The buck no longer stops here

Has anyone noticed a massive decrease in buck services? When Harry S Truman occupied the presidency, he was known for having said, "The buck stops here." When I was in school, this statement was held up to me as a shining example of the duty of someone in power to take responsibility when things go awry, particularly if s/he is prone to taking credit when things go well.

I'm reminded of this because the current thinking on management and responsibility has shifted markedly from Mr. Truman's view. Nobody at the top is responsible for anything anymore. We're apparently more enlightened. We now know that when things go wrong, it's always someone else's fault, generally a subordinate, but sometimes it's the fault of a previous holder of the top job. Scooter Libby, a subordinate, was at fault. Previous directors of the CIA were at fault. The soldiers manning Abu Ghraib were at fault. But boy howdy, the man (or infrequently woman) at the top is responsibility-free. No generals were harmed in the investigations at Abu Ghraib. In a pinch, it's -- wait for it -- The Weather's fault. So, now we have fantastic, ever-increasing salaries at the top positions, while the responsibility is decreasing. Let's spend a little money and put buck stops back in all the plush offices of the holders of top positions in government and industry.

Tinman

I'm sorry to report that this production is appalling. It's a shame too, because I like Alan Cumming, but I don't think I'm going to invest any more of my time watching it. The story so far (I've only seen the first part) looks as if a group of 12-year-old gamerdude boys got the actors and the cameras and the sets all together and then developed the story on the fly, melding vague memories of the original Wizard of Oz with random scenes from Stargate and T. J. Hooker.

The dialogue sounds as though it was created from Beavis-and-Butthead reflections like, "Dude, we can have the flying monkeys come out of the wicked witch's tits, man", "Yeah, sweet", "Heh, heh boobage." The flying monkeys actually did emerge from glowing tattoos above actress Kathleen Robertson's cleavage, (opportunity for closeup of breasts, "yeah!"). There is a mean-spirited, gunslinging policeman (Tinman), a fluttering twit whose brain was removed (I imagine this is the Scarecrow character in the book, though here he's named Glitch), the cowardly lion, a quivering, hesitant member of a leonine empath species (because 12-year-old boys can't conceive of the same person being both empathic and strong), and DG (Dorothy) who is peculiarly played by actress Zooey Deschanel who delivers all her lines in a flip monotone which turns out, unfortunately, to be the the appropriate voice for them.

I found out that there's a 2-hour new episode of The Closer on tonight, which is what I'll be watching instead of the second part of this dreadful, wet mess.

This morning Qwest, my telephone company, had the gall to inform me that both my mother's maiden name AND the name of my childhood pet were invalid answers to my security question for my online account. Now, mind you, this was during the process where I write a security question and answer of my own choosing that only I would know the answer to.

Nowhere did they indicate WHY these items of my personal history were invalid. I suspect corporate America of putting research dollars into better and more efficient ways of pissing off customers and the public at large. How dare they say my mother's maiden name [5 letters] is invalid or that my dog's name could not have been [6-letter name]! Maybe they should just specify my security question and answer for me, since I obviously can't be trusted to do it correctly.

So first, I determined that Qwest has help for everything except its website. I then spent 10 minutes of my life that I will never get back screwing around with Qwest telephone customer service. They couldn't answer my question, but they did verify for the third time this week that I am not working, I have no cell phone, and that there is no other number at which I can be contacted and finally informed me that I should use the online chat function.

Now, I hate these "chat with a live person" options (while wondering when their "chat with the dead" will become available) because so many businesses appear to use insufficiently sophisticated Artificial Intelligence scripts instead of "live" people, figuring, I guess, that live customers won't be able to tell the difference. These "live chat" scripts, in my experience, try unsuccessfully to identify your problem by parsing your complaint looking for likely words. Then they generally give you the solution to some other problem while parroting back your original complaint. I find this unspeakably irritating. I prefer this to the alternative theory, that the person with whom I'm "chatting" is a living, breathing incompetent.

Anyway, after waiting in line (Why do they think it will mollify people waiting in line to hear that they can't talk to you because they are serving other customers? "There are 15 people who are more important than YOU!") they informed me that, although nowhere on the website do they actually say this, the answer to your security question (of your own choosing, mind you) must be 8 to 14 characters. It's like "bank security" now, they said.

I don't care what it's like. Telling me to choose a question and answer without the common courtesy to inform me that I must meet other conditions and parameters is yet another feature of modern life that enrages me and makes no sense to anyone other than a money-grubbing, common-sense-free, corporate spreadsheet jockey. Fie on the lot of them! Come the revolution, well, you know.

doctors

I have a longstanding love-hate relationship with the medical profession. Lately I have noticed that the first conversation I have with female doctors is usually about why I'm visiting today. The first conversation I have with male doctors is all about whether or not I'm an idiot, and what kind of idiot I am.

Why are Senate Democrats so easily pushed around? We are trying to replace a Bush-appointed Attorney General who resigned in disgrace after many episodes of using the office and public money to advance Republicans and harass Democrats. Now Bush is accusing Senators of taking too long to rubber stamp yet another of the President's good ol' buddy appointees. It's fruitless to ask where Bush gets his nerve from, but what I want to know is why Senators Feinstein and Schumer are not rejecting Mr. Bush's pettish fingerpointing and defending their reticence to confirm yet another tame Republican. It's easily answered. "Mr. President, we're taking a good long look at this appointee because so many of your appointees have been inept, inexperienced, crooked as a dog's hind leg, and/or stupid. None of these attributes are what we want in an Attorney General, and we're going to investigate this guy until we are satisfied that he is none of the above."

So many Democrats just roll over at the slightest hint that they might not be completely and absolutely fair, while the other party is running around like a bunch of rogue elephants, violating laws, spending public funds on private and partisan vendettas and generally enriching themselves at the public trough. C'mon folks, stand up for yourselves and us!

Good luck, Ernie

I have a great deal of fellow feeling for Nebraska Senator Ernie Chambers in his effort to sue God for "death, destruction, and terrorization of millions." So much, in fact, that should the senator actually win a settlement, presumably monetary, but, considering the assets and capabilities of the Defendant (or is it Respondent?), I suppose anything is possible as redress, court calendars in all jurisdictions eligible to administer this matter will suddenly be booked solid for centuries.

But while I'm waiting for resolution on this litigation, I'll get on with other things, such as actually dealing with the admittedly sometimes crummy hand dealt me by the Deity in His, Her, Its, or Their wisdom, as the case may be.

police and deaf citizens

As the parent of a deaf child, I worry. My son has no hearing, so if, like they do on TV, a police officer ever yelled, for instance, "Stop or I'll shoot," if he was standing behind my son, my son would not stop. Not because he's a criminal, but because he can't hear the command.

I wrote, several years ago, to ask our police department what steps they were taking/had taken to prevent this sort of tragedy. I got a lukewarm and unspecific assurance that it probably wouldn't happen. Cold comfort, that.

The NAD newsletter came today, with a disturbing story of an encounter between police and a deaf man. Here it is:

The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) reaffirms its commitment to effective communication between people who are deaf or hard of hearing and police officers. Recent incidents involving police officers and individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing remind us that our commitment must be ongoing.

For example, in November 2006, Douglas Bahl of Minnesota was pulled over by police for failing to stop at a red light. Bahl is deaf. Bahl tried to use gestures and paper and pen to communicate with the police officer. The police officer used physical force. Bahl was arrested. After being treated at a hospital for his injuries, Bahl was taken to a jail where he spent four days without access to a TTY to make a phone call and without interpreter services, despite repeated requests for these accommodations. On September 14, 2007, Bahl was convicted of obstructing the legal process without force.

Sadly, Bahl is not the first deaf or hard of hearing person to encounter communication problems with law enforcement officers. The NAD has represented deaf or hard of hearing individuals in disability discrimination complaints against law enforcement agencies when those individuals were arrested and held in jail without access to a TTY to make a phone call or interpreter services to communicate effectively with police. As a result of those complaints, the NAD has obtained favorable legal rulings and settlement agreements requiring law enforcement agencies to provide appropriate auxiliary aids and services, including qualified interpreter services and TTYs.

I am glad that the National Association for the Deaf (http://www.nad.org/) is taking some action on this situation. Deafness may not be that widespread a disability, but even one fatality from ignorance and failure to take action is too many.

Senate tries to censure people who disagree with Bush

Well well, that's a nice headline. And it's true. Our taxpayer dollars are well spent on this measure in the Senate to censure MoveOn.org, who has, apparently, been telling the Senate, often and at length, that many people in the US do not like things the Bush administration has been doing.

I think this is just the beginning, an opening salvo. I predict that soon Senators will be bringing in selected pieces of their mail and introducing measures to censure particular offensive letter-writers. "This lady doesn't like my voting record on health care!" "No! Give her contact info to my staff, and we'll add the old bat to our censure-everyone-who-hurts-our-feelings measure!"

Ah, our government in action.

religious books removed from prison shelves

Today's NYTimes tells me that the Federal Bureau of Prisons is removing "religious" books from its shelves. The stated purpose is to make it harder for militant Muslim and other groups to recruit there.

Wow, a single directive demonstrating both smaller government in action, and the religious tolerance that my grade school teachers claimed was the hallmark of the United States (aka the greatest country in the world).

And, instead of a list of prohibited materials, prisons are to limit their religious sections to titles from a list of approved works. Thus, the Federal Prison Camp in Otisville, NY, which had "a very extensive library of Jewish religious books, many of them donated," has removed 75% of those works. Because, as we know, a key recruitment tool of militant Islamic fundamentalists is a library of Jewish religious titles.

The fun thing about this is that, while the public is not entitled to see the list of approved books, religious folk who have gotten a peek at it are bemused by the omissions and inclusions.

Timothy Larsen, who holds the Carolyn and Fred McManis Chair of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, an evangelical school, looked over lists for “Other Christian” and “General Spirituality.”

“There are some well-chosen things in here,” Professor Larsen said. “I’m particularly glad that Dietrich Bonhoeffer is there. If I was in prison I would want to read Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” But he continued, “There’s a lot about it that’s weird.” The lists “show a bias toward evangelical popularism and Calvinism,” he said, and lacked materials from early church fathers, liberal theologians and major Protestant denominations.

The Rev. Richard P. McBrien, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame (who edited “The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism,” which did make the list), said the Catholic list had some glaring omissions, few spiritual classics and many authors he had never heard of.

“I would be completely sympathetic with Catholic chaplains in federal prisons if they’re complaining that this list is inhibiting,” he said, “because I know they have useful books that are not on this list.”

While I suppose it's counterproductive to have a library full of inflammatory religious literature in a place where violence is all too common, limiting religion to a skewed list of 150 titles seems excessive.

Craig

What happened to Larry Craig is what the Republican Party is all about: hypocrisy and hatred. This is family values? So many things about this story to comment on, but first, how do I get a job on the sex police force? I keep reading everyone applauding the arrest because they want their children to be able to go into public restrooms unmolested. Well, good luck with that. What are they doing sending their kids alone into public places anyway? Last time I looked, it is possible, even probable, that you will be exposed to something objectionable any time you leave the house (or when you simply stay home and turn the TV on). I am so sick of people hiding behind values and child welfare in their relentless and neurotic quest to eliminate every conceivable risk.

Shit happens people. What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Wake up now, because if you stay asleep much longer, you'll have no freedoms, no human rights, and no Constitution. Apparently, the Soviet Union collapsed only to resurface here in the States.

nothing says "welcome to the U.S." like a credit card solicitation

A friend sent me a link to a Snopes report on one of those alarmist emails. This one happened to be true, sort of. It was calling for the populace to rise up and get out their pitchforks and tar and storm the nearest Bank of America branch and cancel their accounts because apparently BoA and other banks (Wells Fargo is cited, but I bet this applies to all those semi-sleazy credit card companies that fill my mailbox with usurious credit card solicitations) will issue credit cards to anyone with an ITIN number (as opposed to a Social Security number). Of course, the email did not refer to "anyone with an ITIN number." It said they're handing out credit cards to illegal aliens. I don't imagine it was referring to the influx of white people from England or Sweden; I believe the people in question are Spanish-speaking and brown.

Boy howdy. I can't think of a more appropriate welcome to our lovely scapegoatist, racist nation than an invitation to apply for a credit card at enormous interest rates with outlandishly huge fee structures. Please empty your wallets before exiting the country.

Why I never post in the personals

You, me, starry nights.
You, liar. Me, termagant.
It would never work.

You, me, endless love.
But…men are pigs. I’m no prize,
myself. Never mind.

Wanted: my soul mate.
You are married. I’m just sad.
Fie, sir. Get thee hence.

idiot-proofing the presidency

The most deplorable effect of President Bush's term in office is that when it ends (assuming it ends) no one will ever again be able to call the U. S. Presidency "the world's most difficult job."

education loan shenanigans

I have a Sallie Mae education loan. It's in forbearance. Sallie Mae keeps sending me mail that says, (IN ALL CAPS) "PLEASE CONTACT US IMMEDIATELY REGARDING YOUR FEDERAL STUDENT LOANS AND YOUR FORBEARANCE DEADLINE. CALL TOLL-FREE AT 1-866-439-0985."

I call this number and surprise, it's Sallie Mae's consolidation line. Of course, I am greeted by a recorded message, and I press 1 for English and am given 3 options, none of which mentions the word "forbearance." Instead, I can apply for a student loan consolidation or check up on a consolidation loan or application for one. This mail purposely gives the impression that I need to take some action or my forbearance is up; instead, they're doing a little bit of social engineering, trying to make it look as though I need to consolidate.

I am not even going to bother to look up whether the law has changed. When I last checked, a couple of years ago, consolidation loans were not eligible for any type of forbearance whatever. If you have no job, if you are unemployable, if you have disabled dependent children or are in the hospital with a dread disease, it will not matter; you will have to start paying your loan right away, and if you default, too frigging bad. So, if Sallie Mae can trick me into consolidating my student loans, I will lose my forbearance status. Slick.

I wonder how much of a bonus the executive who thought this up got.

TV

Lately, I suppose as a side effect of acclimating (sort of) to my 6th decade, I have found myself increasingly irritated by the high frequency of foreplay, if not actual intercourse, on TV. It's all pretty much gratuitous too. The slobbery, tongue-brandishing, face-engulfing kiss has become such a cliche that the only reason to waste minutes of plot time depicting the mutual redistribution of saliva can be that television writers are convinced that we'll forget to be preoccupied with our sexual impulses. So they remind us every 12 seconds. I'd say "Don't forget sex!" is the subtext of 90% of what you see on TV. (Interestingly, the other 10% is given over to food. "Don't forget to eat! Mmmm! Food is good! Better get some now!" And, coincidentally, we are, I believe, the world's fattest nation, those of us who aren't starving anyway.)

It's almost become a chore. You're going about your business, cleaning the toilet or mowing the weeds or going through the day's mail in case it contains something that isn't an exhortation to buy still more stuff, and you realize, guiltily, "Oh my gosh, I have not thought about sex for five minutes! Am I coming down with something?"

I wonder why TV is so industriously pressing upon an unsuspecting populace a preoccupation with bodily necessities. I like to imagine aliens, here to observe the species, collecting TV data and extrapolating results.

Day 1. Started up data collection efforts. Electronic signals apparently intended for amusement and edification of species.

Day 2. Must find different position in which to recline while absorbing data. Yesterday my grin!fkckl very sore. Humans (as they call themselves) devote considerable portion of signal to mysterious face-sucking activity.

Day 4. Data absorption, phase one, complete. Began reviewing, analyzing, and correlating.

Day 5. Hmm. Must check to see if human population declining, as much TV content comprised of exhortations to engage in reproductive activity. Oh and must investigate significance of popular face-sucking exercise. Collecting additional data.

Day 8. Human population appears to be on rise, probably due to high frequency of reminders to consume nourishment. Have noted large amount of electronic signal content devoted to instruction of females on correcting flawed appearance. Must investigate percentage of imperfect females. Still puzzled on face-sucking front.

Day 12. Collected physical data on females, extrapolated female ideals from signal content. This must be wrong. Initial figures seem to show 95% error rate in female physical construction. Will review numbers again tomorrow.

Day 14. Can find no error in calculations. Wonder why defective humans allowed to live. Must investigate why humans fail to make use of simple program of selective breeding to weed out 95% imperfection rate.

Day 17. Decided to examine male physical construction. Can find no difference in variety of male appearance. Wonder why this species is so finicky about appearance of females. What is it with the face-sucking?

Day 25. Face-sucking apparently activity leading to reproduction. Am forming theory that reproduction is simple process, hence hardly ever detailed in generally available signals, but face-sucking activity highly complex and difficult motor activity, hence the need for extreme frequency of repetition. Have noticed that historical signals devote much content to demonstration of sucking on small white tubular apparatus ablaze at one end. If calculations correct, populace mastered this activity in only 30 earth rotations or so, hence current signal content devoted to this activity is comparatively minimal. Wonder how long it will take humans to master face-sucking. Am looking forward to its disappearance from the signal content, as I have just been informed that I will be here for several hundred earth rotations, and f-s activity already tedious in the extreme.

FAT - it's catching. Run for your lives!

Well, Gina Kolata wrote an article in yesterday's NYTimes about a study that shows that if your friends or family are fat, you are 171% more likely to gain weight and be fat. So now fatness, a terrible, horrible condition, is contagious.

Here's what I don't understand. Why aren't we exporting fat people in droves? We need to be sending our fat (that's what we're going to be called now, the fat, like the homeless, or the poor, or the ugly, or the ill-mannered) to nations suffering from huge numbers of starving babies? If you are likely to gain weight as a result of the weightiness of your close friends/relatives, then all we need to do to combat emaciation in babies is to hook them up with our fat. Let's ship the fat to them. I'm sure they'll bond instantly, I mean, fat people are jolly, right? And soon the formerly starving infants will plump right up into Gerber-baby status. Sheesh, look on the bright side, people. We can always kill our fat, or at least deplore them to death, later.

feeding Fluffy

I just read in an alert today issued by EmergencyEmail.org indicating that, in addition to melamine, botulism is now a component of dog food. Okay, some dog foods, presumably canned. The alert named the following brands:

Natural Balance Eatables dog food varieties:
Irish Stew with Beef Dog Food	15 OZ	23633-59860
Chinese Take Out with Sauce with Vegetables and Chicken Dog Food	15 OZ	23633-59861
Southern Style Dumplings with Gravy with Chicken and Vegetables Dog Food	15 OZ	23633-59862
Hobo Chili with Chicken Pasta Dog Food	15 OZ	23633-59863

While I deplore (as does everyone else, I'm sure) the laxity with which food safety regulations are being enforced, I was riveted by the names of the dog food flavors. Irish Stew with Beef. Chinese Take Out with Sauce, Vegetables, and Chicken. Southern Style Dumplings with Gravy, Chicken and Veg. I am not too enthused about the Hobo Chili with Chicken Pasta. I have never encountered Chicken Pasta, and hope never to do so.

As a nascent elderly person with no pension or income, I'm going to look more closely at the dog food section in my grocery. Chinese Take Out. I mean, they can't all contain dangerous ingredients all the time. Hmm. Wonder how much it costs.

ghosting

Among today's Craigslist offerings for writers were two interesting opportunities. One person wanted to hire a ghostwriter to assist him in writing his "next bestseller," and another wanted someone to write his op ed piece (650 words) for him. (I wonder if they charge extra for coming up with opinions to ghostwrite.)

Oh my, what possibilities proliferate here! Let's see... I'm sure I can benefit from this whole new ghosting thing. Hmm, I do want to be known far and wide for my housekeeping skills. I wonder if I can get someone to ghost-clean my house? I also want to have a reputation as the world's best mom, so perhaps I can engage someone to ghost-nurture my children? Oh, and I want to be beautiful but alas, nature did not endow me with the requisite body, so I wonder if Craigslist has people who can ghost-represent me in all my appearances in public?

Of course, getting into a good college is key to a successful life, so perhaps it would be possible to advertise for someone to ghost-take my SAT and ghost-write my college admission essays? After my ghost-undergraduate ghost-graduates on my behalf, perhaps I can even hire a ghost-lawyer to ghost-sit for my bar exam or a ghost-doctor to pass my medical licensure exams should the ghost-law/medical student I've hired not be up to the task?

Perhaps I can engage a ghost-churchgoer to carry out my duties to God and a ghost-soldier to carry out my duty to my country? And I certainly have no desire AT ALL to die myself, so, I'll see you all later -- oh wait, someone-to-be-named-at-a-future-date will see you all later! I'm off to advertise for a ghost-corpse!

of COURSE they want to end residuals

I have been stewing about a piece in the NYTimes Media and Advertising section (link here).

The press briefing was conducted by Barry M. Meyer, CEO of Time Warner, Anne Sweeney, president of Walt Disney-ABC TV Group, and J. Nicholas Counter, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, an industry bargaining group. The press conference was held as a kind of opening salvo in the upcoming contract battles with the WGA. Media companies are proposing to end the way residuals are calculated, in a manner designed to reduce residual payments almost to nothing. I imagine that directors, actors, and anyone else who receives residuals is next. Perhaps we'll begin to see ads on Craigslist for writers for vehicles for big stars, paying $12 an hour, or a dollar a script page. (None of these figures appear in the NYTimes article; they are my extrapolation from watching remuneration for regular writing jobs plummet.)

Well, this clears up a question that has been mystifying me for a while now: Why are the networks so eager to thrust "reality TV" on the public? I know it's cheap, that's a powerful reason, but I didn't realize until I read this article that it's part of a concerted effort to lower the standard of television and develop in the TV audience a tolerance, even a craving, for complete crap. Which, of course, is what we'll see more and more of, if they cut back on residual payments.

It looks like what has happened to the rest of us over the last decade -- showing up for work one day and finding that either your job has been eliminated entirely or that your company only wants to pay you a half to a third of your salary for the work you've been doing, while the top executives of your company are paid vast amounts of money for their work -- is happening to the enormously profitable media industry. Of course they don't want to pay writers. That is money out of some CEO's compensation package and golden parachute fund.

campaign speech disguised as Homeland Security Warning

When I got my alert email from emergency.org with the subject "Breaking Item: NEW Homeland Security Warning," I thought maybe there was something substantive. Then I went there and found it was Chertoff stumping for his boss.

Boy, these folks in the executive branch stop at nothing to foist themselves and their viewpoints off on everyone at every opportunity. I would expect a release from Homeland Security to be a serious warning of some impending danger, but if they are just going to be vague potshots at the opposition, I'm going to quit reading these things. I don't enjoy Republican campaign literature.

on the function of journalists (and bloggers)

I'm posting this here so I shall be able to consult it every time I find myself taking things too seriously.

My various solutions to the problems which beset the nation are intended as suggestions to be thrown around in pubs, clubs and dining rooms. If the Government adopted even a tenth of them, catastrophe would surely result ... The essence of journalism is that it should stimulate its readers for a moment, possibly open their minds to some alternative perception of events, and then be thrown away, with all its clever conundrums, its prophecies and comminations, in the great wastepaper basket of history. (Auberon Waugh quoted by his son, Alexander, in his book Fathers and Sons: Autobiography of a Family)

Alexander Waugh expands on this in the next paragraph:

If journalism was not 'important' to him he nevertheless held it, as a profession, in high regard. It was only when journalists took their jobs too seriously, when they tried to play an active part in shaping events, that he began to lose his enthusiasm for the press. The sole purpose of political journalism, he always insisted, was to deflate politicians, the self-important and the power mad: 'We should never, never suggest new ways for them to spend money or taxes they could increase, or new laws they could pass. There is nothing so ridiculous as the posture of journalists who see themselves as part of the sane and pragmatic decision-taking process.'

I was tempted to write a long jeremiad on the state of argument today, but I think I'll just sit back and consider Waugh's view of the function of journalists, and try to notice if anyone is doing that anymore.

The market is silent on this one

"Finding a way to keep diethylene glycol out of medicine, particularly in developing countries, has confounded health officials for decades. “It is preventable and we have to figure out some way of stopping this from happening again,” said Carol Rubin, a senior C.D.C. official." (NYTimes article "F.D.A. Tracked Tainted Drugs, but Trail Went Cold in China," June 17, 2007)

I keep hearing ambient conversation in the very conservative state where I live about how terrible government regulation of anything is. People forget why so many things are heavily regulated until the regulation goes away and greedy criminals swarm out from under rocks and start killing people in their quest for money.

Do Not Call Me

Years ago, when I read about the advent of the "Do Not Call" list, I signed up on the spot. This was instituted before the Bush administration got hold of things. Well, since today I've gotten three sales calls, and five or six this week, I wondered if the Bushites hadn't dismantled the process. But no. I went to the Do Not Call Registry site and found out that you have to re-frigging-register every five years. God forbid you should miss getting sales calls after five years of being annoyance-free. Maybe they think you get nostalgic or something. "Oh gee, I miss those irritating sales calls, flogging a bunch of overpriced crap that they think I'm too stupid to go out and buy without a lot of telephone nagging. I repent of my signing on to the Do Not Call Registry!"

So I re-registered today. They have 31 days to stop me from getting sales calls. I'm counting.

By the way, the registry site is: www.donotcall.gov

just let go

Oh my god, Richard Gere. Richard, when they start struggling and pushing you away, particularly if you're being filmed, honey, just let go. argh. damn.

http://www.thekansascitychannel.com/entertainment/13181267/detail.html

And, it being India, of course they're going after the woman. This whole thing just makes me slightly ill.

Fear of Flying

In yesterday's NYTimes there was an article about the decline in numbers of people taking flying lessons. The subject, it turns out, is a powerful example of gender politics. And it brings up something I had not thought about before. When, in the early 70s, everybody was trying to get women out of the home and into the workforce, the first thing that sprang into my twisted mind was, "Gee, double the workforce; now everyone will earn half as much." I forgot to consider the effect of this huge influx of female thinking on, well, everything, including what people do in their spare time.

The writer is talking about the drop in numbers of people who are learning to fly as hobbyists. It's a significant drop. After citing figures, the writer is trying to find the cause of this decline in interest. It's surprising since if you think about it, current trends favor hi-tech toys (though I think that there's a general trend, which isn't mentioned, toward staying at home and surrounding yourself with this expensive stuff).

Here's a quote from the article:

Ironically, an increasingly technological society is turning its back on a high-technology pastime.

One problem is fear, in an era when people describe their cars by the number of airbags, not the number of horses. In small planes, the statistics show that fatal accidents per 100,000 hours of flight fell by one-quarter in the decade ending in 2004, but some people in aviation fear that tolerance for risk is falling even faster.

ANOTHER is the shift of income and family decision-making to women. Industry leaders try hard not to sound like a former president of Harvard and attribute anything to innate skill, but women simply do not take up flying as frequently as men do.

“There’s been a big sociological and psychological change in the families of today, in where the discretionary dollars go,” said Phil Boyer, president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. When the husband told the stay-at-home mom of the 1950s that he was going to spend a Saturday afternoon taking flying lessons, she acquiesced, he said. Today, he said, in a two-income family, she is more likely to say: “You are not. That’s your day to take Johnny to the soccer game, and what the heck are you doing spending our hard-earned money on flying lessons?”

The article doesn't (dare) draw a correspondence between the two "problems": Fear and female influence. I think there definitely is one though. Our conditioning, as a society up through the 60s, was based on a perfect nuclear-family mythos, where the little woman's job was to be the brakes, and the man's job was to be the gas. I have to say that the overwhelming majority of women I know have little use for the big male ideas, like space exploration, or building great huge giant phallic edifices that thrust themselves through the cloud cover.

I am not saying women are chicken at all. I'm suggesting that women have been conditioned to be the brake pedal, the crossing guard, the person who says, "Put that down; you'll poke somebody's eye out!" "Look both ways before you cross the street." "Don't run with that! You'll fall down and stab yourself!" "Go wash your hands; you don't know WHERE that's been!" And now a whole bunch of them (us) suddenly have a powerful voice in government and business and modern thought. And just look at the way advertising has mutated in response. I'm not saying it's not a good thing, necessarily, but it bears scrutiny. Women have been conditioned to be risk averse. It's also very scary to be out and participating in an arena from which your mothers and role models were banned. I have to laugh when I hear women say things like, "Thank god that equality thing is settled." Is it now? Then how come we only make $0.75 for each dollar a man makes? Anyway.

Ecological bad influences and fuel expenses aside, both of which, by the way are fixable, women have not been conditioned like men have to view flying as a thrilling metaphor for freedom. It strikes, I think, so many of us as a waste of time. "You're going flying when people are dying by the thousands in Africa? You heartless selfish monster!"

Like I said I don't know how to think about this, but I know I've definitely spent some time in recent years deploring what I see as a loss of courage in American society. I know that's a judgmental thing to say, but just look at how successful the Bush administration has been at getting its policies through by the simple expedient of screaming "OH MY GOD TERR[OR]ISTS WILL BOMB THE GRADE SCHOOL DOWN THE STREET TOMORROW IF YOU DON'T PASS THIS LEGISLATION!" every other day. For the past six years, we've all been jumping at shadows and trying to peer around corners miles in advance and generally quaking in our boots. It's just weird. I think it's a response to the increased anxiety that human beings experience when they are thrust into unfamiliar situations.

I know there are large numbers of men who feel this way too. I think it's easier for them to admit to it now that there is an alternative to the once-pervasive idea of what maleness entails.

The article goes on to quote this flying instructor on the difficulties he faces trying to teach women to fly:

Mr. Boyer’s association is trying hard to make flying more appealing to women, including offering training in how to read aviation maps, talk on the radio and provide other help in the plane, and maybe transitioning them to earning a license themselves. But 95 percent of the students are still male, he said.

At the airport in Smoketown, Matt Kauffman, the chief flight instructor at Aero-Tech Services, the only flight school here, said that the training system had not adapted itself to women. “Women learn differently from men,” Mr. Kauffman said. “If two men go up, they will scream and shout, and a transfer of knowledge occurs, and we’d get back on the ground and go have a beer, and life is good,” he said. “If you yell at a woman, she’d start crying, and she’d never come back.” He would like to hire a female flight instructor but can’t find one, he said.

This last observation brought a wry smile to my face. I didn't learn to drive until I was 28, because of the way driving was "taught" in my high school, which was exactly the way this guy describes guys learning to fly. You had the driving instructor in the front seat, and a back seat full of hearty, sarcastic, loud, intimidating high school boys, all of whom were screaming at you. I find it hard to believe anyone can learn anything under these conditions, but apparently it's only me and some other people without penises. I went to exactly one driving class and never went back. I believe my exact words, when questioned, were, "Fuck that noise." I sure as hell would not spend my hard-earned money on that experience. I mean, you do not want me at the throttle of an airplane thousands of feet above the ground in the state of mind I get into when people are yelling at me.

I acknowledge however that there is a powerful and successful outfit who is teaching people stuff all the time using the yelling method: Our Armed Services. I am not the person to write on the changes that military training has had to make in response to the influx of women, but I bet it's had to adapt.

At any rate, I don't think I like the idea of our abandoning those big, impractical, thrilling enterprises. I remember I didn't like the way they were glorified. And the injunction to "be a MAN" is not as effective as it once was. But I find myself missing thoughtful bravado in a world where everyone is hellbent on planning out his/her entire life in his/her Daytimer, and doling out his/her time in stingy little driblets, as though it were the last few drops of water in a cloudless desert.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/fashion/26pilot.html?em&ex=1177819200&en=3d74feb7e7e3bc73&ei=5087%0A

Epicene

Oh my goodness, I am sometimes so disinclined to look things up in the dictionary. I have actually avoided looking up "epicene" for decades. This little entry is not going to have much point. I just want to note that I actually did look up "epicene" and what a delightful little word it is.

Some history

I came across an English tourist venture, called "The Jamestown Adventure: Begin Your Adventure Where Your Ancestors Began Theirs." It's apparently run out of Lincolnshire, and is trying to attract descendants of the Jamestown colonists. This strikes me as charmingly modest in comparison to US-ian marketing campaigns, which go after anyone who has or can get his/her hands on the requisite money.

There is a place on the Website of The Jamestown Adventure for people to post their stories. There are a bazillion posts there, including an interesting debate amongst some descendants of a man named either Kellam Throgmorton or Throgmorton Kellam on what the ancestor's actual name was. There is certainly a case to be made for either name, since it's being conducted by people surnamed Kellam AND Throgmorton.

I don't find that as intriguing as the fact that the his descendants are arguing about his name centuries later.

But what I was going to complain about this morning was that this outfit is claiming that Jamestown was the "first English speaking settlement in the United States of America." In fact, Jamestown was NOT the first English-speaking settlement in what eventually became the USA. There's Sir Walter Raleigh's Roanoke (1585), which is well known enough to have an annual play about the lost colony, and Popham Rock, 1607, which was one of two settlements chartered in 1606 to a joint stock company. The other site in that charter was Jamestown.

Roanoke is old news, but Popham Rock was only discovered in 1994, when archaeologist Jeffrey Brain matched up a local story of a lost colony where he was vacationing in Maine to a 1608 map of Fort St. George discovered in Spanish government archives in 1888. It's still being excavated.

I am off to see if I can find other early failed-or-forgotten English colonies.

Additions to "This Bible You Sold Me Is Clearly Defective and I'd Like to Return It, Please"

One of McSweeney's lists that keeps me awake at night thinking of additions is Matthew Simmons's "This Bible You Sold Me Is Clearly Defective and I'd Like to Return It, Please."

It is, in fact, a sub-list of this to which I add most often, namely "This Bible Is Clearly Missing Entire Chapters, and I'd Like to Return It, and Also, I Believe I'm Entitled to an Explanation and an Apology."

Where's the part where. . . ?

• Jesus publicly advises leaders of nations, and suggests that they put him on their campaign literature
• Jesus helps fight recession by endorsing brand-name products
• Representative of Jesus tells Corinthians that it is perfectly okay and even advisable to withhold salvation from and refuse church membership to certain undesirables, such as homosexuals, child molesters, liberal Democrats, and their friends and family, and also, on occasion, it's even okay to beat the snot out of them
  
• Jesus says, "Ew, I'm not healing a homosexual, child molester, or liberal Democrat. Be off and take your friends with you!"
  
• Jesus predicts invention of TV and exhorts church elders to make use of new invention for fund raising and membership building
  
• Jesus expresses clear preference for white, English-speaking, male Republicans from the United States
• Jesus not only fails to chase moneylenders (aka bankers) from temple, but actually dons a sandwich board and roams the streets soliciting them and, in a particularly dramatic passage, declaims at length the virtues of business and greed, and calls for churches everywhere to solicit funding from commercial enterprises in exchange for blessings and pulpit endorsements.
  

There but for the grace of God...

My elder daughter has occasion to remind me (generally when I'm screaming about the state of education of the deaf in Arizona or the latest outrageous pronouncements issuing from the clowns in the White House) that finding things to be grateful for is key to achieving serenity. So in the spirit of being thankful for what I don't have to deal with, I present this from today's NYTimes:

In 2002, a Palm Springs man was arrested on charges related to the smuggling of two Asian leopard cats into the airport in a backpack. His traveling companion was arrested when large birds of paradise came flying out of his luggage; also in the luggage were other birds stuffed into women’s stockings and 50 rare orchid bulbs. Two lesser slow lorises, also known as pygmy monkeys, were stuffed into his underwear.

Okay, first of all, I had to read this several times trying to understand if he and the monkeys were both occupying the underwear at the same time. (I ought to have read the beginning of the article more closely, which stated that the monkeys were "stuffed down the pants of an incoming passenger." Presumably this one. I mean, how many people go through LAX with endangered small primates in their pants? Oh wait. Perhaps I don't want to know the answer to that.)

Of course, I then had to complete this compelling visual by consulting Google for pictures of the lesser slow loris and the Asian leopard cat. The loris appears to be a sweet animal, though it's nothing that I'd want in close proximity to well, pretty much any part of my body for an 18-hour flight. (picture and info here) Having traveled in the company of a baby cross country (a mere 5-hour flight), I now refuse to take any small primate anywhere involving a journey of more than an hour.

Then there is the matter of two wild (as in non-domestic) cats in a backpack. I don't know if you have a cat, but I do, and the prospect of stuffing it into a bag of any sort strikes me as a feat only the insane or extremely bored would consider. First off, feline sedation seems to be, from what I infer from the sedation instructions from the vet ("Well, you ought to try these pills out at home first, before you actually travel with the cat..."), largely a matter of dumb luck. Even domestic cats are not known for demonstrating a spirit of benign cooperation. The Asian leopard cat (picture and data here) is only an ancestor of a domestic cat. So, this would probably be akin to attempting to shoehorn two bobcats into a pillowcase. (I quote from the link: "As a rule, they [the Asian leopard cat] do not make good pets, being solitary and reclusive, rarely allowing humans to touch or handle them. They are carnivorous hunters and could represent a threat to children or other pets.") Yeah, especially when the solitary animals are intimately enclosed together for 18 hours in a backpack. I wonder what tipped customs off; maybe the blood issuing freely from the long, jagged claw wounds down the neck and shoulders of our intrepid kitty backpacker?

Or maybe it was a complaint from the poor person sitting next to the squirming bearer of the monkeys for the duration of the flight? There is just so much to think about here. I mean, I know I couldn't go for 18 hours with no bathroom break. It is fun to envision Mr. Monkeypants making use of the tiny airplane bathroom, waking his little passengers from their repose so he could relieve himself. Do you suppose he set them down on or in the sink while he... oh never mind. Oh, and what about food and water for the animals? I imagine one would get pretty thirsty all snuggled up there for the better part of a day.

And what about this man's luggage? The large birds of paradise bursting into flight from it is certainly an entrancing vision, but what I want to know is what he was doing stuffing little birds into women's stockings. Obviously this man is not one of Eddie Izzard's executive transvestites. And then what about the intended recipient of the lorises?

"So, however did you get these splendid specimens into the country?"

"I wore them in my underwear, giving them the same loving care as my own precious family jewels!"

"Oh. Oh. . . . Oh. Er ah. Ah."

"Wait. Where are you going? Come back!"

The trials of my life are nothing when compared to the challenges experienced by others. Reading about these two animal-laden travelers has made me truly thankful that neither my livelihood nor my inclinations are such that I must resort to trying to sneak wild animals through airport security.

Increasing while declining.

Here is an interesting statement from the U.S. Census report on income and poverty as of 2005 (http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p60-231.pdf):

The number of people with health insurance coverage increased, while the percentage of people with health insurance coverage decreased between 2004 and 2005.

Are we breeding uninsured? Killing off the insured? The report explains (or doesn't actually):

The number of people with health insurance coverage rose from 242.4 million in 2002 to 243.3 million in 2003. Nonetheless, the percentage with coverage dropped from 84.8 percent to 84.4 percent, mirroring a drop in the percentage of people covered by employment-based health insurance (61.3 percent in 2002 to 60.4 percent in 2003). This decline in employment-based health insurance coverage essentially explains the drop in total private health insurance coverage, from 69.6 percent in 2002 to 68.6 percent in 2003.

Hmm "...decline in employment-based health insurance..." Sanitized English in which no allusion is made to the increasingly vicious business climate where every benefit given to an employee is seen as a dollar robbed from a shareholder's trust account. No, I can't account for the increase yet decline.

Pet mess

I have been following the pet food poison uproar only desultorily, mostly from an avalanche of outraged posting on various Yahoo Groups I'm on. Every day sees a new update. First it's rat poison, now it's melamine-laced Chinese gluten. Judging from the furor and the urgency with which each new poisoned brand is disclosed, I thought the landscape must be littered with grieving families sobbing over beloved dead pet carcases.

So when I read in this morning's NY Times that the body count is 16, well, here we go again. First of all, I can't believe Bush hasn't sent troops (if we have any left) to liberate China from the probably Al Qaeda-inspired animal abusers.

As a nation, we have a peculiarly skewed view of what we (well, some of us) deserve. 2.5 to 3.5 million of us are homeless (1) (including veterans of Iraq now (2)). 45 million of us have no health insurance (3), though only a few of those are wealthy enough to be able to pay for health care out of their own pockets. A woman still (as of 2005) earns about 75 cents for every dollar a man earns, showing that possession of a penis, even feigned, gooses your economic value to society up by a third. (Uh oh, I'm getting an argument from the Peanut Gallery here. A woman earns 3 quarters. A man earns 4 quarters. The extra quarter he gets is ONE THIRD, not 25%, of HER income. Urgh. I think all we females need to start crossdressing in the job market asap.)

But hoo boy, kill 16 of our pets, and, if nothing else, your stock will plummet. I don't think we really look at the things that upset us. It's much easier, I suppose, to bury ourselves in the day-to-day and worry about our pet food. I guess that seems like a battle we can actually do something about.

1. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/481800
2. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17315490/site/newsweek/ (Feb 24, 2007)
3.http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/002484.html