Occupy Bourbon Street

       Gordon grew up destined to protest something.  I guess you could say it was in his genes.  His daddy’d come down to Mississippi from Ohio in the summer of 1966 to help register the blacks to vote.  His name wasn’t Middleman though.  It was Lowenstein.  Middleman was Gordon’s momma’s family name.  Anyway, Gordon’s daddy’d run off to Canada to avoid the draft about the same time his momma, Bettie Lee, found out she was pregnant. He said he was going to send for her when he got settled, but I don't guess they ever heard from him again. 

Gordon was effected by that too I guess.  He never could stay with a job for too long.  Some said it was because he’d never had a daddy around to show him what work was.  Others said it was having to take care of his momma his whole life, after she came off of that motorcycle, that’d done it. 

Bettie Lee’d run head on into a pick-up truck and right through the windshield she went.  She never talked again.  They called what happened to her “organic brain syndrome” but everybody around town just shortened it to OBS.  Gordon was five at the time.

I don’t really know all that much about it.  Everything I know is only second hand ‘cause I wasn’t around back then.  Gordon’s my cousin.  He’s old enough to be my uncle.  He’s only three years younger than my dad. 

Gordon’s been teaching me how to drive all summer.  He did a great job.  I just got my license last week.  I passed the driving test the first time through.

They closed the battery reprocessing plant where Gordon worked the same day.  I guess they can get a better deal getting them made over in China where they don’t have to worry so much about lead poisoning.  So Gordon was at loose ends when he heard about the protests that had started up north in New York City. 

From what he explained, ninety-nine percent of the people in the United States were being held up by one percent of some greedy hogs that were living there in New York on Wall Street. 

“They might as well have a gun,” he said.

Gordon logged on to the Occupy Wall Street web site to have a look.  He gave them some money and watched a little video somebody posted about how to start a protest in your own community.  I watched it with him, but I swear, it was about the most boring thing I ever saw on You Tube.  I thought it was stupid.  A protest in Soso, Mississippi wasn’t going to accomplish much of anything.  What was he going to occupy anyway, the post office?

Gordon saw it different though.  He thought New Orleans was just about perfect for a protest.  Besides, it was the only city anywhere near big enough that was close to Soso.  I thought, maybe he could catch a Saints game while he was down there. 

He said he could get a couple of his buddies, catch the Amtrack, and go down there on Wednesday if he could get me and his neighbor, Mrs. Clanton, to keep an eye on his momma for a few days while he was gone.  I said sure.  Getting away for a little’d do him good. He didn’t have a job to go to right now anyway.  Maybe they could occupy Jackson Square.

He thought about it all day and by that night he was sure that this was a thing that needed doing.  So he went back to the OWS website to let them know what he was intending to do.  OWS thought that that was a fine idea, and gave him some hints about drums, and collections boxes and what to write on the protest signs and all sorts of things like that.

He went out to the garage to paint some protest signs.  He had a lot of paint left from painting the short bus for the Mardi Gras parade back in February.  He made the first sign purple and gold.  He wrote OWS in big letters.  Then stood back to get a good look to see how it seemed at a distance.   OWS looked a lot like the thing his momma had, the OBS.  Maybe it was a sign.  Something was trying to show him what it was that he was supposed to do.  Gordon P. Middleman was going to be a real leader.  He was the founding father of his own protest.  Gordon was going down there and Occupy Bourbon Street to raise money for his momma.  So that’s what he wrote on the rest of the signs. 

OBS for OBS

 Support your momma

He caught the train on Tuesday.  Nobody else went with him.  I couldn’t go ‘cause I had school.  All our friends had jobs except Wilson, we call him Boo, and Boo wasn’t getting out of jail for three weeks.  Gordon wasn’t waiting.  So there wasn’t any of us that could go with him.  I drove him to the station.  He had a lot of extra signs.  I watched as he put them on the rack above him, then he sat down with that big drum he got from the attic on his lap, like it was a lunch box or something.  That’s the last I saw of Gordon for a while.  I heard from him though.  He sent me texts almost every day.

Day One

Well, my OBS protest isn’t working worth a damn. At first nobody else on Bourbon Street even noticed I was there. I was just standing there by myself with my signs, beating on the drum.  A few people gave me money. Some others spit on me.  Folks stuck Saints stickers on my signs. Tomorrow I’ve got to get some help.

Day Two

a.m. – Slept behind some garbage cans, a guy peed on me. Threw my clothes away and washed off with a hose.

Day Three

Ohhhhh…my head is killing me.  Started on Canal.  I was beating on my drum and a kid with a trumpet and a girl with a violin started playing along.  Next thing I know a seven-foot tall giant in a green tutu, torn fishnet stockings, high heels, and a Tulane football jersey took my green sign and tore it so it only said “Support you Momma” and gave it to a chubby girl in a clear plastic raincoat and nothing else. A boy took a marker and changed OBS on one of the signs to Oh Baby Show me, and off we went, marching along.  All kinds of folk were following us, throwing beads and stuff, girls up on the balconies were pulling up their shirts.  We were sure doing some protesting now.  Police on horses even rode along beside us.  We spent the donation money on some of those tall hurricanes.  I slept on the girl with the raincoat’s couch.

 Day Five

Somebody stole my drum last night.  The girl I’m staying with is a stripper at the JoyLuck Club.  I hope she didn’t give me something.  I only have one sign left and it’s all covered with stickers so you can’t tell what it says.

I didn’t hear anything else for a week or so then Gordon showed up at home.  He said he felt bad about leaving his momma alone for so long but he wasn’t getting enough donations and the raincoat girl threw him out.   After that, he didn’t have enough money to buy a ticket home, but it was worth it.

Gordon and I are both pretty sure he taught those greedy hogs up there in New York a thing or two.

A Free Man

I’m back.

Yep, I met with the Editor and they’ve decided to keep me on. So I’ll be writing this thing for another year. I guess that’s good, or bad depending on if you like the stuff I write, or not. This year will be a little different though, for the first time since I started stringing together words for the JOURNAL I’m unencumbered. Well, I’m still emcumbered by nutty thoughts that ping around in my brain, but what I mean to say is I’m not tied up by being on the board of trustees or the AMA delegation or anything official, so if I say stuff you don’t like you can’t hold it against State Medical. You’re welcome to hold it against me but you shouldn’t expect I’ll lose a lot of sleep at night just because you think I’m an idiot. I’m used to that. I have a whole family that thinks I’m an idiot from time to time.

The unencumbered stuff is only partly an accident, I guess. Most of it was my own doing. I did run to be re-elected to our rapidly diminishing AMA delegation…I lost, but I got to give one of the most fun to give campaign speeches I could ever imagine giving.

It was one of those things that comes to you when you’re driving a pretty long way, like Meridian to Tupelo, and you have time to let things roll around inside your head, getting bigger and bigger as you drive. Usually, after you get to wherever it is that you’re going, common sense takes over and you write a real speech, but I didn’t get that chance. See I’d had to run back home in the middle of the meeting to treat an emergency patient, an old friend, who had developed a spinal cord compression in the mid-thorasic spine. Not wanting them to be paralyzed from the waist down for what life they had left, there wasn’t a lot of choice. Anyway I got back to Tupelo, got out of the car and gave the speech, about that fast. Here it is, as best as I remember:

Our inaugural theme for this year is “A Night at the Races”, so in keeping with that theme, I’m going to talk about this election in racing terms. See, as far as medical politics goes, the AMA meeting is the Kentucky Derby. It’s our chance to shine in the national spotlight, and up to now we have. You, the Mississippi State Medical Association, are the riders, and we, the AMA delegation have been the horse that runs the race. Well, next year you’ve decided that it will be best for Mississippi to enter the Kentucky Derby riding on a two-legged pig.

By quitting the AMA you’ve left your delegation with only one delegate and one alternate delegate, the same size as the delegations from Puerto Rico, and the gay and transgender physician section.

So what this election is all about is deciding what two legs you think you need on that pig. Do you want a couple of hams? We surely have our share of hams on the delegation. We can harness the power of those hams and go plowing along through the dirt trying to get around that track. Maybe we need a couple of strong shoulders, we have plenty of those on the delegation too, a little more dignified perhaps. They can pull us along. Or maybe you all want one ham and one shoulder. We can try to find a way to balance ourselves and not fall over in the dirt.

None of these, I submit, is a good alternative. It is a shame is what it is. You want to tell me that the AMA doesn’t represent you, that the delegation isn’t important to you? Well the work of this delegation is directly responsible for you getting checks for 8.1% of your entire gross federally derived income last year. By fighting to require CMS to abide by the congressionally mandated geographic price correction we prevailed. That meant something to you. You put that money in your pocket. Nobody called to say, “I’m not taking this damned money, the AMA got it, and I don’t approve of the AMA.” Destroying this delegation, just to make a political point, when you’re benefitting from the work that it does is shortsighted and stupid.

My friends have told me that this is a suicide speech. If it is…then so be it. Somebody has to tell you the truth. If we get 1001 members of this association, one fourth of our members, to re-join the AMA at least we’d have two delegates and two alternates. While we still probably won’t win the Kentucky Derby on a four-legged pig, I’m betting we’ll eat a lot less dirt.

It was a great time. I got to pound on the lectern and point at people and tell the truth. Who could possibly ask for more?

The election turned out fine. We decided on two strong shoulders, Luke Lampton and Danny Edney. I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome…unless, of course, those of you out there reading this listen to what it is I’ve said, and do what it’s going to take to get us a couple more legs to run on.



See ya next time,
One of the hams

Discovery-The Continuation of The Thomasine Legacy

Frank: ahhhh...but did you really?

MS CGS: Then there's "Tom, Tom, Piper's son, Stole a pig an' away he run; pig was eat, Tom was beat, Tom went runnin' down the street." (secret Mason-esque code for the potential perils of tracking the Holy Grail) Finally, the esoteric revealed!

Frank: Pig was yummy tho..........

Me: I had totally missed the secret society scenario,the code though may take us as far back as Thomas a Beckett Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until his death in 1170.

Me: Now all we need is the secret ring.

Frank: I got one, but can't tell you or let you see it....it's a secret :-|

Me: The truth is that his real name was Gilbert Beket Jr. it must be some linkage to the Thomasine conversion of 1169 that caused Henry II to kill him the following year, and thus he became Saint Thomas to both the Catholics and the Protestants.

Frank: My ring has a video of that.....oops....shhhhh.

Me: Now if I can just tie this all into String Theory by adding a couple of more dimensions, we've got that little trinket from Stockholm sewn up.

MS CGS: Do you suppose Disney's "Thomasina," the cat heroine (re: the divine feminine) is Gilbert reincarnated? Her worst hairball was a visage not of Christ, but of her nemesis, Henry II's rat-fink advisor. She gagged when she spied the secret decoder ring in her daily ration of Cracker Jack.

Me: The screenplay was written by Robert Westerby and Paul Gallico and was based upon Gallico's 1957 novel Thomasina, the Cat Who Thought She Was God. ...

Me: What more proof could we possibly need, it also explains why Frank keeps watching that secret decoder thingy, he's such a cat lover.

MS CGS: It's the Fisherman's Ring. Tom-Gilbert is the Pope!

Frank: Da*n Cats.....watch my decoder for the cat's 9th life.....

Discovery

When I read what I have stretched out before you, I must admit, my blood ran cold. I came upon it on that fool Anderson’s blog. He’ll be the first one that I kill, I fear.
When the nomination first came before me I laughed. I have been a member of the Nobel Physics committee for seven years and this was the first time any one had paid so little regard to the Nobel protocol that they’d submitted their own work, work that had not even been finished, much less published, for official consideration. I knew right then that this Anderson must be either a fool or a genius. My job was to figure out which.
When I began to look through the submitted equations that were purported to prove the Thomasine Confluence theory, I was appalled. They lacked coherence and anywhere that they crashed they were buoyed by the insertion of an unseen universe or a temporal inversion to sustain them.
Officially I derided them, in public it was easy to show that they deserved no more consideration than the lint under my carpets for serious candidacy for the prize, but it took me to the blog, and it was when I read the comments that I knew they’d begun to see the clues.
My name is Inganteria Moelusteian, but everyone calls me Tom, and yes I am that Tom, the direct spiritual successor to the apostle Thomas, Saint Thomas, Tommy Smothers, and Tommy Chong. The Rightfully Ordained Brother Thomas of the Order of the Thomasine Monks. I am the guardian of the secret of cynical thoughts, the doubters of truth, God’s own troublemakers. And now a small group of idiotic Americans had begun to post the secrets of our Order on the Internet.
My charge is clear, I must hunt them down one by one and eliminate them as a threat, by conversion to the true belief or transition to the inanimate.

The Thomasine Confluence

When I posted my little story The Ghost on my blog it produced an interesting set of responses, which I shall post here, via the magic of cut and paste, unaltered except for names.


“Sis: Enjoyed the blog, Tom. Glad you answered when opportunity rang the bell”

“Frank: Tom, are you sure it wasn't UPS...they ring once and run. And, we went to RMH for the Cardiac Unit's 2 year anniversary this afternoon. Shook hands with my Surgeon, his PA, nurses etc., who remembered me well.....when leaving, the Surgeon said "nice seeing you again - you look great, Tom".... When they made my name tag....they put Thomas (my middle name) instead of Frank....very - very spooky if you ask me....Tom.......VERY SPOOKY.....!!!!”

“Me: the world is a spooky place maybe he was in the wrong place”

“Frank: Which Tom was in the wrong place?”

“Ms CGS: or maybe the surgeon is a closet writer/blogger/prf. of English?”

“Ms CGS: Really enjoyed your blog, Scott.”

“Me: Frank, since you're the only Tom here, I think the ghost was a bit south of where he intended to be. Thanks CG. I don't know where it's going, but it will probably have to be edited some to get published.”

“Frank: But, you see, I'm NOT the only Tom here...you have a Tom there....You are just as much of a Tom as I am....mistaken identity?”

“Ms CGS: can I play? I'll be Tom the Editor.”

I was planning to answer CGS with a suggestion that if we were going to cast an attractive woman as Tom the editor, that she would have to be comfortable being a dominatrix that only wanted to edit you really, really hard. But then something struck me. It was both the tone and the content of those final two posts which led me to the conclusion that there was something larger going on here. So that meant it was time for me to get in gear and look into it, in only the way a piercing mind such as mine can possibly do it. It was time for some…tat da da daaaaaah…..(wait on it)……RESEARCH.

Now research is always a good answer when you have a vexing problem or coincidence to investigate, the problem becomes how, and what to research? Clearly, this doesn’t appear to be a religious problem, although there are examples of Thomas’s who play a prominent role in the bible, and there is always the possibility that we have all been simultaneously, because of our natural tendencies to scoff, and distrust been transformed into visages of the Thomas who doubted Jesus’ resurrection, but after due consideration and running a few preliminary mathematical equations, I rejected this as the explanation.

Biology was always a consideration, and I had to consider the possibility that some genetic sequence that we all possess in common is the root of our mutual Thomasine misidentification. So, I went out to the garage and fired up my DNA sequencer, and used a vacuum on my screen to suck DNA samples from the keyboards of each of your keyboards, by visiting your Facebook profile, and using direct screen-to-screen transport to shove the vacuum nozzle against your keyboard. I hope you don’t mind the intrusion. I looked at that and yes almost ninty-percent of our DNA sequences are similar, but Eighty-five percent of our DNA sequences match those of an earthworm, so I wasn’t able to draw any firm scientific conclusions from that. And while I don’t profess to speak fluent earthworm, I am unaware of any earthworms that refer to one another as Tom at all, much less it having some identifiable locus, so I was able to exclude those common sequences from consideration. The five percent remaining that the three of us have in common with each other, but not with earthworms seems to code for stuff like arms and legs and a four chamber heart and things like that, and not for name specific identity. So I rejected biology.

The answer then I reasoned must come from the realm of physics, specifically I gravitated to the subject of String Theory, and because it is such a fluid field, I adjusted and tweaked physical principles, added two unknown dimensions to account for Thomasine movement, a term I have now created, and viola there was the answer implicit in the very underpinnings of the science. We have only to look of the dual resonance model, first postulated by Veneziano in 1968 to see what is happening. In short, Veneziano observed that the s- and t-channel vibrations that occurred in meson scattering were of exactly the same amplitude, on further observation the exact phenomena was observed in N-particle amplitudes that gave us the idea of harmonic, opposing amplitudes like that which occurs in a one-dimensional model of linear string vibration. Obviously what is happening to us is an exact but opposite reaction, modulated through time by the presence of the two unseen dimensions of the great Brucine Confluence that effected Monty Python in the same years that Veneziano was developing his resonance model, and is only showing up now. I propose that we try to quantify B- (for Brucine) and T- (for Thomasine) confluent amplitudes and sit back and wait on the guys in Stockholm to send us that Nobel Prize I always knew I was going to get some day. I’ll start working on the math.

Scott

Teary Sockets in Tucson

Teary Sockets will be showing at the Tucson Film and Music festival at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday October 12th at the Rialto Theater. If you can come see us. Jackson (the director, and co-writer) and I will both be there.