The Electron Pencil

Well?

In light of yesterday’s carnage in Oklahoma, I can only think of a line that I read recently (I forget where):

If god ever comes to Earth, he’s got a lot of explaining and a lot of apologizing to do.

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My Hero [Sigh]

I’ll admit it, I fall in love like a middle school girl with certain writers, thinkers, scientists, etc. They are my rock stars, my celebrity idols.

For instance, my gush fest over Roger Ebert, both when he was alive and after his death, was as over the top as a Justin Bieber fan’s.

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One of my true-love-forevers is the historian Rick Perlstein, as longtime readers of this fan blog know.

He did something recently that made me swoon even more for him than I had before — and the gaga-ing I’ve done over him normally borders on the embarrassing. But at this point I think I want to bear his child.

The author of Nixonland and Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus is gaining a national rep these days as as an expert in all things Republican — how that party transformed itself from the harrumph-y yet fairly innocuous what’s-good-for-biz-is-good-for-America gang to a more wild-eyed, gun fetishist, persecution-complexed, Ayn Rand-ist, Adam-rode-dinosaurs bunch of loons.

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This neo-Republican Party and its house organ, Fox News, want nothing more than to be able to prod Barack Obama out of the White House with the business end of a pitchfork. Ergo, they’ve manufactured a couple of “scandals” to go along with a real one. Their talking points of the last week include lumping together Obama with that king of presidential crookedness, Dick Nixon. Party of God fanatic Peggy Noonan began it all by saying, “We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate.” That wasn’t good enough for anti-tax, anti-government pain in the ass Matt Kibbe, who wrote on Fox News: “Pundits have compared the current scandal to Watergate, but this one, frankly, is worse.”

So, a Fox News producer contacted Perlstein, hoping to get him to appear on the channel for a feature comparing Obama to the most reviled, sneakiest, most paranoid pol in the history of this holy land. Perlstein can take the story from here:

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All I can say about this is Bee-yoo-tiful!

Perlstein simply, quickly, and in no uncertain terms told Fox News to take its big audience and its potential to goose sales of his books to kiss his ass.

What a guy!

Nowadays, book writers, actors, pop singers, and other people who want to sell their wares to the tens of millions waiting in the checkout line at Walmart would happily appear on a panel with Richard Speck, David Berkowitz, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to discuss world events. Pushing units is far more important than decency, tact, dignity, and self-respect. Juan Williams went from being NPR’s token Tory to Fox News’ token commie abortionist because, well, that’s where the dough was, and laying down with dogs be damned.

I don’t know if Perlstein has become a rich man from peddling his books. Probably not. The book racket is geared to reward corporations that own copyrights and a very few “authors” who type a lot of easy words that can be read with a minimum of effort.

An appearance on Fox News would have exposed Perlstein and his titles to countless folks who might be tempted to drop a double-saw on, say, his history of the Nixon years. But Perlstein found it better to tell the Fox bunch to go straight to hell. And he’s proud of it!

I think I’m in love.

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It’s His Own Fault

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In case you didn’t know, this is not a photo of a pregnant girl. It is a photo of a pregnant guy. Photoshopped, natch.

The Chicago Department of Health’s Be You Be Healthy campaign is hanging posters like this one all around the city’s high schools, where teen pregnancy is about as common as forged absentee notes.

It was reported in 2009, for instance, that 115 of the 800 girls attending Robeson High School on the city’s South Side were pregnant at the time.

The absolutely last thing in the world I wanted to do when I was a sophomore in high school was make a girl pregnant. Which is ironic because the absolutely first thing in the world I wanted to do at that time was to have sex with a girl. Fear of conception (as well as my overall squirrelishness) kept me from initiating the zygote process.

Do kids not know about the sperm and the egg? Or do they just not care?

[via Al Jazeera English]

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Rock Star, Part II

I have this inexplicable need to let the world know that the Chicago Cubs have a player named Rock Shoulders in their farm system. Born Roderick D. Shoulders in Tampa, Florida 21 years ago, Rock plies his trade as a first baseman/outfielder with the Kane County Cougars, based in Geneva, Illinois, some 35 miles due west of Chicago.

Solid

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I hope and pray he becomes a major leaguer. If he does make the big show, his moniker will rank with the following for the best baseball player names ever:

• Razor Shines
• Ed Head
• Clyde Kluttz
• John Glasscock
• Johnny Dickshot
• Oil Can Boyd
• Coco Crisp
• Taylor Teagarden
• J.J. Putz
• Charlie Furbush
• Yogi Berra
• And finally (his parents should be ashamed of themselves), Dick Pole.

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Word Weirdity

Pepsi-Cola is an anagram for Episcopal.

P-r-e-s-b-y-t-e-r-i-a-n

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Britney Spears is an anagram for Presbyterians.

[via Mental Floss]

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Tell My Why

Now we know. Cognitive neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga tells us what our purpose is here on this planet in a 60 Second Read on Big Think:

The job of the human being, as you go through life, is to become less stupid.

Simple as that.

Gazzaniga

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Why, Indeed

OTOH: Loyal readers know I am an evangelical atheist. Nevertheless, I’ve dallied with religion a couple of times in my adult life. Not much, mind you, and not too deeply, but out of a sense of desperation, which, I suppose, is what drives any human to seek the comfort of an unseen, inscrutable, illogical, big boss in the sky.

Anyway, at one of those low junctures in my life, I would spend about a half hour a day sitting in a pew at St. Peter’s church on Madison Street, smack dab in the middle of the Chicago Loop. I’d contemplate whatever misery I was experiencing at the time and wonder why the god I really couldn’t believe in was being such a jerk to me.

Dude, Chill

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I happened to get caught up in a Mass one day. The priest seemed an affable fellow and delivered an upbeat, inspiring sermon. One particular thing he said has stayed with me through the 16 years since I heard it:

We are here to love and to hope.

If the various reverends, lamas, rebbes, shamans, imams, monsignors, and soul healers of this world would have consistently spoken to me in such a buoyant, life-affirming way, I might have tried a little bit harder to ignore the sheer preposterousness of the concept of a god.

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Sunday Morning

I mean, what else do you want me to be thinking about on a flawless May day?

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Bim Bam Boom

That’s what you’re getting today. Quick hits. Flash thoughts. Short attention span ruminations. Bim. Bam. Boom.

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But first, a tribute.

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Take It Easy, But Take It

Yesterday was the birthday of the late Louis Terkel, who turned in his key five years ago but, as far as I’m concerned, will live as long as I’m alive.

He was an actor, a radio and TV script writer, an author, and a compiler of oral histories. While a young man, he landed a role in a play in which another guy by the name of Louis also had a part. The director noticed Terkel was reading James T. Farrell’s trilogy about a young Irish-American tough named Studs Lonigan who is gradually beaten down by poverty and hopelessness. The director nicknamed Louis “Studs.”

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It was the most fitting nickname in the world. Farrell’s three books about the youth, young manhood, and eventual moral and physical collapse of the fictional kid from the streets of the South Side of Chicago were exemplars of a dominating literary genre during the Great Depression that indicted the crushing inequities of capitalism. It would be the last time American capitalism would face a real and honest challenge. Brilliant works by John Steinbeck, Nathaniel West, James Agee, and Henry Miller were unsparing in savaging a national economic system that rewarded the rich and penalized the poor to the point of persecution. Sound familiar?

I wish Studs Terkel were around to interpret today’s obscenely top-heavy economy. He’d devoted his life to celebrating the little guy. A partial Terkel bibliography reads like an outline of a college course on the American descent into a winner-take-all economy:

• Division Street: America
• Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression
• Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About It
  
• American Dreams: Lost and Found
• The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on the American Dream

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Americans get very itchy when confronted with a bill of particulars about the inherent unfairness of this holy land’s economic system. They don’t want their dreams and myths shattered. See, every American dreams that with hard work and a little bit of luck, she or he can become rich.

It doesn’t work that way. It has never worked that way.

Studs Terkel was one of the top two or three reasons I got into the journalism racket in the first place. I read his memoir, Talking to Myself and learned his most valuable tool was not his typewriter or his thesaurus but his Uher, his chosen brand of tape recorder. Studs listened to — and his Uher preserved — the stories of real human beings.

Studs Rode The Bus To Work Every Day Of His Life

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Here’s how Nora Ephron described him in the 1977 New York Times review of Talking to Myself:

Louis Terkel, known as Studs, is of course the great listener, folk historian, troubadour, lover of life, good-humor man and maker of mischief; he is also, and not incidentally, citizen Chicago, disk jockey, activist and author…. In the course of what he modestly calls “a higgledy-piggledy uneventful life,” he has managed to enchant thousands of people into telling him who they are.

That’s what I wanted to do with my life when I went into the newspaper and magazine writing business — get people to tell me who they are.

I can’t tell you the brands and models of the recorders I’ve used these past 30 years. They were all, though, my Uhers. And, like Studs — Terkel, that is — I had an ear.

BTW: The head at the top of this item? That’s how Studs Terkel would sign off his WFMT radio program every day.

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Winners & Losers

Modern Society is sick, sick, sick: Example No. 28,734,032,864,938.

An article this week in Business Insider, a journal of jungle capitalism, sez anybody who strives for work-life balance is, essentially, a loser.

Yup. The real winners of this world place slavish devotion to the office far above any other trivial distractions like children, spouses, hobbies, contemplation, decency, human-ness, agápe, philia and éros, and, well, anything. And that’s just peachy, acc’d’g to the great Biz Insider philosophers.

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Swear to the god I don’t believe in.

As always, Wonkette has the angle:

Nothing says “winning” like abandoning your loved ones to make money for your corporate overlords, amiright guys?

I, for one, am proud to be a loser.

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The World’s Oldest Professionals

I’ve received some 57,000 invitations to join LinkedIn over the years and have resisted said overtures every time.

Why? Oh, I suppose it’s because I consider myself  superior to office drones who feel a compulsion to “network.” I don’t want to be a member of that club. Why I’d want to ask other people to help me find a cubicle in which my body and soul can putrefy for the rest of my working days is beyond me..

I know, I know, there’s a million ways LinkedIn could help me but, still, I just hate the whole idea.

And now, hah! I knew there was a good reason I loathe LinkedIn. Al Jazeera English reports that the interwebs’ top professional club is getting jittery about the number of sex workers who are signing up and, presumably, networking (wink, wink) on the site. LinkedIn is now banning said pros from its ranks of people who prostitute themselves in more socially acceptable ways.

Linking In?

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On top of that, many LinkedIn members are very put out by this turn of affairs. One LinkedIn commenter posted, “Why did it take so long?”

As if sex workers are somehow inferior to people who, for instance, turn down your requests for health insurance coverage every working day of their lives.

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Small Considerations

Surely you’ve heard of the theoretical Higgs Boson, AKA “The God Particle.” You may even have heard that the brains on legs at the CERN particle physics lab recently have discovered evidence that it actually exists.

And it’s entirely likely that you, like me, have little idea what the hell the Higgs is. Trust me, I’ve been studying this stuff, albeit from a non-mathematical, layperson’s POV, for about 20 years now and I still haven’t got a grasp of the thing.

Well, good news. TED-Ed has put out a nifty little vid that explains the whole thing. Or not — it’s particle physics after all, ergo, it’s baffling by definition. Anyway, give this thing a try:

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Now do you get it? I do. Sorta. Well, not really, okay?

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Bim Bam Boom Redux

So shoot me, I couldn’t resist posting this version by Charo‘s ex, Xavier Cugat.

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Five Years

Those of us of a certain age often look at photos of ourselves from, say, half a decade ago and grit our teeth.

The worries, an illness here and there, maybe a breakup, a lay-off or a firing, the years themselves — they all transform that more innocent, perhaps that happier face. Place a picture of today’s face next to that of five years ago and the gritting of teeth may became a full-out grimace.

Imagine how Amy Gerstman must feel today.

Five years ago she was full of glee and hope. She was being sworn in as the Monroe County Auditor, the person in charge of the county’s checkbook, the guardian of our treasure.

Herald Times Photo

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The most recent portrait of her was taken in the bowels of the county jail early Monday afternoon. She is now an accused felon.

As much as I was repulsed by her alleged misdeeds with the county’s dough when news of them first started trickling out, I have to say I feel for Gerstman now.

What is it exactly that I feel? Sorrow? Pity? Relief that it’s she and not me whose all-too-human failings are being paraded in the newspaper and even on Indianapolis television stations?

Something drove her to do what the special prosecutor says she did with county-issued credit cards. Something that could — and perhaps does — reside in any of us.

Gerstman, according to the indictment issued by Barry Brown, was so desperate for cash that she jiggered expense account claims and used county credit to pay some of her personal bills. When she was running for County Auditor, her first stab at elective office, back in 2008, local Republicans wondered why we’d turn our books over to a person who’d had a long history of personal financial irregularities.

She’d dodged a misdemeanor conviction for writing a bad check to Kroger once and, according to Republicans, had small claims and eviction actions taken against at least since 1993.

Amy Gerstman isn’t the only person in the world to find herself making panicky financial choices. But from 2009 through this past January, she was the one human on this planet entrusted with five county-issued credit cards and the responsibility to make sure Monroe County’s cash was being spent wisely and properly. She was the wrong person for the job and the voters of Monroe County knew it when they went to the polling place five autumns ago. Her actions might have been criminal, but our slavish loyalty to Democratic candidates was criminally stupid.

Perhaps it’s easy for me to criticize. I hadn’t arrived in Bloomington yet in the fall of 2008. I’m confident, though, I wouldn’t have voted for Gerstman after hearing revelations of her dicey money handling skills. Not that I’d have violated my own oath never to vote Republican after that party fought tooth and nail in the late 1970s and early ’80s to prevent passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. I’d have done what I always do when offered a choice between the GOP and a Democratic bum — I’d have voted for neither.

You may say I’m taking the easy way out when I do that. You may even say it’s a dereliction of my voter’s duty to make a choice. You may be right. Still, I refuse to give my moral and electoral approval to a candidate who doesn’t deserve it.

And Amy Gerstman deserved nobody’s approval for the job she was seeking in 2008.

A jury just might send Gerstman to the joint for a spell. I wonder what our penance should be.

Gerstman’s Mugshot

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The Origin Of Life

Get yourself over to Finch’s Brasserie tonight for this year’s first summer session of the Bloomington Science Cafe.

Patrick Griffin, a graduate student under Arndt Schimmelmann in IU’s Department of Geological Sciences, will talk about the origin of life on Earth beginning at 6:30pm in Finch’s upstairs room. Griffin currently is working on stable isotope ratios in protein and amino acids but don’t worry, Science Cafe speakers tailor their presentations so a layperson can know what in the hell they’re talking about.

The Science Cafe is one of the joys of living in this college town. Organizers Alex Straiker, Jim Wager-Miller, Natasha Mura, and Marta Shocket put together a usually riveting presentation featuring speakers ranging from internationally-known scientists to students working on their initial research projects. Straiker himself packed the house in February with his talk on the science of marijuana.

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Funny this week’s topic should be the origin of life on Earth. Last night, unable to sleep, I threw the lid of my laptop open and logged in to Stumble Upon. One of my Interests is science, natch, and I was directed to site called Neatorama, specifically a feature on Prehistoric Oddities. There I learned about an ancient critter scientists have named Diplocaulus magnicornis — Maggie for short, I’d guess. Maggie lived some 270 million years ago in what is now Texas. I could try to describe how weird Maggie was but I’d never be able to do her justice. Trust your own eyes on this one:

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See? And you thought science class was boring. See you tonight at Finch’s.

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Real Equality

As always, Dan Savage cuts to the quick:

“Marriage equality comes to Minnesota — because why should Marcus Bachmann be the only legally married gay man in the state?”

Savage & Bachmann

[h/t to Jerry Boyle.]

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Selective Brutality?

Alright, let me put this whole IRS/Tea Party contretemps into proper perspective for you.

First, the background. The Far Right world is simultaneously jumping for joy and shrieking woe-is-us because Tea Party-ists and “patriot” groups have been brutalized by the sadistic storm troopers of the Internal Revenue Service.

Hurts So Good

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(Remember, the Neo-Right loves — to the point of spontaneous orgasm — positioning itself as oppressed and/or under constant attack.)

The “brutalization” comes in the form of IRS office drones asking a few organizations with the words Tea Party and patriot in their names for more information in their applications for tax-exempt status. Which those organizations eventually got.

The Gestapo would only wish it was as barbarous as these IRS file clerks.

Stand-up comics like Mike Huckabee and Rush Limbaugh are fapping in a frenzy over the remote possibility that this “scandal” will lead at least to impeachment or, more preferably, the hangman’s noose for Barack Obama.

Okay. Listen closely. These Tea Party and “patriot” bunches are nothing more than political advocacy groups. They are not — repeat not — “social welfare” organizations, which would merit tax-exemption.

Are we clear?

Now, let’s get clear on another thing. If the IRS was cherry-picking Far Right gangs for enhanced scrutiny, they’d damned well better have been doing the same thing for liberal or progressive organizations. Otherwise, Obama’s IRS is no better than Richard Nixon’s.

You’re welcome.

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Tricky Barack?

And, as long as we’re looking at the Obama Administration with a critical eye today, let’s consider the charge the the US Department of Justice secretly gathered phone records of Associated Press reporters last year. It’s another development that’s terrifyingly Nixonesque.

The Kid Is Not My Son

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See, the DoJ was worried about leaks in a foiled terror plot. So the full weight of the federal government was exerted to nail reporters and their sources in the news coverage of the terror story.

Ick.

One bard at Wonkette put it best:

“Shame on you, Mr. President! We have a really hard time worshipping the water you walk on when you pull shit like this.”

The Wonkette scribe concludes that the Obama gang is far too enthralled with secrecy and that Attorney General Eric Holder must be fired.

Can’t argue with that.

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The English Teacher

The Bloomington High School North community will have to make do without one of its most beloved teachers during the 2013-14 school year. English savant and all-around good dame Elizabeth Sweeney has won herself a grant to teach in Argentina later this year.

The Monroe County Community Schools Corporation doesn’t allow for half-year absences so Sweeney must take the whole year off, she told the Pencil yesterday.

Here’s the kind of teacher Sweeney is: a student went on ratemyteachers.com and wrote, “i love mrs. sweeney she is the best.” Now don’t get your shorts in a bunch over the improper letter case usage and lack of punctuation; that’s how kids type these days.

And, as a testament to Sweeney’s patience, she hasn’t yet pulled all the hair out of her head over this state of affairs.

Sweeney promises she’ll be back at BHSN in August, 2014.

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Mamma Mia

I’ll accept thanks in advance for this. Last night I was thisclose to devoting all of today’s post to Mother’s Day.

Sue Glab, “The Chief”

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As in, Mother’s Day is a big pain in my big ass.

But then I went on Facebook and saw so many posts from people I really like about their moms that I lost my nerve. See, I occasionally concern myself with the feelings of others.

Ergo, no Mother’s Day screed from me today.

[Attn: Fellow curmudgeons — worry not, I’ll tear today’s “holiday” to shreds another time, perhaps after a few weeks or so.]

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She’s Come Undone

How very, completely, and totally cool is this?

Photog Clayton Cubitt is posting a series of vids on YouTube that shows women sitting behind a desk, reading from their favorite books. You may say, “So what? We may as well be watching paint dry.”

Clayton Cubitt

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Well, there isn’t a dry eye in the house (as it were) by the time the vids are finished. See, each of the women is being, shall we say, inspired by an unseen volunteer, beneath the desk, who is (again, shall we say) urging her forward with the help of a “personal” vibrator.

So, the woman has an orgasm while reading literature aloud. Nothing sexist or “pornographic” about it all. No nudity or depersonalization. It’s the perfect marriage of unadulterated bliss and high art. Like I say, how cool!

Here’s an example:

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Cool as it all is, I wouldn’t bet this method will be adopted by local high schools in an effort to encourage students to read any time soon.

[from Criminal Wisdom via Maxxwell Bodenheim]

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Burn, Babies, Burn

As you know, wildfires roared through certain parts of California last week. Firefighters just now seem to be gaining a foothold against the various infernos.

As always, anchorbeings from CBS to Fox News have been wringing their hands and dabbing the tears from their eyes over fabulous mansions going up in smoke. Those who live in more modest domiciles have only themselves to blame, of course, for residing in structures made of flammable materials, so the loss of their cribs is effectively ignored.

Oh, The Upper Middle Class Humanity!

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Other near-victims have been given the brush by corporate media outlets as well. For instance, strawberry pickers saw the flames come so terrifyingly close to their work fields that they considered taking to their heels.

Their bosses at Crisalida Farms caught wind of the imminent danger and issued warnings to the workers. The advisories, surprisingly, contained little or no information on the care and treatment of burns or even what the best routes might be to escape the flames. They were, though, simple and straightforward: If you leave the fields you’re ass is fired!

Or maybe not so surprisingly.

The workers, mostly selfish and lazy immigrants, it must be assumed, claimed they couldn’t breathe and that hot ash was drifting onto their bodies. As if that’s an excuse not to do your job. Anyway, the workers did indeed leave the fields and were indeed fired.

The View From The Fields

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Free market, babies, deal with it. Ayn Rand would have been proud of the Crisalida foremen.

The story has a happy ending, for the sane among us at least. The United Farm Workers decided to come to the aid of the fired workers. The union insisted they be given their jobs back. It also pestered local TV stations to cover the situation. Once Crisalida learned its precious name might be sullied among bleeding hearts and other haters of this holy land, many of whom are known strawberry eaters, the company told the workers it was all a mistake and they were welcome to come back to the fields.

How nice!

Here’s something even nicer: the strawberry workers are not even members of the United Farm Workers! That’s right, the union took up their cause because, well, it was the right thing to do. Somehow UFW officials took time away from tearing down the capitalist system and setting time bombs underneath small business establishments and did something for working people just for the hell of it.

You know, the way big businesses do all day, every day.

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