|
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, July 31, 2002
Edwards for President
On Inauguration day, January 2005, get ready to watch the swearing-in, by whomever happens to be Chief Justice at the time (please, God, not Scalia), of Chief Executive no. 44: John Edwards. Yep, you heard it here first. Or perhaps you saw the normally skeptical and sanguine commentator Christopher Hitchens extol Edwards' virtues in Vanity Fair and on Dennis Miller Live. Or perhaps you read the glowing New Yorker profile. In any case, a consensus is clearly starting to form around the junior senator from North Carolina, a nascent awareness that he's the Democrats' best shot at beating Bush in 2004. And that maybe, just maybe, he'll become that most elusive of creatures, a good President.
He's young. He's smart. He's telegenic. He can work a room like Clinton, only thankfully a little more low-key. He's got a beautiful wife, impeccable Southern credentials and a made-for-TV family story that ensures no Republican will attack him on the character issue (you don't question the family values of someone whose 16-year-old son was killed in a tragic car accident). He has a popular pet project -- a bill to lower the cost of generic prescription drugs -- that just passed the Senate today, 78-21. And even arch-conservative George Will has a hard time saying anything bad about him. Sure, he used to be a trial lawyer, but in these days of big corporate crime it doesn't seem so ridiculous to make a living screwing out-of-control corporations on behalf of the little guy. When it comes to the whiff of scandal, as Will says, he's Mr. Clean: the only legitimate charge against him is that he's relatively inexperienced, and thankfully the very presence of George W. in the West Wing just about wipes that out as a campaign issue. By 2004, Edwards will have served as many years in the Senate as did Poppy's boy in the governor's mansion.
We've got a few years to go, of course. There are many opportunities for Edwards to stumble, self-destruct or even suffer a bimbo eruption. This is bound to make him nervous. The higher his profile gets at this stage, he will be reminded, the more opportunity GOP strategists have to train their mudslinging guns on him. Clinton, the very model of a winning candidate (if nothing else), didn't really burst onto the American consciousness until the beginning of '92. Any pundit will tell Edwards he has a fine line to walk between proving his worth and keeping his head below the parapet. And yet part of me wants to scream at him not to worry about mudslinging, and not to worry about being a latecomer like Clinton. Just go ahead and work up a storm, John; do your damndest to get your ideas out there. Remember, that's what happened the last time this country elected a Senator named John. He was a member of that elusive breed, too.
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, July 30, 2002
Fantastic Voyage in Peril
And while you're considering the possibility of alien life, take the time to sign this petition. Not content with screwing up our chances of ever getting to Mars, it seems NASA has cut funding for unmanned voyages to Pluto and Europa. Don't let them.
Please Hold the Line for ET
Have all these months of running SETI@Home finally paid off? This image would seem to suggest so.
The Case of the Broken Window
Coming back to my Prius after another delightful Radiance rave at Kelly's Mission Rock this Saturday brought me face-to-face with the kind of surprise you don't appreciate at 4:30am: my driver's-side window had been smashed in. Glass lay sprinkled all over the seats. And yet the perpetrator was either not a thief or a very myopic thief, because my iPod still lay there in plain view. Nothing, not even a roll of quarters, had been taken.
There were a couple of other intriguing details: 1) the smashing had been done almost to perfection. Very little glass remained in the window frame. 2) There appeared to be no rock, stone or other smashing implement inside the car. Had the vandal done this with his fist, or had he been courteous enough to remove his missile after the incident? The window is being replaced as I write, but the mystery remains. If you're out there, O perfectionist non-thieving San Francisco vandal, I'll let you off the $375 replacement cost if you can just satisfy my journalistic curiosity. What the hell happened?
The Hair Up There
It has been said, by those who know me, that the picture I posted last week is unflattering. This is true. It has also been suggested, by those who have not seen me recently, that I look like I'm going bald. This is not true. My hairline has barely shifted since I was 19 (I inherited my mother's full curly crop rather than my father's follicle-challenged genes). This, I suppose, is what I get for not drying my hair or making sure my shiny forehead doesn't catch the sun before every candid snap. Sheesh.
Daily Blah for... Friday, July 26, 2002
What It's All For: A Conversation with the World
Pam's comment the other day -- the one about wanting to see more photos and personal details before making an "emotional attachment" to my blog -- provoked a surprising crisis of confidence in your humble correspondent. I mean, it has always been Daily Blah house rules -- or as near as I have to 'em -- that I respond, semi-spontaneously, to whatever readers specifically ask of me. So regardless of whether her statement was serious or a jest, I felt obliged, duty-bound, to respond: "Alright, so you want to see some more of the real me? Here it is." And I started to put together a blog entry titled "Me and My Asparagus." It consisted of two pictures I'd recently taken with the Nikon Coolpix 4500, a camera I'm currently reviewing. One was of myself at Indian Rock, an East Bay viewpoint, last weekend, the sky behind me bathed in this typical tropical blue. The other was of my dinner two or three nights earlier, a dinner arranged so colorfully -- lime-green asparagus on an Indian Rock of tricolor pasta, all spread out on handpainted purple ceramic -- that I couldn't resist taking a snap of it. I'd scribble some witty comment about how before I came to California I never imagined I'd ever find myself eating such an extremely healthy vegetable, and there'd be my entry.
And yet I couldn't bring myself to post it. The blog entry sat there in my "drafts" folder on Blogger for days while I began to ponder the meaning of my aversion. I asked myself what was the matter, and I replied: what, am I some performing animatronic? They stick a quarter in the slot, say what they want, and out it comes? (You'll have to excuse me; I can be a grouchy misanthrope sometimes. I don't know why I put up with me).
See, the real problem is I don't have much of a coherent vision of what I'm doing here. I'm just sort of winging it from day to day, like a lot of lesser-talented blog writers. Talented blog writers -- I define the term as those who seem to have mastered the form enough to be prolific on a punishing daily schedule for something that is universally an unpaid hobby -- seem to have a lot of steam to blow off, a lot of venom to spout. (Perhaps that is the effect, or perhaps the cause, of so many of them being politically conservative). I try to make it a point to blow off some steam on one topic or another each day, but most days I don't have a lot of steam to blow.
I mean, I'm fundamentally satisfied with the world immediately outside my window -- the beautiful fogtown, and the endless sunshine and slight breeze of that whole heavenly bay I saw from the top of Indian Rock. As for the world beyond that, well ... I have an intimate knowledge of it, that's part of my job. But there are so many seemingly intractable problems right now that I wouldn't know where to start. I can get upset about something I read in the paper in my truly misanthropic, pre-coffee state, but by the time I sit down to write -- a stream-of-consciousness hour every day, you see, is as near to house rules as I have -- a zen-like acceptance of the whole human comedy, of Bush's idiocy and Wall Street's collapse and the Pentagon's posturing, hovers over me. So I wonder what to do, apart from get to the computer before I have coffee (I promise you, the result would not be pretty). Try to insert the anger I felt hours earlier into a fresh, sanguine analysis of the facts? Answer all those asinine technology questions I get every day (please, God, anything but that)? Appeal to the lowest common denominator, like at least one widely-read blog I can think of?Try something a little more personal? Or something a little more surreal that will still amuse, and possibly offend, but not alienate?
It's hard. Blogging is an entirely new medium, in its formative stages, tough to define. Yet there are some basic intuitive principles: the blogger, especially the oft-read blogger, is having a conversation with the world. Informality is the order of the day. In fact, it feels more like a conversation taking place in a crowded pub than anywhere else. Hundreds and hundreds of people, each with a tall glass of beer, are sitting at this enormous round earthy wooden table, the kind that just begs to be conversed around. There is a momentary lull in the banter, and all of a sudden everyone around the table -- including friends from New York, from London, friends and family from the North-East of England, and friendly strangers from Alaska to Zimbabwe -- is looking at me to provide the next topic. What would anyone do in that situation? Watch their mind go blank and fumble for a joke, a party trick, anything, all the while painfully conscious of how difficult it is to find interesting common ground in a group as diverse as that. Either that or work the table like a Vegas lounge lizard/West coast CEO: "Bill, good to see ya. Kate, baby, how ya been? Did you loose weight?"
It's a better metaphor than it might seem. The large wooden table is the network node you're sitting at right now, and it begs to be conversed around. The tall glass of beer is whatever pleasure you're taking out of this right now. Goofing off work? Surfing for fun and intellectual profit? Connecting with the world one last time before bed? And boy, is it noisy in here. So many tables! So many conversations! So many distractions! If I don't hook you right away, you'll take your glass and start mingling, without the slightest feeling of guilt on either side. I don't mind; I can't see you get up from the table anyway.
But I think I'm up to the challenge. I have the chutzpah to imagine (and ultimately, all blog writers must believe this) that I'm a pretty interesting guy to have a conversation with, especially in the medium my career is built around: the written word. I'm realistic enough about human interaction to accept that my conversation might stink some of the time. And hell, I seem to have built up something of a crowd around this table. Let's see if we can't have a little bit of fun here and if I can't become an even better conversationalist/blogger in the process. Or, to put it another way:
and
Look at me with all that asparagus, turning into a Californian health junkie.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, July 24, 2002
Heads Up, Chicken Little
My good friend Stephanie, a star reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, has of late become a connoisseur of gloomy news about asteroids. She spent the majority of her July 4 trip to San Francisco telling anyone who would listen about Earth's near-miss last month with a rock the size of a soccer field and the Hiroshima-like effect on any inhabited area in its path. "Don't you think it's terrifying that we can't detect asteroids like that until after they hit us?" she'd earnestly inquire of unassuming strangers at parties, who would squint at her, nod, take another sip of beer and return to their regular July 4 business, like worrying about non-existent terrorism threats.
Of course, there's nothing I like more than feeding someone else's obsession. So as soon as news came through that scientists worry such an asteroid strike might trigger an accidental nuclear war, I had to forward that to her. Someone up there must like feeding her obsession too, because today comes the piece de resistance: news that a 1.2 mile-wide object may possibly be heading for a date with our heads on February 1, 2019. Mark your calendars now. The best part of it all is that Stephanie still hasn't seen Deep Impact, so I get to inflict the last half-hour of that on her next time she comes to visit this coast. That's if we haven't all been struck down by rocky soccer fields before then. Hey, you know, it could happen.
Kitten-eaters of the World, Unite
I think I may have started something here.
Mr Taylor,
Thank you for showing your support for the right to consume kittens. Many Americans and Canadians retch at the thought of consuming a fluffy little kitten. But not us. We at the Kitten Consumption Consortium believe that consuming kittens is a beautiful practice. Granted they are hard to catch, and you often need to floss afterwards, but kittens are still a wonderful, wholesome meal.
Thanks again for supporting our cause!
John Reiser
newrisedesigns.com
Now, if we can only get Ozzy Osbourne to do the Public Service Announcement ...
Daily Blah for... Monday, July 22, 2002
File Under D for "Duh"
More grist for that endlessly fascinating topic, the difference between male and female brains. A new study says women are hardwired for emotional memory far more than men -- that is, upsetting or pleasant experiences make more of an impact in a woman's gray matter and can be recalled more easily, which should make for an interesting excuse the next time her guy forgets their anniversary: "Sorry, honey, my brain was hardwired to forget the emotional impact of our wedding." Presumably the next study from the Did-we-really-need-to-spend-money-on-this Institute will prove that men are more likely to remember obscure sports scores and prices of power tools. The obviousness of it all would be really upsetting, if I hadn't just forgotten about it completely.
Daily Blah for... Friday, July 19, 2002
Men and Supermen
The more astute Daily Blah regulars will have noticed the appearence of a comments link beneath each post (thanks again to Mac, who turned a half-assed desire expressed in a brief e-mail from Japan into reality, all in less time than it took to brew a cup of green tea). Take this as my official encouragement to post what the hell you want there: compliments, arguments, abuse, kitten recipes (thanks, Kaila). It's your space. It's a vibrant example of democracy in action. And apart from anything else, it gives me something to talk about in the next day's blog.
Case in point: Lauren's comment about superheroes being just as popular in Hollywood these days as anti-heroes like Hitler. Partly, I think this is down to the fact that Marvel has finally got its act together -- losing money on regular comics sales fast, it discovered (with the wonderful X-men) it could make far more cash out of renting its franchises out to major studios in a careful and fully controlled manner. After all, who's got time to read comic books these days? Far better to get your dose of Spidey for two hours in a darkened theater, safe in the knowledge that Stan Lee has vetted everything you're about to see. The Hulk and Daredevil seem set to turn Marvel into more of a studio itself than a comic house. AOL Time Warner's very own DC comics is getting in on the act too, with the forthcoming Batman vs. Superman. (Rumors that Dick Parsons and the late, great Bob Pittman are set to square off in the title roles are about as unfounded as our current stock price.)
But yes, it is also partly a by-product of the times. When the going gets scary, people need superheroes. Think about the decades in which superhero comics really flourished -- the 30's, 40's and 50's -- and you're talking depression, global conflict, industrialized genocide and finally the widely-accepted certainty of imminent atomic war. It was precisely because we felt so powerless in the face of all this that the costumed legions flourished. There's a great scene in Michael Chabon's Pulitzer prize-winning Adventures of Kavalier and Clay where Joe Kavalier, fresh from the horrors of Nazi Prague, pours out his revenge into a cover image of the Escapist socking Hitler square on the jaw. If today's superhero comics weren't so jaded and cynical and hadn't lost their sense of societal purpose, you could imagine seeing Superman throttling Bin Laden at a newstand near you. I think a lot of us would laugh and gain some small measure of inner comfort from such an image.
As it happens, I started delving into Nietzsche today (it's one of those things you promise you'll do sometime before you die, like take the trans-Siberian railroad and finish War and Peace), and discovered what ubermensch really means. Previously I'd been one of the uninformed masses scared away by the word's supposed fascistic overtones, and was pleasantly surprised to find Nietzsche -- who disdained his anti-semitic sister -- would not have agreed with Hitler's eugenic interpretation. Rather it's a goal, an aspiration for us all to live life and use our minds to the full; more in keeping with what Tim Leary said about the Beatles, that they were "ambassadors for a new race of laughing supermen." Well, I'm there. Sign me up. Let us all live like laughing supermen, gleefully socking the world's scariest inner demons square on the jaw.
Daily Blah for... Thursday, July 18, 2002
Time For Your Close-up, Mr. Hitler
With the big bad bin Laden bogeyman still at large and the world almost one year into being a very scary place, whom do Americans want to cluster round their TV sets and watch a four-hour miniseries about? That's right: Hitler. Or to be more precise, young Hitler (in the grand visual tradition of young Sherlock Holmes and young Indiana Jones, only with less crime-solving/derring-do and more painting/anti-semitism). At the same time, there's an upcoming Hollywood movie starring John Cusack on the same theme. What's going on here? Do we really need more anti-heroes in our lives? Is the U.S. turning into a pale imitation of Don DeLilo's White Noise, with its academic Department of Hitler Studies and vaguely menacing background threat of disaster?
On the other hand, isn't it funny that people only start kicking up a fuss about representations of Hitler -- that it only becomes a subject for national debate-- when it enters the visual realm? I mean, did anyone bat an eyelid when Ian Kershaw came out with Hubris, his epic biography of the ultimate evil-doer's early years, on which the CBS miniseries is based? No, because it was a book, and so few of us read books anymore. But ask any nonfiction publisher about the cottage industry in Hitler books. The Nazi dictator has long been one of the largest moneyspinners in the woodpulp world. We are still fascinated, it seems, by what repels and frightens us.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, July 17, 2002
Time For Your Cat Scan
Back from Japan and once again gazing at that lovely Al Qaeda tourist destination known as the Golden Gate Bridge. Was rather surprised and saddened to find that eating kittens comment the other day provoked not a single shocked letter-writer. What's wrong with you people? Are you all so desensitized to kitten-eating? Am I going to have to resort to thrusting cats into my scanner to get a rise out of you?
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, July 16, 2002
Don't Sweat the Sweat Stuff
I'm hardly the first Westerner to drink Pocari Sweat, of course, but I may be among the first to stomach it. This site seems to think it akin to the accumulated drippings of a Sumo wrestler's undergarments at the end of a long day's flab-bouncing. Me? I think it tastes like Gatorade. Then again, I've never been too keen on Gatorade.
Daily Blah for... Monday, July 15, 2002
A Word From Our Sponsors
"Judging by the absence of advertising on your website, it appears to be a non-profit venture," writes my old London-based pal Steven, a software engineer whom I just introduced to Daily Blah. "If so, why so? Why don't you stuff it with ads?" Why not indeed.
Alright, today's Daily Blah is brought to you by J-Phone, a Japanese cellphone carrier whose latest model -- with a built-in camera -- allowed me to wander the streets of Tokyo taking low-resolution snaps and e-mailing them to myself.
And by Pocari Sweat, the unfortunately-named Japanese energy drink. Slogan: Body Demand Pocari Sweat.
And by Jeans Mate, the clothing store with a heartfelt urge to show its literary credentials.
By Shinjuku Gyoen, the formerly private imperial garden where I spent a splendidly relaxing and contemplative afternoon drinking green tea:
And by this kitten, one of many I found in the park.
Kittens. The low-fat, high-protein snack food.
Daily Blah for... Saturday, July 13, 2002
Earthquake, the Sequel
As if the lingering threat of two more typhoons weren't enough, we just this minute had an earthquake in Tokyo. I was here on the 22nd floor of the Century Hyatt, recuperating after a hard day's shopping, and suddenly felt the whole building wobbling precariously. For one awful moment I remembered reading about how the Japanese tend to construct their buildings so they fall down quickly in quakes, and hence are easier to rebuild. Luckily, the city still seems to be standing. Nevertheless, the experience leaves me wondering what kind of geological jinx I am. After all, it hasn't been all that long since the San Andreas shaker I wrote about on May 13. I have just got to stop spending time on this damn Pacific plate.
Don't Rave -- Bellydance!
Last week I wrote that pending U.S. Senate legislation might drive ravers underground and across the borders to Tijuana or Toronto. But soon, according to my Toronto correspondent Jennifer, even that may be half-wrong. Yes, the once fine and liberal-minded city of Toronto has taken to banning raves on its property. Jeez. Maybe we'll all end up at relatively small, tame, guitar-and-drum-based "happenings" like the one I attended until 5am last night in the backstreets of Tokyo's Roppongi district. Still, the accompanying bellydancing was fantastic. It seems bellydancing classes are all the rage among female members of the so-called "new species", the collective name for Japan's hip urbanite under-25s. Well, if techno-filled warehouses are to be replaced by roomfuls of gyrating naked torso and sultry Middle East sounds, I guess I won't mind that much.
When You're Big (and) In Japan
See what happens when I go away for a week and don't post so often? I end up one of the Blogs of Note on the Blogger homepage. Of course, this has nothing to do with the fact that I just paid 35 smackers to upgrade to Blogger Pro. I hope.
Daily Blah for... Thursday, July 11, 2002
In Perfect Harmony
The typhoons seem to be giving Tokyo a wide berth, at least for now. It's not looking so promising for Saturday. But at the moment, snow-capped Fuji-san is shining in the far distance and the streets are steadily baking in a 90-degree heat. Such extremes of weather, yin and yang, seems perfect for this place.
I'm really enjoying the extraordinary emphasis Japanese culture places on being harmonious, though I imagine if I lived here any longer it would make me want to scream. Yesterday I met with some executives from Sharp, and we went through the whole business card-swapping ceremony. I'd been forewarned about the rules that govern this elaborate exchange -- always study the other person's business card with interest, be sure to watch how far down they bow and bow to the same level -- but I guess I really didn't believe it would be as formal as all that. It was, of course, and it continued throughout the meeting. One had to hold an expression of interest, to nod at appropriate junctures, to shun eye contact, and heaven forefend you loosen your tie or lean back in your chair. Part of me likes the civilized mannerisms; politeness, after all, is the lubricant of society, and something we could do with more of in the West. The other part of me just wanted to rip off my tie and sprawl back in my chair with legs hanging over the side, TV-watching style.
Comfort vs. congeniality: the eternal debate continues.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, July 10, 2002
Stranger in a Strangely Familiar Land
My first day in the far east, and I have the dubious fortune to run into three (count 'em) typhoons, all licking their lips at the sight of Tokyo. And yet it is the dirty gray clouds and constant anticipatory drizzle, the relative calm before the storms, that help me feel at home here; it is, for the time being, a very English climate. The excessive humidity, though not very English, reminds me of the four New York summers I suffocated through. And the forward tilt into the future which touches everything -- buildings, walkways, giant screens and vending machines -- reminds me of the Blade Runner-type world I always secretly wanted to live in.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not so in love with the world's most populous city to want to insert myself into its endless tower blocks for a substantial period of time (though that would not be out of keeping with the westward-ho trajectory of my life, which has so far catapulted me from England to California via the east coast). But I often say that I adore the San Francisco-Silicon Valley axis for its historically consistent desire to thrust itself five minutes into the world's future, technologically and philosophically speaking. If that is so, then Tokyo wants to live ten minutes into the future. Not just because videoscreens and futuristically funky architecture have been sprinkled everywhere with a kind of innocent glee, but also because of its wholesale cosmopolitanism; its ravenous adoption and effortless mingling of western corporate culture with timeless eastern sensibilities.
I sit here in a hotel room where I can charge up my American laptop in an American socket without need for an adaptor, where my every need is dealt with in English via a variety of media (phone, Internet, fax, interactive TV). Looking out across the Shinjuku area of the city, I can see half a dozen huge signs in English, stretching to all horizons; barely squinting, I'm able to imagine I'm in a kind of European version of Los Angeles. Earlier I took my hotel-property umbrella out for a walk and went shopping in an enormous department store called, in part, Times Square, where T-shirts were plastered in bizarre literary prescriptions for world peace. So the Japanese drive on the left, drink lots of tea and love radical (and radically nonsensical) English phrases.
No wonder I feel at home.
Daily Blah for... Monday, July 08, 2002
Tomorrow in Tokyo
In a couple of hours I'll be flying to Japan for a week of vacation (plus a few business meetings). Too late for cherry blossoms or the World Cup, this is nevertheless my first trip to the land of the rising sun; I'm enormously excited, and I'll keep you abreast of my experience. That's if the pesky international dateline jetlag doesn't get me first.
Daily Blah for... Sunday, July 07, 2002
Rotten Apple
I know Steve Jobs likes to control the message -- he's very gung-ho about promoting Apple products and controling the timing of information release -- but this is ridiculous. It seems Jobs has convinced MacWorld organizers to refuse press passes to any "rumor" website; that is, any small media outlet that joins in the fun of guessing what the company's next hot product is going to be. By pissing these guys off, Jobs is only hurting himself. Nearly all the buzz about products-to-be is created by these sites. They are what turns journalists like me on to what's next, or what might be next. If our only information source is Apple flacks [PR people], we're not going to be so keen to spill ink on whatever the product turns out to be when Jobs deigns to unveil it.
In this brave new world of information, media is organic. There's a whole food chain going on. The big journalists and the little journalists help keep each other alive. Any media hungry individual or organization who does not realize this, ultimately, is finished.
Rave Gone?
Can it be true? Can the U.S. Senate be so far out of touch with youth culture, and so disrespectful of liberty, as to be considering banning raves? What next? Thousands of teens in day-glo pants and black light T-shirts streaming across the border to warehouses in Tijuana and Toronto? A Million-Raver march on Washington? A prohibition against candy pacifiers and light sticks?
The Battle of Bull Run
If there is some gene that causes an inclination towards Hemmingway-esque stuff, I don't possess it. I have absolutely no interest in shooting, boxing, fishing or participating in a major European civil war. When I went to Pamplona during the running of the bulls, I was not one of the testosterone-filled mental adolescents trying to whack the bull on the tail with a rolled-up newspaper, but rather sitting comfortably further up in the arena seating with my sister, shaking my head at the sorry spectacle. Why did these idiots want to do this? What did they have to prove, and to whom? Was it a misguided attempt to work their way into the hearts of women? If so, I remember, the bulls were not playing along, but were rather making very well-guided attempts to work their horns into the hearts of their provocateurs. So it does not surprise me to learn that three people were gored in this year's run. It does surprise me to learn that a 19-year-old woman from Kansas was among the three. Even the more sensible sex, it seems, carries the Hemmingway gene.
Daily Blah for... Saturday, July 06, 2002
Complaints, Glorious Complaints
A sure sign that my audience is slowly returning after Daily Blah's week-long tech glitch hiatus: I'm starting to get the usual kind of underinformed, barely intelligible correspondents writing in, spoiling for a flame war. A guy called Miles Parnell calls my July 3 entry "the biggest load of rubbish I have ever heard" -- strong praise indeed! -- and bases this searing assessment on, um, the fact that he was "living in the U.S. in the early 80's." Well, that explains everything. He goes on: "As a Brit, I can only say you associate with a bunch of imbeciles." Really? I never knew my countrymen were so empowered with long-distance, telepathic mental health assessment skills. Miles continues: "If I were you I would get out and return to the U.K., since it is obvious you are a loser." Wow. You've got me, Miles. Let me book my ticket. Wait a minute -- does this mean the U.K. is a nation of losers? And since you live in the U.K. now ... Whoops! You've insulted yourself!
As a kicker, Miles claims to have "corrected" my spelling of reenact -- by adding a hyphen between "re" and "enact." Sorry, Miles, but "reenact" without a hyphen is the classic American English style (hyphen placement counts as style, by the way, not spelling). Check it out in Webster's. You are familiar with Webster's from your extensive early-80's American experience, I hope?
Meanwhile, on the American side of the nutter fence, "Ken & Jacquie Ilkenhans" (don't you just love it when married couples share an address and don't sign their mail, as if they were some kind of group mind?) take issue with the Mike Newdow entry (July 1). "Maybe you haven't read the first Amendment in a while," they write. "Where does it say that Americans are guaranteed from having religion? Guess what? It doesn't." Well, folks, perhaps you should read my entry again. Where does it say that Americans are guaranteed from having religion? Guess what? It doesn't. It says the First Amendment guarantees Americans freedom from having religion imposed upon them -- by the government. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Now we can argue all day about what constitutes an "establishment" of religion, but if you're the slightest bit open-minded you have to agree this might include -- just might -- government-employed schoolteachers being required to use the words "under God" every morning. If those two words are not religious, as I suspect you might try and argue, then why are religious folks like yourself so upset about the idea of losing them? Discuss.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, July 03, 2002
Bring on the Tar and Feathers!
Time was, back in 1994, when I was terrified of being in America on Independence Day. Here I was, a Brit, in a country celebrating the fact that it beat up the British. Part of me felt a little like an Irish nationalist stuck in the path of an Orange march in Ulster. Sure, we were allies now, but had the Yanks really forgiven us yet? Would people give me strange looks (well, stranger looks) when they heard my accent? Would I encounter a boozy rabble of patriots looking for Tory types to help them reenact some good old-fashioned tarring and feathering? Just how far did this spirit of '76 thing go? My girlfriend at the time, an American, set me straight. "Oh honey," she said, "most Americans don't even know what happened on July 4." To my enormous relief, she was right. There was scarce little historical reenactment going on -- not unless Jefferson et al set down their quills, fired up the grill and feasted heartily on franks and beer. Since then, like most Americans, I've greeted the holiday as little more than a good excuse to goof off in the height of summer, overindulge, and gawp at multi-million dollar fireworks displays. Think it'll be different this year, with the heightened security, the nerves, the extra flags? Somehow I doubt it. The lure of delicious laziness is just too strong.
Margaret on the Guillotine
Growing up in a Labour party stronghold in the north of England, I knew a lot of people who detested Margaret Thatcher. In fact, I was one of those people, although I was also prepared to give her a fair hearing and remember getting very annoyed when she came on television -- not just at the hard-right policies she was spouting, but also at any person I was watching with who would try to shout her down. Anyway, I'm not sure even her more rabid opponents from my hometown would bother decapitating a huge marble statue of her. Cue a nationwide cry of: "How could they tell? She lost her head years ago." Perhaps someone has been taking an old Morrissey song rather too literally.
Daily Blah for... Monday, July 01, 2002
Want to Listen to my Death Threats?
Spent a fascinating evening last Wednesday with Mike Newdow, the guy who brought the lawsuit against the "under God" part of the Pledge of Allegiance and won. I met this 49-year-old doctor and part-time lawyer outside his home in a quiet, well-to-do suburb of Sacramento; I was just ringing the doorbell when a white stretch limo pulled up and Newdow emerged. It was his third stretch limo ride of the day: the Today Show, Connie Chung and now Greta Van Susteren all wanted a piece of him in their Sacramento studios. In little over 24 hours, the unassuming atheist had become a celebrity and a hunted man. His eight-year-old daughter, on whose behalf the lawsuit was brought, had been sent to a safe place. I wanted to pull my car into his driveway, and Newdow said sure -- "unless you're worried about my house getting blown up, in which case you might want to park in front of the neighbors," he grinned.
Newdow said he was hungry, so I took him out for a Chinese meal. Although the world's media was besieging him, nobody had thought of actually feeding the poor guy yet. We did an interview where he wanted to go, a low-rent restaurant in some mall where he wouldn't be recognized. We chatted amiably on the walk there and back, and then he invited me into his place to have some sherbet ice cream and listen to his death threats. He was taping all his answerphone messages, which were arriving at the rate of one a minute. He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of a small tape machine, picking at his guitar, providing a strange soundtrack to the endless stream of abuse:
- I hope you burn in hell.
- I cannot believe you did something so perverse. You will be punished. You will cry out for Jesus. You need to fear for your life.
- I think you're really sick. I hope you have strong asbestos underwear.
- We don't want you. You don't belong here. Why don't you go back to Iran? [Fascinating and ironic; I guess Russia has lost its appeal as a place to tell people to go back to, but why tell an atheist fighting for his atheistic rights to go back to a theocracy?]
- You are a stupid whore.
- Mike. This is God here. I'm really upset with you. [And my personal favorite:]
- If you don't like it, get the hell out. Have a nice day.
I found Newdow remarkably calm in the face of all this. For a few seconds the strain started to show, and I thought I saw tears start to well when one of the Christian callers mentioned his daughter. But there was encouragement too: students doing papers on the Constitution who knew that the first Amendment guarantees Americans freedom from having religion, any kind of religion, imposed upon them. Housewives in Connecticut -- why Connecticut? -- commending him for his bravery. And Newdow himself seemed to act as his own cheerleader; here's a song he wrote about his case, which he played for me just before I finally had to make my excuses and drive back to San Francisco. It's called the Pledge of Allegiance Needs Some Old Religion Blues, and Newdow plays a pretty mean blues guitar and harmonica with it:
It all began one Sunday, in 1954
That old Pledge of Allegiance it needed something more
Though it seemed to be working for sixty-something years
The Nation had McCarthy. The Nation had great fears
The politicians sensed it. Hey, how could they refuse
They had the Pledge of Allegiance needs some old religion blues
The world was filled with danger. Got worse with every hour.
The people put the call in to Dwight D. Eisenhower
He had to save the children. The daddies and the mommies
They all needed protection from those scheming, evil commies
At least that's what they fed us. It couldn't be a ruse
They had the Pledge of Allegiance needs some old religion blues.
They ran it through the Congress. Each colleague gave a nod
Well damn the Constitution. This country needs some God
We know when doing battle, in all the different fights
One can't be burdened with reminders of the Bill of Rights
With Him there on our side there ain't no way we'll ever lose
They had the Pledge of Allegiance needs some old religion blues
The atheists are coming! That was the common shout
They may think that they're clever, but we know what they're about
We all know quite precisely just exactly what they're doin'
We're not about to let them bring the country into ruin
It's bad enough with Catholics, and Mormons and the Jews
They had the Pledge of Allegiance needs some old religion blues
This country is the greatest, and never have we faltered
It didn't take so long to get that defective Pledge altered
And now that we have done it - with God here on our side
So what if indivisible means that we do divide
It's freedom of religion as long as God you choose
They had the Pledge of Allegiance needs some old religion blues
The Blah is back!
After a week of being closed with the technology age equivalent of traffic cones and police tape around it, Daily Blah is back. The problem was not so much my hosting company, which merely needed me to change some technical stuff (my domain name server information), as it was VeriSign, the big scary company that bought Network Solutions and manages all my website information. All I had to do was give Verisign those new domain name servers, and my words of wisdom would be resurrected. Alas, it turned out the only way to do that was through their website -- even the customer service guy on the other end of the phone could only do it through their website -- and this part of their website was down for the better part of a week. It's a 21st century Catch-22 that had me spitting fury down the phone for days on end. "It'll probably be fixed tomorrow," the customer service guy would suggest sheepishly, just like he did the day before.
In the meantime, my readership has scattered to the four winds. When you enter a web address and get no result, it takes a lot of commitment to think "oh, it must be having temporary difficulties. I'll try again in a week or so." And there's no way for me to sound the all-clear, save getting you all to sign up for an e-mail list -- which is, I suppose, something I should look into. Looking after a website, even a blog that's supposed to run (and write) itself, can be as taxing as minding a baby.
|
|
|
|
