But let me say this: whether it is McCain or Palin - de facto, de jure, (de la subida más alta es la caída más lastimosa, de haut en bas, de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum, or de gustisbus non disputandum, or de la O, the great mixed-martial-arts trainer and fighter) - who ends their arranged marriage, and no matter what I think of Mrs. Palin's political views, historical knowledge, or geopolitical vision, and regardless of how dirtydirtydirty I think it is to just plunk AWomanAnyWoman into a vacant hole,
Because I am a dork, and because I am a woman, and because I think that, whatever her weaknesses, she was used callously and nastily, and then left to the wolves like an overeager bush pilot in a moribund and cranky Land-O-Matic,
I do hope her exit or concession speech consists of this and nothing more:
All Your Bases Are Belong To Us.
[BTW: Fail.]
(As though 'women' were indeed the monolithic voting block some chucklehead McCain Campaign Advisor advised McCain.) (Or maybe one didn't; maybe these people do not consult the candidate but act unilaterally, in 'the best interests of the Party.' I really have no idea. I no longer understand any of this. Ever.) (Although I did make venison pizza the other day at the soup kitchen, which seems somehow postmodernly ironic.)
(And then, okay, that from that solipsistic defiance emerges someone on the conservative side who isn't totally ill-equipped to convince those legendary 'Bases' that it doesn't totally suck, or prove cowardice or a moral lack, occasionally to recall that the U.S. is situated on the same globe as {what should be} a rather cautionary amount of other more-or-less confirmedly sovereign political entities.)
(That would so rock.)
(And then we can forget that whole Paraguay thing. K?)
Monday, September 29, 2008
Like Lipstick on Schadenfreude
I don't know how people like Andrew Sullivan or Ariana Huffington do it, how they write opinion about the state of politics day after day after day. I can still get my head around the idea of a print - including electronic print - reporter amassing and distilling facts from wire services and colleagues in the field to come up with 'Polls Show Prohibition Costing Hoover Crucial Votes' or 'Hearst Deal Likely to Solidify Roosevelt's Lead.' But as truly insane and lamentable as things (what things? nearly all of them! pick one, and just see if it's not insane and lamentable!) are now in this country, and this election, I am incredulous that anyone with an analytical, rational, or even humane bent can be calm enough to render opinion on all this obscenity. Admittedly, I don't get paid for it, which might well be a great tonic for wordlessness, but I'm verklempt. Vollständig. I can't begin to think about it properly in its entirety, let alone take an opinion.
That being said, as the Sarah Palin circus grinds on twenty-four hours a day, the one thing I am absolutely certain of is that I feel sick for her, and I also feel sorry (although more mitigatedly so) for McCain. When her nomination was announced, my first reaction was that it was patently a slick and dirty tactical move: the Democratic Convention seemed very successful, galvanizing millions of exhausted and angry voters. So the Republicans timed this bizarre announcement to take a bit of that attention away.
And that succeeded. She was a crazy pick, an unknown who had figured nowhere on McCain's short list. Plus, unlike those (Above-) Average White Guys McCain was considering, she was a woman, a (rather fertile) mother, a hottie, an elsewherian, and politically quite distinct from McCain. Like Reagan or Bush II, and unlike McCain, for Palin there is a set of ideas on which she will not compromise, and which undergird all her opinions, and which must always be beyond discussion or negotiation. We have seen that there are plenty of voters who can relate to that, if, admittedly, sometimes in the 'I don't know nothin bout art, but I know what I like' manner.
My first reaction was that, being ostensibly a tactical move, it would be short lived. It would serve its purpose of notoriety, exultation, hairstyle commentary and scandal, and then when the attention had died down in a couple weeks, the McCain campaign would find a way to release her back into the wilds of Alaska and settle down with a more predictable, truly marriageable partner. Rural grassroots support for Palin would carry over to the new VP candidate easily, provided a convincing exit narrative had been contrived and managed adroitly. The new candidate would continue to mention Mrs. Palin and her values, and she would continue to be a presence in the campaign, heroic, lionized, as though she had actually died for the struggle. He would promise to uphold her - and 'the American Public's - ideals as he took up her mantle. She would live on as a Photoshopped patron saint, her all-too-human imperfections fallen away effortlessly in post-mortem hagiography and cable-news apathy.
But that didn't happen. Or it hasn't happened yet. And while I do not for a second believe McCain should have picked her (nor that it was McCain who did), nor that she should have accepted, her precipitous rise to stardom based, apparently, on looks, maternity, domestic oil production, and an antagonistic relationship to northern fauna, has, in addition to showing how little news is actually possible to unearth on a 24-hour news station, catapulted this very average madonna-executive into the vicious world of international sarcasm. Every aspect of Sarah Palin to which we have access has been vilified ad nauseum. Even her pregnant daughter and her jock boyfriend/sudden fiance are global laughing-stocks. I may find the boyfriend an atrocious little boy personally, but that is of course irrelevant for very many reasons (just to start, neither of them are running for anything except cover, and neither are responsible for the choices of their elders, let alone the Republican Party), and I would have known nothing about him, his (18-year-old's) stance on matrimony, his sporting preferences, his measurements, his academic record, his misogyny, or his apparent willful ignorance had McCain's handlers not proposed this wild scheme to Palin, nor she accepted. We are all idiots, sinners, bad friends, worse enemies, and only cautious good-doers: that two average rural high-school students are now in the position of being lampooned and excoriated globally for being two average rural high school students is disgusting, and something that should trouble us all.
***Break in the middle of this long post: Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Atlantic said something similar and different here, so if you are tired with my position, or my crappy way of expounding it, you can go there, and have a different exposition of a different argument which comes out to a similar injunction: to not be so bloody mean. Or something. Close.
Part of my point is that we're all imperfect, and we all do stupid things, immoral things, and tasteless things. The majority of us are fortunate in that usually only about twenty other people know about them. And while I do not think Mrs. Palin is without culpability in any of this - she is an adult; she could have said no - whatever it is that motivated her assent does not mean that what she is experiencing now, as arguably the most famous person on earth, is to be relished. It is as lamentable as the rest of the heretofore unimaginable crap which daily assaults us.
For me, it was terrible to see her with Katie Couric. She looked at times like she was going to cry, and she was so nervous that even with her notes she frequently couldn't form complete sentences. Instead, she strung together repetitive dependent clauses and catch-phrases that had nothing to do with the question asked. For me it wasn't sport; it was rather like canned hunting. She may be a nice lady, or she may be an execrable human; she may be bright, and she may be utterly incurious; she may be both, always, at the same time. And it may be the case that it was nothing but hubris and a thirst for self-aggrandizement at any cost that drove her to accept the nomination. Manifestly, however, whatever her innate and cultivated aptitudes, and however much one agrees with or loathes her values, she is not ready for Vice- or real Presidency.
McCain is old enough to have said,' What, wait: --who??' and insist that the Party let Palin's family, her political experience, and her global curiosity mature a decade or so before inviting her into national politics. And McCain, as the Presidential candidate for the Party, the person who would have to work with the Vice-President for up to eight years, would, under ideal circumstances, have been able to, expected to, and insistent upon, personally vetting all potential candidates. She, likewise, could have reiterated the famous 'thanks but no thanks' and gracefully suggested that she had a few years more of study, and a few family matters to attend to, before taking the national stage. But, as fame now consistently outscores looks, smarts, and likability in polls of what Americans would prefer to have, her acceptance of the nomination is well within the bounds of normal American behavior. It may be sad, but it is hardly counter-cultural.
And it is because of that fact, the fact of her more strident, obvious, palpable, and less Photoshoppable humanity (especially as versus 30-year political veterans) - not because I agree with her on international or domestic issues, not because I see myself in her womanhood or motherhood, not because I, too, have a complex family, have made mistakes or misjudgments, have succeeded at some things at the expense of others, or have neglected to cultivate parts of myself - that I deeply empathize with her and her family right now, being the brunt of jokes no normal person (even a gorgeously postmodern, outlandishly cynical, Liberal one) could ever have never imagined, every detail of her life scrutinized in absurd fashion, her sartorial choices alternately mimicked and lampooned, her marginal, symbolic, token, silent role as envisioned, extrapolated to its (not entirely illogical) end as potential Ruler of the Last Great Empire.
I hate the whole thing. She shouldn't be there. She is suffering, her family is suffering, friends of friends of her family are suffering. And the country, all the millions and millions of us who are doing no-so-very-well-thank-you-at-the-moment-already will suffer tremendously should someone of so little curiosity and rationality end up as head cook, let alone Captain, of this blighted Narrenschiffe. -- Look, Margaret Thatcher was unique. Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, Benazir Bhutto, Tansu Ҫiller, and Megawati Sukarnoputri were unique, and I'm only picking up the notable notables. There doesn't have to be a woman, or a black guy, or a gay guy, or an ex-bishop, or a prole, or relative of a prole, or a person with a disability, or a person with a large family, or no dependents, or a preference to baklava over awamat -- or a Poodle-studding business or a temporary obsession with lapidary. There just has to be a truly exceptional, historically grounded, ethically centred, utterly visionary, multiply capable, unfailingly prudential and unwaveringly calm individual of whatever genetic or gonadic makeup.
Do I think it was a brilliant cynical move? Sure: it got them what they wanted, which was attention. Do I think we all suffer when those in power think tactically rather than strategically, and of Party rather than country or world? You bet. And I'll see you in Paraguay!
That being said, as the Sarah Palin circus grinds on twenty-four hours a day, the one thing I am absolutely certain of is that I feel sick for her, and I also feel sorry (although more mitigatedly so) for McCain. When her nomination was announced, my first reaction was that it was patently a slick and dirty tactical move: the Democratic Convention seemed very successful, galvanizing millions of exhausted and angry voters. So the Republicans timed this bizarre announcement to take a bit of that attention away.
And that succeeded. She was a crazy pick, an unknown who had figured nowhere on McCain's short list. Plus, unlike those (Above-) Average White Guys McCain was considering, she was a woman, a (rather fertile) mother, a hottie, an elsewherian, and politically quite distinct from McCain. Like Reagan or Bush II, and unlike McCain, for Palin there is a set of ideas on which she will not compromise, and which undergird all her opinions, and which must always be beyond discussion or negotiation. We have seen that there are plenty of voters who can relate to that, if, admittedly, sometimes in the 'I don't know nothin bout art, but I know what I like' manner.
My first reaction was that, being ostensibly a tactical move, it would be short lived. It would serve its purpose of notoriety, exultation, hairstyle commentary and scandal, and then when the attention had died down in a couple weeks, the McCain campaign would find a way to release her back into the wilds of Alaska and settle down with a more predictable, truly marriageable partner. Rural grassroots support for Palin would carry over to the new VP candidate easily, provided a convincing exit narrative had been contrived and managed adroitly. The new candidate would continue to mention Mrs. Palin and her values, and she would continue to be a presence in the campaign, heroic, lionized, as though she had actually died for the struggle. He would promise to uphold her - and 'the American Public's - ideals as he took up her mantle. She would live on as a Photoshopped patron saint, her all-too-human imperfections fallen away effortlessly in post-mortem hagiography and cable-news apathy.
But that didn't happen. Or it hasn't happened yet. And while I do not for a second believe McCain should have picked her (nor that it was McCain who did), nor that she should have accepted, her precipitous rise to stardom based, apparently, on looks, maternity, domestic oil production, and an antagonistic relationship to northern fauna, has, in addition to showing how little news is actually possible to unearth on a 24-hour news station, catapulted this very average madonna-executive into the vicious world of international sarcasm. Every aspect of Sarah Palin to which we have access has been vilified ad nauseum. Even her pregnant daughter and her jock boyfriend/sudden fiance are global laughing-stocks. I may find the boyfriend an atrocious little boy personally, but that is of course irrelevant for very many reasons (just to start, neither of them are running for anything except cover, and neither are responsible for the choices of their elders, let alone the Republican Party), and I would have known nothing about him, his (18-year-old's) stance on matrimony, his sporting preferences, his measurements, his academic record, his misogyny, or his apparent willful ignorance had McCain's handlers not proposed this wild scheme to Palin, nor she accepted. We are all idiots, sinners, bad friends, worse enemies, and only cautious good-doers: that two average rural high-school students are now in the position of being lampooned and excoriated globally for being two average rural high school students is disgusting, and something that should trouble us all.
***Break in the middle of this long post: Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Atlantic said something similar and different here, so if you are tired with my position, or my crappy way of expounding it, you can go there, and have a different exposition of a different argument which comes out to a similar injunction: to not be so bloody mean. Or something. Close.
Part of my point is that we're all imperfect, and we all do stupid things, immoral things, and tasteless things. The majority of us are fortunate in that usually only about twenty other people know about them. And while I do not think Mrs. Palin is without culpability in any of this - she is an adult; she could have said no - whatever it is that motivated her assent does not mean that what she is experiencing now, as arguably the most famous person on earth, is to be relished. It is as lamentable as the rest of the heretofore unimaginable crap which daily assaults us.
For me, it was terrible to see her with Katie Couric. She looked at times like she was going to cry, and she was so nervous that even with her notes she frequently couldn't form complete sentences. Instead, she strung together repetitive dependent clauses and catch-phrases that had nothing to do with the question asked. For me it wasn't sport; it was rather like canned hunting. She may be a nice lady, or she may be an execrable human; she may be bright, and she may be utterly incurious; she may be both, always, at the same time. And it may be the case that it was nothing but hubris and a thirst for self-aggrandizement at any cost that drove her to accept the nomination. Manifestly, however, whatever her innate and cultivated aptitudes, and however much one agrees with or loathes her values, she is not ready for Vice- or real Presidency.
McCain is old enough to have said,' What, wait: --who??' and insist that the Party let Palin's family, her political experience, and her global curiosity mature a decade or so before inviting her into national politics. And McCain, as the Presidential candidate for the Party, the person who would have to work with the Vice-President for up to eight years, would, under ideal circumstances, have been able to, expected to, and insistent upon, personally vetting all potential candidates. She, likewise, could have reiterated the famous 'thanks but no thanks' and gracefully suggested that she had a few years more of study, and a few family matters to attend to, before taking the national stage. But, as fame now consistently outscores looks, smarts, and likability in polls of what Americans would prefer to have, her acceptance of the nomination is well within the bounds of normal American behavior. It may be sad, but it is hardly counter-cultural.
And it is because of that fact, the fact of her more strident, obvious, palpable, and less Photoshoppable humanity (especially as versus 30-year political veterans) - not because I agree with her on international or domestic issues, not because I see myself in her womanhood or motherhood, not because I, too, have a complex family, have made mistakes or misjudgments, have succeeded at some things at the expense of others, or have neglected to cultivate parts of myself - that I deeply empathize with her and her family right now, being the brunt of jokes no normal person (even a gorgeously postmodern, outlandishly cynical, Liberal one) could ever have never imagined, every detail of her life scrutinized in absurd fashion, her sartorial choices alternately mimicked and lampooned, her marginal, symbolic, token, silent role as envisioned, extrapolated to its (not entirely illogical) end as potential Ruler of the Last Great Empire.
I hate the whole thing. She shouldn't be there. She is suffering, her family is suffering, friends of friends of her family are suffering. And the country, all the millions and millions of us who are doing no-so-very-well-thank-you-at-the-moment-already will suffer tremendously should someone of so little curiosity and rationality end up as head cook, let alone Captain, of this blighted Narrenschiffe. -- Look, Margaret Thatcher was unique. Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, Benazir Bhutto, Tansu Ҫiller, and Megawati Sukarnoputri were unique, and I'm only picking up the notable notables. There doesn't have to be a woman, or a black guy, or a gay guy, or an ex-bishop, or a prole, or relative of a prole, or a person with a disability, or a person with a large family, or no dependents, or a preference to baklava over awamat -- or a Poodle-studding business or a temporary obsession with lapidary. There just has to be a truly exceptional, historically grounded, ethically centred, utterly visionary, multiply capable, unfailingly prudential and unwaveringly calm individual of whatever genetic or gonadic makeup.
Do I think it was a brilliant cynical move? Sure: it got them what they wanted, which was attention. Do I think we all suffer when those in power think tactically rather than strategically, and of Party rather than country or world? You bet. And I'll see you in Paraguay!
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
I Can't Stop!
Again from http://wordle.net, this is a word cloud for Seamus Heaney's 'Death of a Naturalist.'*
*Eh, and another one, too.**
**(Em. Look? FROGS!!??)
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Blog Word Cloud by Wordle
http://wordle.net
(I like it, but I know I have never used 'Godmutter' in here.)
Swearing in French in Guerrero
We'll get back to Marie de l'Incarnation soon, I hope, because her story is nuts. She was a powerhouse, a dynamo, a great teacher, a prolific letter-writer, and a nun-scholar-philologist in the wilds of old Canada. In the meantime, here is a story about swearing like a (Québec) Frenchman while wintering south of two borders.
Québecois swearing is justly famous for its outrageousness. If the offense or inconvenience you are suffering is not too great, you can of course just mutter a clipped 'marde' under your breath and have done with it. If, however, the flurry from your neighbor's souffleuse just blew your tasty string of tire d'érable (I remember loving that as a kid; thank God those teeth were temporary) right into the bits of hair sticking out from under your tuque, your ire is unlikely to be fully vented after a mere monosyllable (we think our four-letter-words are handy stress relievers: imagine having ten or fifteen syllables to let off that steam). Instead of a tiny clenched fistful of choices and one short puff of air, Québec Francophones have at their disposal the vast vocabulary of four hundred years of North American Catholic history from which to fashion not merely obscene, but elaborately, flamboyantly, nonsensically obscene multi-part jurons/sacrés combining every religious term conceivable. In English, people sometimes murmur 'Oh, God,' or 'Jesus,' (whether knowingly/deliberately or completely unconsciously) whereas in Québec the would-be swearer has the entire Mass, the Old and New Testaments, two thousand years of saints, all entries main and sub- in the Catechism, and every last detail of ecclesiastical vestments, architecture and ornamentation from which to choose his sacrés.
Now, baptism records notwithstanding, no one is actually Catholic anymore in Québec. That stopped in the 60s, but it doesn't change the fact that it is still objectionable in polite society to yell a series of religious words interspersed with terms alluding to the body's copulatory and excretory functions. So there are euphemisms. Plenty of them. Calvaire (Calvary) and câlisse (chalice) can become calette, calvette, caltour, calvasse, calverasse, câlif/caliphe (caliph or qaliph), câlique and, with adig at reference to the Huguenot Protestant portion of the province's settlers, Calvin, Calvinasse, Calvinisse, Calvinouche, and so on.
In order not to offend old ladies by saying 'tabarnac' which is what you would say if you were a Québecois trying to mutter 'tabernacle' while frustratedly searching for the nearly invisible
you might instead grumble tabarnache, tabarnouche, tabarniche, tabarnane, tabaslac, or even tabarouette (= ta barouette).
NaCo T-shirts
which is the Mexican version of 'chav' and 'joual' and just as classist as these, but with the advantage of having a fair bit of racism mixed in, as well.
('There is no racism in Mexico. -Said this câline of a tabarname of a calvénousse of a baptême of a naco.')
But, just as other vicious words have been retranslated and refurbished in the past few decades as emblems of pride rather than vehicles of derision or hate, so, too, has naquismo as an identity been reclaimed and self-consciously turned on its head in all its garish glory. For the past decade there has been a NaCo clothing company (which was even quite trendy a couple years ago in distinctly non-naco circles with t-shirts such as the designs in this posting and 'Ser Naco Es Chido' and 'M is for Mojado' ['wetback']), with outlets in both Mexico and the U.S., not to mention online.
According to cultural critics such as Carlos Monsiváis and others, however, the word is simply too nasty from its very origin to merit rehabilitation. Most agree the word comes from 'Totonaco' or, possibly, 'Nacohuatl/Nahuatl,' and thus always contains a racial element when used by comparatively cultured, educated and light-skinned Mexicans to refer not only to those with less refinement and schooling, but more indigenous blood. 'Naco' for Monsiváis is 'proletario, lumpenproletario, pobre, sudoroso, el pelo grasiento y el copete alto, el perfil de cabeza de Palenque, vestido a la moda de hace seis meses, vestido fuera de moda. Naco es los anteojos oscuros a la media noche, el acento golpeado, la herencia del peladito y el lépero, el diente de oro. Naco es el insulto que una clase dirige a otra.'
Now, I for one am about as sick of feigned folksyism as I could be, but it is one thing deliberately and inconsistently to drop one's G's from the present progressive in an attempt to get the lumpenproletariat to vote for you ('Guysngals, our regulatory system is outdated...there's somethin that's goin on in our world, in our nation...that needs some shakin up and fixin') and another altogether to be at ease with and proud of all the sweat, callouses, and disapproving looks your naco or joual heritage has earned you. Had someone suggested to me a few years ago that there would be a Democratic presidential candidate of African ancestry, to which the Republican response was going to be Class War, I would have suggested to the speaker that he perhaps 'didn't inhale' a great many more times than Bill Clinton - and quite possibly didn't do that inhaling very, very recently.
Québecois swearing is justly famous for its outrageousness. If the offense or inconvenience you are suffering is not too great, you can of course just mutter a clipped 'marde' under your breath and have done with it. If, however, the flurry from your neighbor's souffleuse just blew your tasty string of tire d'érable (I remember loving that as a kid; thank God those teeth were temporary) right into the bits of hair sticking out from under your tuque, your ire is unlikely to be fully vented after a mere monosyllable (we think our four-letter-words are handy stress relievers: imagine having ten or fifteen syllables to let off that steam). Instead of a tiny clenched fistful of choices and one short puff of air, Québec Francophones have at their disposal the vast vocabulary of four hundred years of North American Catholic history from which to fashion not merely obscene, but elaborately, flamboyantly, nonsensically obscene multi-part jurons/sacrés combining every religious term conceivable. In English, people sometimes murmur 'Oh, God,' or 'Jesus,' (whether knowingly/deliberately or completely unconsciously) whereas in Québec the would-be swearer has the entire Mass, the Old and New Testaments, two thousand years of saints, all entries main and sub- in the Catechism, and every last detail of ecclesiastical vestments, architecture and ornamentation from which to choose his sacrés.
Now, baptism records notwithstanding, no one is actually Catholic anymore in Québec. That stopped in the 60s, but it doesn't change the fact that it is still objectionable in polite society to yell a series of religious words interspersed with terms alluding to the body's copulatory and excretory functions. So there are euphemisms. Plenty of them. Calvaire (Calvary) and câlisse (chalice) can become calette, calvette, caltour, calvasse, calverasse, câlif/caliphe (caliph or qaliph), câlique and, with a
In order not to offend old ladies by saying 'tabarnac' which is what you would say if you were a Québecois trying to mutter 'tabernacle' while frustratedly searching for the nearly invisible
Rue Calvin in Québec City,
you might instead grumble tabarnache, tabarnouche, tabarniche, tabarnane, tabaslac, or even tabarouette (= ta barouette).
(Sa Barouette.)
(Jean à de longues moustaches. Je répète: Jean à de longues moustaches.)
If, however, you were less worried about people overhearing and being offended by your swearing because you were somewhere no one would understand the polite words, either, such as frustratedly searching for the nearly invisible Calle No. 2 in Acapulco, you might be less inclined toward restraint and let all three real syllables fly, giving yet another reason for Mexican resort workers, street vendors, and taxicab drivers to continue to refer to loud Francophone Quebeckers as 'tabernacos,' via analogy to 'nacos'(Jean à de longues moustaches. Je répète: Jean à de longues moustaches.)
NaCo T-shirts
('There is no racism in Mexico. -Said this câline of a tabarname of a calvénousse of a baptême of a naco.')
But, just as other vicious words have been retranslated and refurbished in the past few decades as emblems of pride rather than vehicles of derision or hate, so, too, has naquismo as an identity been reclaimed and self-consciously turned on its head in all its garish glory. For the past decade there has been a NaCo clothing company (which was even quite trendy a couple years ago in distinctly non-naco circles with t-shirts such as the designs in this posting and 'Ser Naco Es Chido' and 'M is for Mojado' ['wetback']), with outlets in both Mexico and the U.S., not to mention online.
According to cultural critics such as Carlos Monsiváis and others, however, the word is simply too nasty from its very origin to merit rehabilitation. Most agree the word comes from 'Totonaco' or, possibly, 'Nacohuatl/Nahuatl,' and thus always contains a racial element when used by comparatively cultured, educated and light-skinned Mexicans to refer not only to those with less refinement and schooling, but more indigenous blood. 'Naco' for Monsiváis is 'proletario, lumpenproletario, pobre, sudoroso, el pelo grasiento y el copete alto, el perfil de cabeza de Palenque, vestido a la moda de hace seis meses, vestido fuera de moda. Naco es los anteojos oscuros a la media noche, el acento golpeado, la herencia del peladito y el lépero, el diente de oro. Naco es el insulto que una clase dirige a otra.'
Now, I for one am about as sick of feigned folksyism as I could be, but it is one thing deliberately and inconsistently to drop one's G's from the present progressive in an attempt to get the lumpenproletariat to vote for you ('Guysngals, our regulatory system is outdated...there's somethin that's goin on in our world, in our nation...that needs some shakin up and fixin') and another altogether to be at ease with and proud of all the sweat, callouses, and disapproving looks your naco or joual heritage has earned you. Had someone suggested to me a few years ago that there would be a Democratic presidential candidate of African ancestry, to which the Republican response was going to be Class War, I would have suggested to the speaker that he perhaps 'didn't inhale' a great many more times than Bill Clinton - and quite possibly didn't do that inhaling very, very recently.
Monday, September 15, 2008
An Arquebus That Was Used at Waterloo
Maybe I'm just really a conservative in everything and resistant to all change, but I think this all looks wretched with the new font, which normally doesn't to me seem tremendously different from Times (although I admit to being one of the seven people in the world that reads the little page in every book about fonts and typeset and the lonely man who does it).
It does seem a great deal easier to read, though (check out the now-totally-garish but still-as-sad-as-ever Counter below! yipes! it makes my failure at fame the much more obvious; all the more it could do would be to blink the sad stats in a glitter-ridden pink!), and as I was just telling the mother, some time in the next five or ten years I'm going to consider applying for corrective eyewear (ooh, wait, convene strategists and deliberate: not if Sarah Palin is just beginning her second term as President; although waitwait, I should by then have adapted to a different updo or shaved These Ebon Locks (As glossy as a heron's wing/Upon the turban of a king) (which o'erspread my youthful neck/ my cheeks a bashful red) altogether, and everyone will be as appalled with her as they are of any second-term incumbent, even if they voted for him/her twice, so no connection will necessarily be made between my deteriorating eyesight and the former governor of Alaska's accessorizing and grooming tendencies).
Anyway, I think all the words look really big, as though I mean what I say and wish to be aggressive about putting it forward.
All I wanted was a bloody cedille. Not a revolution. Of course the fact that the links list is now so obstreperous makes me feel as though I have to address the fact that some don't even link to the main page but some 'August 2005' recap of something or other that was well and duly settled by March of that year if not before.
I want this blog to be pleasing to the eye much as my home is, but with my home I bring in or take away stuff, or move a stuff to place it didn't use to be and in which its presence will be more felicitous than previously. I am not, in other words, reduced to 'formatting' in the case of stuffs and house. In the case of this accursed blog, in marked contrast, I do not have the option of simply moving a jardinière or flower arrangement closer to the screen and a bit to the left or right; I have to do all sorts of soul-destroying things to the code of the copy of the image of the photo of the vase (or something equally geneological and even less-well understood), cross my fingers, cross myself, feveredly pound a glass of a dangerous Barolo, and stare at the screen in abject and unholy fear while holding my breath and pressing 'enter,' 'save,' or another similarly ridiculous copulatory or soteriological command, none of which verbs I particularly wish to engage in with a computer.
I feel in matters technological not unlike Noël Coward's beleaguered Colonel Montmorency felt with regard to his Home Guard troops' lack of necessary materiel. Except there is no superior to whom I might even vainly address my petitions. There's just me, and some really huge type. And the song is admittedly a lot better when sung, and most particularly when it's Coward himself doing the singing. But if I can't even format a blog to conform to my wishes, I most assuredly cannot conjure Mr. Coward sitting at my piano and killing me softly with his stirrup-pump.
'...Poor Colonel Montmorency tried, at infinite cost to time and pride
To tackle his superiors again;
Having just one motorbike, fourteen swords and a marlin spike,
He wrote the following letter in the following urgent strain:
Could you please oblige us with a Bren gun?
We need it very badly, I'm afraid.
Our local crossword solver has an excellent revolver,
But during a short attack on the fort, the trigger got mislaid.
In course of operations planned for Friday afternoon
Our orders are to storm the Hippodrome,
So if you can't oblige us with a Bren gun
The Home Guard might as well go home.
Could you please oblige us with a Bren gun?
The lack of one is wounding to our pride.
Last night we found the cutest, little German parachutist:
He looked at our kit, and giggled a bit, and laughed until he cried.
We'll have to hide that armoured car when marching through Berlin;
We'd almost be ashamed of it in Rome.
So if you can't oblige us with a Bren gun,
The Home Guard might as well go home.'
It does seem a great deal easier to read, though (check out the now-totally-garish but still-as-sad-as-ever Counter below! yipes! it makes my failure at fame the much more obvious; all the more it could do would be to blink the sad stats in a glitter-ridden pink!), and as I was just telling the mother, some time in the next five or ten years I'm going to consider applying for corrective eyewear (ooh, wait, convene strategists and deliberate: not if Sarah Palin is just beginning her second term as President; although waitwait, I should by then have adapted to a different updo or shaved These Ebon Locks (As glossy as a heron's wing/Upon the turban of a king) (which o'erspread my youthful neck/ my cheeks a bashful red) altogether, and everyone will be as appalled with her as they are of any second-term incumbent, even if they voted for him/her twice, so no connection will necessarily be made between my deteriorating eyesight and the former governor of Alaska's accessorizing and grooming tendencies).
Anyway, I think all the words look really big, as though I mean what I say and wish to be aggressive about putting it forward.
All I wanted was a bloody cedille. Not a revolution. Of course the fact that the links list is now so obstreperous makes me feel as though I have to address the fact that some don't even link to the main page but some 'August 2005' recap of something or other that was well and duly settled by March of that year if not before.
I want this blog to be pleasing to the eye much as my home is, but with my home I bring in or take away stuff, or move a stuff to place it didn't use to be and in which its presence will be more felicitous than previously. I am not, in other words, reduced to 'formatting' in the case of stuffs and house. In the case of this accursed blog, in marked contrast, I do not have the option of simply moving a jardinière or flower arrangement closer to the screen and a bit to the left or right; I have to do all sorts of soul-destroying things to the code of the copy of the image of the photo of the vase (or something equally geneological and even less-well understood), cross my fingers, cross myself, feveredly pound a glass of a dangerous Barolo, and stare at the screen in abject and unholy fear while holding my breath and pressing 'enter,' 'save,' or another similarly ridiculous copulatory or soteriological command, none of which verbs I particularly wish to engage in with a computer.
I feel in matters technological not unlike Noël Coward's beleaguered Colonel Montmorency felt with regard to his Home Guard troops' lack of necessary materiel. Except there is no superior to whom I might even vainly address my petitions. There's just me, and some really huge type. And the song is admittedly a lot better when sung, and most particularly when it's Coward himself doing the singing. But if I can't even format a blog to conform to my wishes, I most assuredly cannot conjure Mr. Coward sitting at my piano and killing me softly with his stirrup-pump.
'...Poor Colonel Montmorency tried, at infinite cost to time and pride
To tackle his superiors again;
Having just one motorbike, fourteen swords and a marlin spike,
He wrote the following letter in the following urgent strain:
Could you please oblige us with a Bren gun?
We need it very badly, I'm afraid.
Our local crossword solver has an excellent revolver,
But during a short attack on the fort, the trigger got mislaid.
In course of operations planned for Friday afternoon
Our orders are to storm the Hippodrome,
So if you can't oblige us with a Bren gun
The Home Guard might as well go home.
Could you please oblige us with a Bren gun?
The lack of one is wounding to our pride.
Last night we found the cutest, little German parachutist:
He looked at our kit, and giggled a bit, and laughed until he cried.
We'll have to hide that armoured car when marching through Berlin;
We'd almost be ashamed of it in Rome.
So if you can't oblige us with a Bren gun,
The Home Guard might as well go home.'
Wedges and Edths
As part of my continuing quest not to be the dumbest person ever, I started wondering how I might be able more easily to insert foreign characters* in here. When the Character Set would offer me selections in the default font (Arial) (which it turned out was not even the one the post font was set to) (Times) (but why would I know that? They came out with serifs on the blog!), I would have recourse to some that I needed, like E's both aigu and grave, but for C-cedille I needed to Google some Froggy or Turkic word that contained it, use an entry where the character was not in bold (because Blogger would retain that formatting, and I am not smart enough to know how to remove it when obvious steps do not), and then cut and paste it into the entry because the character set in that font does not have it except in majuscule which, despite my low standards, looks every bit as stupid in the middle of 'faÇade' as I think it does.
My solution, when cutting and pasting seemed too labourious, was to use a terminal sigma and call it done, as with faςade. You probably didn't even notice.
But what I don't understand is why different commonplace fonts would have differing selections of diacritics and/or languages' alphabets from others. (I.e., were there some definitive studies done showing that Courier users consistently need letters that Georgia fans do not?) Not to mention wondering why in Arial I can get access to a capital C-cedille, not to mention a Latin C with both an acute and a cedille and a 'Latin Small Letter Sideways Open O' but be barred from what seems to be a far more regularly used character than either of those? So now everything will be in Georgia (allegedly), wherein I can not only use C-cedilles as liberally as I please, but also toss in a few 'Greek Small Letter Iota with Dialytika and Tonos' when I want.
So here is a final goodbye to Final Sigma. You've been good to me, but just like the loden-green wedges the thieves stole 1/2 of from the car, you were never quite right, anyway. And leave off the hissing; it's unbecoming.
ςςςςςςςςςςςςςςςς.....
*By which I mean more of the sigmas-and-edths type and less the Louis-the-Fourteenth sort.
My solution, when cutting and pasting seemed too labourious, was to use a terminal sigma and call it done, as with faςade. You probably didn't even notice.
But what I don't understand is why different commonplace fonts would have differing selections of diacritics and/or languages' alphabets from others. (I.e., were there some definitive studies done showing that Courier users consistently need letters that Georgia fans do not?) Not to mention wondering why in Arial I can get access to a capital C-cedille, not to mention a Latin C with both an acute and a cedille and a 'Latin Small Letter Sideways Open O' but be barred from what seems to be a far more regularly used character than either of those? So now everything will be in Georgia (allegedly), wherein I can not only use C-cedilles as liberally as I please, but also toss in a few 'Greek Small Letter Iota with Dialytika and Tonos' when I want.
So here is a final goodbye to Final Sigma. You've been good to me, but just like the loden-green wedges the thieves stole 1/2 of from the car, you were never quite right, anyway. And leave off the hissing; it's unbecoming.
ςςςςςςςςςςςςςςςς.....
*By which I mean more of the sigmas-and-edths type and less the Louis-the-Fourteenth sort.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Monastic of the Day!
(Not him, obviously. But weren't the 80s ghastly, though?
Leggings and miniskirts, oh my.
And a headband, no less!)
Leggings and miniskirts, oh my.
And a headband, no less!)
In what seems to be becoming a regular feature here, today's featured religious* is the Venerable Mère Marie de l'Incarnation, 1599-1672, who started out this life in Tours and departed it in an Ursuline convent in New France, which is alot like Québec only with a great deal fewer Frites-Alors, much less poutine, and not even close to as much or as many habitant and habitants.
Both sides of my family, the French ones and the English ones, came over to North America early. This could mean they were desperate, adventurous, bored, reckless, in danger of incarceration, excessively fond of lengthy boat travel, or all these in varying measures. I know a lot about the English side: they fought in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars and sent letters telling about this. I know less about the earliest French arrivals, and I suspect it is because they are the ones who gave the women in our family the facial hair, and the less known about them, the less rancour towards the dead will arise. Still, though, I love the history of Québec/New France/Nouvelle France as much as I love that of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, so while rummaging around online for stuff about the former, I was reminded of the story of the Filles du Roi, in which the above Mother Marie played a part.
(The Roi Whose Filles We're Talking About.Somehow this style never caught on in Trois-Rivières.
They were still probably wearing headbands.)
Firstly, it should be said that Filles du Roi are not at all the same as filles de joie, who figured in earlier posts and had far better wardrobes, not to mention restaurant choices, even after Escoffier, than the habitants of the Canadian wilderness.
(As you can see from the rug and the furniturein this painting by honorary Canadian Cornelius Krieghoff,
imported spouses were also forced to endure shopping at Ikea, which was
even more horrific when Karl XI
was in charge of Swedenthan it is now.)
Unlike filles de joie, Filles du Roi were not career women; their job - once they moved to the New World and found a husband (which tended to happen within a month or so after disembarkation) - was to be a wife and mother, which, alongside religious and camp-follower, was one of the three main career trajectories available to women at the time. Despite the arduous passage across the Atlantic, New Franceian Hausfrau could well have seemed the middle-ground option for marriageable girls with a moderate, though not overweening, sense of adventure and a similarly underwhelming set of marriage prospects.
The Filles du Roi were recruited and imported from 1663 to 1673, beginning in northern cities like Paris, Rouen, and New Rochelle. The purpose of the programme was to populate the colony, which would eventually provide new soldiers to defend France's holdings against Iroquois and English alike. Moreover, having a wife, family, house, land - not to mention livestock, two barrels of salted meat, and dowry from the King - would in theory serve to keep more of the colony's male population where they were instead of following the trend of leaving New France to return home after their three years of service. Though there were only 700, or 852, or 1000 women shipped in during those years, the French population of New France was itself only about 2500 in 1663 (as contrasted with English North America, which already had 100,000 inhabitants), with only 1 percent of New France territory being used by the settlers, so the resulting marriages and considerable progeny (you only got a 300-livre annual pension if you stalled at 10 children, but 400 if you made it past a clean dozen) could indeed eventually constitute a relatively significant bulwark against English encroachment once the children reached soldiering age. In 1671 alone, about 700 babies were born to the new families, and by the end of the ten-year importation of Filles du Roi, the sex ratio in Nouvelle France was more or less even. By 1754, at the start of the Seven Years' War, or the Fourth Intercolonial War, or the Guerre de la Conquête, or the 'French and Indian War,' the 'Indians' at least had some Frenchmen to fight alongside them.
All that notwithstanding.
Some of the girls were not as ready for the privations of Canadian homesteading as were others. They got a quick remedial education in whatever practical domestic arts they lacked while awaiting introduction to suitable suitors, plus a ration of pins, needles, thread, taffeta, and scissors among other things. They did not, however, receive a pair of Sorels or experience in wood-chopping or fence-building. Just as the Filles preferred garçons who already had une habitation set up and ready for move-in (look, I love the Canadiens as much as you do and, honestly, probably more so, but that really is the boring reason they're called The Habs: steady settlers with land and a cabin. Homesteaders. Pea soup. Stability and stoicism, not high-sticking), the male colonists were in need more of a sturdy helpmeet than a piano-playing bourgeoise.
Enter Marie Guyart the Ursuline.
(And also another entry, since this one got away from me.)
*And for the irreligious among you, 'religious' in the nominative way is different than the adjectival version. Flat-earthers, for example, or snake-charming charismatics, no matter how ardent their faith in their faith, would only be adjectivally religious, i.e., religious people, a religious population, rather than 'a religious' like Mother Marie, who took vows/joined an order/consecrated her life. It's not biased language, I assure you, and it certainly doesn't prove the earth isn't flat.
A Wretch Like Me
In the Weekend Journal, Lee Siegel gave a much more dignified and historical view of the U.S. 'culture wars' than I ever do, blinded as I am by the undignified results of the historical process he outlines. In his piece Siegel asserts that part of the communication gap is the product not solely of the two sides' differential weighting of 'culture' in their political reckonings, but their distinct ways of defining it. For Liberals, culture is a Vermeer or a Mahler symphony, while today's Conservative cannot but view culture, as Siegel says, in the anthropological manner, as 'the practice of getting through life.' Culture is thus what you do with your season tickets for Liberals, and how you live your life for Conservatives. While the Left has long asserted that 'everything is political,' it might now be equally true to claim that for the Right 'everything is cultural.' I'd say the two mean the same thing, but I can't hear myself think over the blaring Shostakovich or the stream of messages from church about the fundraising.
I suspect I agree with Mr. Siegel's view of the two sides' perception, or definition, of culture, but disagree with any hint that culture, however construed, does not markedly influence our political stance or voting decisions. For example, liberal or conservative, 21st century or 18th, certain values are implicit in Western culture. Those values then condition not merely our decisions, but what questions we are even capable of asking en route to taking decisions on one issue or candidate. If this is true, not knowing who Mahler is does not invalidate the many shared assumptions, or cultural inheritance, the non-Mahler-knowing individual has in common with his operagoing, Irigaray-reading, International-Herald-subscribing counterpart.
And this brings me to a post I aborted when it went off in so many directions. One of my points was going to be about the insipidity of the Left's unceasing plaint that the Right always want to 'legislate morality.' In the name of all that is Magna Carta, children, that's what laws do! We may believe that a given legislation legislated morality wrong, or that a candidate poses a threat to what we believe is right, but to the extent that we are not in fact discrete, isolated monads but rather members of a polity - a culture, perhaps, even - with assets, concerns, needs, streetlights, highways, and social institutions (and whatever else you want to throw in there) in common, proscribing first-degree murder or grand larceny has rather more in common with the Decalogue than with a text on descriptive economics.
Laws against murder, theft, rape, and child abuse reflect legislators' and governments' (and, we hope, under a representational system, their constituents') moral stances on those issues. (Yes, they are also expedients toward a society's stability, security, and continuity, and it wasn't in hopes of cultivating a God-fearing, Republican citizenry that Hammurabi promulgated his set of suggestions) but when Liberals assert that single, low-income mothers should have access to social services, medical care, parenting resources and financial assistance, they are as much taking a moral stand about a society's responsibility toward bettering mothers', poor peoples', and childrens' lives as are religious Conservatives with regard to the same society's responsibility toward embryos and fetuses when they argue that we as a society have some responsibility for the unborn. Either is an attempt to 'legislate morality' just as is enacting laws against domestic violence or armed robbery.
Obviously the Left has come to grasp this to a greater extent than Siegel gives them credit for: in many states as fully as at the national level, a candidate from either major party with any hope of winning must, for example, trot out his religious credentials and attempt to convincingly portray his personal friendship with Jesus Christ as the most important and influential relationship in his life (I don't remember sola φιλíα from any theology I've ever studied, but that's politics for you!). He must conjure up a spiritual rags-to-riches story to entrench the narrative of the relationship in voters' minds not only as the bedrock of his views, obviously, and as guarantor of good, clean, ethical behavior if elected (his party represents God, after all, and he is the current incarnation of his party), not to mention proof of his just-like-us faith, falls, and redemption (literally, too, for those of you somehow outside the reach of American media), but also as an arc that will be replicated in his saving us and the country, as well, just as he through grace was able to save himself. Religion becomes theatre, however heartfelt it might actually be in some candidates, and we end up with a bunch of agnostic aspirants and speech-writers falteringly inserting Martin Luther alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. into word-heavy but content-free campaignspeak.
I suspect I agree with Mr. Siegel's view of the two sides' perception, or definition, of culture, but disagree with any hint that culture, however construed, does not markedly influence our political stance or voting decisions. For example, liberal or conservative, 21st century or 18th, certain values are implicit in Western culture. Those values then condition not merely our decisions, but what questions we are even capable of asking en route to taking decisions on one issue or candidate. If this is true, not knowing who Mahler is does not invalidate the many shared assumptions, or cultural inheritance, the non-Mahler-knowing individual has in common with his operagoing, Irigaray-reading, International-Herald-subscribing counterpart.
And this brings me to a post I aborted when it went off in so many directions. One of my points was going to be about the insipidity of the Left's unceasing plaint that the Right always want to 'legislate morality.' In the name of all that is Magna Carta, children, that's what laws do! We may believe that a given legislation legislated morality wrong, or that a candidate poses a threat to what we believe is right, but to the extent that we are not in fact discrete, isolated monads but rather members of a polity - a culture, perhaps, even - with assets, concerns, needs, streetlights, highways, and social institutions (and whatever else you want to throw in there) in common, proscribing first-degree murder or grand larceny has rather more in common with the Decalogue than with a text on descriptive economics.
Laws against murder, theft, rape, and child abuse reflect legislators' and governments' (and, we hope, under a representational system, their constituents') moral stances on those issues. (Yes, they are also expedients toward a society's stability, security, and continuity, and it wasn't in hopes of cultivating a God-fearing, Republican citizenry that Hammurabi promulgated his set of suggestions) but when Liberals assert that single, low-income mothers should have access to social services, medical care, parenting resources and financial assistance, they are as much taking a moral stand about a society's responsibility toward bettering mothers', poor peoples', and childrens' lives as are religious Conservatives with regard to the same society's responsibility toward embryos and fetuses when they argue that we as a society have some responsibility for the unborn. Either is an attempt to 'legislate morality' just as is enacting laws against domestic violence or armed robbery.
Obviously the Left has come to grasp this to a greater extent than Siegel gives them credit for: in many states as fully as at the national level, a candidate from either major party with any hope of winning must, for example, trot out his religious credentials and attempt to convincingly portray his personal friendship with Jesus Christ as the most important and influential relationship in his life (I don't remember sola φιλíα from any theology I've ever studied, but that's politics for you!). He must conjure up a spiritual rags-to-riches story to entrench the narrative of the relationship in voters' minds not only as the bedrock of his views, obviously, and as guarantor of good, clean, ethical behavior if elected (his party represents God, after all, and he is the current incarnation of his party), not to mention proof of his just-like-us faith, falls, and redemption (literally, too, for those of you somehow outside the reach of American media), but also as an arc that will be replicated in his saving us and the country, as well, just as he through grace was able to save himself. Religion becomes theatre, however heartfelt it might actually be in some candidates, and we end up with a bunch of agnostic aspirants and speech-writers falteringly inserting Martin Luther alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. into word-heavy but content-free campaignspeak.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
I'll Just Have a Salad, Thanks.
It used to be my custom to order a nice blue/saignant petit filet about twice a year, but due to the current subprime perfect storm of red meat in battleground states between enemy combatants on the ground, at the end of the day I think it will likely be some few years before I have the stomach for another one.
Thanks for ruining my diet and my hairstyle, guys.
-'Red Meat with a Side of Mean'
-'Sarah Palin: Red Meat for the Masses'
-'More Red Meat'
-'Minnesota Delegation Gets Red-Meat Talking Points'
-'No Red Meat from Warner Speech'
-'McCain's Ex-Rivals Throw Out the Red Meat'
Et cetera. And just so we're on the same page, that was only the first one of a search for 'red meat campaign.' We still don't know if John McCain hit it out of the park with his Hail Mary Pass when he threw a bone to theoconservatives in an effort to energize the base which may or may not steal Hillary's thunder should the chickens come home to roost.
And, because I do care about the state of your palate but can't pour you a glass of Brunello from here, here's a bit of Myles to take away that bad taste:
''Keats's Irish terrier, Byrne, failed to come home one night. Chapman found the poet playing the violin, and remarked on his composure. "Keats smiled . . . 'And why should I not fiddle,' he asked, 'while Byrne roams?'''
Thanks for ruining my diet and my hairstyle, guys.
-'Red Meat with a Side of Mean'
-'Sarah Palin: Red Meat for the Masses'
-'More Red Meat'
-'Minnesota Delegation Gets Red-Meat Talking Points'
-'No Red Meat from Warner Speech'
-'McCain's Ex-Rivals Throw Out the Red Meat'
Et cetera. And just so we're on the same page, that was only the first one of a search for 'red meat campaign.' We still don't know if John McCain hit it out of the park with his Hail Mary Pass when he threw a bone to theoconservatives in an effort to energize the base which may or may not steal Hillary's thunder should the chickens come home to roost.
And, because I do care about the state of your palate but can't pour you a glass of Brunello from here, here's a bit of Myles to take away that bad taste:
''Keats's Irish terrier, Byrne, failed to come home one night. Chapman found the poet playing the violin, and remarked on his composure. "Keats smiled . . . 'And why should I not fiddle,' he asked, 'while Byrne roams?'''
The Tribulations of Ti
Not to be excessively bloggy, but for those of you who don't believe in a God, here's your proof He exists: the crazy, *******tent-as-he-is-*********iacal executive director of Fort Ticonderoga (yes, Virginia, there is a Fort Ticonderoga!) is finally announcing he is finally stepping down, having estranged himself and thereby the Fort from the friendship, largesse, and presence of benefactors and former board president and member Deborah Clarke Mars and Forrest Mars. Fort attendance is down overall (except for this year, which had 250th-anniversary events for the Capture of Fort Ticonderoga [July 8, 1758] in the 'French and Indian War' [1754-63]), charitable contributions are way down due to the departure of the Marses, the Fort's largest donors, and, with recent media coverage in the Washington Post and New York Times, Mr. Westbrook's plans to sell off the Fort's artwork (banned by New York law, by the way, under the Fort's charter) reached a wide audience.
And if you have any question as to why such a nice fort would have kept switching hands, it is apparently because a candle and a groggy wife do not a sound defensive strategy make.
Huge Cat or Tiny Chair?
Yes, the tiny leather chair is really that tiny. I used to use it when I didn't use a desk for a desk, but rather a tiny table that is now outside holding dead plants. Now the tiny chair sits in the corner by the unusable Tibetan drawer-thing, the unusable snake opera gloves, and the picture that doesn't stay up of a line of Thai Buddhas.
Monday, September 8, 2008
'You Have to Think Like a Pilot.'
When I started this blog, my reasons were:
a) people told me to do it ('people' also told me I should get married, and we know how that went);
b) I figured it would be a good exercise in discipline (it wasn't);
c) it seemed like a better, more socially-sensitive outlet for my tirades than foisting long ranting emails about pepper grinders in the shape of roosters on people who just wanted to know if I wanted to get some dinner Thursday. (Success!)
And with some generous periods of silence, I've managed fairly frequently to write at least something. Which I think is good and proves I should be doing this or, minimally, that however crap whatever it is I'm going on about at any given time is, I have sufficient motivation to go on about it, and in this forum, rather than face-to-face, in a journal, through email, or by stealing a megaphone and standing outside yelling about poor taste in front of terrifyingly misconceived subdevelopments. So far so good; I think I am content with the 'Just because I'm not Goethe doesn't mean I shouldn't have a blog' stance.
But once it kind of evolved into having a voice/persona behind it - even if the focus or the voice itself changes at times, because we can say each little slant is part of the larger, overall slant - I kept thinking about all the goofy tags. Few serve any practical taggy purpose: nobody does searches for 'appalling taste' or 'Tuscan toilets,' and if they do, I don't think they want to end up here. Nor would a serious-minded searcher for Amelia Earhart trivia get very much rewarding stuff by clicking on her name in my tags. For what it's worth, I know which picture I have of her, but I have no idea why she's in here, what kind of a point I would have making to have had need of natty early-20th-c. aviatrices to support it, but I see her name every time I look at the blog, since she is up near the top of the tag list under A.
There are a couplefew problems. One is the disincentive of how much effort it would take to winnow down all the tags and to make new, sensible ones that might actually provide a clue as to what a posting is about. And it would be a very dull list. Another is that I like how the tags applied to a post better illustrate its content, just in a different way, than labeling it very precisely with what topics it literally contains. Then, too, I still find some of the goofy tags amusing to myself, and if this is really a blog, then that's my target audience: so as long as I keep chuckling nothing else should matter. I like having three entries obliquely or explicitly referencing 'bad monkeys' and another four mentioning Gauloises cigarettes, even if the postings are more substantively about interior design or telephones or pastry cream disasters.
And I imagine I could at least get rid of the ones that only link to one or two posts. 'Amelia Earhart' would be one of that group. But in many cases there is no reason to think I will only ever have one post that mentions that thing or person, so why take it out if I'm going to put it back in, I say. Still, I do think I could afford the time at some point to lose tags for types of wine and just have all fermented grape products under one 'wine' label, for example, without substantively compromising integrity. I could move all three 'fatuous boobs' and both 'idiocy' references to, perhaps, 'fatuity,' 'overarching incompetence,' or 'inanity,' depending on the content. But the thing is, when the posting is really a rant, or some ghastly stream-of-consciousness catalogue of aesthetic sins, and I go all over the place connecting things that in no way relate to each other except thematically and only to myself in some damp corner of my brain, I do go through the list of tags and often find one to append that I wouldn't have thought of had I not had such a long list. And today, I had to add 'China,' which I almost have many times but didn't because I had enough 'Chinese __________' tags. I didn't, on the other hand, make a new tag for 'Nestorians,' but I am sure I will have to at some point, and then it's going to end up between 'neo-Darwinism' (1 link) and 'neuroses' (likewise just the one) unless those have been excised by that point as having been insufficiently utile for all the nonexistent topic-shoppers reading my tag list hoping to find something truly worth reading.
You have to think like a cornichon.
a) people told me to do it ('people' also told me I should get married, and we know how that went);
b) I figured it would be a good exercise in discipline (it wasn't);
c) it seemed like a better, more socially-sensitive outlet for my tirades than foisting long ranting emails about pepper grinders in the shape of roosters on people who just wanted to know if I wanted to get some dinner Thursday. (Success!)
And with some generous periods of silence, I've managed fairly frequently to write at least something. Which I think is good and proves I should be doing this or, minimally, that however crap whatever it is I'm going on about at any given time is, I have sufficient motivation to go on about it, and in this forum, rather than face-to-face, in a journal, through email, or by stealing a megaphone and standing outside yelling about poor taste in front of terrifyingly misconceived subdevelopments. So far so good; I think I am content with the 'Just because I'm not Goethe doesn't mean I shouldn't have a blog' stance.
But once it kind of evolved into having a voice/persona behind it - even if the focus or the voice itself changes at times, because we can say each little slant is part of the larger, overall slant - I kept thinking about all the goofy tags. Few serve any practical taggy purpose: nobody does searches for 'appalling taste' or 'Tuscan toilets,' and if they do, I don't think they want to end up here. Nor would a serious-minded searcher for Amelia Earhart trivia get very much rewarding stuff by clicking on her name in my tags. For what it's worth, I know which picture I have of her, but I have no idea why she's in here, what kind of a point I would have making to have had need of natty early-20th-c. aviatrices to support it, but I see her name every time I look at the blog, since she is up near the top of the tag list under A.
There are a couplefew problems. One is the disincentive of how much effort it would take to winnow down all the tags and to make new, sensible ones that might actually provide a clue as to what a posting is about. And it would be a very dull list. Another is that I like how the tags applied to a post better illustrate its content, just in a different way, than labeling it very precisely with what topics it literally contains. Then, too, I still find some of the goofy tags amusing to myself, and if this is really a blog, then that's my target audience: so as long as I keep chuckling nothing else should matter. I like having three entries obliquely or explicitly referencing 'bad monkeys' and another four mentioning Gauloises cigarettes, even if the postings are more substantively about interior design or telephones or pastry cream disasters.
And I imagine I could at least get rid of the ones that only link to one or two posts. 'Amelia Earhart' would be one of that group. But in many cases there is no reason to think I will only ever have one post that mentions that thing or person, so why take it out if I'm going to put it back in, I say. Still, I do think I could afford the time at some point to lose tags for types of wine and just have all fermented grape products under one 'wine' label, for example, without substantively compromising integrity. I could move all three 'fatuous boobs' and both 'idiocy' references to, perhaps, 'fatuity,' 'overarching incompetence,' or 'inanity,' depending on the content. But the thing is, when the posting is really a rant, or some ghastly stream-of-consciousness catalogue of aesthetic sins, and I go all over the place connecting things that in no way relate to each other except thematically and only to myself in some damp corner of my brain, I do go through the list of tags and often find one to append that I wouldn't have thought of had I not had such a long list. And today, I had to add 'China,' which I almost have many times but didn't because I had enough 'Chinese __________' tags. I didn't, on the other hand, make a new tag for 'Nestorians,' but I am sure I will have to at some point, and then it's going to end up between 'neo-Darwinism' (1 link) and 'neuroses' (likewise just the one) unless those have been excised by that point as having been insufficiently utile for all the nonexistent topic-shoppers reading my tag list hoping to find something truly worth reading.
You have to think like a cornichon.
What Would a Unicorn Do?
On Got Medieval, there was a 'contest' back in July to see what seven words readers would come up with to describe the Middle Ages. The origin of the idea, which is described here, was a disheartening day in class when the new crop of students was asked to free-associate their way to a picture of the era. They came up with 'knights, knights, knights,' 'other knights,' and 'things about knights,' basically, and the writer of the blog uses the story on social occasions to set others at ease when they start to apologize, upon hearing his profession, for their lack of knowledge about Ye Olde Medieval Tymes.
I don't think it's particularly odd that nobody here knows anything about the Middle Ages, because I would imagine most people at cocktail parties would be equally hard pressed to come up with much about the Renaissance, or the Enlightenment. (...Uh, Luther, yeah, Martin Luther!, em, art! there was lots and lots of art! The Crusades! no, em, no, those big skirts with the hoops in them? no, wait.) I may sound more generally pessimistic than is warranted, perhaps, but I will give him this: I do think the Middle Ages probably are a more complete void in most people's understanding of history than are other periods. Before reading his account, though, I hadn't really thought about how thoroughly jousting, heraldry, and ladies-in-waiting with long pointy hats encapsulated the era for most.
The lazy explanation is that it's down to The Media, since any film set in that time tends to have Chain Mail in the leading role, with horses, maidens, and scrofulous serfs filling in the gaps. But if after watching Le Weekend I don't feel I have a complete understanding of 20th-century French history, is that really Godard's fault?
Still, the reality is that most Americans think that, like, nothing happened in Western civ for ten centuries or so. Other than the Black Plague and jousting, that is. Plato or somebody died, and then everyone went to sleep - in really dirty clothes - until da Vinci, or maybe Martin Luther woke them up. (At which time, of course, they then wore hoop skirts and codpieces and really ugly hats with buckles on them and everyone had syphilis.)
But, although the whole thing makes me sad, as does the idea that his (very hilarious) blog gets lots of hits from people looking for sexy chainmail pictures, I like to think of what my list would be, and it was fun to read other lists, because it shows how unique our own perspectives or prejudices are. I would probably put:
-neo-Platonism
-monasticism/orders
-Norman Conquest
-Sacking of Constantinople
-East/West
-books
-The Church
There's repetition, and there's no form of 'music,' or 'law' or even 'Law,' but I think if you take what themes I do have, you end up with those anyway, and much more besides. I suppose you could just say 'The Church' and come up with my whole list incidentally, not to mention unicorns and guys in chainmail, but with a book-banning vice-presidential candidate, I can only muster so much self-loathing.
I don't think it's particularly odd that nobody here knows anything about the Middle Ages, because I would imagine most people at cocktail parties would be equally hard pressed to come up with much about the Renaissance, or the Enlightenment. (...Uh, Luther, yeah, Martin Luther!, em, art! there was lots and lots of art! The Crusades! no, em, no, those big skirts with the hoops in them? no, wait.) I may sound more generally pessimistic than is warranted, perhaps, but I will give him this: I do think the Middle Ages probably are a more complete void in most people's understanding of history than are other periods. Before reading his account, though, I hadn't really thought about how thoroughly jousting, heraldry, and ladies-in-waiting with long pointy hats encapsulated the era for most.
The lazy explanation is that it's down to The Media, since any film set in that time tends to have Chain Mail in the leading role, with horses, maidens, and scrofulous serfs filling in the gaps. But if after watching Le Weekend I don't feel I have a complete understanding of 20th-century French history, is that really Godard's fault?
Still, the reality is that most Americans think that, like, nothing happened in Western civ for ten centuries or so. Other than the Black Plague and jousting, that is. Plato or somebody died, and then everyone went to sleep - in really dirty clothes - until da Vinci, or maybe Martin Luther woke them up. (At which time, of course, they then wore hoop skirts and codpieces and really ugly hats with buckles on them and everyone had syphilis.)
But, although the whole thing makes me sad, as does the idea that his (very hilarious) blog gets lots of hits from people looking for sexy chainmail pictures, I like to think of what my list would be, and it was fun to read other lists, because it shows how unique our own perspectives or prejudices are. I would probably put:
-neo-Platonism
-monasticism/orders
-Norman Conquest
-Sacking of Constantinople
-East/West
-books
-The Church
There's repetition, and there's no form of 'music,' or 'law' or even 'Law,' but I think if you take what themes I do have, you end up with those anyway, and much more besides. I suppose you could just say 'The Church' and come up with my whole list incidentally, not to mention unicorns and guys in chainmail, but with a book-banning vice-presidential candidate, I can only muster so much self-loathing.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Sarah Palin's Hairstyle: Leave It Alone!
Sarah Palin as VP candidate may or may not prove to be a brilliantly maniacal move. We will see what happens; in the meantime, riveting though her story is, and as complex a figure as she may be, I am sad that my own most-favored hairstyle (see above; way, way above, up in the header) is being pilloried ceaselessly by cosmetological hatemongers.
as journalists, bloggers, editorialists, and other such ill-informed numbskulls continue to call it. It is, however, a hairstyle that adds a little height, which some of us can benefit from. Additionally, being an updo, it conveys slightly more sophistication, and the weest soupςon of gravitas when necessary, than long, loose hair does,
while not suggesting the prudery that people seem to read into tightly-pulled-back chignons.
Mind you, I can pull off the archest of chignons and ballerinabuns, but I have eyes the size of pancakes, so it is only with extreme effort that I can manage to look 'hard' or severe under any circumstances.
Nonetheless, I resent the fact that every time henceforth I hastily put together a French-Twist-with-a-Pouf with nothing but hope, two bent bobby pins, and a rearview mirror to guide me, I run the risk of being accused of sporting 'A Sarah Palin.' It is a sad year for grooming indeed.
It is not a beehive,
as journalists, bloggers, editorialists, and other such ill-informed numbskulls continue to call it. It is, however, a hairstyle that adds a little height, which some of us can benefit from. Additionally, being an updo, it conveys slightly more sophistication, and the weest soupςon of gravitas when necessary, than long, loose hair does,
while not suggesting the prudery that people seem to read into tightly-pulled-back chignons.
Mind you, I can pull off the archest of chignons and ballerinabuns, but I have eyes the size of pancakes, so it is only with extreme effort that I can manage to look 'hard' or severe under any circumstances.Nonetheless, I resent the fact that every time henceforth I hastily put together a French-Twist-with-a-Pouf with nothing but hope, two bent bobby pins, and a rearview mirror to guide me, I run the risk of being accused of sporting 'A Sarah Palin.' It is a sad year for grooming indeed.
Friday, September 5, 2008
I Confess
And, yes, along with Ran, Nora Inu, Nights of Cabiria, Zorba the Greek, Ju Dou, Red Sorghum, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Blue Angel, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Wings of Desire, and A Night at the Opera, Slapshot is one of my favourite films. Maybe my very most favourite. I just wish I could find a picture of Newman in that terrifying leather suit to put here.
In a Handbag
Every day I vacillate between disgust and perverse fascination with this ridiculous campaign, not to mention politics in general. I realize politics is at its heart seedy and unseemly. At any level beyond that of local activists committed to working single-mindedly on one local issue, politics and political speech are, by their very nature, filled with half-truths, exaggeration, 'spin,' disingenuousness, diversion, outright lies and, all too frequently, the overturning of conventionally accepted dictionary denotations. It is the realm of inappropriate alliances, indefensible trade-offs, slanderous smear campaigns, absurd rationales, contrived difference, cultivated insularity and groupthink, and outrageous posturing. It is, frankly, sickening.
Here is my 'political' stance on a few of the 'political' issues of today:
-I don't care that McCain is in his seventies.
-I don't care that Palin is a woman.
-I don't care that Obama is African-American.
-I don't care that Biden is a 'Washington Insider.'
As to the 'experience' issue that both sides make much of, here is the list of individuals with the necessary experience for the vacancy in question:
-Jimmy Carter
-George H.W. Bush
-Bill Clinton
-George W. Bush
Other than them, whoever gets the job is going to be getting a big promotion. That is, of course, the trajectory of the American Dream: onward, upward. Not stuck in the dishpit forever, not condemned eternally to Triple A when you have the chops to make it in the majors.
And nobody has the qualifications to run the country perfectly, not even to the universal acclaim of his own supporters.
So none of the Presidential or Vice-Presidential candidates are qualified, or ready, any more than anyone else receiving a promotion is. To me, it is obvious that that is the nature of a promotion, even of a lateral move: the person is going to do something different. It may be similar to the old position in numerous ways, but because he hasn't done it yet, he is not experienced at it. What we do when we promote someone is consider his intellect, his skills, his aptitudes, his personality, his potential, his overall suitability, and his likelihood of rising to the new demands. In the case of a politician running for office, we must also consider whether his values align with ours, his allegiance thus far to those values, his level of dishonesty, his policies, whether we have reason to believe he will continue to represent the best interests and stated desires of the polity he might come to represent, and we must attempt to distinguish the genuine from the political, the sincere from the machinating, and the honest from the demogogic in his campaign rhetoric. --On the other hand, we could dismiss out of hand any candidate who has ever written a book, learned a second language, taken vacations outside the U.S., gone to a selective university, or studied Constitutional Law as 'uppity' and elitist and stick with candidates whose hobbies we share.
Here is my 'political' stance on a few of the 'political' issues of today:
-I don't care that McCain is in his seventies.
-I don't care that Palin is a woman.
-I don't care that Obama is African-American.
-I don't care that Biden is a 'Washington Insider.'
As to the 'experience' issue that both sides make much of, here is the list of individuals with the necessary experience for the vacancy in question:
-Jimmy Carter
-George H.W. Bush
-Bill Clinton
-George W. Bush
Other than them, whoever gets the job is going to be getting a big promotion. That is, of course, the trajectory of the American Dream: onward, upward. Not stuck in the dishpit forever, not condemned eternally to Triple A when you have the chops to make it in the majors.
And nobody has the qualifications to run the country perfectly, not even to the universal acclaim of his own supporters.So none of the Presidential or Vice-Presidential candidates are qualified, or ready, any more than anyone else receiving a promotion is. To me, it is obvious that that is the nature of a promotion, even of a lateral move: the person is going to do something different. It may be similar to the old position in numerous ways, but because he hasn't done it yet, he is not experienced at it. What we do when we promote someone is consider his intellect, his skills, his aptitudes, his personality, his potential, his overall suitability, and his likelihood of rising to the new demands. In the case of a politician running for office, we must also consider whether his values align with ours, his allegiance thus far to those values, his level of dishonesty, his policies, whether we have reason to believe he will continue to represent the best interests and stated desires of the polity he might come to represent, and we must attempt to distinguish the genuine from the political, the sincere from the machinating, and the honest from the demogogic in his campaign rhetoric. --On the other hand, we could dismiss out of hand any candidate who has ever written a book, learned a second language, taken vacations outside the U.S., gone to a selective university, or studied Constitutional Law as 'uppity' and elitist and stick with candidates whose hobbies we share.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Lipstick and Pitbulls
I am so speechless about The Whole Sarah Palin Thing that I can't even finish a post about it I started a few days ago, let alone write about more recent developments, such as her speech tonight. But I reiterate, that a candidate for a national office (or in more populous areas, state or even municipal office) seems like someone one would like to have a beer or Barolo (or hunt moose or go to the symphony) with is truly insufficient grounds for a vote in his or her favor. Nonetheless, it does appear to me that this vote of the 'common man,' with his presumed demonstrable less-than-vigorously-cultivated critical-thinking skills is precisely what McCain was informed that Sarah Palin could deliver, and which his preferred vice-presidential choices, meanwhile, would preclude. Sarah Palin's positions on some issues may yet remain a mystery, some other positions may be objectionable or ideal to one side or the other but, if it is indeed true that what motivates the Common Man most in an election is the candidate's life's resemblance to that of the voter, Mrs. Palin, despite her 'extreme' attributes like moose-hunting, midnight suns, and marathons, takes 'common' to dazzling, giddy new heights:
--mother
--new mother
--working new mother
--small town
--blue-collar, steelworker husband
--child with disability
--married high-school boyfriend
--PTA member
--husband in labor union
--son in military
--hunting, fishing, snowmobile racing
--no passport for most of life
--pregnant teenage daughter
--mispronouncing foreign words as proof of patriotism
--beauty queen
--big hair
--wacky and whimsical children's names
--believes religion and science are at odds; chooses religion
--anti-intellectual; Obama's education/Constitutional expertise disqualify him
Surely her life story has many aspects with which an 'average' American person can relate. It's a compelling narrative of a strong, opinionated, charismatic, attractive woman. And, like the majority of American citizens, she was not born into inherited wealth: in her sudden rise to the national stage, she embodies the long-cherished image of the United States (or 'America,' as she would say) as the Land of Opportunity: that anyone can make it here and that hard work and tenacity matter more than pedigree. It is a great story; I just wish it had built slowly to a climax rather than suddenly to a punch line.
--mother
--new mother
--working new mother
--small town
--blue-collar, steelworker husband
--child with disability
--married high-school boyfriend
--PTA member
--husband in labor union
--son in military
--hunting, fishing, snowmobile racing
--no passport for most of life
--pregnant teenage daughter
--mispronouncing foreign words as proof of patriotism
--beauty queen
--big hair
--wacky and whimsical children's names
--believes religion and science are at odds; chooses religion
--anti-intellectual; Obama's education/Constitutional expertise disqualify him
Surely her life story has many aspects with which an 'average' American person can relate. It's a compelling narrative of a strong, opinionated, charismatic, attractive woman. And, like the majority of American citizens, she was not born into inherited wealth: in her sudden rise to the national stage, she embodies the long-cherished image of the United States (or 'America,' as she would say) as the Land of Opportunity: that anyone can make it here and that hard work and tenacity matter more than pedigree. It is a great story; I just wish it had built slowly to a climax rather than suddenly to a punch line.
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