Not Enough Foam at the Mouth

No one reads my blog for political commentary (or . . . no one reads my blog), but I can't let this pass. Still, I'll be brief: Apparently, Sarah Palin doesn't seem rabid enough for some conservatives anymore. Not enough foam at the mouth. And that's why conservatives have turned to Michelle Bachmann. Here's some information from a recent profile in the New Yorker magazine:

Bible: ". . . is the absolute infallible word of God." She believes in the inerrancy of the Bible which must be taken literally as history and science. She is a follower of fundamentalists who publish on this point. Bachmann points approvingly to a fundamentalist thinker who recently wrote that there may be "occasions when Christians are mistaken on some point while non-believers get it right." However, the foundation of non-believer thought is "false" so that "even individual truths will be seen through the distorting lens of a false world-view." This is from a book that Bachmann recently recommended.

Theocracy: She speaks highly of one fundamentalist writer, Francis Schaeffer, who believes that "Christians, and Christians alone, are Biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns." Schaeffer argued for the violent overthrow of the the government if Roe v. Wade isn't overturned. Bachmann attended a Bible-based law school where a professor she admires called for a theocracy with Old Testament penalties for adultery and homosexuality: Death! Her mentor in law school has recently stated that the Confederacy, the last Bible-based government in his opinion, understood the Constitution better than Abraham Lincoln.

Slavery: She insists that the slave-owning, slavery protecting Founding Fathers worked incessantly to end slavery. Her law school mentor maintains that benevolence deterred Christian slave-owners from freeing their slaves. Another writer she recommends has written that "most southerners strove to treat their slaves with respect and provide them with a sufficiency of good for a comfortable, though -- by modern standards -- spare existence." This writer goes on to claim that Africans brought to America in slavery were lucky. "Africa, like any other pagan country (sic), was permeated by the cruelty and barbarism typical of unbelieving cultures." He also writes that "Slavery . . . was not an adversarial relationship founded upon racial animosity. In fact, it bred . . . mutual respect." And this happy relationship of slave and slaveowner was due, according to this writer, to Christianity.

Climate: "Global warming is a hoax."

Homosexuality: Being gay is a "personal enslavement" and with gay rights "little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal and natural and perhaps they should try it." She follows a writer who has written pamphlets entitled: "The Homosexual Revolution: End Time Abomination" and "Communism, Hypnotism, and the Beatles" which, I'm happy to say, you can buy on Amazon!!!

Redwood Park in Oakland, California!!!

We moved from San Francisco to the Oakland Hills 20-some years ago (and we love SF!) mostly because of this remarkable 1800+ acre canyon on the eastern edge of Oakland. It has 50 miles of trails including two on either side of the canyon in the middle and a great many going up and down the slopes. And the park is connected by trail to a long line of East Bay parks extending from Richmond in the North to Castro Valley in the South and . . . all the way, by trail, to the top of Mt. Diablo in the east.


























Okay, the scene at the bottom is the view of Eiger from the Bachalpsee in the Swiss Alps . . . but with Redwood Park in my backyard, do we really need the expense of a trip to Switzerland to go on a great hike?

Well . . . .

Senator Al Franken . . . Impressive!

Watch 2 minutes of Senator Franken annihilating the credibility of one of the "Family Values" charlatans. Yes, the Senator is impressive, but, in all honesty, this was easy work.

Alice Waters and Cheetos

I'm informed by TC, that Chez Panisse restaurant will celebrate its 40th anniversary soon. I was not invited. Here's why:

Dear T: I was not invited to the 40th Chez Panisse thang. Prob'ly cause I saw Alice Waters at a Milpitas 7-11 one night 'round Xmas buying a bag of Cheetos. At least she was about to buy 'em.

I said, "Yo, Alice! Don't tell me you jones on junk!"

"Oh, Greg, one of my most thoughtful and conscious diners, mentor to Michael Pollan, godfather to Fanny, I must say it's odd to see you here as well. How's Tina? I still can't put her pork loin with foie gras marmalade and toasts of escarole and faux shark fin out of my mind . . . but, no, I'm not 'Jonesing' as you so rustically put it. This bag of Chev -- oh let me look at the label again -- ah, yes, 'Cheetos' -- will be part of a demonstration in which we inveigh against filthy food. And you're here because . . . . ?"

"Alice, we go way back," I replied, "so don't try to turn the kitchen table on me and stop your lying ways. My dear junkie Alice, you got Cheeto dust all over your shit: your fingers, all around your mouth, a 'lil bit in your hair, and . . . oh-oh, on your palms, Alice, and you know what that means!" At which point she started to wipe her hands on a handsome sage-colored linen apron I'd given her years ago after she finally learned, with my instruction, how to kill and slaughter her own livestock. "On your palms, Alice! You should be 'shamed. Means you been stuffin' 'em in your moth, pushing them in . . . with your palms! BOTH palms to make sure nothing falls out. Oh, you're jonesin' Alice. Can't deny it. And as for me, I'm just here to get the Sunday paper for the restaurant reviews. I covered for Mark Bittman in Shanghai last week."

But she was not be be daunted. "Bullshit!" she screamed. "No one comes to Milpitas -- no one! -- except to hide their filthy consumptions. You certainly didn't come here just to get 'the paper'! And, besides, I can wash off this yummy Cheeto dust," whereupon she extended her tongue all over her hands and around her mouth, making it hard to understand her, "bu you gong nee mumfs ta take off tha fory poun uh Ding-Dongs and Bud gut!" Then after having sufficiently dog-cleaned herself, she stepped up to me and warned, "You may have made me, but I'll ruin you if this ever gets out to anyone!"

Well, Alice, it's out. And it's on. Turn me away at the 40th party if you dare.

g

Favorite Typo by a Student

I teach Russian Literature right now, Dostoevski and Chekhov, wherein we're regaled with matters theological quite a bit. Today, I've been given a paper in which Chekhov's "The Bride" speaks of the prospect of the how the "Kingdom of Heaven [might] descend on earth."

Except this glorious student, and I emphasize that s/he is glorious, wrote: "Kingdom of Heave."

Sounds like a fraternity to me. Or a heavy metal band.

I will forever cherish this typo.

Second Favorite Question Ever Asked of Me By a Student Followed by the Favorite Question

An encounter today with a student in my office:

Second favorite question ever asked of me by a student: Greg, I have a splinter. Do you have some tweezers?

Me: No. I used them on my wife's tick and forgot to put them back into my Swiss Army Knife I carry with me always.

Favorite question ever asked of me by a student: Do you know anyone at school who would have tweezers?

I then named 5 people who first came to mind.

Student: Thanks Greg.

Me: No, wait. . . . Do you really believe that I have a list of tweezer carriers committed to memory? I mean, I know I may seem godlike to you with some awesome omniscience, but . . . I'm not a god and not omniscient.

[pause]

Student: Alright. Thanks Greg!


Often, kids ask questions that seem to presume omniscience on my part, but it's not my presumed omniscience so much as it is the students' real lack of investigative zeal.

Watching the NBA Finals with Tina

First hoops game either of us had watched in maybe 5 years: Dallas at Miami, 1st game, NBA Finals. Tina's commentary:

"The neckline of that team's jerseys are, I'd say, rather feminine."

Moments later: "Whoa, the other team, too, with the feminine neckline! I'd call it a 'modified sweetheart neckline.'"

Then: "Long shots are still 'from downtown'? They still say 'downtown'? A long shot should be from the suburbs."

Dallas misses 4 straight shots: "They're terrible. They deserve to lose."

"Long Story Short"

Whenever someone interjects "anyway -- long story short" into a story, the story is already too long.

Official State Weapons! An Idea Whose Time Has Come!

I savor recent reports from Utah and Arizona whose legislative bodies have established an official state gun. For Utah, the Browning M1911 pistol because Mr. Browning grew up in Utah and was the son of pioneers. For Arizona, the Colt revolver because it's made in Connecticut and was used to help settlers kill off the ancestors of Native Americans living in Arizona. That's my guess anyway.

NPR reports that the Florida legislature would bar doctors -- especially pesky pediatricians -- from asking their patients if they own guns, guns being a possible health hazard, especially to children if the parents are careless with the care of guns. Governor Scott says that asking this question of parents constitutes a violation of their Second Amendment rights. Perhaps Florida will honor the loaded-and-unlocked-and-negligently-stored-danger-to-my-child-and-other-children-but-goddammit-that's-my-Second-Amendment-right-and-I'll-give-it-up-when-you-pry-it-from-my-child's-cold-dead-fingers official state gun.

But why just firearms? Why not the official state weapon? Some creative states might designate the pox-infested woolen blanket as the official state weapon. Others, in the South perhaps, the rope! New Jersey might honor cement. And, of course, Nevada would trump everyone with its official state armament: the hydrogen bomb!

Yoko Ono Advises the Beatles from Bed

Took me three years, I think, at a couple of pages here and there now and again, but I just finished Bob Spitz's excellent 860 page biography "The Beatles." If you know me, you know I'm a Beatles fan. My tastes have shifted more toward John Beatles than Paul Beatles (and I've a very, very limited interest in post-Beatles Beatles) and I read the bio mostly for insight into their song creation and musicianship. Of course, there's much more than that including their personalities, the business end, the impact of adulation and millions of dollars, the drugs, the drugs, the drugs, and the drug-induced psychosis, especially in LSD-addled John Lennon who added heroin after deciding to throw in his lot with Yoko Ono.

I couldn't help but make the following assessment: Lennon and McCartney seem quite objectionable as mates, friends, or bandmembers. Yes, yes, yes . . . great music, but deeply unattractive people those two. McCartney was, perhaps is, egotistical, controlling, self-serving, pretentious, disingenuous, and unctuous in the extreme. Lennon was worse: violent, volcanically angry, homophobic, probably anti-semitic, deeply inconsiderate, and drug-addled.

George and Ringo? Princes. And perhaps Lennon outgrew his demons before he died. Hard to say.

But Yoko, with whom I've always tried to sympathize, may be the most comically objectionable of them all.

Consider the following episode from Spitz's biography (which, I'd have to say, is not sympathetic to Yoko):

After marrying John, Yoko had suffered another of her several miscarriages and to heal she and John visited Scotland on holiday. This was around the time of the "Abbey Road" recordings. John had never driven a car before, and though quite stoned, he insisted that he be given an Aston-Martin to drive around the treacherous Scottish backroads. No one says "no" to a Beatle and so off he went with four people in the car including his son Julian by his first marriage and, of course, he promptly crashed the car into a deep ditch to avoid an oncoming car. After a brief hospitalization for superficial wounds, John and Yoko returned to London where John intended to head back into the studio with the Beatles. By this time, Yoko had been attending recording sessions for about a year despite the deep resentment of the other Beatles. Here's Spitz:

"With John's reappearance in the studio came Yoko, back at his side, ever conspicuous as an intruder; however, this time, there was an even more offensive twist: Yoko was pregnant again, with strict orders from her doctor to remain in bed while recovering from the car crash. In a characteristically aggravating gesture, she had Harrods [London's Bloomingdale's] deliver a double bed to the studio and instructed a [studio] technician to suspend a microphone above her head that would adequately furnish her comments to the band."

Elsewhere, Spitz reports that upon attending recording sessions with John, Yoko would presume to advise the band on musical matters. She would cut into discussions with a forceful, "Beatles should . . . " followed by her expert recommendations.

I very much enjoyed reading about John and Yoko's record, the "Wedding Album," in which one whole side of the vinyl album consists of John and Yoko screaming each other's name. Imagine!

Getting a Second Mortgage at an ATM

Went to my bank last week to withdraw funds from one of the two ATMs. I took my place off to side and a polite distance away from two women using the machines. A young man was already there waiting ahead of me on the other side of the women.

So I'm standing off to the side and I can't really see what either woman's doing. Occasionally, I see a hand reach in and back again, then in, then back. A hip or foot shifts compelling the young man and me to look up in anticipation of our turn. He and I make brief eye contact and look away like people waiting for a restroom at a popular restaurant. But the women at the ATMs continue their transactions.

After a while the line on either side of the women had increased to include several people including a mom with two small children who were running around, marring the banking decorum which exists even in this parking lot.

The women at the ATMs continued their business. We all looked furtively as the hands at the ATMs went in, out, in, out.

And then it suddenly occurred to me: Banks, like other businesses, work to cut down on labor costs -- after all, who goes to a teller anymore? -- so maybe these banks found a way to help people with more complex banking transactions . . . at ATMs!

I mean, what were these women doing at these ATMs? Getting a second mortgage? Setting up trust funds for their children? What?!!?

Does everyone now do all their banking on ATMs?

Does the Federal Reserve make money supply adjustments on an ATM?

Finally, after the women had apparently started a hedge fund at the ATMs, I stepped up to transact my humble banking -- a simple withdrawal of walking around money which made me feel like a beggar by comparison or, at best, a child bringing his piggie bank to the counter. But by the time I'd done so, I calculated that inflation, modest as it is, had eaten away 4% of the value of my earnings!

Groceries? Yes. Cappucino? No.

Spaniards Do Random

As you probably know, there are some sayings in other languages that, when translated literally, lose their intended meaning.

Here, in the USA, when we are confronted by some irrelevant piece of info in the midst of a discussion, those of us middle-aged and older might ask, "Dude, what's that got to do with the price of tea in China?" Those who are younger might insist, "Dude, that is soooo random."

In some Spanish-speaking countries, people respond to irrelevant info with, "Yo tengo una tía que toca la guitarra."

It literally translates as, "I have an aunt who plays the guitar."

But what is means is, "Dude, you want random? I got random."


(You may feel, if you've read this far, that this blog entry seems random to you. Well, it is an eclectic mix of things here, right? The eclectics of the world do seem distracted by tangents.)

Greatest Music Video Ever

I am going to post videos I've come across. Here's the first. It's from Japan. Lovely.

Etymology of "Genius"

Genius -- Comes from the Latin word of the same spelling for the deity which watches over each person from birth. This spirit gives one "wit and talent." The root of this is in the Latin word "gignere" which means "to produce" and that comes from the proto-Indo-European foundational word "gen" which means "to produce," too. So you can see how the word "genes" fits in here.

Going back to the idea of a deity which watches over each person from birth, consider the word "genie" which shares an origin with "genius." A genie guards over you and makes you look smart.


Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
-- Benjamin Franklin

Impact of Ayn Rand on Tea Party Folks

Maureen Dowd on the impact of Ayn Rand on the Tea Party folks in Congress like Paul Ryan:

"Indeed, Congressman Ryan has said the reason he got involved in public service was 'by and large' because of Rand, and he has encouraged his staffers to read Atlas Shrugged.

You’d think that our fiscal meltdown would have shown the flaw in Rand’s philosophy. She thought we could derive morals from the markets. But we derived immorality from the markets.

She wrote about Nietzschean superheroes who made things. She died before capitalism evolved into a vampire casino where you could bet against investments you sold to your clients, and make money off something you didn’t own or that existed only on paper."

Guy Kawasaki, on the iPhone

"$188 worth of parts, manufactured in a plant where workers tend to commit suicide, hitched to America’s worst cell phone network. But this is not how Steve Jobs pitches it"

Talking Money

This was presented to my students after they read and wrote about The Great Gatsby:

Many of you have a problem with “money.” You don't trust it; don't want to be too involved with it. You find it . . . vulgar. At the very least, you don't want to be defined by how much you have or how you use it.

Now, let’s stipulate that while some of us in this room may have considerably more family money than others, it is nonetheless the case that by comparison with most of the rest of the world, now and certainly throughout history, we are all filthy rich. So your high rise may be 20 floors taller than mine, but both of them tower over the shanty towns of the rest of the world.

And yet . . . we distrust money. I believe that the distrust of money is a luxury only the rich can afford because we can’t really imagine how we will ever go hungry or cold and by that I mean hungry and with no knowledge of when or from where the next meal or meals will come come. We take money for granted because we can. Remember, in this context, we’re all rich. Remember also, someone has ponied up $34K to have you go to this school when there are free schools all over the city. That $34K is more than most people will see in a lifetime. This is not meant to make you feel guilty . . . just responsible for knowing what’s up.

Money is not the problem. The problem is the stupid ideas we all too often have about money. The two – money and stupid ideas about money – are separable.

Some of you express a distaste for what is expected of you: go to college, get a job, make bank, raise a family, and the young ‘uns start it all over again.

Here’s another way to look at that process: Develop your intellectual talents because your brain likes a challenge otherwise you never would have learned to speak; apply your intellectual talents to an attractive occupation and trade those talents for the talents of others. I teach. I trade teaching for, say, dentistry.

Money is just a tool that allows us to trade skills efficiently. With money, I don’t have to find a parent of one my students to do the dentistry in exchange for my teaching. That would be an inefficient use of my time. I couldn’t teach as much and the dentist, in search of teachers, couldn’t . . . dent as much.

Developing your talents because it brings you joy is fine. Developing your talents so that you can apply them to the most profitable occupation available, is deeply dangerous. You run the risk of a lifetime, your only lifetime, consumed by boredom and little fulfillment.

I can’t imagine being a dentist. I’d maybe make more money, but I’d be bored to the point of depression after 10 years or less. I hope my dentist loves dentistry. If she’s doing it just for the money, I hope she learns to love dentistry. If she doesn’t love it or learn to love it, I pity her.

Now, also, don’t be too unrealistic about money. Some people say, “Do what you want and the money will follow?” That’s ridiculous. Nothing could be more ridiculous.

More accurately: “Do what you want and the money won’t matter as much . . . unless you’re also responsible for the lives of others . . . like your children . . . in which case you can either sacrifice the ‘what you want’ self-indulgence and maybe attend to your kids or you can work hard to convince your kids that money doesn’t matter.” So . . . let’s get real about money. And let’s not denigrate the man and woman who didn’t have the opportunity to develop their intellectual talents and must now work some soul-deadening jobs to give kids a chance to develop their talents and live a fulfilling life.

So give money a break. It’s the messenger. Not the message.

The Fulfillment Curve from treehugger.com.

What I'm Reading: Purple, the Color, Its Origin . . .

From Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky:

"When the Romans took over the Phoenician salt trade, they discovered how to make a purple dye. A logical byproduct of fish salting, the dye was produced by salting murex, a Mediterranean mollusk . . . . The painstakingly extracted purple dye was a luxury item of such prestige that the color purple became a way of showing wealth and power. Julius Caesar decreed that only he and his household could wear purple-trimmed togas. The high priests of Judaism, the Cohanim, dyed the fringes of their prayer shawls purple. Cleopatra dyed the sails of her warship purple. . . . Pliny wrote that men were slaves to 'luxury . . . inasmuch as men scour . . . all the rocks of [North Africa] for the murex and for purple.'"

Photo by Patrick Hamilton.

What I'm Reading: Impact of Cameras, Records, etc.

From The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa by NYT art critic Michael Kimmelman:

"Before cameras, educated, well-to-do travelers had learned to sketch so that they could draw what they saw on their trips, in the same way that, before phonograph records, bourgeois families listened to music by making it themselves at home [sheet music was bought instead or records], playing the piano and singing in the parlor. Cameras made the task of keeping a record of people and things simpler and more widely available,and in the process reduced the care and intensity with which people needed to look at the things they wanted to remember well, because pressing a button required less concentration and effort than composing a precise and comely drawing. During the last century, the history of amateurism in American, whether it entailed snapping photographs or painting pictures or tickling the ivories, like so many other aspects of life, increasingly centered on labor-saving strategies to placate our inherent laziness and to guarantee our satisfaction, a promise, if you think about it, that should be antithetical to the premise of making art, which presumes effort and risk."

I Know the She's

Was rockin' my dark blue tee with the reindeer that loves the She's today and the barrista making my cappucino says, "Oh, man, the She's ROCK!"

I asked her if I rock, too, since I'm wearing the She's tee.

She hesitated and then said, "Uh, yeah-uh!"

But the hesitation spoke the truth and it said, "Sadly . . . no."

So I said, "Your hesitation spoke volumes and it said, 'Sadly, no, you do not rock. Nothing could make YOU rock.'"

"No, REALLY!" she insisted. "You rock."

"No way I rock," I said, steadfast in my understanding of the communication of hesitation.

She looked at me the way people look when they've been caught . . . in a terrible lie!!!!!!!!

So I pulled out my secret weapon: I said, "I know Sami and Sinclair."

She showed no recognition.

"They're just the bassist/singer and drummer for the She's," I informed her, " . . . and I know them really well. Really, really well. We have a small club. Meets Wednesdays at lunch. You can't be in it."

She tilted her head slightly and looked away.

"Now who rocks?" I queried as I took my cappucino and walked away.

Just When You Think . . .

Without Tits There Is No Paradise is a very popular televised soap opera in Colombia.

The USA tends to be a bit more prudish about television. More prudish, in fact, than most of the world. Perhaps now I'm more grateful for that.

I sometimes grit my teeth as I consider some of the more vulgar, stupid examples of USA culture polluting other lands like an imperial invasion of junk. I give you the most popular American television program abroad: Bay Watch. Or consider the McDonald's on the same piazza as the 2200-year-old Pantheon in Rome. However, these folks elsewhere do ask for this junk. And, of course, upon going abroad, I quickly find examples of home-grown nastiness that competes with anything we here in the US send over.

Still, if what I read in the current Atlantic Monthly is true, Colombia wins the junk wars. In the Atlantic Monthly it's reported that "one of Colombia's most popular television show [is] Without Tits There Is No Paradise." It's apparently the continuing saga of a "flat-chested" and impoverished teenager "who wants to sell her virginity for a pair of implants."

I decided not to post visuals for this entry.

This Teacher's Nightmares!!!

There ought to be a word for nightmares that aren't nightmares like Tina gets (she's being chased and her screams come across the pillow as moans born of horror and agony which awaken me, quickly, and so I heroically awaken her and am then assured by her still-asleep and breathless "thank you" which makes me wonder if I entered her dream and thoroughly kicked some assailant's ass (which I can't even do in my dreams so I'm grateful for the possibility of doing it in hers) or . . . did I just obliterate the nightmare altogether by awakening her?. No. No drama in mine like that. Mine are just annoying visitations based upon my own insecurity about what I fear is a presumptuousness going on 20 years, i.e., what business do I have in a classroom full of bright, disciplined kids? I get these two dreams, each is annoying and each attempts to put me in my place about once every six months or so:

I'm scheduled to play a piano concerto with the San Francisco Symphony. I know, but it becomes clear to me that no one else seems to know -- or maybe they do! and they certainly should! -- that I don't play anywhere near well enough to play classical music much less classical music with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra! I don't play classical! I don't sight read very well at all. I have very limited technical fluency or facility on the keyboard so that anything beyond a ballad's tempo or any run up or down the keyboard or any contrapuntal activity requiring a left hand that does anything more than pound chords on the 1 and 3 is wholly beyond me. How did I qualify for this gig? And why do people seem to look forward to my playing? And at what point did I think I could perform with aplomb, fooling everyone? Or did I just go along with whatever ill-founded confidence the music world extended to me? These questions come to me after I awaken, but in the dream they are the inchoate miasma which makes for whatever nightmarish quality the dream imposes upon me.

So . . . here I am, getting ready to go on stage (I guess we have, in fact, rehearsed even!!! and I somehow pulled it off!) in my tux to be greeted by hearty applause, the welcoming smile of MTT, and everyone's happy anticipation of a night of artistry! MTT lifts his baton, the symphony comes in and . . . I play. And sure, I'm a little anxious all the while that I'll be found out, but actually pretty confident, too, and . . . I pull it off! There's applause!

I get the hell off stage . . . .

And there the dream ends.

You might well ask, "Dude, what's wrong with that? That's no nightmare!"

But, of course, it is! Because I know I'm a fake who just succeeded with my fakery . . . and, worse, it will just encourage me to continue with my con and not ever really learn the craft of playing the piano (see "teaching") well. And one day, I will get caught. MTT will step off the podium, look at the music in front of me, look at me, and with both of us scandalized in that moment, he'll point to the f*******ing door.

Who am I to be teaching Shakespeare, Sophocles, Hurston, et al?!!?


And now, for a couple years or so, a new annoyance visits my sleep and in this dream . . . I do get caught:

I'm about to take a final exam in a class for which I have not only not done the work since about the first week of school, I even forgot this class was on my schedule . . . or conveniently forgot . . . up until this moment, the moment when all will become clear as I stare blankly at and leave blank my final exam. And I know that this will mean that I will fail the class; it will mean humiliation.

In this dream, there's no faking it . . . yet anyway. I always wake up, humiliated, before I have to take the final exam. Although I'm not confronted in the dream by any authority, it must be clear to all that I haven't been in class, just about ever, and that I cannot possibly be prepared for this test. I know I don't know and I know that everyone else must know that I don't know . . . anything.

But how is this different from playing with the Symphony? Perhaps one night I will take that final exam and bullshit my way through. I'll hand it in and hang around just long enough to gather my things while noticing the professor leaf through my pages. Yes, in this dream, I can't tell if I'm in high school or in law school (where I was negligent, but not that negligent), and I seem to be a younger man, but with the life experience of the 55 year old that I am. Seems that way anyway.

I wake up mildly disgusted with myself, but then I chuckle because I've escaped the reality, the Truth, represented in the dream and am back in the material world where my smoke and mirrors continue to work wonders.




There must be a name for these dreams. It's not stage fright. As the pianist, and despite my incredulity about being accepted as a classical pianist, in my dream I actually have some confidence that I can do this. Otherwise, I would have run to the nearest exit.

In the final exam dream, I have no intention of "performing" on stage.

I should note that Tina had a somewhat similar recurring dream years ago when she waited tables. She dreamt she had too many tables to wait on. But, you see, in this dream, she didn't create the problem. She's blameless and the injustice of it causes her to scream, a scream of agony that comes across the pillows as moans. So I wake her up. I'm good at that.

G-Gear: My New Clothing Line and Fashion House

Like my other creative friends, I've started my own clothing line, my own Fashion House, so let me hear you say "GREG IS IN HIS FASHION HOUSE!!!" I call it "G-Gear"!!! "G-Gear" . . . pronounced "Guh-Gear" not "Gee-Gear." Teeshirts and denim. Send me $100 for full ensemb.

Here, the highlights are kept under wraps before the Milan spring season show.

It just makes sense: My creativity is not restricted to my blogging even though my blog is eclectic. I am musical! I have painted. And sculpted. I sculpted detritus in my backyard long before Andy Goldsworthy, a little known sign painter when he and I first lunched amidst my "Eucalyptus Seizure" installation. And don't we all -- well, all of us of an artistic bent -- regard our bodies as canvasses or sculptural scaffolding upon which we struggle with the creations of others to express our inner nature sartorially.

How to Disqualify Yourself as My Friend

There's a lovely stand-up piano in one of the classrooms at my school. Occasionally, late in the day, I might sit and mess around with whatever I might be working on. This piano has better action than mine at home -- though I love my piano -- so it's fun to try out little bluesy fills in songs with a lot of space like Gershwin's "Our Love Is Here to Stay" or the old spiritual "Motherless Child."

Well, recently, I'd been playing and didn't notice several girls standing at the door listening and when I did notice, I stopped, embarrassed by the prospect.

"No, keep playing!" one said.

Pleased, I asked if she liked what she heard.

"Oh, yes," she assured me. "It makes me feel like I'm at Nordstrom's." She seemed so pleased to extend what she perceived as a compliment.

I smiled and thanked her. But in my heart, I had her killed.

And then it occurred to me that the piano could be a potential friend litmus test. I should play for everyone with whom I might strike up a friendship and if my prospect hears "Easy Listening Dentist Office Pablum" then, well, I'll have nothing more to do with him or her. But if they hear bluesy mistake prone beat challenged edgy jazzster, then we can hang.

Conservatives and Endangered Species

Now, I'll admit I'll occasionally hear about some species of . . . whatever, but anyway it'll be peculiar to some small area and holding up some form of development because, well, liberals like me tend to be alarmed about killing an entire species of anything. So, do we protect the buffalo? Sure. The tiger? Yes. Whales? Mos def.

But a moth? A moth that can be found, say, only within a five acre expanse in Napa county and would be wholly eradicated by a proposed vineyard? It's a hypothetical, but we hear about these smallish species with powerful friends quite often.

So how do we liberals decide what to do?

Well, here's how current conservatives decide: Kill. Death to the species. Hunt it, competitively, to extinction. The last guy to eat a meal of the animal's flank or make a dollar off its hide or as a result of its extinction wins!

Okay, so maybe that's not as representative of conservative thought as it used to be (and it sure as hell used to be . . . and it might be again if the Tea Party wackos get enough power to eliminate the EPA). Today, conservatives say we should kill the small, localized species that get in the way of the development of whatever cookie cutter mediocrity planned for the day. These conservatives don't value diversity much in their effort to make America look the same wherever you go.

But how DO conservatives really decide to deal with these species? Do they cite Evolution? Yes, only if they can argue that the species in question is not fit enough to survive the "evolution" of the ecosystem in question.

However, conservatives hate Evolution, or at least a scientific view of it, preferring Biblical Literalism/Fundamentalism instead.

This, of course, brings us to Noah and his Ark. God commanded Noah to take two of every species, right? So did Noah take two of some of those species peculiar to the continent that Noah's contemporaries couldn't even imagine? Or did he just take two of every animal as he understood the word "animal"? If the latter, wouldn't God object to Noah's having overlooked some species?

God: Dude . . . where's the buffalo?

Noah: Buff-a-what?

God: Dude, it's on the other continent. Dude, y donde el Snail Darter?

Noah: WTF?!!? You're just NOW telling me there's a whole 'nother continent?!!?


Yes, yes, conservatives believe that we have Dominion over God's creatures and we can do with them as we see fit. But does that mean we can off a species? I just don't see the conservative god happy with that.

God: You eliminated my Speckled Daisy Moth so that you could build another Costco? You are SO going to Hell.


But, to be fair, what about the original question: How do liberals deal with small, localized species? Right now, I believe that just such a species is threatened by the development of a "sun farm" in the desert somewhere. A renewable energy entrepreneur wants to set up big solar panels somewhere, but . . . . So how do we liberals decide which of our oxen to gore? I'm not sure, but, yes, it will require several studies and it may be comically burdensome. But I don't think the answer is to kill the EPA and any species that happens to cross our paths.

Experiment with Twitter

Here are all my Twitter postings until I got rid of Twitter:

Got my own line of clothing now! "G-Gear" . . . pronounced "Guh-Gear" not "Gee-Gear." Teeshirts and denim. Send me $100 for full ensemb.

Economics is no more about money than English Literature is about the alphabet.

To my students today: "I'm on Tweeter!" Response: "It's 'Twitter.'" Then me: "Isn't that what I said, that I'm tweetering?" Eyes roll.

If you see me and it seems I've forgotten that I'm a white guy, remind me.

I'm a'tweetin', but why? Not enough room for jokes, but okay for punchlines. Ex.: "Four! One to charge and three to yell 'Ole!'" Hahaha!

My Twitter vs. my blog: http://theeclecticgreg.blogspot.com/ Which will gain more followers? Not fair. I may kill my Twitter account.

Guess how many followers for the band Coldplay? The number is too long for the rest of the characters I had left after asking the question.

My followers are > those followed. So I am not lame. But close. (Two followers just want my money, so really: followers < followed. Lame?)

We are bored to the exact extent that we are boring. Bored a lot? You are way boring. Bored now? Your boredom = 132 characters.

I have discovered my religion: Procrastinarian. Tell you more about it later.

3 of my 8 followers are strangers trying to sell me stuff. "Bezmoney" ,"TweetPower" , "FinanceMentor" . . . stop following me! I'm wise 2U

Why are there "suggestions" for who I might follow? I can imagine following strangers, but why these? Am I "suggested" to others?

I'm not using Twitter right. Everyone else has big announcements. My announcement? # of followers = # followed: 5. The same 5 for each.

Giving kids time to write in my class. 500 words for them. 140 characters for me. I have 43 left. "Write more!" I tell them. Me, too!!!

Killing my Twitter account. Novelty worn off. 5 twittering following + 5 twittering followers: I kill 10 birds with one stone. Goodbye!

Okay, killing the twittering is kinda' involved and I'm lazy. Will kill later.

Pledge Break

Send me money . . . and I'll send it back right after Google CUBES your donation!

Now's a good time!

Because Google will not double, not triple . . . no Google will CUBE every amount sent in dollar terms.

So, sure, if you're some hobo who sends a dollar, then, yes, 1 x 1 x 1 = 1 and Google will send a lousy dollar.

But imagine if you sent, say, $20! Google will then send 20 x 20 x 20 and that equals $8000!!! With only 100 $20 donations from my readers, I can quit my day job and write the entertaining, thought provoking, intelligent blogposts you've come to expect . . . and I can do it all day long.

This CUBING grant from Google will last only a month, so any time you feel like sending, say, $10, Google will CUBE it! And because Google will CUBE it, I promise you this: Any donation you send in the next month WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU!!!

Capitalism vs. Family Values and Personal Growth on Sundays

On the Sunday after a Saturday Christmas, stores are a-hoppin' with After Christmas sales and so I recall a conversation I had in Switzerland a few years ago. An elderly relative of T's asked if shops are closed on Sunday in America as most are in Switzerland, a land not known for religious fervor. "Sadly, no" I admitted, and my misgivings were not due to some hearkening back to the Blue Laws and Sunday Services of my youth. No, it just struck me that shopping, the recreational activity of capitalism, has trumped family values and wise personal growth in America.

Here's how I see it: Advertising tells us that to live is to consume and to consume formidably. Wanting and acquiring -- perhaps to the point of avarice -- provide a recreational activity and a sense of identity. And the message proclaiming as much is loud and incessant so that the kind of solitude that can awaken us to ourselves is not only difficult to come by, but is denigrated as suspect.

So we risk developing very little sense of ourselves independent of the things we possess and wish to possess. Merchants understand this and also know that Sunday is the day most of us can use the entirety of to pursue recreational capitalism.

But for years, merchants did not open their doors on Sunday. Blue Laws forbade it and even where those laws didn't exist, there was an understanding among locally owned businesses. Then . . . a few did start doing business on Sundays. This inspired competition to serve the customer on Sundays, too. Giant, national chain merchants opened without a bit of compunction, too, shamelessly forcing mom and pop operations to open as well or face the anxiety of not being open when the whole town is shopping for everything at Costco.

As a result, Sunday became a day to consume, not a day of rest, not a day for other civilizing activities like a big family dinner, picnics in the park, long walks, touch football, a good book, and, yes, going to Church or Temple. No, these civilizing activities were shoved aside.

Conservative Opposition to Repealing "Don't Ask Don't Tell" and to Gay Rights in the Military

According to conservatives, here's a typical scenario that can be expected in a war zone after the repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell":

The shit could be all around them at any moment. So in this bunker, 15 soldiers, mostly men, but a few unattractive women, too, quietly, expertly, prepare for battle. All except one: Johnny Bigun. Wearing his boots untied, a flak jacket, and thong underwear, he fashions a makeshift ironing board to sharpen the creases in his fatigues, dancing all the while. His iPod? Pointer Sisters, of course, with whom he lip synchs "Yes We Can Can." Or the Village People. Though Johnny is in the army, he insists, "Oh, I've been IN the navy!"

The women, all unattractive soldierly types, but expertly prepared, tend to Johnny's duties, telling him not to worry about anything. "You GO, girl!" they whisper to him as he lip synchs to the unheard Pointers. They offer to do everything for Johnny except clean his weapon which Johnny does lovingly twice each day.

The other men in the unit are strangely attracted to Johnny for reasons they can't understand and they hate him for it.

Suddenly, mortar fire, AK-47s everywhere along with men shouting in some local dialect. The bunker is under siege. However, due to their expert preparation and drills, the soldiers all assume their positions and their roles with their equipment in hand and at the ready. Here a radioman calls for backup, there a lieutenant issues orders, here a medic readies supplies and runs to the aid of a wounded comrade. Despite the menace of arms, the soldiers in that bunker comprise a well-lubricated unit, the pride of the CO, and if casualties are suffered, it won't be for want of preparation.

Focus is everywhere. Fear is there, too, but not expressed or even exhibited. Focus defines the unit . . . until Johnny Bigun realizes he hasn't had sex in nearly 12 hours. Knowing he can't function without sex, Johnny yells above the din of arms, "Does anyone here want to have sex with me now?" Three men who'd never experienced homosexual sexual relations nonetheless figure that homosexual sex is better than no sex at all and they shouldn't turn down this offer of immediate sex and so they decide to leave their posts and have sex with Johnny Bigun.

Unit cohesion deteriorates. Everyone dies.

Everyone dies . . . all but one with the names of their heterosexually wed wives and husbands back home.


Graphics from: Unconfirmed Sources. www.unconfirmedsources.com

Why Unions Are Necessary for Democracy

Paul Krugman in the 2.20.11 NYT in an op-ed opposing Wisconsin Governor Walker's attempts to deprive public employee unions of collective bargaining rights:

In principle, every American citizen has an equal say in our political process. In practice, of course, some of us are more equal than others. Billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put the desired spin on policy issues; they can funnel cash to politicians with sympathetic views (as the Koch brothers did in the case of Mr. Walker). On paper, we’re a one-person-one-vote nation; in reality, we’re more than a bit of an oligarchy, in which a handful of wealthy people dominate.

Given this reality, it’s important to have institutions that can act as counterweights to the power of big money. And unions are among the most important of these institutions.

You don’t have to love unions, you don’t have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that they’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy. Indeed, if America has become more oligarchic and less democratic over the last 30 years — which it has — that’s to an important extent due to the decline of private-sector unions.

And now Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to get rid of public-sector unions, too.

There’s a bitter irony here. The fiscal crisis in Wisconsin, as in other states, was largely caused by the increasing power of America’s oligarchy. After all, it was superwealthy players, not the general public, who pushed for financial deregulation and thereby set the stage for the economic crisis of 2008-9, a crisis whose aftermath is the main reason for the current budget crunch. And now the political right is trying to exploit that very crisis, using it to remove one of the few remaining checks on oligarchic influence.

Taxes You Have to Love . . .

From: "Find the Taxes That Due Double Duty" by Robert H. Frank in the 2.20.11 NYT

Taxes levied on harmful activities kill two birds with one stone. They generate desperately needed revenue while discouraging behaviors whose costs greatly outweigh their benefits.

Antigovernment activists reliably denounce such taxes as “social engineering”— attempts to “control our behavior, steer our choices, and change the way we live our lives.” Gasoline taxes aimed at discouraging dependence on foreign oil, for example, invariably elicit this accusation.

But it’s a strange complaint, because virtually every law and regulation constitutes social engineering. Laws against homicide and theft? Because they aim to control our behavior, steer our choices, and change the way we live our lives, they are social engineering. So are noise ordinances, speed limits, even stop signs and traffic lights. Social engineering is inescapable, simply because narrow self-interest would otherwise lead people to cause unacceptable harm to others. Only a committed anarchist could favor a world without social engineering.

If outright prohibitions are an acceptable way to discourage harmful behavior, why can’t taxes be used for the same purpose? Taxes are, in fact, a far cheaper and less coercive way to curtail such behavior than laws or prescriptive regulations. That’s because taxes concentrate harm reduction in the hands of those who can alter their behavior most easily.

When we tax pollution, for instance, polluters with the cheapest ways to reduce emissions rush to adopt them, thereby avoiding the tax. Similarly, when we tax vehicles by weight, those who can get by most easily with a lighter vehicle will buy one. Others find it cheaper to pay the tax.

The list of behaviors that cause undue harm to others is long. When we drink heavily, we increase the likelihood that others will die in accidents. When we smoke, we cause others to suffer tobacco-related illnesses. When we emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we increase the damage from greater climate volatility.

EVERY dollar raised by taxing harmful activities is one dollar less that we must raise by taxing useful ones. The resulting revenue would enable us to reduce not only the federal deficit, but also the highly regressive payroll tax. And cutting that tax would stimulate hiring and help low-income families meet the burden of new taxes on harmful activities.

CHRISTMAS TIME IS HERE . . . AND HERE . . . AND HERE . . . .

Visited my father and Jean, his partner of many years, near Christmas. They live in a relatively new development in Chico, California. Each house is one story and they're all about the same size at around 2000 square feet. The fronts seem of equal length, the space between the houses, equal. Very few trees anywhere. Each house features a well-manicured, dark green lawn; each house seems orderly and well-kept. Despite sidewalks, and a few portable basketball hoops, I rarely see people anywhere in the neighborhood. There are no front porches. Every front door is shut. No children play in a wide street that sees little travel. It's a soundless neighborhood.

But it's alive with Christmas decorations on lawn, roof, and facade of nearly every house. Most have scores of small, colorful lights; many have a Santa or two or three in various poses and settings -- some relaxing under palm trees, some on a sleigh, some standing with legs wide apart in a greeting. There are inflatable snow-globes, inflatable characters and inflatable scenes, though not all are inflated during the day and so a flattened, deflated mess of color mars a lawn otherwise filled with Christmas cheer. Candy canes, brightly lit trees with computer generated lighting patterns, carolers, elves, penquins, even Mrs. Claus.

A favorite feature is brightly lit reindeer with slowly swiveling or nodding heads. I'm told that sometimes, late at night, kids ride around town and place the reindeer, with their swiveling, nodding heads, in attitudes of sexual congress. This forces Jean up a little earlier than she intends so as to decouple frolicing, lights a-poppin', heads a-noddin' deer before the sun comes up and so that the neighbors we never see won't be scandalized. Jean has unseasonable things to say about such kids who would disturb the "poor reindeer."

Some houses are dark holes on the street. So cheerless are these houses by comparison with the hundreds of candy-colored lights on either side that one almost expects Boo Radley to come out of the back of one and eat a squirrel or something.

Most houses sport a modest display that suggests a day's joyful work. Some go a bit beyond that, compelling Tina to wonder if there are "catalogs with up-to-date creations that people just must have."

And then there's that one house that seems nearly steroidal in its adornment. So bedecked in Christmas regalia is this house, so swathed in ornamentation, trimmings, and Christmas baubles, that I got the impression of an illuminated, manic rooster among lesser cocks. Here it is:



Across the street, as if in somber, if not opprobrious, response was a bit of mangy buzz-killing homelessness illuminated by a single star. Pushed up as far toward the street as it can be placed, this scene is either about to cross the street and have a word with the Santa Fantasia scene or maybe it just seems to ask, "Uh, have you forgotten something?" Here it is:



The placement of the creche facing the riotous Santa party across the street gave the impression of a scolding neighbor: "Hey! Hey you! Let's hold it down over there! I got a sleeping baby here!"

The Fallacy of "Cyberutopianism"

editorial cartoon by Joel Pett


From Frank Rich in the 2.6.11 NYT:

Among cyber-intellectuals in America, a fascinating debate has broken out about whether social media can do as much harm as good in totalitarian states like Egypt. In his fiercely argued new book, “The Net Delusion,” Evgeny Morozov, a young scholar who was born in Belarus, challenges the conventional wisdom of what he calls “cyber-utopianism.” Among other mischievous facts, he reports that there were only 19,235 registered Twitter accounts in Iran (0.027 percent of the population) on the eve of what many American pundits rebranded its “Twitter Revolution.” More damning, Morozov also demonstrates how the digital tools so useful to citizens in a free society can be co-opted by tech-savvy dictators, police states and garden-variety autocrats to spread propaganda and to track (and arrest) conveniently networked dissidents, from Iran to Venezuela. Hugo Chávez first vilified Twitter as a “conspiracy,” but now has 1.2 million followers imbibing his self-sanctifying Tweets.

This provocative debate isn’t even being acknowledged in most American coverage of the Internet’s role in the current uprisings. The talking-head invocations of Twitter and Facebook instead take the form of implicit, simplistic Western chauvinism. How fabulous that two great American digital innovations can rescue the downtrodden, unwashed masses. That is indeed impressive if no one points out that, even in the case of the young and relatively wired populace of Egypt, only some 20 percent of those masses have Internet access.

From "Twitter Can't Save You," by Lee Siegal in the 2.6.11 NYT Book Review wherein Siegal reviews "The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom" by Evgeny Morozov.

Morozov urges the cyberutopians to open their eyes to the fact that the ­asocial pursuit of profit is what drives social media. “Not surprisingly,” he writes, “the dangerous fascination with solving previously intractable social problems with the help of technology allows vested interests to disguise what essentially amounts to advertising for their commercial products in the language of freedom and liberation.” In 2007, when he was at the State Department, Jared Cohen wrote with tragic wrongheadedness that “the Internet is a place where Iranian youth can . . . say anything they want as they operate free from the grips of the police-state apparatus.” Thanks to the exciting new technology, many of those freely texting Iranian youths are in prison or dead. Cohen himself now works for Google as the director of “Google Ideas.”

For Morozov, technology is a vacuum waiting to be filled with the strongest temperament. And the Internet, he maintains, is “a much more capricious technology” than radio or television. Neither radio nor TV has “keyword-based filtering,” which allows regimes to use URLs and text to identify and suppress dangerous Web sites, or, like marketers, to collect information on the people who visit them — a tactic Morozov sardonically calls the “customization of censorship.”