World Wide Web Log of Pointless Ramblings

My Liberal Economic Philosophy, Sans Vitriol

2010-11-09T03:50:00.000-08:00

I promised myself that I wouldn't spew political opinion in this World Wide Web log any more. Now that I'm breaking that promise, I'm at least resolved to do it in a calm, sane way. Restore sanity, as they say.

So I've been reading a lot about economics lately. It's obviously a big issue, as the economy continues to languish and the unemployment rate refuses to budge. I've come up with a lot of conclusions, but they're always subject to further changes as I learn more. It's complicated stuff.

Let's just start with the problem right now. It's not that the government is spending too much, or regulating too much, or whatever. It's that there's not enough spending, a.k.a. demand. An economy is fundamentally about spending. People buy stuff, and that money goes to someone who buys something else, and it keeps circulating through the system.

In the last decade, whatever you want to call it (the Aughts is still the only name I've found that's halfway decent), American consumers were superstars of spending. American spending was essentially keeping the world economy afloat. The national savings rate was in the negative numbers, meaning Americans were spending well beyond their means.

That's unfortunately not very sustainable. Now Americans' savings rate is at about 5%. That's great in a way, as it means more stability for individuals. But it also sucks in a way, because it means that the world economy isn't artificially propped up by profligate Americans.

The housing collapse was the spark that caused the meltdown, as it caused middle-class people's wealth to collapse. That spark then lit up everything else -- industries dependent on housing collapsed, people started spending less, etc. And of course, there was the banking industry, which made such complicated securities out of these mortgages that even they couldn't untangle them when their values plummeted. That just added fuel to the fire.

So when you have a chain reaction like this, what do you do, if you're a government? You of course try to stop the chain reaction. You can't let the banks collapse -- to extend the metaphor, that would be like letting a forest fire reach an oil well. Like it or don't, banks are at the heart of the whole economic system. I've gone through this part in a previous post, so I won't rehash it here.

And the other thing you can do is infuse cash into the system. That means stimulus spending. When there's not enough demand, there's not enough money circulating. If the government puts more money into the system, it can get more money circulating through the economy. This can at the very least forestall the freefall.

Basically, bad times are not the time to worry about budget deficits. Budget deficits are definitely not good things in the long run. Pile up too much debt and the whole system could collapse, as you might not have the money to pay off your debts. But when the economy is in freefall, you kinda have to worry about the short term, get things stabilized, and then concern yourself with the long term.

A good time to balance budgets is when the economy is doing great. Then, the government doesn't need to infuse cash into the system. That's what happened in the 1990s, and what should have happened in the Aughts. It's not what we should be doing now. Balancing the federal budget would mean removing a lot of demand, that provided by the government, out of the economy at a time when demand is most needed. Deficit spending (Keynesian economics, if you want to get technical) is the approach that we took in the 1930s, and it kept us afloat until the boom times returned.

The key phrase used then was "the government must be the spender of last resort." Note the "last" part. The government needs to step in when no one else is able to. Then, when the economy can run on its own, the government can step out. Essentially, the government has to do the opposite of what people are doing. It has to balance the rest of the economy.

If you don't the have the government smoothing things out, you end up with lots of huge booms and busts that cause a lot of destruction and make for a weaker economy overall. That's how the American economy was in the 1800s -- every ten years or so, a major panic would occur that wiped out all the previous gains. We learned our lesson, though: After the reforms during the Great Depression, we had a record 60+ straight years with lots of booms and only minor recessions until recently.

The recent Great Recession occurred because we abandoned those principles, during the Aughts in particular. The government should have balanced budgets in the Aughts, as I mentioned. And the Fed should have kept interest rates higher. By keeping interest rates low, they encouraged more and more people to buy houses, inflating the housing bubble. They didn't balance things out by doing the opposite of what the private economy was doing.

The mistake people make is to think of government spending like they think of household spending. "We're having to live within our means," they say, "and so should the government." But it's not a valid comparison, because you spend money on yourselves, while the government spends money on all of us. Only a small fraction of the money the government spends is on itself, and even most of that is to pay people who figure out how to spend money on us. Depriving the government of money means depriving our economy of demand.

That said, not all government spending provides the necessary bang for the buck. You don't want the government just randomly buying up businesses and property -- that would just provide a whole wad of cash to the owners of those businesses, who would likely just stash the money or sit on thrones made of million-dollar bills. And moreover, the government will be less motivated by profit in running those businesses, and thus will probably not create the best products.

Since I opened that can of worms, I should expand on it. Most businesses work best as private operations. The Soviet Union was a good test case for the opposite approach, that of having government run the economy, and it was a miserable failure. In an emergency, the government can and should step in and make sure a major, important company doesn't collapse, as it did with GM. As with the banks, a collapse of such a large company would have added much more fuel to the fire. But after the business is on its feet again, the government needs to sell it off. And the Obama administration is currently doing exactly that with GM.

This doesn't mean every single human endeavor is best left to private enterprise, however. You have to judge them on a case-by-case basis. Police are not best left to private enterprise. Only the people who could afford to pay the police bill would get protection. It would suddenly become a much more dangerous nation.

This will open yet another large can of worms, but it's my view that health insurance doesn't work as a private enterprise. You have to look at where the business incentives lie. If you're selling apples, your incentive is to provide good apples at a reasonable cost, so that people will come back and buy more apples. With apples, the business's incentives work for the benefit of the consumer.

But if you're a health insurance company, your incentive is to become the one choice they can choose at a reasonable cost, i.e., the one offered at work. So that's a virtual monopoly right there. Granted, if enough people complain, the workplace might ditch you and go for some other plan. But it's difficult to make that happen -- it's not like just choosing a better apple at the store.

And then your further incentive, as a private health insurance company, is to not pay claims. You make more money when you pay claimants less. The unofficial motto of health insurance companies has long been "Delay, Deny, Defend": First you delay payment of the claims, hoping that the people will give up and pay out of their own pockets. Then you deny the claim, using whatever fine print you can as cover. Usually, people will give up at this point. If they sue, then you defend yourself in court. It works, and makes the health insurance companies loads of money.

Granted, insurance companies aren't this bad about every claim. They provide some payments without a struggle. But their incentive lies in providing just enough so that people don't revolt and charge your headquarters with torches and pitchforks. To me, that's not a system that best serves the consumer. A government-run insurance plan wouldn't do this. It might have other faults, but it wouldn't have perverse, anti-consumer incentives.

Anyway, before I derailed myself, I was going to go into the "bang for the buck" argument. The question of how best to help an economy gets down to talking about bang for the buck. Most anything you can do can help somewhat. You can throw a twenty on the ground and that could possibly help -- someone could pick it up and use it. But it's just as possible that it will be eaten by a dog. That's not a very good bang for the buck, as that money likely will not circulate through anything but the dog's digestive track.

Meanwhile, if you spend that $20 buying dog treats, that money will go partially to the dog-treat purveyor, partially to the dog-treat manufacturer, and they will all spend that money on Pixie Sticks or outboard motors or catheter delivery services or whatever else, and a-circulating we go!

The "bang for the buck" test is esecially relevant when you start talking about taxes. Any tax cut will keep some money circulating through the economy. The question is which will give you the most bang for the buck. Will a tax cut to the middle class keep the most money circulating? Or will a tax cut to the wealthy?

For the most part, the tax cut to the middle class will provide more bang for the buck. A middle-class person will more likely spend that money on a product or service. A wealthy person will more likely just let that money sit in the bank, because they're less in need of a product or service. The bank could possibly use that money on something that will help the economy. Or it could just leave it in there as cash reserves. Or it could use it for credit default swaps or one of these other complicated financial instruments that are really just bets among rich people, no more helpful for the economy than if Bill Gates bet Steve Wozniak a billion dollars that he could recite pi to a hundred digits.

But, you say, because you're a conservative congressman, tax cuts to the wealthy will spur investment in new businesses! Well, maybe. I'm willing to bet that a very small percentage of tax cuts to the wealthy actually goes to business investment. But regardless, business investment is not what the economy most needs right now. It needs demand. Businesses often need investment, of couse. But what what they need even more is customers. Without more customers, there's no point in investing in increasing capacity, which would mean increasing supply.

Sure, there are some businesses that need cash so they can grow and thus help the overall economy grow. And some great new businesses could be fostered. But we're talking bang for the buck here. You could give money to the middle class, which would almost assuredly increase demand, because they need to buy stuff. Or you could send that money to the rich, who might maybe invest it in a business that might maybe be able to expand a bit, which might maybe increase supply in a time when there's already too much supply and not enough demand. You see the difference? The percentage of money that ends up circulating through the economy is much higher when you just give the same money to a middle-class person.

This also gets at why it's important to have a strong middle class. If you concentrate all the money among a small group of indviduals, you end up with fewer consumers, and thus less demand. You see this in third-world nations. They don't have much of an economy at all, because only a few people can afford to buy stuff, and those few people can only buy so many of the basic staples that are the fundament of any economy. One person can only so many steaks, as my 10th-grade history teacher used to say.

You may have heard that the United States currently has a huge and rapidly widening gulf between the rich and everyone else. Unlike with third-world nations, this gap isn't because of corruption and oppression. It's more a case of capitalism working too well. I'll explain.

Capitalism is a marvelous thing, no doubt. But it's not perfect. Some people would have you believe that if everything were just left to the free market, everything would work out perfectly. If only life were that simple!

Capitalism channels people's self-interest into economic production in a marvelous way. But left unchecked, it overrewards the winners at the expense of everyone else, and sows the seeds of its own destruction. It gives all the spoils to those who own things -- businesses, property, what have you -- and almost nothing to those who just work hard but don't own anything. Ownership is valued above hard work.

In the early days of industrialization, this is exactly what you saw. You saw the owners of companies making billions upon billions and establishing trusts, a.k.a. monopolies. And they paid their laborers starvation wages, literally -- just enough to keep them alive so that they could come back and work the next day. These folks would live in company towns, make just enough to barely feed their families, and if they got sick, their families didn't eat that day.

This is what led many people to think that communism or even anarchism was a better idea. More reasonable solutions came in the form of laws and regulations: ending child labor, 40-hour work weeks, minimum wage, unions, etc. All these things cut into company profits and stifled growth -- exactly the things that business organizations always decry when the government proposes anything having to do with any business. But they were the right things to do, and our country is stronger for it.

But I'm verging into a moral argument, and I'm trying to avoid those. I'm trying to focus instead on pragmatics -- what actually makes for a robust economy. Pragmatically speaking, having a few people own everything means having too few consumers, as you have in the third-world countries. John Rockeller can only buy so many steaks.

So in creating an ideal economic structure, you have to create a balance: Use capitalism in some arenas and regulations and/or socialism in others. I know, I said the "s" word. Socialism these days is being conflated with communism, fascism, Zoroastrianism -- basically everything that Americans think they don't like. But socialism is selectively placed throughout our system, and that's good thing.

Social Security, for example, is socialism. It's forced redistribution of wealth, from those who are working hard to create wealth (i.e., workers) to those who aren't doing anything but consuming (i.e., fogies). And it works beautifully. Before Social Security, half of the elderly population in the United States was basically starving to death. Now, elderly people are thriving so well that they can yell things like "Keep the government out of my Medicare!" at rallies that contradict the very principles that are keeping them alive! Hooray!

OK, I promised I wouldn't get all mean, sorry about that one. The point remains that if we had a perfectly free-market system, there would be no Social Security. There would be no Medicare either, and old folks would have to pay exorbitant rates just to have health insurance (another problem with private insurers -- they sure as hell don't want old people on the rolls) and a huge majority would go without it. Then they'd only come in to the emergency rooms, run up huge tabs, and those costs would then be passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher premiums, and so on.

Basically everything the government does is socialism. Roads are socialism. Everyone pays, the government does it, everyone benefits. Imagine if it were done by a private company. Everything would be a tollroad. If you didn't have the money, you don't get to go places. One company could buy up all your routes to work and charge you $100 per day. You'd have less incentive to even go to work, and your productivity would plummet. The road companies would make massive profits and the rest of us would be a lot poorer.

Adam Smith would agree with me on all this, by the way. I've read "The Wealth of Nations," (OK, I've read parts of it) and found a few very interesting passages. In one he says that there are many things that shouldn't be left to private industry -- parks are the example he gives. He also has disdain for people who own things but don't work to produce anything, saying they just leech from the system (I'm paraphrasing here). He would not like many of the investment class that think they're living according to his philosophies.

Of course, he was a strong advocate of the profit motive in many arenas, as am I. The trick is figuring out which arenas should be socialist and which should be capitalist. As I stated before, I think health insurance should be socialist. It works for Medicare and Medicaid, which both cover the most difficult people to insure (the poor and the elderly) and does a reasonable, if imperfect, job. If it can manage the most problematic customers, imagine what it could do for the rest of us. While private health insurance companies pay 15-20% overhead, Medicare and Medicaid have an overhead of about 3%, because it's not paying legions of claims adjusters and marketing consultants and lawyers. That could mean your premiums are 12-17% higher with private health insurance than it would be with public health insurance.

Anyway, I'm getting off-track again -- but I hope this illustrates the kinds of calculations that should go on when determining whether something should be publicly or privately controlled. Both sides should leave moral arguments and idelogical dogma out of it, because those just don't go anywhere. You might say that government control of anything is bad, because the government stinks. I might say that the government is awesome, and should control everything. When two different ideologies butt heads, nothing constructive results.

What should happen instead is to decide on a common goal and then evaluate each option in terms of how it meets that goal. In the case of the health insurance debate, it should be "What is best for the consumer?" Public health insurance would have its problems, to be sure. Governments don't tend to adapt very nimbly to changing circumstances, for example, and can be awfully bureaucratic. But I'd argue those are minor concerns compared to the fundamentally flawed private health insurance system, in which incentives work against the consumer.

If only public discourse could be like this. But this kind of thing bores too many people. They need fire, anger, emotion to keep interested. They need to be a good guy fighting against a bad guy. We all like to blame politicians for everything that's wrong with this country. But the politicians are only a reflection of their constituents. If we responded well to sane, reasonable people who make sound, measured judgements, we would be better off. But look at the Republicans: They spent two years refusing to compromise, filibustering everything, and demonizing Democrats at every opportunity. And they were rewarded for it. We say we want politicians who will work together, and then we elect people who refuse to.

It's not the politicans that are wrong with this country. It's the people. No one can say it, because the politicians have to suck up to us, and we have this mythology about ourselves that we are the best and most brilliant people in the world. But all that hubris is doing us in, as we do crazy things and then blame our minions, the politicians who grovel to our every demand.

OK, now I'm not only getting on a major sidetrack, I'm also spouting some major vitriol. Time to bring this one to a close. I'm sure I'm leaving some things out, because that's how it is with economic issues. It's extremely complicated stuff, and it requires that people be willing to embrace and explore complexities. Maybe some day.

Things I Love: My Beautiful Wootiful Baby

2010-10-25T16:35:00.001-07:00

My baby has been doing pretty darn well in her first week of life. Her poop is now a lovely mustard green that the pediatrician says is a great sign, but makes me less than entirely willing to eat mustard. She sleeps for long stretches, doesn't fuss much, knows her times tables cold, raps at an eight-grade level, and came this close to qualifying for Olympic trials in tetherball (and would have gotten in if not for those cheating Swedes -- I'm on to you, Jan Svankmeyer!)

Plus she's a cutey beauty pooty wootie woo. Booty Hootie Flutie schmoo. But it wasn't all cuteness and roses. The first few moments of her life were more anxious schmanxious wanxious terror schmerror werror of maternal death schmeath weath. My wife was bleeding profusely right after the little bean popped out, and had to be rushed to the operating room to save her life.

I was then shuttled off to the special care nursery, a dreary place where one very premature baby cried and cried and I sat in a rocking chair, my new baby in my arms, staring into her open eyes for the first time, thinking, "You know what baby, it might just be you and me. Hey, it might not be so bad! It could be like that show 'My Two Dads,' except with one fewer dad. Remember that show? Remember the '80s? Wasn't it a blast? Rubik's Cube, Pac-Man, crack cocaine, urban blight brought forth by a short-sighted Republican administration more interested in giving the rich a little more money to gamble with than making sure people have homes to live in ..." Then tears would start falling, less about homeless people in the '80s and more about the absolutely horrific thought that I could lose my wife.

But my wife is still here, a little worse for wear, but already being a wonderful mother. I get a little weepy in a good way at the sight of my little family. See, I've never been a particularly ambitious person. At times I thought I should become a famous screenwriter, and then a famous psychology researcher (because there are tons of those -- not one of my best plan there, I admit) and such and such, but all of those dreams were more means to an end, that of showing off so I can attract a woman whom I love and who will bear my children. Now I have that, and I feel a lot more fulfilled than I have ever been in my entire life.

And instead of worrying about myself quite so much, I do feel a new sense of purpose. I have to do all I can to protect this little kid. So I've already started treatments to strip her of the thetans that are polluting her soul:

What It's Like to Be a Twins Fan

2010-10-08T06:30:00.000-07:00

Let's say all you really wanted in life was to be in love. After years and years of trying and coming up empty, you finally meet someone you really like. You start dating. It's going well. You start to think this person might be "The One." You're giddy -- you've never felt this way about anyone before. So this is what all those love songs are about!

You propose marriage and this person says yes. Hooray! Excitement mounts as the big day approaches. It's a beautiful Saturday in August, and all of the people you love are there. This is your moment.

You stand at the altar with the love of your life. Joy, hope and love envelop you in a warm embrace. The minister asks for the rings.

Suddenly, Derek Jeter bursts into the church, smirks, and starts making love to your fiancee, in front of everyone. You are of course shocked, heartbroken and disgusted. Everyone else, though, begins shoveling praise onto Jeter for his amazing grasp of fundamentals, for his grace under pressure, and for generally being the most wonderful human being to ever walk the planet.

Now let's say this exact same thing happens every goddamn year. That's what it's like to be a Twins fan.

Lessons from the '80s

2010-10-02T05:02:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched "Adventures in Babysitting" at a party. I didn't see it when it originally came out, but I might as well have, because it contained just about everything I learned from TV and movies in the '80s. To wit:

1. Punching someone in the face is a perfect solution to any problem. When someone says something really terrible about a woman, you're supposed to punch him in the face. Or if he's threatening someone, and there seems to no way out -- one punch and problem solved! The great thing about punches to the face is that the guy immediately falls into deep unconsciousness. And you know that, given a reasonable amount of time, he'll get up again, no permanent damage done, and will never bother you or say such terrible things again. He knows he has been defeated.

I actually tried this once. In eighth grade I had a friend named Nathan whom I couldn't stand. I was a passive and overly polite kid, so I tended to attract the kind of people who got on everyone else's nerves. They got on mine too, of course, but I was too nice/timid to tell them to go away.

So Nathan was always annoying me, and I secretly resolved to punch him in the face next time he did. Sure enough, the next day, he was being a jerk, and I punched. But it was a light, ineffectual little punch that just glanced off his chin and didn't hurt him at all. He was more like "Uh, what was that?" I tried to pass it off as a little joke. He seemed to accept that.

2. Cities are horrific, lawless wastelands filled with gangs, hookers, homeless schizophrenics, and gangs of homeless hooker schizophrenics. Suburbs are the the place for normal, safe life, in which you biggest worry is acne. As soon as you cross the border into a city, you will immediately be attacked by screaming lunatics and street gangs that, by the way, happen to be very multicultural. That was another interesting part about the '80s: Each street gang had a good mix of white people, Latinos and black folk. I understand that it was due to the hiring quotas mandated by the affirmative action laws of the time.

3. Black people are always scary at first, but usually turn out to be super cool. If you're going to have a character who is just some guy, you'd make him white, of course! If you're going to make him black, he needs to start out with some level of menace to him. That menace is usually contradicted by him doing something awesome to help you out.

Granted, in "Adventures in Babysitting," there is one black guy chasing our heroes around the hellscape of Chicago who's pretty mean. But even he's really more of a middle-management guy, taking orders from the truly evil person, a white dude.

Every other black person scares our heroes at first, but later becomes awesome. One is a car thief that inadvertedly gets our heroes in trouble. But he always wants to help, and in the end he gets the chance by (spoiler alert) punching the evil white dude in the face.

The other prominent black guy is a blues musician -- our heroes wander onto his stage and are frightened of him and the crowd (all black people). But the bluesman says "you don't leave here until you play the blues," and of course they do so. And the crowd quickly turns from hard-eyed disdain to launching an overwhelming ovation. That's a great thing about performing in the '80s -- all you have to do is be on a stage and try really hard and the crowd will explode with joy. It doesn't matter if you're white as all hell and can't sing (this was the founding principle of The House of Blues, by the way).

4. When you raise your voice in a fancy place, every other patron immediately stops talking and all music stops on a dime. At one point, our heroes barge into a fancy French restaurant to confront Elizabeth Shue's two-timing boyfriend. As soon as things get heated, everyone else in the restaurant suddenly stops talking and stares at them like toddlers watching Elmo. And the violinist in the corner had to cut himself short at the exact same time, so as to not drown out the show. It's really out of consideration -- fancy people LOVE gawping at confrontations. Of course, no restaurant employee intervenes -- hey buddy, down in front! We're trying to watch two kids fighting here! Anyway, the scene ends with (spoiler alert) actually not a punch in the face, but a kick in the butt that pushes the mean guy onto a table. Problem solved. Next scene.

5. Quicksand is everywhere. OK, this wasn't in "Adventures in Babysitting." But it is a very prominent lesson I learned by watching TV in the '80s. I don't know if it was mainly old reruns or what, but somewhere I got the impression that falling into quicksand is a very common occurrence, and it's a good idea to lay out a contingency plan now. I know that after you fall in you have to stay still -- the more that you move, the faster you will sink. You have to hope you can grab onto someone's arm ... but uh-oh, you might pull them in too! Great! Now what?!?! Wait, there's a long vine over here that we can use to pull ourselves out! And it's a vine strong enough to withstand the downward pressure of an entire human being's weight plus the suction of quicksand! Phew!

If I Ruled the World ...

2010-08-27T21:11:00.000-07:00

... I would feed the children and fix global warming and kill all Republicans and blah blah blah. But then I'd get to the real work, which would be:

Making Public Restrooms Less Ambiguous: If there's one thing I hate about public restrooms, it's ambiguity. Ya know? If it's a one-person restroom, I try the knob. It seems to be locked. So I stand and wait. But wait, maybe I didn't try hard enough? I mean, I encountered a little resistance, but maybe it needs a bit more? I really gotta use the restroom here -- this is no time for half-measures!

So maybe I should try again. But then, I don't want to be that jackass who yanks at a locked door furiously, incredulous that a public restroom could be occupied with another human being. So I stifle the growing urgency in my bowels and wait a bit more.

Has this happened to you? Probably. I don't know, who gives a shit about you? This is me we're talking about. And I don't like not knowing for sure whether or not a bathroom is occupied. So that's why, if I ruled the world, all bathrooms would be like the ones on planes.

Except, not in almost every way. Bathrooms on planes are tiny and harsh, and like all things on planes, they transform what should be a glorious adventure (We're flying, goddamn it! A thousand million feet the air!) into a horrorscape of cramped, sanitized, polite agony.

But the one and only thing they do right on planes is the little light on the very top of the bathroom door that indicates whether or not it's occupied. And there's really no way that thing could lie. You slide the lock firmly into place, and the light goes on. Simple. Unambiguous.

And it spells comfort on the other side of the door as well. There are too many public restroom locking systems that are way too unreliable. I'm at the point where, if I encounter one of those locks where you press button inside the knob, I assume it's broken. It scoff at locks in knobs. I spit on them and curse them to El Diablo Chupacabra Hombre, the twisted demon child of Satan and the Chupacabra who is also a hombre, whatever that is exactly.

But a nice latch -- that's a different story. A big, solid latch that fits firmly into place, that is. Not one of these puny-ass little pencil-sized rods that casually slide into a shaky latch that hangs onto a door frame for dear life. I once went to the bathroom at Robert Frost's ancestral home in Vermont, "locked" one of those pathetic little wangles, and then had two people, in quick succession, burst through that flimsy facade straight into the bathroom. Each time I shouted "Someone's in here, SOMEONE'S IN HERE, SOMEONE'S IN HERE!!!!" until the fucking morons realized that someone indeed might be in here. This is the kind of emotionally scarring personal tragedy that I'm trying to avoid, people. To this day I still can't read Robert Frost without wanting to shit on his head. (I don't know if that's exactly related. Something about Robert Frost's head seems very shit-on-able. Maybe that's just me.)

Anyway, point is -- when I rule the world, all public bathrooms meant for one person will have massive deadbolts. And closing the deadbolt will trigger a massive light taking up the entire door that flashes the words "SOMEONE'S IN HERE!!!!!" If it breaks, you better fix it immediately, or I throw you in the pit of lava with the Republicans.

Banning the "Two Words: Blah Blah" Thing: You know this. People think they're hilarious and sassy when they say, "OK, two words: Less makeup" or "Three words: Shit on Robert Frost's head." I don't know why, but I hate it. So it's out.

OK, that one wasn't that great. So I'm going to switch tracks and talk about the English language. It's awesome, you know that? Through thousands of years of evolution, this marvelous language's glorious history of artistic achievement has culminated into a blog post about shitting on Robert Frost's head! Isn't that marvelous? And Awesome?

But it really is a very unique language. It's a language made up of a whole bunch of other languages smooshed together, like a turtle in a vat of peanut butter. That made no sense at all, but I'm going with it. Not sure why.

So we start our story with the Saxons. They were minding their own business up there in England, worshiping Baal, eating mint chutney, and playing the mezuzah, a traditional Jewish fife that is very small and is attached to doors. Then along came the Romans, who conquered them for no reason besides that they just liked to do that sort of thing.

The Romans eventually went away, and ended up not having a lot of lasting effect on the language. So I'm not sure why I mentioned them. But I'm on a roll, so here we go.

Then just dumb stuff happened until England was conquered by the Normans in 1066. The Normans were French, and they brought over a whole bunch of Frenchies to rule everything. And of course, because they were French, they preferred to continue to speak French and to be real dicks about it. Their words eventually got smooshed into the turtle/peanut butter pie like so much mayonnaise. Words like "rapport" and "pistol" and another 30% of all English words, according to this Wikipedia article I just found, are of French origin.

So now you have Saxon and French words living in the same language. But wait, there's still the Catholic Church. It was really into speaking Latin, because Jesus spoke Latin, seeing as how He was such a fan of the Roman Empire and all. Latin became the language of all written texts. And even though the few cognoscenti who could read Latin also spoke English, they couldn't bear to utter many of those low-class, insufficiently syllabled Saxon words. So they had to shift Latin words into English, words like "cognoscenti."

They ended up creating loads of synonyms. They would say "feline" instead of "cat." They would say "timorous" instead of "weak." They coined thousands of words that meant exactly the same thing as existing words, but you know what, those Latin-based words just sounded better, more sophisticated, more ... what's the word I'm looking for ... elitist. No other language has this sort of parallel construction, in which there's a "high" and "low" way to say almost everything.

Hence, business-speak. Listen to a businessperson talk and all those ten-dollar words where a one-dollar one would do are of Latin origin. That "professional" air he/she's trying to cultivate is just the elitism of the medieval nobility in a modern guise. It's a time-honored way of saying "Hey, I'm a one of you superior types. Not one of THOSE people. We will now get along famously and wear polo shirts and play golf and laugh loudly and shit on Robert Frost's head!"

Oh, I'm sorry. I meant to say "defecate on Robert Frost's cranium." Now you're with me, right, fellow elite! A-shitting we go!

Things I Love: Lawns

2010-08-14T21:49:00.000-07:00

Lawns rock! Here’s why:

1. Kids. A visit to a public park with a wobbling toddler often involves one or more of the following:

a. Repeated, but ignored admonitions to your child to leave the stinking, fly-infested trash can alone
b. Repeated, but ignored admonitions to your child to leave the stinking, fly-infested pile of dog shit alone
c. Repeated, but ignored admonitions to that damn dog to leave your terrified child alone
d. Repeated, but ignored admonitions to your child to leave that other kid’s half-eaten and discarded Glutino cracker alone
e. Repeated, but ignored admonitions to your child to please stop wobbling over to the busy road and just stay in the grass for chrissake

All of that can be avoided on your own, quiet, peaceful, fenced-in lawn.

2. They’re soothing. The uniform greenscape is a much-needed respite from the busy jumble that has become the modern world. People in cities are overwhelmed and assaulted by visual stimuli, from billboards to overly-complicated and asymmetrical architecture to the 35 signs necessary to explain a single neighborhood traffic circle. A nice, green lawn, preferably without any curving mulch borders or mounds of wispy ornamental grasses, is a reminder that simple is beautiful.

3. They’re a heckuva lot easier to take care of than the ugly licheny rock-ridden xeric landscapes that enviro-yuppies spend a fortune on creating and then never maintain. In my artificially-watered little town, the properties that have created little native plant havens usually end up with prickly messes overgrown with bindweed, cactus, and dandelions. Nothing’s easier than firing up the ol’ mower once a week and trimming everything into a nice carpet.

Now I realize I should address the things that certain lawn haters like to claim as part of their anti-lawn agenda. And I realize that these are indeed embarrassing little problems with lawns. But they’re not insurmountable!

1. The pollution argument: Ha ha! The enviro-yuppies are totally all over this one. There’s no reason why you can’t have a lawn and use one of those little whirling blade push mowers. Those little whirling blade mowers actually kind of suck for all but a very small, perfectly flat, square lawn with wispy grass, but they make electric and battery-powered mowers that are just as good as the old gas-powered ones, provided you don’t mow over the cord or get too ticked when the battery starts losing its charge after 3.5 minutes of mowing. Someday maybe I’ll get one of those awesome mowers.

2. The pain in the ass argument: Mowing a lawn is waaaaaaaaaay less of a pain in the ass than pulling weeds. It’s also waaaaaaaaay less of a pain in the ass than always keeping your kids inside because your beautiful nature is also a habitat for cougars.

3. The toxic chemical argument: A thick, healthy lawn doesn’t need herbicides because the herbs can’t take root. OK, it may take a few rounds of Weed-n-Feed to get that nice, thick, healthy lawn, but really, once you have that good grass, all you need to do is fertilize (which can be organic or whatever) and pull out the few weeds that wiggle their way in there.

4. The water argument: Oh, OK. Lawns take a lot of water. Fine. You can have that one.

5. The weird huge lawn argument: Some of those rural Midwestern lawns really are weirdly huge. And they’re even mowing their ditches. I hear it’s in part to control the mosquitoes, but I really think it’s just a way for a fat man with a riding lawnmower to avoid his family for five or six hours and call it exercise. So OK, you can have this one too.

I should also mention that I do not in any way support the giant industrial lawns around office buildings that aren’t even used for dull office parties. What a waste those are. And in some towns in Colorado, really nice lawns are maintained (and watered!) in the No Man’s Land by freeway on and off ramps and that’s just ridiculous. But, in sum, nice home lawns are pretty awesome. There’s no reason why we all can’t responsibly enjoy a nice green lawn and still feel like good decent, Capitalists. Because I vaguely remember that Commies are somehow responsible for lawns and dammit, let it be known that I am no Commie!

Things I Hate: Lightning Round!

2010-07-24T08:58:00.002-07:00

Because if you say "lightning" it sounds exciting! Rather than, say, a tedious list of minor annoyances! Excitement, dammit!

Jeans pockets: Man, I hate jeans pockets. See, I'm an adult. That means I have to put more in my pockets than, say, a single paper clip. Ergo, I need more room in my pockets than the amount required for a single paper clip. And a need to access those paper-clip-plus materials through an opening large enough to accommodate a human-sized hand.

I understand that jeans pockets are supposed to be tiny, with a miniscule opening, because your typical jeans-wearer undergoes innumerable rough-and-tumble activities daily, such as riding buckin' broncos, fightin' gators, revisin' spreadsheets, and so forth. Facing such a square-jawed, two-fisted, penis-pumpin' existence, you need your goods tightly ensconsed in hard, unpliable fabric with no access except via extremely long and nimble fingernails, which of course all self-respectin' cowboys own. I know that whenever I wear jeans, I'm in my preposterously gigantic American truck hauling large blocks of something in slow motion as Bob Seger yells in the background. Then later I sit around a campfire with my closest entirely male compadres drinkin' some flavorless American beer and laughing deep, throaty guffaws. Then the gay sex. AmericCUHH!!! Eatin' from a SINgle BOWL!

But between you and me and that disgusting thing on the wall, there are times (shudder) when I wear jeans (shudder, shudder) and am not doing anything remotely physical (Shame! Dishonor! Hari-kari right now! I'm dead!). I would survive, believe it or don't, if my jeans pockets could hold objects large enough to conform to the principles of Newtonian mechanics. And I would prefer to be able to access them without taking the jaws of life to my crotch.

Pockets inside pockets: A related issue, obviously. Especially in right-side front pockets in jeans, you often get a pocket within a pocket, pressed against the skin, which is designed to help you lose spare change and then launder it. The idea, I suppose, is that without these, you would have a chaotic, sloshing soup of objects flying around your capacious jeans pockets, and only by collecting the change in the even-smaller pockets within pockets can you ensure that each attempt to reach for your wallet doesn't explode into a dangerous buckshot of small coins that then impales passersby.

I honestly don't know why they stop there. They need pockets within pockets within pockets, so that the few spare molecules that naturally shear off of coins as part of the immutable process of entropy can be neatly inserted into pockets^-2 and then lost and laundered.

You know, maybe this is all a conspiracy by foreign governments, to keep our loose change lost and unspent, thereby pulling cash from the money supply and dragging down the American economy. I think that this insane theory I just made up is absolutely, uncontrovertibly true, and it is now clear that pockets within pockets are a socialist conspiracy enacted by President Obama to make Glenn Beck cry. Where's my blackboard?

White things: Why do we have things that are white? What are we trying to prove? That we have so much money that we can waste it on things that can easily get dirty and ruined? That we enjoy spending half our lives cleaning? Anything white attracts dirt and stains within a few seconds and then immediately looks awful. Everything white should be banned, from clothing, to walls, to people.

Food noise: This one's not so rational, I admit. My sister can attest to the terror of living with someone with this particular affliction. I can't stand the sound of people eating. Even the smallest smack will drive me into a rage. It's not a good trait.

As for why I am this way, it's probably because of a deep and torturous resentment of my father, who ate like a pig on speed. Or maybe it's sexual. Both, maybe. Whatever. Regardless, there's no very good explanation of the unholy sickness I feel upon hearing people eat. But there is no doubt in my mind that my irrational and out-of-proportion emotional reactions are entirely someone else's fault, and that I am in no way responsible. That's just how it works.

It's at the point where I'm wondering why exactly human beings need to eat amongst each other. I should probably add that one to this list.

Eating with other people: I know, eating with people is supposed to be awesome. We get to listen to each other chew, and uh ... I suppose we can talk, when we get the chance. But think about it: When else in life is your mouth less conducive to conversation than when you're eating? In our day-to-day lives, it's the only time our mouths are fully occupied, and yet we expect to be able to launch a chatting bonanza during dinner. It makes as much sense as having a party at the dentist's office.

I'm all for spending time with people and talking. But I would prefer each dinner party to consist of people coming over and having drinks (which do require occupation of the mouth, but for shorter durations, with just a few inoffensive swallows instead of a chew-chew-chew-smack-gulp ... ooh, I feel sick), and then each person can move into a different room and silently consume food with the lights off and Leonard Cohen playing mournfully in the background. Then everyone can reconvene in a bright and cheerful living room, compare notes on the dinner, drink some more, and play Wii Rock Band (that's how all my dinner parties end nowadays).

Gum chewing: Gum chewing was specifically designed to make me kill myself. It's a socialist conspiracy to make me cry. It's chewing that never, ever stops, just keeps chomping and smacking and chomping and smacking like a brain-dead cow until I grab the person's face, reach in to his smelly, gaping maw, take the gum out, shove it in his eyes, and then rip out his tongue for good measure and eat it. Noisily, with lots of smacking.

Snorts, but not farts, sneezes or burps: Again, I recognize that this is completely irrational, but I can't stand it when people snort in public. It just makes me thing of festering yellow-green mucous yearning to be released from the body and be thrown away and burned and stomped on, but instead being cordially and noisily invited to return to the body and fester, converting the viscera into an inchoate swamp of bubbling, putrid sickness.

But farts don't bother me. Farts are funny. Seriously! This one time? I was at this party? And this dude farted, like, real loud? It was awesome!

It's true, you know, farts are actually very funny. I actually took a course in American Indian literature that confirmed that farts are universally and verifiably funny, and that was in college, where knowledge is true, so there. The first story we read in the class, in fact, was a story meant to be passed down through the oral tradition, so writing it down was stupid, but whatever: It involved the trickster coyote, and he was farting a lot, and it was supposed to cause the kids in the crowd to giggle, so there.

Burps are the same thing. The louder the funnier. And they release the sickness into the atmosphere instead of allowing them to collect inside and poison the bodily humors into an imbalance of phlegmatic disposition. And the same for sneezes, which is why I hate ...

Sneeze stiflers: These are the people who try to do a cute little "pfft!" and hold their sneezes in. They think it's cute and dainty, but to me it says "I don't want to let these poisonous allergens go! I love them lots and lots! I actually want them to grow inside me and sprout little boughs of diseased, dripping coagulations of germs, which will then turn my viscera into an inchoate swamp of putrid sickness! Word!"

Instead, you must let your sneezes out with a powerful and manly KACHOOOO! That proves that the toxins have been forcibly expelled! You have thus rid them from your chest, discharging them with the force of Thor's mighty hammer cleaving the skulls of the unworthy! Now you must go on to drive trucks full of large heavy things in slow motion whil Bob Seger screams about America! RARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR(etc.)!!!!!!

People who laugh loudly at their own jokes: Granted, you can laugh a wee bit at your own jokes. I don't, but many do, and that's fine. It's the people that explode into uproarious laughter immediately after telling their own jokes that bother me. It's pushy and forceful; it's like saying "premise premise premise punchline and now LAUGH DAMMIT!!!!!!" You pretty much have to laugh when people do that because it's too awkward to leave that person going into hysterics by themselves. So you give a polite ho ho ho and get on with life, but you leave feeling a bit manipulated.

Words on walls: Because I'm a married man and I'm whipped like a dead donkey, I end up watching more than a few interior design shows on TV. In a lot of them, they write things on the walls in ostensibly pleasing light purple fonts, things like "peace" and "live life out loud" and "fuck y'all bitches" and stuff like that.

It's extremely tacky, in my book. If you want to create a mood with a room's decor, it might be a wee bit obvious to plaster the sentiment you're going for on the wall in big block letters. If that were how it worked, you could just create an art installation that was a piece of paper tacked on a wall that said "HOLY COW THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT PIECE OF ART RIGHT HERE. MAN OH MAN, IT'S DEEP IN A WAY THAT ORDINARY PEOPLE CAN'T COMPREHEND. BUT YOU, AS PART OF THE SOPHISTICATED URBAN ELITE, CAN FULLY APPRECIATE IT AS BEING A NEW STEP FORWARD IN ARTISTIC EXPRESSION AND SHIT LIKE THAT. NOW THAT YOU'VE SPENT A RESPECTABLE AMOUNT OF TIME STARING AT THIS WITH A SERIOUS LOOK ON YOUR FACE, YOU CAN GO TALK TO THAT ARTSY CHICK AND TRY TO GET LAID."

Musical guests on "Saturday Night Live": I just finished watching "Saturday Night Live," something I haven't done for years, and you know what? It was pretty funny. Except for the part where it all fell flat for 15 minutes because of the stupid musical guest. Wow, a guy yelling into a mic and playing a guitar. Never seen that before.

It wasn't fun when I was young and actually sort of kind of hip (not really). I would watch "Saturday Night Live" every Saturday night (alone, always, but that's a different and much more boring and sad story), and it those days it would even be musicians I had heard of. And even then, the musical guest's appearance was the time to flip over to "Star Search" and hope that it was time for the spokesmodel competition.

You know what? It's not that much fun to watch people play music. In person, it can be fun, because it's loud and there are girls there. At home, on TV, it's really not that great.

Listening to music while doing something else: Whoo, that's fun. Playing music, especially in Wii Rock Band: oodles upon shitloads upon metric tons of fun. But watching other people play music on TV? There's a reason MTV doesn't actually play videos, and hasn't for about 15 years now. They quickly realized that watching people play music isn't that great. If you get a Lady Gaga, who lards her mediocre synth-pop with buckets of weirdo conteporary-art bullshit, that can be OK. Or a rap video in which the music serves as a forgettable backdrop for watching asses shake -- that again can serve some purpose. But a bunch of white guys, on a stage in New York, screaming songs that sound much better on studio versions that I can get on demand from iTunes for $.99 ... yeah, you know what, I have 200 channels. I'm betting that somewhere in there there's something more engaging than that.

That now completes the list of all of the things that I hate. All my future posts will be glowing explorations of things that are great, like cute kitties and pie and the love of a good woman. The end.

Things I Hate: Lawns

2010-07-20T19:19:00.000-07:00

Lawns are awful, awful things. Think about how much destruction lawns cause. No, wait, don't think of it, because I'm going to tell you:

1. Pollution: Supposedly, lawn mowers are some of the worst polluters around. I heard once that mowing one acre puts as many greenhouse gases in the air as taking a cross-country trip in a hybrid. Now while that's probably not true, it does make you think about exactly how much global warming has been caused by this completely unnecessary activity. No one has ever been fed by a mown lawn. No one has ever died because their lawn wasn't mown. It's pointless.

Why exactly do we need lawns? Because our neighbors will complain if we don't maintain them. Why will they complain? Because it supposedly doesn't look nice to have an unmown lawn. By that logic, if everyone decided that chopping off your pinkie fingers looks great, I would have to do that too. Fuck y'all. I don't depend on your opinion of me to maintain my self-worth.

And personally, I think well-mown lawns look revolting. I look at a sea of uniform grass and think about how many toxic chemicals went into the groundwater to create the same look you could achieve by painting a blacktop green.

Lawns look like what happens when anal retentive serial plant beheaders go wild. Why do people think they look nice? It's the same plant, over and over, at exactly the same length. What could be more dull to look at? Why not just install Astroturf while you're at it?

You know what's nice to look at? Nature. People even go hiking in it just to look at it. Imagine that, walking in circle for hours just to look at stuff. And here's the thing about the nature they tend to look at: It doesn't tend to be large swathes of monoculture, like lawns are. It instead tends to be intricate tapestries of colors and textures, comprising the wide range of plants that live in harmony. It's a thing called ecological diversity, and it's kind of vital for the survival of life as we know it on this planet. If nature just produced rows and rows of identical, artifically stunted grasses, we never would have come about in the first place.

I honestly think there's some control-freakiness going on in the minds of those lunatics who care about their lawns. It's like, "This is the land I OWN! I must CONTROL every INCH OF IT, or the COMMUNISTS WIN!" Of course, what could be more communist than a world in which one species fills every inch at exactly the same size and length ...

2. Pain in the ass: Mowing lawns sucks. It's dirty, sweaty work that results in shards of severed plants sticking to every inch of your skin. Guys who enjoy mowing lawns really should channel that energy into something constructive, something that helps people instead of hurting the planet. If they have to be alone with a machine as they do it, they could maybe build something. They could maybe do anything a little less mindless than pushing a pollution-spewing cart back and forth across a scrap of land.

The worst, though, are the people with riding lawn mowers. So wait, you're so lazy and/or feeble that you can't even push a cart back and forth for a few hours. So your solution is to strap some blades to an especially toxic engine and drive around? It puts me in mind of a person who is too fat too walk driving through a buffet in a Rascal. It's gluttony at an epic, Caligula-type level, where you're so spoiled that you're killing yourself through self-indulgence.

OK, maybe that was a bit of a reach. And maybe you have a large property, and need a riding lawn mower to mow it all. That then begs the question: Do you really need to mow it all? If you get a big boner from looking at long rows of identical short green stalks, fine, do that in part of the area. But why not the let the rest of it go to nature? Then maybe a wide range of plants could live there. And maybe animals! And maybe that patch of earth could support life instead of destroying it! Just a thought.

Natural Childbirth: How Morally Superior Does It Make You?

2010-07-13T21:56:00.000-07:00

I is done had some young ‘uns and now that Ed is havin’ a young ‘un, I now feel as though I’ve been invited, albeit indirectly, to share my feelings about natural childbirth. And just so you know, I stole the title from The Onion.

Childbirth...a natural process, as old as our species itself! Can anyone imagine anything more wholesome and earth-friendly than birthing at home, in one’s bed (or on a bed of straw in, say, a stable), perhaps with the assistance of a wizened matron or two? Maybe the straining mother-to-be is practicing hypno-birthing, reaching deep within her consciousness to find the inner peace that will sweep her away from the pain and into a euphoric mental meadow of birthing bliss. Maybe, after a reasonable period of howls and pants, a tired smile spreads across the happy mother’s face as the healthy baby cries for the first time and is placed upon her welcoming breast to suckle its first drink of life. Or maybe everyone dies. Oh, wait...that can’t happen, right? I mean, not if it’s natural...

I live in a place where you’re considered a total failure of a mother if you did not manage to birth your baby without any painkilling drugs or medical intervention. Well, OK, maybe “total failure” is a bit strong, but without a doubt, there is an unspoken sentiment of “you must not really care about your child if you poisoned your body with all those drugs” that radiates from what I think is actually a minority of loud, womb-thumping women. These are the women who start “ban the bags” campaigns to try to pass laws prohibiting formula companies from giving out free samples. They’re mothers who will spend $24.95 for 4 ounces of all-natural, food-grade sun block for their children and who use slings, for heaven’s sake, and not bjorns for their 24-hour-a-day baby-wearing. And, as long as I’ve pushed the stereotype this far, I might as well throw in that they probably assume their baby is gifted. Anyway, these are the women who make the uncertain, expecting, first-time mothers feel guilty for wanting an epidural and dammit, that’s just not right.

Part of it is the term, “natural,” that gets me, as though “natural” is inherently superior. Let’s think of a few natural things...carrots (not bad) and bees (they’re cool) and ticks (well, hm, ticks must be valuable as food for something), and malaria and rabbits eating their babies when they feel threatened and mother cats inbreeding with their son cats (happened in my own house!) and hot lava that’s no longer in our molten core and leprosy...certainly, they’re all facets of nature, but are they all preferable to a human-made alternative? Of course not. Why should childbirth be any different?

And let’s think of other things that can be done “naturally.” Like amputation – haven’t we all seen some movie where a Civil War soldier takes a messy swig of whiskey and pops a branch in his mouth before the doc saws off the leg? Our how about a double mastectomy? John Adams’s poor daughter had a “natural” double mastectomy to slice away the cancer that would eventually kill her. I’d like to see a womb-thumper choose that option.

The point is that there’s no shame in pain relief. There is no badge of merit handed out to those of us who endured the most pain while pushing out a baby. Millions of healthy babies have been born to happily numb mothers and have gone on to do great things in life. And, frankly, the birth is about the tiniest, least significant part of having a kid, so go ahead and have that young ‘un, Ed, even “naturally,” if the pain really floats your boat. But for chrissakes, if you want the epidural, just say so, and with relish. Because you, yes, you! have the power to stop the pain! And then take your Vicodin for your recovery pain. And drink your stout beer to enhance your milk supply. And then drink some wine to make the baby sleep all night. Happy parenting!

I Am Royalty

2010-07-01T15:03:00.000-07:00

We are having a child. And the child's name will of course reflect its status as a member of the English royal family. We have decided she shall be christened "Eleanor I, by the Grace of God, Queen of England and France, Defender of the Faith, Lady of Ireland and the Church of England in Earth Supreme Head, Dykhuizen." Amongst playmates she may affectionately be referred to as "E.I.G.G.Q.E.F.D.F.L.I.C.E.E.S.H." She may not be referred to with the vulgar appellation "Ellie." Such calumny shall be considered an affront against God's representative upon Earth, and justice shall swiftly be brought upon the guilty party.

The nature of said punishment will depend upon the progress of my newly engaged effort to restore Eleanor to the throne as the rightful heir to Henry III. As you all are of course aware, I am the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of King Henry III. I am one of only ten million or so people to be able to make such a claim.

My task is then simple: Gather an army, hie myself to England, and kill everyone with a better claim to the throne. While such a task may have appeared Herculean in the days of my vaunted forefather, advances in modern weaponry make this a relatively easy task. For too long, the House of Minnesota has been ignored in affairs of state! Once more unto the breach, my good men (and women, because my marauding horde is an Equal Opportunity Employer)!

However, in my extensive studies of my illustrious ancestors (I read two books), I must say I've gained new appreciation for democracy. We may occasionally elect an idiot, but hell, at least we don't have wars to decide it. And even George W. Bush looks like a Rhodes scholar compared to some of England's past rulers. To wit:

Henry VI, who ruled England for about half of the 1400s, was pretty clearly what we would call nowadays "developmentally disabled." He was the immediate successor to Henry V, who was the one played by Kenneth Branagh and says "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers ... come upon this field of glory to kick ass and drink beer, and we're all out of beer ... we must protect this hoooouuuse!" Then he went on to win the Battle of Agincourt, defeating Mothra in ten rounds. I think that was how it went, anyway. I was reading all this as I was watching late-night TV, so I'm not sure I got it all right.

Point is, his son Henry VI had quite a legacy to live up to. And boy, did he ever not. He was not only born into the Hundred Years' War against France; he was also heir to the Wars of the Roses, in which different branches of the royal family, those of York and Lancaster, killed each other regularly and traded the throne back and forth. Meanwhile, Henry VI was terrified by war, which is a problem when you're the commander-in-chief of two of them. He was reportedly very meek and gentle, in a way that would be cute if he were a greeter at Wal-Mart, but extremely dangerous for someone trying to lead England. He would blush whenever anyone mentioned sex and sincerely believed his son was created by the Holy Spirit. His solution to the Wars of the Roses was to stage what he called a "loveday," in which members of the York and Lacanster clans would all have a public ceremony together. Mind you, these were people who killed each other's children, a lot. Their beefs are not likely to be smoothed over by a public smooch-fest. Henry thought they would.

The end result of Henry VI's incompetence was that England lost all the gains in France made by Henry V, with Joan of Arc being the symbol of the reconquest. Meanwhile, for the most part, the Wars of the Roses only killed of the members of the nobility, leaving peasants and middle-class folks out of it -- that is, until King Henry's forces looted and pillaged a bunch of towns of Southern England. Imagine that for a second -- imagine if the Republicans and Democrats were killing each other over who would be in power. I think our first reaction would be "Yeah! Cool! Is it on TV?" But then imagine if the Republicans, under their retarded leader George W. Bush, decided to just raze and burn Iowa for no good reason. I think even Fox News would have to turn against them then.

King Henry VI came along for all this countryside brutality, but was likely oblivious, allegedly laughing and singing in his private camp during the carnage. The people of London reacted to the spree by literally shutting the door on Henry and the Lancastrians (they had real doors to cities then, with real keys -- hence the term "the key to the city") and declaring a new king, Edward IV.

Normally things weren't as bad as all this -- normally it would just take one civil war to figure out who the next leader would be. Just a few hundred lives lost over a year or two, something like that. In general, though, we see the danger of letting someone be king just because his father was. Well, we see it, but the English didn't. They kept on with the tradition, because they didn't know anything else.

So imagine what a huge step forward it was to try democracy instead. These days, it's old hat, but then democracy was revolutionary in a way that is hard for us to fathom. It was radical. It was a intellectual, long-shot idea based on cutting-edge theory that turned out to be extremely right.

So that's what I hope we all celebrated over Independence Day: radical solutions to longstanding problems, solutions based on the latest in intellectual thought. That's our true legacy, that willingness to try something that's very new and is based on the creativity of the most probing minds. Innovation, in business-speak. Let's try to keep that in mind before we hate on Obama and the Democrats for trying an innovative solution on health care, or before we reflexively crap on other new ideas in immigration, energy policy, etc. The country is seeming a little afraid of change lately, and fear of change is not what we were founded on.

Ethnicity is a Vegetable, Part One: The Vegetable Part of It

2010-06-24T17:33:00.000-07:00

Ed is havin' a young 'un. This is now how posts on this blog start, I see. And instead of investigating/whining about some part of society that bugs us for inscrutable reasons, we now have the noble duty to warn Ed's young foetus about parts of society that bug us for inscrutable reasons. Warning is much nobler than whining, right?

So, let's begin, shall we? Why don't you hop up on Uncle Joe's lap, young foetus, and listen to a tale filled with dread, wonder, and, ultimately, actually, neither of those two.

Today's exercise in edification will attempt to answer this question: What is ethnicity? As an analogy/delay tactic, I will put off that question, and ask another: What is a vegetable? By way of contrast, and in order to completely lose my entire audience before the end of the third paragraph, I will first ask one more question: What is a fruit?

What Is a Fruit?

This one's the easy one. A fruit, saith Merriam-Webster, is a ripened ovary of a seed plant and its contents. Done. QED. Cogito ergo sum. We all know dozens of examples: apples, oranges, bananas. Weirder ones like kiwifruit, pomegranates, and starfruit are nonetheless easily recognizable as fruit: hard outside, fleshy/juicy inside, and seeds. So, there you go - that's fruit.

Next, we move on to....wait, what's that, little foetus? Isn't a tomato really a fruit? Oh, little one - you have so much to learn about this wonderful world! A tomato's a vegetable, of course. Which leads me to my next question:

What Is a.....hmm? little one? You say a tomato is hard outside, juicy inside, with seeds? Well, sure, but it's still a vegetable, which as you might have guessed was my next ques.... Say what? You brought your personal botanist over? My, but you are an impertinent little foetus! And your botanist says that a tomato is a ripened ovary of the tomato plant? Well, if that's true, then that would make a tomato a fruit, and....what's that botanist? It is? Well, if you go by that definition, then so are cucumbers, green peppers, green peas, and...and...wow. Okay. So lots of things we call vegetables are biologically fruits. Interesting. That now leads me, much more tentatively than before, to my next question:

What Is a Vegetable?

This one, it turns out, is actually easier to answer. A vegetable is something green that we eat as a side dish at dinner. Ha ha, right? But not really - that is almost exactly what our dictionary friends say. M-W calls it a usually herbaceous plant grown for an edible part that is usually eaten as part of a meal.

But that's just the dictionary; let's see what our botanist friend has to say. Oh, dear botanist friend, can you tell me what a vegetable is? You know, scientifically? Now, don't be shy - I may not be a trained scientist, but I'm sure you can put it in layman's terms, right? So, go ahead. Please. I'm not....hey! Where are you going? Little foetus, your friend just ran away! I guess it's up to me. And I say that in the end, a vegetable is a plant that people call, or use as, a vegetable. So a tomato is a vegetable after all. And a cucumber. And lettuce, and carrots, and mushrooms. That makes me feel much better.

Now we can move on to the actual question of the blog, which is....now what? Mushrooms aren't plants, they're funguses? So what? Oh - I said that vegetables were plants. Fine. Vegetables are plants and funguses that we call veg....yes? Yes, I've had sushi wrapped in seaweed. Yes, I'd call seaweed a vegetable. But seaweed isn't a plant, it's algae? Wonderful. Next you'll tell me there are bacteria and animals that are vegetables, too! Ha! (please don't tell me there are bacteria and animals that are vegetables, too....)

Oh boy, I'm feeling a little woozy. I think I have to make this a two-part post. Off my lap, tiny proto-half-Ed, and back in utero for you!

Cursewords I Can't Live Without

2010-05-29T17:21:00.000-07:00

I is havin' a young 'un. And as part of my newfound responsibility, I'll need to clean up my act. No more having three beers in a single night. No more staying up until midnight playing Scrabble online. No more injecting heroin into my eyeball. Yup, my hedonistic lifestyle's gotta change.

But I don't know if I can give up cursing. As a kid I was defiantly anti-cursing, and said a prayer of apology every time I even thought of a curseword. Nowadays I realize that there is a rainbow of self-expression in those naughty words, and I'm not sure I can live without some of them.

Some can go. "Fuckin'" is usually unnecessary. It adds little more than emphasis, as in "That was fuckin' ridiculous!" You don't lose much meaning by just saying "That was completely ridiculous!" I'm not going to miss that one.

But there are some naughty or slightly naughty terms that are downright irreplacable. For example:

Half-assed: I challenge you to give me a term that conveys the same spirit of obligatory, apathetic endeavor as does "half-assed." "Low-effort"? That doesn't really communicate the requisite disdain for the person in question. "Half-baked"? Again, not enough disdain.

Like most cursewords or terms, it makes no sense when taken literally. Why would something low-effort require just half of your ass, and a full effort require all of it? Are that many pursuits so dependent on the entire use of the ass? (Keep it clean, people.)

But that's sort of the beauty of it. I personally love it when a term is able to communicate something so well despite its literal meaning -- in this case, "concerning a section of the gluteus maximus" -- having so little to do with the meaning that it has taken on in our culture.

This is actually one of the few words involving "ass" that I find to be useful. Americans apparently have an ass fetish, because we affix "ass" onto every word we can come up with: dumb-ass, smart-ass, weird-ass, crazy-ass, etc. As with "fuckin'", little is typically added besides emphasis. (Well, "smart-ass" is kind of useful. I suppose you could say "smart alec" instead. But that smells like one of these lame-ass cleaned-up versions of regular curses, like "Gosh!" or "Geez!" instead of "God!" It's kind of a "letter of the law but no the spirit" thing, you know? It's like, do you really think God's going to be like, "Well, since you didn't quite say the entire word, you get by on a technicality." No, He's going to smite you either way. Everyone gets smoten eventually. So live it up while you can, motherfuckers!)

Bullshit: There are many ways to talk about half-truths, but none really communicates anything similar to what "bullshit" so poetically expresses. "Bullshit" is not just a lie -- it's a whole world of lies, a rich tapestry of falsehood, intended to make the speaker look brilliant and wonderful. In fact, this one professor dude once came on "The Daily Show" hawking his book, called "Bullshit," which explored the rich veins of connotation and denotation captured in this wonderful word. So smart people recognize the value of "bullshit" too. So there.

Again, the literal meaning (bovine waste product) has little or nothing to do with the meaning that it has taken on. And again, a big part the word's utility it wrapped up in the disdain it communicates. I would assume that that's true of every curseword or term. And maybe that's why they're so popular -- we don't have enough clean words in the English language that convey sufficient hatred.

Nigga, please: OK, I never actually say this one. Nor should I. "Nigga" is a word that has a different meaning depending on the race of the speaker. My particular race (white) has such a long and brutal history of using the word as a weapon that I don't know if we should ever be allowed to use it, regardless of our intentions. From our mouths it will always have at least a partial meaning of "you are not even human." That's powerful stuff, and not to be played around with.

But, man, I still secretly wish I could say "nigga, please." It has nothing to do with black people, really. When this phrase is used properly, it's just poetry. It's such a perfect way to tell someone "Look, you're not fooling anyone." But there's more than that. "Nigga, please" has in it the wisdom of someone who's seen it all -- most of it unpleasant -- and has come out the other side not only strong, but strong enough to call out everyone who is obviously full of crap, very publicly, and very rightfully. After you say "nigga, please," everyone is kinda like, "Yeah, you're right! Thank God you said that."

But there is also a little bit of warmth in "nigga, please." Maybe that's the true genius in it. There's a hint of letting the other person in on it, leaving them just enough room to burst out laughing and say "OK, yeah. You're right. I'm full of crap, I'm sorry." Then we can all get on with life.

So where does that leave us? I don't know. I suppose just that cursewords can often capture things that legitimate language just can't, and it's a shame that we can't say them whenever we like. But then, maybe if we did, the words would lose those unique meanings. Maybe they need to be saved for those times when we need to break taboos to get our points across. Hmm.

Stuff I'm Going to Teach My Kid

2010-05-24T04:46:00.000-07:00

I is havin' a young 'un. Well, my wife is, actually. I'm little more than a bystander and occasional advisor. I'm a fan, I suppose. I'm a big-time fan of my wife and her baby, and I spend a lot of my free time rooting for them.

The baby is currently called Figgy Plumbum, because for a while, he/she was between the size of a fig and a plum, according to the baby books. Actually, he/she/it is more the size of an apple right now, so I suppose we should change his/her/its/their name to Figgy Applebum. My plan is to have a different name for him/her/it/them/whose every time he/she/it/they/we/how gets larger. So be the time he/she/it/they/wheretofore/inasmuch gets to be the size of a breadbox, we'll be telling Breadbox to get the hell over here. When he/she/it/why/tired-of-this gets to be a teenager, we'll call him/her Leopard on Its Hind Legs. You get the idea.

I've been very excited about having a kid as long as I can remember. Mainly because I want a person to control. Apparently, slavery is no longer legal (thank you, federal government, for controlling our lives!), so a baby is the best route for human domination. And I've got a lot of lessons to brand into lil' Figgy's fertile brain.

Lesson No. 1. Get a credit card in college. I was a headstrong and defiant young adult. Not in the sense of actually doing anything revolutionary, of course. I was more in the vein of not doing things that normal people just do. I didn't like insurance, for example. Still don't. It seems pansy-ass to me. "Oh, what if my house burns down? Better get fire insurance. Oh, what if my ears fall off? Better get ear insurance." You spend all your life and money hedging yourself against terrible things -- that's the life of a paranoid little weiner, not a grown adult who realizes that risk is a part of life. And you know you always come out badly in the deal, because look at the crazy profits insurance companies make. And look how hard it is to get them to actually pay when you need them to, to actually do the only service that you're paying them so much money to do. Why not just put that money in a savings account instead? Then that money could cover you for any number of disasters, not just one type. And you'll have more money, because you're not paying so much to the insurance company to cover their "taking people's money" costs. Moreover, the chance that you're going to have a fire in which your ears fall off before that savings account builds up sufficiently is vanishingly small. And that's the thing -- any disaster is possible. It's a matter of how probable it is. Life is about playing the percentages, and there is a very small-percentage chance that an ear-severing fire will overtake my condo, so I refuse to worry about it.

Anyway. Got off track there. That's not a lesson I'm going to teach my kid. Yes, you do need auto insurance and health insurance and life insurance, sigh. Just don't go into the insurance industry or I will kill you and then disown you and then kill you again for good measure.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, credit cards. Listen up, kid, I got a story here. Go get me another beer first. And in a glass this time, dipshit!

OK, gimme that beer. Now listen up! Credit cards. Get one in college. When you're in college, the credit card companies are falling all over themselves to get the chance to get in line to purchase a ticket to be considered to be allowed to give you a credit card. But as soon as you're out of college and don't have a very good job (because no one does straight out of college), they suddenly become Entertainment Tonight to your former boy band full of 40-year-olds. That is, you've suddenly gone from flavor of the month to begging for change outside of Baskin Robbins. You're old news, hotshot! Fizzo! Floparoonie! Plummetini! Collapsiogo! Not-doing-terribly-well-aroski-meier!

Me, I was all righteously indignant about credit cards (see: insurance). I thought credit cards were a plot to get me to spend beyond my means. And then I'd have to pay extra money to the credit card company each month, and that money would compound indefinitely until I end up paying twice for everything. And they'd jigger the rules whenever they felt like it to keep me paying.

And all of this is true, of course. But, like insurance, they're a necessary evil. As long as you're smart about it, you can win against the credit card companies. Ditto for insurance, sort of.

So get a credit card in college. Don't use it unless you need to. I ain't going to be there to bail you out when you overspend. Hell, look at this shitty apartment -- you think I got the scratch to bail out your skinny little ass? Ever since your mother left me and I lost my job and my ears fell off in that fire, I ... OK, cancel that vision of the future; it's too depressing.

Lesson Number 2. Never, ever, ever, ever room with an attractive person of a complementary sexual persuasion. Even if they're of the opposite sexual persuasion you should think twice. In fact, best to not room with anyone. Avoid people altogether. Live as a hermit in the woods. Make sure you have a good internet connection, though, so I can email you funny jokes. Here's one: What do you call a lawyer who is eaten an alligator? A: I don't know, but it's probably something bad! Ha!

But most of all, don't room with a friend who you could conceivably in some universe have a romantic attachment to. It's one of the most painful things in the world. Especially when you fall for that person big-time, he/she/it rejects you, and you have to go home each night and greet that rejection with a smile. And you get to watch he/she/it go on dates/go into a back room with far inferior mates. And you have to pretend to continue to be the person's friend, while simultaneously and covertly trying to convince that person of how awesome you are, and how he/she should change his/her mind. But of course they don't, because you're "a friend." That is, you're nice but unattractive. And your convincing imitation of a good, caring person will only get your love object to value your friendship even more. So then you spend more agonizing hours with that person as a friend. You end up anxious all the time, especially when you're around the person. But you think you're in love with the person, so you have to keep trying.

In short, it's absolute torture. The first time it happened to me, after college, it was awful. Then I immediately moved into another place with another attractive woman. Of course the exact same thing happened. But this time, my body started to reject my behavior. I was so anxious all the time that I developed a bad stomach condition. I'd get up each morning and puke bile into the toilet. I went through a bunch of tests and ended up on some prescription antacids. But I was still anxious all the time and couldn't eat anything that wasn't very bland, or my stomach would just hurt worse. (It's a good diet plan, by the way. I lost a lot of weight. My stomach almost ate itself, but hey, I looked slightly thinner temporarily!)

That's enough lessons for now. Daddy's tired. Now you can go eatch Elmo.

EARTHQUAKE!!....!!

2010-05-18T15:41:00.000-07:00

We used to have earthquakes fairly often when I was growing up. For some reason, they almost always seemed to happen at night, which meant that they woke you up. I distinctly remember being woken up several times by a gentle rocking of my bed. The first thing that happens with a night earthquake is that you have no idea what's going on - you just woke up, remember. After a second or so, though, you suddenly realize with a thrill that it's an earthquake. If it wasn't too big, you could just lie there and feel the rocking slowly subside. It was always a combination of excitement and comfort to me, somehow.

Then for some reason, they seemed to happen a lot less frequently. There were only a couple that I recall over the last ten years or so that are even worth mentioning. The biggest disappointment with fewer earthquakes, by the way, is you don't get to see the "earthquake guy" - this seismologist who ALWAYS came on tv to tell people what just happened. Here's a couple pictures of him:

Check out that moustache! That's his signature. Seriously. When he signs checks or something, he just dips his moustache in some ink and presses it on the paper.

Anyhow.... Over the last year or so, there'd been a few quakes out in the desert that were big enough to feel out here, but only because I work in a highrise - extra swaying, I guess. Alison had never felt one, so I kept asking her if she felt them, and she kept saying no. In fact, she said that she didn't believe in earthquakes - they were a myth created by Californians to keep people away. The last time she told me that was the day before the big Easter quake we had this year. Talk about a jinx! Of course, that was the biggest one that I've ever felt, so it was a rude introduction.

Now that she's experienced one, she hates them. She doesn't think that the ground (or a house) is supposed to just start moving like that. She has a point, but I have to say that I love 'em! They're my favorite natural disaster to experience in person by far.

My love of earthquakes coupled with Alison's visceral antipathy towards them led me to conduct an informal survey of my aquaintances to find out which one of us held the majority view. Interestingly, I found out that there is a HUGE correlation between one's attitude towards earthquakes and where one grew up. Nearly all of the native Californians enjoyed quakes, or at least were neutral. Nearly everyone from someplace else, though, hated them - often, even so that the mere thought of one gave them the willies.

To the loyal readers out there, I'd like to continue the survey - what do you think of earthquakes? Have you felt one?

And, more broadly, what's your favorite natural disaster? Does it matter where you're from or grew up? Shouldn't a tornado or an earthquake be just as terrifying (or exciting) whether you're from Oklahoma or California (or vice versa)?

The Nerdiness Scale

2010-05-08T08:39:00.001-07:00

Nerd culture is thriving like never before. There was a time when, if you were a nerd, you only had physics experiments or "Lord of the Rings" to keep you entertained. Now there are dozens of TV channels containing nothing but nerd-friendly content. It is truly a golden age for Nerdish-Americans.

I've posted before about the differences between nerds, geeks, and dorks, so I won't go into that debate, hotly contested as it is within Nerdic America. Here I'm more interested in the degrees of nerdiness of various things. There is a spectrum, you see, from 1 (not at all nerdy) to 10 (holy cow, your comic book collection is about to topple over and bury you alive).

Let's take an example. I think we can all agree that "Star Trek" is pretty nerdy. Indeed, it's a sort of standard-bearer for Nerd culture, a touchstone by which people of other social strata are first exposed to the rich diversity of nerdania. But is it nerdier than "Babylon 5"? Ha ha (snort) ha ha -- yeah right, and Captain Pike had no ill effects from delta ray radiation on that J-class training ship! Ha ha (snort) ha ha ... gasp ... oh dear ... I need my inhaler ...

Basically, "Star Trek" is less nerdy than "Babylon 5" because non-nerds can watch and enjoy "Star Trek." It has considerably more crossover appeal than other fields of nerdology. At the same time, nerds can indeed get extremely over-nerdulated about "Star Trek," as we all know. The immense strength of its Nerdic following has to keep its score pretty high.

That's basically how the scale works -- you have to look at the balance between crossover appeal and nerditorial fervor. With those two criteria in mind, "Star Trek" gets a 6 out of 10 on the Nerdiness Scale. "Babylon 5" is easily a 9.

So, here are some other judgements:

"Star Wars": 4. As with "Star Trek," you can get extremely nerdified over "Star Wars." But I submit that "Star Wars" has more crossover appeal than "Star Trek," and has a smaller Nerdic subculture. Of course, comparing the "Star Trek" nerdiverse to "Star Wars"'s is a bit like saying Jessica Simpson is dumber than Paris Hilton -- you're talking about the two titans of their field. But "Star Trek" was the groundbreaker, and still the champion.

Now if you start talking about the "Star Wars" sub-subculture, the books and graphic novels and Web sites exploring Greedo's relationship with his mother or Darth Maul's favorite breakfast cereal, well, then you're getting into primo nerditacularity, possibly a 9 or 10.

"Doctor Who": 8. That's the score in the States, that is. In Britain, it gets probably a 5. In the States, you have to be a pretty hard-core Nerdist to watch "Doctor Who." I'm happy to say to say my particular nerdicacity stops at around a 6 or so, so I have never seen "Doctor Who."

"Doctor Who" has many factors pushing it in to top-flight, high-yield, weapons-grade, light sweet crude nerdilocity:

It's British. (Nerdites are often Anglophiles.)
It's on PBS. (related to no. 1)
It's sci-fi.
It's laughably cheap-looking sci-fi (as I am led to believe, anyway. I haven't seen it, remember? OK, once. But I only watched it because the Doctor's female hanger-on was real hot, and I was 13, and I would've watched an cat strangling competition if a hot chick was involved.)

"Monty Python": 5. As with "Star Trek" and "Star Wars," there's plenty of crossover appeal here. And it's not sci-fi, which lowers its score considerably.

But it has never really reached the mainstream masses in the States the way the two Star empires have. "Monty Python" crosses over not to Joe Sixpack and Jane Peoplemagazinereader but to Professor Van Nostrand and Chuckles McSlappy (a.k.a. smarties and comedians). That pushes it a bit higher on the scale.

My wife put this one best. She says that post-pubescent unathletic boys tend to go apeshit for "Monty Python" (particularly "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," of course). That's usually a prime sign of Grade-A nerdiciousness. But then many of those boys grow up to be relative non-nerds, maybe 3s or 4s on the scale. And there isn't a huge "Monty Python" nerdastic subculture -- there's not much in the way of fan fiction or action figure trading or sexual fantasies about Carol Cleveland. So that knocks it back a few points. The middle is a good place for it.

"Dungeons and Dragons": 10. I'm sorry, but D&D is really the ne plus ultra of nerdturbation. There's really no aspect that crosses over to legitimate society. There was a TV show once, I think, and some terrible movies that no one but the Nerdeviks saw. Really, the only way you can participate in Dungeons and Dragons is to take out some 20-sided dice, call yourself Mokdur the Impaler, buy some pewter figures of half-orcs, and let the nerdescence burst out of you like a primal scream.

And the nerdalaxy for D&D is massive and fervent. There are entire stores devoted to it, stores that may even be in your neighborhood and you don't even know it. They usually pose as normal storefronts, but if you innocently waltz in seeking out a nice lathe or some liquid aspartame, you will get suspicious and unfriendly looks from the shady, shifty-eyed characters shuffling within. You quickly get the hint, depart quietly, and immediately after you close the door behind you, you get the distinct feeling that a rumbling, growling mob has suddenly re-emerged from the shadows to light upon each other with adamantine battleaxes and Spells of Necrotic Termination.

I admit that I have met a few D&D adherents. I would never, of course, reveal their identities. It is their choice whether or not to come out of the closet and undergo the inevitable repercussions from a world that refuses to accept their lifestyles. I can only support them and hope that some day, somewhere, a society will be born that will permit grown men to freely and openly attack each other's Breastplates of Kaltar with the Orbs of Negative Energy that they have spent ther lives accumulating.

So that's the basic idea of the Nerdiness Scale. What other Nerdiflabiflubilations would you bring up, and where would you put them on the scale?

Why Are Religion and Science at Odds?

2010-04-25T04:17:00.000-07:00

I mean, seriously, right? They almost never try to tackle the same questions. It's not like the Bible's all "And then God saith unto him, 'The carbon atom hath 243 electrons. Not six, like those jackass scientists say. I mean, who does those guys think they are? With their "methodical empirical testing" and "rigorous peer review" and "lifetimes devoted to assiduous and dispassionate study of minute concepts"? How could they know more about something than some guy who occasionally reads the Drudge Report?'"

I suppose I just revealed where my sympathies lie here. But I think religion gets unfairly sucked in to the real issue, which is "science vs. crazy paranoid conspiracy theorists." Take global warming, for example. So 99% of all scientists agree that it's a serious problem. And there's a huge percentage of Americans who don't believe in it, because ... why, exactly? Because it sounds scary? Because they read that a couple scientists, out of the thousands doing work on the topic, sweetened their numbers a bit once? So by that logic, if a few people steal office supplies, then no one has ever bought a stapler in the history of the world?

I'm getting off track here. I just get very frustrated with people who don't believe in established scientific principles for no good reason. Look, scientists spend their entire lives studying these things. They go through incredibly rigorous processes to test their theories, from the controls in each study to the aforementioned peer review, by which other scientists gleefully tear apart any weaknesses. This process has worked extremely well to develop the many principles that have since been used to create everything from iPods to McDonald's hamburgers (which are actually sophisticated alloys of magnesium and cat snot -- I'm sorry, did you not know that?)

I'm not suggesting you should believe every study that comes out. Be skeptical about most health-related ones, for example. (Broccoli is bad for you! Now it's good for you! Now it causes cancer! Now it kills cancer! Now it is cancer!) A single study doesn't prove much of anything. But when thousands of studies have been done, and all of them support something like global warming or evolution, you should probably start to think "hmm. There might be something to this. Maybe I don't exactly understand it, but maybe if very smart people who study it for a living all agree on it, well, it could be true!"

The global warming conspiracy theorists especially get to me. It's clearly such a serious problem, and these jackasses are still refusing to face it. I'm very scared, personally. I just read, for example, that photosynthesis decreases dramatically at temperatures above 86 degrees. That means plants can't grow nearly as well when it gets hotter. I think is a more serious problem than whether Obama may at some point raise taxes on the rich.

But the global warming naysayers apparently think it's all some kind of grand conspiracy by scientists. Have these idiots ever met a scientist? Scientists are all arrogant, super-argumentative assholes (present company excepted). They live to tear down other scientists' ideas. Bad concepts would not survive a day in that kind of pressure cooker.

And how exactly would this conspiracy work? Do you think all of the millions of scientists occasionally meet in some underground bunker and go "OK, lets make up something new. How about that the planet is getting hotter? Yeah, that's so crazy it just might work! Now all we have to do is write thousands of papers and keep an incredible internal discipline among the millions of us. All so we can write books that no one reads and Al Gore can make a moderately successful movie! It's pure genius! And besides, without global warming, what would we all do for a living? After all, there are is no other science to study."

This gets at a general distrust that Americans seem to have of experts. I don't get it. We refuse to believe the conclusions of people who are spend all their time studying something that we know nothing about. Wouldn't you think they might come up something more valid than we would?

Why do Americans think that they can have a valid opinion on everything, just by following their own gut feelings? Sometimes, you don't know enough to form an opinion. Sometimes, you have to assume that the experts are not completely insane, that they might have explored the issue in such depth that they might know more than you about it. I know, I'm talking crazy talk. After all, I work hard at the shop and support my family, so don't go telling me that protein kinases add phosphate groups to proteins! I know in my heart that what they really do is help angels fly.

And hopefully that got us back to religion vs. science, which is where I meant to go with all of this. My point was that the Bible doesn't even try to get into science. It gets into history and ethics, but not science. It doesn't say how God did stuff, just that he did. It doesn't say "And God made man, and he did it with a big ZAP and puff of smoke, in like, a second." Why couldn't He have sparked the genetic mutations that led to the formation of humans, etc.? If that sounds silly, it shouldn't. Why can't God work through the physical world to do His thing?

Basically, religion isn't about how things happen. Science explores how. Religion is about why things happen, and by whom. Science doesn't have anything to say about the deeper meaning of our lives, and doesn't pretend to. Science doesn't set forth moral principles, because that's not its job. Religion and science are working on completely different sets of questions.

I suppose this false religion vs. science dichotomy came about because of all the lame explanations that people spun out of religious worldviews and then accepted as holy fact. For instance, they once concluded that the Earth was at the center of the universe, because we're all so wonderfully delightful and God loves us mucho and everything. So when Galileo realized that that wasn't true, the religious authorities came down on him hard. But note that the Bible doesn't say anything about the Earth being at the center of the universe. This was just something people made up before there was science, and then awkwardly tied in to religion.

Or take the creation story, which is at the heart of current religion vs. science talk. Yes, it does actually say that God created everything, including humans, in six days. But c'mon, is that really the most important point here? The point is that God created things. As I said in my last post, people who take the Bible literally would have to also believe that it's OK to beat your slave within an inch of his life.

Do you really think God is up there saying "Yup, six days. If you don't believe that, then go to hell! Literally." I think He's more concerned with people believing in him, and knowing that He loves them. That seems to be more His bag.

Or with global warming - what do you think Jesus would say about it? Seriously. Do you think he would say, "Naw, it ain't true, because I saw this one thing on Fox News that said it was all a lie." I think Jesus would be a lot more interested in the moral dimension of it. That's more His thing. I think Jesus would be more like "You guys really should not be consuming so much that you're threatening to destroy my creation. How about living a bit more simply? It worked for me."

So let's stop assuming that religion and science are somehow at odds. They're not. They're in completely different realms, asking and answering completely different questions.

Page 56

2010-04-21T11:10:00.000-07:00

A fun kind of game I found on Alison's grandma's blog, Z's World (did you know that grandmas could have blogs?!).

Rules:

* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
*Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Edna Selan Epstein, The Attorney-Client Privilege and Work-Product Doctrine (5th ed. 2007)

In short, the attorney-client privilege is designed to protect a client's expectation of confidentiality regarding communications with his attorney. There has been no showing by Metro that, at the time the documents in question were generated, it had any intent or expectation that they would be concealed from its insurance carriers.

Ever Read the Bible?

2010-04-18T16:46:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't. But I went to church every Sunday as a kid and went to lots of Sunday Schools and Bible Camps and Jesus Discos and all the rest of it. So I feel like I know the Bible pretty well. I even read a comic-book version of the whole Old Testament (Spoiler alert: Jesus dies in the end. And the Jews did it, in the billiard room, with the cross.)

But despite that exhaustive research, there are still some fun bits I missed somehow. For instance, there's a whole section of Exodus that lays out about a hundred amendments to the Ten Commandments.

Some are great. Exodus 22:25 states "If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not be like a moneylender; charge him no interest." So basically, all bankers are breaking God's law. Awesome!

Some are not so great. Exodus 20:21-22 states "If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, because the slave is his property." Hmmm. So those people who think homosexuality is a sin because of a few Bible passages ... they obviously must also be in favor of beating slaves within an inch of their lives, no? Or perhaps this Exodus passage is a metaphor. A metaphor for ... ummm .... c'mon, liberal preachers, do something with this one. Stretch this somehow into a lesson about modern life.

No, but really, a lot of this stuff was really revolutionary for its time. You gotta remember what ancient life was like. It was brutality spiced with sadism, with a little mauling on the side. Rome was the most advanced civilization of the ancient world, and it was a place in which entertainment meant watching lions eat people. The Roman gods and other related polytheistic systems didn't really impart morality at all -- they were just more powerful versions of humans whose whims you supposedly had to appease if you wanted to get anywhere.

A lot of the Exodus rules represent a definite step forward from all that. Exodus 21:12: "Anyone who strikes a man and kills him will surely be put to death." So despite the harsh punishment, it implies some value to human life. Or here's a better one -- Exodus 22:21: "Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt." (But Mexicans, of course, they're a different story. You can oppress them all you like. After all, they're not from Egypt!)

So yeah, anyway, I don't have any great overarching point here -- I'm just saying that the Bible is fun. It's totally dope, kids! Word!

Solutions to Baseball's Problems

2010-04-06T14:51:00.000-07:00

Baseball doesn't really have any problems, really. I mean not like Zimbabwe or Bernie Madoff or beeper salesmen have troubles. Baseball is wildly successful and is rolling in so much money that it real worst problem is paper cuts. And I should state that baseball is one of my favorite things in the world. But like everything, it has a few problems that could be fixed to make it a bit better. For example:

Problem: There's a crazy disparity in income between large-market teams and small-market teams. This is been the source of much hand-wringing in baseball for a long time now. A lot of half-measures have been taken, like revenue sharing, in which the small-market teams get an infusion of cash from the rich ones.

But this stinks because it enables the Florida Marlins to basically tank each year and still make a profit. All they have to do is keep their payroll artifically low, and revenue sharing will ensure that they make a profit even if they don't sell a single ticket all year. How come tea partiers haven't come out against revenue sharing? If that ain't communist, I don't know what is.

I should note that the rest of the small-market teams make a real effort to win. And because some of them have had some success lately, the clamor for reform has actually died down a bit. But the fact of the matter is still that if the Milwaukee Brewers develop a player like Prince Fielder, they can hope to keep him for, at best, the first half of his career, after which he's going to sign with the Yankees for ten gabillion dollars. There's not too much the Brewers can do about that -- The Yankees serve a massive group of people, both to watch the games and attend them, and the Brewers just don't.

Solution: The away team gets half the gate at each game. So when the Royals visit the Yankees, they get half of the proceeds for ticket sales for the games they play. Why shouldn't they? They're on the bill too. They make half the effort on the field. The home team still keeps all the money from concessions, merchandise, TV rights, etc. Maybe the home team could keep 55% to cover the salaries of the grounds crew and announcer and hilarious fellow in the chicken suit. Whatever - regardless, the Royals organization should be paid for their contribution to those individual games.

The Yankees would hate this, of course. The Yankees make lot more in gate receipts than the Royals do. But really, the big difference-maker between the Yankees and Royals is the size of their TV contracts, and that won't change. Under this plan, the Yankees would still make more money than everyone else. But it won't be quite as lopsided. And it's an elegant, simple plan, without any of the clumsy, artificiality of revenue sharing. It sure won't allow the Marlins to tank.

So what if the Yankees refuse to give up half their gate? Then the Royals say "OK, fine, then we're not coming. Good luck filling your schedule." Simple. That would never happen, of course, because the owners are all a bunch of rich old white men who spend their time scratching each other's backs with backscratchers made of million-dollar bills. Their enemy is the players, so if the plan doesn't involve screwing the players somehow, they won't do a thing.

Problem: Games are too slow. This is the first thing that every baseball hater says about our beloved game, so just the mention of it makes us baseball lovers want to shoot them very, very slowly. But there are times when I have to agree. When you're watching Nomar Garciaparra foul off the tenth pitch of the at-bat, and then leave the batter's box, remove all his clothes, put them all back on, tap his head ten times, wash his hands fifteen times, do twenty Hail Marys, and then finally step back in the box, you can't help but think "Hurry the hell up!!!!"

Solution: I've already let the cat out of the bag on this one. The solution is to not automatically let the batter leave the batter's box between pitches. Once he enters the batter's box, he has to stay there until he gets a hit or walks hit by a pitch or falls down or gets eaten by a monster. If he wants to leave the box in mid-at-bat, he has to ask the umpire. The umpire doesn't have to say yes. This would be an easy fix -- this is already what batters have to do after the pitcher gets set. Just extend it to the whole at-bat.

Of course, you still have slow pitchers. I think you might have to just have a time limit between pitches. If you don't deliver the ball in time, you've just thrown a ball. That's not the most elegant solution, but hey, I can't think of everything.

Problem: Umpires are human beings. I'm not one to blame umpires for missed calls. It's extremely hard to make split-second calls over split-second plays 100% correctly all the time. Poor umpires only get noticed the 1% of the time they miss a call.

So the point is, I feel bad for umpires. So bad that I want to fire them all and replace them with computerized systems. They already have such a computerized system for judging whether pitches are balls are strikes. Why not just let that system take over? A little noise can come up immediately if it's a ball, and a different one if it's a strike. No missed calls, no arguing.

As for tags, catches, home run calls, etc., there have to be similar systems that could judge those and spit out a response immediately. That's the key, of course -- it has to make the call immediately. You can't have some guy in a booth looking at instant replays.

This one especially will probably not catch on with baseball fans. Their likely response will be "But umpires are a part of the game!" True, I would argue, but not a good part. I want competition to be as fair as humanly, or if need be, robotically, possible. I don't enjoy having human error play such a large role. I'll miss the umpires at first, but I'll get used to the new system and eventually enjoy it more because I wouldn't have to wonder what would have happened if calls went the other way. And that's what it's all about -- what's most fun to watch. And no, I wouldn't want the players all replaced by robots. That would not be fun to watch. (Or would it ...)

In general, true baseball fanatics tend to think of the sport as a perfectly wrought machine, one for which a single alteration would ruin everything. It ain't. It's entertainment, and can always be made to be more entertaining.

Other sports do it. There was a time when basketball had no shot clock. At the end of games, the team that was ahead would just sit there dribbling, trying to run out the clock. They instituted the shot clock to prevent that, and now ... well, now basketball games end with a bunch of tedious fouls and time outs ... but anwyay, that's still better than watching some schmuck dribble for twenty minutes.

So yeah, those are my proposals. They will never, ever, ever be enacted. Oh well.

Review of a Show You've Never Heard of and Don't Care About

2010-04-02T04:54:00.000-07:00

I was excited to see the new show "Future Food," on Planet Green. If you don't get Planet Green, it's a station that ostensibly only deals with eco-friendly stuff. So of course it's a channel that I don't watch much but always feel like I should.

"Future Food" sounded promising. It's a reality show, of sorts, about a cutting-edge Chicago restaurant that uses unconventional, scientific means to create new foods. They'll use liquid nitrogen, for example, to see if they can make watermelon into a passable substitute for tuna. You know, that kind of thing.

I'm a big fan of food. I'm addicted to it, really, eating it almost every day. I'm not so into quantity as I am into quality. And I love trying new, weird foods. That's adventure for me. Put me in an El Savadoran/Norwegian hot dog-flavored ice cream place and I'm happy as a clam with butter sauce. Some people go climb mountains or drive racecars or beat sharks with a bat or whatever they do -- I go to exotic restaurants and try food from countries that I didn't even realize had food.

So eating at this Chicago restaurant of "Future Food" would be a dream come true for me. Watching the restaurant's chefs screw around, unfortunately, was not. Like too many chefs, they're overly intense and competitive, perverting cooking, this ancient and inherently beautiful art, into an opportunity to high-five each other and scream obscenities.

They awkwardly stuff competition into everything they do. In one episode, they made some unusual crepes and then challenged this very nice and respectable Frenchman, an acknowledged crepe master, to a crepe-off. These schmucks talked a lot about "kicking his ass" while the nice old Frenchman smiled gamely. I felt ashamed for America.

And then there's the fact that these guys are really, really, dweeby. When Goldberg and Mick Foley scream obscenities and high-five each other after "beating up" the Undertaker, you're kinda like, "OK, that's dumb, but look at them. What else are they supposed to do?" But when pencil-thin, googly-eyed dorks scream obscenities and high-five after making some really tasty crepes, you're kinda like "Oh c'mon now. You're not fooling anyone. Go home and do play some D&D like you're supposed to. Another high-five and you'll probably injure yourself."

Side topic for a second -- is it still OK to high-five? I mean, if you're Joe Mauer and you just hit a ten-run home run to beat the Yankees in the World Series, yes, high-fiving makes sense. But are mere mortals still really allowed to high-five? I can't really think of an opportunity in which it would be a viable action for me. But I could be wrong about this one.

At any rate, I also worry that this is the first step in Planet Green slipping away their main mission, a la the History Channel. In case you didn't hear, the History Channel does not actually show anything remotely relating to history nowadays. It's kinda like how MTV doesn't show music videos. The History Channel instead shows reality shows about people with weird jobs -- ice road truckers, ghost hunters, shark-beaters-with-a-bat, that kind of thing. These "Future Food" folks were trying to devise ways to waste less food or buy less food that had large carbon footprints, so there was some eco-stuff in there. I'm just worried that a few years from now Planet Green will be showing "Ghost Truckers," a show about people who investigate haunted trucks and discover that when they pulled him from the twisted, burning wreck, he looked like ... this!

Poop Journal, Vol. 1

2010-03-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

Two poops before 9, yet again. That seems to be a trend lately. The first comes on with alacrity and force, about two sips into my first cup of coffee. It's always a big, solid dark one, a strong, forceful leader, the Tony Soprano of the day's poops. The second is less intense, but still insistent, and tends to be lighter and more scattered in form. More of a Christopher Moltisanti, if you will.

Two poops before 9 a.m. always makes me wonder, though. That seems excessive. Is it something I'm eating? Do some foods yield a lot more waste product than others? If so, they should find out what foods yield very little poop material and feed it to cats. Then I'd have to change the litterbox less often.

I'd be very interested in poop research. I mean, I know scientists will study owl poop (which they charmingly call "owl pellets") and other animal poops ("bolus" seems to be the euphemism), but I wonder how many study human poop (and what their euphemism would be). I suppose a lot of connections are made between human poop and diseases, but I'm more interested in questions like "Why does it sometimes come out in one solid chunk sometimes and other times come out as a lot of little pieces?" "Why does it sometimes take about 40 wipes to get all the poop residue out and sometimes take just a couple?" That latter question is especially pressing for me personally -- because of the large amount of pooping and the concomitant amount of wiping I do daily, the ol' asshole can get pretty raw. It's not uncommon to see little blood spots on the toilet paper. Not good. My lifelong dream is to have a bidet and just skip the whole wiping process entirely.

I wonder if I might reach in farther than most people when wiping, though. It's not like I do it for fun of course -- I have to get that stuff out. I always have to make conscious effort to relax my asshole as much as possible and then really reach in far to get to some sort of inner layer. I think of it like trying to brush a shark's inner row of teeth. I don't know if that's true for everybody, or if maybe I have an unsually complex and layered asshole.

I also find that anything but the best toilet paper tends to break apart in mid-wipe, resulting in poop residue on my finger, which is of course very unpleasant. So nowadays I shell out for the top-of-the-line stuff, the toilet paper made of advanced polymers and equipped with special blue bristles for those hard-to-reach places.

Congratulations! You made it to the end of a very disgusting post. You win $1. To claim your prize, carefully print the words "poop journal read in full!" on a 3X5 card and send it to:

Chris E. Keedei Poop Journal Promotion
1333 Mockingbird Lane
Funkytown, AL 54321

Thanks for playing!

"The Hurt Locker" = "Lethal Weapon" Goes to Iraq!

2010-03-08T15:18:00.000-08:00

I saw "The Hurt Locker" the day before the Oscars, and assumed it would be my favorite Best Picture nominee. It certainly seemed like the award represented a battle between Overrated Big-Budget Special-Effects-Laden Family Drama ("Avatar") and Scrappy, Meaningful, Edgy Indie That Smart People Prefer ("The Hurt Locker"). When those type of struggles arise, I'm usually 100% on the side of the indie, because my identity is very much wrapped up in being the smart person. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that "The Hurt Locker" sucked.

There were some good points. It was well-directed. It had a lot of great individual scenes involving bomb defusing and such. There was good detail about what that's really like. The problem was that the script sucked.

There was no plot, and the characters were one-note. The main character was this white guy who came in on an established unit and Played By His Own Rules. Yes, He Did Things His Way, was very irrevent, made bad-ass offhand quips, endangered everyone needlessly with pointless bravado, and wouldn't you know it? He always turned out to be right in the end!

Then on the sidelines, you have the black dude. He was always saying things like "Sir, don't you want the protective suit?!" "Sir, we have to get going -- we don't have much time!" "Come back here or I'm going to have to report you to the principal!" (OK, he didn't say that one. But I wouldn't have been surprised if he had.) Basically, he was the cautious, rule-bound one, the one who was actually following well-established protocols that I'm betting are there for a very good reason -- and he was always wrong in the end. He quickly became nothing but a foil for White Guy's preternatural super-awesomeness.

It's basically just the "Lethal Weapon" formula transported to bomb-disposal units in Iraq. You have the wild-ass white guy who runs on instinct, rules be damned. And then you have the cautious black dude being dragged along, muttering "I'm getting too old for this shit!" White guy's always right, but we love the black dude anyway, because he's so adorable, the way he approaches things in a sane, rational way that doesn't threaten everyone's lives! Aww, look at him try! He'll never be as good as the white guy, but maybe he can learn a thing or two by basking in his glow!

Even the non-bomb-disposal scenes only existed to reinforce this dynamic. They get drunk in one scene, and of course it's the black guy who passes out and has to be dragged to his bed. In the end (which I'm going to ruin for you, because there's not much to ruin anyway), White Guy and Black Guy have a heart-to-heart, which basically just involves Black Guy tearfully asking White Guy, "How come you're so awesome?" White Guy doesn't really answer, but I was yelling at the TV "Because this is a simple-minded hero-worship-fest, with no real characters or plot!"

Then White Guy went back to his boring family stateside, and nothing much happened, beyond White Guy realizing that he has to go back to Iraq. So that's it then -- that's all he is, a perfectly perfect bomb disposal machine. Yes, I get that would be really hard to adjust to normal life after such a dangerous year. But he doesn't really go through any sort of struggle to come to his conclusion to return. The whole sequence only reinforces that he's not so much a character as a cliche.

The real best film of the year, by the way, was "Up in the Air." Or maybe "Up," which I didn't see, but probably got immediately disqualified in most people's minds because it doesn't fit the profile of a best picture (i.e., it's animated). I think most voters didn't even really consider either movie. I think they got caught by the Big-Budget Special Effects-Fest vs. Edgy Indie dichotomy, picked their sides, and that was that. It's a shame.

Movie Reviews: Movies I Haven't Seen

2010-03-07T05:09:00.000-08:00

The problem with movies is that typically, you can't form an opinion on them unless you've seen them. But to see them takes time and money, which you'd rather not waste if you're pretty sure they're going to be awful. So I prefer to judge movies based on the ads. Easier, cheaper, more fun.

I watched a lot of Olympics, so I can recite verbatim pretty much any of the 6 or so ads they had playing over and over throughout. Two were for movies: "Cop-Out" and ... uh ... I forget the other one.

"Cop-Out"

My immediate reaction to this one was simply "Are you fucking kidding me?" So wait, you have the hard-as-nails white cop, played by Bruce Willis, and his wild-ass black partner, played by Tracy Morgan. And they may be, shall we say, buddies? These cops? Ergo, they are buddy-cops? It's so cliche it's almost genius. Is this a parody? The ads didn't make it seem like it was. I'm going to proceed assuming that it isn't.

Assuming that this is a straight exploitation of the buddy-cop formula, the name is the real beauty part. Like most bad movie titles, it's devised to be as easy to remember as possible: It's a well-worn phrase in the English language, and it has "cop" in it so you can easily associate with that one cop movie with the funny black guy. That's all par for the course -- the great part is that the phrase "cop-out" actually means "evading any sort of effort!!!" It's as if the movie is telling us "Hey, we realize we're not even trying here. We're just pushing some crap through the system to make a buck. You know it, and we know it, so let's just get this over with." Next we're going to see a movie about employees of the New York subway system called "Token Effort." Or a movie about a guy making a crappy movie called "I Hope This Movie Covers Expenses in the First Weekend and Gets Some Overseas Business Because It Sure Won't Have Legs."

My brother-in-law always talked about writing a buddy-cop movie, and allowing himself same exact amount of time to make the movie that the movie would run. So, basically, you could improv an entire movie in two hours. I think someone stole that idea for "Cop-Out."

I'm still not sure it's not a parody. If it is, my review could change dramatically. In fact, it would be my favorite movie ever if it turned out to be written by the writers of "The Onion" and it actually killed off Tracy Morgan in the first few minutes, replacing him with another gruff, white loner cop. Maybe have this new partner also played by Bruce Willis, except with a mustache. Bruce and Bruce II would hit it off immediately, and spend the rest of the movie at a bar. Then they fall for each other and spend the final half hour making love. Of all the actors in the world, I think Bruce Willis would be the perfect choice for a character who spends the whole movie making love to himself.

There would be so many ways to screw with the audience on this one. Why don't more filmmakers do that? I would. I would make a movie in which, after an hour of a typical plot about the CIA or a wacky family's Christmas celebration or whatever, the entire world explodes for no reason, and the last hour is just a long shot of empty space.

Or better: Maybe a period piece in which well-mannered and overdressed people sit in an English manor, and nothing much happens at all. Several plot lines get started ("Wait, Mr. Noseworthy has rudely failed to appear for our morning constitution around the garden!"), only to have them immediately resolved in an anti-climactic way ("Oh, actually, Mr. Noseworthy's waiting outside for you." "Oh, never mind then.") It goes on and on like that for an hour, and then suddenly Boba Fett bursts in through a window and starts shooting everyone. Then Rambo bursts out of a kitchen door and starts shooting Boba Fett and his army of Oompa-Loompas. Eventually Rambo gets pinned down, and as Boba levels his gun at Rambo's face, he makes a long and dumb speech about Rambo killing his aunt or something. Then he says "OK, Rambo, say your prayers," and suddenly, at the last second, Peter O'Toole appears and shoots Boba in the back with a bazooka. It turns out he was Mr. Noseworthy the whole time! Close-up on O'Toole, who says, dramatically, "I'm ready for my walk around the garden!" Fade to credits. Thunderous applause.

Anyway, that's all besides the point. "Cop-Out" looks excruciatingly bad, and though I love Tracy Morgan and think he should be in every movie, I would rather chop off my own balls and eat them than see "Cop-Out."

"The Other Movie"

Uhh ... I still can't remember what the other movie was that I saw ads for constantly during the Olympics. You guys watched the Olympics -- what was it?

P.S.: I looked it up and "Cop-Out" is indeed meant to be tongue-in-cheek. But how far in cheek, really? The gags in the ads really don't look very tongue-in-cheek; they look like they were cut straight out of "48 Hours." The alleged tongue-in-cheekness may itself by a cop-out enabling them to lazily run through an easy formula and still save some face.

But regardless, the clincher is that it was directed by Kevin Smith, the worst, most smug, most painfully unfunny director in history. That clinches it: I would happily chop of my balls and both my legs, gouge out my eyes, and carve out my still-beating heart so I could use my last dying moments to eat them all raw rather than see "Cop-Out."

We Need a Nerdlympics

2010-02-14T16:17:00.001-08:00

I love the Olympics. I love the international part and I love the fact that the competitions are quick (races like swimming or speed skating and prancy-dancy things like gymnastics and ice dancing usually take a few minutes each, which I think is why the races and prancy-dancy things are always more popular in the Olympics than, like, hockey or baseball or whatever). But I do think there's an aspect of it that's a little outdated: It's athletic.

Let's be frank -- physical activity is a bit passe. There was a time when physical strength was really a ticket to personal success. You had to swing extremely heavy swords to chop the limbs off of Huns. You had to plow fields like a mofo to feed your family. Big muscles were pragmatic.

Nowadays, athletic ability is little more than window dressing. The winners in life are the nerds who start computer companies or the CEOs who connivingly back-stab their way to wealth. The musclebound types might get chicks in high school , but in real life, they either make the NFL or they get really good at hauling trash. Even if you're a soldier, you do better if you know how to program computers for drone attacks than if you ran into a terrorist cell with your shirt ripped off yelling "ROOOAAAAR!!" like a movie monster. It's brains, not brawn, that wins in modern life.

I mentioned the NFL because yes, there are some brawny types who do well in professional sports. But the people who actually get paid to play sports comprise one millionth of one percent of the all the jocks in the world. And it underlines my main point -- that this appreciation of athletic prowess is a vestigial instinct, one that once would have rewarded those who can provide and produce wealth, but now is tantamount to making national celebrities out of the people who have the best haircuts. It's nice, it's attractive, but it's really pretty useless in real life.

That's why I propose a Nerdlympics. I haven't really figured out the events yet, but I was hoping you guys could help with that. The only rule is that success can not have anything to do with athletic ability. And also, the competition should at least be kinda interesting to watch. It doesn't have to be riveting to do well in an international competition -- look at luge, where they run against a clock and every single run looks exactly the same. And people still watch that and cheer like lunatics. So the bar is pretty low.

It has to be relatively comprehensible too. You can't have a math competition (sorry Emily) because most people don't understand math. It has to be something that people do actually find enjoyable, typically. I think Scrabble should be one.

I'm a bit biased because I'm a Scrabble freak. But I think it could be a lot like televised poker. I've never really enjoyed playing poker, but I admit, it's not bad to watch on TV. Taking a page from televised poker, you would need to see each person's hand on TV, so you could shout at the TV "No, 'qi' on the triple word score, you moron!" That would really be the fun of it. And when they put down a weird word you've never heard of, the TV guys should define it for you. And each turn should be timed to keep things moving.

And honestly, wouldn't you rather root for some nice old grandma who happens to be a Scrabble master than Apolo Anton Ohno and that stripper's pussy on his face? Aren't we all a little tired of rooting for jocks? Hell, reality shows are nothing but non-athletic competitions -- singing, cooking, bug-eating -- and we love them to death. We need that kind of stuff on an international scale, only every four years, and decide that it's a really big deal. That part just seems to make it so much more fun.

So what events would you put in the Nerdlympics?

Things Joe Finds Irksome: Movie Monsters

2010-02-10T12:13:00.000-08:00

This one has been bugging me for some time now. And I suppose it follows up on Ed's recent list of movie conventions. Monsters in movies - from dragons to dinosaurs to aliens to snakes - behave so ludicrously, especially when they're in pursuit of people, that I long ago stopped being terrified, and adopted an attitude of impatience, tempered with disgust, whenever I see their scaly/slimy/monstery figures onscreen. In particular, I can't stand it when they roar for no particular reason. Why? Let's find out, shall we?

Let's start by thinking a little about the behavior of predators. Say you're traipsing by a water hole in the Okavango Delta. You get thirsty, so you lean over to get a drink of cool, delicious water. Suddenly, with a tremendous splash, out comes a great crocodile, with sharp teeth bared. You look awfully tasty to him. What does he do next? There are two options, but the answer depends entirely on whether he is a movie monster crocodile, or a real-life one.

Option One (Movie Monster Crocodile Outcome): He looks at you with his squinty, evil eyes, rears up, and roars at you at the top of his lungs: ROAOAOAAAARRRR!!!!! You, who had been paralyzed with fear merely by the sight of the crocodile splashing out of the pond, take opportunity of this roaring interval to turn and run into the jungle. The crocodile, thoroughly enjoying his full-throated roar, waits until it's quite done, and then notices - oops! - you're getting away. So he starts menacingly plodding after you, oh-so-intent on catching you. You weave in and out of trees, and he deftly follows/knocks trees over, until finally at the last minute you make some quick turn that he can't negotiate, and you're safe! The crocodile looks despondent as you continue to run away, and lets loose a great sad roar: ROAOWAAAhahaaaaaoohmmm(sniff)!

Option Two (Real-Life Crocodile Outcome): He chomps on your leg, and drags you under the water until you die. Then he eats you.

In real life, a crocodile would invariably choose Option Two. Movie monsters always - always - choose Option One.

There are two related problems with Option One. First, movie monsters haven't grasped the idea that, in general, chasing is not a good plan for predators. Unless you're a cheetah, the most effort you want to expend is a short burst to get your prey. Better yet, just hang out, hidden, until something happens to walk by or get a drink of water, and then - snap! - chomp on them. Chasing takes a lot of energy, and most prey have evolved to be quicker and nimbler than you.

Second, the monsters don't get that all that chasing wouldn't even be necessary if they'd JUST KNOCK IT OFF WITH ALL THE STARING AND ROARING! If they're close enough to roar in your face, they're probably close enough to eat you already.

Pointless roaring plus chasing equals lots of hungry nights for movie monsters and their offspring. It's really the roaring that kills me. There's not an animal in nature, I'm willing to bet, that winds up and roars at its prey first rather than chomping at it. Roaring and hissing are warning or communicative sounds. They're not particularly helpful for hunting.

Imagine some Cro-Magnon dude, walking through an ancient European forest with his spear, when look! Over there! A deer! Steathily he approaches, with spear cocked, until he comes within a few feet of the doe. He gets in position, and then.... "AAAARRRGGGHHH!!!! HEY, DEEEERRRR! WHOOOOOOOP!! I'M GONNA EAT YOUUUUU!!! HOOHOOOOO!!!!!" And so the chase is on! The deer wins, of course, because it's really fast. Try to explain that one back at the cave. "Aw, honey, you should've heard my intimidating whoop! That deer looked SO scared before it took off into the woods." " We can't eat intimidating whoops, dear. Go get us some berries."

Movie monsters don't understand how unhelpful a giant roar can be. Impressive, yes. I'm sure all the escapees tell great stories in front of their fireplaces about how impressive and guttural that roar was; how piercing those eyes that kept staring at you; and so on. The point being, these people are sitting comfortably in their homes, instead of being processed by your digestive system. Think substance over style, my monster friends.

I don't know where this trend began, but my guess is Jurassic Park. All those dinosaurs wandering around, back from extinction, and what do they do with their second chance at existence? Waste it on hissing and roaring at the few helpless humans they actually come across. Followed by fruitless chasing, of course. Ugh. Maybe that's why they went extinct in the first place.

The true problem, of course, lies not with the movie monsters themselves, but with their computer-image-generating creators. I think they do a horrible job, by and large, of conceiving and executing terror/evil when it comes to monsters. I think they don't realize that the visual details of the monster are the least important part of terror inducing. I picture them sitting around their tables, or iPads, or iTables, saying, "You know what's scary? Fangs. And scales. And slobber. Let's make something that's made out of nothing but fangs and scales and slobber!" Which is fine, as far as it goes - those things can be scary, after all.

But once they've designed their fearsome thing, they find themselves making two irreconcilable requests of the audience: Be Very Afraid, and Admire My Monster. They want you to put yourself in the shoes of the onscreen character, but they also ask you to sit back and dispassionately examine every scaly inch of their creature that they worked so hard to create. You can't have both. The Rear Up and Roar maneuver attempts to bridge the two opposing requests, but that's like getting fans of Brahms to agree that Wagner's programmatic use of orchestral music doesn't detract from the intrinsic beauty and worth of the music itself - ain't gonna happen, you know?

And so we wind up with this contrived monster convention that serves no purpose but to attract attention to itself and away from the emotion of the moment. It irks me.

I Called It!

2010-02-05T20:45:00.000-08:00

On my favorite political blog, Fivethirtyeight.com (terrible name, by the way, especially for those of us with a bad memory for numbers), they're advocating having a President's Question Time, like Britain's Prime Minister's Question Time:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/02/few-questions-about-questiontime.html

Which I of course agree with, and signed the petition -- but dude, I called it!

http://edykhuizen.blog.friendster.com/2005/05/we-need-presidents-question-time/

My idea! Me! Me, me me me me me me! Mimi! Mi-o-my-o-me! Midi! Me-wee Herman! Me-sothelioma! Me-ter maid! MEEEEEE!!!!!!!

Me.

OK, Just One Quick Political Thing

2010-02-02T04:40:00.000-08:00

Anyone else sick of hearing about these "tea party" activists? Do they even know what they're fighting about?

I just heard a report on them on the radio. They talked a lot about fighting for freedom and protecting the Constitution, which is kind of like taking a strong stand in favor of cute puppies and against puppy-eating Nazis. They said the Constitution was being violated, but didn't say what part, and how. (It's probably the 3rd Amendment, about quartering of soldiers. Lord knows I'm tired of Navy Seals dropping by my St. Paul condo and demanding room and board.)

There were a precious few substantive things mentioned, in fact. They hated the stimulus package, the health insurance bill, and especially the bank bailouts. Let's focus on the bank bailouts, because that's the one that's most universally despised.

A history lesson is in order. In 1929, the stock market crashed. Bummer! But not something that hasn't happened many times before or since. The crash in 1987 was actually bigger. The one in 2001 was no picnic either. And these kinds of stock market crashes often bring about recessions. So that's no good.

But here comes the truly bad part: In 1930, banks started to fail. The Hoover administration took a hard line, saying screw 'em, they deserve to fail because they're dumb. Bad move. When banks started failing, people started panicking, and took their money out of perfectly healthy banks, in what's called a "run" on the banks. Then those banks didn't have enough capital to operate, and they started failing. Think of George Bailey at the Bedford Falls Savings and Loan. He stopped one of these kinds of bank runs by saying "Well, it's because Bob's money is paying for Fred's business right now!" and then stammering adorably. That's how banks work -- they use one person's money to pay for another person's loan. If all the Bobs take out their money, then the bank can't loan the Freds anything any more, and his business goes under, and no new Fred-based businesses get funded, and the bank doesn't even have enough deposits to operate, and everyone loses.

It's this kind of chain reaction that pushed a recession into a depression. This is exactly what would have happened if the government let the banks fail in 2009. Think about it -- the stock market is mostly gravy. You put your extra money in the stock market, plus your retirement, which is very important but not crucial to your survival (there's always Social Security). But banks are the average person's financial lifeblood. That's where your checking is, your savings, your mortgage, your loans -- if that all went away you'd be really screwed.

Then there's also the fact that this is one of the two major tasks of the Federal Reserve. It is a reserve of cash to prop up banks and other major institutions that are on the verge of collapse. (The other major task is the interest rate fiddling-with that you hear so much about.) It was created to do this exact thing after the Great Depression hit. There are those who object to the very existence of the Federal Reserve, which is insanely dangerous but at least logically consistent -- if you're against the bank bailouts, you should be against the Federal Reserve, because bailouts are half of its job.

So anyway, when Obama says that we had to bail out the banks to avoid a depression, he's right. And c'mon -- you think Mr. Liberal Obama would really bail out the banks because he loves them or has buddies there or something? Bush would have bailed out the oil companies if gas went under $2 a gallon.

And while we're at it, where was all this anti-big-government rage during the Bush administration? Bush presided over the largest expansion of government since LBJ. He turned the budget surplus into a major deficit. Granted, Obama has made the deficit much larger, but it was out of necessity -- when no one else is spending, the government has to step in and be the spender of last resort. If he didn't, we'd be in a depression right now.

Plus, we are getting most of the money back from the banks now. And the banks definitely should be punished for not making loans and paying out these huge bonuses. I'd be in favor of a punitive tax on all bonuses coming from institutions that still owe bailout money. Think of it like the wage garnishment you undergo when you owe money to the IRS. I'm also in favor of bringing back regulation that would prevent banks from getting too big to fail and would disallow the kinds of wild speculation that got them into trouble. I'm not happy with the banks either. But I am happy that the Obama administration did the smart thing and not the popular thing. I am very much in favor of the bank bailouts.

Oh, one last thing. Did you know that the Boston Tea Party was actually a rebellion not against taxes, but against a reduction of a tax? It was an explicitly pro-tax demonstration. See, there was a tax on tea coming in from Great Britain. At the time, we were part of Britain. Britain decided to reduce that tax, which meant that British tea became cheaper. This gave it an edge over the tea that people like John Hancock were smuggling in from Holland. (I read about it in a great book called "I Love Paul Revere, Whether He Rode Or Not," by Richard Shenkman.) So basically, the Boston Tea Party was a revolt over cheaper goods competing more favorably with illegally smuggled goods. It's like if our government reduced the taxes on pharmaceutical companies, who then cuts costs on drugs, which those caused all those guys with the Web sites promising CHEAP VIAGARA!!! to react by knocking over pharmacies and throwing all their drugs into sewer gratings.

OK, it's not entirely like that -- it's more symbolic of rebelling against a perceived oppressive government. Considering that the government is not imposing any onerous anything right now, but instead rescuing failed institutions and providing incentives for job creation and etc., it seems very misplaced. But I just feel like in so many ways, the Tea Party is a collection of confused people who are pissed off about losing their jobs and/or seeing their friends lose their jobs and are doing what comes naturally -- blaming the government. You can be pissed off at banks but you can't really do much about it the way you can start a political campaign, so they're going with the campaign, whether it really makes sense or not.

And I guess it's hard to blame them, on some level. I wish they could direct that rage against something that is actually at fault, but I understand the frustration with an economic system that has left the middle-class behind for so long, and is now just dumping them out entirely. I believe that liberal economic policies -- supporting unions, taxing the rich more heavily, instituting a nationalized health insurance system -- can actually correct the top-heaviness of this economy, support the middle class and get more average people to work. But it will take time, and by the time it happens, these tea party folks might vote out the very people who stand a chance of actually fighting for their interests instead of those of the rich. Sigh. If only people knew stuff.

Something Positive

2010-01-29T22:57:00.000-08:00

I've bored myself with all the negative/political crap that I've been writing in this World Wide Web log. I'm going to think of something pleasant and apolitical to write about.

Hmm ... Oh hey, my cat did the cutest thing the other day. She ran over to me and said "What the hell is wrong with the Republicans in Congress? Are they capable of anything besides obstructionism for political gain?"

No, that's not true. My cat is actually a right-wing freak who thinks that the Senate's health care plan is fascism, despite the fact that it is very similar to the plan that Republicans put forth in the early '90s, and by the way, have the Republicans offered any constructive criticism during this whole thing? I'd like to ... OK, I'm going off track again.

Hm. Well, here's something that could be interesting, at least. I have a few conventions of movies and TV that always make me laugh, because when you think about them, they're preposterous. But for some reason we always accept them. Read, enjoy, and have your movie-watching experience permanently damaged by intrusive realizations of the niggling implausibility of what you're seeing.

1. A character awakens from a scary dream and sits straight up immediately. Try actually doing this sometime. No matter how scary your dream is, it is almost impossible to sit up ramrod straight immediately. There's actually a scientific reason for this. During certain parts of your sleep cycle, your body is in a sort of rigor mortis -- your muscles are locked and cannot move. Some people have a disorder in which they wake up while in this state, which is very scary, as you can imagine. Some believe that it's in this waking rigor mortis that people have delusions about being kidnapped by aliens -- the fear translates to terrible semi-conscious dreams that they are later convinced really happened. But anyway, that's besides the point.

Point is, most people experience this state of rigor mortis while they're dreaming. You can wake up with a start, but your eyes will open and that's about all you can do for at least a second or so.

2. A character coming home from the grocery store always has a baguette sticking out of his/her bag. I'm actually stealing this one from Roger Ebert, who's such a terrific movie reviewer that I'll read his reviews for fun, even if I have no intention of seeing the movies he describes. He documented this observation, which is an especially odd convention because I'm betting that a huge percentage of Americans have never bought a baguette in their entire lives. But we just implicitly accept that every movie character loves baguettes and buys them constantly.

I won't use up more spots for other Roger Ebert rules, but I have to include a few more in this one. He also has the Rule of the Apple Cart, in which every high-speed chase through a city involves someone knocking over a large cart of fruit, as if every city is lousy with them. My favorite, though, is the Meet Cute, in which every couple in a romantic comedy has to meet in some ostentatiously cute way, such as smashing into each other in the street or grabbing each other's genitals simultaneously during an orgy (awkward!) or something like that. It's never a matter of the guy just sort of sidling up to the crazy drunk girl during Dollar Shot Night at the Tipsy Pelican like what happens in real life.

You know, this is probably because in real life, meetings of potential mates are always painful and unseemly to watch. In fact, everything about the human mating process, in real life, is horrible to watch. If you're watching bad relationships, you feel icky and sad for both people. With good relationships, the people seem sickly sweet and annoying. Best to keep love off the screen entirely and just stick to watching stuff fart and explode.

3. Characters using computers in movies often end up with screens that blink "ACCESS DENIED!!!" in massive, boxy red letters. Movie characters seem to always be using computers that are actually running Atari games from the early '80s. In real life, you'd get a tiny little box coming on the screen saying "Password does not match username. Please try again." I guess that doesn't have quite the same cachet for the big screen.

4. Characters in different movies often use exactly the same scream. There's the Wilhelm scream, which is sorta famous and might actually be extinct now because it's too famous. Here's a video that compiles Wilhelm screams in various movies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdbYsoEasio

But there are other ones I notice often. In TV ads I often hear a surprised sort of "WhaaAAAAaa!" that I of course can't describe further because I don't know what it's called or anything. So it's kind of pointless to bring it up. Oh well.

What else? I'm sure I'll think of more later. And when I do, I'll delete this part and put in another one. Kinda sad, really. These words never got the chance to fly on their own. Sigh.

Ooh, I'm So Scared, Osama!

2010-01-24T08:03:00.000-08:00

OK, forget the stupid thing I just wrote. This is better. I have a new strategy for dealing with terrorism: sarcasm.

Osama bin Laden just released a tape saying that he directly ordered the attempted attack on Christmas Day, and that the attacks will continue as long as we keep supporting Israel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah. You know what, Osama, you're seeing more pathetic every day. You're seeming less like a criminal mastermind and more like an angry little man sitting in a basement writing insane letters to the editor.

First of all, the underwear bomber was a bit scary, but let's keep things in perspective. He was caught. He was just another Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. And even if he had blown up the plane, well, at the risk of sounding like a horrible human being, it's one plane. Out of the zillions that fly every day. Let's keep our heads about this and realize that the odds you'll be a victim of a terrorist attack are infinitesmal.

I point this out because terrorists depend on the outsized paranoia of their enemies to do their thing. In fact, that's their stock in trade. If terrorists could accomplish big attacks, they would, but they can't, because they're a small bunch of back-assward freaks living in a hellhole. So they do relatively small strikes that they know will cause large amounts of fear. So why play into their hands? Be fuckin' cool. In fact, be rude. Ha ha, asshole, you can't even get an underwear bomber to do any damage. Man, you suck!

We can look to the examples of other nations that regularly suffered terrorist attacks. The IRA would regularly explode cars on London streets. The English kinda sorta got used to it eventually. They would kinda be like, "Oh, that's terrible! Right nearby, huh? So ... that means the Piccadilly line will be closed, so I should probably take Victoria up to Bakerloo ..." Point is, they eventually stopped giving the IRA the fear that they needed to be effective.

I don't mean that we should let up on our anti-terrorist efforts. Not at all. Our government needs to keep working hard to prevent terrorist attacks. I'm just saying we don't have to show fear. Let's be frank -- fear coming from average Americans will accomplish nothing. Remember the color-coded chart and the importance of duct tape? Please. The mere fact of the 9/11 attacks made us all as vigilant as we need to be to tackle underwear bombers or report truly suspicious activity. That's all we need. Anything beyond that just causes paranoia and leads to the sacrifice of our fundamental values, such as the one about not torturing people, the one about giving people their day in court, etc.

The way I see it, the Bush administration wasn't thinking much about terrorism before 9/11. Hell, you can hadly blame them for that -- no one was. But when those planes hit, holy shit were they spooked. Way too spooked for their own good. In later years, they very well may have prevented a few minor attacks. But they also hurtled us into an unnecessary war in Iraq, which resulted in a much larger loss of life than any terrorism attack. They also sacrificed a lot of our values, destroyed our reputation abroad, spent insane amounts of money -- they were basically chickens with their heads cut off. They were a bunch of pussies freaking out. Which of course is exactly what the terrorists wanted. Greater strength of purpose and less panic would have resulted in calmly finishing the job in Afghanistan and making a few smart, measured precautions at home.

So anyway, now we should be concentrating on not allowing al-Qaeda to think that they have a say in anything. It's like how you deal with a spazzy kid prone to tantrums: He just wants attention, so don't give it to him.

A good recent example of overreaction was all the hulabaloo over housing Gitmo guys in American maximum-security prisons. Senators were freaking out, saying no way in my backyard! As if these al-Qaeda schmucks are some sort of Bond-esque supervillans who would drill their way out of a maximum-security prison and then go blow up the local Piggly-Wiggly. They're nothing more than a few maniacs who don't speak the language, have no local network, and won't understand what's going on around them.

And let's not forget that the regular folks in maximum security prisons are not exactly a bunch of cream puffs. I'm more scared of the white guy who eats people's faces than I am of some religious nut from Saudi Arabia who was a pawn in someone else's plan. Plus, I'm betting terrorism suspects will not be the most popular people in prison. The Aryan nation might enjoy making them their bitches. It actually might be cruel to put the terrorism suspects in with those guys.

Anyway, the point remains -- vigiliance is necessary, but not paranoia. They got a big fluke victory on 9/11. They're not actually that strong. We need to fight them, but also need to be cool when they try to shake us up. That will rob them of their only ammunition. Meanwhile, because they're such freaks, they'll continue shooting themselves in the foot by bombing Arab cities and killing anyone among them who's not a super right-wing nutjob. They aren't smart enough to gain any moderate allies and grow any bigger. They'll always just be a noisy little pack of lunatics. Best to just laugh at them, beat them down, and give them enough rope to hang themselves.

Things I Love: Black People

2010-01-24T05:50:00.000-08:00

Black people are awesome, aren't they? Yep. Not that I really know any. Sadly, I don't have a single black friend. I live in the Twin Cities, which is not exactly an African-American mecca. Not that that's a valid excuse, since we do have some. I also don't have many friends, period. So there's that. There was a black dude at my old job who was pretty awesome, but he was too nice. Hard to joke around with someone who has trouble saying a mean word about anyone or anything.

But I see lots of black folks on TV, so that counts for something, right? Right? And music -- probably 80% of the music I listen to is made and performed by black folks. I just don't think white people are really that great at making music. Sorry, white folks -- just a personal preference.

And I've also seen a lot of comedians pontificating in a ribald and irrevent fashion on the hilarious differences one may find between white and black people. Man, white people are so lame! One I've never heard is one I've noticed the most, though. (And rest easy -- it's not funny.) Black folks have a tendency to walk right in the middle of traffic. I find this very odd. It'll be in the middle of the street, right in my path, so that I have to see them and slow down.

Maybe it's just a cultural difference -- for me, there's always an implicit assumption that any car will always keep going forward exactly at the same speed, and if you have any potential of meeting its trajectory, you will die. Black folks apparently think there are human beings behind the wheel who will see them, not want to hit them, and slow down to avoid doing so. Considering how most people behave behind the wheel, I think that's a potentially tragic leap of faith.

Has anyone else noticed this? Or am I a racist? Those are your two choices. Go.

A Few Myths About Religion in America

2010-01-18T08:03:00.000-08:00

1, "This country was founded on Judeo-Christian values."

Well, not really. It was in the sense that the founders were white, and thus came from a Judeo-Christian background. By the same logic, Led Zeppelin was founded on Judeo-Christian values. So was the Geek Squad, the film "Happy Gilmore," and the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices.

Cuz see, this country was actually founded on Enlightenment values. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion -- these are Enlightenment values, not Judeo-Christian ones. These are values created in opposition to the religious oligarchies that filled Europe at the time. At our country's founding, there were plenty of countries actually based on Judeo-Christian values, and none of them had any of the freedoms that form the basis of our country's greatness. These countries had state religions, and woe to those who didn't agree with them or with the monarchs.

The most illustrative example of this is to actually look at the Ten Commandments. I love when people want to post the Ten Commandments in public buildings, because they're a set of laws, and public buildings deal with sets of laws, right? And the Ten Commandments is older, so it must be the basis for what we have now. QED.

Try actually reading the Ten Commandments. Then compare them to the million gabillion laws, state, federal, etc., that govern our land. How many laws are shared by both? Two: Don't kill, don't steal. We're perfectly free to dishonor our mother and father, make graven images, covet our neighbor's ass -- eight of the Ten Commandments disallow things that we definitely CAN do, according to the highest law of our land, the Constitution. And the two that are shared by both sets of laws are also laws that exist in every country, and are certainly not unique to either the United States or Judeo-Christianity. Yeah, I think I could have figured out not to kill or steal without the Ten Commanments telling me. Doi.

I'm not a fan of American exceptionalism, in which we arrogantly think we're a beacon to the world and a moral authority to all and generally the bee's knees, but our Constitution really is an exceptional step forward in the evolution of society. And we can thank the Enlightenment, and our Enlightenment-minded Founding Fathers, for it. Not Christianity. Or even Judeo-Christianity.

2. "Our founders were deeply religious."

This is sort of a corrollary to the prevous one -- the Founding Fathers were actually so irreligious that they made the then-radical move of founding a country on Enlightenment values instead of religious ones. Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, etc. threw God's name in here and there in their speeches, but most were deists, who had a vision of God as a watchmaker: God wound up the world and then left it alone ever after. God isn't watching over us, isn't judging us and punishing us, isn't favoring us if we pray to him before a football game, and generally isn't that interested in our daily lives.

Mind you, they were quite interested in the moral lessons of the Bible. They went to church, learned from the Bible -- but they also learned from the Koran, from John Locke, etc. They were bookish, wealthy intellectuals. Basically, they were the Liberal Elite. John Kerry would have been much, much more at home with the Founding Fathers than would George W. Bush.

3) "Today's Christian conservatives hearken back to the Puritans."

Well, sort of. Yes, in the sense that both groups are really freakin' Christian. But there are some important differences.

Modern Christian conservative groups, such a Pentacostals or what have you, base everything on a person's personal relationship with Christ. God speaks to them personally, and their faith flowers from this. This idea would have been extreme blasphemy to the Puritans. In fact, it was: In 1638, a firebrand revolutionary Puritan named Anne Hutchinson was exiled from the community for saying, among other things, that God was speaking through her.

I learned about this in Sarah Vowell's "The Wordy Shipmates," which is a fun book even if you're not that into history. It talks about how the Puritans believed that God only spoke to them through the Bible, so they studied it like crazy. They actually remind me more of modern Orthodox Jews, endlessly picking apart and analyzing every word of their text. They were generally very literate and bookish, constantly writing and reading everything they could get their hands on.

So they were as nerdy as the Founding Fathers, but they sure as heck weren't deists. They believed everything they saw was a portent. Vowell talks about one Puritan who saw a mouse beat up on a snake. What would now be a funny YouTube video was then seen as a extremely meaningful signal of the Puritans defeating the devil, or something.

And, for the record, the Puritans did believe in at least some measure of separation between church and state. Preachers were prevented from running for government posts, that kind of thing. But in reality there was a lot of influence running back and forth and a lot of unabashedly religious laws on the books.

Another revolutionary figure among the Puritans, Roger Williams, had an opinion about the separation of church of state that more closely matches our modern one. Williams believed that there had to be a huge wall between church and state -- not because he wanted government freed from religion as much as he wanted religion unsullied by government. He had seen Catholicism in Europe warped by political concerns, misused as an instrument of power, and spawn horrible wars, like the 30 Years War that was raging at the time between Catholics and Protestants.

Williams was an interesting guy. He was an arrogant ultra-religious blabbermouth, but he was also remarkably tolerant in a lot of ways. He would harangue you for days on end to become Christian, but he didn't believe in ever punishing anyone for not being Christian. He was also exiled from the Puritain communities because of his views, and went on to live amicably with the American Indian tribe the Narrangasett and become the founder of both Providence and Rhode Island.

Anyway, modern Christian conservatives are much more beholden to a religious movement called the Great Awakening in the 1800s. That's when you got the tent revivals and fire and brimstone and such.

In conclusion (that's how I always ended every high school history paper), sure, The United States has a long history of strong religious feeling. But let's not forget that it also has a long history of irreligious feeling. And the government is and always has been a bastion of that feeling. It's worked pretty well so far, so let's keep it that way.

2001: A Space- and Time-Wasting Odyssey

2010-01-11T09:57:00.000-08:00

You know what never gets old? The comedic timing of Bronson Pinchot. Oh, or the debate about when the millennium started. I accidentally brought it up in a comment last week, and then Amy responded to my comment. So I felt the need to trot out the issue in a full-post forum. I apologize. I really do. But nevertheless....

First off, I see this as a separate issue from the decade debate. 1999 was clearly the end of the Nineties, which made 2000 the first of the next decade (the Zippos, the Ainties, whatever - see previous blog post). A decade really is any grouping of ten years. I have no problem with that.

As for the millennium, let's start with something we can all agree to - a millennium, by definition, consists of exactly one thousand years, right? Excellent. (But see the postscript, at your peril.)

Therefore, to find out whether the new millennium began in 2000 or 2001, we need to find out when the previous one ended and count to a thousand from there. The answer? Well, either 999 or 1000, I guess. That wasn't so helpful. I guess we actually need to go back one more millennium.

A dusty village in the Middle East. In the Roman province of Judea. Inns, being in short supply to begin with, were completely unavailable to a young carpenter and his wife, who was great with child. Soon that child lay swaddled in a manger. This child was Jesus. The year? Good question. The Romans probably called it Cæsar Augustus XLIV or something like that, because I think they measured years from each emperor's reign. Using the current system, though, we now think it was somewhere between 3 B.C. (B.C.E.) and 6 A.D. (C.E.). But that's a digression for millennium-tracking purposes.

We measure years based on the date that Christ was once accepted to have been born, and every year since he was born is part of his reign - the Year of the Lord, Anno Domini. So the entire issue of the millennium comes down to this: was there a Year 0? If you say yes, and go ..., 2 B.C., 1 B.C., 0, 1 A.D., 2 A. D., ... and start counting with 0 as the first year of the first millenium, then the last year of the first millenium was 999, and the last year of the second millennium was 1999, thus making 2000 the first year of the third millennium. If you say no, and go ..., 2 B.C., 1 B.C., 1 A.D., 2 A.D., ..., then 1 was the first year of the first millennium, 1001 was the first year of the second millenium, and 2001 was the first year of the current one.

So which is it? I think it's clear that there was no Year 0 and that the new millennium started in 2001. Why? First, look at the way we divide the years. We have B.C. and A.D. Before Christ, and Anno Domini, or Year of the Lord. Under this framework, there cannot be any years between B.C. and A.D. Whichever year Christ was born, the previous year had to have been the last year before he was born. And that same year had to be the first year of his reign. There's no room for Year 0.

More commonsensically, ask yourself - where do you start counting things? With 0, or with 1? If I said, "Count the fingers on your right hand," would you say, "0, 1, 2, 3, 4" or "1, 2, 3, 4, 5"? Of course, we start counting with 1. So it makes sense that we would count years the same way.

I think the problem stems from the fact that we subconsciously analogize the B.C./A.D. framework to the number line we all learn in algebra. The number line goes ..., -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, ... . And B.C. years seem kind of like negative years, since they came before the A.D. years. So there must be a Year 0, since there's a zero in between negative and positive integers.

The analogy doesn't work, though, because, unlike the integers, the two year-numbering systems aren't part of one unbroken set - they are two separate sets. One set consists of all the years before Jesus was born, and the other consists of the year he was born and the following ones.

Imagine you're at P.E. in middle school (without the awkwardness and self-consciousness, if that's possible). The coach tells everyone to line up. Next, the coach splits the line in two, and tells one half to turn to the left, and the other to turn away from them, to the right. It still looks from afar like we have one continuous line of middle schoolers, but now we have two teams, Team Blue and Team Green. The coach tells Team Blue to count off, and they do - "1, 2, 3, 4, ...". Then, "Team Green, count off!" "Yes, coach! 1, 2, 3, 4, ...". As you can see, there is no Middle Schooler 0. There are two teams, back-to-back, each starting with 1. Similarly, there are two adjacent sets of years, each one beginning with 1.

Okay, that's it. I hope I've convinced everyone reading this blog that 2000 was the end of the millennium and that 2001 was the beginning of the new one. If not, I hope you enjoyed your trip down Memory Lane, getting pegged by the bullies in dodge ball.

P.S. I'm sure no one cares by now, but you can throw a whole new monkey wrench into the debate by asking about the effect of switching from the Julian to the Gregorian calendars. January 1, 1 A.D. on the Julian calendar is NOT exactly 2, 000 years before January 1, 2001 A.D. on the Gregorian calendar. There's currently a 13 day difference between the two calendars. Today would still be December 29, 2009 if we hadn't switched. Luckily for us all, I'm too exhausted to examine the ramifications of that now. Here's hoping you all have a safe and happy Julian New Year's Eve on Wednesday night.

Punch-Up of "The Phantom Menace"

2010-01-02T09:24:00.000-08:00

OK, this will interest no one but me, but I wrote it in an email to my brother-in-law and liked it so much I had to save it. It's extremely topical -- a rewrite of a movie from 11 years ago that probably everyone has already rewritten. Enjoy, or don't, whatever.

OK, I was asked by George Lucas to punch up his new script for his upcoming film "The Phantom Menace." I unfortunately am not allowed to take the entire script, shred it, shit on it, and flush it down the toilet. So I have to work with what we have, and satisfy all of George's whims, while still making it tighter and more sensical. Here goes:

1. Change the Trade Federation to just some warlike planet who has a big, centuries-old beef with Naboo. Let's call them the Klingons, and make them way more bad-ass than the pathetic fishy Asian stereotypes that the whatever-the-fucks are. This would be a lot simpler and give a lot more comprehensible motivation. The Klingons just really hate Naboo, a la Palestinians and Israelis, and want to choke them out and then take over their planet. So they still have that stupid blockade, and have for a really long time now. The Galactic Senate is still powerless to do anything about it, but they still try by sending in some Jedis to talk. Darth Sidious is still pulling the strings, but he's doing so by promising the Klingons this massive droid army. By themselves, see, the Klingons could take over Naboo, but they could not then defend themselves against the inevitable Jedi intervention that would result. The droid army would enable them to go against the entire galaxy.

2. So the Jedi come in to talk and all that, and Darth Sidious still says to kill them. The Klingons are a bit freaked at this, but Sidious says that if they don't, no droid army. And no more support in the Senate (Sidious is the one causing the gridlock that allows the Klingons to keep doing their thing). So the Klingons (not the droid army -- they're promised but not delivered yet) try to kill the Jedi, but fail of course. Sidious knows that they will fail, but that's part of his secret plan. He wants the Jedi to go to the planet and smuggle Amidala out to the Senate.

3. Also, the droid army will need to be about a million times more bad-ass. That seems self-explanatory. But we haven't seen them yet. That's what we in the business call "suspense."

4. So now that they've tried to kill Jedis and failed, the Klingons know they've just thrown down the gauntlet. Time to act. They're excited. They send a Klingon army, no droids yet, down to the surface to conquer Naboo. It's not a massive contingent of Klingons, but it's enough to overwhelm the peace-loving pussy artistes that populate the idyllic Mediterreanean castles of the Naboo. The Jedi still sneak down with the Klingons. They don't come to warn the Naboo of the impending invasion, because as they show up, the Klingon army also shows up (which would of course make a lot more sense, as the reviewer pointed out (Ed. note: "The reviewer" is this guy, who incisively points out a lot of flaws in the movie)). The Jedi actually come to sneak in to the newly occupied city and sneak Amidala out, so they can all make a personal plea to the Senate to fucking do something. This would also cut out all the pointless jibber jabber among Amidala and her council of weiners. No debate needed -- come in, steal Amidala, leave.

5. George has told me that we still have to meet the Gungans somehow, because he is convinced that Jar Jar Binks will be the most beloved movie character of the generation. So fine. After we sneak Amidala out, we go through the planet's core, with all the fish eating each other and other shit that gives George a big boner, and we find the Gungans. If we need Jar Jar earlier, say he's the Gungan ambassador to Naboo, and so he obviously was with the Naboobies and will join them to meet the Gungans. The Jedi ask for the Gungans' help in getting off the planet, in getting through the blockade. It so happens that the Gungans have a peace treaty with the Klingons, because they don't want to be choked to death and don't have any beef with them. Maybe the Klingons force them to pay a heavy fee to not be blockaded also. But when the Gungans see the Jedi, they are convinced to switch sides and stow away Amidala, a few handmaidens, and the Jedi (for a large fee from Coruscant, and also the promise, they figure, of getting out from under Klingon fees). Maybe they also succumb to some Jedi mind trickery. Jar Jar Binks, the most beloved movie character of the generation, is the pilot of the ramshackle ship that the Gungans decide to pilot through the blockade.

6. With the dashing, courageous Jar Jar behind the helm, they are able to sneak the group through the blockade. There is no opportunity to have R2 do his heroism schtick on the wing of the ship. Sorry George, you'll have to bend on this one. Maybe you can add some tension by having them be boarded by the Klingons under suspicion of having stowaways. But the Jedis are able to save the day from their hiding places, by using the force to give the Klingons mystical hand jobs. They're all satisfied and say to hell with it and leave.

7. On the way to Coruscant, Obi-Wan receives a strong premonition, that there is someone on Tatooine with extreme Jedi powers. Being a young and brash warrior instead of a dull, ineffectual puss like he is in the current script, Obi-Wan is convinced that we need to follow up on it, to bring this person to Coruscant with them. Much argument ensues, between him and the old, wise, and more tempered Fucknut McGee (that's Qui-Gonn's new name, forgot to mention that, sorry), and between Obi-Wan and Amidala. They're all like, hey, planet occupied here! But Jedis are known for their strong premonitions, and Fucknut agrees that he has felt it too. Amidala says fine, let's get this person. But be quick about it.

8. So they do. They go to the place where they feel an unusual amount of Force activity, more than they ever have before. It's Watto's place. He is less of an offensive Jewish stereotype. Both Fucknut and Obi-Wan are there, because it doesn't make any sense to leave Obi-Wan at the ship (and because Obi-Wan is the true protagonist, and really should be in about every scene). Amidala insists on sending one of her handmaidens to make sure this happens quickly, and ... I don't know why Jar-Jar has to go. Someone else figure that out.

9. So they want to buy the slave that's giving them Force erections. They try to pretend they just need any old slave, but Watto figures out that they're Jedi, who are morally against slaves, and realizes that this kid must be really valuable if the Jedi are bothering with him. So he says oh, his price just went up to a jillion gabillion dollars. They offer all the cash they have on them, but Watto says no, gotta get more. They say they can come back with millions after they get back to Coruscant, but Watto says get the fuck out of my store.

10. So how can they get more cash? Hey look, there's a talent show going on tonight! With a 10,000-credit grand prize! If we win that, we'd have the money we need to get to Hollywood! No, they actually figure that Anakin can win the stupid pod race thing that makes George cum in his pants. The rule on the planet is that slaves get their winnings from such races, as long as they pay the large entry fee (which the Jedis are able to supply). And if Anakin wins, that will give them enough cash. If Anakin loses, Watto gets all ther money, their ship, everything. Simple.

11. There are no Mitochlorians. That is a moronic idea. The Force is supposed to be a spiritual thing, and reducing it to magical paramecia ruins it. And is unnecessary. The Jedi feel it real hard, and that's plenty. That's what Jedis do.

12. And there's no fucking virgin birth. There is no mention of the father -- that's all a mystery.

13. And make Anakin older. Maybe 12 or older. There's no earthly reason to make him so young and annoying.

14. And you can still say that Anakin's making C-3PO, if you really need to. But not to help his mother, who would have no need for a protocol droid, as the reviewer points out. Anakin's just making him for shits and giggles. Maybe it's the easiest kind of droid to make. It's not terribly important I suppose.

15. I know -- if you need R2 heroism, you can have him fixing some crucial part of the pod just in time for the race. That makes more sense than dragging him along to a planet to help pick up a kid. Maybe he just showed up as a pit droid who is owned by the pod race track, and figured out how to fix Anakin's pod, and then later they bought him with the winnings.

16. So why can't the mother go with them off Tatooine? Because she would be boring, basically. Maybe she's caring for an elder relative. Maybe Watto refuses to let her go, only the boy. Maybe Watto's boning her. Whatever. Regardless, when Jedis come to your house and say your kid is the most awesomest Jedi prodigy ever, you let him go. And there's no need to have their heads explode if the leave Watto's house. The Jedis wouldn't steal them anyway, because they have morals.

17. This is taking longer than I thought. I'm going to see it through though. So you still have the scene where Amidala pleads in the Senate for a solution, and Chancellor Valorum is still weak and influenced by special interests (which are secretly controlled by Palpatine, but no reason to belabor that), and Amidala registers a vote of no confidence, paving the way for Palpatine. The only good simplication I can think of here would be to say that Palpatine is the vice-Chancellor, so he takes over automatically after the vote. You could then cut out the talky scene with Palpatine and Amidala. They just go to the Senate floor, have this conversation, and that's it. Done.

18. The Jedi Council meets the boy, and says, yeah, he gots Force up the ass, no doubt. But too much. So much it would tip the scales. Fucknut is kinda like, yeah, I was thinking the same thing, but Obi-Wan, because he is headstrong and has a personality, insists. The council does not budge. Bring him back to Tatooine, they say. Bury him in a deep hole. And listen to your elders more, asshole.

19. Polyptaint, as the new Chancellor, immediately says, let's bring a solid group of Jedis to Naboo. Woo, says everyone. The Jedis bum-rush Naboo and take an immediate victory, liberating the Naboo from the Klingons.

20. The Klingons go to Sidious, furious. You promised us a victory! Sidious then brings in the promised droid army. Aw shit, it's on.

21. The Jedi see them coming and freak. They go again to the Gungans, and Jar Jar makes a convincing and dramatic speech about how wonderful his new friends are, and we have to be on the side of good and right, and a house divided against itself cannot stand, and I have seen the promised land but will not get there with you, and so forth. It's all very touching, and Jar Jar's incredible dignity and sense of noble purpose carries it through. The Gungans are convinced.

22. During all this, why is Anakin still there? Well, Amidala has had enough of the delays, and convinces them to drop him off later, after Naboo is re-liberated. This gives Amidala a little backbone, which will be nice.

23. The climax is still overcomplicated. But at least it makes a wee bit more sense. Instead of hiding in a cockpit (!), Anakin gets all full of himself and decides he has to fight, so he highjacks a ship of someone who was just shot down and destroys a bunch of the donut ships, including the one powering the droid army. He does it by skill, not falling ass-backwards into victory. Everyone is quite impressed. The not-huge contingent of Jedi and the Naboo and the Gungans, all together in a show of unity, were trying hard but just not able to cut through the millions of droids, until Anakin saves the day.

24. You still have Dath Maul cornering the two Jedi and going through an overly choreographed battle. There needs to be more motivation there though. Maybe Maul can make some statement about the Sith getting revenge and rising again, and that he will exterminate every Jedi until it happens? I don't know, I guess I didn't think this part needed as much fixing as the rest. I thought Darth Maul was the only good part of the whole movie -- no talking, just ass-kicking.

25. So after the victory, at the end, Obi-Wan goes back to Yoda. Yoda reconsiders. He says that the future is cloudy, and Anakin has undeniable skillz, as evidenced by his victory on Naboo -- OK, fine, we'll let him be a Jedi. But he will be your responsibility, Obi-Wan.

26. Ooh, new idea. Fucknut should be the young and brash one. Obi-Wan can be older and wiser, but still relenting and going along with Fucknut's plan to bring Anakin to Jedi school and all that. Switch the roles there. And Fucknut still gets killed by Darth Maul. And Obi-Wan can still pledge to take over Anakin's training if Fucknut dies. And he can go to Yoda at the end, newly convinced and changed (characters changing in a movie! Holy shit!). He has new faith in the Force after seeing what Anakin can do. Maybe before he was too analytical, not spirtual enough, and the young and brash Fucknut convinced him to go with the feeling more. Especially when he died. So then Anakin takes Fucknut's place as Obi-Wan's padowan. Of course later we learn that such faith is stupid, and analytical caution is better, but that's for a later movie.

What do you think? Still a turd, but at least a more polished one.

You Will NOT Call This Past Decade "The Naughties"

2010-01-01T11:53:00.000-08:00

I have a brand-new hatred. This one's so intense that all the others can go to hell. I'd rather spend the rest of my life in a locked room with ultra-right-wing lunatics who chew very loudly while touching their eyeballs and yammering inanely through a long series of Joss Whedon movies than hear another person call this past decade "the naughties."

It's annoying because it's a lame pun ("naught," "nineties," "naughties," wa ha ha), complete with a pathetically small tinge of transgressiveness, of the variety that I could picture on a $100 pink t-shirt worn by Paris Hilton. And it's not even apropos -- this past decade was many things, but it was not "naughty." It was a decade of war, terrorism, and economic disaster. Calling it "naughty" is like calling Hitler "a big poopyhead!"

It was a pretty good decade for me personally, but for the world, I'm betting it was the worst since the '30s. The '40s were a bit problematic too, granted, what with the aforementioned poopyhead and his naughty goings-on. The Aughts (as I prefer to call them) did not have had a single massive problem like the Depression in the '30s or the World War in the '40s. Instead it was a poisonous bouillabaisse of all the worst aspects of the last few decades: the unecessary, intractable foreign war of the '60s, the major recession of the '70s, the greed and widening disparity between rich and poor of the '80s, the existence of Kevin Smith of the '90s (I hate Kevin Smith too).

And more importantly, I have no clear idea what the pop-culture trends were this past decade. What would a Halloween costume of an Aughts dude look like? The '60s had hippies, the '70s had disco gear, the '80s had New Wave, the '90s had grunge -- what the hell did people wear in the Aughts? It's as if they just wore what looked best on them individually rather than slavishly following moronic fads that made them look ridiculous! What the fuck kind of decade is that?

Mostly, I'm worrying about what third-rate comedians will make unfunny comments about in the inevitable 30-hour VH-1 series "I Love the Aughts." I am actually kind of a sucker for those sort of things -- not because I enjoy the dime-store snarkiness, but because I genuinely love getting to know a period of time by going through the whole constellation of its cultural touchstones. For some reason, it warms my heart to watch a countdown of the most popular songs of the '90s, even though I distinctly remember hating most of the songs with a passion.

I'm sure I could easily find out what said unfunny third-rate comedians have already said about this decade -- as I remember, they made a "I Love this Current Decade" series long before the decade was over, and I'm sure there is another one going on now. But I'd rather conjecture about what I think should be in such a series:

1. Loads of technology crap: Social media web sites, Wii, iPods, iPhones, iMacs, iDon'tknowwhatelse
2. Reality shows

Uhhh ... well, there has to be other stuff. Maybe Beyonce? She had a good decade. Kanye West? What were the biggest movies? Batman Whatever with Heath Ledger as Crazy Joker? I know I'm favoring the stuff at the end of the decade, which people always do when they're talking about the previous decade. Let's go see what the top-grossing movies were in the Aughts:

The Dark Knight (2008)
$533,316,061
Shrek 2 (2004)
$436,471,036
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
$423,032,628
Spider-Man (2002)
$403,706,375
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
$402,076,689
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
$380,262,555
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
$377,019,252
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
$373,377,893
The Passion of the Christ (2004)
$370,270,943
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
$340,478,898
Finding Nemo (2003)
$339,714,367
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
$336,530,303
Shrek the Third (2007)
$320,706,665
Transformers (2007)
$318,759,914
Iron Man (2008)
$318,298,180
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
$317,557,891
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
$317,011,114
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
$313,837,577
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
$310,675,583
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
$309,404,152
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
$305,388,685
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
$301,956,980
Up (2009)
$292,979,556
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
$292,000,866
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
$291,709,845
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
$289,994,397
New Moon (2009)
$281,928,000
The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
$281,492,479
Meet the Fockers (2004)
$279,167,575
The Hangover (2009)
$277,313,371
Shrek (2001)
$267,652,016
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
$261,970,615
The Incredibles (2004)
$261,437,578
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
$260,031,035
Star Trek (2009)
$257,704,099
I Am Legend (2007)
$256,386,216
Monsters, Inc. (2001)
$255,870,172

Well, this is a rather alarming list. This, by the way, is a list of the 50 top-grossing movies of all time, with all the non-Aughties movies removed. This means that the only thing worse than "Transformers: Revenge of the fallen" being the fifth-biggest movie of the decade is the fact that it is the ninth-best grossing film OF ALL TIME. I know, this list of highest grossers was always kinda bullshit, since there's a huge bias towards recent movies because of inflation. But I remember when I was kinda into this list, when "E.T." had a long run at the top, surpassed only by "Titanic." Now "E.T." has been surpassed by "Shrek 2." Sigh.

But anwyay, all that aside, this is a good way to catch onto some of the Aughties touchstones. You had the "Lord of the Rings" series, which was quite good. You had all those Pixar movies, which are uniformly excellent. Harry Potter and Shrek are also, I'm told, tolerable, so those go in the bin of Aughts trends. Spider-Man, the "Star Wars" prequels, "Pirates of the Carribean," and "The Passion of the Christ" are definite keepers, for better or worse.

So now our list, in no particular order, is:

1. Social media web sites
2. Wii
3. Apple: iPods, iPhones, iMacs, iDon'tknowwhatelse
4. Reality shows (this could be many entries, maybe one for "Survivor," one for "American Idol," maybe "So You Think You Can Dance With the Stars" or whatever that show is)
5. "Lord of the Rings" movies
6. Pixar movies
7. Harry Potter
8. Shrek
9. Spider-Man
10. "Star Wars" prequels
11. "Passion of the Christ"
12. "Pirates of the Carribean"
13. "The Dark Knight"

Of course, there are also movies that didn't do blockbuster business, like "Brokeback Mountain." That should be in there. And there's all the other media. But I'm tired now. More later!

Things I Hate: Going to Movies

2009-12-27T06:16:00.000-08:00

I guess I've seen it all. I'm hardened, jaded, numbed. I saw "Avatar" last night and, meh. It was OK, I guess. I thought I'd be blown away by the 3D, but like everything, I got used to it pretty quickly. Everything good, that is, gets old fast. Everything awful sticks with me forever.

Speaking of things that are awful, at every goddamn movie I go to nowadays I'm surrounded by a BUNCH OF FUCKING IDIOTS WHO NOT SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!! I hate it with such passion that I had to resort to all-caps and exclamation marks. Every time they yammer, always at regular speaking voices (is whispering a lost art?), I get torn out of the action. And shushing people never has any effect. I shush them throughout the movie, and they just keep on regardless.

And it's never even something that you could possibly want to hear. It's never "You know, the parallels between the Na'mi and Native Americans are obvious, but I wonder if the destruction of the Na'mi Lifetree is meant to remind viewers of the destruction of the Twin Towers?" Instead it's always "Aw, he's dead!" Yeah, brilliant, Eisenstein! What tipped you off, the fact that his eyes are closed and he's crumpled and bleeding on the ground and there's a delicate mood of tragedy in the air that you just destroyed?

And people always say that it's black people ruining movies by talking. Not true, as comedian Brian Posehn pointed out. He tells a story about going to see "Freddy vs. Jason" and hearing some black dude yell out "Look out bitch, he got a knife!" That's enhancing a movie that otherwise would have no real entertainment value. I had a similar experience when I went to see the horrible Britney Spears vehicle "Crossroads" ( some people I was with wanted to see it, by the way). While I was watching and hating that movie, some young black girls went up to the screen and started dancing along with Britney. That made that movie much more fun.

No, ruining a movie is when you're at "Hotel Rwanda," and you're suddenly hit by a shocking shot of hundreds of massacred people, and just as the horror sinks in, the old lady behind you says "Oh, they're all dead!" That happened to me, and it took all my strength to keep myself from braining her with my box of Jujubees.

I mean, there are some movies where you can talk. At comedies and kids' movies, go to town. Especially at kids' movies, it's part of the show. You expect kids to shriek and run around, because that's what kids are born to do.

But here's another thing -- don't bring kids to grown-up movies. PG-13 means it's not for young children. Not because the content will shock them, but because we don't want them there. The ratings aren't to protect the kids -- they're to protect adults from kids. Why do you think moviemakers throw a curseword in every other sentence? Because one single "fuck" gets you an automatic R rating. True story -- stupid, but true. And it's a great thing. Last time I saw "Hamlet" in the theater, it was perhaps a bit off-putting the way Hamlet kept saying things like "Alas, poor Yorick. I fucking knew him, Horatio. Fuckin' A, man." But it sure as hell kept the noisy kids out.

But anyway. I don't like sounding like a grumpy old man, but it does seem like the chatter in theaters has gotten worse. It's always been a problem, but I'm guessing nowadays people see so many movies at home, and apparently chatter like hyenas there, that they get used to it and do it in theaters. And there's also the texting and the cell phone calls and the kids with those earrings and the five-dollar cokes and why do people have to drive so fast nowadays and grumble grumble grumble ....

I am quite fearful of becoming a grumpy old man, by the way. I already basically am one, and I wish there was some way I could turn off these irritations and just be a mellow dude. I've tried everything to try and be cool, but still, every time someone yells "Who's that guy?" in a theater, it stabs my brain. If I'm trying not to think about it, it seems to hurt worse when it happens.

So I've taken to sitting in the back row whenever possible, because it's harder to hear people that way. And I try to always go to movies long after they're hot shit, so the theater is relatively empty. But I wish there were some way to get people to change.

I think we should abandon health care reform and the environmental crisis and all that shit and start a nationwide campaign to ban movie theater chatter. Or maybe terrorism can help here. Not the violent kind, mind you -- I was thinking maybe there was some way you could rouse a whole sleeper cell of anti-movie-chatter people to do something annoying but not illegal to people who talk, like put gum in ther hair or something. But it would have to get across that they got it because they were talking in the theater. Hmmm. Some sort of sticker that says "STOP TALKING IN THE THEATER" that's hard to get off? But they'd have to not notice when it happens and not know where it came from. This is tough.

The point would be that the word would get out that this annoying thing would keep happening to people who talk in theaters, and maybe there would be some news stories, and people would either learn to not talk or they would stay home for fear of getting the sticker or whatever. And that would really get the attention of the moviehouse owners, and maybe they would have ushers telling people to shut up, like I think they used to like a million years ago.

Anyway, I give up on that. The original point of this was that I feel like I've seen it all, and I haven't seen a movie that really shook me to the core in a long time. I guess I'm jaded -- but at the same time, I still love documentaries. Even TV shows that involve real people in some way tend to be more affecting to me than the grandest fictional film. I can shed tears at the drop of a hat at a TV show in which some real person says something sweet about some other real person. But when someone in a fictional movie does the same thing, it's sort of like "Eh, I don't know, I felt that his delivery was a bit clunky there." I think I don't like fiction any more.

You know, people crap on reality shows as a matter of course, and sure, some really suck. But as a whole, they're a damn sight better than the sitcoms and sappy dramas that used to pollute the TV airwaves. Maybe we love reality shows because we're so overdosed on fictional narratives that we're starting to get inured to them. The mechanics of fictional storytelling are so firmly established, with even the variations being a matter of course, that the only thing that can really thrill us or move us is reality (or, at least heavily edited reality). And you know, maybe that's not a bad thing. As documentaries and reality shows get more sophisticated and demonstrate better narratives, maybe there's not much reason to invent new lies.

Sigh. I used to be such a movie freak, too. Kinda sad to lose that. But you know, maybe I don't need an escape as much any more. My life is pretty good right now, better than it's ever been, really. When I didn't have the love of my life and generally didn't like myself very much, it was much more important to live vicariously through movies. Now my own life is fun enough to give me the kicks I need.

See, I can spin things in a happy way! Maybe I should start chatting amiably with the people behind me in the theaters. Oooh, now that could work. Just embrace it and roll with it instead. When they yell out "Who's that guy?" I can just spin around and say "That's the leader of the evil organization! Turns out he was a robot! Hey, what's your name? Can we be friends? I really like licorice. Do you have any?"

I think that qualifies as a happy ending. Roll credits.

More Awesomer Flags!

2009-12-14T09:35:00.000-08:00

I did a little investigation into flags after Ed's exposé on good and boring ones a few weeks ago. One thing I noticed is that as the administrative divisions get smaller, the variety in the flags increases. At the national level, as Ed pointed out, there are a lot of seen-one-seen-'em-all tricolors. (Although, in defense of the Netherlands in particular, they seem to have used the first tricolored flag in history. So even though it's dull, at least it was original at the time.) And while there are some very good ones, hardly any of them feature semi-automatic rifles.

Go down just one level, though - to the states, regions, and oblasts - and you're confronted with a riot of colors, shapes, and designs: from the super boring to the beautiful to the silly to the creepy to the huh? For example....

SUPER BORING

Half the states' flags in the U.S. are super boring. A blue field with the state seal on it. Here's Vermont:

And Maine:

And Idaho:

Some of the states realized that making their flags indistinguishable was a stupid way of having a symbol. But instead of creating new, interesting flags, most of the states that had this realization merely added their states' names to the flag, begging the question: why have a symbol at all, when you have to type out the name of the thing that you're supposedly symbolizing. Wisconsin is a good example of this phenomenon:

I'm surprised no one's gone out and just had a blue rectangle with giant block letters that says, "THIS IS THE FLAG OF KENTUCKY":

That would be as symbolic, and as aesthetically pleasing, as what they do now.

BEAUTIFUL

Some subnational flags are truly beautiful. They combine a pleasing palette with a coherent design and composition. Queen Elizabeth II's personal flag in Barbados is one that really struck me:

It's just beautiful. I also liked several of Taiwan's counties' flags. Here's Yilan County:

Some of the geometric designs can be very pretty, too. I've always liked Maryland's flag:

Newer to me were the flags of Antwerp and Chuvashia (in Russia). They're both geometrically shaped, but retain their distinctiveness and attractiveness, too:

SILLY

Not many flags qualify as silly. Usually, you can see what they're going for, and even if they don't quite make it, you just say, "That's not a very well-designed flag." In the case of South Korea's regions, however, all you can say is, "There goes a silly, silly flag." I give you, as People's Exhibit One, the flag of South Gyeongsang:

This is vexillogical inanity at its utmost. It's a bad advertising image, for sure. And if that were all, you could forget it and move on. But they made it their flag! Can you imagine all the little kids in South Gyeongsang starting their day at school? "I pledge allegiance to South Gyeongsang, and the little Es that make some cartoon eyes. And to the random verb, written in English...." Come on, South Gyeongsang, flag designing is serious stuff! Try a little harder next time.

CREEPY

Some subnational flags are a little creepy. There seems to be, for example, a subgenre of flags featuring disembodied heads. I think that's odd and somewhat unsettling. Here's the flag of Penza Oblast (again, in Russia):

Who wants a stylized floating head of Jesus on their flag? Well, Penzans, I guess. It just makes me uncomfortable. And Corsica's flag isn't much better:

Apparently, throughout history they've switched back and forth between blindfolding the head and leaving its eyes open, as it is now. Either way, it's creepy.

The other one that is a little weird is the Isle of Man. Their symbol is three running legs, all connected at the thigh, with no body attached:

If you saw that in real life, you'd be terrified. So why put it on your flag for everyone to see? Well, maybe because the only people who are really going to see it are the 80,000 or so Manx who live there. I think that's part of why the smaller polities tend to have more individual-looking flags - they only have to appeal to a small population.

HUH?

There are a few flags that I came across that really did not make any sense. They obviously signify something, but I'm at a total loss to think of what. Any help with these ones is greatly appreciated.

First up is Nunavut, Canada's newest territory. Their flag is slightly asymmetrical and yet visually pleasing to my eye. I liked it when they first came out with it. I just have no idea what it depicts:

And last is the strangest flag I think I've ever come across. It's another Russian oblast (go to the Wikipedia list of Russian flags - they really have some fascinating ones). This one's named Voronezh, and I will pay you money if you can tell me what the heck is happening on this one:

Okay, thus concludes today's journey through subnational flags.

This Just in: Athlete Has AFFAIR!!!!!!!!!!!111

2009-12-09T05:21:00.000-08:00

ST. PAUL, MN -- The nation was shocked to the point of pants-shitting this week when it was revealed that a fabulously wealthy, famous and attractive professional athlete was having an affair. There is no precedent for such marital infidelity in the history of professional athletics.

"How could we have possibly predicted this would happen?" said typical American moron Naive McWhuuuuu?. "Naturally, we all assume that professional athletes are paragons of virtue -- chaste as monks and humble as clinical depressives. To see something like this happen ... well, why would we ever want to watch or participate in sports again?"

Among most of the morons interviewed, the primary source of confusion is how this highly desirable athlete, deemed as "fuckable on sight" by approximately 3 billion women and gay men across the world, could have possibly have had sexual relations with a woman who was not his wife. The logistics of such affairs have confounded American morons, since the athlete spends a majority of time away from home, constantly surrounded by legions of worshipful female fans and sycophantic male enablers.

The athlete's wife shared the nation's displeasure, expressing her rage by beating the shit out of said athlete's car, or something like that. This reporter didn't really pay a lot of attention to the details, since there are approximately 10 million things occurring that are much, much more relevant to his life, ranging from the health-care debate that promises to radically rework a sixth of the nation's economy, all the way down to the color and shape of his latest bowel movement.

"It looked like four longish, chocolate-brown ones," said this reporter, on condition of anonymity. "Not that I'm obsessed with my own poop or have to monitor it for a gastrointestinal disorder or anything. My point is just that as unimportant as the size and shape of my poop is, it's still more important to me than the sex lives of professional athletes. That was the idea there. Maybe not the best example, but I'm too lazy to think of a better one."

The name of the athlete under suspicion of infidelity has been withheld from this story, out of respect for the private lives of actual, real-life human beings who do not deserve having their painful experiences paraded in front of a nation of brainless gawkers like a freak show.

More on Education!

2009-11-22T13:30:00.000-08:00

Well, I got such overwhelming support for my last post on education that I just had to share more! The people have spoken, and they want more of my ill-informed, half-baked ideas!

Actually, this is going to be a more measured, contemplative thing. I was just talking with Amy through the chat feature in Facebook Scrabble (a wonderful forum for political discourse of all kinds) and I got to thinking more and more about education. It's especially relevant to me personally since I work in education now.

And I hate to say it, but the more I think about it, the more I think that we waste too much time and money in this country trying to force-feed a liberal arts education down the throat of every child, in both high school and college. It comes from a wonderful, egalitarian principle, that all people become better citizens of the world when they read classics, understand biology, know a foreign language, etc. etc.

And it's true, they do. I loved my liberal arts education, and wouldn't trade it for anything. But in the thrall of this idea, I think this country may have forgotten to teach the practical stuff necessary to just survive as an adult.

I don't like drawing conclusions about the world from my own, necessarily limited experiences, but I'm going to do it anyway. When I graduated from college, I knew tons about French New Wave directors and American Indian literature. Which is great stuff to know.

What I didn't know was how credit cards worked. I refused to get one when I was in college, feeling that they were evil tools of the capitalist hegemony. And I was right, they are. The problem was that if you don't get one of those evil tools of capitalist hegemony, you can't participate in capitalist hegemony, which means you can't buy stuff. It was hell trying to get my first credit card, and my credit rating still suffers because I waited too long.

And my life with credit cards has been one unpleasant surprise after another. It wasn't just a matter of reading the fine print -- I couldn't understand the fine print. I didn't really know how APRs worked until I got my first punishing service charge. I didn't know that they could charge different APRs for different types of debts, and that when you pay money, they apply it to the lower APR first ... and so forth.

And don't just go and glibly say "parents should teach their kids this stuff." Parents "should" do a lot of things. They're expected to do just about everything. Maybe they'll find time to teach their kids about APRs after they work their full-time jobs, get nutritious food on the table, spend "quality time" with them, strap kids through the age of 18 into safety seats, tell them about the birds and the bees and how they like to fuck ... and besides, they might not really understand APRs either.

And moreover, I'm not a fan of "should" arguments in general. Saying that someone should be doing something doesn't make it happen. Will telling parents they should sit their kids down and talk about APRs make it happen? Maybe, but not as well as making it mandatory in schools. We want results, not buck-passing.

But there's a lot more that kids should learn before becoming adults. How about the issues of the day? Rather than learning about the Edict of Nantes and Linnean classification in high school, maybe I should have been learning about what the federal deficit really means? The whole bit about possibly defaulting on our debt and how much our federal government pays in interest on the debt every year -- that's important stuff to know! Whatever happened to civics classes? I never had a single one. If education is in the business of making better citizens, shouldn't they inform those citizens about the basics of the issues of the day?

The more I get interested in politics, the more I realize how many people are basing their views on a lot of misinformation and a few insufficient bits of real, substantive information. Take government spending, since it's my favorite thing in the whole wide world to talk about. A lot of people think the solution is just that the government needs to "tighten its belt" and cut unnecessary programs and stop paying women for their aborted fetuses which the government then grind up and put in vaccinations that are designed to make all kids autistic or whatever the hell they think. Wouldn't we all be better citizens if we all learned exactly what the government spends its money on? I had to seek this out -- before I saw this I had no idea either. This is 2006, which admittedly is a lot different than now, but you'll get the idea:

20.7%: Social Security
19.7%: National defense
12.4%: Medicare
8.5%: Interest on debt
6.8%: Medicaid
4.7%: Other income security (I don't know what that means)
4.5%: Education, employment and social services
3.9%: Other retirement and disability
2.8%: Health
2.7%: Transportation
2.6%: Veteran's benefits
2.1%: Community development
2.0%: Food and nutrition assistance
1.5%: Justice system
1.4%: Housing assistance
1.4%: Earned Income Tax Credit
1.3%: Supplemental Security Income
1.2%: Natural resources and the environment
1.2%: Unemployment
1.1%: International affairs (including foreign aid)
1.0%: Agriculture
0.9%: Science, space and technology
0.8%: Family support (including TANF, whatever the hell that is)
0.7%: General government
0.2%: Commerce and housing credit

I went out with a girl once who said her daddy didn't believe in taxes because he worked hard to build a business and succeed and his tax dollars would just go to lazy people who weren't willing to be the shining beacon of virtue that he was. I kinda wish that she or he had known how little of his taxes actually went to help people that he apparently would rather let starve (and then go commit crime to survive, and bring up the crime rate and make life worse for everyone ... ANYWAY, I promised myself I wouldn't go on about taxes again. This is supposed to be about education, Chris! Focus!)

The point is that the above should be mandatory learning for every high school student. How can you be an informed voter, voting on how the government spends its money, when you have almost no knowledge of what the government actually spends its money on? Isn't this stuff more important than forcing kids to plow through the dull swamp of "The Scarlet Letter"?

OK, maybe I shouldn't be posing one type of knowledge against the other. What we need is more knowledge all around. That's why the very straightforward and simple answer to our education problem in this country is ....

NO. MORE. SUMMER. VACATION.

OK, maybe you get a few weeks off in July so that each year your family can take a stifling, painful car trip to the Grand Canyon and learn to hate each other again. But when you think about it, it is more than a little insane that we give kids three months off of school for no good reason.

For any political issue, I always find it fruitful to compare what we do to what they go in other developed nations, and no other nation comes anywhere close to how much time off we give our kids from school. And meanwhile, no other developed nation works its adults harder. It's no wonder kids start out lazy and often take a few kicks in the pants by Life before acquiring the work ethic to join the working world. Laziness is what they've become accustomed to.

Think of how much more we could teach kids if we had another three months each year. We could teach them all the Pythagorean Theorems and Iliads and all the stuff we teach them now, PLUS, we could teach them how to balance a checkbook and how home mortgages work. Maybe if schools had taught that sort of thing for the past 30 years, we wouldn't be in the financial mess we're in now.

I hear you saying, but Ed! I mean, Chris! What about helping your family with the summer harvest? And yes, that was the reason we started the big summer vacation in the first place. But last time I checked, there were only three farmers left in this country, and each farmed 30,000,000 acres of corn, and all of it was turned into corn syrup to make soft drinks that made people fat. So maybe that's not such a good reason any more.

But what about the vital summer camp industry? Well, I personally hated every summer camp I was ever forced into, so this whole plan is actually a fiendish attempt to avenge my childhood traumas.

But what about teachers? They already work like dogs for low pay and the only real perk they get is those three months a year when they can decide they're finally going to write that novel about the secretly passionate high school English teacher whose natural artistic sensibilities are crushed by a stifling bureaucracy -- but instead they find themselves using the whole summer to eat frozen pizza and watch "Oprah." Well yes, I do sympathize there. As an accession to them, make the school day shorter. That way, they don't have to work quite as doggishly during the year. Spread that pain out a bit. Maybe give them raises or something too. Buy them off, basically.

And perhaps most important, another thing you can teach kids with all this extra time each year is exactly what the working world is like. What are the jobs? What do people do? I had no idea when I left college. I knew that some people worked in publishing, since I was an English major. I definitely knew tons about the life of professors. And like a lot of liberal arts kids, I figured I would like to be a professor. It looked awesome. Then, to that end, I went on to get even more education that I didn't end up using. In truth, I was too ignorant and frightened of the corporate world. Now I work for a corporation, and it turns out it's not half bad.

I think a lot more vocational training should be in the high schools. I think when you turn 16, you should be able to opt out of any more math and biology and English classes and start learning the ropes in some trade. It can be anything from garage mechanic to paralegal.

I see the failings of our educational system a lot more sharply nowadays, since I work for what is essentially a trade school. We call it a "career college," because we don't want to be confused with those places that Sally Struthers had ads for back in the day that would offer classes in gun repair and panhandling, but still, the best analogy is of a trade school. We offer associate and bachelor's degrees in things like Business Administration and Veterinary Technology and Information Technology and Accounting and Medical Assistant. They're all fields that always have job openings, and that offer pretty solid careers as professionals of some sort.

And we have a hell of a time getting recent high school grads in the door. They all think they have to go off to State U and drink a lot of beer and squeak through without learning anything. Then they graduate with degrees in 14th century basket weaving and start working at coffeeshops, or drop out and start working at coffeeshops. Then in their mid-20s, with a family in tow and a crappy full-time job, they realize they need a real career. So they come to us, and we train them to be accountants and paralegals and business administrators and suchlike.

The adult learners are coming to our schools in droves these days, and I'm happy for them. I'm continually impressed by them, as they sacrifice what little free time they have to bring a better future for their families. But I wish they had gone through all this earlier, when they had fewer other responsibilities. I can't help but think the success of my company is a symptom of failures in the conventional system. Shouldn't these folks have learned about what jobs are available and how to get them in high school, instead of having their brains fed with dreams of keg parties and all-nighters producing dreadful papers about Kafka? Couldn't they have had one class that kind of made them little mini-interns at various real-life organizations, so they'd see what real people do for a living? Maybe they'll think of majors like Accounting or Information Technology earlier, ones that can lead to jobs, instead of going to college with no clue, taking a whole bunch of classes, deciding Sociology is the least painful, bluffing through it, and then being left with a degree but no idea how to use it.

As the loyal readers of my long, tedious rants might be aware, I am a big-government liberal. So I feel a little weird about the fact that I work for a for-profit company that provides education. And one that is, frankly, kicking the ass of the government version. We're rolling in dough, opening new campuses all the time. Our graduates get financial aid at a much higher rate than students at state or private schools (partly because we work very hard to help them get it, and partly because they tend to be poorer). Our graduates also go on to good jobs in their chosen fields after graduation at a much higher rates than students from state or private schools. We are as practical in our approach to education as all-git-out, hiring working professionals to teach the students what it's really like to work these jobs, and what they need to know to do so. And it works.

I don't often like to admit that private enterprise can beat out public, government-run stuff at the same game, but that's exactly what we're doing. And I think it's largely because we're taking a sector of the population who is never going to become a bunch of professors or lawyers or doctors and such, and giving them a direct line to solid, respectable careers.

I think there's a lesson here for public education, namely to get more kids in line for practical, career-focused education at a younger age. This means putting them on a different track than the ones set out for the honors-roll kids, exposing them to a wide range of career possibilities when they're 16 instead of letting them waste time until they're 27. Then get them into a training program like ours, one that's all about how to do a job. Then they can go out and do it.

But even if you don't do any of that, for the love of God, get rid the summer vacation. It's a ridiculous waste of time.

Thought I Had That I Just Had to Share ...

2009-11-20T21:39:00.000-08:00

... since I'm all fired up and it's the weekend and I've had a few beers and oh crap, there goes Uncle Chris, you know how he gets at every family reunion after a few beers ... (and again, I would like to emphasize that my name is Chris, not Ed, and I'm not sure why people keep calling me Ed) ... the problem with this country is simple. Too many Mexicans. They keep taking our jobs. Cuz see, I've worked my whole life just to get the chance to clean the houses of wealthy Californians, and there those Mexicans go ... no wait, that wasn't it. What was it?

Oh yeah, the problem with this country ... the problem with this country is that we don't have good citizens. OK, I actually just heard Thomas Friedman say this on "Charlie Rose." But it's true. It's not the fault of the leaders. The leaders, some of them at least, are knowledgeable and well-educated. They know what will solve our problems. The problem is that we're not good enough citizens to make the short-term sacrifices necessary to solve our problems. We will vote the leaders out of office if they even threaten possibly thinking about making us make sacrifices for the good of the country. We are just that selfish. We talk a lot about loving America in this country, but we don't prove our love. Love means sacrifice, and Americans don't sacrifice. I love America, but goddammit, I hate Americans.

OK, now's when I go through all the solutions to all our problems. All of them require sacrifice of the part of Americans (usually monetary, but hey, that's what gets things done in this world).

Climate Change: The answer is electric cars and nuclear power. If power plants were run through nuclear power instead of coal, they wouldn't spew all those earth-killing greenhouse gases. And if all cars were electric, they'd just use that nuclear power instead of burning earth-killing gasoline.

I know, nuclear waste stinks, but finding some god-fosaken wasteland to bury it in (look in the Southwest -- from what I can tell it's nothing but God-forsaken wasteland) is a lot better than cooking ourselves to death through global warming. And I wish I could tell you that solar power and wind power and happiness power and love power and all the other alternative powers would do it just as well, but as far as I understand, they just don't add up. They wouldn't produce enough energy.

Why Won't We Do It? Electric cars cost money. And nuclear power plants cost tax money to create. And a long time ago, a few ridiculously antiquated nuclear power plants hurt people. So that's very scary. And plus, I forgot to mention that it costs money. And that's money we could be spending on iPhone apps that make fart noises!

The National Debt: Start a million-dollar income tax bracket. You know how there are those tax brackets, where you pay a higher percent of your income depending on how much you make? Here's the full chart for single adults, stolen from Wikipedia, the source of all human knowledge:

If you make between $0 – $8,350, your marginal tax rate is 10%
If you make between $8,351– $33,950, your marginal tax rate is 15%
If you make between $33,951 – $82,250, your marginal tax rate is 25%
If you make between $82,251 – $171,550, your marginal tax rate is 28%
If you make between $171,551 – $372,950, you marginal tax rate is 33%
If you make above $372,951, your marginal tax rate is 35%

Hold on, what's that last one? If you make above $372,951, you pay 35%, no matter what? So after that point, you're home free? Why? So if you're Alex Rodriguez, and you make $33 million a year, you get paid at the same rate as some surgeon who makes $372,952? If the graduated, progressive tax bracket system is good enough for the first 90% of incomes (or whatever $0 to $372,951 constitutes), why doesn't it keep going? Especially since that once you get beyond $372,952, it's pretty much all gravy? How much gravy does a person need?

And don't give me that crap about higher tax rates stifling incentives to innovate or to get rich or whatever. I'm not talking about making everyone have the same take-home pay. I'm not even talking about a bracket above 50%. Let's keep things in perspective here. If you raised Alex Rodriguez's marginal tax rate to 40%, say, is he really going to be like, "Wait, man, I can't even pay for my toddler's tummy tuck on that shit! Forget it, I'm going to quit baseball and go fulfill my true dream of cleaning the houses of wealthy Californians." No, what he'll actually do is take home $19.8 million instead of $21.45 million, not really notice much difference, and the government will get an extra $1.65 million that it can use to feed poor children. Or, uh, pay off the debt. I forgot about that part. It's important, for some reason which I never admittedly entirely understood. (I think because the Chinese will stop buying or U.S. bonds or something if we default. And because we pay a huge chunk of the federal budget in interest that could go to better things. It's all very complicated. But I don't want complicated right now. I want overly simplistic solutions to immensely complex problems. It's got more punch that way.)

Why Won't We Do It? Wait, you want to raise taxes? HITLER!!!! I'm a good ol' boy who makes $20,000 a year down at the feed store, so therefore any thought of possibly raising some tax of any kind, even if it would not affect me at all and would actually bring great benefit to me and everyone I know, is fascism! I am teabagger, and I believe in the Constitution, and the Constitution clearly states in Amendment 25, and I quote, "Fuck everyone else. I like money. Plus, guns."

Gun control: You know what? I'm not even going to touch this one. Fuck it. Have your guns. Take all the goddamn guns you want and go shoot yourselves in the head. If that's really all you care about, enjoy. As long as you don't shoot them off in the cities, where rational people live, go ahead and have a big gun-fuck party. Maybe then you'll kill each other off and you won't breed another generation of dumb ignorant fucks that doesn't have the goddamn sense to vote for anything that matters because you're so fucking paranoid that someone's going to possibly come near to approaching in any way your only tiny miserable moments of illusory power in those fleeting seconds when you make a BIG NOISE and watch STUFF BLOW UP all AWESOME AND SHIT ...

Sorry. Maybe I went a bit far there. I just tend to get a tad frustrated when I hear that gun stores are running out of ammo because ignorant fuckers are paranoid that just because a Democrat's in office holy shit! They's gonna go afta' our guns! Guess what, dumb-ass, no one's talking about guns. No one cares any more about guns. There is a whole ocean of bigger fish to fry than your stupid guns. There's the adequate health care coverage that you don't have. There's the economy that is leaving you either unemployed or barely scratching together a living. There's the climate change that is going to quickly make your home, and yes, your hunting grounds, unliveable. But since you don't know enough to pick your ass off a burning stove, we're going to have to haul you kicking and screaming into a happier future for you and your family ...

Stupid Americans. America would be such a great country if it weren't for all the Americans. Grumble grumble grumble. I need another beer.

America Responds! or, Joe's Comment About Charitable Giving Got Too Long, So Now It's Its Own Post

2009-11-18T14:49:00.000-08:00

Hmm. I'm afraid I'm going to have to vehemently disagree with my right honourable friend.

In the first instance, my friend is operating under the misapprehension that "real" charities don't squirrel away their money and live off the interest. Au contraire, my good man. Take a glance at Forbes' list of the top 200 charities in the U.S. Last year, there were 21 charities with net assets over one billion dollars. That’s the stuff they’ve kept over the years, squirrel-like. They regularly (when the stock market doesn't crash, of course) earn tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in investment income each year, which they use to help fund their operations, while the principal sits in Scrooge McDuck’s swimming pool.

And speaking of ducks (or geese, actually)…. An argument could be made that neither these charities nor colleges should be encouraged to become financial geese - building up a huge nest egg and just sitting on it, while goslings of investment income emerge every year to do the work of the gander. My honourable friend would have you slaughter that goose each year, and feast upon its donated flesh. But what, I ask, is more valuable: the present value of today's single goose, which must be replaced in its entirety every year, or tomorrow's limitless flock of goslings, born of one cared-for, always-growing, and well-endowed goose? I leave that to the economists to debate.

(Note to the reader: ignore the foregoing paragraph, if you want; I’m afraid it’s rather strained and doesn’t make sense. But I still like it, so I left it in. If you want to read a thoughtful analysis of encouraging nonprofits to reduce their surpluses by taxing them, take a gander at http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/65xx/doc6567/07-21-UntaxedBus.pdf.)

And non-profits abound that ask for donations beyond an initial fee. I like the zoo. They charge me twenty dollars to see the hippopotamuses. Then they ask me to spend fifty dollars to join the Zoological Society. What for? I already gave them my money. If I want to see another hippo, fine - I'll go back and hand over another appleduster (new slang for a twenty dollar bill). Why should I keep paying for something I already got the benefit from?

Well, donations don’t have to be seen as retroactively increased payments for something you already bought. You can give money to the zoo or a college because you have warm, fuzzy feelings today about the good times you had there. Or you can give to them because you want the zoo or your college to be around for the next generation – and hopefully in better shape than when you went there.

The fact is, fees (and tuitions) usually only cover a smallish percent of institutional costs. Most established charities depend on some balance of fees, grants by foundations and governments, and investment income (which would be replaced by gooseflesh in Ed’s endowment-less scheme). And of course, donations by people like you. If people didn't donate to the zoo by joining the Zoological Society, they might have to start killing endangered animals because they ran out of money to buy Okapi Chow.

Of course, no one forces anyone to donate extra money to a fee-charging charity. (Except of course for the Mobsters' Fund for We Won't Break Your Elbows If You Give Us A Lot of Money Right Now.) You give to the ones you like, according to how much you have and want to give. If you hate okapis, don’t join the zoo. If you think the zoo has started to spend too much money on muskrat enclosures, stop giving them money. If you don’t think your college should be spending money on stairmasters, don’t give them anything.

And not to nitpick, but people can donate to the government, too. Not usually as a “here’s double my tax bill, made out to The Government”, but go to any National Parks website, and you can donate your money directly to that government-run entity.

As for need-blindness, there are few colleges who remain totally need-blind these days. But my understanding is that most places are still something like 80-90% need-blind, meaning that they take financial ability into account only for borderline admittees and wait-list kids. And they meet the full need of anyone that they do admit. So money for scholarships is still useful.

Bottom line is, colleges are worthy recipients of charitable giving. And each dollar you give saves the life of an okapi. So please, give today.

Things I Hate: Giving Money to My Alma Mater

2009-11-15T11:49:00.000-08:00

I loved college. It was a wonderful experience. I made some lifelong friends, learned a ton, and generally, it was top-notch, top-drawer, top-shelf, top-flight, top-hat, Topper-Returns, Top-of-the-Pops ... tops.

And I paid handsomely for it. Well, I didn't pay for it -- my dead great aunt did. Either way, I don't see much point in continuing to pay for it.

I know, there are plenty of kids who couldn't afford to pay for college without some assistance. Thing is, my school isn't very interested in them any more. My school gave up on need-blind admissions when I was a sophomore. To me, that's discrimination in favor of the rich. That's one reason I don't give.

Another is that that my school, like most, is actually loaded with dough. They're so rich that they have big wads of cash just sitting in the bank, and they operate by skimming off the top of it. The call it an "endowment," which makes it sound nice, but it's really just a big hoard of money that they should be using to run the school. That money could go towards scholarships. Or maybe reduce tuition so that normal people can actually afford to go. Do other charitable organizations have the luxury of just squirreling money away and living off of interest rather than using it to fund their operations? Do even the richest for-profit businesses get to do that? (I actually don't know, but I would imagine they wouldn't.)

But yet my college keeps coming to us alumni, hat in hand, saying how they need more money. Yeah, sure, and next I'll make out a check to Microsoft. In 2001, my school lost its shirt in the dot-com crash. This left it only a quarter-billion in its endowment. Only a quarter-billion! Mercy me! How do they put gas in their cars?

And despite losing their shirt, relatively speaking, they still had plenty of money to bring about a lot of unecessary improvements. They redid dorm interiors that were already perfectly fine. They added another cafeteria, despite the fact that I don't remember ever feeling I couldn't find a seat in any of the old ones. They added a huge exercise facility even though they already had two, and the school was full of nerds who shouldn't be exercising anyway.

So this is what my charity dollar is supposed to go towards? Giving rich kids fancier places to work out? I could feed a kid in Africa, combat global warming, contribute to AIDS research ... or give a dorm room a new chair. Somehow, I kinda think I'd do more good giving to the kid in Africa. Maybe that's just me.

In fact, comparing a wealthy and successful college to real charities is unfair to the real charities. Real charities don't get to charge exorbitant tuitions -- they make almost all of their money from donations. Colleges are really more like sports teams. They're tons of fun, you love them, they're part of who you are ... and you pay what they charge, and that should be it. As much as I love the Minnesota Twins, I don't think I'll be donating money to them any time soon.

I'll grant that colleges have a higher purpose than sports teams do. But hey, so do governments. We love our alma mater, so we voluntarily pay even more than we're charged, long after we stopping being a member. We also love our towns, our states, our countries -- yet we take every possible angle we can to avoid paying even the regular amount that they ask of us in taxes. And that's while we are still a member of those places, still benefitting from their work. And forget about giving them something extra.

In short, it will be a great day when our governments get all the money they need and our private colleges have to have a bake sale to buy a building.

My Hard-Hitting Critique of Flags

2009-11-08T06:00:00.000-08:00

I love flags. Even if they're kinda useless nowadays. In the days before people could read, they had very practical uses: Flags were the only way to identify yourself as coming from a particular country. People also couldn't talk or hear in those days, so all communication was done through flags. Every nobleman had a flagbearer who would carry about 5,000 different flags, one for each word in the English language at the time. Even the best flag-waver would take about a half hour in between each word to shuffle through his flag collection and find the next flag, so each sentence took about a day. Lots of awkward pauses in those days. If you were a peasant and couldn't afford a flagbearer, you would communicate through punches to the face.

No, not really! Ha ha ha. But flags were a lot more of a practical necessity in those days. And people didn't get all "sacred-relic"-y about their country's flag like they do now. True story: Few people in the United States saw a single American flag for many years after it was adopted, because it really weren't seen as being terribly important. Several years after its adoption, Ben Franklin was quoted as describing the flag wrong, saying it had 13 stripes of red, white and blue instead of red and white. He'd likely seen one or two by then, but just wasn't a big thing at the time. They certainly didn't worry about flag being burnt or touching the ground or being wrapped around penises or whatever people are upset about today. That whole farcically overwrought and overcomplicated flag-folding ceremony was created in the 1970s. Point is, only recently have Americans been all spazzy about the flag.

But anyway, flags are fun. And the American flag is the funnest. It really is the best flag, and I say that not just because I'm a flag-waving, jingoistic, xenophobic white supremacist. It's a unique flag, yet not bizarre. There's lots of good symbolism in there -- the 50 stars for the 50 states, the 13 stripes for the 13 colonies, the white for white people, the red for the blood of white people, the blue for the blood of rich white people. And it's nice-looking too. Here it is:

I bet it's immediately recognizable to just about everyone in the world. In the marketing biz, we call that "good branding." Then we feel icky for using the word "branding," and we reevaluate our choices in life. Then we realize that we have no discernable talent of any kind, so marketing was basically our only option. Then we cry all the way to the bank.

And I really think that should be the number-one qualification for a flag. Attractiveness is important too, but number one in my book is recognizability. If it's easy to remember that a certain flag stands for a certain country, then it's a good flag.

So what would be a counterexample? Basically every flag in Europe. European countries suck at making flags, much as they suck in creating health-care systems, moral values, and people. (Remember, I'm a jingoistic xenophobe.) Pop quiz, hot shot: What country proudly (?) bears this standard atop their mighty whorehouses and "coffeeshops"?

Nope, not France -- France has the same exact colors, except its stripes are vertical instead of horizontal. It's Holland, or, as it's actually called, the Netherlands. What, you didn't recognize it? Maybe because it looks almost exactly like every other fucking flag in Europe?

Here's another pop quiz: what so-called "country" is so perpetually ashamed of itself that it created this flag, apparently in the hope that they would be mistaken for other countries and that no one would notice them ever again?

You guessed it, it's the world's shittiest country, Luxembourg. Luxembourg and the Netherlands even border each other, folks. The Netherlands was so unoriginal that it did the tri-color thing, like every other European country, and used the same colors as France -- and then Luxem-fucking-bourg upped the ante for unoriginality to the stratosphere by using the same flag as its neighbor! They just made one color slightly lighter! That's so unoriginal that it's almost amazingly original!

So both those flags are absolute failures. People who aren't Joe will never come across the Luxembourg flag and be like, "Oh shit, Luxembourg's in the house!" They will instead be all "Is that France's flag? No wait, its stripes are vertical. Eh, it's probably one of those shitty European countries that doesn't even try to pretend that it has enough national pride to make a flag that normal people (i.e., not Joe) can recognize." It's like if the Netherlands had instead called itself Franceland, and then Luxembourg had called itself Francelande.

So where are the good flags? Not Africa, I'll tell you that. As if it wasn't bad enough that they have so many black people there (reminder: I am a racist), their flags are even worse than Europe's. They all use the same freakin' colors, and just arrange them slightly differently. For instance, here's Ghana:

I know, it's like, SO Ghana, isn't it? You think Ghana, and you think about a star, with red, yellow and green stripes. You would never look at that and be all, oh, hey, Guinea-Bissau! However, if you saw this flag ...

... you'd be all, "oh, snap, it's Guinea-Bissau!" A star with red, yellow and green stripes! And it's so symbolic the way one of the stipes is vertical. People in Guinea-Bissau are known for walking while vertical. It's kind of the thing down there.

And you know, my farcical "Franceland" thing is actually the reality here, because look at Guinea's flag:

Sigh. So you have countries called "Guinea" and "Guinea-Bissau." Already, you're starting with a big similarity problem right there. Then these countries each choose almost the same flag. It's like identical twins who dress the same. Don't you guys want to even try to carve out your own identities? If not, then hell, we're wasting time and money keeping you guys as separate countries. We need to conserve ambassadors and embassy buildings -- did you not you see the Al Gore movie? You're wasting valuable paper and chairs at U.N. meetings by insisting on being different countries.

You know, maybe I actually hate flags. Flags seem to willfully contradict my main qualifications: that they be memorable, unique, and blatantly symbolic. I know that the colors in the African flags are symbolic of Pan-Africanism, but couldn't you think of better symbols than just colors? Colors are very busy things: They are on everything in the world, and each color can symbolize life, death, nature, freedom, ham, and every other possible thing imaginable depending on who you are and where you're from. Can't you go with more concrete and obvious symbols? Can't you be more like Swaziland?

Now there's a fuckin' flag! It's got that kick-ass shield and those spears in the middle, plus a bunch of leaves or pinecones or Tribbles or whatever those things are. Swaziland has no self-esteem problems: With this flag, they're saying to me, "Hey, we're Swaziland, and if you don't like it, we will stab you!" As opposed to Luxembourg or Guinea, who are all "ooh, colors are pretty."

Plus, I think it has a nice look to it. The above representation is not a great one -- usually they use a nice light blue that goes well with the other colors and makes it look like something that a professional artist may have created. I mean seriously, imagine what awesome country flags professional artists could create. They would be attractive, recognizable, unique -- why instead, did most countries just pick a few colors and smack 'em together, with nary a thought toward aesthetics?

But anyway, the all-time greatest flag is Nepal's. They really knew how to "think outside the box" ... literally! (By the way, I am available to speak at your next corporate event. My presentation, "Marketing Lessons from Flag Design: Think Outside the Same Goddamn Boxes of Color That Everyone Else Uses," has inspired countless people to improve their ROI efficiency and upflow their innovationability. Contact me today!)

Yeah, buddy! The people at Nepal said "Hey guys, why don't we innovate? Why don't we break the paradigm and promote a brand identity of young, hip, different, EXTREME?!" So that's what they did, and they have since become the market leader in Nepalese products.

And it's symbolic, too. The sun represents the fact that they have sunlight there. The sun on top of the crescent symbolizes the fact that their Muslims think the sun rises and sets just for them. And the whole shape of the flag symbolizes the extremely pointy breasts that all Nepalese women have.

But I should emphasize that to have a passable flag, you don't have to go as far as Nepal did. You can just put some object in the middle. Mexico's flag (which you should know well, so I'm not putting it in here) is a fine one, I think. Nothing earth-shattering -- basically just Italy's flag with a bird in the middle -- but it's enough to make it memorable. If the Netherlands had stuck a picture in the middle of its flag of a man smoking a joint while being fellated by a prostitute, I would have no problem with it whatsoever.

(For further flag-looking-at: Other good flags include the Marshall Islands, Kenya, Kosovo, Dominica, Seychelles, Montenegro, and St. Lucia. Bad ones include Mali, Lithuana, Hungary, Poland, Indonesia and Monaco (same exact flag for those two), and all those goddamn Scandinavian countries that I can never keep straight. Sweden I can get every time. The rest I can never remember.)

Movies I Dreamt Up

2009-11-01T07:20:00.000-08:00

My dreams take all forms. (Again, I must remind you that by "dreams" I do not mean aspirations. I only use that word when referring to the stuff my brain conjures up when I'm asleep.) When I'm not dreaming painful scenarios that drag my emotions over past failures, I often dream up movie ideas. My brain will make up some weird scenario, and then at some point in mid-dream I realize it's a movie, and as I'm dreaming, I'll form it into a better movie. It's kind of awesome really. I've also come up with songs in my sleep that I was able to remember the next morning. I've never been able to write a song in waking life.

Anyway, here are a few recent movies I dreamt up:

1. "Back to High School"

Glib version of the explanation: Like that Drew Barrymore movie, except better.

It's sorta kinda a lot like that Drew Barrymore movie where a grown-up goes back to high school as an undercover reporter, except a little different. So it starts with our heroine, who we'll call Emily (just to pick a random name), going through high school. This will be a pretty quick introductory segment, in which we run through all the typical characters and themes of all "high school sucks" movies -- there are the popular, rich, mean girls tormenting Emily, there's the charming, cute jock who doesn't have any interest in her, there's the nerd boy who pays attention to her but turns out to be a sex-obsessed jerk, and it's all generally a miserable experience.

All the above is stuffed in one day in which Emily is tired of blending into the woodwork and decides to break out of her shell by wearing these wacky socks that her mother gave her, and that she loves. But instead of getting her noticed in a good way, she gets ridiculed mercilessly. For the rest of high school, she's derisively known as "Socks" Macarthur. (Her last name's Macarthur. That's what my dream told me, so it must be a portentous sign from God.)

So anyway, Emily goes to college, and has a blast. Now she breaks out the wacky socks and everyone loves them. She again becomes known as "Socks," but this time it's a fun nickname. Now instead of wallowing in a crippling fear of people, she relishes their company.

While in college, she becomes fascinated with computers, and creates a few iPhone apps (or something like that -- something in science or technology) that she's then able to market and make a mint off of. After she graduates, she's pretty well set for a while. She's immensely happy.
But she keeps having dreams about how awful high school was. She meets with a therapist, who tells her that there's not much she can do about that one -- there's no aversion therapy for high school. At this point, Socks has become a bit of a perfectionist, obsessed with having a perfect life and no fears or scars. So she says, heck, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

So she goes ... back to high school! (OK, I realize this is a bit cheesy. But it could be fun. And the movie's kinda meant for kids.) She creates a fake identity for herself and enrolls in a different high school. (Maybe some comedy can be mined from having her college buddies pose as her parents. Socks is young-looking, and maybe she gets some bald dude with a beard from college to pose as her dad. Probably shouldn't make her boyfriend do it. That's too icky.)

In high school, she meets exactly the same archetypes as she knew in her high school. At first, she's a bit cowed, but then gathers herself, and acts very confident. She wears her crazy socks all the time. Of course, she gets made of, but she is able to shoot back now, and she becomes pretty popular, one of those rare popular kids who is friends with everyone. This time she actually gets to know all these archetypical characters -- jocks, sex-obsessed nerds, popular girls, etc. Her motives are kinda evil, to befriend them and then find a way to give them a good comeuppance, or at least get them to change from being so terrible to each other. But the more she gets to know them, the more she sees that they're packed with insecurities too, and are just better at hiding them. The popular girl, it turns out, had to fend off sexual advances from a teacher. The nerd has an oppressive family. Et cetera. She ends up being a genuine friend to them, helping them with their problems, but then when they start ganging up on a wallflower girl that reminds her of herself, she can't help herself. She ends up taking revenge on them, and of course it turns out horribly, making things much worse. She tries to atone for what she did, but by then someone discovers her fraud, and she's kicked out. Then everyone feels they've been defrauded and she's demonized and shunned.

She gets a criminal conviction but no jail time (she never did anything icky with any of the high school kids, always telling them she had a boyfriend from another school, which she actually does, and maybe her real boyfriend comes and meets them, and they're just awed by him), and returns to adult life. But maybe eventually, something makes the kids come see her at her cool apartment and there's some sort of tearful admittance that they have changed for the better because of her. So there's sort of a happy ending, somehow. Maybe in the end she becomes a school psychologist. I haven't worked out all the details.

2. "Wall Street Hustlers"

Glib version of the explanation: Chris Rock version of "Wall Street"

OK, I can't really describe this one and not look like an asshole, since I'm a white man. I'll just sound like I'm trying to put on a minstrel show or in some other way be insulting to African-Americans. So I'll resolve this problem by acting all black and shit.

Yo, bitch, what up? Mothafuckin' E to the D here to kick the ballistics on the ultimate balla comedy in the hizzay!!! Peep this .... oh Jesus, I am a horrible human being. I apologize with all my soul to everyone who is African-American, has ever met anyone African-American, or has ever heard of African-Americans. I'm so sorry.

But not sorry enough to not try again. OK, so there's this ghetto businessman who is ruling many of the illicit trades in the neighborhood. Let's call him Joe (just to pick a random name). He's cornered the market on marijuana. But he doesn't sell coke or crack or anything else, because he feels that those destroy the community, and a destroyed community is a dangerous one, and thus bad for business. Marijuana, he says half-jokingly, helps the community, making everyone relax. That's good business. He puts everything in terms of whether it's good or bad for business. He's a charmer, genuinely likable and not smarmy or evil, but he's also a ruthless capitalist, doing whatever it takes to maintain his monopoly. He is an extremely wise businessman, but a mostly amoral one. In a very charming way.

In the beginning he is challenged by an upstart who barges into his office and is shocked by un-fancy it is. Joe lets loose one of his many maxims, something about never looking like you have money. He wears very simple clothes that make him go mostly unnoticed. But he's rolling in money. The pictures on his wall are of Donald Trump, Michael Milken, Ken Lay -- his heroes.

So anyway, this upstart makes bold pronouncements about taking him over, and Joe flashes a genuine smile and says "Well, I welcome the competition! Competition is what makes the system great!" He then asks the upstart about his business plan. Of course, the upstart doesn't really have one. What areas are you going to go into? No idea, but he just spews more bluster instead of answering. How do you intend to get loyalty from the dealers and suppliers? No idea. Joe reveals that he gets their loyalty by always giving them a solid cut and treating them fairly. He even provides health insurance and a 401(k) (which would be a bit of a laugh line). When things get out of hand, which the inevitably do, he has an enforcement team, led by Big Mike, a man who then appears from the shadows and is very large and intimidating. So anyway, the opening scene is mainly meant to establish that Joe is an expert businessman and to set up how he does his thing.

Eventually the upstart goes away, and Joe's smile drops. He's tired of this shit. He wants to move to the next level, to go legit, maybe run some restaurants or other businesses so he can deal with professionals instead of blowhards. People like Trump, or Ken Lay.

Soon after he meets up with old friend from the neighborhood, Chris. Chris was a mathematical genius who got out of the ghetto on a scholarship and ended up working for a major bank. Recently, however, when the financial mess hit, Chris was fired, digraced, and came back to the ghetto.

Despite Chris' fall, Joe is inspired by his rise. Banking! There are no banks in their neighborhood. People go miles out of their way for a bank or just stash their money in mattresses, which often get stolen. Joe, with Chris' help, opens up a bank. It's a different kind of bank, with intense security. Maybe the upstart, who of course never did anything, comes in and tries to rob the place. He pulls out a gun on the teller, and the teller pulls out her own. As does everyone else in the bank. (OK, now you see where the offensiveness comes in. I've been telling it as straightforward as possible, avoiding the jokes, which are often about applying the ghetto world to the "straight" world, but it's hard to do that without playing on stereotypes of ghettos that I'm really not allowed to play on, as a white man. But you get the idea. A black screenwriter could do better on this.)

So anwyay, the bank is a success, and Joe and Chris quickly start opening other franchises. They start to gain some press. Reporters start asking uncomfortable questions about where Joe got all his money to begin with. Chris buts in and starts talking about credit default swaps and derivitatives and such, and that placates everyone. Afterwards, Joe says "What was all that? I don't know what any of that means." and Chris says,"Neither do I. Neither do they. Doesn't matter. It's all a hustle." You get the idea.

So quickly Joe and Chris start building a financial empire, getting into investment banking and all sorts of things. Then maybe they meet the real tycoons, and Joe is of course enthralled. But when he sees what they do, he gradually becomes more and more horrified. They talk casually of laying off thousands just to boost the stock price a bit so that they can then sell their own stashes for a profit. Or they talk of investments like buying up rivers from indigenous South American populations so they an use them for a new type of bottled water. Joe discovers his conscience, and threatens to expose all of their awful deals. The tycoons laugh and tell them that these deals are all well-known, and nobody cares.

Then the tycoons, just to be safe, expose Joe as getting his start in marijuana sales, and Joe is arrested and his businesses destroyed. Maybe at the trial he makes an impassioned speech, asking which is worse -- selling a mostly harmless drug in order to make a system of banks that help the community, or using your riches to destroy communities and people for the sake of gaining slightly more riches. He becomes a folk hero, taking every interview he can get and talking about this stuff. And then there's some happy ending. I don't know what.

So maybe these movies are a bit preachy. I'm so political these days that it would be hard for them not to be. But both would be comedies, with all this stuff underneath it all. What do you think? Neither would be great art, but they could be fun.

Things I Hate: The Simpsons

2009-10-24T12:48:00.001-07:00

I should clarify. The first seven seasons of "The Simpsons" comprised the best run of TV shows in history. The following 24 years (or whatever) have been dogshit. So 7 years of the best TV ever plus 47 years of detestable shows = hate.

I was reminded of this recently when I made the mistake of watching a recent episode. It started just fine, had twists and turns and satire ... and ended up completely emotionally hollow. Characters were reduced to caricatures and cranked through the pointlessly insane motions of the plot. Not a single moment felt attached to reality or had the least bit of heart. It was all a cynical exercise in churning through jokes.

And older "Simpsons" episodes did have heart. Each started from a place of common understanding, some situation that any family can relate to. The family dog has puppies. The bratty kid goes too far when he shoplifts. The father betrays his wife's trust one too many times and is kicked out. From these starting points, the episodes would often go in hilariously bizarre, absurd directions, but they would usually do it temporarily, and then return to a grounding of relatable human behavior. The last few moments would usually have some sort of sweetness to it. I've cried at many an old "Simpsons" episode. Remember when Homer meets his mom again after decades of estrangement, and when she goes back on the lam, he sits on his car and looks at the stars? It gives me chills just thinking about it.

Nowadays, the show is too busy speeding through the joke-manufacturing machinery of the plot to reveal any emotion or human insights. Instead of starting from relatable premises like "Homer has heart surgery" or "Lisa becomes a vegetarian," now an episode will be "Homer becomes a paparazzo." What? Why? So the "Simpsons" writers can make fun of celebrity culture, basically. And hey, who else on TV is doing that? (Answer: Everybody. There are entire channels that do nothing else.)

Of course, the classic episodes were far from 100% sunshine and light -- they were probably 99% cynicism and negativity. But it was a wonderfully insightful brand of cynical negativity. I don't know if this is the best example, but here goes: In one episode, Bart got one of those little spongy things that you put in water and it's supposed to grow to a big dinosaur. He, of course, imagines it will immediately sprout into a 20-foot-tall T. Rex and start eating Lisa. So he excitedly sprays the hose on it, and it slowly grows about two inches and then coasts into the sewer. I remember going through the exact same experience when I was a kid. It was a funny, pleasant shock to see it on screen.

Granted, the new episodes will have funny moments now and then. Sometimes one will have some sort of tiny insight like the one I just described. But to get to those moments you have to wade through lots of labored, contrived, two-bit satire of innocuous pop culture phenomena. That's the other thing -- they constantly lambaste showbiz nowadays, picking easy targets that even the schmucks on VH-1 can make fun of: Paris Hilton, boy bands, etc. And in the process, they always make fun of Americans for being obsessed with it all -- but by expending so much energy ridiculing the most insignifcant little Hollywood trends, the "Simpsons" writers are clearly just as obsessed, if not more. And by the way, satirizing pop culture ephemera guarantees that your show won't age gracefully. Nobody watches old Rich Little clips any more.

But you can't criticize "Simpsons" episodes without inviting the "Worst. Episode. Ever." response from its defenders. That's the one where they make fun of hyper-critical "Simpsons" fanboys who really need to get a life. And I have seen said fanboys in action on "Simpsons" fan sites, picking apart some of the classic episodes and damning them for a few imagined flaws. That's not what I'm doing here. Apart from most of the first season, in which the show was really just getting its sea legs, I think the first seven seasons are uniformly brilliant. I have my favorites ("Lisa the Vegetarian," "Lisa's Rival" -- I guess I like Lisa), but I really don't have much criticism for any of them.

My point is here that I'm not being petty or grumpy-old-man-ish -- I'm just lamenting the fact that the greatest show ever has become a depressing shell of its former self during the past 150 years or so. It's like if Usain Bolt followed his record-breaking run with 72 solid hours of victory laps. No, it's actually sadder than that -- it's like if Orson Welles gave up on making the greatest movies ever and instead settled for being broken, morbidly obese commercial pitchman ... oh, wait.

And Fox will never stop cranking out the episodes until people stop watching. And people probably won't stop watching, because shitty Simpsons is still better than half the crap on TV. That, and people are idiots. So the Simpsons, as a show, as an entity, will continue on its path from going from the best show in TV history to being the worst. Sigh.

I Made a Palindrome!

2009-10-22T03:40:00.000-07:00

Stab for a car of bats!

This is especially exciting for me because this is a phrase I use all the time! When I exhort people to stab things, I often dangle the incentive of a car full of bats. I can't believe that I never realized it was a palindrome before!

OK, it's not the most sensical palindrome ever. The all-time best, for my money, is "A man, a plan, a canal - Panama." Another famous one is "Able was I ere I saw Elba." But I never liked that one because every word is a word that is a palindrome of another word -- there are no long sequences where you're like, "wait, is that actually a palindrome?"Anyone can do one of these every-word-is-a-palindrome palindromes ... let's see ... "We flog racecar golf, ew!" See? Lame.

When I was in high school, a friend and I would try to make palindromes in our spare time. (We were the coolest kids on school, obviously. We also made flip books of the Large Marge scene in "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure." Instead of say, dating. I look back on those days with absolutely no nostalgia.) But we never came up with anything even as good as the bat-stabbing one. They were always more like "Have a kumquat, Tauqmukaevah!" And then we'd explain that Tauqmukaevah was a fellow who liked kumquats. I think we might have tried this for a day or two before we gave up.

So what do YOU think of my awesome palindrome? Remember, your comment must be in the form of a palindrome.

Quick Thought

2009-10-11T06:05:00.000-07:00

I've often wondered if we humans are making life so complicated that eventually we won't even be able to navigate our own lives. Every time we find a problem, we add another layer of complexity to solve it. Eventuially the over-complexity becomes a bigger problem than any of the original problems, but we for some reason just can't stop adding to it.

It's like the tax code. We discover that rich people are getting out of paying income taxes, so we add the Alternative Minimum Tax. But oh wait, now there's a penalty for being married. Let's add another thing that fixes that. Eventually it gets to the point where no one can really keep it all straight, and it's hell to try to muddle your way through it each April.

I think that the recent economic collapse is in part due to this phenomenon. As I understand it, mortgages were broken up and sold as derivatives. Then they were packaged with other bits, and futures were sold against them, and then came credit default swaps and other crazy crap, Eventually it got to the point when no one really knew what they were buying or what they were selling. The financial sector made a system that even they couldn't understand, and ended up making very bad, ill-informed decisions as a result. The whole thing collapsed when the exponentially growing complexity surpassed the finite capacity of human beings to understand it.

You deal with this when you deal with health insurance too -- in that case, though, I believe the overcomplications are intentional. Between deductibles and coinsurance and limits and acres of fine print about what's covered and what isn't under what circumstances, they intentionally make everything so complicated that you can't really sign on knowing exactly what you're getting. And then when disaster happens, all they have to do is say, "Well, because of your deductible and coinsurance, you have to pay 90% of the first $5000 and then 25% of the next $3 and then all future expenses in perpetuity, because the full amount only covered on Tuesdays in autumn. It's in the contract that you signed, dummy. What are you going to do, sue? Like you have the time."

And they count on the fact that we either aren't smart enough to grasp it all or don't have the time to sit down and figure it all out. I've seen many news reports about people who got outrageous denials of coverage (one I remember was a woman who fell and broke her arm, and they claimed it was a pre-existing condition -- no joke), and then those people worked what amounted to second jobs to fight the denials. Eventually they won, but what about all the people who don't have the time or smarts to do battle against massive companies that marshal the best minds in the country to find extremely clever ways to screw policyholders out of money? Because that's where their profit motive lies, folks: in not paying your claims, not helping you when you're hurt, not doing the service you essentially contracted them for. They do it all through the time-honored practice of "delay, deny, defend." They put you through crazy hoops, delaying payment, denying coverage, and then defending it in court, all in the hopes you'll give up and just pay it yourself rather than fight. It works like a charm.

I'm not saying health insurance companies are evil -- they're just trying to make a profit. Therefore, they shouldn't be allowed to make profits. The profit motive works for many, many things, but not for health insurance. They make more money when they provide their customers with less. It would like a food producer that profits when it starves people. The answer is to take away the profit motive and make all health insurance companies non-profits. Or make it all run by the government. Hey, we all know that the government isn't perfect, but I'll take a messy, bureaucratic government system over a system that strongly incentivizes screwing consumers any day.

OK, this was not meant to turn into a tirade about health insurance. Sometimes my passionate hatred of health insurance overwhelms me, sorry. Back to the point: In this developed world of ours, are we just piling on more and more systems to navigate and things to learn so fast that eventually we'll reach an event horizon in which no one can get out of bed in the morning? Do we all need to give up, move to Walden Pond and grow peas? What do you think?

Amy's Irrational Fears and the Irrational Fear-o-Meter

2009-10-02T13:57:00.000-07:00

I’ve noticed that the older I get, the more irrational my fears become. Are irrational fears a byproduct of age? I assume it has something to do with me hearing about other people’s disasters. The longer I live, the more I hear about disasters. Here’s me in 2006: “Nah, bridges never collapse.” And here’s me in late 2007: “Whoa. Watch out for bridges!” Are these budding fears useful or a hindrance? Downhill skiing, while still a fun activity, is hinting at its dangers with each passing experience. When I’m on the chair lift, I think about how much it would hurt to fall off. When I’m scraping my way down the hill, I think about how little I’d like my knee to bend the wrong way until it snaps. Is aging killing my very few joys in life now or is it just making me more careful? I don’t know. Let’s examine some of these fears in-depth:

Fear Number One: My Kitchen Cupboards Can’t Take It Anymore And Come Crashing Down. This is a tough one. I think I have, among other things, 12 dish sets in one upper cupboard above my sink. That’s 12 big plates, 12 little plates, 12 annoyingly big bowls, and 12 seldom-used saucers. The other things are more bowls, some little dishes I swiped from work, and some big heavy decorative dishes my mom gave me. That’s a lot of weight for one small cupboard above a sink. What’s holding that cupboard up? A couple of screws? I don’t see the kind of supports I’d like to see, like the things holding bridges up (even defective ones). As far as I know, my cupboards are just stuck to the wall with some Elmer’s. Why isn’t everyone concerned about this?

Irrationality Level: High. Totally irrational, though? I think not. My friend Lindsey’s ktichen cuboard fell off the wall once, unprovoked. Therefore, it can happen!

Fear Number Two: Mountain Lions. I live in Boulder and there are mountain lions here. I’ve never seen one and I don’t even know if I’ve ever met anyone who has ever seen one, but we know they’re lurking out here somewhere. And they eat people! Maybe they’re in my back yard right now! (As an aside, I really don’t think it should be “backyard.” I think it should be “back yard” and that’s what I’m going to use). I check my back yard every day for mountain lions and while I haven’t seen one yet, I’m not going to stop checking.

Irrationality Level: Medium. I mean, some kid was attacked about four years ago in Boulder and a few weeks ago in Oregon. It can happen!

Fear Number Three: Deciding to Try to Survive for a Summer in a Bus in Alaska and Eating a Poisonous Sweet Pea Plant and Dying Alone of Starvation. Those of you who have read and/or seen Into the Wild will notice that I have too. Since then, I have found myself feeling nervous about somehow accidentally ending up in that situation and I really, really, really don’t want to do that. None of it. I don’t want to live in a bus, I don’t want to eat a poisonous plant, and I don’t want to die of involuntary starvation. I should add a sub-fear, here, which is of eating anything poisonous, even if it’s not in Alaska. I couldn’t even eat this arugula salad I once ordered at a hoity-toity restaurant because it tasted like poison. But anyway, there it is. I really don’t want this to happen to me and just thinking about it gives me the willies.

Irrationality Level: OK, Really High. But you know what, it really did happen! Just not to me.

Fear Number Four: My Front Bicycle Tire Falls Off When I’m Riding Down a Hill. Like the cupboards, what is holding that tire on? Just a little metal? Who put this bike together? Who was the last person to put that wheel on? Me? For heaven’s sake, I don’t know anything about bikes. Who let me put a tire on a bike? Do I KNOW that I did it right? I mean, I think I did it right, it’s really not that hard, but did I tighten the thingies enough? Too much? Is the wheel going to sieze up and stop turning because it’s too tight?

Irrationality Level: I’d Say Medium-Low. Because when I was in high school, it did happen! to a kid I knew and he really got a bad road rash on his face.

Irrational Fear Number Five: My Cell Phone In My Front Pants Pocket Will Give Me Ovarian Cancer. This one eats at me every day. Hopefully not literally. We all know that cell phones give off a little radiation. How much? I don’t know. How much will give you cancer? I don’t know. Does anyone know if these levels are safe? I mean, people used to drink radium thinking it would keep them healthy. Now we know that’s a bad idea. In 30 years, will we look back on our cell phones as cancer cubes (even though they’re never cubes, but “cancer rectangular prisms” is awkward)? I’ve actually thought about carrying my cell phone in my back pocket, thinking that butt cancer would be better. But Farrah Fawcett had a really bad time with anal cancer and we all know how that ended, so that’s probably not a good alternative. (Hey! Maybe a cell phone in the back pocket is how she got it! Did anyone look into that possibility?) A purse would be better, but I hate purses. Getting rid of it would be the best of all, but it really is convenient sometimes. So what do I do? Do you suppose they sell little lead-lined pouches? I just have no answers to this problem. Thankfully, I don’t use my cell phone very much, so I’m strangely not worried about brain cancer.

Irrationality Level: Dammit, Low. Low! I think it’s Low! I think it could happen!

So there we have five of my least-rational fears. What do you think? Is this the first step to becoming the Little Old Lady Who Only Drives a Buick on Sundays or do these fears have merit? It is a case of older-and-wiser or growing instability? I think what gives me some hope and confidence is that I know there are people, maybe even sometime contributers to this blog, who have irrational bee fears. I don’t have an irrational bee fear. They can crawl all over me and I don’t care. Oh, but I am afraid of brown recluse spiders hiding in the fingers of old work gloves and biting me when I put them on. Laugh if you will, I don’t care. It can happen!

A Single Prosaic Thought

2009-09-29T13:39:00.000-07:00

Every time we watch a drama, comedy, or whatever, we're really just enjoying watching people go through terrible things. In a tragedy, people go through terrible things and then die. In a comedy, people go through terrible things and then get married at the end, or whatever. In a drama, people go through terrible things that they conquer in the last reel. The only genre that's nothing but watching people go through pleasurable things is porn. And that's kind of a different thing entirely.

Things I Hate: Most Forms of Male Facial Hair

2009-09-29T05:34:00.001-07:00

I hate most forms of male facial hair. I've broached this topic before, but I haven't given it the sort of hard-hitting, hyperbolic, irrational, unfair exploration that has made me famous among a handful of people who already knew me.

I think the main thing I hate about most forms of male facial hair (henceforth known as "facial hairstyles") is that it always seems that the wearer is trying too hard. Or maybe it's that facial hairstyles go in and out of fashion so much, and people should know from looking at old pictures that today's hip look is always tomorrow's laughingstock. I'm not sure why it is exactly, but I am sure that a weird facial hairstyle usually means that the person is a douche.

There are acceptable facial hairstyles. Full beards are fine, because they are well-established over the centuries and don't connote anything in particular. I guess they sometimes mean "I am a professor," but not always, and hey, being a professor isn't necessarily a bad thing. And if you have the balls to grow one really long, like some Russian noble from the early 1600s, well, then you're the man. Now that's retro.

Big bushy Magnum P.I.-esque mustaches are acceptable, because they're funny. They're so hopelessly out of style that, if you have one, you've committed yourself to wearing a joke, all day, every day, and you have to admire that kind of gumption. Other facial hairstyles make men look like jokes, but the men aren't in on the joke, see, and they think they look hip, so that's just annoying. I doubt many guys with big, bushy mustaches really think they look hip, and if they do, well, that's all the funnier.

Pretty much all other facial hairstyles are horrible. In fact, I think they should all be renamed ("rebranded," if you will. Will you? No? OK, well, I don't blame you.) with disgusting, hateful names. I think if they're paired with nasty images through terrible names, the true nastiness of the styles will break through their pretensions of hipness like rays of fetid sunlight. Then, ideally, people sporting these forms of facial hair will be ridiculed using these new names, and then those people will commit suicide, and we'll rid ourselves of an entire generation of douchebags. That's the plan, anyway. So here's the first one:

1. The soul patch is now "Upside-Down Hitler Mustache."

See that douche in the picture on the right? By wearing the upside-down Hitler mustache, he is sending a secret signal that he hates Jews and wants them exterminated from the earth. That's what it means as of this moment, anyway. So the next time you see a guy on the street with a so-called soul patch, go up to him and shout, "Why do you want to kill all Jews?!?!" I do it constantly, and I've only been arrested a few dozen times. It's the least I can do to help rid the world of the upside-down Hitler mustache (and, as an added bonus, free the world of bigotry).

As an aside, a stand-up comedian (can't remember who) once noted how amazing it is that Hitler was able to make a certain mustache unusable forever. I mean, that's some remarkable evilness -- he was so evil that whatever he chose to put on his face would be destroyed for everyone. Idi Amin, Pol Pot -- sure they exterminated milions, but did they kill a hairstyle? I think not! Bunch of wannabes. Saddam Hussein even had some silly facial hair (the aforementioned Magnum P.I.-esque mustache), and no one even considered banning it forever. Hm, maybe he wasn't so evil after all. Crap, we shouldn't have invaded Iraq! Geez, now we figure it out!

Wait a minute, here -- maybe naming a facial hairstyle something unflattering isn't going far enough. Maybe you have to commit genocide to really get one banned forever. Well, I guess a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Any recommendations for an ethnic group I should cleanse? Anyone care about Norwegians? Bunch of smug, blond-haired, blue-eyed devils. And hey, because of the blond, blue-eyed thing, they're the kind of folks that Hitler would have loved, so you get the anti-Hitler demographic on your side right there. I think this could work.

But you know something, to really commit genocide, and do it right, it takes organization. And time. And I have so many things on my plate already right now. My wife and I are thinking about having kids, getting a house, watching more TV -- I don't see how I can squeeze a campaign of ethnic cleansing in the mix. Ah, forget it. Back to the name-calling.

2. That hair-only-on-the-edge-of-the-chin thing is now "The Mangy Lincoln".

The picture I got on the right isn't the most egregious example -- worse is when it's some slickster with a perfectly groomed line of hair trailing around the edge of his jaw, like a long line of ants in a daisy chain (another name idea: "Long Line of Daisy-Chaining Ants").

I guess this isn't the most offensive name possible, but I think have to get the mange in somewhere with one of these names. The mange is such a wonderfully sad and disgusting disease that fits so well with a lot of these facial hairstyles. I guess pretty much any facial hairstyle could be called "The Mangy Lincoln." Except a full beard. And a mustache wouldn't work for that either, since Lincoln didn't have one. Maybe a mustache is a "Reverse Lincoln"? Nah, not insulting enough.

3. The long-line-of-hair-down-the-middle-of-the- bottom-lip-and-chin thing is now "The Stripper's Pussy."

Sorry, I know this name's especially offensive, but just look at this guy. We have to fight fire with fire here, folks. This is baseball player Scott Speizio, who is the douchiest douche in doucheland, and he needs to know that his face looks like a stripper's pussy.

Not that I've actually seen any strippers in real life, with nether regions exposed or otherwise. I've honestly never been to a strip club, and I doubt I ever will. This is partially because I don't have many douche-y male friends, but also because strip clubs sound like the world's most depressing places to me. I doubt many of the strippers could really enjoying doing the whole stripping thing, so that's depressing right there. And the guys, to enjoy the show, would, I assume, have to think in some primitive part of their lizard-brains "Hey, this chick wants me," which is also very depressing, because it's so unbelievably untrue. Strip clubs seem like places for sexually abused women to perform for sexual abusers. So you can understand why I'm loath to go. Plus, the music probably sucks.

4. The bushy goatee is now "Your Momma's Pussy."

Again, I apologize, but my crudeness is a necessary means to a noble end. Actually, goatees are so mainstream that I hesitate to even really object that much, much less give it the most offensive name so far. But the shoe fits -- dude on the right, your face looks like your momma's pussy. Sorry, bushy goatee-wearers (not to mention their moms, who are really blameless in all this, but you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs).

Another thing that makes you look like a douche, I just realized, is posing for a picture with a "serious" look on your face. This guy seems to want you to think, "wow, he's deep and sexy and sexydeep, which is a new word I just invented because nothing else can capture how sexy and deep he is." And of course, to me, that always translates to "I am a douche."

5. The spare, wimpy goatee is now the "Your Stripper Momma's Pussy."

I make no apologies for this one. This is perhaps the worst facial hairtsyle of the bunch, and it deserves what it gets. "Your Stripper Momma's Pussy" is actually probably too tame. Maybe "Your Crabs-Infested Stripper Momma's Pussy"? I could go on but I won't. But again, I do have some reservations since the stripper mommas are blameless here -- they're only trying to put themselves through Harvard, right?

On a related topic, you know what else I hate? Restaurants with belly dancing. Call me sexually repressed if you like, but when I'm eating dinner with my family, I really don't want to see some middle-aged chick's pelvis rolling around in my face. The worst is when they come by the table and ask how you liked the show. You have to nod encouragingly and say "Oh, great. Nothing like undulating pale flesh when I'm eating tabouli."

I got into an argument once with a vehement woman (she was always vehement about something) about this, and I never really recovered from it. We were at a restaurant with belly dancing, and I was asking why this is acceptable. Isn't this an exploitation of women, for the sexual titillation of men? The vehement woman exploded, saying that was very sexist of me to say that, so I cowered whimpering in the corner and that was basically the end of the argument. But I wish I could have defended my position better.

Because really, what's the difference between belly dancing and stripping? A few clothes? I know, I know, belly dancing is a skill that you have to develop and takes muscle tone and yadda yadda -- but so does pole dancing. You're telling me you can jump on a pole, splay your legs around it, hold yourself upside down with your legs, slide down slowly, release your legs, and then do a hilarious puppet show with your labia (again, I haven't been to a strip club, so I'm not exactly sure what goes on there) without doing some serious calisthetics?

I think belly dancing is only acceptable because it's "ethnic." Ancient Middle Eastern harem-havin' guys had belly dancing, so instead of being nasty sexual exploitation, it's a cultural expression.

But, you say, what if women want to express their sexuality through belly dancing? Well, OK, yeah, I guess they have every right to -- but is there a way they could do it when I'm not eating? And not in a place where men are supposed to hoot and holler and put dollars in their clothes like a bunch of baying jackals with lots of disposable income? 'Cuz I may be just a simple country boy, but where I come from, that's called "hegemonic patriarchy commodifying female sexuality to gain feelings of power and sexual gratification."

I'm not sure how a discussion of facial hair turned into a rant about belly dancing, but there you go. That's what bad facial hair does to me. You see the pain and confusion it causes? So men, please, stop with the trendy facial hair. In fact, just stop being trendy at all. Everyone just wear and do the same things all the time. It's just easier that way.

What Was This Summer's Tolerable Pop Song?

2009-09-25T07:26:00.000-07:00

As I get older, I get less and less connected to pop music. I'm sure that happens for everyone. But the difference with me is that when I do watch some awards show or something, I'm not all "What is this crap? In my day we had good music, like 2 Live Crew! And Gerardo!" I'm often more like "OK, well 80% of this stuff sucks, but that's always been the case. The other 20% here is actually quite good! How about that!"

And each summer I discover that I really like at least one artist that is eating up the pop charts (is that the right phrase? Is it "heating" up the pop charts? "Beating" up the pop charts? "Shooting" up the pop charts? "Shitting" up the pop charts? I like "shitting up the pop charts.") Last summer it was MIA, who I've been a fan of for a while. The previous summer it was Gnarls Barkley. They (not he) are awesome, even if they have the worst band name in the history of music. (Can you think of another that's more confusing while also being terribly un-clever?)

This summer I don't recall any pop artist being tolerable. Of course, I'm not paying a lot of attention. Oh, I did actually like the Beyonce song, the one in which she was proposing that everyone who likes her hand has to put a ring on it (does she have some kind of wonderful hand or something? I thought she was more famous for the more interesting parts of her anatomy. Unless she's secretly saying that if you like her ass you should put a ring on it? I've never heard of ass rings, but I am 100% sure that they will become all the rage very soon).

And by the way, Kanye was right. Beyonce should have won for that. That was such a great video that even I saw it. I'm not saying he should have rushed the stage like a lunatic and said so, of course. Though I do genuinely love bizarre interruptions in live TV. If Kanye had run up and said "Wu-Tang is for the children!" (see below video to catch reference) then I'd be totally behind him. But he kinda pissed on Taylor Swift right in front of her, and defended someone who wasn't interested in being defended, so that's kinda weird.

That's all I have to say. I'm more interested in what other people felt was this year's tolerable pop act. While you're thinking, here's the late, great Ol' Dirty Bastard just being Ol' Dirty Bastard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2-5GSjZvW8

My New Least Favorite Commercial

2009-09-19T09:24:00.000-07:00

So I watch a lot of MLB Network, which is a new channel that doesn't have a ton of viewership. Therefore, they only have about three commercial sponsors on the whole station, and the same three ads cycle endlessly.

Unfortunately, one of the sponsors is Pizza Hut, whose latest attempt to kill people with pizza is one with a crust made of cheese, or something. I'm not exactly clear on it, because I literally have to turn away in horror every time the commercial comes on. It involves the ex-comedian Jim Breuer saying "Jackpot!" over and over again, in increasingly annoying ways. It's a nakedly obvious attempt to start a catchphrase, but fails spectacularly.

It also serves to kill Jim Breuer for me -- if you don't know who he is, he's a sleepy-eyed guy who was on "Saturday Night Live" for a while, best known for his Joe Pesci impression. He was always sort of a frat-boy comedian, a la Dane Cook, but I dunno, I guess I still thought he was OK. No more. He's dead to me. And hopefully, soon, to everyone else.

One quick digression: Have there actually been any nationwide catchphrases lately? Is that a lost art? I remember when every other ad featured a catchphrase that was a nationwide phenomenon. From "Bo Knows Baseball," to "Wassssaaaaap," our young nation was bound in common bond, inviolable and sacrosanct, by the catchphrases that gave voice to our deep and fundamental need to collectively beat jokes into the ground. I was reminded of this recently as I overheard a coworker -- a well-meaning and sociable fellow, I should disclaim -- say "Wassssappp! Remember that ad?" to someone else in the office. It wasn't as annoying as you might think -- it was more of a painfully sad spectacle of desperate, deeply ruined whimsy, like watching a grungy, grinning clown make balloon animals for spare change in a crackhouse.

Admittedly, I'm so ensconsed in my own little world of my wife, fantasy baseball, and whatever's in our Netflix queue, that I probably remain completely ignorant of nationwide catchphrases and suchlike. But it would be interesting if catchphrases were dead. And they say we're going through a tough time in this country! C'mon America, we kicked our catchphrase habit! Turn that frown upside down!

But back to annoying ads: I also remember a time when I had a list of companies whose ads were very annoying. I vowed to boycott those companies until their ads became less excrutiating (which is kinda pointless, actually, because they were all companies whose products I didn't buy anyway, that or I'd just forget). But this Pizza Hut is the first in ages that has brought out that level of revulsion in me. Why is that? Have I mellowed? (Not bloody likely -- recently I cursed out some people at Enterprise Rent-A-Car -- long story.) Or have commercials just gotten better? It might be that plus the fact that I watch fewer commercials, what with Netflix and a DVR. And hey, America, yet another reason to c'mon and get happy: Look at yourself now. Now think back to about eight years ago. Aren't you watching fewer TV ads than you did then? Doesn't that put a smile on your face?

I'm adding this to my list of The Good News (Referring to Problems That Have Been Solved in America and Thus Contrast with Bad News -- Not Referring to Jesus, Who's Good and All, but Let's Be Frank, He's Not Exactly "News"):

1. Acid rain (solved, from what I hear)
2. Hole in the ozone (not exactly solved, from what I hear, but much less of a problem, all due to smart government regulation of the offending chemicals -- all in all, good reason to think the government can have a positive influence on global warming)
3. Serial killers (As I pointed out in an earlier post, when was the last time you heard about a serial killer? But in the '90s, the country was lousy with them.)
4. Violent crime (obviously not solved, but down dramatically since the mid-'90s)
5. Annoying TV ads (not abolished, but down to a trickle, in my view)

I'm sure there are more, but those are the ones that come immediately to mind. I think it's important to review these Good News items so we don't get too discouraged. Anyone got others?

Weather You Like It or Not

2009-09-04T11:58:00.000-07:00

San Diego has weather. San Diego has seasons. Of course, the fact that I actually have to spell that out for people means that most folks think we don't. Even the people who live here will sometimes find themselves repeating the myths: every day is 72 and sunny; it never rains; and so on.

Now, I have to admit, obviously, that it does not rain a lot here; it's a semiarid Mediterranean climate, after all. And every day does have the potential to be 72 (or even 80) and sunny, which you can't say about most of the country.

But that doesn't mean that there aren't distinct, noticeable seasons. Right now, we're just hitting the peak of summer - temperatures in the low 80s, a little humid, and you can see the afternoon thunderclouds up in the mountains and deserts. This kind of weather is only possible now - between July and September. To me, that means it's a season.

Pretty soon, we'll be getting into Santa Ana season - hot, dry winds that come sweeping over the mountains to the coast. Each Santa Ana lasts about three or four days, and on the first day, the skies can be incredibly clear. Even the city lights seem to sparkle and twinkle at night. On the downside, they can act like bellows on wildfires, and a lot of people get headaches when they happen. Some people love Santa Anas, mainly because they make it warm in the fall and winter. "Gosh, it's 75 in December!", they'll say. To which I jauntily retort, "Ouch! My head aches!" Man, I hate Santa Anas.

Towards the end of Santa Ana season, you start getting into the Season of Actual Weather. From November through March, it really does rain here. Some years more than others (El Niño years are especially wet), but this is when it happens. And it cools down. A typical day in January is maybe 59-63 during the day and 46-51 at night. Not freezing, obviously, but not exactly shorts weather, either.

After the rain starts to peter out in late March, we get to probably the best time of year: real Frasier weather. April is about the nicest month we have. No rain, no clouds, warmer and longer days. Just nice.

Which is good, because the next two months bring the lousiest weather of the year: June Gloom. Starting in May, we get low clouds that come in off the ocean in the afternoon, and stay until 10 or 11 the next morning before burning off for a few hours (if they burn off at all). No rain or anything, but just cloudy, gloomy days. This is the only time of year when San Diego's weather is demonstrably worse than where you're from (wherever that is). (Although, to be honest, I kinda like the muffled softness of cloudy June days. But I'm weird that way.)

So that, in a nutshell, is what San Diego seasons look like. There's even a folksy rhyme that succinctly describes the climate in San Diego: "The spring comes in the summer, the summer comes in the fall; the fall comes in the winter. And the winter doesn't come at all."

Now, maybe the change from one to the next can be a little more subtle than in Minnesota. I mean, any idiot can look around at brilliantly colored trees and feel the cool wind blow and tell you that's it's fall. And winter clearly slaps you in the face and yells (icily), "Hey - it's winter!! I can freeze off your nose in ten minutes if you don't believe me!" But it takes a refined, sophisticated atmospheric sensibility to get plopped down in 72 and sunny and be able to tell whether it's July or November.

And to all those folks who come out here and say stuff like, "Oh, I miss thunderstorms! I miss snow! I miss the leaves changing colors! How I miss all these seasonal manifestations that I grew accustomed to in my former place of residence! Oh!", all I can say is, hey, I like them, too. Snow is neat. Nothing wrong with some snow. There's also nothing wrong with no snow, however.

Anyhow, I'm glad that I've dispelled, once and for all, the notion that San Diego's weather is boring. It's not in the least like watching Frasier every day. It's like watching Frasier maybe 150 days a year. And let's be honest: who among us doesn't already do that? I mean, it's syndicated.

I Finally Figured Out How to Express This

2009-08-31T11:45:00.000-07:00

Living in Minnesota, you get used to the conversations about weather. I'm not really a big weather follower myself -- I never seek out forecasts, don't watch local news, and am often surprised to discover that it's cold or warm on a particular day. But when someone wants to talk about the weather, which they often do, I try my best to hold up my end of the conversation. "Yes. It is cold. I expect it will continue to get colder until it gets very cold, at which point the earth's annual rotation will begin to gradually bring about a more perpendicular angle between the sun's rays and the surface of our region. Greater average temperatures will then occur, and Minnesotans will then remark that it is getting warm."

The one thing you never get used to, though, is people who aren't from Minnesota dissing our state's weather. Pussy-ass Californians or Texans often come here, experience 50-degree weather, and then say "Ooooh, it's so cold! Brrr ... how can you live here?!?!" Well, I guess we manage it because we have balls. We can withstand a bit of cold weather and not collapse like a bunch of hothouse flowers.

That's not really what I say. I usually then say that I prefer the weather in Minnesota, because you get a change in seasons. I especially enjoy it this time of year, when the season is actually changing pretty rapidly to autumn. Of course, this is a stock response and gets you nowhere. So I searched for a long time for a better way to get across why having seasonal changes is better than long, uninterrupted stretches of climatic niceness.

I finally figured it out. Southern California weather, see, is like watching nothing but "Frasier" every day. It's a fine show, not exactly challenging or ground-breaking, but pleasant enough. But if you had to watch it every single day, wouldn't you get a bit tired of it? Wouldn't you eventually yearn for some piece-of-shit documentary on VH-1 in which third-rate comedians make snarky comments about the greatest Christmas-themed novelty songs of 1983? Wouldn't you ache for an episode of the hot new reality show "Semi-Attractive Morons Hitting Each Other in the Head"?

Cuz that's what weather is like in Minnesota. At least half the year, probably more, is a mix of "According to Jim" reruns and Disney's "The Jonas Brothers Do Their Taxes -- LIVE!" But when those "Frasier" episodes come on in the spring -- man! You appreciate those "Frasier" episodes so much more than you would if it were nothing but "Frasier," all day, every day. And it's not just "Frasier" either -- some nice days are "Seinfeld," some are "The Simpsons" -- I might be taking this a bit far, but you hopefully get the idea. There are so many different types of nice days in Minnesota. Right now, there's a bit of a nip in the air, which is exciting in its own unique way. In Southern California, meanwhile, this kind of weather would betoken a tragic ice age and thousands of Californians would huddle in corners, shivering madly, shaking their heads, and cursing the evil Lord Xenu for implanting thetans of frigidity in their souls.

In Minnesota, weather provides variety, and from that variety, drama. A major storm is a exciting event that we all experience together and compare notes on later. In the dead of winter, we all snuggle together indoors and gripe happily about the cold. In the summer, Minnesotans stage so many outdoor fests and fairs that you'd think we were the heartiest partiers in the world (we're not). One way or another, the weather binds us together in common experiences.

Meanwhile, poor Southern Californians are deprived of the daily drama, conversation topics, and source of cohesion that bizarre weather fluctuations can provide. So what do Californians do instead? Apparently, any crazy shit they can come up with. They start cults and get plastic surgery and make shitty movies and have referenda on whether the government should provide everything imaginable while simultaneously cutting taxes, etc., etc. I think it's all rooted in a need for drama that isn't being fulfilled by their weather.

To gather further proof that Californians are desperate for drama, I recently visited the God-forsaken hellhole they call San Diego (great town, by the way -- America's Finest City, I hear). There was this beach that the constructed specifically for children, complete with a wall that created a sort of alcove, which allowed small waves to come up but prevented a major undertow. The problem was that they didn't construct the wall quite right, which somehow made the beach very attractive to seals (who are known fanatics for shoddily produced civic projects). So the seals are always hanging out there, being cute, which sparked a decades-long vicious battle between pro-seal and pro-children factions as to which uncontrollable animal should be given exclusive rights to the beach.

And a vicious battle it was. Pro-seal fanatics formed human chains to prevent children from entering the beach. Pro-children fanatics continued to squirt out brats at an exponential rate so as to overpopulate the world and drive all other animal species, including seals, to extinction. Meanwhile legislatures tried to resolve the issue through the time-tested method of floating crazy, half-baked ideas, such as setting up speakers that constantly play dog barks to scare away the seals. (This plan was shot down when it was discovered that seals aren't afraid of dog barks -- true story.)

No one apparently thought of maybe building another beach, and this time doing the wall right. Maybe this one could have a fence at the mouth of it, maybe 40 feet from shore, that keeps the seals out but allows modest waves to get through. No, this was not considered. Because if this problem were resolved, what would the pro-seal and pro-children factions get excited about? How would they spend their time? Watching "Frasier" reruns?

Movies I Found a Titch Disappointing: No Country for Old Men

2009-08-23T16:35:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of the Coen Brothers. "Fargo" is one of my favorite movies. So of course I was excited about "No Country for Old Men," which was apparently their best movie since it won the Academy Award, right?

I think old men should have been disqualified from voting for Best Picture that year. This movie pandered like crazy to old men, specifically grumpy old men. (By the way, "No Country for Grumpy Old Men" is definitely a movie I would see. Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau raised from the dead and going on a killing spree. "Gruff but endearingly homocidal" could be the tagline.)

It took me a while to really get into words what was wrong with this movie, but after I had an argument with a stranger on Facebook I got it down. (Ain't that always the way?) This guy on Fecebook waxed pretentious about how the movie "bespoke some sort of deep internal disquiet about modern life," that the country and indeed the world had turned away from old men and seemed foreign and dangerous and blah blah blah.

And that is indeed what a big part of the movie seemed to try to bespokinate. Tommy Lee Jones and some other guys were old men who were scared and baffled and downright helpless in the face of the threats of the modern world, what with its proliferation of Dorothy Hamill-coiffed serial killers and suchlike. There's one long and incredibly dull scene at the end of "No Country for Old Men" in which Tommy Lee Jones goes to some other old guy's house in the middle of Bumblefuck, Texas and they trade pithy platitudes about the world creeping to hell in a handbasket, or something. I wanted to tell them to grow the hell up.

This gets to what I call have long called the "grumpy old man argument." It's a tried and true device in which grumpy old men complain about the modern world by saying that everything was better in the good old days. These arguments usually start with phrases such as "In my day" or "I remember a time when," etc. They're almost always bullshit.

In essence, the grumpy old man argument is really "The world has passed me by. I don't really get what's going on nowadays. Therefore, it's the world's fault." It always involves looking at the past with rose-colored glasses, looking at the present with bile-covered glasses, and then just completely making shit up.

Here's an example: Have you ever heard a grumpy old man say "I remember a time when people were kind and decent to each other!" Yeah, pops, except to minorities. And women. And foreigners. And you know, even among white men, there were lots of fistfights. I'll grant that there was less gun violence (although, violent crime levels are currently at lows not seen since the '50s), but if you read any history about ordinary life in the first half of the 1900s, it's little besides fistfights and suicides. Lots of suicides. Of course, the grumpy old men only remember how Old Man Johnson would come by each morning and say "hello" to the family. They leave out the part about Old Man Johnson beating his kids and blowing his salary each week on whiskey.

I'm not saying that everything is great nowadays. For one thing, a lot of attempts at positive change are being impeded by grumpy old men and other, younger conservatives who are terrified that if we change the worst health insurance system in the developed world to something more closely resembling the best health insurance systems in the developed world, we'll suddenly all be standing in bread lines and praising our Great Benevolent Leader Obama. It's not based on logic, just on that primal, irrational fear of change that is the grumpy old man's stock in trade.

But all that aside, the reality is that the world is not more or less sinister than it ever was. It's just as sucky, but in different ways. Yes, we now have global warming and terrorism and Jonas Brothers. But we used to have World Wars and institutionalized racism and Andrews Sisters. Grumpy old men only think it's worse now because they're not used to it all.

Which gets us back to "No Country for Old Men." Basically, the premise of a lot of it is that the world has become scary and freakishly violent -- this being embodied by Anton, the aforementioned Dorothy Hamill-coiffed denim enthusiast who just walks around killing people for no reason. The problem is that Anton, as scary as he is (and he really, really is, thanks in part to a brilliant performance by Javier Bardem), is not some archetype of modern life. Guys like Anton don't simply don't exist in the real world. There have been plenty of serial killers (very few lately though, have you noticed that? It seemed like you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a serial killer in the early '90s. But when was the last time you heard of one these days?). But most real serial killers are a lot more like Jeffrey Dahmer -- nerdy, conniving, private, sexually perverse. They're horrific, but not in a showy, charismatic way. They simply don't just walk around town with a cow-puncher killing people for no reason and constantly get away with it. And moreover, they're extremely, extremely rare.

You know who does walk around killing people for no reason though? Jason, Freddy, Michael Myers, etc. Anton is one of the great movie monsters of all time, but that's it. He's not a commentary about modern life, because modern life simply isn't like that. Violent crime rates are low, the threat of nuclear war is at a lower ebb, and even terrorists are not the master villains that we've made them out to be -- they're just a small collection of lunatic fringe radicals that really don't have very good resources and will never really get normal folks on their side. (And that opens a can of worms that I will now close and perhaps re-open in another post.)

Bottom line is, people in this country are as safe or safer than they've ever been -- they're paranoid, to be sure, perhaps because they watch too much exploitative news -- but safe. We have lots of actual things to be scared of, from climate change to falling house prices to idiots screaming into cell phones, but if Anton is supposed to be a metaphor for that kind of thing, the Coen Brothers and Cormac McCarthy really need to go back to metaphor school.

Of course, it's obvious what Anton is really supposed to be a metaphor for -- he's the boogieman that grumpy old men invent in their tiny minds to reconcile their discomfort with the unfamiliar with their own massive egos. Maybe the United States isn't exactly a country for old men, but it could be one if old men were willing to say hey, this new world might make me feel a bit odd, it might not be what I'm entirely used to, but things change, and maybe I should try to stretch myself a bit and meet it halfway. But no, that can't be it. I'm perfect. The problem is that this goddamn world is crawling with serial killers with funny hair! That's it!

More Amazing Inventions!

2009-08-12T06:20:00.000-07:00

1. The Fart Sweetener: There must be something you can stick up yout butt that will convert the terrible smell of farts into a pleasant, floral aroma. I wouldn't necessarily recommend just putting a Glade Plug-In up your ass, but I do think Glade should investigate some version that can be inserted rectally. Even if it were just a filter, maybe in your underwear, that activates upon contact from fart molecules and covers up the smell with potpourri. Imagine if you were at a pleasant dinner party, and over cups of tea and dainty finger sandwiches, your host could say, "Ronald, (your name is Ronald), I'm finding the odor in this room to be a trifle stank. Would you mind farting?" And then you say "but of course!" and let out a bit juicy fart. Then suddenly everyone breathes in deep, with pleased expressions on their faces, and all say simultaneously, "Ahhh ... Country Fresh, I believe!" And then you nod and everyone chuckles happily. It would be great.

2. The Honk Specifier: Since I first became able to drive, I've decried the inspecificity of honks. A honk is the only way to communicate with fellow drivers, and it is the most clumsy and blunt tool imaginable. A single honk can mean:

Fuck you!
Hey, pay attention.
Excuse me, do you mind terribly? Thanks!
Hey, I know you!
Oops, I slipped and hit my horn.
I was just in a crash and am dead.

Sometimes you can guess at what was meant by the length of the honk, but that's rare -- most honks are medium-length ones that are completely inscrutable. Add this ambiguity of intent to the fact that on a crowded street, no one has any idea who is honking, or to whom they have honked, or which whom they will have had had gehonkened. It's a mess. It's as if we only had one word in the English language, "Blargh!" and we had to say "Blargh!" at every occasion. Imagine if "hello" was "blargh," "good-bye" was "blargh," "I love you" was "blargh," "go to hell," was "blargh" -- granted, you could use different tones and inflections, but I still think there would be lots of misunderstandings.

So I propose a whole set of different honks. They would vary in pitch, and each pitch would mean a different thing. You'd have a high pitch for "move ahead please!" and a low pitch for "Go to hell." And maybe you could have a second sound for the location that you mean to direct the honk. Maybe the car could just say "North!" And it would always have to identify the sender of the honk, maybe by automatically tacking on "blue Honda!" assuming you drive a blue Honda. So if you were in a blue Honda and wanted the car in front of you to know that the light has turned green and it's time to go, your car says "North from blue Honda, (polite, high-pitched beep)!"

But that could be awfully noisy. Maybe instead you need an electronic news-ticker style thing on top of your car. You'd need four, one for each direction -- then you could light it up only in the direction of the person to whom you're honking. So you press the direction and type of honk. Each type of honk automatically corresponds to an intended message, and puts it on the correct electronic sign.

Then when you hear a honk, you look to see if you can see an electronic message. If you don't see one, you're in the clear, but if you see something saying "Move your ass!", then you know that that specific car is telling you specifically to move your specific ass.

You do run into the problem of too much thinking being required for each honk. But really, wouldn't that be good? Now people honk at the drop of a hat -- wouldn't it be nice if people had to stop and think for at least a split second exactly what they mean to communicate and to whom? Maybe you wouldn't end up with people honking like morons in the middle of a traffic jam that is no one's fault.

And I guess you'd still have to have a "panic" one that you can just quickly hit in an emergency. But if you did the "panic" one in non-emergencies, you should get arrested, or something. I haven't worked out all the bugs. But you get the idea.

Blog Jazz

2009-08-07T23:06:00.000-07:00

Skee bop doodle-e bop de bop ... hey, all you jazz fans out there, I'm going to try a little improv bloggin' right now ..,. straight from my brain to the screen, that's right ... Hey! I know I said I felt ambivalent about jazz before, but that was a crappy and confusing post anyway so hey! Hey! Let's groove, or something along those lines ... soooooo-be-deooo-beedle-e-bop .... Bottled water seems stupid, until you think that it's so much healthier than other things you could buy at a convenience store. And many of us are out on the town regularly, and we get thirsty, and hey! Water fountains are not that common, you know? And you can never get as much water from a water fountain as you really need, you dig me baby? No one can really drink even a full cup of water from a drinking fountain. It's got to be technically impossible. Hey, did you know if you drink a whole gallon of water real fast, you will die? It's true! Some people try to do it on a dare, and then they die! Skoo-bobble-ee-doo ... all this makes much more sense in my mind than it would to a reader, beacuse I have a tune going on in my head that you can't hear, but hey! Hey! I don't care, because I've had a few drinks tonight and spent the night playing Rock Band with my wife, which was quite fun ... my only objection to Rock Band is that you can hear the original singer of the song, and I wish it were more karaoke-style, where it's just your voice and nothing else ... uh ... hmmm ... that went nowhere! OK! Maybe there's a reason why people don't do this more often, but hey! Hey! I will keep on trucking until I get tired ... ska-ba-dee-ba-dalee-do ... hey! This reminds of King's Things -- did you ever see that column? I don't know if it's still in The USA Today, but it used to be, and it was the ne plus ultra of pseudo-journalistic laziness ... it was just random sentences that Larry King thought up. It went a little something ... like this: "Hey I think the Portland Trailblazers really have a good team this year. I like bacon but I don't like pork chops. This sweater is itchy. Menachem Begin has a great collection of hats." And it would just go on like that for about 500 words and then Larry would collect his million-dollar check. I like Larry King and all, but really, aren't there a lot of people who could do his job? I mean his real job, not King's Things. Aren't there plenty of people who can relentlessly ask dumb questions of someone for an hour based on zero preparation? I've met five-year-olds who do that freelance, and for longer than an hour. With some famous people I'm like, yeah, not many people can do that. I'm not a Mariah Carey fan, as I have expressed in the past, but hey, not many people can hold a note that only dogs can hear for four straight minutes. Larry King, though, I dont know ... I like bacon but I don't like pork chops -- that insight is really a real insight from my life. It's true. I swear! No really, it's true. I know, it's amazing, isn't it? Let me break it down for you: Pork chops are just bland pieces of gray, anonymous-seeming meat that you then have to dress up. Bacon, on the other hand, has a very special flavor all its own. But they're both from the same animal (donkey)! How can they taste so different? Maybe they should do the same things to pork chops that they do to bacon? What do you do, cure it or brine it or soak it in urine or something? Well, whatever it is, I say do it to everything. Because bacon is so wonderful, but it does have an Achilles heel: those strips of fat in it. If you order bacon really well done, those strips of fat are cooked enough so that you can eat them, no problem, but if not, then you're stuck eating rubbery strips of solid fat. That's just plain gross. If you could bacon-ize big slabs of solid meat, like the ones you find on pork chops, holy cow. That would be great.

Time for a break there. I feel a bit bad about crapping out this shitty post right after Amy's thoughtful one about things she hates, but hey! I'm not tired, I still have a lot of energy, and I remain amused, regardless of other considerations ... hey! Wouldn't it be nice if fingernail clippings could be burnt as fuel? I feel like I have to cut at least a few nails every day. And they just go in the trash. Hair clippings too -- our bodies go to all this trouble to create all this stuff, and we just chop it off and throw it in the trash. Seems like a terrible waste! And it's all organic, right? Anything that's organic is something you can burn, right? Someone work on that.

Bop-a-dee-bop ... you know what I want to see die? Twitter. Lame. It's perfect for people who like to talk but don't like to listen, but for people who enjoy two-way interactions, not so much. Which is why politicians are all over it, I think. In every other mode of communication ever devised by human beings, if you express something, you can probably expect some sort of response. Even in Facebook, if you post something, you'll often get a range of responses that Facebook then informs you about. But in Twitter, it's all just a mad torrent of people talking with no expectations of getting responses, and no good way to even track responses. That's why politicians love it -- "wait, there's a new way to talk without having to listen? I'm in! Why haven't we done this before?"

Zap-bap-adee-boo ... you know what would solve all the world's problems? Love. Love, sweet love. As in, makin' sweet love. As in, all the world leaders need to get together and have a big orgy. Then afterwards they would be too embarassed to talk to each other ever again, and everyone would leave each other the hell alone.

You know what else would solve all the world's problems? Women's rights and birth control. No, really. When a country gets women's rights and birth control, then people stop having so many goddamn babies. And when they stop having so many goddamn babies, they can concentrate on other things, like building societal infrastructures. (It helps if you have modern medicine, which makes it more likely that the few babies you have will survive. So maybe that's step one.) But after step one, which we just heard about in the parenthetical statement there, you have women's rights and birth control, which invariably means fewer kids and not putting such a strain on the family's finances and not putting such a strain on our environment to feed all these goddamn kids. I mean, I love kids, but enough already! We have 6 billion people on this little planet. Our population has grown crazy exponentially in the past hundred years, after being at a reasonable and sustainable stasis for centuries. Now we're left wondering how our environment will survive all the exhaust from all the cars these people will drive ... I say, that's it, no more people! From now on, just one kid per family, just like China. I mean, I've always dreamed of having two kids, so I get to have two, but nobody else from now on!

Now I'm tired. I'll go dream about unborn children now. Good night!

Things I Hate: a Potpourri

2009-08-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

Traffic Circles, Specifically Boulder’s Traffic Circles

Traffic circles don’t belong in 4-way intersections. Stop signs do. Traffic circles are for the cowpath junctions in England and the Northeast where 7 streets all converge and no one can figure out who should have the right of way. In 4-way intersections, the result of the traffic circle is a bunch of cars on the bigger road careening around the circle to go straight through, a few cars ridiculously driving 3 times farther than they need to to make a left turn, and a few cars on the smaller road timidly waiting for all the cars on the big road to go through because they don’t feel like they are important enough to just barge right into the circle. This little scene is also often enhanced by some confused pedestrians (some call them “peds”) who don’t know whether the cars should be stopping in the middle of the circle for them or whether they should just be making mad dashes from sidewalk to sidewalk. And the cars don’t know either. The best anyone can do is to close their eyes, grip the wheel, put the pedal to the metal, and see what happens.

Incidentally, I was once called a “ped” by a traffic cop after a fireworks display. “OK, peds, you can cross!” I found it vaguely offensive.

The Word Finds in Variety Puzzle Books

I just can’t think of anything more boring.

Mom Bashing

The topic du jour for the sociology-major-turned-freelance-reporter is how frantic and whacked out American moms of young children are. I read a big long book about how American moms are trying to be too perfect, staying up until 2 a.m. after a long day at the office, baking gluten-free heart-shaped muffins for preschool, etc. Not long after that, someone posted on her Facebook page an article about how women who use pictures of their kids as their Facebook profile pictures have lost all sense of who they are as individuals. Both the book and the article had a derogatory, Betty-Fridan-would-be-turning-over-in-her-grave sort of tone. And I belong to an email group of about 1000 area moms who ask each other questions (“what’s the best diaper cream for a bad rash?”) and then post very preachy responses (“I would never, never, NEVER wipe chemicals on my baby’s butt! EVER!”) that usually involve some absurdly labor-intensive solution, like cooking up your own unpasteurized goat milk baby formula. These preachy moms themselves actually deserve a little bashing. What I really hate, though, is this unspoken agreement that American mothers are an easy and deserving target. That we’re never doing enough for our babies, but if we try to do enough for our babies, then we’ve become nurture zealots who really just need to chill out, but if we chill out too much, then someone ought to call Social Services because we clearly aren’t protecting our children enough and so on and so forth. I think this all started in the 90s with soccer moms. Anyway, I’d like to tell the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and whatnot that it’s time they find a new aspect of our social infrastructure to pick on. Leave moms alone. Except for those annoying ones who tell everyone to make their own raw goat milk formula. You can keep bashing them.

Software Updates

Seconds after installing new updates, I get messages saying there are even more updates to be installed. Let’s just give it a rest, Microsoft, OK? In fact, I don’t see why we ever need fancy new operating systems, either. I mean, yes, please fix bugs and problems and sure, why not throw in some useful new thing that no one ever thought to program in before, and yes, let’s make it faster, but is it really necessary to move the menus around, change the colors, and redraw all the icons? Is it really necessary to piss off all your users by making us relearn all the things we used to take for granted when using our computers? Why does computer stuff have to change so fast? I mean, there are other products that still work just fine that probably have never changed. Like clipboards. I bet clipboards made at the clipboard factory in 2009 look the same as and are as easy to use as the ones made in 1949. And Jiffy muffins. One look at a box of Jiffy muffins is enough to tell me they haven’t changed since 1930. And is anyone complaining?

(Speaking of Jiffy muffins, I just researched the history of the Jiffy muffin and find it fascinating. Of particular interest is the name of the president of the Jiffy muffin company, Howdy S. Holmes. I wish I had the guts to name my kid “Howdy.” I couldn’t think of a better name for a muffin company president.)

That’s enough stuff to hate for now. I’m sure there’s more. And I don't actually hate potpourri, by the way.

Should We Fire the Canon?

2009-07-10T12:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I originally meant to write this post a long time ago in response to Ed's post about jazz. Then I got sidetracked by sudoku (curse you, sudoku!), and then I got lazy/forgetful. Lucky for all you readers out there (hey Steph! hey Amy! hey Emily!), I'm finally back on track. Get ready for some insight, folks, 'cause here it comes.

Today's topic of discourse is the relevance of the Western canon. (Wait! Don't go away, please. I know it sounds dull, but I promise to throw in some funny witticisms at some point.) I started by thinking about Ed's gripe about the small group of people for whom jazz is life. He was sounding really bitter about how they got to decide who and what was "important" in the world of jazz. He was like, boo to esoteric, be-boppy deconstructions of "My Funny Valentine". It was too think-y. And then he was like, boo to the sappy, soulless smooth jazz beloved by the vapid masses. Greatness in jazz in his view was to be decided by neither the devotees of the hyperintellectual avant-garde, nor the shallow and unthinking proletariat. Rather, the arbiters of greatness would be intelligent people with a sensitivity to musical expression, who nonetheless maintained a studied distance from the mechanics of the music.

In other words, Ed gets to decide. Which is fine, for Ed's Canon of Stuff He Digs. But when it comes to choosing and studying the people and works that represent the achievements of the Western world, to a certain extent, we have to take the experts' word for it.

And that's the canon. Somebody else keeps track of all the greatness so that we don't have to. And because we can't, even more to the point.

Here's a quick exercise: In the blank space on your computer screen, write down the names of ten famous scientists, in any field.

Alright - which names did you write down? Hopefully none, because that could do serious damage to your computer screen. I'll assume you simply thought up ten of them. Let me guess. Einstein. Newton. Galileo. Copernicus. Gregor Mendel. Pasteur. The Curies. Darwin. Maybe Niels Bohr? I don't know. I got a lot of them, though, didn't I? That's because they're in the scientific canon. And I know the basics of why each of them is famous. But my appreciation for them and their work can only go so deep, because my knowledge of their fields can only - well, at one point, it would've filled a couple of textbooks. But there are people who know every last thing about these people, and who know what makes them so significant.

And there are experts in each of those fields that would more or less agree on a general hierarchy of greatness. Louis Pasteur was a great chemist; Daniel Rutherford was a very good chemist. According to Wikipedia, he isolated nitrogen (which he called phlostigated air). That's pretty good. But he didn't invent pasteurization or cure rabies. That was great.
So are there experts in every field - scientific, artistic, economic - whom we entrust with the task of creating, maintaining, and passing along the hierarchy of greatness.

Which means we can say: great composers - Bach, Mozart, Beethoven; great artists - Michelangelo, Renoir, Picasso; great Presidents - Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln. And we can say this without qualification, because they're in the canon. And also because I put that in italics. You can't argue with italics.

It's not a perfect system. There are biases, historical accidents, historical intentions, and other quirks that have led to people's inclusion or exclusion from the canon. Why are there so many artists from Florence or composers from Vienna in the canon? Because that's where the money and influence was. Which attracts great artists and composers, to be sure, but also leads to the marginalization of would-be great artists from elsewhere.

But neither is it a static system. New research, new sensibilities, new fashions constantly add to and subtract from the canon.

And you don't have to enjoy something just because it's been canonized. Lots of people hate Jane Austen, Arnold Schoenberg, James Joyce, and Daniel Rutherford (that accursed phlostigator!). Ed apparently has a vehement, visceral hatred of Charlie Parker and his noodlings. But the jazz people tell us he's a good one, so I guess he is. (And I think I also have to argue with Ed's point that the hard core jazz fans are only satiated by novelty - Parker's heyday was during the Eisenhower years - after fifty years, noodling's no longer novel, but some people still wax obsessed about it.)

Great music (and art, literature, etc.) appeals both to the intellect and to the soul (That's a hoity-toity sentence, isn't it?) It's an individual's decision whether a particular artist or artwork strays too far down one road or the other for their own taste, but even Charlie Parker's music (and Karlheinz Stockhausen's - listen to him sometime, if you're feeling masochistic) satisfies the souls of his true fans.

(I was going to investigate the nature of sophistication at this point, but I'm really running out of steam, as I'm sure most of the five of you are, as well. So maybe I'll talk about it some other time.)

My point, by the way, is that the canon is a useful collection of greatness. It has its flaws, but it's served us well over the centuries. So cut it some slack.

Inventions I'm Too Lazy to Make or Market

2009-07-05T16:40:00.000-07:00

1. The Remote Finder. Like a lot of people, I watch a lot of TV. Like most of those folks, I use a remote to do it. Like a large percentage of such humans, I'm lazy and messy. Like a lion's share of the guys to which I'm referring, I often lose the remote. Like a healthy sector of chaps with which I share the above characteristics, I get extremely angry when I lose the remote, and start banging my head with my fists, moaning, and frothing at the mouth. Like a plethora of homo sapiens who find themselves caught in a similar or analogous pickle, I am then sedated by men in white coats.

Has this happened to you? It has to me, and others, probably. That's why I thought of but will probably never market or sell the amazing new Remote Finder! It's a small thing that you attach to your remote. Then there's another small thing you attach to your TV that has a button. When you press the button on the TV, the thing on the remote beeps. Then you find the remote!

Post script: A lot of TVs have this built in. And I actually looked online and found that a lot of other people have also had this idea, but presumably have also been too lazy to actually do anything with it. Oh well. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, so it doesn't go.

2. iKaraoke. My wife just got an iPhone. It's fun. I thought you could have an application (I refuse to call them "apps." I don't care if they call it the "App Store." Apple may be powerful, but they do not have the power to turn annoying abbreviations into legitimate words. The day the public library puts up a sign saying they are now called the "Pube Libe," then maybe, MAYBE I'll use the word "app" in a sentence non-ironically. But only then.)

What was I saying? Oh, yeah, how about a karaoke application? The iPhone already can send its music into a radio station. So all you'd need is a program that will take in your voice (which shouldn't be hard, since this thing is ostensibly a phone) and play it over an instrumental track. And the screen could play the words.

Why, you ask, would I want an iKaraoke application? Well, I love karaoke. There, I said it. It's a great way to have a performance in your own house. There was a time, back in the old days, back in the times I don't remember, because no one who experienced them is still alive, when people would regularly perform music for one another, just in the house or on the street or whatever. Everyone could play an instrument or yodel or hambone or yodelbone or something. And it's a fun thing, to see people you like doing something besides talking and watching some person you don't know performing on TV.

The thing is, learning to play an instrument sucks. It takes a long time just to get terrible at it, especially if you're me. Meanwhile, anyone can sing, sort of. But no one wants to hear people sing without some sort of backing band. That's called "a capella music," and is illegal in most states, for good reason. A capella music is strictly the domain of painfully white young guys who have floppy hair, wear button-down shirts, and think they're much more charming and funny than they actually are. It's the improv comedy of the music world.

The answer to this dilemma? Karaoke. But who wants to drop a zillion dollars for a karaoke machine? And who wants to sing the songs that are actually available in karaoke form? Most of the time you get both kinds of music, country and western. If you get a hip-hop song, it's Kris Kross. Seriously. When I do karaoke, I want to sing a GG Allin song in the style of Morrissey. This is seldom an option. So with iKaraoke, you would somehow make an unlimited library of songs available for download.

Post Script: This has probably already been done. I'm too lazy to check.

3. The Lasagna First Piece Not So Fucking Sloppy Pan (the name isn't quite finalized yet). If a device involves cooking, and seems like it could potentially be useful once in a person's life and never again, it will fly off the shelves. I've been to cooking specialty stores that are packed to the gills with rosemary mincers and tripe squashers and bread injectors and all sort of crazy gizmos that are absolutely vital in order to save a few seconds making one recipe that you will make once and fail at and then never try again. Kitchens are getting bigger and bigger to provide plenty of storage in which to put all these useless pieces of crap so that you can stack them on top of one another, forget you have them, and then die, leaving your kids with the task of trying to find a use for pork tossers and potato sodomizers.

In that spirit, I think the world is in desperate need of the Lasagna First Piece Not So Fucking Sloppy Pan. It's a lasagna pan that has two extra metal walls in the corner, each perpendicular to the sides of the pan. These extra walls connect to make a small square within the larger square of the pan, about the size of one piece of lasagna. Then you fill the pan with lasagna, all except that one square. When it's done, you then lift the two extra inner walls out (I forgot to mention that they're removable), and voila! You can now cut the lasagna and use the spatula in the open space made by the removable walls there to remove a first piece of lasagna that's not so fucking sloppy. That's where we get the name of the product: The Lasagna First Piece Not So Fucking Sloppy Pan. Ask for it by name!

Post Script: Probably invented. I don't know. I'm bored now.

Arguments that Drive Me Nuts, Part 1 of a Million

2009-06-21T05:23:00.000-07:00

So here in Minnesota, we have a governor, Tim Pawlenty, who will do anything and everything humanly possible to not raise taxes. His only real guiding principle in life is that taxes are no fun to pay. Right now he's planning to cut whatever government services he can see -- health, education, your gramma's medicine, the fund to protect cute things from being eaten by bears -- as long as rich people don't have to pay another tiny fraction of their income! What did you say, that the cuts to health services will throw a lot of helpless people on the street, take them off their meds, and basically sign their death sentences? Well, it's all worth it, because a few people didn't have to pay an extra $20 a year in taxes!

I've written before about how much I love taxes, and consider it a central patriotic duty to pay them in full. So I won't bore y'all with that. My beef this time is with his justification, one that's repeated parrot-like by everyone who supports his perspective. It is:

"Well, companies and families are having to cut back. So should the government!"

No, no, and no. And you're an idiot. And no. See, the budgets for families and companies are spent on those individual families and companies. The budget for government is spent on the whole society. That makes for a very, very different animal.

So if a company tightens its belt, it might mean cutting travel expenses. It may even mean laying off employees. If a family tightens its belt, it might mean fewer vacations, or maybe laying off a few kids. Not good stuff, surely, but still, restricted to just those entities.

But if a government tightens its belt, it could mean cutting essential services to all sorts of people, usually the most needy ones, and creating a devastating effect that may not be felt right away but slowly creeps through the society like a virus. The government doesn't exist solely to support itself financially (at least, not a functional government). The government exists to support the whole society financially. Telling the government that it needs to cut expenses isn't just getting tough on the government -- it's also punishing the whole society, often the most vulnerable elements of it to a disproportiate degree. It's cutting your nose to spite your face.

In bad times, the opposite has to take place. Governments have to take in the big picture, to counteract the negative economic trends, and become the spender of last resort when no one else is spending. Obama knows this, and is weathering the firestorm from people who say "Hey! How come you get to spend money when I don't? Spending is bad nowadays -- I saw it the 'Today Show' and everything!" But Pawlenty would rather throw anvils on the economy's sinking ship by forcing the government to spend less too.

(And yes, I know that the comparison isn't entirely fair, since Pawlenty has to balance the budget by law, while Obama is free to spend like a crazy person. But I submit that allowing just a wee boost in taxes to the upper-middle class and wealthy is not going to affect their spending much, not going to force them all to move to Florida or something as many conservatives claim (a lot of people enjoy living in Minnesota, believe it or don't), and meanwhile will tide us through this downturn and maintain a solid foundation for future prosperity. But now back to the regularly scheduled argument. Man, this might be my longest parenthetical statement ever! Let's just sit back for a moment enjoy the feeling of being in parentheses. It's quieter here, more peaceful. It's an exclusive club, only for those truly dedicated to reading pointless tirades. Welcome, friends. Sit, enjoy, and love.)

Of course, I grant you, governments can have plenty of unnecessary services that aren't really benefitting society much at all. Those can and should go. But good luck finding them at this point. Keep in mind that this country has been dominated by this "government is wasteful" philosophy for how long now? Since Reagan? And in that time, politicians have had every incentive to pander by cutting stuff and every incentive to not raise taxes. I've looked carefully through all that the government does nowadays, and I don't think there's much left to cut. Our Minnesota governor is discovering the same thing, apparently, but is still happy to cut the necessary services.

And if you're still convinced that our government is too big, I ask you: compared to what? Take a gander at every other highly developed nation. All their governments are much larger than ours. All enjoy a high standard of living, clean drinking water, relatively low crime rates, healthy people with reliable health services, food that you can basically trust to not kill you, streets full of fliers for phone-sex services, sullen and spoiled teenagers, abundant flocks of hairdressers, and buildings! Oh, the buildings! Point is, the big-government countries of Europe and elsewhere all tend to be pretty safe, happy, well-functioning places, and I don't think that is a coincidence.

Meanwhile, where do you find small governments that provide few services? Places like Burkina Faso. We don't want to be Burkina Faso, trust me. Despite their hilariously named capital city (Ougadougou), it's not a nation of people giggling all day at silly-sounding words. They actually have loads of problems with basic things like finding drinking water that we don't have to worry about.

I love government, in case you couldn't tell. I think our government is the major factor that makes us a successful, developed nation. Our government made and is making the long-term investments that make a society great, from highway systems to higher education. Most Americans seem to think our country has been such a great success because Americans are just so darn special. Bullshit. We're full of the people that the rest of the world threw away. We've been successful because the structures set up by our government and legal system struck the right balance between encouraging business innovation while also checking and balancing the excesses of capitalism.

And, most importantly, our government invests in the things that are vital to the economy, but that no business would ever see as a wise investment. Government does the long-term stuff that that brings benefits to a whole range of people but can't easily measured in dollars and cents. Businesses prefer short-term investments that benefit only themselves and are very easily measured in dollars and cents. Cutting jobs is the kind of thing that boosts your stock prices, not investing in education. (A related issue that I'll resist going into: How stock markets incentivize businesses to pursue short-term gains instead of, and often in the expense of, their own long-term interests. Quick version of my opinion on this: Grrr.)

Maybe an example is in order. Take K-12 education. No business in its right mind would pay for some random kid's kindergarten at a Catholic school (unless of course, they were trying to look like they're all a bunch of nice folks). That's not likely to be an investment that will pay off -- it's unlikely that kid will come to work for that company. As for families, few have the money to pay for Catholic school.

But if the government pays for that kid's education, then that kid will go to work somewhere, and the investment in the kid's education will be paid back to the society tenfold. Imagine if the government didn't do that - then the kid would be a moron. Morons are bad for the economy.

See, I'm not someone who likes putting government services in terms of compassion or it being "the right thing to do." Fuck poor people's feelings -- to me, they're an investment. If you give the poor enough services to climb out of poverty and have fulfilling lives, they contribute to the economy, and lift up everyone's boats just a little bit. If you don't, they may turn to crime to survive. That sinks everyone's boats a little bit.

Government does so many things for us that we take for granted. Enjoy driving on highways? Thank the government. Enjoy not getting botulism when you drink milk (as happened regularly in the days before the regulation of food)? The government is waiting for a thank you card. Enjoy having police and firemen and the legal system and the military and etc. etc. etc? You're welcome, says Uncle Sam.

In fact, I think almost every recent major failure in our economy is rooted in taking the government for granted, and then cutting funds to regulatory agencies or just failing to regulate sanely from the beginning. Among many people in this country, there is an unbounded faith in the invisible hand of the markets being able to only do good. But lately, the invisible hand has slapped us on our invisible asses so often that I'm thinking maybe we shouldn't give it quite so much free reign. It's good in some places, bad in others. It's all about continually making adjustments to strike the right balance.

And this gets us to the boogeyman of "socialism" that conservatives are getting their panties in a bunch over. Hey dummies, we already have socialism. Social Security is socialism. It redistributes wealth to the elderly. Education is socialism. It's redistributing wealth in favor of kids. And kids don't even contribute anything to the economy! Why are they getting such big handouts? They could at least put a few hours in at the coal mines to pay for it, am I right, Hannity?

Capitalism without any socialist structures means the raw, brutal, unfettered capitalism of the Gilded Age, when a few people wiped their asses with $100 bills and everyone else lived in shacks on starvation wages. But on the other hand, raw, brutal, unfettered socialism (odd turn of phrase there) equals the USSR, where no one but the government is motivated to do jack shit. That's no good either. It's not a battle of capitalism vs. socialism -- it's actually both. We have to continually work to find the right combination of the two.

And to be clear, I think capitalism is ideal for a lot of aspects of society, perhaps a majority of them. Capitalism is the only way to make good computers, food, twelve-inch dildos, etc. Regulation, the threat of lawsuits, and occasional government intervention are all necessary checks and balances on the extreme and damaging stuff that can sometimes come out of a pure profit motive, but on the whole, profit motives can be good and productive things.

But capitalism doesn't work for everything. It doesn't work for firemen -- imagine if you had to pay firemen a fee each month or they wouldn't come to your house when it's burning (which is how it actually did work in the 1800s). Capitalism is also not great for education, as I mentioned before (though it could be carefully infused in education, I think -- I like the idea of charter schools competing for students). I personally don't think capitalism works for health care (this is a whole 'nother post, but did you ever think about how backwards it is that health insurance companies have all their incentives pointing toward NOT providing their services to their customers? They make more money when they find creative ways to give their claimants less. That's a fundamentally warped system. Imagine if an orange farmer took a monthly fee from his customers, and then only provided oranges when people sent in forms saying that they were starting to get scurvy. The orange farmers who made the most money would be the ones who said "But do you really need three oranges? I don't care what your doctor says -- we only cover two per month for brown-haired people with large feet. Oh wait, you had pre-existing scurvy because you didn't have the money to have an orange plan for a long time? Oh well, then we can't help you, bye!")

Well, I went far afield of the original topic, but oh well. There are such fundamental differences between my perspective and those of the small-government freaks that it takes a lot of explaining.

Things That Really Aren't That Sexy, Guys

2009-06-02T04:59:00.000-07:00

Men are stupid. I think we all recognize that. Men may complain about the double standard at work here - you could never get away with saying "women are stupid" and expect to live to tell the tale, whereas it's quite fashionable in polite society to say that men are stupid -- but in my view, this is double standard is awesome. After thousands of years of it being de rigeur to presume women aren't intelligent enough to vote, lead, hunt, smoke tobacco, wear pants, etc., now the reasonable and unrestrictive shoe is on the other foot. And in my view, the shoe belonged on that foot in the first place.

Here's just one way in which men prove their stupidity. They convince themselves that certain things are sexy that really aren't. I'm not talking about fetishes, which are up to the individual -- I'm talking about deep-seated turn-ons that are fundamentally wrong-headed. These are the ones in which only men's own delusions are to blame:

1. Lesbians are not sexy. I mean, they're sexy to other lesbians. And individual lesbians can be plenty attractive - I'm not saying as a whole that they aren't nice-looking folks. I'm saying that there's nothing inherent about a woman who prefers other women that should in any way turn a man on.

In fact, quite the opposite -- by definition, a lesbian is someone who isn't interested in guys. This definition should be a sign to guys that two lesbians together = sorry, dude, you're not wanted here; please try somewhere else. But for some reason, this situation turns men on more, apparently.

I thought of this recently (and this whole post, for that matter) as I read a column written by a woman who talked about a date she had with another woman. They were approached by a man, and when they made it clear that they were on a date, he did not say, "oh, sorry, I guess I'm not needed here then. I will now go over there." Instead, he said, "Wow, that's even hotter. Since you are both exclusively interested in women, you must want me, a man, all the more," or something to that effect. I found his reaction predictable but stunningly counter-intuitive and moronic.

Maybe this idea that lesbians are sexy to men was created by the porn industry? Perhaps it's better to watch to women going at it because you don't have to watch some repulsive guy in the mix. But porn can only appeal to men's stupidity -- it can't create it out of whole cloth.

I think the reason for this baffling attraction is the principle at the center of most men's sexuality, which is a horribly unwarranted and stultifyingly high level of self-confident myopia. Me and my needs are at the center of the world, they seem to think, so anything sexual going on is somehow for my benefit. Bar skanks capitalize on this by kissing in public, but the root of it is the bizarre subconscious notion that lesbians might be doing their thing for the benefit of men. And of course the very opposite is true: They're doing it because they're sexually repelled by men. I'm guessing women don't get hot at seeing two men kissing. If one or both of the men were attractive to them, I would presume they'd be disappointed by that.

Maybe men assume that lesbians must be more promiscuous, because, dude, she's so horny she's willing to do it with another woman! Which is of course, infinitely insulting to and delusional about gay people. I don't know; I think there are probably layers of this particular delusion that I can't even fathom.

2. Identical twins are not sexy. Again, individual twins may be plenty attractive, and I suppose since they're identical, then both would have to be similarly attractive. But there's nothing inherent to identical twins that should make them any more attractive than two female friends who are both attractive.

I heard about this one through a Coors Light commercial that listed all the things that guys supposedly love. At one point it went "And TWIIIIINS!!!" and showed two identical blonde chicks straight out Central Casting for Allegedly Attractive Women. I was baffled, and it took me a long time to figure this out.

Again, it's rooted in the male tendency to think everything is somehow sexual, for their benefit. Most people look at identical twins and think "Oh, weird" and then move on with their lives. I tend to look at them and say "Oh my God, clones!!!! It has occurred! Some kind of evil plot that you find in sci-fi shows, which I haven't exactly figured out the details of at this moment, but regardless, it's scary!"

But men apparently look at clones, I mean, uh, identical twins, and think "menage a trois!" They seem to think that because twins are freakishly similar-looking, they would thus want to engage in a three-way with fat, shlubby, beer-swilling losers. Which I sincerely doubt. I don't know why two identical twins would want to share that most private of human activities any more than regular sisters would, and I think regular sisters really, really, really, really would not. That's gross. That's incest, basically. That's kind of a taboo, guys, and a good one. I'm guessing you wouldn't want to have sex with one woman along with your brother. I bet he would piss you off in the middle of it by making a really annoying noise and then you'd start fighting and then that would turn to wrestling and then you would officially be gay.

3. Women with 0% body fat are not sexy. This is of course a familiar one, fraught with discussion and controversy, and has been a problem for decades. Models tend to be rail-thin and harsh-looking. It's a terrible role model for young girls and probably a cause of many eating disorders. The fashion industry tries to defend this by saying that clothes look best on thin people -- well, maybe that's because you only make clothes for thin people, smart guy. Maybe it would break new, exciting ground to make clothes for more than one body type. Shocking, I know.

A side issue to all this is that it all seems especially pointless since extremely thin women are not attractive. They're often painful to look at, in fact. They look either like corpses or like pubescent girls or boys, and if you think that's sexy, well, I have a jail cell with your name on it. Women are better when they actually look different from men, when they have curves.

This is not just me mouthing off -- this preference for curves is actually hard-wired into male brains, and has been for millenia. There's evidence of this wiring in the primate kingdom: In many monkey species, the females signal the fact that they are in heat, or "estrus," and can thus conceive, by having their breasts and butts swell up. This demonstrates that they have the excess caloric intake to be physically able to bring a baby to term. It's a sign of health. Humans are unique in that we don't have an estrus period, and can always conceive, and thus human women's curves are permanent year-round.

So why would men be more attracted to women who are terribly thin? Wouldn't that be a sign of unhealthiness? Maybe, in a sick, twisted subconscious way, that's what they want. Maybe they want a woman who can't conceive, as many anorexics can't because they don't have enough body fat. Maybe it's also a form of control, in that their extreme and difficult-to-attain preferences are meant to force women to work very hard to maintain a certain "ideal."

Many women are now getting so thin that they have visible muscles. They have ripped abs and biceps and stuff. I suppose there's nothing wrong with that if that's your choice, and you could say it's a signal of female strength. But to me, it makes women look awfully mannish. I don't want women to look like men. I'm not attracted to men. Maybe the preference for extremely thin women is a manifestation of some sort of latent homosexuality.

I'm throwing a lot of theories out there because this one is especially pervasive and especially confusing. This one's so pervasive that I think there are probably tons of causes. Another idea I've heard is that it's a class thing, that only wealthy women have the time and resources to maintain a very thin frame, while lower-class women have to spend their time working at desks and eating whatever they can whenever they can.

And signals of class membership change over time, of course. Back in the days of Rubens (that porn merchant), plumper women tended to be wealthier and were considered more sexy. They, like the monkeys in estrus, had the resources to be able to maintain some extra body fat. And in those days, it was more desirable and more rare to have the ability to carry a baby to term.

I don't know -- there are thousands of interlocking issues here. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?

Things That Terribly Disappoint Joe: Sudoku

2009-05-26T10:59:00.000-07:00

The year was 2006. The world was gripped by Sudoku Mania (not to be confused with the Rubiks Cube Ague of 1983). I, being of this world and highly attuned to all its whims and fads, was soon spending every spare waking moment filling empty squares with numbers, such that each number from 1-9 would appear nine times, but once and only once in every row, column, and 3x3 grid.

Man, was I hooked. I started on the easy ones, developed a few strategies, and methodically planned to move up the Sudoku difficulty ladder from easy, to medium, to hard, and finally (Lord willing) fiendish! Each level found me getting stymied, as my early strategies were found to be inadequate to handle the tougher puzzles. But each time, a new strategy appeared before me, beckoning like a great big beckoning thing, showing me the way forward. Thrilled beyond hope, I crept along steadily, amazed in the ability of the human mind to construct ever more refined logical tools to solve problems, until, one day, I finally discovered something that would change my life forever....

You can't solve every Sudoku with plain old logic. There are some puzzles (millions, in fact), where you have to guess - there's no other choice. You pick a square that has two possible numbers, pick one, and try to solve the rest of the squares, hoping that your 50/50 chance works out. If you reach a dead end, you backtrack to that same square, erasing everything you've done along the way, go with the other number, and voilá - a completed puzzle.

I think that's stupid. The whole point of Sudoku is that it's a universal logic game. It's not like the hybrid logic/verbal game of a crossword puzzle. You don't have to know any historical or pop figures; you don't have to know twelve synonyms for "paltry"; you don't have to be clever enough to figure out any themes or cutesy clues (Clue: "Head start?" Answer: "Doodoo"; ha ha ha); you don't need to know anything at all beyond the numbers 1-9 - it's pure logic. Wow! what an incredible challenge, thought I. The greatest human advancement since staging the moon landing at Universal Studios in 1969.

Well, that's baloney. It's not pure logic. If you're guaranteed to reach a point where logic stops working, then it's not pure logic. That's pure frustration. And a waste of my valuable time the entire way. If I'd known that guessing was eventually going to be not only a strategy for the weak, but a requirement for success, I would've found something more worthwhile to do - like twiddling my thumbs, or listening to Kenny G (best jazz artist ever imho).

By the way, I understand that, strictly speaking, guessing (or trial and error, or Ariadne's thread, or whatever you call it) is still logic. When you're walking around a labyrinth, keeping track of where you've been and so forth is actually a very logical way to proceed. In fact, it's the most logical way to proceed. But if you're not in a labyrinth, guessing is stupid.

Point is, Sudoku betrayed my trust. It's not what it purports to be. And I think it's sad that Will Shortz has jumped on the bandwagon by putting his name on so many Sudoku books - for all the dumb puns and obscure 1920s actresses that find their way into the New York Times crossword puzzles, at least you know what you're in for. Suduko, though, the siren of puzzle games, sang her song of mental stimulation, lured me too close to the shores of false logic and dashed my brain ship on the rocks of stupidness. Very messy.