Peace sells and we better be buying (iraq) 9.3.02

Going to war with Iraq is such a monumentally bad idea that I am suddenly left without the capacity for rational self expression. So I will just grunt and stamp for the length of this column in the hopes that my moral point of view or MPOV will spread via osmosis.
Right now, we are on the "brink" of war. The brink of war is a funny place to sit, because this is the point historians look back and wonder what exactly we were all thinking we were about to do; what was going through our minds before X happened?
No one "wants" war. Even the people who really, really do want war so bad they can taste it like a big juicy burger will tell us they don't want it. They will tell us that war is one of those inevitable eventualities of life to which old men commit - if not condemn - young men. War is something required in the struggle of right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, the light side of the force vs. the dark side of the force. It never ends.
And the truth is that some wars certainly are inevitable. I would even go so far as to say that as bad as war is, it can even be necessary.
But war with Iraq? Is it necessary or would it just feel good? War with Iraq is about as necessary as your typical bar brawl. The only reason to go at it with Iraq is to make us look cool in front of our girlfriends and buddies who had too many Jagermeisters.
People will argue about the necessity of war from now until the moment it gets started and the Desert Storm II: Electric Boogalo T-shirts, hats and bumper stickers go on sale. At that point, the debate will cease, Dubya's ratings will skyrocket, people will talk about the amazing resurgence of patriotism and how great it is that we are all on the same page "at last."
The problem is that Iraq is like one of those bullies you went to high school with. You know the guy, the one nobody liked who smoked weed during gym class. Everybody wanted to beat him up, but he had a lot of older cousins.
No one really likes Iraq including his cousins and while they would like to see him get a beat down they can't let it happen because moms would get mad.
Of course, at this point in history, it doesn't require 20/20 hindsight to know that Iraq is not so much the problem as the guy in charge, Saddam Hussein. The guy is a pathological freak and most Iraqis, like most Americans, would be happier without him. They are also like us in that they get up and go to work every day and just want to not be blown up on the way to the market one day. They would have taken care of this in 1991, too, if we hadn't pulled out leaving Saddam in power.
A regime change is needed in Iraq and Saddam Hussein and a few cronies are about the only people who disagree with that statement. He destabilizes the Middle East more than it already is and even the Saudis would like see him gone, but they can't just give us the thumbs up, because they have an image to maintain. It's like taking taking sides against your family.
Right now, we're the toughest kid on the block that everybody seems annoyed with. Even the guys we hang out with like England are telling us to "chill out 'cause the guy ain't worth it." But we really want to beat somebody up and we really want to make him swing first (casus belli-an event that justifies war).
In this case, the casus belli is that Iraq might be in possession of weapons of mass destruction or harboring al-Qaida. Whatever gets the job done. We aren't sure, but we do know they keep looking at us funny, i.e. they want really badly to be in possession of said weapons so no one will mess with them.
Different experts say different things. One expert says Iraq doesn't have jack for weapons while others says they could have a working nuke by 2005. Either way, most everyone agrees Saddam Hussein is a loose cannon. Not so much like "Die Hard," but more like Charles Manson, the Son of Sam or Napoleon.
This would all be much easier if we knew we had the support of anti-Hussein forces in Iraq, but unfortunately they haven't known what to make of us since 1991 when we pulled out and left them on their own - a curious move to say the least. This would all be a tad less difficult with the support of Arab countries in the region. This would almost be a no-brainer if a few of our allies were down with us, but they aren't.
What we do have is a slim possibility for a peaceful solution, but even that might just end up being a "prelude" to war. Vigorous weapons inspection backed by military force. No firing, just huge threats. We go in no holds barred, no shenanigans, no spontaneous civilian protests ... nothing. No rock left unturned, no door left locked, no falafel left untested for small pox and THEN maybe we can avoid a 10-year commitment and possible worldwide immolation. Perhaps with Saddam totally controlled, meaningful change in Iraq will be possible without war.
It is quite an investment, but then peace, usually is.
- Greg Jerrett is a Nonpareil staff writer. His column runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He may be contacted at 328-1811, Ext. 279, or by e-mail at gjerrett@nonpareilonline.com.

drug addicts complain about ban (smoking ban) 8.27.02

New York's Mayor Mike Bloomberg has managed to get the price of cigarettes jacked up to $7.50 PER PACK. Can you believe it? Remember when you could get cancer sticks for a buck? From a vending machine? At work? So you could smoke WHILE you worked? I bet you do.
Nothing said good morning, America like that first smoke as you rolled out of bed, shaved, showered, had another smoke, poured a cup of coffee, smoked a cigarette and then headed off to the bomber plant to do your part for the war effort ... while smoking.
Time was, any 12-year-old with a notion to could walk into the general store, get a handful of jaw breakers and a carton of Lucky Strikes for a penny. And why not? If you're old enough to work 14 hours a day, by God you should be old enough to smoke, too.
Soon, Bloomberg will manage to make it illegal to smoke even in New York bars. Can you imagine walking into a transvestite, S&M, biker bar on branding night and not being able to smoke? Me neither.
Lots of people, well, not people so much as smokers, don't like that one bit. "It's a violation of our civil rights," they shout while frantically reaching for another bullet and one of those tacky, red disposable, child-proof lighters they bought at a convenience store for 50 cents that barely works. Flick, flick, flick. Flick ... flick ... FLICK. "I have rights, too, you know." Puff ... fuuuuuu.
I have to agree with the sentiment behind those words. It really isn't a bar if people aren't smoking in it. One can hardly argue that a bar is such a healthy environment that it is wrong to poison other people's lungs while those people are poisoning their livers. Besides, smoking and drinking go together like Martin and Lewis, Lewis & Clark, Lois and Clark and Clark Bars and Vodka which leads us back to smoking and drinking.
Why should what goes on New York concern those of us who live in the rational epicenter of common sense and libertarianism that is the Midwest? Because what New York does, we'll be doing six months after that. If the largest city in our country pulls off this coup with little or no rankle, then the motivation will be there for every city and state government to drop the hammer on smoking as well.
Ames already has a ban in restaurants before 8:30 p.m. and Iowa City is working on one, too. More and more people are warming to the idea of simply outlawing cigarettes altogether, a feat that is looking more plausible every day. Smoking is going the way of the dodo and one day in our "Star Trek" future we will look back in wonder at this primitive behavior.
Smoking tobacco is not significantly different than smoking crack or shooting heroin. In fact, studies have shown that cigarettes are at least as addictive as cocaine. Don't believe me? Try quitting. People can say they like smoking all they want, but the sad fact is they are just as addicted to that drug as any back alley dope fiend.
If you had a monkey on your back digging his nails into your neck until you fed him bananas, would that mean you really liked bananas? Of course not. You were just feeding the monkey.
Remember the first time you inhaled smoke? That is how you really feel about cigarettes.
When you wake up because you are having a "nic fit," those are the same feelings junkies get when they need to spike a vein. The reason smokers so often look like death warmed over is no more complicated than why crackheads, tweekers and dopers look like hell. Poison will do that to you.
Smokers get upset at smoking bans because they are hooked on a drug. I got hooked at 18 and even though I don't want to smoke today, I like the idea of going into a bar, having a beer and stepping off the wagon.
When I got the diabetes, my doctor said give up cheese and never smoke again. OK, I said. Now, let's get something straight. I love cheese. For six months, I had no cheese and not one smoke. Then I went to the airport. After a stressful check-in, I hit the bar and found a mark to bum me just one smoke.
Nearly a year later, I have not so much as bought a small quantity of cheddar cheese unless it was fat free and taste free, but I still buy smokes from my co-workers on a regular basis.
One day, the world will look upon tobacco with at least as much disdain as it views marijuana, not because all the non-smokers will make the lives of smokers miserable, but because EX-smokers, high on zealotry, will call for its ban to keep temptation at bay.
Smoking is not pleasurable, it is not relaxing, it doesn't feel good, smoke doesn't taste refreshing. Smoking is a drug and smokers are drug users. As long as people are comfortable with that notion, so be it.
With that said, public interference should really be kept to a minimum. Smoking will die on its own the less we do. In-your-face measures will act as life support. Stop Big Tobacco from selling to kids, keep the ads down, but leave the smoking sections alone and quit jacking with the prices. The only thing legislators and city councils will manage to do is make smoking even cooler than it already is. That's half the reason people started anyway.
- Greg Jerrett is a Nonpareil staff writer. His column runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He may be contacted at 328-1811, Ext. 279, or by e-mail at gjerrett@nonpareilonline.com.

Politics nothing but G-thang (gang politics) 8.16.02

Since the dawn of history, mankind has run in gangs of one kind or another. Any excuse to draw distinctions between us and them. Tribes, clans, nations and within, nations, political parties. It's part of our human need to identify ourselves with a greater entity for protection.
Parties are a big part of the problem with our current system of government. Instead of spending time debating issues on their merit, finding practical solutions for modern living and getting something, anything done, we waste what little political effort we are willing to make on defending our parties of choice.
Right now we have a two-party system that takes money from the same corporate sponsors in an effort to keep things as homogeneous as possible. Straying too far from the pack is a death sentence.
These parties don't matter. The Republican Party hasn't done anything truly great since Lincoln freed the slaves and the Democratic Party should have folded up shop the second Bobby Kennedy was shot. Two-party mud-slinging is all we really have.
We might just as well go back to the Whig and Bull Moose parties, at least their names put things in perspective. Who could get seriously worked up about being a member of these parties? "Whigs rule!" "I'm a proud Bull Moose." Of course, you are.
Lord knows Hitler would never have gotten as far as he did if the National Socialist German Worker's Party had been called Dolfie und die Apfelstrudel Miststücken. It's all about image, substance got lost in the shuffle so long ago even its mother has moved on.
The purpose of any political parties, first and foremost, is to consolidate power. Sure, most of them start out with the best intentions, namely, to shift power from someone else who is hording it. Political movements start out seeking change and turn into political parties that want to maintain the status quo. The parties have sought power for so long they forgot what they wanted the power for in the first place.
Under the best of circumstances, a party needs a simple majority to take charge. A mandate from the people, control of the executive and legislative branches is needed to make any real progress, but when that happens, the party in charge is so worried about maintaining their control they soft pedal themselves out of office because the people generally believe it isn't good to have one party with too much power. So what is the point to parties? No one has even gotten it all and proved that yes, indeed, they were right all along. They won't it isn't possible.
Right now, the two major American political parties have things evenly divided between them. We can argue and quibble over who has a slight lead at any given time and believe me, we DO and WILL argue about who squeaks by with a few heads as if a few thousand one way or the other in a country of over 200 million people matters much.
Debating about whose gang is bigger and badder is ultimately pointless because in 25, 50 or 100 years there could be two other parties vying for the same mandate from the same people who don't see that our system doesn't care about who is right and who is wrong so much as who can get what from whom and how fast.
What are we, Bloods and Crips? Basically ... yes. Reds vs. blues. Republicans vs. Democrats. You could meet people all the time who agree with you on a vast majority of issues who just have to know what political party you belong to so they can know whether or not it's OK to agree with you or dismiss you out of hand.
Does it really matter if your produce manager is a liberal or conservative? A Republican or Democrat? He could be SLA, Quebec Liberte´ or a boy from Brazil so long as he keeps the cabbage stocked, what do we care?
City politics are the same thing. Who cares what party a city mayor votes in national elections? That has nothing to do with maintaining the streets, sewers and tourist industry.
I myself can say 1+1=2 time and time again and it doesn't matter how sound the logic is, somebody still wants to know how I'm registered before they buy into my line of reasoning ... such as it is. Why does that matter? Is it OK for me to say spanking is OK as long as I'm a Republican? Is it suddenly wrong if I'm a Democrat who says the same thing?
I am fiercely independent and will remain so. I vote the issues and the candidate, never straight party. I encourage you to do the same. We don't need term limits because voting is all the limitation we should need. If a professional politician is good, he should stay in office for as long as we keep pulling the lever by his name. If he stinks, we should vote him out.
If you want political change, drop out of the two-party rut, because honestly, when was the last time you were even invited to the party?
Thank you, thank you very much. Elvis has left the building.
- Greg Jerrett is a Nonpareil staff writer. His column runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He may be contacted at 328-1811, Ext. 279, or by e-mail at gjerrett@nonpareilonline.com.

i waste, therefore i am (i waste...redux) 8.15.02

I was watching a documentary about the Iceman, a guy who fell asleep on a snow-covered mountain in Europe some 5,200 years ago only to be thawed out in the 20th Century. To answer your question, no, he wasn't still alive. He did have a few lessons for us though. Scientists picked him apart from top to bottom... literally. This man's colon told a story like "War and Peace."
As far as documentaries go, it was pretty sweet. It had dramatic reenactments of life in 3200 B.C. and believe me, life back then was not pretty and slick like it is today.
Iceman was something of a stud and he told these scientists a great deal For example, he had a copper axe 1,000 years before it was thought possible to have copper. That's like finding a TV in the Dark Ages or strong leadership in the Democratic Party. Amazing!
Iceman was decked out in his finest goin'-to-the-sacred-tree clothes. Before this, no one had a clue what Neolithic men wore. Apparently they wore animal skins and not polyester, but hey, the man had a copper axe so anything is possible.
The Iceman - let's call him Brian - was 45. That is old for a Neolithic man. Three times before he died, Brian's fingernails stopped growing. This is significant because one's fingernails only stop growing when one is suffering a severe illness. THIS is significant because it means Brian was sick enough to die three times and DIDN'T. THAT is significant because Brian either had access to medicinal herbs or the European healthcare system is just that good. My money is on echinacea. That stuff works!
Wear on Brian's teeth showed he ate a rough bread product. Fascinating.
The commercials were almost as educational as the documentary itself. One was for Chili and Scoops - corn chip scoops with a tiny bowl of chili in a plastic container inside a brightly painted cardboard box. Microwave the chili, eat it with the scoops - it's fun! I bet the Brian would be miffed he missed this one.
Why would anyone pay for a single serving of chili and a handful of corn chips? Our Neolithic ancestors killed bears for dinner and we can't get it together enough to buy our own can of chili and bag of chips?
Then there was one for Kraft cheese cubes. Just cubes of cheddar cheese in a bag. As if cheese weren't expensive enough, I am going to pay someone else to cube it?
Recipe for cubed cheese: 1) Buy cheese. 2) Cube it! If you can't do that, you should avoid cheese anyway.
If you have money to spend on pre-cubed cheese and never give to charity, you might want to rethink this in case Jesus is watching.
And Lunchables, aren't these pretty much crackers and cheese in a box? When I was a kid, if you sent your kid to school with nothing but crackers and cheese, the teacher called social services.
Are they still selling the single-serving cereal bowls in the refrigerated section with the milk? They sell these things so kids can help themselves, but if a kid can't open a box of cereal how can one crack three layers of cardboard and safety seals to get at a couple ounces of Frosted Flakes?
If your kids aren't old enough to figure out a box of cereal, they shouldn't be in the kitchen by themselves. Besides, what kid can't polish off three bowls of sugar-coated anything while watching cartoons?
Maybe it started with canned soup, sliced bread and TV dinners. Was that the beginning of the end of self-reliance in America? Or maybe it goes back to the beginning of agrarian society itself.
We accept a lot of waste in America: Cans, plastic, aluminum, Robert Downey Jr. episodes of "Ally McBeal," but even so, these products go beyond the pale. Small units increase your cost per unit so where is the up side?
I've got to think there is psychological damage as well. Consuming these prepackaged food items is a weird placebo telling us falsely we are better than lesser men. I waste, therefore I am.
I am not completely above all this, no one is. Maybe my objection is a working-class thing. When I was a kid, my mom would rather have cut her hands off than buy tiny bags of chips.
"Why would I want to spend good money on little bags of chips when we got a whole bag in the cupboard?"
I couldn't believe she didn't get it. Didn't she know chips taste better when they come in designer bags for others to see you have enough money to spend on shiny things?
Maybe cheese tastes better when somebody else cubes it, too. Who knows? Not me, because I would never buy pre-cubed cheese.
At the end of the Brian's documentary, the narrator put all of the information into perspective for us.
"What would the Iceman (Brian) think about all this scientific investigation? He wouldn't know what to make of it."
Oh, that poor, primitive Iceman. What would he think if he knew his story were paid for by people who sell pre-cubed cheese to his descendants?
What would he think of descendants who couldn't kill their own bears let alone cube their own cheese?
The Iceman would probably be glad he lived 5,200 years ago, free and capable.
We gaze in wonder at how far we have come in 5,000 years. I have to wonder at how far we have fallen.
If I needed to survive in the wilderness for a few days, I'd up and die from shock. I couldn't start a fire with sticks. I know there is more to it than that.
Rest in peace, Iceman, you were as good as any of us.
Homework assignment: Read "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk while eating a block of cheese you cubed YOURSELF (vegetarians) or an animal you killed yourself (carnivores).
- Greg Jerrett is a Nonpareil staff writer. His column runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He may be contacted at 328-1811, Ext. 279, or by e-mail at gjerrett@nonpareilonline.com.

Crisp, refreshing Greg goes down easy (advertising) 8.13.02

There is a homework assignment at the end of today's column. Don't worry, it involves watching TV not doing calculus.
A British marketing firm working for video game manufacturer Acclaim UK is looking for people who will legally change their identities to that of one of their most popular characters, Turok, a time-travelling American Indian who hunts bionically-enhanced dinosaurs. I know what you're thinking: where is a pre-contact Indian supposed to get a time machine and why would he kill dinosaurs bionic or otherwise?
The process is called identity marketing and is just the latest abomination to come out of the minds and wallets of marketing folk who act more and more like characters from Revelations every day.
How it works is you go online and apply. You have to be willing to not just change your name legally to "Turok" for one year, you have to be willing to live your life as a walking talking advertisement for the game. Dress like Turok, talk like Turok. Kill bionic dinosaurs should they show up at your place of work.
Oh, you can keep your job at McDonald's. Mickey Ds would probably be obligated to keep you on the payroll too. As an equal opportunity employer, it would be illegal for them to fire an employee just because he is a time-traveling Indian who kills bionic dinosaurs. That's in the Constitution presumably.
You will need to keep your day job as well because in exchange for abandon your true identity for a year, you will make a whopping $800, according to the Associated Press. Well, NEARLY $800. Apparently making an enormous jackass out of yourself for an entire year is only worth about $785 ... before taxes.
Why such a silly ploy to promote a video game? Apparently, the average consumer (which is what corporate executives call human beings) are "too dulled to conventional advertising." To put it succinctly, our attention spans have become so short (due in no small part to advertising) that we don't pay enough attention to conventional advertising that interrupts our TV shows, falls out of our magazines, kicks up the wait time before our movies to 20 minutes, changes the names of stadiums and litters walkways, roadways and schools to sell us things we don't need and can't afford. Or worse, just to create "an image" for some product.
Newer and "better" ways of advertising have to be developed to get people to look at ads, ESPECIALLY when they don't want to.
For example, product placements began hardcore when Reese's Pieces played a large role the alien's favorite snack in "E.T." Now it's sad and commonplace, but luckily it only happens in movies that are total crap like everything made by an SNL Alum or its producer Lorne Michaels.
Recently Michaels put a Sobe soft drink ad right in the middle of an SNL sketch of a fake talk show. It was supposed to be funny.
A couple in Kansas named their son Iuma after the Internet Underground Music Archive. They were paid $5,000 for this bit of abuse.
Superbowl winners shouting "I'm going to Disneyland!" during interviews for cash is demeaning to them, their sport and our intelligence. Come on, does anyone really believe a professional quarterback is going to take a pass on all the champagne, drugs and women that come with victory to hop on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride?
Garbage is a GREAT way to advertise. Fast food wrappers are emblazoned with logos not for the five minutes we see them AFTER we buy fries, but because much of that garbage gets tossed out of car windows and sits on the ground for days.
Schemes like these are viewed even by advertising executives as a way to "get their message heard" over the white noise of TV commercials, magazine inserts, junk mail, billboards, signs on busses, bus stops, cabs, buildings, over urinals, on web sites and in your face 24/7.
Let's face it, it works. It's working right now.
By talking about how brutally stupid anyone would have to be to change their identity to that of a video game character, I help Acclaim sell their worthless game. For every 20 or 30 people who tsk along with me there will be one or two people who think to themselves, "A game about a time-traveling Indian? Who kills Dinosaurs?! BIONIC DINOSAURS!?! Sign me up for that!" Fait accompli. The deed is done.
The only way to win is to move to a cabin in the woods for 30 or 40 years and even then you will catch yourself singing the words to the only song you know: "Fee-lin' 7UP, I'm feelin' 7UP. It's the crisp refreshing feeling, crystal clear and light. America's turning 7UP and it sure fe-els right. Feelin' like a 7, feelin' 7UP."
That's from memory, folks. A commercial that has not been on the air since the early '80s.
Homework assignment: Go out and rent the original "Rollerball" this weekend, the one starring James Caan, not the hideous remake that came out six months ago. Watch it, learn from it and discuss.
- Greg Jerrett is a Nonpareil staff writer. His column runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He may be contacted at 328-1811, Ext. 279, or by e-mail at gjerrett@nonpareilonline.com.

Solving Iowa's problems the old fashioned way (legalized prostitution) 8.8.02

[Stay tuned 'till the end of this week's column for an EXCITING READER'S POLL.]

Lately, my friends and I have been overcome with a most unusual sense of nostalgia. It is unusual because we are all between 33 and 35 and have not felt the need to look backwards until now. It's all "weren't the '80s great!" and "If I knew then what I know now, well..."
When one works long hours and feels his mortality in aching muscles and joints while explaining why things are the way they are to one's kids, one starts to get all funky and emotional. It's nature's way. One day, while wondering what happened to that Loverboy headband you wore to school four months straight in the ninth grade, you get hit by a bus to make way for the next generation.
For my part, I have enjoyed looking at old pictures of Council Bluffs throughout the ages (and if anyone has pictures they would like to share, they can e-mail them to me at the Nonpareil).
Looking at the same streets I've roamed in stark black and white makes me feel connected to something greater. Reading of the exploits of Council Bluffs residents makes me feel as though anything is possible.
Which brings me to this weeks big question: Why is prostitution illegal and why can't Iowa figure out a way to profit from it?
Ben and Mary Marks, formerly of Council Bluffs, made their money in the entertainment business around the turn of the century. Ben ran several successful gambling establishments while Mary ran a whorehouse on Vine Street. It seems to me if we can have three major casinos in Council Bluffs to fill the various coffers that they fill, then we, as intelligent, morally flexible individuals should have no problem figuring out a way to not only make prostitution legal, but to score huge greasy wads of dough of it as well.
Fact: Council Bluffs has twice the national crime rate. Fact: Council Bluffs lacks night life. Fact: One affects the other.
We need to get the crime rate down. We need a nightlife. Now we can accomplish both.
Take something that is illegal, make it NOT illegal any more and watch our crime rate plummet. No extra cops, just pure mental gymnastics. Clean up illegal prostitution by making it legal.
What's that? Prostitution is immoral, you say? Well, last time I checked, so was gambling until we realized how much money we could make from it. Let's not get bogged down now. Technically, gambling is still illegal. I can't run a casino out of my house, can I? We can do the same thing with prostitution. We keep the skanky, nasty truck stop variety and independent pros illegal then we rent out some space in the Omni Center and set up the sweetest, little state-sponsored cathouse this side of the Missouri! YEEE-HAAAW! The parking is awesome!
This doesn't have to just be a Council Bluffs thing. You could take any empty storefront in any small town around southwest Iowa and convert it for the purposes of legalized, sanitary, stress-relieving prostitution. Walnut would be perfect, but I suspect quite a few cities 'round these parts could do it.
Isn't prostitution bad for women? No little girl says "I want to be a prostitute when I grow up." Isn't hooking a shameful occupation? Forced prostitution IS wrong. Pimping is wrong. No diggity. But lots of people have jobs they hate or find shameful. I know, I used to do telemarketing.
You know something else you never hear a little girl say? "I want to clean toilets when I grow up," "I want to be financially dependent on a man," "I want to make french fries all day" or "I want to have my 401(K) mismanaged by a Fortune 500 company," but it happens.
Besides, men can be prostitutes as well. In my vision of financial security for the great state of Iowa, men and women will all have an equal opportunity to make whores of themselves for cash in a clean, safe, medically-regulated environment. They will put books in our schools, open free clinics, fund sexual addiction counseling to handle the sudden, but acceptable, increase in that affliction.
People will come for miles around to make us rich. Forget libraries, entryways and small civic improvements, this plan is bigger than all that. Iowa will be able to afford world-class medical centers, the biggest mall in the universe, underground asteroid shelters, our own space program, gold-plated hubcaps and furry hats for every city council member, city manager and big pimpin' mayor in the state.
It's the 2K2, Iowa, let's look to the past to solve the problems of today and - I'd guess - tomorrow. Leave your hangups in Nebraska and let's get this fiscal party started, right?
On a related note, I am conducting my own reader's survey. Send me the name of your favorite southwest Iowa "go-go club" by Aug. 16 at 9 a.m. The password is "Fidelio." You must be at least, oh, 16, let's say to vote, but no older than 116. Contestants must speak English, Spanish, French, German, Latin or Sanskrit. Call/e-mail Greg Jerrett at the number/address below. Don't cheat. It's no fun if you cheat. All results are final. Results will be announced Saturday, Aug. 17 in this column unless I call in sick after my birthday. Contest is open to all Nonpareil readers, employees, their family members and clergy.
Next week's contest: The worst thing you ever did to another human being. Password is "Who are you to judge me?"
- Greg Jerrett is a Nonpareil staff writer. His column runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He may be contacted at 328-1811, Ext. 279, or by e-mail at gjerrett@nonpareilonline.com.

Stay gold Council Bluffs drive-in (CB drive-in) 8.6.02

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
-Robert Frost

I would like to be able to say the first time I heard these words it was in an English class, but the truth is I first heard them in "The Outsiders" at the Council Bluffs Drive-In.
I'm just a small town boy living in a lonely world who took the midnight train going anywhere and I am as sentimental as the next guy. Our drive-in theater is one of the few remaining in the United States and. You would be hard pressed to find a true C.B.-er who had not spent a night or 20 in the haze of youth watching dimly lit movies in the fresh summer air with the scent of Lake Manawa wafting from behind the screen carrying with it the promise of young love and the distinct odeur of corn dogs. To this day, I get a completely non-Platonic feeling when I smell frying cornmeal.
Yes, the drive-in theater is a true American classic, a marriage of our love for movies and our love for cars. What could be better than those nights? My buddies and I would trip on out to the theater with a 12-pack of tall boys on ice in a five-gallon pickle bucket from Sam's Hamburgers and a box of Little Debbies Star Crunches to watch "Big Trouble in Little China," "The Goonies" and "Friday the 13th Part Who Cares."
I saw "Batman Returns" at that theater with my nephew when he was 3-months old, not that he recalls it. I spent many a Fourth of July there eating hot dogs and watching the fireworks. I saw my first R-rated film, "The Screaming Cheerleaders," at the drive-in when I was a wee lad. For some odd reason, my parents thought I would sleep through all the screaming and jiggling. Doesn't happen now and it didn't happen then.
"Love Story," "Smokey and the Bandit," "The Apple Dumpling Gang," "The Strongest Man on Earth," "Smokey and the Bandit II," "The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again," "Smokey and the Bandit III," "Smokey and the Apple Dumpling Gang Hook Up with the Screaming Cheerleaders" ... the list goes on.
In retrospect, the movies never mattered as much as the company and occasion, because it was always a special occasion when you stayed out until 3 a.m. watching that real clinker at the end.
Unfortunately, our drive-in theater might not be with us much longer and that is sad. Nothing gold can stay, I reckon. The land the theater sits on is up for sale and since it has a much greater value as a parking lot or strip mall than as a movie theater we all used to go to as kids, chances are pretty good that by this time next summer there will be one less thing to make Council Bluffs unique.
Maybe there is something we can do, but I doubt it. This is just one of those times when you have to sit back and accept the inevitable. If the Council Bluffs Drive-In were a thriving concern, if it were packed each and every night with people buying popcorn by the ton and pop by the gallon, maybe it wouldn't need to close. But this is social Darwinism for you. The weak die while the strong plow them under for another car lot.
Granted, I've been away for years, but the last movie I saw at the drive-in was "Batman Returns." Not "Batman & Robin," not "Batman Forever," "Batman Returns." That's about 10 years ago. So for my part, I haven't exactly kept the deep fat fryers of the drive-in filled with canola oil and the projectors filled with celluloid.
Everything changes, that is inevitable. Sometimes things fall apart because the universe is an unstable place. Trees, people and suns die. That's entropy. Sometimes tastes change. That's why you can't hardly find sasparilla any more. And sometimes things fade out because they just don't make as much sense as they used to. Drive-ins were cool when air conditioning was rare. They were great social gatherings when we all felt much safer being out late at night. Drive-ins were the place to see movies when quality new movies came out less often, when people didn't have 300 channels, VCRs and DVDs at home.
The day of the drive-in is drawing to a close and while I hope the Council Bluffs Drive-In somehow makes it to 2003, I will have to catch whatever is playing out there this summer just in case it doesn't. It doesn't really matter what, just one last memory to add to the stack.
Nothing gold can stay, but we can always remember that for far longer than most, we had a piece of living breathing pop culture history right here in our midst.
- Greg Jerrett is a Nonpareil staff writer. His column runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He may be contacted at 328-1811, Ext. 279, or by e-mail at gjerrett@nonpareilonline.com.

bridge over troubled back streets (bridge) 8.2.02

This proposed Avenue G viaduct has got me a bit perplexed. I understand the need to move more traffic from one side of town to the other but it seems to me that people need to have a reason to go from point A to point B along a certain route, am I wrong?
What exactly is the motivation to travel from point A on Avenue G to point B further along Avenue G near 16th Street? Do 4,500 people a day really need day old bread and beef jerky that bad?
I am the perfect candidate for using this new viaduct and even I don't see the upside. I live on the east side of town, I go to Comic City and Lipstix (to do research on my novel) with breath-taking regularity and I can't see the advantage of a big bridge on G besides moderately improving emergency response times.
I would think a better idea might be a newer, wider, swifter viaduct where the current one is standing or perhaps one on 9th or 5th that would make heavily traveled streets easier to navigate during crunch time.
Getting stuck waiting for a train is aggravating and a painful reminder of how awkwardly Council Bluffs is laid out. The current viaduct is so heavily used, by Crom, it feels more like a parking lot than a roadway. Even with the new viaduct, there are still parts of town that can be totally cut off from the outside world if two trains are running at the same time. I call this section of town The Bermuda Triangle because I was once stuck down there wearing Bermuda shorts and was taunted by bikers.
I may just be a simple country boy, but it seems to me that a another bridge is just trying to catch moonbeams with a butterfly net. The real problem in Council Bluffs is that we have railroad tracks running right through the center of our town from one end to the other.
In most towns, you see railroad tracks on the ugly industrial side of town, out of the way for the most part. With C.B., the tracks are about three blocks from City Hall.
I grew up right by a set of train tracks and it can be annoying, but in all honesty, you get used to the screeching and honking, the exhaust, the ground shaking and the sight of a leviathon cruising past your kitchen window at 65 m.p.h. You hear about derailments, but you put them out of your mind. I even had a dog lose a leg to a train. Frankly, he should have known better than to chase it.
And while train tracks aren't the worst thing in the world, they do have a stigma attached to them. There is "the right side of the tracks" and "the wrong side of the tracks." For over a hundred years, the vast majority of C.B. has had the unfortunate and inappriate distinction of being on "the wrong side of the tracks."
We can build all the bridges we want, but at the end of the day, we still have more tracks than an Amsterdam city park after midnight. We are wedged in between the river, the tracks and the hills. We need some breathing room and beyond picking the entire city up and moving it halfway to Glenwood, we might just be stuck unless we can get the Union Pacific to take their rails underground.
Maybe we could take the streets under the tracks, it works like a dream out at big lake. At least then we could avoid turning the length of Avenue G into the same kind of wasteland that sits under the current viaduct and prevent Avenue G residents from becoming trolls.
I'm just one guy with no degree in community and regional planning to fall back on, but I have played hundreds of hours of "Sim City." And if being Mayor Jerrett-san of Ho Chi Greg City has tought me anything, it's that it is hard to run a city of this size. You have constant growing pains. One little slip up like a flood, earthquake, plague of locusts or UFO invasion and half your town moves away. Getting over that 100,000 hump is hard. There's never enough money to do what you need to do let alone what you really want to do. And you would have to be psychic to know what is going to work ahead of time.
Until we find the cheat code that let's us have unlimited funds, no crime, great education, jobs and entertainment, the best we can do is let our city council know what we think in the most rational manner possible. Let them know you have concerns in the Nonpareil opinion section and at council meetings.
While there is likely no solution that will make everyone happy, there are alway options to consider.
- Greg Jerrett is a Nonpareil staff writer. His column runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He may be contacted at 328-1811, Ext. 279, or by e-mail at gjerrett@nonpareilonline.com.

(fatasses) 7.30.02

In case you haven't noticed, America is really fat, though considering that 61 percent of adults are overweight or obese, it would be kind of hard not to notice. More frightening is there are three times as many fat kids not running around as there were 20 years ago, diabetes is epidemic and we all sit around with our thumbs no where to be found. Thank you cable TV, video games, fat-packed fast foods and disinterested parents.
What is really starting to bug everyone is that it costs the nation $117 billion a year in health costs and lost productivity, according to the Surgeon General's office. Late night comedy pundits like Bill Maher and Dennis Miller get great mileage out of mocking fat folks and who can blame them. Fat people are the new homosexuals. Once upon a time, it was totally acceptable to work your hate out mocking gay people, now it's not so cool. But fat people? That never gets old. It's like they deserve it.
Let's be brutally honest, everybody hates fat people. Even fat people hate other fat people. I'm a fatty and therefore entitled to be as brutally honest in my observations as I want much in the same way as I am entitled to unleash on the French because I'm a bit Gallic.
I know fat people don't like fat people any more than skinny people do. We hate what fatness says about someone's personality, don't we? The slothfulness, the sloppiness, the gluttony.
You know the one's I really don't like are people who are just about 30 or 40 pounds overweight who have never even tried to lose that spare tire who feel they are entitled to tell me what I'm doing wrong when I have lost well over 100 pounds at different times only to gain it back. Those people really make me sick. If losing weight is so easy, tubby, dig those high school pants out of the closet and strut your stuff.
You see it in kids on the playground, they're like little animals fixating on the weak, torturing them physically and mentally. It's fun, especially if you don't have special ed kids in your school. The only thing that kept me from beating on the fat kid in my grade school was that I WAS the fat kid. If I could have kicked my own butt, I would have.
I dislike alternate terms for fatness like husky, chubby, plump, big-boned and burly. They soften the blow. I prefer the term "fat #@!$%&" because let's face it, that's what I am. If I had any self respect or will power, I wouldn't be a thunderchunk with a waistline the size of Rhode Island whose friends are embarrassed to be seen with him, who gets winded walking DOWN stairs and who has to pay women of questionable morality to talk to him in sleazy, out-of-the-way bars, now would I?
News specials all talk about the problem. Talk, talk, talk, talk. All we really do is talk, talk. Finding a solution is a big deal suddenly. As a nation, we're like that fight guy who needed firefighters to rescue his 1400 pound mass from his bedroom only we are just now screaming toward 500 pounds thinking, "hmmm, maybe I should go for a walk or lay off the Dove Bars?" Ya think?
Looking for a solution just mirrors the problem of losing weight on the individual level. A move is being made by lawyers currently to do to the fast food industry what they did to Big Tobacco, i.e. find a scapegoat to make them rich.
George Washington University Law Professor John Banzhaf, the mastermind behind the tobacco suits, recently said he believes it would be legitimate and feasible to sue fast food companies for misleading advertising. If it worked once, why not twice? If there is anything lawyers like it is a nice fat class action lawsuit they can dress up like activism as if the primary motivation to sue BK, KFC and Mickey D's is to help us all by raising costs. Yeah, that'll work. Food does grow on trees, doesn't it?
There is nothing quite so frightening as Americans looking for a solution to what is ultimately a personal problem. Pass a law! Sue somebody! No matter how much money it costs employers, the government or the economy, fat is a personal issue. Every fatty out there is fat for their own fat reasons. Eating too much really is only part of the problem - though you wouldn't think so to walk into some of the buffets around here.
Genetics, culture and lifestyle do play a part. So does psychology, food addiction, poor eating habits, bad dieting strategies, laziness and, yes, the content of fast food. These many different reasons alone make a class action lawsuit impossible because all the members of a "class" have to be fat for the same reasons and they could not possibly all be fat because they didn't realize fast food was fatty.
So put that aside, the only thing this will accomplish is passing the buck. The real source for our fatness is a long-term cultural inclination we need to work against like spawning salmon. Mmmm, salmon.
Americans in 2002 still eat like 98 percent of us are working the fields 14 hours a day. We like big food fast, fatty and tasty. We have little concept of what is good for us or what is bad for us and like cavemen we eat everything we can.
We are so bamboozled by fad diets we can't tell when science is giving us new clues. Carbohydrates may be a great source of nutritional energy, but not in the quantities we consume them. Huge bowls of pasta, bags of potatoes, sugar by the pound. I have seen "healthy" guys drink Mountain Dew like water for hours on end. Eight fluid ounces of Mountain Dew has 110 calories in it, 31 grams of sugar and 50 milligrams of sodium. Most non-diet pop is the same. That is like putting a gun in your mouth. Considering that "super-sizing" and free refills are common, a liter of this stuff has 440 calories, 124 grams of sugar and 200 milligrams of sodium. That's like consuming four apples dipped in salt only there is absolutely NO nutritional benefit.
Look around any given restaurant you frequent for people eating vegetables or fruit. I dare you to find any significant consumption of fresh fruits or veggies, not canned, not drenched in syrup and NOT breaded and fried. It doesn't happen.
Americans don't really care much for fresh food that is good for them and so long as that trend continues to grow, so will our waistlines. Litigation just forces this ridiculousness into sharp relief.
- Greg Jerrett is a Nonpareil staff writer. His column runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He may be contacted at 328-1811, Ext. 279, or by e-mail at gjerrett@nonpareilonline.com.

Basic freedoms not basic cable (Basic freedoms) 7.27.02

I like to read my old college paper online. The Iowa State Daily was OK to read and a great training ground for this line of work. Going back to school over the Web reminds me just how seriously every word we printed was taken - not just by staff and students, but by all kinds of extremists who enjoyed taking out their media frustrations on junior journalists. They could swear at us, but Dan Rather wouldn't put up with that nonsense. If you leave obscene remarks in Dan Rather's comment box, he will hunt you down and beat you senseless with his personal assistant's electronic rolodex. I know this, because Tyler Durden knows this.
A comment left on that vaunted Web site (www.iowastatedaily.com-check out my old stuff) last Thursday got me to thinking. A poster from Hong Kong wrote about Americans, our precious liberties and common American complaints: "[Al-Qaida] wants to kill every last one of you. You really may have to sacrifice some things - short term - to still be alive tomorrow. Think about all your bellyaching when you see that your entire government has been destroyed."
It is one thing to hear this kind of talk from Americans, but when our exact words - and I do think this is a fair, if overblown, sample of comments I've heard from the Justice Department, Ari Fleischer, Dick Cheney and some citizens - are spouted back at us, it takes on a different dimension.
You know, if I had a cause I could conceive of, I would do something constructive. If the War on Terror resembled World War II or any conventional war, I'd collect tires and tin, give up sugar and meat, volunteer my service ... anything. But it isn't. This whole thing is more confusing than a David Lynch movie only without all the dancing midgets and psychotic lesbians.
I can tell you this, though, before any of us start sacrificing the things that make America, well, America, in order to feel like we are safe or contributing to the cause, we better think long and hard about what it is we're giving up. IS surrendering civil liberties necessary? Is it temporary? Or is it just the start of something bigger?
What should we be willing to sacrifice?
I've said all along, I don't have a problem waiting in line at the airport to have some knuckle dragger go through my underwear looking for pipe bombs and fingernail files. That is totally cool with me. I don't have a problem with the FBI questioning suspects or following leads when they get the notion to actually do those things. I don't have a problem with the CIA searching the Internet for al-Qaida communications. We've known for years the net isn't exactly private.
Can we handle change? Sure, we can. Should we be vigilant? Absolutely. Should we be vigilantes? No.
Life changed after 9/11 and we all regretted that. Some adaptation will be necessary, sure, a greater level of awareness doesn't hurt. But let's not close up this great democratic experiment because of fear.
It's always the really good liberties we talk about giving up, too, like freedom of speech. My right to blab endlessly on a variety of subjects is just about my favorite civil liberty of all time and I take a dim view to shutting up.
When we start thinking secret tribunals, martial law and trying Americans as enemy combatants are OK because American values like justice shouldn't apply when the heat is on, I get nervous. Worse than that, I get offended. We all should because our liberties and values aren't luxuries or privileges; they are our rights.
Voluntarily giving up any of our rights isn't just putting the cart in front of the horse, it's dragging the horse behind the cart going 90 miles an hour down the Interstate, "Highway to Hell" blasting out the stereo.
If we let our fears dictate our actions, we lose control of this country. If we voluntarily give up our liberties, if we become a police state where postmen, cable guys and truckers spy on us with some vague notion that it's right to do so, while Homeland Security repackages fascism and John Ashcroft convinces middle America that dissent is terrorism and martial law is no more offensive to the American spirit than community policing, then our enemies win a much greater battle than killing us could ever achieve.
Our forefathers fought for our rights, they did not fight to create a government that does what it pleases because its citizens are too timid or apathetic to speak up.
We better talk while we can, because I hear the sound of jackboots coming up the back stairs.
Giving up a few basic freedoms is not the same thing as going without cable for a while. It's like going without oxygen for a few days. The absence of liberty is not acceptable, freedom is NOT temporary.
- Greg Jerrett is a Nonpareil staff writer. His column runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He may be contacted at 328-1811, Ext. 279, or by e-mail at gjerrett@nonpareilonline.com.