Tron, ten minutes of entertainment spread out over three hours. Go figure. Get a CLU. So much for critical thinking.
Had the additional honor of encountering the remodeled lobby at Downtown Disney. Taking lessons from the Starbuck’s reader. How to charge ten dollars for a cup of coffee. Put something alcoholic in it, of course. If I think about it, the idea seems absolutely preposterous. Ten dollars for coffee? What planet are you from?
But It’s incremental, like the drop of water argument in tort damages. Two-fifty for coffee. A lot, but okay, if you have to pay six or seven greenbacks (or Technicolor holobacks or whatever passes for dollars now), for a quart of popcorn that costs maybe a dime in its wholesale state, why not two-fifty for coffee? And if plain coffee can be two-fifty, why not six or so for something as exotic as a latte? Surely the qualitative value of a latte equals or exceeds a quart of popcorn. And if you charge three more dollars to add, not a shot, but a dollop of Irish whiskey, with tax you’re almost there, and everybody’s happy.
The whole arrangement of the lobby is an exercise in strategic marketing and profit maximization. What was previously a large open space has been subdivided like lots in a retirement development for efficient processing. Where you had a widely curving food service counter spread along a fair share of the periphery, the space has now been broken up into irregular specialty stations for a bar, other typical beverages including coffee, popcorn and nacho center, and the traditional theater food counter that now takes up about a tenth of its former territory. What used to impart a brief and deceptive yet rewarding sense of spacious elegance, has now been reduced to a typical rat maze of promotional entrapment, with the possible added bonus of at least increasing the take without increasing the staff, if not outright reduction of staff. Not that I would be surprised considering the source, but I somehow feel like one more little delusion of significance and independence for the masses has now been withdrawn and quite consciously commodified. They didn’t even bother to try and evoke any kind of ethnic or cultural charm in the design. Efficiency has met standardized taste in an ultimate McDisnification.
Here's Thinking for You
Iffy
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Unrealized Aristocrat: Harry Potter and Evil Difference in The Deathly Hallows
One attraction of the Harry Potter series is the unlikely hero/prince in disguise emerging from obscurity to battle the forces of evil, and (as the latest installment quite specifically asserts) if you just believe in yourself, have talent, and persevere, you will prevail, an attractive premise for awkward individuals in a challenging world, and an easy message to associate with Rowling from her single-mom, financially-challenged-to-mega-billionaire perspective. I haven’t seen her whole story, or how exactly she picked up an agent, and I suspect, like the character she created, she had more resources available in the manner of connections, in spite of her financial challenges, than are readily apparent.
As I never tire of remarking, The first Harry Potter novel amused me. I only got through half of the second one before the humor wore out and I concluded it was going nowhere. After that, there was nothing left but the movies, an endless procession of gaping snakes and sentimental conversations. The other part of it, that hundreds of millions of people don’t agree with me, is merely an unfortunate phenomenon of the emperor’s new clothes.
What the latest movie emphasizes, as for the Lion King, Avatar, and other commercially-crafted, sentimentalized fantasies, is not just an unrealistic opportunism that depends on aristocratic empowerment in the Western Tradition, but ultimately on a restatement of the determination that real evil resides in difference. Another attraction of Harry Potter as narrative has been the apparent variation of the relative forms in which good and evil are represented, such as diminutive elves or a tyrannical minister of magic in the character of a 50s soap-opera Mom, but these are misleading. Unfortunately, ultimate evil in the character of Voldemort still adopts the traditional darkness and deformation invested by reptilian knock-offs. Everything else becomes comic relief. The essential struggle depends on the traditional powers of darkness, represented by Voldemort and his corrupted ministry, against the rebellious keepers of the light, in contention for control of the source (the wand and wizardry), but the rebellion itself is an ironic one, because Harry Potter is the real heir of exclusion.
The powers of good, as the realm of Hogwarts perceives good, reside in the obligatory fair-skinned anglo adventurers of the North. I don’t know that Rowling ever specifically designates the racial and cultural origins of the characters aside from nationality and cultural connections, but the culture of the English boarding school is a little difficult to overlook or escape. The imperial colonial heritage that implies also creates a somewhat paradoxical and perplexing issue in terms of Potter’s popularity. Is Harry Potter a celebration of English Imperial High Culture (to which even oppressed colonial subjects apparently aspire, or at least the subaltern), or is it really an ironic indictment, or both, or something else? And does it matter? Perhaps it matters if Potter’s popularity represents an uninformed acceptance of cultural oppression, as for Edward Said. The giant snake, for instance, is not only a creature out of mythology, but a creature out of the mysterious colonial African and Oriental realms.
Colonial imperialism was not all bad. At the very least it provided an opportunity for the indigenous inhabitants of conquered cultures to study their oppressors from a privileged observation point, not necessarily a pleasant and inspirational view, but sometimes a pragmatically productive one. Europeans investigated the world and inadvertently displayed themselves for what they were in various contexts, opening themselves up to degrees of retaliatory appropriation. That however is fundamentally another argument. Whether to the effect of domination or to the opposite effect of opportunity for resistance, the Harry Potter character remains closely associated with the normative imperial conventions of the English boarding school culture.
I am not a great advocate for alternate lifestyles, but I would think that anyone in that position would be looking skeptically at Harry Potter, whether for the sake of disability, sexual orientation, or any number of various unique personal attributes. In the main characters, there are neither deformities, nor failures. These are the perfected champions of the aristocratic tradition, with the possible exception of impaired vision, although spectacles themselves indicate a kind of symbolically ironic intellectual affirmation, the need for spectacles suggesting keen vision of another kind. Doubt and adversity are permissible. Failure is never an option, quite consciously. That Harry, Hermione, and Ron may get tired of trying and make mistakes is expected. That they could fail isn’t even really contemplated. This is the conventional escape from reality in which skillful manipulation of a conventional quest engages a hopeful audience, yet distracts them from the more subtle stereotypes of power and domination. If the characters represented a rag-tag bunch of morally challenged individuals, there would be an element of aspiration to diversity, but what they represent in their conceptual form is an Anglo-European heritage of conventional hetero-sexual and political relationships, good-hearted, loyal devotion to each other and to an orderly society, however magically endowed the society may be, and disturbed, if at all, only by the acceptable dimensions of competition for sexual pairing. Even the introduction of jealousy and revenge, while conflicted, only emphasiszes the conventionality of the relationships. There is nothing fundamentally deviant or diverse in these characters. Only their opponents represent any inclination to resistance, and resistance only privileges evil. Hagrid, the one prominent, sympathetic character who sometimes seems to hover unarguably at the fringe of resistance, has been relegated to a kind of exile on the Hogwarts frontier, a somewhat tragic, yet cautionary condition.
True evil, whether greed, power, or only self-indulgence, results from failure to recognize that individual interests have detrimentally impacted social considerations, a denial of personal enlightenment and a threat to every stable relationship, personal or social. An authentic representation of such evil often reflects the mode of Rutger Hauer, evil disguised as beauty, or evil closely connected to beauty, but Harry Potter represents a simplified version, an older, more traditional narrative mode, the dark mode of primeval fear established in the Western tradition and the literature of colonial imperialism. Harry Potter validates that evil in the name of, not even sacrifice, but in the name of determined performance. Dobby the elf, for instance, sacrifices freedom and life for the sake of Harry Potter and his quest, but is only a subordinate, and therefore expendable. Harry accords the subordinate a noble ceremony, but the nobility is not the recognition of equals, for that cannot be. It is only a generous gesture to what is after all just an inferior creature that sacrificed itself in a noble gesture of its own, noble gesture for noble gesture. Why isn’t the undefineable Dobby himself (it/herself?) pursuing the dark, snake-like character of Voldemort? Because Dobby is just a free elf, not an aristocrat, and free or not, can never be an aristocrat in Harry Potter’s world. Narratively the primary characters with whom the reader identifies cannot be sacrificed, but in addition, Dobby is an inferior, only worthy to rubber stamp a cause incurred by the aristocratic knight-er(r)ants. The opposition to muggles and mud-bloods associated with Voldemort’s camp isn’t really an issue as much as it is a reflection of Harry’s own awkward unrealized aristocrat status and a distraction from the true nature of the relationship. Harry is the endowed aristocrat. The opposition’s preoccupation with mudbloods does not reflect an authentic fear of contamination. It reflects a fear of reflexive exclusion. Who is the real aristocrat?
It would not do for a true commoner to invest the cause of the quest. Perhaps the unrealized attraction of Harry Potter is appeal of the aristocrat in disguise (and that we all secretly want to be aristocrats, a kind of sceptre envy). Aspirations to social consciousness and benign self-enlightenment are only pretense. Unfortunately for the aristocratic urge and regardless of the appeal, aristocracy depends on the permanent subjugation of the majority and is therefore both inherently unstable and inherently tyrannical, which is like saying aristocracy begets evil. Everybody should have the opportunity to be aristocrats some of the time, also part of the Potter appeal (vicariously identifying with the aristocrat), but as a matter of enlightened self-interest and social justice, nobody should have a permanent endowment of aristocracy. That is where Harry Potter fundamentally fails as a contemporary moral allegory. It appeals to an aristocratic imperial nostalgia that is both lost and impossible, and through the stereotypes it invokes, likewise potentially destructive.
Voldemort’s reason for being is ultimate power/supremacy, a somewhat ironic representation of death (as for the vaguely ethnic Tale of the Three Brothers within the tale). The language of the name suggests something ambiguously Eastern European, perhaps including a casual leer at the Dutch, a traditional English opponent, with linguistic connections to desolate moors and the grotesque, shadowy growths associated with decay, distinct from the cheery Dickensian irony of Dumbledore, Umbrage, Weasley, and Potter, or even the quasi-mythical Western-European and agrarian-fertility connections of Hermione Granger. In spite of the nod to the quest for supreme power, the implication is that the capacity for evil is not a force inspired strictly by human involvement, but a force derived from the momentum of a mysterious and mythical antiquity. Evil exists in the world as an independent force, perhaps residing in corruption for the sake of bad choices, but otherwise independent of human intervention. Not just any old derelict champion will do. Only chosen human beings, invested by light, perfected by the mythical gift of wizardry, who meet the demanding standards of tradition, are called worthy to contend with the dark forces of difference, and those representatives of the aristocratic heritage are not complicated or hampered by the “imperfections” of diversity.
Here’s Thinking for You
Iffy
As I never tire of remarking, The first Harry Potter novel amused me. I only got through half of the second one before the humor wore out and I concluded it was going nowhere. After that, there was nothing left but the movies, an endless procession of gaping snakes and sentimental conversations. The other part of it, that hundreds of millions of people don’t agree with me, is merely an unfortunate phenomenon of the emperor’s new clothes.
What the latest movie emphasizes, as for the Lion King, Avatar, and other commercially-crafted, sentimentalized fantasies, is not just an unrealistic opportunism that depends on aristocratic empowerment in the Western Tradition, but ultimately on a restatement of the determination that real evil resides in difference. Another attraction of Harry Potter as narrative has been the apparent variation of the relative forms in which good and evil are represented, such as diminutive elves or a tyrannical minister of magic in the character of a 50s soap-opera Mom, but these are misleading. Unfortunately, ultimate evil in the character of Voldemort still adopts the traditional darkness and deformation invested by reptilian knock-offs. Everything else becomes comic relief. The essential struggle depends on the traditional powers of darkness, represented by Voldemort and his corrupted ministry, against the rebellious keepers of the light, in contention for control of the source (the wand and wizardry), but the rebellion itself is an ironic one, because Harry Potter is the real heir of exclusion.
The powers of good, as the realm of Hogwarts perceives good, reside in the obligatory fair-skinned anglo adventurers of the North. I don’t know that Rowling ever specifically designates the racial and cultural origins of the characters aside from nationality and cultural connections, but the culture of the English boarding school is a little difficult to overlook or escape. The imperial colonial heritage that implies also creates a somewhat paradoxical and perplexing issue in terms of Potter’s popularity. Is Harry Potter a celebration of English Imperial High Culture (to which even oppressed colonial subjects apparently aspire, or at least the subaltern), or is it really an ironic indictment, or both, or something else? And does it matter? Perhaps it matters if Potter’s popularity represents an uninformed acceptance of cultural oppression, as for Edward Said. The giant snake, for instance, is not only a creature out of mythology, but a creature out of the mysterious colonial African and Oriental realms.
Colonial imperialism was not all bad. At the very least it provided an opportunity for the indigenous inhabitants of conquered cultures to study their oppressors from a privileged observation point, not necessarily a pleasant and inspirational view, but sometimes a pragmatically productive one. Europeans investigated the world and inadvertently displayed themselves for what they were in various contexts, opening themselves up to degrees of retaliatory appropriation. That however is fundamentally another argument. Whether to the effect of domination or to the opposite effect of opportunity for resistance, the Harry Potter character remains closely associated with the normative imperial conventions of the English boarding school culture.
I am not a great advocate for alternate lifestyles, but I would think that anyone in that position would be looking skeptically at Harry Potter, whether for the sake of disability, sexual orientation, or any number of various unique personal attributes. In the main characters, there are neither deformities, nor failures. These are the perfected champions of the aristocratic tradition, with the possible exception of impaired vision, although spectacles themselves indicate a kind of symbolically ironic intellectual affirmation, the need for spectacles suggesting keen vision of another kind. Doubt and adversity are permissible. Failure is never an option, quite consciously. That Harry, Hermione, and Ron may get tired of trying and make mistakes is expected. That they could fail isn’t even really contemplated. This is the conventional escape from reality in which skillful manipulation of a conventional quest engages a hopeful audience, yet distracts them from the more subtle stereotypes of power and domination. If the characters represented a rag-tag bunch of morally challenged individuals, there would be an element of aspiration to diversity, but what they represent in their conceptual form is an Anglo-European heritage of conventional hetero-sexual and political relationships, good-hearted, loyal devotion to each other and to an orderly society, however magically endowed the society may be, and disturbed, if at all, only by the acceptable dimensions of competition for sexual pairing. Even the introduction of jealousy and revenge, while conflicted, only emphasiszes the conventionality of the relationships. There is nothing fundamentally deviant or diverse in these characters. Only their opponents represent any inclination to resistance, and resistance only privileges evil. Hagrid, the one prominent, sympathetic character who sometimes seems to hover unarguably at the fringe of resistance, has been relegated to a kind of exile on the Hogwarts frontier, a somewhat tragic, yet cautionary condition.
True evil, whether greed, power, or only self-indulgence, results from failure to recognize that individual interests have detrimentally impacted social considerations, a denial of personal enlightenment and a threat to every stable relationship, personal or social. An authentic representation of such evil often reflects the mode of Rutger Hauer, evil disguised as beauty, or evil closely connected to beauty, but Harry Potter represents a simplified version, an older, more traditional narrative mode, the dark mode of primeval fear established in the Western tradition and the literature of colonial imperialism. Harry Potter validates that evil in the name of, not even sacrifice, but in the name of determined performance. Dobby the elf, for instance, sacrifices freedom and life for the sake of Harry Potter and his quest, but is only a subordinate, and therefore expendable. Harry accords the subordinate a noble ceremony, but the nobility is not the recognition of equals, for that cannot be. It is only a generous gesture to what is after all just an inferior creature that sacrificed itself in a noble gesture of its own, noble gesture for noble gesture. Why isn’t the undefineable Dobby himself (it/herself?) pursuing the dark, snake-like character of Voldemort? Because Dobby is just a free elf, not an aristocrat, and free or not, can never be an aristocrat in Harry Potter’s world. Narratively the primary characters with whom the reader identifies cannot be sacrificed, but in addition, Dobby is an inferior, only worthy to rubber stamp a cause incurred by the aristocratic knight-er(r)ants. The opposition to muggles and mud-bloods associated with Voldemort’s camp isn’t really an issue as much as it is a reflection of Harry’s own awkward unrealized aristocrat status and a distraction from the true nature of the relationship. Harry is the endowed aristocrat. The opposition’s preoccupation with mudbloods does not reflect an authentic fear of contamination. It reflects a fear of reflexive exclusion. Who is the real aristocrat?
It would not do for a true commoner to invest the cause of the quest. Perhaps the unrealized attraction of Harry Potter is appeal of the aristocrat in disguise (and that we all secretly want to be aristocrats, a kind of sceptre envy). Aspirations to social consciousness and benign self-enlightenment are only pretense. Unfortunately for the aristocratic urge and regardless of the appeal, aristocracy depends on the permanent subjugation of the majority and is therefore both inherently unstable and inherently tyrannical, which is like saying aristocracy begets evil. Everybody should have the opportunity to be aristocrats some of the time, also part of the Potter appeal (vicariously identifying with the aristocrat), but as a matter of enlightened self-interest and social justice, nobody should have a permanent endowment of aristocracy. That is where Harry Potter fundamentally fails as a contemporary moral allegory. It appeals to an aristocratic imperial nostalgia that is both lost and impossible, and through the stereotypes it invokes, likewise potentially destructive.
Voldemort’s reason for being is ultimate power/supremacy, a somewhat ironic representation of death (as for the vaguely ethnic Tale of the Three Brothers within the tale). The language of the name suggests something ambiguously Eastern European, perhaps including a casual leer at the Dutch, a traditional English opponent, with linguistic connections to desolate moors and the grotesque, shadowy growths associated with decay, distinct from the cheery Dickensian irony of Dumbledore, Umbrage, Weasley, and Potter, or even the quasi-mythical Western-European and agrarian-fertility connections of Hermione Granger. In spite of the nod to the quest for supreme power, the implication is that the capacity for evil is not a force inspired strictly by human involvement, but a force derived from the momentum of a mysterious and mythical antiquity. Evil exists in the world as an independent force, perhaps residing in corruption for the sake of bad choices, but otherwise independent of human intervention. Not just any old derelict champion will do. Only chosen human beings, invested by light, perfected by the mythical gift of wizardry, who meet the demanding standards of tradition, are called worthy to contend with the dark forces of difference, and those representatives of the aristocratic heritage are not complicated or hampered by the “imperfections” of diversity.
Here’s Thinking for You
Iffy
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Edjukshun Is Hilee Over8ed LOL
Ther is a big hipe on edjukshun. Oh, I no they got numbers that U will get a fansy job if U get colege, but truly U dont need no edjukshun 2 mak a lots of mony. I am entrepenur on thu net, & mak lots of mony. If U want lots of mony & get chances, pick U family good. U don’t need no edjukshun. I quit out of hiskul cuz thu net dont need no edjukshun.
Thu way I mak mony is on thu net & I subsckrib 4 X porno & slezy net skuls, all legul. If you want to mak mony on edjukshun, do verts & soshul netwerk 4 net skuls but I got sumbody to writ 4 me cuz sumbody sed that wuz not real cuz the writing wuz stoopid. They R stoopid. My frends all stick with me when I git thum stuff and do there stuff with thum that is fun 2. That taks no edjukshun.
My freind sed it wuz not thu sam. Thu kids that wuz on thu net all thu time new much as big shots. Now it not so E-Z cuz it got mor complik8d all laws & siense & such. Now all taks colege. Not tru. I writ on thu koments of thu net all thu tim. Read on the koments of the net sumtim. U wil see me ther. That dont need no edjukshun. My freind is stoopid.
Here's Thinking for You
Iffy
Thu way I mak mony is on thu net & I subsckrib 4 X porno & slezy net skuls, all legul. If you want to mak mony on edjukshun, do verts & soshul netwerk 4 net skuls but I got sumbody to writ 4 me cuz sumbody sed that wuz not real cuz the writing wuz stoopid. They R stoopid. My frends all stick with me when I git thum stuff and do there stuff with thum that is fun 2. That taks no edjukshun.
My freind sed it wuz not thu sam. Thu kids that wuz on thu net all thu time new much as big shots. Now it not so E-Z cuz it got mor complik8d all laws & siense & such. Now all taks colege. Not tru. I writ on thu koments of thu net all thu tim. Read on the koments of the net sumtim. U wil see me ther. That dont need no edjukshun. My freind is stoopid.
Here's Thinking for You
Iffy
Sunday, October 24, 2010
The Devil Take the Hindmost
In a way I feel bad for Obama, not because his approval ratings are down, that goes with the territory, or even because McChrystal couldn’t remember what he was doing in Afghanistan, or even because the Russians don’t like chili dogs, but because, like Arnie in California, the job is impossible. Like I said before the election, the Rove/Cheney/Bush abyss may be too vast for any mortal human being to span in one lifetime. It is a no-win job that the republicans should have had responsibility for fixing as much as for breaking. But Arnie has only managed to confirm that the republicans can’t fix anything except their wallets. In spite of good intentions, Arnie gets hit from every direction. (http://politics.newsvine.com/_news/2010/06/26/4566213-gop-schwarzenegger-a-great-disappointment
Obama was the only hope, and I hate to see him go down in a thankless, impossible job, but he asked for it, so he gets the credit for not fixing it just as much as the Dubya Posse gets credit for breaking it. The opportunity to rise above the occasion for Dubya was exceeded only by the opportunity to screw it up, and so he did, leaving a legacy that even a sincere republican like Arnie can’t touch.
As for comparing Deepwater Horizon with Katrina, all Bush had to do to be a hero in New Orleans was to evacuate the sports dome and the hospital in two days. That’s all it would have taken. They would have forgiven everything else over time, but the pressure on law enforcement and resources in the city with no place for people to go turned into a spectacle that we’ll remember for a lifetime.
Military trucks, vessels, and aircraft a hundred miles away never moved, and the final irony was that the airport was still operational. That’s what really pissed people off, and likewise intensified resentment of every other perceived inadequacy of the response. After that, it was prove you can do better than New Orleans, instead of we are so glad to have some help.
As for fixing Deepwater Horizon, what in the hell was Obama supposed to do? This was not a regularly occurring natural disaster like a hurricane. The only domes involved are a mile under water, and there isn’t any known device in existence to manage the results. All he could do was stand on the beach and jump up and down. The Navy doesn’t have a huge stock of oil containment equipment. Yeah, somebody should have been ready to deal with this kind of problem. We know blowouts happen. We know BOPs can fail. We know working a mile under water is tricky, but republicans and other conservatives are always whining about big government and free enterprise. Nobody wanted to put responsibility for another expensive project on the government when they already had so much invested in cozy regulatory relationships. Does this remind you of anything, like the SEC? The industry could have cooperated on joint development of equipment and planning for contingency protection, but that would have been a quasi-government function. Chalk another one up for free enterprise, and let the devil take the hindmost. Only problem is, the hindmost is us.
Here's Thinking For You
Iffy
Obama was the only hope, and I hate to see him go down in a thankless, impossible job, but he asked for it, so he gets the credit for not fixing it just as much as the Dubya Posse gets credit for breaking it. The opportunity to rise above the occasion for Dubya was exceeded only by the opportunity to screw it up, and so he did, leaving a legacy that even a sincere republican like Arnie can’t touch.
As for comparing Deepwater Horizon with Katrina, all Bush had to do to be a hero in New Orleans was to evacuate the sports dome and the hospital in two days. That’s all it would have taken. They would have forgiven everything else over time, but the pressure on law enforcement and resources in the city with no place for people to go turned into a spectacle that we’ll remember for a lifetime.
Military trucks, vessels, and aircraft a hundred miles away never moved, and the final irony was that the airport was still operational. That’s what really pissed people off, and likewise intensified resentment of every other perceived inadequacy of the response. After that, it was prove you can do better than New Orleans, instead of we are so glad to have some help.
As for fixing Deepwater Horizon, what in the hell was Obama supposed to do? This was not a regularly occurring natural disaster like a hurricane. The only domes involved are a mile under water, and there isn’t any known device in existence to manage the results. All he could do was stand on the beach and jump up and down. The Navy doesn’t have a huge stock of oil containment equipment. Yeah, somebody should have been ready to deal with this kind of problem. We know blowouts happen. We know BOPs can fail. We know working a mile under water is tricky, but republicans and other conservatives are always whining about big government and free enterprise. Nobody wanted to put responsibility for another expensive project on the government when they already had so much invested in cozy regulatory relationships. Does this remind you of anything, like the SEC? The industry could have cooperated on joint development of equipment and planning for contingency protection, but that would have been a quasi-government function. Chalk another one up for free enterprise, and let the devil take the hindmost. Only problem is, the hindmost is us.
Here's Thinking For You
Iffy
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Insecticide: How a Failure of Diplomacy Wiped Out an Entire Community
In the spring when I was cleaning the yard, I kicked up a low-lying wasp nest out behind the shed without realizing it at first. The wasps came in around my ankles, and I got stung pretty good (or pretty bad, or badly). Wasp stings can be so intense that the impact is first sort of incomprehensible, like suddenly running into an electrified barb-wire fence that was never there before. “This can’t be happening,” I say to myself, and then, ouch, yes it is happening, and I am doing the tribal dance of pain. I have some sensitivity to wasp stings as well. For several days my ankles swell into a painful imitation of exercise weights. I was seriously annoyed, but the truth was they were just doing what wasps do, and they weren’t really a problem otherwise. I wasn’t planning on going back there anytime soon, so I slathered on hydrocortisone and left them alone. After a couple of weeks, I could again walk like a human being instead of a two-legged pogo stick, and my outrage subsided into a comforting haze of live-and-let-live magnanimity.
This summer I had to work on the fence across the back, which wasn’t really in the range of the nest, but I had to walk within a couple feet of the wasps to get around them. I was a little apprehensive at first, but apparently I wasn’t a threat, and they left me alone. When I was almost done with the fence, however, I was picking up where I had been working, and suddenly the agonizing combination of sensations like sharpened lightning bolts hit me from behind. After days of ignoring me, apparently the capo wasp had suddenly decided to put out a hit on me, and without warning, the enforcers targeted the backs of my legs. This apparently unprovoked and unreasonable attack infuriated me. I had left them alone and given them their space, but they attacked me without mercy, the vicious little buzzards. I did what people do when they collide with the impersonal aggression of nature. I pulled out a can of insecticide and blasted the colony into oblivion.
Perhaps the wasps had legitimate concerns, at least in wasp terms. Perhaps in another reality we could have been sitting down with a couple of beers under a big umbrella, amiably chatting up our unjustified mutual paranoia. Perhaps we could have reached an accommodating agreement regarding our space and our right of way. Perhaps we would have found that our basic motivation was not so different, and that we shared fundamental ambivalence about our competing relationships with the unfamiliar and the unique.
Unfortunately, wasps are short on diplomacy and long on attack skills. While their needs may be uncomplicated and fundamental, their triggers are irrevocable and somewhat mysterious. As far as I can tell, they have little patience or appreciation for negotiation, and so for all intents and purposes, they quite decisively and carelessly commit themselves to heroic annihilation, and the truth is that I have a hard time feeling thoroughly bad about it.
Here’s Thinking for You.
Iffy
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Perfect Business
Conservative republicans accused President Obama of opposition to business. What does opposition to business mean? Does it mean Bernie Madoff and AIG, no accountability, no enforcement, and no regulation? If so, then Obama opposes business. Does it mean uncontrolled pollution and collapsing bridges? If so, then Obama opposes business. Does it mean dangerous food, inadequate disaster response, and discrimination? If so, then Obama opposes business. Does it mean all the resources and all the income are controlled by a few people? If so, then Obama opposes business.
The conservatives accused another President of opposing business. His name was Theodore Roosevelt, and the business was Standard Oil. No doubt that ruined the country. By now we could have a government operated for profit by one corporation, like Idi Amin in Uganda. Wouldn’t that be perfect?
Here's Thinking For You.
Iffy
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Full Ride
Shanna McLaughlin got a lot of exposure in a UCF locker room and subsequently on the internet, as the images went from less than outlandish
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/432879-shanna-mclaughlin-pics-the-playboy-playmate-and-ucf-fan-causes-a-stir#page/7
to borderline pornography as reported by some kind of illiterate scribblealazzi.
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/6487262-shanna-mclaughlin-shot-nude-in-university-of-central-florida
One entertaining thing about the internet is just how much the information can be lost in translation, or even just transfer. Apparently the mere attempt to repeat information is too much for some reporters. Female nudity in college football locker rooms makes interesting headlines, but in this case it’s also misunderstanding at best and sheer fantasy otherwise.
But Shanna McLaughlin in the locker room doesn’t bother me. The more blessings we can find to celebrate the better as far as I’m concerned. What does bother me is that anyone employed by the university would think it was okay to provide access to university facilities without consulting the legions of bureaucrats we employ to administer such things, alum or no alum. Do you have any idea what kind of hoops a business has to jump through to get approved for operating on campus? The university athletic department wouldn't even dignify a polite inquiry from Iffy with a reply, but a publication connected to adult entertainment can walk in and somebody hands them the key.
I’m not complaining. I just want to make sure we understand who really runs this parking-lot carnival.
Here’s Thinking for you.
Iffy
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