Tightly Wound

Southern Gothic III - Deliverance

Southern Gothic III - Deliverance

So my cousin Lee (you know, the one whose dog was devoured by his brother's lioness) moved up to the NC/TN mountains after he got out of the Marines. He married a nice mountain girl named Nellie, and took up carpentry, doing cabinetry and other work for all the rich yankees who build houses near the ski resorts up there.

Nellie's dad is named Otis, and he's a failed teetotaler who vacillates between being "saved" and making moonshine runs (Oh, and he got in trouble with the law once for growing a single pot plant in the flowerbed in front of his house. The DEA can't find the drugs pouring over the borders in a flood but they can harass one dissolute mountain man. And not find his still. Whatever, DEA.). But I digress.

Anyway, Otis has a bit of a hairtrigger temper when he's off the wagon, and like all good moonshiners, he's armed. Lee and Nellie have a house on land adjacent to Otis', and there's a creek running along the back of the properties. One night, Lee awoke to this screeching, grinding, crashing noise. Since they don't live near any large highways, this was worthy of notice, so Lee grabbed his rifle and his flashlight and went to investigate.

If you're unfamiliar with this part of the state, there's a large, mobile population of migrant workers that comes through during the summer to work the tomato farms. Most of them are illegal aliens, and very few speak English. What Lee discovered when he went out back was a car full of non-English speaking, drunk, and confused Mexicans. Apparently, they weren't paying attention, and the driver thought that the creek bed was an extension of the unpaved road they'd been driving on. He soon discovered otherwise.

The biggest danger here was not the carload of confused and frightened Mexicans, nor the lone mountaineer with a rifle. The biggest danger was that Otis, having been imbibing a bit himself, would interpret this event as a hostile takeover attempt and react accordingly. So it was without irony or overstatement that Lee trotted back up to the house, got the keys to his truck and told Nellie,"There's a carload of Mexicans in the creek. I'm gonna tow them out before Otis shoots them."

So Lee did, Otis' wrath was averted, and the workers, now very, very sober, drove off. Just another day (or night) in the holler.

Oh, and Here's Something Actually

Oh, and Here's Something Actually On-Topic for the Blog

This article, which proclaims the death of post-modern theorizing. Amusing, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the rest of the scions of modern-day academia at large to admit these truths (they can't afford to lose the publishing deals):

"...Sander L. Gilman, a professor of liberal arts and sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, replied instead. "I would make the argument that most criticism — and I would include Noam Chomsky in this — is a poison pill," he said. "I think one must be careful in assuming that intellectuals have some kind of insight. In fact, if the track record of intellectuals is any indication, not only have intellectuals been wrong almost all of the time, but they have been wrong in corrosive and destructive ways."

Mr. Fish nodded approvingly. "I like what that man said," he said. "I wish to deny the effectiveness of intellectual work. And especially, I always wish to counsel people against the decision to go into the academy because they hope to be effective beyond it."

So Stanley Fish arrives at the only destination made possible by deconstruction--deconstructing deconstruction. Wheeeee! Come join the intellectual circle jerk; just be sure that you understand that Nothing. You. Do. Matters! Of course, you should still expect a nice salary and the perks that come with draconian thought control inside your classroom--gotta have that stuff or there's no point!But wait, there's more:

If theory's political utility is this dubious, why did the theorists spend so much time talking about current events? Catharine R. Stimpson, a panelist and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University, offered one, well, theory. "This particular group of intellectuals," she said, "has a terror of being politically irrelevant."

You know that hackneyed old saying, "The truth will out?" Yeah.

(via NRO)

We Interrrupt the Familial Mockery

We Interrrupt the Familial Mockery to Bring You This Public Service Announcement:
What the Hell is WRONG with You People?

Okay, I would have considered this article to be Swiftian, except for the inconvenient fact that it's not a satire, but an actual report. By and large I stay out of the abortion debate, but this is just over the freaking top. When you're so subsumed by a political issue that you cannot ever see a reason for an exception for fear of some damn "slippery slope," even when the exception is obvious, sensible, and done in the name of freaking JUSTICE, then you've crossed the line from fanatically stupid into actually evil.

An (almost) full term baby, who was capable of life outside the womb and who was WANTED by the mother, died, because his father murdered his mother, and because, to put it scientifically, a chemical had not yet been released by the baby's body that would start labor. To split hairs over whether the baby had actually been "born" in order to prevent your politcal opponents from gaining some sort of "advantage," is evil. No wait, let me rephrase that. It is Fucking Diabolical. Stupidity is no excuse here, lady. Neither is the slippery slope. For justice to be done in the Laci Peterson case, the prosecution should bring a double homicide charge against the murdering asshole responsible. If you can't see the depravity inherent in coldly calculating the worth of a human being in order to preserve the political status quo, then I've got nothing left for you except contempt.

In the real, nuanced, shades-of-gray world, exceptions exist. Sometimes, there is a higher good than political gain. Not that I would expect the current NOW flunkies to understand something like that--it's too abstract and smacks of morality. And when you start talking about morality, it means you have to actually examine your actions. Can't have that, NOW, can we?

Southern Gothic II - A

Southern Gothic II - A Gun for Miss Emily

My Aunt Pat's first husband (and father to the three sons involved in the whole lioness fiasco) died when the youngest son was about 15. She remarried a fellow named Steve, who was a WWII veteran and active in local politics. Steve was also a widower, and he had one son and one daughter. The son is fairly normal. The daughter, however, is not. She is crazy in that uniquely southern way that inspires people like Faulkner to write dark tales of familial intrigue and violence. I say all of this not only by way of explanation, but also to make the point that I share NO DNA with this person. Thank you, God.

Linda was married and had 4 children--three daughters and a son. Before she was married she was athletic and adventurous; a cheerleader who counted skydiving and shooting among her favorite hobbies. After marriage and pregnancy, though, some odd trends began to surface. Linda became obsessed with collecting antiques, and living the "pageant lifestyle"--dressing up the daughters and parading them around in pursuit of crowns, scepters and sashes reading Little Miss Boll Weevil, or whatever. She also let herself go physically, replacing activity with food. Eventually Linda's collecting and controlling got out of hand, and she ended up driving her daughters into early marriages and her son into permanent sullen withdrawal.

Linda lives in a large home in a rural area. However, you cannot walk through the house, because it is crammed with antiques. She has something like 30 full sets of china, as many sets of silver, tons of furniture, etc. She even has a tractor trailer parked behind the house, also crammed with expensive antiques that are rotting, because they aren't being properly stored. She will not sell them. Meanwhile, the house itself is falling down around her, because she "cannot afford" to get things fixed. Her church buys her groceries. This weird combination of hoarding (if she sold her dining room table, it would fetch at least ten grand) and poormouthing finally broke her on-again, off-again marriage, and her husband left. Linda was furious.

Things came to a head one day when her oldest daughter called Linda and asked if she'd come over to help her (the daughter) out. Halfway there, Linda realized that her daughter would never, ever, call her for help. Her father (Linda's ex) must have put her up to it! With a screech of tires, Linda turned the car around and sped home. Sure enough, there was her ex's car, and he (and his new girlfriend!) were just leaving. Apparently, he needed to pick up a few belongings, and knew that Linda would never consent if she were home. He was right.

After a brief confrontation, Linda went inside and returned with her pistol, which she began firing at the tires of the ex's car. The ex and the new girlfriend made it out unscathed, but a little upset. It's not every day that a large crazy woman shoots at you in the driveway, after all. When word got back to Steve, he just shrugged and made the following reply,""Aw hell. She was just mad and trying to shoot his tires out. She's an excellent shot--if she'd wanted him dead, he'd be dead."

And that was that. Everyone in that area knows each other, and they know Linda, so they tend to be a little more blase about this sort of behavior than, say, I would be. Yep, gotta love the SC branch of the family tree. Next time, I'll round out the Southern Gothic series (for the time being--I have many stories, grasshopper) with a visit to the mountain dwelling branch of the family, where you'll get this quote explained:

"There's a carload of Mexicans in the creek. I'm gonna tow 'em out before Otis shoots them."

Yes, I have not one, but two relatives named Otis. Do not start with me.

Southern Gothic Occasionally I am

Southern Gothic

Occasionally I am reminded that my family is not exactly run-of-the-mill. This usually happens when I visit my South Carolina relatives. I truly believe that something in the water down there causes insanity. Not the grand schizophrenic kind of insanity, but the random gun-firing, inappropriate pet-having, reckless endangerment form of insanity that's a little harder to pinpoint until after the fact, when upon reflection you realize that these people are quite possibly insane.

Case in point: We were discussing "grandparent stress," the disorder whereby grandparents cannot enjoy even ONE MOMENT of time with a grandchild without first envisioning every way their darling could be killed or maimed in any situation, and I remarked that my Aunt Pat wasn't as freaked out about stuff with her grandkids as my mom is. Pat replied that it was all a matter of perspective; after all, two of her grandchildren were almost eaten by her son's PET LIONESS once, so run of the mill problems like falling off the sofa just weren't a big deal.

Yep, my cousin had a pet lioness named Kimba. I remember her--I was about 10 at the time (my cousin is 15 yrs my senior), and Kimba lived in Jimmy's (my cousin's) garage when she wasn't escaping and terrorizing people. Jimmy's children were 2 1/2 and 1 then. Here's a fun list of Kimba's shenanigans:

1. She escaped and scared the hell out of two fishermen, who were just sitting in the river in their rowboat when suddenly a lioness sprang from the long grass at the river's edge and charged them. Again, this is in South Carolina, not Kenya. I suppose we're fortunate that neither of those men died of a heart-attack.
2. She almost ate my other cousin, Alan (the oldest of Pat's 3 boys) when she escaped (notice a theme, here) and hid behind the paddock at my aunt's house. Alan saw her out of the corner of his eye and ran like hell. He got into the house and closed the sliding glass door. Kimba hurled herself at the door so hard that she bent the metal frame, and Alan calmed her down by throwing raw hamburger and chicken from the fridge out to her.
3. The final straw came when Kimba devoured my OTHER cousin Lee's (the youngest of the three) little dog.

It was then pointed out to Jimmy that his idea to keep a pet lioness on a chain in the backyard with two toddlers around probably wasn't such a good idea, as those two toddlers just the week before had gotten out of the house and wandered onto the dock and almost drowned. If they could do that, how could anyone guarantee that they wouldn't wander too close to the pretty kitty on a chain? So Jimmy gave Kimba to a zoo. And his children are both grown and relatively unscathed. At least, they aren't displaying overt symptoms of SC insanity yet.

I have firsthand memories of this animal, yet it all seems like a fuzzy dream. I blame it on the SC water. It has to be a mild hallucinogen.

Next time on Southern Gothic, this quote explained: "Aw hell. She was just mad and trying to shoot his tires out. She's an excellent shot--if she'd wanted him dead, he'd be dead."

True Colors I considered not

True Colors

I considered not blogging about the Burk-Augusta non-protest fiasco last weekend, mainly because it seems the only thing keeping all this stupidity going is the media hoopla, and I didn't want to add to it. But then I realized how stupidly pretentious that was--I mean, come on people, this ain't USA Today, and besides, this stuff has passed annoying and gone straight to knee-slappingly funny. Well, if by funny you mean wasting everyone's time and being really annoying but not much else. Guess I have an odd definition of funny. But I digress...

Look, if you really think that Burk's whole Masters protest is about anything except self-aggrandizement and publicity, then let her speak for herself and put an end to that silly notion (from USA Today via Instapundit):

So will Burk march on Georgia again? "I don't think so," she said Sunday.
Her term as the NCWO's chair expires at the end of 2004, and she's already thinking about her future plans.
"But if Hootie thinks he's going to outlast me," she said, "he's going to have to wait a while yet."

Yeah, all that talk about injustice and inequality? Piffle. Here's what she's after--power and publicity, and she's willing to not only beat that dead horse, but tapdance on it naked if that's what it takes to obtain her objective. Hootie can't win! That's not fair! Who cares that it's a PRIVATE CLUB, who cares that most women aren't even interested in the issue, and that those who are probably couldn't afford a membership--the important thing here is that Martha Burk will not be bested by some upstart southern MAN! Burk will keep on until she pushes herself into irrelevance, because she's a publicity hound and an idiot. And I will laugh and laugh and laugh. Because the only antidote to idiocy like this is ridicule.

By the way, where do I go to join this group--they're right up my alley:

A local group called People Against Ridiculous Protests carried out the day's most tasteful protest. Founder Deke Wiggins appeared at his designated protest site in the morning, planted a sign, then departed. The sign read: "Look at all these ridiculous people."

I see big things ahead for PARP. Maybe I'll start a local chapter. That's a protest group I could really get behind.

Go Here. Speak Up. It's

Go Here. Speak Up. It's Important.

Via everywhere, this lovely notion by the folks at the University of California that if students start speaking out against their classrooms being politicized, well, just change the rules on them so that they can't. Clever, no?

Oh, look everyone! It's Irony again! I think I should just have the guestroom on permanent standby for you, old pal. What? You tried to talk to the UC folks and point out that they were some of the biggest agitators against oppression by the over thirty crowd in their pot-scented heyday? And that maybe your presence as they try to rewrite speech codes to squash student dissent was appropriate? Good for you, I. Glad to see you've been keeping up with that assertiveness training. What happened? Oh, is your foot okay? I understand that doors can really hurt you when they're slammed on your foot. Bummer. Keep fighting the good fight, I. Here's a beer.

And for the rest of you--head on over to NoIndoctrination.org and work up a righteous head of indignation. It's for a good cause. And being indignant on a regular basis leads to long life, good health and improved virility. No really, I'm serious.

The Cruelest Month(s) All this

The Cruelest Month(s)

All this happy crap about the coming of spring cheeses me off. The popular conception of spring is balmy weather, fluffy bunnies, warm sunshine and fresh flowers and grass underfoot. Spring is the time when we turn to thoughts of luuuurrrve and happy sunny things. What a load of utter crap. I hate spring with the fury of a rudely awakened rattlesnake, and here's why:

Balmy weather brings with it the yearly Exploding of the Oaks and Pines, whereby everyone in my town must go about masked or succumb to the swirling noxious yellow clouds of pollen. When you can go outside at night and actually SEE pollen motes floating through the beams of your home's floodlights, something is very, very wrong.

Fuzzy bunnies? Oh sure, we have them. For about five minutes, and then my cat deposits their headless corpses on our doormat. We keep her in at night--doesn't matter, and no one sleeps, as she was a stray who is very much an outdoor cat and who doesn't mind letting you know it. Buy her a bell--no good. Nothing can stop her single-minded quest to herald spring by mercilessly killing every one of God's creatures in a 3 block radius. I have nursed bluebirds to health in my bathroom, held bunnies as they expired (did you know that fleas leave a dead bunny's body IMMEDIATELY after death? I do! Ask me how!), and attempted to salvage moles, mice, and even hummingbirds. My success rate is unfortunately very low. In addition, I have had the joy of stepping, barefoot, into any number of pieces of ex-wildlife. At least by summertime the survivors are big enough, smart enough, or scarce enough to avoid her wrath.

Flowers? Grass? It is to laugh. I am surrounded by pine trees. Nothing grows here except pine trees. The soil sucks, the flowers wither, and the black widow population just loves hanging out around my deck, porch, flowerbeds and driveway. Oh, and that's not counting the snakes--or at least the snakes that are too big for the cat to eat.

Okay, so what about the other stuff--the luuurrrrve stuff? Puh-leeze. Spring is the time of year where I emerge, Sta-Puff like, from my cocoon of sweatpants and comfort food and find that I can signal passing aircraft by allowing the sun to reflect off of my white, white legs. My complexion always freaks out in spring; I'm pale, untoned, and scruffy. And as for the clothing--the human being does not exist who can pull off a lime green spring sheath dress. What is wrong with bright red or blue for spring? Pale pinks, lavenders and yellows have the added bonus effect of EMPHASIZING my puffy pallor. There is no love here. I scare myself, not to mention the pilots of those low-flying planes who mistook my calves for runway lights.

And then, just as I resign myself to the inevitability of fruitless yard work, spider squishing, wildlife rescuing and resumption of jogging, we have a freaking cold snap. Oh, very funny, spring! Ha. Ha. Joke's on me, I guess. Oh, and on my toddler, who doesn't understand that 40 degrees and rain are a pretty good reason for coming inside. Whee! Cold weather AND tantrums! It doesn't get any better than this!

Spring? I hate you.

The X-Files? Was A TV

The X-Files? Was A TV Show, Dammit

Listen to me, because I am only going to say this once (today), albeit loudly for the benefit of those of you living in soundproofed bunkers and draped in tinfoil:

Those images you saw yesterday? You know, the hoopin' and hollerin'? REAL. Yep, really real. Not staged, retouched, digitally enhanced by Peter Jackson's WETA workshop, or pulled out of Brit Hume's ass by the photoshop fairy. Okay? You got that, you bunch of mental midgets?

Perhaps you've spent too much time smoking Longbottom Leaf with your fellow sociologists, but I'm no longer interested in excuses, root causes, or medical theories to explain your bizarre behavior. So I'm going to spell this out for you:

• You are insane if you believe, actually believe, that there is some sort of all powerful, all knowing illuminati out there pulling the strings of every government worldwide.


• You are insane if you think that there is a top secret jewish cabal plotting to wipe out muslims, twist christians to do their evil bidding and control ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD!


• You are insane if you seriously claim that the current administration is a dictatorship, that earth was settled by humans during an alien experiment, or that Michael Moore ever gave a rat's ass about any "people" whose initials weren't "Michael Moore's Bank Account."


• You are merely deluded if you think that one day, somewhere, communism can work out, and that ANSWER is a grassroots conglomeration of concerned citizens with no other agenda.


• You are deluded if you think that a government will EVER overcome human nature and result in a utopia, that people everywhere will someday spontaneously start getting along, and that Star Trek was a pretty accurate depiction of the future.


• You are inhabiting another dimension entirely if you think "Castro's not so bad, no worse than our government," that foreigners will like and respect you for agreeing with (and one-upping) their anti-American disdainful vitriol, or that "natural anti-perspirants" actually, you know, WORK. And in that same vein--patchouli? The hell, people. There are like a MILLION natural scents that DON'T make you smell like year-old Avon pillowcase potpourri. Pick one.

Why Does Edward Said Continually

Why Does Edward Said Continually Chap My Ass?

Well, aside from the fact that I had to actually read and make use of his theories to get through grad school? Because he's created an image of a people and a region based upon the false nostalgia of youth, and instead of recognizing that reality differs from theory, continues to insist on his worldview to almost the point of madness.

Here's what set me off this time. I recently came across an old article by Said, a defense of the autobiography he wrote in 1999. The idea that leapt out at me was his nostalgic view of life in Palestine (I believe he was 15 when he lived there/left), and his subsequent construction of self-identity as brave rebel, struggling against his parents' expectations as well as those of his adopted country. This isn't unusual, but I was left with the impression that Said's need to fulfill some leftover adolescent fantasy of rebellion fueled his theories. At the very least, it painted an unflattering picture of Said as an egomaniac, and this was in an article WRITTEN by Said to DEFEND HIMSELF against attacks on his AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Irony stopped by as I read the article, and we shared a special moment of laughter, as well as a beer.

I was going to just file that under Well, No Wonder and move on with my life, until this morning when I came upon this special quote (Via Sullivan):

The idea that Iraq's population would have welcomed American forces entering the country after a terrifying aerial bombardment was always utterly implausible ... One can only wince at the way weak-minded policy hacks in the Pentagon and White House have spun out the 'ideas' of Lewis and Ajami into the scenario for a quick romp in a friendly Iraq.

I hope that yesterday's reality created some cognitive dissonance for Said. I find it amusing that he uses sneer quotes around the "ideas" of others, when his own are ripe for the same treatment. And I finally wonder how long it will be before he authors a screed bemoaning the post-traumatic stress disorder of the Iraqi citizens, claiming that their euphoria was caused only by the cessation of bombardment and that it was actually just pragmatic self-preservation for these victims of white hegemony.

I used to think that adolescence was something we experienced and got over. I now find this theory increasingly disproven, especially among those whose only sense of self-worth comes from being seen as a "rebel." I'd be angrier if it weren't so pathetic.

FIRE is on, Well, Fire.

FIRE is on, Well, Fire.

Got two emails from Thor Halvorssen yesterday--yeah, I know they're mass emails, but I just like saying that I get mail from a thunder god--about cases at Harvard and Rutgers which FIRE calls "victories for fundamental fairness and freedom of conscience." Go read both case studies and be very very glad for the existence of this watchdog group.

I also noticed they're working on a new endeavor, speechcodes.org. Site isn't up yet, but I intend to check back.

Hi, I'm the Most Overwrought

Hi, I'm the Most Overwrought Person Ever.

In the latest Chronicle (sorry, subscription only), we have a lovely first person account of the "chilling effect" of the Patriot Act on scholarship. And who, may one ask, is the academic experiencing the chill? Perhaps an outspoken pro-Palestinian political science professor? Maybe a high-profile critic of imperialism, like Edward Said? Why no, not at all. Just plain ol' Judith Grant, associate prof at USC who teaches poly sci and--wait for it--women's studies.

Far be it from me to paint with the broad brush just by looking at Judith's disciplines. Let's allow her to speak for herself:

"I am now experiencing what American legal scholars call 'a chilling effect' and I was indeed first aware of it as a sort of chill running up my spine--a half-second of anxiety, almost subconscious, the moment I heard the act had been passed. I feel that chill again when I realize that I now pause a moment before I write almost anything."

Well, the case could be made that the pause is a good thing, in that it might let you actually EXAMINE the self-absorption apparent in this article and perhaps develop a sense of embarrassment about writing it, but I guess the chill isn't yet that pervasive. Why, may you ask, is she feeling chilled?

It seems she gets emails about politics from former students who are now abroad. They run the gamut from the reluctant American soldier to the Israeli citizen puzzled by her increasing feeling that many Arabs in the region are "crazy extremists" to the South Korean who wants to know if capitalism caused the mental illness of a mass-murdering countryman. Our good professor thinks of contacting other former students in Saudi Arabia and China, to see how they're doing, but she doesn't. Why? Well, that pesky chilling effect, why else?

"Is my email monitored, now that I have been in contact with people in countries that border the 'axis of evil'?"

Short answer: no, you self-important hack. But it goes on in this vein, concluding that:

"I hear President Bush tell the nation that the number of protestors against the war with Iraq doesn not matter, that the opinions of American citizens are irrelevant."

I must have missed the "Fuck You, Hippies" speech. Or perhaps they only aired it on Planet Judith.

Okay, so she concludes that she must now stand up and speak out about the eeeville Bush while she still can, dammit, or else she won't be able to hold her head up in class. What. Ever. This article is most instructive as an exampe of the sanctimonious hysteria and egoism that thrives on campuses. Obviously, the eeeeevillle hegemonic imperialist mental-illness inducing capitalist globalizing Bush junta will not be appeased until it can read every trite email from a no-profile academic with the hopes of crushing her freedom.

I get the impression that secretly she yearns for just a taste of real oppression, perhaps to lend legitimacy to her persecution complex. And what better indicator of a free society is there than a complete lack of understanding of what oppression actually means? Hey Judith? Chill.

Caveat: I'm not addressing the whole good/evil issue of the Patriot Act. Here's the text of the Patriot Act--read and decide for yourselves. Here's my short take: can it be abused? Yep. Can every law written be abused? Theoretically, yes. Example: NARAL's attempt to prosecute pro-life protestors with RICO. Didn't work. Why? Courts. Overly simplified point here? Probably. Do I care? Not really, because I'm more of a "wait and see" person when it comes to this stuff. And anyway, I'm all about the mocking. I'll leave that legal analysis to folks who do it for a living.

There's Someone for Everyone And

There's Someone for Everyone

And thank God I found mine sooner rather than later. Last night, after the usual ritual of dinner, war news, bath for boy and excerpts from the Wiggly Safari DVD before his bedtime, the hublet and I were relaxing in the den, reading, playing video games, and digesting the day. We were humming the last tune we'd heard from the Wiggles--the Crocodile Hunter song (click to listen to audio clip--it plays after a 15 second intro.)--and as we typically do (to alleviate the tedium of hearing the same song on infinite brain loop) we started making up words. A sample verse went something like this:

Hublet: Chemical Ali
Me: He's a dead man
Hublet: Chemical Ali
Me: He's a corpse!
Hublet: Chemical Ali
Me: Really dead, now
Both: Crikey he's so dead! Dead as a dead horse!

After we amused ourselves with variations on the theme, hublet looked at me and opined,"You know, I bet we are the only people in the whole world right now singing about Chemical Ali to the tune of a Wiggles song."

I think he's probably right. And I'm not sure how to feel about that.

Note to Baby Boomers--It's the

Note to Baby Boomers--It's the Beginning of the End

Saw that Cher's televising her final performance ever. Guess it's about time, as the buffed, polished, and shellacked visage on my screen was largely indistinguishable from that of one of her female impersonators. When you become your own drag queen, you might want to stop with the surgery. I'm just sayin'. Could someone pass that along to Joan Rivers? 'Cause she didn't get the memo.

Noooooooooooo! (Pause, Deep Breath.) Noooooooooooooooo!

Noooooooooooo! (Pause, Deep Breath.) Noooooooooooooooo!

In an example that chaos theory is alive and well, the commencement speaker for NCSU will be (drumroll please) Phil Donahue.

Collective campus response: head-scratching, followed by "The Hell?"

NC State is best known for engineering and ag science. This has what to do with a Notre Dame alum and random sensitive yankee man? If your answer to that question is "nothing that I can think of," you win a prize.

I just...no words. Too random.

America. Bringing the Sexy Since

America. Bringing the Sexy Since 1776.

Via Andrew Sullivan:

What, the man was asked, did he hope to see now that the Baath Party had been driven from power in his town? What would the Americans bring? "Democracy," the man said, his voice rising to lift each word to greater prominence. "Whiskey. And sexy!"

Hee!

Oh, Sorry Tina. Didn't See

Oh, Sorry Tina. Didn't See You There.

Though I can't imagine why not, since she's trying soooo very hard to remain relevant in the face of all sorts of proof to the contrary. This diminutive loud mouthed catty Ted Turner wannabe manages to stun the world again with her latest screed, which demonstrates both her amazingly tenacious self-absorption and her complete lack of understanding of anyone or anything who isn't Tina Brown.

First, the gratuitous "It's all about me, dahlings!" moment:

"No doubt the Bush White House has its own good reasons to feel cross with me, but scheduling Operation Shock and Awe to begin precisely at the moment of my new CNBC TV show seems a little excessive."

Yeah, Tina. Operative words here are "CNBC TV show", as if anyone anywhere would be watching it, or would know who the hell you were even if they did stumble across it. Oh, I see, it's supposed to be a joke--poking some humble fun at your inflated sense of self-worth. Hmm. Doesn't work, mainly because anyone who's ever read anything by you knows that you're not REALLY joking. Whatever.

More random ramblings designed to demonstrate that she understands the "little people"--what, she had a conversation about the weather with a doorman once in 2000? I'm sure you have your finger on the pulse of America, Tina. As this demonstrates:

“If only Tony Blair were President” is still the prevailing feeling among Americans, whatever they feel about the war. It’s only a matter of weeks before Bush starts to become seriously jealous of Saint Tony’s press. He is already put out by Blair’s insistence on the importance of the UN in postwar Iraq.

Umm, no. I love Tony Blair for standing by us, but I doubt he would have spearheaded the effort to get rid of Hussein, since he's more UN friendly than we. And although jealousy and image supercede all other factors in your little world, I doubt Bush is jealous of Blair. And he's "put out" with the UN, not Blair, because the UN has consistently demonstrated itself to be hypocritical, irrelevant, and self-interested. But like they say, it's difficult to see your own faults in others, so I'm not surprised you missed those salient points.

And finally, this foray into the bizarro world of Shakespearean tragedy viewed through the lens of current events:

Blair’s complex nobility makes us feel that he is on his way to being a tragic figure, which is something Bush could never be. When they appear side by side at press conferences the disparity in quality is almost painful. There is something dense and taciturn about Bush even when he’s being charming. He has the damped-down anger of the dry drunk. When he’s not scripted, his bald answers seem to be covering up ulterior motives. His true motives are private and his own and he will tell us only whatever it takes to mollify us. He is the embodiment of a crack Eleanor Roosevelt made when a friend pressed to know what FDR thought about an issue: “The President doesn’t think. He decides.”

Could someone please explain what the hell the "damped-down anger of the dry drunk" is supposed to mean, except to remind us that Bush was in rehab? Do you truly mean to suggest that W. would be happier if he were an alcoholic? That he just needs a Budweiser and suddenly all the messy world events that coincidentally pre-empted your TV show would vanish? Have you been hanging out with Mark Morford?

Additionally, I kind of like folks who make decisions, and seeing as that's a president's JOB, I can't get behind your smugness here, Teen. Nor do I think it's a bad thing for a president to be a little more emotionally reserved than say, Phil Donahue. I guess your complaint is that W. doesn't make good TV. So sorry. Maybe next time we'll elect a president who makes a point of emoting all over each national "event" to demonstrate that he "feels our pain"--oh, wait. Been there, done that. Didn't work out too well; ended up parsing the meaning of "is" on national TV and bombing an aspirin factory. Not exactly King Lear, but I guess you can't have everything.

The sad thing is that the size of this column in inches is probably 8 or 10 times greater than Tina Brown's emotional or intellectual depth. But TV is a two-dimensional medium, so I can see why she fits right in.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Can You Hear Me Now? You Can? Oh, Nuts.

So I've been thinking--a dangerous pastime, I know--about love and war and death and taxes and education and health insurance and politics and what I'm going to eat for lunch today because I've only got $2 in my pocket and I'm really tired of soup, and I have realized a few important things. The main thing is that all this thinking makes my head kind of hurt, but that should be obvious and in any case, isn't really my point.

I'm a ranter by nature. Little things build up, I vent, fume and spew, then I'm fine. My blood pressure routinely stays around 80/60, so either I HAD a heart attack years ago and died and my body hasn't figured it out yet, or the volcano approach to self-expression seems to work for me. And I really only get worked up about little non-personal things; I tend to be able to deal rationally with stuff like car accidents and medical emergencies while losing it completely over ill-worded signage at the local Wal-Mart.

I think it's a control issue. Car accidents and medical emergencies are out of my control, for the most part. They're things that just happen sometimes, regardless of how careful and prepared I am, and I'd better accept that reality and move the hell on. But the little things, like that sign--well, they piss me off because they ARE controllable, and folks should know better. Someone was sloppy and muddied communication was the result.

Words are controllable and controlling--this has been done to death, so just think "Orwell" here, and move on. There is no excuse for sloppy language, particularly when the sloppiness is intentional. I started this blog because I found humor in the ways professors routinely use 43 words where two will do, usually in the interest of making their ideas appear weightier. But now it's starting to lose some of its humor, mainly because in posting their words I've done what I never did in college--started paying attention to them. And a lot of times, the thinking behind these writings isn't merely wrongheaded, dated, obscure and muddled, it's dangerous and damaging.

The funny part is, these profs are so accustomed to either having their colleagues skim their work because everyone is so inundated with poor language that it's no longer worth the effort to fight through the copious prose in search of meaning, or being rubber stamped as "right-thinking" and reflexively praised, that when they are finally called on their opinions they freak out. Case in point: DeGenova, whose idiot blather and subsequent spin and disappearing act point to the fact that true academic inquiry and debate must be dead. If DeGenova honestly had a clue about the reception of his speech, I doubt he would have made it. At the very least (one would hope), he would have tempered or controlled his language. He is a pure product of the insulated, self-congratulatory professoriate, so involved in ginning up masses of words and catchphrases for the approbation of his peers that he no longer understands what those words mean to the unindoctrinated.

Further proof: the organizer's attempt to spin the whole thing as a wacko conspiracy. Well sure, if by conspiracy you mean a whole bunch of people who you regularly hang out with, talk to, and whose papers you read and sometimes edit for publication. The reality is everyone else up there was expressing similar ideas; DeGenova's problem was that for once in his life, his language was straightforward and his meaning was crystal clear.

Sloppy communication is annoying and sometimes amusing, sure, but it's also a tool whereby unacceptable opinions can fly below the radar of the public. Is it a conspiracy? No, it's just an academic culture thing. Me, I'm all for more teach-ins whereby this crap can come to light. Well, that and Wal-Mart employees who can spell. But that's a rant for another day.

You Suck, Edward Said Here's

You Suck, Edward Said

Here's a fun quote (via Campus Watch):

Edward Said, university professor, calls the U.S. policy in Iraq a "grotesque show" perpetrated by a "small cabal" of unelected individuals who hijacked U.S. policy. He accuses "George Bush and his minions" of hiding their imperialist grab for "oil and hegemony" under a false intent to build democracy and human rights.

Said deems Operation Iraqi Freedom "an abuse of human tolerance and human values" waged by an "avenging Judeo-Christian god of war." This war, he says, fits into a larger pattern of America "reducing whole peoples, countries and even continents to ruin by nothing short of holocaust."

Look on the mindless parrotting of unproven tropes, ye mighty, and despair! Let's just count them up, shall we?

1. The amazing "unelected" myth. Yawn. Check out US History, as well as every paid and unpaid recount from 2000. This idea only survives among professional nutjob conspiracy theorists, race baiting rabble rousers, and those with no actual intellectual might. Which one might Mr. Said be? You can pick more than one, in case you were wondering.

2. Oil and hegemony together again! I'm thinking we need a corollary to Godwin's law just for the War on Terror--the Hegemony Corollary. It should hold that anyone using the word hegemony in reference to US Government has already lost their argument, just because they've demonstrated a complete lack of independent thought. The word is often overused in Post-Colonial studies, and its meaning runs the gamut from "evildoing white people" to "evildoing white people," no matter the context or the actual definition of hegemony. Same thing goes for "imperialism," as if only democratic societies can be imperialistic and there never was a Caliphate. Perhaps Mr. Said means that only successful cultures are capable of imperialism? Maybe we should ask him, just to watch his tiny head explode.

3. The Avenging Judeo-Christian god of war. Wow, he sure knows a lot about my religion, doesn't he? And history, too! Why, just this past century America was involved in a Holocaust. No, wait, that was Germany. Well, then we were being all imperial--no wait, that was Japan! Well, I'm sure we were involved somehow--oh, right. We fought AGAINST those things. Such an easy mistake to make, particularly if you're distracted by visions of hegemonic crusaders intent on feeding oil to babies before sacrificing them to Jesus...wait, something's not quite right there. Well, that would require thinking instead of knee-jerk hate spew, and we high minded intellectuals are simply too busy for piffle such as facts.

Edward, your sustained years of raging against the machine are taking their toll and you're finally coming completely unglued. While it's fun to watch, I'm thinking we should remove all sharp objects from your room for a while. Here's a nice crayon--why don't you go draw a diagram of hegemony on that soft, padded wall?

I am So Proud To

I am So Proud

To live in North Carolina, especially since our state motto has been changed to "You Want Fries With That?"

Yes, unfortunate denizens of the not-Carolina, tremble before the intestinal fortitude of our citizenry! And you, drive-thru workers of the world, realize that you cannot stand against the force of our redneck fry munching army! When we say curly fries we mean it, dammit! And don't quibble about the fact that we may have eaten some of the substandard potato product you first gave us. Just hand over the curly fries, and no one gets hurt. We are a strong people, and we require our carbohydrates. Do not thwart us. You will regret it.