my backyard

I experienced a side of Washington DC last night that endeared itself to me immediately. An overindulgence in unemployment last fall enabled me to explore most of the more notable sights in the area within a relatively short amount of time. It took a visit this week from my family, however, to reveal an obvious, yet strangely undiscovered fact about memorial-land DC: it's so much cooler at night.

Amid earsplitting thunder and downpouring rain, we made our way down to the National Mall last night and visited a couple of the memorials/monuments under cloak of darkness. As the rain puttered out, we found ourselves essentially alone to drink in the sights.

I tepidly praise the WWII memorial whenever asked about it by friends. During the day, I find it noble, yet bland; impressive as an idea, yet slightly neo-fascist (ugh!) by design. Furthermore, I think it struggles to distinguish itself as it sprawls as a shallow saucer across the mall. Upon nightfall, however, the lighting serves to transform the memorial into something more elegant. It feels like a distinct unit on the mall, instead of awkwardly bleeding into the surrounding grass as it does during the day. With a fresh rain upon the stones, the water fountains glistenened and cast a shimmering glow about the perimeter that made me feel like i was in giant fishbowl. The atmosphere embedded itself in my memory.






After the WWII memorial, we made our way to the Roosevelt Memorial. Although the cenotaph impressed me for its approachability and unique design the other times i've ventured that way, nothing compares to a night stroll through the meandering stones. This memorial doesn't seek to awe the visitor with towering statues, instead, most of the human figures stand life-size and accessible to hordes of seventh-grade groping hands...or 25 year old hands, for that matter. it felt like walking through a garden where each person could appease their own aesthetic palate with something enticing. Besides the occasional 747 roaring above, it was almost easy to forget that city trains and concrete melees teem just over the river or behind the trees...peace of mind in an unexpected spot.

free stuff promoting not-so-free stuff

For anybody that hasn't visited their local Starbuck's yet this morning (Fascists), go quick because they're giving away free ice cream. Today and only today. Considering Starbuck's has crept into the darkest corners of the planet (9,000 stores worldwide with long term plans for 20,000), and i'm not aware of anybody in rural Tajikistan who reads my blog, i'm guessing 100% of you can make yourselves real-happy-like soon. Furthermore, it won't drive you into the broke house because, well, it's free. By the way, anybody that buys coffee consistently should definitely follow that hyperlink and read the article. But if you're too lazy, here's a page (refered to in the article) where you can figure out how much of your hard-earned (or hard-borrowed) fortune drains away into the commercial coffee shop coffers compared to the relative pittance required for office battery-acid brew.

K-Higgity's research proved instrumental in completing this story.

only sometimes

sometimes they make me work. sometimes they make me work a whole bunch. only sometimes. i'm off to the spy museum. is anybody else's life insane right now? should i make business cards for my blog? do you think any librarians are ninjas? okay, bye.

the joys of humidity

So two people walked up to my cubicle this morning and told me outright that I look tired. What the hell! Although my week/month/life has been moderately insane lately, nothing of catastrophic import happened in the last day or two (although I did miss the Ted Leo show at the 9:30 Club…you can read my buddy Jake’s take on the show here) that might render me a tattered and torn person. Not that I really care if people at work think I look tired-I’ve been known to sport the same shirt two, maybe three times in a five day work week…hence,I don’t have much of an image to maintain-but I found it odd that two different people said the same unusual thing, completely unsolicited (a conspiracy, perhaps?).
Curiosity piqued, I stole away to my favorite bathroom, slightly off the beaten track, where many a crossword puzzle has fallen victim to my lack of concentration on work-oriented tasks. The visage facing me in the mirror made that kid in The Ring look like Winnie the Pooh. It wasn’t that I looked tired (atleast in my unbiased opinion), it was that I had bangs! Oh god, memories of my sister’s seventh grade picture came flooding back and pangs of forgotten buckteeth assaulted my senses. They were so perfect too, as though I’d developed an uncanny proficiency with the curling iron after years of dedicated study.
So is it the bangs that made me look tired? I’m thinking so. I’m guessing the first think people think about when they see bangs is a strung out rocker chick in a def leppard video. They did tend to look tired. But they looked damn good in their strung out glory. So although nobody appended the “…but you look good” to their “Phil, you look tired”, I’m pretty sure they were thinking it. I do cut a striking figure in neon pink.

On another note, it’s funny to watch congressmen (and an occasional congresswoman) play baseball. I hope they had plenty of medical personnel available, because I think the arms might leave the sockets before the ball leaves the hand.

Finally, I don't think I have a sizeable cadre of tech savvy bloggers reading my blog, but if anybody knows how to work with the blogger comments coding, please let me know. i've been trying to make my comment section organized in threads for awhile, but i can't figure out how to access the html. Any ideas?

THE NEXT STEP: YOUR EARZZZZZZZZ

poor, abandoned blog

life's been crazy and ebay blows. that's my explanation.

There’s an unmistakable perfume that permeates Portland air in the summer months. The dreary gray days have receded (mostly) into a winter memory and slow, sun baked lushness finally blossoms in all its glory. A verdant, fragrant, gorgeous city enjoys itself and the quality of life it offers it inhabitants. I had the opportunity to revisit this often overlooked gem in the pacific northwest last weekend that cradled me through college and its aftermath. A sizeable part of me wants it to remain overlooked, although judging by the Pearl District, north/NE Portland, and SE, I think that notion can be tossed out the window.

Besides attending an ideal summer wedding (congratulations Maria and Jason), checking out my brother’s james bondesque lab at nike, strolling through Saturday Market on the Willamette River, and eating at the greatest breakfast café ever, we managed to make our way up to Mount St. Helens for a quick outing. More than ever, I stood agape taking my first glimpse of the mammoth crater carved from the 1980 eruption. Even at a distance of 5 miles (access to the mountain has been severely limited due to the recent spate of volcanic/seismic activity) the sight is humbling.

I learned some stuff: At 8:31 on May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens in southwest Washington State stood at 9,677 feet above sea level, minutes later 1,314 vertical feet lay scattered across the surrounding countryside or hovering miles above. The mountain now stood at 8,363 feet above sea level. A yawning crater facing the north (1.2 miles east-west, 1.8 miles north-south, 2,084 feet deep) offered the beautiful peak that had stood there before. (I took this pic looking southward at the i-got-my-shit-kicked north part of the mountain, check out the steaming vent)

After months of warning activity that included repeated earthquakes, a steaming crater, and a bulging north flank, the anticipated climax arrived on the morning of May 18, 1980 (I had 15 days to prepare for the party upon entering this world). Perhaps causing, but more likely caused by a 5.1 magnitude earthquake 1 mile beneath the volcano, three successive landslides ripped away the north flank of the mountain. Picking up rocks and trees during its violent descent, this landslide transformed into a jumbled debris avalanche that eventually covered 23 square miles, buried the North Fork Toutle River to an average depth of 150 feet, and reached velocities up to 150 mph. this avalanche swept over towering ridges (which I hiked across this weekend, and never in my life would have imagined could have been overrun) and completely buried pristine Spirit Lake and good old Harry Truman (although there's some debate regarding whether the ensuing explosion reached him first). Before literally swallowing the water in Spirit Lake, the landslide ‘pushed’ it toward its northern shore and forced a flood of water up an 800 foot embankment on the other end before the water came crashing back to the now covered lake floor. If Harry was gonna go out, I think he did it in style.

The disappearance of the north flank relieved restricting pressure on the yearning gas deep within the bowels of the volcano. This superheated gas expanded at hugely accelerated rates and blasted through the weakened walls of the north flank. This fiery explosion was enhanced by vaporized snow and ice which, when mixed with ash and lava, formed a dramatic steam column rising an estimated 16 vertical miles above the crater. At its most violent, the blast tore away from the mountain at 300 mph. 300 mph!!! The blast was so strong and toxic that 4 billion board feet of timber (enough to build about 300,000 2-bedroom homes) blew down in the face of such pressure. You can still see many of the toppled trees to this day all lying with their tips facing northward, some with diameters as large as 8 feet. This ash column followed the prevailing winds and spread eastward across the state, the nation, and eventually encircled the entire globe 15 days later! My family in eastern Washington holds distinct memories of having to shovel an inch of volcanic ash off cars and sidewalks some 200 miles away.

All this heat melted glacier ice and snow and sent it cascading down the side of the mountain. As it sunk into the ground, a dangerous slurry of cement-like mud raged down the mountain, carrying trees and boulders along. This thick paste clogged rivers and punished any bridge or home in its path. Between this and the accompanying pyroclastic flows, any untouched forest or river in the path of the eruption eventually met its doom. For some great pictures of before, during, and after the explosion, check out this site. If you have a slow computer be prepared to wait while it loads because all the pictures reside on the same page.

Aside from the 57 people who lost their lives due to the eruption, wildlife perished in droves. The Washington State Department of Game estimates that 7,000 big game animals died, along with all birds and most small mammals. Furthermore, the Department of fisheries estimated that 12 million Chinook and Coho salmon fingerlings were killed when hatcheries were destroyed. Another estimated 40,000 young salmon were lost when forced to swim through turbine blades of hydroelectric generators as reservoir levels along the Lewis River were kept low to accommodate possible mudflows and flooding.

Staring at Mount St. Helens reminded me that mother nature remains the most awesome and devastating force on this planet as evidenced recently by the 1991 Bangladesh floods, the 2003 Iran earthquake, and the 2004 Tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Compared to these natural disasters of immense proportions, in human terms the 1980 Mt. St. Helens earthquake proves but a tiny dot on the radar screen. Its location in the United States surely catapulted its importance in the eyes of national and international press, perhaps beyond its due limit. However, just as the Grand Canyon is one of those natural scenic points that simply blows you away regardless of how much you’ve heard before visiting, so too does Mt. St. Helens make your jaw scrape along the gravel trail when you consider how much force it required to transplant that much earth in a geological instant. If a city had surrounded the base of the mountain, it would have been completely annihilated. Don't laugh. in fact, move up the Cascade Range to next prominent peak: Mt. Rainier. should this 14,000 foot giant realize its all too real volcanic potential, the Seattle-Tacoma area, especially the south-eastern satellite communities, might suffer catastrophic fatalities, not to mention the economic blow. Consider San Francisco or any number of metropolitan areas along the California coast that sit prostrate as the earth's crust amasses pressure, just waiting to unleash an earthquake of mammoth proportions, with the possibility of an ensuing tsunami. These are just a couple examples from one region in one corner of the globe.

I'm sayin'...I'm just sayin'.

haiku portland

drizzle deep gray morn,
reinvent electric soul,
commune antic set

the most recent posting on my blog

So I was watching Batman Begins tonight and amid the creepy hallucinations, gratuitous shots of still-trembling-lower-right lipped Katie Holmes’ covered nipples, and my future car, there were also a whole bunch of flying sewer lids. So I got to thinking that I don’t want a flying sewer lid to land on my skull. Then I got to thinking about the teenage mutant ninja turtles, those heroes in half-shells, who were known to utilize said sewer lids as projectile weapons against Shredder’s goons. Then I thought that ‘goons’ is a funny word. Then I was wondering if I could call that world onomatopoeia, even though I didn’t think I could. I was right. I couldn’t. but I still had the chance to write the word ‘onomatopoeia’. Twice now. Twice because I just used it again in the previous sentence. Actually it was two sentences before the last sentence when I said that. But the intervening sentence wasn’t much of a sentence, so now I really don’t know what to make of my situation. Hell. So now I’m forgetting about that and thinking about sewers, which are kind of like caves, which have spelunkers spelunking down into the depths. Then I thought, damn, not too many people I know spelunk…if any. So I started reminiscing about the Carlsbad Caverns and how alien and exotic those subterranean caves were with stalactites and stalagmites and bats and all. And that got me thinking about Batman again, but then I decided thinking about Carlsbad was more interesting so I’m doing that again. And I remembered this one gigantic rock poised oh-so precariously in the caverns. It rested on the outcropping of one rock and leaned against the cavern wall twenty two feet away. The educational display down there said it will surely become dislodged in the next couple hundred years or so…and then I thought again about sewer lids and skulls and how I hope that rock doesn’t come crashing down on my skull the next time I go carousing through the caves in Carlsbad. But not spelunking. I won’t be spelunking because I’d have to have gear and not an elevator or a well-trodden path or electric lights elegantly positioned behind rocks to simulate natural light. Nothing natural about it deep down in the bowels of the earth where lava roils and continent factories churn and I dig in my sandbox all the way to china. Can you imagine, I tried digging all the way to china one time with a simple shovel, a pair of size 3 smelly sneakers, and a black Labrador sniffing at my side. I never made it. I wonder if Smokey did? He might have, but then he would have had to dig through the lava and that would be bad. I think our sandbox would turn into a volcano. Right there, smack in the middle of residential Spokane, Washington a volcano would have erupted. Maybe we could have timed it for the fourth of july or something so nobody would notice and we wouldn’t get grounded. I hated getting grounded, especially in the summer when I could look out my window and see my brother and sisters out playing tag in the sweet summer evening air in front of our house with the kids in the neighborhood. Playing away while I was stuck inside thinking about the doors I’d slammed and the heaving chest and the frustration and anger and sadness and all those emotions that channel through a kid. There weren’t many kids in gotham city, just a couple I recall. Little scavengers lurking in the shadows of the undercity rat alleys, poised against walls, waiting to fall…but maybe not in their lifetimes. Not if Batman has anything to say about it.

I'm late for lunch, damnit

this is all you get:

1)...and i have trouble climbing out of bed.

2) one of the musical recommendations that was recently offered to me (thanks, Amanda) kicks ass and is available to us, the internet using world, free of charge. Check out the Decembrists live at the 9:30 Club on NPR's website. NPR's posting a bunch of cool shows that come through the 9:30 club. the next such show is Bloc Party (thank you NSA=JA) this thursday. unfortunately, i'll be stalking the decembrists in their hometown of Portland, OR, so i can't go.

3)more things...be a good american and go learn all about the statue at the top of the US Capitol building.

That was an annoyingly and unnecessarily high number of hyperlinks to include on this itsy-bitsy post. deal with it.

Hey Seppala, a chunk of your face just fell off

I just finished reading The Cruelest Miles by first cousins Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury. This book documents the 1925 diphtheria epidemic in Nome, Alaska and the ensuing feats of heroism that enabled the antitoxin to arrive in Nome safely before the entire population succumbed to the frightful disease. The whole book was fascinating, especially if you have a love for adventure stories and an appreciation for the arctic. A few things struck me as especially poignant.

I didn’t know much about diphtheria prior to reading this book. In the words of the incestual authors:

Diphtheria is an airborne bacterium that thrives in the moist membranes of the
throat and nose and releases a powerful toxin that makes its victims tired and
apathetic. In two to five days, other, more deadly symptoms would appear: a
slight fever and red ulcers at the back of the throat and in the mouth. As the
bacteria multiplied and more toxin was released, the ulcers thickened and
expanded forming a tough, crusty, almost leathery membrane made up of dead
cells, blood clots, and dead skin. The membrane colonized ever larger portions
of the mouth and the throat, until it had nowhere left to go and advanced down
the windpipe, slowly suffocating the victim.

As anyone who’s ever suffered from tonsillitis or mononucleosis can attest to, severe sore throats rank among the worst of physical afflictions. I’ve had my fair share of broken bones, third degree burns, and gruesome skateboard accidents, but without hesitation, I’d include throat issues among the worst of my experiences. When you have to muster every ounce of courage within yourself simply to swallow saliva, things are pretty bad. I can’t imagine the plight of these (mostly) children who battled with diphtheria, only to meet their end in a losing battle with asphyxiation.

Considering the threat of diphtheria has retreated into the annals of history, I’ve never found motivation to research its effects. Pondering this reality, I was reminded of how easily I dismiss the modern threat of contagious illnesses/diseases. Leaning upon an oft-subconscious, yet all-encompassing faith in modern medicine, I neglect the all-too-real threat of those pathogens surpassing a critical threshold and morphing into a pandemic. This might be in the form of SARS in Asia; AIDS in Africa, India, Russia, and urban America; Marburg in Angola; or even an influenza outbreak when the flu shot supply issues we experienced last year are magnified many times over. AIDS is already wiping out whole populations in Africa, and a cure has yet to materialize. Containment of the less scary ones hinges on constant medical vigilance, while the more pernicious examples have no known remedy. Although I cherish the ease of international travel, I can’t help but fear the repercussions this might entail should an outbreak escape our monitoring, or if the carriers of such an illness/disease don’t develop symptoms for months or years subsequent to contraction.

It’s funny how a book can have peripheral affects like this. Judging by the prologue and after-comments, drawing attention to such issues was not their primary or explicit goal in writing the book. Their depiction of entire Alaskan villages falling victim to influenza (1918-19, which also devastated many other parts of the world) and only narrowly escaping the same fate with diphtheria, however, made such ruminations unavoidable after spending a good chunk of last year in Alaska. While this is all well and good, it still bothers me that my sense of empathy wanes as geographical distance grows between a devastating event and my own sphere of experience…something I’d like to continue to reverse.

Aside from all that nasty stuff, however, the book documented just how intrepid both mushers and dogs (not too many historical accounts afford individual dogs a sizeable chunk of text) were to brave the perils of Alaskan winters. I would have preferred even more attention paid to the individual mushers’ experience during their legs of the relay. [Side note: contrary to popular belief, the dogsled portion of the antitoxin delivery consisted of 20 different mushers covering a total of 674 miles from the interior town of Nenana to coastal Nome. Both the relay aspect and the course itself differs from the modern Iditarod race which starts in Anchorage and covers 1,049 miles….actually, the distances for the North and South legs of the Iditarod course are 1158 and 1163 miles, respectively, but the traditional distance of 1049 represents that the race always extends longer than 1,000 miles and that Alaska is the 49th state.] Furthermore, the relatively short personal accounts represent only a handful of the participating mushers. According to the authors themselves, the many native Alaskans who participated in the middle segments of the relay either balked at recounting their stories for the press or were never asked at all. I’d love to hear these stories sometime. The stories that did make the final edit recounted blistering cold, unforgiving winds, precipitous climbs and plunges, and treacherous ice (the water threats constituted some of the most fascinating material, in my opinion…imagine falling through the ice on the Yukon river, only to find that the water underneath had retreated and you were left in an empty cavern of frozen riverbed 20 feet deep and 150 feet wide). Most of these guys did this stuff for a living. Every day!

One more juicy tidbit worthy of mention was the lively debate concerning whether sled teams or airplanes would deliver the serum. History could have played out quite differently had the Governor of Alaska decided to transfer the serum via plane, instead of by sled dog teams. Aviation in the north had yet to find a firm foothold, and only a group of bold pioneers and military units explored the skies in the Last Frontier. The miniscule collection of planes in interior Alaska consisted of World War I vintage biplanes that were dismantled for the winter, had open cockpits, and had water-cooled engines that were unreliable in cold weather. Regardless of these formidable barriers to safe aerial transfer, the national and international press still harangued the Governor and the Board of Health for choosing a much slower means of transportation riddled with its own perilous obstacles. To the benefit of the both the governor and the ailing population in Nome, the sled dog teams competed TWO successful relays and saved innumerable lives. Although the contingent pressing for an air delivery lost in the short run, they won in the long run. National attention focused upon the insufficiencies in northern air travel and an era of rapid development in this industry followed on the heels of the 1925 diphtheria outbreak.

But the dogs had their day. I’m going to stop writing now. If you’d like, you should read the book. I highly recommend it. Just try to disregard the fact that the title came from a modified Ronald Reagan quote.

Sunday morning thoughts (republished...comment issues)

…yes, morning. A couple things:

My computer is crippled and, by extension, I am crippled. There’s no denying it, computers are an ever-increasingly integral part of my life. Since I can’t afford the computer I really want right now, I had to settle for reprogramming windows onto my computer (chose traditional OS for timebeing). Since ordering it weeks ago (my XP disks disappeared in the bedlam of my one of my post-collegiate moves), it’s yet to arrive and I’m sort of going insane in the interim. Fiddling with a keyboard accomplishes too many important things these days for me to be completely cut-off upon leaving work, including the following: the internet serves as my primary source of daily information (articles, entertainment, weird websites), I also accomplish a fair amount of my communication online, and finally, I pour most of my technical interests and creativity (as my buddy Tony can relate to) into computer oriented activities these days. That’s a lot to go without. Such a stance might alarm or atleast surprise many people who knew me in my previous Stone-age phase, but they need not worry. I haven’t gone over the deep end yet.

Washington is really humid. I perspire alot.

I saw the Old 97’s in concert last night at the 9:30 Club here in DC. First of all, they kick ass and I highly recommend checking them out. Also, that venue reminds me a) how much I love intimate live shows and 2) how much I don’t like way overpriced megashows (although I’ll still go if it’s my only opportunity to see an amazing band) where the people on-stage look like wiggling black lines in the distance. Like other smaller venues I’ve frequented in p-town, anchorage, Spokane, dc, etc, the shows there are almost always cheaper and, without a doubt, much better.

Arrested Development is the funniest show on tv. I don’t really watch that much television, so I don’t religiously follow that many shows, if any. But I guarantee you when the third season of Arrested Development starts this fall, I’ll be watching (all my love to those who pushed for the show’s renewal). I’ve been laughing until it hurts the last couple weeks as I’ve charged through the Season 1 dvd’s. If you’re a late-starter like me on this one, get on-board soon. It’s hilarious.

What's the surest way to determine nobody reads this blog?...

…Aha! Post an entry that practically begs for reader participation. So in the spirit of masochism, here’s the deal. As tends to happen occasionally, I feel like I’ve been stagnating musically as of late. After jamming the same eight or nine albums over and over for way too long, I switched my I-Pod to ‘shuffle’ mode recently just to get some different tunes in the mix. Although this allowed me to rediscover some old treasures, it’s still stuff I’ve listened to before. I need some new beats in a bad way. So here’s where you, yeah YOU, come in. I’m counting on the reader(s) of this blog to provide me with recommendations for where I should take my downloading/music-store-wanderings. In the spirit of giving-to-get, I’ll include some stuff I’ve been jamming…the problem being, of course, that it’s nothing all that revolutionary. But perhaps one or two recommendations might strike an unexplored (or forgotten) chord. So here’s a sampling of my most frequently visited grooves lately, with props given to those who either introduced me to these jams or inspired me to revisit old classics:

-Kill Bill II Soundtrack(Br. Long)
-The Roots- The Tipping Point (K Huh)
-Johnny Cash- Sixteen Biggest Hits: Volumes I & II (Dr. Maher)
-Thievery Corporation- Any and all
-The Temptations- Greatest Hits (VH1 movies=unemployment)
-Beck- Guero
-Irish Drinking Songs- (Imhoff sots)
-DJ Dan- Funk the System (Lorentzen…long, long ago)

The last time I did this (via email) those who responded hooked me up with amazing input and I’m hoping for a repeat performance. So scroll through your MP-3 player and jot down what you’ve been listening to, dig into those hidden vaults and drop some obscure shiznit, or just let me know what you’re rocking these days, regardless of how painful said revelation might be (seriously, I was listening to old Whitney Houston yesterday…yeah, Amanda)! A brief description/plug always elevates recommendations to the next level, but it's not requisite.

Do it for the children.

Tomorrow’s Headline: Oxytocin Found to be Oxycontin, Oxycontin Found to be Alcohol

And now, back to news that’s happened in the last 14 months.

Chalk another one up for the Reductionists in the crowd today. Or more correctly, let’s all revisit that debate again because we’ve found yet another instance where human behavior correlates directly with biochemical design. But who or what is in the driver’s seat? Regardless of how you answer that question, you should consider getting your hands on some Oxytocin if you want to convince somebody you’re not a slimeball, when you are, indeed, a slimeball. Oh, and it might prove useful in treating a number of diseases/disorders that bar individuals from forging intimate, trusting bonds with others (i.e. autism). This study also tells us that with or without hormones shoved up our noses, we have a long way to go before we offer computers all the trust they deserve.

PS. Websites in Chinese are crazy! Bonus: First person to explain how to tell the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese wins my undying admiration.

How in the hell did this slip by?

Note: Anyone not living in a cave or Alaska one year ago probably doesn't need to read this entry. And now more about a top woman in the U.S. administration carrying out surreptitious deeds that undermine her staunchly conservative husband’s agenda.
Am I a moron (please don’t answer that) or were other people in the dark about Lynne Cheney’s steamy 1981 novel Sisters? It seems a younger Lynne wasn’t only concerned with promulgating historically accurate literature chaulked full of heinous prose (please suffer through excerpts then laugh really hard at this [here's where the omitted text is reinserted]website). Apparently Lynne wasn't happy until she spun out luscious lesbian love affairs, scenes rife with extramarital affairs and rape, and promoted a pro-feminist philosophy.

Unfortunately for us, the Lynne Cheney prose hungry public, people with, errr, pull decided the republication wasn't in anyone's best interest. According to this USA Today article,
the publishing company decided to cancel the republication independent of any outside pressure: Perl (executive director of publicity at New American Library) and Barnet (Cheney’s attorney) said no legal action was threatened. Although New American Library had the rights to reissue the novel, Perl said, there was no desire "to put out a book that the author was not happy with." Sounds just slightly sketchy, but who am I to judge. Either way, if you want to get your hands on this Sapphic gem, don’t plan on finding it new.

Pat Nixon (d. June 22, 1993): Masterminding as we speak

Now that the true identity of Deep Throat has been revealed, I deem it safe to reveal the results from my private investigation into the matter. What follows is a list of the top ten suspects I had narrowed my search to:

10. The guy in the ‘Scream’ mask
9. Amelia Earhart
8. Yoda
7. Linda Lovelace
6. God
5. A Soviet person
4. The night attendant at that parking garage
3. W. Mark Felt
2. My father
1. Pat Nixon