Bourbon Cowboy

Goodbye and Hello

2009-04-14T23:14:00.002-04:00

Remember how I used to post two, even three times a day on this blog? Well two things happened. First, I had to write an entire book. Second, I had to create a NEW blog, suitable for a Big Name Author (tm), and I haven't wanted to launch it until it's all pretty and stuff.

But dammit, I have to sort of "prelaunch" now, because I have to announce a few news items, even though I don't have a thing to wear and my hair is a mess, virtually speaking.

So I am officially abandoning THIS blog--not even maintaining the pretense anymore--and blogging exclusively at my new site, davidellisdickerson.com (no "www"). Link your RSS feed or aggregator or whatever it's called to the new site.

It contains all my old posts, only this time they're nicely organized so that with a single tab press you can see all my vocabulary poems, or all my bar napkin cartoons, and so on. Another nice feature: all my long posts should automatically cut themselves. Aside from that, there's not much to it yet and it's not even as pretty as I'd like. But it will be expanding.

In the meantime, go there! You'll know you've found it if you see the post that reads:

I've been putting off the official launch of this new version of my blog because I don't feel it's ready yet. No author photo, no link to my book, no press kit, no calendar, et cetera. But I'm between two big events and I need to announce it in some way. So forgive the hasty look of the place. I just moved in.

First off, my story, "A Flash of Hope," is the story of the week on the wonderful Moth Podcast, available on iTunes at this page: http://tinyurl.com/djy2ms The Moth Podcast is often the #1 podcast in the country (up there with This American Life, Car Talk, and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me), so I'm thrilled to be on display. And they mention my book! (Some of you may know this story by the title I usually give it, "The Most Heartwarming Wet T-Shirt Contest Ever." They needed something shorter.)

In other news--bigger but more localized--I'm opening for David Sedaris at FSU in Tallahassee on Thursday....

Pop Culture Reference Question...I think

2009-03-21T12:08:00.003-04:00

I'll be starting up the new version of my website very soon. (I have to label everything properly so it organizes; my new site's got TABS!) But until then I thought I'd ask a simple question. I saw this snippet from Slate's review of "I Love You, Man":

"Their early encounters, in which Peter struggles to emulate Sydney's effortless cool, make for the movie's best moments: When Syd casually nicknames him 'Pistol' after their first night out, the best Pete can counter with is 'Catch you later...Jobin.'"

Someone's going to have to explain this to me.

ACPT Bleg

2009-02-22T17:21:00.002-05:00

On Monday I'm intending to send off a check for my first-ever American Crossword Puzzle Tournament as a competitor. (I've crashed twice to see friends, but I've never actually competed in my life.)

Question: I was given to understand that there was a sort of off-the-menu option to attend the Tournament without going to, or paying for, the meals. I like this option better, but it's not on the official sheet. If I'm a competitor, going to everything, but skipping the meals, how much will this cost me?

In any event, I look forward to seeing a lot of you this upcoming weekend. Hooray!

Vocabulary Poem: Historiaster

2009-02-12T03:17:00.004-05:00

HISTORIASTER. (hih-STO-ree-ass-ter) n. A contemptible historian.

The counsel of a lone historiaster
Won't make a period movie a disaster...
But two or three? I've wond'red.

I know, though, if their badness grows like yeast,
Then twelve historiasters joined, at least,

To make the film "300."

In Lieu of a Christmas Letter...

2008-12-31T19:10:00.004-05:00

...Here's a quick, last-chance summary of the year. Which can't help but be a tad self-indulgent. But a lot of friends are contacting me through Facebook. This will help bring them up to speed.

The year didn't start well: In mid-January I got fired from my crossword editing job. It wasn't a sure thing at first--I had just really screwed up and knew I was in trouble--but my friend Tracy said, "I hope they fire you. Your job is the only thing you ever complain about. It could be the best thing that ever happened to you."

Turns out she was right. By very great luck I was able to stay rent-free in Brooklyn for three months while I collected unemployment and tried out Plan B. (The friend, Jocelyn, was doing an extended stint with Habitat for Humanity.) I spent January and February working on my book proposal for How to Love God Without Being a Jerk, and adjusting to the life of a writer: I began working out every day on my bike. I began to cook, and to eat heathily and carefully. (I also stopped drinking; turns out I'm slightly allergic.) [Side note: I also decided, thanks to Netflix, to watch every major film noir there was, at a rate of roughly one a day. I am now pretty much an expert on the genre.]

On March 18th I sent out my proposal, and immediately got a response from an agent who said, "I can't sell this, but I like your writing. What else have you got?" I then sent him the proposal for my Kansas City memoir, and he bit. On March 21st (Easter!) I got my agent, Adam Chromy, who has been absolutely amazing. How amazing was proved in only a few weeks.

On April 1st, I made the rounds to several different publishers, and on Monday of the following week, the book had gone to auction. By April 6th, I had a book deal for enough money to actually live on for a while. (At least temporarily. I'm returning to work once I'm done with the writing and touring part.) My life changed instantly. It still makes me dizzy to think of it.

So I spent April actually writing the book and waiting for the contract. In April I stayed with my stalwart friend Tracy, who was away with Habitat for Humanity. (If you ever need to couch-surf, go to the Habitat for Humanity chat rooms. I have references now!)

In May I moved to my amazingly generous friend Sherry's country house way out in the Hudson Valley, still waiting for the contract, still writing and exercising and eating well. I lost weight. I had to buy new clothes, and Tracy helped me buy clothes that actually fit. (Part of this weight loss may have been nervousness: I only had unemployment money through mid-July.) So I spent all summer in the Hudson Valley, writing and waiting around, and FINALLY, at the end of June, I got the contract. In July, I got the first part of my money. Thank god for unemployment insurance. It lasted exactly as long as I needed it.

In August I took my current apartment in the East Village, but I couldn't move in because I was finishing the book and a move would have thrown me off. I finished the rough draft at the end of August, and spent September moving in.

It was weird, moving, because it turns out that, after years of being other peoples' roommate, I didn't really own anything for living on my own. I actually had to buy plates, and cups, and salt, and a bed and a desk and so on. And I made a number of impulsive errors that I will improve on next time I move. Moving is surprisingly exhausting, and I wasn't able to return to the manuscript (draft 2) until the end of the month, when I fixed it up and turned it in.

So I am now finally living the life I've always wanted: a self-supporting writer (for now, at least) living in Manhattan. I've also lost 25 pounds and three inches off my waist, which puts me in the best shape of my life--equal, roughly, to my freshman year of college. I dress well, I smell nice, and I'm basically happier than I've ever been. Also, Obama got elected, which is not only good for the country but it won me a long-standing bet. So it's been a really, really, really good year.

I just want to thank my agent, Adam Chromy, and my friends Jocelyn, Tracy, and Sherry, who saved my life when I really needed saving. Thanks also to the Moth and the New York storytelling community, without whom I would never have met all the friends who sustained me this past year. (This also means big thanks to the amazing Cyndi Freeman, who introduced me to the storytelling scene in the first place.) And of course, huge enormous thanks to Ira Glass and everyone at This American Life, who are a total delight to work with. It's been crazy busy, but I'll get something in this year; I promise.

In 2009, I'm eying a move (in August) to someplace in Brooklyn with a little more room. (i.e., something large enough to have office space I can deduct from my taxes...and small enough that the tax savings are comparatively impressive.) And I'll have finished my book and begun starting on the next one. Aside from that, I'm actually daring to hope that 2009 might even be better than 2008. And that, just possibly, things keep improving from here.

Happy New Year, y'all!

Baffling Things Overheard in New York

2008-12-28T00:03:00.001-05:00

Guy passing me on the street talking to his male friend: "She'll get over it. She's dating a Mexican."

I Think I've Found My New Nickname

2008-12-26T03:39:00.002-05:00

Found in a vending machine in a laundromat in northwest Tucson. Kalil is the local bottling company, so I doubt this stuff is found outside Arizona. But look--the DR has a period! It's about time one of these soft drinks stood up for proper punctuation.

The Joy of the Season

2008-12-25T10:46:00.002-05:00

Wasn't going to post today--I've got a lot of Chinese food to eat--but I saw this on Dan Savage's blog and couldn't resist sharing. Merry Christmas from me...and Henriette and Myrna.

Christmas in Tucson, Such As It Is

2008-12-24T13:50:00.003-05:00

I spent the last ten days in Tucson, Arizona with my family, and one of the events we went to with my niece and nephew was the "Snowfall." At a high-end mall in the north of town, they have a scheduled snowfall every Friday and Saturday night for about twenty minutes. "You should come," said my sister. "I think you'll find it hilarious."

It was hilarious indeed. They had carolers. The place was littered with kids, some of them actually bundled up against the snowy cold. (It was about 60 degrees the night I went.) I thought they were actually going to break out the snowblowers or whatever it is they use up on Mount Lemmon to add snow when there isn't enough. But--although it's very hard to tell with my shitty camera-phone--that light mist you can see near the lights isn't actually snow at all. It's soap foam, drifting down in appropriately sized bubbles, shooting out of some sort of cannons. From a distance, it actually doesn't look too bad in the air. But it's soap and water. It doesn't collect on the ground, you can't make it into snowballs or catch it on your tongue, and aside from the visual it's basically useless. It was a huge hit.

The saddest thing for me was when I saw two children lying supine on a patch of dirt--which was now muddy dirt, of course--flailing their arms in imitation of a snow angel. It was too dark to capture, alas, but the image is burned in my brain as a symbol of the most depressing kind of wishful thinking. As a desert rat myself, I never thought I'd miss snow, but I was happy when I returned to New York and found it already on the ground, officially Christmaslike.

Anyway, enjoy the dark video, and snark away if you like.

Best Christmas Hymn Ever

2008-12-24T05:00:00.000-05:00

While there's still time, I'd like to make a pitch for my own favorite Christmas song. In the past few years I've been introduced to my recent favorites, "Fairytale of New York" and "Baby It's Cold Outside," and I'm grateful for the exposure. But when it comes to traditional Christmas songs, there's one that stands out more than any others, and you almost never hear it sung. The hymn in question is "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence."

I've loved the song ever since I first performed it in choir almost 25 years ago. It's eerie and somber and speaks to the potential unearthly holiness of Christmas better than any other hymn out there. (The medieval mode helps.) Unfortunately, a truly great version that's free is very hard to find. So I've offered two YouTubes here. The first, a single voice, will give you a sense of the lyrics, and the second will demonstrate how it can sound when it's arranged all pretty.

If you enjoy it, spread the word! I'd love to hear some pop singer cover this instead of "Silent Night" for the gazillionth time.

It's a Festivus Miracle!

2008-12-23T13:08:00.005-05:00

The good news is, after my blegging, I discovered that there IS supposed to be a Festivus celebration in New York. And not only is it in Manhattan (I was guessing it'd be in more hipster-friendly Brooklyn), but it's only a few blocks from my apartment, at BAMN!, an honest-to-god automat on St. Marks.

The bad news is, the FestivusBook.com website is down or screwed up or something, so I can't confirm the time. I remember it being 6:30 to 8:30, with any overflow crowds being shunted to the bar next door. But now not only is the site not letting me in, but there are ancillary reports that it's supposed to be invitation only, and/or that it's a promotion for Festivus The Book, which is being released in paperback.

So I was going to make this a post saying, "Hey, everybody! Come join me for a Festivus celebration that's apt to be a real hoot!" Instead, I'm now offering myself as a sacrificial lamb: I'm going to head over at 5:30 or so and report and take pictures and so forth, so we'll see what happens. I'd hate for anyone else to make a long trip--say, from Jersey City--only to be spurned at the threshold and left to weep in the cold. Wish me luck.

By the way, BAMN! stands for By Any Means Necessary, which is not much of a surprise when you notice that one of the proprietors is named Nobu X.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention: Festivus is TODAY, December 23rd. So if you want to risk joining me, you've only got a few hours.

LATE UPDATE: The website is fixed! And as you can see here, the event starts at 8:45. Good thing I checked! Looks like you're all welcome, and there's still several hours to RSVP. Woohoo!

Eating the President-Elect, Part I

2008-12-23T12:22:00.005-05:00

I was in Chicago for Thanksgiving, and I asked my friend Jen, "How come I'm not seeing any Obama stickers on the cars?" She said, "In Chicago, it goes without saying."

I guess this is the case, because here are a few pictures I took at a deli we visited a few days later. I have to say I'm impressed at the accuracy of the drawing. I couldn't do a recognizable Barack even in pen, much less in frosting.

UPDATE: I should add that, although she's clearly very popular, not all of Obama's foodstuffs had him sharing the spotlight with his wife. Here was a twofer I bought whose point seemed to be Illinois Presidential pride:

Back on Schedule

2008-12-23T11:58:00.002-05:00

As you may have noticed, I haven't blogged for a full month, and even before then my blogging got really spotty. I apologize. My life as a writer is terra incognita, and I'm learning as I go how to manage my time. What I learned this time around is that I really need a schedule in order to get things done. As of yesterday, I have one, and it's made all the difference. Now that I know when I work and what counts as "done," I am also free to blog and doodle and do all the other things I love without fear of squandering important writing time. Whew!

So expect me to return to my former habit of two or three posts a day, starting today. (Or, just possibly, starting after the 25th, for obvious reasons.) With any luck, hiatuses like these will be less common in the future.

Holiday Plans (Some Blegging)

2008-11-24T21:42:00.001-05:00

It looks like I'll be visiting Chicago for Thanksgiving (coming in Wednesday, flying out Monday), and then I'll be in Tucson for ten days or so, from around the 9th to around the 19th.

The reason for this schedule is so that, this year, I can finally have my first ever truly New York Christmas, which means two things: 1. celebrating Festivus in its natural environment (NYC) on Dec. 23rd, and 2. celebrating Christmas by eating Chinese food and going to the movies.

This leads me to the following requests:

Request #1.) Chicago people: contact me! I've got a lot of friends there, but it's been awhile and I have nobody's phone number. So if by some chance you're reading this, email me or something. I'm not quite sure how to do it, but other people have managed, so I'm sure it's possible.

Request #2.) If anyone knows of something happening for Festivus, let me know! I imagine that there will be some large thing in Brooklyn announced in The L magazine or something, but still; I'm always willing to hear suggestions. What if I go to a plain old Festivus party in Park Slope and then discover there was a Festivus concert in Queens featuring the Beastie Boys? It's my first time; I'd like to do it well.

Request #3.) This is actually the biggest problem. I'd like to "eat Chinese food and go to the movies," but I assume most Jews do this with other Jews. I don't go to Temple, and most of my Jewish friends are actually headed out of town. Does anyone have any ideas for how to lamprey myself onto an existing celebration? Are there groups (like, I don't know, maybe knitters or someone else with a Meetup or other overt social profile) who might be doing something like this? I won't feel truly New York-y until I can pull this off, so this is actually psychologically important.

Black Nerds Unite!

2008-11-14T12:38:00.002-05:00

Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is now one of my favorite writers, has a hilarious little article on how NOT to survive as a black nerd. The article is here, but be sure to read the comments, too, in which the readers add their own experiences.

By the way, Obama collects comic books. So he really is a nerd made good. All hail President Spock!

Next Up: The Hand Formed in the Shape of a Tiny Pistol

2008-11-07T16:39:00.001-05:00

I love this: The stick is inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame.

Brief Thought on the Inevitability of Gay Marriage

2008-11-07T08:00:00.000-05:00

I was quite depressed that California passed Proposition 8 to deny gay people the right to marry. But after a moment's thought, I believe I can prove that this is only a temporary problem.

The main data point I have here is what we saw in the first two terms with Clinton. When he ran against Bush Sr., one of Bush's campaign aides turned out to be gay, and Bush let him go, for his obvious political conflict with the campaign. A mere four years later, another gay person showed up in Bob Dole's campaign (it's like they're everywhere) and Bob Dole didn't fire him, though he clearly wanted to. In four years of Clinton, prejudice against gay people suddenly became political suicide.

I predict it'll happen again. Just by virtue of having a Democratic majority everywhere, the Democratic platform will pretty much be the thing people talk about until everyone's bored, and "gay marriage" won't seem any more horrifying than "green" or "bailout." It won't exactly sweep the nation, but in urban places like California it definitely ought to change.

I wouldn't say this, by the way, if the country were incredibly opposed to gay marriage, like they are to having, say, an atheist for President. But the Prop 8 vote was split almost 50-50, so the opposition is hanging by their fingertips. An Obama Presidency is just the sort of thing to make their grip loosen. (Also, the anti-gays tend to be older; in four years there will be thatmany less of them, and a significant number of new voting-age citizens with gay friends and no particular hangups.)

It's a temporary setback, but the emphasis is on "temporary." I'll even lay money on it.

A Dave Fun Quiz: Before and After

2008-11-06T18:17:00.002-05:00

Twenty words are clued below. The ten "Before" words all undergo the same operation in order to become their "After" counterparts, which are in mixed order. What is the operation--and for that matter, what would have been and/or will be a more thematically appropriate time to post this quiz? (All words are between 4 and 7 letters long.)

BEFORE Clues

1. Act coquettishly, like Sarah Palin

2. Trade

3. Plugs of tobacco

4. Brightly colored parrotlike bird

5. A common utility

6. React to an alarm clock

7. Crash

8. Make sanctified, like ground

9. A male witch

10. Detroit hockey player

AFTER Clues

a. Call of "anyone there?"

b. Horse opera

c. Pig noise

d. Making renovations to

e. Like an old bucket of song

f. Mayhem

g. Mitchum-Russell film set in a foreign city

h. Lever 2000, e.g.

i. Vacuum cleaner company

j. Part of a rowboat

I'll show the matchups and explain the whole thing in a later post. In the meantime, enjoy!

The Triumph of Old Media

2008-11-05T13:26:00.002-05:00

Nate Silver says it best: "Good luck finding a newspaper this morning."

...And Here's Reason Kajillion-and-One

2008-11-05T12:07:00.004-05:00

I was walking home from the PATH station (that's the train to/from New Jersey) and saw the following display at 14th and 3rd Avenue, a good distance away from where the ginormous flag had been earlier. Apparently someone had brought along a drum.

It was like this everywhere, even at 3 a.m. When the subway stopped and the doors opened, you could hear cheers from distant cars. People were honking horns and shouting "Obama!" at passersby through their open windows. I can only imagine what it must have been like in Chicago.

Why I Love Manhattan, Reason Number Kajillion

2008-11-05T04:25:00.002-05:00

At tennish, Obama had 197 electoral votes and we figured we could stop worrying. So while my friend Tracy and I were leaving a viewing and heading to her place in Jersey (where Jon Stewart lay TiVoed), we passed Union Square (roughly 14th St. and 4th Ave, for you out of town folks), and saw that someone had covered the entire apron near the street with a giant flag that a bunch of people were simply flapping up and down in a celebratory manner. It was a lovely, fun, and essentially nonpartisan way to celebrate Election Day, and I even got a little video so you get some sense of the size involved. Thanks a lot, Crazy Benefactor!

The Waiting! It Hurts!

2008-11-04T12:41:00.003-05:00

Even though I'm not especially concerned about the outcome--Fivethirtyeight.com gives Obama a 98.9% chance of becoming President--I'm finding that waiting for the coverage and the results is terribly distracting, like trying to sleep on Christmas Eve. So screw this. I'm going outside. Maybe I'll buy a couch.

Wham, Obam, Thank You Maam

2008-11-04T10:14:00.004-05:00

For some reason I decided to get dressed up a little for voting day. I put on a hat, a nice new suit jacket I just bought in San Francisco, and shaved. It took a little extra prep time, but it was coming on 8am, so I figured even if the line was hours long, I'd still get in eventually. I brought a book--appropriately titled And Then We Came to the End--and an iPod, and a bottled water and a snack, just in case it took the hours I'd been warned about.

I needn't have worried. Although some people have reported lines around the block, here the lines were all inside. It still took a good deal of time (there were two booths for the entire 35th District), but I got in and out in about 45 minutes, which is less time than it took to vote for Kerry back in Tallahassee, where the lines really were out the door and down the steps. As proof, I offer this photo of the polling place. Notice the no lines--although I think this says more about its extensive interior space than it does about everyone's excitement.

Speaking of which, it was over rather quickly, and wasn't quite as magical as I had hoped. I mean, yay Obama and all that, but for some reason I expected to be moved--this is a huge vote and a historic opportunity--and instead I simply felt, "Well, it's about fucking time." Maybe that's just as well. Common sense shouldn't feel heroic. It should feel common.

Of course there are perks to make this day feel more special. But please note that while Ben and Jerry's is offering free ice cream, and Krispy Kreme is offering free donuts, and Starbucks is offering free coffee, no one is as committed as Babeland, whose stores are actually offering free sex toys ($15-20 value each)! Let's hope they don't go bankrupt. For today at least, and to keep Babeland solvent, I recommend widespread partnered sex in the streets, sort of like V-E Day.

Halloween at Hallmark

2008-10-20T14:08:00.005-04:00

I always tell people that the thing I miss the most about Hallmark is Halloween. With all those incredible artists concentrated in one place, the annual Hallmark Halloween party was always a jaw-dropper, with amazingly elaborate costumes. (One year, I saw a guy come as a credible Mount Rushmore, and another fellow appeared as a green plastic army soldier--complete with a plastic stand, which he'd sliced in two so he could separate his feet and move around. But he had the pose down, and he was green top to toe. It was staggering.)

But this post about geeky Jack-O-Lanterns reminds me of the other great thing about Hallmark: their artists can use any medium and still blow you away. Note that most of the geeky pumpkins in the linked article aren't actually all that hard to make. But this Jack Nicholson one I've reprinted here will make you blink and look four times. So believe me when I tell you that there were at least twenty people at Hallmark capable of making this pumpkin--and if pressed, they could also do it in gesso, cookie sprinkles, or hammered tin. It was moments like this that I would rear back and remind myself, "Oh, right--these are some of the best artists in the world." When you're around them all the time, sometimes you forget.

(Thanks to Jennifer Lee-Olmstead for the link.)

Vandalism, Inc.

2008-10-16T03:31:00.003-04:00

One of the odd things about New York is that people are actually paid to advertise products in a way that looks like vandalism. Tonight I saw these two guys painting up a wall on behalf of some new Max Payne release. They'd drawn a crowd of six onlookers, at two in the morning. Avenue A near 13th Street.

Great Minds Obsess Alike, Apparently

2008-10-16T02:33:00.001-04:00

When it comes to books being used as decoration, Dan Savage is exactly like me.

Demonizing the Opposition

2008-10-08T12:01:00.000-04:00

Bumper sticker. President Street near 4th Avenue, Brooklyn.

Bar Napkin Cartoon 71

2008-10-07T00:01:00.000-04:00

Sarah Palin: Evil Sack of Shit

2008-10-06T22:04:00.002-04:00

If, God forbid, Senator Obama ever has his life threatened, it may be because of Sarah Palin running rallies like this. Note that one person yelled "Kill him!"

Late Night Meme: Stuff I Have That You Probably Don't

2008-10-06T01:37:00.005-04:00

Just saw this on my friend Elaine's page, and I can't resist, even though it's supposed to be based on a "Friends List," and since this is a blog, this makes the whole thing basically unconfirmable.

Name a CD you have that you think no one else on your Friends List has. Situational Ethics, by rap duo 3582. I bought it thinking, "I wonder why I've never heard of these guys." Now I know.

Name a book you have that you think no one else on your Friends List has. Since I often steal oddly-titled books when they're being unfairly used as decoration in restaurants, I have a huge list of these, but I'll go with Six Nuns and a Shotgun by Colin Watson. (Unless my earlier blogpost about it caused someone to buy it online or something...)

Name a movie/DVD you have that you think no one else on your Friends List has. I own a fair number of sort-of-obscure old movies (The Narrow Margin, The Man Who Cheated Himself, The Invisible Boy, Midnight), but I'm going to take a gamble and go with Man With the Movie Camera, an experimental Russian film from 1929 that has no plot and no dialogue; just images and music, sort of the ur-Koyaanisqatsi. I had it loaned to me by someone who moved away before I could return it, and I find the music occasionally soothing. I don't know what anyone else's excuse might be.

No Title Seems to Do This Picture Justice

2008-10-06T00:01:00.000-04:00

56th and Broadway. This is the rare sign that's funny whether it's intentional or not.

Cliff Notes Get Worse

2008-10-05T12:01:00.000-04:00

Appalling DVD product at Virgin Music Store, Union Square. The next time I teach literature, I will only assign books that haven't been made into movies. Oy.

Bar Napkin Cartoon 70

2008-10-04T02:38:00.000-04:00

(Click to enlarge.)

40

2008-10-03T16:11:00.003-04:00

I almost forgot: today's my twin brother's 40th birthday. Happy Birthday, Daniel! I'll think of you tonight when I'm attending the New Yorker Festival Dance, which seemed like a good idea at the time. My dream is to get the band or the DJ (or the jukebox, I guess) to play U2's "40" as a private joke. Such a downtempo choice, though, doesn't seem likely to fly until the after-party.

No party on this end until I can combine it with an apartment-warming (and probably some karaoke across the street). Another week or two, I think.

Wordplay in the Wild redux

2008-10-03T15:52:00.003-04:00

Thanks to old high school friend Kentaro (which, come to think of it, also means 'thanks to Facebook'), I now have this example of what may be the loveliest ambigram you're ever likely to see outside of puzzle books and Dan Brown novels. Nicely done!

LATER: I just noticed, though. The cover is a spoiler! Look away, children! Look away!

Post-Debate Reaction

2008-10-03T10:47:00.005-04:00

I guess the second scenario I envisioned came to pass: Palin's "attacks" were pretty weak, Biden was a class act, and Palin didn't completely embarrass herself except for the constant lying, which America is used to by now.

And yet, although Veep debates don't generally amount to much in the grand scheme of elections, I suspect this one actually helps Obama. Because it was one of the most widely watched debates ever (or was at least projected to be; I haven't seen the ratings reports yet), which means that lots of low-information voters stopped by just to gawk at the potential train wreck. And if the snap polls even come close to reality (we're not supposed to trust snap polls, but they were remarkably accurate in the wake of Obama-McCain #1), then 87-95% of the viewers thought Biden was qualified to be Vice President. Surely the numbers weren't that high going in, given his history of gaffes. Throw in the fact that he consistently leveled the most withering attacks at the top of the ticket, and I bet this results in even better poll numbers for Obama. It's possible we've even reached a tipping point, if McCain's abandonment of Michigan is any indication.

The most interesting element to me was how quickly the CNN audience of independents turned on Palin every time she said something calculated to be folksy. "Darn right we need tax relief," "There you go, Joe!"...every time she said something like that, the viewer response plunged, and one of Tina Fey's sketch writers sprouted wings. Wow, I thought. The independents actually don't trust her. (At least not in Ohio on CNN in real time.) If she has to prove herself--instead of waltzing onstage and being trusted on sheer mom-and-apple-pie spunk--she's going to be useless to McCain, because the best she's able to do when pressed on issues is say a few quick bromides and run away before they have follow-up questions. (As Josh Marshall has noted, all of the embarrassing Katie Couric moments came when Palin was asked to clarify something--she is literally a surface-level candidate, one determined scrape away from appalling the nation.)

A roundup on Andrew Sullivan's site shows that a few commentators (like Erick Erickson and Jay Redding) actually think Sarah Palin completely dominated the debate and mopped the floor with Biden. If you really think this happened, get yourself checked: it means you're not paying attention to what mainstream independents are listening to, and it's a sign that you're very much out of touch with politics in America--and possibly reality itself--and the electoral map this season will only cause you shock and heartbreak. The sane conservative commentators are mostly shrugging and saying, "Well, at least she stanched the bleeding from the wound she caused." That I can agree with.

The other thing that struck me is that Palin's message of alleged "change" falls flat with independents precisely because what she calls "change" is what any sensible political observer might call "the same Republican talking points we've heard since Reagan was a pup"--lower taxes, rein in spending, strong America, tax-and-spend liberals, blah blah blah. And it made me think that those of us who are actually looking around at the modern Republican party have been seeing how empty those promises and ideas actually are: Clinton gave us a surplus and actually reduced the size of government. Bush squandered it while making government larger than ever; Bush's policies have overtaxed us militarily, helped create our current economic disaster, and have brought our national reputation lower than any time in modern history. (And where the fuck does she get off talking about how "bipartisan" their ticket is? Was she even watching her own convention? Did she not remember her own ugly-ass speech? Jesus.)

Perhaps this is the biggest tragedy of the campaign: McCain might have had a chance to represent change, if (in some ideal world) he actually were a vanguard cutting-edge Republican of principle and not (as we've seen now) a soulless opportunist who will lie about anything if he thinks he can apologize for it later in his next book. But the diehard right wing of the party is so in love with itself, so blinkered by its own rhetoric, that it isn't even aware that its policies have failed and that maybe it's time to change something somewhere. For the most part I say good fucking riddance; let the Rush Limbaughs and Dick Cheneys wind up scraped off the bus tires of history. But for an actual Republican of principle, the religious right wingnuts, with their dog-in-the-manger approach to outreach have left the tent too small to support life.

(Picture: the amusing poster for where I watched the debate last night. A fun time, except that the promise of free beer caused an overflow and they actually shut off the TV when the fire marshal made people evacuate. So I actually missed the entire section on Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Was it as good as I hear?)

How Did The Gay Jewish Conspiracy Let This Happen?

2008-10-03T10:23:00.002-04:00

Larouchies are apparently still around. 14th street, just east of Union Square.

Updated Debate Prediction

2008-10-02T16:00:00.002-04:00

Oy vey. According to this article, Palin actually plans to go on the attack against Biden--particularly by picking on statements he made against Obama during the campaign when they were running against each other.

On the one hand, I can see how that might work--if she attacks, and he defends, the debate stops being about her. Particularly if he's been coached to be nice to her for fear of seeming "sexist" by the GOP's bizarre "don't ask our women any unfriendly questions" definition of the term. Because the more the debate is about Palin proving herself, the worse she'll do.

I was furious after the Convention because up through Obama's acceptance speech, everything had been fairly reasonable: this is my policy position, my opponent has that one, here's why mine will work. Then Palin came along and drove the entire campaign into the gutter by stoking cultural resentment with cheap shots, snarky attitude, and basically dividing the nation while speaking with no authority whatever. And for a few weeks it worked. Then McCain started playing completely idiotic lies in his ads, and no one seemed to be calling him on it, and between the two events I was so furious I refused to even talk about the campaign to anyone.

Then, in the past few weeks, we've had what you might call a karmic rebalancing, as the evil that McCain has spouted--as well as his reckless tendencies to gamble and grandstand--have really toppled him, and his campaign looks like it's heading into loser territory. (Fivethirtyeight.com has the statistical projections, and they're pretty staggering.) McCain just pulled out of Michigan to focus on Florida--Florida!--which is tipping toward Obama. And it's hard to imagine this loss wouldn't have happened without the millstone of Palin costing him credibility with adults who care about their leaders actually knowing things.

It's entirely possible that Palin's "attacks" will be lame antics that Biden can simply shrug off. This would be in keeping with much of the McCain campaign, who has only been able to attack Obama by lying about him; the truth tends to favor Obama's wisdom, caution, and careful policies, and any true thing they say about Biden is likely to be in non-substantive "gotcha" areas. Generally speaking, if they stick to the truth, they've got nothing. But if Palin LIES about Biden--and particularly if it's an ugly lie--then I can't see Biden NOT attacking. That's what he's best at. And moreover, he's also very likeable, even when he's on the attack.

So what this really comes down to is how disciplined Biden is, and how much control the Obama campaign has over him. But this leaves us with two options, not the most obvious scenario I was predicting earlier: either she attacks, Biden shrugs it off, and it's more or less a tie, or she attacks, Biden snaps back, and the whole thing melts down into a partisan bloodbath. Which, whatever else you might say, will make for pretty good TV.

In any event, if the worst thing happens and the veep debate turns ugly, two other things are guaranteed: first, that no one will actually care that much (this was the vice debate, and Palin's the only reason anyone's watching), so it will have little impact on the overall polls, and second, that no matter what else happens, Palin will almost certainly have to appear on network shows the day after (my birthday!), and this will again take her off message and out of her comfort zone. Expect more Palin gaffe clips on YouTube.

Don't forget how fragile she is when she's out of her element. A single offhand remark about Pakistan made to a passerby with a question made McCain sit beside Palin across from Katie Couric to explain what she "really" meant. It looked like Palin had been taken to the principal's office. (And predictably, McCain lied.) Even half a dozen unscripted questions from people who are actually skilled at asking them is likely to produce even worse results. So in a way, I don't even care about the debate: I want to see her press conference afterward. And if there aren't any press conferences, and the media doesn't raise holy hell, I'll be very surprised indeed. On press-conference-avoidance alone, Palin is now one month more cowardly than Dan Quayle.

Why Palin Probably Can't Win

2008-10-02T13:07:00.003-04:00

I wasn't going to blog today (I've got an apartment to clean, after all), but I've seen so much hand-wringing about the upcoming debate that I feel obliged to say something.

Mind you, I'm not expecting a blowout. As I've said before, I expect Biden and Palin to both play it safe--Biden because he's been coached to shut the hell up, Palin because this isn't a safe environment for her like Fox News would be. But on about half a dozen blogs, I've gotten references to Palin's performance in the debates in Alaska and how powerfully she dominated. "Watch out!" I hear my Democratic friends saying. "We don't want to misunderestimate again!" (And by the way, the more you watch Sarah Palin, the more the George W. Bush parallels pop up.)

But if I'm seeing things correctly, Sarah Palin "won" those debates not on substance, but on charm. According to a BBC interview with Mr. Halcro, who lost to her in the debates...

""I don't think anyone could have beat her," Mr Halcro said. "It wasn't about how much she knew about the issues. People didn't care about her experience, they just thought, 'This is the drink of water we need'."And she beat the incumbent by presenting change and difference and newness. She's just really really likeable.

Here's why I think it won't work. We've seen her likeability already. She's the only reason people are coming to McCain rallies, she's the reason McCain spiked for a while there, et cetera.

But now the news is out: she's a national joke. A nice joke, a likeable joke, but a joke. And since the Convention high, her approval ratings have fallen to a net negative 3 from a high of positive 17. This is not because she's suddenly become unlikeable; it's because she can't even answer the simplest fucking questions from Katie Couric without making even her supporters cringe. I suspect if you canvassed America, you'd see over and over again people saying, "I like her personally, but there's no way she's qualified to be Vice President." She's not the drink of water we need.

So in the debate tonight, everyone will be obsessively focused on what the hell she knows. And frankly, after her last awful set of gaffes (on Russia, on Roe v. Wade, on "the newspapers" and the list goes on), she literally can't win. Even if she suddenly pulls out an appearance of competence, surely people will say, "Wow! She must have been really cramming for this debate! She didn't know half this stuff last week...um, do we want someone in the White House who's been desperately cramming for the job?" Those clips aren't going away, the meme has already done its damage--and particularly in the case of the CBS News clip that shows Biden and Palin being asked the same questions, and Palin fumbling awkwardly, you can't really blame "the liberal media" for being unfair. She's a complete embarrassment to everyone outside her base--and since her base of diehards is smaller than it's ever been (Bush's approval ratings hit several historic lows this week), she's going to have to win over new people who already know her reputation as an ignoramus. So again: the focus will be on what she knows, not what kind of beer buddy she'd be, and a pleasantly surprising performance still has that unfortunate word "surprising" in there.

If the economy weren't in crisis, I imagine the electorate would be a trifle more forgiving. But a crisis demands weighty people with serious answers, and Palin's really not up to it. What I predict will happen: She'll survive the debate just fine, and her supporters will breathe a sigh of relief...and then they'll pause and think, "Is it really wise to hire someone that makes us this tense?"

Wordplay in the Wild

2008-10-02T12:01:00.000-04:00

Nicely ambigrammatic logo. 3rd street and 1st avenue.

Alas and Barack

2008-10-01T23:49:00.003-04:00

Well, damn. I've been talking all week about wanting to go to Philly to help out the Obama campaign. But I had a friend in town yesterday and today, tomorrow's the debate[CORRECTION: today now; I started writing this at 11:45], and--oops!--I have several tickets to the New Yorker festival this weekend, including seeing Stephen Colbert, a humor master class with Ian Frazier, and possibly even a ticket to the big dance on Saturday night. (I'll have to check with my social secretary.)

And now, thanks to the constant emails I'm getting from the Obama campaign, I have just discovered that THIS WEEKEND IS THE LAST CHANCE TO REGISTER VOTERS IN PHILADELPHIA, which is the nearest swing state for New Yorkers like me to be able to influence. So while I may be able to help out NEXT week instead, by that time the most important part may have already been done. Sigh.

So since I can't really justify going myself, I'm assuaging my conscience by at least suggesting that YOU--all you New Yorkers and other borderers-of-Philadelphia--ought to consider going down there for a day or two. There are bus trips and the like happening all over the Obama campaign's site, and this really is the last chance to do some good.

Meantime, I'm crossing my fingers and hoping I can make it NEXT weekend, which is still free of special events. I guess I'll know by Monday if I have to work on the book some more or not. Wish me luck!

Bar Napkin Cartoon 69

2008-10-01T12:01:00.001-04:00

The Guiltiest Workout Plan Ever

2008-10-01T01:21:00.003-04:00

The good news is that I have an exercise plan for the first time in many years, and it's working better than any such plan ever has. Since January, I've lost three inches around my waist and something like forty pounds. There have been a number of factors that have combined to enable this:

1.) I was fired in January and living on unemployment for the next six months, so I suddenly started learning to cook lots of very inexpensive vegetables--which turns out to be easy to do (saute everything in extra-virgin olive oil) and remarkably healthy.

2.) I discovered I was allergic to alcohol (stomach rumblings often lead to bad breath), so I cut out alcohol and went from two shots of whiskey a day to zero. (I still write in bars, and I'll have a hard drink on occasion when there's something to celebrate, but mostly I have seltzer and cranberry juice.) With whiskey as hard as I was drinking, that's a drop of about 250 calories a day right there. More on the weekends.

3.) I also developed a weird reaction to vinegar, and that meant cutting out a host of foods like mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, relish, barbecue sauce, and all the other things that make hamburgers so great--and this further pushed me toward a steady diet of brown rice and veggies.

Most of all, however, I started riding my stationary exercise bike. And since I had all the time in the world, I was riding roughly 88 minutes a day. I say 88 because that's the length of two average hour-long TV shows once they go to DVD. I needed to watch a DVD while riding because that's the only way I can not die of boredom. (And I can't go outside and ride a real bike: too much real-world preparation, and I always get distracted by something outdoors in the unpredictable world. To be consistent, I need to have a completely controlled environment, and it has to be as easy as waking up, putting on slippers and riding away.) When I did this in grad school I discovered that one episode quickly wasn't enough time, so I started watching two. When I resumed it this time, I started at two already, since I knew I could do it.

So far I've gone through three seasons of The West Wing, Season 3 of 24 (never again), Season one of Veronica Mars and Mad Men, every episode of Friday Night Lights, Lost and House that's currently available, 2 seasons of Arrested Development (for comedies, I do four episodes a day), and the first season of Heroes. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of other stuff I've seen, and I did a few movies in there too (It turns out most 1950's-era noir films are exactly 90 minutes long). But mostly it's just been TV, TV, TV.

This is, of course, ridiculously expensive. I've justified it up till now by telling myself that $75 every month (which is what buying new shows averages to) is about what I'd be paying for a gym membership anyway, only this I'm actually using and getting results from. And yes, I've thought of doing Netflix, but the problem with that is that you can't guarantee you'll get your season in the proper order, and it also makes it VERY difficult to watch the best dramas--HBO's hour-long shows tend to come two to a DVD--so I'd get a DVD and need it to be replaced immediately. Not even Netflix is that fast. And soon I'd have no room for movies.

So I've been looking for alternatives, and just this week I hit on idea that I'm afraid works beautifully. I'm almost ashamed to say it, but since it might help someone else, I'm swallowing my pride and fessing up.

The only real splurgey thing I did when I moved into my new apartment was to buy an XBox. (XBox, despite the "ring of death" problem, because they have Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan and I'm just that big of a boardgame geek). Then I bought "Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion," which is basically a dumbass adventure game of mind-boggling scope. You can wander almost anywhere, do whatever you like in whatever order you choose, and have it all happen in a pretty beautifully rendered world with constant new challenges, side quests, and the requisite overall epic feel. For just the right breed of geeky magpie, this is like an endless field trip to Shiny Objects 'N Things.

Until recently, I actually hadn't played all that much, because--well, it's really silly and pointless. But last Friday, when Deadwood breathed its last and I was looking around for something new, I did an experiment and discovered that the controls on Oblivion are just simple enough that you can, in fact, operate them while on the exercise bike. And so all week I've been playing Oblivion while pedaling away.

Oblivion has, they say, 100 hours of gameplay. That's the equivalent of 136 episodes of a TV show, or 73 days worth of biking. (Actually more, since after distractions I really only bike two days out of three, depending on the breaks). And it cost me $50. For sheer bang for the buck, that knocks Season Four of The Wire into next Thursday.

But it gets better. Because although it may CLAIM to have 100 hours of gameplay, like any role-playing game, it actually has at least twice that much, because they probably don't want to count all the times you have trudge back into town to go sell your loot at the local merchant (for reasons I won't go into, it profits you to sell 100 arrows one at a time), or wander in utter confusion (it's often better to take a slow winding route to a location), or summon a skeleton a hundred times in a row to get your skill levels higher. For that matter, you can simply futz around with your character's completely customizable face if you like. (And you can change everything: eyebrow height, eyebrow width, eyebrow protrusion, eyebrow angle, eyebrow color...and that's just the eyebrows.) It's all utterly meaningless but so compelling in the actual moment. The minutes fly like webisodes.

Today I hit a new personal record: because I only permit myself to play the game if I'm on the bike, today I rode for two hours because I was trying to close the Oblivion Gate in Leyawiin and I couldn't find the damn Sigil Tower. (Don't you hate when that happens?) "Just let me get the hell out of this dimension," I told myself...and before I knew it, two hours had passed--and I emerged, exhausted but happy and about four hundred calories lighter. Tomorrow we'll see if I collected enough allies to prevent the daedra hordes from overrunning Bruma. I am electric with hope.

This has resulted in an odd disconnect. I find myself passing the mirror in my new 31-inch bluejeans and thinking, "Damn--I look better than I've ever looked in my entire adult life." Then immediately another part of my brain says, "And yet, I am also, this very moment, a seventh level high-elf wizard." If fuckability worked like matter/antimatter, I'd have imploded days ago.

Anyway, I submit this for everyone's consideration. If you can profit from it, do so with my blessing. But if not, may I add one other thing I've learned? The West Wing has eight episodes per disc. Eight! If you're renting them one at a time from your local Blockbuster, that's the exercise regimen to start with. And you know what else? riding an exercise bike is a great way to watch any film that has subtitles. You weren't going to hear all the nuances of the voices anyway, were you?

The Small-Hat Look

2008-09-30T11:35:00.001-04:00

At One Man's Treasure, a vintage store in Jersey City, humoring my friend Tracy.

Putting the "Why"s in Holy Days

2008-09-30T02:47:00.004-04:00

So wait a minute--the bailout bill didn't pass...and now the lawmakers are going on vacation for two days? For what purpose, exactly? How is anything that happens during Rosh Hashanah more important than helping out the economy?

It's times like this that being an atheist makes me feel very alien indeed. I want to explain to everybody, "Rosh Hashanah is a very nice ritual, but come on! It's not even a real new year! Do you really think God, who knows everything, observes a lunar calendar? Do you really think the world is 5,769 years old? More importantly, do you really think God thinks its more important to sit still and do nothing for two days than to help prevent millions of Americans from losing everything? And even if God thinks so, isn't he wrong?"

And then I just sigh. We're wired for ritual. I understand that. And it's meaningful and cultural and historical and it roots us and gives us community and all that. But Jiminy. At a time like this, I'd expect my lawmakers to work through Christmas or Easter, or to postpone Thanksgiving, and if some holy book didn't order it otherwise, surely we'd be skipping Rosh Hashanah too.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a great time off. I hope nothing terrible happens. But if the worst occurs, I hope those apples and honey were REALLY tasty.

UPDATE: Okay. It looks like the non-celebrating legislators ARE in fact, still at work hammering out a bailout bill. So the only thing that's been delayed is an actual vote. That's still a little silly, but it's not as crazed as I thought it was. Whew! I always feel better when human beings make sense.

A Frank Opinion

2008-09-29T20:54:00.004-04:00

One of the small upsides to our current financial crisis is that it's put Barney Frank, my favorite legislator, front and center on all the news networks. I don't know whether he's a great legislator or not--I imagine he's got to be good, though, if he got caught with a male prostitute and still got reelected--but I do know he's the funniest member of Congress that I'm aware of, and has been for a long time. In interviews he will swear freely, or say shocking and unsayable things. In an interview he did with Rolling Stone during the Clinton impeachment, he was asked who he likes and dislikes in his party, and he said two interesting things: first, "No one likes to admit it, but deep down all of us are basically alike" (i.e., lawyer types who liked the thrill of passing big laws). And second, asked to single out anyone for real hatred he said, "If Bob Barr was on fire, and I had a pail of water, I'd have to think long and hard about whether to put him out. I'd probably do it, but I'm sure I'd feel bad about it later."

Anyway, here he is on today's bailout bill failure, after the Republican leadership blamed the failure on Nancy Pelosi's apparently partisan speech. It's an absurd excuse, and Frank is appropriately withering. It's only a minute and a half. Enjoy.

Palin-Biden: A Prediction

2008-09-29T12:17:00.003-04:00

Everywhere I go I hear that Palin is going to do surprisingly well against Biden in the debate, that she's not to be underestimated, she's a quick study, etc. Even given her disastrous Couric interview, hopes seem to be bizarrely high--Biden has to be careful not to seem dismissive or mean, and all she has to do is show up and seem competent.

I expect this sort of thing from the Obama campaign, who of course have an interest in keeping expectations for Palin high. (It's one of the most amusing things about debates: in the run-ups, you actually get to hear the campaigns say good things about their opponents for once: "He's a deadly debater! We're probably going to get killed! Lord a-mercy!") And certainly Palin had an impressive debut at the Convention. But there are a number of things I'm noticing that lead me to think it's going to be a bloodbath.

1.) She didn't show up on the news after the first debate. Commenting on your own lead guy's performance is the only thing the vice president does in campaigns like this. They're hired to be attack dogs. And so far, attacking--or rather, delivering attack lines written by a Bush speechwriter on a TelePrompTer--is the only thing Palin has shown any proclivity for. So the fact that the McCain camp didn't release this alleged pit bull on the one night everyone's expecting her to show, and the entire campaign actually let Joe Biden rip McCain apart on every news station unopposed, tells you how little confidence the campaign has in her. They actually judged that having her not show up at all was less damaging than letting themselves be attacked unopposed.

2.) The people who made this decision--Palin's handlers--are actually the only people who know anything about her, thanks to the media freezeout. So although idiots like Bill Kristol (who has been wrong on everything, right? So why is he still allowed to talk?) are starting to say "let Palin be Palin," and blame the campaign for overmanaging her, all of these calls are coming from people who don't know much about Palin (thanks to that media freezeout again) and are animated more by wishful thinking than observable fact.

3.) When Palin first appeared, she was a nobody, and anyone who disliked her was a partisan who wasn't giving her a chance. In the weeks since her arrival, even though her appearances have been tightly controlled and she's only taken 'safe' interviews, her approval ratings have fallen 27 points (to a net negative 3), and she's become an official national joke (thanks to Tina Fey--and, of course, thanks to Palin herself, who provided the script for Fey's last sketch).

4.) Palin's worst interview moments were with Katie Couric, who could hardly be accused of being sexist, or even of asking a single unfair question, and this has allowed people to think, "Wow. I think Palin may be dangerously uninformed because she's dumb, not because she's a woman and I'm a sexist." That meme is now safe, and Biden can retreat to it plausibly. (I expect the McCain campaign to accuse him of sexism no matter what happens, but I also expect it'll have no impact on the polling.)

5.) Biden already has a history of misspeaking. A huge long embarrassing history. And for this reason, if he says something wrong, it's not going to be nearly the millstone it'll be for Palin if and when she does the same thing. He's been inoculated against culpability for his words going back years. (This is the same inoculation that has largely worked for the McCain campaign against Obama so far: "Oh, sure, McCain got the Sunni and the Shia confused, but he's been a senator for a long time and it's just that one error." The larger narrative is stronger than the recent gaffe.)

In sum, then, I think the debate will be moderate and calm--because that's no doubt what Biden's going to be coached to do, and Palin's going to be in a defensive crouch, and the format itself is the most rigidly structured of the four--and when it's all over, Palin will probably have said two or three mildly absurd things, plus maybe two memorably heartwarming coached moments, and Biden will too. Net result: further loss for Palin, because she now needs to prove she's amazingly competent and not just a hockey mom, and she doesn't have it in her. Not for ninety minutes. Not without a TelePrompTer.

That's the other nice thing about a debate. In the Potemkin world of modern Republican politics, it's become essential for conservatives to stage-manage their own reality (with Fox News, Conservapedia, and the like). But there's a limit to how much you can stage-manage a debate, and once the cameras are on, Palin will be alone out there. And then, as an additional treat, Palin will have to appear the next day on talk shows--no doubt to defend something she said that showed a depth of ignorance or was contrary to McCain's policy or something. Which will give her a further chance to either say something worse or--more likely--freeze up and repeat the same empty talking points, which seems to be her fallback position when she senses hostility. Either way, it ain't gonna be loveable.

By the way, I turn 40 on October 3rd, the day the fallout goes down. I predict a very happy birthday to me. (And P.S., I won't be celebrating with a party; I'm looking into a quick jaunt off to Philly to volunteer for the Obama campaign. I'll organize something when I get back.)

Bar Napkin Cartoon 68

2008-09-29T00:01:00.001-04:00

Bed, Bath, and Aesthetics

2008-09-28T04:08:00.001-04:00

Now that the bulk of my work is out of the way for the moment, I’ve been taking the time to do a few other things that have sorely needed doing: bundling up clothes to be donated, emptying boxes, rearranging furniture and the like.

Chief among these chores has been purchasing actual amenities so that my apartment is less of a hidey-hole and more of an actual nest that people (well, okay, women) might feel comfortable hanging out in. On Wednesday I went to Bed, Bath and Beyond and bought bed stuff (two sets of bedspreads, and enough pillows to smother a giant), and on Friday I went back and bought things for the bath (a scrub brush, new towels, matching brushed-metal wastebasket and soap dispenser, and a funky shower curtain). On Monday, my plan is to finish up with Beyond—probably a floor lamp and some curtains that are nicer than the bare-bones white Ikea drapes I’m currently working with. Then I order a poster or other wall art, do a little drilling (I bought a drill!) and then I can hang out my shingle.

I’ve never done this in my life, and it’s paralyzing. I sent a text to my friend Tracy that said, “I’m in Bed Bath and Beyond and I’m overwhelmed. How can anyone decide on just one set of pillows?” I could have happily bought two of each of ten different styles. I found myself in the bedding area for over an hour, literally staring at five different bed sets and thinking, “What is the shape of my aesthetic? Orientalist sultan? Funky modernistic shapes? Spartan solids? Country casual?” They all had different claims on my character. Apparently I contain multitudes.

Of course, ideally when you’re decorating, you’re decorating with things that you bought slowly over the course of many years, and even more ideally, you’re decorating with really original, one-of-a-kind distinctiveness. I don’t have that kind of money. So really, I haven’t been thinking, “Who am I really?” but “What subsection of the Bed Bath and Beyond demographic do I seem comfortable representing?”

The answer, it turns out, is “Whatever’s on clearance.” It’s not that I’m intensely cheap. I walked in and said, “Money’s no object; I just want my tiny apartment to be festooned with efficient quality over its modest fractional acreage.” But after looking over every bedding style they had, I kept coming back to three pieces…and all of them turned out to be on clearance. Apparently it’s been a bad season for abstract shapes. Same thing happened in the bathroom. “Ooh! A funky brushed-metal look! I wonder why everyone seems to hate it so?”

So I bought this stuff, but I admit I’m a little nervous. It’s possible my place just looks horrible now and I’m the only one who doesn’t know.

The thing is, I actually know what my aesthetic is: it’s jokes. I noticed this a few years ago when I was listing my favorite artists—Paul Klee, Rene Magritte, Roy Liechtenstein, Claes Oldenberg, Salvador Dali, and that reliable puzzle-geek standby M.C. Escher—and I thought, “Wait a minute! All of these artists are funny!” They work in visual paradox in some way that tries to disconcert you. I was forced to admit that I may not know a thing about art: I just know what makes me laugh, and I could very well be embracing total shit just because I like the guy in the picture’s bemused expression. Without a visual gag of some sort, I have almost nothing to say about any art at all. And did I mention that I’m colorblind?

I’ve tried to decorate in jokes before. It’s a disaster. Since my humor seems to run in a kind of pop culture/pop art/comic book vein, everything that amuses me demands one’s attention, and if you stick even three of them together in a single room—say, a Simpsons calendar, a Humphrey Bogart Scrabble board, and curtains with retro cowgirls on them—the place starts looking awfully cluttered. Additional problem: even if I like jokes and pop culture, I’m not going to get laid if I have Bugs Bunny sheets, even if I suspend large metal quotation marks directly over the bed. At some point you have to rein it in.

What I’m telling myself now, and I almost believe it, is that the styles I’ve chosen are on clearance because they’re distinctly masculine—triangles and squares floating on a backdrop of gunmetal gray and chocolate are at any rate not girly—and this makes me not so much classless as a non-normative Bed Bath and Beyond shopper. I know this much for a fact, because I was there, surrounded chiefly by women and more women. The only men I saw were being pulled along by female partners. By the time I hit the checkout, I felt disgustingly hairy and in need of a manicure.

But the deed is done, and in a week or two I’m hoping to have an open house where friends can come by and judge for themselves. (Then we’ll repair to a nearby bar. There’s really no room in my place for more than four people, and two have to stand—plus we all have make loud humming noises if anyone uses the bathroom.) I can say two things, however: I like it a good deal. And I have eight very comfy pillows on my sofabed. That’s right, ladies—eight giant pillows.

Back Now.

2008-09-28T02:57:00.002-04:00

I've been working, and then buying stuff for the apartment so I can actually live like an adult human being. Now that's all done and I can start blogging again. Now if only there were events in my life and in the culture at large to talk about...

Bar Napkin Cartoon 67

2008-09-26T00:01:00.000-04:00

Bar Napkin Cartoon 66

2008-09-24T00:01:00.000-04:00

Bar Napkin Cartoon 65

2008-09-22T00:01:00.000-04:00

The naked man is drawn awkwardly, and the suit guy is sketchy, and the dialogue is harder to read than it should be. But I have to say I love this gag.

Bar Napkin Cartoon 64

2008-09-19T00:01:00.000-04:00

Is Hasbro in League with Wal*Mart?

2008-09-17T12:01:00.000-04:00

In a game of Scrabble the other day, this came up naturally on my rack. (Click to enlarge. Sorry it's so fuzzy.) I reacted with shock and awe: "I so not, e-Scrabble! I not at all!"

By the way, if anyone has a good play from this position, I'd love to hear it. The best I managed, after finding no purchase anywhere, was HI/HAW for something like 14 points. (I'm too disgusted to even count it.) No doubt there's some vanishingly obscure 5-letter word that would have completely turned my fortunes.

Final Glubbing

2008-09-17T03:08:00.003-04:00

I'm about to embark on a final one-week finish-the-document surge. If you happen to see me online, ask what the hell I'm doing and to get back to work. It takes a village to finish a book.

By the way, the cartoons are going to be appearing automatically every other day or so until they run out. So even though I probably won't be blogging, there will be some amusing thing added every day or two. Thanks, Blogger, for the delayed-post feature!

Bar Napkin Cartoon 63

2008-09-17T00:01:00.001-04:00

Bar Napkin Cartoon 62

2008-09-16T00:01:00.000-04:00

Upcoming Show (Last Minute Notice)

2008-09-15T03:34:00.005-04:00

I'll be storytelling TOMORROW NIGHT (That's Tuesday) at Sherry Weaver's Speakeasy. The show is at the Coraline Cafe at 29 Cornelia Street (I think of it as being sort of "behind" the 4th Street A station), starts at 8:30, and there's a $10 cover plus a food or drink item. As you can see from the link, I'll be performing with certifiably great people like James Braly and Faye Lane, so it'll be a terrific evening.

If you see me, feel free to comment on how pale I look. For the past two days, I've woken up, started writing, and didn't venture outside until 9 pm. But don't worry--in the absence of sunlight I've begun taking vitamin D tablets to stave off rickets.

(P.S. Sorry for the last-minuteness of this announcement. If it helps, I'll also be performing a completely different story on October 16th at Sherry's other Speakeasy show at Bar Reis in Brooklyn--375 Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. I'll be telling along with Andy Christie and Tracy Rowland, among others. Admission is $10, but here you don't have to buy food or anything.)

(NOTE: An original version of this post said the show was tonight. It's not. Sorry for any confusion that I may have deepened.)

Bar Napkin Cartoon 61

2008-09-14T06:05:00.004-04:00

Again, from my old Hallmark-era notebook. The caption ought to be "Merit Badges for Twenty-Somethings," but aside from that I stand by it.

Baby Wants Candy

2008-09-14T05:47:00.005-04:00

Last night, thanks to a last-minute call, I found myself at the Barrow Theater watching Baby Wants Candy. Baby Wants Candy is an improv troupe (with a rotating cast including writers for The Colbert Report and 30 Rock and the like, so they're no pikers) whose gimmick is that they improvise an entire musical based on a title someone has yelled out. One title out of an entire audience supplies the premise for the next 90 minutes. As you might imagine, the stakes are high during the yell-out phase.

I saw them once before, and they actually used my title--The Littlest Vampire in Sheboygan--and did a very impressive job. (The main founder/performer, whose name I'm sadly blanking on, is an absolute genius at comedy, lyrics, and scene management. He brings out everyone else's best.)

This time I thought, "Maybe I'll sit this one out. There are 200 people in the audience, they'll all be yelling stuff, and I had my chance." I figured I'd simply put my name in the hat (they were holding a drawing for two free Baby Wants Candy tickets and one pair of tickets to The Colbert Report) and sit quietly. But then I came up with what I felt was a truly great title--"Serial Killer Follies of 1982"--and decided, what the hell; I'll yell.

Here's the thing: they took my title. And the show, "Serial Killer Follies of 1982," was as hilarious as I'd hoped, since they were not only free to do New Wave and metal songs, but made tons of movie references as well (as a scene in the detention hall started looking at lot like The Breakfast Club)...and at one point, the drummer for the live band even did the drum break from "In the Air Tonight."

Disappointments? A few mild ones. As I told my friend Jenn, I kind of hoped one of the singers doing backup would sing "Turn around, bright eyes...," And no one reacted to anything by saying "Jump back!" a la Kevin Bacon. But of course, these jokes are absurdly specific and the guys aren't psychic. A bigger sadness lay in that they didn't have an actual synthesizer, so no traditional New Wave music was actually possible (though onstage, one of the actors played an air casio keyboard and brought down the house by announcing that she was pushing "Samba.")

Also, while there was break dancing--and there's been break dancing 2 out of 2 times in the shows I've seen, both times as a one-shot joke--they didn't do any rap, which is a shame, since 1982 was just about the last time that people could actually make money doing rap without actually having lyrics, flow, or talent of any sort. (Listen to Run-DMC's 1985 Raising Hell some time and try to imagine what it must have been like to have a climate where a rapper could literally have a track that begins "Peter Piper picked a peck of...pickled peppers!" and not get shot for insulting the genre.)

Finally, there was only one serial killer in the show, and there were never any Follies. I pictured something more elaborate, like John Wayne Gacy and Ed Gein saying, "Let's put on a show in the old circus tent!" Kind of like Assassins.

But I quibble. They were brilliant, and I got exhausted just thinking about how hard they must have been working to come up with new scenes, new jokes, new rhymes. I had a great time. In fact, I had the best possible time, because not only was my musical title picked, but at the after-show drawing, I won the Stephen Colbert tickets. (Don't know when, though; they'll email me, assuming my address is legible.)

So this is my prediction: the next time I see Baby Wants Candy, it won't be quite as good. I don't see how it could be. For now though: childlike squee sounds of happiness. Big thanks to Jenn for inviting me out.

Bar Napkin Cartoon 60

2008-09-11T13:10:00.005-04:00

Click to enlarge. Part 1 of a multipart series of cartoons that date back to my very first (and really only) cartooning notebook, from Hallmark circa 1996.

Dawn of the Interwebs

2008-09-11T13:00:00.003-04:00

Can it be? I actually have...Internet access! Right here in my own apartment! No more scrambling around to hunt up stray bandwidth, buying polite bagels I don't want. I can actually check my email whenever I want to without getting dressed up, showering, and then justifying the trip by staying for 90 minutes. Excuse me for a moment--just thinking about all the time I can save now has made me a little dizzy.

The bad news is that I'm still completely swamped with my book, and I'm hoping to get a really good draft done at the plausible clip of...well, I can't specify, but I should be mostly free of the sweatiest mining by the end of the month.

In the meantime, though, my postings should pick up almost immediately, partly because it's gotten so much easier to do now...and partly because, back during the move, I uncovered a surprising stash of old cartoons in a book that was covered with mold. So in order to toss the book, I had to scan the cartoons, and now I've got about a dozen of them ready at a moment's notice. I'm (tentatively) back, baby! I'm (tentatively) back!

The End of a Very Strange Puzzle Era

2008-09-09T22:01:00.003-04:00

It brings me mild sadness to announce that my themed Sudoku for Time Out New York--as well as the entire puzzle page that supported it--is being discontinued. The last one to run will be in the issue about New York's neighborhoods in...maybe two weeks? I never keep track of this stuff.

It was just under two years ago (I think) that I found out that TONY was planning a New York themed puzzle issue. Since this city is ground zero for puzzle constructors, I was slow on the gun when I got back to them three days after the announcement. The only things they had left were the two bottom feeders of the puzzle world: two sudoku and a word search.

In an effort to make the sudoku somewhat interesting, I suggested that, instead of using the standard 1 through 9, this puzzle could use the letters in the phrase I (heart) NEW YORK in every row, column and square.

They loved it. They loved it so much, in fact, that they asked me to do it as a regular feature: every two weeks, I came up with two sudoku--one easy, one hard--and found a nine-letter isogram (i.e., word with no repeated letters) that corresponded with the theme of the issue. My favorite one was for an issue that was about how to score tickets to sold-out shows, or find ways behind the velvet ropes, or get into exclusive restaurants, etc. My phrase: I KNOW A GUY. I tried to make them funny, but the restrictions are pretty severe, so I often had to settle for merely apposite.

But since they're no longer going to be running, I thought I'd take a moment to salute a few of the fallen comrades: either themes words I never got to use, or words that I suggested that got nixed in favor of something less fun. With a heavy heart, I bring them to you now:

FILMGOERS (they never did a film issue!)

BOHEMIANS (nor did they do one about art, or about scene kids. This would've been perfect.)

MURPHY BED (they never did one about tiny living, either)

FUMIGATOR (or one about New York pests)

DOWNSCALE (they did a Thrifty Issue, but went with DIRT CHEAP, which I agree was a better choice. But I had this arrow in my quiver in case they did it again.)

CLOSETING or RAINBOW SHT (they did a Gay Issue, too, but these two didn't make the cut. The second one's a stretch, I know, but it's what I think every time I walk into a gay bookstore.)

ANOREXICS (They were always doing Fashion Issues, and I always suggested this, but I seem to recall they liked the idea, but wanted stuff that was actually about fashion. They never did an issue devoted to models qua models. Damn.)

I'll definitely miss the $150 it brought me every two weeks. It's not much in the grand scheme of things, but, like most glossy magazine puzzle work, it was a sinful overpayment based not on my own time working but on their standard page rate. That's the lesson for today: if you have to write puzzles for magazines, never write for actual puzzle magazines. Write for glossy magazines where they have no idea how puzzles are created and don't know how crappily they normally pay.

I feel like I should apply this principle to some larger part of my life, but I'm not seeing any helpful metaphoric bridge.

Wordplay in the Wild

2008-09-08T00:25:00.003-04:00

In Hasbro's Scrabble Beta (their legal answer to Facebook's Scrabulous), the "loading" screen spells out "LOADING" using Scrabble tiles on the board background. Normally this doesn't make me look twice, but on this particular move, I did a double-take. What you see at the bottom is my rack.

What were the odds? Probably not long, given how much Scrabble I play. But still--it was fun to see and I had to share.

(Oh--and I couldn't play it anywhere. Curse of the endgame.)

Why I Love This Guy, Part 2

2008-09-05T14:02:00.004-04:00

Kevin Drum has left Washington Monthly for Mother Jones, but he left behind Steve Benen, who's been maintaining Drum's great standard, and this post in particular is the sort of thing more people should be talking about.

Short version: McCain has been claiming that Obama voted against money for the troops. Which he did in a sense; he voted against a supplemental budget bill, along with many other Democrats, as a way to show opposition to the continuation of Bush's Iraq policy. But there was another supplemental budget bill, backed by Democrats, and McCain voted against that one.

In the he-said, she-said world of idiot politics, the expected response--and the sort of thing that Clinton tended to do, smart as he was--was to simply accuse right back: "McCain voted against a bill for the troops!* (*Details elsewhere.)"

Obama is refusing to play the game, and in this article, as you can see, what he says instead is, "Look--here's how bills work..." Read it here. It's just as refreshing as hell.

I don't understand how anyone can make any moral equivalence between these two campaigns. Take away the lies, and McCain has almost nothing compelling to say.

Be sure to read the comments. There are some pretty good ideas in there too once you sift through the trolls. Washington Monthly has always had a really healthy substance-to-troll comment ratio that I don't see at DailyKos.

(Okay. Back to writing, dammit.)

McCain Base Betrayal Watch

2008-09-05T00:30:00.003-04:00

If Kevin Drum is right about this, then I stand by my earlier statement: in a speech that was incredibly light on policy--and said very little about the economy, which is the main issue for people this year--one of the few specific things he has mentioned is "wage insurance," which is a neoliberal social policy. Sounds like he might be a real fan of the idea. The base should be bleeding from their ears.

I'm starting to think that, with Palin on the ticket, they just want to elect McCain and then shoot him themselves.

P.S.--if the economy continues to take hits like this, surely this bodes poorly for the ruling party.

P.P.S.--and doesn't it also bode very poorly for a campaign that they're actually making arguments this idiotic? Once I could see. Twice maybe. But five times? With McCain the last speaker? How can this not hurt him with the reality-based community? Wouldn't even a casual voter see this as a sign that they've really got no good arguments?

Why I Love This Guy

2008-09-04T23:45:00.004-04:00

I should be writing, but in all the Palinoia I can't resist. Two examples today of why I love Obama:

First, Southern ignoramus Rep. Lynn Westmoreland called the Obamas "uppity." The racial baiting could hardly be more obvious. Obama's response? A shrug: "I've been called worse on the basketball court."

Then yesterday in her speech, Palin criticized Barack Obama as a "community organizer." He gave this amazing response, which everyone should read. It's not sound-bitey. It's not shallow gotcha politics. It's better than that--it's thoughtful and sensible and doesn't do what Palin did to Obama: treat him like an idiot. I think the tone is perfect.

By the way, since everyone seems to be wetting their pants about Sarah Palin, let me just point out that, barring a huge slipup somewhere, there's really no way McCain can win this year. This is going to be the year of throwing the Republican bums out, and if people could vote against George Bush (who now has four solid years of under 50% popularity) they would. So McCain had two choices: appeal to the moderates by being NOT like Bush, or appeal to the base by being EXACTLY like Bush 2.0. Both of these are losing strategies, chiefly because the base is jealous of their lunatic ideology and they snarl at anyone who asks for a step of compromise.

His choice of Palin shows the second strategy: Palin's speech was snarky, resentful liberal-bashing that sounds exactly like the Rove divide-and-conquer strategy that put McCain in this no-win position in the first place. If you say "you're either our friend or our deadly enemy" often enough, a schism is guaranteed. Obama isn't drawing huge crowds just because he's a good talker. He's actually selling something that people want WAY more than they want McCain (as evidenced by the comparatively small crowds McCain's been drawing all year).

People are excited about Palin because she gave two entertaining speeches and has an intriguing new bio. But she's not selling change. She's sucking up to the oil companies, she's an inexperienced good ol' boy you'd want to drink a beer with, she brushes off criticism with a folksy charm, and she's obviously ignorant about huge swaths of policy. (As Matt Yglesias pointed out, even on the one thing that she's supposed to be good at--energy--she didn't say a single even moderately sensible thing.) This is obviously energizing to the base, but here's the thing: the base--which STILL loves George W. despite his record of actual incompetence--is driven by ideology and charisma and is fucking insane, and while they're clapping each other on the back at the convention, sensible people actually hungry for change aren't apt to change their Obamaward trajectory. Zealotry breeds ignorance which breeds an echo chamber which breeds self-destruction. If Obama continues responding smartly, this is going to be a nine-days-wonder of a threat. (Especially if she keeps insulting non-small-town big cities as being somehow elitist and unAmerican. That's where most Americans live, for god's sake...)

Two other things that haven't been touched on in any of the blogs I've been reading:

1.) Since McCain is on record as having originally wanted a moderate veep (Ridge or Lieberman) and Palin is his third choice, and since he has clearly reversed himself on huge segments on his own record in order to get elected, why the hell does the base even trust him not to flip again? Once he gets into office, what's preventing him from reverting to the actual rebel he's intermittently been for the last 26 years? Why isn't anyone in the base seemingly worried about this? (Possible answer: they can't afford to be?)

2.) Since McCain chose Palin against his will as a sop to the base, and since he obviously doesn't know anything about her, what are the odds that they'll actually get along? I suspect there may be a whole backstage melodrama in the offing. His next autobiography could be a hoot.

Final note: Great line from Josh Marshall, liveblogging McCain's acceptance speech: "It's so great to have George Bush in the White House. Now let's get elected so we can clean up this mess in Washington."

The Merest Fillip of an Update

2008-09-04T03:39:00.002-04:00

Just surfacing again to mention the following things of interest:

1.) I'll be appearing on This American Life this weekend, as they're rerunning "The Devil Inside Me." My segment is about 12 minutes from the end, and it's my favorite so far of all the pieces I've been involved in.

2.) I sleep tonight on an actual bed! Not the bed I ordered. I ordered a trundle bed, and even though it's been a month, I'm told it's going to take yet ANOTHER month to get the damn thing together. But they were kind and let me have the trundle part, so I'm sleeping on a twin mattress that can pop up or down, and which is still a million times cooler than sleeping on an inflatable mattress. (No offense, Trace; it was big of you to loan it.)

3.) This should be my last week without Internet access. Getting that back will go a HUGE way toward helping me post regularly again. Woohoo!

4.) Im also hoping to be done with the bulk of the book by the 14th or so, which will free up even more time. So there's light at the end of the tunnel.

5.) In the meantime, though, huge push to make a deadline I bet a friend of mine I could reach. If you thought I was quiet before, just wait for the next two days. I may not even leave the apartment.

Gasp! (Glub, Blub..)

2008-08-22T01:16:00.003-04:00

Good news: I now have everything, including my printer/scanner, which makes cartoon postings a possibility again after several weeks.

Bad news: I'm being squeezed to death by a deadline, and it's leaving me no time for fun. (And I'll have no Internet for a week anyway.) So expect the silence on this blog to continue until about the 1st of September or thereabouts.

Okay. Back to the writing.

(Deep breath.) (Plunge.)

Blub-Glub

2008-08-12T15:36:00.003-04:00

I'm submerging myself for another multiday writing push. Don't expect to hear much until I surface on the other side.

Calling All Word-Geek New Yorkers!

2008-08-10T11:18:00.004-04:00

My friend Charlie just informed me that Ammon Shea (who followed in the footsteps of A.J. Jacobs in The Know-It-All) read the entire OED and wrote a book about it called Reading the OED. (That must have been a short title meeting.)

On Monday night at 7 he's talking about it with OED Editor-at-Large Jesse Sheidlower at McNally Jackson Booksellers, at 52 Prince Street in Soho. I will totally be there, if only because he used the same idea I had when I read The Know-It-All. But I thought, "It's such an obvious knockoff idea, who would buy it?" Obviously Mr. Shea was unswayed. I should have had more faith.

UPDATE: Turns out I won't make it after all. A friend is in town. If anyone else goes, let me know how it was? Thanks!

Why Evangelical Eschatology is Both Evil AND Batshit Crazy

2008-08-09T15:51:00.002-04:00

I knew it was only a matter of time before something like this happened: Hal Lindsey has begun to compare Barack Obama to the Antichrist.

As soon as Obama began turning heads in Europe, I knew it was coming. In case you're not familiar with evangelical eschatology (i.e., their reading of how the world will end), a brief rundown is this: The Book of Revelation is a literal prediction of events that will occur in the future just before the end of time, and those events include all the standard apocalyptic goth signifiers: the ocean turning to blood, a third of the stars falling from the sky, the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (famine, disease, war, and--in an astonishing triple redundancy--death). As part of this, the world gets taken over by a one-world government run by a charismatic leader who offers world peace, but who is really pure evil and who has an agenda to destroy all the Christians by forcing them to deny Jesus (to "take the mark of the Beast") in order to buy anything.

This has been a consistent theme of the nutcase right, who have been suspicious of the League of Nations, and then the U.N., and most recently the E.E.C., all of which are seen as an example of bringing the world together and thereby softening it up for demonic takeover. It's a stupid way of looking at the world (and a completely irresponsible way of reading Revelation or of prophecy in general), but that didn't stop Hal Lindsey from writing The Late Great Planet Earth, which took a verse-by-verse analysis of Revelation (those locusts are clearly Soviet helicopters!) and which became the bestselling book of the entire 1970s. So these terrible terrible ideas have found fierce purchase among an entire generation of naive literalists who were scared into Christianity (always an ugly motivation) and who will believe anything--anything, no matter how morally appalling--as long as the Bible "tells them" to do it.

Until now, the most obvious example of the pure evil of this concept was the reign of James Watt as Reagan's Secretary of the Interior. His tenure was a disaster for the environment because he believed that Jesus was returning soon, so why not use up all our resources now? It's a bit like saying, "Why not break all my toys, since Santa will replace them at Christmas?" You'd be gambling a helluva lot of precious things on the existence of Santa Claus. And someone else would eventually wind up paying for your delusion. We the taxpayers aid for Watt's divinely inspired anti-management for years.

The two main effects of this have been on U.S. foreign policy, in the knee-jerk resistance to anything the U.N. does, and the knee-jerk support of everything Israel does, for no better reason than that the Bible "says so." (Israel needs to exist for the Armageddon countdown to be set in motion; Christian "prophecy" writers often talk about the creation of Israel as a modern miracle and fulfilment of Biblical prophecy. They're less keen to observe that the prophecy was self-fulfilling; the hope for a Jewish state was kept alive through the 1930s and 1940s by Christian evangelicals in America and England.)

Theologically, this has the same problem that I alluded to in my earlier post about the evangelical version of the sacrament: it's a mere checklist with no reason to exist; a pure knuckling under to what is seen as a Biblical injunction that has no obligation to make historical, ethical, psychological, scientific, or human sense. (Bruce Bawer makes this point quite elegantly in his chapter on eschatology in Stealing Jesus. He asks, why would God turn the oceans to blood and darken the sky forever? What possible purpose does it serve, except to be creepy? Why, at the end of time when his message is presumably most important, does God reveal himself to be profoundly and bafflingly weird, bloodthirsty, and terrifying? And why, Bawer asks, do evangelical Christians not even seem disturbed by this presumably real face of their God of Love?)

So far, so unpleasant. But now that we have a Presidential candidate for the first time in ages who is actually, genuinely popular all over the world, the nutcase religious right is about to become completely unhinged: they will take this man--an obviously skilled politician who is smart, informed, pretty non-corrupt, and genuinely good at smoothing things out--and claim that precisely because of these traits, he is likely to be the most evil inhuman creature in all of world history.

I trust that it won't work. I trust that, if anything, it will further alienate the eschatological wing of fundamentalist Christianity from sensible mainstream Americans, and will further distance this approach to the Bible from that of the under-30 generation of Christians (as David Kinnaman has already noted is happening).

What terrifies me about this, though, is that it only takes one deluded fuck to wield a rifle. (To "deluded" you could add "frightened" and "hungry for importance" and every other unloving adjective that tends to motivate extreme religious types; they combine readily.) And if ever a theology was perfectly designed to mass-produce assassinating lunatics, it's evangelical Christianity's completely unhinged, scholastically irresponsible, and generally unspeakably idiotic view of the end of the world.

Let me add, however, that I'm one of the few optimists I know when it comes to thinking about an Obama Presidency. Everyone keeps flashing back to Kennedy and MLK and worrying that Obama might get assassinated just like them. I disagree. The world is different than it was in the '60s, we're not quite as culturally unsettled, and unlike either Kennedy or Luther King, Obama has made a career out of being careful and not pissing people off. I don't see how any sensible person would have a strong objection to his candidacy, and I fully expect Obama to survive both terms (barring a catastrophic misstep somewhere or a choice to only do it once), and in so doing, change our national myth forever. I would also point out that it's actually a little harder to kill people by surprise now than it was in the 60s, what with the expansion of surveillance and the interconnection possible via the Web. It sucks that we have less privacy, but there is that upside to it.

But if I'm wrong, and someone does decide to try to kill Obama, I predict right now that it's going to be someone who ascribes to the evangelical view of the end of the world, and who uses that theology to justify his crime. (And if, god forbid, Obama gets shot, with modern medicine there's good reason to assume he'll survive--and this will just inflame the apocalyptic idiots further, because the Antichrist is supposed to die of a head wound and come back to life too. You literally can't win with these people.)

Articles like Hal Lindsey's should be a warning sign to evangelicals: a demonstration that their helpless devotion to a literal reading of scripture--even of those parts that were never meant to be literal--has ugly side effects. It leads to a worldview that can actually look directly at an opportunity for greater world peace and react with unthinking panic and fear and even hatred. And the fact that some of them really think that this is what Jesus would do is an insult to Christianity, and to goodness in general. It's possibly the greatest tragedy that a well-intentioned person can commit. And that's the price of letting an ancient, inflexible book take your actual conscience hostage.

Tubes Needed

2008-08-08T13:03:00.002-04:00

More problems with the posting, for the reasons you'd expect: I just moved to a new place, they don't have Internet access yet, so I'm grabbing it in my spare time wherever I can. It's not a mode that's conducive to focus. Things will improve soon, of course, since they must.

A Meet-Cute Hollywood Hasn't Tried Yet...

2008-08-06T11:10:00.003-04:00

The 'advice' is ridiculously obvious, but the sentence is fun, from Dan Savage's latest column:

"It is indeed rare for two men to meet and fall in love while each is banging half of a pair of male twins."

Sacramentables!

2008-08-06T10:16:00.006-04:00

When I wrote my "non-book" of Christian Top Ten Lists back in 1992, one of the lists was "Top Ten Changes in the Church by the year 2050." And the item 7 on the list was, "Bread and wine in one tiny pill!"

Well, they've done it. I went to a church in my neighborhood this past weekend (long story, short version: I was taping interviews) and as I entered, I was handed a program and this, which I had never seen before:

There's a better picture here. It turns out they're now making communion in handy to-go combo cups, with the wafer right there in the top. No mess, no waiting, no crowding the aisles--and of course it's grape juice, not wine. The only thing missing is any actual sense of holiness or, God forbid, human touch.

The Catholic in me was horrified. The whole point of communion is to have an actual encounter with the body and blood of Christ, which is why you need a priest there in the first place. This sort of get-Christ-to-go approach could hardly be more blasphemous. The ecumenical part of me, though, was more ambivalent. Since it seems like superstition anyway, what better way to completely neuter it of any miraculous aura than to get a communion that was mass-produced by a machine?

Ultimately, though, I'm saddened by it. Not because it's tacky, though of course there's that. But because it's a symptom of what too many fundamentalist churches do when they misread the Bible. They get the bare score but none of the music. In his 1977 book Fundamentalism, James Barr points out that evangelicals tend to have an extremely empty theology: they believe in the virgin birth, not because virginity or Mary or any element of the story is a matter of great theological impact or reflection; it's because if you believe the Bible, then you have to believe a number of things in a checklist: the Flood; Adam and Eve; the Virgin Birth, etc. The important point is not the Virgin Birth itself; the important thing is checking it off, and then, having checked it off (thereby proving that you're not a liberal), to move on to the real center of contemporary Christianity in America: quiet times, Bible study, prayer and personal growth. A topic that has been the subject of Christian art for centuries has become, in Bible literalist hands and for all practical purposes, a mere shibboleth.

So in a sense, the Sacramentables are a symptom of a very real tendency in evangelical Christian thought: with no sacraments, no art, and a minimum of distracting symbols, the only reason they have communion is because the Bible tells them to. So why make it more important than it needs to be? A wafer in a prefilled thimble-sized plastic cup is as puny and comma-like a communion as you could conceive of. Of course, they'd never get rid of it entirely--that would be unbiblical! But they definitely show what they think about the Bible's demands by how they dress it up. (I should add, by the way, that this was a Pentecostal church, so you can also see how, in their interpretation of the Bible, direct communion with the Holy Spirit through tongues and miracles knocks a silly old wafer into a cocked miter. So I'm not saying they're spiritually starving, per se; I'm saying their focus has taken them way out of the mainstream of history and tradition.)

In the end, I think I'd prefer an actual meal--shared meals are part of religious ritual even in hunter-gatherer societies--with real wine and actual broken bread (no wafers please!) and no spiritualizing mumbo jumbo, so you could focus on what's really happening: the people, the conversation, the nourishment that all shared meals provide. Whatever all that adds up to, I think it's pretty clear that the Sacramentables offer the exact opposite.

You know what else it is, though? It's pretty fucking hilarious. Encapsulating the entire communion into that little package is just asking for abuse. I mean, how could a juggler resist?

The Move

2008-08-05T08:42:00.006-04:00

Yesterday I broke out my well-honed trundling skills again. I don't know why I do this to myself. I hate moving. I probably could have afforded movers this time. But I did it myself anyway, in the interest of getting it done immediately so I can focus on my work as soon as possible. (Well, 83% myself; A hundred hugs to my friend Charlie, who helped me load up the van on trip #1!) Even though I had the van for ten hours, and even though I was making a series of fifteen- and thirty-minute drives, I still had to call to extend my rental, so in the end I had the thing from 10 am to 11:30 pm, barely stopping to eat. And today my body is achy all over and in a permanently clenched posture.

I did it in three trips: Trip #1 was out to Clinton Hill in Brooklyn to pick up my stuff that had been in storage since the end of March. Some of it turned out to be too moldy to salvage, but the DVDs and most of the boardgames are all right. (I hadn't played Trumpet in years anyway.) Haven't checked the TV yet. I assume it works, but I can tell you one thing: it ain't pretty no more. I might have to retouch its scar-scraped edges with a bit of nail polish. Do they make Large Appliance Gray? (The big surprise in Brooklyn: I got there at 11:30 and discovered that there was no parking, and cars were two deep on one side of the street for street cleaning. Oh, right, I thought; it's crazy shit like that that's why I got rid of my car in the first place. That cost me an hour of bafflement and redeployment right there.)

Trip #2 was to Ikea. It's an odd thing: since I've been a professional houseguest for years now--I left all my little amenities, like plates and forks and such, back in Tallahassee and have had well-heeled roommates and community cookware ever since--I actually had a chance to rebuild everything from the ground up. I still don't have a cooking knife (I want a good one), no plates (didn't like Ikea's options) and no salt and pepper shakers (I want something fun)...but everything else is pretty well taken care of, and I can even entertain up to five other people. Probably you'll all have to stand, though, and sign a release promising to engage in loud conversation any time someone steps into the bathroom.

The worst part of that foray was when I got back to my place and there was, for the only time all day, no place to park nearby, and I was alone. I was obliged to drag my purchases, one by one, across the concrete for a block and a half. Most survived okay, but my wardrobe was tall and weighed 76 pounds, and the pressure on the cardboard box was just too great. I hurled an old shirt underneath; I dragged newspapers along; nothing survived the shredding, including my wardrobe. In the end, the entire box simply shattered a few steps from my doorway, and I wound up bringing the fucking thing in in piece by piece, leaving the pile of shrapnel outside on the sidewalk. I doubt anything's missing, though, unless one of my new neighbors is a disposable-Allen-wrench fancier.

Trip #3 was to Jersey City, where my exercise bike has been cooling its odometer since the end of April or so. The surprise there was simple: I got lost trying to get to Holland Tunnel, and somehow managed to travel down West Broadway until it flipped as I crossed an intersection and turned into a one-way street charging straight at me. (Interesting fact: you can get ticketed for talking on your cell phone while driving in New York City. Which means that if there's no place to park, you actually have to travel quite some time before you can find a place to pull over and call your friend to say "There's no place to park." Ditto if you get lost. Since I got lost about three times, I lost precious minutes on my meter just from finagling a way to call someone with Mapquest.)

Still needed: a window air-conditioning unit. Until then I won't really feel comfortable in my new place. Does anyone know how people buy these things without breaking their backs? Do air conditioning places deliver? Or are they lighter than they look? (I'm thinking of investing in a dolly and some bungee cord. But of course, then comes the problem of storage...)

I will say this, though. As beaten and smashed as I feel today, as horrified as I know I'm going to be when I survey the strewn wreckage (I'm still at Tracy's for the moment), there's one spot of hope: the first piece of mail arrived in my name at the apartment, and it turns out to be a book I ordered--The Most of S.J. Perelman, a classic collection by my favorite humorist. There could not be a happier omen.

As Proof of Evil Mounts...

2008-08-05T08:39:00.003-04:00

I suppose there are still some people who will be shocked to learn that the Bush administration displays a pattern of faking intelligence in order to justify war, but Washington Monthly efficiently lays out the latest, with helpful links.

Commercial Break (or Yes, But Can Manolo Blahnik Do This?)

2008-08-04T08:11:00.006-04:00

This blog is brought to you by Nike...

(Fans waiting in chairs for the release of Nike's apparently amazing Air Force One sneakers. Rivington and Clinton, on Friday.)

...and Dewar's...

(Cool ad across the street from the Nike fans, done completely in chalk.)

...and by the American Vampire League, whatever the hell that is:

(Fun ad at Houston and Avenue A, presumably for some sort of TV show involving vampires. The apparent defacement is actually part of the poster.)

Photos I Couldn't Take

2008-08-03T23:28:00.005-04:00

I'll admit it; I overplanned. But when This American Life calls, what can I say? I'm helpless in the face of their warm winning smiles and calm handshakes. So even though I have a book to write, and even though I'm moving on Monday (which I suspect will take all day, since I'm driving from Manhattan to Clinton Hill and back, then from Manhattan into Paramus, NJ--they have Ikea--and back), I also agreed to do a piece for TAL the details of which I'm not at liberty to divulge at present. (For all I know, it may not even work and may ultimately not run. If I get a kill fee, I'll do the honorable thing and tell you all what happened.) Hence my brief absence. Since tomorrow is moving day, I wouldn't count on an update then either. But soon I'll settle down into an actual writerly routine, and then I'll be back to my usual blogging state: the cartoons; the poems; the odd observations, both religious and non. It'll all be there.

Until that day, though, I have to share two moments that I wish I could have photographed, but since there were people involved, I despaired of getting permission:

* A homeless person on 14th street today was holding a sign that said. "I'm just like Obama. I want change."

* On Friday, down at Clinton and Rivington, an Asian couple was pushing their baby in a carriage, and the baby--I kid you not--was holding a brochure titled "Emergency Contraception." I actually ran after them to ask them to stay still, but they didn't speak English and looked alarmed at my excited manner. Damn the foul luck. That would have been the greatest picture ever.

About Last Night...

2008-08-01T23:40:00.003-04:00

I was actually unable to post for 24 hours because right around noon on the 31st, I got a note from Blogger that said, "Our systems have flagged your site as a possible spamblog. If you are a human and are reading this, send us a request. We will not restore rights to your site until we can scan your blog personally, and if you don't reply your blog will be deleted in 20 days."

I'm obiously not a spamblog (and by the way, add an r in there--Spamblorg--and you've got a pretty neat name for some villain in a fantasy trilogy), but it's been killing me ever since: what the hell could I possibly have done to get a robot's attention? I don't talk about Viagra THAT much, and when I do, everything is spelled perfectly.

At any rate, I'm back. But I'll happily accept any suggestions any of you may have that might help keep me off some spam-hunter's radar. As so often happens in real life, my actual innocence has availed me nothing.

Homefulness is Here! Sort of.

2008-08-01T23:30:00.002-04:00

I got the key today! That's the good news.

The bad news is, because this is the first time I've ever not simply thrown everything I have into the nearest vehicle and moved it all myself, I'm discovering that things are a little more complicated than I anticipated. Examples:

*ZipCar probably won't have a vehicle for me until the weekend is over. (Summer in New York is like that, apparently.)

*The movers I talked to required a two week wait. It's summer AND the first of the month, so they're already booked up.

*Worst of all, the sofabed I want to have--the slightly high-end, Art Deco-inspired sofabed of my studio apartment's hope-fevered dreams--can't be delivered until the 23rd.

Fortunately, I can continue to stay with my friend Tracy for a few days more while I work out what the hell I'm going to do. My current guess: get a Zipcar on MONDAY (who vacations then?) and shuttle my things back and forth then. This will also allow me to a. buy a wardrobe at Ikea (there's NO closet space in my apartment) and b.) buy a window-unit air conditioner. (Advantage of a studio: a window air conditioner takes care of the whole place.) After that, I'll just sleep on a borrowed air mattress for the next 20 days or so. This will further delay any thoughts I might have had about dating.

Still, it's a huge relief to have the keys in my pocket, and I keep loving the neighborhood. If it doesn't rain while I'm mid-trundle, I can hardly wish for more.

No Thumbs

2008-07-31T00:20:00.003-04:00

Ack! Apparently, At the Movies--which I still think of as "Siskel and Ebert"--is finally ceasing production after 33 years. Ebert has a terrific reminiscence here.

I've been cableless and haven't even been able to watch the show for five years, and this still makes me sad.

(Hat tip: Eric Berlin)

Countdown to Homefulness--1 Day Left

2008-07-31T00:01:00.000-04:00

After carefully considering the driving plan I'd have to do to get my stuff from Jersey City (New Jersey) AND Clinton Hill (Brooklyn) into my new place in Alphabet City (Manhattan), I've done the only sensible thing: I've decided to hire movers, the way a real adult might do it. First time I've ever done it, and just thinking about it makes me feel as relaxed as a butterfly floating in a pool of Nembutal. I imagine a butterfly in that position might wake up poorer and not even care so much.

Countdown to Homefulness--2 Days Left

2008-07-30T00:15:00.001-04:00

I'd write more, but fans of my blog already have a lot of listening to do.

'80s Christian Music on YouTube!

2008-07-29T23:52:00.003-04:00

Thank god for the Internet! When I left Kansas City, I left behind my extremely heavy collection of vinyl, since it was intensely represented by Christian music, and I was a newly minted atheist who never listened to it anymore. But I've definitely missed some of those songs, and after that last post, I did a little poking and discovered that many of these songs live on in YouTube form. If you're completely unfamiliar with Christian music, this probably won't be representative--I was something of an alternakid in my tastes, so heavy on the new wave/indie sound instead of Amy Grant, Petra, and DeGarmo & Key. But you might find these songs fun. I do, however, repudiate all the visuals, which are either cobbled together by people at home, or produced in the '80s on Christian-music budgets. I actually can't decide which is worse. I advise you to listen with your eyes closed.

1. The Seventy Sevens, "Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba"

2. Daniel Amos, "(It's The Eighties, So Where's Our) Rocket Packs"

3. Tonio K., "What Women Want" (A bit retrograde, but listenable)

4. Larry Norman, "Why Don't You Look Into Jesus" (Radosh's pick; definitely the best Larry Norman song on YouTube. It's amazing what he got away with in the 70s.)

5. Prodigal, "Future Now"

and -- what the hell -- how about...

6. Crumbacher, "Glowing in the Dark"

By the way, if anyone out there is planning to release a few more of these lost singles on YouTube, may I make a few requests? There was a lot of Daniel Amos, but very few of my own favorite songs ("William Blake," "Dance Stop," "As the World Turns," "New Car!" "Darn Floor Big Bite"), and there was almost no Tonio K. (I'd love to see "Impressed," "True Confessions," and maybe "Romeo Loves Jane")...and, much to my shock, almost no Mark Heard (though lots of other people seem to be covering his "Strong Hand of Love"). Most of this work went out of print before it even went to CD, so really--anything you pirates can do, I'd love you for it.

Top 10 Christian Songs

2008-07-29T17:44:00.005-04:00

I just found out that Daniel Radosh, the author of the amazing Rapture Ready (which is a funny and also beautifully nuanced and compassionate look at Christian pop culture; I recommend it to everyone, Christian or not), also put out a list of what are, in his opinion as an interested outsider, the top 10 Christian rock songs. It's been awhile, so I haven't heard most of these new bands he mentions, but I thought I'd weigh in--admittedly far after the fact--to make my own list. Since this dates from my own experiences in the '80s and '90s, I haven't heard Sufjan Stevens or Caedmon's Call or any of a dozen others.

My own Top Ten list, in something close to chronological order, is as follows:

1. "Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?" by Larry Norman (from Only Visiting This Planet). The granddaddy Christian music song that practically invented the entire genre, and it's still a helluva lot of fun to listen to.

2. "Future Now" by Prodigal (from Just Like Real Life).

3. "Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba" by The 77s (from All Fall Down).

4. "(It's the Eighties, So Where's Our) Rocket Packs" by Daniel Amos (from Vox Humana). Beautifully structured, with a Buggles-style tinny voice effect that's just perfect for its litany of sci-fi hopes about the future--many of which are quite close to coming true ("in every house a picture phone" and "a president of female gender"). Funny and sweet.

5. "True Confessions" by Tonio K. (from Romeo Unchained).

6. "River of Love" by Sam Phillips (from The Turning). This is the last "Christian" album she made, and these days it's been rereleased on a standard secular label. But at the time, this was an unusually difficult and ambiguous Christian album.

7. "Whatever Happened to Sin?" by Steve Taylor (from I Want to Be a Clone). This is a tough call, because Steve Taylor was very political, and (of course) conservative, and so almost every single part of the song is ugly to me now. (It's anti-choice and homophobic.) But it's such brilliant lyric writing--[particularly the never-seen-it-before-or-since use of a one-word gimmick in the rhyme scheme. This is what I always liked about him; he wrote the smartest songs, even if you didn't agree with them.

8. "Hero," by Steve Taylor (from Meltdown). Not only a lovely song, but a very honest look at what evangelical Christianity offers its adherents: the chance to be a real hero, and to have one that won't disappoint.

9. "House of Broken Dreams" by Mark Heard (from Dry Bones Dance)
10. "Another Day in Limbo" by Mark Heard (from Satellite Sky)

Mark Heard left us WAY too soon, but thank goodness he found his footing before he passed, with a series of three absolutely terrific albums (Dry Bones Dance, Second Hand, and Satellite Sky) whose songs are still being widely covered today--most recently by Buddy Miller, whose Universal United House of Prayer covers "Worry Too Much."

I was surprised that some of the songs I thought for sure I'd represent--Steve Taylor's "Meltdown," for instance--have not aged well at all, while others--like "Future Now"--haven't aged well either and yet I don't care for some reason. Who knows. All I know is, this stuff stays with you. Just a week or so ago I actually had a the chorus from "Royal Command Performance" pass through my brain--it was written by a Christian synth band called Crumbacher, on an album I never even liked very much. It gives me an idea for an absolutely impossible trivia game that I'll spare you all.

(P.S. I ignored mainstream bands like U2 or The Call--whose "I Still Believe" is still probably one of the most stirring religious anthems ever written--in order to keep this a ranking of bands that you really had to be a Christian in the 80s to have heard of. It's more fun that way.)

Nongo

2008-07-29T09:38:00.003-04:00

Let me just add to the chorus of woe, as I was one of those people who woke up this morning to discover that Scrabulous has been disabled because of a lawsuit from Hasbro. It was inevitable--the article that says Scrabulous "bears a close resemblance to the word game Scrabble" is being absurdly tactful. Scrabulous is Scrabble in every particular, from the tile counts to the board layout to the words used in the official dictionaries. So this was bound to happen at some point, and now that Hasbro has recently put out Scrabble Beta--a truly clunky, slow-moving alternative that's inferior in every way--the writing was on the wall.

I have to say that I'm reasonably confident that they'll work something out, because apparently Scrabulous is the single most popular feature on Facebook (so Facebook has a reason to keep it alive) and it has caused a spike in sales of the Scrabble board game (so Hasbro benefits from having them around).

In the meantime, though, it looks like my life just got waaaaaay more productive.

UPDATE: Here's another article that's a bit more detailed.

Craziest

2008-07-29T00:13:00.003-04:00

To bide the time while I'm potentially away, here's a really fun short film about Scrabble. Thanks to Geoff Brock for the link!

Countdown to Homefulness--3 Days Left

2008-07-29T00:11:00.001-04:00

There may be a brief blogular silence as I travel a bit...

It Would Almost Be a Palindrome...

2008-07-28T14:37:00.002-04:00

If it weren't for the damn X. Wordplay caught in the wild, which chain I will be leaving behind tomorrow.

Countdown to Homefulness--4 Days Left

2008-07-28T13:52:00.002-04:00

(Germantown, NY)--Halfway there! Tomorrow I'll be in Jersey City, staying once more with my kind and patient friend Tracy. So if tomorrow's countdown has a different dateline, that's why.

Countdown to Homefulness--5 Days Left

2008-07-27T10:34:00.003-04:00

I just discovered that my apartment technically becomes available on the same day as the first total eclipse of the sun in two years. I suppose some would see this as a baleful omen. I'm choosing to see it as a symbol of the day I get my superpowers.

Death of a Wafer

2008-07-26T11:46:00.003-04:00

P. Z. Myers of Pharyngula has just desecrated a consecrated wafer--which is, according to Catholic theology, the actual body of Jesus. In writing about it, he has produced, not the snarky fuck-you I was expecting, but a truly worthwhile post on the nature of evil and religion. Go check it out.

Bar Napkin Cartoon 59

2008-07-26T11:23:00.002-04:00

Countdown to Homefulness--6 Days Left

2008-07-26T11:17:00.002-04:00

Don't get wedded to this number: the countdown date is actually being negotiated as we speak (and wait for an email from the landlord).

A Few Notes on Thinkiness and Astrology

2008-07-25T20:46:00.004-04:00

A few nights ago I went with a female friend of mine to an art-discussion salon that was being held in Troy, New York. The speakers were as follows:

* a landscape designer who talked about the conflict between using "native" and "exotic" plants (the exotic plants often escape and start taking over the countryside from the natives), and the ways in which mythology sometimes influences the "nativist" plant movement (since some of our native plants began life as exotics themselves).

*a dancer who stood in the middle of the room and fell over. Then she dragged a chair over, stood on it, and fell to the floor again. She then bent over with the chair on her back (like she was sitting at a 90-degree angle) and walked around, saying, "I want you all to close your eyes, then open them and notice what you're seeing." She fell over, then she climbed up on the nearest table, facing the wall. She spread out her arms. "Because there's a difference between seeing and perceiving. Do you know what I mean? Are there any questions?" It went on like that for several minutes.

* a guy who refurbishes old houses and who talked about the difference between commerce and art and the way that his own artistic muse has grown in size (he used to just make furniture; now he redoes entire floors).

On the way home--it was an hour drive--my friend said, "Well, I got a little bit out of it," and I said, "Yeah, except for that dancer. What self-indulgent bullshit! She had no idea what the fuck she was doing." And my friend said, "Really? That's the only part of the whole evening that made sense to me."

I realized then that I was in the presence of a non-thinker. I mean that in as nonpejorative a sense as I can manage. Because if I learned anything while writing my sample chapters for How to Love God Without Being a Jerk, it's that there's definitely such a thing as thinking too much. And to a certain extent, the contempt that some more activist atheists have for religion in general--not just bad religion and bad religious people, but for all religion of any sort--stems, I think, from the same sort of cultural bafflement that makes evangelicals hostile to homosexuals: "How can those people even think that way? I can't make any sense of it."

I'm obviously an extremely thinky person myself. So while I'm aware that there's a limit to what pure rationality can do for us, I'm still trying to work out the exact shape of those limits; where they fall and why they're important; what's so damned great about intuition and myth, etc.

The example I keep coming back to is astrology. By any sensible measure--that is, if you tested astrology the way you'd test the statements of a person running for President--astrology is utterly worthless on every conceivable level. To assassinate the concept in a single sentence: Astrology posits that our personality is shaped by the constellations we're born under, even though those constellations aren't even in the sky when we're born anymore (the earth has slowed since the Middle Ages), and the constellations--which of course aren't a group of stars near each other but just stars that appear to be together from our angle--allegedly produce character traits based, not on the stars, but on what someone once thought the stars looked like (so Taurus means you're "bull-headed," Libra means you're into balance, etc.), which means that a different culture with different myths and different names for those same constellations would technically have a completely different read on people; and what about the Chinese Zodiac, anyway?

It is, in short, all so completely made up and bogus that you'd be better off just saying, "Sheila is anal and a compulsive talker" than saying, "Sheila is anal and chatty; that's just so Virgo of her!" Because it really really really really isn't Virgo of her, and never has been, and has never made a single lick of sense. I don't even mean it's not scientific. I mean that not even common sense applies here; astrology is held to a lower standard than we ask of advertisements.

And yet, broadly speaking, women are drawn to astrology. That's sociological fact: Women make up 80% of the consumers of astrology magazines, and that's why you find astrology columns in Glamour and O, but not in Popular Mechanics or (if memory serves) Boys' Life. Women may not take it very seriously (I know few who plan their days around it, Nancy-Reagan-style), but a helluva lot seem to find it at least fun to think about, and it does inform the way many women talk of, and interpret, the world and the people in it.

As a fair-minded but very thinky person, this puts me in a dangerous situation: if rationalism really is the best way to go, then women, demographically speaking, are idiots. That's obviously very uncharitable, and flies in the face of another fact: I really love women. I have always preferred their company over men, and their wisdom and care have added immeasurably to my life. If I dismissed people out of hand for believing in astrology, my life would be quite impoverished.

So that leaves the question: what the hell makes people--including many people I love--think astrology is worth a second's thought? And after talking to my dance-loving friend the other night, I have reached this theory: astrology is a shared cultural myth--something like a religion with no theology and no demands--and by invoking astrology ("Steve is such a Taurus!"), its adherents are sharing in a community and giving their beliefs about someone's psychology a more profound anchor. Steve isn't just aggressive out of nowhere; it's a mythical aggressiveness that we believers have all seen before. So we can pool our wisdom to talk about it, even if you don't know Steve personally.

The proof of this, I think, is that although people use astrology to make general pronouncements ("Pisces are very peaceful people"), only rarely do they say things that are actually counter-intuitive. They wouldn't say, for example, "Although Julian is an abusive wife-beater, he's really a peaceful person because he's a Pisces." Instead they say something more like, "Although he's a Pisces, he must have been born with Jupiter in retrograde to be such a violent jerk as well." I haven't read the latest astrology magazines about the Presidential candidates, but I can hazard a guess: the stars tell us that Hillary is aggressive and ambitious, that McCain is experienced but has a temper, and that Obama is idealistic and open to possibilities. Call me psychic. Astrology never trumps common sense; it serves to explain it.

In other words, astrology is layered over everyday observations--observations that aren't even particularly interesting--in order to imbue them with greater meaning, even if that greater meaning isn't that much greater or taken that much more seriously. So the fact that half the population is inclined to this way of thinking suggests that there's value in it. It suggests a whole series of things that I'm trying to take to heart as well: that in many cases it may be more important to create community than to be exhaustively factual (something all storytellers know); that the impact of a belief may need to be weighed more than its provable accuracy (which we see all the time in discussions of life after death, where materialists have a particularly hard sell to make); and that a happy life may be the one that doesn't worry the details to death.

It still doesn't make sense to me, but of course that may be much of the point; we can survive the loss of more sense than hyperrational people (like me) think we can. I'm still learning.

Of course it may also be the case that we need all types of people, from the extremely impractical energy-invoking dancer types to the hard-edged, taxonomy-wielding lexicographers, and maybe even advising people to do something about it is the wrong approach. But at present I'm convinced that the extremes are not entirely healthy, and that it's better, if possible, to aim yourself toward the middle. Even if you can't get all the way there, some balance, and more of it, is better than none.

Countdown to Homefulness--7 Days Left

2008-07-25T15:18:00.001-04:00

Ahem. It has been brought to my attention that July has 31 days, and since my apartment will be available on August 1st, I've been misnumbering my countdown. I apologize for any confusion that would have eventuated a week from now.

Midday Quiz Question

2008-07-24T17:16:00.003-04:00

What do the following have in common: Monopoly, Columbus, Pinocchio, and a light bulb?

I'll give the answers when I'm good and ready.

LATER: Okay, I'm ready now. Answers in comments.

Countdown to Homefulness--8 (not 7) Days Left

2008-07-23T23:38:00.003-04:00

(posted a trifle early so I don't have any distractions for tomorrow's more official writing)

A BRIEF POEM OF HOMEFUL ANTICIPATION

When I’d the chance, right off the bat

I got a little Village flat

So if I ever bought a hat

I’d have a place to hang it.

In dreams, I’ve decked its every stat

From walls to bed to bathroom mat...

But I wake up and notice that

It’s still not mine yet. Dang it!

Bourbon Cowboy

Goodbye and Hello

Pop Culture Reference Question...I think

ACPT Bleg

Vocabulary Poem: Historiaster

In Lieu of a Christmas Letter...

Baffling Things Overheard in New York

I Think I've Found My New Nickname

The Joy of the Season

Christmas in Tucson, Such As It Is

Best Christmas Hymn Ever

It's a Festivus Miracle!

Eating the President-Elect, Part I

Back on Schedule

Holiday Plans (Some Blegging)

Black Nerds Unite!

Next Up: The Hand Formed in the Shape of a Tiny Pistol

Brief Thought on the Inevitability of Gay Marriage

A Dave Fun Quiz: Before and After

The Triumph of Old Media

...And Here's Reason Kajillion-and-One

Why I Love Manhattan, Reason Number Kajillion

The Waiting! It Hurts!

Wham, Obam, Thank You Maam

Halloween at Hallmark

Vandalism, Inc.

Great Minds Obsess Alike, Apparently

Demonizing the Opposition

Bar Napkin Cartoon 71

Sarah Palin: Evil Sack of Shit

Late Night Meme: Stuff I Have That You Probably Don't

No Title Seems to Do This Picture Justice

Cliff Notes Get Worse

Bar Napkin Cartoon 70

40

Wordplay in the Wild redux

Post-Debate Reaction

How Did The Gay Jewish Conspiracy Let This Happen?

Updated Debate Prediction

Why Palin Probably Can't Win

Wordplay in the Wild

Alas and Barack

Bar Napkin Cartoon 69

The Guiltiest Workout Plan Ever

The Small-Hat Look

Putting the "Why"s in Holy Days

A Frank Opinion

Palin-Biden: A Prediction

Bar Napkin Cartoon 68

Bed, Bath, and Aesthetics

Back Now.

Bar Napkin Cartoon 67

Bar Napkin Cartoon 66

Bar Napkin Cartoon 65

Bar Napkin Cartoon 64

Is Hasbro in League with Wal*Mart?

Final Glubbing

Bar Napkin Cartoon 63

Bar Napkin Cartoon 62

Upcoming Show (Last Minute Notice)

Bar Napkin Cartoon 61

Baby Wants Candy

Bar Napkin Cartoon 60

Dawn of the Interwebs

The End of a Very Strange Puzzle Era

Wordplay in the Wild

Why I Love This Guy, Part 2

McCain Base Betrayal Watch

Why I Love This Guy

The Merest Fillip of an Update

*Gasp!* (Glub, Blub..)

Blub-Glub

Calling All Word-Geek New Yorkers!

Why Evangelical Eschatology is Both Evil AND Batshit Crazy

Tubes Needed

A Meet-Cute Hollywood Hasn't Tried Yet...

Sacramentables!

The Move

As Proof of Evil Mounts...

Commercial Break (or Yes, But Can Manolo Blahnik Do This?)

Gasp! (Glub, Blub..)