Guts Wrencher
Palahniuk, frosh food and beer money.
By Bobbie Willis & Jamie Passaro
EDITOR’S NOTE: Hey, Eugene, where are you, and what’re you doing for fun, for work, or just to pass the time?
This new, occasional column is part observer and eavesdropper, part day-after gossip, reflecting upon the Eugene scene.
Dude, I Don’t Feel so Good
As Chuck Palahniuk read a new short story called “Guts” at WOW Hall last week, several of
the 550-plus audience members had to step outside for fresh air. Others put heads between knees
and took deep breaths. Three fainted.
Woozie fans are all over Palahniuk’s latest book tour — the running total: 39 down (two were
treated in hospitals). Many others, this writer included, were left feeling kinda ookie.
Palahniuk’s story, three tales of male masturbation gone very wrong (one based on an inci-
dent at the UO), was originally rejected by Playboy for being “too extreme.” They’ve since
changed their minds, offering to publish the story for more than 300 times his Fight Club ad-
vance.
Palahniuk, looking Mr. Rogers in a sweater vest and fresh from an interview with Conan
O’Brien (where he caught a cold after drinking out of sickly Quentin Tarantino’s cup) seemed
downright gleeful about the gross-out. Ever faithful to his fans, he signed books and appendages
for two and a half hours after the reading. He inscribed a copy of Diary for the event’s coordina-
tor, UO Bookstore’s Brian Juenemann: “To Brian — Thank you for 3 More!!! Fall Downs …” —JP
From the Lunch Department
It’s noon and you’re caught in the lunch rush spilling from South Eugene High School to
shops near 18th Avenue and Pearl Street. The adolescents saunter or shuffle in packs, some
wearing headphones connected to portable disk players, others bumping like puppies in a card-
board box. Standing among them at the crosswalk, you feel a little tall. They laugh so much, you
wish you were laughing with them. You think about slouching to fit in a little. But you don’t, be-
cause you’re the grownup.
Safeway on 18th is swamped with freshmen. “I wish we could drive,” says one. But they only
walk still, so they walk here each day for half an hour of freedom — freedom to talk and swear, to
partake of grocery goodness.
Ten or 15 kids wait at the deli for sandwiches or the $1.99 “Snack Attack” — jojo potatoes
and a barbecue burrito. Gobs of teens sit in an eating area near the store entrance — boys and
girls poured into chairs, draped onto tables, leaning into conversations about things they don’t
want you to hear, exploding aloud over things they do want you to hear. Their faces are fresh and
bright as new apples; you smile at the sheer hope of them.
The boys eat lunches like: a bagel, a donut and a candy bar; jalapeno poppers and chocolate
milk on sale. The girls, sigh, eat one kind of lunch: sandwiches, fruit, juice and water.
Mr. Brian Pech, store manager, says, “For the volume of people, these kids behave themselves
pretty well.” Whether there’s a favorite item they wipe out, he only says, “I’ve seen them eat
everything from sushi to corn dogs.”
Polishing off the last of lunch, they disperse, orderly as a colony of ants. Pumped on food and
freedom, they head back to the day. — BW
The Blue Ribbon
On a recent Tuesday at John Henry’s, a new band called Yeltsin opened for Pellet Gun. Maybe
you wore your knit stocking cap and your black Converses and your favorite orange shirt; maybe
you left your cap on all night — it was that kind of night. The band played that urgent music that
vibrates your table and hums through your body, making you feel good and young and a little
wild. The guitar player sounded like a forlorn Billy Idol, and the bass player looked like a guy from
a literary editing class you took at the UO. “We’re paying our dues,” said the drummer twice dur-
ing the short set.
What’s curious is how you might’ve learned about this band — in an EW ad for Pabst Blue
Ribbon. Curious because San Antonio-based PBR was promoting an unknown Eugene band. Turns
out it was PBR’s idea, part of a national marketing strategy to tap into local hipsters and the anti-
mainstream values they espouse. Instead of slicky beer advertising with twins and catchy slo-
gans, PBR “supports” bike swaps, snowboarding videos and alternative country bands like
Portland’s Moonshine Hangover. In a June New York Times Magazine article, Rob Walker com-
pared Pabst to “some kind of small-scale National Endowment for the Arts for young American
outsider culture.”
Pabst has sponsored the Eugene Vespa club’s spring rally two years running. “When we first
approached them, we were looking for free stuff,” says Matt Milletto, a 25-year-old web de-
signer/Pabst memorabilia collector. Pabst sent jackets, hats, patches, stickers, and keychains and
let them use its logos on flyers.
“Really, a lot of younger alternative or punks or whatever you want to call them beer drinkers
who aren’t into big corporations have always been drinking Pabst,” Milletto says. “The company
wants to keep that feel. They really dig sponsoring events.”
Does it matter that Pabst is owned by a large company that also owns Schlitz, Stroh’s and Old
Milwaukee and has ties to the decidedly un-alternative Miller Brewing Company? “I know all
that,” says Milletto, “but I’ve been drinking Pabst since before the marketing. It doesn’t matter.”
Nor did it matter a week later at Lucky’s as Yeltsin, performing between Stacked and Ailment,
gave in to fans cheering, “Encore, Encore!” Then came Ailment, unfurling a PBR banner, the lead
singer flashing a giant PBR patch on his jacket. — JP
4 NOVEMBER 13, 2003
TO THE EDITOR
COUNTING VOTES
Lane County Elections has followed the
mandated reform (and flawed lesser-of-evils
theory) by choosing a new optical-scan vote-
counting system. Presumably there is a phys-
ical record (pencil mark on paper ballot), but
the virtual tally will be much easier to rig than
with a punch-card system.
Some questions need answers: Is the soft-
ware proprietary? Will Lane County
Elections have access to the code? Will audits
or recounts account for ballot input and vote
tally, but not the black box in between? Will
anyone outside of Elections have access to
the software, such as political oversight or
media investigation? Or only the voting ma-
chine corporation? Will Elections allow the
press to audit both the vote tally and the soft-
ware data after every election?
If the company that makes the machines
has the sole access to the software, and since
it is a constitutional requirement to hold
transparent elections, is this not by definition
an illegal voting system?
Why not choose the system (hand-count-
ing paper ballots) with the lowest error rate,
the least risk of rigging, the most honest and
transparent process, and which tabulates the
votes in a few hours?
Is it typical or expedient to avoid a recount
or audit of vote-counting procedure, espe-
cially after an actual election, rather than
merely pre-testing mock-ups? (As evidenced
in the 2000 coup with the suppression of any
true recount in a contested election where the
spectacular and primary issue was exactly
how many votes were cast in Florida.)
Check out http://blackboxvoting.org
Bernard Nickerson
Eugene
DAMAGED BY WAR
As Veteran’s day approaches I am haunted
by a foreboding I just can’t shake. Our sol-
diers in Iraq are experiencing things human
beings were not meant to feel. If we learned
anything from the Vietnam War, we learned
that these soldiers will all return changed, and
many will return psychologically and emo-
tionally damaged.
We are already hearing reports that the
stateside military medical facilities are unpre-
pared and underfunded. Will we be prepared
for treating up to 150,000 returning troops
suffering from post-traumatic stress? And,
with the high levels of depleted uranium all
over Iraq, will we be prepared to care for the
myriad medical problems that will arise over
the next several decades?
On this Veteran’s Day, write a letter to
your representatives in Washington demand-
ing that laws be passed guaranteeing that
these soldiers will not be abandoned. Anyone
who puts themselves in harms way to protect
our freedom should never again have to
struggle for basic human needs for them-
selves and their families: affordable housing,
enough to eat, and proper health care. Every
member of congress has a pension that guar-
antees him or her these basic needs and much
more for the rest of their lives. Don’t you
think the men and women they send to fight
should have the same consideration?
If you display a sign that reads “Support Our
Troops,” here’s something real we can accom-
plish. No matter what side of the Iraq War argu-
ment you are on, here is where we can unite.
Carol Horne
Eugene
GUNS & CASKETS
Many — though maybe not all of us —
know the U.S. is not in Iraq to import democ-
racy. We should complain about our leaders
acting immorally. Most do not, maybe be-
cause morality can be hard to measure. But
battlefield statistics are something else. They
are tangible, and so can be measured.
As they mushroom, they finally may get
us angry enough to act against leaders whose
selfish policies bring business to munitions
firms — and to casket makers.
Deaths of at least 20 soldiers, as I write
this, in a U.S. helicopter shot down in Iraq
boosted the daily death toll of our sacrificed
children into double figures. This came as
U.S. deaths in the Middle East reached the