Cat, Amusing Picture of a

Larry's new favorite perch, which requires a jump of about five feet from the kitchen counter. He's obsessed with all things ceiling. His latest trick was turning on the Shop Vac in the basement, though judging from the condition of his fur immediately afterwards we expect that one won't be repeated anytime soon.

Not Affiliated With Any Known Form of Journalism

We had two major news stories here locally last week--the identity mixup of two victims of the Taylor University crash last month, then the home invasion murder of seven members of an Eastside family, followed by the 48-hour manhunt for the primary suspect. It was a real test for the local talking hairdos, as both stories were big, garnered national attention, and were so serious that the ordinary vapid patter had to be shelved. You could see the strain on some of 'em by the second half hour.

Which meant that by Monday we were back with a vengeance to the everyday business of taking oversized bites out of a shit sandwich while smiling and telling the viewership just how garsh-darned good the thing tasted. That included yesterday's big 666 story, including an "interview" with the proud parents of a baby boy born by C-section on 6-5 so that their friends wouldn't make fun of them--that's what they said, and that's why I put "interview" in quotes. There was a distinct feel of making fun of the handicapped about the whole thing, but at no time did any of the professional journalists hot on the story's trail mention that 6-6-06 has nothing whatever to do with the Beast, if in fact anything does. The whole thing played so matter of factly you'd have imagined they ran a story on math phobias every day, or a This Week's Exorcism feature.

I still had a headache left over from accidentally hearing one-time President of the United States George W. Bush say, of whatever euphemism he was using for same-sex marriage, that "the nation should decide," which I'm sure at one point would have genuinely caused "conservative" heads to start exploding. But my suspicion is that the sort of person who'd be outraged by the trampling of state's rights inherent in that statement also favors it, so we're not going to hear "George Bush is not a 'Conservative', Take Two" on this one, though I noticed the network pundits were still bringing up his alleged "Compassionate Conservatism" this weekend after having ignored it for the previous five-and--a-half years. The Tony Snow "heterosexual marriage as civil right" thing was bouncing around my cranium as well, though to be honest I'm not sure I will ever get that worked up over anything Snow spits up has to say, because, well, it's Tony Snow. (The absurd notion that Tony Snow was going to make a difference as Press Secretary because he wasn't Scott McClellan lasted, what? thirty six hours?)

So maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind to listen to the CBS evening news. It's a rare event; I can't tell you the last time I watched network news. Maybe the week of 9/11. And I wasn't prepared for the CBS crew wagging its collective finger at me, but that's what happened, three stories in a row.

The first, naturally, was the big Canadian terrorist story. It was obvious right away that CBS had no real interest in any details when flights of fancy could serve. As a graphic illustrated the path from Canada to Bangladesh apparently taken by one suspect, Bob Shieffer intoned that this showed how easy it was to arrange an international terrorist hookup, despite the notable lack of one word of evidence showing the suspect had, in fact, made such a connection. The Toronto Star story which, by taking the odd tack of focusing on what's known about these terrorists has uncovered a laughable tale of teenaged delinquents with tundra for brains, was still hours away in real time and light-years away in professionalism.

(Really, anything's possible, but why would an actual radical Islam version of SPECTRE want to attack Canada? Did it occur to anyone to ask? )

After all this time, after all the dummy Orange Alerts and bald fabrications, not to mention a horribly botched invasion, what will it take to get professional journalists to consider for thirty seconds before they jump at something like this? It called for nothing more than ordinary skepticism, which ought to be available in spades these days, but still seems to be on the ration list. And this was followed by a report on stem-cell research at Harvard which took the "Here's a Controversy" approach to the story despite strong public acceptance and all sensible argument being on one side, and a shocking revelation that the VA "identity theft" story now involved active-duty military personnel, a story which first broke 48 hours earlier and which was treated as the worst, most selfishly criminal exploitation of Our Troops ever exposed. Too bad one percent of that outrage has never been aimed at the people who sent those same soldiers into war on false pretenses. You just gotta wonder. Don't bad dreams cause most people to wake up?

Caution: Spoiler

I've been working like the dog i' the adage the past few days, and I fell asleep around 9 last night, naturally to awaken around 2 AM. I went into the bathroom, sorry, the master bath, and there was a solid, high-pitched, industrial squeal coming in through the window. I am one of those people, assuming there are others, who can't let something like that go. Besides I'd already had my five hours' sleep.

I went outside, expecting the source to be our neighbor to the north (the "Canadas"), the guy who does zero maintenance and whose air conditioner sounds like a MIG take off. Wasn't him, though, and it wasn't the trouble-making family (the "Hatfields") just up the block, though they yet had their front door open, giving a nice view of the string of white Christmas lights which adorn their fireplace. I kept walking, and the sound never got any louder. I was nearly to the church at the end of the block, where I would have gotten a less restricted shot at determining direction--your ears can fool you, class--when it stopped altogether, which convinced me a) it was somebody, probably in some commerical establishment three blocks over, who was running something that shouldn't have been running at that hour; and b) it was too frickin' cold out to have walked a quarter mile in a lousy t-shirt while still bed warm.

Of course my faithful companion was waiting silently at home for my return, so I grabbed the remote and punched up Turner Classics. It was The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), but unfortunately it had already been on for forty minutes and he'd already shrunk, so that was ruined for me. All that was left was watching Grant Williams run around with oversized props while some smoothy makes off with his now unsatisfied wife. Sometimes size does matter.

I decided to critique his survival technique, especially since at this hour every other channel was an informercial. I should also point out that Williams was already in the basement, and I forget how he got there. I'm pretty sure he had an altercation with the cat while upstairs, so taking to the basement solved his immediate predator problem, though, of course, not for good. (Now that I think of it, his wife may have become convinced that he was eaten by Fluffy, making the moves of Mr. Smoove just that much more irresistable. ) But freed of that danger, WIlliams proceeds to go about things all wrong. Now none of us can say for certain that an unexpected weight loss of such proportions wouldn't play on our minds for a time, but...survival means using your head! Setting priorities! And the first of these is hydration, but Williams takes it for granted. Something drips on him and he swallows a couple mouthfuls. We'll allow as how people in the 50s were unaware of the risks of giardia; today we would be sure to treat the water (by boiling 15 minutes if no other purification method was available). Still, assuming there's no pressing medical or safety issue at hand, potable water is your number one concern.

Somewhere along the line Williams fashioned himself a toga. No doubt this was a nod to the social mores of the moviegoer of the day, but it's no excuse for going barefoot. A simple pair of sandals could have been made quite easily. Bear in mind that you'll probably do a lot of walking in any survival situation, and if you're shrinking by the minute you'll have to do even more. And not that clothing was a bad idea; as you shrink the ratio of surface area to volume may increase, so you'll lose body heat more rapidly. A toga is not going to be a great choice under the circumstances. Some puttees or leggings, even wound strips of material running from ankle to thigh, would help. So would stuffing the upper garment with insulating materials. Keep your core warm--top of the head to the navel.

Williams did create a shelter out of an abandoned matchbox. This was a good choice under the circumstances, as his only insect opponent turned out to be the exceedingly rare Midwestern web-spinning tarantula, and she couldn't fit in the box. But most basements will house a variety of arachnids and other undesirables, underscoring the fact that fire should be a major priority in the wilderness. If he'd been astute Williams would have stashed firestarting materials around the house before he shrunk down to insect proportions; even so, a little ingenuity would have had a fire going in no time, since there appeared to be a match left over (even though he was too small to manipulate the match, Williams could have shaved the head for combustible materials and the body for tinder, or he could have fashioned a wick and taken fire from the pilot lights of the water heater or furnace. Taming fire tames the world around you.

Williams wastes a good deal of time in the pursuit of food (cheese from a mousetrap, some sort of breadstuff near the spider's web), nearly getting himself killed a couple of times in the process. This was really all wrong, first because food is not your number one priority, second because if it is you might want to head for the kitchen, cat or no cat (speaking of which, if you do have a cat upstairs and mice in the basement you might want to consider letting Kitty go downstairs once in a while). In fact if you could swing it the refrigerator just might be the idea location under the circumstances, as food would be ample and predators nonexistent. It would be cold and dark much of the time, but people have endured worse.

I have to admit I lost interest around the time the water heater broke (never set up camp in a dry stream bed) and consciousness shortly after. And I dreamed myself a dream, and in it the US President noticed his jacket sleeves were growing longer.

On Vacation

Back in a few.

June

National Accordion Awareness Month

Oh, Come On NOW

So the National Organization for Women thinks Elizabeth Vargas is a cause célèbre? Does she even rank as a garden variety célèbre? When someone says to me, "If it can happen to Elizabeth Vargas it can happen to anyone," I have to assume they're referring to hosting World News Tonight, not getting shoved out the door.

Okay, okay, NOW can look out for its own agenda. But aren't there millions of women out there with no health care, no disability insurance, who can be fired because the boss doesn't like how they say, "Good morning," who are just one religious crackpot with a pharmacy degree away from poverty? Wouldn't most of those women consider one week of Elizabeth Vargas' pay a godsend?

Don't get me wrong, just because Vargas is extremely overpaid because she learned to read and comb her hair doesn't abrogate her rights. But she isn't being dumped for getting pregnant; she's getting dumped because ABC can't do the Ken and Barbie News now since Ken caught some shrapnel in the conk. They waited a decent period. They can't bring on Ken's Best Friend Skippy, and they can't leave Barbie there alone. Barbie is a fluff merchant. Fortune's turned against her, just like Fortune cold-shouldered thousands of other girls and boys who weren't pretty enough to get there in the first place. The difference being that Vargas gets millions for not quite making it, and the 24-hour-a-day nanny service women with real problems will never know.

Besides, nobody's ever had a better opportunity to put something in John Stossel's coffee and failed.

Martinizing Old Glory

Roger Ailes wonders about the whoopers and whistlers at Arlington National Cemetery.

We get a double dose in Indianapolis, since the Race, which used to be held on Memorial Day and thus had the justification of honoring the departed on their day among 400,000 people who had chosen to go to a sporting event instead, is now held the day before. Like most sermonizing and other public pieties the ceremonies tend to turn the beaters on High and just let 'em run, out of fear that insufficient time will be spent on showing reverence, and the whole thing winds up like a Twinkie without the sponge cake. The moment of silence (with that many people) always impressed me. The moment of Blue Angel (now B1) flyover always impressed me as an excuse for Air Force brass to score some free ducats.

Maybe that's just me, but my guess is that I'm not the only person who can recite the Gettysburg Address (with variants) who's never even bothered to read Edward Everett's two-hour oratory.

But if the Speedway engages in understandable patriotic poshlost, it's left to local teevee news to burst the bonds of dignity and turn the whole thing into one long, breathless shill appropriate to a new mall opening, apparently a reaction to those days when we used to line up and spit on the graves of Vietnam veterans. Used to be they'd cover taps somewhere, and a 21-gun salute and the wreath laying at Arlington. Yesterday it was practically wall-to-wall, with multiple remotes and Civil War reenactments (the heat! the wool!) and microphones stuck in everybody's phiz, including the team of husband and wife war dead buffs who were dressed in identical American flag shirts.

Even so, one moment of truth snuck through, somehow, when a young woman (wife, sister, I didn't catch the ID) said, "I used to spend every Memorial Day picnicking in the state parks. Now I suppose I'll spend every one, for the rest of my life, at Crown Hill (Cemetery)."

Holiday Garden Tour

Grüss an Aachen rose ("Jerry") responding quite well to this spring's root pruning.













Close up of Jerry.







My wife had to use the digital camera last week, so I cleared it out and found these tulips reaching for the sun from March. They predate our purchase of the house. There's never been more than three blooms before.














The fern family. Clockwise from the tassel fern at bottom center: Japanese painted fern, Lady fern, Southernwood fern, Japanese beech fern (all but invisible in front of yellow nametag), Lady in Red, another painted fern, and autumn fern just beginning to bloom. Leatherwood and Royal ferns just visible in back. The hosta in the lower left corner is Fire & Ice, one of my favorites.






I have to splurge on something just hitting the market every year. Here's this year's, a heuchera called "Peach flambé".











Japanese fleece flower, heuchera "Palace Purple", dead nettle, hosta "Blue arrow", a hosta I don't know the name of but call "Tie-dye" because it'll exhibit a half-dozen different tints once the weather gets hot, and a $5 garage sale pot my wife found.

The Top 50 Liberal Rock Songs of All Time

Please tell me nobody's gonna do this. And if they do, please tell me that "Imagine" isn't going to be #1. Somebody.

Happy Birthday

Dorothea Lange
May 26, 1895--October 11, 1965

Delirium, Revisited

Um. I'm not sure about this. My recent illness had, as the earlier three bouts have had, a certain hallucinatory quality, a clarity, not a fevered delirium, not a spinning turntable of Ray Miland Lost Weekend dementia with mocking laughter and skulls and snakes an' shit. Mescaline, not LSD, if that means anything to you, and if so you ought to be ashamed of yourself. It would kill your mother if she knew.

Sometime in that period I saw George W. Bush standing with the First Lady, he was saying something about immigration, I think, and she was just this incredible phony person standing sorta next to, sorta behind him. It may have been her body language, or my enhanced psychic receptivity, or maybe I made it up. But she seemed to be laboring at the Stepford bit, which seems to come so naturally to her. It was the first time I remember seeing her where I imagined there was something going on in her head. I listened to some Pere Ubu on the grounds that I wanted to do something with this free psychedelic experience, but David Thomas made me laugh and it hurt to laugh. I went to bed. That was Friday.

Then sometime over the weekend Alton Brown pronounced "Herculean" correctly. He might be the only teevee personality I've ever heard do so. I immediately forgave the schtickiness he's descended into in the past few years, but not Iron Chef America. That was Saturday. I went to bed.

The punchline isn't that when I woke up Sunday I was no longer hallucinating but "conservatives" were. They were--David Brooks removed all doubt--right where I'd left them. I was worried, briefly, about the Others, though. The local news, for one. You'll remember that Mitch "Apple Box" Daniels is about as popular as foot odor, and the poor dears are having a hell of a time figuring out who's ass they're supposed to kiss. There was a brief reprieve when the new fireworks law, aka "fuck it, just go ahead and blow shit up", went into effect, giving Channel 8 the opportunity to hand over a film crew and five minutes' air time to the barely literate "owner" of a major fireworks retail barn and site of a future test of local emergency preparedness.

It was the sort of thing that twenty years ago would have run as a "would you look at what sort of toothless cousin-marry-ers are running loose in [name Southern state]?" feature. The "operator" of this business--which, incidentally, neighbors have been trying to close down for years--kept squawking sentence fragments about "Freedom" and "America", and I kept waiting for someone to walk into the shot and give her a doggy treat.

I've lost track of how long this has gone on. In my youth Indiana, like the civilized world, restricted the sale of major explosives to people who had legitimate reasons to topple buildings. It was a rite of summer in certain quarters to drive to Tennessee (ten feet over the border sufficed) and come back with a trunkload of M-80s. I myself enjoyed the occasional Roman candle fight or the amateur theatrics involved in keeping a straight face while somebody's dad demanded to know how the aluminum siding got blackened. Then suddenly such playthings were openly available in Indiana, provided you signed a piece of paper agreeing not to set them off. Seriously.

There was no question about why the law suddenly changed. Fifteen-year-old boys are not, as a rule, politically connected or effective organizers, and emergency rooms, so far as I know, don't have lobbyists out trying to drum up more business. The only question was why the local media seemed oblivious to prima facie evidence of a state legislature with a For Sale sign out front. It's the same legislature which last year removed the restriction on setting the shit off--which, of course, had been roundly ignored--on the grounds that it was "hypocritical". But it wasn't hypocritical, of course. Hypocritical is where you deny the thing you're really doing. In exchange, fireworks retailers will now be collecting a surtax to fund fire safety and preparedness and, I hope, to fund several masses in the Fire Marshal's memory.

Y'know, it's not that I find watching shit blow up to be an obvious substitute for a satisfying adult sex life, though I do. It's not that this is willfully marketed as a question of "Freedom" when real freedoms are trampled with impunity, nor that as we face a national military manpower crisis Indiana is giving our most natural recruiting demographic a good reason to stay home. It's not even the thousands of injuries--mostly to children--these things cause every year. It's the frickin' tawdriness of the culture, the grubby everything's for sale reality behind the Culture of Life sermons and the Support Our President yard signs. It's Chinatown. Where they've been selling firecrackers for generations.

I'm still a bit tetched. I thought this was gonna veer off onto Richard Viguerie's WaPo Op-Ed, not because it or the spectacle of "conservative" rats deserting their own ship is particularly amusing at this point, but because last night Norah "Bot" O'Donnell did a piece on it on MSNBC, and either she couldn't be bothered learning how to pronounce "Viguerie" or the rest of us have been saying it wrong for twenty-five years. Why don't we have a better press corps? Because we deserved the one we do have.

One Minute Rebuttal

David Brooks, "The Big Sleep", NYTimes, May 21

And for this reason, the hearings must be investigated, for their dullness derived from three catatonic streams. It was, to twist the metaphor of a recent book, a perfect calm.

The first element in this calm was the rapid fizzling of the N.S.A. scandal. We have been treated in the past year to a panoply of anticlimactic frenzies. For example, we have seen the periodic flaring and the inevitable noneruption of the Valerie Plame affair. Every few weeks, perhaps coinciding with the full moon, the left half of the blogosphere will arise from its habitual state of paranoid rage and soar into a collective paroxysm of anticipatory glee over the thought of Karl Rove's imminent indictment. Alas, the indictment never comes.

Brooks, you PRISSY LITTLE TOAD, if we wind up the the same space someday I'm gonna PUSH YOUR FACE IN so far you'll have to TAKE OFF YOUR SWEATER VEST JUST TO SNEEZE! And NOT just because you wrote another specious column, NOT because you can't seem to choose one key and SING THE ENTIRE FUCKING SONG IN IT, NO, not even because you pull out that ridiculous "left blogosphere" shit when I WILL PAY YOU $5 FOR ANY BLOG BEYOND KOS, ATRIOS, OR KEVIN DRUM YOU'VE EVER READ ON THE SUBJECT, HELL, ever read at all, for that matter, providing you'll pick up the money in person so I can KICK YOUR ASS SO HARD PEOPLE WILL THINK YOU'VE GOT A GOITER! Is my minute up already?