JAFO

I Have A Little List....

2005-11-13T12:48:00.000-06:00

A friend of mine read my most recent entry to this blog, and he made what I'm sure he considers a rather astute and pointed observation, to wit: that every book I listed, indeed every book on my currently-in-play bookshelf, is a “conservative” book. I’m not entirely sure how my friend makes the connection between a conservative point of view and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, or Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, both of which titles are on said bookshelf, awaiting their own turn in the bathroom (which is where I do most of my reading, now that my globe-trotting, itinerant rent-a-geek days are in hiatus), but I suppose he does have a point. Simply because, in a larger sense, my friend is entirely correct: the overwhelming majority of the books I read are written from what one might correctly regard as a conservative perspective. But you know what? I’m okay with that. In fact, it doesn't bother me in the least that I read “conservative” books, because I am - true confession time - a conservative.

Whoa! What a load off my conscience! I guess confession really is good for the soul.

In Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, Polonius advised his son Laertes, “To thine own self be true,” and I have always believed that that was pretty good advice, especially considering that his advice to “neither a borrower nor a lender be” proved to be spot-on in my own circumstances. “For surely it will follow, as night follows the day, thou canst not be false to any man.” I assume that that observation would also include women, but since Shakespeare never had to contend with Eleanor Smeal and NOW picketing the Globe Theatre, we can only speculate. In any event, it’s a pretty good rule to play by, so I try. Do I invariably succeed? Of course not; who, in this imperfect world, does? But holding a standard of behavior and occasionally falling short of it is not the same as the attitude that, since we cannot expect to live up to a lofty standard 24/7, we should not even bother to try. “Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good,” is the maxim we frequently hear in this context.

But, in a cynical effort to be “fair” (cynical because I frankly don’t give a fat, furry gerbil’s butt whether I’m “fair” or not, and ‘fair’ in irony quotes because the very concept of ‘fairness’ is, in my mind – if you’ll pardon the expression – horseshit; and you will please note the conspicuous absence of irony quotes around that last word), I will hereby acknowledge that there are several “liberal” books on my reading list, if not yet physically on the shelf. The fact that those titles are not yet on my bookshelf, and the reasons for their absence, is not entirely irrelevant. So I will herewith explain my appalling insensitivity to left-wing authors and the size of their royalty checks.

The reason I tend not to read “liberal” books is a deceptively simple one. It isn’t because I generally don’t care about what liberals have to say on a particular subject (although in the “to-thine-own-self-and-for-surely-it-will-follow” theme I’m embarking on…, I don’t). No, it’s even more basic than that.

You see, I don’t like to get angry. And reading liberal talking points tends to make me angry. Sure, anger is useful when you’re in a kick-ass-and-take-names mood, but I’m just not an ass-kicking kind of guy. On the other hand, I don’t subscribe to the “Make Love, Not War” mindset, mainly because I recognize the fact, driven home over the course of over four decades now, that I couldn’t get laid if my name was Stainmaster. (It’s an obscure reference, I’ll admit, but come on; you’re a clever bunch.) I have always believed that anger is a largely useless, and frequently counterproductive, expenditure of emotional energy. It raises one's blood pressure (widely regarded by the medical profession as a Bad Thing), clouds one’s judgment, and rarely actually accomplishes much. “Don’t get mad, get even,” is one adage that perfectly describes the essential uselessness of anger, and Ivana Trump’s “Don’t get mad, get everything,” is even better. Instead of sitting around fuming, how much better to be relaxing with a cold Rum Collins on the verandah of the beach house in Barbados!

Dorothy Parker (an almost incandescent Leftist herself, but whom I have always enjoyed reading) wrote in one of her more infamous book reviews, “This is not a book to be set aside lightly; it should be hurled with great force.” I know the feeling all too well. It is the almost uniform reaction I have (go ahead, Leftists, say ‘Pavlovian’; I know you want to, and frankly, you wouldn’t be far off-base), whenever I read something like What’s the Matter With Kansas?. So, in order to maintain my much-sought-after equanimity, I tend not to read books from the Left.

But sometimes, you gotta make exceptions. So yes, I do have a list of books from the left side of the political and cultural divide that I fully intend to read, no matter how much I expect them to piss me off.

First on that list is the new book by Bill Press, How the Republicans Stole Christmas. The main reason I have that title on my list is, quite simply, the utter absurdity of the title itself, and the apparent premise behind it. The Republicans didn’t “steal” Christmas, they rescued it from Democrats who are trying diligently to abolish it. What the hell was this guy smoking, and where can I get some? Let’s face it, the world of letters lost a refreshingly twisted point of view when Lewis Carroll died; for someone to offer us another, more contemporary glimpse through the looking glass is most welcome. Even more intriguing is the book’s subtitle: “The Republican Party’s Declared Monopoly on Religion and What Democrats Can Do To Take It Back”. Do you think there’s a chance that ‘Ending their overt hostility to religion’ might be on his list of recommendations? Me neither. But I'm curious to find out, so it's on the list.

Another title on my list is Are Men Necessary?, by Maureen Dowd. I’m going to assume that the question presented in the title is a rhetorical one; I’ve always felt that there was something vaguely dikey about her (“not that there’s anything wrong with that” – Seinfeld, ad nauseum). I’ve seen a lot of pictures of Maureen Dowd floating around the Web in recent weeks, evidently plugging her book. The all seem to be asking, “Wouldn’t you date this woman?” Short answer: uh, no. For my money, Maureen Dowd has been on the wrong end of a camera entirely too much lately. Anyone who has seen both Casablanca and Murder on the Orient Express cannot help but notice that the intervening years were exceedingly unkind to Ingrid Bergman – from ethereal beauty to horse-faced harridan in the space of less than thirty years. Perhaps Ms. Dowd’s hostility toward men is a case of casting them as proxies for Father Time. A rather lengthy profile of her in the Washington Post (complete with photograph that I think pretty much makes my point – and what’s up with those shoes!?) covers a broad range of topics, up to and including her dating history. I closed the browser window when I got to that part; if I wanted that kind of images leaping out of my subconscious in the middle of the night, I’d read Steven King.

If nothing else, buying these books and reading them might give me an opportunity to test something that I’ve been curious about for a long time: Can you really flush a Koran down a toilet? Of course, I would never use an actual Koran; I’d need to find a stand-in. And scientific research is a much better use of my time that just sitting on the throne being angry.

So Many Books , So Little Time...

2005-11-12T15:25:00.000-06:00

I've been reading quite a bit lately.

Now, anyone who knows me would also know that a phrase like, "I've been reading" carries about the same stop-the-presses impact as, oh, say, "I was breathing the other day...." Like Wal-Mart’s lower prices , I am always reading something. Always®.

Back in my itinerant rent-a-geek days, I generally did the bulk of my reading in bars. After I got off work, I would mosey over to my neighborhood hang-out (it was always the first thing I looked for when I arrived in a new city, after checking into the hotel and locating the office), ensconce myself on a stool in my favorite quadrant of the bar, order a Martini ("and keep ‘em coming"), open my book, and become the World’s Best Bar Customer; i.e., an excellent tipper who seems never to get drunk (in point of fact, I got frickin' ripped, but I drank slowly – a Martini is not a drink that one chugs, unless you want to give the room a new paint job – so the alcohol tends to get more completely metabolized; my patented technique for 'Endurance Drinking'), one whom the bartenders could pretty much ignore all evening long. After a couple of chapters I would have dinner, then call a cab, and go home.

Strangely, this behavior has actually gotten me on the wrong side of more than one of my fellow bar patrons. There was one fellow who asserted that it was rude of me to sit at a bar and do nothing but read. Funny; I had been brought up to believe that behaving oneself, minding one's own business, and not bothering other people was anything but rude. Live and learn.

Another fellow barfly, a woman I'll call Ronnie (since that was her name), first made my acquaintance when she noticed me sitting at the opposite side of the bar, thumbing through a dictionary. (I had just acquired a new copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, and I was exploring. I'm a nerd; I do that kind of thing.) She thought I was some kind of nut. I thought she was a loud, brassy, obnoxious strumpet. Then we got to know each other, had some rather entertaining evenings, and found out that we were both right. The most valuable lesson I carried away from that experience was: Never again will I second-guess a first impression.

This essay was going somewhere, but I cannot for the life of me recall where. Oh, yes, now I remember: the summer reading list that I’ve been whittling away at.

Last night, I finished reading Tammy Bruce's The New American Revolution, and I thought it was just swell. At the same time (yes, I can read as many as three books concurrently), I am reading Scalia Dissents, a collection of Justice Antonin Scalia's more fascinating opinions, edited by Kevin Ring. A couple of days ago, I wrapped up Intellectual Morons, by Daniel J. Flynn.

Recently completed books include Madame Bovary's Ovaries, by the father-daughter team of David P. and Nanelle R. Barash (highly recommended); 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, by the inestimable Bernard Goldberg (the best part is why Al Franken is #37 -- but I won't spoil it!); and Isaac's Storm, by Erik Larsen, about the devastating Galveston hurricane of Septemer, 1900.

And then there is the stack still untouched. Or, in some cases, tasted but not yet devoured. One particular example of that category is 1776, by David McCullough, whom I regard as one of, if not the, best historical writers of this, or any, century. (No disrespect intended toward Victor David Hanson, whose works I devour like, oh, sharp cheddar cheese whenever the stuff is within arm's reach.) Another is Black Rednecks and White Liberals, by whom I regard as one of, quite simply, the best of the best (the precise category is profoundly irrelevant here, he is just flat-out worth reading - even his laundry lists are worth reading), Thomas Sowell. And then there is the latest by Ronald Radosh, Red Star Over Hollywood. (I have read a lot by Ronald Radosh; the man simply does not know how to disappoint a reader.)

My summer reading list is taking me well into autumn. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Books are good. Books are your friends. Books are easier to take into the bathroom with you than a laptop. (Speaking of which, my current bathroom reading - no disrespect intended - is Stet, Dammit! (which I acquired from National Review Books but cannot seem to find a reference to - anywhere), an anthology of Florence King's 'The Misanthrope's Corner, originally published in National Review).

I have never been a huge fan of First Lady Causes (Lady Bird Johnson's Highway Beautification mission left me absolutely cold, and Nancy Reagan's 'Just Say No' campaign required me to say 'No' to everything to which I was most inclined to say 'Yum, Gimme!'), but I can really get behind Laura Bush's mission to promote universal literacy. Because you haven't lived until you have read. (And if you have gotten through your sophomore year of high school, I strongly suggest that you read Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities again, just for the sheer joy of it. Trust me, it's a much better book when your grade doesn't hang on it.)

And if you're reading this right now, I rest my case.

Of Golden Apples and Golden Hair

2005-10-12T11:47:00.000-05:00

While cleaning out a closet the other day, I found an old book, which, given that 'words on paper' thing (if it's words, and it's printed on paper, then it's a moral imperative), I started reading, and suddenly found myself transported back in time to the days of my dissipated youth (which actually includes my last birthday, but that's a topic for another day); remembering two fine gold chains, from which were suspended two gold charms, in the shape of an apple; an apple with the word KALLISTI engraved upon it. I wondered whether those gold chains still encircled two slender necks, whether they still occasionally got entangled in long blonde hair. I had a profound weakness for blondes in those days, one of many weaknesses I had back then, some of which I eventually outgrew. Two tales of bittersweet romance, painful at the time, but now little more than poignant memories, encased in the protective amber of a great many intervening years. I've changed a lot since then; I'm older now, and I like to think wiser, and absolutely certain that my taste in women has improved.

The story I found in that musty old book reminded me of how I said goodbye to two women I should never have said hello to in the first place. The story began with a party, a long, long time ago, in a land far, far away . . . .

To celebrate the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, Zeus hosted a wedding feast. He invited all of the gods and goddesses of Olympus, with one exception: Eris, the goddess of discord. Zeus wanted nothing to disrupt the festivities, so he felt that not inviting the goddess of chaos was a wise precaution. He couldn't have been more wrong.

Eris, quite understandably, was somewhat put out by her exclusion from the list of invited guests. Not to put too fine a point on it, she went downright logarithmic over Zeus' obvious snub, and vowed to get even. Hell hath no fury, and all that.

The party was in full swing, everyone just having the grandest time, when the doors opened and a solid gold apple was thrown into the ballroom. Thrown in by Eris. On the apple was engraved the word KALLISTI, 'the fairest'. Three goddesses -- Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite -- immediately pounced upon the apple, each claiming it for herself; each considered herself the fairest, and thus deserving of the prize.

A near riot ensued. In an effort to restore order to the proceedings, Zeus commanded that a contest be held. For this first-ever recorded beauty pageant, Paris, son of Priam, king of Troy, was selected to be the judge. (Zeus knew a no-win situation when he saw it, and wisely decided to let somebody else take the heat. One winner meant two losers, and one of the potential losers was his wife; like a lot of long-married couples I know, they didn't get along all that well. And an omnipotent, supremely honked-off deity can lay some serious hurt on you, even if you're another omnipotent deity.)

Paris, as the legend goes, was reputed to be rather naive, just this pretty, dumb kid who hung out on Mount Ida, tending his sheep. In his favor, it must be said that he wasn't too thrilled by the spot Zeus had put him in, for exactly the same reasons. Ticking off goddesses was, as a rule, not exactly conducive to a long and healthy life. Whatever; each of the goddesses put her case before the reluctant judge; in other words, all three contestants offered him a bribe. (Things like morality, honor and fair play were virtues that the gods of Olympus didn't have much use for.) Hera offered Paris power and riches beyond his wildest dreams; Athena offered him glory and renown in war; Aphrodite offered him the most beautiful woman in the world as his wife.

Paris proved to be not as naive as everyone had assumed: his hormones took over, and he awarded the apple to Aphrodite. (Although I suppose it should be acknowledged that his decision may actually have been based on the objective merits of the case; the Goddess of Love was reputed to have been exceedingly beautiful, and Hera was getting a bit long in the tooth by then, and probably beginning to sag a bit in all -- well, both, anyway -- of the wrong places. And Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom, probably had a certain bookish, Marian-the-Librarian look about her, and although I personally find that almost irresistably attractive, a guy spending all of his time alone on a mountaintop, with nothing but sheep to keep him company -- and no, we are not going to go there -- might well have been of a different frame of mind.) In return, Aphrodite awarded Paris the most beautiful woman in the world: Helen. (Yeah, that one.)

There was just one minor complication to this arrangement. Helen was already married, to Menelaus, king of Sparta. A complication, yes; an obstacle, no. After accepting a bribe and making formidable enemies of the two runners-up (another characteristic of deities: they were notoriously ungracious in defeat), was a little kidnapping going to stop him? Not bloody likely. Paris, aided and abetted by the goddess of love, seduced Helen and convinced her to elope with him back to Troy. Menelaus raised an army to get her back. The result was the Trojan War. It lasted ten years, reduced the city of Troy to rubble, brought down Priam's kingdom (to say nothing of the fact that Priam didn't come out of it too well, either), and decimated the ranks of the heroes of ancient Greece.

And all because Zeus didn't want any trouble at his party.

Reading about the Judgement of Paris, and about the Trojan War, reminded me of those two golden-haired vixens, and I wondered where they are now. I wondered if they ever think of me, and if so, whether they recall me with a twinge of regret at what they turned away, or with an enormous sigh of relief at their narrow escape. (Probably the latter; I am very much an acquired taste, always have been.) The golden apple charm was a sort of symbolic message to them. I have always been fond of myth and legend, and that particular myth is one of my favorites, being about how the wrong woman can really screw up your world. Anyone who has ever been in love, or thought he was, knows very well just how foolishly a man will behave while in the grip of that particular form of insanity. To this day, I am persona non grata at several restaurants in Houston, and for a while I was on a first-name basis with at least half of the staff at the crisis-intervention hotline there. I still get Christmas cards from several of them.

In the three decades and change since I discovered the fundamental differences between males and females and, more importantly, the reasons for those differences, there have been only two recipients of the golden apple; the two women who goobered up my life so totally that the experiences changed me forever.

I'm still partial to blondes, though. Some people just never learn.

Belaboring the Painfully Obvious

2005-10-10T15:30:00.000-05:00

Practically everyone with a blog (which seems to be, these days, practically everyone) has posted repeatedly, and with the periodicity of a tolling bell, on the manifold failures of the Mainstream Media, or MSM. (A brief and utterly irrelevant aside: These acronyms always annoy me, in a vague, inchoate way, ever since people started referring to the year 2000 computer bug as Y2K, thereby perpetuating -- and practically trademarking -- the same sort of half-assed, lazy shorthand that got us into that particular mess in the first place!) The evidence abounds, and you don't even have to go near Dan Rather to make the point. The post-Katrina revelations of the media's breathless reportage about the descent of New Orleans into utter barbarism is a good example, probably better than most.

We've all heard the story by now: the lurid tales of widespread looting, rape, wholesale slaughter in the Superdome and Convention Center, Visigoth-caliber pillaging of the city, and general rampant chaos turned out to be -- what's the polite word? -- somewhat exaggerated. In fact, practically none of it was true. So how did the media get so thoroughly snookered? Hey, I'm not a professional journalist -- I don't even play one on TV -- but if an Arkansas National Guardsman told me that there were 30 to 40 bodies piled in a freezer at the Convention Center, before I put that story on the AP newswire, I'd be strongly inclined to open the door for a first-hand look-see into the abatoir. The reporter in question didn't do that. As it turned out, the bodies on the floor that the Guardsman pointed out to the reporter with his flashlight didn't exist, either. It was all just regurgitated rumors, accepted uncritically and without corroboration as fact, and disseminated around the world at the speed of light, less signal attenuation and router latency; the truth attenuated even more dramatically, especially since there was never much of it to begin with.

I found it deliciously ironic that one of the reporters who broke the story -- that most, if not all, of the descent-to-Hell reports were not, in fact, true -- was one of the most enthusiastic propagators of the initial, subsequently-proven-false, horror stories. It was a journalistic trifecta: breaking news, which turned out to be manufactured news, which led to breaking the news about the manufacturing of news. Anyone want to bet that this guy will be in the running for a Pulitzer?

Did these nitwits learn nothing from the New York Times' Jayson Blair debacle?

The big question, in my mind at least, is why? Why did these outlandish rumors start circulating? Why were they so readily accepted as fact by the news media? And why did they gain such traction that practically everyone on the planet believed them, and in several cases (the Mayor and Police Chief of New Orleans most notably come to mind), even elaborated on them? What does it say about us as a culture, as a civilization, hell, even as a species, that we are so ready, willing and able to believe the absolute worst about our fellow human beings?

Tough questions, to be sure. And the answers, if we can summon up the courage to hear them, are liable to be extremely uncomfortable. But what are the answers?

The answer to the first question is both simple and profound: how does any urban legend get started? "Word gets around, guys talk, you hear things," as the old beer commercial tag-line went. The situation in New Orleans, particularly in the Superdome and the Convention Center, was dire; there simply is no other word for it. If it was bad where you were, you didn't want to imagine how bad it was in the cheap-seats or the nosebleed section. And what you don't want to imagine, you just can't help but imagine. And it was all so plausible.

As for the second question, why the media accepted all those horror stories as fact, without bothering to check them out, that one is even easier to answer: because they desperately wanted the stories to be true. Let's be candid here, they made for good copy. The stories had "legs", as they say in the business. They were, in the immortal words of the producers of 60 Minutes Wednesday, "too good not to run with". It isn't necessary to ascribe any venality to the media for wanting to believe the tales coming out of New Orleans; ratings and circulation numbers are all you need by way of explanation. You don't have to believe that the media's eagerness to promulgate unsubstantiated rumors as fact illustrates their shockingly low opinion of humanity -- their pervasive belief that this is the way people in a dangerous, stressful situation are likely to behave -- although I'm inclined to think that that was a factor. The news media are some of the most cynical people in the known Universe; they have seen so much of the absolute worst of human nature, that they think it's the norm.

And why were the stories so widely believed? The answer to that question is the easiest to answer of them all, and that answer is the most disturbing. It is because the tales were so easy to believe. It is true that journalists are among the most cynical people in the world -- with the singular exception of the rest of us. We don't just believe that people, when left to their own devices, will descend to the most loathsome behaviour imaginable -- we know it. Hell, we've heard it from everyone: our politicians, our teachers, our syndicated columnists, our celebrities (with our sports stars providing real-life, show-and-tell examples), even our parents have drilled it into our heads: people are the scum of the earth; we're a blight on the planet. The veneer of civilization is wafer-thin and easily fractured. And when that thin veneer of civilization shatters, we are, underneath it all, worse than animals. We eat our dead; sometimes, we don't even wait for them to be dead before chowing down on Braised Brisket of Barney with steamed asparagus and au jus. The most aberrant, deviant behaviour, the most reprehensible conduct, is blithely explained away as being "only human".

And that, my friends, answers the final question, for it speaks volumes about us as a culture, as a civilization, as a species. We believe the worst about us because we've been told that we really are as bad as we've been told. We believe it because we're just dumb enough to believe it. We believe it because we've heard it so often, and from so many quarters, that we've come to accept it as true, on the theory that "if three people say you're sick, lie down." And we believe it because not enough of us have had the courage to answer the charges with a single, all-encompassing rejoinder:

"Bullshit!"

Over the Edge and Around the Bend

2005-09-05T19:21:00.000-05:00

If memory serves, it was the inimitable P.J. O’Rourke who observed that “liberals think conservatives are evil; conservatives think liberals are stupid.” (I could be wrong about the attribution, and if I am, I apologize; but it sounds like something P.J. would say, and if he didn’t, he should have.)

It’s hard to argue with, or to dismiss, such trenchant analysis.

The political debate over the past six – no, make that twenty – years provides more than ample evidence that P.J., as usual, was right on the money. In fact, we can even add Ken’s Corollary to the O’Rourke doctrine: “the conservatives are right.”

We need only to take a gander at the bilge being spewed forth by such exemplars of the “reality-based community” as the Democratic Underground, MoveOn.org, and some of their more illustrious fellow-travellers on the leftward fringes of the blogosphere, to see the unassailable truth of Mr. O’Rourke’s observation.

Exhibit A: The Daily Kos entertains the thought – however briefly – that the Administration killed Chief Justice Rehnquist.

Exhibit B: An unidentified idiot, allegedly a member of the media, raised the question that the failed levees surrounding New Orleans were deliberately breached to kill black people in the city.

Exhibit C: The Mayor of New Orleans, C. Roy Nagin, is convinced that the C.I.A. is out to get him. (Although if it's true, he's safe as a kitten; if you can count the number of times they've tried to take out Castro -- and failed -- you're probably an astrophysicist. Because only an astrophysicist is comfortable with numbers that large.)

There are more, many, many more, but these should suffice for the time being.

The question before the panel is two-fold: 1) do these clowns honestly think the American people are that fucking stupid that they will believe this rot; and 2) are they?

Based on some of the comments, the answer to part 2, apparently, is an unqualified 'Yes'. Ken's Corollary is hereby proven. QED.

But what of the larger issue of the O'Rourke Doctrine? Well, the second part, the assertion that liberals are stupid, appears to have been borne out by by the proof of the Corollary. For the first, that conservatives are evil, well, if we look at the numbers, the evidence does not support the contention.

So now we know.

UPDATE (6 Sept 2005): A teeny-weeny little devil on my shoulder seduced me into adding Exhibit D, Sean Penn's Rescue Mission. There's a Gilligan joke in there somewhere, but I can't quite find it.

UPDATE #2 (6 Sept 2005): At the time I posted the preceding update, I was not aware that the real "Gilligan", actor Bob Denver, had passed away. My apologies, Bob; I meant no disrespect.

The ONE Must-Read on the Web

2005-09-05T18:26:00.000-05:00

I link to this item, from Bill Whittle at Eject! Eject! Eject!, without comment. Because nothing I could possibly say could improve on it, add to it, or or do anything, really, except to diminish it.

Except this:

Thanks, Bill. We needed that.

BTW: It was Beth at My Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy who pointed me to this item. Thanks, Beth.

After the Storm..., the Imbeciles Swarm

2005-08-31T16:03:00.000-05:00

I had not intended to post anything about the horrific events of this week -- the hurricane, and the virtual destruction of New Orleans and the Mississippi coast -- at least not for a while. I thought it would be prudent of me to wait a bit, to let the shock wear off, to allow sober reflection to take the place of the mind-numbing horror evinced by the images that I have been seeing on television, and on the Web. And besides, there are scores of other bloggers offering endless post mortems (if you’ll pardon my use of such a macabre expression under the circumstances) of the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina, that anything I could have added would be superfluous. But after reading everything I could find on the 'Net about this disaster, I have discovered that I am decidedly in the minority on this topic; no "sober reflection" for a lot of the afore-mentioned bloggers; no, these bloggers have opinions (which, as we all know, are like assholes: everyone has one, and the vast majority of them stink), and by God, they're going to let the world know about it.

I guess that it should be regarded as almost axiomatic that some of those bloggers would feel compelled to lurch beyond the surreal, which this story arguably is, and into the realm of the utterly unhinged. It appears that some people just can’t help themselves; if an opportunity arises to make a complete and public ass of themselves, they must seize that opportunity with both hands and hang on tight.

In addition to the almost incomprehensibly self-absorbed (e.g., QueerDay.com worries that Katrina may – or may not – have put the kibosh on the annual Southern Decadence Weekend), we are also being treated to recriminations from the likes of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the German Environmental Minister, Herr Jürgen Tritten, blaming the whole catastrophe on George W. Bush’s refusal to whole-heartedly (and empty-headedly) adopt the Kyoto Protocol. Others merely quibble over the exact nature of Bush malfeasance: according to these guys, the fault lies in the Administration's gutting the funds of the Army Corps of Engineers, through the misallocation of resources (blowing scads of money on the war and all), "tax cuts for the wealthy", and similar incompetence; money that, if Al Gore or John Kerry had been President, almost certainly -- no, make that positively, absolutely, without question -- would have been used to shore up the system of levees that failed in New Orleans. (What a President Gore or Kerry would have done to hold back the storm surge that wiped out the Mississippi coastline doesn't get mentioned; maybe someone will cover it in the comments.) Still others choose to use the occasion of this catastrophe to demonstrate that they do, in fact, have a use for religion -- but only if it can be used to blame religious people for the disaster, and thereby ridicule them, in a 'God has spoken, and boy, is He pissed!' form of snarkiness.

Forgive me for stating the unflinchingly obvious, but now really is not the time for this kind of idiocy.

First, let's deal with the essentials. For full, comprehensive, up-to-the-minute coverage of the storm and its aftermath, there is no better place to go than Michelle Malkin. None. Period. At all. (Well, actually, Brendan Loy has been doing an absolutely fabulous job of reporting on the storm's aftermath, but since Michelle links to him on a regular basis, I thought I could slough him. For all of ten seconds. Damn conscience!)

Next, if you want to do something to help the survivors, the best place to start is right here. I've already made my donation to Operation Blessing, but don't let my choice dictate -- or even influence -- your decision. There are plenty of worthwhile charities and relief organizations to choose from, so why limit yourself to only one? Or even two? Come on, people, pony up. Give till your banker stops breathing. (Whoa, a two-fer!)

Look, I'll be completely up-front about this: I've never been much of a fan of New Orleans. The city's "laissez le bon temps roullez" mind-set, and its legendary official corruption, aren't exactly the sine qua non for a slot on my list of Favorite Places to Visit. The idea of a city dedicated to non-stop, 24/7 partying simply has no appeal for me. The steamboat-gothic architecture of the buildings in the French Quarter, with their ornate wrought-iron tracery, is picturesque and enjoyable (yeah, I'm a self-styled student of architecture, and I get off on that kind of thing), but the endless procession of bars that those buildings house is not. And I don't even know if that marvelous restaurant (Sclafani's) where my father treated me to a truly memorable dining experience (okay, I was twelve at the time, but even then, I could still appreciate magnificent food) still exists today. So, New Orleans qua New Orleans is not the focus of my anguish over the events of the past several days.

I certainly do not intend to suggest that I am unmoved by the damage that the storm inflicted on the city, or the loss of life and property suffered by the city's residents. The people of New Orleans have suffered a grievous blow. There are still (as of the time I write this) an unknown number of people stranded on rooftops and in attics throughout the city. Because of the imperative of getting those people to safety, the authorities aren't even bothering to collect, or even to count, the dead. Looting, by many accounts, is out of control; the fabric of social order has almost completely unraveled. And the current situation in the Superdome is too grim for me even to imagine. But as bad as the situation in New Orleans may be (and it is worse than anyone imagined, pre-hurricane, that it could possibly get), New Orleans is not the only place that this hurricane has ravaged, and it should not be the sole focus of our attention. Hundreds of thousands of people along the coasts of Mississippi, Alabama, and even the Florida panhandle have had their lives devastated by this storm, and they are every bit as deserving of our attention, our concern, our efforts to relieve their immediate suffering, our continuing efforts to help them put their lives back together, and of course, our prayers. New Orleans is the most prominent victim of this disaster, but New Orleans is by no means the only victim. So let's give a care to the people of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, okay?

And with that said, I'll return to the original topic of this post -- if, indeed, there ever was one.

It simply appalls me that anyone would take the circumstances of this nearly-unprecedented disaster to try to score some cheap political points. The people who do so make me ashamed to carry the same number of chromosomes in my DNA; I am repulsed by the thought that we are of the same genus and species, for these low-life cretins cannot possibly be human. We are witnessing the ravings of people who have completely unmoored themselves from anything even remotely resembling reality.

I've got a story to tell you....

I am a life-long resident of the Texas Gulf Coast and its environs, and I have lived here for a good number of years. In consequence, I know a thing or two about hurricanes. I've ridden out two (Carla and Alicia), and have run from several others; so you can take my word for it that, of the two options, running is the far wiser course of action.

Once, I opted not to run; that was in 1983, when Hurricane Alicia swept onto the Texas coast, and then proceeded to trot up Main Street, through downtown Houston. One image, that remains vivid to this day, offers an example of what these storms are capable of: I watched, from the window of the third-floor cafeteria of the building in which I had reported to work (for I had no place to run to at the time, and I thought that the office building was probably the safest place for me to be), as the storm's winds ripped a 1000-plus pound bronze-and-glass door off its hinges and frisbeed it across the parking lot, until it decapitated a Nissan Sentra that was unlucky enough to be in its path -- and the door kept sailing. I don't know where it eventually came to rest.

And Alicia was a pissant storm compared to Katrina. But even a pissant can do some serious damage. Alicia killed twenty-one people, and injured more than 3,000 more. A total of over 2,000 homes were destroyed and another 3,000 or so suffered sufficient damage to render them uninhabitable. All in all, Alicia was responsible for damages totalling more than $2 billion. And Alicia was a small hurricane; the track of the storm (where hurricane-force winds were recorded) was barely sixty miles wide.

Hurricanes are nasty. They are dangerous. But they also are -- and this is where I'm going to lose a few left-leaning readers, if in fact I actually have any -- they are natural phenomena. They are (not to promote an absolutely abysmal Ben Affleck film, despite the fact that Sandra Bullock was in it, too) Forces of Nature. Neither George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Halliburton, nor the Trilateral Commission have any influence over their creation, their growth, the direction of their track, or the amount of destruction they leave in their wake. Sometimes, shit happens. And sometimes, it really is nobody's fault.

To blame a politician you don't happen to like for this kind of destruction is not just irresponsible; it is not merely inappropriate; it is not only wrong. It is, in the immortal words of Douglas Adams, "at right angles to reality." It is, in short, insane.

If you want to make a political case, and expect rational people to take you seriously, you first have to convince those rational people that you are, yourselves, rational.

You have failed. Spectacularly.

You people are out of your freakin' minds.

Go Home, Cindy; Paris and Tom Want Their Spotlight Back

2005-08-19T22:16:00.000-05:00

It has been noted almost everywhere I look in the blogosphere that August is traditionally a slow news month (the heat-wave in Europe a couple of years ago that killed almost 20,000 un-air-conditioned old people in France, while the kids and grandkids were busy cavorting topless on the Cote d'Azure notwithstanding), so Cindy Sheehan's fifteen minutes of fame getting a mid-season renewal is not surprising. It may also speak tellingly of other matters: the fact that the major network news outlets apparently have nothing better with which to occupy their resources being one, as is the apparent fact that the MoveOn.org crowd feels that this story is their last, best chance to bring down the President.

But the simple fact is that this story started out lame, and has not improved with age.

But it looks like this long, national nightmare may finally be coming to an end, if this post in The Corner turns out to be true. (UPDATE: The story is true, and Mrs. Sheehan's mother is improving, which is good news, although the doctors are concerned that there may be some continuing paralysis, which is not good news. And she has reportedly said that she hopes to be back in Crawford by next Wednesday, which most decidedly is not good news.)

Cindy Sheehan has lately been expressing concern that this story is turning into a "media circus", and in point of fact, it has. But you're the ringmaster of this circus, Cindy, and any complaining about it at this point sounds suspiciously like -- oh, hell, what's the word I'm looking for? Ah, yes, I have it: horseshit.

Now, I have no children of my own, so I honestly cannot relate to the wrenching pain of losing one's child as the result of an act of war. But previous generations did have to go through that ordeal, and until relatively recently, they managed to "soldier on", if I may use the phrase; for a specific example, Mrs. Sheehan might look into the story of Thomas and Alleta Sullivan, whose five sons -- George, Francis, Joseph, Madison, and Albert -- all died on the same day, while serving aboard the same ship (the USS Juneau), at the Battle of Guadalcanal, during World War II. (The Navy actually had a policy -- still does -- of not allowing siblings to serve on the same ship, but it was not rigorously enforced at the time, and the brothers insisted that they be allowed to serve together.)

Did Mrs. Sullivan honor her sons' sacrifice by camping out in FDR's front yard, in protest of their loss? No, she did not. In fact, she did exactly the opposite of what Cindy Sheehan is doing -- she spent a great deal of her time making speaking engagements in support of the war effort.

Then again, people were made of sterner stuff back then, and most people in this country actually knew what we were fighting for, and what we were fighting against. More than that, they thought the fight was worth it.

Apparently, that isn't true today. Pity.

They're Everywhere! And That is Important, How, Exactly?

2005-08-03T21:51:00.000-05:00

The ever-worth-reading (and always easy on the eyes) Michelle Malkin has a post up about the state of the Blogosphere. The link to the study she refers to is interesting enough, but what really struck me was this little tidbit, perhaps to advise a bit of healthy skepticism about the alleged reach and influence of bloggers on the media, and the culture at large:

As I've noted before, however, many (most? almost all?) of these blogs are either not updated regularly or are updated by automated programs (as opposed to actual human beings).

One thing she does not mention (and neither does the study she links to) about these 14 million-plus-or-minus blogs is the probability that many (most? almost all?) of them are actually read only by the blogger who writes them, and maybe -- and I emphasize the word 'maybe' -- a couple of members of said blogger's immediate family who actually give a fat, furry gerbil's butt what the blogger has to say.

Maybe I'm being unnecessarily cynical here, or maybe I'm just plain, flat-out, freakin' jealous, but I just don't see the kind of profound, ground-shaking influence being attributed to blogs and bloggers by a lot of people who really ought to know better. Sure, you have your serious heavy-hitters, like Powerline, Instapundit, The Corner (my personal favorite), the afore-mentioned Michelle Malkin and about a dozen others, with their counterparts on the other side of the political divide. But let's face it: the overwhelming majority of the blogs out there are basically ego-trips for some self-aggrandizing dipstick (e.g., moi), and their cumulative influence makes the logarithmic inverse of Planck's Constant look like one of those numbers that you copy off the back of your DVD player onto the warranty-registration card. In other words, it is zilch; it is minus-zilch; it is zilch divided by i-to-the-nth-squared. It is, just like i itself, imaginary.

I'm beginning to see ominous parallels between the hype surrounding blogs and the Internet bubble of the late '90s; that is, as we here in Texas are fond of putting it, this thing, this "blog phenomenon", is "All hat, no cattle". I would sumbit that Ms. Malkin's observation -- that most blogs are not updated regularly -- has a deceptively simple explanation: it's because the bloggers who maintain them aren't taking them all that seriously.

So why the hell should the rest of us?

eBay? Don’t e-Bother

2005-08-02T22:23:00.000-05:00

Do you remember that scene from the movie Pretty Woman, when Vivian (played by Julia Roberts) was shunned by the saleswomen in that exclusive Beverly Hills boutique? Well, I know exactly how she felt. Because I was shunned by the alleged "sellers" on eBay.

eBay, of course, is the online auction site, and one of the more resilient survivors of the dot-Con (and no, that wasn't a typo) debacle of 2000; while most of the Internet start-ups (or up-starts, as it were) had no product to sell except shares of their own stock, eBay was selling all kinds of stuff. Other peoples' stuff, to be sure, but stuff, nonetheless.

But over the past weekend, I learned (the hard way, naturally, because only lessons learned that way ever really get learned) that eBay is very much a "closed community". Forget their TV ads; they’re all lies. You ain’t gonna get jack shit from an eBay auction, because the sellers will only sell to buyers who have been playing the eBay game since the get-go. Newbies ain’t got a chance. You will be unceremoniously shut out of the bidding; your bids will be rejected; they will be completely ignored. Why? Because you don’t have a "feedback rating" with eBay, that’s why.

The "feedback rating" is what eBay uses to gauge the reliability of sellers and buyers – do the sellers deliver the products they advertise, do the buyers pay up, that sort of thing. In principle, it makes sense; people are more likely to buy stuff from sellers who do not have a history of ripping people off; and people are more willing to sell their products to people who have a history of actually paying for the items that they have agreed to buy.

But how do you get that coveted "feedback rating"?

Well, first, you have to complete a transaction on eBay. And that’s where the whole "feedback rating" system falls apart. Because if you can’t complete that first transaction – if no seller will take you sufficiently seriously even to consider you a viable prospect for that transaction – then that first transaction just ain’t gonna happen.

The bottom line is that unless you’ve been trading on eBay practically since the day they went online, any seller is going to treat you like a no-account, deadbeat loser. It's discrimination, pure and simple, in the classic Catch-22 mode: barring evidence to the contrary, new users are assumed to be liars, cheats, frauds and welshers. And that assumption of being a liar, a cheat, a fraud and a welsher is precisely the thing that bars evidence to the contrary. And as a consequence, that Babe Ruth autographed baseball that you’ve coveted since you were nine years old (or in my case, a plotter) is going to go to somebody with a "feedback rating" higher than the zero that you can claim – all because this is your first venture into online auction sites. New players most definitely are not welcome.

If you own eBay stock, you might consider selling. The site will last only as long as the life-span of its current membership; when they start to die off (and the sooner that happens, the better, as far as I’m concerned), the business is doomed.

But, if that's the way they want it, then that's the way they can have it. I have just instructed eBay to close my account. If they want to play their little reindeer games, and keep the deals all to themselves, fine. I've been able to muddle along without them up to now; I think I can survive without them in the future. And since PayPal is owned by eBay, then that account is going bye-bye, as well.

Michelle Malkin Crosses a Line

2005-06-23T11:31:00.000-05:00

I saw this post on Michelle Malkin's blog, and I must say that I am a bit incensed.

I'll not have you dissing Clifford, Michelle.

I worked for Scholastic for almost two years (from January of 2001 through October of 2002), helping to put together a product called Read 180 – a reading-intervention program for students who are reading below grade level. Every week, a local dry-cleaner’s van would pull up to the curb in front of 524 Broadway in Manhattan (the building in which I worked), and the driver would carry the Clifford suit into the building; I feel like I got to know Clifford very well in the course of those months.

Now, you can say what you want about Scholastic, the company that publishes the Harry Potter books in the United States, and was also responsible for Charles In Charge. But there will always be a soft spot in my heart for Clifford, the Big Red Dog; he is the symbol of the two best years of my life (with the exception of one absolutely dreadful Tuesday, but that's a subject for another time).

And I will countenance no disparagement of him.

UPDATE (23 June 2005): I neglected to mention that the voice of Clifford was performed by the late John Ritter, whom I had the pleasure of meeting, very briefly, at Sardi's, on the occasion of my birthday. My date and I were going to see The Producers; Mr. Ritter was grabbing a quick nosh with his co-star in The Dinner Party, Henry Winkler. I made an excuse to pass near their table, on the pretext of going to the Men's room (actually, it was not a pretext: I really did have to pee like a Peruvian pack-mule -- damn Martinis!). As I passed, I said, "Hi, Clifford." He smiled and nodded; Mr. Winkler looked at me like I was some rare species of idiot. Okay, so it was my night in the barrel.

And that was it: my brush with celebrity.

No, I’m Hitler – er, I mean, Spartacus. Yeah, that’s it. I’m Spartacus!

2005-06-17T02:03:00.000-05:00

Bill at INDC Journal linked to it. So did Michelle Malkin. In fact, just about every blogger on the Web has linked to it (if the trackback list is anything to go by), so I might as well, too. What is “it”? It’s this item, courtesy of Jeff at Beautiful Atrocities (and I won’t even begin to go into why I love that name – suffice it to say that I do).

It seems like everyone and his cousin Phil is being compared to Hitler these days. And frankly, this meme is starting to wear a bit thin.

What does it mean, exactly, to compare someone to Hitler? Basically, it means that the person making that comparison is an idiot. Sorry if I have offended anyone (actually, I’m not the least bit sorry), but Hitler was a unique figure in world history (thank God!); comparing anyone to him (with the possible exception of Stalin) reveals one to be: a) an historical illiterate; b) chemically free of any capacity for moral or ethical discernment; and c) intellectually lazy, or more accurately, utterly bereft.

But it turns out that some people have a better claim to the Hitler mantle than others, if the research of Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams bears up to scrutiny. The Pink Swastika, originally published in 1995, with an updated fourth edition released in 2002, is an examination of homosexuality in the National Socialist German Workers Party, or as they were known at the time, the Nazis. Yes, you read that right, sports fans: the upper echelons of the Nazi Party were as gay as Christopher Street on a Saturday night. Sounds like somebody at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force got some ‘splainin’ to do.

As tempted as I am, I am not going to trot out the “Hypocrisy!” charge so favored by the Left. Despite the fact that the antics of such gangs of hooligans as ACT-UP and Queer Nation are ominously reminiscent of the head-busting tactics of Ernst Roehm – a notorious flamer in his own right – and his SA (Sturmabteilung, or storm troopers), I don’t believe it serves any purpose to throw those similarities in anyone’s face. I’ll just remark – quite casually, mind you – that the fact that these similarities go so completely unnoticed by the Bushitler Brigades is indicative of the historical illiteracy I alluded to earlier.

The Pink Swastika made for riveting reading, and I have been following up reading the book by checking out the bibliography. (Don’t tell my boss; he thinks I’m actually working!) So far, Lively’s and Abram’s work checks out. I have not examined all of the book’s 200-plus source documents, but those I have been able to locate – I found a couple of them on my own bookshelves, a side-benefit of being an indiscriminate and voracious reader – support the authors’ thesis: that the Nazi Party, which rose to power during Weimar Germany, was founded by the original “radical fairies”. In fact, Germany in the early years of the last century was the birthplace of the “gay rights” movement in Western culture, and homosexuality was known in Europe of the era as “the German vice”. Berlin of the 1920s occupied a position very similar to that of San Francisco today.

The Pink Swastika is a hard book to find; Barnes & Noble doesn't carry it, Amazon.com says to allow 2-4 weeks(!) for delivery, and all I got from the clerk at Border's was a blank stare. (No, I'm not going to comment; it just wouldn't be sporting.) But you can find it, in its entirety, on the Web. It's a damn good read, and well worth the bandwidth. And it will drive the gay activist in your family completely berserk.

Not Guilty

2005-06-15T13:14:00.000-05:00

The verdict is in: Michael Jackson has been acquitted on all ten of the charges against him. Now, I am not a fan of Michael Jackson’s, and I never have been. I think his music pretty much sucks, and you don’t even want to get me started on what I think of his – for lack of a better word for it – dancing. And as for Jackson as a person – well, let’s not go there. (Well, not yet, at least. But we will, in a moment. And if you want to take that as a threat….)

Now that the verdict has been rendered, we can only hope that, if nothing else, he will take his recent experience as a wake-up call. A report from the BBC implies that this may be the case. But somehow, I doubt that he will. More likely, he (and his teeming hordes of sycophantic followers, a.k.a., “fans”) will see yesterday’s verdict as permission to “carry on”, which means that we’ll probably see a replay of this circus in, oh, I’m guessing about ten years down the road.

For what it’s worth, let me say that I agree with the verdict the jury handed down. Nor am I at all surprised by the verdict, but not for the reasons you might think. I refuse to believe that we, as a society, have become so jaded, that we have “defined deviancy down” to such an extent, that accusations of child-molestation no longer rise to the level of criminal behavior. I think the reason for the acquittal is much more prosaic than that.

Ever since the infamous McMartin child-molestation case (which took place in California in the ‘80s), prosecutors have had to be relentlessly careful in bringing formal charges of sexual abuse of a child: the evidence has to be rock-solid, the witnesses above reproach. This, I would argue, is as it should be; the potential consequences of mistakes – whether it be losing a case against someone like Arnold Dean Corll (who actually never went to trial) or John Wayne Gacy, or a wrongful prosecution against innocent defendants, as in the McMartin case – are too great to allow any carelessness or half-measures in building the case. This was where the prosecution failed the test. The principal witness against Jackson (the alleged victim’s mother) was, shall we say, less than sterling, and the jury was reluctant to convict on the basis of her testimony; there was simply too much extraneous baggage carried into the courtroom, too many questions about the mother’s motives. This is not to say that the jury concluded that the charges against Jackson were baseless: at least one member of the jury acknowledged that she had reason to believe that Jackson had, in fact, molested two of the prosecution’s witnesses; unfortunately, neither boy was Jackson’s accuser, and the jury could only convict or acquit Jackson of the charges with which he was accused. The verdict, therefore, was the correct one.

That said, I do have a few thoughts with respect to Mr. Jackson himself. (I did warn you.)

You can say all kinds of things about Jacko and his general weirdness (and just about everybody with a Web presence has), but for reasons that I really don’t want to explore too deeply, I feel kinda sorry for the “guy” – and yes, those were irony quotes. Not in any Shakespearean, tragic way, mind you (although God knows there is ample cause for that); no, this is a more detached, clinical-researcher type of response. Every time I see photographs of The Gloved One, my first – and only – reaction is an intense desire to snag a tissue sample (just be close-by the next time his nose falls off) so I can count the chromosomes.

Jackson has been in the public eye for more than forty years, since he was five years old, when he made his singing debut with the Jackson Five. As a result, he was deprived of a normal childhood, so he has had to compensate for that lack by indulging in an abnormal childhood since his mid-thirties. Much speculation has revolved about the name of his Neverland Ranch, and I am personally of the opinion that a lot of it is valid: he really regards himself as a modern-day Peter Pan, because he really is the “boy who never grew up”; he never had the opportunity. This in no way excuses his behavior over the past couple of decades, but it does offer an explanation of sorts. He has spent his entire life as a rich and famous celebrity, and he has undoubtedly been convinced that there is nothing – absolutely nothing – that he cannot get away with; he has been surrounded by people whose job it is to make all these troublesome situations “go away”, to shield him from the consequences of his actions. Not only did he never have the opportunity to grow up when he was a child, he has never known the need to grow up after he became an adult. The result is the tragic-comic farce of a human being we see before us today.

So I guess there is an element of Shakespearean tragedy in this story, after all. It is a common thread in all of the Bard’s tragedies that a fatal flaw in the central character’s makeup is the trigger for all of the unfortunate events that ensue, without which none of those events would have taken place. Michael Jackson’s flaw is that he never grew up. And I think it’s too late for him to start now.

Stop It or You’ll Go Blind!

2005-05-28T14:28:00.000-05:00

I caught this item last night while generally ignoring the NBC Nightly News, with Brian Williams:

Blindness noted in men using impotence drugs

This morning, I found that Patterico had picked up on it from a story on the Guardian’s site.

My prediction:
The jokes are just gonna write themselves.

UPDATE (30 May 2005): Told ya.

The Brave New World of Kim Possible

2005-05-26T16:15:00.000-05:00

I’m going to admit something in a public forum that most people would never own up to, even on the Jerry Springer Show: I am a forty-something-year-old Disney Channel junkie.

My favorite Disney show, hands-down, bar none and running away, is Kim Possible. I make it a point never to miss an episode. (I sort of have a “thing” for Shego – I just luv a “bad girl”! And she is the definitive tasty babe with attitude. So what if she's nothing more than paint and plastic; you've just described half the population of Southern California.) And did you know that there actually is such an animal as a naked mole rat? I had always thought that was just a tweak on "mall-rats", presumably the show's target demographic. Live and learn.

A recent episode was particularly topical, in that the storyline involved Dr. Drakken setting out to create an army of genetically-modified, chaotic-evil (Dungeons & Dragons® afficionados will know what I’m talking about) clones of Kim Possible, whom he can send out to do his evil bidding; the idea of using copies of his arch-nemesis to further his plan for world-domination was just too delicious to resist. Fortunately (or unfortunately -- it all depends on whom you're rooting for in this grudge match), Drakken took a few short-cuts (what can we say -- he's a cheapskate), and the clones he ended up producing were unstable, requiring nothing more than a healthy spritz of grape Nehi® to cause them to decompose into a puddle of bright green gunk. (I may be wrong about the grape Nehi®, but the stuff coming out of that soda-fountain spritzer was purple and carbonated; it's a reasonable conclusion, based on the available evidence.)

I seriously doubt that the show was intended as a morality tale, but it was nonetheless instructive.

The whole issue of cloning has been around for years, and has been the subject of many serious bioethical debates, not to mention some astoundingly crappy sci-fi/horror movies, ever since Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World was published in 1932 and, in a more obscure fashion, even before. The first successful experiments in cloning date as far back as 1963.

The topicality of that episode of Kim Possible stems from current goings-on in the Hallowed Halls of Congress: two pieces of legislation, both authorizing federal funding for various types of stem-cell research, have passed the House and are headed for the Senate. One of them, the so-called Castle bill, named for one of its principal sponsors, Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE), faces a promised Presidential veto if it makes it to the Oval Office, because this bill proposes to authorize and fund embryonic stem-cell research, in which human embryos are created, allowed to grow, and then destroyed for the purpose of harvesting their stem cells.

The process of cloning, or somatic cell nuclear transfer (as the process is referred to by people who appreciate the fact that we, the Great Unwashed, actually know what the word 'cloning' means, and who are thus trying to hide what they're up to behind an impenetrable curtain of technobabble), goes something like this:

Step 1: Get an unfertilized egg;

Step 2: Remove the nucleus from the egg cell;

Step 3: Replace that cell nucleus with the nucleus from another type of cell;

Step 4: Artificially induce the cell to start dividing;

Step 5: Halt Step 4 when you have a blastocyst, or a cluster of about 150 cells.

That "cluster of about 150 cells" are your stem cells; what you'll do with them at this juncture is a whole 'nother issue entirely, but the current answer to that question seems to be... not a lot. You see, so far, not a single medical breakthrough, or even a promising avenue of research for an effective treatment, has been made possible through the use of embryonic stem cells; not one. On the other hand, research using "adult" stem cells (the production of which do not involve the destruction of embryos) has led to many promising areas for further research, and in several cases, effective treatments.

That hasn't deterred the advocates of embryonic stem-cell research from touting all sorts of pie-in-the-sky promises, from the regeneration of nerve pathways (a la Christopher Reeve) and new skin (for burn victims), to the possibility of customized pharmaceuticals tailored to a patient's specific body chemistry, to the ability to grow complete replacement organs for transplant (although I have my doubts about that one -- the minute a sip of grape Nehi® hits your cloned, replacement liver..., you're screwed!)

Thus, it would appear that the most compelling argument in favor of embryonic stem-cell research is little more than a Utopian fantasy, and the most persuasive argument against it is an eminently pragmatic one: that this godawful-expensive avenue of research has yet to produce anything remotely approaching the results that other avenues of research have already delivered. So why are some people pushing so hard to promote a field of research which has, thus far, yielded no significant results, and yet is so heavily saddled with ethical baggage?

The only explanation I can think of for this attitude points to the fundamental nihilism of embryonic stem-cell research proponents and their cultural fellow-travellers: a gut-level belief that there is nothing particularly special about human beings; that we're just a collection of chemicals; an extreme expression of the notion that "a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy", according to Ingrid Newkirk of PETA. (Uh, speak for yourself, Ingrid; people who are unable, or cannot be bothered, to count the chromosomes aren't the most authoritative sources on species-related issues. And if you honestly cannot draw any distinctions between "a rat or a pig or a dog or a boy", then your parents' reaction to your prom date must have been a 'Film-at-eleven' moment.)

The Last Time I Saw Paris…

2005-05-25T17:20:00.000-05:00

I had promised myself that I would never, ever, mention Paris Hilton on this blog, but my promises haven’t been worth bupkis since I told my agent that I would never take a job in New York, and that I would never work on a Macintosh – and then spent the better part of two years writing Mac code for a company in Manhattan (and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world).

So why am I changing my mind? It’s hard to explain, really, but I suppose the answer might lie somewhere between the phrase, “target of opportunity”, and CBS News’ reason for rushing the Rather memos onto 60 Minutes Wednesday: “too good not to run with”. I can’t define it, I can’t explain it, but Paris Hilton has a certain je ne sais qua: there is an indefinable quality about her that just makes you want to smack her like a piñata full of Krugerrands.

One commenter on the Knowledge Is Power blog characterized Paris as “…famous for being rich, stupid and easy to nail”. All of which of course is true, but what comes to my mind when I think of Paris Hilton is an obscure line from Arthur Hailey’s novel Hotel (how's that for irony?), about a minor character in the story: “Her brains are in her tits; the only problem is, they’re not connected.”

Okay, I can see, for all that I am alarmingly close to being eligible for membership in the AARP, that Ms. Hilton would have a certain visceral appeal to a particular demographic, but let’s assume for the moment that you have graduated from middle school; as that magical moment at the apex of puberty (and you guys know what I’m talking about) recedes into the past, the allure becomes ever more incomprehensible. What, pray tell, is so sexy about this vapid prima facie evidence that blonde jokes aren’t jokes, after all?

There has to be something I can point to and say, “This is why she’s famous.” But what could that something be? The fact that she’s obscenely wealthy? Big tap-dancin’ whoop; she didn’t earn a nickel of it. She’s beautiful? Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so behold. Now that’s beautiful! She’s talented? I never saw the sex video, so I can’t judge her in that particular talent contest, but I did see this. Fine, so she can eat a hamburger and wash a car; hey, it’s a skill, like anything else. But can she do both at the same time? The evidence is inconclusive on that point.

Oh, how I long for the days, not so very long ago, when the words ‘Paris Hilton’ conjured up an image of an overpriced chain hotel on the Champs Elyssee. Instead, VH-1 treats us to Paris Hilton’s Most Shocking, and we spend the entire program wondering how long it took how many editors to whittle the list down to the mere dozen or so that actually made it into the final cut. Hell, every breath she takes is a shock to me (if only by demonstrating that she has enough cognitive function to do so). VH-1 proclaims in its Web page about the show that Paris is “a lot smarter than you think”. That still leaves them plenty of wiggle-room, frankly; define ‘a lot’. (And you probably don't want to know how I would define the phrase '...than you think'; there are things in my refrigerator that exhibit higher-level cerebral activity.) The page’s blurb ends with what I have to assume is a rhetorical question: “What will she do next?” Actually, it merely serves to beg the more pertinent question, “Who the f*** cares!?” (And for any readers in California, let me assure you that those persistent rumblings you feel beneath your feet are not the San Andreas getting ready to cut loose; it’s Grandpa Conrad spinning in his grave so fast that he’s about to drill himself into another, posthumous, fortune in oil.)

Andy Warhol famously remarked that everyone is famous for fifteen minutes. Well, Paris exhausted her quarter-hour a long time ago; she’s running on my minutes now, and I want ‘em back!

Beam Me Up, Scotty!

2005-05-24T11:12:00.000-05:00

I moved a couple of months ago, which explains why I haven’t added any new entries to this blog since late February. I also started a new contract recently, and it’s shaping up to be one of the more interesting I’ve had in the decade or so I’ve been doing this “consulting” shtick. I’ve always hated being called a consultant, because every company and/or manager who referred to me by that title never listened to a word I said. I will answer to “contractor”, “itinerant rent-a-geek”, “data-center concubine”, or any of a number of other “colorful metaphors”, but if you call me a consultant, I’ll just ignore you. (Miss Manners would call it rudeness; I call it karma, coming back to bite you on the ass.)

I am now a telecommuter, working from my home. This is both a good thing and a bad, since the company I am working for is located in southern Virginia, and I live in East Texas. I don’t have to absorb the expense of maintaining a residence twelve hundred miles from home, but I don’t get the tax-free living expense per diem, either. It required a few adjustments, like summoning up the self-discipline to drag my lethargic ass out of bed every morning (which I would have to do, anyway, no matter where I worked), and immediately get down to working, without benefit of that nerve-jangling drive to the office. On the other hand, there is also the fact that I am never really off-duty. (This, also, can be considered a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your outlook.) I can work whenever the muse inspires me, which is good for the company, because they get more bang for their buck, and for me, because I have always been motivated more by getting things accomplished than just putting in the hours. I’ve always been something of a night-owl, anyway; my most productive periods tend to coincide with the times the maintenance crews come on duty, and those Rolls-Royce RB211 turbofan-powered vacuum cleaners they insist on using can be a bit, shall we say, distracting.

Another adjustment that was required was to upgrade my Internet connection. Since I am now living, to use the technical term, twelve miles north of nowhere, I have had to compensate for the slower, simpler pace of living in the middle of a prairie. For the techno-geek, the phrase “slower, simpler pace” translates to… dial-up. You can’t get DSL out here, and the local cable company is pushing their technology envelope delivering the Disney Channel; expecting them to offer broadband is completely out of the question. Out here, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain – oh, sorry, that’s Oklahoma – there is only one alternative: satellite.

It was installed last Saturday.

Okay, it took a while to connect the title to the text, but I finally got there.

Internet via satellite is probably the greatest invention since the cordless vibrator. You get wicked fast downloads (faster than DSL, in many cases), connectivity in areas where DSL isn’t available, along with a cool-looking piece of high-tech sculpture in your back yard. (Hey, if that Joan Miro piece of crap in downtown Houston qualifies as art….) Admittedly, it is a bit pricey (the service starts at sixty bucks a month, and the equipment and installation runs from six hundred to more than a grand), but if the only alternative is dial-up at 28.8, then the check is in the mail.

So now that I am connected in true Star Trek fashion, what am I planning to do with my new-found bandwidth out the gazotch? I’m gonna kick some bytes and take down some file names, is what!

It's Friday! That Means It's Time For...

2005-02-25T17:05:00.000-06:00

Friday Booze Photoblogging!

Moxie tossed this idea out a couple of weeks ago, and since I've just acquired the means to add pictures to my blog, and the novelty has yet to even ebb a little, let alone wear off, I'm hoppin' on this one!

To get in on the action, just hop over to Moxie's Booze Photoblogging post and take it from there!

And remember, Friends don't let friends blog drunk.

Technically, I'm not drunk yet, so it's okay.

Experiments in Photoblogging I

2005-02-25T16:37:00.000-06:00

Wanna know why, in the photo in my profile, I'm grinning like an idiot?

Wouldn't you?

Scandal! (Er, Take Two)

2005-02-25T00:12:00.000-06:00

Regular readers of this blog (both of you) may have observed that, after a brief, initial spurt of activity, entries have tended to be, shall we say, rather sporadic. There is a reason for that. Actually, there are several.

One reason is the fact that, although I have strong political opinions (some of my more liberal friends would probably say "pig-headed", "reactionary", "neanderthal", and a few other characterizations that are even less polite), I do not feel any urge to write about them all that frequently. (There are exceptions, of course, but that isn't why I created this blog.) There are simply too many other bloggers out there, being political commentators and investigative journalists and what-not, and an already crowded field doesn't need any more population pressure from a lightweight such as me. This despite the fact that there has been an awful lot of politics going on lately -- plenty to write about, if I were to be so inclined, which, basically, is my point: I am not.

Secondly, my "journalistic instincts" (insofar as I actually have any, despite having been a journalism major in college -- for a whole semester) have always leaned less toward Jack Anderson than P.J. O'Rourke. From the Washington Times' review of his book, All The Trouble In The World: "... Economists, political scientists and sociologists are inclined to approach the ills of society with regression analysis. P. J. O'Rourke just points and laughs." That approach has always worked for me. The news lately has left me inspired, angry, jubilant, saddened -- indeed most of your better-known emotions -- but there has been precious little that I could make fun of.

Until now.

Which brings me to my final point: I only post to this blog when the opportunity arises to tweak some hypersensitive twit (one of my more recent postings was a recycled screed that regurgitated a thirty-year-old bitter-fest, in which I got to tweak 430 of them, a.k.a., my entire high-school graduating class) or, in lieu of that, a feeling that it has simply been too long since anything was added. Well, guess what: It has been too long since "new" content was posted to my blog. This time, though, the content actually is new. Topical, too, more or less.

Hard on the heels of the Eason Jordan affair came the Left-wing bloggers' "retaliation": the take-down of one Jeff Gannon, a.k.a., James D. Guckert, a third-tier Internet stringer who covered the White House beat for Talon News (whoever the hell they are), and who, in a previous incarnation, was a noteworthy presence on various gay escort-service Web sites. The lefty bloggers' complaints about Gannon (or Guckert, or whatever nom de voyage he's using these days) included such "high crimes and misdemeanors" as: he is not a "legitimate" journalist (as opposed to, say, Walter Cronkite, who lied to the country about the Tet Offensive, and who thinks Karl Rove was the Executive Producer of the pre-election Osama bin Laden video); that he pitched 'softball' questions to the Administration, thus proving their first point (the question that really set them off characterized Democrats as "divorced from reality" -- which actually reinforces his status as a "legitimate" journalist, because, in point of fact, a great many of them are, and he was sufficiently objective to notice it); that he is an Administration plant, gaining unwarranted access to the White House, under an assumed name, through Administration connections (actually, he used his real name and his real Social Security number, to obtain day passes to the White House Briefing Room); that he is gay (an odd charge, that one, since the Left just loves gays -- and perhaps the less said about that, the better, wink-wink, nudge-nudge); that he was the source of the information that revealed Valerie Plame (Joe Wilson's missus) to be a CIA operative (which information was, in turn, leaked to him by an article published in the Wall Street Journal); that he cannot be a serious journalist if there are pictures of his penis on the Web (okay, they got me there; I, for one, would find Dan Rather's credibility seriously impaired if I found a jpeg of his Johnson on the Internet -- as I would if confronted by images of Jennings' Peter, or Brian William's willie, or Shepherd Smith's "staff", or -- oh, hell, you got three freebies already, make up the rest yourselves). Oh, and did we mention that he's gay?

For reasons that completely eluded (and continue to elude) the Left, that particular "scandal" gained absolutely zero traction whatsoever. Could it perhaps be because Jeff Gannon is a complete nobody, hence no one really gives a flying flamingo about him? And there are so many penis pictures posted on the Web that Jeff's little photographic anatomy lesson cannot even claim the virtue of novelty; "been there, done that, and the T-shirt would hide my six-pack and pecs." And -- okay, I'll admit it -- I've seen the pictures in question, and I am utterly unable to stifle a yawn. A blue whale's penis is over eleven feet long; sorry, Jeff, but as Shania Twain might say, "That don't impress me much."

Faced with this abject failure at scandal-mongering, the lefty bloggers set their sights on a much bigger, infinitely higher-profile, target -- Fox News' Brit Hume. Hey, let 'em know you're going for something, that's my motto. The result was almost pathetic. No, not almost; it was pathetic.

I suppose, if the "scalp-hunters" are going to go after a major-league journalist, then Brit Hume is as good a target as any, and probably better than most; he certainly has better hair than Jeff Gannon, if only by virtue of the fact that he has hair. (Gannon shaves his head.) From a tonsorial standpoint, Hume stands Head and Shoulders(TM) above the likes of Ted Koppel (isn't it amazing what they're doing with fiberglass these days?); besides, Koppel's one of theirs. Sam Donaldson, on the other hand, would be easy pickings -- too easy, in fact; a good gust of wind would do the job, no real effort required. I know that most people would scoff at the thought of Sam Donaldson being a conservative journalist, and I daresay Sam himself would vehemently deny it. But I saw it happen, on This Week with David Brinkley, back around '85 or '86. In response to Cokie Roberts' chastising Ronald Reagan for not holding a summit with the leader of the Soviet Union, Donaldson immediately rose to the President's defense: "Maybe it's because they keep dying on him!" They all laughed it off as a nice throw-away line, but I knew that something positively seismic had just occured.

So what was Brit Hume's crime that several liberal bloggers are demanding his head? According to them, he misquoted President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the subject of Social Security. Misquoting someone -- a hanging offense if ever there was one! Of course, Maureen Dowd does that kind of thing all the time, but I've never heard anyone clamoring for her pretty little head. (Probably because it isn't particularly pretty -- at least, not to me. Now, Claudia Schiffer is pretty. But MoDo? There ain't enough Stoli in the world.) But what, exactly, did Mr. Hume say that was so unforgivably heinous? Here's the actual quote, from an article he wrote on FOXNews.com:

In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, "Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age," adding that government funding, "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."

Now, this is what FDR said, vis-a-vis Social Security:

In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps thirty years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.

(If you doubt me, here it is from the Social Security Administration's own Web site. It's a bit more than half-way down the page, the third paragraph following the 'Congressional Consideration' heading.)

The gist of the lefty bloggers' accusations is that Brit Hume, using a bit of "editorial license", edited FDR's statement to convey a meaning quite different than what Roosevelt intended. Rather like what the afore-mentioned MoDo did with George W. Bush's "they're not a problem" statement about dead Al Qaeda terrorists. (Dowd carefully edited out any reference to the terrorists Bush referred to as being dead, giving the impression that the President was not taking Al Qaeda seriously.)

But here's the thing: other than splitting an infinitive (which I personally abhor, but is no longer considered the unpardonable grammatical sin that it once was), Brit Hume's truncated quotation by FDR, and the article in which it appears, is entirely correct. Franklin Roosevelt, the "father of Social Security", did in fact propose something very akin to President Bush's voluntary individual accounts. So those lefty bloggers are demanding Brit Hume's scalp over -- what, exactly? Being right?

Bill at INDC Journal offers an excellent recap of the whole kerfuffle (and this is a situation that definitely warrants such a twerpy characterization).

Then again, when did the facts ever get in the way of a juicy left-wing witch-hunt?

The Clueless Majority? Spare Me!

2005-02-12T10:29:00.000-06:00

As per usual, I am weighing in on this subject a day late and a dollar short. So what else is new?

I’ve seen a lot of rumblings all over the blogosphere of possible – or at least the appearance of (and that’s supposed to be just as bad, isn’t it?) – vote fraud in the Presidential totals in the state of Wisconsin. As if that Blake Edwards movie that’s been playing in Washington weren’t enough, now the Cheese-heads have to get into the act.

I’m not going to rehash the story here, but for the seriously interested, here are some places to get the full dirt: Powerline; Michelle Malkin; Captain’s Quarters; Stranded On Blue Islands; Boots and Sabers. There are others – a great many others, in fact – but I don’t want this post to look like that copy of The Prophet by Khalil Gibran that David Bromberg referred to in his song Bullfrog Blues (the one “with all the significant passages underlined; every word in the book is underlined”).

I have to admit that I am of two minds over these revelations, if revelations they actually turn out to be (as opposed to mere tit-for-tat sniping: “I’ll see your Ohio, and raise you Washington and Wisconsin.”)

On the one hand, I must confess that I can’t quite bring myself to care a whole lot about this, at this point. The election is over. The Electors were selected in each state according to Article 2 of the Constitution, those Electors cast their votes in their respective state capitals, the votes were transmitted to the House, the House certified the results, Bush won. Like I said: it’s over. Let’s tear a page out of MoveOn.org’s book and, unlike MoveOn.org, actually move on. If there has been any serious attempt at vote fraud, then it was singularly ineffective, in that they failed to make off with the booty; despite all of the Democrats’ alleged efforts to steal the election, they still lost.

On the other hand, that humiliating knowledge of abject failure is only likely to persuade some people to try harder next time, on the theory that, well, practice makes perfect. Clearly, something must be done to discourage this possibility. So I would like to see these matters fully investigated, and if anything is proven, then the parties responsible should be held fully accountable. I’m talking some extended stays at the House of Many Doors, here. And a thorough wood-shedding at the polls in the next election would probably be in order, too – even in the absence of any convictions.

Anyone who insists that “every vote be counted” should set off alarm bells far and wide – because it’s an odds-on bet that that person knows full well that a lot of those votes shouldn’t be counted, because the “people” who cast those ballots had no legal right to do so; some of them may not even be people. And that person probably has a pretty good idea who those votes are for. It is the law in every state in the United States that, in order to vote, certain qualifications must be met. You have to be a citizen of the United States; you have to be at least 18 years old; you have to be a resident of the state and community in which you are voting (verified prior to casting a ballot, and not after the fact – except, of course, in Wisconsin, where same-day registration seems to be the “root cause” of most of the “irregularities”); in most jurisdictions, you cannot have been convicted of a felony; and, of course, you have to be alive. Shouldn’t these requirements be enforced?

But more important, we need some serious examinations of the states’ procedures for registering and qualifying voters. Some people seem to believe that the more voters you have, the better; that the level of participation should trump all other considerations.

I submit that, in the immortal words of Willie Nelson, “that ain’t necessarily so.”

Could someone please explain to me why an election decided by the majority of 160 million clueless mouth-breathers is ipso facto a better result than one decided by, say, the majority of 80 million informed citizens, each with enough interconnected neurons to make a rational decision? Or 60 million? Or 30 million? The qualifications for voting in any election should involve rather more than the ability to punch a hole in a piece of cardboard - particularly since even that seems to be beyond the capabilities of a sizeable portion of the voting population.

Where is it written that, just because you have a pulse – and even that is pretty much optional, given the “graveyard” vote in many jurisdictions – you have an unassailable right to vote, irrespective of any and all other considerations, up to and including whether or not you meet the legal qualifications to vote, or whether or not you know who is running for office, or even what those offices are?

Allow me to offer a modest proposal: in order to cast a vote in any election, for any office, every voter must:

Be registrered. And I mean before the fact. If you can't take five minutes out of your busy schedule to fill out and mail in a voter-registration card at least one month before the election, then I submit that you are insufficiently engaged in the process, inadequately informed on the issues, and therefore unqualified to participate. Do us all a favor and sit this one out;

Show up. You want to vote? Then get up off your lazy butt, get into the car, and drive down to the polling station. Don’t have a car? Ask a friend for a ride. Call a taxi, take a bus. Walk, even, like they did in Iraq. Because if you’re too damn lazy to put forth a bit of effort to vote, you damn well don’t need to be voting. And as for Internet voting, heh, not in this life, lard-ass;

Be able to spell the last names of at least two of the candidates for that office. This would at least provide some assurance that the voter actually has some semblance of a clue as to what he is doing. Then, no one would ever again be able to assert that anyone was “disenfranchised” because of long lines at the polling station; they would be disenfranchised because they were clueless nitwits.

And that’s a form of disenfranchisement that I think I could live with.

The Potholes on Memory Lane

2005-02-06T13:58:00.000-06:00

Since I've been too damn lazy to post any original content on this blog lately, I decided that I'd just recycle some old stuff that the publishing world (wisely) wanted to have nothing to do with. So herewith follows an essay I wrote about a year ago, when I was feeling a bizarre combination of nostalgia and cynicism....

Every so often -- say, every couple of weeks or so -- I have to log into my America Online account to clear out my mailbox. I only use that account when I'm on the road (which hasn't been much lately), so the spam has a tendency to pile up. Case in point: today's total of 182 messages, not a single one of them from anyone I knew, let alone had any desire to hear from. There was one, however, that caught my attention....

Classmates.com is a Web site that provides a venue for hooking up with one's high school classmates (hence the name). For reasons that remain unclear to me, I registered with the site a couple of years ago. (I did notice that the date on which I registered was two days before my 45th birthday, so perhaps my reasons were not so unclear, after all.) Since that day, on at least a weekly basis, I have received an e-mail message from the site, advising me of how many new former classmates they have added to their rolls, and, if I upgrade to their Gold (read: paying) membership, I could be reconnecting with all of them.

Most of these e-missives get deleted unread, along with about 99.9999975% of everything else that appears in my AOL mailbox, and for pretty much the same reasons: my house is still under construction, so I really don't care what mortgage re-fi rates are; I have no need for cheap Viagra (although not for the reasons most men would want you to think -- if you don't have a car, or even a driver's license, then you really don't need an Exxon credit card in your wallet, now do you?); and I left absolutely nothing behind when I graduated from my high school nearly thirty years ago. Most of those people despised me back then, and the feeling was more than mutual; the one who didn't (although to this day I'm not absolutely certain of this) is married to my brother, so we still keep in touch. So I really had no interest at all in how many of my high school cohort Classmates.com had unearthed in the past week, beyond a mild curiosity as to how many of them the term 'unearthed' could be applied literally -- i.e., how many were no longer alive. For some reason, however, I felt the urge to open this particular message, and follow the link to the Classmates.com Web site.

What followed was a trip down Memory Lane, recalling people I had not seen, nor, with exceedingly rare exceptions, even thought about, in almost three decades. There was Tina, who for three years shared German class with me; and yes, I had a bit of a crush on her. I recalled that, early in my freshman year, she passed an "I think you're cute" note to me during class. It was meant as a huge joke, the sentiments expressed in it regarded by virtually the entire student body as so patently ludicrous that the irony was unmistakable (she was breathtakingly beautiful, and I was, well, not), and I recognized it as such. I just didn't appreciate the humor. One name I did not find was Clarence, the class bully who tormented me for almost four years, until I finally decided that I had had enough, and tried to kill him on the school bus one afternoon. When the Assistant Principal took me to task over the incident, I freely admitted my intentions. He was not ready for that; back then, attempted murder was not a disciplinary issue that a school administrator had to deal with very often. Tina and I eventually established a cordial, almost friendly, relationship (although my crush-y sentiments were never reciprocated). As for Clarence -- well, suffice it to say that, to this day, I wouldn't pee down his throat if his lungs were on fire. Other names jogged other memories, few of them particularly pleasant.

Why this sudden urge to recall people and events from a past that, in today's self-esteem-sodden educational environment, would have demanded intensive therapy for the next fifteen years? I'm inclined to suspect that masochism was a factor, but even so, it has been (as I believe I have already mentioned) almost thirty years since any of these people occupied even the most peripheral place in my life; it's over, long past, dead and buried, with a stake through its heart. (Or so at least, I cannot help but hope, is Clarence.) Move-on-dot-org, and all that.

But I recalled another e-mail message from a few months ago, from one of those very classmates, which proposed, and solicited interest in, a thirty-year class reunion. There had been a ten-year and a twenty-year reunion, both of which I chose not to attend, for reasons to which I have already alluded: I frankly did not care (and still don't) whether I ever saw any of those yutzes again. But something -- some inchoate racial-memory kind of thing, I suspect -- is urging me to attend this one. Is it possible that I did, in fact, leave something behind all those years ago, and am only now beginning to realize it?

I don't think so.

I think I want to go to this reunion for the same reason most people attend these functions: to get a sick, demented thrill out of seeing the overweight, balding tub of lard that the school jock has turned into, and to witness first-hand what the ravages of time, parenthood and the unrelenting maw of middle-class survival (to say nothing of the relentless pull of gravity) have wreaked upon the perky breasts, the waspish waistlines, and the artfully-frosted hair of the cheerleading squad. Kind of like when The Real World meets Waiting For God.

Some people, of course, go to their high school reunions to show off, to flaunt their success and wealth, and to lord it over the plebeian hoi polloi who believe that dinner at Red Lobster and a movie constitutes a night on the town. These people are of no consequence. The desire to grab them by their silk collars and bitch-slap them until their ears bleed is understandable, but unnecessary. The IRS knows who they are, and cosmic justice, in its own inimitable, deliciously gruesome way, will be served. Trust me.

But the overwhelming majority of people who attend high school reunions do so for one reason and one reason only: to experience that frisson of almost karmic serenity that comes from the discovery that your mundane, middle-class, spectacularly nondescript existence is the norm; that, all things considered (certainly with respect to the rest of those pitiful, hopeless misallocations of protoplasm that you went to school with), your life did not turn out too terribly bad. In fact, compared to a lot of them, you've actually done pretty damn well.

You think your job is a disappointment, a grind? Consider where the guy voted Most Likely To Succeed ended up: doing eight years for securities fraud, I'd wager. (And I think I can state categorically that your sex life is more satisfying than his; you, at least, get to choose your partners.) Remember the Prom Queen, the girl whose erogenous zones extended about eight feet from her actual body? Well, her butt has that distinction now. And the guy voted Most Popular? His three ex-wives' lawyers and the Child Support Enforcement people would certainly agree; they want him bad.

Am I being overly cynical? Probably, but so what? The only people who haven't become card-carrying cynics thirty years after high school are the ones who never put down the bong they picked up on that spring-break trip to a Tijuana tchotchke shop during their freshman year of college. Sooner or later, you have to grow up, and a degree of cynicism comes with the package. You eventually realize that all that talk about World Peace that the valedictorian blathered on about during his Commencement speech (until you were ready to open a vein) was just so much beauty-pageant bullshit; that being elected Class President is as much of a political career as anyone in his right mind should aspire to; and that the high school experience in general had no more grounding in reality than your typical Star Trek convention.

Let me be brutally honest about this. The only thing I took with me out of high school was the only thing that was worth taking: an education, from the days -- now, sadly, long gone -- when high school actually provided an education that carried some measure of credibility. There is nothing more that I want or need from those years, from that place, or from the people who acted as the supporting cast of my own personal Wonder Years. I don't want or need their fellowship, particularly from those who had no interest in offering it back when it might have meant something to me, and I certainly don't need their approval.

So will I be attending the proposed thirty-year reunion of my high school graduating class? At the moment, the jury's still out on that, but one fact will weigh heavily in my decision: I look damn good in a tux. (And rolling up to the event in a Jag isn't likely to hurt my image, either.)

I'd kind of like Tina to see that. And perhaps to ponder, for a moment or two, at least one road not taken.

Another Example of the European Model

2005-01-31T14:14:00.000-06:00

I just ran across this item from the Telegraph of London (Hat Tip: The Corner):

“If you don’t take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits”

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

This is just abso-bloody-freakin’-lutely amazing. Ronald Reagan’s statement that “government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem” has never been more true than in this situation.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit.
<...>
The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars.

Okay, let me see if I have this straight: the German government included "houses of ill repute" in its welfare-reform laws, because it was too difficult to tell the difference between a brothel and a bar? Now, I'll admit that it's been quite a few years since I've been to Germany, but I think even I can tell the difference between a bar and a brothel: for one thing, even if the brothel's bartender makes the most exquisite Ketel One Martini on the planet, that's not the reason you're there; and in a bar, your waitress is not on the menu.

The German government legalized –- and mainstreamed -- prostitution in 2002, ostensibly to curtail trafficking in women and help to combat organized crime. Now it appears that, thanks to the all-pervasive European welfare state, the government is now engaged in human trafficking -- through, of all things, extortion; i.e., if a person does not comply with the requirement to accept whatever job is offered (including prostitution), it will cut that person’s unemployment benefits.

Traditionally, when women have been forced into prostitution--what we used to call ‘white slavery’ -- law-enforcement agencies around the world were ready, willing and able to step up to fight it. Now, law-enforcement agencies -- in Germany, at least -- are stepping up to do the enslaving. Some would call this progress; fortunately, I don’t know any of them, and I don’t think I would want to.

Well, at least the second objective -- to combat organized crime -- may be achievable under the new German laws. Once the government starts to muscle in on the Mob’s business, the Mob doesn’t stand a chance.

UPDATE (7 FEB 2005): It turns out that this story is untrue. Which raises an interesting question (well, interesting to me, at any rate): Why did this story get such traction in the first place? Of course, the salaciousness of the whole premise -- government-coerced entry into prostitution, and all that -- was a factor, but even so..., why were so many people willing to believe it? Blogger Xrlq has an interesting hypothesis, and quite possibly captures a good part of the answer, but I cannot help but feel that something else is at play here. I suspect that anyone who has read Philip Howard's The Death of Common Sense can at least guess at the rest of it -- that hide-bound adherence to bureaucratic, regulatory "procedures", coupled with the inevitable atrophying of individual judgement and the all-pervasive Law of Unintended Consequences, will, almost by necessity, produce results that are not what the people who drafted these regulations intended, or even could imagine. In other words, the idea that a government regulatory regime could force a woman into prostitution, by threatening to withhold unemployment benefits if she doesn't comply, is just so plausible! It is exactly the kind of bone-headed nonsense that one would expect -- and, with astonishing regularity, witnesses -- from an over-reaching, politically-correct, government nanny-state mentality. It's almost a pity that the story isn't true.

On The Local Front

2005-01-19T13:53:00.000-06:00

A few items in the local paper (the Houston Chronicle)....

Looks like the Enron big-shots are going to have to face a Houston jury:

Despite their plea to be tried outside of Houston, a federal judge ruled today that the fate and future freedom of ex-Enron chieftains Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling will be put in the hands of a Houston-area jury.

The central issue here was that the two defendants expressed doubts that they could find an impartial jury in the Houston area; defense attorneys cited commissioned polls

... in which one-third of area residents surveyed associated [Skilling's] name with negatives like "pig," "snake," and "economic terrorist."

Was that a multiple-choice questionnaire, or did the respondents get to choose their own answers? And what other characterizations weren't on that list? Enquiring minds want to know.

That was about three times the percentage of people in Atlanta, Denver and Phoenix who came up with negative responses. Skilling suggested the judge move the case to those cities, and Causey also suggested New Orleans.

New Orleans? Hmmm. When's Mardi Gras, by the way?

Well, after this post, I seriously doubt that I'll be selected to sit on that jury.

Two questions arise from this item: 1) Why was this kid carrying a gun to school? and 2) Where were all those metal detectors that schools are installing these days, to prevent just this type of infiltration?

Well, at least in this case, the armed student chose the right target: himself. Sorry, libs, but I have a strict zero-tolerance attitude toward bringing firearms into schools: you don't. Period. There is only one conceivable reason why anyone would want to bring a gun to school, and that is to shoot someone. And that ain't allowed. (It is seriously detrimental to the other kid's self-esteem; any educational "expert" will tell you that.)

And if the kid ends up shooting himself, well, that's just a Darwinian self-correction: one down, several to go. (Although this idiot appears to have gotten off with a warning. Well, better luck next time.)

Every time I see something like this, I thank God for the State Legislature; were it not for that august body, people like state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte (a Democrat, as if you hadn't already guessed) might have ended up in the corporate world where they could do some real damage. (See the first item, above, about Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling. If those guys were U.S. Senators, for example, none of that Enron crap would have happened; it would have been the Federal budget they goobered up, and who would ever have noticed that?)

I have to close the paper now. The cynic-o-meter is pegging, big-time. Where's the crossword?

CBS - The 'Network' Network?

2005-01-19T10:02:00.000-06:00

There's a major shakeup in the works for CBS News, according to the New York Times. CBS News chairman Les Moonves described some of the changes in the works as "revolutionary". Hell, I'd think just sticking to the facts would be revolutionary enough, but no, Les is aiming for bigger game.

The back-story:

As everyone with an Internet connection knows by now (with one startling exception, on which I am not at liberty to elaborate -- but if you're reading this, it's about damn time you jumped on the bandwagon!), CBS News has been in ratings- and credibility-freefall since early September, when anchor Dan Rather aired a story about President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service that turned out to be -- how can we put this delicately? -- less than authoritative. Oh, screw delicacy, it was a pack of frickin' lies, is what it was: forged documents, and breathtakingly amateurish forgeries at that, provided to the network by an "unimpeachable" source who turned out to be a barking moonbat with a grudge against the President, the whole package put together by a producer who had been chasing this particular Grail for five years with naught to show for it. It was the stuff of Pulitzers, at least of the Walter Duranty vintage; that is, until bloggers started picking at the seams, and then the whole fabric of the story started to unravel like a ten-dollar Hong Kong suit. Four people have been fired -- so far -- and Rather has announced his retirement from the anchor desk on March 9. Even CBS' own Dave Letterman has opened up with both barrels. Clearly, CBS News is in trouble, and something has to be done about it. But what?

That's where this story takes a sudden detour into the surreal:

But Mr. Moonves said he was looking to install something more "cutting edge" this time. As part of the overhaul he indicated he would even consider a role for Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's "Daily Show." Mr. Stewart has emerged as both a late-night comedy star and a biting commentator on the news.

Can you say 'Howard Beale', boys and girls?

Then again, consideration of Jon Stewart for a slot on the CBS Evening News might be nothing more than a tacit acknowledgment that CBS' coverage of the news is a running joke, and Moonves is simply adapting to the reality of the situation. If so, he might want to keep one thought in mind as he ponders this prospect: Dennis Miller's brief (but not brief enough) stint on Monday Night Football. Bad karma.

In any event, it's starting to look like, no matter what direction they turn, CBS News is heading over a cliff.

Happy landings.

Bench Press?

2005-01-19T08:41:00.000-06:00

From a recent editorial in the New York Times:

When the Senate battles fire up again over the merits of President Bush's nominees to the federal courts, the administration will have a surprising new partisan on its side, the National Association of Manufacturers, the powerful business lobby that heretofore has stayed out of such high-profile political fracases.

This should make things interesting. It's good to see that more people are starting to take judicial appointments seriously, which, to me at least, was one of the defining issues in the recent Presidential campaign. Heaven help us had Kerry won; we'd be faced with a Supreme Court that looked frighteningly similar to the Ninth Circuit -- with no higher court to overrule them. (The Ninth Circuit is the most frequently overruled court in the entire Federal system.)

Of course, the editorial makes clear where the Gray Lady stands in all of this -- firmly on the side of "do as I say now, not as I say on any other occasion." The last paragraph in the piece is positively breathtaking in its chutzpah:

In response, Big Labor and other liberal groups have begun talking of spending more on the judgeship fights. And that will further degrade a debate that should be about a nominee's merits, not the whose-side-are-you-on simplicities of feral politics. (Emphasis mine.)

And where was the NYT during the last four years, when Miguel Estrada, Pricilla Owen, Charles Pickering and William Pryor, to name but a few, were being sandbagged by Tom Daschle and the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee? Shoveling the sand, that's where.

Bonnie Prince Heinrich

2005-01-18T15:09:00.000-06:00

Since I lack, for the moment, anything more substantive to write about, I thought I'd weigh in on the Prince Harry "Wardrobe Malfunction" flap.

Honestly, people, do we really have nothing better to talk about? Apparently I don't, so here goes.

Anyone who hasn't heard about this already should seriously consider getting a more reliable DSL provider; I swear, the story's been all over the Web for days. Anyway, here's the gist: Britain's Prince Harry, younger son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana, third in line for the throne but destined for a tasty title in his own right -- a Dukedom, at least, but I couldn't begin to tell you which one -- was photographed at a "fancy dress" party (that's a costume party to the non-British, i.e., a masquerade) wearing a Nazi uniform. The politically-correct worldwide shit eggrolls.

Meanwhile, at the St. James Theatre, on West 44th Street in New York, audiences are seeing the exact same costume in nightly performances of The Producers, and laughing so hard over it that they're practically puking their Chicken Supreme of Sardi into the aisles.

Okay, I can concede that His Highness' taste in clothes is, well, somewhat questionable. I mean, he lives right down the road from Bond Street, so scoring some decent duds shouldn't be all that much of a problem; he shouldn't have to resort to shopping at an army-surplus store. (Although at the very least, he could be a bit choicier as to whose army.) And let's face it, the Nazis were a thoroughly nasty bunch, and not exactly a sterling role model for a Head-of-State-in-Waiting. But still....

Hasn't anyone ever heard of irony? Satire, even? Hell, the British practically freakin' invented satire, for pity's sake! Isn't it just remotely possible that Harry was "'avin' a bit of a larf"?

You know, it always strikes me as a bit, shall we say, inconsistent that a heavily-photographed Royal should get his ass chewed out over going out in public in a ridiculous outfit, but something like this doesn't even raise an eyebrow.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to take these people seriously anymore.

On a slightly tangential note, however, I did notice a brief item about this (I believe it was on The Corner, but I wasn't taking notes at the time) to the effect that, if the costume was intended to distract from the fact that Harry was holding a cigarette in that photo, then it was spectacularly successful. A cigarette? Hey, with any luck, Alfred Dunhill, Ltd. might just get the Royal Warrant back. Always look for the silver lining, that's my motto.

The "Are You A Barking Moonbat?" Quiz

2005-01-18T11:01:00.000-06:00

John Hawkins at Right Wing News has posted a quiz for the "Reality-based Community". It's definitely worth checking out.

I am a long-standing sucker for quizzes, the dumber, the better. Not that this one is dumb, you understand; actually, the questions are, by and large, pretty incisive. It's just that I love quizzes. (The ones that show up every so often in the Enquirer -- and no, I flatly refuse to link to that online birdcage liner -- are especially fun. I particularly loved the "The Way You Attack A Salad Bar Reveals Your Personality" quiz. No, wait -- I actually made that one up as a joke, and sent it to them a number of years ago. They didn't publish it; I guess they saw through the gag. Okay, so maybe they're not complete nimrods.)

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to take the quiz here, on my own blog. I copied and pasted the questions, and set them in bold type; my answer follows each question.

1) Do you think a significant percentage of prominent Republicans would secretly like to see the US become a theocracy?
No. To the contrary, I think there is only a vanishingly-small percentage of Republicans, prominent or otherwise, who would have even the vaguest clue as to how to bring such a consequence about. An even more vanishingly-small percentage would even be so inclined. Indeed, the closest thing to a theocracy this country faces at this point in its history is a theocracy based on the Gospel According to... Liberalism.

2) Do you believe it was a mistake to go to war in Afghanistan?
No. I don't think it was a mistake to go to war in Iraq, either. And I don't think it would be a mistake to go to war in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, or even France. We have refrained from kicking ass -- it doesn't particularly matter whose -- for too damn long.

3) In your opinion, is it a myth that American soldiers were spit on when they returned from Vietnam?
No. It was not a myth. Every news organization on the planet (CBS, ABC, NBC, AP, UPI, Reuters, etc.) has the photo archives and footage. They should, since they did most of the spitting.

4) Michael Moore's distribution group, Front Row Entertainment, received help marketing "Fahrenheit 9/11" in Lebanon from the terrorist group Hezbollah. Do you believe that was appropriate?
Yes. It was perfectly appropriate, considering that Michael Moore is probably a card-carrying member of Hezbollah.

5) Do you think you can be a patriotic American and support Iraq's anti-occupation resistance?
It depends on exactly who you mean by "anti-occupation resistance". If you mean the people in Iraq who are saying, "Okay, you've done your job, we'll take it from here. You can go home now," then yes, it is possible. If, on the other hand, you are referring to those whack-jobs who are cutting people's heads off and blowing up everyone else in a fifty-yard radius, trying to derail Iraq's upcoming elections, then I don't see how anyone could reconcile those two positions.

6) Do you think there is a significant chance that the capture of Saddam Hussein was timed to help George Bush politically?
No. Some things are simply fortuitous; they happen when they happen. This was one.

7) In your opinion, is there a significant chance that Diebold is rigging elections in order to help the GOP?
No, but anything that helps to offset the Democrats' graveyard/homeless-wino vote cannot be an altogether bad thing.

8) Is George Bush more "evil" than Saddam Hussein?
No. This is a trick question, right? Can anybody be that frickin' stupid? George Bush never fed anyone feet-first into an industrial plastic shredder, did he? I mean, I'm sure I would have seen it on the news if he had, right? Ask Dan Rather; he'd know.

9) In your opinion, is there a significant chance that Republicans rigged some of the Senate races in 2002?
With better candidates, better positions on the issues, more effective GOTV efforts...? I know a few leftists who might call that "rigging" the election. As for myself..., no.

10) Was Ingrid Newkirk right when she said, "There is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They're all mammals"?
Ingrid Newkirk is a 24/7 idiot. She is never right about anything. Ever.

11) Is there any nation in the world that's more of a force for good than the United States?
Not in the last 80 years or so, no. In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to nominate a candidate from before that time, as well.

12) In your opinion, is the US a "stingy" country?
Another trick question, right? The American people are the most supremely generous people who have ever lived. We are blessed in so many ways, and we rejoice in sharing those blessings. We don't even particularly care who receives those blessings. (We would appreciate a polite -- and sincere -- 'Thank you' now and then, however....)

13) Is there a significant chance that America will become a fascist state in let's say the next 10 years?
Only if the Left takes over the reins of government. Then all bets are off.

14) Do you think there's a significant possibility that liberals will be rounded up and put into some sort of camps in let's say the next 10 years?
I don't see it happening, but it's a nice fantasy.

15) Is America an imperialist nation in your opinion?
An "imperialist nation" -- no. An "imperial power" -- yes. And it's high time we acknowledged that reality and started to act like one.

16) Do you think "losing" in Vietnam was good for America?
No, on a number of levels. 1) It caused the world's tyrants and thugs to stop taking us seriously; 2) It made us too risk-averse to be effective in the world's dust-ups for far too long; 3) It convinced the Left that they were right -- and they were not right then, and they are not right now.

17) Are you sometimes ashamed to be an American?
Never. To the contrary, I'm a flag-waving, anthem-singing, hat-doffing, hand-over-the-heart, utterly unrepentant American, and if you have a problem with that, Francois, then -- what's French for "I wish Eisenhower had landed in Belgium"?

18) Do you think it's wrong for the President to put the welfare of Americans ahead of the welfare of people in other countries?
Certainly not; that's his job, for God's sake! He is, after all, the President of the United States. Or didn't you get that memo?

19) Do you see significant, noteworthy, parallels between America and Nazi Germany?
Yes, but not in the way you think. I recommend that you pick up a copy of The Ominous Parallels, by Leonard Peikoff; it will scare the crap out of you, even if it is a bit dated.

20) In your opinion, was Iraq primarily a "war for oil"?
No. Iraq was, in my view, a war to put the fear of God into a bunch of Middle-East despots and thugs -- and if it convinces the Euro-weenies to be a bit more circumspect around us, then so much the better.

21) What about Afghanistan? Was that primarily a "war for oil" as well?
No, that was vengeance, pure and simple. With a little "Thou shalt not fuck with a superpower" thrown in for good measure.

22) Do you think it's likely a draft will be declared by the end of George Bush's term?
A draft ain't gonna happen. And may I point out that the only ones who actually introduced legislation in Congress to reinstate the draft were... Democrats.

23) Do you think Iraq was preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place?
Probably. At least since 1998, when Congress passed, and then-President Clinton signed, a resolution making "regime change" in Iraq official U.S. policy.

24) In your opinion, is sleep deprivation a form of torture?
A college student cramming for finals probably doesn't think so; a college student trying to sit through a three-hour lecture the morning after an all-night kegger might.

25) Would you prefer that we lose in Iraq?
No. On the contrary, I think we should prosecute the war far more aggressively than we now are.

26) Do you believe anyone who goes to Afghanistan or Iraq as a soldier is fighting for an evil cause under an evil commander in chief?
No.

27) Was Michael Moore correct when he said, "There is no terrorist threat in this country. This is a lie?"
Two-part answer: 1) Micahel Moore is an idiot; 2) Michael wasn't in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001; I was. Trust me, there is a terrorist threat. I saw it from my office window.

28) Is there in your opinion a significant chance that the Bush administration either was behind 9/11 or knew it was coming and allowed it to happened?
No and No.

29) Do you think there is a significant possibility that the Bush administration had a hand in Paul Wellstone's death?
No. Now, if you asked if I thought there was a possibility that Hillary Clinton had a hand in Vince Foster's death, again I would say 'No'. I do, however, think there is a possibility that White House staffers, under Hillary's instruction, moved Foster's body from his office, and tidied up afterward. (Why else would they keep the police out of his office for so long? What were they doing in there? Cleaning the carpet, perhaps?)

30) Do you believe that somebody rigged the vote in Ohio during the 2004 Presidential election?
No, but you can't blame the Kerry campaign for trying. Well, actually, I guess you could, the incompetent boobs.

31) In your opinion, do you think there is a significant chance that the Bush administration was behind the anthrax letters that were mailed out to some members of the media and US Senate?
No. No-one in the Bush Administration writes that sloppily. (Check out the addresses on those letters. A four-year-old with carpal-tunnel has better penmanship!)

32) Had George Bush lost the election, do you believe there was a significant chance Republicans would have thrown a coup?
No. Republicans may not be particularly graceful losers, but when they lose, they at least recognize that fact and accept it. (Let's see just one Democrat try that shtick.) I don't even think the Republicans would have pulled Barbara Boxer's silly-ass stunt.

33) Do you believe there's a significant chance that Karl Rove or someone else in the Bush administration had something to do with the last minute appearance of the Bin Laden tape right before the Nov. 2nd election?
No. I think bin Laden did this on his own, in a desperate effort to make himself relevant again. Hey, that al-Zarqawi scumbag was hogging all his press; he had to do something.

34) Do you believe comparisons of George Bush to Hitler are appropriate?
Comparisons of Bush to Hitler are not only ludicrous, they vividly illustrate a person with no sense of perspective, an abysmal ignorance of history, and an all-around -- here I go again -- idiot.

35) Do you think Communism could work if the right people were running it?
Communism cannot work, no matter who is running it. That is its fundamental problem: someone has to run it; because the people, acting according to their nature as rational (nod to Ingrid Newkirk) animals, will always act in their own self-interest, with survival as their primary objective. They will never, in the absence of coersion, sacrifice their own self-interest to the interests of others. (And to pre-empt that old canard about a father -- or mother -- sacrificing his/her life for a child, the survival of a child is in the parents' self-interest, you ignorant twit, both culturally and genetically. So there.)

36) Do you believe that black Americans who support and vote Republican are betraying their race?
On the contrary, I believe that black (or any other ethnic) Americans who insist that black (or any other ethnic) Americans who vote Republican are betraying their race are the ones doing the betraying.

37) Do you think people who say Al-Qaeda doesn't exist are right?
Thanks to Bush and the military, they are closer to being right than ever before, and getting unrelentingly closer. This, I would argue, is a Good Thing.

38) Are the insurgents in Iraq roughly comparable to Americans who fought against the British in your opinion?
Not even close. The Revolutionists of 1775-1781 were fighting for independence; they were fighting to create a new country. The "insurgents", on the other hand, are fighting to create chaos. Where, pray tell, is the "insurgents'" Declaration of Independence?

39) Do you believe Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur was correct when she said, "One could say that Osama bin Laden and these non-nation-state fighters with religious purpose are very similar to those kind of atypical revolutionaries that helped to cast off the British crown"?
I believe that Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur's constituents need to stop voting by reflex; this woman is an idiot. (I do seem to love that word, don't I?)

40) Do you believe there's a significant chance that the US Government knows where Bin Laden is and is deliberately allowing him to remain free?
Does the government know where he is? It's possible. Is the government deliberately allowing him to remain free? Not bloody likely. Unless you subscribe to the belief that, if we do reel him in, a large portion of the American populace will say, "Okay, we got him. War's over. We won. Stand down." So let me amend that last answer: not likely, but possible. For the aforementioned reason -- because that "unless" is entirely too possible. Unfortunately.

Hope I get an A.

Where I'm Coming From

2005-01-17T20:24:00.000-06:00

Okay, I think it's necessary that you should all know exactly what my 'take' is on the topics I'll be discussing in this blog. So I'm going to post an essay I wrote a little over a year ago, by way of explanation.

When I wrote this, it was never really intended for public consumption; it was meant as more of a palliative, a self-therapy, if you will. It described a day in my life that started so great, and ended so badly. I call it:

RECOLLECTIONS OF A PARTICULARLY BAD DAY

It was a breathtakingly beautiful Indian summer morning. Not a cloud in the sky, and just the merest hint of the approaching autumn: a crispness in the air, not quite summer anymore, but not quite fall yet, either.

The bus trip into Manhattan was swift and uneventful. We breezed through the Lincoln Tunnel, and arrived at the Port Authority Bus Terminal well ahead of schedule. From there, the stroll down the concourse to the Times Square subway station was, well, if I had to choose a word for it, ordinary. The subway musicians were at their usual posts. There was the little old Korean guy, playing an absolutely horrendous rendition of Beethoven's Ninth, on a traditional Korean instrument perched on his knee, its single catgut string sounding like it was still attached to the cat. I speculated (not for the first time) that that rumbling I felt under my feet was not the uptown A train rolling up to the platform under the Port Authority; it was Beethoven spinning in his grave. The black spiritual singer was belting them out as enthusiastically as ever, accompanying himself on an electronic keyboard, whose power source I had never been able to locate. This morning was no exception; where that thing got its juice from remained an impenetrable mystery. There was the harmonica player, who only knew how to play one note; the violin player had learned a new one, bringing his total to four. The accordionist was, mercifully, absent that morning. I swear, if I have to hear Lady of Spain one more time.... The bums were cadging change on the subway platforms, as always.

I watched two young women on the R train as it rumbled downtown, drama majors at NYU, I suspected; they had a certain 'never been to Bergdorf's, never will' look about them. New York is probably home to the highest concentration of mortified parents in the Northern Hemisphere; here was proof. What grabbed my attention about these two was the fact that one of them had red hair. Not naturally red hair, or even any shade of deliberately-dyed red hair; this was painted hair, almost fuscia in color. That, plus the fact that they sat beside each other on the train, literally grooming each other, exactly like you would see in the Primate House at the Bronx Zoo. I couldn't help myself. I laughed out loud. The man standing next to me asked what was so funny. I pointed to the two girls, and said, "Everyone told me that this city is a zoo, but I always thought that was just a figure of speech!" He started laughing, too. We were still laughing when I got off the train at Prince Street.

Coming out of the subway station, and crossing Broadway, I entered Dean & Deluca's espresso bar. The guy behind the counter knew me, and he knew what I wanted: large coffee, black, and two croissants. It's good to be predictable. I walked down the block to Spring Street, crossed at the light, and stopped in front of my building. I set my bag of croissants on a narrow ledge in the masonry, fired up a Dunhill, and leaned against the wall of the building, sipping my coffee and bracing myself for a very busy day. It was just after 8:45 in the morning.

What the hell was that? A loud boom, reverberating through the streets of lower Manhattan, with no discernable source. I didn't think much of it; sudden, loud noises in the City were not at all unusual, even though this one was louder than any I had ever heard before.

Then I spotted The Suit. He crossed Spring Street, heading down Broadway, outfitted in typical Suit regalia: attaché case in one hand, cell phone pasted to his ear in the other. Getting the deal closed before he got to the office; time is money, and there was never as much of the one as he needed, never as much of the other as he wanted. Then he stopped, almost directly in front of me, looked up and said, "Holy shit!" Not into the phone, not to anyone in particular. Just an observation, and a reaction. I couldn't see what the Suit was staring at. A large banner, advertising the trendy Soho boutique next door, hung from a standard that extended over the sidewalk, blocking my view of the downtown skyline. I pinched out the butt, gathered up my pastries, and went into the building, up to my office on the eighth floor.

To call it an office was, perhaps, overly generous; it was an alcove in a hundred-year-old building, with two cubicles shoehorned into it. But it had one feature that most cubicles do not have; it had a window. The window faced south, overlooking an alley, and it offered a magnificent view of the Twin Towers. Every day, gazing out that window into the alley below, I always halfway expected to see Lucy and Ethel gossiping on the fire escape. On this day, however, when I arrived at my desk, I saw through the window a plume of thick black smoke streaming from the North Tower and over the East River, billowing from a blackened gash in the side of the building. Paper, thousands of sheets of paper, fluttered in the air above the Financial District, reminiscent of a ticker-tape parade down Broadway. Well, this was definitely Broadway, but this sure as hell weren't no ticker-tape parade. What the hell was going on?

I pointed the Web browser to CNN. 'Plane hits World Trade Center' was the headline. That was pretty much all I was going to get from CNN that day; all subsequent re-queries of the page -- of any page -- returned a 404 error: 'The requested page could not be found.' The 'Net was down.

Other people who worked on my floor had started to gather in my cubicle. Naturally; I had the view. There was rampant speculation, but no one actually knew anything.

Then, as I watched, a huge fireball erupted from the South Tower. I never heard the explosion that must have accompanied it; there is a limit to what our senses can absorb, and the sound could not get past the image. But I vividly recall watching that ball of fire expand, in slow motion, frame by frame, like a stop-action video. And then, from a radio on the ninth floor, we heard what was actually happening, what we all, by then, knew.

For some inexplicable reason, mine was the only phone that was working on that floor, so I gave up my cube as the de facto communication center. A friend called me from Austin. She just needed to hear my voice, she said. I assured her that I was fine, that we were miles away from the scene. (It was actually less than one mile, but she didn't need to know that.)

A woman who worked on my floor, whose father worked in the South Tower, tried repeatedly to get in touch with him, to no avail. Then, at a little before ten o'clock, she stood beside me as we watched the top of the South Tower heel to the left, slide sideways, and then the entire building crumbled in a cloud of dust. She gripped my arm, tight; it was three weeks before the bruises finally faded. I never learned her name, but I did learn, several days later, that her father had escaped.

A few minutes later, we were ordered to evacuate the building.

On the street below, the building authorities realized that the only thing they had done was to put several hundred people in the way of the rescue efforts, so the evacuation order was rescinded. Most of us complied, if only to get out of the way of the fire trucks, police cars and ambulances racing down Broadway, and the masses of people streaming in the opposite direction. While we were trudging up the stairs to our offices, the North Tower collapsed. The word went out again: not an evacuation this time, business operations were suspended until further notice. New York City was closed.

There were about a dozen of us in my work-group, and all but one -- me -- lived in Brooklyn. They decided to set off as a group, across the Brooklyn Bridge to their respective homes. They raided the vending machines in the break room, pooling their change and stashing provisions into knapsacks; screw the Cokes and Skittles, they were after bottled water and Power Bars. They pleaded with me to come with them; they didn't think it was a good idea for me to be on my own in the chaos of a city under attack. I assured them that I would be okay; it was only about five miles to the Port Authority, I told them, and if there was any way across the river to Jersey, that was where I would find it. They accepted my decision, reluctantly and not without argument, but we parted company on the street outside the building. We kept each other in sight for as long as possible, looking over our shoulders, until we lost each other in the crowds.

Subway operations were suspended, and buses and taxis had been commandeered to transport the injured to area hospitals. So I walked. Up Broadway, through Union Square, past Madison Square Park, Macy's, the Garden, Penn Station, to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, with every step repeating a single mantra to myself: Don't look back. I knew what I would see if I did, and more painfully, what I wouldn't see, what I would never see again. But what I did see were the Faces. Some numb with shock, others contorted by grief, still others burning with anger and rage. Keep moving, keep walking, the voice in my head kept repeating. And don't look back. I kept walking. I didn't look back.

The Bus Terminal was closed; so were the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, and all of the major bridges. There was a six-hour wait for the ferries crossing the Hudson River. No place to go, and no way to get there, but still I kept walking. An advertisement, on the side of a building on 8th Avenue, across from the Bus Terminal, promoted Target Stores; it was a twist on the 'I-Heart-NY' graphic, with the heart replaced by Target's bulls-eye logo. 'I target New York.' The whimsical had turned macabre. I felt sick to my stomach; I turned away, and kept walking. Night fell, and I kept walking. A local news broadcast flickered on a marquee on 42nd Street, across from a movie theater, playing the images of the morning over and over. Hundreds of people stood on the sidewalks, watching. I couldn't bring myself to see it again -- once was quite enough for me -- so I kept walking. Finally, a Port Authority Police officer directed me to Penn Station; New Jersey Transit had resumed train service, outbound only, to Newark. I started walking again; only this time, I had a destination.

Track Three, the ticket agent at Penn Station told me. Where do I get a ticket? All the ticket windows were closed. He shook his head; Track Three, he repeated. I boarded the train, found a seat. The doors closed, the train started moving, and for the first time in what seemed an eternity, I no longer needed to.

I arrived at Newark's Penn Station at a little after ten o'clock that night. From there, I spent over an hour in a taxi, circumnavigating the road closures, to get me to the only place I wanted to be at that moment: my neighborhood hangout, a place called Harold's, in Lyndhurst. Since eleven o'clock that morning, I had been alone, utterly alone, in a city of eight million people. I didn't want to be alone anymore. At Harold's, I knew I wouldn't be.

By the time I got there, it was nearly closing time. But they were waiting for me. I had been coming to this place for years, and they knew me well; the bartender had a Martini in front of me before I sat down. I downed it in less than five minutes, a drink that I normally would nurse for the better part of an hour. I asked for another; it was already in the shaker, waiting for me. By now, it was approaching midnight, time to get home. I tried to settle my tab. Not tonight, the bartender said. Go home, get some rest; you look beat. I took a cab back to my hotel.

I was finally home. I was finally safe. (Well, as safe as anyone could pretend to be that day.)

I finally had time to cry.

JAFO: An Introductory

2005-01-17T20:05:00.000-06:00

"You should start a blog. I'll bet you'd get a lot of hits."

That's what a Web site editor e-mailed to me when she rejected (conditionally, in her defense) an article I wrote for her site, about -- of all things -- love-bugs. (I'll explain later, but only on request.) Well, as they say, 'Be careful what you wish for....'

I must confess that I had second thoughts about even starting this blog. After reading the kind of bilge that Michelle Malkin has to put up with on a daily basis, I spent a great many hours asking myself, "Who needs this shit!?" But then I decided, "Hey, if Michelle has the balls to tolerate this spewage, then so damn-flippin'-well do I!"

In the 1983 John Badham movie Blue Thunder (John Badham directed; Roy Scheider starred), one of the characters is called ‘JAFO’, for “Just Another Fucking Observer”. Well, that’s me. With this post, followed by a couple of rants on some of the hot-button issues of the day, I hereby inaugurate my blog, appropriately titled ‘JAFO’. Because that is precisely what I am: Just Another Fucking Observer.

The introduction of a new weblog invariably prompts the usual quorum of reactions, mostly on the order of, “Geez, like we aren’t up to our armpits in these things already?” Now, I can’t promise that my blog will be significantly different, or qualitatively better, than the six-hundred-and-seventy-two kazillion blogs already floating about in cyberspace. But it will be mine, and that should make it unique, after a fashion, if nothing else.

A former manager (not mine, actually, but I worked closely with her department as part of my responsibilities toward my signature project) once told her staff: “If you don’t piss off at least one person in the course of your day, then you’re not doing your job.” I have taken that little snippet of smart-assed wisdom to heart, and have incorporated it into virtually every aspect of my life. Thus I think I can safely promise that, in the entries I shall make on this site, people will be pissed off. Some will be pissed on. (Figuratively speaking, of course; I’m not into that kinky-sex scene. In point of fact, I’m not particularly into sex at all. I figure that if God had meant for us to enjoy sex, He wouldn’t have made it sticky.) Oxen will be gored. Sacred cows will be rendered into mouth-watering Prime Rib. (With the obligatory horseradish sauce, and gently-steamed asparagus spears with Hollandaise. Washed down by a particularly saucy Pinot Noir.)

Hopefully, some of my observations will strike a responsive chord, and prompt lively (civil would also be nice, but I ain’t holding my breath!) debate. It is entirely possible that some people may even actually agree with me. (As Bloody Mary said in South Pacific, “You gotta have a dream….”)

What are you likely to find in these pages? The usual bloggy crap: long-winded pontifications about this and sundry; short, pithy commentary in re some of the more moronic news items I run across; pointless ramblings about whatever gets my delicates in a twist; the obligatory, massive ego-stroking; links to other, more reputable, blogs, mostly in hopes that those more-reputable blogs will link back to mine, thus driving up my hit-count; occasionally some tit-shot JPEGs and fart jokes. You know, S.S.D.URL.

What you will not find is: any reference whatsoever to cats. I hate cats. I am allergic to cats. And the musical sucked harder than a Hoover. (The vacuum cleaner, I mean, not J. Edgar. Although rumors abound….) I will, therefore, from this point forward, decline to write another word about cats, mine (which I don’t have) or anyone else’s. Let me qualify that a bit: I will write nothing about cats that does not convey, in the most vivid terms, my utter disdain for those hairy, dander-poofing, furball-hocking, cosmically self-absorbed little beasts who, like the Alderaan wing of the Democratic Party, can't seem to get it through their heads that the sun has, in fact, finally set upon their imaginary empire.

And so, without further ado…, on with the blog.