Michele Bachmann for President (Debater)

I support Michele Bachmann for the Republican presidential nomination this next year, not because she wouldn’t stand a chance in hell of beating Barack Obama (she doesn’t stand a chance in hell of winning the nomination) but because I would be glued to our 40”-HD TV set to see her debate Obama and play a drinking game where I’d take a hit every time she said something idiotic, ignorant, or insane:

"If we took away the minimum wage – if conceivably it was gone – we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level." (Jan. 2005) Yes, and if we took away child labor laws we could fully wipe out unemployment. And how about bringing back slavery? Bottoms up!

"I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?" (Oct. 2008) Considering she’s one “of the people in Congress,” maybe she could start her McCarthy witch hunt with herself. Bottoms up!

"Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas." (Apr. 2009) I’ll have to let me stepdaughter – and the thousands of her atmospheric scientist colleagues – that her dissertation charting the harmfulness of carbon dioxide isn’t valid. Bottoms up!

"I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence." (28 Apr. 2009) Pretty interesting coincidence, indeed, except that the 1976 swine flu outbreak happened during the administration of Republican President Gerald Ford. Coincidence? Bottoms up!

"But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States. ... I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly – men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country." (Jan. 2011) Except that many of the founders – including Washington and Jefferson – owned slaves; they were all dead before “slavery was no more”; and John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) wasn’t a founder. Bottoms up!

"Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That's the kind of spirit that I have, too.” (June 2011) An elevating thought, although the John Wayne from Waterloo (Bachman’s hometown) is John Wayne Gacy, serial killer, not the cowboy actor from Winterset, Iowa. Bottoms up!

"Before we get started, let's all say 'Happy Birthday' to Elvis Presley today." (16 Aug. 2011) How thoughtful. Too bad Elvis was born on January 8, he died on August 16. Bottoms up!

“I would go over to the Department of Education, I’d turn off the lights, I would lock the door and I would send all of the money back to the states and localities.” (22 Sept. 2011) Despite this being something that no president could do, it would be a great photo-op to precede her being carted off to the loony bin. Bottoms up!

"I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending." (Aug. 2011) So God wreaks havoc through earthquakes and hurricanes in order to get politicians to listen to the roaring American people. Okay, but what was he telling the people of Japan or Indonesia or Haiti or . . . ? Bottoms up!

“As president of the United States, every mile, every yard, every foot, every inch will be covered on that southern border.” (16 Aug. 2011) Grammar aside (at least I don’t think she’s campaigning for the southern border to be president of the United States), I would hope she’d be more specific about what she wanted to cover the border with. Bottoms up!

“The Republican Party cannot get the issue of life wrong. It’s a seminal issue.” (15 Dec. 2011) Indeed, I guess you can’t get much more seminal than impregnation. Bottoms up!

I’d be on-the-floor smashed before the end of the first round of questioning in such a debate. And imagine if a Bachmann/Obama debate schedule followed that of McCain/Obama in 2008 – three debates and two forums. I’d have to get a lifetime membership to the Betty Ford Clinic. And a swine flu shot.

The Normal Abnormal Weather

Watching or listening to the weather on TV or radio, especially this time of year, yields a particularly strange use of the English language in relation to reality. Any particular day’s high or low temperature is always compared with the “normal” high or low temperature for the day. Of course, by “normal” they really mean “average,” because the actual normal is at least 5° and often 10° above or below the average. And so more often than not there is surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, in the weatherperson’s report of the day’s deviation from the “normal.” Today, for example, we’re experiencing “abnormally” warm temperatures in Iowa for December 29 – a balmy 53° against the more chilly average (weatherperson’s “normal”) of 31°. But if you look over the high temperatures for the past 16 years for Iowa City, you soon see that today’s high is not all that abnormal:

2011 - 53° 2010 - 35° 2009 - 19° 2008 - 26° 2007 - 26° 2006 - 56° 2005 - 36° 2004 - 41°

2003 - 35° 2002 - 50° 2001 - 15° 2000 - 19° 1999 - 54° 1998 - 37° 1997 - 30° 1996 - 21°

Only 3 of these highs are within 5° of the average (or “normal”), only 9 are within 10°, but 7 (almost half) are plus or minus 10° or more (3 plus 20°). So as with most in life it turns out that the “normal” is actually the “abnormal.” Surprise.

Home For the Holidays

We’ve had our family back for the holidays – our daughter Amelia and son Jeremy, their spouses Pete and Mary, and our granddaughters , 4-year-old Ellie and 3-month-old Abby – and it’s been one grand time, at least for us grandparents, if not always for the whole brood (we don’t do things always the way that our children do). In various combinations, we’ve played games, watched movies, taken walks to the park, and of course spent all of Christmas day exchanging gifts, eating brunch, driving to an expanded family gathering, eating a large dinner, and exchanging more gifts. Excess as the season requires. It’s satisfying to see that our children and their spouses are all readers and are instilling that virtue in our grandchildren (though I’m not quite sure what to make of their fascination, if not obsession, with playing games on their smartphones; perhaps it’s just a way of passing the too many down times that seem to happen when we’re around). My main – almost sole – contribution to the gathering is the cooking. The night after Christmas was easy in that I could fix a (leftover) turkey tetrazzini, one of our children’s favorite dishes when they lived with us. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a particular hit with Ellie, nor was the accompanying green salad, though she did try to pick at what I told her she might like (not to much effect). She did though enjoy her first viewing of The Wizard of Oz (one of the scores of gifts she received), demonstrating at one point a precocious pre-school interpretative ability by announcing toward the end of the Oz color sequence of the film that she thought it was all Dorothy’s dream. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to repeat this holiday gathering. The kids each live on opposite coasts, and certainly as their families and the cost of air travel grow, it will become more difficult for us all to come together. But for at least this year, we were.

Savvy Shopper

I’ve noticed recently that I engage in a stupid activity and I’m not sure if I’ve just begun falling into it or if I’ve always done it and am just noticing it more. What it is is this: I set out to buy something. I go to one store after another, several, then half a dozen, more, and can’t find what I’m looking for. Finally, I succeed in finding it, and because of a sense of final accomplishment simply say “I’ll take it,” only to find after it’s been rung up that it costs twice as much as I thought it would cost. Of course, by then it’s too late to express doubt about the purchase; I’ve confidently announced my desire for it and to back away at this point would be an embarrassing admission of cost being a factor in the transaction that I didn’t inquire about at the time when one should inquire about cost if that is a factor. When you say “I’ll take it,” there is an implicit “whatever the cost.” There’s no turning back. So I hand over my credit card. And ask for a bag, if only just to get my money’s worth.

Gray German Thanksgiving

I was cleaning out my study and came across a photo I had taken 30 years ago when I was living and teaching in Germany. It’s not a particularly scenic photo, not of any historic or cultural import, pretty mundane really, perhaps with a bit of balance, though not artistry. It’s of a field, covered in probably half a foot of snow. In the foreground on the left are some posts, remnants of a long-gone fence, leaning toward the edge of the shot, as if sensing an escape, leafless stems of weeds surrounding them. In the foreground on the right is a stand of dead brush and sunflowers, falling toward the right of the shot, creating a leaning balance of elements. In the distance, beyond a field of snow, is a pine- and fog-covered hill. The sky is dark and low. The scene looks to be in sepia, browns and grays and whites, though it’s actually in color. There just wasn’t any color that day. Maybe that’s why I took it in the first place, and why I had it blown up in development to 8”X10” and had it pinned to my office wall for most all of the past 30 years.

It was Thanksgiving Day, 1981. I was living alone in Litzendorf, Germany, a tiny town outside Bamburg, where I was teaching for the military. It wasn’t a holiday in Germany, and I’d followed my usual routine that morning – as the coffee was brewing, I went across the street to the bakery for a kasse küche; listened to the radio and read for an hour or so; went for a long jog in the falling snow through the Geisfeld Forest to Geisfeld and back; more coffee, more reading; lunch at the pizza restaurant, run by two Moroccan brothers, below my apartment. And then north the few blocks north on Am Knock street, past the church and cemetery, and into the dead fields of hay, beets, and parsnips. Into that silence and solitude of that gray snowy scene. There was nothing beautiful about it, and everything beautiful about it. And I still have no idea why I took the picture, let alone why I enlarged it and kept it on my wall all these years.

Car Chases and Explosions

It’s becoming more and more difficult for me to see any movies. A few years ago, I made a vow not to watch any films that featured car chases and explosions in their advertising. For the most part, that’s worked fairly well, I’ve avoided a number of movies that I can’t imagine I would like, and the couple with explosive promotion I did see I didn’t like. But it’s becoming more difficult as apparently more and more films are at least advertising explosions in promoting their films. Currently there are three films I’d be interested in seeing, but the ads all have car chases and fiery explosions:

Mission Impossible 4

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Sherlock Holmes 2

I’ve always been a fan of character films, quiet films, not action films. Action films are essentially cartoons – adrenalin inducers, not thought inducers, pabulum escape, not reflection, roller coasters, not carrousels. I’ll probably see all of these films, and I might actually like a couple of them, at least for what they are. But what they are is what I fear too many films are becoming – thrill via technology, bangs and motion, CGI, not writing or acting. Yes, I’m out of my time. But I don’t have to like it.

Giving and Getting

This time of year one inevitably hears over and over the well-worn proverb derived from Acts 20:35 that “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” This comes from Jesus, who as far as the record shows, received gold, incense, and myrrh at his birth from the wise men but didn’t give anything to anyone else except for parables and sermons and on one occasion a propagation of bread and fish to a multitude. I’ve always found the notion of it being better to give than to receive to be an elegant paradox. For one thing, if someone gives you something, and you accept it, that explicitly makes you a lesser person than the “blessed” giver. You would be better to refuse the gift: “Oh no you don’t, I’m not falling into that trap!” Moreover, shouldn’t the purpose of giving be to provide pleasure or gratification or comfort or whatever to the receiver? But if it’s better to give than to receive then the very act is by definition selfish: “Look what a good person I am by giving you this!” And what happens if the receiver doesn’t care all that much about the gift? – “Do you have the receipt for this? Can I return it?” – What does that do to the giver’s “blessed” status? No, it’s probably best to just shop smart, try to find things your friends and relatives need, want, or could use – and keep the receipts. And disregard altogether who’s the better for the giving or the getting.

Online Sarcasm

One of the problems of writing online – email, twitter, facebook, etc. – actually a problem in all of writing, though any problem with writing these days seems to be focused on the online variety – is (to finally get to the object of this sentence) sarcasm. Sarcasm is a tricky rhetorical device, best left to professionals. But the great bulk of writing online is not committed by professionals, and hence many of the attempts at sarcasm online are misconstrued as earnest thoughts. Someone might email a friend, “That guy you were with last night sure was hot!,” meaning that he was a loser, but taken as literal, resulting in a second date that might ruin several lives. It’s happened. So there are movements afoot to resolve this supposed problem by pushing for a sarcasm font or punctuation to indicate that the writing is being sarcastic in a particular passage.

This actually dates back to the 16^th century, when Henry Denham proposed using a backward question mark, or “percontation point” (؟), to denote a rhetorical question (“That’s really good ؟”). In the 19^th century, the French poet Alcanter de Brahm extended this mark to represent irony, and that use has been revived recently for use in online communication. A less radical idea (in that it wouldn’t involve a punctuation mark that isn’t on most keyboards) is the “scare quote,” which indicates that a particular word or phrase is not intended literally (“That’s really ‘good.’”). (In the previous sentence, “scare quote” is not an example of a scare quote.) Another proposal is the Ethiopic temherte slaqî, an inverted exclamation mark (¡),though like the percontation point it involves a punctuation mark not on most non-Ethiopian keyboards. One way over the keyboard hurdle is the question mark in brackets (“That’s really good [?]”) or an exclamation point in brackets (“That guy you were with last night sure was hot [!]”).

A more recent proposal, particularly for online, is to use pseudo html code to alert readers of sarcasm: (“˂sarcasm>You’re wearing that?</sarcasm>”). This is absurd on its face. Why stop with sarcasm? Why not signal all rhetorical effects with html code:

<humor>One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I’ll never know.</humor>

<simile>My love is like a red, red corpuscle.</simile>

<metaphor>He’s an asshole.</metaphor>

<personification>The sky grew dark and then pissed all over the town.</personification>

<oxymoron>He’s a conservative intellectual.</oxymoron>

<hyperbole>I’m so hungry I could eat a conservative intellectual.</hyperbole>

Of course the real problem is not with finding some punctuation mark or other typographical accoutrement to indicate sarcasm or any other figurative language. The problem is the people who want to use the language in these elastic ways learning how to do so, and those who read such messages learning how to recognize such use. Punctuation should indicate the syntactic relationship between words and phrases and sentences, not signposts for the rhetorical intent of a writer who can’t express that intent in writing, in words and in style. But then, <sarcasm>writing-by-the-numbers must certainly be much easier than writing from ability.</sarcasm>

Cell Phones and Driving

Today the National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) called for a ban on all cell phone talking and texting while driving. It brought out all the studies of the past couple of decades as well as newer ones, all of which show that driving while talking on a phone – and especially while texting – increases one’s chance of having an accident – and killing oneself or someone else – at least as much as driving while legally drunk. And tapping in phone numbers or text is only part of the distraction. As much or more of a problem is the psychic distance that someone enters when making a call or reading text messages – they move out of the context of their car and off into some nether-cyber-world, their minds literally off the road and into space. This is why it’s just as dangerous with hands-free phones as with hands-on phones (though more dangerous with texting). Here are just a few of the findings from various studies:

·         Between 2005 and 2008 deaths caused by distracted driving rose by 28%.

·         This is despite 35 states having restricted in some way calling and texting while driving.

·         About 20% of all drivers, and 50% of drivers aged 21-24, report texting or talking while driving.

·         At least 1 in 100 cars are driven by persons texting, emailing, or surfing the web.

·         And many more are talking on their phones.

People who talk and text and play games while driving think they are competent drivers able to multi-task while flying down the highway. So do drunk drivers. This is an issue that’s been going on for more than a decade, and I’m surprised it’s even still an issue. I began teaching my composition classes more than 12 years ago focusing on media and culture, and this is one of the issues we studied. The studies just emerging then clearly showed the dangers – again, not just the physical distraction but also the cognitive distraction – and those dangers have only been reinforced in study after study – and fatal accident after fatal accident – since then. After this appeal from the NTSB, if there isn’t a national ban on all phone (and digital) use while driving passed in the next year, then there is only one word to describe it – shame.

Busted at Checkpoint Charlie

Thirty years ago this weekend I was arrested in East Berlin for trafficking in the black market. That makes it sound more exotic than it actually was. Here’s how I recounted the experience in a letter to friends at the time:

               

How your faithful (but gullible) servant was arrested this past weekend by the East German Polizei.

              My first mistake was in changing my original plans, which had me visiting West Berlin museums on Saturday, theatre Saturday night, the zoo and aquarium Sunday morning, more theatre Sunday afternoon and night, and East Berlin on Monday. Of course the weather was typically miserable – gray, cold, and wet – and through some convolution of logic, I woke up Saturday morning thinking that the dreariness would be appropriate for a walk along The Wall and into the East (it didn’t strike my shriveled brain that it was even more appropriate for staying inside museums). So I switched my Saturday and Monday plans around and headed off across the border. And it was somewhat appropriate to be cold and wet while walking through the bleakness of East Berlin – there is definitely a perceptible difference between the opulent consumer society of the West, and the meager subsistence society of the East (most of the buildings stark and uniform, relatively few people on the streets, but a lot of people lined up outside stores waiting to get in to buy what looked like not a lot of anything). My second (and monolithic) mistake was being conned by a communist black marketeer who wanted to give me 190 DDR Marks for my 150 D-Marks (other mistakes were letting him know how much money I had and not knowing that the going black market rate was at least three-to-one). At first I balked, knowing in the functioning corner of my brain that this was highly illegal; but soon the greater proportion of my sense (i.e., lack of it) overtook me, and I succumbed to his haranguing (he kept assuring me it was okay, said he was a student and could buy more books with D-Marks (oh boy!), etc.). I immediately realized I had been duped, and began to think of ways to get back to the West without being caught (hiding the money would help because I couldn’t do anything with it if I did get it across the border, buying things wouldn’t help because they’d have to be declared – and above all, I’d have to account for not having the D-Marks I entered the East with (declared at crossing)). So I had little choice but to just see what would happen if I tried to go through as if there were no problem. And what happened was the guard asking for the bank receipt for the money (bank receipt! – that was the rub my friendly conman failed to mention in out deal). And when I couldn’t produce one, I was immediately informed that I had broken a DDR law and was shuffled quickly off to a small room with a table and chair, where I was searched and questioned for about 45 minutes by another officer. Then I was taken to another room for more questioning (this was all in German, making it strange, and probably very inaccurate) while the officer typed up my “statement.” I was told I wouldn’t get my Marks back (which I had assumed), and further that I would have to pay a “fine” of the 80 US dollars I also had with me (how convenient that the fine was covered with just the amount of money I had left!). I protested briefly, but had little choice (I could have gone to jail for the night and wait for a Russian authority who would later call for someone from the American consulate – not much of a choice). All of this took almost three hours. I don’t think they ever considered that I was into the black market – I was obviously just a dumb asshole who got took. And so the government used the occasion to take me again. So I lost 150 D-Marks and 80 dollars – about 150 dollars total. A stiff price for being stupid. But as the years go on, and as I tell the story over and over, I hope to regain some of my loss by embellishing the tale (what you have here is but the mundane truth) to include rubber hoses, large Prussian women wearing jack-boots and brandishing whips, having my genitals threatened with glass tubing, etc. If all goes well, it shouldn’t be long before I can sell my story for a movie or TV mini-series (“Horror at the Border” or “Escape from the East!”).

              The Big Irony in all of this, is that when I went out to see the W. Berlin museums on Monday, I found them all closed. Life is most exciting when it abuses.

One thing left out of this account is that when “I protested briefly,” I demanded to see someone from the American consulate. One of the officers went into another room for a few minutes, returned, and said that if I wanted to see someone from the American consulate, I would have to remain in jail until at least Monday. Also, they had decided to tack on an addition to my fine, 40 DDR Marks (I have the receipt framed and on the wall of my study), that they wanted me to send them in US dollars when I got back home. When I went through Checkpoint Charlie, I told my story to the U.S. guards, and they told me definitely not to pay any more money (which I had already figured out). They also told me I had no recourse for any restitution and was lucky just to get back across the border (which I had also figured out). I can’t recall if they actually told me I was a stupid asshole, or if they just made it clear through insinuation and gesture.

Checkpoint Charlie, looking toward the East, about the time of my arrest.

Surviving Winter

If it weren’t for the arctic temperatures, the driving snow, the treacherous ice, winter would be a fairly pleasant season. There was a time when I thought I actually liked winter. I lived for a year in Minnesota, owned a pair of cross-country skis, and actually used them two or three times a year. I have pictures of me bundled in a parka, ski gloves, and stocking cap, leaning on my ski poles, my exhaled breath frozen on my glasses and in icicles dangling from my beard, a smile on my face that looking back now I can only interpret as delusional. As I’ve grown older, about all I enjoy in winter is central heating, watching TV, and Johnny Walker Red, neat. In literature, winter has always symbolized death, and that seems just about right. I bring a couple of gold fish each year in from our pond to winter over in an indoor fish tank. As the two piscine lounge in their 10-gallon central-heated resort (no TV or Scotch, though), they have no awareness of their buddies who they swam with through the summer who are now entombed, frozen in a pond of ice. I watch them suspended in their tank and envy their watery ignorance of winter.

Onesies

When I got my vasectomy almost 40 years ago, having never fathered (as far as I know) a child, I never thought I’d find myself purchasing a onesie. Hell, I didn’t know what a onesie was. But about a decade later, I acquired children (stepchildren) who were ages 8 and 10 at the time, and the 10 year old somehow ended up in her 30s, married, and the mother of two daughters, providing us with two granddaughters and for me a reason to find out what onesies are. I’ve now, in fact, bought two onesies (“two onesies”; that’s an odd phrase that I’m certain I’ve never written or uttered before). The first was four years ago for my first granddaughter, Ellie. I found it at an upscale shop on the Plaza in Kansas City that catered to baby-boomer grandparents (like me). It featured the image of Jimi Hendrix, with something like “Baby Rocks” across the front. It was hugely over-priced, targeted directly at me, and Ellie only wore it once that I know of (that’s apparently the way it is with infants’ clothes, which they outgrow in weeks, particularly when there’s an incongruent image of Hendrix involved). I bought my second onesie yesterday for our new granddaughter, Abby. This time I went more practical (and less exorbitant) – yellow, with simple black lettering: IOWA (gold and black are the University of Iowa’s colors), an early hint that we would like her to begin considering Iowa as a school she might attend, not that she could save money by staying with us or anything, though of course she could, if she wants. And Ellie could take up the electric guitar. Or come to Iowa too. We don’t want to be pushy grandparents though. But then that seems to be one of the subtexts of the onesie.

The Folly of a College Football Champion

We’re at the end of another college football regular season and predictably the call for some kind of playoff to determine the national championship is being advocated by most of those who have easy access to sports columns or microphones. The complaint this year is that the two teams most likely to play in the championship game this year – LSU and Alabama – are from the same division of the same conference and have already played each other (LSU beat Alabama). Curiously, virtually everyone agrees that these are the two best teams in college football, but paradoxically there apparently is still a “need” for a playoff – Why? To somehow confirm what everyone agrees to? To give a chance for a lesser team to pull an upset of the better team? Isn’t the assumption and claim of a “national champion” that of the best team in the country? This contradiction is admitted (albeit unwittingly) by those desirous of a playoff. Inevitably, at some point in the discussion, one or more of the proponents of a playoff will point out, without hint of self-awareness, that “anyone can beat anyone else on any one day.” If that’s so – and it is, we see it every week throughout the season – then all a playoff (with four or eight teams) yields is the team who played the best (or beat a team who played the worst) on a particular day or two or three. Which brings me to my primary discomfort with the drumbeat for a playoff – Why do we need a “national champion” in the first place? The whole “best of” concept eludes me. That’s why I favor the bowl system (preferably the one from at least three decades ago, before there were 40 games spread out over a month). It admits that there are a certain number of teams that have been better through the year than most of the other teams and rewards those certain teams by sending them (and their fans) to warm-weather climes for laudatory games.

I write here of a romantic ideal, realizing of course that the driving force in determining a college football champion is TV and the piles of money that filters through it. Whatever makes the most money for the TV networks (playoff) and the NCAA (bowls) will ultimately win out. Probably some compromise of both systems. And that will compromise the whole mess. But it’s no doubt too late to hope for anything better. TV and its money long ago corrupted college sports.