I originally wrote this for BlackPublicMedia.org

“PORT-AU-PRINCE — On the western outskirts of the Haitian capital, a large white house shows signs of coming back to life. Groundskeepers have torn down the campaign posters that a presidential candidate had papered all over the forest-green front gate, trimmed the long lawn, swept the winding, fir tree-lined driveway, and even planted flowers. A light illuminated the two-story house like a lantern one evening last week. The groundskeepers are busy because they and other supporters anticipate the return of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who has lived in exile in South Africa since he was ousted in 2004. Supporters say the former leader will inject a sense of hope in this nation, battered by a massive earthquake, a cholera epidemic and political unrest. [full story]”

There have been entire generations of Haitians for whom “diaspora” is synonymous with abrupt, forced exile. For these Haitians the old house back home is a recurring setting for their personal and political dramas, the exile, the refugee, the reluctant emigrant – even the ousted dictator or democratically elected president – prone to obsessively casting a glance over their shoulder at the things they have left behind. Sometimes the old house sits empty except for ghosts and memories, sometimes it waits diligently minded and maintained by family and friends, and sometimes it is not your house at all anymore, the place where you used to live occupied by strangers: unruly squatters, or worse, the victor in whatever lost contest sent you packing in the first place.

In the fantasies of the exile the country itself is often much like that waiting house, and the course of Haitian politics has long been particularly prone to sudden reversal due to the unexpected return of people who think themselves its rightful owners, its ablest caretakers. Just in the last tumultuous year we have seen Wyclef (no exile, but still), then Baby Doc, and now, potentially, Titid, overturn the Haitian market cart by merely stepping off a plane and declaring themselves home. Their ambitions treat Haitian politics like a packed theater (another kind of house) where the headliner has been running late: even when the warm-up act is there doing their thing, the stage remains empty and waiting.

My parents were exile Haitians, and by extension I am as well, so we know a thing or two about waiting. Back before he became an exile, my father had been an officer in the Haitian Coast Guard, and although I suspect he was, in the main, apolitical, he had strikes against him in the form of ties to the ousted Magloire regime. He waited out the violence of the early 60s before sending my mother ahead to stay with relatives in New York, then waited some more before li pran anbasad – sought asylum – at the Colombian embassy. After waiting a few weeks there in hopes of getting to NYC, some or another friend at the embassy counseled my father to have my mother meet him in Bogota instead. The weather was better in Colombia and life would be easier there for them, the Colombian explained, but my mother spoke no Spanish, and, anyway: why bother setting up shop in an entirely different country? By then the Duvalier regime was already long in the tooth compared to any number of its predecessors; surely they would be back home in just a bit? [...]

full story at BlackPublicMedia.org

Well, at least you are saved the hassle of the DMV this year.

from Susie Bright:

The next guilty teenage boy you see on the street... buttonhole him, and whisper, "You're not doing it ENOUGH! You better beat off like your life depended on it!"

A new study shows that regular masturbation can reduce the risk of developing prostate cancer. Seriously.

The Australian researchers who carried out the tests found men who ejaculate more then five times a week were better off then men with more modest numbers. And the younger you start, the better the results.

And, no. I have no idea why C-3PO is up there. It just felt right.

I don't have a proper segue for this, but: My father had funny ideas about the prostate. Sometime in the mid-70s, ground pepper was banned from our home because he picked up the notion somewhere that the grains somehow enlarged the prostate. When a male relative came down with some trouble down there, my father leaned over to me - at dinner, while dude was sitting across from me - to whisper that the relative had taken ill because dude masturbated into the pocket square he always wore six times a day. (The beauty of that story is that I must have been, like, 9. Me and Dad didn't see eye-to-eye much, but nothing brought us together like the male urinary tract.)

In stark contrast, my father claimed not to have touched himself since his days at an all-boys military boarding school, which, besides being a bold-faced lie (I found "the stash" when I was 10) gave me the raw material for a lot of likely homophobic - but good natured, I swear! - innuendo-making at his expense. Dad subscribed to a lot of quack "newsletters" - this was before the intertubes, they came in the mail - and had clearly picked up both the pepper thing and the prostate-wanking connection in their pages. When his own gland swole up unexpectedly one day, I couldn't resist telling him how it just couldn't be his prostate seeing how he had given up his life of dickcrime way back in boarding school. He didn't have much in the way of snappy comeback, but that might have been because he was howling in agony in the bathroom trying to pass a drop and a half of urine, poor old guy. :(

Dock Ellis, talks to Donnell Alexander and Neille Ilel about pitching a no-hitter on LSD:

We flew into San Diego and I asked the manager could I go home, because we had an off day. And he said, "Yeah."

She said, "I don't know but you better get to that airport."

from boing boing:

Over at MobHappy, Russell Buckley comments on a news story about an elderly gentlemen who for years has called his late wife's Verizon voicemail just to hear her voice. During a system change though, the message was lost. Apparently though, Verizon heard about the sad situation, found a back-up of the old greeting, and restored it.

The first few years after he died, I would call my father's old number every 2 or 3 months, letting it ring a few times before hanging up. The number had been reassigned to new people, who I liked to imagine wondered what the quarterly prank call from Boston was about. (This was circa 2004 or so, Cambridge days.) I never left a message, don't think I ever held the line long enough for anyone to pick it up. I can't say for sure what I thought I was doing. There was no ghostly recorded voice on the other end, and I harbored no supernatural fantasies about Dad himself answering. My father was a strict materialist and good with electronics, and I figure that he'd find a way call me directly should he find himself inhabiting the phone system.