The News That Fits

Spent a couple of minutes this evening with Paper.li, creating a paper that I have dubbed Eclectica: News That Fits. So far it’s built only on my Twitter account (@wjreynolds); we’ll see what transpires into the future.

The following, I think, is intended to appear among all the clutter at the left of this column. I’m after thinking that more clutter is not what the left side of this page needs, but I was curious to see how it looked, so here it is:

The News That Fits is, of course, a play on The New York Times’s motto, “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” But for me it goes back to my adolescence and a Mad magazine parody (I think. Maybe it was Cracked; maybe National Lampoon—it’s been a few months), with a newspaper proudly displaying the motto “All the News That Fits, We Print.” Under current circumstances it seemed, well, fitting.

Give Eclectica: News That Fits a once-over, if you’re so inclined. Pointers from veteran Paper.li users is always appreciated. As are anonymous cash donations, but I hold out scant hope.

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Born to Loose

Just got this great tweet on (well, of course) Twitter:

Hi there, gain muscle quickly and loose fat easily with these secret techniques: http://tinyurl.com/zzzzzzz

I love messages like this, which is a good thing since I seem to get plenty of them on Twitter these days. Even with no more than 140 characters to deal with, you can still find a lot of fun in them.

For instance, “secret techniques. ” Sad to say, fellow Twitterer, but the mere fact that you are promulgating these techniques across the vast landscape of social media kind of blows the whole “secrecy ” thing. I suggest you go with “these anything-but-secret techniques. ”

And then there’s the fat. While I think it would be a good idea to lose some fat, I can’t get on board with the push to “loose fat easily, ” or any other way, since it seems manifestly unfair for me to “loose” fat on the world. Also, it sounds gross.

Some people, I’ve noticed, play fast and loose with the word lose.

I enjoy Twitter a lot, and it’s fun to get new followers and, sometimes, follow same, but I’ve long since given up on “following back ” everyone who follows me. For one thing, a certain number of them, on close examination, prove to be right-wingnuts, birthers, and racist slanderers of POTUS. I can’t for the life of me figure out why they’d want to read my tweets, and I know for a fact that I have no interest in reading theirs. (Don’t for a second delude yourself into thinking maybe they’re interested in a wide spectrum of political opinions. Their tweets give the lie to that idea.)

There’s another bunch—although their numbers seem to have dropped off, at least in my little corner of the Twitterverse—who have opened an account, are following perhaps 100 or more tweeters, but have yet to tweet or retweet a single item. Obviously everyone has to start from zero, but you would think there’d be some effort to quickly bring that into positive numbers—how else are people to decide whether a given person is worth following?

Lately I’m starting to get followed by a lot of local businesses and services...local, that is, to some other part of the country. I’m not going to follow back a carpet cleaning service in Tuscaloosa or someplace, unless the majority of their tweets are of general interest—and interesting general interest—as opposed to their great Memorial Day specials. I state clearly in my Twitter profile where I live, and it’s nowhere near Tuscaloosa. I get that for some Twitterers the object of the game is to get as many followers as possible, but, really, people, qualify the list a little bit first!

The ones who really fascinate me, though, are the ones who are removed from Twitter before I even have a chance to view their profile upon receiving e-mail telling me they’re following me. I assume they’ve committed some sort of blatant TOS violation, but wow. What on earth did they do to be closed down almost instantly?

Perhaps they loosed fat on an innocent world. Or the Twitter offices.

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How Low Can You Go?

Those who know me know that I am at least a quasi misanthrope at the best of times. But occasions such as that which occurred just this evening serve to solidify my longstanding motto, Populus es haud damno bonus (“People Are No Damn Good”).

My wife and I are just back from our cemetery tour, first watering the planters at my parents’ grave, then heading out of town a ways to the little country-church cemetery where my wife’s grandparents and great aunt repose. At the latter venue we discovered that the planter of flowers that my wife and her mother had put together and placed for Memorial Day is nowhere to be seen.

While we were marveling at this turn of events, a couple who had been driving slowly through the small cemetery stopped and struck up conversation. Seems their family’s grave had been looted as well, with a couple of hanging pots of plants appropriated from shepherd’s hooks.

Charming.

I can easily excuse a starving man who steals a loaf of bread—or money to purchase a loaf of bread. In the grand scheme of things, that’s an awfully petty offense. But to steal plants and flowers from graves? That is a crime of near-complete depravity. Not depraved as in murder or child molestation or other heinous crimes, obviously, but depraved in the sense that it is a completely pointless crime. Nobody needs a planter of flowers. There’s no black market on which to sell them. It’s just stealing for the sake of stealing.

Much of the drive back to town was spent pondering exactly how low a person must be to steal from a grave. I think such an act ranks below even stealing from the church poor-box. It may not be the lowest act of theft, but I’m hard pressed to think of anything worse offhand.

Mostly what I think are the immortal words of Daffy Duck:

 “You’re despicable.”

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Paging Mrs. Malaprop!

As is so often the case, the comments on various articles and news items are at least as entertaining as the articles themselves. Here’s a new (to me) malapropism that I came upon in a comments section just this morning:

“Here is the crust of the problem...”

The author has some other problems, too, besides his crust—the apparent lack of a ? key on his keyboard, an inability to unravel the subtle nuances between your and you’re, and so on—but none is as unique or interesting as the crust of his problem.

This looks like a job for Malaprop Man!

One wonders if the crux of the problem in such cases might not be hearing related. I read once that Norm Crosby, “King of the Malaprop,” came to his hilarious wordplay by virtue of an undiagnosed hearing problem that caused him, in childhood, to understand words almost correctly—drinking decapitated coffee, requesting a cold one from the beertender, and so on.

Sometimes, I know, it’s just a matter of misunderstanding a given expression or colloquialism. I knew a fellow in college who was wont to “get down to brass tactics”...and in the years since I’ve known probably half a dozen others who have shared his desire.

Not really a malapropism but still funny is the wildly off-base expression employed by a parish priest of my acquaintance several decades ago. Obviously he had come upon the expression “fly in the ointment,” but misunderstood “fly” to be the verb form. Thus it was that his homilies occasionally would refer to this or that action of Jesus that “flew in the ointment” of the religious leaders of the day. Makes me wonder if he knew what “ointment” is.

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Washington, Oregon, Whatever

I have no idea what is going on at The Daily Beast these days. Not that I ever did. But in yesterday's "Cheat Sheet," as indicated here, they had the president "chugging" Guinness at an Irish pub, when the referenced article in fact indicates he drank about two thirds of a pint. ("Chugging" implies downing an entire drink at one go). And today, well, today they have this:

Not sure what good it will do Mr. Kucinich that there are openings in Oregon when, it appears, he may be moving to Washington. But, as the saying goes, whatever.

By this evening, I observe, the Cheat Sheet section of the Daily Beast's website has been corrected. That's the beauty of the internet.

Here's another beautiful thing: At the same time that the Daily Beast seems to have forgotten all about accuracy, proofreading, and junk like that, here's their current front page, proving that irony is far from dead.

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Never Let Accuracy Get in the Way of a Headline

This from today’s “Afternoon Scoop” from The Daily Beast:

Really. The President of the United States “chugs” a Guinness. Huh.

Well, for one thing, being of Irish background Mr. Obama certainly knows, instinctively, that one does not “chug,” “slam,” or “throw back” a Guinness. One sips it, so as to be able to enjoy the complexity of flavors that make Guinness the exemplar of all beers. At most, one quaffs it. But sipping is recommended. On this point I am unanimous.

Then there’s the little matter of the story itself. Click through to the article at National Journal, and you will read this (which, apparently, the staff of The Daily Beast had no time for):

When he finished talking, Obama said, “And with that, let me have a pint.” After being cheered for taking the first swig of his pint of Guinness, Obama announced, “I just want you to know the president pays.” The normal price of a pint of Guinness is 3.75 euros. He finished at least three quarters of the pint.

Not having been there, I cannot comment on the use of the word “swig,” except to reference my comment above in re sipping. But given that the standard definition of “chug” means to down a drink at one go, without stopping for air, but the National Journal indicates that the president finished “at least three quarters of the pint,” I think it safe to conclude that “chug” was a pretty poor choice of verb.

But I have observed over time that The Daily Beast is little concerned with accuracy where its “Cheat Sheet” headlines are concerned. Provocative trumps precise every time.

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Yes, This Sounds Familiar

This comes from Clients from Hell. I have had similar conversations with people.

Me: “How can I help you today, ma’am?”

Client: “Is e-mail internet”?

Me: “I beg your pardon?”

Client: “Is e-mail on the internet? I have no internet, can I still read my e-mail?”

Me: “Well yes, you must be able to get online to view your e-mail.”

Client: “Oh, dear. I can’t see my e-mail.”

Me: “Well, let’s see. Can you open up Internet Explorer for me and tell me what you see?”

Client: “Open what?”

Me: “Your browser, can you open up your browser?”

Client: “My…my…?”

Me: “What you click on when you want to browse the internet?”

Client: “I don’t use anything, I just turn my computer on, and it’s there.”

Me: “Okay. Do you see the little blue ‘e’ icon on your desktop?”

Client: “You mean I have to start writing letters again?”

Me: “I’m…what, I’m sorry?”

Client: “I don’t have any pens at my desk. I just want my e-mail again.”

Me: “No, ma’am, your desktop, on your computer screen. Can you click on the little blue ‘e’ on your computer screen for me?”

Client: “Oh, this is too much work. I’m too upset. Just send me my e-mail. Can’t you send me my e-mail?”

Me: “We…okay, ma’am. Can you tell me what color the lights are on your router right now?”

Client: “My what?”

Me: “The little box with green or possibly a couple of red lights on it right now - it’s most likely near your computer?”

Client: “Lights and boxes, boxes and lights, just get my e-mail for me.

Me: “My test is showing that you should be able to get online right now. Can you tell me what you’re seeing on your computer screen?”

Client: “It’s been the same thing for the last two hours.”

Me: “An error message?”

Client: “No, just stars. It’s black and moving stars.”

Me: “…Do you see your mouse next to your keyboard?”

Client: “Yes.”

Me: “Move it for me.”

Client: “Move it?”

Me: “Yes. Move it.”

Client: “My e-mail!”

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Why I Quit Taking Surveys

Readers of this page will know that I used to take a lot of online surveys. They were kind of fun, and put me into the running to win prizes that I never won or to earn points that expired before I could amass enough to acquire that nifty looking ballpoint pen or some other glitzy trinket. I stopped doing them, for the most part, because they had become repetitious, as well as...well, here’s this:

Perhaps you see the problem. The correct answer to the question is, in fact, zero. But zero is not an option, nor is the question optional. Because the originators of the survey failed to sufficiently think through their design, I am left with two choices:

1. Lie

2. Quit

I chose the latter, not only because of my legendary devotion to total honesty (made that up) but also because if the survey writers make a boneheaded mistake like this at the beginning of the process, the odds are not good that the rest of the undertaking will be any better.

Besides, I suddenly remembered why I had quit taking so many surveys.

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And Still They Say

Some more quotations. Once upon a time, nearly all of the quotations that I shared in these pages came from the wonderful newsletter A Word a Day, but now—thanks to the astounding power of Twitter—they come from all over this great land of ours. Better than e-mailed cartoons, even. Or pretty close.

“A witty saying proves nothing.” —Voltaire

“Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.” —Chinese Proverbs

“In youth we feel richer for every new illusion; in maturer years, for every one we lose.” —Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine, mystic (1782-1857)

“There is only one success—to be able to spend your life in your own way.” —Christopher Morley

“Gentleness in every kind of behavior: that is the praise of the wise man.” —Egyptian Proverb

“Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.” —George Bernard Shaw

“I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.” —Gerry Spence

“A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.” —Henrik Ibsen

“An expert is someone called in at the last minute to share the blame.” —Unknown

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” —Albert Einstein

“My life has a superb cast but I can’t figure out the plot. —Ashleigh Brilliant.

“We may have filled our lives so full of other things that we have no room to receive our blessings.” —Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather’s Blessings

“Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.” —Carl Zwanzig

“It’s not good to make sentimental journeys. You see the differences instead of the sameness.” —Mary Astor

“More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all of the theological arguments in the world, and more people have been driven from church by the hardness and ugliness of so-called Christianity than by all of the doubts in the world.” —William Barclay, theologian (1907-1978)

“Neuroscientists, developmental biologists, psychologists, social scientists, and researchers from every point of the scientific compass now know that play is a profound biological process.” —Stuart Brown, MD

“Every conversation is a form of jazz. The activity of instantaneous creation is as ordinary to us as breathing.” —Stephen Nachmanovitch

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” —Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)

“Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.” —Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“Care of the soul is a continuous process that concerns itself not so much with ‘fixing’ a central flaw as with attending to the small details of everyday life, as well as to major decisions and changes.” —Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul : A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

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Amusing. Also True.

Someone else posted this on Facebook. Not sure of its origins. Amusing enough, but it does tend to underscore the fact that there is real, serious stuff going on in the world, despite the tomfoolery of GOP presidential hopefuls, Faux News pundits, and the Great Unhinged.

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And Where Was the News?

Like millions of Americans (I presume), I was in front of the television set late last night awaiting the president's comments on the death of Osama bin Laden. After a certain amount of channel surfing, in which we saw a lot of talking heads all saying pretty much the same things, we ended up on CBS.

As I waited for the president, I also had Twitter running on my phone. Tellingly, it was Twitter that first brought me the news of bin Laden's demise. (Actually, it was my wife calling down from upstairs shortly before 10:00 p.m. CDT that a friend of our son had just texted him the news, prompting me to check Twitter. It would be several minutes before my e-mail started popping with news alerts from various sources.) By and by, tweets began to appear describing scenes of celebrating crowds that had gathered in front of the White House, cheering, chanting, and singing the national anthem.

And then CBS's White House bloke interrupts himself to say that his producer had just stepped outside and reported back that crowds had gathered, cheering, chanting, etc.

And my thought was, Where was the news?

Here we have a guy standing in front of a sign saying CBS News White House, and reporting that his producer ran outside to see what was going on. But where were the pictures? It seems to me that even two or three years ago, the reporter would have interrupted himself to throw to another reporter out on Pennsylvania Avenue, showing us the cheering, chanting, singing crowds. But that costs money, I suppose, so instead we have a talking head telling us what is going on outside the building.

I might as well have been listening on the radio.

Or reading it on Twitter.

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Damn! Forgot the Camera Again!

As will sometimes happen, local daily had an interesting letter in it this morning:

Where were the women and children?

In the Voices section of the April 23 Argus Leader was a picture of the Last Supper. The picture was a good one, but what it portrayed was completely inaccurate. Where were the women and children?

Everywhere that Jesus went, he was accompanied by women and children. He loved them. He cared for them. He always had them near.

Most biblical stories are about men. Two thousand-plus years ago, the roles of women were much restricted, and women were treated as inferior to men. The role of women in Christianity and Judaism was as if they were invisible, which resulted in men being all there was when the Bible was written. And, of course, we need to remember that the Bible was written by men.

In biblical usage the term “disciple” often means “student,” someone who believes in a person’s message and who tries to follow that person’s values and teachings. “Apostle” means “one who is sent forth as a messenger.” Using such definitions, all female and male followers of Jesus could be considered his disciples.

According to Wikipedia, there are at least 53 named women who were disciples and/or apostles of Jesus.

Not much has changed in the past 2,000-plus years. Women still are restricted and treated as inferior to men. If Jesus was physically here with us now, he would be appalled. It is past time that the good old boys woke up to the fact that without women, there would be “nothing” and “no one.”

I hope that the next time I see a picture of the Last Supper, I won’t have to ask, “Where are the women and children?”

Rev. Ed D. Crowson

Pierre

Letters such as this always provoke in me a chuckle. “The picture was a good one, but what it portrayed was completely inaccurate.”

Really? Completely inaccurate?

Am I to conclude, then, that the letter’s author was there?

No one, apparently, had the presence of mind to bring a camera to the Last Supper, so it’s hard to say who, precisely, was there.

The biblical accounts reference “the twelve,” but they don’t say “the twelve and nobody else,” nor do they say “the twelve and a bunch of women and children and two puppy dogs,” so that’s all up in the air.

Note that I am not quibbling with the Reverend’s comments on the sexist nature of the Bible, since I happen to agree with him on that score, for the most part. Nor am I arguing about whether any or all portions of the Bible actually happened, for that is irrelevant to the matter at hand.

Which is the claim made about the portrayal of the Last Supper. Viz., “completely inaccurate.”

Completely inaccurate?

Well, let’s see. Anyone reading the biblical record (the only source) would have to conclude that, for one, Jesus was there, and the twelve disciples, too—so that much of it must be accurate enough. Perhaps the picture is incomplete and other people, unmentioned for whatever reason or no reason at all, were indeed present. But to say that the rendition is “completely inaccurate” is...yep, completely inaccurate.

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What Does it Mean When You Pose the Question and Then Don't Answer it?

I’ve received notice from my credit union that its board has decided to merge with another local credit union. I’m not keen on the idea—my experience has been that when credit unions decide they need to be bigger, service suffers—and I think it should have been put to a vote of the members (evidently the other credit union’s members get to vote, but not ours), but what really caught my attention in the “information” packet I received in the mail was how little real information it contained. And what a dandy job its creators did of dancing around questions...even though they were the ones posing the questions!

Take this example, for, um, example:

Okay, good to know...but tell me: How much is the merger going to cost??

Sort of never gets around to saying. And much of what little id does say makes no sense. “...instead of two computer systems, we will operate on just one.” Uh-huh. Well, I can tell you how much money that will save the current members of my credit union: Precisely nothing at all. See, my credit union currently operates one computer system. The other credit union, a competitor, operates its own, as does every other credit union in town. What they do is not an expense to me or my fellow members, just as what wedo is not an expense for them. The same goes for “combining facilities, our insurance bond, card programs, and much more”—these are not duplicated expenditures, as implied, since currently the two businesses are completely separate. The idea that merging two independent businesses cuts duplicated expenses is ludicrous. It’s tantamount to saying that if I double my expenses, then cut them, I’ve “saved” money.

And while there may be “cost savings” in the future—real cost savings, I mean, not sleight-of-hand “savings”—it bothers me that not even ballpark guesstimates are being put forward. Absent any figures, it’s impossible to judge whether the board is indeed accurate in claiming that bigger will in fact be any better for the members.

Looks like I might have to drag myself to one of the “informational meetings,” even though it feels like a waste of time. We don’t get to vote, and it’s obvious where the big shots weigh in on the deal. Still, my longstanding motto is You have to make your own fun, so perhaps I’ll turn up and ask some salient questions.

Like, How much is the $!#@&% merger going to cost??

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Maybe Sex Sells After All!

I mentioned in passing nearly a month ago (“Catching My Eye,” March 26, that USA Today’s Tech Briefing had been touting for several weeks already the article “Free porn on ‘tube sites’ puts a big dent in industry”—and I expressed my wish that I had been keeping track from the beginning so I could report on exactly how many months now they’ve been plumping this patently salacious headline.

However, I can report that USA Today has yet to give up on it: Here’s a screenshot of this morning’s Tech Briefing e-mail, with the porn headline still enjoying its place of honor. I assume it’s there after all this time because it continues to generate clicks, so maybe it is indeed true that sex sells.

Let’s not fool ourselves: I’m not particularly prudish, as anyone who’s read one or more of my detective novels can attest. My issue here is with the blatantly prurient intent attached to running this same link day after day, week after week, for well over a month now. Enough, already!

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Even in the 21st Century!

Shocking, just shocking!

I was in a local supermarket last evening when I espied this sign in an area being remodeled:

I would have hoped that by this point in the 21st century we might be beyond such blatant discrimination, but apparently not!

No, I did not venture over to the north side of the building. The thought of those poor Chinese people crammed into one corner of the place was too sad for me to bear. 

To make the discrimination even more odious, the supermarket seems to have done away with its Chinese deli, which used to be located where the sign now is! Odd.

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A Prepositional Bee in the Syntactical Bonnet

Here’s an excerpt from the excerpt in today’s Delanceyplace.com e-mail, “The precision and clarity of Latin.” Given my profession and my inclinations, I’ve read many things about the strange histories of English language “rules,” but I’d never come across this anecdote before:

“Why is it ‘wrong’ to end a sentence with a preposition? ... Who, upon seeing a cake in the office break room, says, ‘For whom is this cake?’ instead of ‘Who’s the cake for?’ Where did this rule come from?

 

“The answer will surprise even most English teachers: John Dryden, the seventeenth-century poet less well known as an early, influential stickler. In a 1672 essay, he criticized his literary predecessor Ben Jonson for writing ‘The bodies that these souls were frightened from.’ Why the prepositional bee in Dryden’s syntactical bonnet? This pseudo-rule probably springs from the same source many others do: the classical languages. Dryden said he liked to compose in Latin and translate into English, as he valued the precision and clarity he believed Latin required of writers. The preposition-final construction is impossible in Latin. Hence: it is impossible in English. Confused by his logic? Linguists remain so to this day. But once Dryden proclaimed the rule, it made its way into the first generation of English usage books roughly a century later and thence into the minds of two hundred years of English teachers and copy editors.

 

“The rule has no basis in clarity (‘Who’s that cake for?’ is perfectly clear); history (it was made up from whole cloth); literary tradition (Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Samuel Johnson, Lord Byron, Henry Adams, Lewis Carroll, James Joyce, and dozens of other great writers have violated it); or purity (it isn’t native to English but probably stolen from Latin; clause-final prepositions exist in English’s cousin languages such as Danish and Icelandic). Many people know that the Dryden rule is nonsense. From the great usage-book writer Henry Fowler in the early twentieth century, usage experts began to caution readers io ignore it. The New York Times flouts it. The ‘rule’ should be put to death, but it may never be. Even those who know it is ridiculous observe it for fear of annoying others.”

This excerpt is from the book You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity by Robert Lane Greene. Read the entire excerpt at Delanceyplace.com.

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The Candidate Candidate

Recently I have been musing upon the notion that there is a new (in my lifetime, at least) breed of presidential candidate—for want of a better word—stalking the land. We have had in the past the Comic Candidate (e.g., Pat Paulsen), the Goofball Candidate (e.g., Lyndon LaRouche), the Once Relevant Candidate (e.g., Harold Stassen), the Irrelevant Candidate (e.g., Ralph Nader)...but to my knowledge we have not had until recently what I’ve come to think of as the Candidate Candidate.

Harvey Dunn, The Harvest Orator, South Dakota Art Museum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like someone who is “famous for being famous,” the Candidate Candidate is a candidate for no other reason than to be a candidate. He or she may or may not be serious about wanting to be president, but they seem to have little desire to do the actual work necessary to become president.

I suspect that Fred Dalton Thompson may have been the first Candidate Candidate. He seemed to want to be president, all right, but for no reason other than to be president. He stood for nothing, nothing that I could discern, at least. Early on there were some vague Reaganesque pronouncements and comparisons, but they never went anywhere—largely, I imagine, because Thompson had no depth. Perhaps the expectation was that the ghost of Reagan would cast some sort of aura around him that would propel him into the Oval Office. Guess not.

The consummate Candidate Candidate has got to be Sarah Palin, of course. Some might say she belongs in the Once Relevant Candidate category, but I dispute that she ever was relevant. No doubt those who, inexplicably, shoved her onto McCain’s ticket must have felt she had relevancy, but I believe they were sadly mistaken. And I believe history has shown me to be correct in my belief. Harold Stassen, who was, alas, something of a joke when I was a kid—this old guy from Minnesota who sought the Republican nomination every four years even though he had no chance at all of coming anywhere near the ticket—but he had a distinguished and important career in public service, not the least as a district attorney and three-time governor of Minnesota. (Yeah, he resigned midway through his third term, in 1943...but he did so in order to go on active duty with the Naval Reserve, not to have a half-baked TV series and go collect speaking fees.) Stassen was once relevant, and big time; Palin not so much.

But now a new contender emerges: Donald Trump. Why is he running? What does he hope to gain? Is it a publicity stunt? A circus act? Is he serious—and, if so, about what?

The man puts me in mind of a Fred Dalton Thompson with deep pockets. He may well want to be President...but beyond that, well, what is he? He seems only to be a Candidate Candidate—on the hustings for the sake of being on the hustings, apparently with no other agenda in mind. Eventually there will be a book deal, of course. Maybe another television show. But beyond that...as Gertrude Stein once said of her childhood hometown, “There is no there there.” So it is with Trump, to date. There is no him there.

It’s easy, and fun, to look upon Candidate Candidates as harmless buffoons, as a sideshow, to use the term most frequently applied to Trump. But there’s the real danger that one of them could catch fire, could in in fact end up in a position where he or she could do some real and lasting damage. “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people,” said H.L. Mencken, and he was and is right. You get enough people to believe that so-and-so is “one of us” or “tells it like it is” or whatever the sound bite of the day may be, and trouble will follow. In fact, you don’t actually need people so much, thanks to the likes of Fox Noise and the Koch Brothers.

Where’s Harold Stassen now that we need him. Hell, where’s Pat Paulsen?

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You Mean I Have to Share the Road with THIS Jerk??

This photo hardly does justice to the subject, but as you can tell, the circumstances were far from ideal: It was 7:29 this morning, there was a misty-drizzly action going on, and the light at 37th and Minnesota had just changed to green, meaning that the driver of the Volkswagen Beetle in front of me was compelled to floor it in order to, I dunno, get ahead of all the Saturday morning 7:29 a.m. traffic you see here.

Nor is the angle as advantageous as I would like, but perhaps it’s enough to set the scene: A few blocks farther south, this Beetle came flying past me in the right-hand lane. The speed limit at that point is 35; this driver was doing at least 40, maybe 45. Which is fine, except that the driver had to be about as blind as a blindfolded bat. You see the condition of the car’s back window? Well, except for a porthole scratched out in the side window and another on the driver’s side of the windshield, all of the car’s windows were in like condition.

Annoyingly, a few blocks north we encountered a southbound police car, but there was no joy there: The officer seemed not to notice that the driver’s field of vision was seriously compromised (a fancy way of saying nonexistent), and that he or she was continuing to drive in the 40-to-45-miles-per-hour range when the posted speed limit in this stretch is a mere 30 miles per hour.

Upon some reflection, I think I’d rather take my chances with a texting driver than this one.

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Or Second. Or Third. Or So.

This evening I happened to catch this ad for Law and Order: LA (a show which, just a couple of weeks ago I wondered aloud about the continued existence of...obviously having been mesmerized by the one and only episode of it I watched last fall).

What struck me was the apparent ignorance of the network, or the producers, or an advertising agency, or whoever wrote and approved these lines:

For the first time in twenty years, a Law and Order detective will fall.

Oh? Really?

If by “fall” they mean “will die,” then they obviously have forgotten the very first L&O lead detective, Sgt. Max Greevey, who was murdered in the 1991 episode “Confession.”

I imagine they would argue that Capt. Danny Ross, who was killed at the beginning of the ninth season of Law and Order: Criminal Intent does not qualify as a “detective”--but the fact that he was killed while working undercover sure makes it feel like he was another L&O detective to “fall.”

Perhaps there have been others as well--I don’t follow Law and Order: Special Victims Unit--but in any event, I’m thinking it’s not exactly accurate to portray this apparent killing-off of a Law and Order franchise detective as a “first.” More of a “second” or even “third.”

But, who's counting?

Still Standing. For Now

So I typed in my address and got this map, indicating the state of the bridges within 10 miles of my house.

I presume the green icons represent bridges that are in decent shape (a helpful graphic should have a complete legend); the red ones, obviously, are not. Although the green icons, thankfully, outnumber the red ones, there's still a distressing number on red ones. Doesn’t fill a guy with a lot of confidence … especially since the red icon right next to the “pin” on the map is a bridge I use several times a week.

Amuse and/or frighten yourself by visiting http://t4america.org/resources/bridges/.

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