I’d better feel like a marshmallow floating in hot cocoa tomorrow.

This is the most annoying TV ad I’ve ever seen in my life, period, bar none, no exceptions, end of story, cue the fat lady:

 

As I mentioned to a colleague, if this campaign is to work, it needs to give us a relaxing, satisfying denouement so that I feel like I’m a marshmallow floating in hot cocoa.

If it doesn’t, it’ll be even more obnoxious for having left us without a peaceful solution to the manic problem they think we all have. JCPenney is promising a revelation tomorrow, which according to Penney’s and industry buzz is a three-tiered pricing structure.

I’m already starting to melt.

(Did you notice Mozart’s Requiem playing in the background? Poor Wolfy is rolling over in his grave. That’s where the screaming is really coming from.)

Started: 2012-01-30

Music for the Long Way Home

Around Christmastime, when I was not going home, I shared a string of emails with a coworker, who was also not going home, and sent him a few links to songs that over years I’ve found comforting. I’m a romantic and lapse into sentimentality easily.

These are ballads drawn from my particular taste in music, but they are accessible on some level if you give them a chance.

(Everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve been able to hear distant trains in the summer with the windows open and cool breezes carrying nightsounds. I’m very fond of that. In Erie, the train was probably a mile away, which is the perfect distance for nighttime listening. Supertramp’s “Long Way Home” recalls it well at the end.)

Supertramp - Take the Long Way Home

Mama I'm coming home - Ozzy Osbourne
 

Home Sweet Home - Mötley Crüe

Going Home - Alice Cooper

Started: 2012-01-27

Nope

This was my setup. All I needed to buy was the alligator clip to use as a heat sink, but the smallest clip I could find turned out to be too big, and the components too small for me to work with. I tried it without a heat sink and probably fried it anyway.

Ever get so disgusted with a project you just wanted to throw the whole thing out the window? And it looked so pretty and organized to start.

I’ve occasionally found myself in this situation, perhaps you have too: You had all the right stuff and the knowledge and desire, but no experience, and so you wound up with a mess.

I replaced it with a PNY Micro Attaché. Even my most trivial writing will be in the cloud or on a backed up hard drive when possible, but at least when I have to work off a thumb drive, this will lessen the likelihood of it snapping.

I guess it’s not a total loss. I got a bag of roach clips out of it.[1]

[1]
That’s a joke.

Started: 2011-01-28

Holy Techno-Crap, Bat Brother!

Those are words of commiseration from my brother when I told I busted my beautiful 16Gb thumb drive.

As it happens, only 2 of the 4 pins are actually separated from the board, and I may be able to solder it back into working order long enough to get the data off of it.

Brother Tom says to use a very hot iron and a heat sink. He’s a biotech and does this every day so I’m taking that advice.

So happens, a dozen complete and future blog entries are on it, as I happen to run a couple portable apps on it that let me blog quickly and easily so I can focus more time on the words.

Lesson: If you can’t afford to lose it, don’t keep it on a thumb drive.

Fortunately my fiction, which I have returned to in earnest (and wrote a blog about you might get to see) is on my desktop, in the cloud, and backed up nightly via FTP. Why the #$%#$ I broke my own rules for blogs is beyond me.

"Fast Food Is Not Especially Unhealthy"

From Skeptoid➚: "In Super Size Me... Spurlock's results were only presented in his movie. No actual data was published or subjected to any scrutiny or peer review."
 
As Brian Dunning says, too much of any food is bound to be bad for you.

Dunning's weekly segments are uncompromising, polite and insightful. Definitely worth a listen. I catch him on WPRR➚.

Spurlock is a good example how uncritical thinking is not restricted to global warming, UFOs, and other fringe whackery.

Started: 1/22/2012

I Didn't Realize I Was Watching History Being Made

I used to watch Carson[1] when I was teen. Not always all of it, in fact, usually just the monologue; but if there was someone interesting scheduled, I'd stay up and watch the whole thing. I watched live broadcasts of people that most folks living today only see in reruns, or don't see at all, or more sadly, are unaware of.[2]

I didn't realize I was watching history being made. We rarely do at the time.

Like this: I watched Orel Hershiser sing the Doxology on Carson and Johnny was so touched, he included it among the best segments on his show when he did a retrospective before retirement. I don't think you'll find Hershiser singing it on Youtube, I looked for it, but I've embedded the music for you below; it's very short. I sang it every Sunday in church as a child. It's a staple in many churches; it's usually sung acapella.

It used to be acceptable (even admired) to be a publicly Christian athlete, and you could simultaneously do needlepoint or drink beer.

Miller Lite, 1975 12 28, Rosey Grier and friends:

In my youth, famous Christian athletes were the likes of George Foreman, Rosey Grier, and Terry Bradshaw. Today Tim Tebow is filling a similar role, though he's taken it to the field and that is inviting some interesting parody and unkind criticism.

Most interesting to me is that these men didn't just choose to be spiritual (that is still okay most of the time), but chose to associate themselves with a particular spiritual leader.

[1]
If you're a lot younger than me, you may not know that Johnny Carson was so closely associated with The Tonight Show, viewers and show people alike often just called the show "Carson." Neither Leno nor Letterman (or any late night host) come close to the iconic status (and viewers) Johnny Carson had.

[2]
I saw Jimmy Stewart reading his own poetry; I saw George Burns tell a masturbation joke (he wore gloves); I watched countless standups that became rock star comedians and many that fizzled and disappeared, and some that where somebody for some time, and are now forgotten by most, but not by me, like David Brenner. Thank you, David, for the laughs and memories.

Started: 1/10/2012

Malthus Writ Small

A couple days ago, a grandmother was beaten at a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese when she confronted a man for using foul language in the presence of children. (Story➚)

More people means less space, and precious resources like pizza and game tokens are spread thinner; it's no wonder we respond this way.

It's Malthus➚ writ small.

We spiral unawares.

Started: 1/17/2012

Indigenesis

I've suspected for years that people sometimes develop similar ideas and practices entirely independently because they are wired the same way and exposed to similar environments, and not necessarily because they shared those ideas and practices.

I learned from Prof. John R Hale, quoting Sir Walter Raleigh in Exploring the Roots of Religion (which itself is a quote from his thesis), that this concept has a fancy name: antidiffusionism. It's also known as inventionism, autochthonism, or indigenisim (or how about indigenesis?).

I regard it to be a very reasonable position. Why? It makes sense (everything starts there, doesn't it?[1]), and it's a social extension of a generally accepted evolutionary concept that similar physical changes can evolve independently; flight, for example, is often cited as having developed a number of times over millions of years.

Sir Walter Raleigh wrote this after finding canoes in a variety of cultures that couldn't possibly have borrowed the idea from each other:

The human mind has the ability to look at an array of means and materials that exist worldwide and choose the same things and craft the same objects and practices from them.

Diffusion is of course is the norm and lets us make connections between related languages, beliefs and practices, but if taken to extremes results in hypotheses like that in Thor Hyerdahl's Kon-Tiki, which Hale treats gently but discards.

I read most of Hyerdahl's books and enjoyed them immensely, as speculative as they were; Thor had an adventurer's soul that facts could not deter.

Hale, for his part, delights so much in the diversity and similarities of the cultures he discusses, you can't help but share his enthusiasm.

[1]
Of course, an idea that "makes sense" has more value when it makes sense to someone already knowledgeable in such things.

Started: 1/18/2012

We haven't come very far in 2,000 years

Last night I finished listening to a series of lectures, Exploring the Roots of Religion, a non-sectarian archaeological perspective by Prof. John R Hale.

In a lecture on Rome, Prof. Hale said that sports was marked by religious fervor in the ancient world as much as it is today.

Made me think how little we've advanced in 2,000 years. We still gather to watch human beings knock the stuffing out of each other. At least nowadays we generally restrict it to broken bones and crushed skulls.


But we live on the edge of barbarity. (There are those alive today that can remember Auschwitz, Bataan, The Killing Fields, and other modern atrocities.) We are all at our centers products of the same evolutionary line, and our best efforts to distinguish ourselves from other peoples is often to kill them.

Started: 1/16/12

We Don't Laugh Like That Anymore

I just listened to an old CBSRMT CBS Radio Mystery Theater episode that advertised the "new" 1974 Buick Regal.

It occurred to me that less than 30 years before that episode was first broadcast, the Golden Age of Radio was in its heyday; and here it is, nearly 40 years after that, and I am further away from 1974 now than I was from 1944 then.

Makes you stop and think. Makes me stop and think, and if you're not yet stopping and thinking about this sort of thing, you will someday soon.

Turner Classic Movies played a few Abbott and Costello scary comedies Sunday night. The were too scary for Dee Dee, but I did manage to watch a bit. The screwball buddy comedy is timeless, but we'll never see the likes of Abbot and Costello again, or Hope and Crosby, or Martin and Lewis.

Started: 1/16/12

(Most posts will now end with a "started" date, except for those I began so long ago that I don't remember the date. My subjects sometimes key off a recent event, so the date might be helpful at some point for anyone that's interested, including myself. I archive and save nearly everything I write, including these posts; together with email and my fiction, they form a fairly full picture of me that someone someday might enjoy reading. I wish I had this full picture of my grandparents, great-grandparents, etc.)

The Real Free Thought Heroes

Atheists are often angry skeptics[1], and this type of atheist is just as annoying as angry fundamentalists; neither side can let the other enjoy a little harmless diversion.

Christopher Hitchens died recently➚; he was celebrated for his acerbic atheism; he said if you had given Jerry Falwell an enema before he died, you could have fit him in a coffin the size of a matchbox.

This is unfortunate on many levels, not the least of which is a incredible irreverence for the dead. The angriest atheists seem to delight in being angrily witty[2], and there is a temptation for the listener to grant more value to something that is said well.

Now, there is some merit in the assertion that anything said well is worth hearing, regardless of what is said (much poetry exists for that reason alone), but it doesn't mean the words give us any insight into the human condition, and it can often mean they hurt others.

The best writing shouldn't hurt anyone (not intentionally), but it often does; Truman Capote's Answered Prayers comes to mind; it is first great writing and secondly gossip (which would have faded with the personalities it embarrassed had Capote not so sublimely elevated the lowly deeds of his celebrity friends[3]).

Hutchins' comment on Falwell was clever, but that's about it. Taken out of context (which is how another atheist presented it on the radio), it offers no insight into Hutchins, Falwell, or atheism, and certainly has no regard for my sensibilities, the listener, and I am probably among those most interested in the dialog.

Unfortunately, the angriest atheists only want to be heard and applauded by like-minded atheists, allowing of course for a few chortles here an there at the absurdity of befuddled believers (of which there is no shortage). It's not about listening, understanding, and debating, it's about ensnaring and embarrassing the gullible (also of which there is no shortage).

And so I offer two diametrically opposed heroes of free thought, two role models, one for each side of the coin, two men who had more in common than either would admit, and seemed even to like each other: Jerry Falwell and Larry Flynt.

Jerry Falwell
I liked Falwell, not because he was a Christian, but because he had the balls to engage Larry Flynt as a human being on national TV and to really mean it, and that's no small thing when you're running a multi-million dollar ministry; there were real dollars and careers at stake. Call him right, wrong, or crazy, Falwell was nothing if not genuine, and he took the high road after suing Flynt for the unflattering parody linked below. In the course of filing and losing the lawsuit, Falwell and Flynt got to know each other quite well, and I think they liked each other on some level, even while disagreeing with each other on just about everything.

<- Jerry Falwell Talks About His First Time[4] Rated MA 
I'm not kidding, this is from Hustler, okay?



Larry Flynt
And Larry? After all these years I can't figure out if his conversion by then-President Jimmy Carter's sister was genuine or not, but it sure seemed like it at the time, and I'd like to think it was; he made a couple odd financial decisions for Hustler at the time that he probably wouldn't have done otherwise, including a cover declaring "We Don't Need a Cover Girl to Sell This Magazine."

(But they did; it was one of the poorest selling issues in the company's history. A few companies have experimented with "we don't need _____ to sell you _____, including Ford, IIRC, who had an actor walk out on a white background and just talk, which didn't sell any more cars than Larry sold magazines.)

In any case, Larry made a public profession for Jesus and took a lot of crap from his readers. Call him right, wrong, or crazy, that took courage, and I think he did "come to know the Lord," as we say back where I come from.

In this light, Falwell was more open-minded than any atheist I have ever met, and should be an example for both atheists and Christians.

And Larry, despite having since embraced atheism, if he was truly genuine, he'll be rejoicing with the angels someday along with the rest of us when we all get to heaven. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Flynt ➚

They both took the time to know each other, and in so doing could disagree civilly.

Larry Flynt, Jerry Falwell on Larry King live 1996, Part 1
(The rest is on Youtube➚; if you watch all four parts, you can sense a connection between these two. They have more than their girth and extremism in common.)

[1]
"Often" because no group is always anything, even if it's mostly something most of the time.

[2]
Not in a funny ha-ha way, but in a Neo-Classical capital W Alexander Pope way.

[3]
Well, former friends, for those stories were the beginning of the end of his career, though in my opinion Music for Chameleons, more or less an anthology of late magazine pieces and published not long before he died, contains some of his best work.

[4]
Like most kids from that era, we found ways to get magazines like Hustler, and we read this issue when it first hit the newsstand. I was too young to understand the implications of what I was looking at (implications don't matter to children, they're an unfortunate facet chiseled into us as we enter adulthood; consequences - that's a different matter), but I felt like I was news along with this glossy, taboo, center of attention. I was probably the only person in my church that knew first-hand what all the ruckus was about. Of course, that's the only reason I read Hustler in the first place, for the articles. I was a very well-informed child.

Things You Can't Criticize

• Teachers
• Voting
• Firefighters
• Police officers
• Soldiers
• Any religion but your own

I'm not saying I want to criticize any of these people or things, just that propriety and preservation prevent me from doing so.

The only type of person that can successfully criticize these things is someone who finds a small flaw that most of us agree deserves criticism (which then can be leveraged into a broader condemnation), or someone who is so far above reproach on everything else that they are just politely acknowledged (like Charlton Heston's comments near the end of his life regarding gun control ➚), or someone who is fundamentally right and has identified something obvious the rest of us have overlooked.

Working on a larger post, different subject, taking some time.

 

Which Version Do You Like? (or, Anatomy of a Revision)

Regarding my post on "What does it mean to keep Christmas?":

Each of these opening paragraphs is adequate. One is better.

Before
I, like many others, more eagerly anticipate Christmas each year, and ever more deeply mourn its passing each year. Our holiday hopes are increasingly higher, which only means they are dashed from a greater height.

After
I, like many others, more eagerly anticipate Christmas each year, and each year more deeply mourn its passing. Our holiday hopes are increasingly greater, which only means they are dashed from a greater height.

The 2nd makes a couple improvements:

1. In the first sentence, closing the distance between the repeated cycle ("each year") instead of the activity ("mourning") emphases the cycle, and saves the activity for a small denouement; it makes your ear wait a bit, and in any case is more suitable for an observation on a periodic event. I also enhances the echo between "more eagerly" and "more deeply"

2. In the second sentence, I first described the amplitude of hope with height; but I wanted the hope to drop proportionally to the height, and I wasn't happy with the implied cliché "high hopes." "Greater hope" is more seasonal, and the repetition of "greater" more satisfying (at least to me) than repeating variations on height.(BTW I’m still not h happy with the 2nd line, there is one niggling thing I can’t let go it, just can’t put my finger on it.).

Sometimes you can't analyze it, you just know it. Just like in the preceding sentence (the one you just read before this one); I separated two independent clauses with a comma. Verboten in the school room, and most of our newspapers, magazines, and business writing.

I understand why, and you are welcome to disagree. It's not, IMHO, because we can't trust ourselves to learn and break rules (although that's probably part of it), it's because those that teach the language you and I speak don't understand why these two sentences have subtly different effects.

Sometimes you can't analyze it, you just know it.
Sometimes you can't analyze it; you just know it.

And that is a pedagogical tragedy.

And I used to teach, so I know what I'm talking about.

And yes, there is absolutely nothing wrong with starting an English sentence with a conjunction. If you're speaking Latin, you have my sympathy.

Why do I sometimes put a picture at the top of my post that's unrelated to the first paragraph?

Because when I share it on Facebook, Facebook grabs the first image it sees, so I try to put something interesting there.

 

 

Just so there's some context for this: Next time you see a hippie leftover from the 60's or 70's, don't ask how they couldn't keep pace with a changing world; ask instead how the world once found peace and love and managed to lose it.

 

Santorum: Surreptitious Ignorance

Tonight I heard a couple left-of-center pundits on MSNBC's The Ed Show accuse Santorum of being intentionally racist and that his comment in the clip below was evidence of an agenda harbored by some conservative elements.

IMHO that's nonsense. Racist, yes, but evidence of an agenda? No.

What it was, was surreptitious ignorance.

Racism is often so subtle, so incipient, those affected by it don't realize it; and I use the word surreptitious because the ignorance submerses itself, like a neurosis (maybe exactly so), and refuses acknowledgement.

Rarely do racists know they are racist. Mr Santorum is a victim of his class, his station, his color, his family, his wealth, and every person and idea that ever nudged his path one way or the other.

He may indeed have nothing but goodwill toward all men of all colors, but his language, and hence the collective pieces that make Rick Santorum Rick Santorum, unfortunately include enough poorly formed mores that these words were formed by his brain and allowed to leave his mouth.

Is he a bad man? I doubt that very much. Could it have been a linguistic slip because he was recently discussing Black Americans in the context of welfare? Possibly. But it shows an allowance for insensitive wording that shouldn't be tolerated, least of all in public office.

 

Who loves ya, baby?

I'm watching the first season of Kojak. I was too young when this was first broadcast to stay up and watch it, and I suspect my parents thought it was too violent. It's also riddled with gritty portrayals of drug use, prostitution, etc, but those things go over a child's head; violence, however, is digested early.

But that opening theme, it's like a lullaby, an immediate transport to a simpler time, when prime time was bedtime, and a musical capsule meant kisses goodnight and getting tucked in and falling asleep with moonbeams settling into dark corners.

They don't make opening themes like this too much anymore (eg Seinfeld, an extreme minimalist example). Know why? Cutting 60 seconds from a show's beginning and end makes more room for commercials. There are probably music royalty savings as well, but I don't know much about that world.

What they've lost is a Pavlovian[1] event that would serve them well in syndication. A theme song encapsulates memories in a way nothing else does, and it lasts a lifetime. Squandering the time for a few more ad dollars is a mistake.

 

[1]
I heard a buy on progressive radio say Pavlov was discredited over 50 years ago (and he was a noted speaker at an event, not an on-air personality). Not sure what he meant by that, he didn't elaborate. Just try to remember that next time you see a food commercial and get hungry, or smell food and salivate. We all do. No, it's not a universal standard model for human behavior, but it's a good chunk of it.