Some thoughts about September 11

Whenever I look at a digital clock and the time reads 9:11, I shudder and feel a sudden depression. Then I'm annoyed with myself that five years on, I can't shake that response. Yet whenever I hear a politician refer to 9/11, I don't feel the same shudder, just anger at the way it's used as justification for bad decisions, for hollow and redundant remembrance.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, my newspaper didn't come. I was getting ready for school (I had just started a Masters program in English then), and I needed some kind of noise as I ate breakfast and drank my coffee. So I turned on the Today Show around 8:30 and went around my apartment. I had finally sat down on my ratty, twenty-year-old couch to sip my coffee and drift mindlessly on pablum before heading to a class on modernism, when the show comes back from commerical to a shot of the first tower on fire with part of a jetliner sticking out.

Katie Couric was interviewing an NBC producer who lived near the towers by phone. As the second tower was hit, Couric was asking a question. She continued asking through the shot and through the producer's screams of "Oh my God!" for about five seconds. For that reason, to this day I cringe when I see or hear Couric.

I called my mom and told her to turn on the television. I went to class, where I was the only grad student in a class of 30. Before class, people were talking, sharing rumors (a bomb outside the State Department, hijacked planes all over the country), and I felt like even more of an outsider, unable to share in what they knew and didn't know.

After class I spent some time trying to log onto news sites; I informed a fellow grad student, Bill, of what had happened. Several times over the next few years, he reminded me that I was the one who made him aware of what was happening on September 11.

I tutored a foreign-exchange student in the Writing Lab, part of a new building designed to house all the university's tutoring and career help centers. I kept looking away from her essay to the 80s televisions on rolling stands in the distance, when through the crowd around the TVs I could get a glimpse of the towers falling. "Why are all those people watching the TVs?" she asked.

"People flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon this morning."

"Why would people do that?" she said, now unable to think about the essay that had been the cause of her day's anxiety until then.

"I don't know," I said.

I went home afterward and watched news coverage all day, glued to recurring shots of jumpers, of the tops of the towers surreally sliding earthward, taking the rest of the towers with them. Footage of concrete dust billowing, then blackening the street, then giving way to a gray haze. Tom Brokaw and the skyline of wind-blown smoke behind him.

I had bad, predictable dreams in the weeks afterward. I tried to write a September 11 story after declaring only awful ones would be written. I have nothing new to say, nothing new to feel about it, nothing new at all. So if you've kept reading, thanks.

Does Monsanto hate you?

Go watch this. Go read this. Beware Monsanto, beware milk.

The Path to Propaganda

If you haven't heard, on Sept. 10 & 11, ABC will run a film called The Path to 9/11 which is filled with bizarre inaccuracies. Not only will it try to capitalize off of 9/11, it will slander Bill Clinton. Go read more here.

What the hell?

So I checked my blog hit stats today to find that, since around 3:00 pm, over fifty people have come to my blog, most of them searching for something related to David Horowitz and his "blog" about his book. Anyone want to fill me in on why?

Sniffing the protein powder

So I went to the nearby GNC today to get methylcobalamin, a less-common source of B-12. The most common source is cyanocobalamin, but it's often more difficult for the body to process. You take methylcobalamin sublingually (let it dissolve under the tongue), so it bypasses the digestive system and gets metabolized quicker. Some uses are to slow or prevent Alzheimer's disease, decrease the risk of heart disease, and improve one's mood.

But I'm not here to discuss alternative medicines. The guy at the GNC store was nothing like the guys I've seen in other stores--not the big, beefy, neckless wonders who wear the store's shirt one size too small. No, he was a post-Avril Lavigne punk rocker, complete with a black t-shirt and black jeans, heavily gelled black hair, silly tattoos on his forearms, and gigantic earrings. I kept wanting to ask him if he was robbing the place, but instead I asked, "Where do you keep the B vitamins?"

And going to the GNC reminded me of a great story. Several years ago, when the first rumors that Mark McGwire was taking andro and creatine were going around, my friend Gary and I went to the local Smoothie King for smoothies. While we waited, we checked out the wall of supplements and found creatine. One of us, in our worst surfer-dude impression, said, "Dude, gimme some andro!" As if sparked to life, one of the Smoothie King employees came up and said, in a hushed voice, "You guys want some andro?" We laughed and said no.

After he walked off and disappeared into the back, I said, "Look at how skinny we are. I can't believe he thinks we use andro." Just then, another employee came up and said, "You guys want some andro?" We bolted when we got our smoothies and never went back.

One more thing

In my post the other day about the Center for Internet Addiction, I forgot to mention their Internet Addiction Test. For each question, here are your possible answers.

1. Rarely
2. Occasionally
3. Frequently
4. Often
   
5. Always
6. Does not apply

Now I'm not a professional test writer (though I occasionally or rarely give quizzes), but don't Rarely and Occasionally seem too similar, as do Frequently and Often? So I'm going to vote that the website cannot help you. I'll grant that I haven't read their published paper (careful, it's a pdf) about the Internet Addiction Test, and be aware I'm not a scientician. Still, I'm often, or frequently, interested in how language is used to manipulate people.

The sweet taste of The Onion

Fresh off of questioning Adam Carolla's skill as a comic, I found that the good people at The Onion lay into him. See also their great article about a student writing an essay.

Whatever happened to Bill Simmons?

I'll begin by saying I like reading Bill Simmons, aka the Sports Guy. Among the other writers at ESPN.com's Page 2--the tin-earred, falsely drama of Scoop Jackson, the hyper-reaction of Skip Bayless, the schticky logorrhea of Gregg Easterbrook--Simmons is usually clear, direct, and funny. And, as he likes to point out, why complain about a free column?

That said, the quality of his columns has diminished over time. For example, see his tediously long, obvious comparison between Larry Bird and David Ortiz. What a shock that Bird, fondly known to Simmons as "Larry Legend" and "The Basketball Jesus," won out. Or notice the frequency of mailbag columns lately, the truest sign of Simmons mailing it in.

And the apt criticisms have increased. See the Bill Simmons column generator, Awful Announcing's regular analysis of Simmons' columns, or any reaction to the Sports Guy cartoon(scroll down).

So why has this happened? Why have a lot of Simmons' readers turned on him like Philly fans on Santa Claus? I've been thinking about this a lot, in part because I still check regularly for new columns. It's not like he's become a terrible writer; though he's not as sharp as he was, he's still often worth reading. So here's what I think has happened.

1. Simple attrition. He's not a journalist, he's a writer. I wouldn't even call him a sportswriter. He's a writer who happens to use sports as a general guiding focus. But he's been at his best when he rambles, when he veers away from sports to movies, the nature of his relationships with his male friends, etc. He doesn't write about sports so much as the places sports intersects with life.

Plus, he writes as a fan, particularly as a fan of the internet age. Reading Simmons' best columns is like reading one of those long, rambling emails from a friend who you only see a couple of times a year. Except he's obviously considered what ramblings work and what don't. That's why his Curious Guy segments aren't all that interesting--he asks questions like a fan without really challenging who he's writing with. Or the cartoon--the best word to describe the cartoon is, I think, execrable. Simmons is a good writer, but his timing in prose doesn't translate beyond prose. That's his strength and his limit.

At a certain point, of course, Simmons couldn't keep writing the same columns using the same strengths. He had to expand, which meant other kinds of experiments. So we get the good--his book, the columns about sports books (you know, the ones you read, not the ones where his picks aren't as good as he claims they should be)--but we also get the bad. And because he's writing for ESPN, the expectations are raised, and he has less opportunity to experiment on a smaller scale.

2. Age. He's grown up. You can date this to his move to the West Coast, if you'd like, though I think it's a little more complicated than that. He got married, had a daughter, bought what I assume is a big house, etc. Early on, Simmons posted several long columns per week, each one energetic. He posted each day of a week's trip to Vegas; he posted each day of a Super Bowl trip. Now the columns arrive less frequently; notice how often Simmons complains about his body.

So in the last few years we've seen some good ideas poorly executed. The intern contest, for one, which not only dragged on forever but ended with Simmons hiring a guy who always underperformed. Simmons' energy seemed split; writing both columns for ESPN and jokes for Kimmel seemed to drain him.

3. Speaking of the Kimmel show, Simmons seemed to lose perspective once he started writing for it. The show isn't that good. Strangely enough, Simmons regularly claims that Adam Carrolla is the funniest guy in any room he's in. I'll be happy to be proven wrong, but I couldn't agree less.
____________________

All that said, I still enjoy reading the Sports Guy. He's claimed recently he doesn't want to write his column much longer, or doesn't expect to. So let's enjoy what we can while we can. I'll still look forward to the next big project (a book, I hope).

How to cure an internet addiction

While on vacation, I had little access to the internet and found myself much more productive. Now that I'm back, I'm back online a lot, wasting time and feeling annoyed with myself. But it turns out there's a solution: The Center for Internet Addiction. Sounds great. But it's a website, and I'd like to spend less time online. What's worse, the biggest links on the site are to the left: "Download and Listen to our newest Podcast," "Check out our new Recovery Blog," "Find valuable resources in our Referral Directory," "Email this page to a friend," and "Join our mailing list."

Now, not to be too cynical, since I'm assuming the site and group is valid (though I've done no looking into it), but it seems like the website is asking people to spend more time on the internet, not less. And I didn't even mention the downloads, the self-tests, and the scroll-down menus at the top of the page. I particularly like the self-tests; it gives the site an OKCupid! feel.

Here's some money. Now give me some money!

Good liberals that we are, the wife and I have gotten ourselves onto a number of mailing lists for various causes. Oxfam, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, NOW, the Democratic National Committee, any candidate who runs for office in Funkytown or our glorious state. (Somehow, my wife also got a Christmas card from President Bush, but we don't know how that happened. It's the only Republican mail we've ever received.)

Of course, most of these mailings are dunning letters printed on thick, clean white paper, along with personal mailing labels and a letter decrying the current state of things. Don't read this as too critical, mind you--I understand why they send these letters out, and at times we're happy to donate a little. But I've just gotten an odd one from UNICEF. It includes the following:

• The standard letter. The need is urgent, etc.
• 57 mailing labels with my wife's name and our address. They're cute. Some how flowers in pots, others have New-Englandy lighthouses. Interestingly enough, she loves gardening, and she was raised in New England.
• Here's the kicker: a shiny nickel. Yes, the non-profit group that needs our money sent us a nickel. It's a nice 1999 one, Jefferson's profile too noble for such a largely useless coin. Not only that (though that still kills me), it was glued to the cover sticker and showing through the clear plastic of the envelope with the address. They'd like me to return the nickel with my donation. Or my wife's. Maybe if they sent me a twenty.
  

Guess who's back, back again.

Crazy's back. Tell a friend.

Yes, I'm channelling my inner Eminem. My Svelte Shady, as it were. I've returned from my long hiatus to come back to semi-regular posting, refreshed and renewed. In my "Hiatus" post, I mentioned Kant, hummus, and depression as three of the reasons for my time off. So I guess I'll explain those.

• Immanuel Kant. A double-whammy. I taught this summer during the 3 1/2 week term, meeting for two hours every day, plus individual and group conferences (not to mention grading and time spent ignoring grading). I focused the research-and-writing class around ethics, so we read excerpts from Peter Singer's anthology, Ethics, including five pages of Kant. Incredibly, the class loved the experience of the difficult readings. It's the best class I've ever taught, and I got the most positive evaluations I've ever gotten. Plus, I've been reading Kant for comps. Good times all around.
• Hummus. I've been eating a lot of hummus, and I don't like leaving pita dust on the keyboard.
• Depression. Like a lot of people, I suffer from mild chronic depression. Every once in a while it spikes, as it did earlier this summer. I mention this not for pity or sympathy (though I've gotten two recent kind comments about it--thanks C-Wang and WB), but because depression is a common issue that's still a social stigma for a lot of people. By mentioning it here on my semi-anonymous blog, I hope to encourage people that, if you suffer from depression, you, too, can effectively mock athletes.
  

Update

For those of you who are curious (or sad), I'm now considering the blog on hiatus until late August, around the 23rd. In the meantime, go read Michael Bérubé and learn something. I'll explain the hiatus once I'm back. Needless to say, it involves Immanuel Kant, depression, and hummus.

A Blog Deferred

What happens to a blog deferred?

Does it dry up
like Ann Coulter in the sun?
Or fester like Israeli--
bombing runs?

Does it stink like rotting flesh?
Or crust and sugar over--
like an ignored death?

Maybe it just sags,
like a heavy load.

Or does it implode?

The reports of my demise...

are pretty accurate, really. I took a few days off from the blog, and that became almost a month. And to be honest, I'm not sure if I'm going to keep updating. It seems like a big time suck in a lot of ways, especially since I'm teaching a summer class and reading for comps. Maybe the spirit will move me in the next few days to pick back up, or a chorus of imploring readers will lift me from the anti-blogging doldrums.

On the marquee

I like to think of myself as an adult, but for some reason, stupid quotes on church marquees drive me to childish reactionary anger. I just want to go up to the church door, knock, and yell out, "How fucking stupid are you?" Yes, I know, it's an overreaction. But here are the ones that bug me:

• "Coincidences happen when God chooses to remain anonymous."

Really? Do you want to go ahead and admit that you're so frightened of math you choose to believe in coincidences? Really? You know, coincidences are mathematically likely. Please put down your study Bible and go read this book.

• "Nothing you can see has any real value."

So the church, the Bible, my family, my own body, Christ (assuming one were alive around 33 A.D. or, if you're expecting him to come back soon, you see the Second Coming), priests, saints, preachers, these have no real value? And what do you mean by value?

• Thankfully, I can't think of an example, but the ones that use letters in "clever" ways bother me, like, "You can't spell church without u." (I made that up, but I'm sure it exists somewhere.

But to show I'm not a completely bad guy, I'll share one that I like, as it applies to fiction writing (though it's a mite disturbing in some ways).

• "Character is who you are in the dark."
  

My advice for you

Go. Visit. Hitler cats!

Cover your ears!

Know why they call The New York Times the "Gray Lady"? Because it has the sensibility of an old woman:

"[Chicago White Sox Manager] Guillen went into a profanity-laced tirade against Jay Mariotti, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist, and called him a number of names, including a derogatory term that is often used to describe someone's sexual orientation."

Now, since I'm not a scaredy-cat, I've been on the interwebnets and seen that Guillen called Mariotti a "fag." Guillen later apologized for using the word, but refused to apologize for calling Mariotti a name. But if I hadn't seen on the interwebnets that Guillen had used the word "fag," imagine my racing thoughts after reading the Times obscurantist phrasing. Was the word:

• motherfucker?
• cocksucker?
• ass jammer?
• felcher?
• heteronormatarian?
  
• ass-philanthropist?
• rectum sorcerer?
  

(Those last two come from the good people at The Dugout.) Also see Deadspin for their helpful list of names Guillen can use in the future. And I think the good people at Jay the Joke, a blog devoted to Mariotti's myriad failures, get it right.

Go read a literary magazine

The July/August issue of Poetry is their humor issue, and I'm happy to tell you to go buy it. Not only do I know two of the contributors, but unlike the last humor issue, this one is actually really funny. I haven't read the whole issue, but it includes some real gems, including:

• X.J. Kennedy's brilliant parodies.
  
• Dean Young beginning poems with laugh-out-loud funny lines, then veering into nearly incomprehensible synaptic leaps.
• Joan Murray rewriting "We Real Cool" to hilarious effect.
• Peter Kane Dufault's painful, and intentionally so, poem about Guantanamo.

The prose is less entertaining, though it has its moments. I'm hoping they keep the humor issue as a tradition; it's nice to see a mix of comic poems that seem both light and lasting. Plus, they nailed the cover. Moral: go get the humor issue.

Slouching Towards Comprehensive Exams

Now that I'm done with coursework, I'm starting to read for my comprehensive exams. So far, this means tweaking the lists with advisors, color-coding the lists (what I have read, what I haven't, what I know well, what I don't--it looks like my lists are celebrating gay pride right now), making schedules for reading, and even a little bit of actual reading. For those of you keeping score at home, here are my areas:

1. Primary: Twentieth-Century American Fiction
2. Secondary: Twentieth-Century British Fiction
3. Other secondary/tertiary: Literary Theory, emphasizing the History and Theory of the Novel

For my reading schedule, I've divided the first two lists into three time periods each. The plan is to read two books from the first time period of each list, then two books from the next time period, and so on and so forth. (The theory list, by the way, is very much in flux at the moment, so it's less clear right now how I'm scheduling that.) For example, here's what I've got set up so far:

1900-1940: Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio (I've got 80 pages left); Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (I'm twenty pages in). Once I finish the Anderson, I read Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome; once I finish Ford, I read Rebecca West's The Return of the Soldier. Plato's Ion and Phaedrus dialogues and two books of The Republic fit in there somewhere. Then, it's onto

1941-1970: Gertrude Stein, Ida (I'm looking forward to having Stein behind me, behind me, behind me); Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory; Mary McCarthy, The Company She Keeps; Samuel Beckett, Molloy.

1971-present: Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow; Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber; Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street; Zadie Smith, On Beauty.

There's a logic to it all. Retyping this for the post, I feel simultaneously organized and anxious as hell. Organizing is useful, but I think I'm also using planning as a way to delay actual reading. We'll see how I do once my wife goes out of town tomorrow and I can only talk to the dog.

Breakfast, coffee, vandalism

My wife and I woke up to find that, during the night, vandals took two of the planters in our front yard and smashed them in our next-door neighbor's yard. What the hell? Why do this? As I was cleaning it up, my neighbor from across the street came over and told me that it happened around 1:30 am. The noise woke him up, and because his wife's car was parked on the street, he thought someone was fucking with the car. When he turned on his porch light, the kids ran.

So if you see two white teenaged males with short blond hair today, smack them upside the head for me.

Thank you

A big thanks to Deadspin for linking to my response to J. J. Redick's DWI. The first day, I had 1,488 hits. Yesterday, 930. My first thousand-hit day, and probably the only one I'll ever have. I feel all warm and fuzzy.

In other news, I'm preparing to start reading for comps (technically, I've started, but not in any systematic, real way) by color-coding my lists: what books I know very well (only a few), what books I know pretty well (a surprisingly high number), what books I read a long time ago and remember one meaningless detail from (a few), and the books I haven't read at all (the word "yikes" doesn't even begin to cover it). Am I just doing things to prevent getting started? My wife likes the idea, having been through comps herself. Plus, it's pretty cool to pull up a candy-coated Microsoft Word file. But I'm not sure if it's just one of another set of distractions I'm setting up for myself. Like, you know, blogging.

Required reading

Go give Michael Bérubé some love for his incredible defense of academic freedom.

One of the things he defends universities from is the American Council of Trustees and Alumni and its ridiculous report, "How Many Ward Churchills," in which it claims "many" university teachers think, for example, that those who died on 9/11 deserved it. It's the same old story about angry leftists in the university. And their evidence? Why, course descriptions, of course. Here's an example:

• Animal rights activism has entered the undergraduate classroom in a strikingly open and undisguised way. The University of Colorado offers "Animals and Society," a sociology course that "investigates the social construction of the human/animal boundary," "[c]hallenges ideas that animals are neither thinking nor feeling," "[c]onsiders the link between animal cruelty and other violence," and "[e]xplores the moral status of animals."

The above paragraph is taken verbatim from the report. (I'm not linking to it, but MB does.) They provide no comment on what's wrong with that description. A class that "investigates," "challenges," "considers," and "explores"? Run for the hills, Ma Parker, as Homer Simpson says. What they quote from the description offers nothing that demonstrates animal rights activism in the slightest. In fact, it does what sociology does: explores why and how certain social distinctions exist, what functions they serve, what value(s) they may or may not have.

Two anecdotes, then I'll go. In a classroom discussion about the SAT, I raised the question about whether or not the SAT is a racist test. (In my opinion, it isn't, but only barely.) In the course of the discussion, affirmative action came up, and I asked my students what percentage of our university's population is black. The lowest number I heard was 25%. In fact, it's around 11%.

Two, an incredibly intelligent and thoughtful white student of mine last fall thought it was because of "political correctness" that white people aren't supposed to use the n-word. Not, obviously, his brightest moment.

J.J. Redick had a bad night

My favorite poet, J.J. Redick, got arrested last night for a DWI. After rolling on the floor and gnashing my teeth, I managed to pull it together long enough to write a poetry parody. In honor of Gerard Manley Hopkins' "God's Grandeur."

Duke’s Grandeur

J.J. is charged with driving while drunk;
   He did flame out, like bricking from jump shots;
   He gathers to a sadness, like the reek of shots
Breathed. Why will teams now draft this punk?

Coach Krzyzewski will cry, will cry, will cry—
   No, wait, that’s Redick, bleared, smeared with booze;
   He wears Zima’s smudge and shares the smell; the ruse
Is up now—Duke is not great, it is a lie.

And for all this, J.J. is never spent;
   His mug shot’s up but he will cry in verse,
And like lacrosse, no, he will not repent.
   At least he didn’t throw it in reverse.
His eyes were “very glassy,” and he went
   And u-turned from the cops—what could be worse?

Truth in advertising

My wife was flipping through a local coupon/sales publication when she came across an ad for Revolution Remodeling, a local company that does your home remodeling projects. But here's the brilliant part, blazoned across the top of the ad:

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act"
-George Orwell

Orwell's not rolling over in his grave so much as puzzling in it. But I bet the work Revolution Remodeling does is double plus good.

School's out for summer

Well, until I teach in July. But still. I turned in my grades today, then took a nap. I just ate lunch (more on that in a moment), and I'm keeping an internet eye on the U.S.-Czech Republic World Cup game (the U.S. is getting trounced already) while drinking an Ale81 and working on comps lists. I feel like I'm in the lamest Old Milwaukee commercial ever, except in a good way. "And then the crate of lobsters dropped from the sky."

About lunch. Make this for yourself. Trust me: I marinated half a slab of tofu in a mix of basalmic vinagrette, mustard, and basil (dry, not fresh, unfortunately) for 30 min. in the oven. Overnight marinating gets more flavor, but 30 min. on 300 degrees works. For two sandwiches, cut four slices of sourdough bread. Drizzle a little olive oil and a little of the marinade on the bread. Add whatever toppings you prefer; I just did lettuce, but lettuce, tomato, and onion works well. Cut the marinated tofu in half (yes, that's one quarter of the full slab). Enjoy your sandwich. And don't say I never did anything for you.

*******

By the way, an update from Gilead (if you've read The Handmaid's Tale, you get the reference. And feel free to take Updates from Gilead as a blog name): People are defending Ann Coulter's ridiculous attacks on 9/11 widows. Let me put it this way, Mary Matalin: when Don Imus has the moral high ground on you, it may be time to reassess your views. Media Matters is all over it.

Back to Ann Coulter's Sunday School

Once again, Ann Coulter asks us to seek the Bible for guidance. On Hannity & Colmes, claiming that Christ would condone her new book, which "belittles and ridicules a large segment of the American population" (Alan Colmes), she cites the money-changers passage in John 2:12-17. So why don't we look at that?

John 2: 12 After this he went down to Capernaum, with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.
13 The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
14 In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there.
15 And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.
16 And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade.”
17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

Now, according to Raggedy Ann, that passage justifies her attacks on those who subscribe to "liberalism." But nowhere does she criticize liberalism for making the church into a place of commerce; she instead criticizes liberalism for being its own religion. Wouldn't that have more to do with false idols? And in the case of false idols, doesn't God do the smiting, or am I forgetting my Old Testament values?

But that's not the only passage on which we require Raggedy Ann's elucidation. Continuing to criticize the widows of 9/11 victims, she says, "do I have to kill my mother so I can be a victim, too?"

Let's ignore for a moment the major logical flaw--the widows of 9/11 did not kill their husbands, their husbands were brutally murdered by fundamentalist terrorists--and focus on her treatment of mourners. A few passages from the New Testament:

Matthew 5:4 (in the Sermon on the Mount): Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Raggedy Ann's gloss: Clearly Jesus was being sarcastic. Blessed, schmessed, I say.

Romans 12:14-16: Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.

Raggedy Ann's gloss: And hate with those who hate. It's my Bible bitches, I can misinterpret it if I want to.

And, finally, Raggedy Ann interpreting herself:

On Rivera Live, 6/7/2000: "Let's say I go out every night, I meet a guy and have sex with him. Good for me. I'm not married."

RaggedyAnn, on The Situation with Tucker Carlson, 6/6/2006: "We've had liberalizing rules on divorce. We've had the sexual revolution. We've had, you know, the pill and burning bras and rampant premarital sex and polymorphous perversity. "

In other words, we need to stop all that damn rampant premarital sex. Just not, you know, the rampant premarital sex she's apparently allowed to have.

Uh oh, Annie make boo-boo, fall down

And on national tv no less. On The Today Show. Yes, that's right, the Serena Joy of the real world attacks 9/11 widows in her new book, and she then defends her claim to Matt Lauer. Here's the important claim from her book: "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' death so much."

Ye freaking gods. This is down there with Bill O'Reilly claiming American atrocities in WWII and getting his facts completely backwards.

Stupid globally, stupider locally

Yes, kids, the Douchebag Daily, your window to the world, our local newspaper, is at it again. I don't even subscribe to it, I just notice the ridiculous front page headlines on my way to the library. The top headline on today's front page:

Strict moms produce fat kids

Here's how the article begins:

"'Clean your plate or else!' and other authoritarian parenting methods can lead to overweight children, a new study finds."

In other news, beating your children might make them violent and distant from other people. Unfortunately, the article is not just a local article, it's an Associated Press piece. I won't get into the problems of the study (I won't link to it, but you can easily find it on your own, if you'd like to smack your forehead), but here's what bothers me about the study and the odd publicizing it's getting on the front page: it's the mother's fault. The study didn't take fathers into account, so all the blame--on the top of the front page, no less--goes to mothers. Geez, can't moms do anything right?

I hate our local newspaper

The top headline on the front page of today's Douchebag Daily:

"Big Brother's watching your diet."

Why do I doubt the headline writer has read Orwell?

Enjoy your weekend

One essay down, one to go. (Written, that is; I've still got plenty to grade.)

In the meantime, go enjoy this video. Turn the sound up, and lower your IQ. Trust me.

The Best American Cookbook of the Last 25 Years

This week's New York Times Book Review is the "Food Issue," devoted entirely to books about food. Yet they have one major oversight: they neglected to elect the Best American Cookbook of the Last 25 Years. What, like people don't buy cookbooks? Cookbooks don't matter anymore? What about Toni Morrison's Beloved Blintzes? Philip Roth's American Pastry? John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Cookbooks? DeLillo's White Sauce? Roth's The Kitchen Counterlife? This is an outrage, an absolute outrage.

The, um, Aesthetics of Karaoke

My pals C-Wang and the WB have already narrated the Karaoke events of the other night (by the way, you can now use "karaokie" as a verb, as in "we karaoked the night away"). So no post-mortems here, but a theory of karaoke, since WB tried to justify why she doesn't do karaoke. Based on the other night, here are the kinds of people who do karaoke, and why:

1. The actual singers. The rarest of the bunch, these unassuming people shyly step up, then belt out "At Last" or something along those lines and wow the Pabst-swilling masses (CLT included). While they're good singers, I don't think they get the purpose of karaoke--you get to sing as loud as you want in your car, except it's not your car, and you're drunk.
2. The pretty good singers. These singers aren't bad, and they usually tend to take it more seriously than others. They sing along to their favorite songs and feel really f-ing cool. I don't blame them; they aren't bad. But I think a few too many of them have the sense they've really just rocked the house, when in fact the house went to get another beer or pee.
3. The mediocre or bad singers who don't know they're bad singers until they get up there. By far the majority, these people are living their rock-in-roll dreams. Strangely enough, these rarely impact the unintentional comedy scale, partly because they're so common.
   Yes, I'm being a little blunt.
   
4. The bad singers who know it and vamp it up. After all, it's all about performance, making an ass of yourself. I'm in this category. I can't sing on key, much less scream on key, but I threw myself and my vocal cords into "Helter Skelter." This group consists of graduate students in English and white guys who perform rap songs, usually rap songs over five years old that don't include the n-word. (By the way, I confessed to my wife the next day that I almost signed up to perform Kanye West's "Golddigger." "Thank God," she said. She's probably right.)

My point here is mainly for those who refuse to sing karaoke when everyone else does (Wanda, I'm looking at you): the quality of your voice has very little to do with it. If you don't want to karaoke because you don't want to make a flaming ass of yourself, I understand. I'm happy to be the ass. I can't sing my way out of a paper bag, but I can make-an-ass-of-myself my way out.

One last note: I'm voting for a new holiday: Pabstover.

Karaoke Night

So last night I flogged my vocal chords. My memory of last night is a blur, thanks to cheap beer. Or, in other words, it's a Pabst smear.

Since it's late

A quick note on "thinking outside the box": if you seriously use the phrase "think outside the box" as prescriptive (for example: "Try to think outside the box with your history project") or descriptive ("That Eminem sure thinks outside the box with his dope rhymes"), you aren't thinking outside the box. In fact, you're helplessly trapped--not inside the box, but deep within Plato's cave. Just a thought.

Honoring Barry Bonds' achievement

Now that Barry Bonds has finally tied Babe Ruth and will likely overtake him soon, again with no official acknowledgement, I've typed my own special tribute to Barry and Bud Selig, a parody of W.H. Auden's "The Unknown Citizen." Enjoy.

The Unknown Slugger

To BB/25/M/714
This Marble Asterisk Is Erected by Bud Selig

He was found by the Office of Major League Baseball to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
But all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a taint,
For in everything he did he served the Barry Community.
Except for one year till the day he retired
He played for weak teams and never got fired
up—unsatisfied with his employers, the bad team.
Yet he wasn’t too bad or odd in his views,
For his Mistress reports that he paid some dues,
(Our report on his Mistress shows he’s a clown)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with himself and liked the Cream.
The Press are convinced that he brought an evil every day
And that his reactions to questions were abnormal in every way.
Steroids taken in his arm prove that it’s gone to his head,
And his cap size shows he was once much skinnier but not unfed.
Both Sports Illustrated and The Chronicle declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Roid-taking Plan
And had everything necessary to an Arrogant Man,
A hypodermic, a mistress, a bat and a cruel stare.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are pissed
That he took clean tests during the baseball year;
When it was winter, he was for drugs; when they played ball, he missed.
He was quite good and added seven MVPs to his mantle,
Which our Bud Selig says is fine and good—those we won’t dismantle—
And his coaches report that Bonds never choked Jeff Kent or ranted.
Was he clean? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had Barry Bonds used drugs, we should certainly have heard.

Pat Robertson, God's meteorologist

Thank God someone's listening to, um, God. On May 8, Pat Robertson claimed God told him what weather the U.S. should expect this year. From Yahoo:

"If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms," Robertson said May 8. On Wednesday, he added, "There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest."

Apparently, God's not taking any chances on predictions. Don't storms hit the American coastline every year? Is God getting senile in his old age? Has he forgotten the Hurricane season he created? And I love the "well may be" of the tsunami prediction. God must be taking cues from horoscopes these days.

Oh, wait, it's not God making predictions, it's Pat Robertson, Christian extraordinaire, who's brought us such gems as:

• his gesture of lovingkindness in calling for Hugo Chavez's assassination;
• his turning the other cheek in agreeing with Jerry Falwell that feminists and gays were responsible for the September 11th attacks (Osama bin Laden, gay feminist?);
• his nuanced analysis of evolutionary theory, which he says is the religion of atheists, as a cult religion, a nuanced analysis Ann Coulter will reiterate in her next screed.

A damn good point

Go. Read.

Why I love baseball

Checking scores on Yahoo Sports, I found that Dave Williams was pitching to Sal Fasano. That's Williams on the left. Don't they look like a couple of stoners and/or drunks about to get in a bar fight?

Most annoying lists of the last 25 years

Certain to bug people the world over, the New York Times solicited opinions from various literary types (I was going to write "luminaries" instead of "types," but that word is now on my growing list of words not to use for a while) to crown the Best Work of American Fiction of the Last 25 Years. Toni Morrison's Beloved won, which will raise the hackles of lots of people, I'm sure--according to A.O. Scott's introduction to the list, several people wrote in to explain why they weren't choosing Beloved. Personally, I prefer her novel Song of Solomon, but that might change next time I read either one.

The list will likely get a lot of publicity as did the Modern Library's list of the Best 100 Novels of the 20th Century because it's naturally faulty. If you ask for the "Best Book," there's likely a certain pressure to vote for the Big Social Novel; after all, writers produced an awful lot of those as the millenium approached, so choosing one is likely indicative of an important literary trend. A lot of the judges are writers I admire, writers I would have assumed would reply to a query about the Best Book with a, "Thanks, no. This is ridiculous." Only a few writers who placed also voted--Norman Rush, Don DeLillo ("how many can I nominate?"), Marilynne Robinson.

After Beloved, the next four were:

• Underworld, Don DeLillo. I read the prologue to the novel, which was later published in its own hardcover. The prologue was both brilliant and maddenly pompous and falsely portentous. I later heard that's the best part of the novel. I'll probably go back and read it someday, but for now I'm using it as a yoga brick. That isn't a joke.
• Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy. Haven't read it.
• Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels, John Updike. I loved Rabbit, Run--I read most of the novel posing for my brother, a painter, and broke the binding on the mass-market paperback--and I liked Rabbit, Redux. His prose writing amazes me.
• American Pastoral, Philip Roth. I read a ton of Roth in high school and early college; he is for me as a writer like Annabel is to Humbert Humbert in Lolita, the formative experience you can never escape. Still, I stopped reading American Pastoral at page 50.

Other notables:

• A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole. Long live Ignatius J. Reilly. Apparently some voters resisted the novel because it was written beyond the scope of the last 25 years but published within it. I say screw them. I would have voted for Tristram Shandy.
• The Counterlife, Philip Roth. I enjoyed this book immensely and went through a period of shoving funny passages from it in people's faces. That said, in the intervening years I've conflated it with Operation Shylock, another Roth novel on the Times list I enjoy.
• Where I'm Calling From, Raymond Carver. Good call. Unexpected.
• The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien. Admittedly, the first book that came to my mind when someone mentioned the list to me.
  
• Sabbath's Theater, Philip Roth. Really? I enjoyed this when I read it. My brother (again the painter) read it, then destroyed it in two sentences for me. I can't believe this novel is on the list.
• The Plot Against America, Philip Roth. He must've called in a lot of debts. Not a bad novel. Not a great one, either.

Now that I've devoted far too much time to the list, I'm off to flog myself, then walk naked through the streets holding Danielle Steel's Summer's End over my head and shouting, "Why hast thou forsaken Steel, oh good and great Grey Lady?"

Academic Dis-course

Good lecture last night on politics and novels--really smart about defining what we mean by politics and where we look in novels for political statements, especially in novelists whose work seems apolitical or, at least, less overtly political.

But I'm not here to report on a good lecture. I'm here to register my anger. Our department has someone who insists on asking brutally tough and vicious-sounding questions at lectures. I have no problem with asking tough questions; it's mainly the confrontational tone, the absolute failure of tact and respect I'm sick of. For example:

• If you're going to ask a question, ask one. Don't ask three with your pitch and volume rising throughout, so the first question gets lost in the mix (and is often incoherent to begin with).
• If you're going to accuse someone of misquoting, why not say, "I remember this quote differently. Are you sure that's how he put it?" I don't recommend beginning with, "You misquoted so-and-so." Though when it turns out that your accusation of misquoting is wrong ("would you like the page number?"), I do have the pleasure of hearing you shot down.
• If you're going to be the first person to ask a question, don't immediately leave after the speaker has answered, whether you have a good reason to leave or not. (Letting your dogs out five minutes earlier than you would if you stayed for the whole q-and-a is not a good reason.) It makes you look petty and as if you're trying to draw attention to yourself.
• If you're going to ask a question, don't yell. In fact, you don't even need to raise your voice at all.
  
• If you do choose to stay after asking your question(s), don't talk through the entire rest of the q-and-a so other audience members can't hear. You may not be aware, but not only is everyone else being civil, you're supposed to be modelling professional behavior for graduate students. Does your incessant prattling mean I can take your class and talk during your lecture or during someone else's presentation? Can I pretend to authority by aggressive disagreement? Can I abruptly leave?
  
• If you have a question, please decide what it is before you ask it. When you claim to have three questions, but really you have one question that you keep revising as you speak, it makes you seem incoherent. And the thing is, we know you're not incoherent. We know you're otherwise articulate and intelligent.
  

My least favorite defense of this person is that he/she doesn't actually hate the speaker, he/she simply feels it's his/her role to ask tough questions. But if the role a) doesn't accurately represent civil academic discourse and b) doesn't accurately represent how one might critically respond to a peer's work in terms of the content, you don't push forward the intellectual inquiry the university offers, you stunt it by drawing more attention to yourself than to the ideas. So please--be civil, be polite, be respectful.

What I'm reading

Chickywang wants me to explain my early dislike of Ian McEwan's novel Saturday, so I'm folding it into a list of book recommendations.

Ian McEwan--Saturday
I liked Atonement but found it a little overrated, so I was resistant to Saturday to begin with. Let me say this: McEwan writes incredible scenes. When Henry Perowne, the narrator, interacts with other characters, McEwan manages the interior and exterior life of our main character brilliantly, constantly ratcheting up the tension through Perowne's ethical ambiguity and the background of larger events. He also handles intimate gestures well; Perowne has an eye that allows McEwan to focus on minute human actions that resonate by demonstrating our larger concerns.

That said, McEwan can also be a tremendously redundant writer. He often deals with ideas too explicitly, announcing thematics rather than giving the reader space to explore. James Wood, in a positive review of the novel, points out how McEwan saturates the reader with the fact of Perowne's life as a doctor. Perowne's perspective is artificially limited and limiting. Also, McEwan deals overtly with September 11 and the Iraq War, neither of which seems to serve him well. The passages that deal with arguments about both seem stale, unsurprising to me. I prefer Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie to Atonement and, instead of Saturday:

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
I disliked Woolf for a long time, eventually acknowledging a grudging respect for To the Lighthouse after I read it the third time. Same with Mrs. Dalloway. On the first reading, I found myself impatient, a little confused. By the second time I read it, a year later, I luxuriated in Woolf's handling of the interior life, the bizarre narrative choices that seem risky even today. Go read it. Feel humbled. And after you're done, read

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Every time I read an Austen novel, I love it, vow to read more, then forget her for two years until circumstances require me to read another, which I love. I'm like a bad boyfriend. (Speaking of which, T.C. Boyle has a story called "I Dated Jane Austen." I'm not a huge Boyle fan, and the joke of the story is in the title--dated, in both senses--but it's a clever story. Smarter people than me recommend it.) Austen's first novel, but published posthumously, Northanger Abbey has gotten short shrift from critics, apparently, but it's a fun, hilarious novel. The comedy is broader and more obvious than in her other novels, but it's a nice palate cleanser (and more complicated than I'm making it sound) after Woolf. Plus, there's this, courtesy of one of the characters: "The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." Here, here. Plus, one of the characters is one of literature's great douchebags--in fact, Austen almost titled the novel The Douchebag. And not to keep up the feminist reading list, but next read

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Disturbingly prescient, though Atwood would probably bonk me on the head and say, "No, you douchebag, it described America in the eighties. Things have only gotten worse." Such a smart novel.

I'll leave off there since I've got to go make headway in Michael Cunningham's The Hours, which I'm not enjoying at the moment.

Them money-grubbing perfessers

Every once in a while, the stars align and one gasbag cites another. So we have Ann Coulter citing David Horowitz in her latest column. And though Horowitz claims his list is not a blacklist of any sort, here's how Coulter ends her column:

"How about Congress having weekly hearings on the price of college and the salaries of professors like Churchill? Horowitz has already provided the witness list for the first two years."

That's right--his book isn't a blacklist. But since he's conveniently given us a list, let's use it as one. The noise machine is cranking up for its next fear-mongering campaign, the liberalism of the American university. As most ridiculous media claims begin, this one's starting on the fringes, but it's getting picked up more and more--even the National Review has a blog devoted to bias in education.

I know lots of people who would dismiss this as crazy talk we don't need to worry about, but remember that we're veering closer to war with Iran and the mainstream media routinely gives air time to claims about the liberal media without examining the growing conservative bias on news talk shows or the MSM's continual avoidance of slaughter in Darfur or the looming dangers in Afghanistan brought on by a sloppy invasion after September 11.

But back to Saint Ann. Among the things in her column that I'd mark up in a freshman essay:

• Noting CNN's coverage of rising gas prices and rising college tuition, she compares the two, answering complaints about gas profits by claiming that college professors are reaping the benefits of higher tuition in the same way oil executives are. Bad analogy. Wouldn't the proper comparison be to college presidents and deans, whose salaries rise at a greater rate than professors'?

• She uses Ward Churchill as an example. Yes, Ward Churchill is a flaming nimrod. And you know what? He's the exception. He's a gasbag in public, and he isn't qualified for his job. Yes, we know. But, again Ann, he's the exception. Of course, she and Horowitz know that, but Churchill makes a more compelling case than Chomsky, what with all his scholarly books and articles (in addition to his political writings) and his insistence on keeping his political and scholarly work as separate as possible.

• "Every sentient, literate adult knows that the current spike in gas prices is 90 percent due to forces completely beyond the control of Congress, the White House or even 'Big Oil' itself." Way to acknowledge opposing arguments and present them before countering them. That's her opening sentence, by the way.

• "Liberals think hardworking taxpayers who can't afford gas should pay more in taxes because it is vitally important that young people be taught that America is the worst country on Earth and that the American bond traders who were murdered on 9/11 deserved it." You know, I was just teaching one of Shakespeare's sonnets last week to demonstrate this point. "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes" lends itself really well to Ward Churchillian rants.

• She cites the work of Ohio University economist Richard Vedder, who apparently "has demonstrated, every time the government subsidizes college tuition through tuition tax credits, college tuition rises by the precise amount of the tuition tax credit." And where has Professor Vedder (presumably not one of the liberal professors who hates America) demonstrated this? Well, Coulter doesn't tell us. I'm sure he's written it somewhere, but unlike other columnists, she doesn't actually tell us where he demonstrated it. (I've put an email in to Dr. Vedder.)

So why does this gasbag matter? Why do I spend my time excoriating her instead of reading Northanger Abbey or Ian McEwan's Saturday? (Don't worry, profs, I'm getting back to them as soon as I post this.) Because more and more of my students equate empty rhetoric with argumentation. Because students routinely believe the following:

• That Al Gore said, "I invented the internet."
  
• That a woman who spilled a little McDonald's coffee on herself while driving won $10 million when in fact 1) she was in the passenger seat, 2) the car was parked, 3) the jury awarded her $2.7 million, an award lowered to less than $500,000 on appeal, 4) she had never sued anyone in her life and only initially asked McDonald's to pay her hospital bills, 5) the woman suffered third-degree burns on her thighs and groin (go ahead and google pictures of third-degree burns) and had to spend seven days in the hospital, and 6) prior to her case, McDonalds had had over 700 complaints about their coffee being dangerously hot and never consulted a burn expert.
• That the Columbine shooters were part of the "Trenchcoat Mafia" and that they loved the music of Marilyn Manson. And what's more, when provided evidence to the contrary, one student (not representative, but still a college student) said, "But my dad told me they were part of the Trenchcoat Mafia." When pressed, he acknowledged that his father had no credentials.

So take the noise machine seriously. They're turning up the volume, and what they lack in evidence they make up for in screed.

P.S. While you're at it, boycott Slate.com. They've published an essay by Christopher Hitchens that makes ridiculous claims about Juan Cole, one of the "dangerous perfessers." Cole tears Hitchens a new one on his website. He's also added some more about it, but once you're there, you should be able to find it.

Grade norming

Another NFL Draft has come and gone, again unwatched by me. I'm a little uncomfortable with all the homoerotic language (upside, measurables), and I only have "lifeline" cable, which gives me clear local stations, four PBS channels, and E!. But I like keeping up with the draft coverage, mainly because it's so ridiculous before and after. Prognosticators talk about people like stocks and make mock draft after mock draft.

But my favorite part is the grades. A bitter Mel Kiper, who according to his website can "accurately predict as much as 80 percent of first-round draft selections", gave zero A's. On an entirely unrelated note, he only correctly predicted six of the 32 first-round selections this year--that's only 19%, if you round up. That's an F, even if you grade on a curve.

And the often curmudgeonly Dr. Z over at Sports Illustrated has awarded three A's and two A minuses. What's a perplexed NFL fan to do? We desparately need to know what teams earned what grades. Welcome to the wonderful world of grade norming, where I'll be the arbitor deciding on averages between the iron-haired Kiper (that refers to the tensile strength of his hair, not the color) and the bald Dr. Z (Z works it, though, he works it). I'll just be touching on the interesting differences between them (and teams I can make cheap shots about), not their grades on all the teams. After all, I have actual grading to get back to.

Arizona Cardinals/Buzzsaw: Kiper, B; Z, A
CLT: A-. The lovable losers drafted Matt Leinart, who I'll now call the Human Petri Dish: he's dating Paris Hilton, who I would call the Human Petri Dish if she were human. (Enter rimshot.) If Leinart can spread the ball like he'll be spreading disease after he moves on to Lindsay Lohan, there's no telling what round of the playoffs the Cardinals/Buzzsaw will lose in.

Baltimore Ravens: Kiper, B+; Z, B
CLT: F. A couple of friends of mine used to work at a tutoring facility next to the Ravens' training facility, where, according to my friends, the Raven players' Escalades routinely threatened other cars and occasionally and unapologetically caused accidents. Think of the Ravens as the loud, bulky jerk in the back of the classroom who passes because the teacher is afraid of getting beaten to a pulp. Not this time, though, not this time. What are they going to do, send Kyle Boller to throw something at me?

Carolina Panthers: Kiper, C; Z, B
CLT: B. Dr. Z likes "need drafts." Kiper thinks they got the wrong needs. Can we consider their good coach, great receiver, and decent-enough quarterback? They did, after all, make the playoffs last year.

Chicago Bears: Kiper, B; Z, D
CLT: C+. Settle down, boys. Kiper likes that a team with a great defense and shitty offense drafted for defense; Z points out, rightly, that the Bears drafted for the wrong goddamn side of the ball. If you read closely, you can see Z's neck veins pulse. But I like the city of Chicago, so I'm cutting them a break. Plus, they play in a shitty division, so who cares?

Cincinnati Bengals: Kiper, C; Z, B-
CLT: B. Kiper's right, the Bengals need a tight end, but they have a greater need to shore up a weak defense, and they did a bit of that. Also, Marvin Lewis seems like a smart guy. Don't forget the Bengals did win the division last year, and if Kimo Von Wilkes Booth hadn't rolled over on Carson Palmer, we'd likely have a different Super Bowl champion. Not the Bengals, but not the Steelers, either. Oh, and I like Chad Johnson's teeth.

Cleveland Browns: Kiper, B; Z, B-
CLT: B-. They play in a tough division. They'll probably surprise a few teams because they have a good coach, but until LeBron James or Bugs Bunny plays eleven positions on the field at all times, I don't like their chances.

Denver Broncos: Kiper, B; Z, A.
CLT: C-. They traded up to take Jay Cutler, which seems like bad karma. Why mess with Plummer's stache?

Detroit Lions: Kiper, C+; Z, B+
CLT: F. When a student's last several essays are F's, you don't suddenly give him the benefit of the doubt. Come on, people. Matt Millen needs remedial classes.

Green Bay Packers: Kiper, B; Z, B
CLT: A+. You know what, Favre's coming back to throw more interceptions. Mute the fawning announcers, or MST3000 the game yourself. The team won't improve, but who cares? Draft, schmaft.

Houston Texans: Kiper, B+; Z, D
CLT: D. I'm with Z on this one. If you decide you need to improve your defense more than sell tickets or acquire the most promising (or hyped, anyway) player to come along in a while, why not trade the pick for a defensive veteran and more picks so you can draft more defensive players? Instead, Texans, you picked a talented player who apparently takes plays off and gets most of his sacks against weaker teams. Unless Leinart gives Reggie Bush some of Paris Hilton's, um, travelling companions and Bush has to have his legs amputated, this will go down (pun intended) as a huge mistake.

Jacksonville Jaguars: Kiper, C+, Z, C
CLT: C. Jacksonville reminds me of the kind of student who works hard but just isn't a good writer. Once in a while, he'll make a good point, but he just can't pull it all together.

Kansas City Chiefs: Kiper, C; Z, B-
CLT: C. They've gone from Dick Vermeil's can't-quite-get-far-enough to Herm Edwards's can't-quite-get-far-enough. Good for them.

New Orleans Saints: Kiper, C; Z, A
CLT: A. They went 3-13 last year, they managed to get the most exciting player in the draft, and they just signed Drew Brees. Throw them a bone, Kiper. If the roof were blown off your hair, I'd give you an A if you only picked six out of 32 selections correctly. They play in an impossible division, but Bush will likely rush for around 1,000 yards and pick up a lot of receiving yards from Brees, who seems to prefer the short pass. Plus, I foresee Deuce McAllister playing hard for a big contract elsewhere.

New York Jets: Kiper, B-; Z, A-
CLT: A-. You know what? Kiper seems way off on all of these. The Jets built up their O-line, including a player with a built-in nickname: D'Brick. And his nickname actually relates to his role in the game. Plus, they picked up Brad Smith of Missouri, who won't be a quarterback but might add dimension to the offense.

There are no other really interesting differences. All draft grades are pretty ridiculous, but Kiper's seem ludicrously vengeful. All six teams that picked as he predicted (and I'm counting Denver as one) received at least a B-; all but the Jets received a B or higher. I know he lives for this year-round, but he just seems a little too biased in his grading. But what do I know? I don't wear helmet-hair.

How to reach me

As the Angry Professor at A Gentleman's C did recently, I'm including here a list of recent search terms that led people to my blog:

my wife fuck soldier fantasy
is it illegal to masturbate in a restroom
how would i cite a quote from the declaration of independence
atheist banana clip
fatter people
intellectual fun

The sad thing is that, except for the first one, I understand how each would get a reader here.

Raggedy Ann

I don't want this blog to become an "Ann Coulter Watch," but I've got some masochistic vein that keeps me coming back for more. To the columns, anyway. I can only do short bursts of bizarre illogic and silly attempts to shock.

But before I puzzle over her latest column, a small note of praise: the title is "It's Hard Out Here for a Pump." I'll admit, I'm all a-twitter.

But Ann's all a-twit. To wit:

Discussing the 1993 energy budget, in which Democrats wanted to add a high tax to gasoline: "Al Gore defended the gas tax, vowing that it was 'absolutely not coming out' of the energy bill regardless of 'how much trouble it causes the entire package.'

And mind you, this was before we knew Gore was clinically insane. Back then we thought he was just a double-talking stuffed shirt who seemed kind of gay. The important thing was to force Americans to stop their infernal car-driving, no matter how much it cost."

Nothing says to the reader "take me seriously" like calling Al Gore clincally insane. More to the point, can we slow down for a second and debate how we might consider cost relative to, say, the future of the fucking planet? You know, how waste of natural resources might lead to widespread environmental catastrophe? I know we're not supposed to take science seriously, but still.

However, here's the kicker:

"Democratic House Speaker Tom Foley endorsed the proposal on "Charlie Rose," saying: 'I'd have a five-cent increase every year for five years. ... But that's not going to happen ... because we've got people who fret and worry that one- or two-tenths of a cent of a gasoline tax is going to cause some revolution at home.' So in Tom Foley's universe, two-tenths of a cent is the same as a quarter -- another testimonial to the American public educational system."

Oh Ann, you try so hard. But Foley's point was that adding a twenty-five cent tax was unthinkable when people viewed a two-tenths of a cent increase as too much. Again: he wasn't saying twenty-five cents equals two-tenths of a cent. Are we clear? No?

You know, she got her law degree at the University of Michigan. But I'm not going to bring up that whole "another testimonial to the American public educational system" comment.

All about the tongue

Possible captions for this photo:

• "Oh no, the ball is a magnet that controls my tongue!"
• "I'll never be able to touch my nose with my tongue!"
• "Shit, Manute Bol wants his ball back!"

Actually, the most interesting thing about this post is that Manute Bol has his own Wikipedia page, and his biography reads like a mash of two different people.

Behold the banana!

You must go watch this video, which will change your belief system. Just skip ahead to the 3:30 mark and watch until roughly the 4:36 mark. No longer will you bow before the false god Darwin; now you will worship, as does Curious George, at the altar of the almighty fruit!

In other words: man explains God's existence with banana. This clip is ripe for satire, and not only because Kirk Cameron is in it. Apparently, we all misunderstood why Gwen Stefani spelled out bananas in "Hollaback Girl": she wrote the first hymn to our new God. Cause there ain't no Hollaback God...

God bless the internet

Forget research, the internet exists for this. (Note--requires high speed, video and audio capability.)

I feel so timely

So a few days ago I entered the wonderful religious world of Ann Coulter, and now she's evoking Christ a little more, likely as a promotional move since she has a book coming out where she, apparently without sin, will cast stones against "liberals" for being godless. The good people at Media Matters have more.

Crazy Little Thing Called Dog

At the advice of the lovely and talented Chickywang (yes, lovely and talented is a stock phrase, but still true), I've posted above a photo of Crazy Little Thing Called Blog's Crazy Little Thing Called Dog. (Actually called Olive.) That's her a few months ago, prior to her cute pink collar and some growing.

News Flash: Tax Time

In an effort to help citizens get their tax information in on time, the IRS has changed the due date from April 15 to Ken Griffey's first stint on the Disabled List. "Knowing that he could go down at any time will likely help citizens act quicker to get their W-2s together," spokesperson Dorf Fogelstein said. "Besides, his going on the DL is like Easter--you know it happens sometime in the spring, so you just go ahead and get your decorations up before everybody else in the neighborhood."

The Gospel According to Ann

You may have heard that notorious hack Ann Coulter has a book coming out this summer titled Godless: The Church of Liberalism. It's due to come out on June 6, 2006, apparently as her "tribute to liberals": the date is 6-6-6. (Really, it's 6-6-06, but why quibble?)

I'm an atheist, but one who admires the central ethical tenets of Christ. I also respect people of faith who act morally and ethically; any guiding force that leads to good is honourable, no matter what leap of faith you've taken--and atheism is just as big a leap as faith.

But I was curious, being a little more than passingly familiar with Coulter's work, how she is actually a Christian in anything more than name. And then I was struck with the image of her teaching a text like the Sermon on the Mount. So here we have:

Ann Coulter's Sunday School (or ACSS--the C is silent)

Matthew 5:3--Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Ann Coulter--Instead of poor people with hope and possibility, we now have a permanent underclass of aspiring criminals knifing one another between having illegitimate children and collecting welfare checks.

Matthew 5:4--Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

Ann Coulter--To expiate the pain of losing her firstborn son in the Iraq war, Cindy Sheehan decided to cheer herself up by engaging in Stalinist agitprop outside President Bush's Crawford ranch. It's the strangest method of grieving I've seen since Paul Wellstone's funeral. Someone needs to teach these liberals how to mourn.

Matthew 5:27-28--Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:
28But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Ann Coulter--Like the Democrats, Playboy just wants to liberate women to behave like pigs, have sex without consequences, prance about naked, and abort children.

Coulter, elsewhere--Let's say I go out every night, I meet a guy and have sex with him. Good for me. I'm not married.

Matthew 5:44-45--But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
45That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

Crazy Little Thing: Frankly, I just don't know where to start on this one. Maybe the quote about blowing up the New York Times, or invading countries and killing their leaders, or how liberals hate America and want to give aid to the terrorists, or killing liberals to scare them, or threatening to poison a Supreme Court judge.

Matthew 6:2-6--Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
3But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:
4That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.
5And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
6But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

Ann Coulter--Actually, I think it's time to come clean with my readers and admit that I belong to a small religious cult that celebrates the birth of Jesus this week.

Ah, sweet, deliberate understatement.

Also, there's the whole bit about converting Muslims to Christianity and killing their leaders; on a related note, she ridicules anyone who would call Islam a religion of peace.

Oh, she's also publishing a book called Godless, putting herself in the position of some sort of Christian who deserves to be in the position to judge.

Matthew 7:1--Judge not, that ye be not judged.

Crazy Little Thing: Um...

If you want to add some of Coulter's scriptural commentary, post it in the comments. I feel unequipped to summarize, so I'll end by quoting Thomas Jefferson.

"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong." (Notes on Virginia, 1782)

"But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." (Notes on Virginia, 1782)

"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear." (Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787)

"I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians." (Letter to Richard Price, Jan. 8, 1789. Richard Price had written to TJ on Oct. 26. about the harm done by religion and wrote "Would not Society be better without Such religions? Is Atheism less pernicious than Demonism?")

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State." (Letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802)

"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes." (To Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813)

"The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills." (Letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814)

"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." (Letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814)

Ahem

Or, An Open Letter to the Student Masturbating at the Urinal of the Third Floor Men's Room of Aged Philanthropist Hall

Dear Masturbator:

Allow me to introduce myself. I'm a grad student here at the Funkytown Institute for Increasing One's Future Monetary Value. I'm also the guy who came into the restroom while you were coming in the restroom, or just before. I'd like to touch on (no pun intended) a few basic notes of decorum and decency in our society.

First, though public masturbation of any sort is illegal (and disgusting), most public men's room masturbators choose to do so in the stall. I'd like to recommend that to you. I've had the unfortunate experience of overhearing guys masturbate in stalls, but it's not nearly as disgusting and day-ruining as seeing a man standing at the end of a row of urinals jerking off.

Second, you may recall you chose to pleasure yourself at the urinal next to the far wall. You were, apparently, already angled away from the entrance, but--and this is just so you know--turning your back to me doesn't shield what you're doing. One, you're now facing a wall, not a urinal, so it's unlikely I'll assume you're peeing. Two, your arm is still moving. Because the only sound I hear is your breathing, I can only assume you're not, say, shellacking the wall or, say, caulking it.

And speaking of your breathing, third, just because you realized that I was in the room and silencing your heavy, quick breathing might help me miss out on the fact that you're shaking hands with the unemployed, clearing your throat to stop breathing that way only draws more of my attention to you. I'm already trying to ignore you; clearing your throat while facing the wall only makes the sound resonate.

Fourth, and this applies whether you're masturbating in public or in the confines of what I can only assume is a gray-brick-interiored single dorm room with a poster of Jenna Jameson rubbed thin by your affectionate kisses, when you wash your hands, you must actually wash your hands. Maybe civilization didn't reach you. Squirting liquid soap from the dispenser, then flicking it into the sink, well, that skips a major step. Briskly rub your hands together. As you already know how to briskly rub, this should be an easy new task for you to learn.

And, finally, fifth, after I left the bathroom, with you in my wake (and if you're curious, yes, I did hunch my shoulders forward in fear you'd clap my back in some misguided spooge-infused idea of cameraderie), I looked back to see you walking down the hall where you shook the hand of your professor. As someone who teaches undergraduates, please let me impress upon you the utterly crucial point that, should you choose to exert zero control over the bobbing urges pressing against your Spiderman underoos, at least have the courtesy not to spread your waste to those of us who try to travel trustingly and unmolested through our days.

In the above very unfortunate incident, I was simply too shocked to report what happened or tell you to stop. Please be aware that, the next time, I will not be so inclined, now that I'm prepared to see another self-lover the next time I need to relieve myself.

Respectfully yours,

Crazy L. Thing

Where I come from

I was born in and, until the age of four, lived in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, but I wouldn't be able to express exactly what that meant until now.

Coming Unbound

Reviewing a novel before you've finished reading seems to jump the gun a bit, but in the case of Walter Kirn's serial novel, The Unbinding, currently up on Slate, it's necessary. Today they posted the tenth of an apparent thirty-two installments, and I have to admit it's a gripping thriller. For those who don't enjoy reading on screen, the installments are short--"found" objects, including emails, letters, recorded phone conversations, journal entries. The idea behind the "fiction" (calling it a novel seems naive), as Sven Birkets points out, is that it taps into our "paranoid consciousness" and our worries over the thin boundary between our public and private lives.

Birkets also claims, "where the bound artifact--the novel--can only posit the narrative possibility, the Internet version makes it actual. The reader knows and feels, even if only at a semiconscious level, the implications of the online medium; he registers the suggestive power of the idea of surveillance, of being seen, investigated, and known." I actually have to disagree with Birkets. So far, Kirn's online fiction strikes me as conservative. According to Slate's own announcement of the serialization, The Unbinding "will make use of the Internet's unique capacity to respond to events as they happen, linking to documents and other Web sites. In other words, The Unbinding is conceived for the Web, rather than adapted to it." But so far, Kirn's fiction has done very little to justify its existence as a web fiction. (Though I certainly enjoy it as a fiction.)

First, the "found" documents reach back into a long narrative tradition--the epistolary form, the journal. The documents themselves could easily be presented as bound; the fact that they're online doesn't have the effect on me Birkets claims (let's not get started on how he posits "the reader" and has the reader act as Birkets likely did). Moreover, the ironies the chapters establish--the pretenses the characters enact to attract each other--reflect the kinds of ironies a reader could find in any number of fictions with omniscient point of view or found documents.

That's not necessarily a major criticism, that he relies on long-standing narrative traditions and practices. I'd be surprised if they weren't there, in fact. (One of the main characters' last names is Selkirk, which is the name of the sailor Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is based on.) However, the abundance of those traditions seems to outweigh the novelty of publishing such a text on the internet. Which leads me to my second point: through ten installments, he's included only three hyperlinks. What an internet fiction can do that a book in one's hands cannot is link to pages elsewhere on the internet. (Even including intertextuality, theory-heads.) And since the "found" documents are personal reflections in several cases, hyperlinks might lead to interesting point-0f-view questions--are the characters always aware of what the links lead out to? Can websites serve as a kind of unconsciousness? If the word "dare" leads to someone's personal myspace.com page, how might that implicate the character (and the reader) in the telling?

One good sign for Kirn--one of his three links is to Birkets' piece. (It's a long story--read it.) So if you read it and post your thoughts, you might impact the telling, which would lead to other questions about readership and the construction of meaning. (Are you listening, theory-heads?) And whether or not it's all that innovative, it's still a good read.

The War on Easter

Remember the War on Christmas, the fake culture war John Gibson and Bill O'Reilly tried to pawn off on the people last holiday season? I thought it would be funny to write a satiric post about the upcoming War on Easter, including the following:

• Random mob peltings with Cadbury Eggs, the sugary insides smeared on people's clothes, faces, and Bibles.
  
• Eyeliner-smeared Goth kids running around yelling, "Vernal Equinox, Vernal Equinox!"
• Sam Walton's kids shushing greeters who said "Easter" and directing them to say "Happy Spring season! Please look for our copious Alban Eilir decorations!"
• The pièce de résistance (yes, the use of a French phrase makes me an America-hating faggot commie who wants to live under the Islamic law, Sharia--can you cut off my hands now for stealing that pack of baseball cards when I was nine?) was to be the crucifixion of the Easter Bunny, in which he wears a crown of thorns on his head and around his bushy tail. He was going to be punished by a toga-adorned Bill Clinton, who would yell "Ecce Bunny!" The Easter Bunny was going to hop down the street, pelted by plastic eggs filled with rocks, easter egg dye bleeding from his skin. Then, on Easter, the Easter Bunny was going to arise from his grave, one ear half torn. He'd meet Ted Kennedy on the road, who would stick his finger into a side wound as Thomas does to Christ in the Caravaggio painting.

So there I was, giggling at myself, when I learned that the goddamn wingnuts beat me to it. What you'll read on WorldNetDaily, perhaps the creepiest non-porn site on the Internet, is that some are trying to "hijack" Easter; there's a "PC Police"; and there was a "national uproar" over Christmas. What world are these people living in? Did they read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" as a primer on how to fuck with people's heads? The "national uproar" over Christmas existed in the echo chamber of the right wing. Fox News, WorldNetDaily.

I'll say it, and I don't even believe in God: Merry Christmas! Happy Easter! Enjoy those times you recognize things that mean a great deal to you. Share them with your family. But you know what? Bill O'Reilly isn't a Christian. Neither is John Gibson. They may claim to be Christians, but their behavior on television demonstrates an understanding of Christ's teachings that couldn't even be called rudimentary. Perhaps it would help them to read the Jefferson Bible, Thomas Jefferson's revision of the Gospels. Jefferson admired Christ's ethical teachings (it's pretty hard not to, I think), and remarkably, the people who claim most rabidly that Christianity is under attack are those who act in accordance the least with that ethical system.

As I read somewhere recently (I can't remember where; sorry not to give credit), a defensive church is a strong church. Convince the congregation your faith is under attack, using the language of physical violence to represent perceived (though in this case, very unreal) non-physical violence, and they will bond together to defend against those attacks. That's what the right-wing echo chamber does: a defensive political party is a strong political party. If you're looking for a culture war, though I loathe that phrase, that's it: the "values" of the right wing are under attack, apparently, so they must defend by attacking these perceived slights. Thus we have Michelle Malkin's paranoid fantasy about Aztlan, the claims and conferences about wars on Christianity (sidebar: thanks to Priceline, my wife and I stayed at the Omni Shoreham, a four-star hotel, the week prior to the conference about the "War on Christianity"; it's a swank, expensive place--the moneychangers in the temple seem to be doing well enough despite the "War"), the fear that teaching evolution will destroy Christianity and moral behavior.

If you think this is all a joke, easy to laugh off and ignore, remember that the party that panders to these people--even that "maverick," John McCain--is the one that controls the government right now. So fill up your supersoakers with holy water and your brain with actual quotes from the Bible, because the "Christians" who think they're under attack are trying to burst out of their echo chamber: an election is coming up.

MLB Preview--be well versed

I wanted to write a poetry parody that would preview the upcoming baseball season and make a prediction for every team, but since I'm a grad student, I had grading to do, reading to do, emails to return, a dog to walk, a nap to take, etc., so you're getting a limited but potent dose. So below is Percy Bysshe Shelley's prediction for the 2006 MLB season.

Ozziemandias

I met a traveler from Chicagoland
Who said: Two vast and trunkless teams of stone
Play in the AL East. Near them in the standings,
Half mad, a Guillen visage smirks, whose frown,
And crazy smile, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its wearer well those passions knows
Which yet survive, stamped on those Series rings,
The hand that wears them, and the team that blows:
And on his undershirt these words appear:
"My name is Ozziemandias, manager:
Look on my team, ye Yankees, and despair!"
White Sox will lose this year. Round the decay
Of all free agency, hopeful all year
The even teams love Opening Day.

And if that weren't enough, Elizabeth Bishop emailed me her predictions as well.

Cubs Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many pitchers, one disabled list,
how can they win? Their team is a disaster.

Lose one game every day. Send down your roster
of lost money, bad players getting pissed.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

The Devil Rays, they'll lose farther, lose faster:
morale, and games, and where it was they wished
to travel. Season's here, time for disaster.

The Cincinnati Reds, they'll come in last or
next-to-last, Ken Griffey's hamstring turns to mist,
Dunn K's, Harang's their ace--no master.

All losing teams. Seattle's one, with vaster
talent--Felix, Ichiro. And the Pirates,
at least their ballpark's no disaster.

--I love the losing teams; thus the mocking gesture
of love. They try so hard, I know, but grist
they are for parody. Yes, they will master
cellar-dwelling, all or most. Disaster.