...And Another Thing

I suppose I should just get over this whole George Zimmerman thing. The truth is that there is an unimaginable litany of grotesque injustices perpetrated throughout the world every day of our lives. Our own government routinely crushes and incinerates women and children as a function of our holy crusade against Islamic radicalism, a both popular and self-perpetuating foreign policy. All over America, men, women and children of all races are shot and killed each day as an apparently irrelevant by-product of our sacred right of weapons possession. Let me not digress into the state of much of the remainder of the planet, where in abominable places like North Korea people eat grass and corpses to survive and in every corner of the globe evil men exploit and abuse the weak and the defenseless. Sometimes I just feel like giving up, which it appears a substantial number of my fellow citizens have already done.

 

I should get over it, but I can’t; not just yet. I have already suggested that my having sons around the same age as Trayvon Martin has emotionally affected me in unexpected ways. While my children are not black, they have friends who could be Trayvon Martin; kids who have on occasion raided my refrigerator and left cigarette butts on my patio and parked on the grass even though I have told them not to. As co-conspirators with my own children, they may even have smoked some dope, like about virtually everybody has at some point in their lives. Like my own children, they may even have taken exception to being corralled by authority and may sometimes have taken a short-cut through the backyard of someone they didn’t know. I am still having a great deal of trouble understanding how any of this warrants execution at the hands of a facile, over-aged hall monitor with a bad temper.

 

Speaking of bad tempers, I am making every effort to control mine. Anger is pointless, since there is not a thing I can do to correct any of this particular injustice, and rage just further assaults my already perilously decrepit cardio-vascular system. Anger is the path to the dark side and, perhaps more importantly, as opined by Sherlock Holmes, passion is the enemy of precision. Righteous indignation is a poor substitute for a reasoned and enduring commitment to justice, so I am going to suppress my fantasies of violent retribution and the sickly gleeful whimsy of seeing the smug, contemptuous proponents of feudal law being visited with the violent death of their own children as a proper form of education. Living only 54 miles away from the beautiful City of Sanford, Florida, I have been tempted to drive over and holler “you suck!” at every 40-something white woman I encounter, hoping my protest would find the ears of a member of the jury. Instead I am going to try my best to develop some perspective, accept the possibility that I could be wrong in my assumptions and surrender myself to the benign indifference of the Universe.

 

For the record, in my view of that Universe, we humans are only apes with big brains who by force of evolutionary dictate have adequately mastered control of our environment to allow us to procreate in unreasonable numbers and transmit the power of knowledge to succeeding generations. We are not the beloved of God, nor the pinnacle of creation, nor is there any substance to all of the other arrogant self-delusions we so fondly embrace. We are at every moment subject to slipping back into a state of primitivism where the exigencies of survival supersede commitment to any secular or religious principle. We must be constantly vigilant, not against the “fucking punks” that seek to burglarize our mid-priced townhomes, but against our own shallow commitment to decency and respect for the value of human life.

 

Quite frankly, I have been nauseated at the celebratory cacophony of voices extolling the vindication of the right to “stand one’s ground”.  This antediluvian concept, lifted straight from a “B” western, implies that civilization should support people who chose to initiate or prolong disputes to the point of lethal force when they simply could have walked away, as if one man’s pride is more valuable than another man’s life. This is what is so horribly wrong with Trayvon Martin’s death and why I have such difficulty in letting it go. I do not have to know the facts of the ultimate encounter to know that George Zimmerman did not have to put himself into the position of firing a round at point-blank range into the chest of a 17 year-old child. I do not have to know the state of mind of George Zimmerman to know that he had dozens of other choices he could have made that would have endangered no one. I do not have to analyze Florida’s manslaughter statutes to know that deliberately seeking a conflict and then using that conflict as justification for killing deserves to be punished. I do not have to judge the character of a dead child to know that his death is a tragedy. Over and over again in my mind, I keep seeing the image of Trayvon Martin’s lifeless body lying face up in the grass, legs crossed, blank eyes staring into oblivion, uselessly, senselessly and, apparently, legally shot dead, and my heart hurts.

That's Why It's a Sin to Kill a Mockingbird

Well, needless to say, I found the verdict in the case of the State of Florida vs George Zimmerman to be repulsive, although by no means surprising. I’m still trying to figure out how it can reasonably occur that a 17 year old kid coming home from the store is profiled, stalked and shot dead by a self-revealed racist with a history of physical violence and nobody is held to account for it. I am saddened and disappointed and, of course, angered and my anger and sense of frustration are exacerbated by the large numbers of my fellow citizens who take the position that justice has been done and we can all sleep well at night again.

It is not my intention to analyze the legal merits of the prosecution or defense of the case and it is not my intention to impugn the character or the intelligence of the jury. It is not my intention to question the efficacy of our legal system or of any of the specific decisions or actions of that system made or taken during the course of the trial. I was not present during the trial and cannot evaluate the quality of the presentation of the evidence or the manner in which it may have been refuted, and I did not participate in the jury deliberations and cannot assess the intent or substance of those deliberations. I do not know if it was proven that Mr. Zimmerman was guilty beyond all reasonable doubt of the charges brought against him, but I do know Mr. Zimmerman is guilty of being an avatar of the sick paranoia and cult of hatred and violence that so many people promote as a virtue in 21^st Century America.

America has always been a racist nation. We were born through the genocide of countless millions of aboriginal peoples and built upon the violently extracted sweat of African slaves. These actions required us to value the lives and rights of certain classes of people less than our own. The extent to which these facts of our history are diminished or denied has continually astounded me, and the righteous justification that allows us to absolve ourselves of moral culpability for such things contributes to the creation of people like George Zimmerman who feel that their assumptions about certain types of people are evidence of clear and present danger that warrant pre-emptive action. Racism is by no means dead in modern America, and the very argument that Mr. Zimmerman’s fears were reasonable because “young black guys commit all the crimes” is sterling evidence of that.

What really drives my dismay about this verdict is more deeply personal, though. I have two sons, one who will be 21 in a few months and another who will be eighteen in a couple of weeks. I love them and fear for their welfare a good deal more than my words or deeds generally indicate. They have not always followed the narrow path and I can easily see either of them wandering around somewhere unfamiliar at an unusual time and being confronted by a resident suspicious of their presence. I can also see the brashness of youth resulting in an uncooperative attitude which is then viewed as confirmation of suspicion and an escalating exchange where both parties vent their frustrations; frustrations over perceived danger on one hand, and the frustration of not being able to pass unmolested down a public street on the other. Such encounters usually result only in harsh words, or, at worse, the police being summoned to intervene, but if a person like George Zimmerman is introduced into the mix, I might be grieving the death of a child who was guilty only of standing up for himself and not being experienced enough to know how dangerous that can sometimes be.

On the night of February 26, 2012 George Zimmerman observed a person legally walking in his neighborhood that he thought was suspicious. He thought he was suspicious because he was the same race and age of persons who were thought to have committed property crimes in the neighborhood. George Zimmerman armed himself with a handgun and followed the “suspect” in his car. At some point he got out of his car and confronted the individual. Some sort of exchange ensued and an unarmed Travon Martin was shot dead. Whether George Zimmerman planned to shoot anyone is impossible to say; it is clear he prepared himself to so. The jury says there was no crime, but the jury can only judge the guilt of an individual, not a society, and crime and sin are not always the same thing. 

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Equilibrium

For no apparent reason I was sitting around this afternoon thinking about natural rights. I guess mostly because my job is boring. I wonder if perhaps the right to daydream is also unalienable, although the tax-payers paying my salary would likely not think so. Anyway, I have concluded that what so many try to define as natural rights are simply human predilections. We claim the right to free speech because it requires a severe beating to shut the average person up. We claim the right to bear arms because we are in parts hostile and fearful and fascinated with machines. We claim the right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure because we don’t like anybody messing with our shit. We claim the right of association because drinking alone is not as much fun. Our rights are, for the most part, just the freedom to be what we are.

From what moral authority these rights devolve, no one can truly say. Many would claim they are “God given”, but the Bible is oddly silent on whether or not a corporation is a person. I personally see scant evidence of any god’s existence and therefore cannot accept intellectually the presupposed moral structure that bestows these rights upon man. Mr. Jefferson, et. al. made reference to “nature’s god” in their eloquent treatise on why King George was a douche-bag, but this could have been a reference to Baal or Pan, or simply just a metaphor. Nonetheless, there is a tenacious impulse in the people of our nation to presuppose and defend with a mortal certainty the existence, universal applicability and moral sanctity of these rights.

Perhaps I overstate the case. The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness can certainly be abridged, often with the enthusiastic support of the populace. In some places you don’t even have to be technically guilty of a crime to be deprived of your life, but perhaps some pigs are after all more equal than others. I suspect that part of Mr. Jefferson’s intent was to suggest that rights were possessed not only by those who had the power to assert them, but that proposition then begs the question of what authority will preserve the rights of those who are not capable of doing so independently. Of course, the answer is government, but ironically we are now in an age where a significant number of our countrymen, perhaps even a majority, see government as the greatest threat to their liberties and they seek to fracture the responsibility for protection of individual rights into ever smaller units, right down to the solitary random dude with a gun. This pervasive suspicion of the police power of the state is, however, strangely lacking when it comes to the government’s imposition of certain behavioral constraints related to the moral preferences of certain groups of citizens. In America independence and conformity, like irony and hypocrisy, are mostly interchangeable.

I have cultivated an interesting perspective on the issue of unalienable rights, having spent more than a quarter of a century as a government bureaucrat involved in areas of regulation of building and development. I have listened to countless citizens bemoan the oppressive weight of government regulation and the fundamentally inequitable limitation on their right to engage in commerce. As a general proposition, the basic argument is that a person should be able to put whatever product on the market that they desire, and the informed consumer will make a rational choice concerning its purchase. Sounds like a winner in theory, but of course a couple of people usually have to be severely injured or killed before the informed consumer becomes informed. What do we do when one person’s right to pursue happiness contradicts another’s right to life? Bangladesh is, after all, the model for the unfettered free market.

Of course, regulation does often go too far and unreasonably impair the rights of individuals and is too frequently applied without due recourse to common sense, but perfection is not a prominent human trait, and neither is logical consistency. I continue intermittently to find irony in the significant subset of the population who will strongly assert their inviolable individual rights and in the same prolonged breath tell me their neighbors are illegally harboring a rooster which makes a lot of godawful noise. This makes we wonder as to whether harboring a rooster should not be included in the universal declaration of the natural rights of man. Sadly, absolutism is a luxury of the idle and mentally infirm and the rest of civilization must simply muddle along making daily the thousand compromises necessary to hold back the darkness of chaos and prevent interruption of cable service.

Pirates of the Parliament

I suppose things must be getting really fouled up when the timid toreador Harry Reed decides to actually take action on something. He is again threatening is to amend the Senate rules to limit the use of the filibuster. Since the rules can be, under the appropriate circumstances, amended by a simple majority of Senators, such an action is within the realm of the possible, especially given the almost ubiquitous use of the filibuster by the Republican minority to forestall consideration of anything Glenn Beck doesn’t approve of. It remains to be seen whether Senator Reed has the courage to do anything but piss himself when Mitch “The Turtle” McConnell glares at him, but I very much support the elimination of what is to my mind the political equivalent of a muzzle-loading flintlock.

Part of the deep-rooted political schizophrenia of our great nation stems from the dilemma that faced our forefathers as they contemplated ditching King George for Plan B. While they clearly understood the potential for abuse of authority inherent in hereditary, autocratic regimes, they were also a bit lukewarm on the aptitude of the common man for self-governance. Parlor tricks like the Electoral College and the Senate itself were devised to potentially frustrate the will of the majority should it deviate too severely from social stability and the solvency of the banks. In defense of the sainted founders of our nation, the French Revolution just a few years later demonstrated that their fears were not completely unfounded. The bottom line was, you could limit the franchise to white guys with property, but you could never be sure that a bunch of idiots wouldn’t accidentally be born white and luck into property through inheritance or the lottery.

So our democracy was conceived in metaphysical dysphoria and was designed as a procedural obstacle course to prevent anything precipitous from occurring. In this respect, our forefathers would be proud of what we have become. Unfortunately, the world has changed since the 1780’s and the role of the federal government has evolved to the point where paralysis can actually do practical harm. The filibuster itself has been around in the Senate in various incarnations since the mid 1800’s, but really took its modern form in the 1930’s. Without troubling myself to do any actual research, I believe the process requires a vote of 60 Senators to bring an end to debate on any proposed action and move it forward to a vote. It used to be a requirement that someone actually be debating for a vote to be filibustered, hence the melodramatic “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, but now Senators can sit in their offices and get pedicures while refusing to end debate on an issue and effectively defeating it, denying a potential majority of Senators the opportunity to consider approval of an action.

As matter of full disclosure, I am what Mr. Reagan would describe as “so far Left, I have left America”, and I am sure that there are those who would suggest my newfound distain for the filibuster is just partisan polemics, but I have convinced myself that it is really a pretty silly idea. As far as Citizen Obama’s agenda is concerned, filibuster reform in the Senate would likely result only in improved success of judicial appointments since the MENSA gang over in the House will never approve anything that a black man supports. To me, the issue is more of a call to recognize that as a nation we only perfunctorily embrace true majority rule and, as each political group takes its turn sucking hind tit in the wilderness, we are becoming more and more absorbed with simply defeating the evil machinations of our opponents and less and less committed to any real principle. In that vein, I was dismayed to see Texas State Senator Wendy Davis elevated to hero status for filibustering an anti-abortion measure, not because I support such theocratic, totalitarian falderal, but because it just demonstrated that Democrats are as hypocritical and void of principal as the abominable Republicans.

   

Anyway, there are no innocent parties in this agglomerated mess we have made of our political process, but the proponents of obstructive minority rule are nothing more than treasonous royalists who seek to place King George back upon the throne. I see the mental state of participants in our present political system as being like that of jilted lovers who selfishly murder their former paramours simply to prevent them from being with anyone else. If you only believe in democracy when you are in the majority, then you belong in the Soviet Union. The filibuster is a bad idea that makes a whole lot of other bad ideas worse and Senators of every political stripe need to grow up and act like adults instead of spoiled children who didn’t get what they wanted for Christmas.

Zombie Research News

Seems like zombies are just about everywhere these days. With the release of Brad Pitt’s summer blockbuster “World War Z” just around the corner, reanimated, cannibalistic corpses are once again in the news. Perhaps not coincidentally, a newly published study, “Zombies; Serious Threat or Delusional Bullshit”, undertaken by Dr. Wang Chung Chu of the State University of California at Rancho Cucamonga and Dr. Vern Angstvorstern of the Technical Institute of Basel, explores the scientific basis for carnivorous corpses and conjectures how such a plague might begin and eventually wipe out mankind. The nine and one-half page report, published in the June edition of The Journal of Armenian Homeopathic Practice, examines the biological basis for zombies and the epidemiology of a possible zombie outbreak.

Dr. Chu, who holds a PhD. in industrial psychology from Case Western Reserve University, first became interested in the potential for real life zombies when he was bitten by an apparently homeless man on Rue de Chartres in New Orleans while attending the Super Bowl in 2002, which was won by the Patriots on a late Adam Vinatieri field goal. Says Dr. Chu, “this guy was super grody and the bite hurt like hell. He didn’t break the skin because his few remaining teeth were pretty loose, but I had to ask myself what would have happened if this guy had been dead and ripped a big chunk out of my hand. I would have been in some serious trouble.” After this experience, Dr. Chu began to read all the scientific literature he could find on the living dead. “I couldn’t find any scientific literature on the living dead,” says Dr. Chu, “so I thought I should probably write some.”

With the aid of a grant from The National Science Foundation and UNESCO, Dr. Chu assembled his research team. Realizing he needed someone with a credible background in microbiology and cellular mechanics, he contacted Dr. Vern Angstvorstern, a chemist with extensive experience in the reflective optics of industrial coatings. “Dr. Angstvorstern was just the man we needed,” recalls Dr. Chu; “he was neurotically meticulous with an obsessive eye for detail and he owned a boat on Lake Lucerne.” Dr. Angstvorstern recalls their first conversation on the proposed study, “I had just completed a research project in which we had attempted to find a coating for the hulls of large vessels such as oil tankers which would prevent barnacles from attaching themselves. The research was largely unsuccessful and I really needed some money. The grant funding sounded interesting, so I joined the team.”

Chu and Angstvorstern began by assessing the supposedly fictional representations of zombies in popular culture. “We must have watched 200 zombie movies,” says Chu; “most of them were pretty shitty. The plots made no sense, the editing was incoherent and the cinematography was awful. Whoever thought this crap was marketable entertainment escapes me.” Angstvorstern echoed Chu’s sentiments, “I’ve seen Bangladeshi porn with better production values than most of this manure,” Nonetheless, after hundreds of hours of viewing, the team was able to establish the basic rules of reanimation of the dead and the forces that drive them to seek human flesh. “Your guess is as good as mine,” says Chu; “it’s either a virus or radiation or a curse or a chemical the military made or a medical experiment gone sadly off track.” As to the craving for human flesh, Angstvorstern puts it more succinctly; “well, some zombies seem to only want brains, while others will eat intestines and some even eat bugs and raccoons.”

As to whether there is any real chance that a zombie apocalypse will befall the world in the future, Chu and Angstvorstern are decidedly noncommittal. “There’s no way any of this shit could ever happen,” says Chu; “dead people can’t get up and walk around. That’s complete foolishness.” Adds Angstvorstern, “If you have ever tried to keep barnacles off a boat, you know what a challenge it can be, but human progress will defeat even the barnacle one day.” Despite remaining unanswered questions, the work of Chu and Angstvorstern has expanded the frontiers of scientific knowledge and provided a solid basis for audiences all over the world to judge the scientific accuracy of zombie films like World War Z. Angstvorstern sums it up, “the Dawn of the Dead remake was pretty good, but I didn’t get paid enough to watch most of that wretched mess.”

Mr. Cthulhu, Your Table is Ready

Animal Planet just aired a program about the “Man-Eating Super Squid”. This was part of its “Monster Week” line-up of supposedly frightening creatures. For my part, the “monsters” in Monster Week are like the “news” in Fox News, but I digress. My initial expectation was that I would see a squid, possibly wearing a red cape, shooting lasers out of its perfectly round, soulless eyes while slaughtering boatloads of hapless Haitian refugees or snatching healthy, buxom possibly under-aged young girls from the surf, but instead there was a collection of sailor’s tales (which are especially known for their uncanny accuracy) and video of some smallish but excitable squid doing what smallish but excitable squid do.

For the record, there are presently around 300 species of squid lurking in the world’s oceans apparently patiently waiting for the opportunity to dine upon succulent human flesh. They range from the very tiny (around one-quarter of an inch) to giant, colossal and stupendous (about 45 feet long). They have been around for 60 million years, give or take, and inhabit virtually every corner of the globe. The best known of all squid is perhaps Squidward, who lives next door to Sponge Bob, but he sadly is missing a couple of tentacles and is not a good candidate for being a man eater. When they are not gleefully eating people, squids enjoy a diet of fish, crabs and each other. They are also eaten by quite a few residents of the ocean and slaughtered sperm whales are well known for having bellies full of the indigestible beaks of large squid, which must leave them feeling bloated and irritable, perhaps explaining why they often try to smash the boats of the whalers who are attempting to slaughter them.

Here would perhaps be a good point at which to address the on-going controversy as to the plural of the word “squid”. Merriam-Webster’s on-line dictionary says that it can be either “squid” or “squids”. Why we are given a choice of a very clear usage and an ambiguous and potentially confusing one, I do not know. If, for example, someone said “the squid ate my mother”, we would have no idea whether there was one culprit or several. This could lead to some issues at the eulogy when the preachers says Mrs. So-and-so was eaten by “the squid”. Some mourners might note that Mrs. So-and-so was a large woman and then inappropriately extrapolate the required size of the offending squid (singular), when in reality it was dozens of smaller squid that skeletonized her in four feet of water off Cocoa Beach. Words do matter.

In the program, Animal Planet shows us a couple of guys who went diving in the Sea of Cortez where large groups of the Humboldt Squid are known to hang out. These guys got pestered and ultimately assaulted by a number of the squid. The Humboldt Squid can grow as large as six feet in length and weight up to 100 pounds. Apparently they are very curious and don’t like to be bothered when eating. The divers in the video say the squid punched them, bit them and pulled them down into the murky depths with hostile intent, perhaps to eat them, maybe sexually assault them, or possibly just to kill them because they were boring. Who can say? When the divers were released by the squid(s), the playful cephalopods flashed various colors, perhaps to say “quit being such a cry-baby, we were just fucking with you”. In any event, I was disappointed to see that there were no partially eaten neoprene-clad corpses pulled dramatically from the ocean with blank, empty eye sockets staring accusingly at the cameras.

So anyway, what struck me most about the whole program was the implication of evil intent on the part of our clever mollusk cousins and the seemingly genuine hurt feelings of these guys who got harassed. A squid is just a freakily mutated snail with great eye-sight and enough intelligence to be concerned about what the fuck a human is doing swimming around in its ocean. In my opinion, hippies and other unrealistic people should not go in the ocean, because the idea that they may gently commune with the peaceful denizens of this primitive world is a hash induced fantasy. I am really sorry these guys got beat up by the squids, but they asked for it. Animals do not like you or dislike you; they only want to know if they can safely eat you, are you going to try to eat them and what your fat ass is doing taking up space in the territory necessary to their survival. We create our gods and our fears in our own image, but squids and the rest of the world’s carnivores don’t have the emotional capacity or the idle time to wish us harm. As usual, the only real monsters are the Homo sapiens who harvest the oceans to the point of exhaustion, dump garbage and sewerage into the squid’s habitat and eat calamari while watching Animal Planet and shuddering at the thought of being grasped by a powerful, sinewy tentacle and dragged off to face the same cold indifference that we claim as our birth right.

Those Were the Days

Just for the record, I have not watched one minute of the television coverage of the Republican National Convention, nor do I intend to do so. I am one of those close-minded, judgmental people who already know everything and don’t need any new information. Well, perhaps I am being too hard on myself; perhaps it is more like having once tasted a turd, you know it tastes like shit and the next time somebody offers you one, you don’t need to chomp down on it to be certain that you will not find it palatable. Anyway, I have read many of the reports from the biased socialist, communist liberal media and can safely say that there is nothing new under the sun in the world of Conservative America.

 

Also for the record, I have this recurring fantasy of anally raping Ann Coulter while I slowly strangle her with an electrical cord and then I dispose of her nude body in a drainage ditch with several inches of stagnant water beside a state highway in Alabama. I know this says a lot about me, principally my dedication to public service, but I’m not trying to pretend to be some sort of hero; I just can’t stand the hateful and vindictive shit that comes out of some people’s mouths. I am also not sure why Ann Romney is not at home with her sister-wives raising up a passel of young’uns instead of regaling the assembled faithful with her utopian vision of an America where all wealthy white people can live in harmony and freedom, but what do I really know, after all? For example, I don’t know what the hell George Washington intended when he wrote the Magna Carta, but that was a long time ago. Back then, a slave was three-fifths of a person and gasoline was a penny a gallon. People went to church because it was the only place to find a decent hook-up. Land was cheap and anybody who was willing to murder a few Indians could make a life for themselves. Nobody stopped you from beating your wife or smoking dope and the average life expectancy was two and a half years. Everybody had to build their own cold fusion reactors and we were a better nation for it.

 

It seems to me that the most consistent theme in Conservative rhetoric is the loss of something pure in American society. There is an almost obsessive desire to return to some unspecified but nostalgically perfect time or condition when America used to be a better place. A time when the individual controlled their own fate and we were all unified in our belief in God and country. The problem is, of course, that such a time never existed. For every great virtue of the past there are two horrible and intolerable conditions that have to be ignored. The irony here is that my Republican brethren are bigger idealists than I am. They actually believe in the perfection of humanity instead of the interminable struggle to hold back the darkness. Their idea of perfection may be a little on the Third Reich side, but it is not unusual for people to long for a society where there is no conflict, everyone agrees on important things and unpleasant displays of poverty or perversion are hidden away from decent folk.

 

So here’s my analysis. Mythology is parable and allegory, not history or law. The American mythology of our sainted Founding Fathers, the vision and charity of Captains of Industry and the simple, self-gratifying toil of the masses is all delusional shit. It is only valuable in the opportunity it provides us to aspire to be better people and a better nation. As the parade of lost souls at the Republican Convention continues to invoke God and wave the flag and talk about values, they are nothing more than Oprah’s Book-of-the-Month Club discussing some wonderful, inspiring novel they all just read. They are filled with a sense of longing for a world that never existed; sadly Bilbo Baggins and Harry Potter are just idealistic visions of resourcefulness and moral purity. Transforming those visions into reality is not a job for people looking behind them, nor is it a task for the intellectually limited or the culturally inflexible. Bibles and bombs and abortion bans will not fix what ails America, nor will a diminished sense of social responsibility or descent into the hallucinatory hell of unfettered capitalism. If the truth be told, I choose to avoid watching the Republican Convention not because I fear I will, in a paroxysm of rage, hurl something at my expensive flat-screen TV, but because I am a grown man and I fear the senseless sadness of it will make me cry.

Pussy Magic

Meet Todd Akin, a six-term Congressman from Missouri who aspires to replace Senator Clare McCaskill in the U.S. Senate. In his tenure as a Congressman, he has expressed some opinions and served on some committees. He has sponsored legislation to define rape as something like fucking a nun. He has a Master of Divinity degree. He doesn’t support the right to choose to have an abortion, but he does support the right to own a lot of guns and he supports the War on Terror. He likes Paul Ryan, but not in a gay way.

Congressman Akin feels that women who are “legitimately” raped have a greatly reduced likelihood of getting pregnant. This is because of some power that the female body has to reject the sperm of a rapist. Apparently a friend told him this. A friend who is a doctor. Probably a Doctor of Divinity. Undocumented, scientifically inaccurate supposition is an important currency of discourse with people like Todd Akin, and ignoring facts that contradict his previously arrived at conclusions is the foundation of his impish charm. According to an authoritative source which I shall not name because that would violate the rules of ignoramus debate, about five percent of rapes result in pregnancy. I don’t know if this calculation is adjusted for the rape of girls too young to conceive or the rape of men or of ladies past menopause, so a woman could have a greater chance than that of getting pregnant from a rape, unless their secret uterus magic kicks in. In all fairness to Congressman Akin, he did say he misspoke when he found that his comments had been distorted by the liberal media to make it sound like he was an idiot. I respect people who abandon their unpopular principles.

If Congressman Akin were just some ambitious, ignorant megalomaniac shit-ass spouting voodoo nonsense to appeal to the mass of superstitious, retard voters in some backwater, inbred Congressional district, I wouldn’t really care. There will always be shit-holes in America, because freedom and genetic diversity provide for it, but this guy wants to be a Senator and represent the great State of Missouri, wherein lie St. Louis and Kansas City and about six million people; and the true shame of it is that he still has a reasonable chance of doing exactly that.

In 15th Century Europe they burned women for being witches; our sainted Pilgrim forefathers hung women a couple of centuries later for the same offense. It is always women who are getting blamed for freaky shit, usually unmarried women and more often than not, young ones. My theory is that some men are not handling the transition to civilization very well and they can’t get down with the fact that a woman can control the use of her own pussy. That pussy is pretty fucking enticing, and it sucks when you want some and the bitch blows you off. We men can’t understand why that pussy is so fucking irresistible; it must be the work of the devil because it makes us do stupid shit like buying houses and fist fighting our best friends. Ultimately, we resent the fact that we are slaves to pussy and of course we can’t blame ourselves, so the pussy’s owner must be the culprit. You evil, seductive bitches are responsible for this fucking mayhem. Sluts.

The sad truth is that in America we still have primitive minds, male and female, that wish to explain away violence against women as a consequence of nature and not a conscious choice on someone’s part to be a fuck-stick. When Mr. Akin misspoke, what he clearly meant to say was that if you weren’t a skanky whore who deserved to be raped, then God would probably not force you to carry a child you did not conceive out of love as a punishment for your skankiness. Since you can only “legitimately” rape the pure, all you promiscuous slatterns brought this crap on yourself, and we shouldn’t let you escape your well deserved penance by allowing you an opportunity for an abortion, or the status as a victim. What Congressman Akin is trying to say is that you fucking women are less than fucking human and should be treated like fucking animals, and if you allow medieval piss brains like him to get elected, you will be.

Citizens United, Perhaps

One-hundred and three days until the November 2012 elections and everything has settled into a predictable pattern. Unlike the 2008 election cycle when Barrack and Hilary were wedgying each other down to the wire, and John McCain was trying to re-learn how to smile, the nominees of the two relevant political parties have been obvious for some time, which has allowed them to go full bore with expending the gross national product of several South American nations trying to convince us what a turd the other guy is.

The role of money in political campaigns is an issue that is almost as old as the nation itself. Somebody had to pay for the hay for Washington’s horse as he rode around fathering the nation. The National Archives are replete with posters opposing Free Silver, supporting the Kansas-Nebraska Act and making fun of Millard Fillmore. Somebody had to pay for that stuff. There has never been a time in human civilization when the wealthy and the powerful didn’t have a disproportionate influence on the development of public policy.

The difference today is the sad reality of who the wealthy and powerful are. A thousand years ago, if you wanted to be the Viking king, you had to at least kick ass on a few dozen big, hairy Vikings and be able to hold your liquor. People listened to you because they knew you would smack them with the broad side of a battle ax if they didn’t, but they also knew that you would kick ass on any unwelcome invaders and that you would bring home the booty. The Viking king would be among the first to die if shit went south; he had not just authority but responsibility and accountability. Certainly he had privilege, but he had earned it by what he contributed to society. Even the 19th Century Robber Barons, with all their unethical and exploitive practices, actually accomplished something positive. They built railroads and steel mills and ships and factories. They got obscenely rich, but their objectives were almost never purely wealth; they had visions and dreams. They may have squashed a lot of decent, hard-working people along the way, but the nation got something in return, including a fresh understanding of how much it sucked to be exploited, which led to 20th Century liberalism.

Wealth in present day America is real mixed bag, but the super-wealthy tend to have one thing in common; they haven’t done shit for anybody, except perhaps their shareholders. The typical billionaire is either an inheritor living off the genius of past generations, has made their money speculating in commodities and stock markets, got rich charging you $30 for every bounced check, or earned hundreds of millions of dollars laying Americans off and exploiting Chinese peasants. While these may be gross and unsupportable generalizations, I am firmly committed to them being correct. There are, of course, always exceptions. Bill Gates, for example, is fabulously wealthy because he transformed civilization as we know it, for better or worse. Interestingly, people who have acquired great wealth through invention and initiative appear to be more likely to use their wealth for positive social change and addressing the needs of the unfortunate, unlike the Koch brothers.

Heaven forbid that we have any class warfare in our classless capitalist utopia, but I just think that if we are going to have people using unlimited wealth to promote political points of view, that it would be nice if they actually knew something or cared about something besides their own economic benefit. Freedom is not any guarantee of quality and no rules or laws are likely to protect us from the cold reality that some pigs are more equal than others, but if we start demanding that people have actually done something worth a shit before we pay any attention to their braying, then things might make a little more sense. As always, we Americans are masters of our own destiny to the extent that we choose to be. We don’t need the Supreme Court to protect us, and they won’t anyway.

It's not the heat, it's the Stupidity

It was hot when I got up this morning. That is probably not completely unusual since it is normally hot in Florida in July, always compounded by the insufferable humidity, but it started me thinking about how hot it has been everywhere for the past few years and why America is no longer capable of exercising productive leadership in the world. “What!?” you say. “Huh?” you reply. Well, I’m having a little internal dialog about global warming and how our treatment of the issue reflects a larger problem with American society.

Climate science, like much of our knowledge of the natural world, is complex. The earth’s climate is affected by a diverse set of variables which range from various cycles of the sun to behavior of ocean currents to the chemical composition of the atmosphere. There is debate about the future of the earth’s climate precisely because it is a complex scientific issue, and complex scientific issues are not generally the province of the untrained layman. Some of you may recall the chewing gum commercial where four out of five dentists recommended a particular brand of gum. This was judged to be effective advertising because the chewing gum company figured dentist ought to know what you should be putting in your mouth and if a significant majority of them thought a particular product was preferred, the buying public would consider this good enough for them. They never said what the fifth dentist preferred, or what his reasoning was, but it was accepted that when experts disagree, you are better off going with the majority opinion. One might term it a sort of intellectual democracy, with the key difference that only people who have legitimate qualifications get a vote.

The current debate on global warming tosses this accepted concept in the dumpster. Fully 95 percent of qualified climate scientists, qualified being having reasonable education and experience in the in the subject area, agree that the Earth’s average temperature is increasing. Perhaps three-quarters of them are in agreement that at least some of this increase is attributable to human action. Almost all of them agree that global warming, if occurring, will have a dramatic impact on human civilization. As with everything from evolution to the theory of relativity, there is dispute among intelligent, qualified experts acting in good faith, and sometimes the lone voice crying in the wilderness is absolutely correct, but there is a reason they have that ask the audience life-line on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.  I am not a qualified expert on the Earth’s climate and I will not attempt to debate the science, I just know that if I have a lump on my neck and I consult ten doctors and nine of them say have it removed, I’m having it removed.

Unfortunately, in America we have now largely abandoned respect for education and appreciation for the scientific process and have subordinated our policy decisions to the financial interests of the corporations that fund election campaigns and the strident voices of the extreme. Corporations have no children and therefore cannot reflect upon the moral responsibility we have for how we impact future generations and extremists tend to be either ignorant or emotionally defective, or both, and do not make good leaders. As a society, whether we are progressive, conservative or don’t give a shit, we have abdicated our civic responsibility to educate ourselves on the basics of how the world functions and to select leadership which is capable of understanding complex issues and which has the courage to be honest and make difficult decisions. We no longer trust any opinion except the ones that support what we already thought and we have convinced ourselves that legitimate scientific debate is just a proxy for promoting philosophical objectives. We are so fucked. It’s really sad.

America has probably never been the moral paradise that many nostalgically long for and we have entertained some pretty fucking stupid ideas over the centuries. I’m not saying that our current idiocy represents a dramatic turn for the worse, but we seem to have lost the spirit of inquiry that used to drive our progress. It appears we think we have it all figured out and there is no need to seriously reflect on issues anymore. Few people are curious about anything but the Kardashian’s sex lives. The tragedy of this is that we are approaching a juncture in mankind’s history where thoughtful consideration of our situation will be the only thing that stands between us and unimaginable suffering. My opinion is that if you can’t understand the cause of the heat, then stay the fuck out of the kitchen.

Paid Political Announcement

As I sit here today, I can well imagine President Obama hiding there in the Offal Office, confused, frightened and ineffective, watching in wonder as the besieging army of Republican Presidential candidates slowly burst into flames, one after the other, and collapse into piles of smoldering ignorance and hypocrisy. Like Moses, he probably feels the hand of divine providence as he is delivered from his enemies unto the Promised Land. Personally, I am not looking forward to another four years of Quisling compromise and forgotten principles, but since the viable alternatives are so heinous, I have no choice but to support the current President. I realize this is just the sort of copout that has ruined America, but sometimes you have to accept mediocrity to oppose evil.

The media hype machine has been working overtime to try and create some interest in the political pornography that is the Republican primaries. First it was Michele “Hypno Toad” Bachmann, the first truly mentally handicapable candidate in American history; then it was that venal, misogynistic idiot savant Newt Gingrich back from the dead like a protégé of Dr. Herbert West, and now we’re back to Mutt Romney, the self-made son of privilege who changes his colors so often that the chameleon and octopus are left gaping in wonder. Not since Commodus has a man had such a sterling career based upon nothing other than his father’s legacy. Mr. Romney says in his TV commercial that he will “never, ever apologize for America”, apparently even when we’ve totally fucked things up, so he’s clearly the sort of thoughtful, objective realist we need in these treacherous and difficult times.

I’m going to digress here to point out that Mr. Romney is a Mormon. Religion is such a sensitive subject in America, for a myriad reasons, that openly and honestly discussing it is almost taboo, but every candidate for President, Republican or otherwise, seems to want us to understand that they are people of faith, including Mr. Romney, so I think it is fair game for analysis. I have not had close personal relationships with many Mormons, but the ones I have known were uniformly sociable and agreeable people who eschewed unhealthy behaviors and obeyed the laws, so it would be impossible for me to fairly level any criticism against the adherents of Mormonism based upon personal experience. Because I have long been an adherent of the Marlboro and Jack Daniels diet plan, I don’t think I would be very well received among the Latter Day Saints, but they’ve never wronged me as far as I know.

Back during the dark days of my misspent youth, I and several of my hash-addled fraternity brothers were visited by a pair of young Mormon missionaries.  We received them politely and settled them into comfortable chairs and proceeded to have a discourse on the nature of faith, the possibility of true knowledge and ultimate reality of existence. We were not awarded a copy of the Book of Mormon at the conclusion of this discourse and at least one of the young missionaries may have committed suicide shortly thereafter, but the upshot of it was that Mormonism didn’t appear to offer anything new or particularly revealing from a metaphysical perspective. Couple this with a secretive church bureaucracy that attempts to rewrite history to support myth and an institutional tendency towards mysticism, and Mormonism appears to be just as useless of the rest of organized religion. In fact, I think the worst thing that has ever happened to Western Civilization was probably when Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 A.D. This concluded the process of transforming the simple, humanistic philosophy of a filthy, sandal wearing socialist hippy into a political imperative and an instrument of state control. The Romans, cynical and crafty as always, absorbed the revolution that was challenging their legitimacy and hammered plowshares into swords to puncture enemies of the state and expand the Emperor’s dominion from this world to the world to come. From there, the magic underwear was clearly not far behind. Let me say, I truly admire the Romans; they set the standard for worship of power, wealth and privilege that has become the cornerstone of our civilization and the underlying theme of the Republican Party. What Jesus would have thought of this as he selflessly mingled with the lepers is anybody’s guess, but “Oh Goody!” doesn’t really come to mind.

Anyway, we are on the verge of another season of deliberate lies, distortions and misrepresentations, enhanced with honest mistakes of ignorance. I’m not sure it really matters which of the soldiers of the Army of Darkness emerges as the challenger to the President; he or she will almost certainly promote the interests of the wealthy over the needs of society and they will cloak themselves in the raiment of Christian humility and divine obedience while cashing checks from the Aryan Brotherhood. It’s really quite enough to make one want to puke. It would be pretty entertaining if somebody like that spiteful, venomous insect Rick Santorum were nominated, but it is difficult to imagine that even the Republican base could be so lacking in intellectual discernment, though I can always hope. Our other fine Mormon candidate, John Huntsman, is really the only Republican running whose election would not force me to flee to Romania, but he has the support of the same number of Republicans who support Barrack Obama, so his nomination is not likely.

We humans are a fine mess. Simultaneously dangerously clever and dangerously ignorant, we believe that some angry phantom created the universe and doesn’t want us to masturbate. We assemble by the billions in places of divine worship throughout the world and then sally forth and bash each other’s heads. Here in America, we tattoo “Freedom!” on our asses and then let those selfsame asses be groped by total strangers in airports while our elected representatives pass laws that allow the government to listen to our phone conversations when we complain about the groping. Every so often we have the opportunity to correct all this nonsense by putting reasonable people in positions of power to exercise the collective authority of “the people” and preserve human dignity and freedom, but instead we elect self-interested sociopaths, deluded messiahs and cowardly lions. Fuck if I can figure it out.

Here's the Thing

I’m a bit concerned about this “Thing” thing. This is the thing; “The Thing from Another World” was an admirable picture for 1951. Margaret Sheridan would have definitely been supremely doable bent over a stump in a garter and some hose with a bright red ball gag in her mouth, and Corporal Barnes went on to manage the production of several episodes of Batman, Land of the Giants, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Time Tunnel and Lost in Space; some of the best TV Sci-Fi of my youth. Of course, no one can forget a young Marshall Dillon as the carrot from outer space. The black and white portrayal of the Arctic monochrome and the creeping claustrophobic paranoia of hunting the budding extraterrestrial vegetable definitely gave the movie an “in the produce section, no one can hear you scream” quality. The Cold War (Arctic, Cold? anyway…) was in full swing and we were under siege from every treachery imaginable with nothing but the All-American electrical technology of Nikola Tesla to preserve us. I didn’t see the movie for the first time until around 1970, but I was young enough, and not quite completely spoiled enough by “special effects”, to still find it frightening.

Along comes 1982, Reagan is President, and I, listlessly killing time between the Army and college, go with my sister and some friends to the Omni in Atlanta to see John Carpenter’s “The Thing”. It’s an afternoon matinee and, consistent with Atlanta’s demographic, the crowd is almost exclusively black. Without undue stereotyping, it is accurate to report that many patrons were already talking to the screen while Snake Plissken was still in the Viking research station eyeballing frozen corpses. What proceeded to unfold was a grotesque ballet of nauseating imagery, gallows humor and the anxious fear of genuine uncertainty. I’m not going to say that “The Thing” is a masterpiece, but “The Thing” is a masterpiece. I have this movie on DVD and have nearly worn a hole in it. I never get too much of Kurt Russell’s sneering or Wilfred “Diabetes” Brimley’s deadpan. And the black guy doesn’t get killed first, or perhaps, at all. Keith David, whom I sleazily loved in “Requiem for a Dream” and admired in “Dead Presidents”, is the perfect foil for Russell’s I’m-young-and-good-looking-and-in-charge-and-also-white. It was 1982, remember. I will say, while I did miss some of the dialog that day, I don’t think I had before or since enjoyed a more blissfully uncontrolled communion of terror with my fellow Homo sapiens. Anyway, I didn’t feel John Carpenter had ripped off “The Thing from Another World” so much as allowed it to evolve. It was more than “updated”; it was transformed into the gag reflex horror of the full color, post Vietnam reality of human civilization which the naiveté of hiding under a desk to escape from a 20 megaton hydrogen bomb would never have been able to comprehend. It was simply, “The Thing”, and it didn’t matter where the fuck the thing was from; it was fucking bad news. John Carpenter had already proven he could generate return on investment with “Halloween”, “The Fog” and “Escape from New York”, so you knew it was going to be good, but it was better than good; it was different.

So now, along comes “The Thing” 2011 style. Of course I have not seen it yet, and, of course, I will, but I can’t help feel like somebody wants to replace the Mona Lisa with a digitally enhanced Mona Lisa. Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. hasn’t directed shit, and while Mary Elizabeth Winstead is a babe, eye candy does not a horror movie make. You just can’t tell me that you can do better than MacReady and Childs, surrounded by the flickering remains of the research station, sharing a drink, while the frozen darkness slithers in from all sides. My children say I’m getting old and stupid, but I’m still smart enough to follow MacReady’s advice and just wait here for a little while... see what happens. 

The Origin of Father's Day

2,000 years ago, during the Han Dynasty, there lived a poor peasant named Wu Chan Chu. He resided with his wife and eight children in the small village of Wuwei near the capital of Luoyang. For many months, children had been disappearing from the village without a trace, despite the best efforts of their parents to keep a constant eye on them. Many feared that wolves or a bear that had acquired the taste for human flesh were to blame, but Wu Chan’s wife practiced the old religion and she told all who would listen that a demon stalked the town seeking revenge for being cheated by the villager’s ancestors. Wu Chan did not believe in such superstitious nonsense and he was embarrassed by his wife’s backward ways, but she was a good wife and had borne him many healthy children, so he kept his tongue.

One evening Wu Chan was returning to the village after having delivered a wagon-load of wheat to a nearby town. Darkness was falling as he approached the outskirts by the lonely road that passed through a thick wood. Only minutes short of home, he came upon a terrifying sight; a grotesque and ferocious creature was eating the remains of a child Wu Chan recognized as a son of a neighboring family. He thought to take a stick to the creature, but it rose and stood like a man, blood and gore dripping from its enormous teeth. It looked as if its skin was alive with a coat of flesh-eating beetles and it gave off the most over-whelming stench of decay. Wu Chan did not want to believe it, but he knew he was in the presence of a demon; he would be very sorry to have to admit to his wife that she had been right.

“Wu Chan. Your feeble efforts cannot deter me. I am the powerful Demon Shen, and I have returned after a long absence on important business to claim what is rightfully mine.”

The words felt as if they were hammered into Wu Chan’s ears. He was frightened and wanted to run away, but he feared for the safety of his children. “O Great Demon Shen, what can you possibly desire from our humble village?” Wu Chan could hear his teeth chattering.

The demon spat out a small human tooth and looked at Wu Chan, though he seemed pleased to have someone to converse with. “Since you have the courage to inquire, I will answer your inquiry. Over two-hundred years ago this village sought my aid during a time of drought. In exchange for bringing the rains, I was to have a child to be my companion in Diyu (Hell), but I was tricked and they gave me a child made of straw to accompany me, which promptly burst into flames when I returned to the underworld. I have been totally pissed ever since, and now I am here to claim all the village’s children, the last of which shall accompany me to Diyu.”

Wu Chan had no doubt that some in the village, even today, would greedily and foolishly try and cheat a demon, but Wu Chan loved his children and prayed that they might be spared. “O Great Demon Shen, I beg to accompany you to Diyu in the stead of the promised child so that my children might be spared.” Wu Chan knew his wife would be quite cross about having to provide for eight children on her own, but this was better than having them eaten.

“Ah, Wu Chan” said the demon, “I can see that you are a sentimental fool, but you have displayed great courage and selfless love. As a demon, I do not understand this and, quite frankly, it makes me a little uncomfortable. I am in the mood to eat children and cannot, therefore, accept your offer, but because you do not fear evil when faced with harm to your loved ones, I will spare all your children on the condition you return to this place each year at this exact time and say “Shen is fucking awesome!” You must do this each and every year until the day of your death.” Having said this, the demon billowed into a sulfurous cloud and blew into the dark woods.

Wu Chan returned home and greeted his wife and children affectionately. He told no one but his wife what had occurred and, while children continued to disappear for some years, Wu Chan’s children were spared (this did, however, create some friction with the neighbors, but what can you do?) Every year on what came to be known to his children as “Father’s Day” Wu Chan faithfully returned to the spot and paid homage to the demon until Wu Chan died in his bed surrounded by his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Wise Guys

If you visit the Animal Planet web site and look at their Top Ten lists, you will see a link (http://animal.discovery.com/tv/a-list/creature-countdowns/smartest/smartest.html) for the ten smartest animals on the planet. The first thing that struck me about this list is that Homo sapiens do not appear on it. There are at least a few possible reasons for this; the good people at Animal planet don’t consider people animals; they have reservations about self-evaluation; or we just didn’t make the top ten. Any of these are plausible, but recent political and social trends lend much credence to the last most of the possibilities.

At number ten on the list is the ubiquitous rat. Rats are known for being good at navigating mazes and their fondness for cheese. It has been demonstrated that rats can count, at least up to five, and they are able to recognize and remember complex patterns when properly induced, such as with the possibility of access to food, sex or cocaine (in this respect, the common rat is most comparable to a Republican Congressman). We are not, however, completely comfortable with the intelligence of the rat. Rats know, for example, that dead rats don’t need their intestines anymore and that the extremely intoxicated have little feeling in their extremities. Rats also know that human infants don’t know Kung Fu. Rats are literally everywhere on Planet Earth and will do anything, no matter how selfish or degrading, to survive, sort of like Lindsey Lohan. When you are the creature with which the concept of “rat fuck” is associated, you clearly deserve some credit.

Number nine on the list is the octopus. You would think they would have made the octopus number eight just for irony, but perhaps the people at Animal Planet don’t appreciate irony. The octopus is the cleverest of the invertebrates, smarter even than the spineless asses in Congress. It can navigate mazes and open jars on par with the average citizen of Alabama. The octopus can communicate with complex visual signals produced by changing the pigmentation of its skin. While scientists are not clear on all the intended meanings, “I’m horny” and “piss off” are prominent among them. Most knowledgeable people agree that octopi (3.14 octopuses) would build nuclear weapons and eradicate the human race if they could get some plutonium, which is why we make every effort to recover any nuclear devices lost at sea. The octopus is sneaky, evil, hateful and disgusting, which completely justifies us dumping raw sewerage and other garbage into its environment.

Number eight is the Pigeon. The Pigeon. Allegedly pigeons have excellent memories and can differentiate between their own reflection and the reflections of other pigeons in a mirror. Why they would care is something of a mystery. Pigeons have been known to exploit the mentally ill and the elderly for breadcrumbs. They have an advanced chemical warfare program in which they spread Histoplasmosis through their dung. Their ultimate objective is in all likelihood the eradication of mankind, but in the short term, vandalizing bronze statues appears to be their goal. Pigeons can remember things for years, so if you ever crossed one, you might want to move.

The seventh most intelligent animal is the squirrel. No joke. Hey, I didn’t make the list. The squirrel is essentially an arboreal rat with a bushy tail, but what makes them smarter than a rat is that they know how to be cute. They also know how to hide food and climb up on bird-feeders. In reality squirrels are selfish and devious creatures that have no respect for private property or vehicular rights-of-way. They scamper hither and yon, indifferent to traffic patterns or the length of your dog’s leash. They have been known to torment their canine cousins by repeatedly running along the top of a fence, just out of reach. Squirrels are, however, smart enough not to torment cats, which is what keeps them on the list.

Number six on the list is the pig. Pigs are highly adaptable and adept at problem solving. Part of the esteem for their intelligence stems from the fact that they know housework is a waste of time. Also, pigs will eat anything, which makes picking a restaurant a lot easier. Pigs can be trained to do anything a dog can do, except perhaps bark. Many people keep pigs as pets and say they are as affectionate as dogs or cats, which indicates that pigs will lie for food, an essential element of any definition of intelligence.

Number five is crows. These creepy descendants of the dinosaur are well known for their ability to stealthily purloin your French fries when your back is turned. It is no accident that they were the villains in ‘The Birds”; they would murder you if they had access to firearms, but they have been known to employ the old “beak in the eye” routine. Crows utilize all sorts of strategies to crack nuts, such as leaving them in the road for cars to run over; they would do the same thing with your toddler if they had more lift. It is a myth that crows assemble when someone is about to die; they are smart enough to wait until someone is dead to show up.

Number four is the elephant. They are, of course, known for their extraordinary memory and their habit of all-too-public displays of grief at the death of a herd member. Elephants are vicious and vindictive bastards who hold a grudge for years, thanks, I guess, to their good memory. They use tools in the wild, which means they will throw shit at you if so inclined. Elephants kill people all the time, which shows they have a pretty good handle on the whole ‘badass” thing. In fact, elephants are the only creature to make both the top ten most intelligent and top ten deadliest lists. You would be well advised not to fuck with elephants.

Third on the list is the orangutan. The orangutan looks like a human and acts like a human, except that it’s not an asshole. Speaking of acting like humans, orangutans have been in Clint Eastwood movies, but that’s not necessarily a sign of intelligence. They have complex social structures and solve complex puzzles. Perhaps they should be in Congress, unlike Republicans.

Number 2 is the dolphin. They have complex language structure, and learn complex tasks quickly and easily, when they are properly rewarded that is, a sure sign of intelligence. Dolphins have no hands, which is why they have not murdered any of us for humiliating them with all that inappropriate dolphin touching stuff. Juvenile dolphins remain with their parents for several years, showing great intelligence on the part of the juveniles, although one has to question why this occurs if the parents can swim faster.

Number one is of course the cockroach. No, sorry, that’s the chimpanzee, but the chimpanzee is not smart enough to live in large numbers in my house irrespective of my efforts to eradicate them. Chimpanzees are very clever, but they will also rip your face off if they get pissed. Chimpanzees hunt cooperatively and use sign language, like human males on ladies night. Chimpanzees are much stronger than an equal sized human, so they definitely should not be taught kung fu. That wouldn’t be smart.

What is intelligence anyway? If intelligence is defined as taking actions which are most consistent with one’s own wellbeing, bacteria are probably smarter than we are. There are a lot of other animals you could put on this list, especially the dog, which is smart enough to lie around the house all day and take advantage of free food and healthcare while giving nothing in return but cuteness, sort of like teenage children, except for the cuteness part. Anyway, animals are not so different from us in most ways, except they’re not arrogant and they don’t make lists about shit.

Who Shot J.R.?

It was 32 years ago today that 918 people died in various ways in the jungles of Guyana, mostly from drinking poisoned Kool-Aid. Leo Ryan, a California Congressman, was shot dead as he concluded his mission to assist those desiring to abandon Jim Jones’ totalitarian, theocratic utopia. Ryan’s death was a great loss to America, as he remains one of the few chosen representatives of the People who had the balls to see his leadership role as more than just cashing lobbyist’s checks. As a California State Assemblyman, he went undercover as both an inner-city school teacher and a prison inmate to gain firsthand knowledge of conditions in schools and prisons. He was ambushed by members of the People’s Temple as his plane sat on the runway preparing to return to Georgetown, Guyana’s capitol. Congressman Ryan’s death set off a chain reaction of lunacy that resulted in the suicide or murder of 909 members of the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, which had been established in 1974 as an example of “apostolic socialism”, whatever that is. Jim Jones’ claim to holiness ended in horror, as most putative holiness does. The human capacity for illogic and self-delusion is well documented and, one might argue, is a primary driving force in history. In my view, the sad truth is that the distance from Main Street to the jungles of Guyana is not that great. Many of the world’s primary religions have elements of apocalyptic cultism in the context of their sense of exclusive knowledge of the truth and obedience to orthodoxy, and God knows the subculture of paranoid, Luddite xenophobes in America is quite ready to explode in an orgy of self-righteous destruction and fevered cleansing to prepare for Jesus’ return or armed revolution, or both.

But the political process in America was never intended to be an eternal struggle between good and evil. We have already established those truths which we hold to be self-evident. The people we elect are only supposed to respond to changing circumstances as they relate to ensuring domestic tranquility and providing for the common welfare, not to battle daily for the souls of mankind. Government has truly overreached its bounds, although not through excessive taxation, burdensome regulation or bureaucratic inertia, but through the arrogant presumption of those of every philosophical stripe seeking political office with claims of insight into absolute truth or the paths of the righteous. With our electoral process awash in the filthy lucre of corporate personhood and politics becoming little more than the race to define and emulate the lowest common denominator, it would appear the Grand Republic is in danger of entering a terminal death spiral, and all we get is bombastic moralizing from the right, left and center with not a qualified economist or logistician among them. My own bombastic moralizing notwithstanding, I’d cut a deal with Leon Trotsky, John Boehner or King George III in a heartbeat if it would create a few hundred thousand jobs. Whatever happened to good old enlightened self-interest? Adam Smith can’t be pleased.

Anyway, the TSA is presently very popular. Apparently Washington has gotten the idea that the average American no longer wishes to plunge earthward at 700 miles an hour in the flaming wreckage of what used to be a commercial airliner because some miscreant strapped C-4 to his wiener and tugged the Johnson at 35,000 feet. For this reason, the federal Government has implemented innovative wiener surveillance processes which include your choice of either the undignified viewing of your shriveled manparts or your confusing ladyjunk, or a humiliatingly intimate caress to ensure there are no explosives in your cleavage or butt crack. The new x-ray vision scanners, which were likely procured through the back pages of a comic book, are apparently quite realistic in their representation of an individual’s flabby nakedness, which mortifies the image-conscious American public, over 25 percent of whom are clinically obese. Obese is the Latin word for gross. I should know. Of course, all of this self imposed abuse is done in the name of security, because we know that there are people who aren’t afraid of flying who want to kill us. Unfortunately, most of us still don’t understand why. There are probably people in various places around the world who are asking themselves very similar questions about our motives. Fortunately, God is on our side, and even though God has not been completely successful in protecting us against every horrid assault on our national pride, we pray he will assist us in our quest for an infallible underwear scan.

The Republican leadership in the House of Representatives has wasted no time in addressing the out of control US budget. The US budget deficit in Fiscal Year 2009 was $1.42 trillion, an amount many consider excessive. Even though the new Republican majority in the House will not take office until January, John Boehner and his associates have struck a blow for fiscal accountability by attempting to eliminate all Federal funding for NPR. NPR is a well known propaganda arm of the world-wide socialist movement and has often advocated un-American activities like telling the truth. NPR receives about 15 percent of its total funding from government sources, including about $16 million form the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Eliminating this allocation would reduce the 2010 Federal Budget by .000004 percent. Unfortunately, the anti-American Democratic majority defeated the brave effort, but they’ll get what’s coming to them.

Lastly, for you beleaguered parents out there. Good luck. Preparing a child to live successfully in the coming world is a challenging task, to understate it significantly. We parents can’t begin to imagine the technological, social, political, economic and environmental circumstances that our children will face in the next four, five, six, seven or eight decades. The best we can do is try to prepare them to use reason and logic, guided by principle, to adapt to what life presents and try to find meaning and satisfaction in what ever may come. But just remember this; my wife is not always correct. She says my two sons have learned their facial expressions and mannerisms of annoyance from me, but this is not true. They only appear to be mimicking me; the fact is, they are me, sort of. They received half of their DNA from me. I would even suggest the better half of their DNA, but that is still an issue of some dispute domestically. Nonetheless, when you observe your children manifesting undesirable behaviors similar to your own, do not doubt your parenting skills. Do not fault your own weakness and inability to conceal your flaws from your highly imitative offspring. Do not regret that you have not made more effort to be tolerant, understanding and charitable. Simply accept that you have passed on the crappy genes that have ruined your life and that there is little hope for the future.

I Declare

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” They don’t write ‘em like that anymore, which is kind of ironic since the Declaration of Independence is a sort of break up song. Anyway, you can feel the power of these words resonating with logical symmetry and you can envision the quaking of tyrants as they cower before the inexorable tide of freedom called forth by this mystic incantation. I still marvel at the prescience of the Old Dead White Guys and their ability to concisely capture and summarize the most fundamental yearnings of the human race in seven simple words.

But here is where we return to the cold realities of human social intercourse. Seven simple words. But nothing in real life is simple, and words are but the Platonic shadows of the true thought flickering upon the cave walls. It is often suggested that the authors of our nation’s founding documents always said what they meant, and meant what they said, but much is read into these documents that is far from clear by right of syntax and semantics. It was probably not the intent of the Founding Fathers that each citizen should be an expert in the oratory and written missives of each signatory, and it is certainly arguable the extent to which a collective effort can concisely represent the convictions of each of multiple individual participants. I can only conclude that words of the Declaration of Independence are intended to be sufficient unto themselves to convey the sentiments of its authors.

It is interesting, therefore, that the word “God” is used the sum total of once in the Declaration, in reference to “the laws of nature and of nature's God. “Nature’s God” is a somewhat ambiguous term, all the more noteworthy since it could have simply been clarified to “the God of Abraham” or “Our Savoir Jesus Christ”, but it wasn’t. Most 21st Century Americans will likely assume that it is in fact an allusion to God-Almighty, the Scourge of Sodom and spiritual father of Jesus, but there is nothing in the document’s words or context to support that. The reference could very well be to Pan, Circe or Yoda, but Mr. Jefferson didn’t elaborate. The term “divine appears once also, in the context of “Divine Providence” and the term “Creator” also appears one time only, as that power which has endowed Man with his “unalienable” rights. Whether this force of creation is divine or natural is not discussed and whether such “unalienable rights” devolve from the authority of the divine or arise from the natural structure of human society cannot be established from the text.

Most of those men generally recognized as “Founding Fathers” came from fairly mainstream Christian backgrounds in the context of the late 18th Century, although we have little information on things such as regularity of church attendance or the sum of donations to religious organizations. The writings of the individual Founding Fathers provide quite a variety of theological perspectives, but generally reflect a bias against religious bureaucracy and the involvement of the clergy in the political life of the nation, which is completely consistent with the Protestant thinking of the age. What is largely absent from the record is significant evangelism or strident condemnation of Moors, Buddhists or other nonbelievers. On balance, there is little indication that the men who founded America articulated any consensus either before or after that it was their intent to found a “Christian” nation, though they were clearly mostly believers in some degree of “divine” influence in the affairs of men. Neither the Articles of Confederation nor the United States Constitution contain the word “God”, a fairly serious omission for a “Christian” nation. References to “God” are common in 18th and 19th Century America political dialog and speeches, but are usually in a general context like “oh my God, the dog just shit on the carpet”, or “the God-damned dog just shit on the carpet.” Aggressive and persistent religious partisanship as a feature of the political process appears to be a fairly recent development, and is coincidental with the rise of social freedoms and associated public debate of issues like Gay Rights, abortion and pornography, as well as the expansion of the role of the electronic media in the daily life of the average citizen.

Anyway, somewhat completely changing the subject, here I sit in my post Election Day 2010 funk, contemplating the apparent repudiation of Liberalism midst angry cries of creeping socialism and various doomsday prophecies, and I wonder what the signatories to the Declaration of Independence would think about their fickle 21st Century progeny. Ben Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had just taken up arms against the most powerful empire in the world with little more than their convictions to shield them. They commanded no real army, could not be certain of the allegiance of their fellow colonists and could hope for little support from other monarchs who would likely see their insurrection as an invitation to global chaos. They had enumerated a list of grievances against the Crown that went well beyond “I can’t afford a new car this year” and “black people make me nervous” and they went out on quite a political limb to say that the rich and the powerful shouldn’t be able through the instrument of government to suck every possible dime out of the working man to fund their insatiable lust for acquisition and conquest, especially if they had no intention of reinvesting any of the spoils to the collective benefit. These guys weren’t saints, but they were brave and they were among the first to articulate a concept of social and political equity that extended beyond the bounds of class by “natural” right. The fact that they didn’t conceive of equity extending beyond white guys with walking-around cash doesn’t reduce the radicalism of their ideas; their slap in the face to King George was the first trickle in what would become a historical torrent that ultimately allowed women and blacks and gays and dwarves and geeks throughout the world to say “why not me? why not freedom?” The world of 1789 and the world of 2010 are so incomparably different that it is impossible to define what modern political party, if any, has its true analog in the ideals of our Founders, but we do know that they had a commitment to social justice in the context of their time that would have made Abbey Hoffman blush.

So I watched the TV pundits expound grotesquely upon the sometimes absurd and sometimes tragic circus that representative democracy can be and I cheered the many defeats of Tea Party patriots with their constitutionalism and doctrine of original intent and other comfortable fantasies of solid rock beneath the ever evolving truth of human civilization. I despaired as legions of grandmas on Social Security voted against redistribution of wealth and packs of grandpas on Medicare voted against socialized medicine. I sat in amazed silence as people living in cheap houses built largely by illegal laborers voted against humane immigration reform. I seethed as the rich who have taken advantage of every public investment ever made to live a life few can imagine voted to correct the unfairness of their tax burden and I was heartened by the few unexpected victories and the closeness of other losses which implied that not everyone in America had lost their mind. It did occur to me that perhaps, when swiftly tumbling towards the ground from a lofty height, left and right loose most of their significance and that fear and anger offer less resistance than reason, but mostly I just marveled at the Divine Providence that continues to preserve the unalienable right of we the people to govern ourselves in accordance with the faithfulness and abilities of our chosen representatives. Sometimes that’s the best we can hope for.

Further Musings on Physics, Metaphysics and Stuff

I’m not going to pretend that I actually understand M-theory, or even that I understand what understanding it would entail, but being that M-theory is an elaboration on Superstring theory, which is an elaboration on String theory, which was an effort to reconcile Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, there is little surprise that it’s comprehension escapes the remaining part of my brain that the zombies didn’t already eat. Incidentally, zombies violate the rules of thermodynamics, so either they don’t exist or they remain in a state of quantum superposition after the collapse of the probability wave; either way, they sadly linger as only creatures of our imagination.

According to Wikipedia, the source of all my wisdom, the M used to sort of stand for Membrane when M-theory first arose, but latter evolved to just M when it became clear that the concept of a membrane was only partially apt for the theoretical structure that the comprehensive theory proposed to use as an analog for reality. Nonetheless, M-theory is simply summed up, and I quote, as “asserting that strings are really 1-dimensional slices of a 2-dimensional membrane vibrating in 11-dimensional space.” Everything we know or can know results from this fundamental and underlying truth.

I was going to go on to P-branes and “lose ends” and such, but you can read Wikipedia just as well as I can. The thing that I find remarkable about these theoretical constructs in physics is that, however bizarre they are, they only survive the fatally selective marketplace of ideas by being mathematically consistent with what is observed. It has long been argued amongst quantum mechanics toiling in the chalk-infused filth of their subterranean lairs as to whether there really is such a physical thing as a “probability wave” or whether it is just an analog to an unobservable physical reality. There was a major insurrection in Quantum society over this very notion resulting in the emergence of “schools” of quantum thought. Are there really 2-dimensional membranes vibrating in 11-dimensional space? Hell if I know, but we are so far from really understanding even the most fundamental of realities, how can we claim knowledge of good and evil, being and nothingness, Starsky and Hutch? Like, you know, the Universe; it’s here; it’s queer; get used to it.

I have to stay away from politics as much as possible because my cerebral artery walls are weakening. Anybody who reads this blog is both bored and already knows what I think about current American politics anyway, but what about the Germans? Frau Merkel, the Chancellor of the Reich, has declared that “Germany's attempts to build a multicultural society have utterly failed.” Well, so did their attempt to build a monocultural society. What’s a Volk to do? Before you get all “who are you to judge the German people?” on me, I did live there for three years 30 some odd years ago, and I wasn’t inebriated the whole time. My observation then was that the “Guest Workers”, mostly Turks and Italians with a component of Balkan and Pan-Slav minorities, were more or less relegated to the economic and cultural fringes. As one would expect, some of this was the result of clannishness on the part of the immigrants, but I never got the sense that they were welcomed in the same way I was as a blond, blue-eyed American soldier. Perhaps this was because the Germans knew I would eventually leave, but I’m not sure that a multicultural society can be created just by dumping disparate cultures into the same physical space and expecting assimilation or some other form of equilibrium to establish itself. In the case of Germany, the principle problem is that most of their immigrants have been exclusively pursuing economic opportunity and have been viewed by the broader society as mainly inputs into an economic equation. Capitalistic views on labor combined with an innate sense of cultural superiority may not in this case be the best recipe for success. Successful multicultural societies are based upon mutual respect, acceptance and tolerance, and the ability to sometimes agree to disagree. However, tolerance without respect is just paternalism and respect without acceptance is only fear. Nations need to ask themselves some very serious questions and give themselves some honest answers before they open their borders in pursuit of cheap labor, shouldn’t they?

Finally, Juan Williams got fired from NPR because he was doing his part-time gig on Fox and told Bill O’Reilly that people in “Muslim” dress on airplanes “made him nervous”. He used the reasoning that people who were committed enough to their religion to dress in accordance with its tenets might be committed enough to engage in more drastic forms of religious fervor. NPR was correct to fire Mr. Williams, but not because of his blatant bigotry; rather, because he is a dumbass. For the record, the Quran limits its directives on clothing to suggestions that it be “modest” and a little technical advice on what parts of the body need to be covered to achieve modesty. Hillary Clinton routinely meets the requirements of Islamic modesty in her dress, if only accidentally, as do most American women over 50, or who are at church in the South. American male business dress is one-hundred percent consistent with the Islamic dress code, as is, ironically, most Rap inspired male dress. The point here is that when Juan Williams identifies something as “Muslim dress”, he is really referring to a cultural or ethnic manifestation. The dress is Arab or perhaps “South Asian”, but it is not Islamic.

Being a dumbass on Fox News is no crime, since Fox News is specifically directed at dumbasses and they clearly have a right to pander to their target market. NPR, on the other hand, has some responsibility for objectivity and factual correctness, both of which Mr. Williams is apparently lacking. I believe we live in a country now where ignorance and failures of reason are seen as “fair and balanced” and studied and researched presentations of unpleasant fact are nothing more than Liberal propaganda. Pointing out factual error is now censorship and criticism of hate is itself hatefulness; and don’t forget, reality is, perhaps, nothing more than 1-dimensional slices of a 2-dimensional membrane vibrating in 11-dimensional space. Sigh.