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NOTE TO MY READERS OF THE DAY:
Sure I could attribute my failure to post anything in the last ten days or so to laziness or lack of inspiration. But I prefer to think of it as a principled gesture of premature solidarity with the striking writers whose cause I now arbitrarily choose to abandon.
SOCIO-POLITICAL ANALOGY OF THE DAY:
In reading Michael Pollan's excellent book "Omnivore's Dilemma," I learned that in industrial chicken farming, chickens are cooped up in tiny cells in which they are fed and from which their waste (or at least most of it) is removed. The feature that differentiates regular mass production from the production of meat that can proudly sport the label "Free Range" is that, in the latter case, the livestock are given a designated period of the day (I believe usually 15 minutes) during which the gate to their cell is opened up. At the far end of the giant meat farming building there can be found a small passage way with an opaque rubber curtain on it. If one of the animals happens to wander out of its stall and find its way to this door and traverses the little rubber curtain, it would find itself in a small enclosed outdoor pen--exposed briefly to the grace of weather and sky. Needless to say, most of the chickens neither make use of this little portal to enclosed outdoorness nor even discover that it is there. And yet, it is the feature that allows the industrial facility to legally market its product as "Free Range."
Anyhow, it struck me as being a little bit like the way we market our "democracy" to ourselves. And the way we experience and exercise our "freedoms." Don't want to push the analogy too far, but I feel that there is some kind of relevance there.
CONCEPT OF THE DAY:
Stealth newness. The novel being introduced under the cover of the familiar. Rather than the far more prevalent opposite phenomenon.
EPIPHANY ABOUT MY OWN ABSURDITY OF THE DAY:
I was recently told that, due to a technical error, the first two weeks of our fantasy basketball league might not count and official scoring might only begin in the third week of the season. I of course protested with vehement righteousness--as I have been obsessing quite a bit over my team's roster and have been alternating between first and second place in the standings. I actually found myself thinking:
If the fantasy hoop points I've accumulated over the last two weeks don't count, then all that wasted time was for nothing!
I was evenly divided between the part of me that saw humor in the thought and the part of me that didn't find anything funny about it at all. Ok: I was like 95% in the latter camp.
Ok, let me retroactively redeem my failure to see the humor of this thought by (shamelessly stretching the material and) annointing it:
TRAGI-COMIC THOUGHT OF THE DAY:
If the fantasy hoop points I've accumulated over the last two weeks don't count, then all that wasted time was for nothing!
LFAQs of THE DAY:
Did that gesture of turning wasted time into a quip keep it from being wasted time?
Would you rather travel unobstructed in the wrong direction or bumper to bumper in the right direction?
Gay Republicans. Isn't that like Jewish Nazis? Or Black Klansman?
Has the George Washington Bridge suffered a subtle reductioni n prestige due to having the same initials as George W. Bush?
Why aren't the people who outed a CIA operative (Valerie Plame) being charged with treason? Why are they not in Guantanamo bay? Why are questions like this so readily dismissed?
Which is higher praise: He's a good person or he's a good mammal?
Were the Pakastani police living out every American's fantasy by beating up the lawyers?
How many people have manifested the kind of magical thinking that allows you to take milk out of the fridge, notice it's a day or two past its expiration date and then, instead of trying it or throwing it out, simply put it back in the fridge as if it's going to somehow get less addled with the addition of time?
Or is it just me?
STAT OF THE DAY/JOKE OF THE DAY:
I saw a story on Yahoo the other day claiming that 53% of married men admit to ogling other women. It was also reported that 47% of married men lie.
ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE DAY:
Winning my first week rotisserie fantasy NBA match-up with just one thumb!
MUSIC COMMENTARY OF THE DAY:
Got a last minute ticket to see Sufjan Stevens at BAM. A really special talent. I'd say of the explicitly Christian musical artists I am aware of, Sufjan, The Innocence Mission and J.S. Bach are my three faves. Hell, if they were the only three faces of Christianity, I just might oblige Anne Coulter and "perfect" myself.
CURIOUS PHENOMONEON OF THE DAY:
When I arrived for said concert, I was given ear plugs by the usher. Classic. Actually, that (Classic) was the name of the earplug manufacturer. I wonder if they give blindfolds at the movie screening too.
OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:
The unlikeliness of two people being together isn't necessarily a bad thing. But unlikeliness shouldn't be the best thing that a relationship has going for it.
MEDIA OBSERVATIONS OF THE DAY:
a)
Larry King to Seinfeld: "Now your show wasn't cancelled was it?"
Larry King to Steve Erwin's wife: "Now a croc is the same thing as an alligator?"
Larry King: the apotheosis of casual avuncular cluelessness. If there were no Larry King, he would have to be invented. Most likely on SNL.
b)
The mainstream media is still abdicating its role as an arbitrator of fact and a critical filter for information. It still presents lies and truths (i.e. deceptive spin and established certainties) in a preposterously fair and balanced way. As if truth and falsehood were merely competing claims. (And, yeah, I know "media" is plural, but it just doesn't sound right that way.)
c)
Sarkozy on 60 Minutes. A delightful slap in the face to the inherent immaturity, irresponsibility and prurience of even the semi-serious American media. That the first question to the new leader of one of our greatest and longest standing allies (and a nation that finds itself on the verge of great socio-political and economic change) would be about his personal life is symptomatic of just how far our public discourse has fallen.
REFLECTION ON POLITICAL RHETORIC AND LINGUISTIC ELASTICITY OF THE DAY:
This administration believes you can keep something from being called torture by redefining torture as "enhanced interrogation techniques:" I can imagine Cheney stealing an old lady's purse. The old lady screams. "That man just stole my purse!!!" whereupon Cheney responds defiantly: "That's not stealing. That's merely using enhanced acquisition techniques."
Which suggests our second repurposing of the day and our first and only:
CARTOON WITHOUT ILLUSTRATION OF THE DAY:
VIS: Cheney, Bush and Addington breaking into a car with a crowbar.
CAPTION: It's not stealing. It's merely using enhanced acquisition techniques.
REFLECTION ON TORTURE OF THE DAY:
Water boarding. A terrible thing. Obviously inexcusable. And obviously--despite inspired linguistic evasions-- torture. But frankly, I found snow boarding every bit as painful and degrading. I never recovered from the first lesson of being repeatedly body slammed to the ground. Come to think of it, the boys at Guantanamo Bay might want to look into snow boarding lessons as an enhanced interrogation technique. After the first few bruise inducing encounters with the icy slope, those guys would become veritable chatterboxes.
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
"I guess that when the good guys aren’t even good anymore, it’s time to give up politics.” -my mother on her disappointment in Chuck Schumer.
Schumer's rationale (as expressed in a NYT op-ed piece) for supporting the Mukasey confirmation seemed to be a variant on the concept that the perfect is the enemy of the good. His take was, in essence, that the good is the enemy of the minimally acceptable. Or maybe even that the minimally acceptable is the enemy of the barely tolerable.
MOVIE OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:
Saw Michael Clayton. Was--for obvious reasons-- really moved by the scenes of the divorced protagonist picking up his son in suburbia for weekend visits. And overall, I was surprised by how much I liked the movie. While I'm not a fan of the whole romantic trope of psychosis as liberated truth (Tom Wilkison's role is reminiscent of Peter Finch's in "Network"), I really appreciated Clooney's carefully modulated performance--conveying his character's pained confusion and emerging moral awakening with muted gravitas. It struck me that Clooney is becoming the Robert Redford of our era; Their career arcs are really similar with both evolving from dazzlingly sexy young movie stars to the good looking but sober-spirited moral consciences of their generations. I suppose the same could be said of all kinds of liberally inclined leading men (Warren Beatty from Redford's generation, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Brad Pitt etc from Clooney's)--but there is a certain combination of beauty, charisma and complexity that links these two. No? Or is it just the Lipitor talking?
ADDENDUM OF THE DAY:
Other tough things to do with broken thumb:
Open bottle of wine.
Play pool.
Use chopsticks.
Origami.
Play guitar.
SORT OF A PROPOS, ENHANCED METAPHOR OF THE DAY:
Like trying to find a needle in a haystack. In the dark. With two broken thumbs.
CORRESPONDENT CONTRIBUTION OF THE DAY/WEEK/MONTH/YEAR:
Loren Parkins our fearless Correspondent at Large phones in from the Aperture fundraising auction to report that he doesn't know which people are eyeing with most interest: the art, the appetizers or the breasts.
For this we pay him good money. (but of course not during the Writer's strike.)
GEOPOLITICAL SUMMARY OF THE DAY:
This silly young country in this sad old world.
BAD TASTE POLITICAL QUIP OF THE DAY:
I read somewhere that among pedophiles who vote, there has been huge support for George W. Bush over the last 7 years. I was mystified by that, until I realized it was based on a simple misunderstanding. The NAMBLA folks thought his policy was called "Leave No Child's Behind."
P.S. OF THE DAY:
Sorry.
SELF-DISCLOSURE OF THE DAY:
I’m not a misery loves company kinda guy. I don’t want company when I’m miserable. Hell, I can barely stand my own company when I’m miserable.
NOTE FROM THE JOURNAL OF MOURNING OF THE DAY:
Dream of going to the place where I last ate with my father. I explain my presence to the waiter/maitre d. I sit in the seat and sob.
The waves of acutely felt loss just keep coming. I'm just startled by--will forever be startled by--the permanence and unnegociability of the absence. The fact that he is no longer there to call.
With the death of a loved one, one's life is irrevocably divided between the time when you had that person in your life and the time you no longer do. And you are endlessly shuttling between those two irreconcilable versions of your self--struggling to become the impossible integral of those two identities.
---
Until the end there is no end. And then it seems there is nothing but the end.
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Posted on 11/10/2007
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