The Saga of Chutzpah the Mouse – Part the First

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Dave

The Saga of Chutzpah the Mouse
In Several Parts
This being the First

Wherein we meet our protagonist and, for the very first time, encounter The Mouse…

I’ve never had a mouse before. Never even seen one. Well, not a proper one. Mickey Mouse, of course. Mighty Mouse. The little mouse in the Bugs Bunny cartoons that the elephant is petrified of and hikes up her elephant-skin dress-legs and tiptoes about in horror. So cartoon mouses, yes. But not real, live, proper mouses. (( Yes, yes, the plural of mouse is mice, my pedantic friends. But you see – and not a lot of people know this – mice refers to a collection of the creatures. Whereas mouses, naturally, refers to various individual creatures taken together in a collective statement. Thus we might speak of our mouses: the one in my house and the one in yours. Or we might speak of a fleet of mice if, say, 25 of them were running down the street. Or had joined the navy, presumably.)) I mean, they don’t even keep those in zoos or natural history museums, do they? Or do they? Because, perhaps they are in the natural history museums, but I always miss them on my way to the dinosaurs. Perhaps they’re in there, peaking their little noses out from behind the underbrush that early man is stomping through on his way to the watering-hole. ((Watering-holes were the “club scene” of early man. In fact, this is why modern clubs are so-called. You see, Watering-holes are where the men-cavemen would go to meet women-cavemen. And when they did meet them, or at least one they fancied, they’d club her over the head and drag her home. So Watering-holes soon became known as the scene of clubbings, whence “club-scene.” And this is the term we still use today, though obviously we don’t club the women over the head anymore. Not mostly, anyway.)) But if they are there, I’ve never seen them. And they’re certainly not in the planetarium, I can promise you that much. Well, not as exhibits anyway. Residents, perhaps.

I’ve never had a mouse before. And then one day, I did. That is, we did. ((We: my roommate and I. You see, I live in New York County, New York City. Most people call it Manhattan, about which if you’re curious I highly recommend A History of New York by Diedrich Knickerbocker, which is not actually by Diedrich Knickerbocker, but by Washington Irving. (Meta-footnote: “Knickerbocker” didn’t pass the spell-check, and I’m slightly indignant about that). The thing about Manhattan is, it’s virtually impossible to have your own place unless you happen to be phenomenally wealthy, or have had your own place since before Michael “Little Caesar” Bloomberg got his Midas-Real-Estate hands on the place. He’s the one that’s taken out all the trans-fats, cigarettes & poor people; The first two by fiat, the latter by presiding over astronomical rent-increases (about which if you’re curious I recommend Jimmy McMillan’s 2009 mayoral campaign and his Rent is Too Damn High platform). So when I say “we,” I am referring to myself and my roommate.)) I don’t remember exactly how we first discovered this. Odd scratching sounds against the wall, maybe. Or a scurrying shadow seen out the corner of an eye. Tiny little holes in food packagings, which to go by the spell-checker is not actually a plural. We may have been a bit slow on the uptake. Just because one watches BBC’s Sherlock, doesn’t make one Holmes and Watson, or rather Holmes or Watson, since we’re speaking of the proverbial “one.” But in the event, there are two of us, and so Holmes and Watson works just fine. Though this whole incident with The Mouse may have begun before we started watching that show, and so we can’t really be held entirely at fault on that account.

I’ve never even seen a mouse before. I didn’t even know anything about them. I suppose I assumed that mouses were basically very small rats that grew up to be proper sized rats; much in the same way that I assumed ponies were very small horses that grew up to be proper sized horses. ((I do dead languages, not biology.)) The result of this ignorance was that I spent a bit of time wondering how long it would be until our little mouse would grow up and become a rat. And I definitely did not want a rat. However, I kept this to myself as I didn’t want to worry my roommate.

That is, I kept the rat business to myself. We discussed, broadly, what we ought to do about this mouse. Initially, we considered actively precipitating its demise. But somehow this didn’t seem at all nice. To be sure, it sheltered under our roof and feasted upon our dry-goods. And to be sure, it did not ever offer to contribute to the rent. It didn’t even offer to bring back any food of its own, let alone buy toilet paper once in a while or do the dishes. But considering that it could drown in the sink much more easily than either of us, I was willing to overlook this last bit. ((Also, the sponge was much too big for it. I’d have gotten it a little mouse-sized sponge, if I wasn’t worried about the drowning, but I was so I didn’t. And of course by mouse-sized, I mean sized to fit its mouse-hands. Not a sponge the size of an actual mouse. That would be daft.)) The point is, we left it alone for a bit.

Back in those innocent days, I didn’t bother to close the door to my room when I went to work in the morning. “I’ve no food in my room,” thought I. “So why would The Mouse ever think to venture thence?” But venture he did. Perhaps he was exploring. I suspect he’s quite a curious little creature, when he expects nobody’s watching. ((I even suspect now that mankind has inherited its spirit of curiosity and desire for exploration from our furry forebears. Indeed I’m now quite sure that there were mice stowed away on all three of Columbus’ barks. Mission: the same as old Cristobal himself. “To India!,” spake the intrepid Spanish-employed Italian. “To the Land of Spices!” And, “To India!,” spake the mice. “To the Land of Cheeses!” It’s all right there in the now-lost pages of Columbus’ famous journals. I’m quite sure.)) The only thing is, he’s got a very small brain. A mouse-sized brain, in fact. So although he may expect nobody’s watching, somebody may actually be watching. And that’s just what happened one night.

I was lying in bed, watching Twilight Zone reruns, ((Here’s a question. When WPIX airs a marathon of TZ episodes, one may be said to be watching reruns. But, when one actively calls up an episode on the Netflix, is that a “rerun”? File under Φ for “φilosophy.”)) when I heard a knocking. A knocking at my chamber door. No, it was more like the pitter-patter of little feet. Or was it more of a scratching? And not at my chamber door, but at my baseboard. But near the chamber door, at least. So, to sum up: I heard the scratching of little feet, scratching near, on or about, my chamber door, which was open. At which commotion, my ears pricked up. Possibly like little mouse-ears, if they do that. If they don’t, then more like those of a dog. If I’d had a tail, I expect I might have wagged it. But not having a tail, I sat quite still. And listened. Listened in the general direction of my chamber door.

Nothing happened. The noise stopped. Perhaps his mouse-brain was keener than I’d given it credit for. Perhaps he was in the process of expecting that somebody was watching and so he was doing what I was doing. Namely, still-sitting and ear up-pricking. I paused the Netflix and looked about, a bit unbenerved. This, I think, lulled The Mouse into a false sense of security. Because after a few moments, the scratching of little feet scampered past my open chamber door and behind my desk and then a bit around the corner of the room. And I was not prepared for what happened next.

Did you know, a mouse is a very cute creature? I had no idea. It made sense later, of course, when I philosophized over this on-after-wise. After all, had not Mr. Disney inspired the soul of a friendly child-hood companion into the body of a mouse? Surely this owed to the body of a mouse being possessed of at least some measure of cuteitutde. But at this moment in time, I’d no idea a mouse was cute. And then, at that very moment, The Mouse presented himself in the most adorable way he could think of, and thereupon belearned me of his cuteness.

For at that very moment, he sprang himself upon my desk chair, and perched himself upon its crown. And then he sat there, in the blue glow of the computer screen, striking the “mouse pose.” You’ve seen it, at least in imitation. Up on the hind legs, little arms folded in across its chest, head bent down, cocked a bit to one side, tail curled around its feet. Imagine a cartoon mouse, eating a piece of cheese, and you’ve got the idea, though he didn’t have any cheese. He looked so peaceful then, in thoughtful mouse-repose. What was he thinking? Was he dreaming of open pastures, with cheese blooming in the underbrush, not an owl in sight? Was he thinking of the next freighter he’d stow away on, a chance to see the world in all its glorious cheesiness? Perhaps he was thinking of a particularly nice sharp cheddar he’d had when he was young, or the runny camembert that had got away. ((Presumably by running.)) Or maybe he was looking at me and thinking, “you know, humans are actually kind of cute when they’re not trying to kill you or lock their food away in cupboards you can’t get into.”

And then he was gone. Whereupon was I sore displeaséd. Because it’s one thing when you can see the little bastard and quite another when he’s hidden himself and yet you know, oh you know, he’s back there somewhere. So off he went, and with him, all my musings on my intrepid, romantic, philosophic tenant. In fact, I couldn’t sleep until I was satisfied he was no longer in my room. ((At least 3 Twilight Zone episodes later.)) The door has been barred ever since. And while that was the last time The Mouse has ever dared to cross the threshold to my chamber, it was by no means the last we saw of him.

Tune in next week for the next exciting installment of The Saga of Chutzpah the Mouse, wherein The Mouse executes a marvelous deed of derring-do and thusly earns himself a name.

ARS CONVERSATIONIS

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Dave

The Art of Conversation
Or
Courtesy & The WordBucket©

The following is yet another submission by my dear friend and colleague, Anne Thrope. If I myself do not contribute anything soon, she may supersede me as the primary writer of this Blogue, whereupon shall I become little less than a guest contributor on the grounds of my own proprietorship. Nevertheless, we humbly submit for your approval a discussion on The Art Of Conversation.

“…it was one of those conversations where you sort of wish you’d been paying attention from the beginning, but you never expected it to be interesting.” This was my boss speaking. We’re usually on the same page, which is why I didn’t feel too badly about missing the front end of this particular story. It did raise an interesting question, however. Namely, how does one deal with stories in which one is not particularly interested? One way, it seems, is to zone out and hope it never goes anywhere of consequence. A bit cynical, perhaps, but practical. I do this sometimes as well. Although, in so doing, I rely heavily on my WordBucket©. (( The WordBucket is a mental contraption that I’ve knocked together which allows me to subconsciously track the most recent portion of any conversation. Imagine a bucket with a hole in the bottom. As a person speaks, their words fall into the bucket. As the person continues to speak, the older words fall out through the hole and new words pile in on top, so that the most recent 20 or so words are always swirling around in there. The thing is, I have no idea what’s in the bucket until I reach in and grab them. It works like this. Somebody suspects I’m not paying attention (guilty-as-charged) and says “Are you even listening to me?,” loudly enough to jar me from my own more interesting thoughts. “Of course!,” I reply beïnjuredly. Whereupon do I stare into the distance and focus my mental powers as I reach into the word bucket, mindlessly reciting back the last 20 or so words this other party has said. Whereupon do they continue besatisfied.))

What it comes down to, friends, is Courtesy. Allow me to anticipate your objection. You might argue that Courtesy is not tricking your interlocutor into believing that you are paying attention when in fact you are doing quite the opposite, but that Courtesy is, contra-wise, actually paying attention. I shall parry this thrust by counter-suggesting that perhaps Courtesy means not telling frightfully dull stories. Or perhaps Courtesy is having the observational wherewithal to be able to deduce when your audience is being frightfully dullified on your account. I suggest, ever so humbly, that if you are going to tell a story, you have a responsibility not to be paint-dryingly, grass-growingly, Jane-Austenly boring. That, people, is what it means to be Courteous. If you should fail in this, well, you live me little choice but to reciprocate by not paying attention, WordBucket at the ready.

If this all seems a bit rude, take heart, for there is another way. At least, sometimes. The Zone-Out method would seem to work in almost any situation. However, I’ve found a peculiar way of dealing with boring conversations which I myself have accidentally initiated. Yes, accidentally initiated. You may fairly wonder at that. But be honest. We’ve all done it. We’ve all asked a question of someone and immediately regretted the asking of it. No sooner have the words escaped your ἕρκοϲ ὀδόντων (( Cf. the previous post “On Dumplings,” n.4)) than you exhale sharply, perhaps pinching the bridge of your nose, and realize you must now settle in for a long-winded answer about something you only care about, at best, peripherally. All because you asked a question to seem polite, out of “Courtesy.”

Well, friends, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be this way. I don’t know about you, but if I make a mistake, I’m big enough to own up to it. Suppose, for example, I’m talking to a successful attorney at a party. And suppose this attorney happens to be somewhat dull, but here I am stuck talking to her anyway. Suppose further, in realizing that she works for one of the major firms in the city, I say something stupid. Something like, “Oh, do you work on any interesting cases? I saw in the paper that your firm is representing Such-&-Such construction company in that major fraud case.” And she starts in with something like, “Well, actually, I don’t do litigation. I’m in Corporate. Mergers and Acquisitions. We work out the details of the contracts. It’s our job to make sure, blah, blah blah…”. At which point, I can’t. I mean, I just can’t. The Catonically ((Seriously, have you ever read Cato’s De Agri Cultura? There is nothing more boring.)) boring madness must be stopped. And since It’s my fault she got started on it in the first place, it’s my responsibility to end it. And that’s just what I do. “Excuse me,” I interrupt on-delicate-wise. “I’m terribly sorry. Don’t get me wrong, this is my fault. After all, I asked you. However, I’m realizing now that I don’t care. Like, at all. So please stop. I never should have asked in the first place. I was trying to be polite when I should rather have left well enough alone. Again, I’m sorry.” At which point, I’ve found it’s best not to give the poor girl a chance to respond, but instead to beat a hasty retreat. ((I think it was Douglas Adams who said, “if discretion is the better part of valour, than cowardice is the better part of discretion.” And if he didn’t, he certainly should have done.)) And possibly to mutter something about going to get another drink. ((If it should happen that my glass is not empty, I’ll down whatever I’ve got to make the drink-getting portion of the excuse more plausible. (Cf. Courtesy).))

No doubt certain people will find this approach charming. No, wait. Not charming. What’s the word? What did mother always say? “Anne, dear, you mustn’t be so…so…r-r-radiant?” No. “Anne, dear, you mustn’t be so…r-r-rascally?” No, that was Elmer-r-r…ude! “Anne, dear, you mustn’t be so RUDE!” Ah, yes. Mother dearest. Heart of gold, that woman, but not much of a sense of humor. In any case, no doubt certain people will find the above approach rude. But really, I’m just trying to do the right thing. I mean, I’m sure the (entirely) fictional attorney in the above scenario no more wants to bore me than I myself wish to be bored. After all, perhaps there is somebody at this party that would like to know just what it is she gets up to at work. And the sooner she is able to determine that that person is not me, the sooner she can go about finding this…curiosity. Likewise, the sooner I can go about finding more gin. Whereupon do we all continue about our own peculiar merriments. And if this be not Courtesy, I know not what is. ((I don’t. Or do I?))

Ms. Thrope is a frequent contributrix to dokeimoi.net. Her critique of Subway etiquette, entitled Let The People Out First! did not appear in the Atlantic Monthly. Additionally, she does not teach a class called How to Succeed in Polite Society at the 92^nd St. Y. Ms. Thrope has red hair and lives in New York City. Alone.

On Dumplings

Posted on November 18, 2012 by Dave

Owing to a Master’s Thesis which devoured most of my writing energies for the year, I’ve not been able to maintain this blogue ((I’ve frankified the spelling of the word “blog” in an effort to make it seem more erudite)) with the sort of frequency one might desire. However, I’ve been able to reel in my old friend Anne Thrope to do a little piece for me. “Anne,” quoth I, “would you mind terribly knocking together a little something for my blogue?” “Sure,” quoth she. “What did you have in mind? Another rant?” “I should be delighted,” quoth I. What follows is that rant…

Let me start by saying that I love dumplings. I love dumplings. Love ‘em. Five for a dollar at Prosperity. It’s got to be the best deal in town. I mean, where can you get five of anything for a buck? Let alone anything as good as a dumpling. So what if the guy behind the counter hasn’t smiled since General Chennault was in China with the Flying Tigers? So what if the place is nothing more than a 4×4 holding cell for hungry Chinese, idiot hipsters, tourists who obviously know somebody who sent them there because honestly you could never find this place on your own if you didn’t live here, screaming children, pushy Chinese, this one sketchy photographer dude in a leather jacket that I see from time to time and I’m pretty sure is kind of a dick (unless he reads this, in which case, hey what’s up), and pushy hungry screaming Chinese children. Obviously this little 4×4 dumpling play pen doesn’t hold all these folks at once. That’s what the line out the door is for. Or, alternatively, why you try to go at not-quite-lunchtime. So you get your five-for-a-dollar, hit it with some sriracha and soy sauce, and get the hell out of that claustrophobophoric fox-hole and enjoy your glorious dumplings in peace. Or you get your sesame pancake. I mean, they look great, but they clock in at what, $1.25? $1.50? I’m not made of money. The point is, I love the classic dumpling.

Also the soup dumpling. I’m assuming you know what a soup dumpling is. This may be an error, as I can’t tell you how many people I’ve had to explain this to. I try to tell them, “Ok, picture the greatest thing ever. Now imagine it’s a dumpling. Now imagine it just had an orgasm in your mouth. Now imagine that your mouth had a return orgasm all over it.” Gross, right? No! Because it’s a dumpling. (Dumpling!). With soup inside it. (Soup!). I mean, I’m ready to put the soup dumpling forward as proof of the existence of god. You want to teach creationism? Go right ahead, provided you use the soup dumpling as your sole example of why there has to be a god. Because things like this don’t happen by accident. We can explain the creation of the earth and the moon and the sun with physics. And evolution is totally fine. But you don’t get the soup dumpling without divine intervention. It just doesn’t happen. Because if mankind were actually capable of this kind of genius, we’d have figured out how to stop having Republicans who keep thinking it’s a good idea to use the word “rape” in any context whatsoever. Or wars. Whatever. Anyway, the soup dumpling. A cheap treasure. You can find them at Joe’s Shanghai among other places. They cost something on the order of six for eight bucks, give or take. People, this is a small price to pay to make out with god.

And then, This. My friends, the dumpling has gone Artisan. Θεέ μου θεέ μου, ἱνατί με έγκατέλιπεϲ; ((My god my god, why have you forsaken me? – Matthew, 27:46. And yes, I had to look that up. Also, and I’m not a biblical scholar and I don’t deal in koine Greek, but notice the lack of elision on “με.” “ἐγκατέλιπεϲ” is a natural adonic which gives the line a literally epic close. Yet the rhythm, at least to my Homerically trained eye, is derailed by the lack of elision in the preceding word. So as a Jew, I feel comfortable saying that the real shame here is not the crucifixion of Jesus, but the crucifixion of epic rhythmical figures. But I guess it’s only a matter of time before King James gets his hands on it anyway. So whatever. But, whither dumplings?)) You see, this is why we can’t have nice things. Hipsters will eventually ruin everything. First they came for Cheese. But I’m lactose intolerant, so I didn’t say anything. Then they came for Beer. ((Don’t get me started.)) But I prefer whiskey, so I kept my head down. And now they’ve come for the Dumpling. And who is left to speak out? Look, I don’t mean to be hysterical. Artisan dumpling establishments are not going to put the five-for-a-buck Chinatown shops out of business. It’s just that, well, can’t I enjoy my cheap dumplings in peace? Does a “pretzel dumpling” really need to be a thing? Not that it’s not nice. I’m sure it’s nice. But it’s this sort of cavalier attitude that will spawn hundreds, if not thousands, of hipsters who are now going to talk like they “know” all about dumplings. Hipsters, you do not “know” all about dumplings. Oh, but you know how to be pretentious about them, don’t you? And now it’s only a matter of time until I’m standing on line at Prosperity and will be forced to endure overhearing the hipsterical pontification about how these dumplings are the greatest hidden treasure because they’re so cheap (and I’ll be godsdamned if the word “authentic” doesn’t pass your ἕρκοϲ ὀδόντων), ((“The wall of your teeth,” a Homeric formulaic figure, often used to express the idea of, “What the fuck did you just say?”)) but ohmigod have you had the pretzel dumplings!?” Ohmigod, shut the fuck up. Please. Pretty please, with a slice of orange on top.

Miss Thrope is the author of many unpublished works, including the hardly known “I Don’t Care What You Did Last Summer,” and the will have been posthumous classic “Die, You Bastard: A Love Story.” She does not have a small dog which is the size of a large rat that she carries in a purse. And even if she did have such a dog, she would still not carry it in her purse. I mean, seriously. She lives in New York City. Alone.

Republicans are democrats and Democrats are republicans

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Dave

Republicans are democrats and Democrats are republicans
(or Inflammable means flammable? What a country!)

This week ((As if I’ve been doing my job of updating this blog on weekly basis.)) I shall forgo, generally, the usual archaic affectations which I tend to, well, affect, when discussing politics. That means fewer antiquated spellings and not so many sesquipedalian words. ((Well, besides that one, obviously.)) Moving right along, then, I have been knocking around an idea lately. Knocking it around, as I say, while trying to resolve the interminable cognitive dissonance echoing around the politisphere. I proceeded to run this half-baked idea by a rather bright friend of mine. ((Let’s call him Cash Banks.)) He wasn’t convinced. So I thought I should take the time to flesh it out a bit here and see if I can’t order my thoughts a bit more, at least to mine own satisfaction.

The premise, simply put, is that big-R Republicans have become small-d democrats and big-D Democrats have become small-r republicans. This is more than a neat chiasmus. ((Though, be fair, I hope you will at least grant that much.)) There’s two things going on here. Namely, how people view government, and how they view themselves. So let’s look at the government side of things first, shall we?

What is a republic and what is a democracy? It’s a question worth pausing over. We sing the praises of democracy every day. ((Well, I mean, I tend not to. But people do.)) Yet as anybody who has ever completed 11^th grade social studies will joyfully and pedantically ((Funny how these two go in hand in hand, isn’t it?)) point out to you, America is not a democracy. America is a republic. Why then did Wilson want to make the world “safe for democracy” instead of “safe for democratically elected republics?” ((Incidentally, have you ever noticed how it’s invariably the totalitarian states that call themselves “people’s republics?” Discuss.)) Why are we so keen to export democracy, protect democracy, encourage democracy? More to the point, why did the glorious Founders – who by the way, couldn’t agree on very much, so can we all please stop using the term “The Founders” as if they all thought the same way about everything, but that’s another rant – see fit to establish a republic and quite obviously not a democracy?

Indeed, in the very narrow sense of one man-one vote ((And certainly there is much more to democracy than this core principal.)) this is the most democratic America has ever been, and in ways quite contrary to the intentions of the founders. Consider that today: Women vote (constitutional amendment); Non-whites vote (constitutional amendment); Non-landowning citizens vote (passed by the several states); Senators are directly elected by the people (constitutional amendment). The reasons for this were manifold. Centuries of English tradition/progress dating to Magna Carta; racism; questions of interest; questions of class; questions of education; the epic and prominent failure of Athenian democracy and the comparative success of the Roman republic – just to name a few. There are whole libraries on any one of these subjects and whole libraries on the ideological, philosophical and political origins of our constitution. ((A good place to start, for the curious, might be Gordon Wood’s Radicalism of the American Revolution (Vintage, 1993) and Bernard Bailyn’s Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Belknap, 1967).))

But the question was, what is a democracy and what is a republic? For my purposes here, when I refer to democracy, I am speaking in the very narrow sense of a direct democracy. A democracy in which all citizens vote directly on all affairs without empowering others to vote in their name. This is different from a republic in which the citizens vote only for representatives to act on their behalf. Although the terms have broad and overlapping meanings today, ((The OED gives for democracy: “Government by the people; that form of government in which the sovereign power resides in the people as a whole, and is exercised either directly by them (as in the small republics of antiquity) or by officers elected by them. In mod. use often more vaguely denoting a social state in which all have equal rights, without hereditary or arbitrary differences of rank or privilege.” And for republic: “A state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; spec. a state without a monarchy. Also: a government, or system of government, of such a state; a period of government of this type.”)) this is the distinction that was understood at the end of the 18^th century. ((A gross and borderline obscene oversimplification. And yet not entirely un-useful. But for context, cf. Wood Radicalism generally, and Bailyn Ideological Origins, 281-4 for a distillation of the concept.))

Direct democracy, I believe, presupposes that the citizen population be possessed of a certain capacity to make decisions in their own collective interest. A representative republic merely supposes that the citizen population is capable of finding the people most fit to make decisions in the collective interest of the state. ((Of course this too is an oversimplification. Madison, for example, supposed that people would vote their own interests and the government’s job was to balance these interests, the result of which would be to the collective advantage of the state. Cf. Federalist 12.)) For many of the founders and political thinkers of the 18^th century, the ability to make decisions in the collective interest of the state was bound up with the notion of “virtue” – among other things, “above all, unremitting devotion to the weal of the public’s corporate self.” ((McDonald, Forest Novus Ordo Seclorum, Kansas UP, 1985, p.70.)) Virtue was not a thing generally believed to be conferred naturally upon every man. ((Let alone woman; indeed the stem of the Latin word virtus is vir which means “man.”)) Thus, “‘republic’ conjured up for many…the triumph of virtue and reason, ‘democracy’ – a word that denoted the lowest order of society as well as the form of government in which the commons ruled – was generally associated with the threat of civil disorder…” ((Bailyn, 282.))

Earlier I said that one half of the equation was how people view government. Let the preceding stand, for the purposes of this discussion, as the difference between a republic and a democracy. Or at least, let it stand as one way of viewing them. Now let us consider how people view themselves. In this context, I believe that people view themselves as either being capable of making informed and advantageous decisions on behalf of the state, or not.

Let us stipulate that all citizens will elect to office people who broadly share their principles. This does not, of necessity, mean that those elected would, or should, make the same decisions as the people who elected them. ((Another oversimplification; broadly speaking, the purpose of a bicameral legislature is to give voice to the people’s exact wishes and then to temper those wishes.)) And herein lies, I think, a major difference between today’s self-identified Republicans and Democrats. This difference, it seems to me, is at the heart of the epithet “elitist” which is so lately in use. And it is also why, I think, the term is used pejoratively by the right and yet not disavowed on the left. I remember during the Bush II administration, people on the right would call people on the left “elitists.” People on the left would respond with something along the lines of “If by elitist you mean I want a smart, well-educated person to represent me in government – in short, the intellectual elite of society – then, yes, I am an elitist.”

I would like to speak from my own experience, if but briefly. I graduated from High School. I have a college degree. I am now working towards a Master’s degree. In each experience I was confronted by people who are smarter than me. In each case I ran up against my own limitations. The differences in ability, however, became more manifest the higher up the educational ladder I went. I now run up against more people who are smarter than me more consistently. I run up against the limits of my own abilities more often. The result, I think, is that in High School I was more likely to think of myself as being just as able as the next person to make wise decisions in the interest of my country. Less so now. Take an issue like Syria. I recognize the situation in Syria as being incredibly complex and difficult. Now, my principles dictate that people ought to be free and that governments should not use violence against their own people. This does not mean I favor military intervention in Syria. It also does not mean that I do not favor military intervention. It simply means that I think the situation is a mess and needs to be resolved somehow. I don’t know how. What would be the effects of a military intervention? What would be the effects of arming the rebels? What would the effects of an embargo? And so on. I’m not sure up I’m to making the right decision. I’m not sure the people I’ve met who are smarter than me are up to making this decision. I want people smarter than the smartest people I know making theses decisions. In short, I want an intellectually elite class of people at the helm of the ship of state. I will vote for those people so long as they share my principles.

That is my personal experience. But I believe this is true of many on the left, of many who would be tarred with the epithet “elitist.” It may be elitist, but it is also republican. What I observe on the right, more often than not, is the opposite of this. I observe people who believe they have the answers to complex problems and wish only to elect people like themselves who will carry out their direct wishes. For this type of voter, it is not enough that their elected representative simply share their values. The elected representative must do exactly as they would do if only they could be there themselves to cast the vote. On the whole, quite a democratic position, I would say.

It is clear then that all voters have strong beliefs and opinions. For every individual, these beliefs and opinions are guided by a personal set of principles. These principles, by and large, are honest, good, noble and well intentioned. ((Though sometimes they are guided by racism, fear and selfishness. Yet neither the right nor left has a monopoly on “virtue.” Surely, “virtue” as defined above is something that is striven for on both sides.)) In the end how we view our government and how we choose who we elect has a lot to do with how we view ourselves and our relationship to our government. For all this, it is an odd quirk of history that at this time, Democrats may be republicans and Republicans may be democrats.

The Joys of Radio

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Dave

One of the more beautiful things about childhood is the way we use our imaginations. We imagine anything anywhere and at any time. It may look like we’re just stacking up pillows, but to us, it’s a fortress. To grownups, they’re just a pile of blocks, but we know it’s a castle, and we know who lives there. GI Joe doesn’t fight on the living room floor, he’s out in the desert or in the mountains or the beaches, defending America against COBRA (and possibly Zombies). My parents were only vaguely aware that Normandy – Omaha beach, to be specific – had somehow come to occupy an entire room of our house. It was, I should note, made quite clear to them however, that they were not to disturb the little green army men if they cared at all about a free Europe. ((I was perhaps a bit precocious.))

But as we grow up and stop playing with toys, we leave these sorts of imagineered worlds behind. Not entirely, of course. I think that we like movies because they take us someplace else, and books too. I also happen to think this has a large part to do with what’s behind the trending interest in the topos known as the “Zombie Apokalypse.” I think people like to imagine themselves in a lawless broken down world. How would they survive? What would they do? Are they up to the challenge? For our parents it was the Wild West. For us, I suppose it’s Zombies.

Movies, books, Apokalypseis Nekroplaneton ((The technical term I’ve logodaidalicized for such an event: lit: Apocalypse of the Wandering Dead)) are all fine vehicles for the adult imagination. But for me, there is something particularly special about radio. And more particularly, listening to ballgame or a hockey game on the radio.

Listening to a game on the radio is not really something that one can do casually, or sporadically. Certainly that’s fine if all you want to do is catch up on the score, or have the game on in the background. Now television is great because you can see what’s happening. You can see how far the centerfielder had to run to make that amazing catch. You can see the split save the goalie just made. And there’s much to be said for that. But your limited by where the cameras are. You’re limited by what the director chooses to put up on the screen.

Oh but radio! You can imagine all of it. You can put yourself right in the front row. Better yet, you can put yourself on the field. You can be right there on the ice. You can be the catcher, seeing that fastball whistling in at you, 95 miles per hour. You can stand at shortstop and watch your centerfielder fly like superman. You can be the defenseman trailing the play, and see the look of heartbreaking astonishment on your winger’s face as the goalie impossibly robs him.

You have to work for it. It’s not easy. You’ve got to take the time to shut out the rest of the world. To close your eyes and listen. I mean really listen. When you watch a game on TV you’re only peripherally aware of the sounds of the game. But when you close your eyes and listen to the radio, you can here the breeze, really hear the chatter in the stands. The crack of the bat isn’t some dull noise that accompanies a picture anymore. You anticipate it. You hold your breath, your ears prick up…pop or crack? That sound tells you what happened before the announcer does. You can hear the sound of steel cutting into ice, boards rattling, stick on puck. There’s a whole orchestra playing behind that ballet of a hockey game. The music tells a story.

Baseball is a game that’s made for radio. Baseball is always the same. Players are exceptional. They make exceptional plays. But the game is always the same. The batter always gets three strikes. He always stands 60 feet 6 inches from the pitcher. You can see it without having to see it. Not that the visual doesn’t have value. The poise of Mariano Rivera. The way David Ortiz towers over the plate like a volcano waiting to erupt. Jose Reyes going first to third. These are sights to behold, surely. But in the moment, they’re abstractions. The Mick could hit the ball for miles. Jackie would have people on the edge of their seats, just waiting, waiting for him to steal second. It’s all happened before, and it will happen again. So in baseball it’s all about the moment. And radio allows you to transport yourself right inside that moment. All you have to do is close your eyes, listen…and imagine.

And of course there are the announcers. Some are better than others, of course, and some are head-scratchingly banal. But you listen to them day in and day out, and you begin to form a relationship. You know their mannerisms, you know how they think, you can almost anticipate what they’ll say next. In a strange way, they become your friends. You know them. Last summer, I bought the MLB app for my iPhone. I made it a habit of listening to at least a few innings of every game on the opposing teams broadcast. It’s like being invited over to somebody’s home, somebody you don’t know that well, but somebody who loves the game like you love the game. And you spend time with them. You get their perspective, get to know what they think about certain players, how they read certain situations. And then I’ll switch back to the home broadcast, and it’s like coming home for the late innings, opening some beers with a good friend.

Hockey, admittedly, is much harder on the radio. In baseball, you know where all 9 men are at any time. In hockey, without your eyes, you know where the goalies are, and maybe the puck carrier. You have to fill in the rest with your knowledge of the game. But it still works. And man is it exciting! A good hockey game has a pace. It has its own rhythm. And a good play-by-play man will capture that rhythm with his voice. You feel the rise and fall, and you hear the crowd behind it all. On a lazy summer Sunday, I can put a ball game on and easily drift off to sleep for a few innings. But hockey? Forget it. My heart is up in my throat.

This winter I’ve been developing a new and perhaps somewhat unique relationship with hockey on the radio. I am a die-hard Islander fan. ((And I’ve been dying a hard death with that team pretty much every year since 1994.)) As such, I’ve been listening to their radio broadcasts for years; especially in the last two years when I could no longer watch them on television. But this year, as part of my ongoing effort to learn French, I’ve taken to live-streaming the Montréal Canadien broadcasts. And although the Islanders will always be my one true love, because I’ve spent so much time listening to them (and reading about them), le CH have sort of become m’équipe adoptive.

At first, I was completely lost. But with each passing period, I am able to pick out a little bit more. And while I often don’t know exactly what’s going on, I can at least follow the play pretty well. Doing so, however, ties in all of what I said above. I listen to the sounds of the crowd, the sounds of the skaters, the sticks, anything that will give me a little more information about what’s going on. And over it all, the rhythm of the call rides like a wave, catching it all up together. In my mind’s eye, the picture may be a little grainy, and definitely fuzzy around the edges, but it’s still hockey and I can feel the rhythm of the game and I can imagine what’s happening.

And here too I’m developing a relationship with the announcers. The excitable rapid-fire play-by-play man, who speaks with precision and enunciates clearly. The slower, more monotone color man, whose conversational banter is almost impossible for me to grasp. But how he felt about the Habs’ defenseman taking a penalty in the closing minutes with his team down a goal was perfectly clear in any language.

Maybe this isn’t for everybody. Maybe some people need to see the game. Maybe we don’t all have the patience or the attention span anymore to put everything aside for even an hour, to just sit, eyes closed, and listen. And imagine. But I urge everybody to give it a try. You might be surprised by the places you’ll take yourself.

SPELLING (GET OVER IT)

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Dave

There’s nothing quite like watching my friend Anne Thrope go off on a rant about something that really irritates her (which, fortunately for me, happens to be most things). She was kind enough to write one of those rants down for me, and I here submit it for your reading pleasure. I’m not sure I agree with her, but it’s an interesting ride, to say the least.

AN OPEN LETTER TO PEOPLE WHO ARE UPTIGHT ABOUT SPELLING

Dear Friend,

R u uptite about sp3lling? Duz it bothr u wen p33ple mess about with ure well-manicured universe of 26 letters arranjed just-so? My friend, I repsektfully submit to you that it iz time you got over ureself.

What is the source of this rant, you may ask? Very well, I shall tell you. As a single 27 year old girl living in the big city, I decided to join a dating site. Mostly on a lark. But also on the internet. And every now and then, I’ll get an email from some no-doubt witty young fellow addressed to “hey pretty ladi,” or “sup grrl” or some other such nonsense. At first, I paid this no mind. But several of my lady friends, who are also on this dating site, would complain of this. In most whinesome tones, I might add. One day at a happy hour ((Happy hour is whatever hour I am drinking; though it may coincide with after work drinks at a discounted rate, one really has nothing to do with the other. So it’s entirely possible that this conversation took place at 11am on a Sunday over Bellinis. If that’s not a happy hour(s), I don’t know what is.)) my girlfriend asked me if I ever received a correspondence addressing me as “Ladi” and isn’t that obnoxious. Well of course I had. And naturally I suggested that this was perhaps a very clever subliminal message on the sender’s part, as “ladi” is obviously an anagram of “laid.”

Friend: Hmm, maybe. Wait. What’s an anagram again?

Me: Waiter, another Bellini please.

Waiter: But miss, you haven’t finished –

He didn’t bother to complete his thought as I managed to drink my entire (2^nd) Bellini while he was registering his protest. But the point is this. You’d better believe that my friend now knows what an anagram is. No, hang on. That wasn’t the point. The point was that it got me thinking about spelling, and why people are so hung up on it.

Now in her case, I think the answer is obvious. She was making a character judgment based upon this poor fellow’s spelling. People do this all the time, don’t they? Whether judging an intentional idiomatic usage such as “grrl” or “ladi” and extrapolating a Jersey Shore lineage therefrom or noticing a failure to correctly differentiate homophones like their/there/they’re and concluding that the writer, however well intentioned, is demonstrably your social inferior, people will make character judgments based on spelling. And it’s time to stop. Like, now.

Because what is spelling, really? It’s just the visual representation of sound. Shadows dancing on the wall of the cave, my friend. It could look like anything. Hell, it does look like anything. There are pictographic alphabets. Weird triangle-y shit like cuneiform. Asian characters, Norse runes, Semitic right-to-lefties, Roman left-to-righties, and so on and on and on. And look, people can only make so many sounds. So the whole thing is arbitrary to begin with. Trick question hotshot. Does the letter x look anything like the sound x? Of course it doesn’t. Because sounds don’t look like anything. If they did, people would write about music instead of dancing about architecture. Or something. And anyway, x is a bullshit letter. It’s a digraph. It’s just ks for lazy people.

But let’s stick with alphabets for a second. Because I’m going to suggest to you, my uptight friend, that you have a rather narrow and parochial view of your very own alphabet. Alphabet. Is that alpha-beta? Is it aleph-bet? Whatever it is, it’s just some super-evolved version of whatever the Phoenicians (or Phoinikians if you want to be pedantic – and the whole point here is that you apparently want to be pedantic) were peddling around the Mediterranean three thousand years ago whilst trading their red dye for olive oil and feta cheese or whatever the hell they were doing. So you’re ((Ha!)) 26 letter sing-song alphabet didn’t spring fully formed from the brow of Zeus. Or anywhere else for that matter. The Romans didn’t bother with j or v or w. Those all came later when people started pronouncing things differently or couldn’t be bothered to figure out when i or u were meant to be consonants, or when they started hanging out with Germans and Saxons named Wilhelm and William and Waldorf and Wall-E. And if we were really on our game, we probably should have bothered to make up new letters to fit the sounds of our Russian friends or our Chinese friends. I mean, the fact that the West couldn’t figure whether to spell the name of China’s capital Peking or Beijing should say something about the adequacy of our alphabet in the global economy.

Hey! Wake up! Sorry to bore you, but it’s sort of to the point here. Our alphabet has evolved. So has the way we spell words. Now look, if you want to be pedantic or a wise-guy, go ahead. You can have lots of fun with spellings. The editor of this site does it all the time. And he’s both a pedant and a wise-guy. I noticed a post or two ago that he dropped the phrase “inlegal inmigration” on us. Now, for my money, that’s pretty slick. Buy ((Ha!)) using the archaic Latin trick of unassimilating the prefixes, the natural but otherwise hidden alliteration is revealed. ((Also for my money, he needs to get out more.)) Or you could go all 18^th century and spell economic as œconomic. And of course if you want to be a real bastard about it, you’d spell it oikonomik. But once you start doing that, the only person reading your bloggue ((The word blog is actually an anglicized spelling of the French bloggue. Not a lot of people know that. Ok, of course it’s not. But by noodling with the spelling a bit, you can totally make up faux histories for words!)) is the crazy cat lady down the street who thinx ((Well, why not?)) that 9/11 was an inside job pulled off by a secret cabal within the state department whom she used to be convinced were Martians, but now realizes that due to a typographical error in her conspiracy-theory newsletter was actually just a bunch of guys all called Martin.

Ok, so maybe now you begin to get the idea that there are hundreds and even thousands of years of history behind the spellings of certain words. And you can show off how much of that history you know by Hellenizing or Francifying or Latinizing or Anglicizing or whatever the hell you want to do. But really nobody cares. I promise you that much. In fact, if they themselves are ignorant of this history, then they’re likely to look at your unorthodox spelling and think you’re either an idiot or…well, they’ll probably just think you’re an idiot.

But this is all backward looking navel gazing. It’s academic. It’s pedantic. And it’s really only cut for dinner parties. The kind of dinner parties nobody likes going to because they just know they’re going into run into you and have to hear all about how the English word work is obviously derived from the German werk, itself obviously an Indo-European cognate with the Greek ergon, which originally started with a w sound, but of course Greek lost the digamma rather early on and…NOBODY LIKES YOU!

So instead of looking backwards, let’s look forward. Because let’s face it, that’s really where your problem is, isn’t it? You just hate when you get a text message asking “what time u get off wrk,” don’t you? What’s wrong with this? No, tell me. Please, I’m dying to know. It’s efficient. It’s utilitarian. It is, or at least was at its inception, vaguely clever. And it’s tweet-friendly. So what then? Does it just reek of a certain lack of effort? Do you read it and just think to yourself, “this punk couldn’t be bothered to spell out the word you, why on Earth would I ever want to bear his children?” Or maybe you tolerate that sort of shorthand in text messages where each extra thumb action might mean another day of arthritis later on, but when it comes to email and your real life QWERTY keyboard you demand a higher level. Because email now is apparently the last bastion of class and culture in our mile-a-minute-and-anyway-it’s-only-a-matter-of-time-before-they-stop-delivering-mail-on-Saturdays society. So the least you could do is spell out Y-O-U!

Just a minute ago I said u for you might have been clever. And that’s where the beauty of this stuff is, if you want to take the time to notice it. Like I said before, spelling – particularly in English – is arbitrary insofar as there are multiple ways to represent the same sounds. To the extent that spellings are fixed and codified, you’re really just running up against historical weight and inertia. ((And classism, but that’s a whole different kettle of fish.)) I’ve got this friend who works with computers. Bright guy. Deals with Indians a lot. And these Indians speak a rather heavily accented English. For example, the pronounce the word we as vee. So what do they do? You guessed it. They spell the word we simply as v. I think that’s brilliant. I mean, it only makes sense in a very narrow context, but within that context it’s perfect. A single letter carries all the phonetic information you need. So what if that phonetic information is technically wrong? So what if an outsider couldn’t piece it together? It perfectly represents the usage. What more can you really ask for from writing? Spelling should be unambiguous and representative of the way people speak. Unless your French. Then apparently you could give fuck all about the relationship between the way you spell you words and the way you speak them. But they make nice bread, so we’ll give them a pass.

Let me put it another way. Do you work for your alphabet or does our alphabet work for you? I can tell you that my alphabet works for me. It does my bidding. Sometimes I look backwards with my spellings. I like to find connexions between words and times and cultures. Sometimes I look forward. I tweet. Characters in a tweet are like Manhattan real-estate. There’s never enough, but if you think outside-the-boxily you can do some really clever things in very small spaces. ((Also, they probably have air rights. Once we get 3-D smart phones, hopefully we’ll be able to tweet up off the screen. Imagine whole skyscrapers of mindless thoughts piling up out of the phone. It’s all about light and air, people. Light and air.))

And context matters. Let’s go back to homophones for a second. Have a look at there and their. More than one of my friends has written into their her dating profile something to the effect of “if you don’t know the difference between their/there/they’re, don’t bother contacting me.” Now maybe I’m just thick. But what’s the problem? Is a failure to differentiate between these a character flaw? I’m going to put aside they’re for a moment, because it’s a contraction and so is really two words. Their is a possessive adjective (or pronoun) and there is a preposition. Ten times out of ten, context will make clear which is intended. So why not spell them both there. Or their. Probably somewhere along the line they were pronounced differently. And they probably have their own unique orthographic histories. Now personally, I don’t know anything about Germanic historical linguistics. And I bet you don’t either. So I doubt you’re getting upset about somebody trouncing on 1500 years of history by using the wrong spelling. So then what is it? I’m dying to know. One is “right” and one is “wrong” and woe betide the idiot that missed that day in school? I think – I hope – there are more important things out there. Certainly more important traits in a human being you would consider dating. For instance, does the bastard chew gum with his mouth open? I don’t care if he’s godsdamn Nobel fucking laureate. Close your mouth or move along, pal.

Has this little rant changed anybody’s mind? Probably not. Do you walk away thinking Anne’s a real bitch? Not my problem. All I’m saying is, open your mind a little. Ask yourself who gets to decide what’s right and what’s wrong. How long has something been right? Where might it come from? Where might it be going? Go listen to recording from the 1940’s. The way people talk sounds a little funny to our ears, doesn’t it? And that’s only 70 years ago. That’s living memory, and people are pronouncing things differently. Now go look at a page of Chaucer. That tells you something about how things were pronounced in his time. Can you imagine how people will sound in two hundred years? I can’t, but I’ll bet you ten thousand dollars of Mitt Romney’s money that they’ll sound different. And they’ll probably spell differently to. So go ahead and try to lock down whatever “rules” you learned in school. But bring a towel. Because you, my friend, are spitting in the wind.

Luv,
Anne

Miss Thrope is the author of several books including Please Lower Your Voice, which was not reviewed by the New York Times Review of Books, although an excerpt did not appear in the New Yorker. She lives in New York City and is, surprisingly, still single.

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΩΝ ΜΕΡΙΔΩΝ ΠΟΛΙΤΩΝ B’ (On the Classes, part the second)

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Dave

Wherein are considered some several questions on
distribution amongst the classes and the fairness thereof

There has been much discussion of late on the subject of “income inequality.” This space will not deal excessively with that amply covered topic, but with its cousin. When we speak of income inequality, we are essentially speaking of the distribution of wealth. What I am concerned with, however, is not the distribution of wealth, but the distribution of pain.

To my mind, the distribution of wealth is something fit to be worried over in good times. And these are not good times. Let us take it as self evident that, from an œconomic perspective, things are not likely to get markedly better for the average American in the next 6-12 months. As the recent congressional struggle over the Social Security payroll tax &c. have demonstrated, we can barely agree to maintain the status quo, itself barely sufficient, if it all.

If we remove the status quo as an option, the government would seem to have two avenues open to it with the goal of rectifying its œconomic condition. The first is a large Keynesian-type stimulus. Putting aside the question of efficacy vis-à-vis large government spending, we may discount this as a practical matter since any such proposal would fail to gain the requisite legislative support as the two houses are currently populated. The other avenue, really the only practicable avenue at this time, is to affect a balancing of the fœderal ledger. This may be done either by a decrease in expenditures, an encrease in revenues or some mixture of the two.

It is not the purpose of this piece to proscribe any particular expenditures, neither to identify in their particulars new avenues of revenue. Suffice it to say that the extraction of additional monies from individuals and businesses is bound to cause some measure of inconvenience to the entity forced to surrender it. Likewise that individuals and businesses are likely to be inconvenienced by a decrease in governmental expenditures by which they had heretofore been advantaged.

It is at this point that I ask, who is it that should be thus inconvenienced and to what extent? Should there be a relationship between the extent of œconomic injury suffered from one group to another, or ought they to be independent of one another?

The term “class warfare” has been used by some on the right to calumniate the proposals of some on the left. Without considering the merits, or lack thereof, of any proposals that have been so appellated, I would suggest that there are few in this land who would wish for a class war, though it is clear that there many on both sides who feel that one has been already foisted upon them.

For my part, I should like to see Americans from every œconomic stratum work together to ameliorate our distress, to the advantage of all. Our history has shown that we are a people capable of great sacrifice when circumstance so demands. Yet it is natural that people are most willing to sacrifice when that sacrifice is shared by all. People will more easily bear some burden or injury when they know that their fellow citizens will suffer similarly.

The lower and middle classes in this country do not have much to give, but I believe they will bear what they are able the more readily if they see that their œconomic betters will take up some burden on likewise. The White House introduced a twitter campaign calling for people to tweet what they could do with $40 dollars, the estimated savings per-paycheck derived from the so-called payroll tax holiday.

To my mind, this is the wrong approach. One might also ask, if necessity demanded, how would you cut $40 dollars from your weekly expenditures? There is no question that the loss of $40 dollars out of my paycheck would be noticeable. Indeed it could make the difference between being able to afford a night out with my friends or perhaps some creature comfort to which I have grown accustomed. Or perhaps a reëvaluation of what and how much I buy at the grocery store. Yet, at the same time, I recognize that as a nation, we are not on solid ground with respect to our finances. If the loss of this income would truly be to our national advantage, then would I willingly bear this hardship. If.

If, and this is the key, I knew that all Americans would bear some comparable hardship. The wealthy must also be made to give. This giving might take the form of an encrease in marginal tax rate, or an encrease on capital gains taxes, stock transaction fees, or something else entirely. It may perhaps need be little more than symbolic. Just enough that they would be conscious of also having made some sacrifice. It can not be the sole burden of the already weak to suffer thus.

Certainly it would not be to our advantage to extract revenues at the expense of potential job creation. And though it is by now a familiar topos of the right to identify wealthy Americans as “job creators,” neither can we be held hostage by the notion that any additional œconomic burden whatsoever would have this as its issue. Just as it can not fairly be said to be “class warfare” to ask for such sacrifice.

What is saddening – or frightening, depending on one’s perspective – is that our elected representatives seem unable to deal with these issues in a mature manner. More than 2/3 of the populus thinks the deficit ought to be righted by some mixture of additional revenues and spending cuts. Yet still do we find obstructionism and dogmatism in Washington. It is enough to make one wonder for whom Congress really works. But that is a question for another day. For now, it is enough to remember that we as a nation must weather this storm together. We would do well if each of us would not only accept some part of the burden, but indeed showed some pride in the bearing of it.

De Caeli Natura (On the Nature of Heaven)

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Dave

Before I begin, I want to thank my friend Anne Thrope once again for contributing to this space last week. Hopefully she’ll be kind enough to do so again in future. As to this week’s post, I’d like to dedicate it to the memory of Christopher Hitchens. What follows is a bit of irreverent fun on the nature of heaven. Take from it what you will.

DE CAELI NATURA
(On the Nature of Heaven)

Suppose for a moment that you believed in heaven. And suppose for a moment that it was the sort of heaven that more or less mirrored earth. That is to say, it’s not just disembodied souls floating around on clouds playing harps. ((Although, I suppose they could be playing harps if they wanted to. On second thought, maybe they could only play harps if they knew how to play harps in life. Alternatively, perhaps entry into heaven entitles one to virtuosic skill at any instrument one desires. Which would sort of take the fun out of meeting Beethoven, who, come to think of it, probably wouldn’t even be deaf in heaven. But following this line of loonery to its logical conclusion, the fact that Beethoven could hear in heaven would at least justify your newfound fluency in late 18^th-early 19^th c. German.)) But rather a more tangible existence, with proper human bodies, homes with south facing windows, locally grown grass fed beef, bartenders who know how to make proper martinis, ((Whatever you think about heaven, I hope we can all agree there is no such thing as a “vodka martini” there)) and true double headers.

But if we accept for the sake of this silly argument that heaven is indeed something like this, then it seems to me, we must consider two factors: Age and Time. Let us consider age first. And by age, I of course refer to the manifested chronological age of the heavenly habitant. I think we must concede that if one is to live – well, not live, strictly speaking, after all, one is only in heaven if one is dead, presumably ((‘Tho I would make an argument that playing centerfield for the Yankees and marrying Marilyn Monroe can’t be that far off)) – I say, if one is to live in heaven, one must be able to choose the age of the body in which they are going to putter around. Else what kind of reward is a happy eternity in a frail old body? ((To be fair, I suppose it’s a matter of perspective. In the Republic, Plato has Sokrates have Sophokles say that old age is great because the body is no longer ruled by hormonal passions. (329c: ἁϲμενέϲτατα μέντοι αὐτὸ ἀπέφυγον, ὥϲπερ λυττῶντά τινα καὶ ἄγριον δεϲπότην ἀπέφυγον. I am most pleased to have escaped it [τἀφροδίϲια – aphrodisia], as if I had escaped from some raging and wild master.) )) But even this raises a question. Does one have the option of designing an ideal body for themselves, or must they choose a model only from a given point on their own linear chronological continuum? Maybe it doesn’t matter. If I could show up looking like my 25 year old self, but be able to hit the ball like DiMaggio, maybe I don’t need some idealized body. ((Plus, by virtue of this being heaven, chicks needs must dig me, right?)) In any case, it seems some decision must be made, and ideally, the choice of body will be made by the end-user. It may be that upon arrival one must fill out a survey in triplicate as to which of their previous bodies they would like to use. ((Or future. Suppose I get hit by a bus when I’m nine. Maybe I’d still like to utilize my 25 year old (temporally non-realized) body.)) But since I can only assume (i.e. hope) that heaven is nothing like the DMV, perhaps the administrators conduct some kind of cranial scan and have your pre-chosen heaven-body prepped for you by the time you show up.

So to sum up the question of Age, let us conclude for argument’s sake that one can choose for oneself any one of their bodies from any given point along their own linear chronological continuum, and that body can then be endowed with any sort of physical prowess up to the heights of human limitation. What then of Time?

When you get to heaven, when is it? Is it when you died? Is it the future you could never imagine or the past you wished you could have lived in? Put it another way, would great Caesar’s ghost (GSG) have to wait 2000 years for the telephone to be invented on earth before he could make a call to great Pompey’s ghost? ((And incidentally, is the ghost of Pompeius Magnus – i.e. Pompey the Great – great Great Pompey’s ghost? Great Pompey’s great ghost?)) Does GSG text now, where he couldn’t before? Or does he just skip ahead and communicate telepathically, since sooner or later somebody’s bound to come up with that? In other words, does heaven, at any given time, contain the full scope of human innovation, available for all to use? Imagine GSG sauntering over to Samuel Morse and asking him what he is clicking away on over there, and Morse has to say, “oh, it’s my telegraph, but you’re before its time so I shall have to ask you to piss off.” Meanwhile, Morse wonders why Bell keeps holding a little tube up to his ear and calling it Watson. And they all wonder who’s that arrogant SOB in the black turtleneck carrying a little glowing box with white wires running up into his ears.

Taking this to its (or at least, a) illogical conclusion, will technology at some point begin to affect the population of heaven? I refer specifically to the Singularity. Surely the population of heaven is dependent upon people dying. ((If we accept the premise that one can not be born into heaven, but only die into it, then it stands to reason that there are no unwanted pregnancies in heaven. Likewise, if we accept that heaven is a place where nobody ever gets sick, then the need for condoms in heaven is entirely obviated. Amen.)) But if we achieve the Singularity, such that people can live on indefinitely in robot bodies, then it would seem that their arrival in heaven would be indefinitely delayed. ((One might wonder, tangentially, how this would effect the heavenly real estate market. I suspect that, even now, there is rampant speculation taking place. Operating under the premise that everybody who is born will die, and that there are mathematically (failing some wepic disaster) far more people yet to be born than are now living, or indeed have ever lived, then heaven must constantly be looking for new places to stick the people who are flowing through their golden gates and planning ahead for those yet to come (or go, from our perspective). So imagine the poor schnook who locks up a gazillion acres of heaven-space and starts developing luxury condos, manor houses, chalets, villas and whatever else the lately departed/newly arrived will want, only to find out that due to the Singularity demand has been crippled. From there, it’s not hard to imagine a situation where the speculator/developer starts sneaking not-so-deserving souls over the border in the back of his van just to recoup some of his losses. Now you’ve got an inlegal inmigration problem. This naturally creates a host of headaches for HHR (Heavenly Human Resources), because all of a sudden you’ve got souls who were heretofore good people, but are now showing signs of xenophobia, raising the question: can/should they be kicked out of heaven for such narrow-minded bigotry? And you thought the only thing heaven had in common with Arizona was a lack of sales tax.)) Add to that the question of Singularitized robot procreation – to wit: do they? – and we may be faced with, if not the end of humanity, then the end of new people/souls.

The irony to all this, of course, would be that heaven turns out to be much better than being alive on earth. Yet on earth, you have all these people prolonging their lives with robot bodies and electronic brains for the sole purpose of avoiding the afterlife. ((For the first time since people discovered heaven, nobody’s dying to get in! #zing)) Meanwhile, all the people in heaven are stunned by this development. They want to let everybody on earth know that dying isn’t so bad after all, come on in the water’s fine, &c. But alas, there are only two rules in heaven. 1) You’re not allowed to tell living people anything about it. 2) Don’t be a dick.

~~In the end~~ In closing, it is of course impossible for the living to know anything about heaven. Sure, one can go to church, or synagogue, or mosque or whatevs, but they’re all trying to sell you something of which they have no actual knowledge. Sort of like buying a Conestoga wagon from some shyster in New Jersey because he completely sold you on how beautiful Oregon is. Maybe Oregon and heaven are both truly beautiful. But speaking strictly for myself, I ain’t taking his word for it. At least, not at his prices.

Ultimately, we can’t know anything about heaven until we get there. ((Or don’t get there, as the case may be)) But what’s the rush? Heaven is for æternity, but life is quite finite. So pour a drink, put on your favorite music and live a little!

IN SANCTVM SECRETVM NICOLAUM (Against Secret Santa)

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Dave

**Owing to a particularly busy schedule, this week I have asked a friend of mine to provide a guest post. Below, Anne Thrope offers some thoughts on holiday cheer at the office. If she should seem a touch excitable at times, we beg you indulge her. We hope you find her ruminations not unworthwhile.

Let’s get one thing straight. I don’t care about your “War on Christmas.” Let’s get another thing straight. I also don’t care about your Christmas either. I am, however, a fierce partisan in the war of “Can’t You Just Leave me the Fuck Alone?” Look, I don’t mind caroling. I don’t mind it because at 27 years old I’m perfectly capable of putting my headphones on. Or earbuds in. Whatever. It doesn’t bother me if you want to dress like a hipster Santa Claus or a slutty Mrs. Claus. I grew up in the East Village back when you could still get crack with your bagel in the morning. I’m used to people who dress like idiots.

At least she’s wearing a hat. So I’m sure her mother approves.

Reindeer aren’t locally raised, so Hipsters can’t drive them.

My problem is when your holiday spirit invades my workplace. For starters, I work in an office. Sterile isn’t the word for it. Soulless, maybe. And probably degrading. Look, you remember what Sarah Palin said? No, not that one. The one about lipstick on a pig. That’s what your little dinky lights around your desk are. And your holiday cards on your cubicle wall. My god, man, you’re just gilding the cage. If you really want to help somebody, bake some tree shaped cookies and sprinkle them with green sugar. Or arsenic. Whichever.

I’ll tell you what, though. I can even take the lights and the cards and the obnoxiously shaped cookies. I mean, I don’t have to sit at your desk. And by the grace of whatever god you’re praying to this holiday, they let me wear headphones at mine. So I can tune you out, you and your confabulated holiday cheer.

You must understand, the great war of Can’t You Just Leave me the Fuck Alone is not a war of aggression. We have no lust for new lands, no desire for power. It is strictly a defensive engagement. We wish only to keep you behind your own borders while we sit ensconced in our grey little bunker. Ah, but what is this? In the spirit of the holidays you send an embassy? Waving a white flag? Well, it has been a long war, and we are tired. If you believe we have something to talk about, do come in. Yes, we ask that you leave your arms at the gate. Check your goddamn Santa hat with the corporal. It’s not that we don’t trust you. It’s more that we don’t much like you. Nothing personal, you understand.

What is that in your hand? Ah, you bring us terms. Sit, sit. Please. Would you join us in a glass of rum? No, I’m afraid we don’t have any milk in the bunker. Oh, yes, we do have eggnog. Here, let me just pour your rum into that. Now then, what is it you wish to discuss?

Embassy: Oh, I’m so glad you allowed us in to speak with you! You know, we’ve worked together for over a year, but we hardly ever chat.

Anne Thrope: Yes…

Em: Well, oh and first of all, happy holid – are you quite alright?

AT: Yes, child. Just cracking my neck. Do go on.

Let the good times roll, baby!

Em: Umm, yes. Well. So I was thinking. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we started a Secret Santa around the office. You know, nothing much. Maybe five or ten dollars. I was just thinking that would really lighten things up around here. I mean, as I’m sure you know, nobody’s gotten a raise in this company since the Carter administration, and I think it would really make a difference to a lot of people if they got a little something from a coworker. And of course, as I said, it needn’t cost much. After all, it’s the thought that counts, right?

AT: *pinching the bridge of my nose while you smile like a madwoman.

Em: So can I count you in?

AT: Look, I…<sigh>…is everybody doing this?

Em: Well, I was going to send out a mass mail this afternoon. But I thought if I could get a couple of people down for certain, that would make it easier.

AT: And you came to me first becau – <sigh> – this means rather a lot to you, does it?

Em: Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I just think it’d be super fun!

AT: I see. (Turning to an aide). Leftenant, bring me another bottle of rum, will you?

L: But sir, you’ve had half a bottle just in the 15 minutes since the embassy arriv –

AT: Bring the damn bottle, soldier! On the double! That’s on order.

There’s a reason we promoted young Morgan to captain.

L: Yes, sir. Right away, sir.

So I finished my rum and agreed to her terms. What else could I do? I may be a bitch, but it’s not in my nature to completely disregard people who mean well. And if there’s one thing you could say about this cheerful bobbing mass of inane smiles it’s that she’s damned annoying. But I suppose she means well. And anyway, what’s five dollars? (I assume she was kidding about the ten-spot).

Now just because I’m going to participate doesn’t mean I’m going to like it. In fact, I’m going to hate it. Every step of the way. Because that will teach her a lesson. Surely. But I have two major problems with all of this. The sort of problems that I’d confess to you over a pint at happy hour if we worked together. (Alternatively, if we worked together, we would not be going for happy hour).

First, I resent feeling coerced. And make no mistake, “friend,” this was an act of coercion. You corner me and ask me to participate in some action which you assure me will have as its issue the improved morale of my colleagues. Wherefore the only thing more inconvenient to me than engaging in this ritual is meeting with your looks of disapproval for the next several weeks and the passive aggressive barbs which shall surely be slung in my general direction when you arrive at your next bright idea of chipping in for so-&-so’s birthday. Ah, I can see the email now. “Julia over in accounting [ed. Not even our department!] is turning 31. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all chipped in for this [ed. meaningless] anniversary of her birth and got her a gift card to the Disney Store? Of course, don’t feel obligated. While it’s only five or ten dollars, I know some people can feel put out by this, and that’s the last thing I want…ANNE!” Hey, honey, go play in traffic.

Ok, he’s kinda cute.

So yeah, I’ll throw down a fiver to get out of that email. But I’m also annoyed by the whole Secret Santa thing as a practical matter. Let’s be honest. Five bucks barely buys you a round trip on the subway these days. And what’s worse, you’re not even going to give me a five dollar metro card, i.e. something I could actually use. Instead I have to look forward to some trinket, some gewgaw, some knick-nack (paddy-whack, can’t I just go home?), that a) I have no use for and b) I’ll feel guilty about throwing away because some poor sap put the intellectual equivalent of five bucks worth of thought into it. This leaves me with two choices. Establish said bauble on my desk whence it shall be as a font of astonishingly dull small-talk. Or else take it home to my shoe-box sized New York City apartment whereupon shall it add to the overall clutter of the place, and make it that much harder to realize my dream of just once getting the whole joint cleaned up, if even for a day.

Oh, and here’s a question. Who the hell appointed you ambassador from the North Pole anyway? No, really. How does one arrive at the conclusion that they ought to self-anoint themselves as Grand Marshall of Secret Santa Ceremonies? Does one look around and see in the faces of their coworkers a latent desire to join in such a ritual, if only some brave soul would be the first to ask? I think I know what you see in their faces, friend. These are beaten men and women. Worn down by corporate directives and politically correct goodthinkfulness, they just want to earn their paychecks and get home to their families. (Or bottles. I’m just saying). Can’t you let them slave away in silent dignity, dead to the world around them?

In the end, you’ve succeeded in breached my bunker. You’ve snookered me into your little rite, shanghaied me with your deceptively friendly holiday wiles. The least you could do is bake some cookies. And I mean real, nice, gooey chocolate chip cookies. Not those blasted flavorless sugar cookies whose only redeeming quality are their “fun holiday shapes.” And so I say, Merry Christmas to all, and to all…can’t you just leave me the fuck alone? Cheers.

**Miss Thrope is a regular contributor to The Cynic, where she frequently disapproves of most things. Her most recent book, Seriously? Could you walk any slower?, did not appear on the New York Times best seller list. She lives in New York City. Alone.

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΩΝ ΜΕΡΙΔΩΝ ΠΟΛΙΤΩΝ Α’ (On the Classes, part the first)

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Dave

Wherein are considered some several questions relating to:
class, unemployment and social mobility

We seem to accept in this country a division of the populus into three distinct classes: The Lower Class, The Middle Class & The Upper Class. ((Added to this we might consider as a fourth class the military. Mark Thompson examines this idea in greater detail in his excellent article for Time Magazine entitled “The Other 1%.” For this post, however, I shall confine myself to the tripartite œconomic division identified above.)) The division between these strata is generally clear insofar as people tend easily to identify themselves as being a member of a particular class and insofar as these self-identifications seem generally to go uncontested. However, it is a characteristic peculiar to the American experiment (or at least it was at the time of its inception; much of the world seems now to have caught up to it) that while one might inhabit a certain class, one is not bound to it. This notion walks cheek by jowl with the idea of personal responsibility. ((There is no doubt but that the term “social responsibility” means vastly different things to different people. But left, right & center, I believe all Americans subscribe to some belief in personal responsibility, whatsoever it may mean to them.)) That is to say, we expect that if a citizen of the Upper Class should act irresponsibly with respect to their personal finances, those finances will be proportionally and appropriately affected. Likewise we expect that if a person should be born to the Lower Class, that person will work hard and in accordance with their own natural talents and thereby elevate themself. Now the extent to which this is practicably true is much debated in our society. And to the extent that it is untrue, one of the goals of this American experiment must be to make it incrementally more true.

The fluidity of movement between œconomic classes resides, quite literally, at the foundation of the American experiment. Putting aside the question of religious freedom which also lies at our foundation, since the founding of Jamestown people have come to this land to better their œconomic prospects. While I am by no means an œconomist, œconomic mobility must be at the heart of any capitalistic system, else there is no incentive to take risk. And let it be stated clearly, œconomic mobility must flow both ways. The potential for upward mobility must encourage risk and inspire creativity while the potential for downward mobility must give cause for circumspection and instill prudence and moderation.

The apparent lack of accountability for those most responsible for our current œconomic morass speaks, δοκεῖ μοι, to a loss of potential downward mobility for those inhabiting the very highest œconomic stratum. This seems to be a major point, variously articulated, by the Occupy movements. ((I do not presume to speak for the Occupiers, nor do I count myself among them, but that this is an argument put forth by them seems self-evident. If I should be in error, I encourage any Occupier to provide a more accurate articulation.)) However, this post is not very much concerned with the lack of potential downward mobility at the top, but rather the lack of potential upward mobility in Middle and Lower Classes.

In particular I would like to consider the question of unemployment insurance. ((There is a helpful nuts & bolts analysis by Casey B. Mulligan of U. Chicago which was posted on the NYT.)) While listening to Meet the Press this morning, I heard Senator Schumer (D.NY) arguing for the further extension of unemployment insurance, already at 99 weeks. Now, prior to the onset of this œconomic winter which began in 2008 the generally accepted norm was 26 weeks of unemployment insurance. Presumably we believed at that time that 26 weeks was a sufficient period for an individual to find new meaningful employment. Therefore the fact that an individual can collect for up to 99 weeks, and the attendant idea that even this is no longer enough, must be a tacit admission on the part of our government that it not only no longer expects the unemployed to find new work inside of two years, but indeed that it expects them not to find new work.

No doubt any number of arguments will be confected on the right against such an extension. Likewise on the left in support. By now even the causal observer might prophecy with ease several arguments to be made by either side. However, I here propose to consider the question of prolonged unemployment insurance vis-à-vis potential upward œconomic mobility. Specifically, I shall try to argue that continued and long term unemployment insurance will likely often harm an individual’s potential upward mobility.

I mean to tread carefully here, for there are those who would argue that longterm unemployment insurance by its nature breeds a complacency in its beneficiaries; that it discourages the search for new employment; that it inhibits personal responsibility. I say now that I reject these arguments. I believe that most people in this country want to work, want to earn the food on their table and the roof over their head, want to walk with dignity and not be the object of another’s pity or charity. I want to be clear about that.

How then, if longterm unemployment insurance does not breed complacency or inhibit personal responsibility, how does it harm one’s potential upward mobility? The problem is twofold. First, we must consider the peripheral problems that attend a person in a state of persistent unemployment. Second, we ought to consider what might be termed the collective collateral damage to our society as a whole.

When we consider the misfortunes of the unemployed we tend to see only the most manifest symptoms. We see people suffering in hardship, struggling to pay their bills, struggling to feed and clothe their children. We see people for whom a single surgery or disease would mean absolute ruin. What is less apparent, I think, is that the longer one is removed from the work force, the greater is the diminishment of their potential value to an employer. Technology progresses and skills wane concurrently so that the less contact one has with the working world, the more difficult it must be to reacclimate. The more training must be required to get such a one up to speed.

Further, and I don’t know how one would go about trying to prove this, I suspect there is a stigma attached to being unemployed. It may even operate on a subconscious level, but there are almost certainly employers who when given the choice between hiring a young adult out of college or an experienced person who has been unemployed for two years will wonder what deficiency has prevented an otherwise experienced worker from getting a job for so long, even in such hard times as these.

Further, there is emerging evidence that longterm unemployment carries a stigma. In fact, many employers have become so brazen as to make current employment a prerequisite, as reported by the New York Times in July. At first, I suspected a sort of unspoken prejudice whereby an employer would wonder what deficiency of character or ability has kept a potential employer out of work for such a duration. But in fact, as reported by the Wall Street Journal back in 2009, employers are quite open about this. There is an almost Darwinian philosophy at work which argues that only the fittest have been able to remain employed, a sort of economic Catch-22 which serves to keep the longterm unemployed in a prolonged penurious holding pattern.

As for the collective collateral damage to our society, here too we tend only to see the immediate symptoms. That is to say we are more likely to consider the money that the chronically unemployed are not pumping into the œconomy, the social security taxes they are not paying, the spent government dollars which some would prefer to spend on other programs and others would prefer to spend not at all. This is sufficient cause for concern today, but what about tomorrow? A reasonable analogy might be that this is akin to paying famers not to grow crops in a time of famine.

Let it be given that we have a responsibility to our fellow citizens. It can even be a self-motivated responsibility, for as Perikles is reputed to have said, “a flourishing state is altogether more helpful to individuals than when the individual does well on his own, but the state is collapsing around him. For the man who is doing well on his own is nonetheless ruined when his state is destroyed, but the one who is in bad shape while his state prospers is more likely to find his salvation.” ((…πόλιν πλείω ξύμπασαν ὀρθουμένην ὠφελεῖν τοὺς ἰδιώτας ἢ καθ᾽ ἕκαστον τῶν πολιτῶν εὐπραγοῦσαν, ἁθρόαν δὲ σφαλλομένην. καλῶς μὲν γὰρ φερόμενος ἀνὴρ τὸ καθ᾽ ἑαυτὸν διαφθειρομένης τῆς πατρίδος οὐδὲν ἧσσον ξυναπόλλυται, κακοτυχῶν δὲ ἐν εὐτυχούσῃ πολλῷ μᾶλλον διασῴζεται. Th.2.60)) In any case, we cannot leave people to starve, we cannot leave children to wear rags, we can not watch whole neighborhoods be foreclosed upon nor entire communities pass into ghost towns.

If this is true, then we are obliged to help these people. Three hundred dollars a week is not much, but our society seems to have concluded it is enough under the circumstances. The question then becomes, if we resolve to pay an unemployed citizen $300 dollars a week, ought we to pay them to do nothing or ought we pay them to do something. And if it be the state that pays, ought not a service be rendered in kind to the state? They could be paid to plant trees or clean up roadsides. Anything is better than nothing, surely.

How would this affect one’s potential œconomic mobility? Even if no meaningful skills were acquired, it would demonstrate to a potential employer accountability and responsibility. The potential employer would see somebody before them who, even if they required training, could be counted on to show up every day, on time and work hard. This is an easier claim to make for somebody who has been working for two years than for somebody who has staid home for two years, even if the claim be true for both.

Sadly, as things are now, people can sit home for up to 99 weeks (soon to be more) and simply “get by,” if even that. During this time they acquire no new skills, forge no new connections, make no contribution to the state or to their own personal betterment. There is no hope of promotion, no brighter tomorrow. Those who have fallen from the Middle Class to the Lower are less able to realize a reascension to their previous station, while those who already inhabited the Lower Class remain there imprisoned. It is in this way that potential upward œconomic mobility is stunted, and there is no doubt but that we are all the worse for it, singly and together.

*This post was updated 12/5/2011 to reflect the journalism on the matter of many employers seeking only to hire those already employed. Thanks to Justin Starr for the research.

ΔΟΚΕΙ ΜΟΙ

'It Seems to Me' by Dave Starr

Author Archives: Dave

The Saga of Chutzpah the Mouse – Part the First

ARS CONVERSATIONIS

On Dumplings

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The Joys of Radio

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ΠΕΡΙ ΤΩΝ ΜΕΡΙΔΩΝ ΠΟΛΙΤΩΝ B’ (On the Classes, part the second)

De Caeli Natura (On the Nature of Heaven)

IN SANCTVM SECRETVM NICOLAUM (Against Secret Santa)

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΩΝ ΜΕΡΙΔΩΝ ΠΟΛΙΤΩΝ Α’ (On the Classes, part the first)

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