Saturday, January 30, 2010

Yes, We Have No Bananafish


Of all the Salinger obituaries, the one in the Onion is probably the most fitting – a great CitR parody with an undercurrent of truth. How did this guy build a monumental rep on the basis of one novel, a couple of novellas, and a handful of short stories? Simple: he became a mystery man, a legendary recluse. This got him a page-and-a-half in the NYT? The only photo they had to run was his old CitR jacket portrait, which he insisted on having removed from later printings. The appreciation on the editorial page added: “His half-century of solitude and silence was a creative act in itself, requiring extraordinary force of will.” Which I think is a total crock; the guy was just an introvert and wanted to be left alone.

But let’s face it: for Salinger to have been able to quit writing and go live on 90 acres in New Hampshire he had to have made just oodles ’n oodles of money with Catcher in the Rye. And for a book published in 1951 based on the author’s experiences in the 1930s to have stayed in print this long – well, that has to tell you something too. What it tells you, I think, is that people who grew up revering Holden Caulfield as the epitome of rebellion ended up teaching and foisting the book on new generations of readers, for whom Holden was maybe not as cool as he was for their teachers. Not as cool as Harry Potter, I’d wager.

That leaves Thomas Pynchon as reigning literary recluse, and when he goes we’ll get to see his Navy photo in the paper unless Melanie Jackson coughs up a more recent family snapshot. The price of celebrity is privacy. And for those who wish to safeguard it, no excuses are necessary.


Thursday, January 28, 2010

More than a hole in your underwear?


Wasn’t the underwear bomber enough of a warning? Now airline passengers are stuffing lizards into their shorts. It’s clear that we need to initiate more intensive screening before boarding or there’s going to be more extensive screaming afterward. Snakes on a plane are just the tip of the iceberg, there’s no telling what people will be trying to sneak past security. What about small rodents like mice or gerbils or lemmings? How many ferrets can fit in a pair of boxers? And is that a Komodo dragon on your head or just an unusual hat? We’re also going to have to start worrying about scary multi-legged creatures like spiders, scorpions, and centipedes. Any of these varmints can be secreted in clothing and won’t trip the metal detector. And bees in a rubber-stoppered glass vial should breeze right through. Why is the person going thru security in front of you twitching so much? Does he have ants in his pants? Does he literally have ants in his pants? Those little bitey red ants? Is he going to set them loose in the plane? For the love of god, isn’t somebody going to do something????

Okay, calm down. Full-body scans should take care of the problem – after all, something actively squirming isn’t going to escape detection. Even if the perpetrator sedates the critters first, the presence of a ferret or two in the x-ray is going to arouse some suspicion. (Isn’t it?) But if something else is squirming, I don’t think that guy should be let on the plane either.

Let’s face it, we’re not gonna feel safe(r) until those f-b scans are in place and in use at every airport. (“Excuse me, sir, is that a ferret in your shorts or are you just happy to be here?”) And you can carp about invasion of privacy all you want, it’s not like the TSA crew is gonna be gathered around the screen cracking wise about everyone who goes thru. (Okay, maybe about the people who need to pay for two seats.) The novelty will wear off after about, oh, half an hour, and the constant stream of boobs and peckers will become a disgusting blur. Besides, you think you have a constitutional right to get on an airplane? Don’t like it? An erosion of liberty? Take the train. (Joe Biden does.)


Wednesday, January 27, 2010

WWBD?


Was streaming last nite’s Daily Show, muting the commercials as usual, when I noticed an unusual one: a cartoon depicting a Tibetan Buddhist scenario in support of Red Bull energy drink:



Now I have nothing against poking fun at religion but I thought this was pretty outrageous, because you know darn well they wouldn’t have dared depict an audience with the Pope. Or even have used Pat Robertson (but then that would present a conflict with his “diet shake”). If the theme is “gives you wings,” wouldn’t angels at the Pearly Gates be more appropriate? But messing with the religious imagery of your demographic is suicide – that of another culture is always fair game. Kinda reminds me of the “crucified Santa” Christmas card that came out of Japan several years back:

 

 

Let’s level the playing field. What I’d really like to see around Easter is a McDonald’s happy meal replicating the Last Supper – just a little bread & wine for the kiddies – with maybe actions figures of the disciples. (The Judas figure comes with 30 pieces of silver, so kids will be fighting over that one.) For dessert, the apple pie will have a bite out of it, reminder of Eves original sin. And for the duration of the promotion, a plastic crown of thorns with every fish sandwich. Okay, who’s hungry?

Monday, January 25, 2010

Which Way?


I’ve been a student of the Tao Te Ching for most of my adult life. I probably was first made aware of it in a comparative religion course in college; then I picked up the Gia-Fu Feng/Jane English translation that came out in 1972  – an oversize paperback with atmospheric black-and-white nature photos enhancing the text – and became more interested. Today it is the book to which I turn when I realize that I’ve gotten carried away with worries about the world.

Reputed to be more widely translated than any book except the Bible, the TTC presents a challenge to newcomers and aficionados alike: which version is best? Over the years I’ve accumulated more than fifty editions, reflecting my quest to get to the heart of this inspirational but enigmatic book. Consequently, when I feel the need to pull one off the shelf I have to pause.

There seem to be three basic approaches to publishing the TTC: poetic, meditative, and scholarly. Editions of the former generally run straight through the text’s 81 chapters and are intended to be read for their inspirational value; those of a meditative bent interrupt this flow with passages on each chapter’s meaning or implications; the scholarly versions comment on issues regarding provenance, translation, and context. I sense that most people prefer the poetic, and the ongoing popularity of the Feng/English and Stephen Mitchell editions bears this out. The meditative (e.g. that of self-help guru Wayne Dyer) I take with a grain of salt, since they generally tend to serve the author’s agenda.

But I lean toward the scholarly versions, since I’d like some indication from the translator that their modern English conveys the sense of the original Chinese – otherwise, I’d suspect I could be reading Lao Tzu’s thoughts second-hand, like some Cliff Notes edition or the novelization of a movie. This suspicion is borne out by the observations of some commentators that with the poetic and meditative versions – especially where the author isn’t even translating directly but working from other translations – you’re getting not necessarily what the text means but rather what the modern author wants it to mean. Consider one piece of on-line advice, to simply see how the translator has rendered the opening lines; then compare.

Of all of the editions currently available, the one that I most often return to is by Ellen Chen. A first-hand translation by an American scholar of Chinese, it not only provides corroboration for word choice, it also offers thoughtful yet meaty commentary – no New Age niceties here – to allow one to meditate on the meaning of each passage. The only criticisms of it that I’ve come across have to do with its less than poetic flow, which may be why I prefer it. Professor Chen has chosen to treat the TTC as a work to be explored, to tease out its meaning rather than to paraphrase it in purplish prose.

Chen’s Tao Te Ching was published in 1989 by Paragon House, a small independent publisher whose distribution networks may not be as far-reaching as those of larger New York houses that have published more popular versions, with the result that it may not be available in a lot of stores. (I also think the cover design has done the book a disservice, and attracting browsers in stores has a lot to do with sales needed to keep a book in stock.) But it’s worth seeking out – and to anyone who stumbles on this blog, I commend it wholeheartedly.

Another volume lacks commentary but is of value for a different reason. Tao Te Ching: The Definitive Edition by Jonathan Star earns its subtitle by virtue of providing a character-by-character translation, enabling you to “tao it yourself.” This approach has been taken before in a couple of other books (The Book of Lao Tzu by Yi Wu, now out of print, and The Gate of all Marvelous Things by Gregory Richter), but Star goes a step further by presenting a range of possible meanings for each ideogram, thus offering some insight into how so many different translations have come about. It’s an eye-opening look at this classic, but may be best appreciated by obsessives like me.

Remember the guy in the end-zone seats at football games holding up the “John 3:16” sign? I always wanted to hold up one that read “TTC: XX” for my favorite chapter of the Tao Te Ching. This little book is the best medicine I know for quieting the mind. In times like these, it comes in handy.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

I used to be disgusted...


...and I try to be amused. Really I do. But between bestiality on the local front and beastly voter behavior on the national, sometimes it ain't easy.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Belated Birthday Greetings


Yesterday I stumbled on a blog that celebrated last Friday as the birthday of Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart. He just turned 69. Which is kinda relative, since 40 years ago he could easily have been mistaken for a 69-year-old blues man.

The Captain (not by any stretch of the imagination to be confused with Daryl Dragon) is said to be a cult figure. He’s an acquired taste, that’s for sure. But there’s no mistaking him.





Sunday, January 17, 2010

A Salute


When I saw the headline that GM is suspending production of Hummers, I gave a cheer. But unfortunately, it’s only a temporary measure pending sale of the brand to a Chinese company. It’s bad enough that General Motors built these gas-guzzlers – and the fact that people actually bought them was even more alarming; the prospect of their continuing existence is dumbfounding.

The first Hummer I ever saw, roaming the Tucson foothills, was pre-GM, a military leftover that looked like it had to be about 10 feet wide. At first I thought, okay, whatever turns you on. But when GM decided to turn it into a family vehicle for the conspicuous-consumption crowd, I became a diehard Hummer hater. I won’t deny that people have a right to do whatever they please as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else, but these monstrosities pushed the envelope – because the fact that they waste non-renewable resources does hurt everyone else. And you wouldn’t want to be rear-ended by one.

And so every time I saw a Hummer approaching on the road, down went my window and up went my middle finger. It was the least I could do. Beth tried to reason with me, pointing out that anybody so oblivious to social norms could possibly have a gun on board, and eventually I vowed to be less confrontational. And I have to admit, on one occasion I saw in my rear view mirror that the target of my mid-digit salute had pulled off to the shoulder as if to contemplate giving chase. Either that or he was weeping over the disrespect his foolish purchase had brought him.

The Hummer debate did become a bit of a standoff. The on-line Daily Sun in Flagstaff once carried a rather heated exchange of posts between Hummer detractors and defenders. (The Sun recently revamped its web site and cleared out all this old dialogue, but you can get a small taste of it here.) It all started when some liberal type berated a Hummer owner in a parking lot in front of his little boy. Some readers said it was mean-spirited, but I say if you’re willing to make that kind of statement to society, you’ve got to be prepared to take the heat. So it became an unresolvable dispute between those readers preaching conscientiousness and those defending personal rights. Just like health care!

I recognize that there are other vehicles on the road whose mileage is just as ghastly; and the times are even a-changin’, because the other day I noticed a large van with decals announcing that it was a hybrid. But the Hummer was so in-your-face about it, it deserved the bad rap. Now that it’s going to China, aficionados will presumably still be able to get one if they have a yen for it. But it’ll serve them right if it falls apart.


Friday, January 15, 2010

BB, W, et al.




Alluding to Big Brother and the “memory hole” in previous posts triggered a lot of associations. Nineteen Eighty-Four was required high-school reading for many of us, but I don’t think enough people appreciate all of the resonations it has for today’s events.

  • There’s the whole surveillance culture and Big-Brother-Is-Watching-You mentality, honed to perfection by W’s NSA directives. And don’t forget the capacity of average citizens today to spy on fellow citizens using the cameras in their cell phones. Parsons’ kids – the ones in the book who turned in their doting dad – would’ve loved that little gizmo.
  • The memory hole into which Winston sent old facts that were to be replaced by new ones speaks to the whole revision of history – and it’s not just Republicans conveniently forgetting W’s blunders; it’s the record of their determination to dictate history on their terms, from the certainty of Saddam’s wmd’s to the declaration “Mission Accomplished” to today’s knee-jerk castigations of Obama. Now in the wake of the underwear bomber they’re crowing that W kept us safe from attacks as if 9/11 never happened.
  • As with the world of 1984, we seem to be in a constant state of war, necessary to maintain public vigilance and promote patriotism. Winston had this suspicion confirmed in Goldstein’s book: “The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.” Just like the war on terror that the wingnuts – and even Obama – love to hold over our heads.
  • Doublethink – “The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them” – has become the norm. Maybe it all started in Vietnam, when we “destroyed a village in order to save it.” Now giving up our rights in the name of freedom, especially as legislated through the Patriot Act, is doublethink in action. (Remember: “Freedom is Slavery.”)
  • Torture today seems to be as cold-blooded and matter-of-fact as it was at the Ministry of Love. You’ve seen the pictures from Abu Ghraib, so don’t even ask what’s behind the door to Room 101.
  • The Junior Anti-Sex League, of which Julia is nominally a member, sounds a lot like the abstinence programs championed by W.
  • Thoughtcrime has its modern counterpart in “hate crime,” where the criminal act isn’t sufficient: the motivation is equally punishable. (I realize this is a rap on liberals and a departure from the prevalent theme, but it’s no less true.)
  • Finally, my favorite: Just as citizens of Oceania gathered for a “two-minute hate” in which they focused on the villain Emmanuel Goldstein, today we focus on the villain Osama bin Laden, a turncoat to his highly placed Saudi family like Goldstein was to the Inner Party. Despite our inability to catch the sonofabitch, it almost seems more useful to the government to have him out there – like Goldstein – as the focus of our wrath.
Nineteen Eighty-Four has a lot to say to us today; it’s also a heartbreaking love story. I only wish that Oprah had made it one of her picks so that more people would read it.



Thursday, January 14, 2010

Say It Ain't So, Pat


That wild & crazy Pat Robertson is at it again, claiming that Haiti’s devastating earthquake is a result of that country having made a pact with the Devil. Where do you come up with these great one-liners, Pat? That may be about the best one since proclaiming that feminism is “a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.” Or since you and Jerry Falwell blamed 9/11 on “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way – all of them who have tried to secularize America.” (What a great team – too bad God had to break it up.) For more wit & wisdom, click here, here, here, or here.
 
I dunno, though – he’s a hoot, but he has a way to go to top Robert Tilton. I think it’s time to invoke the spirit of Frank Zappa again...



Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Where There's Smoke


The debate over health care ultimately comes down to one over the proper role of government.

Take fire protection. As in most civilized countries, we have fire companies, supported by taxes, that come and put out the flames if our houses catch fire. I think nearly everybody would agree that this is a good arrangement. We don’t have a “right” to fire protection any more than we do to, say, having our streets plowed when it snows. But we’ve come to accept that these services are sensible, and we consent to be taxed in order to have them.

Protecting our health isn’t a whole lot different. People can take precautions to make sure they don’t get sick, just as they can to prevent fires. But accidents happen, and folks need access to health care just like they do to fire protection, or else risk tremendous loss.

Now suppose that fire companies could pick and chose whom they serve. Shake roof? Sorry, it’ll have to burn. Had a fire before? We won’t come next time. Isn’t that essentially what’s happened with health insurance? But while the agencies that provide fire protection are public services that answer to their municipalities and taxpayers, those that provide health insurance are profit-making corporations answerable to their boards of directors and stockholders. And as they have seen their product become less of an option and more of a necessity, they have come to have control over people’s very lives. Is any fire company in that position? If a fire razes my house, that’s a great loss; but if I carry fire insurance, I can rebuild. If sickness ravages my body and I’m unable to afford health insurance, I may not receive the treatment I need and could possibly die. So I take W’s advice and go to the emergency room and wait five hours for treatment – and if I can’t pay even for that, the hospital has to absorb the expense and health costs continue to escalate.

When lives are at stake, we the people – in the form of our government – can exercise the power that the Founders set out in the Constitution to provide for “the general welfare” (Article I, Section 8). And those of us in the liberal camp believe that the proper role of government includes providing health care just as much as providing fire companies. I recognize that in terms of dollars it’s a big leap from tax-supported fire protection at the local level to tax-supported health care at the national, but we need to shift spending priorities – cut out pork, discontinue farm subsidies, stop being cops to the world – in order to make it work.

We have already adopted – and accept – public health practices like garbage pick-up, vaccination clinics, and pest control. Why is providing security in the face of devastating medical bills branded “socialism” when spraying for mosquitoes that carry the West Nile virus is simply common sense? Conservatives’ fear of government-supported health care is so knee-jerk it’s almost comical and harks back to commie-in-the-woodpile paranoia. There’s no reason why what is already provided to the elderly, veterans, and civil servants can’t be provided to all.

This past Sunday’s NYT Magazine profiles Florida conservative Marco Rubio, who’s challenging Republican Governor Charlie Crist for a Senate seat. Rubio hit the nail on the head: “We are not debating stimulus bills or tax codes. We are debating the essence of what government should be and what role it should play.” And never the twain shall meet. It all comes down to winning over a majority of the electorate to determine which direction we take.

Health insurance may not be a right, any more than fire protection. But we can decide that all of our citizens are as entitled to good health as they are to having firemen on call – or to a financial safety net in old age or in periods of unemployment. It’s time to put out the fire that is our national health crisis. We can join the other industrialized nations as a more civilized people. And a more compassionate people as well.


Monday, January 11, 2010

The Non-Trouble with Harry


So Republicans are tripping over themselves to cry shame on Harry Reid for having said during the presidential race – in a private conversation, mind you – that Barack Obama was a “light-skinned” African-American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Sounds fairly accurate to me. As it happens, I’m a fair-skinned Anglo-American with no English accent unless I care to fake one.

But they’re crying “double standard” and drawing comparisons to Trent Lott’s ouster (don’t you just love that word?) on account of his having supported Strom Thurmond’s presidential bid as a segregationist in 1948 and being proud of that support half a century later. Double standard, my ass. I think there’s a bit of a difference between “sometimes this guy puts on an accent” and “black people shouldn’t have rights.”

Whoever it is the GOP has hired to sit in a dark room and come up with pretexts for challenging everything the Dems do or say ought to come out for a little fresh air and sunshine.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Time to Sing Along...


Before the teabaggers, there was Woodstock Nation. (Remember?) And before you jump to the conclusion that aging has simply transformed the latter into the former, bear in mind that the slightly older median age for the teabagging crowd puts them squarely (and I do mean squarely) in what was then the “anybody over thirty” set we weren’t supposed to trust.

Patti Smith sang “People Have the Power” in ’88, but the best anthem of all, from 1969, was “We Can Be Together” by Jefferson Airplane:



The real difference between protest then and now is that Woodstock’s revolutionary spirit was defined by pure joy (as in “Yippie!”), while today’s teabagger movement is characterized by befuddled bitterness.

Do the teabaggers have an anthem? “Dazed and Confused” would certainly be appropriate, but I somehow can’t imagine it catching on. Much easier to picture them swaying with arms interlinked singing the Kinks’ “Sunny Afternoon” (“The taxman’s taken all my dough...”). But I can’t help but think of that classic misinterpretation by the older generation when “One Toke Over the Line” was performed on the Lawrence Welk Show in 1971 because they thought it was a gospel song:



So in that spirit, I’d kinda like to hear the teabaggers get a little joy by wailing on the chorus to Jimmy Buffett’s “Fruitcakes,” thinking it an homage to a favorite dessert....



Friday, January 8, 2010

... and the Democratization of Everything


It must’ve all started with man-on-the-street interviews. Some random event takes place, and a news team is out there to corral any yahoo who walks by and ask him what he thinks about it. Especially important if, say, a blizzard is on the way: “We’re here at Hinkle’s Hardware, where Joe Anybody is buying a shovel. Think this is going to be a big one, Joe?” “I think so, Andy.” “Thanks, Joe. That’s Joe Anybody and this is Andy Newsguy reporting from Hinkle’s Hardware. Now back to you, Samantha....” Hurricane coming? No prob: Joe’ll be buying plywood for his windows instead.

On the web, we don’t have to wait for Andy Newsguy to shove a mike in our face, we can volunteer our opinions anytime. And we do. Whether it’s my local paper or Huffington Post, I’m amazed at the level of public discourse to which technology has brought us. (First there are the Kilroy comments that simply register having read the article; then there are the Killjoys, looking to pick a fight.) And now there’s Twitter (in which I foresee no reason to get involved); can cyberspace handle this much public opinion? Can the universe?

And in line with Dylan Thomas’s observation from A Child’s Christmas in Wales that, after the useful presents of mufflers and mittens, there were the “useless presents” (including “a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow”), we have blogs like this one....

Mu!


Thursday, January 7, 2010

Teatime for Democracy


One of the upshots of this early American history I’ve been reading (see “Forward Into the Past!,” January 2) is the notion that some people thought too much democracy was not such a good idea. This was certainly true of the Federalists, who envisioned their own aristocratic leadership as the key to America’s future; it also held for some moderate [Jeffersonian] Republicans, who defended an independent judiciary against their radical brethren’s insistence that judges be more accountable to the public.

There’s also a danger of too much democracy today,and that threat looms in the form of teabaggers. A few days ago, conservative columnist David Brooks opined that the teabagger movement had the potential to not only give the [modern] Republican establishment a run for its money but also evolve into a political force on the same level as our present two parties. Scary.

What’s so scary about people taking back power, you might ask? In principal it’s not scary at all, it’s what this country is all about. Whenever I hear Patti Smith sing “People Have the Power,” it gives me chills. What’s scary is that this particular crowd seems too easily swayed by the likes of Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh to ever begin to think for themselves. (Okay, maybe I’m just jealous because we lefties can’t agree on anything.)

I came across a fairly outrageous suggestion once (wish I could credit the source): that votes ought to be allocated by age, with younger people having more votes because they have a greater stake in a future that will be determined by the political decisions of today. That’s not too far-fetched an idea, but just try selling it to the teabaggers, whose median age seems to be about 75. The protester who insisted “Keep your government hands off my Medicare” pretty much summed it up: ill informed, quick to jump to conclusions, and too stupid to trust with choosing tomorrow’s leaders.

Unfortunately, an IQ test would be as unconstitutional as a poll tax (and we learned back in 2000 that butterfly ballots aren’t the answer). But since we already have rules that politicking can’t go on within so many feet of a polling place, maybe Fox News ought to be banned within the same distance of retirement communities.

So, what makes the People that Patti sings about different from the teabaggers? When you get right down to it, maybe not much. “The people have the power ... to wrestle the world from fools.” But first they have to recognize that it’s the fools who are egging them on.




Wednesday, January 6, 2010

The Ties That Bind


With New Jersey’s senate set to vote tomorrow on same-sex marriage, it’s time your faithful blogger weighed in on this. Because it’s an issue drenched in faux sanctimoniousness that’s annoyed the hell out of me for some time.

We all recognize the need for many of the laws that govern society. If murder, rape, robbery, and similar offenses against persons and property were not designated as crimes and went unpunished, we would feel insecure about the possibility of being threatened by people who did not live by the Golden Rule. This of course presumes that law is a deterrent, but it’s the best we can hope for.

We can agree that criminals pose a recognizable threat. But if you object to the notion of same-sex marriage, all I can ask is, “How does it threaten you personally?”

Let’s say, just as a thought experiment, that there was an isolated town a couple of counties over from you in which heinous crimes went unpunished and which consequently became a haven for criminals. If the state found out about this situation, it would be appropriate for it to take action to keep these criminals from posing a threat to neighboring communities. But say there was a town that allowed gays & lesbians to marry. How would that be a threat? And if it were not a threat to have this going on a hundred miles away, how would it be any more of a threat to have it occur in your own community?

If you insist that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, you’re espousing a definition established by your religion. (Other religions might see things differently; one doesn’t have to look any further than nineteenth-century Mormons.) If religions choose to so designate marriage, that’s their prerogative. But in the case of civil unions recognized by government for the purpose of matters like taxation, health care, and visitation rights, marriage is what we define it to be — and those of us who seek a more just society would choose to define it as any union of two consenting adults.

Because the perks of marriage sought by same-sex couples are those granted by civil government, civil laws are the issue here — not religious institutions. If you consider gay marriage a threat, please concede that it is a threat to an institution as defined by your religion, not a threat to you personally. The problem lies in the fact that the institution is recognized by the same designation by both church & state.

It all comes down to word-choice: calling it “marriage.” Church weddings refer to the “bonds of holy matrimony,” and the phrase “holy matrimony” yields more than three times as many Google hits as “holy marriage.” Perhaps we could agree that same-sex couples are as entitled to “marriage” as anyone, but only a man and a woman are entitled to “matrimony”? That way, those of you who insist on continuing to feel threatened can have all the holiness you want. And guess what? We’ll leave “marriage” to those secular sinners; you get MATRIMONY all to yourselves! 

Let’s conclude with another thought experiment: the person to whom you’ve committed your life is in the hospital dying, but you can’t visit because you’re not an “immediate family member.” Don’t take too long to decide how you’d feel.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

So Sorry


Quoting John Lennon the other day made me think of Paul McCartney, who has been in the news a lot lately – album, tour, new Beatles merchandise, biography. And boy, does he look old.

I always leaned more toward John than Paul. Some of the songs McCartney wrote with the Beatles frankly make me want to puke. But there’s one of his post-fab4 tunes that always sticks in my head: “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey.” It’s not that I particularly care for the song – it’s so typically Paul-cute – but its versatility is remarkable. “We’re so sorry, Uncle Albert, we’re so sorry but we haven’t done a bloody thing all day” lends itself to any number of four-syllable substitutions, provided the accent is on the third.

During my spiritual-questing years, I was somewhat of a devotee of J. Krishnamurti. His name was the first to suggest itself in apology for not having done a thing all day, and it seemed like a not inappropriate replacement. I’m so sorry, Krishnamurti, for not quite going along with everything you said. But you could be quite maddening at times.

Lyndon Johnson was another good one. “We’re so sorry if we caused you any pain” – the irony of it! Or Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work so well after them. And no fair stretching or eliding syllables.

How about O.J. Simpson? Homer Simpson? Winslow Homer? Pairs of names work too: Horn & Hardart. Barnes & Noble. John & Yoko.

Michael Jackson fit – as is fitting, since Paul sold him the Beatles catalog. Warren Zevon too. Or Richard Starkey, world’s luckiest guy so no cause for sorrow there. But now, in 2010, it would have to be Lady Gaga. Because the kettle’s on the boil and we’re so easily called away.

Maybe the bottom line is this: We’re so sorry, Paul McCartney. But if anything should happen we’ll be sure to give a ring.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Big Brother vs. the Bean Counters


For all the years I lived in Tucson and had to drive to Phoenix, I always found it slightly disconcerting that when you reached the southern edge of the metro area and the speed limit dropped from 75 to 65, everybody seemed to speed up instead. Then there was the section of I-17 through the heart of the city, posted at 55; I often found myself keeping up with traffic and doing 70 without noticing — and being passed routinely.

That changed somewhat over the past year with the installation of speed cameras. They give you warning that a zone is ahead, but I’ve failed to notice more than once. But they only get you if you’re going more than 10 mph over, so what’s the big deal?

It was a big deal to many Arizonans, who screamed “Big Brother” and reserved the right to violate speed limits as long as no one was watching. Now it seems the program may be on the way out. According to a news story, it just isn’t bringing in the revenue that the state anticipated; people receiving citations in the mail are largely ignoring them because they know that they can always claim they didn’t receive them and that they aren’t likely to be personally served. The speed camera contractor isn’t even breaking even.

But I’ve noticed the difference. The traffic through Phoenix now proceeds at pretty much the speed limit, and I no longer feel compelled to maintain the same pace as speeders in order to keep from becoming a traffic hazard. And if that’s been the intended effect, so much the better — I no longer feel like I’m taking my life in my hands just by being on the highway.

Never thought I’d say this, but maybe a little Big Brother can be a good thing.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Life'll Kill Ya


Recent news out of Pakistan isn’t good, especially if you’re a volleyball fan. The death count may even have gone up since I posted this. Muslims killing other Muslims may be dumbfounding, but it’s no different from Christians killing other Christians in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Makes me think of one of my favorite Warren Zevon lyrics:

Don't let us get sick
Don't let us get old
Don't let us get stupid, all right?
Just make us be brave
And make us play nice
And let us be together tonight

Warren’s prayer is charmingly naïve. Unfortunately, people still get stupid and refuse to play nice. The only solution, I think, lies in that equally naïve lyric by John Lennon:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too

Well, maybe it isn’t hard if you happen to have a vivid imagination. But countries and religion are what people have killed and died for throughout history and there seems no end in sight. Getting stupid isn’t the issue, we’ve been there forever. Ever notice that, in the majority of sci-fi stories, cultures on other worlds are largely homogenous? What’s with Earth? As Frank Zappa observed, we’re dumb all over (and a little ugly on the side). And will probably go on killing one another for these same stupid reasons until the aliens land and force us to unite. Until then, we’re operating by another Zevon lyric:

Send lawyers, guns, and money
The shit has hit the fan


Saturday, January 2, 2010

Forward Into the Past!


Having had an inadequate exposure to American history during my school days, I’ve been catching up. The Oxford History of the United States is a particularly enlightening series, and I’m currently reading Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 by Gordon S. Wood. What’s really fascinating about this era is the extent to which factionalism divided the nation so soon after its founding. Political parties hadn’t yet officially formed, but Federalists and Republicans (i.e. Jeffersonian Democrats) took sides in trying to determine how the country should be run. The Alien and Sedition Acts arose out of the Federalists’ fear that the French Revolution would corrupt the new nation, and they can’t help but remind me of today’s GOP paranoia.

The Party of No is sinking to new depths. It’s not enough that they’re in lockstep against any and every Democratic proposal; now they’re yowling because Obama didn’t respond promptly enough to the recent attempted plane bombing or wear a tie when doing so. Never mind the fact that W took days to react to the shoe bomber, that’s gone down the memory hole. Both O and Napolitano are perceived as being too cool on the issue when what we clearly need is alarmism.

[An aside, pursuant to my previous “The End is Near” post: My relief that the shoe bomber hadn’t used his jockstrap betrayed my ignorance of the underwear connection in this latest event. Who knows what kind of hoops we’ll have to jump through now. But there are serious gaps in airport screening, and just because wingnuts are advocating racial profiling doesn’t make it a bad idea. Profiling may be offensive, but these are offensive times; if it can save lives, then I say throw political correctness out the window. Because while other groups do commit acts of terror — fundamentalist Christians blow up abortion clinics, radical environmentalists torch new housing developments — it appears to be only Muslim extremists who exhibit a threat to air travel.]

Then of course we have Darth Cheney “swooping around like a dementor from Harry Potter” (per Gail Collins) to squawk at us again with the reminder that we’re at war. I never really bought into this concept. W declared a “war on terror,” which was like some medieval king declaring a war on crossbows. Since Americans had become used to figures of speech like “war on drugs” and “war on poverty” it was an easy sell, even though al Qaeda resembles more than anything else an international crime ring out of James Bond. But we’re not sending our version of 007 to do the job; W preferred to expand executive powers and then start a couple of real wars to justify his actions. Now we conduct extraneous military actions that put our own soldiers in harm’s way while the real-life SPECTRE continues to put operatives on airplanes. What’s wrong with this picture?

So there appear to be a few parallels between the late eighteenth century and the early twenty-first. The Federalists saw society in terms of “us and them” and envisioned the aristocracy leading the way into the future. Today’s Republicans have successfully revived that “us and them” mindset and, with an eye toward the glory days of the Cold War, seem bent on leading us back into the past. After all, there’s nothing like an international conspiracy dedicated to overthrowing our way of life to bring “us” all together — or else be counted as one of “them.”

Friday, January 1, 2010

Happy Arbitrary Calendrical Demarcation


It’s the first day of the year. Sez who? Sez Pope Gregory XIII, that’s who. But others have different ideas. And according to David Foster Wallace, we are leaving behind the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment and commencing the Year of Glad. No matter, just think of it as an agreement, a convenience, a means of making sure everybody’s on the same page of the cosmic appointment book.

So sure, I’m willing to go with the flow. Make resolutions (exercise more, eat less, get my waist size down, yada yada). Pay attention when I date checks (which I seldom write anymore anyway). But y’know what? One day’s pretty much the same as another. If it were the umpteenth of Hippagolagus, would it really make any difference?