We remember the thousands of Americans who left for work that morning and never returned; the hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern non-combatants inadvertently killed or maimed in the course of the U.S. response; and the tens of thousands of troops who have thus far sacrificed their lives or limbs or been otherwise injured in the process.
If only all metal were Flexon.
And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. (Jesus Christ; Luke 6:31)
It happened again. I perused someone else’s latest blog post, and there it was, in full plumage, staring me right in the face—a typo. How to proceed in this oft-encountered and delicate situation presents the horniest of dilemmas.
Oops. Thorniest. Caught that one myself.
Personally, I find it rather impolite and inconsiderate when a reader detects a typographical error—or, for that matter, a slipshod grammar gaffe or an ungainly English-as-a-second-language-type blooper—in any of my writings and omits to apprise me thereof. Call me … Read More →
Barack Obama’s presidency is unconstitutional. His place of birth has nothing to do with it. The “birthers” were correct in their conclusion but wrapped themselves around the wrong issue to get there.
Mr. Obama’s presidency is unconstitutional because, at age 47, he was simply too young to have been inaugurated. All his acts as “president” are therefore null and void. For all practical purposes, the nation has been a rudderless dreadnought for going on 18 months now.
Setting forth eligibility criteria for the office of president, Article II of the U.S. Constitution clearly states … Read More →
Last night I, once again, barged into my kitchen unannounced—calling ahead prior to changing locations within my own abode is a habit I have yet to adopt—and in so doing I rudely interrupted a cute little mouse during its preliminary inspection of a piece of pie which had been left unattended on the counter.
Although I cat scant resemblance to a bear … let’s try this again … although I bear scant resemblance to a cat and, to the best of my recollection, neither meowed, hissed, purred, nor licked myself on entrance, poor little Mickey or Minnie panicked as he or she noticed my presence, turned tail, performed an obvious miscalculation with respect to brake speed and counter friction, tumbled over the counter’s edge, landed on his or her spine on the tile floor beneath, instantly bounced back on his or her four little … Read More →
This issue seems oddly confusing to many people, so let me clear it up:
If a Muslim individual robs a bank because he wants to buy himself a bigger flatscreen TV, he or she is a bank robber, not an “Islamist” bank robber. Unless a desire to fund violent jihad prompted the need for cash, the person’s muslimhood has nothing to do with the crime.
If, on the other hand, a Muslim individual blows himself and dozens of others to pieces while screaming Allahu Akbar, he or she is an “Islamist” terrorist, as the act was faith-based.
Jeffrey Dahmer and Adolf Hitler were Christians and homicidal—genocidal in the case of the latter—sociopaths, but not “Christian” sociopaths, as their deeds were hardly motivated by … Read More →
Had I known the manner in which talk radio loudmouth Jim Fate shrugged his mortal coil, I never would have opened the package which contained this intelligence.
What a great read! Said I liked it but I lied—I LOVED IT! The perfect escape wrapped in mystery, adventure and danger! Lis is my new favorite author.
—Michael Bolton, Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter
As a television crime writer and producer, I expect novels to deliver pulse-pounding tales with major … Read More →
Wall Street almost drove the whole country into the ground. On the flip side, even the most ayatolloid Che Guevara T-shirt-wearing leftist would have to admit to the physical prettiness of New York City’s Financial District, this grid-less labyrinth of narrow European-style streets wending their way between beautifully architectured mostly pre-war buildings whose sheer height nevertheless renders the scenery uniquely New York. Adding a charming hillside touch, the entire area slopes toward the East River, with nary a car to spoil the walking-around experience.
Since money and I naturally repel each other like the negative poles of two magnets, I seldom journey south of the Village, or SoHo at the most; hence it doesn’t happen every day that I can be spotted strolling down Wall Street. (For the Manhattan-challenged, the Financial District is located near the southern tip of this elongated island.) Strangely, whenever it does happen, passers-by seem blissfully oblivious to the rarity of the event they are witnessing. If they saw a giraffe … Read More →
Birds do it, bees do it, squirrels do it. All animate entities on this planet—and most likely extraterrestrials as well—are programmed by nature to multiply. Procreation happens automatically. It requires no special training, no talent, no skill, and no higher intellect. In all of nature, there’s no such thing as “too dumb to procreate.” Any living being too dumb to produce offspring would also be too dumb to respire or to convert sunlight into chlorophyll, i.e., be non-viable right out of the gate.
Even potatoes know how to multiply, hence the ingenuity of a potato is all it takes.
In addition to the necessary skill set being already built in, all living creatures are endowed with an inherent drive to procreate, and a pretty powerful one at that. So aside from no skill and no intellect, no more effort is required to effect conception than it takes to sit back, relax, and leave the driving to Mother Nature.
What does require a measure of skill, on the other hand, is to prevent procreation from occurring. One must possess at least a scintilla of intellectual prowess to be able to follow … Read More →
……………………………………………………………………..
A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have. (Gerald Ford, 1974)
Are there any Republicans left, pardon the pun, that haven’t suffered at least one televised stroke as of yet? Let us pray they all have medical insurance—under the current system, GOPers must have had a rough time obtaining coverage on account of their pre-existing condition. (In Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You, a father, played by Alan Alda, breathes a sigh of relief upon being briefed by a neurologist about his son’s CAT scan results; of late, the young man had been espousing all manner of radical conservative ideas, perfectly consistent with the location of a small tumor exerting pressure on a particular area of his brain.)
To be fair, the current right-wing meltdown comes on the heels of … Read More →
Yesterday I received my 2010 Census form in the mail. Didn’t I just read somewhere that they were looking for census workers to knock on doors and ask personal questions? So then wherefore this form in my mailbox?
Presumably, someone will ring my bell shortly to inquire whether I had liked its font and the design with its light-blue background, and whether I found the Start here at the top enlightening or perplexing given the omission of a matching Stop here at the bottom of the final page. After all, without having been told when to stop, I might have plowed through the end of the form like a Toyota on steroids and kept checking imaginary boxes until my pen ran out of black or blue ink.
So most likely, the door-knocking wetware will be deployed to collect feedback on the forms; to make sure people received, understood, completed, and returned them; and perhaps to elicit one or the other confession about … Read More →
This is the opening line from an Associated Press article in the Business section of today’s New York Times:
If you don’t mind going door to door and asking strangers some personal questions, you may have a future as a Census worker.
Huh?
I used to mind very much going table to table, ragged out in a dopey apron and tie, asking strangers some personal questions about their dinner preferences, yet minding it didn’t prevent me from having a rather extensive past doing precisely that. So why should the fact that I would certainly mind shuffling door to door and interviewing strangers … Read More →
If you’re just goofing around, applying won’t suffice. In addition, you’ll have to come in for an interview, undergo job training, and perhaps even show up for work every day.
If you’re serious, all you have to do is apply, and you’re done.
Or could it be the dangling only refers to serious and not to the act of applying?
As I keep scouring Craigslist’s Help Wanted section in my endearingly fruitless quest for employment, I keep stumbling across the endearingly insipid Serious Only Need Apply. I can’t help but wonder about the mindset of an employer who would bother to include such a silly line in a job ad, assuming the employer him- or herself either wrote or personally signed off on it prior to its publication. (Even if some factotum was wholly responsible for the content of the ad, the impression it engenders attaches to the employer and the company, not to the witless minion in … Read More →
An attractive young woman suits up in a tight mini skirt and a skimpy peekaboo blouse, paints her face like Irma la Douce, dons a flashy diamond necklace, sticks a wad of 100-dollar bills into each of her exposed garters, puts on a pair of four-inch stilettos, gets plastered out of her mind, and proceeds to take a midnight stroll on the South Side of Chicago, all by herself.
She ends up raped, strangled, and robbed.
Now, if—upon condemning this act of violence—you ever so gently offered for consideration the thesis that the young lady’s choices in the run-up to her demise may not have been among the most conducive to her personal welfare, chances are you’d be taken to the woodshed by every women’s and victim’s rights group under the sun for “blaming the victim” in a disgraceful bid to make excuses for her attacker(s), as if you were implying that on account of the victim’s conduct the crime committed was less severe than had she been stone sober, wrapped in a burlap blanket with a potato sack over her head, and assaulted en route to the grocery store in broad daylight with fifteen body guards and a pack of … Read More →
In his splendidly (oops…) entertaining and highly (ouch!) edifying writing primer On Writing–A Memoir of the Craft, horrormeister Stephen King counsels against the use of adverbs:
Adverbs, you will remember from your own version of Business English, are words that modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. They’re the ones that usually end in -ly. Adverbs, like the passive voice, seem to have been created with the timid writer in mind. With the passive voice, the writer usually expresses fear of not being taken seriously; it is a the voice of little boys wearing shoepolish moustaches and little girls clumping around in Mommy’s high heels. With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is afraid he/she isn’t expressing herself clearly, that he or she is not getting the point or the picture across.
The above 80-word paragraph features five adverbs, i.e., 6.25% of it is pure adverbiage—quite remarkable for a paragraph explicitly composed to discourage rather than to promote their employment—including a whopping three instances of the word usually. (On the previous page, Mr. King had stated that he was “not in love” with the sentence My romance with Shayna began with our first kiss because it contained the word with twice in four words.)
Mr. King continues … Read More →
My previous post contained the following sentence:
Weapons of mass destruction or no weapons of mass destruction, Iraq, being located smack in between Iran and the Saudi Arabian oil fields, with Saddam and his murderous Oprichniki removed as a regional stabilizer of sorts, I guess there’s little chance of pulling out of there until such time as we’re all driving solar vehicles.
A former-sort-of-coworker-turned-Facebook-acquaintance of mine (not the gentleman pictured above) kindly yet forcefully lamented that something was “very wrong” with this sentence and that it made “no sense,” grammatically speaking.
Yet I contend that my sentence works just fine, as it is structurally modeled upon the Second Amendment:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
This antiquated construction is called … Read More →
On one of the late-night talk shows, rocker Jon Bon Jovi referred to Barack Obama as the “coolest” president in the universe.
Agreed. We do have the coolest president imaginable, the classiest First Lady, two adorable First Daughters, and the most hypo-allergenic First Dog in history. More importantly, with the exception of Bo (left), less than one average human lifetime ago this entire beautiful family would have been relegated to the proverbial–as well as the literal–back of the bus in certain parts of the very country whose executive mansion they now rightfully inhabit. In spite of its flaws–which may be due to imperfections in human nature itself rather than the American system of governance–we live in a great nation with a moral arc bending towards justice in many respects.
Who can forget the expression of joy mingled with a sprinkling of disbelief in the teared-up eyes of older African-Americans, who had witnessed segregation firsthand, as they watched a black man delivering his acceptance speech and subsequently being sworn in as, yes, president of the United States of America? And irrespective of whether or not one agrees with Mr. Obama’s policies, who could possibly fail to delight in the notion of a bunch of knuckleheaded drips banging the deranged contents of their goofy-looking … Read More →
The main panel discussion on yesterday’s Meet the Press, titled America–The Next Decade, was premised upon the sentiment that a new decade would officially kick off on January 1, 2010. In fact, we’ve been subjected to quite a lot of end-of-decade talk lately.
I suppose a legitimate argument can be made that a new decade begins at every moment. Hence, the decade that commenced on November 4, 1984, at 7:45:32 a.m. cashed in its chips on November 4, 1994, at precisely 7:45:31 a.m. And this very moment (right now) is the final one of the decade that started exactly ten years minus one moment ago.
Therefore, the decade that began January 1, 2000, at 00:01 a.m. has no choice but to expire December 31, 2009, at 11:59 p.m. The quantum effects of special relativity aside, ten years are ten years–a decade is a decade no matter what point in time the clock was started. A decade always ends ten years to the zeptosecond from the zeptosecond we started counting. And there exists no law against … Read More →
Hard drives crash. Computers flatline. Insidious malware corrupts and obliterates our precious data. Thus I decided to invest in a state-of-the-art online data backup system. Gentle on the wallet, and should my Windows machine ever fall prey to a burglary, a flood, or get niblicked beyond repair by a jealous blonde chasing after me with a nine iron and causing all sorts of collateral property damage in the process, at least my files will be safe. (Unless, of course, whatever domestic misfortune may befall me coincides with a meteorite strike at the remote date storage facility–but what are the chances of such ill-fated concurrence?)
The project of backing up my data proved a shade more technically challenging than I had anticipated, so in flagrant defiance of the doctrine which holds that men neither ask for directions nor read manuals, I grudgingly resolved to consult the accompanying literature.
On page 17 (out of 50), the following statement perplexed me:
It is worth mentioning that Live protect requires adequate System resources.
It seems that protect should be capitalized and System should be lower-case, but let’s not sweat the small potatoes. What I found several orders of magnitude more troubling was that … Read More →
Someone once referred to fathers as the dark matter of our psychic universe. The dark matter of my mine passed away exactly ten years ago today. Death came suddenly. It was a Sunday. Und der Herrgott weiss immer warum.
* My Dad (1930-1999) *
Laura Ingraham
The other day, I watched a fascinating exchange between Laura Ingraham and Diane Francis, a Canadian journalist who advocated population control by referring to China as having had some success with their one-child policy. Although Ms. Francis, a self-professed feminist, conceded that she wasn’t particularly crazy about Communist dictatorships and their methods, some serious action needed to be taken in order to stem population growth, or else at some point in the not so far future global competition over basic resources like food, water, and energy would become so fierce that World War II will look like a dorm room pillow fight by comparison. (My analogy, but it captures the gist of her analysis.)
Needless to say, Laura Ingraham, being a card-carrying Christian conservative, blew her top at the notion of any kind of policy aimed at reducing birth rates, citing that any such policies would be impossible to enforce without draconian methods akin to those employed in China. For instance, we’d have to tell women how many children they could have, and this would never fly in this country.
Probably true. Hard to imagine to impose a one-child policy in the United States without kicking off a civil war that would make the Civil War (capitalized) look, well, like a dorm room pillow fight by comparison. After all, this is a Christian country, and one of the tenets of Christianity is that God creates every human life for a reason, and it is a mortal sin to interfere with the process. Hence no abortion, and, ideally, no … Read More →
So I’m reading this book called Bird by Bird by one Anne Lamott, subtitled Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Those familiar with my attempts at putting pen to screen will now be sorely tempted to enthusiastically exclaim how urgently I require not just some but truckloads of instructions in both areas. Be that as it may. (To quote James Thurber, “When I split an infinitive, it is going to damn well stay split!” And, to quote myself, when I split hairs, split they damn well shall remain.)
On page 98, in a chapter on understanding people and how to tap into our quintessential oneness with our fellow citizens so as to be able to convert them into real and recognizable characters on the page, Ms. Lamott writes the following:
But it’s even possible to have this feeling when you see–really see—a police officer, when you look right at him and you see that he’s a living breathing person who like everyone else is suffering like a son of a bitch, and you don’t see him with a transparency over him of all the images of violence and chaos and danger that cops represent. You accept him as an equal.
Violence, chaos, and danger? That’s quite a flattering lineup of cop associations. Verily, one would think Ms. Lamott is referring not to police officers but to members of … Read More →
If I wanted to marry myself and applied for a marriage license, chances are that every license-issuing magistrate on the planet would politely but firmly instruct me to take a hike. But why? More importantly, why should my request be turned down? What could possibly be wrong with entering into the sacred bonds of matrimony with the person I love, honor, and cherish above all others? How is it that, merely on account of my spouse selection, I am being denied my civil right to shed the societal stigma of singlehood and enjoy a tax break like everyone else?
Well, for starters, if only one person is involved, it ain’t marriage. Simple as that. Says who? Why, tradition, of course. Historically speaking, the concept of marriage has never been known to extend to unions with oneself.
So there I go, and there I have it. Bummer.
Gay marriage proponents argue that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees the right to same-sex marriage, and that resorting to the ballot box in this matter amounts to an exercise in futility, since–short of the passing of an constitutional amendment–our fundamental rights are not accountable to the democratic process. The Equal Protection Clause, by definition, trumps the outcome of … Read More →
There’s no business like show business. Except death and taxes. If you thought the latter two were the only sure things in life, check out this latest bombshell revelation from yesterday’s Theater page in the New York Times:
The hit musicals, which often charge more during holidays, exploited demand even further last week by requiring more people to buy tickets at premium prices of $300 or higher. (Patrick Healy, New York Times, 12/1/09)
Broadway Musicals requiring (!) people to buy $300.00-plus tickets? Who would have thunk it? How is it constitutional to force the folks to fork over their hard-earned rent and grocery money at the box office? Whatever happened to property rights?
Effective immediately, I shall steer clear of the Theater District, lest I may suddenly find myself surrounded by a gang of brass-knuckled goons jumping out from behind a billboard or rappelling from a marquee and blackjacking me into blowing hundreds of dollars on show tickets.
Now, I’m no economist, but I sometimes do wonder what kind of theory of economics a person subscribes to that impels them to use a certain terminology in their reportage. Last time I checked, the United States was a free market economy. Is such a system God’s gift to mankind? Probably not quite, as evidenced by … Read More →
A well-known New York City psychologist recently recommended the following on his radio show:
Do small talk. It’s meaningless. It’s good for you.
Although I do not recall the context which prompted the chitchat prescription, its likely aim was to promote the use of conversation as a bonding tool as opposed to a mere conduit for the exchange of utilitarian intelligence or lofty intellectual constructs. Notwithstanding the fact that the determination of meaning-lessness versus its fullness resides notoriously in the eye of the beholder, on its face the notion of enjoying the company of others by way of shuttlecocking meaningless sound waves back and forth without allowing cumbersome tidings to distract from the congenial vibe seems reasonably therapeutic, especially for patients with full-blown STDD (small talk deficiency disorder).
It just so happens that yours truly’s dexterity in the small talk arena rivals that of the average milkman attempting to perform mitral valve surgery on an Dalmatian. Indeed, your’s truly couldn’t small-talk his way out of the proverbial paper bag at a wedding reception if a crazed Afghan party crasher held an AK-47 to his temple and demanded such talk; although, on account of the strength of such incentive, he might, in fact, be able to crank out an unusually eloquent succession of perhaps two or three peppy zingers along the lines of “That’s a beautiful rifle” and “How’s your goat?” prior to falling silent due to STE (small talk exhaustion), which, in this case, would most likely be followed by his falling even silenter [sic] due to … Read More →
Although not a big believer in prophecies, I am somewhat intrigued by the timing of this eerily portentous advertisement, which appeared on the back cover of the September 2001 edition (i.e., published sometime in July or August 2001) of an eyewear magazine:
