Thu - August 28, 2008
I'M DONE
with this.
The rest is
silence.
[Update, 2/1/09:]
To read what I'm doing now, head over to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and read
[Update, 2/1/09:]
To read what I'm doing now, head over to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and read
Posted at 10:25 PM
Fri - August 22, 2008
(NO) NOTES FROM A FRIDAY AFTERNOON
or a friday night.
Sorry, folks. The busiest day of a busy, and kind
of crazy, week.
Stay tuned until tomorrow afternoon, when the notes return in full bloom...
Stay tuned until tomorrow afternoon, when the notes return in full bloom...
Posted at 10:30 PM
Fri - June 20, 2008
AS THEM SWEET SUMMER NIGHTS
turn into summer dreams.
In the almost 51 weeks since my last summer siesta,
TWM has gone only twelve days without at least one new post. That's 355 days,
547 posts, and a whole lot of hearty, happy blogging between the big, blessed
breaks. Which means that, in the interests of mental and physical and maybe even
syntactical health, it's time to take another one.
And so tomorrow, TWM toddles off for rest and relaxation, for the sort of brain-clearing, battery-charging rejuvenation that only sunshine and family, blue skies and beautiful waters, can provide. Tanned, rested, and ready, I'll reopen for business and blogging as usual on Tuesday, July 2nd.
In the meantime, I urge you to dip your toes and fingers into these familiar waters, to read a few thoughts you may have missed or a couple of posts you might like to find again. To get you started, here are few of my personal favorites, a selection of hand-picked greatest hits, in convenient daily doses, from TWM's past 51 weeks...
SATURDAY: POSTSEASON REDS & WHITES and UNDERCOOKED, a pair of East-Meets-West Pennsylvania sports reflections.
SUNDAY: SUPERBAD, SUPERDUMB, & SUPERVULGAR, THE ROAD TRIP TO HELL, THESE SIMPLE, PERFECT PLEASURES, three tales of parenting, from the ridiculous to the sublime.
MONDAY: THIS IS NOT AN ANTI-SEMITIC POST, BEEF ON WECHT PARTS ONE, TWO, and THREE, a tetralogy of posts in response to the tortured and tortuous scribblings of a certain indicted ex-coroner.
TUESDAY: BABY ON BOARD, BABY TALK, WHEN LUKE RAVENSTAHL TALKS..., three painful reminders that Pittsburgh made the wrong choice last November.
WEDNESDAY: WHITLESS WONDERS, THIS IS WHAT IT'S LIKE, DIE SOFT, and OVER TIME, four remembrances of the Pens' remarkable playoff run.
THURSDAY: NEWSWEAK, MAG-NYET, and THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT, a trio of reactions to strange bedfellows at work in the American body politic.
FRIDAY: A NOTE TO HIS FELLOW PITTSBURGHERS, and THE VIEW FROM ON HIGH, two unconventional presentations, and probably the two best things I wrote all year.
SATURDAY: ONE IN EIGHTEEN THOUSAND and I'LL TELL YOU WHY, two pairs of essays on what's right and wrong with modern feminism.
SUNDAY: THE AGITATIONS OF HOPE and THE FULL SECESSION, two (or, counting all the links, five) on TWM's least-favorite favorite subject.
MONDAY: RASING A WARINESS, YOU CAN'T CHECK OUT ANY TIME YOU LIKE, COTTON CANDY DREAMS, WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?, four more chronicles of our continual cultural rot.
So there you have 'em: thirty-two thoughts, reactions, and observations that did make it into a full-length post this year, back once more to tide you over until I wash up once again on the warm and happy shores of TWM.
Until then, as always, I thank you -- from the top of my keyboard to the bottom of my heart -- for reading and indulging and somehow actually enjoying all these crazy efforts and excesses.
And so tomorrow, TWM toddles off for rest and relaxation, for the sort of brain-clearing, battery-charging rejuvenation that only sunshine and family, blue skies and beautiful waters, can provide. Tanned, rested, and ready, I'll reopen for business and blogging as usual on Tuesday, July 2nd.
In the meantime, I urge you to dip your toes and fingers into these familiar waters, to read a few thoughts you may have missed or a couple of posts you might like to find again. To get you started, here are few of my personal favorites, a selection of hand-picked greatest hits, in convenient daily doses, from TWM's past 51 weeks...
SATURDAY: POSTSEASON REDS & WHITES and UNDERCOOKED, a pair of East-Meets-West Pennsylvania sports reflections.
SUNDAY: SUPERBAD, SUPERDUMB, & SUPERVULGAR, THE ROAD TRIP TO HELL, THESE SIMPLE, PERFECT PLEASURES, three tales of parenting, from the ridiculous to the sublime.
MONDAY: THIS IS NOT AN ANTI-SEMITIC POST, BEEF ON WECHT PARTS ONE, TWO, and THREE, a tetralogy of posts in response to the tortured and tortuous scribblings of a certain indicted ex-coroner.
TUESDAY: BABY ON BOARD, BABY TALK, WHEN LUKE RAVENSTAHL TALKS..., three painful reminders that Pittsburgh made the wrong choice last November.
WEDNESDAY: WHITLESS WONDERS, THIS IS WHAT IT'S LIKE, DIE SOFT, and OVER TIME, four remembrances of the Pens' remarkable playoff run.
THURSDAY: NEWSWEAK, MAG-NYET, and THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT, a trio of reactions to strange bedfellows at work in the American body politic.
FRIDAY: A NOTE TO HIS FELLOW PITTSBURGHERS, and THE VIEW FROM ON HIGH, two unconventional presentations, and probably the two best things I wrote all year.
SATURDAY: ONE IN EIGHTEEN THOUSAND and I'LL TELL YOU WHY, two pairs of essays on what's right and wrong with modern feminism.
SUNDAY: THE AGITATIONS OF HOPE and THE FULL SECESSION, two (or, counting all the links, five) on TWM's least-favorite favorite subject.
MONDAY: RASING A WARINESS, YOU CAN'T CHECK OUT ANY TIME YOU LIKE, COTTON CANDY DREAMS, WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?, four more chronicles of our continual cultural rot.
So there you have 'em: thirty-two thoughts, reactions, and observations that did make it into a full-length post this year, back once more to tide you over until I wash up once again on the warm and happy shores of TWM.
Until then, as always, I thank you -- from the top of my keyboard to the bottom of my heart -- for reading and indulging and somehow actually enjoying all these crazy efforts and excesses.
Posted at 06:50 AM
Wed - May 21, 2008
RIDING ON HIS BUBBLE
he waits for the blessèd
break.
I don't know why I thought of this poem today, but
I did.
It is no surprise, of course, that I should think of it; it is, after all, one of my all-time favorites. But the timing -- here in the springtime, thinking about Pittsburgh and Baltimore, not Boston in the winter -- is odd. Perhaps it's the image of the aquarium, or the memories of studying it most fully when I lived in the city to which Adam is traveling even as I type. Or maybe it's just that, on a gray and rainy and unseasonably cold day, between sons and projects and playoff games, I can, more than most days, empathize with Colonel Shaw and his great stone statue.
FOR THE UNION DEAD
Robert Lowell
"Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam."
The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.
Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.
My hand draws back. I often sigh still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized
fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.
Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,
shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.
Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.
Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.
He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gently tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.
He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die--
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.
On a thousand small town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.
The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year--
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns . . .
Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."
The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling
over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.
Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessèd break.
The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.
It is no surprise, of course, that I should think of it; it is, after all, one of my all-time favorites. But the timing -- here in the springtime, thinking about Pittsburgh and Baltimore, not Boston in the winter -- is odd. Perhaps it's the image of the aquarium, or the memories of studying it most fully when I lived in the city to which Adam is traveling even as I type. Or maybe it's just that, on a gray and rainy and unseasonably cold day, between sons and projects and playoff games, I can, more than most days, empathize with Colonel Shaw and his great stone statue.
FOR THE UNION DEAD
Robert Lowell
"Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam."
The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.
Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.
My hand draws back. I often sigh still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized
fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.
Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,
shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.
Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.
Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.
He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gently tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.
He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die--
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.
On a thousand small town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.
The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year--
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns . . .
Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."
The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling
over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.
Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessèd break.
The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.
Posted at 07:57 PM
Wed - April 23, 2008
RED SUGAR, BLUE WORDS
or, shut up about censorship.
I saw this article in yesterday's PG and
planned to write a scathing post about it later today. But my pal JP -- that's
PittGirl,
to the rest of you -- over at The Burgh Blog beat me to it.
So just read her post instead.
So just read her post instead.
Posted at 10:47 AM
Thu - January 3, 2008
MY TURN
not yours.
I promised a post on this subject over the
weekend, but an irresistible combination of food, family, and fascinating --
which is to say, non-bowl-game -- sports drama kept luring me away from my
computer and off the subject of the place, the necessity, the possible
superfluity of blog comment threads.
I'd first considered a post like this a little more than a month ago, after an impromptu debate on the subject broke out at a Pittsburgh-Post-Gazette-hosted bloggers lunch to which Mackenzie Carpenter and John Allison made the obvious (but understandable, and much appreciated) mistake of inviting me. Mike Woycheck, unofficial guru of Online Pittsburgh, co-founder of Pittsburgh Bloggers, and mastermind of the fabulous WearPittsburgh -- in other words, the go-to-guy for wisdom, insight, and experience on all things bloggy -- nearly made my head explode when he suggested that blogs had to have comments. I interrupted -- rude, I know, but I was afraid I might go all Scanners on the table if I didn't -- and asked him to clarify.
I told himthat I understood the many advantages of comments, that I've been known to comment on many a site -- consider the threads over at The Burgh Report before the mayoral election; I practically took up residence there -- but that plenty of good and valuable blogs (including that silly little TWM site) do not have comments and surely do not require them to be true and whole and worthy of full-fledged blogdom. He agreed, of course, and, after listening to a few other opinions from around the table that were passionately argued but hopelessly missed the point, we both agreed that comments were a key, but not essential, feature of a blog.
I assumed that was the position all reasonable -- and reasonably self-aware -- members of the blogosphere would hold, so I decided a post on the subject would be a waste of time and space, a redundancy on the order of arguing that Willie Parker's broken leg greatly diminishes the chance of the Steelers winning the Super Bowl. And yet, as that guy who called up the Mark Madden show two weeks ago to announce that Willie Parker's injury may be just what the Steelers need to rediscover their power running game so perfectly proved, there's one in every media crowd. And so there was again last week, in a comment attached to the online version of the City Paper's Carbolic Smoke Ball feature:
If the CSB was a real blog, it would allow for reader comments.
This comment, from serial blogger, frequent blog commenter, and perpetual political candidate Mark Rauterkus, constitutes Exhibits A, B, C, and D for my own personal case against blog comments:
A) It's non-sensical. (What, exactly, is a real blog, Mark? And, for that matter, how do you tell a fake one? By the silicone permalinks?)
B) It's hopelessly arbitrary. (Oh, that's right: a real blog is whatever you, in your own hermetic wisdom, decide. Fact and reason and precedent be damned.)
C) It's all about the random whim of the commenter, not the concrete point of the poster. (The point, after all, was that a local satirical news web site is slowly being assimilated by mainstream media, not whether CSB passes autocratic authenticity tests laid down by people to whom the very definition of blogging, much like the concepts of nuanced thought and elegant writing, must seem as inscrutable as a passing car to a grazing cow.)
D) It's not even grammatically correct. (That should be If the CSB were a real blog, Mark; see the subjunctive mood.)
These reasons -- non-sensical additions, arbitrary judgments, random tangents, and grammatical slop -- are more than enough for me, a thinker and writer who has his many failures, to be sure, but who tries as best he can to bring clarity and quality and some sense of literate (and maybe even literary) consistency to his site, to reject comments. But a far simpler one is this: TWM is my site. My space. My place. It reflects my standards, speaks in my voice, and articulates my opinions. And I have absolutely no interest in seeing any of that hijacked or compromised or otherwise contaminated by a rabble of random viewpoints -- even ones I happen to like and respect.
I've always tried to make this site, the occasional indulgence and more-than-occasional vulgarity aside, the blogging equivalent of a regular newspaper column: something singular yet expansive, a place where people can come (or not) to get my view and read my writing on any number of subjects that interest me and that, I hope, interest them. When there are other viewpoints I like or respect -- or with which I vehemently disagree -- I give them an airing here. If people email me with praise or criticism or suggestions or submissions -- and I encourage you to do so; there's a Feedback link at the end of every post -- I evaluate each one and, letters-to-the-editor like, consider them for posting here.
That's just the way I like to do things. Right here on this real, live blog.
Which brings us back to Mr. Rauterkus, who later expanded his position, such as it is, on his own blog...
I only wish that the CSB was able to take comments with its blog postings.
Perhaps they can run an 'open thread' once a week within the blog.
If comments were permitted, that would could prove to increase the humor ten-fold.
Here, at least, he backs off the real blog bit -- more on that in a moment -- even as he fails to explain how a bunch of people commenting on satire could increase the humor ten-fold. (Would it ever be nine-fold? How about twelve-fold? Is that figure independent of the number of commenters? If 100 people comment, would each of them increase the humor only one-tenth-fold?) And even as he once again ignores the simple fact that different sites intend different things. A political clearinghouse is not the same as a political advocacy site, which are not the same as a flash fiction blog or a collection of paintings. And a satirical news site -- one that, much like TWM, carefully cultivates its voice and its point of view, and that is intended to be read and considered and not necessarily prattled upon -- does not need to resort to comments or open threads or other faux-democratic, up-with-the-reading-masses tricks to achieve some sort of blogging or posting legitimacy.
You could, in fact, argue just the opposite: that, if TWM is like a series of good columns or editorials, then Carbolic Smoke Ball is like a series of good editorial cartoons, designed for quick hits, big laughs, and the occasional deeper or more disquieting thought. Which, if able or eager to be shared, can always be sent to the editor (er, Judge), or else commented upon in some other viable online forum. (As you can see from the hundreds of Pittsburgh blogs listed at Mike Woycheck's site, there's surely no shortage of those alternate forums.)
Which brings us back, once more, to Mr. Rauterkus, who -- fittingly, and predictably, enough -- attempts to defend his indefensible position in a comment thread appended to his original post:
I think that the blog should be open to comments now -- because of the expansion into print (Trib) and radio (DVE). You can't talk back easily with either the daily newspaper nor the radio segments. So, it is time to evolve into a real blog.
Allow comments!
Because I say so!
Now.
About that first part: I'm not sure why our expansion into print and radio (which, by the way, happened almost a year and a half ago) suddenly necessitates comments. Nor am I sure how those expansions inform the definition of a real blog -- which used to be the problem, and will be again, but apparently is not in those first two sentences. (Would a coherent and consistent argument be too much to ask? Apparently.)
Anyway -- the last time I checked, it was pretty damned easy to talk back to a newspaper. That mechanism -- it's been around for quite a while now -- is known as the letter to the editor. It is these days supplemented by the email to the editor, as well as the phone call to the editor and the email to the contributing author(s). All of those should be -- or so I thought -- pretty easy to access for a guy who write roughly four hundred blog and comment posts a day. I mean, with that much online experience, you'd think he could find his way to the big boys and girls at the mainstream media. (I would ramble on about how you can call or email the DVE studios and DJs and producers and parent companies too, but I figure that most of you have gotten the point by now. So I'll simply move on to...)
...the odd little notion that Carbolic, or that any blog, must necessarily be talked back to. With instant gratification. In a public forum. From people to whom the grating noise of their own prattle is doubtless the most mellifluous sound they can imagine.
Or to the damn fool notion that a blog must, to be real, have comments. Just because many blogs do, and just because some pretentious or preposterous people think they should, doesn’t make it an a priori existential argument. It is, in fact, the very definition of a narrow-minded, a posteriori fallacy. It’s like someone from the American League declaring that it’s not real baseball if you don’t have a designated hitter.
Anyone who knows and respects the rules of baseball knows that's a heaping pile of late-to-the-game revisionist horse manure. Just as anyone who knows and understands that blog is short for web log -- it is not, after all, a blogent or a blogcom or a blogwithpointlessreaderadditions -- knows that a blog can have all sorts of features and effluvia but, by definition, needs merely to consist of content posted at regular intervals on the web. A blog requires comments to be real no more than a car requires cup holders; to suggest, much less clumsily to argue, otherwise is to confuse taste with fact and folly with reality. (Common enough afflictions these days, I know, but ones I do not suffer lightly.)
This is the way definition -- and by extension, society -- works: we agree on fact and definition, and we proceed from them. Otherwise, we descend into chaos not unlike the frothing frenzy of an anonymity-fueled comment thread, with so many people just pointlessly pissing in each other's wind.
Though, now that I mention it, that does sound kind of fun. Perhaps I should try it. Perhaps I should, right now, declare that a blog that does not include a blgoroll to link to other blogs, that includes silly polls in the left sidebar, that uses orange as its banner color, and/or that spells delegate with an i, is not, in fact, a real blog. I think that might be fun. Even, I suspect, Mark Rauterkus may think otherwise.
And that, of course, would be just fine. Because that is also the point.
In the end, as it was in the beginning, the most fundamental principle of blogging would seem to be this: your real and happy little blog, once you get it online, can be whatever the hell you want it to be. It can be a repository of photos or essays or poems, a collection of random links or political ramblings, a joyously blank slate upon which you regularly carve your own mark, set your own standard, allow (or disallow), encourage (or discourage), propel (or dispel) whatever and whenever you see fit. This is a principle that Mr. Rauterkus, a libertarian, should understand better than most people. And one I suspect that all of you, blog readers and writers alike, know at least as well as I.
If not, just let me know.
I'd first considered a post like this a little more than a month ago, after an impromptu debate on the subject broke out at a Pittsburgh-Post-Gazette-hosted bloggers lunch to which Mackenzie Carpenter and John Allison made the obvious (but understandable, and much appreciated) mistake of inviting me. Mike Woycheck, unofficial guru of Online Pittsburgh, co-founder of Pittsburgh Bloggers, and mastermind of the fabulous WearPittsburgh -- in other words, the go-to-guy for wisdom, insight, and experience on all things bloggy -- nearly made my head explode when he suggested that blogs had to have comments. I interrupted -- rude, I know, but I was afraid I might go all Scanners on the table if I didn't -- and asked him to clarify.
I told himthat I understood the many advantages of comments, that I've been known to comment on many a site -- consider the threads over at The Burgh Report before the mayoral election; I practically took up residence there -- but that plenty of good and valuable blogs (including that silly little TWM site) do not have comments and surely do not require them to be true and whole and worthy of full-fledged blogdom. He agreed, of course, and, after listening to a few other opinions from around the table that were passionately argued but hopelessly missed the point, we both agreed that comments were a key, but not essential, feature of a blog.
I assumed that was the position all reasonable -- and reasonably self-aware -- members of the blogosphere would hold, so I decided a post on the subject would be a waste of time and space, a redundancy on the order of arguing that Willie Parker's broken leg greatly diminishes the chance of the Steelers winning the Super Bowl. And yet, as that guy who called up the Mark Madden show two weeks ago to announce that Willie Parker's injury may be just what the Steelers need to rediscover their power running game so perfectly proved, there's one in every media crowd. And so there was again last week, in a comment attached to the online version of the City Paper's Carbolic Smoke Ball feature:
If the CSB was a real blog, it would allow for reader comments.
This comment, from serial blogger, frequent blog commenter, and perpetual political candidate Mark Rauterkus, constitutes Exhibits A, B, C, and D for my own personal case against blog comments:
A) It's non-sensical. (What, exactly, is a real blog, Mark? And, for that matter, how do you tell a fake one? By the silicone permalinks?)
B) It's hopelessly arbitrary. (Oh, that's right: a real blog is whatever you, in your own hermetic wisdom, decide. Fact and reason and precedent be damned.)
C) It's all about the random whim of the commenter, not the concrete point of the poster. (The point, after all, was that a local satirical news web site is slowly being assimilated by mainstream media, not whether CSB passes autocratic authenticity tests laid down by people to whom the very definition of blogging, much like the concepts of nuanced thought and elegant writing, must seem as inscrutable as a passing car to a grazing cow.)
D) It's not even grammatically correct. (That should be If the CSB were a real blog, Mark; see the subjunctive mood.)
These reasons -- non-sensical additions, arbitrary judgments, random tangents, and grammatical slop -- are more than enough for me, a thinker and writer who has his many failures, to be sure, but who tries as best he can to bring clarity and quality and some sense of literate (and maybe even literary) consistency to his site, to reject comments. But a far simpler one is this: TWM is my site. My space. My place. It reflects my standards, speaks in my voice, and articulates my opinions. And I have absolutely no interest in seeing any of that hijacked or compromised or otherwise contaminated by a rabble of random viewpoints -- even ones I happen to like and respect.
I've always tried to make this site, the occasional indulgence and more-than-occasional vulgarity aside, the blogging equivalent of a regular newspaper column: something singular yet expansive, a place where people can come (or not) to get my view and read my writing on any number of subjects that interest me and that, I hope, interest them. When there are other viewpoints I like or respect -- or with which I vehemently disagree -- I give them an airing here. If people email me with praise or criticism or suggestions or submissions -- and I encourage you to do so; there's a Feedback link at the end of every post -- I evaluate each one and, letters-to-the-editor like, consider them for posting here.
That's just the way I like to do things. Right here on this real, live blog.
Which brings us back to Mr. Rauterkus, who later expanded his position, such as it is, on his own blog...
I only wish that the CSB was able to take comments with its blog postings.
Perhaps they can run an 'open thread' once a week within the blog.
If comments were permitted, that would could prove to increase the humor ten-fold.
Here, at least, he backs off the real blog bit -- more on that in a moment -- even as he fails to explain how a bunch of people commenting on satire could increase the humor ten-fold. (Would it ever be nine-fold? How about twelve-fold? Is that figure independent of the number of commenters? If 100 people comment, would each of them increase the humor only one-tenth-fold?) And even as he once again ignores the simple fact that different sites intend different things. A political clearinghouse is not the same as a political advocacy site, which are not the same as a flash fiction blog or a collection of paintings. And a satirical news site -- one that, much like TWM, carefully cultivates its voice and its point of view, and that is intended to be read and considered and not necessarily prattled upon -- does not need to resort to comments or open threads or other faux-democratic, up-with-the-reading-masses tricks to achieve some sort of blogging or posting legitimacy.
You could, in fact, argue just the opposite: that, if TWM is like a series of good columns or editorials, then Carbolic Smoke Ball is like a series of good editorial cartoons, designed for quick hits, big laughs, and the occasional deeper or more disquieting thought. Which, if able or eager to be shared, can always be sent to the editor (er, Judge), or else commented upon in some other viable online forum. (As you can see from the hundreds of Pittsburgh blogs listed at Mike Woycheck's site, there's surely no shortage of those alternate forums.)
Which brings us back, once more, to Mr. Rauterkus, who -- fittingly, and predictably, enough -- attempts to defend his indefensible position in a comment thread appended to his original post:
I think that the blog should be open to comments now -- because of the expansion into print (Trib) and radio (DVE). You can't talk back easily with either the daily newspaper nor the radio segments. So, it is time to evolve into a real blog.
Allow comments!
Because I say so!
Now.
About that first part: I'm not sure why our expansion into print and radio (which, by the way, happened almost a year and a half ago) suddenly necessitates comments. Nor am I sure how those expansions inform the definition of a real blog -- which used to be the problem, and will be again, but apparently is not in those first two sentences. (Would a coherent and consistent argument be too much to ask? Apparently.)
Anyway -- the last time I checked, it was pretty damned easy to talk back to a newspaper. That mechanism -- it's been around for quite a while now -- is known as the letter to the editor. It is these days supplemented by the email to the editor, as well as the phone call to the editor and the email to the contributing author(s). All of those should be -- or so I thought -- pretty easy to access for a guy who write roughly four hundred blog and comment posts a day. I mean, with that much online experience, you'd think he could find his way to the big boys and girls at the mainstream media. (I would ramble on about how you can call or email the DVE studios and DJs and producers and parent companies too, but I figure that most of you have gotten the point by now. So I'll simply move on to...)
...the odd little notion that Carbolic, or that any blog, must necessarily be talked back to. With instant gratification. In a public forum. From people to whom the grating noise of their own prattle is doubtless the most mellifluous sound they can imagine.
Or to the damn fool notion that a blog must, to be real, have comments. Just because many blogs do, and just because some pretentious or preposterous people think they should, doesn’t make it an a priori existential argument. It is, in fact, the very definition of a narrow-minded, a posteriori fallacy. It’s like someone from the American League declaring that it’s not real baseball if you don’t have a designated hitter.
Anyone who knows and respects the rules of baseball knows that's a heaping pile of late-to-the-game revisionist horse manure. Just as anyone who knows and understands that blog is short for web log -- it is not, after all, a blogent or a blogcom or a blogwithpointlessreaderadditions -- knows that a blog can have all sorts of features and effluvia but, by definition, needs merely to consist of content posted at regular intervals on the web. A blog requires comments to be real no more than a car requires cup holders; to suggest, much less clumsily to argue, otherwise is to confuse taste with fact and folly with reality. (Common enough afflictions these days, I know, but ones I do not suffer lightly.)
This is the way definition -- and by extension, society -- works: we agree on fact and definition, and we proceed from them. Otherwise, we descend into chaos not unlike the frothing frenzy of an anonymity-fueled comment thread, with so many people just pointlessly pissing in each other's wind.
Though, now that I mention it, that does sound kind of fun. Perhaps I should try it. Perhaps I should, right now, declare that a blog that does not include a blgoroll to link to other blogs, that includes silly polls in the left sidebar, that uses orange as its banner color, and/or that spells delegate with an i, is not, in fact, a real blog. I think that might be fun. Even, I suspect, Mark Rauterkus may think otherwise.
And that, of course, would be just fine. Because that is also the point.
In the end, as it was in the beginning, the most fundamental principle of blogging would seem to be this: your real and happy little blog, once you get it online, can be whatever the hell you want it to be. It can be a repository of photos or essays or poems, a collection of random links or political ramblings, a joyously blank slate upon which you regularly carve your own mark, set your own standard, allow (or disallow), encourage (or discourage), propel (or dispel) whatever and whenever you see fit. This is a principle that Mr. Rauterkus, a libertarian, should understand better than most people. And one I suspect that all of you, blog readers and writers alike, know at least as well as I.
If not, just let me know.
Posted at 04:18 PM
Wed - October 31, 2007
Sat - October 20, 2007
THE BOY AND THE GRAPES
to luke, from aesop, with
love.
A Boy one day spied a beautiful bunch of FOP grapes
hanging from a tree at a press conference along Banksville Road. The grapes
seemed ready to burst with juicy endorsement, and the Boy's mouth watered as he
gazed longingly at them.
The bunch hung from a branch with high standards and even higher expectations, so the Boy had to jump for it. The first time he jumped he missed it by a long way. The second time he jumped, he tried to knock them down with his golf clubs, but he still could not reach them. So he rode off a short distance in his Homeland Security SUV, had a couple of beers, and returned to try again, only to fall short once more. Again and again he tried, but always in vain.
Now he sat down and looked at the grapes in disgust.
"What a fool I am," he said. "Here I am wearing myself out to get a bunch of sour grapes that are not worth selling the taxpayers down the river for."
And off he walked very, very scornfully.
The Moral of the Story: There are mayors who pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach.
The bunch hung from a branch with high standards and even higher expectations, so the Boy had to jump for it. The first time he jumped he missed it by a long way. The second time he jumped, he tried to knock them down with his golf clubs, but he still could not reach them. So he rode off a short distance in his Homeland Security SUV, had a couple of beers, and returned to try again, only to fall short once more. Again and again he tried, but always in vain.
Now he sat down and looked at the grapes in disgust.
"What a fool I am," he said. "Here I am wearing myself out to get a bunch of sour grapes that are not worth selling the taxpayers down the river for."
And off he walked very, very scornfully.
The Moral of the Story: There are mayors who pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach.
Posted at 10:53 AM
Wed - September 12, 2007
ONCE MORE UNTO THE BOOKS, DEAR FRIENDS
once more.
Yes, Nandini, I'm reading.
I'm always reading. So much, in fact, that I find it almost impossible -- and especially maddening -- to answer a question that asks me to name one book that says or does or means anything to me. So much, in fact, that I have already been tagged with the One Book meme and an original addendum to it. (You'll find those first sets of answers here and here.) So much, in fact, that I am happy to respond again to that meme, and this time -- with, as you will see, one notable exception -- to provide all new answers for each category.
This time around, the process was no less maddening. But just as much fun...
ONE BOOK THAT CHANGED YOUR LIFE
Selected Poems, John Ciardi.
ONE BOOK YOU'VE READ MORE THAN ONCE
The Atrocity Exhibition, J. G. Ballard. (How can you not?)
ONE BOOK YOU'D WANT ON A DESERT ISLAND
John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose.
ONE BOOK THAT MADE YOU CRY
Reservation Road, John Burnham Schwartz.
ONE BOOK THAT MADE YOU LAUGH
Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy!, Bob Harris.
ONE BOOK THAT WAS BEST READ AS A CHILD
Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury.
ONE BOOK YOU WISH YOU'D WRITTEN
(Besides the two I've long been planning and the one I'm currently working on...)
The Road, Cormac McCarthy.
ONE BOOK YOU WISH HAD NEVER BEEN WRITTEN
The Red Pony, John Steinbeck. (Without it, 8th grade English might have been the best class ever.)
ONE BOOK THAT ROLLS ITS EYES AT YOU FROM YOUR BOOKSHELF
Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida.
ONE BOOK THAT MADE YOU THINK
Tiny Alice: A Play, Edward Albee.
ONE BOOK THAT MADE YOU WANT TO BE A WRITER
Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift.
ONE BOOK YOU'RE ALWAYS BUYING SOMEONE AS A GIFT
Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson.
ONE BOOK THAT MADE YOU WANT TO LEAD THE REVOLUTION
American Tabloid, James Ellroy.
ONE BOOK THAT WAS DEFINITELY BETTER AS A MOVIE
Jaws, Peter Benchley.
ONE BOOK YOU'VE BEEN MEANING TO READ
The Abortionist's Daughter, Elisabeth Hyde.
ONE BOOK YOU'RE CURRENTLY READING
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, Umberto Eco.
ONE BOOK ONLY YOUR MOTHER KNOWS WHY
That short story anthology she gave me when I was just beginning to discover the power of great literature, the one with Kafka's "Metamorphosis" and Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" and Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery."
This last one will never, ever change -- if only because it could just as easily have been filed under "One Book That Made You Want to Be a Writer." Or "One Book That Made You Think." Or "One Book That Changed Your Life." Oh my, yes...
I'm always reading. So much, in fact, that I find it almost impossible -- and especially maddening -- to answer a question that asks me to name one book that says or does or means anything to me. So much, in fact, that I have already been tagged with the One Book meme and an original addendum to it. (You'll find those first sets of answers here and here.) So much, in fact, that I am happy to respond again to that meme, and this time -- with, as you will see, one notable exception -- to provide all new answers for each category.
This time around, the process was no less maddening. But just as much fun...
ONE BOOK THAT CHANGED YOUR LIFE
Selected Poems, John Ciardi.
ONE BOOK YOU'VE READ MORE THAN ONCE
The Atrocity Exhibition, J. G. Ballard. (How can you not?)
ONE BOOK YOU'D WANT ON A DESERT ISLAND
John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose.
ONE BOOK THAT MADE YOU CRY
Reservation Road, John Burnham Schwartz.
ONE BOOK THAT MADE YOU LAUGH
Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy!, Bob Harris.
ONE BOOK THAT WAS BEST READ AS A CHILD
Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury.
ONE BOOK YOU WISH YOU'D WRITTEN
(Besides the two I've long been planning and the one I'm currently working on...)
The Road, Cormac McCarthy.
ONE BOOK YOU WISH HAD NEVER BEEN WRITTEN
The Red Pony, John Steinbeck. (Without it, 8th grade English might have been the best class ever.)
ONE BOOK THAT ROLLS ITS EYES AT YOU FROM YOUR BOOKSHELF
Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida.
ONE BOOK THAT MADE YOU THINK
Tiny Alice: A Play, Edward Albee.
ONE BOOK THAT MADE YOU WANT TO BE A WRITER
Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift.
ONE BOOK YOU'RE ALWAYS BUYING SOMEONE AS A GIFT
Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson.
ONE BOOK THAT MADE YOU WANT TO LEAD THE REVOLUTION
American Tabloid, James Ellroy.
ONE BOOK THAT WAS DEFINITELY BETTER AS A MOVIE
Jaws, Peter Benchley.
ONE BOOK YOU'VE BEEN MEANING TO READ
The Abortionist's Daughter, Elisabeth Hyde.
ONE BOOK YOU'RE CURRENTLY READING
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, Umberto Eco.
ONE BOOK ONLY YOUR MOTHER KNOWS WHY
That short story anthology she gave me when I was just beginning to discover the power of great literature, the one with Kafka's "Metamorphosis" and Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" and Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery."
This last one will never, ever change -- if only because it could just as easily have been filed under "One Book That Made You Want to Be a Writer." Or "One Book That Made You Think." Or "One Book That Changed Your Life." Oh my, yes...
Posted at 09:43 AM
Sat - August 25, 2007
IT MUST BE FOR PHONE SEX
or, the soft subsidies of low
inhibitions.
TWM has long championed TMQ, Gregg Easterbrook's
fabulous Tuesday Morning
Quarterback column that, no matter where it
finds a home each season -- this year, it's back at ESPN's Page
2 -- is the smartest and most entertaining column you'll ever read
about the NFL and a whole lot of other stuff. This week's edition, biding some time between
the AFC and NFC Preview editions, featured even more digressions and
deconstructions than usual, explaining why the NBA's tv ratings (and its level
of play) are floundering, cataloging how the
Spider-Man
and
Superman
movies unwisely diverge from their comic book
source material, and unleashing a spirited attack on the outrageous federal
subsidies our ex-presidents -- Bush said
he needed $69,000 for "equipment" and $13,000 for postage. Is [he] planning to
mail 32,000 thank-you notes next year? --
annually request and inevitably
receive.
The true (ahem) money paragraph of that diatribe is the last one, in which Easterbrook takes former President and aspiring future First Husband Bill Clinton to task for his telephone subsidies. It is so good, and also so infuriating, that it demands to be quoted here in full. And so I will oblige:
To top it off, Clinton requested $79,000 for telephone service. It is impossible, physically impossible, to spend $79,000 on telephones! If Clinton had a 10-cents-a-minute long-distance plan, he could talk long-distance 24 hours a day, 365 days per year -- and you can imagine Clinton doing this -- yet fail to burn through $79,000. The most expensive package offered by Verizon Wireless is an international super-phone with unlimited texting and four hours of talk time daily; this sells for about $3,000 per year. Clinton could purchase two dozen of the most expensive cell accounts available in the United States for the tax-subsidized telephone budget he requested. Is Clinton's $79,000 phone request fraud, or is Clinton planning to use the money to buy phones for staffers working on his private speaking business? An ex-president who had financial problems might legitimately turn to the taxpayer. For all three living ex-presidents to be quite wealthy yet demanding public subsidies is shameful -- to say nothing of a failure of leadership.
Though nothing could make me want to hasten our current president's exit from the White House any more than I already do, I must admit to a morbid curiosity about what sorts of subsidies King W. will require. Mountain bikes and brush-clearings come immediately to mind. Perhaps he will, like his father, ask for an excess of postage. (They will, after all, have to mail lots of invitations for Jenna's wedding.) I wouldn't be happy about paying for any of that, but I might be willing to chip in a few of my hard-earned tax dollars for some public speaking lessons. And a few courses in logic. And maybe some psychotherapy.
Now those would be some surges -- and some subsidies -- I could support.
The true (ahem) money paragraph of that diatribe is the last one, in which Easterbrook takes former President and aspiring future First Husband Bill Clinton to task for his telephone subsidies. It is so good, and also so infuriating, that it demands to be quoted here in full. And so I will oblige:
To top it off, Clinton requested $79,000 for telephone service. It is impossible, physically impossible, to spend $79,000 on telephones! If Clinton had a 10-cents-a-minute long-distance plan, he could talk long-distance 24 hours a day, 365 days per year -- and you can imagine Clinton doing this -- yet fail to burn through $79,000. The most expensive package offered by Verizon Wireless is an international super-phone with unlimited texting and four hours of talk time daily; this sells for about $3,000 per year. Clinton could purchase two dozen of the most expensive cell accounts available in the United States for the tax-subsidized telephone budget he requested. Is Clinton's $79,000 phone request fraud, or is Clinton planning to use the money to buy phones for staffers working on his private speaking business? An ex-president who had financial problems might legitimately turn to the taxpayer. For all three living ex-presidents to be quite wealthy yet demanding public subsidies is shameful -- to say nothing of a failure of leadership.
Though nothing could make me want to hasten our current president's exit from the White House any more than I already do, I must admit to a morbid curiosity about what sorts of subsidies King W. will require. Mountain bikes and brush-clearings come immediately to mind. Perhaps he will, like his father, ask for an excess of postage. (They will, after all, have to mail lots of invitations for Jenna's wedding.) I wouldn't be happy about paying for any of that, but I might be willing to chip in a few of my hard-earned tax dollars for some public speaking lessons. And a few courses in logic. And maybe some psychotherapy.
Now those would be some surges -- and some subsidies -- I could support.
Posted at 01:24 PM
Wed - August 15, 2007
SWEET AS THE SUGAR STONE
and a lot easier to
find.
As I noted yesterday, I don't make a habit of
shilling products -- especially when no one I know stands to profit from the
effort. I do, however, make a habit of shilling my friends, my colleagues, and
their considerable creative achievements -- especially if they stand to profit
from the effort. And so today, as an antidote to bad mascots, bad weather, and
all the other bad things that may be haunting you in these devil-dog days of
August, I am proud to point you in the direction of
Undertown...
...a labor of love and wonder and dizzying imagination from my good friend Jim Pascoe and his outstanding illustrator Jake Myler.
(You can read more about it here. And here. You can buy it here. And here.)
If you have children, if you know any children, or if you've ever played with any children, then I highly recommend this book. You'll be transfixed by the heart and humor, the action and adventure, the pulsing narrative and piercing intelligence you'll find at work (and at play) on every page. And when you -- or your children, or the children you know, or the children you once played with -- finish Undertown, if you (or they) are anything like me -- which is to say, if you really believe -- you'll want to read it again. And again. And, just like little Sama's dad, you'll be dying to know what happens next.
...a labor of love and wonder and dizzying imagination from my good friend Jim Pascoe and his outstanding illustrator Jake Myler.
(You can read more about it here. And here. You can buy it here. And here.)
If you have children, if you know any children, or if you've ever played with any children, then I highly recommend this book. You'll be transfixed by the heart and humor, the action and adventure, the pulsing narrative and piercing intelligence you'll find at work (and at play) on every page. And when you -- or your children, or the children you know, or the children you once played with -- finish Undertown, if you (or they) are anything like me -- which is to say, if you really believe -- you'll want to read it again. And again. And, just like little Sama's dad, you'll be dying to know what happens next.
Posted at 09:15 AM
Tue - July 31, 2007
AND NOW, A PROGRAMMING NOTE
for something (not quite) completely
different.
TWM will be taking today and tomorrow off, then
returning for business and blogging as usual on Thursday. In the meantime,
you'll want to keep reading the fantabulously funny Carbolic
Smoke Ball, where my mad scribblings -- including today's stories on
the Hillary Clinton letters and yet another Luke Ravenstahl controversy -- will
continue to appear during this short recess.
(And don't worry -- once you get past my piddling stuff, you'll get to the truly hilarious bits. Like this. And this.)
So crank up that air conditioning, pour yourself a couple of cool drinks, and check back in two days time. I will, as always, look forward to seeing you then...
(And don't worry -- once you get past my piddling stuff, you'll get to the truly hilarious bits. Like this. And this.)
So crank up that air conditioning, pour yourself a couple of cool drinks, and check back in two days time. I will, as always, look forward to seeing you then...
Posted at 07:37 AM
Sat - July 21, 2007
NOW THIS IS HOW IT'S DONE
cnn avoids my wrath. for
now.
You want to write a piece on
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
that describes the actions and themes and
narratives of the book in a way that is rich and rewarding but gives away
absolutely nothing? CNN's Ravi Agrawal shows you how. And then
some.
Absolutely brilliant, Ravi. (Well, except for that bit about The Matrix; you're showing your age, I'm afraid. But otherwise...) Bravo!
Now. Everyone else out there, listen up: do it like that, or don't do it at all.
Absolutely brilliant, Ravi. (Well, except for that bit about The Matrix; you're showing your age, I'm afraid. But otherwise...) Bravo!
Now. Everyone else out there, listen up: do it like that, or don't do it at all.
Posted at 08:20 AM
Fri - June 22, 2007
MY BRAIN TAKES A VACATION
just to give my heart more
room.
In the almost 51 weeks since my last summer siesta,
TWM has gone just thirteen days without at least one new post. That's 355 days,
522 entries, and a whole lot of hearty, happy blogging between the big, blessed
breaks. All of which means that, in the interests of mental and physical and
syntactical health, it's time to take another one.
And so tomorrow, TWM toddles off for rest and relaxation, for brain-clearing rejuvenation, for the sort of battery-charging reinvigoration that only sunshine and blue sky and beautiful waters can provide. Tanned, rested, and ready, I'll reopen for business and blogging as usual on Tuesday, July 3rd.
In the meantime, I urge you to dip your toes and fingers into a few of my old (but not yet stagnant) waters, to read some thoughts you may have missed or sample a few posts you might like to find again. To get you started, I thought I might suggest a few of my personal favorites -- three per day, to honor this third-annual summer hiatus -- a selection of hand-picked greatest hits from TWM's past 51 weeks...
Saturday: WHILE I WAS AWAY, LONG TIME GONE, & CAN YOU TELL ME WHERE WE'VE GONE?, three posts linked obviously by title and subtly by content.
Sunday: HARRY POTTER & THE ALL DAY PASS, THANK DOG, & YOU CAN SEE IT SUCKING, three silly little shorts just for fun.
Monday: GERRY AUSTIN MUST DIE, TERRY AUSTIN MUST TRY, & GERRY AUSTIN IS A BIG FAT POOPY HEAD, last fall's epic trilogy of googling gridiron absurdity.
Tuesday: ONE OF THESE DAYS, THE QUIET COUNTENANCE OF A TUESDAY MORNING, & THE DELICATE PUNCTUATION OF PARENTHOOD, three plaintive thoughts on being a parent.
Wednesday: A BREATH OF STALE AIR, THE PERILS OF PARALLEL STRUCTURE, & LET US ALL REMAIN ALERT, three reality-checks for the Obamedia frenzy.
Thursday: THE BRAVERY OF BEING OUT OF RANGE, THE DEAD WE DARE NOT SPEAK, & THE LIGHTS ON LIBERTY, three reflections on the awful cost of this terrible war.
Friday: BLUE PLATE, BLUE MOVIES, HARRY POTTER HAS A PENIS, & MEN AND WOMEN DON'T HAVE TO HAVE SEX, three rational responses for oddly prurient interests.
Saturday: LOOK, UP IN THE SKY..., SCROOGED, & COME ON UP FOR THE SHILLING, a trio of classic, TWM-style smackdowns.
Sunday: TWO WEEKS' NOTICE, BUREAUCRACY'S GOT A GUN, & BLACK & WHITE & RED ALL OVER, a loose trilogy of looks at political, bureaucratic, and cultural hypocrisy.
Monday: INSINCERITY ALWAYS IN SEASON, THE BIRTH OF PENGUIN NATION, & GRADUATION SATURATION, three pieces that began here, moved to the Post Gazette, and ended up among my all-time favorites.
So there you have 'em: thirty thoughts, reactions, and observations that did make it into a full-length post, back again to tide you over until the vacation tides go out and wash me back online. Until then, as always, I thank you -- from the top of my keyboard to the bottom of my heart -- for reading and indulging and somehow actually enjoying all these efforts and excesses.
And so tomorrow, TWM toddles off for rest and relaxation, for brain-clearing rejuvenation, for the sort of battery-charging reinvigoration that only sunshine and blue sky and beautiful waters can provide. Tanned, rested, and ready, I'll reopen for business and blogging as usual on Tuesday, July 3rd.
In the meantime, I urge you to dip your toes and fingers into a few of my old (but not yet stagnant) waters, to read some thoughts you may have missed or sample a few posts you might like to find again. To get you started, I thought I might suggest a few of my personal favorites -- three per day, to honor this third-annual summer hiatus -- a selection of hand-picked greatest hits from TWM's past 51 weeks...
Saturday: WHILE I WAS AWAY, LONG TIME GONE, & CAN YOU TELL ME WHERE WE'VE GONE?, three posts linked obviously by title and subtly by content.
Sunday: HARRY POTTER & THE ALL DAY PASS, THANK DOG, & YOU CAN SEE IT SUCKING, three silly little shorts just for fun.
Monday: GERRY AUSTIN MUST DIE, TERRY AUSTIN MUST TRY, & GERRY AUSTIN IS A BIG FAT POOPY HEAD, last fall's epic trilogy of googling gridiron absurdity.
Tuesday: ONE OF THESE DAYS, THE QUIET COUNTENANCE OF A TUESDAY MORNING, & THE DELICATE PUNCTUATION OF PARENTHOOD, three plaintive thoughts on being a parent.
Wednesday: A BREATH OF STALE AIR, THE PERILS OF PARALLEL STRUCTURE, & LET US ALL REMAIN ALERT, three reality-checks for the Obamedia frenzy.
Thursday: THE BRAVERY OF BEING OUT OF RANGE, THE DEAD WE DARE NOT SPEAK, & THE LIGHTS ON LIBERTY, three reflections on the awful cost of this terrible war.
Friday: BLUE PLATE, BLUE MOVIES, HARRY POTTER HAS A PENIS, & MEN AND WOMEN DON'T HAVE TO HAVE SEX, three rational responses for oddly prurient interests.
Saturday: LOOK, UP IN THE SKY..., SCROOGED, & COME ON UP FOR THE SHILLING, a trio of classic, TWM-style smackdowns.
Sunday: TWO WEEKS' NOTICE, BUREAUCRACY'S GOT A GUN, & BLACK & WHITE & RED ALL OVER, a loose trilogy of looks at political, bureaucratic, and cultural hypocrisy.
Monday: INSINCERITY ALWAYS IN SEASON, THE BIRTH OF PENGUIN NATION, & GRADUATION SATURATION, three pieces that began here, moved to the Post Gazette, and ended up among my all-time favorites.
So there you have 'em: thirty thoughts, reactions, and observations that did make it into a full-length post, back again to tide you over until the vacation tides go out and wash me back online. Until then, as always, I thank you -- from the top of my keyboard to the bottom of my heart -- for reading and indulging and somehow actually enjoying all these efforts and excesses.
Posted at 06:43 AM
Mon - June 18, 2007
YOU DO SAY
measuring the carbolic sphere of
influence.
As someone who's been named a top-twenty-two professor at a top-three (or
top-ten, or top-fifteen, or top-twenty, depending upon whose deeply flawed
methodology you believe) business school at a top-fifteen (or top-twenty,
or top-twenty-five) university, I know all too well the fleeting,
often abritrary, always erratic glories that come from so-called independent
rankings and objective assessments. And I understand all too well that some
universities and schools and professors, protesting indifference or even
defiance to such things, would quietly sell their students, their endowments,
and/or what is left of their souls to achieve, if only one time, the heaps of
praise and attention and inevitable goodwill that follow such special
recognition.
And so it is with great pride and pleasure -- and at least a little perspective -- that I congratulate my new friends and colleagues over at The Carbolic Smoke Ball for today being named the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Sixth Most Influential Political Blog. I'm not sure what that means, exactly -- of course, neither do they -- but it sounds cool. And it's surely worth a post, a toast, and maybe a couple of heartfelt huzzahs before the night is through.
For the record, I have no compunction about so boldly praising and blatantly cheerleading for a site to which I now regularly contribute. I was a CSB reader and admirer long before I became a CSB writer, and the assessments for this ranking -- unless, of course, they were cobbled together over the weekend by a couple of people in the back room of a bar in Conshohocken -- surely pre-date any of my meager contributions. And, perhaps more importantly, we now -- if that drop-down menu above the rankings is any indication -- have an arbitrary, propietary method of measuring my influence on The Carbolic Smoke Ball's sphere of influence.
If, in the next set of rankings, CSB should fall from its rightfully lofty perch, we'll all know whom to blame. And then -- especially if Judge Peckham goes all Michael-Corleone-Mayor-Ravenstahl on me -- I will be forced immediately to tender my resignation. I'll be disappointed, of course, but I'll also be willing to do my part for the power of influence and the sanctity of the rankings. I'd still have TWM, after all. And if it was good enough for Sidney Crosby, then it would certainly be good enough for me.
Especially if I were picked up by the Steelers.
And so it is with great pride and pleasure -- and at least a little perspective -- that I congratulate my new friends and colleagues over at The Carbolic Smoke Ball for today being named the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Sixth Most Influential Political Blog. I'm not sure what that means, exactly -- of course, neither do they -- but it sounds cool. And it's surely worth a post, a toast, and maybe a couple of heartfelt huzzahs before the night is through.
For the record, I have no compunction about so boldly praising and blatantly cheerleading for a site to which I now regularly contribute. I was a CSB reader and admirer long before I became a CSB writer, and the assessments for this ranking -- unless, of course, they were cobbled together over the weekend by a couple of people in the back room of a bar in Conshohocken -- surely pre-date any of my meager contributions. And, perhaps more importantly, we now -- if that drop-down menu above the rankings is any indication -- have an arbitrary, propietary method of measuring my influence on The Carbolic Smoke Ball's sphere of influence.
If, in the next set of rankings, CSB should fall from its rightfully lofty perch, we'll all know whom to blame. And then -- especially if Judge Peckham goes all Michael-Corleone-Mayor-Ravenstahl on me -- I will be forced immediately to tender my resignation. I'll be disappointed, of course, but I'll also be willing to do my part for the power of influence and the sanctity of the rankings. I'd still have TWM, after all. And if it was good enough for Sidney Crosby, then it would certainly be good enough for me.
Especially if I were picked up by the Steelers.
Posted at 06:42 PM
Sat - June 16, 2007
ALWAYS IN THEIR OWN SWEET TIME
twm goes to the pg.
again.
Regular TWM readers will remember that, two weeks
ago today, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
ran a wonderful photo of a pointless procession:
two little kindergarteners in caps and tassels en route to their graduation
ceremony at the never more aptly named North American Martyrs Catholic School in
Monroeville. Once I'd calmed down and prevented my head from exploding, I wrote
this post. But the image and the outrage
persisted -- this is, as regular TWM readers will also remember, one of my
long-standing, axe-grinding pet peeves -- so I exhumed an old post, massaged it
a bit, and turned out this
commentary, which, thanks to the steady eye and generous ear of editor
Greg Victor, appears as the First Person essay in this morning's
Post-Gazette.
So. For today's taste of TWM, head on over to the PG, belly up to the op-ed bar, and sample a little Graduation Saturation. You'll have to supply your own cookies and orange drink, but the insights (and occasional outrages) are on me.
Enjoy.
So. For today's taste of TWM, head on over to the PG, belly up to the op-ed bar, and sample a little Graduation Saturation. You'll have to supply your own cookies and orange drink, but the insights (and occasional outrages) are on me.
Enjoy.
Posted at 09:15 AM
Thu - June 14, 2007
JUDGE PECKHAM ASKED ME TO THE BALL
and i said yes.
That's right, folks: two of your favorite
Pittsburgh-based -- or, hell, anywhere-based -- web sites have joined forces for
more than just sidebar links and mutual admiration. The good and hilarious
gentlemen of the Carbolic Smoke Ball, who've obviously read
enough of this site to be entertained but not quite enough to see that I'm
really just a hack with a good ear for syntax, have invited me to join their
stable of searing and satirical talents. I considered the offer for all of
about three seconds before I asked them to point me to my stall and tell me how
hard I can kick.
My first kick -- a good, swift hoof to the head of The Boy Who Likes To Make Sure Everyone Knows He's Mayor -- goes live today, and, though I think it's some pretty funny stuff, the fact that it's not nearly as great or as epic or as bloody brilliant as the piece that precedes it provides a pretty good reminder that, no matter how much I'm looking forward to the gig, and now matter how much fun I'm already having trying to come up with new material, I'll need to work my ass off to maintain the lofty standards that site has so long set.
It's a pleasure and a privilege to be asked to contribute to CSB, and I'm sure -- since I'm a guy who always seems to feed off his own inspirations -- that my occasional efforts there will further energize my usual efforts here. So stay tuned, keep reading both sites, and know, yet again, that everything I do at this (or any other) site is just one big labor of love for the joys and wonders of the written word.
My first kick -- a good, swift hoof to the head of The Boy Who Likes To Make Sure Everyone Knows He's Mayor -- goes live today, and, though I think it's some pretty funny stuff, the fact that it's not nearly as great or as epic or as bloody brilliant as the piece that precedes it provides a pretty good reminder that, no matter how much I'm looking forward to the gig, and now matter how much fun I'm already having trying to come up with new material, I'll need to work my ass off to maintain the lofty standards that site has so long set.
It's a pleasure and a privilege to be asked to contribute to CSB, and I'm sure -- since I'm a guy who always seems to feed off his own inspirations -- that my occasional efforts there will further energize my usual efforts here. So stay tuned, keep reading both sites, and know, yet again, that everything I do at this (or any other) site is just one big labor of love for the joys and wonders of the written word.
Posted at 10:40 AM
Wed - June 13, 2007
THE CAT AND THE HAT
or, why i love flannery o'connor and
david chase but am a little leery of tom stoppard.
As I read yet
another of the seemingly endless ruminations, fulminations, and
bloviations on the final episode of The
Sopranos -- I'll add my own to the mix shortly,
along with my picks for the twelve best episodes ever -- I was intrigued by a
discussion of the Ginger Cat that, because it would not stop staring at a photo
of Christopher, inspired some of Paulie's funniest superstitious expectorations
in many a season. Angel? Devil? Restless soul of Adriana come back to haunt
the pork store with its baleful, knowing gaze? Good
stuff.
I was less intrigued, however, by the connection that Slate's Timothy Noah sees to the man-sized Ginger Cat that appears in a fancy-dress ball in Shipwreck, the first installment of Tom Stoppard's trilogy, The Coast of Utopia -- which, perhaps not coincidentally, won a Tony Award on Sunday night, not long after Tony and the rest of the family cut finally to black. And I was least intrigued of all by Stoppard's explanation of the cat's significance in his play:
Essentially, the Ginger Cat is an arbitrary purposeless malign or mischievous force/fate which deflects the individual life within the overarching Hegelian Law of History to which populations are subject.
This is precisely the sort of explanation that David Chase happily refuses to give for the cat or the cut or anything else we may have seen or thought we saw in that final episode. And so he reminds me of, even as he does not go quite so far as, the great Flannery O'Connor, whose recounting of an especially dispiriting exchange she had with an English teacher over A Good Man is Hard to Find came immediately to mind when I read the Stoppard quotation.
“Miss O’Connor,” [the teacher] said, “why was the Misfit’s hat black?” I said most countrymen in Georgia wore black hats. He looked pretty disappointed.
Then he said, “Miss O’Connor, the Misfit represents Christ, does he not?”
“He does not,” I said. He looked crushed.
“Well, Miss O’Connor,” he said, “what is the significance of the Misfit’s hat?” I said it was to cover his head; and after that, he left me alone. Anyway, that’s what’s happening to the teaching of literature.
And also, at least this week, to the watching of television. Because a cat may not always be just a cat, but sometimes a hat is a hat and a cut is a cut. And digging or stretching or reaching too far to find answers to unanswerable questions, contorting our minds so fully and wildly that when we gaze finally upon the Gordian Knots of our own faulty logic we see only the straight lines of a dull and manufactured certainty, does not serve the Mob bosses nor the Misfits nor even the sad, stray little felines who've come to haunt the waking dreams of our own artistic visions.
I was less intrigued, however, by the connection that Slate's Timothy Noah sees to the man-sized Ginger Cat that appears in a fancy-dress ball in Shipwreck, the first installment of Tom Stoppard's trilogy, The Coast of Utopia -- which, perhaps not coincidentally, won a Tony Award on Sunday night, not long after Tony and the rest of the family cut finally to black. And I was least intrigued of all by Stoppard's explanation of the cat's significance in his play:
Essentially, the Ginger Cat is an arbitrary purposeless malign or mischievous force/fate which deflects the individual life within the overarching Hegelian Law of History to which populations are subject.
This is precisely the sort of explanation that David Chase happily refuses to give for the cat or the cut or anything else we may have seen or thought we saw in that final episode. And so he reminds me of, even as he does not go quite so far as, the great Flannery O'Connor, whose recounting of an especially dispiriting exchange she had with an English teacher over A Good Man is Hard to Find came immediately to mind when I read the Stoppard quotation.
“Miss O’Connor,” [the teacher] said, “why was the Misfit’s hat black?” I said most countrymen in Georgia wore black hats. He looked pretty disappointed.
Then he said, “Miss O’Connor, the Misfit represents Christ, does he not?”
“He does not,” I said. He looked crushed.
“Well, Miss O’Connor,” he said, “what is the significance of the Misfit’s hat?” I said it was to cover his head; and after that, he left me alone. Anyway, that’s what’s happening to the teaching of literature.
And also, at least this week, to the watching of television. Because a cat may not always be just a cat, but sometimes a hat is a hat and a cut is a cut. And digging or stretching or reaching too far to find answers to unanswerable questions, contorting our minds so fully and wildly that when we gaze finally upon the Gordian Knots of our own faulty logic we see only the straight lines of a dull and manufactured certainty, does not serve the Mob bosses nor the Misfits nor even the sad, stray little felines who've come to haunt the waking dreams of our own artistic visions.
Posted at 04:45 PM
Tue - May 29, 2007
NAKED HE WENT INTO THE ARMY
following up the mix with some written
(and spoken) word.
With the possible exception of
Flannery O'Connor: The Complete
Stories, no book I read in college had a greater
impact on my writing or my thinking than John Dos Passos'
Nineteen Nineteen.
It teased and challenged and provoked and
inspired me, grabbing me by the head and the heart and the throat, and forever
changing the way I thought about history and fiction and politics. Nineteen
years later, 1919
still haunts me. And on days like this, when
another Memorial Day has come and gone in the shadow of a senseless and
seemingly interminable war, when ten more American troops have died in Iraq, shot
down in a helicopter or blown up by a roadside bomb, the whole novel, and especially that last,
awful, beautiful chapter, still rings and cries in my
mind.
And so I thought I would share that chapter -- The Body of an American, a stream-of-anger-and-consciousness rumination on the dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier -- here, not just in written form but also, as a TWM first, in podcast form. You can listen to and/or download a reading of the chapter here. Or you can, as I have so many electrifying times, simply read it like this...
The Body of an American, from NINETEEN NINETEEN
John Dos Passos
Whereasthe Congressoftheunitedstates byaconcurrentresolutionadoptedon the4thdayofmarch last-authorizedthe Secretaryofwar to cause to be brought to theunitedstatesthe body of an American whowasa- memberoftheAmericanexpeditionaryforceineuropewholosthis lifeduringtheworldwarandwhoseidentityhas- not beenestablish for burial inthememorialamphitheatreofthe nationalcemeteryatarlingtonvirginia
In the tarpaper morgue at Chalons-sur-Marne in the reek of cloride of lime and the dead, they picked out the pine box that held all that was left of
enie menie minie moe plenty of other pine boxes stacked up there containing what they’d scraped up of Richard Roe
and other person or persons unknown. Only one can go. How did they pick John Doe?
Make sure he aint a dinge, boys,
make sure he aint a guinea or a kike,
how can you tell a guy’s a hundredpercent when all you’ve got’s a gunnysack full of bones, bronze buttons stamped with the screaming eagle and a pair of roll puttees?
. . . and the gagging chloride and the puky dirtstench of the yearold dead . . .
The day withal was too meaningful and tragic for applause. Silence, tears, songs and prayer, muffled drums and soft music were the instrumentalities today of national approbation.
John Doe was born (thudding din of blood of love into the shuddering soar of a man and a woman alone indeed together lurching into
and ninemonths sick drowse waking into scared agony and the pain and blood and mess of birth). John Doe was born
and raised in Brooklyn, in Memphis, near the lakefront in Cleveland, Ohio, in the stench of the stockyards in Chi, on Beacon Hill, in an old brick house
in Alexandria Virginia, on Telegraph Hill, in a halftimbered Tudor cottage in Portland the city of roses,
in the Lying-In Hospital old Morgan endowed on Stuyvesant Square,
across the railroad tracks, out near the country club, in a shack cabin tenement apartmenthouse exclusive residential suburb;
scion of one of the best families in the social register, won first prize in the baby parade at Coronado Beach, was marbles champion of the Little Rock grammarschools, crack basketballplayer at the Booneville High, quarterback at the State Reformatory, having saved the sheriff’s kid from drowning in the Little Missouri River was invited to Washington to be photographed shaking hands with the President on the White House steps;—
though this was a time of mourning, such an assemblage necessarily has about it a touch of color. In the boxes are seen the court uniforms of foreign diplomats, the gold braid of our own and foreign fleets and armies, the black of the conventional morning dress of American statesmen, the varicolored furs and outdoor wrapping garments of mothers and sisters come to mourn, the drab and blue of soldiers and sailors, the glitter of musical instruments and the white and black of a vested choir
And so I thought I would share that chapter -- The Body of an American, a stream-of-anger-and-consciousness rumination on the dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier -- here, not just in written form but also, as a TWM first, in podcast form. You can listen to and/or download a reading of the chapter here. Or you can, as I have so many electrifying times, simply read it like this...
The Body of an American, from NINETEEN NINETEEN
John Dos Passos
Whereasthe Congressoftheunitedstates byaconcurrentresolutionadoptedon the4thdayofmarch last-authorizedthe Secretaryofwar to cause to be brought to theunitedstatesthe body of an American whowasa- memberoftheAmericanexpeditionaryforceineuropewholosthis lifeduringtheworldwarandwhoseidentityhas- not beenestablish for burial inthememorialamphitheatreofthe nationalcemeteryatarlingtonvirginia
In the tarpaper morgue at Chalons-sur-Marne in the reek of cloride of lime and the dead, they picked out the pine box that held all that was left of
enie menie minie moe plenty of other pine boxes stacked up there containing what they’d scraped up of Richard Roe
and other person or persons unknown. Only one can go. How did they pick John Doe?
Make sure he aint a dinge, boys,
make sure he aint a guinea or a kike,
how can you tell a guy’s a hundredpercent when all you’ve got’s a gunnysack full of bones, bronze buttons stamped with the screaming eagle and a pair of roll puttees?
. . . and the gagging chloride and the puky dirtstench of the yearold dead . . .
The day withal was too meaningful and tragic for applause. Silence, tears, songs and prayer, muffled drums and soft music were the instrumentalities today of national approbation.
John Doe was born (thudding din of blood of love into the shuddering soar of a man and a woman alone indeed together lurching into
and ninemonths sick drowse waking into scared agony and the pain and blood and mess of birth). John Doe was born
and raised in Brooklyn, in Memphis, near the lakefront in Cleveland, Ohio, in the stench of the stockyards in Chi, on Beacon Hill, in an old brick house
in Alexandria Virginia, on Telegraph Hill, in a halftimbered Tudor cottage in Portland the city of roses,
in the Lying-In Hospital old Morgan endowed on Stuyvesant Square,
across the railroad tracks, out near the country club, in a shack cabin tenement apartmenthouse exclusive residential suburb;
scion of one of the best families in the social register, won first prize in the baby parade at Coronado Beach, was marbles champion of the Little Rock grammarschools, crack basketballplayer at the Booneville High, quarterback at the State Reformatory, having saved the sheriff’s kid from drowning in the Little Missouri River was invited to Washington to be photographed shaking hands with the President on the White House steps;—
though this was a time of mourning, such an assemblage necessarily has about it a touch of color. In the boxes are seen the court uniforms of foreign diplomats, the gold braid of our own and foreign fleets and armies, the black of the conventional morning dress of American statesmen, the varicolored furs and outdoor wrapping garments of mothers and sisters come to mourn, the drab and blue of soldiers and sailors, the glitter of musical instruments and the white and black of a vested choir
—busboy harveststiff hogcaller boyscout champeen cornshucker of Western Kansas bellhop at the United States Hotel at Saratoga Springs office boy callboy fruiter telephone lineman longshoreman lumberjack plumber’s helper,
worked for an exterminating company in Union City, filled pipes in an opium joint in Trenton, N.J.
Y.M.C.A. secretary, express agent, truckdriver, fordmechanic, sold books in Denver Colorado: Madam would you be willing to help a young man work his way through college?
President Harding, with a reverence seemingly more significant because of his high temporal station, concluded his speech:
We are met today to pay the impersonal tribute;
the name of him whose body lies before us took flight with his imperishable soul…
as a typical soldier of this representative democracy he fought and died believing in the indisputable justice of his country’s cause . . .
by raising his right hand and asking the thousands with the sound of his voice to join in the prayer:
Our Father which art in heaven hallowed by thy name . . .
Naked he went into the army;
they weighed you, measured you, looked for flat feet, squeezed your penis to see if you had clap, looked up your anus to see if you had piles, counted your teeth, made you cough, listened to your heart and lungs, made you read the letters on the card, charted your urine and your intelligence,
gave you a service record for a future (imperishable soul)
and an identification tag stamped with your serial number to hang around your neck, issued O D regulation equipment, a condiment can and a copy of the articles of war:
Attn’SHUN suck in your gut you c——r wipe that smile off your face eyes right wattja tink dis is a choirch-social? For-war-D’MARCH.
John Doe
and Richard Roe and other person or persons unknown
drilled hiked, manual of arms, ate slum, learned to salute, to soldier, to loaf in the latrines, forbidden to smoke on deck, overseas guard duty, forty men and eight horses, shortarm inspection and the ping of shrapnel and the shrill bullets combing the air and the sorehead woodpeckers the machineguns mud cooties gasmasks and the itch.
Say feller tell me how I can get back to my outfit.
John Doe had a head
for twentyodd years intensely the nerves of the eyes the ears the palate the toungue the fingers the toes the armpits, the nerves warmfeeling under the skin charged the coiled brain with hurt sweet warm cold mine must don’t sayings print headlines:
Thou shalt not the multiplication table long division, Now is the time for all good men knocks but once at a young man’s door, It’s a great life if Ish gebibbel, The first five years’ll be the Safety First, Suppose a hun tried to rape you’re my country right or wrong, Catch ‘em young, What he don’t know wont treat ‘em rough, Tell ‘m nothing, He got what was coming to him he got his, This is a white man’s country, Kick the bucket, Gone west, If you don’t like it you can croaked him
Say buddy cant you tell me how I can get back to my outfit?
Cant help jumpin when them things go off, give me the trots them things do. I lost my identification tag swimmin in the Marne, roughhousin with a guy while we was waitin to be deloused, in bed with a girl name Jeanne (Love moving picture wet French postcard dream began with saltpeter in the coffee and ended at the propho station);—
Say soldier for chrissake cant you tell me how I can get back to my outfit?
John Doe’s
heart pumped blood:
alive thudding silence of blood in your ears
down in the clearing in the Oregon forest where the punkins were punkincolor pouring into the blood through the eyes and the fallcolored trees and the bronze hoopers were hopping through the dry grass, where tiny striped snails hung on the underside of the blades and the flies hummed, wasps droned, bumble-bees buzzed, and the woods smelt of wine and mushrooms and apples, homey smell of fall pouring into the blood,
and I dropped the tin hat and the sweaty pack and lay flat with the dogday sun licking my throat and adamsapple and the tight skin over the breastbone.
The shell had his number on it.
The blood ran into the ground.
The service record dropped out of the filing cabinet when the quartermaster sergeant got blotto that time they had to pack up and leave the billets in a hurry.
The identification tag was in the bottom of the Marne.
The blood ran into the ground, the brains oozed out of the cracked skull and were licked up by the trenchrats, the belly swelled and raised a generation of blue-bottle flies.
and the incorruptible skeleton,
and the scraps of dried viscera and skin bundled in khaki
they took to Chalons-sur-Marne
and laid it out neat in a pine coffin
and took it home to God’s Country on a battleship
and buried in a sarcophagus in the Memorial Amphitheatre in the Arlington National Cemetery
and draped the Old Glory over it and the bugler played taps
and Mr. Harding prayed to God and the diplomats and the generals and the admirals and the brasshats and the politicians and the handsomely dressed ladies out of the society column of the Washington Post stood up solemn
and thought how beautiful sad Old Glory God’s Country it was go have the bugler play taps and the three volleys made their ears ring.
Where his chest ought to have been they pinned
the Congressional Medal, the D.S.C., the Medaille Militaire, the Belgian Croix de Guerre, the Italian gold medal, the Vitutea Militara sent by Queen Marie of Rumania, the Czechoslovak war cross, the Virtuti Militari of the Poles, a wreath sent by Hamilton Fish, Jr., of New York, and a little wampum presented by a deputation of Arizona redskins in warpaint and feathers. All the Washingtonians brought flowers.
Woodrow Wilson brought a bouquet of poppies.
Posted at 03:45 PM
Wed - May 16, 2007
I DIDN'T HEART THE PRIMARY
but i wrote about it anyway.
So the
Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette, with its Page 2 tongue planted
firmly in its political cheek, this morning challenged its readers to
Be Pittsburgh's poet laureate for the day.
The assignment: write a poem commemorating
yesterday's primary elections. Because I've always been a fan of Robert Lowell
and Randall Jarrell, because I once studied under Sam Hazo, and because it
seemed like a good way to kill a couple of minutes, I decided to give it a
go.
My first (and best) idea for commemorating this week’s primary in poetry was to submit a nice, big, blank verse. And I mean totally blank. Because I’m not sure we should even dignify it, much less commemorate it. But then John Allison reminded me that it’s kind of hard — or at least a little unwise — for the PG to print a lot of white space. So I decided that the only fitting form with which to chronicle this sorry excuse for a political week was a little ol' limerick.
I think it fits. And it even gets a little dirty in the end.
Enjoy...
PITTSBURGH PRIMARY LIMERICK
When big races run uncontested
The political climate's infested
With back-alley scenes
And party machines
'Til all of democracy's molested.
My first (and best) idea for commemorating this week’s primary in poetry was to submit a nice, big, blank verse. And I mean totally blank. Because I’m not sure we should even dignify it, much less commemorate it. But then John Allison reminded me that it’s kind of hard — or at least a little unwise — for the PG to print a lot of white space. So I decided that the only fitting form with which to chronicle this sorry excuse for a political week was a little ol' limerick.
I think it fits. And it even gets a little dirty in the end.
Enjoy...
PITTSBURGH PRIMARY LIMERICK
When big races run uncontested
The political climate's infested
With back-alley scenes
And party machines
'Til all of democracy's molested.
Posted at 07:06 PM
Wed - May 9, 2007
(CLOSING TIME) DRINK SPECIALS
for the barmaid.
LOVE: The soul-filling satisfactions of a written
labor of love.
HATERADE: The soul-sucking nauseations of an online labor of hate.
LOVE: People who rise to the first and rise above the second.
HATERADE: The soul-sucking nauseations of an online labor of hate.
LOVE: People who rise to the first and rise above the second.
Posted at 07:34 PM
Sat - May 5, 2007
HROTHGAR HATH NO FURY
like a monster's mother
scorned.
Over a light family lunch at a nearby, neighborhood
Quiznos, our typically far-ranging conversations
unexpectedly came, through Cars
and Happy
Feet and
Monster
House, to the subject of Robert Zemeckis' new film version of
Beowulf,
and then to the subject of the great and gory and insanely influential epic
poem. Before long, I'd begun to wax rhapsodic about the language and the action
and the echoes of the narrative in other great works of art -- including the
first three Alien
films, which may well be the most vivid and
evocative re-telling of the tale ever -- and Adam, whose attention happily never
waned, had begun to wonder when he might get a chance to read it. Ethan, who at
times must struggle to remember that he is seven and not twenty-seven, was
discouraged to learn that he would have to wait a few years. But you and I
happily do not.
So, after coming home and pulling out and paging through a couple of my copies -- yes, I have several -- after reading all those wonderful lines and threatening to fall between them, I came back up for air and decided that a gray day with just a touch of damp chill in the air was the perfect time to break out a passage from one of the world's great -- and one of my favorite -- works of literature and post it here.
(Though the recent Seamus Heaney translation is wonderful, I've always been partial to the 1952 Edwin Morgan translation, from which this excerpt, setting the scene and the mood for the attack of Grendel's mother, comes.)
Enjoy...
They sank then to sleep. For his night's rest
One paid heavily, as had often been
Their lot since Grendel haunted the gold-hall,
Acted his evil till the end was obtained,
Death for his sins. It was soon clear to men,
Known far and wide, that an avenger still
Had survived the enemy, survived for some time
The agony of the battle; that misery was remembered
By the mother of Grendel, monster in woman-sex,
She who had to live in the terrible streams,
The freezing waters, when Cain became
The sword-blade-slayer of his own brother,
The fruit of his father, and then went outlawed,
Fled murder-branded from joy of mankind,
Made wilderness his home: from him sprang thick
Demons of God's doom, Grendel among them
Man-hated, homicidal, the finder in Heorot
Of a fighter vigilant and waiting for war;
The monster had him there in his grip,
But he called to mind the strength he commanded,
The magnificent gift God had granted him,
And he looked to the Lord for all his grace,
For his solace and support; and defeated the fiend,
Humbled the hell-fetch. Wretched he went then,
Devoid of all delighting, to seek death in hiding,
Enemy of humanity. But now his mother,
Blackhearted and gluttonous, was moved to set out
On a journey of danger to avenge her son's death...
So, after coming home and pulling out and paging through a couple of my copies -- yes, I have several -- after reading all those wonderful lines and threatening to fall between them, I came back up for air and decided that a gray day with just a touch of damp chill in the air was the perfect time to break out a passage from one of the world's great -- and one of my favorite -- works of literature and post it here.
(Though the recent Seamus Heaney translation is wonderful, I've always been partial to the 1952 Edwin Morgan translation, from which this excerpt, setting the scene and the mood for the attack of Grendel's mother, comes.)
Enjoy...
They sank then to sleep. For his night's rest
One paid heavily, as had often been
Their lot since Grendel haunted the gold-hall,
Acted his evil till the end was obtained,
Death for his sins. It was soon clear to men,
Known far and wide, that an avenger still
Had survived the enemy, survived for some time
The agony of the battle; that misery was remembered
By the mother of Grendel, monster in woman-sex,
She who had to live in the terrible streams,
The freezing waters, when Cain became
The sword-blade-slayer of his own brother,
The fruit of his father, and then went outlawed,
Fled murder-branded from joy of mankind,
Made wilderness his home: from him sprang thick
Demons of God's doom, Grendel among them
Man-hated, homicidal, the finder in Heorot
Of a fighter vigilant and waiting for war;
The monster had him there in his grip,
But he called to mind the strength he commanded,
The magnificent gift God had granted him,
And he looked to the Lord for all his grace,
For his solace and support; and defeated the fiend,
Humbled the hell-fetch. Wretched he went then,
Devoid of all delighting, to seek death in hiding,
Enemy of humanity. But now his mother,
Blackhearted and gluttonous, was moved to set out
On a journey of danger to avenge her son's death...
Posted at 02:10 PM
Thu - March 29, 2007
WHERE THERE BE MONSTERS
(finished, finally, after four years of
revisions.)
My son woke me last night,
crying,
Moaning in his sleep, calling out into the dark
For help, somehow a little less scared
Because he knew that help would come.
I had a nightmare, he said, about bad monsters.
I crawled into bed beside him, needing to lie
Down to lie to him, to tell him the same lie
My mother told me: There are no monsters
In the basement, in your closet, under your bed.
But one day you’ll find plenty, I didn’t tell him, in your own head.
I envy him his eight-year-old ability to fall back to sleep,
To roll over and wrap himself in the thought
That someone, anyone, with a gentle smile and caressing hand
Can, with a few whispered words, make everything alright.
Because I can’t. Not when so many monsters
Haunt these aching, waking dreams, so much more
Frightening at my age than at his, because no one
Comes in the night, when I need him most, to tell me
They won’t one day get me: the beasts snapping
At my sons’ heels, chasing them out of my reach
And into the arms of some accident, some illness,
Some creeping kidnapper; or the demons digging deep
Enough to exhume some cancerous corpse lying
In my brain, my colon, my prostate; to cut me down
And make a widow of my wife, leaving my sons
With one parent, scarred and scared herself,
To tell them there’s nothing to be frightened of ever, or
At least until they’re old enough to know better.
Moaning in his sleep, calling out into the dark
For help, somehow a little less scared
Because he knew that help would come.
I had a nightmare, he said, about bad monsters.
I crawled into bed beside him, needing to lie
Down to lie to him, to tell him the same lie
My mother told me: There are no monsters
In the basement, in your closet, under your bed.
But one day you’ll find plenty, I didn’t tell him, in your own head.
I envy him his eight-year-old ability to fall back to sleep,
To roll over and wrap himself in the thought
That someone, anyone, with a gentle smile and caressing hand
Can, with a few whispered words, make everything alright.
Because I can’t. Not when so many monsters
Haunt these aching, waking dreams, so much more
Frightening at my age than at his, because no one
Comes in the night, when I need him most, to tell me
They won’t one day get me: the beasts snapping
At my sons’ heels, chasing them out of my reach
And into the arms of some accident, some illness,
Some creeping kidnapper; or the demons digging deep
Enough to exhume some cancerous corpse lying
In my brain, my colon, my prostate; to cut me down
And make a widow of my wife, leaving my sons
With one parent, scarred and scared herself,
To tell them there’s nothing to be frightened of ever, or
At least until they’re old enough to know better.
Posted at 10:47 PM
Sat - February 24, 2007
WHAT WE SHOULD FEEL LIKE FOR WATCHING
or, the world's going to hell in a clown
car.
It's not the first (or the second) time, and it surely won't be the last,
but a piece of writing that first appeared on this site has found its way, in
revised and expanded form, to the pages of the
Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette. TWM's inaugural guest blogger,
the incomparable Dennis Roddy, picks up where he left off Wednesday night in the
Saturday morning paper, continuing the tale through a high-speed chase
in a PT Cruiser all the way to the wisdom of Solomon, where he finds a
tug-of-war for both a rapidly decomposing body and a steadily devolving
culture.
Read it. And weep not.
Read it. And weep not.
Posted at 01:23 PM
Thu - February 1, 2007
HARRY POTTER HAS A DATE
with death. i hope.
Now that the publication date of the final Harry
Potter novel has officially been announced, it feels like a good time to go back
and re-visit a couple of notes I made six months ago -- ones upon which, as the date
draws nearer, and as I work my way back through the books again with Ethan this
time, I will inevitably expand -- in which I explain why I hope that July 21st,
2007, should go down in publishing history not as only as the day that
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
was released, but also as the day that Harry
Potter died:
John Irving and Stephen King may not want J.K. Rowling to kill Harry Potter, but I do.
It seems to me that she's been building to that inevitability all along -- the increasingly darker tone, the succession of major character deaths, the inexorable bond between Harry and Voldemort -- and that it would make the most thematic sense. Rowling has painstakingly (sometimes too painstakingly, as in the first two hundred pages of Goblet of Fire) -- crafted one of those great, classical, neo-mythical showdowns between good and evil. A showdown that, the protests of its myopic naysayers notwithstanding, is deeply rooted in a Christian narrative tradition. And in that tradition, as well many other great-good-vs.-supreme-evil narrative traditions, the good must sacrifice itself to vanquish the evil. Just as, I think, Harry will -- and should -- have to sacrifice himself to destroy Voldemort and save the wizarding world. Just as his parents and Sirius and Dumbledore have already done for him. Harry has learned from those parents and teachers and surrogate parents, and he will -- or at least should have to -- follow their selfless example, giving his own life to protect the lives of his loved ones. Unless Rowling has some incredibly nifty, shifty trick up her narrative sleeve, anything else will feel like taking the easy -- or worse, the sentimental -- way out.
Because that's exactly what it will be.
John Irving and Stephen King may not want J.K. Rowling to kill Harry Potter, but I do.
It seems to me that she's been building to that inevitability all along -- the increasingly darker tone, the succession of major character deaths, the inexorable bond between Harry and Voldemort -- and that it would make the most thematic sense. Rowling has painstakingly (sometimes too painstakingly, as in the first two hundred pages of Goblet of Fire) -- crafted one of those great, classical, neo-mythical showdowns between good and evil. A showdown that, the protests of its myopic naysayers notwithstanding, is deeply rooted in a Christian narrative tradition. And in that tradition, as well many other great-good-vs.-supreme-evil narrative traditions, the good must sacrifice itself to vanquish the evil. Just as, I think, Harry will -- and should -- have to sacrifice himself to destroy Voldemort and save the wizarding world. Just as his parents and Sirius and Dumbledore have already done for him. Harry has learned from those parents and teachers and surrogate parents, and he will -- or at least should have to -- follow their selfless example, giving his own life to protect the lives of his loved ones. Unless Rowling has some incredibly nifty, shifty trick up her narrative sleeve, anything else will feel like taking the easy -- or worse, the sentimental -- way out.
Because that's exactly what it will be.
Posted at 02:14 PM
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Published On: Feb 14, 2009 10:48 AM
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Published On: Feb 14, 2009 10:48 AM