A Joke's a Joke. Please, Stop.

Darwin's Cat Presents the 15-Minute Man

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How can I possibly be rising in the blogosphere? Readership is falling. No new links. It's as if someone were slipping into my driveway every night and tipping a cup of gas into my gas tank, creating the illusion of good mileage. And then one cruel day they start to siphon....

I can't take the pressure. I never claimed I belonged among the elite top half-million. I'm a wandering minstrel, not a pop icon.

Not Tonight, Dear, I'm a Keynesian

A personal message from an old friend. Hey, at least he read the post.

According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections. Enough amusing talk about whacking off at fancy salons. Times are desperate. Tonight's not too soon.

One from the Heart: A Good Tourist is Also a Good Citizen is Also a Good Student

This list of recommendations was given to incoming freshmen by the Dean's office. It does remind one that the city is both a classroom and a playground. If I were in in my *ironic* mode, I'd add a few things-to-do of my own....

But the semester has begun, and I think we shall lower the Black Flag of Irony for the next three months.

Here's the nice list. It's hopeful and open-hearted. Time enough to get all crabbed and sour later on. Heck, even though I am pretty crabbed and 99 and 44/100ths percent sour, I may just go for a certificate myself.

The Dean’s Syllabus: USF, the City, and Beyond

Jennifer E. Turpin, Dean

http://artsci.usfca.edu/

http://www.usfca.edu/studentacademicservices/index.html

As part of its mission, the University of San Francisco strives to draw from the cultural, intellectual and economic resources of the San Francisco Bay Area and its location on the Pacific Rim to enrich and strengthen its educational programs. With this in mind, I challenge you to explore and learn about your community here at USF, in the City, and beyond. I’ve put together a “must-do” list of activities that I hope you find not only educational, but fun as well.

The Must-Do List:

At USF:

1. Attend a concert or play at USF: www.usfca.edu/vpa/pa/performances.html

See the talents of your fellow students in a production sponsored by the Performing Arts Department.

2. Attend an art opening at the Thacher Gallery: www.usfca.edu/library/thacher/

A public art crossroads in USF’s main library, the Thacher Gallery is a forum where creativity, scholarship, and community converge. Each year the Thacher Gallery presents exhibitions that probe community and aesthetic issues, multicultural and interfaith dialogue, and the urban Jesuit University’s commitment to social justice.

3. Talk to at least one Professor in your major/minor

In addition to knowledge learned in books, your professors can offer advice on life after college as well as ideas on how to reach your goals, if you ask. Make an appointment to see your professor at a time other than for academic advising.

4. Attend a reading or presentation by a visiting writer or scholar

Many of the academic programs sponsor a wide variety of readings and scholarly presentations throughout the academic year. I especially recommend that you attend the annual social justice lecture.

5. Visit one of the College’s centers or institutes

The Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good; the Center for Latino Studies in the Americas; the Center for the Pacific Rim; the St. Ignatius Institute; and the Joan and Ralph Lane Center for Catholic Studies and Social Thought offer a wide variety of programming. Contact the Dean’s office in Harney 240 for more information.

6. Join at least one student organization: http://www.usfca.edu/universitylife/get_involved.html

There are many student organizations on campus, including academic honor societies, cultural organizations, and special interest groups.

In The City:

7. Get a “rush” ticket to the San Francisco Symphony: www.sfsymphony.org

“Rush” tickets are sold at the symphony on the day of the performance and are more affordable for students than advance purchase tickets.

8. Visit City Lights Bookstore on Columbus Avenue in North Beach: www.citylights.org

Founded in 1953, City Lights is one of the few truly great independent bookstores left in the United States. The Beats' legacy of anti-authoritarian politics and insurgent thinking continues to be a strong influence in the store, most evident in the selection of titles.

9. Attend a religious service for a religion/denomination other than your own

10. Visit at least one of the major museums in San Francisco

There are several museums in San Francisco covering a range of interests. Visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the De Young, the Legion of Honor, or the Asian Art Museum. Look for special student rates or free days.

11. Take a ferry to Angel Island: www.angelisland.org

In addition to offering spectacular views of the entire Bay Area and several recreational activities, Angel Island is rich in historical significance. Miwok Indians fished and hunted there, and it was once the “Ellis Island” of the West.

12. Visit the San Francisco neighborhoods: www.sfgate.com/traveler/guide/sf/neighborhoods

Each neighborhood has a culture, history, architecture, and personality of its own.

13. Take a Native American focused tour of Alcatraz: www.nps.gov/alcatraz/indian.html

The takeover of Alcatraz was one of the most successful American Indian protest actions of the 20th century, fueling the rise of modern Native American activism.

14. Visit one of the city’s many cultural centers

Abalone (the Native American Cultural Center), the Irish Cultural Center, the Chinese Cultural Center, the Arab Cultural and Community Center, and the Russian Center are just a few of the many cultural centers San Francisco has to offer. Visit a center that relates to your own heritage, or learn more about a culture different than your own.

15. Visit the California Academy of Sciences: www.calacademy.org

The California Academy of Sciences, the fourth largest natural history museum in the United States, is home to Steinhart Aquarium, Morrison Planetarium and the Natural History Museum.

16. Visit the Exploratorium: www.exploratorium.edu/

The Exploratorium is an experimental, hands-on museum designed to spark curiosity – regardless of your age or familiarity with science.

17. Walk from USF through Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach

Golden Gate Park is a 1,017 acre urban park in the western section of San Francisco. It stretches 3.5 miles (by .5 miles wide) from the center of the city to the Pacific Ocean.

18. See the Balmy Alley Murals in the Mission district: www.precitaeyes.org

The colorful Mission District is the capital of San Francisco’s famous murals. Balmy Alley has a concentration of more than 30 vibrant murals, painted on fences, building walls, and garage doors.

And Beyond:

19. Participate in a USF international experience

USF offers a number of international programs, study abroad opportunities, and immersion experiences through University Ministry.

20. Contact a USF alumnus in your major: www.usfca.edu/alumni

Contacting one of the many USF alumni is a great way to find out about potential career opportunities and network with potential employers. Visiting an alumni-sponsored event is another way to meet graduates of USF.

Certificate of Completion:

While you will not receive a grade for this “class”; if, upon graduation, you submit a brief journal chronicling your reflections on each of these assignments to my office (Harney Science Center, Room 240), you will receive a special certificate of completion.

Welcome to USF and San Francisco!

that was the salon that was

For those of you keeping score, the final results of last night’s salon were: goddess 117; godless 23; France 2; gay hillbilly marriage 1.5.

Wallace Stevens was declared Best of Show, and God failed to appear.

What can I say? It was a real nice clambake. We began by casting up – or out; or down – good thoughts to all our Higher Powers in support of Jeffrey Pressman out there among the alien corn in Brooklyn and Little Tommy Chaffin, a former salonista facing some serious surgery back there in Hotlanta.

Then, Miss Edith Landrith shared a bit of the Pelasgian creation myth as configured by Mr. Robert Graves, featuring a provocative footnote from Mr. Graves in which he shared the insight that back in those halcyon days “woman was the dominant sex and man her frightened victim.” *Big* points for the goddess.

Then Gayle Feyrer did W.S. Merwin’s “The Judgment of Paris,” which has not one, not two but THREE goddesses offering their services to the Trojan prince, who, lacking the brains to ask for brains, opts for the sex, instead. Well, at least he wasn’t frightened.

Then, Barbara Dietrich and David Reinke did a tag-team goddess thing that started out as a serious goddess homage but then, to the surprise of some and the delight of all, turned the corner toward the comic in a celebration of the goddess Asphalta, garbed in day-glo orange, she who provides parking spaces to the prayerful and oh so much more. The audience thus softened was more than ready for Brother Bob Wieder before whom all shibboleths quail as a baby seal quails before a crazed Norwegian. Seems that not so long ago sitting alone in his underwear Bob heard a C&W song called (I think) “Now I Know Why God Made Oklahoma.” Now you and I would have been moved to tears and gone to stare at a sunset, but Bob’s response was to create a list of Why God Mades running through most of the lower 48 and pretty much suggesting God is a drunken old poop.

Needless to say, this was greeted with tumultuous approval.

Then, Michael Koppy, the Hillbilly Hesiod, shared not as expected one of the cuts from his new CD, available at a Dollar Store near you, but a brand-new composition inspired by the folk lined up for marriage licenses outside San Francisco’s short-lived Window of Love several years ago. Actually, the song spoke neither of hillbillies nor of gays – Koppy supplied the back story – and actually it was sweet and nice. But with Koppy there’s always a certain danger, a certain premonitory dread. For instance, he draped one of those things that looks like an orthodontic device around his neck and then clamped a harmonica in it, with the net effect of supplementing his sangin’ and pickin’ with some blowin’. All quite delightful, of course, but it did add the frisson of hoping against hope he wouldn't suddenly strap cymbals to his knees and start banging them together.

Ah, then I myself shared a bit of the old work-in-progress, reminding the crowd beforehand that my master is the great Henry James, which means my sentences are gravid and difficult, and the psychology of my characters is nuanced and deep, positively sub-atomic. But lest they feel excluded from so opaque and attenuated a universe, when certain folk in my fiction began to chant VICK–tree, VICK-tree,VICK-tree over masturbation, I invited the bunch to join right in.

Which they did in right good spirit.

Then the break. Much wine wine more wine. So the god Baachus had his moment.

Gayle Feyrer led off the second half with a lovely bit of Mary Oliver – who may be the salon’s poetic goddess – and then Wieder returned with a pithy description of some of the courses that might be offered by a “Christian” college in the grip of Intelligent Design mania. I don’t think Bob believes there ever was an age of miracles during which the whale stomach, for instance, was capable of selective digestion.

Then, Lyle York and Mary (not McCarthy but I always think of her as Mary McCarthy) did something from the French on not one but two (2) viol de Gambas. (Viols de Gamba? Les viol de Gamba?) Anyway, there is something mournful and spiritual and, of course, beautiful in the VdG in the right hands – and these hands were very right, indeed – so finally the wandering salon was back on firm ground. (And you should have seen the many notations on Lyle’s sheet music, delicately penciled suggestions and instructions from various teachers. If God is in the detail, there was a lot of God on that sheet music.)

And finally Jon McKinney did that McKinney thing where he has the poem in front of him but then does it from memory – or by Braille from touching the edges of the pages; he doesn’t look at the damn thing. The more offhand, the more brilliant, right? This time the poem was Wallace Stevens buoyantly pagan “Sunday Morning.” It is a poem that reads well but sounds better, and Jon sounded it very well, very well.

So that’s pretty much it. An October salon is in prospect in San Francisco, either at Sue Russell’s or Dan and Ora Harder’s. T’is a consummation devoutly to be wished, n’est-ce pas?

The Look of Love

I said to my wife, "Why don't you sit down on the couch next to me?" and she said, "I would rather sit here at the end of the couch so I can look at you."

So she sat down and looked at me for a minute, at which point she said, "You have hair on the end of your nose."

Heck, I was going to shave anyway.

Perhaps One Last Summer Classic, But This One Cleverly Updated

From August 2005:


In the course of cleaning up my computer desktop, I stumbled across this. Never did get it published. There are some *funny lines* in this.

News item: To aid in his apprehension, the US continues to distribute pictures of Osama Bin Laden altered so that he appears without a beard.

Scene: A High School auditorium somewhere in America.

First, I want to thank all of you for coming out on a school night -- and on a night Mel Gibson is making a perp walk! (Pause for laughter.) I also want to thank the Republican National Committee, who – in response to the President’s call for a new voluntarism – has helped to put together tonight’s slide show of pictures of what Osama Bin Laden may now look like. You live in a key, swing and hotly contested Congressional District, where to my enormous surprise I have just learned a special election is taking place next week! This is just the sort of place where a fanatic terrorist might “go to ground” as our allies the British would say. So thank you again Republican National Committee for making this evening possible!

(Pause for applause.)

And, of course, thanks to the Republican candidate in your upcoming election, who has agreed to work the slide projector tonight. Thank you, Mr. Texas! Mr. C. Les Texas, everyone! (Long pause for applause.) Push the big button.

And now the first slide.

(Click)

Okay, here Bin Laden is without a beard wearing jeans and penny loafers. Those are French centime coins, not pennies, in his shoes. We have very good humintel from France, where the food is excellent.

(Click)

Bin Laden without a beard in a turtleneck sweater and an anorak from a recent Land’s End catalog. The sweater has been discontinued. The anorak is available on back order.

(Click)

Here Bin Laden is without a beard on an ocean liner wearing Groucho glasses and a shoe polish mustache, smoking a cigar and making rude comments to Margaret Dumont, who is wearing a burka.

(Click)

Here Bin Laden is without a beard wearing a burka that’s much too short. Notice his legs.

(Click)

A close-up of his legs, unshaved.

(Click)

And the same legs shaved. Very shapely, very evil legs.

(Click)

And in an evening gown with his very shapely, very evil legs covered but still wearing the penny loafers, this time with two of the new Euro coins, the signature currency of the New World Order.

(Click)

Here Bin Laden is without a beard in thong underwear delivering pizza to Bill Clinton.

(Click)

Here he is again without a beard. The guy with the beard – and the thong -- is Al Gore.

(Click)

Okay, here Bin Laden is without a beard at the beach wearing a Speedo rubbing cocoa butter on Hillary Clinton’s back. You will notice that this time she is the one wearing the thong. And in the background Joe Lieberman sneaking up with a net.

(Pause for sexist laughter.)

(Click)

Okay, here Bin Laden is without a beard in a chemist’s smock giving anthrax spores to Harry Reid so Harry Reid can plant them in his own office mail.

(Click)

And here Bin Laden is without a beard at the 2004 Democratic Convention publicly intoxicated while placing the name of John Kerry in nomination for the presidency of the United States.

(Click)

Oops. That thumb in front of the camera belongs to Jim Jeffords, who used to be a Republican.

(Click)

Okay, here’s Jeffords in front of the camera -- Bin Laden took the picture without a beard.

(Click)

And here Bin Laden is without a beard at the beach in a Speedo rubbing cocoa butter on Jim Jeffords’ back while Nancy Pelosi makes the drinks. You will notice that they are all wearing thongs except for Teddy Kennedy who is in the cabana putting on a thong. Yes, that would be worth waiting for.

(Click)

And here Bin Laden is without a beard on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills shopping for thong underwear with California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides. Hey, what happened to the lights? Could it be a blackout? You say someone flipped the switch? No, I’m sure Mr. Texas is still right there next to the slide projector – with his finger on the button! (Pause for prolonged applause.)

But I Don't Believe in the Virgin Birth of the Original Bunny-Wunny

A little more than three weeks ago, I changed the name of my fantasy baseball team from Snakes on a Plane to the Six Bunny-Wunnies. There's been an occasional bump in the road since then, and I've had to augment the number of Bunny-Wunnies, but the results speak for themselves:

Standings from 7/23/2006 thru 8/17/2006

Name	Avg	HR	R	RBI	SB	ERA	K	S	W	W PCT	Total
T. S. Intellectual, OBE ()	8.0	9.5	9.0	10.0	2.5	10.0	8.0	9.5	9.5	10.0	86.0
The Eleven Bunny Wunnies ()	9.0	9.5	10.0	5.0	9.0	9.0	5.0	9.5	2.5	3.0	71.5
The Money Shot ()	7.0	6.0	7.5	8.0	4.0	8.0	6.0	4.0	5.5	5.0	61.0
The Lonesome Strangers ()	3.0	7.0	5.5	6.0	10.0	4.0	10.0	7.5	5.5	2.0	60.5
The FunGhouls ()	10.0	3.0	7.5	9.0	1.0	6.0	2.0	1.5	7.0	6.5	53.5
Leaves of Grass ()	1.0	1.0	3.5	1.0	7.5	5.0	9.0	1.5	9.5	8.0	47.0
Chi Chi ()	2.0	4.0	1.0	3.0	2.5	7.0	3.0	5.5	8.0	9.0	45.0
Marfa Dogs ()	5.0	5.0	2.0	2.0	6.0	2.0	7.0	5.5	2.5	6.5	43.5
Hell Hounds ()	4.0	2.0	3.5	4.0	5.0	3.0	4.0	7.5	4.0	4.0	41.0
Little Chi Chi ()	6.0	8.0	5.5	7.0	7.5	1.0	1.0	3.0	1.0	1.0	41.0

I have my superstitions right enough, but I like to think I keep them small and under control, like mice in the basement or flirtations with meter maids.

Technorati is Apparently My Bitch

Darwin's Cat Presents the 15-Minute Man

Search this blog

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This makes no sense. I'm only getting three readers a week. And most of them say, "Ah, I think I'll wait for the deathbed confession."

Twinkie Defense, Yes. Defense of Twinkies, No.

For the first time in decades, I ate a Twinkie yesterday. I was in the Walgreen's picking up milk, and there it was, and what Poe would have called the imp of the perverse guided my hand.

I ate the first of the matched set -- for as most of you know they come two to a package -- on the way home, and after the first couple of bites I found the taste nauseating, but sugar-freaked, I finished it.

I considered throwing the second one out the window immediately since they biodegrade, but I thought a cop might spot me, and I was in no mood for a discussion of basic biology. And with that Twinkie inside me, I might have bull-rushed him and been Tasered, or worse, on the spot.

And damn me if in a couple of minutes I didn't grab the second Twinkie and finish it off. It was nauseous -- which as all my copy editing students know means nausea-inducing -- from the first bite.

What is in those damn Twinkies? Worse, what's in me that I can't eat just one?

And Now for Something Completely Self-Referential

Every now and again, my wife and I attend a local poetry salon founded -- co-founded? tri-founded? I leave this to the historians -- by my friend Patrick Finley, who was many things. Unfortunately, everything about him may be catalogued under "was."

Rest in peace, dear boy, and flights of angels help you score whatever it is you need to score.

My current role in the post-Finley salons is to prod. If I don't prod, the salons don't happen. But my most recent prodding has borne fruit, and a salon is coming up this Saturday. But scheduling a salon is not enough. One must create some buzz, keep the salon on the front burner of the collective awareness. Thus, here's my most recent email to the salon regulars.

Of course, it's self-indulgent to post this, but in writing the following, as one might with one's cellphone minutes, I used up today's allotment of writing time. So it's this or nada, our nada who art in nada.

And that was a Hemingway reference suggested by the topic of the salon, which is god/goddess/godless. Or, if you like, God/Goddess/Godless. (Might "Godless" merit a cap? Yes. We must have that conversation sometime.)

It sounds like fun. All of you are invited. What? Friends from out of town?

I understand.


Dear Salonistas:

Well, that salon friend (SF) is still barking about there not being enough pre-salon missives, that drumbeat of ephemera designed to nudge the fence-sitters -- towards the salon, my friend, not away, but I wouldn't be the first victim of the Intentional Fallacy. Anyway, here goes:

* Hostess Lyle and Mary of the group, The Mary and Monica Flower Arrangement, will be doing something, maybe instrumental, maybe not; file this under anything could happen and probably will;

* Michael Koppy, the Hillbilly Hindemith, will be selling his CD out of the trunk of his car. He will perform, of course, which should provide motivation to purchase, either to encourage him or to nip this virus in the bud;

* Jon McKenney is going to -- can't find my notes; can't find my notes -- do some Wallace Stevens, I think. That should be money in the bank;

* Gayle Feyrer is going to -- I really can't find my notes -- do TK, as we used to say at the newspaper. Anyway, more money, more bank;

* Jessica, of Jack and Jessica, might just make it.... I promised to hold the curtain, if necessary. If we get Jessica, of Jack and Jessica, I like our chances;

* Where are my damn notes????? Other performing people are going to be performing. Those people: Remind me now

* Yours truly is uncertain. I had planned to read an excerpt from my novel from back in the day that I have been rewriting, but Patrick Finley used to say that the salon is not the place for new work because a) odds are it won't be as good as already published material, stuff that has been fretted over and revised and submitted to professional editors who vet and edit before it tumbles into print, each of those steps winnowing out the chaff; b) actually, odds are new work will be awful because that's sort of the nature of new work, isn't it? And then you get the audience painfully aware of how eager and vulnerable the writer is, and thus the audience feels obligated to feign grimaces of pleasure.

Which leads to the Bob Wieder exception. Bob Wieder always does his own material, but much of it has -- no secret this -- been published before and thus is the product of vetting, editing, etc. Also, he's a professional writer and has some sense of the quality of his material. Also, on one level, frankly my dear he doesn't give a damn. (What will he do for Saturday? Something blasphemous, probably. I am excited. I'm just saying that if I were Ben Franklin and Bob were in the vicinity, I'd break out the kite.)

Also, Bob sometimes enjoys prodding the audience, pleasing them at first and then taking them where they may not want to go- JFK/MLK love nests and so on. Oooooh boy. Anyway, when it comes to my opening the door into my own secret garden -- the kitten licks its paw; the dew shimmers on the leaf -- maybe I will and maybe I won't. Come early and watch me drink my way toward a decision, until red-faced and huffing, I lurch into some York family heirloom and blot my copybook down to the bone.

Okay, SF, you happy now?

Bear Walk Wave Drill

That hot stretch we had here by the Bay a couple weeks ago opened some memory doors. I believe it’s common for a current physical sensation to connect somehow with a lost moment, some recollection that has lain undisturbed for years.

In my case, the trigger was heat. The memory was high school football. I don’t know if they’ve changed the rules, but 50 years ago on August 15 in the hottest days of the Virginia summer, two-a-day football practice started. Around August first, I would begin to imagine what I would soon experience, not just the bashing into and the running around and the jumping up and down but also the puking and sometimes the fainting, in spite of the salt tablets. I always thought, "You should have started running laps six months ago."

I never ran laps. I started from square one, a square characterized by a certain flabbiness and shortness of breath. Still, one of the small satisfactions of those three weeks of uncomfortable behavior – school always started the day after Labor Day at which point we dialed back to a mere four practices a week, plus a game – was watching the attrition. Lots of kids showed up, but every practice the numbers shrank. There was satisfaction in survival, and I never quit.

Originally, my dad made me go out for football, and it never occurred to me to turn that into a family drama. I didn't like playing, but I guess I liked pleasing my dad. At the time, I thought that intial command -- get in the car; practice starts in an hour -- was wrong. I thought it was bad parenting, and I decided if I ever had a kid, I would never make him go out for football. Yet I now think that he did the right thing -- for his kid. I was a mama's boy and a grandmama's boy and a great aunt's boy, too. We lived next door to my grandmother, and I was always being given little treats, like a prize pig.

I didn't get into confrontations, much less fights. A mama's boy can turn into a ladies man for sure, but he can also turn into a prop character from Flannery O'Connor. ("Everything That Rises Must Converge"; check it out.) So being forced to hit and be hit a hundred times a day was useful, at least for me. In football terms, I had a good first blow, but I lacked a "motor." That is, I would fight the guy opposite me all day, but I only made a tackle if the ball carrier ran into me, and on offense we had some plays where the tackle "pulled," that is, ignored the man opposite and ran briskly left or right to lead the interference. I was too slow. I interferred with my own running back.

Also, I wore "football glasses" with a thick rubber pad across the bridge of my nose so the metal frames wouldn't cut me. After five minutes of sweating I couldn't see a damn thing. It wasn't fun, but it was satisfying. I was never better than second string and then got the mumps -- yes, the mumps -- and dropped to third string. Senior year I didn't play because I wanted to take both physics and creative writing, and that meant I didn't have last period free.

My dad liked my taking physics and creative writing because by that time I was a bit of an academic star -- science medal, Most Intellectual and so on. When it came to academics, I had a better motor, though I sure have put-putted all over the place over the last four decades.

But that's not my point. I'm talking about the right way to raise a kid. When it comes to child-raising, my wife and I don't have any, so I never had the opportunity to develop my theories. My impression -- formed from a distance -- is that kids should be raised like chickens, either locked up in small cages or put out in the yard and allowed to range free.


And, once they are safely past the egg stage, how about a little football? Probably wrong for most but it was right for me. If I had it to do over again, I would ... do it over again. I didn't realize I had a good memory about those miserable days in the hot sun, wallowing in the dirt and the blood -- not much blood, but what there was was my own. I thought it was going to be a bad memory. But it isn't. My dad did a lot of things wrong, but not that.

Surprise. Surprise. Really big surprise.

Yet Another Classic Summer Rerun

August 25, 2004
She Doth Teach the Torches to Burn Bright -- with Headlights Like That

I think they call it "found art," when you drag a piece of junk out of the dumpster, glue it to the wall and call it "Florence Nightingale's Prolegomena to a Better Metaphysics"

An equivalent is English as gibberish, as in the instructions for operating a cheap VCR that have been written by someone with only a glancing knowledge of the language.

Another gift from the ashes is English that is an insult to the basic sense and beauty of the language, of the kind you find in certain press releases and advertisements where the problem is not that the writer is taking risks in the strange lands of languages not his own but has apparently failed to keep his head above water in the vast sea of his own tongue.

Ridiculing this kind of stuff strikes me as a lazy kind of column writing, both lazy and condescending. And not just because the difference between what these writers do to English and what George Bush does to meaning -- a far more worthy topic -- is the difference between a butcher and Jack the Ripper.

But sometimes it is just irresistible.

I present for your inspection a catalog description recommending the purchase of a romantic sculpture of Romeo and Juliet. The sculpture looks like something by a senile Rodin -- the artistry gone, the artist yearning for his lost hormones.

The work is a naked torso of a naked woman with a naked young man standing behind her -- Romeo and Juliet getting serious about getting busy! First observation: Juliet has these enormous breasts, and Juliet, as we recall, was not quite 14 years old.

If Juliet had looked like this, when her parents complain about death having plucked the sweetest flower from the field of life, one of the servants would have added, "And Hooters, methinks, hath lost a waitress."

Also, our new Juliet looks in her early 30s, minimum, while Romeo has this "boy band" mop. Recall all those references to "old Capulet" and to how young Lady Capulet was when she got married? What we have here is not "Romeo and Juliet" but "Romeo and Mrs. Robinson"!

None of this is really my point. It is the text accompanying this ... thing ... that filled me with envy. First the headline:

Place it on the shelf of your living room and let the world know you're a connoisseur of the finest art.

"Shelf of your living room" is about half a bubble off. Dull American or struggling immigrant? Let us continue.

There is much history behind this superbly crafted piece of art. Romeo and Juliet was one of the most influential tragedies ever written by world-renowned playwright William Shakespeare.

Not "admired." Not "soul-stirring." Not even "performed." The play is "influential." It makes people love? It makes people die? I see bumper stickers: What Would Romeo and Juliet Do?!?

And, now, for the first time, you can own this rendering of the two lovers engaged in a passionate embrace.

Not to be indelicate but what we have here is Romeo playing "supermarket" by squeezing one of the melons. I guess this is an embrace, though you could also call it copping a feel.

Our bronze-plated statue is a must for devotees of Shakespeare's most famous story, enthusiasts of his work, or everyday people who have an interest in finely sculpted art.

Okay. Let us move through this passage methodically. Every devotee would want this on the shelf of his loving room, no doubt about that. But the writer reassures the "Hamlet" crowd and the "Othello" bunch and even those who prefer the comedies that if you squint just the littlest bit, it's Ophelia and Hamlet, or Desdemona and Othello (squint a lot), or Beatrice and Benedict -- or Rosalind and Celia if that diagrams your sentence. Yet here's something for "everyday people" who just happen to like "finely sculpted art" because...

It can also make a sophisticated gift for any wild-eyed couple, whether long-time married or newly consummated. The powerful imagery of this bronze will surely evoke sensuous feelings in even the most inhibited individuals.

Wild-eyed? I want it now. Inhibited? See wild-eyed; you'll want it soon enough. Newly consummated????? Ah, this is where I fall in love with this description, and not only because the idea of "newly consummated couple" is either great poetry or great nonsense. No, what I love is the fact that "newly consummated" is NOT hyphenated, which is exactly right since the AP StyleBook says you do not hyphenate adverbs modifying adjectives. And I guess that makes it nonsense. No one cares if poetry follows the AP StyleBook.

Meanwhile, back in the catalog:

... adorn your living room with this noble statuette and let it move you to new heights of affection for your mate.

Measures: 16" x 13" x 21". Weight: 9.6 lbs.

$99.95 Additional shipping charge $9.95

No mention of handling charges, and for once this is a item where you can actually see the handling!

Now, for those who have waited so patiently:

What man art thou that thus bescreen'd in night So stumblest on my counsel?

Full disclosure: The original link was dead, but I found the noble sculpture offered elsewhere at an even better price.

The Incredible Dullness of Dreams

Since this is the time of year I start having nightmares about teaching, last night I *willed* myself to have a teaching dream and then to remember it. Well, as you know well -- perhaps weller than I -- an experiment is a success even if it is a failure, that is, if all the requisite protocols and conditions are observed and nothing happens.

Nada.

Last night I think we did rather better than nada. (Spanish for something) happened, though it certainly did not seem to have much to do with teaching. But when I awoke for either the first or the forty-first time from the light sleep that characterizes the end of the night's sleep state, I did remember that I had pledged to remember.

And guess what? I did ... remember. Here's what I remember dreaming. This is truth, not just truthiness.

* I dreamed that I was looking at Natalie Wood in an old-fashioned automobile of the sort from the early days of that mode of transport driving down a very steep hill and over an embankment. And there was a voiceover that said: "This is the most dangerous movie stunt ever attempted." Natalie Wood was in a rather lavish comedy about the racing in the early days of automobiling, and I saw that movie, but there was no scene like this.

*And then I dreamed that a woman was showing Jason Robards Jr. -- like Wood, long since dead -- a painting on a wall. And Jason Robards Jr. said that he had owned paintings by the same artist, but that he had given them to Mrs. (can't remember name). The woman commented once more on the painting, and once more Jason Robards Jr. said he had owned paintings by the same artist, but that he had given them to etc. And in in the dream I thought, "He is having an affair with Mrs. (I can't remember her name), and this is his way of letting the woman to whom he is talking know that fact. But then Jason Robards Jr. said he was going to visit Mr. and Mrs. (I can't remember the name), and I thought perhaps I had jumped to a conclusion, and that he and Mr. and Mrs. etc. were just friends.

* My wife and I were in a the auditorium of a movie theater, and we decided to leave. No movie was, in fact, on the screen and the lights were on, but I don't recall if that was our reason for leaving. As we walked out through the lobby, there was a barrier made of yellow tape strung between stanchions blocking the front doors, the doors through which we intended to exit. A young man in the lobby, obviously a theater employee, said, "You can't go out that way." And then he added, "I'll have to stamp your hand so you can get back in." And I told him that he was saying the wrong thing, that he should just say that we can go out that way but that if we don't get our hand stamped, we can't come back in. And he said, "I have to say what I'm told to say." About that time some young people walked passed us and out the door. But as the walked through the lobby to exit, another theater employee gave them yellow flyers, which they immediately threw on the ground. My wife and I started to leave also, but first she picked up the yellow flyers from the floor of the lobby and put them in a trash can.

Now, if you have read this far you will probably say, "No. I haven't read this far. I stopped a long time ago because these are not very interesting dreams. But someone who had read this far might well go whole hog and ask, 'Okay. What do these dreams mean to you, sir?'"

To which question that might be expressed but probably won't I can only say that I dunno. I guess such dreams suggest I am a bit of a pedant, who would like people to say what they mean in the first place. But if my subconscious is trying to get at something about how I teach, this is rather roundabout.

Subconscious! Say what you mean!

Be clear as you were with that business about my wife picking up someone else's trash out of the goodness of her heart, which is what my wife has done and will in the future do. But that's not some dream secret, that's documentary.

And what that has to do with the price of melons in Katmandu your guess is as good as mine.

Things That Call Roll in the Night

Every year in August I get the back-to-school back-to-teaching nightmares, even those years I taught summer school and had thus not really been away from teaching. It's something about August, particularly warm August nights, so rare here in the Bay Area. But tonight is warm. The electric fan is buzzing, and I remember how it was back in Virginia before air conditioning. The electric fan didn't do much good. It just invested a great deal of circular motion, the result of which was the movement of large volumes of air short distances to dubious effect. If that's not a metaphor for teaching, well, roll your own. Tonight I am going for lucid dreaming, that state in which you dream and know you are dreaming and control your behavior in the dream. I'm going to dream about teaching and I won't be late for class or be without my notes or, as in the rawest of nightmares, know nothing about who I am or where or I am or who these people are sitting in the seats, knowing only that here is a class and it's my job to teach it. Tonight I am going to cultivate the dream state, and we shall see what we shall dream.

Alcohol Involved; Were Depressed about Global Warning, Absence of Wings, Gas Prices, says Landlady; Alleged Mel Gibson Slurs Remain Uncomfirmed

From USA Today:

Penguins die in Texas wreck

Really, You Need to Get the Black Box Drunk

I read that Jodie Foster and other friends and acquaintances of Mel Gibson are defending him against the charge he's an anti-Semite. I would suggest they employ the black box theory of psychology; that is, let's not guess at what is inside the black box; let's limit ourselves to a description of what the black box does.

Let's say some of Mel Gibson's very best friends are Jews, as he says, though what that might mean in Hollywood, land of the air kiss and the Byzantine deal, is anybody's guess. Let's imagine him greeting one of those friends and that friend's wife.

Gibson says: "So great to see you two." But is he thinking?

1) "Jesus was a Jew. When I see you it's like looking into the face of my beloved Savior, with a side order of Mary Magdalene."

or

2) "You lousy money-grubbing kike, not to mention the shiksa whore you rode in on."

Let's assume worst case. Let's assume thought balloon number two. But if that is where it stops, at a rude thought, then existentially speaking he is not an anti-Semite, at least in that space where your world and his overlap. All things considered, I think Gibson's defenders should leave it at a description of observed behavior, which ideally should include one or more examples of his conduct that seem antithetical to and/or destructive of anti-Semitism.

But there's his movie and his dad and his old Australian friends, all of which really do make us wonder what's going on under the hood of that black box.

I mean, was there ever a racist Southerner who did not boast about how well he got along with black people, not including, of course, those bad boys he helped lynch?

And when I say helped I'm including those guys standing back in the shadows, holding the murderers' coats.

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Handling the Truth

This is one of those days I wish a thousand people read this blog so I could get a thousand suggestions.

The problem is: Which political prognosticators are the most accurate? Which pundits and/or pollsters are most often correct?

With the rise of the Internet -- and doesn't that phrase sound like something from a George Lucas backstory? -- it has become simplicity itself to aggregate six or a dozen websites to provide an overview, a pulse-taking, of politics in the U.S. But one -- meaning me and maybe you -- is quite naturally drawn to those sites that confirm one's hopes for the future. And that can lead to confusion and disappointment.

I mean that in 2000 and 2004 I spent a lot of time reading pundits and pollsters who gave the most positive view of Democratic prospects. I enjoy a good pep talk, but I don't want to be self-deluded. There is a practical application of having better data. My wife and I don't give vast amounts to our favorite Democrats, but we do give something, and accurate polling/predicting help us direct our contributions.

But the real point is that I do follow the "horse race" aspect of politics, whatever my reason, and I would like to see as clearly as possible -- if only for my own satisfaction -- who's ahead and who's behind as the horses come into the stretch.

This is where I am currently getting my "best guesses" on what will happen in November: Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia and the Cook Report, which shows up in a weekly email. My favorite, however, is the Iowa Electronic Markets website, because of its accuracy and its rationale.

In the IEM, investors put up real money to buy shares in political outcomes. (If you need to know more than that, click through.) The point is that in terms of recent presidential elections, the IEM has been slightly more accurate than the an average of the best-known polls in predicting not just who will win or lose but what the actual vote share will be. As I understand it, the theory is that if a sufficient number of people "buy" shares in a possible political outcome, their collective wisdom is considerable because the act of investing money with the possibility of personal gain, or the simple satisfaction of I-told-you-so, allows them to differentiate between what they want to happen and what they actually think will happen.

I don't fully grasp the implications of this idea, since the Internet stock bust shows that not every financial market operates rationally. But experience suggests that IEM does. It certainly has become one of my favorites. It showed last time that Kerry would lose by very nearly the margin by which he lost. And now the consensus of IEM market investors is that the Dems have a better than 50-50 chance of taking back the house but only a 1-4 shot at taking the Senate.

Any of you readers have a favorite source -- be it Magic Eight Ball or Ouija Board -- when it comes to handicapping future elections? I can handle the truth.

Yet the Odds of Getting to Heaven Remain: 6-1

The great Patrick Finley Fantasy Baseball league furor seems to have sputtered out. A couple league members raged against my obscenely ingenious trade. A couple said why don't the rest of you get a life?

Half the league said nothing. I'll be coming back to that fact.

But first the outcome of the great trade debate. I rescinded the trade because disapproval of myself by others makes me uncomfortable. That's just a fact. That's the wind I sail into, tacking all the while so that I am not blown too far off course. Some people have the constant wind of self-approval and self-interest at their back -- on a "dead run" in the nomenclature of the sailor -- and they sail straight on till morning. Anyway, I backed off with the permission of the other party in the trade.

I was disappointed but not so much by the outcome as the process. I had hoped that the league members would vote on the acceptability of the trade. I had hoped for involvement, ideally resulting in a 5-4 vote (I had recused myself) and then an acceptance of the result. Indeed, I would have preferred losing 5-4 if you get down to it. I like the idea of a fair debate followed by a close vote. Of course, I want minority rights protected, etc. etc., but to me the emblem of a people's government is an up-or-down vote and the acceptance of that vote.

It's apathy that irks me. That's one of the aspects of the reign of George Bush that infuriates me. In 2000 and 2004, so many people voted with their broad bottoms; that is, they sat at home and did not vote at all. That was even worse than voting for Nader, which was pretty horrific.

And, of course -- and you may say more to the point -- Bush lost the 2000 election and may have lost the 2004. The process must be fair and it must be transparent. I would not want to have my trade rescinded by a vote of 6-5 with only nine people voting. At that point, I would have called in Jimmy Carter.

But back to the fantasy baseball league. On one level I would have been delighted with a 5-4 vote against my trade and the logic underlying it because it would have shown an enthusiasm for our little league, and it would have pleased me to be part of a functioning democratic process.

This is sentimental, I know, though it seems to me that the greater sentimentality is always to insist on consensus. You have been in such situations probably, where participants in a discussion are bullied into superficial agreement, a process that drives the tensions underground rather than acknowledging that even though we are not on the same page, that does not mean we going to throw away the book.

I recall my election as department chair in the old Communication Department at beautiful USF a long decade ago. I had a rival. The unit was divided, but I knew how to count noses and I figured I would win by a vote of -- here's a true irony -- 6-3 but no worse than 5-4. A supporter of my rival asked that I withdraw from the race because the vote would be divisive. I was told that anything other than consensus would damage department morale.

In retrospect, I might have said, well why doesn't he quit since I am going to kick his ass?

Instead, I said that I would be perfectly happy losing the election, but that I was going to stand. I was going to stand even if I lost 8-1. It seemed to me that it would be valuable to acknowledge disagreements publicly and then get on with the business of getting along. Too much was hidden by smiles. Correction: Too much was accompanied by a side dish of smiles that did nothing to mask the bitterness of the disagreement.

My rival withdrew, and I was elected by acclamation, in a spirit of false consensus. I still remember the expression of woe on a colleague's face, which at least was honest.

It was not a particularly successful three years as chair, my goodness no. I think I would have been better off winning 6-3 or 5-4, all the cards on the table, the pennant at the department's mast showing exactly from which quarter the wind was blowing.

The Man Who Invented the Protractor is Running for President

Here is his hot new video, "The Last Leaf: Director's Cut."

And here is his latest commercial, "A Dog Called Hope."

Here is his first campaign commercial.




Wednesday, August 25, 2004

I Love the Smell of Chalk Dust in the Morning. It Smells Like "I" Before "E" Except After "C"

I need a signature seasonal column, one that the fans start to anticipate weeks ahead of time and even build a special evening around, maybe inviting an exchange student or an estranged relative so all can bask in the glow of the computer screen as the link is clicked and once again it's:

Magic. Utter wonderful spell-checked magic.

Jon Carroll has his signature Thanksgiving column, which is essentially the same old column with a few names changed each year to show he's not just emailing it in. Herb Caen had that holiday column -- it was a poem, I think -- that suggested people will read the most awful drivel if it's stuffed with people's names because in Herb's case his faithful readers were twitching with the hope of someday having their names in the column.

Oh, I made Herb Caen's column once -- for misspelling the name of San Francisco's vice mayor in this huge story on the city's power brokers.

"That was about the time the drinking got out of control," I like to say. (Pause.) "Herb's, not mine!"

Of course, I felt like crying. He's dead, and now I tell lies.

Anyway anyway, it's a good thing to have a signature seasonal column since it saves wear and tear, and it reminds readers you have been around for a long time. ("Editor's Note: This column first ran in December 1973 during the dark days of the Macy's underwear riots, giving hope to....")

I shouldn't be too disdainful. Twenty years from now, a columnist will be reiterating for more than the 20th time a 9/11 column I'll hang my heart's hat on. But that gifted columnist will stand next to a mound of dreck regurgitated by lesser comrades.

Still, the seasonal contemplation is a legitimate subgenre. So I am going with:

Back to School!

Actually, I'm not going back to school this year. I am on sabbatical, which the top academic brains are granted to free them up to work on world peace or hydrogen fusion or whatever. And while I'm futzing with the Big Ideas and the Deep Truths, I don't have to gotoclass preparelectures gradestories advisestudents attendfacultymeetings for one whole year. Heck, I can even unsew my lips from the dean's butt if I feel like it.

Though that would be rash.

Point is that I miss going back to school. I have always liked going back to school. When you lump together public school and graduate school and the time I've taught -- which is now a longer run of years than the time I spent as a journalist -- good goddess! it's 35 years.

I always liked school.

If you were a bookish child, when they unlocked the school building at the end of August or the first of September and let you back in, you felt like George Bush in 1980 when Nader showed up with the coke: Bring it on!

I particularly remember buying the tools, the instruments, the basic equipment. I am not talking about buying clothes. My mother "took the boy shopping'" for school clothes, and she would not buy me cream-colored chinos because they would be too hard to keep clean. She always bought me two pairs of corduroy pants, one medium brown and one chocolate.

Didn't care about the clothes. Loved the zipper notebook, the best of which had slots for your protractor and your compass. Ah, little grasshoppers who read me now seeking guidance about what was and what, perchance, may be, there was a time when education consisted almost entirely of using a compass to draw circles on yellow paper and a protractor to draw 45 degree angles. Today people in India do this for us and do it better than us. But there was a time.

The zipper notebook had to be strong -- well-stitched, cover made of thick cardboard covered with fake leather -- because this was long long long long ago, and the only people who had backpacks were Boy Scouts. When you had homework, you crammed all your books inside your zipper notebook and zipped it up, crammed to bursting. Sooner or later it would burst, and making sure it did not burst too soon trained you in the appreciation of cause and effect when it came to the elasticity of cardboard covered in leatherette. But you did not need to be obsessive about the preservation of your zipper notebook, for you got a new one every year if you were an upwardly aspiring blue-collar child the heads of whose parents were filled with dreams, such dreams.

New shoes, too. I remember SnapJacks, which were shoes without shoelaces, but neither were they loafers. They were huge Frankenstein shoes, which closed about your foot like a trap around a small animal, using a metal device attached to the tongue of the shoe and to the shoe itself that levered the shoe closed once your tootsie was safe inside. SnapJacks, charcoal trousers and a pink shirt: You were to die for it would seem reasonable to conclude.

I am starting to remember other things now. I remember acne, for instance. Oh, there used to be a lot of acne. In some generations it was sprinkled lightly around, but in other generations it was concentrated on only a few, and very rarely one member of a particular population cohort got all of it.

And so it happened in the reign of Eisenhower Augustus I was that youth.

Acne ebbs and flows in its intensity, and all I prayed for as the first day of school approached was not its disappearance -- my faith was already itself ebbing -- but just please that I hit school that first day in kind of a trough of scarlet pimpleness. I had a special medicine I smeared on the zits that probably wasn't a medicine at all but brown makeup dignified and made acceptable by the name of medicine. On my best days I looked sort of ...

Splotched. Flakey. As if I had started to delaminate.

I remember Kay McDonald. She was -- my word, what was the nomenclature of the times? -- stacked. I'm almost sure.

Stacked.

First day of school, face with the topography of the far side of the moon, not exactly hiding from Kay McDonald, more like orbiting her the way Neptune orbits the sun, way out there out of sight but caught by the gravity, drawn, distant, invisible.

And nobody else is wearing SnapJacks.

I don't think I am going to make this an annual column after all.

Postscript/August 2006: Some of the links are dead, but I've let them be, since both the original post and the reprinting of it are exercises in nostalgia. It's like the Romantic preference for ruins, dwarfed and lonely in vast landscapes. Let us contemplate loss and absence and the inability of memory to fill the void:

"Fled is that music. Do I wake or sleep?"

Mel Gibson-Pamela Anderson Love Child is Proud to be a Jew. I May Not Be Observant, But I'm Certainly Alert, Says Barry Ben-Gibson

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Darwin's Cat Presents the 15-Minute Man

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First Dixie, Then the Battle Hymn of the Republic: That's What a Southern Liberal Would Do. For an Encore, Whatever Sinatra Comes to Mind.

I am thinking about doing one of Einstein's famous thought experiments, identical except for the fact actual containers of whiskey would be consumed. We wouldn't just think about consuming actual containers of whisky

If I understand correctly, Mel Gibson's blood-alcohol level was 0.12. Our experiment would require either borrowing or renting a breathalyzer, then drinking one's way up to 0.12 and then seeing whom would you curse, whom you would threaten and whom you would blame for whatever woes a blood-alcohol level of 0.12 would bring bubbling to the surface.

If necessary, you can go sit in the front seat of your car and have your wife or signficant other approach the vehicle from back left wearing that cop costume she wears on Halloween (and on certain special anniversaries) slamming her official Naughty Nightstick into the palm of her hand and jingle-jangling her handcuffs.

On second thought, lose the fantasy component.

But go sit in the car and imagine the cops, the flashing lights, the impending community service and loss of driving privileges. And at that moment you would then open your mouth and ...?

Close it again? Or is that hopelessly old fashioned?