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New story: Mail-order DNA test reveals mutts' breed heritage

Mail-order DNA test reveals mutts' breed heritage

Heirs of the dog

SCOTT MCNUTT, NEWS@KNEWS.COM
Monday, December 10, 2007

The Young-Williams Animal Center listed our dog, Dakota, as a beagle mix. But an arching, curly tail and other oddities convinced my wife Dana that Cody (Dakota’s nickname) had a different lineage.

A foot high at the shoulder and two feet from nose to tailbone, 1-year-old Cody weighed a surprising 27 pounds. The dog’s muscular build, thick neck, powerful jaws and barrel chest prompted Dana to dub Cody “the world’s tiniest pit bull.” Friends guessed Cody might have Welsh corgi, basenji and terrier in her...

For the full story:

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/dec/10/mail-order-dna-test-reveals-mutts-breed-heritage/

Knoxberry, USA -- Knoxville Voice column

This will probably be up on the site eventually, but you can alway pick up the hard copy at any of these fine locations:

http://www.knoxvoice.com/find-us.html

Es

Knoxberry, USA

Potentially popular TV programming?

By Scott McNutt

The screenwriters’ strike offers the perfect opportunity to create a Knox County-based TV show. Because our county government is so abysmally dysfunctional, the show would write itself. Imitation being the sincerest form of profit in the television industry, maybe our show could be "The Mikey Ragsdale Show," about Mikey Taylor, mayor of the sleepy Appalachian community, Knoxberry. He’d have a son, Lumpy, and helping him raise the boy would be his Aunt Cynthia (Aunt C for short) and Deputy Mayor Armstrong "Army" Mike; plus there’d be the well-meaning interference of the community’s colorful, incompetent eccentrics.

To show how easy it would be to script this thing, here’s a sample episode:

Stage Directions: (Mikey swings open his office door. Inside, Mikey’s always-befuddled assistant, Army, is sitting on the side of Mikey’s desk, fiddling with a charge-card swiper.

Army leaps up, startled, and twists around, trying to conceal the machine. Tangled in the device’s cord, he rips the wires out, shocking himself in the process.)

Army: Ye-OWTCH!

Mikey: Army, how many times have I told you to keep your P-Card holstered?

Army: I wasn’t using it, Mij, honest I wasn’t. Dad-blamed malfunctioning doodads! It just started beeping at me! I warned it to keep its peace. This is the mayor’s office. We have to maintain some dignity, don’t we? We can’t just have dadburned machines up and beeping, can we? Nip it in the beep, I say. But the infernal thing just kept up the racket. It was challenging my authority is what it was. I had to subdue it.

Mikey: Subdue it? Army?

Army: All right! All right. It wasn’t cooperating, so I had to wheel tax it. It was disrespecting me is what it was!

Mikey: Arm, we been over and over this. You can’t go wheel taxing everything that don’t behave like you want it to. Now, if—

(A tremendous racket cuts off Mikey’s next sentence as Commissioner Scoobers Pile bursts into the office.)

Scoobers: (Out of breath) Mayor Mikey! Mayor Mikey!

Mikey: Scoobers! Just settle down now, Scoobers. Get your wind back, then tell us what’stroubling you.

Scoobers: Hootie-hoo, Mikey, I do thank yew for helpin’ me gather my thoughts together, ’cause like my Grandma Pile used to say, ‘If thoughts ye don’t gather, yew’ll only blather.’ So I do thank yew, thank yew, thank yew. Yes, I do. (Pause.) Well, I guess I’ll be gettin’ back to the commission. (Scoobers starts to exit.)

Mikey: Scoobers? Wasn’t they something you’s going to tell us?

(Standing half through the doorway, Scoobers gapes at Mikey for a moment, then yanks the door shut.)

Scoobers: Well, Sha-zay-um! Fer shame, fer shame, fer shame! I guess my brains’d be wanderin’ behind the forest critters if they weren’t stuck plumb inside my noggin. Yes, Mayor Mikey, they was something. Them P-Cards yew told me weren’t goin’ to be gettin’ no more charges from must be faulty, ’cause that little approvin’ machine down to the commission wuz just chirrupin’ up a storm.

Mikey: Was it? (Darts eyes at Deputy Army, who erstwhile makes a great show of rummaging in a filing cabinet.)

Scoobers: That it wuz. I know we’d got them gas and maintenance charges squared away, but gol-ol-ol-lee, the little feller liked to beat the band, a-clicking and a-whirring and a-spitting out little bits of paper. Then—

Mikey: I get the picture, Scoobers. Well, Army?

Army: It was just one piddling little tax charge! You have to believe me, Mikey!

Scoobers: Commissioner’s aye-ray-yest! Commissioner’s aye-ray-yest!

Army: Nip him! Nip him in the butt, Mij!

Mikey: Simmer down, the both of ye. Now, Army, I said you could have one charge if you kept it—

Scoobers: Mayor Mikey—

Mikey: Not now, Scoobers. I said, ‘If you kept— ’

(The door is thrown open again and in strolls Aunt C with Lumpy in tow.)

Aunt C: Oh, Mi-KEEEEEEY! My family credit card isn’t working, and I was trying to buy lobsters to make more of the pickled lobster tails you love so much.

(Mikey is stricken with caution.)

Scoobers: That’s what I wuz trying to tell yew, Mayor Mikey. That little machine kept a-spittin’ out charge after charge from Aunt C. I figured it must be stuck, so I pulled the plug on it. I thought that might be a help.

Mikey: (Only half-listening to Scoobers) The pickled lobster tails I love so much?

Lumpy: Pa—

Mikey: In a minute, Lumpy. Aunt C? The tails?

Aunt C: Mikey, dear, the batch I made last night for my sorority’s sewing circle is already gone, so I knew you ate them. (Mayor Mikey starts to sputter in protest, but Aunt C cuts him off.) There’s no use in making a fuss pretending you didn’t. It’s a flattery that you enjoy them so much. So I just went down to the corner store to get some more lobsters, and while I was there, I thought I would buy a few things, like a few trips to my regional sorority gatherings, a few more lobsters, you know, necessities. And do you know? The silly card wouldn’t work.

Mikey: Aunt C, which card were you using?

Lumpy: Pa—

Aunt C: The family card, of course.

Mikey: But Scoobers here says they were going on the P-Card account.

Aunt C: Why, Mikey! That is a family card.

Mikey: (Groaning.) Now, Aunt C, I have told you and told you and told you that the P-Card is for county business only.

Aunt C: Mikey, I thought I raised you smarter than this. Aren’t you Mayor of Knoxberry?

Mikey: Yes, Aunt C, but that don’t—

Lumpy: Pa—

Aunt C: Don’t interrupt, Lumpy. (To Mikey) If you are the county mayor, then county business is your business. And your business is your family’s business, so family business is county business.

Mikey: (Ponders for a moment) I reckon I never skuck up on it that way, Aunt C. You’re wiser than a hoot owl, and at least twiced as lovable. Scoobers, hook that machine back up. That’s settled, but we still have a poser. I know I didn’t eat them lobster tails. Who— ?

Lumpy: (Sheepishly) I ate ’em, Pa.

Aunt C: Lumpy, you scamp!

Mikey: Well, for the love of— C’mon, son, let’s get your stomach pumped. That lobster’s not yew’s to a-et.

Aunt C: We’llput it on the P-Card!

(All exit, whistling.)

KNS freelance piece --Agee Park dedication

Making their mark at James Agee Park

Volunteers, donors honored for roles in improvements

Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam led a celebration Sunday honoring those who have contributed to James Agee Park, located at the corner of Laurel Avenue and James Agee Street in the Fort Sanders neighborhood, a block from where the Pulitzer Prize-winning author grew up.

 

"It's a celebration of volunteers and donors who have helped improve the park, especially some recent improvements," said architect and Fort Sanders resident Randall DeFord, who has been involved with the park's development since its early stages...

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/nov/26/making-their-mark-at-james-agee-park/

For Life -- New Toxic Fumes in the Hellbender Press

Eventually, the edited version of this column will probably be at http://www.hellbenderpress.com/. But don't wait! Pick up your hard copy at any of these locations, http://www.hellbenderpress.com/where, to read what Rikki Hall says about the sticky issue of spider webs, how Yarnell Perkins advises you deal with bad bosses, Kim Stephens' pitch for visiting the Racheff Gardens and so much more.

 

In the meantime, though, here's some toxic fuming.

For Life

The logical end? Death to all who aren’t!

by Scott McNutt

What is our most precious natural resource? What is the one thing that we must conserve at all costs? Air, water, arable land? Natural gas, crude oil, coal, ethanol? No, none of those things. It’s life, of course.

The pro-life movement defines life as beginning at conception. But that concept is ill-conceived. It gives short shrift to sperms and eggs. Are sperms and eggs dead? No, they are not. They are alive! So life begins the moment a single sperm or egg is produced. To be logically consistent, the preservation and propagation of every single human sperm and egg produced in the United States should be the pro-lifers’ goal. Instead of leading the world in gross national productivity, the U.S. should lead in gross national reproductivity.

"Be fruitful and multiply," God commands in Genesis 1:22-23. Does he say wait until some arbitrarily decided "age of consent"? No, He says procreate! He says bump those humps, honey! To go far enough in the pursuit of life, we must immediately sanction regular monthly testing of adolescents to determine when their sperm and egg production begin! Mandatory marriage and breeding must follow verification of fertility. Screw the "age of consent" (not literally screw, of course, because that would waste potential embryonic material), what we must establish is the "age of conception," when youngsters can begin to conceive more youngsters. As soon as they do, off with the clothes, into the bed, make with the whoopee!

But that’s not enough. For the sake of all those billions upon billions of unused sperms and eggs, all those little, living, almost human beings, we’ll have mandatory reproduction for couples beginning with the age of conception and lasting until fertility ends! And with drugs extending thenatural age limits of fertility, expect a lot of extra senior-citizen sack time.

And because sex should only be for purposes of propagation, all purveyors of material and products that emphasize pleasure over procreation will be banned. This ban would of course cover obvious pleasure-enhancement items such as lubricants, dildos, edible underwear and Barry White’s voice.

But it also means buh-bye, Sports Illustrated swimsuit special. Hasta la vista, Cosmo-variety "Eight Out-of-This-World Ways to Achieve Extraordinary Orgasms" articles. Jean Paul Gaultier’s provocative fashions? Out. Victoria’s Secret undies? Unh-uh. Mouth wash? If fresher breath makes you more sexually exciting, it’s gone. Anything that injects fun into the reproduction function is out. Your life-begetting must be dead serious.

The purpose of life is to beget more life, so all able should be getting begetting, or they’ll be getting the fate of the misbegotten! Those shirking better getting working! There’ll be whuppin’s and worse for all those who refuse to copulate whenever they are capable (within the bounds of holy matrimony).

Marriage is for life, death is for those who divorce, those who perform divorces and those who cause divorces! If a spouse dies? Mandatory remarriage and more breeding until reproductive capabilities are exhausted!

Speaking of death...The most extreme penalty must be enforced on any and all persons and products that in any way inhibit breeding (within the bounds of holy matrimony). Each egg is vital! Every sperm’s entitled! All who disagree? Thump ‘em with a Bible! Those unwilling to get in on the action? Each egg extracted! Every sperm subtracted! Then penalty of death exacted!

Death to those who can't reproduce! Death to those who don't have the necessary reproductive drive! Death to premature ejaculators! Death to masturbators!

Death to stem-cell researchers! Death to doctors who perform vasectomies! Death to those who tie tubes! Death to purveyors of prophylactics and contraceptives! Death to those who sell unnecessarily tight, sperm-count-reducing underwear! Death to those who display images of Barry White! (His voice is one thing, his image another entirely.)

Death to long bike rides and soaking in spas or hot baths, which can reduce sperm counts! Death to producers of artificial sweeteners, caffeine, food additives such as MSG, beer, wine, hard liquor, cigarettes, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, paint fumes, radiation, chemical cleaners, solvents, contaminated food or water, and stress, all of which may interfere with the natural reproductive order of things! Death to makers of fertility-rate-lowering low-fat cheese-food dairy products! Death to makers of vitamin C and all grain-based oils and hydrogenated oils, particularly cottonseed oil; all hormone-containing meat products and soy or soy products, including textured soy protein and soy protein isolate, which experts warn may lower testosterone levels and impair fertility!

So death to Illinois, the biggest producer of soybeans in the U.S.! Death to California, the biggest producer of dairy products in the U.S.! Death to North Carolina, the biggest producer of tobacco in the U.S.! Death to Iowa, the biggest producer of corn in the U.S.! Death to Washington, the biggest producer of hops in the U.S.! Death to Tacoma, Washington, 2004’s "most stressful place to live" in the U.S.! Death to TKI Foods, Inc., the biggest producer of private-label artificial sweeteners in the U.S.! Oh, the heck with it! Death to the U.S., one of the biggest producers and consumers of all things that prevent maximum reproductivity in the world!

Death! Death! Death! Until all are for LIFE!

It’s only logical.

Yellow Pages Justice -- new Knoxville Voice Column

 As always, check out the rest of the issue at http://www.knoxvoice.com/

Yellow-Pages Justice
The horror of a socialized legal system

by Scott McNutt

We in the United Private Sectors of Uncareica are well off, with all our needs provided through the free-market system. Under the UPSU Bill of Sale, Uncareicans can buy all the rights they want. But some people are always discontented. Periodically, some quack politician broaches the idea of a nonprofit, universal judicial system with all personal civil rights therein guaranteed. And every time some pol proposes this, it seems like a flock of parrots takes flight, all squawking the same damned “Socialized justice! Socialized justice!” refrain. What a bunch of bird droppings!

Don’t those birdbrains realize what “socialized justice” would mean? Who in their right mind believes the government can protect citizens better than citizens can? Consider all the basic societal protections we need: food and water quality and safety, traffic control and safety, construction safety, fire protection, environmental protection and more. As an Uncareican, you are a caveating emptor when you purchase any of these goods or services.

For example, the typical Uncareican buys his water, then tests it at home with his own water-quality-testing apparatus. But what if water quality were administrated by the UPSU government? Even if you could trust a bureaucracy to get the test right, how could you be sure they weren’t adding something to your water? Maybe something to brainwash you, like fluoride. Scary, right?

Oh, advocates of socialized justice will tell you not to be scared. They insist that all they want is for everybody to have some coverage in our judicial system. Everybody should have access to justice, regardless of their ability to pay for it, they say. They promise free justice to people who can’t afford legal representation.

And they’ll always bring up “the children.” “How will the poor children pay for their justice?” they’ll cry, tugging at your heartstrings like pitiful Quasimodo yanking on Notre Dame’s bell ropes. How can you resist? But you cannot treat rich people like chattel while you give legal representation to snot-nosed kids claiming to be have-nots.

Just as there’s no such thing as free healthcare, there’s no such thing as free justice. The real agenda here is justice redistribution. What they want is to take justice from those who pay their own legal bills and give it to the kids of deadbeat criminals who don’t. There is no justice in such thievery. Besides, socialized justice has never worked. Look what it’s done to the United States of America.

Our private legal system works fine. If somebody does something illegal to you, you just shoot 'em with your own God-given gun. Or, if you prefer, you can hire private police officers to catch your criminals and lawyers to sue them in the court of your choice before a judge you buy. The free market at work. Private enterprise at its finest. Respectful of personal rights, no lines, no waiting, no muss, everybody makes a profit – what more could anyone want? Anyone willing to pay for justice can get it. You simply get the justice you pay for.

Those who didn’t have the foresight to arm themselves to the teeth and to make enough money to retain the best counsel and bribe the best judges should not penalize those who did. If we nationalize the UPSU legal system, revenues going out will rapidly exceed those coming in. Then, we must either bring in more revenues (through taxes or borrowing) or reduce services (through rationing and/or elimination of justice).

Mr. and Mrs. UPSU Taxpayer, you are being asked to pay for your neighbor’s legal system. If you think your lawyer’s fees are too high now, imagine what they will be when you're paying for everyone else’s justice. To paraphrase P.J. O’Rourke, “If you think justice is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s ‘free.’”

What will socializing the legal system really do? It will drive legal costs up and bring the quality of rulings down. Under a nationalized, “free” legal system, writs of habeus corpus will cost an arm and a leg, pleadings will be reducing to begging, motions will be stillborn, appeals will be unappealing, reversible errors will be mistaken, cross examinations will be vexed and verdicts will be verboten. Plus, taxes will be higher.

Right now, you need look no further than the yellow pages to choose a police force, legal counsel and courts of law to settle your case. But under a socialized justice system, forget about choice. When just anyone can bring charges against anyone else, the government will have all the police forces busy tracking down jaywalkers and sidewalk-spitters, clogging the system with piddly stuff like that. The government will treat everybody’s case the same, because a bureaucracy can’t distinguish between important and unimportant cases.

If criminals ever get caught, and the case actually goes to trial, it will be impossible for you to hire the best attorneys, because the government will force them all to work government-mandated cases. And there won’t be any private lawyers anyway, because, under government-set pay scales, no one will have an incentive to study law. In fact, hard-working, for-profit lawyers will all be run out of business.

Plus, it will be impossible for the wealthy to secure their preference of courts to hear their cases because the government will deem that too prejudicial to the accused or something like that. They’ll keep coming up with supposed “rights” of “victims” (especially children) that must be “protected” until the system is overwhelmed.

A concept like “equality of all before the law” is only a stepping stone to government-dictated law. Socialized justice will mean long waits and crappy service and being told by the government what justice you can and can’t have and when you can and can’t have it. It will mean shortages of justice and justice rationing. It will mean whole regions will simply run out of justice. And after socialization of the legal system will come the outright socialization of all business, followed by socialization of the press. Heck, they might even try to socialize healthcare.

This is the trend that socializing justice will set in motion. So it’s best to leave the law where it belongs: in the hands of private individuals with the money to pay for it.

Yes, justice for all…who can afford it. Especially the children.

 

new freelance piece for KNS -- tunnel visions

Former councilman wants tunnel under Henley reopened to public

SCOTT MCNUTT
news@knews.com
Monday, October 29, 2007

Don Ferguson remembers when the public had access to a tunnel under Henley Street, stretching between what is now the University of Tennessee's Conference Center on Locust Street and the recessed wall behind the Sunsphere.

He'd like to see it open to the public once more.

Ferguson, a retired U.S. District Court chief deputy clerk, one-time member of the Knoxville City Council, former News Sentinel city editor and current "Grammar Gremlins" columnist for the paper, has been waging a one-man campaign to reopen the tunnel to general use.

Read the whole story...

www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/oct/29/former-councilman-wants-tunnel-under-henley-to/

Mercy, Mercy Me -- new Hellbender column

The latest Hellbender Press is out, and it's only available in print. So pick up your copy at any of the locations found here:

http://www.hellbenderpress.com/where

Mercy, Mercy Me (Human Ecology)

It’s too late, baby, now

by Scott McNutt

Sometimes when I am gulping beer, sitting opposite Hellbender publisher Rikki Hall and other ecologically inclined persons, I wonder, "Are they going to whip out daggers and stab me to death?"

’Cause I’m ruining the environment. It’s a steamy morning in July as I type these words on an electricity-eating computer. As I type, the atmosphere-heating, air-polluting clothes dryer is running, and I’m relishing the air that blows from the equally power-hungry central-air unit cooling our woefully energy-inefficient house. Ceiling fans and box fans clatter and whir (I said the house was energy inefficient, didn’t I?), while drifting from downstairs comes the murmur of one of our many TV sets. Although lost in the sea of competing sounds, also droning from downstairs is the power-sucking dishwasher, probably not nearly as full of dishes as it could be. Lights have been left on unnecessarily in every room. The kitchen garbage cans (yes, we have kitchen garbage cans, plural; we excel at nothing so much as garbage production) hold many beer cans and a couple of Styrofoam to-go containers from last night’s dinner of non-free-range chicken wings.

So, as I ponder all of the ways my unsustainable way of life hurts the environment, I can’t help but wonder, "Are you, the reader, going to ram me with your gas-miserly Prius next time you see me?"

Actually, what I’m wonder is how I came to not care about the environment and only by extension about whether you’ll kill me for not caring. Because I used to care.

When I was growing up, in perhaps the most environmentally incorrect city in the world, Oak Ridge, Tennessee (Motto: "Don’t Mind the Two-Headed Salamanders"), we actually did environmental-type things. The first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, my elementary school class celebrated with each student planting a sapling. They probably all died from the mercury in the soil, but we were trying.

The next year, we saved money to help the bald eagles, our national symbol, who were endangered because DDT in the environment was softening their eggshells, causing them to break prematurely. For our efforts we received a letter from a grateful Department of the Interior thanking us and a certificate proclaiming that we had saved two bald eagles from extinction. After that, it was recycling drives. Then, citywide neighborhood clean-ups. Our communities were turning each of us into tiny, earnest Rachel Carsons.

Filling the airwaves and our heads in those days were ecologically and socially conscious songs like "Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology)," "Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian)," "War (What Is It Good for?)," "In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)" and "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy (I Got Love in My Tummy)" (ok, the last one not so much, but it was filling my head).

They may have been naïve, they may have been silly -- heck, most of those songs were bad -- but they felt sincere to us.

And there was the heartbroken American Indian wandering all over the nation, right in front of our eyes on the TV set, always getting trash thrown on his feet and weeping over what had been done to his ancestral land. The part was done by a guy billing himself as Iron Eyes Cody, which was good enough for us. Of course, his real name was Espera DeCorti, and he was born of Sicilian immigrants in Kaplan, Louisiana. But we don’t know that then; and we wouldn’t have cared if we had! When Iron Eyes cried, we all shed a rusty little tear.

And we conserved energy in my household. Winters we shivered, summers we broiled. In summer, We had one big window-unit air conditioner that, when turned on, simply rattled ineffectually at the heat, because we only turned it on when it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. That was the house rule, and, of course, my father decided when the rule was invoked.

I challenged dad on it one year, and he allowed me to go break an egg on the front walk. Not only did the egg not fry, but when I finally gave up, it had cemented itself to the pavement and I sweated myself to saturation trying to clean it.

Then, staggering under the weight of defeat and soggy clothes, I trudged back into our broiler oven of a house. The kicker: While I was out there melting into the walk, dad had turned on the air conditioner.

I digress. The point is, there were lots of elements influencing my generation to care for the environment and conserve resources. Then it just…stopped.

It seemed like one day I was surrounded by adults devoted to preserving the environment and conserving resources and teaching me to do the same. The next, they were worrying about where they’d get their next gallon of gas. Still young, I didn’t understand, but it was around then that many of us lost the will to care. Maybe it was the ludicrous sight of Jimmy Carter putting on a sweater and turning down the thermostat on national TV that so disheartened us. At any rate, I was old enough to recognize a lost cause when I saw one. Although through my 20s and 30s, I made half-hearted environmental efforts, I never really recovered a passion for conservation.

And today, I fear my environmentally indifferent household is not unlike many households of middle-aged families. So, on this July afternoon when the atmosphere outdoors is like a sweat-soaked sock slapping you in the face, I was wondering, how had it come to this? How did I, from such heady childhood beginnings, dwindle to such contemptible indifference as I crest the comfortable beer belly of my middle age and totter down to the sunken haunches of my dodderdom?

I didn’t have an answer as I was typing this. So I went downstairs to see what was on TV as I pondered more.

And there, my question was answered. Right in front of my eyes on the TV set were garishly dressed figures writhing across brightly lit stages, emitting thunderous, murkily indecipherable music.

And filling my head were these thoughts: "Oh yeah. I’m part of the generation that, as children, planted groves of saplings, and, as adults, cut them down for new subdivisions. I’m part of the generation that saved the bald eagles but now encroaches on their habitats with our sprawl. I’m part of the generation that started recycling paper in the ’70s but doubled paper product consumption in the years since. I’m part of a generation whose response to the gas shortages of the ’70s was to build bigger, less energy-efficient vehicles in the ’90s."

And finally, filling my head as I gazed dumbly at the TV set was, "I’m part of the generation that -- seriously -- thinks using enough energy to heat Norway for a week to send a bunch of environmentally unconscious pop stars to far-flung corners of the globe to sing cringingly unlistenable songs for a concert laughably titled ‘Live Earth’ is an energy-efficient response to global warming."

I’m of a generation that accepts symbol as substance. I don’t know why we’re like this; I only know "Live Earth" reminded me that I’m part of that group. Like saying so many Hail Marysto absolve spiritual pollution, we purchase a few units of Green Power to erase the dirty stain of our gigantic carbon footprint. Or we hold an enormously wasteful concert to raise other people's awareness of environmental issues. We never acknowledge that we must change the way we live to keep living.

Well, I’m acknowledging it. My lifestyle’s unsustainable. I went wrong somewhere, and I’m too weak to change. We really tried to make a difference back then, but it's too late now. I know there are some, like Rikki and the others who produce this newspaper, who are not as hopelessly addicted to comfort as am I. So if you environmentally minded souls see me, please, have mercy. Don’t kill me. Just give me a foot to the ass and save the planet for yourselves, despite me. The kicker? Tell me "Live Earth" made you do it.

Wedding Bell Bums, Part II -- new Knoxville Voice column

As always, pick up the hard copy or at least go check out the other parts of the paper at www.knoxvoice.com  There's a review of the county corruption case, a cute new feature called "Ask a Bartender," and of course,a s always, the inimitable Don Williams. And I'm there too. So:

Wedding Bell Bums, Part II

What fate joins together, let no bums put asunder

by Scott McNutt

What has gone before: A former employer of mine recently got divorced. Once upon a time, he dumped me from a job. Because of various financial and psychological strains, including a money-sucking house an ex-girlfriend convinced me to buy, this development really, really bummed me out. At that time I also reacquainted with Dana, whom I’d met 20 very odd years earlier. She revealed to me that the first time she saw me, she knew she was going to marry me. Coming on the heels of the other shocks to my system, this revelation, which was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to me, prompted me to say, "You’re crazy."

But Dana wasn’t dissuaded and eventually she moved into the money pit with me. And we talked about marriage. Or, as I remember it, I talked around marriage, mostly. "If we get married, I can’t promise I’ll ever be making money," I said. "What kind of life would that be, stuck in this dump with no prospect of betterment?"

"‘For better or for worse’ will hold, even if the worse never gets better," Dana said. "But things will get better. I know they will."

"How do you know that?" I demanded.

"Because I’ll be married to you," she said serenely.

So one night I asked her. I said, "If I asked you to marry me, would you say yes?"

She said she would. Then I got enormously drunk. She instant messaged me from work the next day to see if I remembered what I’d asked. I did. So it was agreed. We would marry. But I probably never would have done it if that house purchase and that job loss hadn’t made my life such a sorry shambles that I thought no one could want to be part of it…yet Dana did. That made me see that her love was unconditional. That’s about as "true" as it gets.

Poor as we were, we planned to be married without ceremony by a justice of the peace. But our wonderful friends insisted that our wedding be an occasion. They arranged to hold it on Market Square, with a party afterward at the Downtown Grill and Brewery. Then bride and groom would stay overnight at the Hotel St. Oliver for a brief, but paid-for, honeymoon.

Brisk winds were fetching up mounting banks of gloomy clouds, and what had been a surprisingly warm April Fool’s Day, 2004, was turning into an uncomfortably chill one. To a lilting old-timey tune played by a group of musically inclined friends, the bride, in her lovely lavender gown was being processionaled down Knoxville’s newly concretized Market Square by our Bride Giveaway Guy, Joe.

Why April Fool’s Day? I wanted it, and Dana indulges my off-kilter sense of propriety. I know marriages, just like life, go through seasons of change. Marriages must endure through mild and rough weather alike. As a reminder, I wanted our anniversary to be in the time of year when any sort of weather is possible: sultry, balmy, snowy, stormy.

Plus, having remained single into middle age, I doubted my friends believed I really was getting married. I wanted a date that said, "Gotcha!"

Anyway, Dana, in a gown that plainly did not sport pockets (the importance of this detail will become clear momentarily), crossed the midway point of the square, one arm bearing a big, beautiful bouquet, the other arm locked in Bride Giveaway Guy’s arm. That’s when the hobo lurched into the proceedings.

"Gotta cigarette I k’n barra?" says the shabby fellow to the blushing, really, truly, blushing bride.

"This is my wedding," peeps my poor, dumbstruck darling.

From the square’s stage, I helplessly watched this tableaux unfold with licensed religious practitioner Steve and best man, Ian, and maid of honor, Bethann. I’d like to report that the street person, sensing the inappropriateness of his intrusion, congratulated Dana on her most special of days and went on his way. But Dana says he just turned away, disappointed. Perhaps he muttered a benediction under his breath as he left.

We completed the ceremony without other incident and stepped down from the platform as wife and love slave. But Dana was worried. "I hope that homeless person wasn’t an omen," she whispered as we made our way to the brewery against the now-stinging wind.

Dana believes in luck and worries over portents. I believe in chance and worry about probabilities. But fate does inflict irony, even on those who don’t believe in it.

At the party paid for by our generous friends, the guests had a lively time – including the uninvited, now-married and pregnant ex-girlfriend who had badgered me to buy the money-trap house. She briefly made herself the center of attention by – and this really happened – trying to bum cigarettes from other guests.

The ex’s crashing worried Dana. "It’s got to be a sign," she whispered.

"Yes. It’s a sign of how tacky she is and how brainless I was," I replied.

Dana smiled.

Later, we retired to the hotel. The next morning, we went across the street to Pete’s Coffee Shop for breakfast. My ex-employer was dining there. He came up to our table and asked if it had been our wedding on Market Square the evening before. We said it had. "Well, congratulations," he said and walked away.

"I know that has to be an omen," Dana whispered. But it wasn’t. It was just a twist of fate being tied up.

Now, if he’d ask to bum a cigarette, that would have been an omen. But he didn’t. So thanks, former employer.

Wedding Bell Bums, Part I -- new Knoxville Voice column

As always, you should check out the hard copy of Knoxville Voice, or at least go to the web site: http://www.knoxvoice.com/

But here's the column:

Wedding Bell Bums, Part I

What fate joins together, let no bums put asunder

by Scott McNutt

The twists of fate converge in curious ways. Like a twist-tie closing a garbage bag, fate can neatly wrap up life’s jumbled detritus. I mention this because a former employer of mine recently got divorced. Roundaboutly, the former employer is responsible for my own marriage. Only, at the time, I didn’t offer him the thanks the deed deserves.

It happened like this. Several years ago, amid a barrage of hectoring from a girlfriend, I had taken the long step off the short pier of financial security into the bottomless sea of mortgage debt by buying an old (supposedly) restored house (it wasn’t). After the purchase, the girlfriend departed. So much for long-term investments.

Also at the time, I was burnt out and bored of the job I’d been at for a dozen years, from which I earned a comfortable living. Then I was offered what I thought was my dream job – the catch being that the "dream" included a $15,000 pay cut, which meant cashing out my 401k just to afford to chase the dream.

I cashed out and took the job. A year or so later, a new owner took over the dream job, and shortly thereafter I’m booted out on my ass. Maybe I deserved to go, maybe I didn’t. But my feelings then were that I’d gotten a bum deal from a bum boss.

The far side of 40 is no place to be deeply in debt, without income and with writing jobs scarce in this area. "Despair" doesn’t describe where I was. I was in a hole so low that the dirt of it clings to me still.

And then there was Dana. We’d known each other for 20-odd, sometimes very odd, years. We had dated in high school and briefly in college, but we’d gone separate ways. We’d recently run into each other again. She was coming out of a divorce; I was just out of a relationship.

We started dating. Dana endured my malaise, my self-pitying, my whining – she endured everything that would have driven away any other woman I’d previously dated. (And there were a lot of them; I went through barrels of bad apples and bushels of good. None amounted to apple pie with me.)

Dana stuck with me. I couldn’t understand it. I subtly tried to drive her away, certain I was saving myself from the inevitable heartbreak that must ensue when she finally realized what a loser I was.

But she didn’t go. And one intoxicated, intoxicating evening, she said to me, "The first time I saw you, I told my sister, ‘I’m going to marry that guy.’"

Never mind that the first time I saw her she was 15 years old and dressed as Columbia for a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, how does one respond to such a revelation? From childhood, I never believed in true love, in the sense that there is one soulmate out there for everybody.

The child that I was saw that, if adult marriages were combinations of soulmates, then souls were angry things, mostly. And if those relationships were love-based, well, then, love was a very different thing indeed than what they taught in Sunday school about how Jesus loves me, this I know.

Of course, even the Christ’s love came with conditions. But you just don’t expect Jesus to be shouting at Mary Magdalene, "If you really loved me, you’d have dinner waiting for me when I get home from a hard day’s cross-bearing, you lazy bitch." My perception of adult love didn’t support this soulmate thing.

Besides, as an adult, my experience in "loving" relationships had been that someone wasn’t in it for love. Someone was never with you for you, just for what they could get out of you, or what they (desperately) needed from you, or what they thought you might amount to, or what they were trying to mold you into. Sometimes, "someone" was me.

Yeah, I’ve been a cynic about love.

And then, here to find, after all this time, this girl I'd known more than half my life, whom I'd met at The Rocky Horror Picture Show, of all places, said she knew all along she was going to marry me?

She was seeing the lowest I could be, the ugly and the true and the commonplace nature of me, and still she could tell me that the first time she saw me, she knew she was going to marry me?

It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to me, and there was only one response to it. "You’re crazy," I said.

To be continued here 9/23/07 (or pick up the hard copy on 9/20/07, at any of these fine locations: www.knoxvoice.com/find-us.html )

new Sentinel piece

Remembering the Riviera
‘Shrine of the Silent Art’ was a major player in Knoxville’s movie-house history

SCOTT MCNUTT
news@knews.com
Monday, August 27, 2007

When the Riviera Theater opened at 510-12 S. Gay St. on Monday, Dec. 6, 1920, with Cecille B. DeMille’s “Conrad in Search of His Youth,” it was the latest crest in a craze for movie theaters that had washed up and down Gay Street for more than a decade, each theater surpassing the last in size and grandeur...

EAST TENNESSEE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

In an undated photo looking north on Gay Street, the

Riviera Theater can be seen on the right side.

News Sentinel after a fire destroyed much of the Riviera

Theater in downtown Knoxville, it was rebuilt and

opened in January 1964 with the Cary Grant movie “Charade.”

Read the full story here:
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/aug/27/remembering-the-riviera/

Movie house highlights: Pink marble, risqué shows

COMPILED BY SCOTT MCNUTT
Monday, August 27, 2007


    *       Staub Theater, 800-804 S. Gay St., 1872

      With its pink Tennessee marble facings, Mansard roof and balustrade, the Staub Theater was the talk of the town when it opened with Rossini’s opera “William Tell” in 1872...

Read the full story here:
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/aug/27/movie-house-highlights-pink-marble-risqu-shows/

it ain't the pulitzer...

...and it never will be; but this story I did for inMotion Magazine won an Apex Award in the category of Interviews & Personal Profiles.

(complete list of winners at http://www.apexawards.com/A2007_Win.List.pdf)

So I can display this emblem if I want:

Whee. Anyway, FBOFW, here's the piece:

 

inMotion Volume · 17 · Issue 1 · January/February 2007

Relationships Rescued Him Journalist who lost hand in Iraq renews commitments to those who helped him recover by Scott McNutt

In 2003, TIME Magazine senior correspondent Michael Weisskopf went to Iraq to profile “The American Soldier” as TIME’s Person of the Year. The reporter didn’t put much thought into what might befall him in a theater of war. It was a chance to inject some excitement into a stale work routine and add another entry on a lengthy list of professional achievements. Weisskopf got the story, but he also became it, losing his hand to the blast of an insurgent’s grenade. That loss propelled Weisskopf on an 18-month long, pain-filled journey of recovery, during which, with the care and support of many people, he evaluated his life and re-established his identity. He has chronicled his journey in a book, Blood Brothers: Among the Soldiers of Ward 57. Although Weisskopf’s story encompasses much more than the relationships he made and re-established during his healing process, the book is a testament to the healing power of the bonds that connect each of us to a greater community. Time and again in Blood Brothers, Weisskopf touches on the theme of a community of caring and explores his own place in a wider web of social connections. As he writes in Blood Brothers: “It had taken a major loss for me to understand what I meant to others. Relationships rescued me. They got me out of Baghdad, into Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and back home. I received that help not because of a grade I had earned, a story written, or lives saved; it was for being me. I resolved to return the love by being less selfabsorbed.” Weisskopf is one of only a handful of civilians ever to be treated at the military facility. Coworkers at TIME, fellow journalists and Weisskopf’s congresswoman lobbied to get Weisskopf admitted. At Walter Reed, Weisskopf was assigned to “Amputee Alley,” Ward 57. During his time in Ward 57 and after, Weisskopf witnessed and experienced the bonds of friendship, family and caregiving among and for the soldiers recovering there. For people with limb loss, there can be many different communities, and “combat amputees are a narrow subset,” says Weisskopf. “It’s a lonely world as an amputee – the larger the community of amputees we fit into, I think the richer the community.” Just establishing a rapport with his fellow amputees on Ward 57 was, in a way, building a bridge between different communities. Weisskopf notes that not only was he a civilian, but he was also at least twice the age of the other patients. Plus, he quips, he was “a professional with more education than I needed.” In his workaday world, he had little in common with the soldiers of Ward 57. “But there are a bunch of common denominators among those at Walter Reed and on Ward 57 that cut through all that,” Weisskopf says. “Primarily, it was that all of us there were struggling for identity.” That struggle cut the psychological distance between young soldiers who like guns, tattoos and fast machines and a self-described “middle-aged hack” who had gone to Iraq to clinically observe those soldiers going about their mission and to dispassionately write up his observations. “I felt keenly that I’d gone to Iraq as a guy who was looking in from the outside and left Ward 57 in my own platoon of wounded warriors,” explains Weisskopf. “The distance between us broke down because what they were going through, I was going through. There are few people in society who can understand that unless you were there.” One of the wounded warriors with whom Weisskopf bonded is Pete Damon. Damon, a helicopter mechanic whose National Guard unit was sent to Iraq, lost both arms when the metal rim on a helicopter tire he was inflating exploded. Weisskopf, whose right hand was destroyed when he grabbed and tossed away a grenade that was lobbed into the back of a transport vehicle, felt a kinship to Damon, and not only because of his physical loss. Each man had questions about his role in what led up to his respective trauma. Damon could not remember the events leading up to his mishap; Weisskopf had questions about the impulse that moved him to seize the grenade. “I felt keenly that I’d gone to Iraq as a guy who was looking in from the outside and left Ward 57 in my own platoon of wounded warriors,” explains Weisskopf. “The distance between us broke down because what they were going through, I was going through. There are few people in society who can understand that unless you were there.” Each man encouraged the other to fill in the gaps, and through this similar sense of purpose, a friendship was forged. It would see each of them through to successfully resolve (if not fully answer) their questions about their losses, as well as bring them together for simple camaraderie. Weisskopf even accompanied Damon to visit the parents of Damon’s partner, who was killed in the same explosion that took Damon’s arms. “I also had a debt to Pete because he gave me insight, tremendously,” says Weisskopf. “He triggered something in me that helped me. So, I went there as a friend. I didn’t go there as a journalist. I felt like we were helping each other.” Another blood brother who helped Weisskopf along his journey is Jim Mayer, a.k.a. “The Milkshake Man,” whom Weisskopf dubbed one of the “Angels of Ward 57.” Mayer, a Vietnam vet and a bilateral below-knee amputee, is a military peer visitor trainer, certified by the Amputee Coalition of America. Such peer visitors help new amputees adjust to their situation, demonstrating through their own experience that reconnecting to a larger community is possible. Mayer’s dedication to the soldiers of Ward 57 is near legendary, even going beyond the peer visitor model. That Weisskopf was not a vet made no difference to Mayer. The two men first met when Mayer, offering his customary milkshakes and a chance for conversation, poked his headed into Weisskopf’s room on Ward 57. Well-intended though Mayer was, this attempt at relationship-building was ill-timed, because at that moment, Weisskopf was trying to learn to use the bathroom one-handed. Despite that inauspicious beginning, the two eventually hit it off and remain friends. “It made me realize early on – every amputee has to – you must accept help from others. It was very easy to get it from my kids. It gave them a real senseof power and a sense of importance. Every kid should have that. I think they truly rose to the occasion, and I am very fortunate to have them.” Deeming Mayer “an amazing man,” Weisskopf says that he was important because “he figured out correctly that what every new amputee ponders is, ‘Will I ever be normal again?’ What Jim would do with that milkshake was bring you a little piece of ordinary life. It reminded you that you were part of humanity. You had normality within your grasp.” Weisskopf goes on to note that Mayer has now served hundreds of amputees as a friend, confidant and blood brother. “At first, Michael didn’t want to take a milkshake intended for a service member,” recalls Mayer. “I can’t tell you how much his attitude about that impressed me. I learned that he was a to-the-point talker and a sharp listener. It didn’t take me long to observe that, as a seasoned correspondent, Michael could sniff out b.s. from 50 feet away. So I always tried to concentrate on what he was saying and feeling and respond candidly. To this day, Michael and I can go for a period of no contact and then immediately start talking about anything, with no reservations.” The bond of family also helped Weisskopf in ways he had not anticipated. Having lost his father at an early age, Weisskopf felt guilt about almost depriving his young children, Skyler and Olivia, of their father. From his experience, he began to understand what had driven his father to work himself literally to death and to forgive him for it. His son and daughter, in turn, showed Weisskopf that they could forgive his “gamble on a job assignment” because of the bonds of love between parent and child. They also showed their father that they could help him in ways that he had once helped them. “Not long ago, I had tied their shoes,” Weisskopf writes. “Now they were tying mine. I had patched up their cuts and scrapes; now they were changing my dressings.” This change in the adult-child balance of power caused a change in Weisskopf’s perception of parenthood as well. Before going to Iraq, he’d considered it a job. Now, he calls it a love affair. “It was wonderful,” Weisskopf says. “It made me realize early on – every amputee has to – youmust accept help from others. It was very easy to get it from my kids. It gave them a real sense of power and a sense of importance. Every kid should have that. I think theytruly rose to the occasion, and I am very fortunate to have them.” One of the central themes of Blood Brothers is Weisskopf’s struggle to understand what led him to grab the live grenade that cost him his right hand. He wasn’t sure that he was the sort of person who would act nobly in a time of crisis. Now, with the help of many people who care for him professionally and personally, Weisskopf accepts that his was an honorable act, one that saved the lives of the soldiers who were in the Humvee with him. He also sees that his actions reverberate throughout a larger community. On receiving the Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism, Weisskopf wrote, “Even if I inhabited a world of self-interest, I acted on a larger stage with consequences reaching far beyond me.” But even if Weisskopf recognizes that his actions have impact in a broader community, Jim Mayer hopes his friend knows their importance to one community in particular. Asked about the larger context of the recovery process for people with limb loss at Walter Reed, Mayer says, “Walter Reed and the Amputee Coalition of America have trained and certified over 90 peer visitors. I’m lucky to be one of them and also to be a part of the original core group of volunteers who graduated from ACA’s Train the Trainer Program. “But Michael’s talks and friendship on Ward 57 reminded me that, aside from general reference points like ACA’s Phases of Recovery, each patient has a very individualized path to recovery and thriving in life, one with very unique twists, turns and setbacks. Michael writes eloquently about that in recording his and Pete Damon’s and the others’ recoveries in Blood Brothers. That gift from Michael is worth a lot more to me and my fellow peer visitors than whatever we may have given to Michael on Ward 57.”
Back to Top	Last updated: 06/07/2007

© Copyrighted by the Amputee Coalition of America. Local reproduction for use by ACA constituents is permitted as long as this copyright information is included. Organizations or individuals wishing to reprint this article in other publications, including other World Wide Web sites must contact the Amputee Coalition of America for permission to do so.

New Knoxville Voice column -- Battlin' Babies

This one's for my wife.

As always, I recommend picking up and reading the hardcopy Knoxville Voice -- lots of commentary and articles not found elsewhere in local media. At the least, go check it out on line:

http://www.knoxvoice.com

And the editorial in the latest KV is being discussed on line over at the "other" KV, Randy Neal's Knoxviews:

http://www.knoxviews.com/node/5327

Battlin’ Babies

by Scott McNutt

Local baby "fight club" ring busted

From APB wire report -- KNOXVILLE, TN. Today, federal authorities here charged Michael "Vapuh Rub" Vicks, a celebrity athlete who played ball with the local university, with running a "baby fight club" ring whose bouts ended with the torture and murder of the losing infants. Officials at the university here deny rumors that Vapuh Rub set up and extended his fight club circuit through connections with the university’s athletic program.

Charges against the Vapuh Rub ring include cruelty, abuse, neglect, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Vicks asserts that the babies were unwanted anyway, having been picked up as newborns off the street or through the state foster care system. The babies, with ordinary names like Bart, Lisa, Maggie, Sluggo and Nancy Boy (a tag-team tandem), and Jane, ranged in fighting age from 6 to 24 months.

Federal authorities dispute Vicks’ contention that the babies were unwanted. A federal spokesperson said they will charge Vicks with at least one count of kidnapping, in the case of the baby Jane Doe. A federal spokesperson reported that the heartbroken parents had reported the child missing months ago. Said the spokesperson, "Over the course of the investigation, the parents often lamented, ‘Whatever happened to baby Jane?’"

Authorities say no weight classes were set between babies of differing ages, meaning that helpless infants often went into the cage with careening toddlers. "It was inevitable that carnage would ensue," said the spokesperson.

One investigator at the scene was appalled by the horrors that confronted her. "It seemed like an ordinary tract house anywhere in Suburb, USA," she said. "But once we got inside…there were playpens everywhere filled with writhing, naked, scrawny, starving, neglected, abused, battlin’ babies. It was ghastly and grotesque. One two-year-old was using ‘Tickle-Me Elmo’ to bludgeon a six-month-old to death. In my 12 years on the Special Victims Unit, I never seen anything remotely like it."

Vicks claimed that his group was not being intentionally cruel to the babies, because they didn’t know babies could feel pain. He insisted that the babies were well taken care of. "If they didn’t win, they were taken care of real well," he said.

"Look here, babies cry all the time, am I right?" Vicks continued. "You ever hear a baby not cry? I didn’t think so. So, if we was electrocuting them or burning them or using them for target practice or hanging them or drowning them in jelly or whatever, we didn’t know they was in pain. And when we poured gasoline down their throats and dropped a match down it and taped their mouths shut, then cut their arms off and put battery acid on the open wounds and then disemboweled them and finally strangled them to death, it’s not like we could tell they was hurting, you know. They might have just been hungry for all we knew."

Vicks denied that he or any in his ring had actually killed a sentient being during the aftermath of the baby fight matches. "These were just really late, late term abortions," Vicks scoffed. "Look, man, I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s not like we were eating them or anything. And they’re just a bunch of fucking babies, anyway."

Officials with the local university publicly denied having any knowledge of Vicks’ underground activities. But one official, speaking anonymously, acknowledged that federal authorities had alerted the university to their ongoing investigation.

"Michael was contacted by us," the anonymous official said. "Michael was urged to seek counseling. In fact, for all athletes with ties to the institution, we held a consciousness-raising seminar titled, "Hurting Babies Could Get You into Trouble," and he was invited to that. He didn’t attend.

"We pled with him. We used every emotional appeal we could think of. ‘Think of the university,’ we said. ‘Think of our reputation if this gets out. Think of what this will do to our fund raising. Think what this will do to revenues from athletic event attendance.’ We even talked about how it might be affecting him. ‘Sure it feels good now,’ we said. ‘But think how this might hurt your future signing bonuses. Think how it might impact your lifetime earnings from endorsements and promotions, calculated over an athlete’s average career span and takinginto account salaries, investments, stocks, fees from potential movie rights and public appearances, and minus the cost of diapers and upkeep of playpens.’

"Nothing moved him. Michael was always stubborn. It’s what made him an exceptional talent. He said, ‘I gotta show them babies who’s boss.’"

A Federal spokesperson noted that anonymous sources tended to be long-winded.

When asked what steps the university was prepared to take to ensure that none of its other former athletes were involved in the baby fight club ring and to investigate the charges that its athletic program was used to set up the ring, a university spokesperson was remarkably candid.

"What steps will we be taking? We’ll be dragging our feet, but circling the wagons," he said. "We’ll suspend ties with Michael pending the outcome of his case, of course, but we’ll hedge our bets so that if it appears that his reputation can be rehabilitated, we’ll leave the door open for re-instituting our connections at some later time. That is, if it’s profitable for the university to do so. If he’s going to cost us money, we’ll drop him like a fly ball.

"As for the assertion that other former athletes might be involved and might have used connections within the athletic program to further the ring, we’ll deny that. Naturally, if the feds find that any of our other former athletes are involved, we’ll suspend connections with them too. And we’ll throw them to the wolves if need be. At all costs, the institution must be insulated from bad publicity.

"We’ll resist federal authorities if they try to do an investigation into our affairs. We’ll claim that we’re handling the matter internally and conducting our own investigation, same as we always do. And our investigation will conclude that, with a few doublespeak tweaks that won’t amount to anything, the system of checks and safeguards already in place against this sort of thing is sufficient to prevent it from happening again.

"In short, to preserve short-term earnings potential, we’ll deny, obfuscate, distract, stonewall, cast blame elsewhere, and absolutely refuse to accept any responsibility for this affair. The survival of the institution as a viable moneymaking entity is at stake.

"And long term? Ultimately, the institution will survive. Because the public’s appetite for Michael Vicks-type ‘warriors’ to engage in gladiator-type exhibitions is insatiable, over and above any petty concerns of morality or decency.

"Besides, they’re just a bunch of fucking babies."

Another Sentinel freelance piece: Judge wins ADA spirit award

Judge wins ADA spirit award
Nonprofit will honor individuals, groups on 17th anniversary of act
SCOTT MCNUTT
Wednesday, July 25, 2007

During a sleepwalking episode the night of June 11, 1992, Charles D. Susano Jr. plunged through a second-story window of his home.

He struck his head on a brick and was paralyzed from the chest down.

Using a wheelchair for mobility, Susano returned to his law practice in December of that year. He was appointed by Gov. Ned McWherter to fill an unexpired term on the Tennessee Court of Appeals in March 1994 and was elected outright to the court in August 1994, then subsequently re-elected in 1998 and 2006.

On Friday, to commemorate the 17th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Knoxville disABILITY Resource Center will present Susano with a 2007 Spirit of the ADA Award...

Full story: www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/jul/25/judge-wins-ada-spirit-award/

New Hellbender out

The new Hellbender is out. I'd post the "Toxic Fumes" from it, only I don't have an electronic version of it. See, Rikki Hall and I did a "Spy vs. Spy," or rather column vs. column, with "Six Legs and a Buzz" and "Toxic Fumes." Rikki did the final work, pulling the two together and editing them approporiately. So he's got the electronic copy. And I don't.

There's all the usual good stuff in it, too, including an interesting story about how dreadful an impact our burial practices have on the environment. So you should pick up the hard copy (list of locations where it's available: www.hellbenderpress.com/where).

Unhandyman: New Knoxville Voice Column

Pick up the hard copy too. There's commentary from Don WIlliams, Michael Kaplan, Tony Murchison, stories on the Old City, the U.S. Social Forum, among others and lots of A&E stuff from Eric Lawson and others and still more.

The Unhandyman

Confessions of a repair-impaired home owner

by Scott McNutt

 There are things that happen in a TV sitcom or a slapstick two-reeler that you just aren’t prepared to have happen in real life. Recently I had such a Three Stooges home repair moment.

 Before I tell you that story, I must first make a confession, then tell another story that sets up the other story. Context is everything, you know. So. A confession: I’m not a handyman. With any sort of do-it-yourself task, I am the epitome of ineptness. I am the anti-handyman, the unhandyman.

 Now, the other story: My days of unhandiness probably began when my father taught me how not to work on cars, beginning when I was, oh, probably ten years old. From then until I was 18, we worked on the family cars.

 Whenever a car didn’t start, we’d replace the bendix. We were always replacing bendixes. We owned three cars over that period, and we must’ve replaced the bendix eleven hundred times on each of them.

 I didn’t even know what a bendix was, but I always imagined it was the automotive equivalent of a human appendix: a totally useless part, which, if it goes bad, kills you. Or, in this case, kills the car. (I now know that a bendix has something to do with the alternator. Which is to say, I still don’t know what a bendix is.)

 Inevitably, the car wouldn’t start, and my dad would put on his coveralls and one of those train-engineer-type caps, get his tool box, then tell me to put on some old clothes and follow him out to the carport, which I’d reluctantly do. Then he’d proceed to climb under the car and curse it. I stood by to hand him tools to fling in frustration. The conversation would go like this:

 “Son," he'd say, "Hand me the five-seventeen-hundredths spaleen screwdriver with the beveled head,” and I’d hand him a screwdriver.

 “Son, are you blind, or are you deaf?” He’d say. “I said the five-seventeen-hundredths spaleen screwdriver with the beveled head. This is the seven-seventeen-hundredths spatial screwdriver with the tapered head.”

 So I would hand him another screwdriver, and he’d say to the part he was working on, “Frimmin’, jimmin’, jangin’ dangin’ blazin’ thing! Why won’t you scrimmin’ lemon with the jim-jam FIT? Grunt, grunt, grunt, grunt, dang-blame-hanged-! Why you, you’re gonna fit if I have to- OUCH! MOTHER OF GOD!!!!!”

 And the screwdriver would come sailing out from under the car and whang off the side of the house. Occasionally the tool would ricochet into me. Once, one instrument, an adjustable crescent wrench I think, even bounced right back into the tool box, which made me proud of my dad.

 Anyway, he’d ask next for the semi-arctic, transbobbler socket saw or similarly arcane item. The names were always beyond my comprehension, but I stood by to hand each thingy to him. Multi-factotum prickly span adapters, prick-adept spanning factor multipliers, multi-faction-adaptive Spanish pricklers, they’d all pass under the car and come sailing back out.

 Saturdays, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., we’d spend in this way. Sundays, we’d get up and do it again. Except longer. Usually, about 10 o’clock Sunday night, dad would announce that the repair was finished.

 Afterward, dad would boast to me, “Do you know we saved $140?” When I was older, I’d object. “But dad,” I’d whine, “if we wasted an entire weekend and spent 20 hours fixing something a mechanic could have fixed in two, did we really save anything?”

 He’d look up from washing his grimy, bloody hands, fix me with a weary stare and finally say, “You never have learned the value of a dollar. Or the importance of self-reliance.”

 He was right on both counts. All I ever learned was that it takes me a lot longer to fix things than it takes a professional, and if I try to do it myself, it usually costs me even more to have the professional come in and fix what I screwed up.

 This is why I am the unhandyman. And this is why I should have known better than to try to fix the faucet that I was about to tell you about before I interrupted myself to tell that story. Now, you’re ready to hear the other story.

 It was a Sunday afternoon, and what transpired was, my wife Dana was upstairs taking a bath to soothe aches and pains. I had been reading the newspaper in the living room and went into kitchen for something.

 Our faucet was leaking and, on impulse, I decided to fix the pesky thing. I climbed under the sink to turn the water off, and the shut-off valve broke off in my hand. Water shot into my face. And everywhere else in the kitchen.

 A water valve breaking off in your hand is one of those things that isn't supposed to happen to you in real life. Really.

 For a couple of moments, I lay there stunned and drowning, with the water whooshing directly in my face and running all over me, just like you see happening to Curly in the Three Stooges shorts. Then, like the poor monkey in the joke about the exploding pig, I tried to put the cork back in, so to speak.

 It was no use. The thing had broken off at the pipe. Water was pouring out, flooding the kitchen, and I was trying as best I could to stem it with both hands and a kitchen towel that I was just able to reach from my position under the sink.

 Despite my efforts, a lot of water was still pumping out of the broken pipe. But if I let go the pipe, several hundred gallons of water would be submerging the house by the time I found the key to the basement lock and got down there to shut the water off at the main. Dana would be trapped on the second floor by the rising flood waters, and the dog and I would be paddling around downstairs in the upended coffee table. The cats, hopefully, would have drowned.

 So there was only one thing to do.

 "HELP!!!!" I yelled. "Helphelphelphelphelphelphelp!!!!! Helllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll-ppppppppppppuhpuhpuh!!!!!!!"

 Eventually I heard Dana coming down the stairs. I heard her footsteps patter near to the kitchen doorway and stop.

 "Help!" I screamed.

 "Are you hurt!" she called.

 "No! I need help!"

 Are you sure you're not hurt?" she insisted.

 "YES, will you please come help me," I yelled.

 She did. Dana held the dish towel on the pipe and I went and shut off the water main. We called a plumber friend who came over and replaced the water valve on the kitchen plumbing. He tightened something on the faucet that made it stop leaking. He didn’t even have to turn off the water to do it. And he only charged $140.

 Epilogue.

 After our plumber friend left, a thought struck me. I asked Dana why she asked if I was hurt before she came into the kitchen. She told me that, unhandy as I am, she imagined I had cut my hand off or something equally bloody, and she wasn't sure if she could stand the sight.

 "Well, were you going to leave me there to bleed to death if I'd answered yes?" I asked, reasonably enough, I thought.

 "Of course not," Dana said. "I'd have helped you."

 "So why ask if I was hurt?" I persisted.

 "Because then I'd have known to close my eyes before I came in," she said.

 I love my wife. And she loves me, even if I am an unhandyman.

Waiting to Be Waited on: New Knoxville Voice column

This ran in last week's Knoxville Voice, which is still on the stands. You should read the whole paper.

 

Waiting to Be Waited on

20 good reasons you won’t be

By Scott McNutt

If ever you and your date have been the only patrons in a sandwich shop late at night, sitting patiently at your table, and the only worker in the joint wouldn’t wait on you — in fact, was studiously ignoring you, you’ve probably thought to yourself: “Hey! This looks like a great place for a stick up!”

No, seriously, you probably thought that lone waitron was an insufferable jerk, something you’d be more than happy to tell the manager, if only the manager (or somebody) would show up. But have you ever considered the situation from that lonely worker’s point of view? He has his own responsibilities, his own struggles, his own inner turmoil. There are things you don’t know that might be affecting his job performance — things that, if you knew, might make you more sympathetic.

He might be fretting that he won’t be able to put new toilet paper in the stalls at closing because no one thought to restock the toilet paper supply earlier in the day. He might be worried that the rye is contaminated with aspergillus mold spores, and customers eating that bread could be in danger of experiencing strong hallucinations. So, in his concern, he is pondering sampling the bread himself, just to ensure your safety.

So think on that: If he is, in fact, willing to risk massive hallucinations for your sake, shouldn’t you be willing to cut him a little slack? It may be that, with the weight of the world crushing down on his shoulders, he just hasn’t had time to notice something as trivial as a customer waiting to be waited on. It is with this thought in mind, then, that we present…


20 Really Good Reasons Why the Only Staffer in the Place Won't Wait on You.

20. Cool:
 "I am. You're not. Who should approach whom? That's right. YOU, mofo."

19. Passion:
 “Sonya is waiting in the storage room for me. She’s already got her pants down, man.”

18. Illness:
 "Well, I got mono, so I'm feeling slow. But I had to come in, y'know? I had to, 'cause, well, it's the only job I got, y'know? Can't afford to lose it, even if it is a shit job. But, y'know, I didn't actually want to give you mono or anything. So I figured I better just, y'know, avoid you."

17. Mellowness:
 "Talking to you would harsh my mellow, man. I'm bein' John Mellowcamp here. You want me to go John Melonclamp on your balls? No, you don't. So chill."

16. Bad hair:
 “Hey, bad hair day, OK? Do we really have to go into details?”

15. Poverty:
 "Look, I'm poor, goddamn it. I'm stuck here being fucking broke, not even making minimum wage. I’m actually losing money here, ‘cause if I was getting paid what I oughtta be getting paid, I’d be a millionaire! So I’m too broke to move, do you understand me, jack? And you just waltz in here, like you own the goddamn place and expect me to come running. Just. Because. You. Have. Money? Jesus Christ and His Mojo Fix, you are some conceited bastard. Not on your fucking life, man, not on your life am I waiting on you."

14. Fashion:
 “I can’t come out from behind the counter. I forgot to put my pants back on when I was in back earlier.”

13. Morality:
 “I can’t, in good conscience, wait on you when I know you’re only going to order stuff that’s bad for you.”

12. Music:
 "Aw, screw, man, I just downloaded Beyonce's entire catalog to my Ipod. Can't you come back tomorrow?"

11. Management:
 "No, no, no, the manager said I am supposed to work counter. He said I wasn't supposed to leave my post. That's what the manager told me to do. You want to get me fired for not following orders? Talk to you? Why the hell would I do that? The manager didn't say I was supposed to talk to you. I don't get paid enough to talk to every pencil-dick rubbernecker that breezes in here. Cry me a fookin' river. I’m doing what the manager told me, so I'm not talking to you."

10. Ted:
 " Give it a minute, man. I'm waiting for Ted to text message me. Ted swore it was really important. "

9. Paranoia:
 “I’d wait on you, only I’m scared the mayonnaise will turn on you, and I’ll be blamed for it.”

8. Attitude:
 “Yo, dude, I’m really bummed, OK, so, like, I’m not into the whole servitude scene right now. Give me a little room, OK?”

7. Reality:
 "How do I even knowyou're hungry? How do I even know that you really want a sandwich? If I can only perceive reality through my senses, how do I know that you're actually sitting there waiting to be asked about a sandwich? My senses might not be attuned to your plane of existence. Even though you appear to be just yuppie jerks from East Bumfuck, you might actually be evil aliens from Outer Bumfucker. So if I give you a sandwich in my reality, in another reality, I might be giving you the final piece you need for a weapon that destroys the world in every reality, man. Your perception of reality is different from reality, you understand? You know, I don’t think you’ve given this order much thought. You better go get your head straight on this and come back later."

6. Religion:
 "I gave up serving for Lent."

5. Literature:
 “Dammit! I was working out a major plot point in my novel. It was really cool, ‘cause it turned on this one character, Burr, it turned on his character progression. Get it? Depending on whether he’d learned from all the stuff he’d been through — and I’m going to put him through some crazy shit, man, I can tell you — the plot was going to go one of two ways. But now I’ve lost it. Thanks to you.”

4. Psychology:
 “You look like you have a sandwich problem. I don’t want to enable you.”

3. Virtue:
 “I’m studying the seven virtues — chastity, abstinence, generosity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility — and incorporating them into my being. Today, I’m practicing abstinence. So should you.”

2. 9/11:
 "What am I supposed to think? You might not be customers. You might be terrorists. What happens if I get photographed talking to you, then? Then, I go to jail, too, that's what happens, then. No way, no fucking way am I going to risk jail just to wait on you, man. You know what? I think you are terrorists. You look like terrorists, you look like fuckin’ Osama bin Laden. You askin' who looks like fuckin' Osama bin Laden? Both of you, that's who. I ain't saying anything else to you fuckers. I am calling the fucking FBI right NOW, you asshats!"

1. Procedure:
 “Just like the sign says, you’re supposed to order at the counter.”

www.knoxvoice.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=557&Itemid=31

 

Another News Sentinel freelance piece - A Splatter of Starlings

This ran Monday last. The photo by Paul Efird was exceptional.

Propane cannon: Tool to scatter swarms of starlings

Space invaders

By SCOTT MCNUTT, NEWS@KNEWS.COM
June 11, 2007

A flock of seagulls.

A murder of crows.

A splatter of starlings?

Each fall, swarms of European starlings invade downtown Knoxville to roost in Bradford pears and other densely leafed trees.

They then cover the area with excrement.

Former downtown resident Julie Auer was a starling victim. One evening in 2000...

You can read the rest at: www.knoxnews.com/kns/science/article/0,1406,KNS_9116_5579737,00.html

First freelance piece for the News-Sentinel: Artful bear talk of town

Artful bear talk of town

9/11 images bother some; city begins looking into a policy for art in public places

By SCOTT MCNUTT, news@knews.com
May 29, 2007

Colorful fiberglass bears from the Dogwood Arts Festival's 2001-02 "Bearfoot in the City" show are familiar sights around downtown.

Now, a replacement for one of these icons has stirred discussion among downtowners and galvanized Knoxville city officials to work on a policy regulating art in public places...

Read the rest here:
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_5559829,00.html