The American Pile

• My New Year’s Day Prayer is that during 2006 someone will teach me how to do Michael Jackson’s moon walk.
• “I regret that I did not have a 12-gauge shotgun, or (my son’s) new AR-10—that big baby easily reaches out to 1,000 yards and fires a .308 cartridge—or my seven-millimeter—my old elk killer—or the .270 Winchester along (that day), but 60+ rounds were probably enough.”—Melvin Gohard, commenting from his Rattlesnake Creek aerie in remotest rural Washington state in response to a press inquiry about the rather limited number of weapons he brought along for the September 2004 execution of his nettlesome Gateway computer.  A video circulating in the underground has subsequently made Gohard something of a cult hero.  (January 9, 2006)

Talk About Disproportionalism!

• “Forty percent of all abortions are performed on black women, who make up only seven percent of the population.”—statement from an ad defending Judge Samuel Alito, run in the January 16-22 edition of the Washington Times  by the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education, founded by Star Parker, a black woman.

• I was entertaining a colleague this afternoon by reciting Jonathan Winters’ Dance of the Rattlesnake skit. When I finished, and he’d finished laughing, he looked at me blankly and said, “Who’s Jonathan Winters?”  He's in his 30s and has never heard of Johnny. It is time to die, I think.  (January 13, 2006)

• I just mailed an envelope bearing postage stamps of presidents Lyndon Johnson, George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, William McKinley, Harry Truman, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the upper right corner. The lower left corner—point, counter-point--was decorated with a non-postage “American Pathetic” stamp featuring Sick Willie and his mean-spirited bride, Hillary.  I rather enjoyed the contrast.  (January 14, 2006)
• Four of the six men who founded the Ku Klux Klan shortly after the Civil War were lawyers.
• Peaches has been taking care of my oil changes and car-related errands for quite some time. I’ve celebrated retirement by taking over some of those duties. A recent weekday found me in the captivity of Jiffy Lube in tony suburban Brownsburg.  I was summoned to the manager’s work station and confronted with a big checklist.  Regular old oil (now, obviously, inferior, judging from the faint sneer in his voice)? Partial synthetic? Synthetic? How are those wiper blades? Those fluids? Did I want my tires rotated? My pancreas removed? Engine overhaul? A major organ transplant? He held a cardboard thing in his hand, said it was an air filter and that it was, well, dirty—did I want a new one? Oil filter, too? The list went on. I said “no” whenever possible, but not enough. Infiniti, he said, recommended the following services at the 80-thousand mile mark—a list of them flared up on his screen. Fear and uncertainty raged in me. Only a few months ago I’d paid Infiniti nearly $1800 to do something, on what I thought was a visit for a routine tuneup. Had it been 7,000 miles? Or 70,000? I said “no” to all of them. I signed an affidavit, several of them, attesting that I had been warned, informed about everything that could possibly be wrong or go wrong. By the time I left, the bill was almost $75. I was stunned. One of those “quick” oil changes ought to cost around $15-20.  I reeled home in awe.  Going into one of these places now is to submit to an all-out marketing assault. The staff try to sell you a stunning host of add-ons. You’ve got to give them credit. They smile, read their checklists, and they aim to empty your wallet before they let you go.  Unbridled capitalist greed at its finest. I wish I never had to go back.  (February 4, 2006)

Caught Off Guard?

• First-class postage rates in America increased on January 8, 2006, an event touching the lives of several hundred million citizens and uncountable thousands of post offices and postal employees. Specifically, the rate for a typical one-ounce letter increased by two cents to 39 cents.  Even the dimmest bulb among us could foresee, I submit, that this was a clue that many millions of two-cent stamps would be needed as “make-up postage” for the millions and millions of 37-cent stamps already in our trembling hands. And so it is with no small amazement that I have entered the Hard Cheese Post Office three times--once at the very end of December and twice in January after the rate increase--to buy two-cent stamps and been told that they had run out of them. These have not been Confidence-Building Moments.  (February 8, 2006)

Could ‘Real Returns’ Be Somehow Related To ‘Whisper Numbers’?

• In an article about mutual fund investing, the Wall Street Journal quoted Garrett Thornburg, the CEO of Thornburg Investment Management, on how many funds mislead the public by not calculating and revealing their so-called “real returns”—that is, the actual return after taxes, inflation, and all expenses.  The Journal noted that even Thornburgh’s fund doesn’t publish the lower, real return figures—“because we don’t want to be the only ones using real numbers,” Thornburg said. (February 6, 2006)

• Time magazine published a big six-page story in its February 20 issue about the furor in the Muslim world over the 12 cartoons published by a Danish newspaper. But Time didn’t print any of the cartoons. Meantime, a small conservative magazine, The Weekly Standard, with probably one one-hundredth the resources of Time—but many times the courage--printed all twelve.  (February 15, 2006)

Stark Raving AWOL

• Anyone else enjoy the big slipstream media’s enthusiastic willingness to print pictures of Piss Christ, the Dung Madonna and anything else it can get its hands on which insults Christians and other decent people, its enduring eagerness to print pictures of Abu Ghraib and anything else that can damage the U.S. military and the Dubya Administration, but how it turns up stark raving AWOL when it’s time to print cartoons that might irritate Muslims?  (February 15, 2006)

• Milestone: Peaches and I both attended our first NBA game February 21, 2006: The Indiana Pacers routed the New Orleans-Oklahoma City Jazz at wonderful (though not wonderfully-named) Conseco Fieldhouse. We had second-row seats and thus superb viewing.  I was surprised that the skill levels did not seem any better than a good college team’s, and at how many close-in shots were missed. Most of the players demonstrated a calculated insouciance, walking onto and off the floor ever so s-l-o-w-l-y, as though bored or weary, or both. There was little of the enthusiasm, the one-for-all-and-all-for-one team spirit seen at lower levels of play. The players themselves were strong and powerful, though this game presented no one of the truly monstrous stature of a Shaquille O’Neal. The Pacers’ David Harrison, at around 7-feet and 300 pounds, was the largest player on the floor, but seemed rather soft and pudding-y.  Often you’d see a player loafing, walking upcourt or even stopping as the opponents’ fast-break unfolded ahead. The referees allow a great deal of contact--shoving, hand-checking, and uniform-grabbing--and of course traveling and palming the ball are largely ignored. The game appears to me to be mostly a one-on-one affair, with a lot of poor shot selection (and, as a result, the low shooting percentages we see in the pro game). To be fair, there were some nice passes, good ball movement, and an occasional show of unselfishness. The Pacers have two “foreign” players—Sarunas Jasikevicius and Peja Stojakovic—and to my untutored eye, those two seemed to play a sounder, more team-oriented game, with better effort and fundamentals, than their American-game-trained teammates. The one place where enthusiasm certainly reigned was in the hype and marketing department.  Bowser, the team mascot, teased and played with youngsters—the next generation of fans who must be seduced right now. The Pacemates, a gaggle of writhing, scantily-clad young women, made numerous oncourt appearances, jiggling, pumping, and undulating to a thundering rock music beat, and all with piercing, brittle, near-hysterical smiles.  A group of Ball State University cheerleaders and writhe-dancers hustled oncourt at halftime to promote higher education. Timeouts were called to hype advertisers, have silly contests involving fans racing up and down the floor for prizes. Bowser at one point came oncourt to fire tightly-packaged free Pacers T-shirts into the upper decks, using a compressed air shotgun.  A team of acrobatic young men trampolined into the arena’s dark upper reaches, somersaulting and spinning downward for slam dunks, and the monster scoreboard screen exhorted us to dance, make faces, drink beer, shop, eat, and support sponsors and advertisers in any way humanly possible.  Perhaps because of the troubles which have afflicted the team for the past several seasons, and, with Reggie Miller’s retirement, the lack of any marquee star players--and on this night a lackluster opponent--the overall level of manic phantasmagoria which we’d expected was simply not quite there. The crowd was announced at slightly over 14,000 in an 18,000-seat arena. Our tickets were a gift from an extraordinarily generous friend, and so we were spared having to take out another home equity loan to finance the evening. I still prefer the college game—my beloved boys at IU—but, like the Indianapolis 500 and certain other spectacles, this was an experience worth having, at least once.  (February 21, 2006)

Why Dignify Them?

• “Highly-paid piece(s) of meat.”—Aaron Brown, former CNN anchor, describing cable news anchors during a speech March 1 at Southern Oregon University, according to the Medford (Oregon) Mail-Tribune.

• Nielsen Media Research reports that the average American home with cable television has 96 channels but 81 of those offer “nothing he or she wants to watch.” I would estimate the comparable figures in our Doglog Drive aerie to be approximately 80 and 8-10. This research tells us what we know intuitively: that if cable merchants didn’t require us to buy packages of  (mostly unwanted) channels, roughly 85 percent of the crap they sell would go unsold. There will be no justice in this great nation until cable television is sold a la carte.  (March 2, 2006)

Best News Of The Year, So Far

• A front-page story in the Chicago Tribune announced that a company called Natural Nano has developed a high-tech paint using copper and nanotechnology which will block cell phone and radio signals.  The amount of potential happiness this offers the human race is incalculable. If only they will paint everything with it. (March 1, 2006)

• Hmmmm.  Boston Scientific bought out Guidant just a few weeks ago. Guidant manufactures heart rhythm devices which have been the subject of product recalls and regulatory investigations. Sales have slumped as a result of the publicity. Boston announced this week that it’s going to poll doctors to see if they think giving these devices a new name—“rebranding” them, in the buzz language of the day—would increase sales. Given our short attention span, this sounds like a slam dunk of an idea. (March 9, 2006)

• Gangly Dennis Weaver died at age 81 and Time magazine’s notes on the actor’s expiration covered the well-known—Weaver starred in Gunsmoke, the 1970s TV series, McCloud, and had major roles in 40 films, including one of Steven Spielberg’s early films, the cult classic, Duel—and the rather obscure—Weaver “spent the past 16 years living in an Earthship, a 10,000-square-foot house made of tin cans and tires.”  I would pay money to see that house, and to know if Weaver’s environmentalism led him to wear shoes made from the skin that forms on chocolate pudding.  (March 9, 2006)

See Ya At The Botox Website!        

• Time magazine’s 72-page March 13 issue was accompanied by a special supplement, one for which American society has been crying out: How We Shop Now.  The 78-page sparkler bills itself as ”A Global Guide to 21st Century Consumer Habits.” It’s jammed with stunning pictures of beautiful people, beautiful places, beautiful shopping emporia.  All the models are buff, tanned, toned, glowing, and sporting that famous “thousand-yard stare.” The graphics and page design practically reach out and grab you. One article precisely sums up American society, at least, by explaining how eBay helps us “get more of what we want, when we want it”—which, of course, is NOW!  There’s even a full-page ad showing a beautiful, vibrant-looking woman holding up a sign proclaiming, “I Did It For Me!”  She refers to botox treatments, and the ad warns us that if we haven’t already called our doctor or visited the injection website to see about botox we may have missed the last big departing ocean liner carrying the sleek and chic to The Land Of Personal Happiness.  (March 12, 2006)

• If you live in Detroit one of your rewards is to pay the highest average auto insurance premiums in the United States--$5,984 for one year’s coverage.  Next were Philadelphia at $4,440, Newark at $3,977, New York at $3,430, and Lost Angeles as $3,303.   The cheapest rates were found in Roanoke, Virginia ($912). Then came Chattanooga ($980), Nashville ($1,040), Green Bay ($1,042), and Raleigh ($1,057).—Jim Mateja, Chicago Tribune columnist, March 15, 2006.

• Uh-oh. The political correctness police are on the march again.  It’s Houston this time. The city’s new pro soccer team, Houston 1836, is under heavy pressure to change its name. The present one outrages Mexicans, and they and their Anglo Left backers are screaming about it. It’s racist, anti-immigrant, a slap in the face, an insult, demeaning—we know the mantra. The name, it seems, reminds the aggrieved of certain past misfortunes. Houston was founded in 1836 and the Battle of The Alamo was fought in that year. In addition,  General Sam Houston defeated a Mexican army led by Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna in the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, and that brought Texas independence from Mexico. The new soccer franchise unveiled the Houston 1836 name only last month, and local speculation is that it will not survive to see April.  (Reported by The Washington Times in its February 27 edition)

Another Legend Goes To Ground

• American singer Gene Pitney was found dead in his Cardiff, Wales, hotel room where he had sung the night before on a tour in Britain.  He was 65 years old. He became a top-selling pop singer in the late 1950s and early 1960s. For my money, his best song was “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” made for the movie of the same name. Local authorities said the death appeared to be from natural causes.  Adios, Gene.  (April 5, 2006)

• Using the Internet from Amsterdam last week, I noticed each time I logged on that a pop-up ad appeared, blinking and flashing urgently. It wanted to know—insisted on knowing, in fact—if I wanted a U.S. Green Card.  And if so, how dang many of ‘em?  I resisted the urge to say yes and type in the name Shlomo bin Laden.  (April 6, 2006)

Marcel And Mathilde Remember The Big Red One

• In late March I found myself in the tiny village of Thimister-Clermont in eastern Belgium, not far from the German border and along the route the American First Infantry Division—“The Big Red One”—took in driving the Nazis back into Germany in late 1944 and in early 1945.  Now, as then, the setting is beautiful rolling farmland, speckled with small villages, homes, shops and farm buildings. It looks exactly like the villages we’ve seen many times in World War II movies and documentaries. Peaches and I are in the company of a small group of students and faculty from a private academy in Deerfly, Indiana. We have stopped at the Remember Museum. It is far off the beaten tourist path. Admission is free to Americans. Everyone else pays to get in. We learned of it only through sheer  chance, and our tour guide, Christian, was able to add this stop to the itinerary on short notice. The museum is the grateful creation of two local residents, Marcel and Mathilde Schmetz. Marcel looks to be about 70 years old. She is younger, born after the war. She married Marcel, a bachelor most of his life, several decades after the war. They met by chance when she brought a damaged automobile to his garage (now the museum site) to be repaired. Both have lived their entire lives in this region. He was a child when the Nazi troops arrived, and got to watch many of his friends and neighbors die at the hands of the occupiers. Both remember and heard the stories of the savagery and suffering, and they remember their joy when the Americans arrived to liberate them.  Some years ago they decided to establish a museum to commemorate the liberation. It fills two smallish buildings alongside the winding narrow road twisting off the main road miles away. The buildings are filled—jammed-–with World War II artifacts, both donated and found. There are jeeps and a large transport truck, tents, military gear of every description: boxes of food rations and supplies, rifles, pistols, bayonets, flares, maps, coats, helmets, uniforms, ammunition, tools, field radios, shell casings, silk parachutes. There are copies of magazines from the 1940s such as Time, Colliers, Life, photographs of local residents (each with a story, usually of their death or murder), flags, and pieces of shattered wreckage from airplanes which were shot down and crashed nearby. A Sherman Tank sits opposite the museum buildings, just yards from the road through town. Mathilde leads our group through the exhibits. She is animated and emotional as she talks to us about the Americans who saved them. Many have come back here decades later to visit the museum, who invited them both to the United States in 1995 to join in a 50-year reunion of veterans who came through the area. Many of these veterans have donated artifacts and money to their project. Marcel and Mathilde have thick files of documents and correspondence. In our group is the grandson of one of the solders who fought there. Mathilde asks for his name, and digs out a picture of the boy’s grandfather. The young man appears to understand the deep meaning in this moment. He has quite a story to tell his grandfather now. Mathilde talks about the brutality of the Nazis. Some of the people here have forgiven, she says. It is clear she has not. How long should it take to forget, to forgive? she asks.  “Never,” I blurt out, “How about never?”  She nods in agreement.  She says, “You hear all the time how we in Europe don’t like Americas. Don’t believe it. It is just our leaders talking silly. We love the Americans. We love the Americans.” Outside, in the cool damp of a March morning, it is possible to stand in the quiet and gaze out across the countryside and almost see the scenes from the movies. We gather for pictures. The cameras flash, and Mathilde is still talking a mile a minute. It is apparent everyone in our group is touched by this experience. Later, we drive a short distance to the American Military Cemetery at Henri-Chappelle. There, on land donated in perpetuity by Belgium to the United States, a beautiful columned memorial stands on a hillcrest. Spreading out over 57 acres are over 7,000 white crosses, the graves of Americans who died in the fighting. Peaches and I walk the full length of the cemetery. The names on the crosses all face away from us. I pick a row at random and approach a cross. It bears the name of a soldier from Indiana. What an eerie coincidence. The ground is spongy from rain and a raw wind whistles through the seemingly endless waves of crosses surrounding us. It is a somber, sobering sight. I thank God I did not have to fight in a war, but hope that if I had been called to, I would have acquitted myself with the honor such occasions demand. I bid all these brave, sleeping young men goodbye. We board the bus and slowly pull away. It is quiet inside, too, each of us lost in our own private thoughts.  (March 27, 2006)

I’d Be Waving, But My Hand Is Nailed To My Desk Top

• Italian police have captured fugitive Cosa Nostra chieftain Bernardo Provenzano in a farmhouse near the little village of Corleone (not making this up) in Sicily. Bernardo has eluded authorities for 43 years. His nickname is “The Tractor.” He was given this in recognition of his driving, dogged determination in carrying out his assignments—some assassinations among them—as a young Mafia pup.  (April 12, 2006)

• I got back in my groove this morning by listening to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring enroute to work. Dang near had the steering wheel torn off by the time I hurtled into the downtown parking garage. An absolutely wonderful tonic I’d been too long without. (April 12, 2006)

• With their Mexican flags and swords put away on advice of counsel, but by the same token at their side—or sides—thousands of mostly Hispanic protesters marched in Indianapolis April 10. They were part of a nationwide series of rallies designed to pressure American politicians to give amnesty to millions of undocumented (code for: illegal—why can’t they just spit out the word?) immigrants. March organizers told eager reporters there were at least 20,000 protesters on hand. The Star’s editors took this for gospel and its huge front-page the headline screamed: “20,000 Protest.” The same day’s Chicago Tribune said the Indianapolis crowd had been estimated at 10,000 by local police. The Tribune, in its tally of the number of marchers in various cities, identified its source in each case. The Star’s ample coverage, while presenting a generally balanced array of viewpoints, did not include a city police estimate of crowd size.  (April 11, 2006)

• The Indianapolis march appeared to be mostly without incident. Only a few “counter-protesters” showed up, according to the Star’s coverage, and there were no reports of violence against the marchers.  One incident, however, provided a Kodak Moment snapshot of the fecklessness of the great unwashed majority and its political leaders.  It is not too much of a stretch to imagine that in the vast assembly of either 10,000 or 20,000 protesters on Indianapolis streets, there were a significant number of illegals and criminals and many individuals carrying forged or stolen identification papers, or none at all. (The Pew Hispanic Center estimated in 2004 that there were at least 65,000 illegal immigrants in Indiana, and some say that number is closer to 100,000.) So a parade route spectator likely could have thrown a rock in any direction and hit an “undocumented” person. Local police not only couldn’t lay a finger on these individuals, they were there to escort them safely along their route and see that no one attempted to harm them.  Now consider the pickle Mike Arnold, age 47, found himself in when he expressed his displeasure with the day’s events. The Star reported that Arnold watched the parade from his pickup truck “adorned with Confederate and American flags” at the corner of Alabama and New York Streets and then  “backed up his truck toward the crowd, revved the engine to a roar in protest, and was promptly slapped with a $75 fine for violating the local noise ordinance.” The contrast is instructive, and sorrowful.  (April 11,2006)

• “The big question we still have to ask is not where we’re going, but what were we doing here in the first place.”—Art Buchwald, remarking on his own lack of concern about the hereafter. Buchwald, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and humorist, is in a Washington, D.C., hospice preparing to die after declining to undergo 15 hours a week of dialysis to deal with kidney failure. “I just decided ‘To hell with it’. . .I’ve had a wonderful life. I’m 80 years old, so I’m not afraid (to die),” he said. He was quoted in a USA Today editorial, which noted that doctors expected Buchwald to survive only about two weeks after declining dialysis, but here he was, a couple of months later, holding in-hospice seminars with visitors on how to die with grace and humor.  (April 15, 2006)

Yeah, And The Tenets, Too!!

• “This undermines the tenants of a free press.”—Linda Compton, Indiana Broadcasters Association president and CEO, quoted in the April 17-23 Indianapolis Business Journal by writer Anthony Schoettle in an article about NFL team owners banning local television stations from the sidelines during games, to protect the big networks who pay billions and billions and billions of dollars for exclusive broadcast rights. (This reminds me of the sign that stood along a highway at the south edge of Vile Gorge, Indiana, in the mid-1960s:  "Land For Lease—Or Will Build To Suit Tenets.”)  (April 17, 2006)

Illinois Governor’s Suite At The Federal Pen In High Demand

• Illinois continues to press its case for designation as the Citadel of Serial Scumbags In High Places.  A federal jury has just convicted former Republican Governor George Ryan on 18 counts  of corruption and bribe-taking. For this we should all be on our knees thanking a Just God, or The Big A—Allah—just in case. Ryan thus became the third of seven prior governors to be convicted of crimes.  A fourth (Republican William Stratton) was indicted for tax evasion but was acquitted. The convicts include Democrat Dan Walker (17 months in prison for bank loan fraud after he left office) and Democrat Otto Kerner, one year in prison then paroled for bribery, conspiracy, mail fraud, tax evasion, and perjury. And all this without even a glance at Chicago! (April 17, 2006)

• In March of 2001, Peaches (although then her name was Mogo) and I traveled to four cities in China—Beijing, Xian, Suzhou and Shanghai—and every hotel and restaurant bathroom we encountered was furnished with American Standard brand plumbing fixtures—until we stopped by the Shanghai site of the Communist Party Congress (CPC) offices. There the fixtures bore the brand name of Toto, presumably a good Chinese company. Beijing is a city of startling contrasts. New buildings soar up out of squalor. Everywhere, and for miles, structures were being torn down, and right in their midst rose new buildings under construction. It’s a huge place—over 13 million population. In the spring, everything is coated with dust and the air most days was tan from the dust storms blowing in from northern China. Somehow, millions of cars and bicycles co-exist. Parts of Beijing look like Chicago’s Magnificent Mile; other parts resemble Warsaw, Poland—grimy, ramshackle structures, and looking 40 to 50 years out of date by American standards. But there are striking and attractive buildings—no skyscrapers of American size, but some reaching 30-40 stories. Many signs appear in English. On the outskirts of Beijing was a sign which read “The Bucolic Govt. of Si Ju Wong.” No one in our group could hazard a guess what that meant. But another sign on a car repair business was easier to decipher: it read “”Vocational Doctor American Vehicles.” In the heart of the city, right alongside a 10-lane highway, was a huge (about 20 acres) plowed garden plot, where people apparently grew vegetables. We noticed that many of the advertising signs and billboards featured non-Asian faces. Downtown apartment buildings in bright colors and pastels delight the eye—orange, blue, yellow, green, purple, pink, tans. Traffic is dense—bicycles, cars, old pickup trucks, riding lawnmowers, donkeys pulling carts, people walking. There is a powerful impression of furious energy, as if the Chinese are renovating and rebuilding their entire country. We spent much of a day in the elegant embassy district, the highlight of which was a visit inside the American Embassy with a member of a U.S. agricultural mission to China, and an afternoon coffee and cake on the sprawling veranda of a white-pillared hotel. On our last night (March 22) in Beijing, we turned on the hotel room’s television set.  We surfed through many channels, all of them in Chinese or other unknown languages. Finally, we found CNN-Asia and a broadcast in English. We watched a little of the news. Then another channel and—what’s that? Basketball. It looked familiar. I leaned closer. It was an NBA game, the Indiana Pacers and the Orlando Magic playing some 12,000 miles away in Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. The Pacers won, 96-95. The post-game summary was done by Chinese broadcasters with all the names and scoring statistics in Chinese. Small world, indeed.  We’d noticed stores in Beijing selling NBA merchandise, and Chinese youths in Michael Jordan T-shirts and other sportswear. The next day we flew some 900 miles inland to the ancient capital of Xian. We crossed vast mountain ranges coming in, and once we dropped below the cloud layer the air was tan there, too, from blowing Gobi sands. The airport is about an hour’s drive from the city. Along the route we passed Ming burial tombs, people working in fields with primitive tools. The homes were more like huts of baked brick—most looked about 15-feet square. Most had tiny gardens, with scrawny goats and cattle tied outside. Vast fields of rapeseed—blankets of bright yellow—spread in every direction. Some of the “houses” were merely cavelike openings in hillsides or huge mounds of earth. We were later told the average Chinese has 100 square feet of living space. Xian was the starting point for the famed Silk Road that connected China to the Middle East and Europe. Traders coming to China from those places passed through the Xian gate. A huge ancient brick wall still encloses the city, with a moat outside that. Our bus drove down one side. The wall is about a mile long and 50 feet high on a side. The highlights of the visit were the Wild Goose Pagoda and the Terra Cotta Warriors. The latter are among the world’s wonders—thousands of life-sized soldiers, court officials, horses, carts, warriors crafted from terra cotta and buried underground for centuries. The excavation is 30 years underway and is enclosed in a building at least as large as a domed football stadium in the U.S. The Chinese say there’s far more to be unearthed. The sight of it staggers the mind. In Xian, the capital from approximately 200 B.C. to 900 A.D., when it was moved east to Beijing, we were in the hands of two local guides, Ming and Michael. Ming told us he had completed three years of college and taught English to Chinese high school students.  During a brief break, I asked Ming if it was difficult for a Chinese citizen to get a visa or passport to travel to the United States. “Very, very difficult,” he said. I asked why, and who was responsible for it being so difficult. “Our government,” he answered firmly. I asked him why that was so, and he said, “Because, most of us would not come back. The United States is a dream for Chinese people. You have so much freedom.” In Xian we also visited a nursing home—“Old People’s House,” in the words of our guide. We sat in on a morning meeting of the residents. A dignified old man in a plain dark “Mao suit” rose and faced us. He said he had been a heart surgeon, and had taught at an institute for cardiovascular diseases. He apologized—though of course he did not need to—for his poor English. He said he’d learned English from his students. He spoke earnestly of the need for Chinese-American friendship. Another man stood and said he had been an opera singer. He drew himself erect, and sang for us in a ragged but strong voice. It was a touching moment. The south of China offers a semi-tropical climate and Shanghai, along the coast at the mouth of the Yangtze River, is one of the jewels of the world. This was one of the first Asian cities heavily influenced by the West. In the mid-1800s the humiliating (to the Chinese) Treaties of Nanjing divided Shanghai into sectors controlled by the British, Americans, French, and Germans, and later by groups of Japanese and Russians. Visitors can still see traces of these reminders of the colonial era, though they are no longer labeled as such. Shanghai’s architecture is soaring, startling, jaw-dropping, amazing, delightful—the equal of anything I’ve ever seen.  We entered the city on elevated highways lined for miles with flower boxes containing—live!—flowers. We visited the ancestral home of Sun Yat Sen, who in 1911 led the revolution which overthrew the last (Ching) dynasty and established modern China. Sun Yat Sen also founded the Koumintang Party, which ran China until the Communists took over the country in 1949. The Koumintang fled to Taiwan where the party rules that island nation yet today. We had a late afternoon hamburger at the Shanghai Hard Rock Café, and there met a group of American sailors from the 7th Fleet on shore leave from their battleship anchored in the nearby harbor. A day trip to Suzhou, the 2500-year-old “Venice of the Orient,” took us along the coast to a marshy district replete with fish farms, canals, more rapeseed fields, a silk factory, and a canal boat ride through the village.  We bought two original oil paintings. Leaving Shanghai for the airport on March 28, I saw a highway exit sign which read Long Dong Avenue. Shanghai to Tokyo to Detroit and back to Indiana, likely changed in subtle ways forever by this most amazing trip of all (so far). (Notes transcribed April 21, 2006)

And May I Introduce My Good Friend And Colleague, Mr. Hernando Herpes Duplex II? 

• “Ron Mexico.”—The alias allegedly used by Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick when Vick sought treatment for “a sexually transmitted disease,” according to a lawsuit filed by plaintiff Sonya Elliott, who also claimed Vick gave her the disease. Her lawsuit was settled out of court, according to attorneys for both sides, who were quoted in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (April 25, 2006)

Rhino-Sizing

• Just like Americans themselves, American appliances are rhino-sizing. This is the big, hearty news from the April 27 Wall Street Journal, which reports that U.S. appliance makers are rolling out massive refrigerators, freezers, and cooking ranges and even oversized faucets and sinks. And customers, about 50 percent of whom are grossly obese on a typical day, are stampeding to buy ‘em.  GE, for example, offers a 41-cubic-foot double-doored refrigerator for $13,999. And Capital Cooking Equipment has a $12,500 range which features five burners, a griddle plate and a rotisserie oven and, from the look of that big baby, plenty of room to park your SUV, too. Several reasons are cited for this trend: one is that manufacturers are desperate to find ways to set themselves apart (Capital brags that its Precision Series 60-incher can bake144 cookies at a time!); another is to provide space to store and cook all that stuff we buy in monster-sized crates and barrels at big bulk sellers like Costco and Sam’s Club.  My wife, Peaches,is brimming with excitement at the prospect of getting one of those big Precisions—“then I can burn all 144 of ‘em at once!” she exults.  (April 27, 2006)

• The Indianapolis Star’s editorial writers “did the math” and report that:  Indiana ranks 46th nationally in education level achieved by its citizens; over 25% of our high school students drop out; of the remaining 75 or so students who complete high school, about 40 actually enroll in college; but almost one of every four freshmen (23%) requires remedial classes or tutoring in college; and after six years only 21 of these students--barely more than half who enroll--graduate from college. This is a pitiful record. Its bottom line is that about half the dollars spent on education in Indiana are wasted. Lefties and teachers unions lobby every day for more spending, though. The Star advocates full-day kindergarten and something it calls “early childhood education for at-risk kids,” and suggests the way to better results is to “lay a strong foundation in the early years.”  Fairly thin gruel, if you ask me. (April 27, 2006)

Wait Till The ACLU Hears About This!

• A correspondent from suburban Nashville, Tennessee, reports spotting a six-person trash pickup crew along Nolensville Road near the Davidson-Williamson County line the morning of April 29. These crews are typically comprised of local miscreants—either jail inmates or locals sentenced by courts to community service—and each member of this one was wearing a fluorescent orange safety vest stamped with the message, “I Am A Drunk Driver.”  Each represents, as soon as some lefty lawyer gets hold of this, a lottery jackpot of billions and billions and billions in compensation for being made to feel bad about himself.  (April 29, 2006)  

• Years ago Johnny Carson offered a most memorable joke about hats made out of lunchmeat.  I’ve never forgotten that moment. At the time, and since, of course, we all took this as a spoof. But I am overjoyed to report this morning—a wonderfully cool, rainy Sunday morning spent sipping coffee and perusing my copy of the Sunday Vile Gorge Meddler—a major breakthough for humankind:  there is now a website devoted to this matter. Its web address is www.hatsofmeat.com and there is much to be learned there.  A sneak peek reveals topics such as Meat Muffs for inclement weather; Ham Helmets for safety; a form-fitting ‘miracle meat’—Ground Chuck—for fabricating almost any headgear; a crown made from pickled pig’s feet; a Classic PorkPie hat; a Base-Bull Cap featuring a visor of flank steak; The Canadian, a cold-weather cap made of Canadian bacon with a chin strap of sausage links, and a Brisket Yarmulke.  I could go on and on.  In reverence and awe, I commend it to you. (April 30, 2006)

I Am Not Making This Up

• “The California State Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill last week that would require public schools to teach students in all grades about the contributions homosexuals, bisexuals and transsexuals have made to society. SB 1437 which passed April 4 by all three Democrats on the Senate panel, would also mandate that California schools buy textbooks that “accurately” portray “the sexual diversity of our society.”—The Washington Times, April 10-16, 2006 issue, first two paragraphs of a news story.

• Most Americans probably little noticed the April 30 death in France of an almost incomprehensible man, Jean-Francois Revel:  a French intellectual, writer, and political philosopher who openly admired the United States, who was an outspoken conservative in the radically left French intelligentsia. He became internationally famous in 1970 when he wrote Without Marx or Jesus, for which he was reviled by the left. He followed that with The Totalitarian Temptation, and then, in 1983 published  How Democracies Perish, a chilling warning of the dangers--many self-inflicted--facing free nations.  (April 30, 2006)

• Years ago—probably in the 1960s or 1970s—I ran across a short story called The Yellow Raft by Evan Connell.  A story I wish I’d written: brief, precise, pungent, peculiar. The entire story takes place at sea. A lone airplane is buzzing along over the endless blue ocean on a brilliant, sunny day. It is an old World War II-vintage plane. Far below, on the surface, the pilot spots a yellow raft bobbing. He takes the plane up in a steep climb till the engine stalls, then drops it over nose-first in a steep, screaming dive. He flattens out at the last moment, swoops low over the water and opens up on the raft with wing cannons and machine guns. The bullets and shells rip and tear and tinkle and splatter the raft, and it sinks. The plane climbs away into the void, trailing a glittering stream of empty beer cans the pilot pitches, one by one, out of the Plexiglas canopy. The end. I have never figured out what it all meant. But I love the story. There’s always the possibility that it’s pointless. Perhaps that’s what appeals to me, the pointlessness. If I ever run into Evan Connell, I’m gonna ask him. (May 10, 2006)

• President Roosevelt’s address to Congress and the nation following the attack on Pearl Harbor included an eight-minute prayer, according to my good friend and colleague, Ann Coulter. Would anybody would dare try that today?  (May 13, 2006)           

Time To Get Serious

• An AOL news headline flying by said that a Newsman Admits Suicide Try. I didn’t care enough to stop to find out who it was, but I did snort to myself this truth:  Anyone who fails at a suicide attempt was simply not serious about it. Those who mean it succeed.  All the rest of it is just pathetic posturing. (May 19, 2006)

• Protest organizers have no trouble finding billions and billions and billions of illegals to march in major cities across our country to dramatize a Day Without Immigrants.  Why can’t our government arrange for such a day to be observed along our borders? (May 15, 2006)

Bob’s Still Out There, Plugging Away

• A picture of Bob Greene—the one I used to see five days a week in the Chicago Tribune—appeared in a Literary Events calendar in a recent Sunday Tribune book section promoting his appearance at a suburban Borders bookstore to promote and sign his new book, And You Know You Should Be Glad.  Greene lost his columnist’s job at the Tribune when it was revealed that he’d once had a tryst with a teen-aged female reader who was under the legal age of consent but consented, anyway, and later blabbed to the press. (May 18, 2006

• The best conservative radio talk show in America—at least of the ones I can pick up on my crystal set—is the Greg Garrison Show, week-daily on WIBC-AM in Indianapolis (1070 on your radio dial). Garrison is an attorney, best known locally for prosecuting, convicting and sending to prison the former heavyweight champion boxer, Mike Tyson. His radio show is a wonderful combination of outspoken, patriotic, emphatically conservative, common-sense views, blended with calm respect and fairness toward guests and callers.  (May 19, 2006)

Wait Till The ACLU Hears About This!

• Garrison had better watch out, though—he rather proudly closes his show with the comment, “God bless America.” Doesn’t he realize that’s against the law? (May 19, 2006)

• A caller to Garrison’s show today reported that Regions Bank in Indianapolis has this policy on the identification it requires when opening new accounts: if you present an out-of-state driver’s license, a manager’s approval is required to open the account; if you present a Mexican ID card issued by the local Mexican consulate, it is accepted without manager approval.  (May 19, 2006)

• Jim Nabors is singing Back Home Again In Indiana on the radio now. Why are there tears in my eyes?  (May 19, 2006)

• Remember last summer when Northwestern University’s women’s lacrosse team visited the White House and the TV and print media were full of pictures and fashion critique pointing out that some of the lassies were wearing sandals?  Flip-flop-gate, they called it.  Contrast that with the all but complete absence of media coverage of quarterback Vince Young’s White House fashion faux pax when he and his teammates from the University of Texas national championship football team visited the White House this spring. Young’s teammates wore suits to the event, but Young “forgot his” and appeared in jeans and a zippered sweatshirt, then refused most autograph requests from White House staff while his teammates gladly cooperated.  Vince pretty much got a free pass from the national media. (This courageous report from Paul Bedard, who writes the “Washington Whispers” page, in the March 6, 2006 issue of U.S. News & World Report.)

Booking Katrina

• I’ve seen her name spelled many ways. I thought I’d go to the source, the masthead of The Nation, where she is Editor & Publisher and Chief Banshee of America’s Far Left. There she spells it: Katrina vanden Heuvel. Book it!  (May 25, 2006)

• The May 22, 2006, issues of Time and Newsweek provided an insight into something that’s been troubling me for a long time: an increasing dislike and contempt for both publications. Both magazines made cover stories of the revelation that the National Security Agency had been analyzing telephone call data in the fight against terrorism. Both converted what some felt was a fairly routine story into a sensationalized cover carrying a clear implication that a sinister, evil government, was spying—spying, for God’s sake—on ordinary and innocent Americans who were using the telephone. Newsweek’s cover blared “Spying on Your Calls—Is It Legal?—What Else Don’t We Know?” over a picture of the White House with a huge telephone hand-piece on top. Time printed a spook-film  picture—lit from below, against a black background--of the face of Michael Hayden (then the new nominee to head the CIA) with the ominous question: “Does This Man Have Your Number?” This treatment thrills the Hate America First Crowd, and the Bush-Haters, as well, but in my view it was disgraceful. Both magazines have evolved a long way from the time when they were serious, thoughtful, and fairer in their presentation of news. Both are increasingly filled with celebrity gossip and frivolous pop culture pap—they’re shallow and silly in their approach to just about everything.  (May 23, 2006)

• Just finished, half a century late, a novel by Paul Bowles, The Spider’s House. Set in the mid-1950s in Morocco, it is told through the eyes of an American expatriate, John Stenham, living in that north African country at a time when it was still a French colony, and of a native boy named Amar. Both live in the city of Fez. Bowles writes in rich detail of the countryside and the people, and of the rising currents of hatred among the native population of “all things European.” It’s a striking story of what it must be like to be an outsider living nearly alone in an alien (and increasingly hostile) culture. This is especially pertinent for Americans today, who are having to come to terms with their confrontation with the Muslim world.  (May 25, 2006)

• I watched the 1962 film, The Longest Day, over Memorial Day weekend and although I had seen it before, I was surprised this time at the number of actors in it who later became “household words”—big Hollywood stars who in the 1960s were not yet all marquee players. Peaches and I spotted, or believe that we did, the likes of John Wayne, Peter Lawford, Rod Steiger, Red Buttons, Sal Mineo, Robert Mitchum, Robert Wagner, Henry Fonda, Kurt Jurgens, Jeff Chandler, Robert Ryan, Richard Burton, Eddie Albert, Gert Frobe and--looking almost like a teen-ager--Sean Connery—all taking part in the Normandy Invasion. I doubt it would be possible in the current world to assemble such a cast for any production.  (May 29, 2006)

All Except The Few Millions Who Were Starved, Executed, Or Somehow Died In Uncle Joe’s Gulag!

• “Many Soviets, viewing the current chaos and national unrest under Gorbachev, look back almost longingly to the era of brutal order under Stalin.”—Mike Wallace, 1986, on CBS Television’s 60 Minutes program.

• “Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy.” –Dan Rather, quoted in Mona Charen’s 2003 book, Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got it Wrong In The Cold War And Still Blame America First.

• “Stalin is giving the Russian people—the Russian masses, not Westernized landlords, industrialists, bankers, and intellectuals, but Russia’s 150,000,000 peasants and workers—what they really want, namely joint effort, communal effort.” –Walter Duranty, famous New York Times foreign correspondent, writing from his station in Moscow in the 1920s, quoted in Mona Charen’s book, Useful Idiots.

• More South Vietnamese died attempting to save their country from Communism than did Frenchmen resisting Hitler—Statement attributed to columnist William F. Buckley about the Vietnam War, in Mona Charen’s book, Useful Idiots. 

• Bill Campbell, the mayor of Atlanta from 1994 to 2002, has been sentenced to 2.5 years in prison, fined $6,300, and ordered to pay $62,823 in back taxes in a case involving allegations that Campbell loaded up on illegal campaign contributions, free trips, and other payoffs while in office. Campbell’s lawyers said that his more than two decades of public service should have earned him leniency, but the judge thought otherwise.  Associated Press, which provided the story in the Indianapolis Star this morning, left out a crucial detail, though:  nowhere in its account was the mayor’s political affiliation mentioned.  Rush Limbaugh noticed this, too, and read three stories about the matter before finding one which revealed—in its very last paragraph--that Campbell was a Democrat. The issue here is not that Campbell is a Democrat. It’s that the perp’s political party affiliation is a required basic element in stories of this sort, and AP chose not to include it. Asking us to believe this was inadvertent is a bit of a stretch.  (June 14, 2006)

• Listerine was invented in the 1800s as a surgical antiseptic. Later it was marketed in distilled form as a floor cleaner and a cure for gonorrhea. In the 1920s, it was offered as a sure for “chronic halitosis”—then an obscure medical term for bad breath.—Factoids from Freakonomics, published in 2005 in hardback, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.

• Another attempted raid on the public treasury was rebuffed in early July when the Indiana Supreme Court ruled 4-1 against a Munster, Indiana, man’s lawsuit claiming he was entitled to damages after falling backwards out of gymnasium bleachers while attending a basketball game. He sued, claiming the Lake County School District should have posted signs warning people of the backless bleachers. A local judge threw out the suit but the plaintiff appealed and the suit was reinstated. The Supreme Court overturned the appeals court, saying the man’s fall was his own fault. This is quite a novel concept in the Current Age.  (July 2, 2006)

One Ringy-Dingy. . .Two Ringy-Dingy. . .

• Among my more unflattering qualities is a deep, visceral dislike for telephones. The sound of one ringing triggers a surge of gut-level animosity, and accounts for the inevitably gruff, sullen manner in which I answer them. I hate the instrument, not the caller. This affliction arose when I worked at the aptly-named Bloomington Herald-Telephone newspaper in the 1970s.  I sat in a block of four desks pushed together to face each other in the center of the newsroom. One phone served the four desks. Other phones were scattered on desks around the room’s perimeter. The newsroom had just one phone number for incoming calls. All calls—every one of them, every day—rang on the phone at my desk, and from there were forwarded to others. Not one in a thousand of them was for me, but they all rang there, a foot or so from my face. The nearly incessant ringing of the phone, coupled with the chaotic and pressure-packed atmosphere of the newsroom, kept me on the cliff’s edge of freak-out all the days that I worked there. We were thinly-staffed but fiercely committed to the cause—beating the competition and putting out a high-spirited product. Page deadlines began at 9:30 a.m. and progressed through women’s pages, sports, business, inside pages, and finally, at 1:30 p.m., page 1 was locked and we went to press. On many days we had to accommodate advertising department goof-ups and other last-second changes, tearing up pages, re-doing layouts, our hearts and eyeballs bulging from the strain and stress of it. Through all of that, the phones rang, and they rang and rang and rang. Management ignored pleas to route calls elsewhere, or hire a receptionist. Too costly, they said. Eventually, I left the paper and went on to more ridiculous things. But the sound of a phone ringing—insidiously insistent, demanding, intruding, interrupting—jangles me to this day, and I think it will follow me to the end.  I do have two modest goals regarding phones, however. One is to someday be seated at a desk or in a chair and have the phone ring, whereupon I will rise to my feet and, very slowly and deliberately, pull out a glistening double-bladed axe and in one mighty stroke split the telephone in two, driving the axe about six inches deep into the desk-top.  And the other is to someday live somewhere and not have a telephone at all.  Could this be too much to ask?  (July 17, 2006)

Nanny State Ninnies Are Gettin’ Me Down

• I’d been feeling pretty smug and safe, holed up in my bunker and munching away on pemmican and diet root beer. Then the July 17 Indianapolis Star was tossed down the hole. In that instant, serenity vanished. For there, practically leaping off the page into my lap, was a full-page feature about the latest horror threatening this great land: flip-flops. You know, flip-flops—those rubber things we wear on our feet with a strap going up between the toes. The flip-flops we’ve been wearing for more than half a century—perhaps longer—with nary a thought of danger?  Well, the Star  is  ending that pipe dream.  It’s rounded up podiatrists and other “experts” to sound the alarm: flip-flops are dangerous, a looming public health crisis. They “slip off easily.” They “don’t absorb much shock.” They make toe-stubbing and ankle-spraining “inevitable.” That’s not the half of it. Overuse of these evil, dangerous devices, says reporter Lindsay Lyon, “can cause tendonitis, blistering, arch pain, sprained ankles, and stress fractures.” An Indianapolis podiatrist, Dr. Wendy Winckelbach, said that “flip-flops  are the number one culprit when it comes to people and foot injuries.” The Star found a few locals to ridicule, too. The reporter stopped 53-year-old Anita Hill, who was striding through Circle Center Mall in a pair of “hot pink” flip-flops, for an interview. Hill seemed amused by the moment. “I’m not going to talk bad about my flip-flops,” she said, adding that she’s spent up to $40 a pair on them. “I’ll bet I’ve got 30 pairs in 26 colors. Some have high heels.” Pressed by her interrogator, Hill admitted that sometimes her toes get sore “from gripping the bottoms too intensely.”  Little Samantha Nichols, a 12-year-old from Greenwood, also disappointed the experts. “I don’t care if there’s snow on the ground,” she chirped, “I wear them anyway.” The Star’s reporter relayed this remark to another expert, Dr. Harold Glickman, a past president of the American Podiatric Medical Association, who, the Star revealed, “exhaled deeply” when he heard of it. “That’s about the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Glickman, who somehow missed hearing about the Senate voting to build border fences but voting against approving the money to do it. Glickman’s stern warning to little Samantha: “That’s the best way to get frostbite, really hurt yourself, and inflict severe damage on your feet.”  It is almost beyond human comprehension to think that I lived in an age where no one, in even their wildest, most delusional moments, would ever have dreamed that flip-flops were dangerous. (July 17, 2006)

A Quiet Little Table For 36, Please

• I polled eight friends and asked them who they’d choose if they could invite only five people, living or dead, to their house for dinner.  Three, apparently homeless, failed to reply. The tally from those who did: Jesus Christ led the pack at three votes. Receiving two invitations were Thomas Jefferson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. One vote each went to Robert Frost, Ben Franklin, Russell “Possum “ Marquess, Albert Einstein, Angelina Jolie, Voltaire, Charles Darwin Carpinter,  Mohandas Gandhi, Jonathan Winters, General George Patton, William Hoffman, Jean Shepherd, George Carlin, Thomas Friedman, John Wooden, Billy Graham, George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, “Ding” Darling, and the fathers of two group members.  Andre The Giant was suggested  as bouncer, Marilyn Monroe as topless waitress, and Johnny Carson as moderator of after-dinner jousting.  Be there!  (July 20, 2006)

Quirky Willard

• Soon it will be time to mark the 124th anniversary of Willard Aldrich’s planting. He’s worth a moment’s silence. He died and was buried in Mishawaka, Indiana, in 1882. A local newspaper article makes it clear that he raised the bar for pre-planned passages.  Well before his expiration date, Willard saw that certain instructions were carried out by his local undertaker. He ordered a  custom casket, built so he could be buried sitting up.  A glass window was installed for Willard’s face. He was so delighted with the casket when it was delivered to his house, that he spent considerable time testing it, trying it out, getting the feel of things, inviting friends over for a look.  A special tomb was ordered—Aldrich was obviously a person of means--with photos and paintings hung on the walls. It also contained a card table, a deck of cards, a bottle of whiskey, a saddle, a pair of boots, and a gun. He was buried, you might say, “ready for action.”  He remains an inspiration to us all. (July 21, 2006)

• However, 1982 was not a good year for signage.  On October 27 of that year, I was sitting at 6:30 a.m. in a Mr. Submarine snack shop at the corner of Roosevelt Road and Halsted Street in Chicago. The neighborhood is on the seedy side. The street outside reminded me of Nevil Shute’s On The Beach—grey, gritty, dirty, broken bottles on the sidewalks, rubbish clotting the gutters, scraps of paper skittering past in the morning breeze, a sense of desolation and poverty. It was warm inside Mr Submarine, though. I ate my donuts and drank my coffee and saw a sign taped on a cigarette machine that said: Attion costomer. Mr Submarin is not Responisable for lost money in machine Use at Own Risk The Mgt.” The next day—October 28—I was in a donut shop in Goshen, Indiana. I picked up a free magazine, one of those advertising local homes and lots for sale. They have little pictures, always, to omit the sinkhole in the side yard, or the neighbor’s toxic waste dump. There are little messages beneath the pictures. One said this is the perfect home to get away from the hussle of the city.  I wanted to hussle right over to my friendly realtor, but didn’t. The day after this—October 29—I was interviewing students at Indiana University at South Bend. There, on a wall, was a sign that said Cousneling Dept.  A little white arrow pointed toward the place. I resisted the temptation to go on over there and counsel them on how to spell it.  A three-day run on bad spelling, but at least my donut hole got filled. (July 21, 2006)

• “I am a cursed man, tethered to the instrument without hope of escape.”—Marc Neidlinger, Principal, CEO, and House Lackey for MindLightning Design Group, a website design firm in Vancouver, Washington, commenting on his relationship with his cell phone. (July 21, 2006)

Makin' The Rounds

• Still on a wrinkled to-do list I carry in my billfold is a reminder to write a letter to one of the chieftains at McDonnell Douglas Corp.  It ran a two-page ad in Newsweek and Time in February, 1982, extolling the virtues of its new Cruise missile. I got pretty excited reading about it. “A Missile For All Seasons!” shouted the headline. The text promised that “Neither snow, nor rain, nor gloom of night stays Cruise missiles from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” The missile, says McDonnell, is a subsonic, jet-powered cylinder, 20 feet long, capable of delivering both nuclear and conventional warheads. It has a stored map of the enemy terrain in its computer guidance system, so the missile adjusts its altitude for all the hills and dales and valleys enroute to ground zero.  I am hoping this big baby is for sale to individuals. I want mine slightly modified to include a space—a little message board up in the nosecone area—where I can scrawl (moronically, of course) a little greeting like “Hi There!” or “Take it in the face!” to my hobgoblin of the day. I want one—well, surely more than one—in the worst way. (July 22, 2006)

• I’ve been barraged lately with mail solicitations for Visa credit cards.  As many as four or five envelopes a week have been arriving, mostly from something called Chase (presumably what in olden days was known as Chase Manhattan Bank). It’s been this way for months. Every organization under the sun wants a piece--AARP and the ACLU, two of my favorite leftwing organizations, among them.  I shred up the contents, snip off anything bearing my name and address, and mail them all back, sometimes adding other scraps of paper and cardboard to boost the weight, in the business reply envelopes so thoughtfully provided, thus forcing them to pay to get their own rubbish back.   God, how I love this!  (July 28, 2006)

• A friend faxed me an important document today. It came out about half an inch wide and 10 inches high on the sheet, all the type shrunk to sub-atomic particle level and unreadable. I called and reported this. He sent me the document as a .pdf file attached to an e-mail. I got the e-mail, downloaded the file, clicked on the little icon. It came up as a blank page. I e-mailed my friend to report this. I must not have Adobe Acrobat Reader on my machine, he surmised. I would have no clue about that. He tried to fax it again. No success. I asked him to just mail me the page through the Postal Service.  After half a dozen e-mails, four failed fax attempts, and much gnashing, my wife, Peaches, succeeded in downloading Adobe and printing the one page I needed.  Earlier, at the doctor’s office, it was discovered that my medical records had not been forwarded from Dr. Feelgood’s old office to his new one, even though I had signed and returned the “Forwarding Permission Form” in early April. I promised him I would not only call the old office, but send them a letter, again asking them to forward my records. Things were slipping at the old place, he murmured, and people had been let go and service had been degraded.  Later, I was told by an assistant to wait outside a door for my name to be called for lab work. I waited 45 minutes. No one called. I went to a window and asked an aide to check to see if I was on the right conveyor belt, or had entered a black hole. She looked at my papers, said I was on the wrong floor. I should be downstairs in the first floor lab. No one told me that, I replied. I went downstairs and in 10 minutes my name was called.  A  phlebotomist with a cleft palate and crippled legs expertly took my  blood samples and whisked me out the door with a cheerful smile.  I drove to the Hard Cheese Post Office to mail four small packages. Thirteen people were in line ahead of me when I entered. I peeked around the corner. One postal clerk was on duty. The other station was closed. Customers on a Monday morning had apparently caught them by surprise. Two people angrily bailed out ahead of me as the minutes droned on. Each transaction seemed unusually complicated.  Each was worsened by the clerk’s required pestering of each customer with sales pitches: Did  the customer want insurance on the contents? Did the parcel contain anything flammable, explosive, perishable, or ridiculous? Did the customer want registered mail? Next-day delivery? Two-day delivery? Delivery confirmation? Special handling?  A heart/lung transplant? Did the customer need any stamps, special envelopes, money orders?  A second clerk came to help, but her computer wasn’t working properly, and so for a long time her cash drawer would not open. A supervisor stood by, waiting for her to give him some large bills from the drawer, while customers waited for her to wait on them.  I waited approximately 30 minutes before handing over my parcels. Much to my surprise, they actually had some of the special Baseball Slugger stamps advertised on a large poster. Usually, they’re out of advertised items.  I bought a sheet, thrilled to see Mickey Mantle in the glory of his youth again. I staggered away into 90-degree heat  and hurtled onto Old South Friendly Road in my  2000 Tuscan Bronze Infiniti QX-4 toward home, the only safe place I know. (July 31, 2006)

A Confirmed 2006 Darwin Award Nominee!

• From remotest southwestern Indiana came word August 7 of a confirmed nominee for the 2006 Darwin Award competition.  Paul Lynch, 31, of Clay City, died when a homemade pipe bomb exploded while he was fishing along Birch Creek near Clay City, according to the Indianapolis Star. Authorities speculated that Lynch intended to use the devices—a second, unexploded bomb was also found at the scene—to stun the fish.  Lynch died instantly when shrapnel from the explosion pierced his heart, said a local coroner. (August 7, 2006)

• Physicist James Van Allen expired August 9 at age 91.  An amazing life. He taught for decades at the University of Iowa. Instruments he designed were aboard the first American satellite, Explorer I, which discovered the intense bands of radiation surrounding Earth. These are now known as the Van Allen Belt. They are only a few short light years from the Van Oort Cloud, where I’ve been a frequent visitor. On more than one occasion I’ve run into George Carlin there.  Let’s bid James and his amazing half-century long career a fond adieu.  (August 10, 2006)

• Many were happy with the June news that Al Qaeda’s big kahuna in Iraq, the terrorist leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi, had been bombed and killed in an air strike at a safe house. Among the TV news clips was an enlarged, framed U.S. military photograph of the dead terrorist’s face. That sent the Washington Post’s culture critic, Phillip Kenicott, into  a hissy fit. “The framed image of a head,” he sneered, “has a disturbing sense of trophy to it—proof of another small victory brought home from battle.”  Well, yes. (August  10, 2006)

I Knew Mongo, Mr. Logan, And You’re Certainly Not Mongo

• A slow Chicago Tribune news day brought word from Athens, Ohio, that Corey Logan, a 22-year-old Ohio University football player, had pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct and was fined $100 and some “community service.” Pretty thin gruel, ordinarily. But the attentive reader was rewarded with the revelation that Corey had tried to deck a horse named Chip in a scuffle outside a local bar in April. The horse took Corey’s best punch without a sniffle and the policeman on its back tossed young Corey in the pokey. Logan’s position on the team? Tight end—what else?  (August 21, 2006)

Makes Me Sick To Think That A Loose Moron Blames The City For This

• “Yesterday, I saw a homeless man washing himself in a city ditch. It makes me sick to think of the priorities of this city!”—Anonymous phoned-in message to the Indianapolis Star’s “Let It Out” service, which invites readers to call and bitch about whatever they want, then prints the pick of the litter in the paper. (August 12, 2006)  

Surely, Everyone Feels Better Now           

• The Illegal Immigration Unpleasantness came to Indianapolis in a big way—at least for one family—last summer when a drunken driver ran through a red light near downtown and smashed into a vehicle leaving a wedding reception, killing two people, including the groom’s father. The perp/driver was identified as Rosalio Pedraza, age 32.  His trial in Indianapolis resulted in a 52-year prison sentence August 25.  Pedraza testified he had consumed “as many as 15 beers and cocaine” before the accident. Evidence revealed he had two previous drunken driving convict ions in the last five years, and was in the United States illegally. (August 26, 2006)

Say Goodbye To Maynard And Those Softball-Sized Cheeks

• Maynard Ferguson died August 24 but the memory of his wailing trumpet blasts will linger awhile.  Ferguson made over 60 albums in a long career that included a 1978 Grammy Award nomination for his recording of the theme from the movie, “Rocky.” Bands he led featured noted soloists like Chuck Mangione and Chick Corea.  Ferguson appeared in the inaugural 1999 Indianapolis Jazz Festival and played about 150 dates a year until 2005, when his health failed.  A Lost Angeles Times obituary said his “screaming, high-register solos and pop-tinged arrangements thrilled his fans and sometimes appalled his critics.”  I have an album or two of Maynard’s, one of which features a photo of Ferguson with huge Dizzy Gillespie-esque cheeks and the look of a man transported. Man, he could make that baby squeak and scream. He was worth the price of admission.  (August 24, 2006)   

• We’ve lived most of our lives hearing criticism by Europeans of the United States for its “cowboy” mentality and gun-fed lawlessness. Belgium is one of the loudest howlers. But as of mid-summer 2006 (according to the Wall Street Journal) the murder rate per capita in Belgium (9.1 per 100,000 of population) is nearly twice that of the U.S.  (August 28, 2006)

• When will libraries design bookshelves to hold books stacked on their sides so the titles are easy to read? A lifetime of scanning shelves with our gourds at right-angle tilt is long enough. (September 1, 2006)

• Sam’s Club already had Christmas merchandise out for sale by the end of August. It prefers to call it “holiday” stuff, though. It’s time for me to start making my 2007 season “Christmas” references as often as possible. I so look forward to this campaign!  (August 31, 2006)

• Peaches and I watched several hours of a Discovery Channel special on 9/11.  Difficult to watch. The overwhelming emotion it roused in me is fury: fury at the bastards who did this to us; fury at Americans and others who don’t get it; fury at liberals who are working assiduously to undermine our country’s anti-terrorism efforts; fury at our leaders who are responding with half-measures, weakness, incompetence. As a nation, we need to get furious and stay furious 24/7/365. We need to be hunting down terrorists everywhere on earth and killing them, until there are no more of them to be found. I fear that so-called free people in the Western democracies have lost the will to defend themselves. We’ve become flabby, weak, and silly, and we will deserve whatever we get.  (September 11, 2006)

• Bob Mitchell, living in Hamburg, Germany, needed a new car. He talked to friends, did research on the web. He came to a short list of four: a VW Touran, and an Opel Zafira, both made in Germany; a Ford S-Max made in Belgium, and a Toyota Verson built in Turkey. He went online, configured each vehicle at the company websites, received e-mail confirmation of this, and asked for a test drive. Toyota called in less than 24 hours and arranged for the test drive in the next two days. Mitchell never heard from the other three companies. He wrote a letter to the Financial Times speculating that his experience may be a clue why Toyota is the world’s largest car manufacturer.  (Sept. 8, 2006)

Look For Two Sticks Up And One Across! (Or, Alternatively: Imagine The Twin Trade Towers Connected By A Mid-Rise Pedestrian Bridge)

• A correspondent reports two recent visits to an Indianapolis CVS pharmacy which offered Kodak (but not confidence-building) Moments. In the first, a cash register attendant could not compute the needed $1.63 in change because he was unaware of the denomination of American coins. Our correspondent helped him identify the correct coins. The second visit involved a female employee puzzling over the trays containing prescriptions in alphabetical order before finally having to ask a co-worker, “What does an ‘H’ look like?”  Told its shape, she was able to retrieve the prescription. (September 18, 2006)

Visions Of Rosa...

• My feeding tube was removed this morning. I celebrated by eating a fresh Bartlett pear and a few Egg McMuffins. My memory of my encounter with Dr. Golo, for what I thought would be a mere “meet and greet” consultation, is fragmented and incomplete. Apparently it was quite an outing. Peaches went along. I recall being seated in a small room, and Dr. Golo walking in. After greetings, he sat down on one of those wheeled stools, and began asking me questions. The last question I remember was about James Carville’s still ongoing vote counting in Florida. Then there was a sudden loud rushing sound. Out of my peripheral vision I saw a very large, very hairy woman bolting toward me from behind an innocuous-looking screen where she had been concealed. She was clad in a drab, shapeless dark uniform. It—she-- reminded me of Rosa Klebb, the menacing KGB agent from one of the early James Bond movies. I had time to turn my head just enough to see that she bore aloft a huge hypodermic device as she rushed toward me in rapid impetuosity and fury, eyes ablaze, her lank, crudely-chopped hair flowing behind in disarray. She was on me in a flash. My last sensation was of being body-slammed to the tile floor—it was cool against my cheek—as Dr. Golo rolled rapidly backward out of the line of attack.  I awoke some time later, Peaches at my side, patting my forehead with Handi-Wipes, saying, “There, there. . .there, there. . .” Someone has removed my prostate, both of my prunes, and perhaps other tissue or small organs (I haven’t been able to learn any more than this from the counseling staff). The hospital billing office has installed a tap and a Sloan backflow valve into both our living trusts, which we estimate will be emptied by Hallowe’en.  Just a night or two ago, half-groggy and still sedated, my eyes flickered open long enough to see Bill Clinton wagging his Lewinsky finger at some hapless Fox News lackey and giving him—it appeared—the lecture of his life.  It was good to know that Sick has been re-elected President--even if I am, shall we say, rather nutless these days.—Patient letter dictated September 27, 2006.

• Time to brace ourselves.  Major League Soccer has announced that next year it will begin selling advertising on the fronts of player jerseys. Reporter Jon Weinbach in the September 28 Wall Street Journal notes this could encourage other pro sports leagues which have been hanging back. The NFL and major league baseball allow apparel firms to display their logos on team uniforms, and last year baseball commissioner David Stern hinted it may soon loosen its policies.  I expect to live to see the day—if it’s not already here-- when the next frontier will be broken: advertising on the human body, either in permanent or temporary format.  An individual could sell a color tattoo across his forehead for Verizon or Honda or Prozac for either immediate cash, beer, or a retirement annuity. And after that it will only be a matter of time till needy adults begin selling advertising rights on newborns—we already abort ‘em, what’s the problem with slapping ads on ‘em? Eventually, federal legislation will make it mandatory, and they’ll come to your house to tattoo ads on you—right after they’ve forced you, at gunpoint, to shop--if you don’t voluntarily submit. (September 28, 2006)

• The Seattle law firm of Marier Clark is tiny—six lawyers, an epidemiologist, and a nurse on staff—but mighty—it’s been officially knighted the “go-to place for victims of food-borne illnesses” by the Wall Street Journal. Already last week the firm had signed up 76 clients seeking damages in the E. coli-in-spinach outbreak. The firm has an E. Coli website, “an aggressive brand-building campaign” and an exploding niche legal practice as a result. The Journal’s September 27 article noted that “less severe E. coli cases with symptoms such as diarrhea, vomiting, and dehydration are usually worth between $25,000 and $500,000 when they are settled.” Marier Clark typically takes  a 25 percent cut for a child’s case, 35% for an adult’s.  With money like this flying around, it’s a shame all that spinach has been pulled off my grocer’s shelves. (September 27, 2006)

• Fresh off a half hour of driving around listening to Alison Krauss & Union Station, I can reaffirm that if I have a reincarnation I’m comin’ back as a combination singer and guitar and banjo picker and I’m going to get dressed up like George Clooney, John Turtorro, and Tim Blake Nelson did in the movie, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and I’m gonna sing and pick and grin my way through endless repetitions of AK+US’s classic version of “Man of Constant Sorrow.”  Nothing could top that.  Nothing. (September 28, 2006)

Your Assignment: Compare And Contrast. . .

• Up at Purdue, they’re splitting quarks, preparing for journeys to the ninth dimension. Down in Bloomington, they’re clucking and preening and putting up billboards touting Newsweek magazine’s inclusion of Indiana University on its coveted list of America’s Hottest Campuses (it has “lots of weekend parties,” the magazine exclaimed, breathlessly). Indiana was named the “hottest school” in the state, too. Meanwhile the big chip-making giant, Intel, named IU the nation’s best university for “wireless connectivity” and its truly incredible range of. . .328 different degree programs available for all who qualify.  At least IU is next-to-last in Big Ten athletic programs (Purdue is last).  (September 28, 2006)

• Alison Krauss sings a song called “Gravity,” about leaving home when she was seventeen and being told that all she’d find would be the “allure of the road.” This song is a peculiar one, with strong hints of great sadness and loneliness, but also notes of faith and confidence. Judging from these two lines, she found something else:

              “All the answers that I started with,
              Turned out questions in the end. . .”

  The stanza continues, telling us of the years rolling by, “and just like the sky, the road never ends.”  There’s something intensely sorrowful about this, and I never hear the song without shuddering when she sings it.  I suspect the message is that some of us do end our lives with more questions than answers. (September 28, 2006)

The Message On Stockelman’s Forehead: Best Sleep With One Eye Open

• There’s a shortage of justice in this world, but a story out of a Carlisle, Indiana, state prison this morning warmed many hearts.  Anthony Ray Stockelman, 39, is serving a life sentence there for abducting, molesting, and killing a 10-year girl (Katie Collman). Authorities have moved Stockelman to protective custody inside the prison, and are investigating how a large tattoo of the words, “Katie’s Revenge” got placed on his forehead.  Someone took a picture of Stockelman’s forehead and smuggled it outside to a blogger, who promptly plastered it all over the Internet. Stockelman is absolutely refusing to say a word about his new tattoo. Smart fellow. The father of the murdered girl told eager reporters that, “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s a statement from the (other) inmates.” Prison lore has long included the notion that even hardened criminals don’t tolerate child killers, and they often exact a rough sort of justice, including sometimes killing them within the walls, when one is placed in their midst. My guess is Stockelman will never have another night’s peaceful sleep in his life.  (September 29, 2006)

Remembering Scarlett’s. . .

• Esquire magazine, which long ago forgot what it was and underwent serial re-inventions of itself, has named actress Scarlett Johansson the “Sexiest Woman Alive” in its November issue. Scarlett, in her turn, after taking the money and posing seductively in a photo shoot, is telling breathless reporters she would rather be admired for other things. And what might those things be? “What about my brain? What about my heart? What about my kidneys and gallbladder?”  But there is no record of Johansson or any of her agents and handlers approaching, say, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Endocrinology Monthly, or the Cardiac Crier to suggest they do an in-depth story on those organs. Only the honkers are being trotted out there. They are all the clues we need, really, about what Scarlett wants to be admired for. (October 2, 2006)

• We’ve long huffed and snorted about the increasing corruption of college sports by money, primarily from television. Seldom does a year go by without some new frontier being breached. And now, a correspondent from the remote northern Indiana hamlet of Deerfly calls to report this latest blasphemy:  Miami University of Ohio got its homecoming football game on television--by playing it on a Sunday night! No word on how delightful and convenient this was for alumni and fans--but who cares?  A boatload of cash was made and the deal went down in a flash. (October 8, 2006).

• AOL loves to offer little polls on its home page. Anything to engage its subscribers, get us to pause long enough to see an advertisement. Today’s asked us how we felt about making English our country’s official language.  As of 4:30 p.m., AOL had received 33,6000 votes. Ninety-four percent (94%) of us favor it.  This is very bad news for our politicians, but I’m confident they will find a way to ignore it.  (October 9, 2006)

More Reasons To Hate America

• The 2006 Nobel Prizes for medicine, physics, and chemistry, announced in early October, all went to Americans.  (October 8, 2006)

Remembering Izzy

• Hardly a newspaper-reading day goes by which doesn’t remind me of how much I miss one of America’s great journalistic experiences, I. F. Stone’s Weekly.  It had a controversial and scintillating 18-year run (1953-71) of ornery, prickly, bombastic investigative journalism the likes of which only the luckiest of us see in a lifetime. Stone himself was my idol in journalism for the short span of years I was in it, and remains my idea of what one should be. The son of Russian immigrant parents, he was born Isidor Feinstein. He started his own newspaper as a high school sophomore in Haddonfield, New Jersey.  His long career included stints at the Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Post, and The Nation,  as well as several long-defunct left-leaning newspapers like PM, the New York Star and the Daily Compass. He published his first book at age 30 and around that time took the surname Stone, which he used the rest of his life. He was inspired by the muckraking journalists of his time and began his own hell-raising newspaper, I. F. Stone’s Weekly, in 1953. One of his more famous books, Hidden History of the Korean War, made the controversial claims that South Korea provoked the war and the U.S. and South Korea’s leader, Syngman Rhee, “welcomed the conflict.”  He was frequently accused of having Communist ties and of being “used” by the KGB and the Soviets. His Weekly was consistently provocative and Stone himself frequently scooped rival journalists. This was due, often, to his spending long hours in the Library of Congress and dingy bureaucratic basements reading the Congressional Record and other government documents while most of his colleagues were schmoozing at press conferences and snapping up press releases and handouts. Stone thus had unlimited and largely uncrowded access to the unexpurgated records of all the abuses, absurdities, deals, deceits, treacheries, sell-outs, conniving, and ripoffs perpetrated by the political and bureaucratic classes upon the citizenry, and most every week his paper came out blazing with new and embarrassing revelations. He was frequently banned from the White House, and was widely scorned by his colleagues. The Weekly reached about 70,000 subscribers at its peak in the 1960s, but Stone fell ill and had to close the paper in 1971. I remember getting the announcement. I wrote Stone a grief-stricken letter, offered to come to work for him for next to nothing. I don’t recall if I ever got a reply, but in a few months I. F. Stone’s Weekly stopped arriving in my mailbox. Once or twice after that, I saw Izzy on TV talk shows. He wrote for a while for the New York Times Book Reviews. He learned Ancient Greek and in 1988 wrote a well-received book about the prosecution and death of Socrates. He died in June, 1989, and with him went a brand and style of journalism we sorely need. What passes for journalism today is, except for a few lonely voices, a mean and cruel joke upon the citizenry.  I. F. Stone is high on my list of reincarnations, if I get any. (October 13, 2006)

Duh. . .

• Wal-Mart’s announcement of an expansion of its $4 generic prescription plan drew new fire from its intellectually exhausted leftist critics, who now are accusing the company of trying to grab a bigger share of the prescription drug market. (October 19, 2006)

Gimme an H. . .Gimme a Y. . .Gimme a P. . .

• A day after Wal-Mart’s announcement, Target Stores matched Wal-Mart’s offer of $4 generic prescriptions.  And then, the strangest thing: not a single leftist wacko could be found bitching about Target’s move to grab a bigger share of the prescription business.  (October 20, 2006)

Double Duh. . .

• The Postal Service has announced it’s going to eliminate all postage stamp vending machines in its facilities. It will be 2010 before they’re all gone. By that time, you’ll have worked your way to the front of the line to buy stamps, anyway.  (October 19, 2006)

Ninny-O-Rama

• 1) School officials are afraid a child will get hurt and sue for damages; 2) The kids themselves will feel safer; 3) Parents are afraid their kids will get hurt; 4) Dodgeball had already been deemed “exclusionary and dangerous” and banned a couple years ago.—Reasons why Gaylene Heppe, the principal of Willette Elementary School in Attleboro, Peoples Republic of Massachusetts, has banned tag, touch football, or any other unsupervised chase game during recess. Heppe told eager reporters that recess is “a time when accidents can happen.”  (From an Associated Press report printed in the Indianapolis Star October 19, 2006.) 

• Today’s mail disgorged something special from Indianapolis Monthly, whose ad-bloated regular issues treat news and feature content as mostly an afterthought.  October brought an entire magazine—Indianapolis Shops--100 pages cover to cover—devoted entirely to shopping advertisements. (October 21, 2006)

• Sometime last week, demographers say, the population of the United States reached 300 million. Cute newspaper headlines referenced that magic, cuddly 300 miilionth individual. However, it is all but certain it was an illegal immigrant who was voting, collecting Social Security and other federal grants, and getting free medical care and college tuition before night fell. (October 20, 2006)

Ed’s My Man! (Or Half Of One)

• The “energy editor” of the London-based Financial Times writes under the name of Ed Crooks.  At the top of his column is the strangest “picture:”—some sort of morphed or computer-created image that resembles a buffalo or bull head, but with some eerily human features. A note at the end of each of Ed’s columns tells readers, “The writer is the FT’s energy editor and half man-half bull shaman.”  This is a man I would pay money to meet. (October 22, 2006)

Adopt-A-Witch

• Hurtling eastward along New Mexico Highway 4 in our deep titanium-colored 2006 Chevrolet Mailbu sedan, Peaches and I encountered this Adopt-A-Highway sign near mile marker 65, a few miles past the village of White Rock:  Our Lady of the Woods (Wiccan).  (October 27, 2006)

• New Mexico provides these wonderful additions to the list of colorful place names:  Buffalo Thunder Road (on an exit sign north of Santa Fe on Highways 84/285)and Crazy Rabbit Road (about 15 miles south of Santa Fe, on County Road 42 heading east). (October 27, 2006)

Yeah, And That Means All Your Relatives, Cats, Dogs, Goldfish, Handlers, Agents, Dermatologists, Personal Trainers, And Their Cockroach-Eating Friends, Too!

• Notice: To Thieves, Thugs, Fakirs or Bunko Steerers--Among Whom Are: J.J. Harlin alias “The Wheeler,” Sawdust Charlie, William Hedges, Billy The Kid, Billy Mullin, Little Jack, The Cuter Pock-Marked Kid and about Twenty Others: If found within the limits of the city after 10 o’clock P.M. this night, you will be invited to attend a Grand Neck Tie Party, the expense of which will be borne by 100 substantial citizens.”—Sign dated March 14, 1882, on exhibit in the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe. It had been originally posted in nearby Las Vegas, New Mexico.

• Let it be noted that on an eight-day car rental charge of $232.64 in New Mexico, the state and other bureaucratic agencies nailed on the following taxes and fees: sales tax (6.875%) of $18.70, leased vehicle surcharge of $16.00, leased vehicle “gross receipts” tax of $15.26, a “customer facility charge” of $16.00, and a 9.89% “concession fee” of $23.01. The total of $89.37 is equal to 38.42%.  Breathtaking—and we might even say, playing off a favorite bit of leftwing mantra, a true case of unbridled bureaucratic greed.  (November 1, 2006)

• In the last several months I must have returned 50 business reply envelopes containing shredded unsolicited applications for credit cards, but they still pour over the transom at the rate of about five each week.  I’ll bet five bucks I can keep up my end of this as long as they can keep sending them. (November 3, 2006)

Standing, Drooling, Sliding

• In the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, hangs a contraption titled  Beyond 1 X V (1998).  It is identified as an “oil on canvas,” and measures approximately 5 feet square. It was created by a person named Joan Watt and was given to the museum as a gift by Bobbie Foshay-Miller and Chuck Miller. The “work” is either on white canvas or on canvas painted white. Whichever the case, aside from “whiteness” it is featureless, totally blank. I stood before it for the longest time, slack-jawed, struggling to find meaning. At length I shuffled away, my life still miserable, empty—and not one danged  angstrom unit  better for having seen Beyond 1 X V--, sliding my feet instead of lifting them. (October 25, 2006)

A Thorn Among the Hoity-Toity

• Tucked away in the agate type listings of thousands of 2006 donors to the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s annual fund campaign is this gem: Bill “Ficus Plant” Trankle. I have a hunch I’d like this guy. (November 4, 2006)

Jack Wilson Finally Bites The Dust

• Early November brought us the sad news that actor Jack Palance had died at age 87.  His Hollywood career spanned 40 years. He was a “craggy-faced menace” in many of his early films, as Bob Thomas of the Associated Press put it. These included a 1952 film with Joan Crawford (“Sudden Fear”) in which he played a stalker.  A year later he played opposite Alan Ladd in the great Western film, “Shane,” in the role of the cold-blooded hired gunman, Jack Wilson. He played a mob boss in one of the Batman films.  After years of playing “bad guy” roles, at age 70 he began doing comedies such as “City Slickers,” which won him an Oscar.  At the 1992 Academy Awards ceremonies, when he received a best supporting actor Oscar, he did one-armed pushups on the stage for a delighted audience. He was then 73 years old. He was regarded by his film industry colleagues as something of an iconoclast, and once told a reporter, “Most of the stuff I do is garbage.”  “Shane” was my introduction to Palance. His character was terrifying, and terrifyingly well-acted. I relished every film of his I saw over the next decades.  A memorable character indeed. (November 10, 2006) 

Reasons To Go On Living

• If it is true that liberals tend to favor and participate in abortion more than conservatives, could the case be made that eventually liberals, through self-elimination, will die out as a species? (November 14, 2006)

• A recent headline in the Washington Times said that Muslims in America vote heavily Democratic. I wondered what my left-leaning friends thought about their latest new constituency. Probably delighted to have them in their big tent, I answered myself.

• Ticketmaster, the giant which controls over half the market for all the sports and entertainment event tickets sold in the United States, is intensely lobbying state governments to make the resale of such tickets illegal.  The Wall Street Journal reports a huge secondary market for tickets—much of it online—has developed as competition to Ticketmaster’s control (and its normal 30% markup on prices) of the initial-sale market, and Ticketmaster wants this competition outlawed. Another glimpse of what goes on while ordinary citizens are at home sleeping, and believing that their world is safe from predators and legislatures. (November 15, 2006)

• Yahoo is running an advertisement for a one-year college degree. How long before they just sell them by mail, no class time, books, or study required? Oh, wait, I forgot—they already do that.

They’ll Just Have To Keep Judge-Shoppin’

• Two former top executives of a northern Indiana trailer manufacturer, Monon Corp., convicted in 2002 of conspiracy, mail fraud and wire fraud and ordered to pay $8.7 million in restitution to the company they bankrupted, have lost an appeal in the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. The basis of their appeal—and I am not making this up--was this: they should not have to pay restitution because the lenders they deceived should have noticed something was wrong.  Judge Frank Easterbrook rejected that notion in late July. The two men—Thomas Rosby and John Franklin—have vowed they will soldier on and appeal somewhere else. (November 19, 2006)

• Time to make some room for Dean Young at America’s fast food feeding trough. Dean is the son of the legendary cartoonist Chic Young, who created the Dagwood & Blondie comic strip in 1936. Dean took over the strip when his dad died and now he’s realizing a life’s dream by opening his first Dagwood’s Sandwich Shoppe in Palm Harbor, Florida. The concept is pure Dagwood: colossal sandwiches. Young is convinced his big babies will hit a home run in the hearts of Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch and elbow their way onto America’s harvest table already groaning under the weight of Big Boys, Whoppers, Whalers, Thickburgers,  and 50-pound bags of  Cheese-Whizzed fries. “The Dagwood” is Young’s signature creation, “a 1.5 pound double-decker, 24-ingredient behemoth,” and sells for $8.90, according to a story in the Nashville Tennessean on—perfect!!—Thanksgiving Day.  Young wants to open 50 Dagwood’s franchises in the next year and aims for 600 to 800 within five years.  (November 23, 2006)

Buggin’ the ACLU

• The ACLU’s address, for those of us who wish to torment them with Christmas (not holiday. . .Christmas) greetings is:

  American Civil Liberties Union
  125 Broad Street
  18th Floor
  New York, New York 10004
  
  And remember—the more religious references you can make, the crazier it drives them!  (December 1, 2006)

• A high school sophomore slashed the throat of a freshman boy in a study hall at Jennings County High School in North Vernon, Indiana, Monday. The victim is hospitalized but is expected to survive. The slasher fled and was captured later at an apartment complex. The Indianapolis Star quoted Melissa Vance, whose daughter is a student at the school, saying that she knew both boys and that, “They’re both really good kids.” Vance then added the classic contemporary psychobabble that, “Kids do have breaking points. Until you walk in their shoes and see what their life is like, you can’t judge their actions.” Authorities appear to have decided that actions can be judged, however. Their judgment is that attempted murder occurred. That anyone would care to file charges is startling, in itself. Three cheers for this uncommon courage!  (December 5, 2006)

Power Shopping On The Far Side Of The Moon

• Peaches and I proudly flashed our special membership badge at the door, grabbed a big over-the-road shopping cart, and plunged into the grey half-light of Sam’s Club. Overhead, suspended from a steel catwalk, was a gigantic scoreboard. Its strobe lights sizzled and popped as it continuously flashed the average weight of each patron and each shopping cart. Thus we could plot our own consumption as we foraged. But more importantly, store management—both here and back in Bensonville—could plot it, and make product placement, pricing, and other adjustments from moment to moment as we browsed and grazed. We paused on the scale, then set off. Upwards of a hundred television sets honked and blared at us as we slipped and scrambled down their gauntlet. I spied a huge battery kiosk and signaled Peaches. We needed two AAA batteries. They came in 28-packs only. We soldiered on. I cranked the big steering wheel abruptly hard left and Peaches followed me down a packaged junk food avenue.  Here was a “Chocolate Tower”—a series of stacked boxes of chocolate candy of undisclosed origin. Its low price suggested the main ingredient might be jellied candle wax. Then came the “Chocolate Platter,” a yard wide, shrink-wrapped, bearing more candy. To our left, at eye level, loomed two or three molded plastic Walt Disney characters—Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck. They were on sale at $179—Special Limited Edition, the sign said—Each With Its Own Genuine Certificate of Authenticity!  I stood transfixed, trembling. Somehow, I turned away, resisted grabbing one of each. The aisle was crowded. We stopped, edged left, then right, skirting other shoppers. Our senses were now acute, nostrils flaring. Peaches snagged an 80-pack of toilet paper. I wrestled a surprisingly heavy waxed box of jumbo-size “Yuppie” fireplace logs into our cart. I could feel my heartbeat quickening. My vision was becoming laserlike as I scanned the vast arena, seeking and homing in on targets. “Coffee!” Peaches barked, and I brakedhard and surged down a canyon of coffee products. I grabbed two 40-ounce bags of Foongawyeeyuhtanana dark roast, and burst out into the suddenly stark light in refrigerated and frozen foods.  A tiny, wizened woman at a feeding station thrust a deep-fried Cats Paw shoe heel at me. I took a bite, spat out a fleck of gristle. The taste—sweet ‘n sour road apple with hints of rosemary, and a nice finish--was not bad. “They’re on special today,” the woman croaked, and we moved on. The cart traffic was getting much more dense now. There was a palpable tension in the air, and the muted sound of contented mooing and lowing. I knew it was because we were near the meat, dairy, and baked goods sections—where legends were made and men were tested in fire and lightning. I saw a brief gap in the meat counter mob, planted my feet, and surged straight through to the ground beef. Coming toward me behind the counter was a middle-aged man. He wore a butcher’s apron and a white netting on his head. My glance fell from that to a similar net bag which hung from his chin and was suspended by straps around the back his neck. He pushed a cart loaded with packages of meat. I assumed he was restocking the cavernous bins, and that the sack around his neck might have been for feeding purposes. Perhaps the sack was to prevent him from eating on the job. I could not be sure.  In one seamless movement, I scooped up a 15-pound tray of ground chuck, angled left, knocked aside a feeble old lady, and surged back into mid-aisle with my laser beam locked in on Ding Dong Heaven—baked goods—acres of them!!  The cries, barks and hawkings from nearby feeding stations were blending into a din in my ears. Ahead was a hopeless jam of carts. Up came a motorized cart/trailer operated by a gigantic, cloudlike being, a man who had eaten so much he could no longer walk—but Sam, by welding on a 400-horse V-6 engine, was making it possible for him to keep right on tonnage-shopping with the best of us! To avoid a collision, I yanked back sharply on the cart handles in a mighty surge of power which lifted the front wheels off the steel floor. Almost simultaneously, I jerked to the right, and whipped the cart in a soft, four-wheel drift through a narrow gap in the milling throng, and burst through free and clear into the suddenly soft, sweet string music of baked goods. Donuts the size of hula hoops were stacked in tubes of twenty!  Pies and cakes as big as garbage can lids!  Muffins big enough to hang on barbells! Vast sheets of Danish rolls, slathered in icing in bizarre colors.  Peaches approached at high speed from my left, stiff-arming one customer, doing a tremendous somersault to clear an opposing cart.  She skidded up and threw in a billowing plastic bag of 100 Twinkies. Our eyes met. We exhaled deeply, both of us, then pushed at moderate speed toward the checkout lanes.  We were both still a bit edgy, but our breathing had returned to normal. The cashier smoothly scanned our product, smiled knowingly as we twitched and flexed, swiped our card, gave us a printed record: Average weight: 224 pounds; weight of purchases: 87.5 pounds; style points: 14. Nothing fancy. We have a long road ahead before we can shop with the big boys.  (December 23, 2006)

May I Wear It When Bobbing For French Fries At Holiday Parties?

• Do NOT trim mask while wearing it. Do not wear mask when driving, smoking, sleeping, swimming. Be careful when crossing streets or using stairs.—Cautionary Warnings on the packaging for a rubber Elvis Presley mask sold by  The Paper Magic Group, Inc. (December 25, 2006)

. . .And The Reason This Is Slapped On Here Is Because Somebody Already HAS Been This Gol-Danged Stupid And Won Billions and Billions in Damages From Z-Line!!

• Do not place very hot or very cold items on the glass surface(s) unless adequately thick table mats are used to prevent such items from coming into contact with the glass. Do not sit or stand on the glass surface(s). Do not use the glass as a chopping surface. Do not strike the glass with hard or pointed items. When cleaning the glass use a damp cloth or leather with washing up or soft soap if necessary; do not use powders or any other substances containing abrasives since these substances will scratch glass.—Warnings on a computer desk and bookcase featuring glass tops and shelves, offered for sale in Staples and made by Z-Line Designs (part of its “Galaxy Collection). (December 26, 2006)

• The state of journalism has declined markedly in my lifetime, but here and there can still be found thrilling, inspiring examples of what it can be. At year-end my nominees for the two best newspapers around are The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times. The latter is a London-based business-oriented paper. I think of it as Europe’s equivalent of the Journal. The Financial Times is printed on distinctive pale orange newsprint. Both papers, obvious leaders in business journalism, offer far, far more than that. Both have superb editorial pages marked by calm, reasoned, compellingly written commentary. The Journal tilts right in its view of the world, the Financial Times leans left. I care less about the business news than their other features, which are extensive and over-the-top excellent.  Both offer delightful “weekend” editions loaded with book and movie reviews as well as sparkling writing on museums, the arts, culture, society, travel, sports, and other topics. The Times offers a decidedly “European” slant on American politics and culture, and while it sometimes stings, it is usually refreshing, and offers a nice balance to the normally one-sided diet Americans get. The Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal are sharp, painful, and embarrassing rebukes to what passes for “journalism” in the United States—the major television networks, the cable channels, and the major print news outlets such as Time, Newsweek, and the big city daily newspapers. (December 31, 2006)

 My 35 Most Obnoxious People Of Year 2006

• Jacques Chirac, Kofi Annan, Rosie O’Donnell, Cynthia McKinney, (Indianapolis Star columnist) Dan Carpenter, Patrick Bauer, Hillary Clinton, Patrick Leahy, Michael Richards, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Carl Levin, The Senator From Chappaquiddick, Al Gore, John Kerry, Lincoln Chaffee, John Murtha, Mel Gibson, Bob Knight, Pat Knight, Britney Spears, Ward Churchill, Kid Rock and Pam Anderson, Molly Ivins, Ray Nagin, Paris Hilton, Donald Trump, Sacha Baron Cohen, Dan Rather, Cindy Sheehan, Sean Hannity, Hugo Chavez, Jimmy Carter, Howard Dean.  (December 31, 2006)

• My favorite discovery of 2006: Lewis Black, a standup comedian Peaches and I had never heard of till we stumbled across the tail-end of one of his shows on The Comedy Channel one December evening.  His “delivery” is the secret to his appeal for me: manic, angry, eye-rolling, shuddering, tic-ridden,  twitchy, sweating, jowl-shaking, and barking and spitting out words with the force of machine gun bullets. He is a constant surprise, too, because he consistently appears on stage well-groomed and  well-dressed, often in a suit and tie--a real novelty in this age of stink, slovenliness, armpits, strap T-shirt underwear, grunge, grizzle and grotesqueness.  Peaches says his act reminds her a great deal of my breakfast table rants while reading the morning paper—except, of course, for the suit part. Lewis is over-the-top hysterically funny and I’d pay money to spend an evening in his company.  (December 31, 2006)

• The parade of notable nicknames seems never to end. From the Indianapolis Star (mostly the obit columns) in 2006 came:  Kevin “Geeter” Cannon, Frank “Schoolboy” Bobbit, Jr., Ronald G. “Grumpy” Lumpkin, Elizabeth “Teaser” Mays, Raymond D. “Pops” Cox, Emmett Lee “Catnip” Stowers,Kenneth “Jaybird” Ratliff, William “Button” Reed, Verdell “Voot” Davis, Anthony D. “Big Man” Sanders, Frederick W.  “Spilly Billy” Pothast, Jr., Bernice “Bunny” Nolting, Willie Jasper “Boot” Culpepper, Willis H. “Bun” Hardy, Thomas “Jinks” Albrecht, Charles E. “Ezy” Dixson, Jr., Marvin J. “Eagle” Northcutt, Gary “Bootsy” Kendrick, Sr., Jaron