Xcargo 97Q2: The St. Louis Thing

By Michael Jay Tucker

Welcome to Xcargo 97Q2: The St. Louis Thing.

So what, you ask, the heck is that?

Ah, I answer, so glad you asked. It is a collection of essays and other stuff I wrote in the second quarter of 1997, which was Long Ago and Far Away, and I was a lot younger. And you maybe weren't born yet. But, heck. You got the job done eventually. So, congrats.

Anyway, at the time I was doing an ezine called Explosive-Cargo, or Xcargo for short. An ezine was a sort of precursor to the blog, It was a short, informal publication that went out via email to anyone who wanted it. And, Explosive-Cargo, a.k.a. "Xcargo," was my ezine. It was sometimes comic, sometimes political, sometimes very personal. It was also relatively successful as ezines went. I had something like 1000 readers, not counting pass-along, by the time I stopped doing it.

For no particularly good reason other than that I'm a raging egomaniac (and proud of it), I've been gathering up all my old Xcargo columns and publishing them as little books. This particular book contains all the stuff I did in the second quarter of 1997, or as much of it as I could locate. Now and then pieces have gone, well, missing. I'm sure they're fine. Probably on a nice farm. Prancing and dancing and just having a grand old time. You betcha.

Anyway…the following is called "The St. Louis Thing" because it contains, in addition to lots of other stuff, one of my infamous multipart series, this one about the great city of St. Louis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Belfort & Bastion
• Release date: Jan 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386370611

Michael Jay Tucker

I am a former trade press editor in the field of computers (small claim to fame, I interviewed Stephen Jobs just after he was kicked out of Apple, and just before the company begged him to come back). I’ve done several hundred news articles for various publications. However, I’ve also written books and articles in other areas, notably history (for instance, And Then They Loved Him, a biography of Seward Collins, who was one of the lovers of Dorothy Parker, and later a self-described “fascist). Before blogs were trendy, I did an “e-zine,” an email based publication, entitled “explosive-cargo,” which had a readership of slightly over a thousand. Since then, I’ve turned it into a blog and you may see it here: http://explosive-cargo.blogspot.com/ Most recently, I have taken to producing personal videos and limited-action animation pieces. You may see my work here: https://vimeo.com/mjt1957

Book preview

Hello, hello!

––––––––

Welcome to Xcargo 97Q2: The St. Louis Thing.

So what, you ask, the heck is that?

Ah, I answer, so glad you asked. It is a collection of essays and other stuff I wrote in the second quarter of 1997, which was Long Ago and Far Away, and I was a lot younger. And you maybe weren’t born yet. But, heck. You got the job done eventually. So, congrats.

Anyway, at the time I was doing an ezine called Explosive-Cargo, or Xcargo for short. An ezine was a sort of precursor to the blog, It was a short, informal publication that went out via email to anyone who wanted it. And, Explosive-Cargo, a.k.a. Xcargo, was my ezine. It was sometimes comic, sometimes political, sometimes very personal. It was also relatively successful as ezines went. I had something like 1000 readers, not counting pass-along, by the time I stopped doing it.

For no particularly good reason other than that I’m a raging egomaniac (and proud of it), I’ve been gathering up all my old Xcargo columns and publishing them as little books. This particular book contains all the stuff I did in the second quarter of 1997, or as much of it as I could locate. Now and then pieces have gone, well, missing. I’m sure they’re fine. Probably on a nice farm. Prancing and dancing and just having a grand old time. You betcha.

Anyway...the following is called The St. Louis Thing because it contains, in addition to lots of other stuff, one of my infamous multipart series, this one about the great city of St. Louis.

So, without further ado, here’s Xcargo...Q2 1997!

Depth Charges!

The time, I fear, has come again. I would spare you if you I could, but I can't. You see, once more, we must brace ourselves for the lowest type of explosive-cargo ...

Depth Charges!

*

Did you see in the paper the other day that a promising anti-baldness drug, Propeccia, may make some men impotent.

Geez.

Ya just can't win for losing.

*

I suppose, though, it actually makes some sense. Sort of like conservation of momentum. I mean, if it comes up there, it's gotta go down here. All a matter of physics. Newton would have understood.

*

Or here's another one. They think now that three to six glasses of wine a day cuts the risk of senility. The kicker is that I got no tolerance for alcohol. Three glasses of wine and I'm doing the puke-a-poka.

I mean, shit. I won't get Alzheimer's, but I'll be too damn drunk to notice.

*

Here's more: You remember that thing in Yeman?  A guy went bonkers, went into a school, killed some children and a couple of teachers. They caught him. They tried him. And they shot him. More or less in that order. I like efficiency.

But before they did that, they decided they wouldn't crucify him, as they had originally been planned. I'm disappointed.  In fact, I think we ought to bring back the fine old custom of impaling, as in Vlad The Impaler, expressly for people who commit crimes of violence against children.

It would make sure they got the point ...don't you know.

*

Memo to that talk show host who said she would never interview Woody Allen:

Yeah, I agree, but ....

'Fess up. If it hadn't been HIM but HER boffing a 16 year old foster-son, she'd have been on the cover PEOPLE as a feminist pioneer and you'd be telling me I wouldn't say stuff like this if she were a man.

*

Jesse Helms is blocking a ban on chemical weapons, which COULD kill millions. Makes sense. He also supports the  tobacco industry, whose products DO kill millions. Sort of a professional courtesy, you see.

*

I heard on the radio the other day one of those smug commentators decrying the fact that Americans don't pay enough attention to Major Stories In the News. He had surveys to prove it.

I wonder if it ever struck him that maybe the real reason people don't pay attention to Major Stories is that they, unlike big league pundits, have sufficient brains to realize that a news lead on Newt 's current mumbles about Hillary's sleeping arrangement in the Lincoln bedroom is just about as trust- and newsworthy as a National Inquisitor center  spread on Michael Jackson's bra size.

*

Did you see in April that Sears, the big American retailer, has admitted to employing hardball collection agency tactics with bankrupt former customers? That is, if some poor soul had three payments left on the 'fridge, but then lost his job and had to go Chapter 11, Sears would do the strong-arm routine and demand payment  .. or, else ... even though, in fact, under Chapter 11, the debtor is actually protected by law from that sort of thing. Then Sears got caught at it. Now it says it's very, very sorry and will never ever do it again.

Yeah. Right.

You know those ads on TV about The Softer Side of Sears?

Is that where they put the blackjack in an argyle sock before  they hit you?

Just wondering.

*

I'm looking at an article here that says the Swiss police have linked the brother of former Mexican president Salinas to drug trafficking.

I mean, jeez. We loaned the country billions in the bail out, and all the time they could have balanced the budget with a couple afternoon's  cocaine kick backs.

*

Speaking of which, I read recently that the (male) Heaven's Gate cultists went to Mexico to be ... er ... that is ... well, castrated. Apparently they couldn't find doctors to do it here. So they went there.  They went across the border with 'em, and came back without 'em.

Sorta brings a whole new meaning to the term foreign trade deficit doesn't it?

*

Wonder if there's an export duty.

*

You know that guy that they think raped and poisoned that little girl in Chicago? Couldn't we sort of induct him into Heaven's Gate, now? I mean, better late than never.

*

Which gets us back to impotence. Some years ago I remember seeing a study that suggested smoking can cause the problem as well. It would make sense. Cigarettes damage circulation, and an erection is largely a matter of

hydraulics.

Wonder why the anti-smoking movement never picked that one up. I mean, a couple of TV spots with limp cigars and we'd have a smoke free gender before tiffin.

*

Here's another: researchers at Thomas Jefferson University and the New York State Health Department urge pregnant women who have HIV not to smoke, because it increases the chances that the baby will catch the disease.

Huh?

Now, lemme get this straight, women who already have AIDS, but who have chosen to bring their babies to term ... running the 1 in 4 risk that that baby will come into life with a full blown, terminal disease ... are also smoking while the child is in the womb? Smoking? Which is dangerous to the unborn even when mother and child are in perfect health?

Whoa.

You know that bit about the nurturing sex and moral superiority? Would you mind running it past me again? I think I missed something the first time.

*

Actually, I hate smoking. I hate the smell of it, the look of it, and what it does to people. I watched my Mother-In-Law die of lung cancer, and she went puffing to the end.

Still ...

With some of the more radical anti-smoking people I have the same problem that I have with the partisans of many another high and holy cause—animal rights activists, Pro-Lifers, the Anti-Fat Food Fascists, and on and on and on.

To wit, it would be easier to take them  seriously if only they didn't so obviously take an intense, passionate, and even erotic joy in denying someone else a pleasure which they themselves do not share, and so will not miss.

*

Okay, here's one that p*sses me off royal...

Got an note here that says Princeton University Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor is to be closed because of budget cuts. This was the device that scientists hoped would ultimately lead to controlled fusion and enough cheap, clean, and pollution-free energy to make us fat and happy until the next ice age. Seems the U.S. government doesn't think it's worth it no more. Cost savings.

Peeves me. I mean, for Christ's sakes, we can afford to fight a whole war, to bomb Iraq into the stone age, and send millions of Americans to sniff nerve gas in the desert  to protect  the immense river of oil imports which drains our economy, befouls our environment, and darkens our future ... but we can't afford one measly little research tool that might make oil as obsolete as flint chipping.

The problem is, you see, those decisions are made by Congressmen and bureaucrats,

who will still be in air conditioned offices and high speed limos ... no matter what ... while the rest of us freeze to death in the dark, our lungs too full of cinders and ash to give us the breath to bitch about it.

*

Ah, here's another one. I've got a Reuters article from March 25, 1997, that says the Islamic fundamentalist government has fired 65 state employees for trimming their beards. Wonder what they would have done to the Cultists who trimmed something else.

But, seriously, in Afghanistan we now have an Iranian-inspired regime which is actually so militant that it frightens the Iranians themselves, no slouches when it comes to doing fun stuff like shooting people and backing terrorism. And the really funny thing is that we created it. We, that is those of us in the West, armed and organized the armies which, ultimately, came back with bombs and guns and heroin at us. We were so busy fighting Godless Communism that we never even suspected that a God-awful Fundamentalism could be even worse.

It's enough to make you long for the good old days of the Cold War. I mean, the Marxist-Leninists-Stalinists were pretty damn nasty, and guilty of many, many crimes against humanity ... but at least we understood them. They were a reforming, Westernizing movement that used a rhetoric with which we were familiar, because we ourselves had developed it.

In other words, they were bloody-handed, bloody-minded sons of bitches, but I miss 'em. 

They were family.

*

Onward and upward.

Name Vain Game Drain

Hello Everybody,

You may be wondering why I'm not in my usual virtual office at [e-mail], nor even in the slightly larger (but no less virtual) quarters at http://www.webpub.com/xcargo/, the Webzine I sometimes run as well—uh, and by the way, look for a new issue in June. (Note: new quarters are explosive-cargo.blogspot.com)

But, anyway, you're wondering why I'm not there, but here, in what appears to be a virtual wood lot behind a virtual wood shed with a large virtual tub full of virtually soap and water.

YEAH, BOSS, HOW COME?

Oh, there you are, BERNIE ... Everyone, you know BERNIE, don't you? He's a small piece of software who lives on my disk drive. I believe he's what's called a intelligent agent. Say hello to Everyone,

BERNIE.

HELLO TO EVERYONE BERNIE.

I *hate* it when you do that...

Anyway, in answer to your question, BERNIE, it's like this. A few weeks ago, I received an email from a disgruntled reader.

SAY, BOSS, IF YOU CAN BE DISGRUNTLED, CAN

YOU BE RE-GRUNTLED?

Shut up, BERNIE. Anyway, this reader took me to task ....

HOW  'BOUT DAT-GRUNTLED?

Shut up, BERNIE. This reader felt I'd been blasphemous.

OR MAYBE POST-GRUNTLED.

Shut up, BERNIE. Anyway, he was anger. In fact, with a few omissions for reasons of space ...  not to mention that I'm not sure those references to my bodily cleanliness, sexual hygiene, and chances of eternal salvation would make it through the 'net ... I'll reproduce here what my angry former reader had to say.

He ... or she, it's not clear which ...  writes:

––––––––

"Dear Sir:

"I did subscribe to your mailing list. It was

referred by an Internet for Dummies like book

The last column was so offensive that I am

unsubscribing to your list as of now ...I am very

unhappy with the vulgar  language referenced

in it. The vain use of my God's name was

ultimately offensive, How dare you use

God's name in vain for your column. I am a

Christian and I don't appreciate the vulgar

language and using God's name wrongly.

Offended Subscriber

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OOO. BOSS. I DON'T THINK HE LIKES YOU.