...but it seems like people are using buzzwords more than they're using English these days. And at inappropriate moments.

I've just been reading this ugly little story:

MILTON, Mass. (March 29) -- A man on a rampage fatally stabbed his 17-year-old sister, decapitated his 5-year-old sister in front of a police officer and then headed toward his 9-year-old sister before officers shot him amid what their chief described as "a killing field."

Am I just being too sensitive here? Or am I justified in saying "Hey Chief, stop playing to the cameras." Why did you need to use a clever little term like 'Killing Field' to describe an actual tragedy? As a movie title, fine. In this context, not.

If you've been unable to escape my writing in the past, you may remember that I really got worked up into a lather about the term "Ground Zero" being used to describe the World Trade Center site. I was and still am truly disgusted by that. It's the scene of an unspeakable tragedy, for fuck's sake. It's not a video game.

"Ground Zero" my ass. When I hear a TV news anchor refer to "Ground Zero" I want to just choke the life out of him.

Cool-Sounding Buzzwords like "Ground Zero" and "Killing Field" trivialize things like this. They're a substitute for actual thought. They shouldn't be used to describe actual tragedies. Ever.

Am I nuts? I mean, on THIS evidence, am I nuts?

http://jp917.blogspot.com/2009/02/leaked-beatles-revolution-1-take-20.html

http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/beatles-expert-discusses-unreleased-revolution-1-197926?cpn=RSS&source=MRNEWS

The question of the track's legitimacy doesn't really rest on the use of those sound effects, or in the fact that it's much easier to drop them in in today's digital world than it would have been in 1968. That's a specious argument -- after all, they did "Revolution 9" with scraps of tape and several tape decks all running at once, and probably about six hands on the faders. Most likely it took hours and hours. I could do the same thing right on this computer in four minutes (yes, less time than it takes to listen to it) but so what? They DID it in 1968, with tape, and the proof of that is in your hands whenever you pick up the record.

I'm totally convinced that this "take 20" was done in 1968, and here's why:

In the middle of "Revolution 9," there's that moment when you can hear Lennon, in a really strained voice, saying "Right! Right! Ri-i-i-i-i- i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ght..." as the background noise suddenly stops behind him.

("Paul Is Dead" fans cite that as John telling you to listen to only the right channel of the stereo mix, which is where you'd here all the "clues" that Paul had died.)

But notice how, on this "take 20," it turns out that that's actually the lead vocal track of the song itself, and takes place immediately after the original fade-out.

It's way too perfect a fit to have just been stapled on later. It belongs there.

So I can insist with no doubt whatsoever that at least five minutes of this thing are for real. Can't say for sure about all the stuff after that, but it certainly makes sense.

My friend Rob just related a story about a rough time he had getting into Canada.  Which reminded me of an incident from a few years back.

The band was flying to Toronto from the West Coast, and I was driving their gear from New Jersey. The van, like most rock and roll vans, was filthy and full of all sorts of detritus...almost-finished coffees of indeterminate age, unwashed clothing, sticky magazines...ugh.

It never occurred to me to toss the van before I left.

I had been given this customs form by their management and was assured that this was all I'd need when I got to Canadian Customs.  Ha!

I got to Niagara and immediately here's a sign that says passenger cars this way, all trucks and vans this other way. So I follow the arrow and end up at a Checkpoint Charlie sort of thing. I innocently hand the guy my form, tell him where I'm going, etc.

He looks at me like I'm from the moon and says "Who gave you this form?" I tell him. He looks at me like I'm from the moon AGAIN. WTF, I'm thinking? Is this the first time an American rock and roll band's gear has come to Canada??

"Well, who is your Customs Broker?"

My what now??

I'm directed to the parking lot one of those 60s-era official-looking buildings. The sort that could be a Motor Vehicle bureau or an elementary school. I figure, maybe it's a new guy at Checkpoint Charlie and I'll go inside and they'll stamp my form with a red maple leaf design and everything will be fine.

I go inside and some very hopeless-looking people are sitting on benches looking like they're waiting for their bail bondsmen. Oh-oh.

I go to the window, explain my situation to the nice lady, who AGAIN looks at me like I'm from the moon. "Well, who's your Customs Broker?"

Now I'm annoyed. And I decide my best move is to act the same way I feel -- "surprised at all this" -- because I don't want it to look like I'm hiding anything. Because it has just NOW occurred to me, you see, that metaphorical storm clouds are forming here -- which is fine, I have time for that -- but also that I did NOT TOSS THE VAN BEFORE I LEFT. Which is not so fine at all, I am just now realizing.

She says all the agents are at lunch and I'll have to wait. I object and ask politely what all the fuss is about, because I'm just an innocent little driver and I was told that all I needed to do was show this letter at Customs. It is, in fact, an official Canadian Customs Form of some sort, and she's lokking at it as if she's never seen one before. Just like the Charlie guy did. I want to know why that is.

She turns around (behind her bulletproof plexi wall) and flags down a passing Actual Mountie -- with the hat and the funny pants and everything. He looks me up and down and decides I'm probably legit. They have a keen eye, those Actual Mounties.

He comes over to a different window and motions me there. Asks a thousand questions, which again is fine, but sheds no light as to why this seems to be the first van full of musical equipment that's ever crossed the river here.

"So you don't have a broker?"

"Listen, sir, I'm totally baffled at even being asked that. I don't know what a Customs Broker even is." (But at this point, I've tacitly figured out that it is most likely just another way for shyster assholes to make money, with full governmental cooperation, off of some legal service that you ought to be able to do yourself for free, WITH THE FCCING FORM I AM HOLDING.)

"Well, okay, let's see if we can figure this out."

"Sir, I don't even know what there is to figure out. The band is flying to the show, in Toronto -- here's the contract for them to appear -- and I'm driving their equipment there. If there's some sort of fee I don't know about, tell me and I'll call their management. Which, believe me, I'm gonna do anyway, since they've apparently been negligent in their duties and thereby wasted my time AND yours."

I actually said this. To a mountie.

And it worked, too. He was in my corner now.

He laughed and said "I'll be right back."

It probably helped that he knew of the festival -- a fairly big-deal show with two stages.

Here's what I hadn't counted on -- oops -- my cheapo cell phone does not work in Canada. Oh, good. But I had a hunch that I might get a vestige of an American signal out in the parking lot, which isn't too far from the river.

I tell the nice lady at the window that I'm going outside to see if I can get my phone to work, and she should tell Dudley that I did not flee with screaming tires.

(This is all true, with the single exception of the word "Dudley.")

I call "So What Management" (like this should not have been my FIRST clue) and leave a message. I'm practically screaming into the phone. There are mounties and other official types scattered around the entrance to the building and I'm making damn sure they hear every word of my message, in which I play up my role as Innocent Driver who has been sent into some sort of Terrordome by them, the Negligent Management Boneheads. This can only help.

And it does. When I go back inside I see Dudley talking to one of the other Dudlii who had been outside. They both look at me and laugh. (Not that THAT doesn't happen often enough, mind you.)

I approach the window and say "Find anything out?"

He explains How Things Are Usually Done here -- a Customs Broker submits, several days in advance, an inventory of the complete contents of your vehicle. With photos, usually, and a breakdown of the dollar value of said contents. And what they're for. But I can simply fill out the form that said Broker would have submitted, and they'll validate it for me.

And of course, as I'm two-thirds done with the form, I see the question about "merchandise." Of which, the van contains several boxes.

Dudley is sitting in the waiting room with me now, and he sees the look on my face.

"Got merchandise, eh?"

"Yep, sure do. They're not even planning on selling any, there won't be a place at the festival for them to do that. But it's all in the van."

And I'm going to have to PAY TO BRING IT IN, or have it confiscated. Confiscated apologetically, of course.

"Well, I'm gonna have to go back outside and try to raise their management on the phone again. I don't know if they'd rather pay the fee or just have you keep the stuff."

This goes over quite well with Dudley, who is now quite sure that I'm on the up-and-up because of said remark. No mention has been made of anyone having any intention of searching the van. Of course, I'm going to have to inventory said merchandise. He says that whether I pay the fee or turn it over, they'll still need an inventory. So it's back outside.

The van's in a corner of the parking lot. I take the form out, leave ANOTHER message which isn't returned, and start counting.

I ain't worried. Cathy at "So What Management" has given me the corporate VISA card number for emergencies. Not, I'm quite sure, expecting that it will be used for this.

So I count up the CDs and T-shirts and sumbit an inventory to Dudley. He goes back into the office and has someone official come up with some sort of number, I think it was about $175 CDN.
That's all?? FCC it. Put it on the card. If she doesn't like it, then she should have called me back.

Dudley laughs again. He says it isn't usually done this way, but he thinks it'll be okay, and starts heading back to the office.

Meanwhile, it occurs to me that HE STILL HAS NOT ASKED TO SEE THE MERCH. Even to take a cursory look. And now I'm thinking I'll be on my way out of the parking lot, and on whatever Exit Papers they'll give me they will not have checked whatever little box says "strip-search" and I'll end up looking down the barrel of whatever they shoot Kodiak bears with.

So -- having arranged the boxes of merch neatly, and not having seen anything obviously inappropriate while doing so -- I say, "Don't you wanna look in the van??" and point towards the parking lot.

"Nah," he says, "This'll be fine."

Another 20 minutes or so go by. At this point I've been here for about two and a half hours, and am going to miss my officially- designated load-in time. This is a bigger deal than it would normally be -- since the festival is on an island which can only be reached by boat.

(And it ends up costing me dearly, because I end up missing the last boat back and have to take the public ferry, which drops you off a considerable distance from the place where the van is parked. I find this out AFTER waiting on the dock for a boat which I was ASSURED would be coming -- for two hours. Not knowing the name of the street -- the papers are in the van -- I can't very well take a cab. Well, I can sort-of see where it is from the middle of the river as the ferry is crossing. And I become a victim of City Waterfront Spatial Distortion -- wherein it looks like your destination is a short walk away, but is actually a TWO-HOUR WALK from where you are about to dock.)

Anyway, back to Canadian Customs. He comes back out, with a receipt, and a form, and apologizes for all the confusion. None of this whole thing was his job to do, of course. He could have left me to sit there with the other rotting corpses while some Desk Guy finished his Two-Molson Lunch or whatever it is they eat in Canada.

I thank him again, and make my way back out to the van, making it very obvious that I am NOT IN ANY KIND OF A HURRY TO GET OUT OF THERE, NO SIR, NO WAY.

...and wouldn't you know that Checkpoint Man looks at this new form, AGAIN, like he's never seen one before????

He calls the building on his little Canadio-Shack walkie-talkie, and after a minute or so he waves me on and apologizes for the delay. And I'm off.

All sorts of mind-numbingly ridiculous stuff happened on that trip -- the upshot of which was that, because of screw-ups in timing by other people, I completely missed meeting up with my friend Sophie, as previously arranged.

Coming BACK through Customs, I felt a bit better -- since I had, in the middle of the night, completely tossed the trailer AND the van and not found anything askance.

But the US Customs fellow at Checkpoint Cerberus is nothing like his CDN counterparts. He motions me to pull over to a mini-Guantanamo off to the right. And makes me open the trailer.

"You bought quite a bit of musical equipment in Canada, didn't you?"

This catches me totally off-guard, as it was obviously designed to do.   But the stuff is all a thousand years old and has the band's name stencilled on every piece. Oh no, I thought, you're not getting the best of me here. So I laugh, as if taken aback, and say "What?  No, look. These cases are all ancient, and the band's name is painted on them."

He looks at me like I'm an idiot. "Ever heard of used musical equipment?"

What??!!??!!?

I show him, again, that he is holding the eponymous band's contract to play at a festival in Toronto which has just concluded the previous evening. And that said band's name, painted on the cases, was obviously painted thereon quite some time ago because the paint is all scratched and faded.

...and right about now, I've had enough.  So I just say what's on my mind.  "You want me to open all the cases? You want to search the whole van AND the trailer? Just say the word."

He stares me down, hard, gives me the papers back and lets me go.

Our local paper had a story in the "People" (read: "Celebrity Gossip") section this morning about Bobby Rydell.  It was credited to The Associated Press.  Remember that -- it becomes important.

As the story went, the Ultimate Fan fulfilled a childhood dream by marrying Bobby Rydell recently -- after having been his fan club president SINCE THE AGE OF TWELVE, in 1960.

Trouble is, it didn't actually happen...

--------------------------------------

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/the-insider/Bobby_Rydell_gets_married.html

"Bobby Rydell got married Saturday night to Linda Hoffman -- but it's not the Linda Hoffman who's the president of the Bobby Rydell fan club, as I erroneously blogged Tuesday night.

"Yes. There are two Linda Hoffmans. They know each other. For a while when they lived in Montgomery County, they had the same dentist, family doctor, hair dresser and jeweler.

"The Linda Hoffman who is the new Mrs. Rydell, 55, is a cardiac sonographer who met him in October 2007, said the "other" Linda Hoffman, who's the president of his fan club. Linda Ferrino Hoffman, the fan club president (who's known as Linda #1), has been married for 38 years to Jake Hoffman and lives in Margate.

"The Rydell's wife, Camille, died of cancer in 2003. His mother, Jennie, died on Jan. 7."

---------------------------------

This means:  some assclamp intern at THE ASSOCIATED FUCKING PRESS saw this blurb IN A BLOG and ran with it without performing the simplest, easiest, most cursory of fact-checks. 
 
Is there even a Fourth Estate anymore?  Is all this stuff done by unpaid zit-squeezing iPod-wearing ADHD-inflicted arc'ing-synapsed drones sitting at MacBooks getting all their factoids from Wikipedia with one hand and texting Samantha/Casey/Taylor/Brytny with the other hand?  HALF of the other hand??
 

I'm sorry if I'm offending any deeply religious types out there, but I really do think all Holy Texts need to be stripped bare and replaced with:

"Hi, this is God speaking.  Be nice to people, animals, and plants, don't fuck with anybody and STOP PUTTING WORDS IN MY MOUTH IF YOU DON'T MIND.  And I'll see you later.  And I WILL see you later.  Your friend, God."

And that's it.  Page one is also the last page.  No footnotes!

Now Happy Fucking Holidays, dammit.