Hot Air

Dem Pep Rally

Monroe County Democrats have announced the date for their annual FDR Gala wherein they tell each other over soft drinks and cheese cubes how much the citizenry loves them and how they’re going to win the very next election handily. And, as a rule, they do win those elections — as long they’re local.

So, you can rub shoulders with mayors (soon-to-be-emeritus and aspiring), city council members, party supporters, payrollers who’d rather be at home with their shoes and socks off, and other exotic creatures Thursday, April 2nd, 6pm, in the Fountain Square Ballroom on Kirkwood.

The Monroe County Republican bash will be held under the Opie Taylor’s canopy, weather-permitting. That is, if it’s raining, the event will be cancelled because pedestrians might be trying to stay dry and, therefore, there’ll be no room for two more people.

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A Weighty Issue

Here’s another example of an issue wherein those on both sides of its fence are full of it. Thanks to Indiana University human sexuality research scientist, Debby Herbenick, I learned today that Bryn Mawr College this school year has been sending out targeted emails to students whose silhouettes, shall we say, are a tad more parabolic than some medical professionals might wish.

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The Bryn Mawr health services center sent the emails to students whose body-mass indexes were found to be “elevated” during office visits. The students, the email advised, were welcome to join a weight loss program sponsored by the center.

In other words, the message came through loud and clear to certain individuals: You’re overweight. This may lead to health problems. If you want to start working out and eating more healthily, we’ve got a program for you.

Sounds pretty much like what any caring health professional might say to a patient whose belt is beginning to look a bit strained at the last notch.

But, natch, the emails were received by enrollees at one of the Seven Sisters/Ivy League institutions of higher brow-furrowing. Whoever sent out the email forgot that such burgeoning scholars must parse and dissect every syllable of every word uttered near, about, and around them for any signs of oppression, tyranny, violence, ridicule, or poor grammar and usage.

One Bryn Mawr student howled on Facebook that the email is “problematic, it’s hurtful, and it’s just plain stupid.” The student explains that she has struggled with an eating disorder much of her life and has sought treatment for it from the Bryn Mawr student health center. “I felt very targeted,” she said to one TV reporter. “It didn’t feel like the school had my best interest at heart. Knowing my personal history, it was an email telling me to lose weight.”

Well, um, yeah.

This, babies, is what we snark artists like to refer to as a First World Problem.

The person who made this big splash has told interviewers as well as the rest of the world she was “horrified” to receive the email.

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So, apparently, the student was filled with fear, scared out of her wits, her hair stood on end, and her blood ran cold. Rather like the residents of Hiroshima when that bright flash occurred one sunny August morning.

So, fine, she’s a sensitive flower who can’t bear being reminded of that which she has already acknowledged. I hope her heart can bear the terror of being fired from her job one day. But let’s leave her and start picking on the Bryn Mawr health services center.

It’s none of their goddamned business how big any of their students grow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know all about how obesity affects health care costs that must be born by all of us. Ho hum. Some window-peekers among us think it’s in the university’s or the company’s or even the state’s best interests to monitor every personal facet of our lives because all those things affect some bottom line. So what?

I know scads of folks whose love lives adversely affect their work productivity. If they get dumped, say, they’re next to useless for days, even weeks, at a time. Shall we send them messages advising them never to fall in love again?

This bottom-line mentality has at its core the near-criminalization of personality, of individualism, of self for chrissakes. Some people are fat. Some have tender hearts. Some have bad breath. All those traits affect us — their friends and coworkers — in some small but ultimately measurable way. Measurable, that is, by bean counters and bookkeepers whose sole concern in this life is that last cell in their spreadsheets.

To them I say, Let us be fat. Let us well-up with tears at odd times during the work day because we’ve been jilted. Let us have our bad breath.

After all, why do you insist on being so close to us that you can smell our breath?

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Information Is Power

I just started drawing up a list of questions for the mayoral candidates. In the past, I’ve done questionnaires with candidates for various offices for Ryder magazine in an effort to get at each of those true persons.

For instance, during the 2010 Congressional election, I queried the likes of Todd Young, Shelli Yoder, Col. John Tilford and the rest of the aspirants for Indiana’s 9th District seat about their childhood memories, the music they listen to, the books they read, their fave TV shows of all time, and other such politically vital dope.

Here are a few of the Q’s I came up with last night:

Who were the three greatest US presidents?
Describe the happiest day of your life.
What was the first album you ever bought with your own money?
Do you agree that chocolate should be the national drug?

Uncontrollable Substance

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If you have any suggestions, feel free to comment here or send them to me at glabagogo@gmail.com.

We’ll run the questionnaire and responses in the April issue. The Democratic primary between John Hamilton, Darryl Neher, and John Linnemeier will be held Tuesday, May 5th. Republican John Turnbull is running unopposed.

BTW: Here’s a question for the populace:

How comfortable would you be if Darryl Neher becomes mayor. In that case, he’d be Mayor Neher. Could you bear it?

Which reminds me: Why do you think it is that the United States military does not have the rank of Field Marshal? Pretty much every other fighting force on Earth has Field Marshals. The US stands alone in this regard.

It turns out that the Army did indeed consider adding Field Marshal to its ranks at the start of World War II. Only the top dog in the Army at that time was one General George Catlett Marshall, who directed the two-theater war effort from Washington. The story goes that Marshall was displeased with the idea because he thought it would be unbecoming to be referred to as Field Marshal Marshall. And that was that.

Marshal?

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01/23/2014

Your Daily Hot Air

Bureaucrats’ Big Night

So, the great state o’Texas whacked yet another prisoner last night.

Texas, home of many, many, many fiercely proud, independence-minded, anti-government types, has killed more than 500 people since the death penalty was reinstated by the US Supreme Court in 1976. Today, some 298 prisoners languish on death row in Texas prisons.

The guy who took the collar last night was a Mexican national. Few people would suggest he didn’t pump three slugs into the skull of a cop who’d arrested him after a drunken brawl in 1994. The only real controversy in the case was why Texas prosecutors denied him the opportunity to get legal help from the Mexican consulate.

Texas long has been known as the execution king of this holy land. Them good ol’ boys sure love to tie nooses, aim rifles at people’s hearts, or watch with glee as doctors inject lethal drugs into people’s arms.

Your Room Is Ready, Sir

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Which is really ironic since everybody involved in a state-sponsored execution is…, well, an employee of one government or another. Papers must be shuffled, reams and reams of them. Food must be served to death row inmates. Their medical needs must be taken care of. Arrangements must be made, deadly drugs procured, and undertakers must be called.

All done by bureaucrats. From the time a suspected capital criminal is hauled in to the time he or she is separated from this vale, payrollers from the city, the county, the state, and, eventually, the federal government* get involved.

[*Capital punishment cases almost invariably are reviewed by the US Supreme Court.]

Funny that Texans — who are well-known to be suspicious of government-run health care, are petrified that the government has a secret plan to seize citizens’ shootin’ irons, absolutely loathe the fact the tax moneys are spent on food, education, and housing assistance, and, in general, fervently wish all governments would simply disappear from the face of the Earth — depend so passionately on bureaucrats and operatives paid for with our precious tax dollars to carry out state-sponsored homicide.

Texas, babies, is a weird country.

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Cabin Fever

I will brook no argument against the following pronouncement:

This has been the worst winter I’ve experienced since The Loved One and I left Chi. in March, 2007.

Kirkwood Avenue (Herald Times/Jeremy Hogan photo)

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One of the reasons I was convinced to leave that November-through-March hell was the prospect that I wouldn’t have to endure sub-zero temps and crushingly gray January days.

I’d always said that if my beloved former hometown didn’t have depressing, dangerous, often fatal winters, its population would at least double and possibly triple.

There’s nothing in the world like a late spring morning walk along Chicago’s lakefront. The waves lapping the shoreline, the sun rising over the distant watery horizon, the spectacular skyline opposite — why, it’s a slice of heaven. There are, I might reasonably estimate, two, perhaps three, such days to be had in each Chicago year.

So, my two years in Louisville followed by four mild winters here in Bloomington have convinced me we made the right move. Until now.

B-town, you’ve got a lot of making up to do.

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Big Science

Natasha Mura will talk about the Science of Obesity at the next session of the Bloomington Science Cafe, Wednesday, January 29th, 6:30pm, at the Root Cellar Lounge, underneath Farm Bloomington.

Science Cafe czar Alex Straiker sez Mura is “quite passionate” about obesity. Odd that: she’s as thin as a rail. I probably could fit three of her into a single pair of my billowy dungarees.

The Science Cafe Gang*

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In any case, I’ll be dropping by the Root Cellar to find out the scientific reason why I warp the floorboards. I hope to see you there, too.

[* (l to r) Jim Wager-Miller, Alex Straiker, Natasha Mura, and Marta Shocket.]

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Much Appreciated

Thanks to everybody who has extended warm wishes and support as my family and I facilitate my mother’s journey out of this mortal coil.

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08/30/2012

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed, Mr. President, but I do say not more than ten to twenty million dead depending on the breaks.” — General Buck Turgidson in “Dr. Strangelove: Or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”

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A RAIN OF RUIN

This is both stunning and terrifying.

Isao Hashimoto of Japan has created a CGI video depicting every nuclear explosion on Earth since the first one in the New Mexico desert in July, 1945. The first few years plod along but then, by 1962, when Hashimoto’s vid becomes a perverse symphony, it’s as though we’re trying to blow the planet to smithereens.

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Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z

In the days and weeks leading up to the Republicans’ self-love orgy going on this week in Tampa, people asked me how excited I was to have this glorious opportunity to spout off even more than I usually do about them.

Whatever “It” Is

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The answer: Not much. And a correction: the opportunity is not glorious.

Funny, huh?

As in ironic.

As I wrote yesterday, all politics is theater. And the convention on Florida’s west coast is the GOP’s big showbiz opening.

What am I going to write? That they’re liars and alarmists? I may as well recycle any of dozens of posts I’ve already written about that.

What have we learned thus far that we didn’t know already? That Ann Romney still has a schoolgirl crush on her big boy?

He Lights Up My Life

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Wake me up when it’s over.

Oh, and I’ll have another fine opportunity to take a well-earned beauty nap when the Dems convene in Charlotte next week.

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FAT CHANCE

There never was any chance Chris Christie of New Jersey would be tabbed by Willard Romney to be his running mate. The fact of the matter is Christie’s too fat.

Chris Christie

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Last fall when the idea of a Christie run for the White House was floating around, some op-ed writers danced around the topic of his belt size. Pseudo-liberal blowhard Michael Kinsley even suggested that a Christie presidency would set the wrong example for the nation, as if tens of millions of folks would suddenly start scarfing down entire Tombstone pizzas in a sitting (hey, wait a minute — that is happening already.)

His girth precluding him from coming within a couple of blocks of the White House is both an insult and a rather reasonable proposition.

It’s insulting because most people have a prejudice against fat people. The thin harbor within themselves the notion that fat people are greedy pigs who are swallowing too much of the Earth’s resources, primarily Wavy Lays and Sara Lee frozen cakes.

People are fat, the svelte among us believe (whether they admit it or not), because they are lazy cows.

Choose whichever round animal analog you wish, the comparison is never praise.

Not A Bull, Not A Bear, Not A Lion

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Republicans might love Christie’s stances but they’d hate to look at him for four or eight years. The fat, we’ve decided, are unsightly. And can you imagine how Dems would jump all over President Christie for his width? He’d be the poster boy for the rapacious rich in progressive cartooning and editorializing.

As wise policy, keeping Christie out of the Oval Office merely insures that we won’t have to suffer the grief of burying him a year and a half into his presidency due to his heart exploding like a water balloon. I mean, even Bill Clinton was thought to be too corpulent when he was first elected. He had to lay off Big Macs and pretend to exercise a bit before the nation felt comfortable that we weren’t an infarct away from a Gore Administration. Still, Clinton twice had to have his cardiac plumbing Roto-Rootered to keep him alive.

Even though we’ve become the fattest nation on Earth, we just don’t like fat people.

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WRONG FROM RIGHT

Really, you’ve got to love the Right Wing. They give us so much to laugh at.

For instance, there’s a new book out about the raid to find and kill Osama bin Laden. It’s written by a guy named Richard Miniter and it’s called “Leading from Behind.”

Miniter argues that Barack Obama spent years screwing up the hunt for Obama. Which is odd, considering the fact that the president ordered the raid to get the al Qaeda leader. And it worked.

That is, Obama accomplished something in his first term that George W. Bush failed to do for seven and a half years. Yet Obama screwed up. Miniter so far is silent on Bush telling us the mightiest military in the history of the planet was doing everything it could to round bin Laden up even as the number one terrorist traipsed at will from Afghanistan to Pakistan.

Actually, No

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See, that’s the way it is with today’s Republicans and their various Tory pals. Nothing a Democrat does can be praised, even tepidly. Especially Barack Obama. In fact, the Republicans told us early on in his term that their sole raison d’etre until 2012 would be to bring down the president.

Nice patriotic gang, eh?

By the way, those who dared criticize Bush’s handling of Afghanistan and his Family Honor War in Iraq were immediately branded traitors by the same bunch that’s ravaging Obama today.

I’d laugh out loud but too many people buy into the Republican line.

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Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

❏ XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”

❏ Skepchick — Women scientists look at the world and the universe.

❏ Indexed — All the answers in graph form, on index cards.

Indexed

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❏ I Fucking Love Science — A Facebook community of science geeks.

I Fucking Love Science

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❏ Present/&/Correct — Fun, compelling, gorgeous and/or scary graphic designs and visual creations throughout the years and from all over the world.

❏ Flip Flop Fly Ball — Baseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

❏ Sodaplay — Create your own models or play with other people’s models.

❏ Eat Sleep Draw — An endless stream of artwork submitted by an endless stream of people.

❏ Big Think — Tapping the brains of notable intellectuals for their opinions, predictions, and diagnoses.

❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, games, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

◗ Kinsey Institute, Morrison Hall — Volunteer docent training; 3-4:30pm

◗ Monroe County Public Library — It’s Your Money series: Free, confidential session with a financial expert; 4:30pm

◗ Bear’s Place — Music: Jamey Aebersold All-Star Quintet; 5:30pm

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Music: 220 Breakers; 6-8:30pm

◗ City Hall, Showers Plaza — Women’s Bike Ride; 6pm

◗ The Player’s Pub — Music: Below Zero Blues Band; 6:30pm

◗ IU Cinema — Film: “Little Otik”; 6:30pm

◗ Brown County Playhouse, Nashville — Music: Jeff Nelson & Sylvia McNair host a presentation of performances by Jacobs School of Music students; 7:30pm

◗ The Comedy Attic — Best of the Bloomington Comedy Fest; 8pm

◗ Bloomington Playwrights Project — Drama: “Working”; 8pm

◗ IU Memorial Union, Whittenberger Auditorium — UB Films: “Magic Mike”; 8pm

◗ Serendipity Martini Bar — Team trivia; 8:30pm

◗ Max’s Place — Music: Americana showcase; 9pm

◗ The Bishop — Music: Outdoor Velour; 9pm

◗ IU Cinema — Film: “Conspirators of Pleasure”; 9:30pm

◗ IU Memorial Union, Whittenberger Auditorium — UB Films: “Magic Mike”; 11pm

ONGOING

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

“40 Years of Artists from Pygmalion’s”; through September 1st

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

“A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th
Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th
Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th
“Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th
David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st
Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012
Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st
“French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

“Media Life,” drawings and animation by Miek von Dongen; through September 15th
“Axe of Vengeance: Ghanaian Film Posters and Film Viewing Culture”; through September 15th

The Electron Pencil

Category Archives: Obesity