The Year's Worst Commentary

I'm not really a big fan of celebrating the New Year. The actual holiday always strikes me as a waste of time - It's a fresh new year! That's why everything's closed and you can't do anything! - and I have no interest in staying up until midnight for any reason unless I can sleep in until noon the next day. (I suppose that New Year's Day works well for the hangover crowd, but as a teetotalling Mormon with kids who jump on him before 8:00 AM, I can't do much with that.) We did watch an unexpected rerun of "Rudolph's Shiny New Near" on television last night, and it's just as delightfully dopey as I remember it, but beyond that one weird Christmasish special, the celebration of the calendar's relentless trek onward leaves me cold.

I do, however, enjoy all the best/worst lists that crop up this time of year. They've lost some of their luster with me these days, in that I've usually only seen one or two of the movies that show up on those lists, and rarely, if ever, have I seen or heard any of the TV shows, music, or other entertainment offerings.

I do, however, read a lot of commentary. And I stumbled across one item that showed up on the Internet yesterday that qualifies as the most bone-headed assessment of the world today that I have read in many a moon. It's by noted film critic Roger Ebert, and it's just all sorts of dumb. It's grandiosely stupid; asininity on a global scale. Allow me to share excerpts with you, complete with running commentary/mockery.

It's entitled "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold," and right at the outset, you know that the British spelling of the word "centre" means this is seriously self-important business. It also black geometric shapes that end with a red octagon, which makes far more sense than the commentary itself.

It begins thusly:

It's all coming to pieces, isn't it -- the world we live in, the continuity we thought we could count on, the climate, the economy, the fragile peace. The 20th century was called "the American Century," with some reason. I do not believe the 21st century will belong to anybody, and it may not last for 100 years of human witness.

You see where this is going, don't you? Maybe not. Sure, it's apocalyptic, but here at the outset, you don't get the full flavor of what it is that's going to ensure that America will fall and that humans won't be here to witness the outset of the 22nd Century. Indeed, Ebert makes some token references to issues that are legitimately frightening - Iran with nukes, a collapsing economy - in the hopes that you don't notice the real boogieman that has him clutching his blankie and sucking his one thumb up on those dark, windy Chicago nights.

So let's start with paragraph #2 from Ebert's ponderous thoughts.

The weather is unhinged. It is no longer a question of global warming. It is a question of what in the hell is happening? I do not have to rehearse for you the details of this horrible American autumn, and a winter not yet half over. The tornadoes, the hurricanes, the floods, the blizzards, the wild fires, the heat waves, the water shortages, the power blackouts.

What? Winter is not yet half over? Noooooooo!

I think rehearsing the details might be a good idea, Rog, if only because I can recall nothing about this past year that is markedly different from life on Earth for millenia. Winter doesn't end in December not because the planet is spiralling out of control, but because - let me think - Winter never ends in December.

The other reason, of course, that it's no longer a question of global warming is that the globe isn't warming, and it hasn't since 1998. The cooling trend of the past two years has knocked out almost a century's worth of warming, so alarmists like Ebert have to cling to other straws if they're going to make us tremble in our booties. And so, to scare us fully, Ebert references events that did not happen. What was so horrible about this past autumn? It was a relatively mild hurricane season, coming off of a hurricane season the year previously that was one of the most tepid on record, despite the warnings from Gore and Co. who insisted that Katrina was the harbinger of deadly hurricanes for decades to come.

Tornadoes? Floods? Blizzards? Wild fires? Heat waves? They have ever been with us, and this year wasn't any different. We can do next to nothing to stop them, and, despite Ebert's frothing at the mouth, we can't do much to start them, either. As for water shortages and power blackouts, those are less nature and more nabobbery - the product of Leftist environmental political hackery that Ebert himself applauds.

You want more reliable power and water, Roger? Dam up some rivers. Drill, baby, drill.

The demagoguery continues, shifting temporarily to international events:

The economy is going to get worse. We may have no idea how much worse. The greed and corruption at the economy's core reached a scale unimaginable at the time of the Great Depression.

Nonsense. Those Roaring Twenties tycoons were plenty greedy. And I couldn't care less.

Look, I can't find too many silver linings in our current meltdown, either. But I do know that ignoring the real causes of this thing is useful in scapegoating, but not much else. Ebert attributes this all to "greed and corruption at the economy's core" and later cites "$100 million bonuses" given to the CEOs of failing banks. Ebert doesn't know it, but he's right in line with John "Beavis" McCain, who thinks the entire federal deficit is the result of earmarks.

Earmarks are an easy target, but they account for a tiny fraction of total spending. As crass as massive CEO bonuses are, they remain an infinitesimal part of the current debacle, which is the result, not of greed and corruption as Ebert defines it, but of well-intentioned, kind-hearted Leftists insisting that billions upon billions of dollars be loaned to people without the means to pay it back. Ebert no doubt applauded that compassion when its consequences weren't visible; now that the law of supply and demand is being enforced, Ebert struggles clumsily to shift the blame.

Ebert then proposes we should all be the Amish, growing our own food and spurning modernity, which may limit Ebert's movie review choices. He sees all kinds of weird scenarios where the oil supply falls apart overnight and we're drawn into every nuclear war imaginable.

But it's global warming that gives him real fits.

I wonder if we are living in the End of Days. I do not mean that in a biblical sense. I mean that we seem to be irrevocably screwing things up. In the case of the global warming problem, we may have already done so. Please, please, don't tell me global warming is Al Gore's fantasy. I am reminded of a great line by Saul Bellow. A dying man tells his brother: "Look for me in the weather reports."

As for me, I am reminded of a great line by Rodney Dangerfield: "What, did somebody step on a duck?" It makes about as much sense as the Bellows line does, and it's funnier, besides.

It's nice that he pointed out that he wasn't speaking Biblically, because a modicum of faith in something bigger than Mr. Ebert might temper the rhetorical extremes here. But how do you respond to something this vapid? Perhaps if he had said "pretty please with sugar on top," I might have been persuaded. But since the evidence of the globe's actual temperature flies in the face of Ebert's pleas, all he can do is whine.

And now witness what he whines about in the beginning of the next paragraph!

Earthquakes. Tsunamis. Typhoons. Volcanoes. Melting icecaps. Dead zones in the sea.

Excuse me? Earthquakes?! Volcanoes?! Would you mind telling me how reducing carbon emissions can keep tectonic plates from shifting? Would Mt. St. Helens have stayed dormant if everyone drove a hybrid? This is Chicken Little-type stuff. How can anyone take it seriously?

It's earthquakes, incidentally, that cause tsunamis, and we covered the mildness of this year's typhoons earlier in the post. As for the melting icecaps, it's pure fiction, especially in the south, where the Antarctic ice is noticeably thickening.

He then whines that nobody really reported on the fact that there was a power blackout on Oahu while Obama was vacationing there, which Ebert attributes to a freak lightning storm. Even assuming that's true, I think the reason nobody cared is that the power came back on. We're far more resilient than Ebert gives us credit for, and so is Spaceship Earth.

His final plea:

If you are a member of the U.S. Congress, you should not give a damn if you are a Democrat or a Republican. You should discard ideology and partisanship. You should be searching only for what works, or gives promise of working. You should be listening to the best counsel of the wisest people you can find. This is no time for playing to the crowd. That is all over with. This is the hour to seek what might lead us back from the brink.

This is like that Saturday Night Live character who comes on the news and screams "Fix it!" over and over again. It's supposed to be funny when he does it; Ebert is unintentionally funny here. You want to do "what works, or gives promise of working," Rog? Okay. Open up the Outer Continental Shelf and drill like a madman. Build nuclear plants and more oil refineries. Stop worrying that leaving the lights on overnight is somehow going to make a volcano explode, because it isn't. Lend money only to people who can afford to pay it back. Let uncompetitive businesses fail so that the money is freed up for business that succeeds. And use big sticks and big guns to scare the bejeebers out of anyone who might want to blow us up.

All of that stuff works, Roger. It's stuff you hate, much the same way you seem to hate the very world you live in, what with its typhoons and earthquakes and unhinged weather and all.

Happy New Year.

Now what?

So as family members in Utah discovered at Christmas, I finished my novel and had five copies printed by Lulu.com, the vanity publishing house that has produced Languatron's masterworks over the years. I wanted to print more copies, but I didn't want to do it until I saw what it would look like in print. The thing comes in at 102,000 words and 400 pages in a too-small 11-point Garamond type.

My parents have one copy, which they have subsequently lost. My wife has one, which she's read and marked up, and her sister has one, which she has read, along with her 16-year-old son. My 17-year-old nephew has read it, and everyone has noticed the various typos and crap, but for the most part, reviews have been positive.

The cover looks like this:

I drew it myself! If you're impressed, you shouldn't be. I'm not sure if I'm set on this particular title, either. I'm still open to suggestions.

Anyway, I'm happy to provide people who want it with a digital copy, but I think it's easier and more satisfyingly read in print. After fixing some typos and some minor revisions, I'm going to print up another batch and give that one away to interested parties. Rest assured that the new ones will have a more readable font.

I can't tell you how invaluable all the comments and such have been in the course of preparing this thing. If you doubt me, witness the blurbs I put on the back cover:

You can click on that image to get a larger version. I have lovingly dedicated the book to anyone willing to bother to read it all the way through.

If you want to read the thing digitally, I can send you an electronic copy, but it's much more satisfying to read the thing in print. I can whip up a Kinkos-style wirebound 8 1/2 x 11 version quickly for anyone anxious to read it right away. Or you can wait for the secound round of vanity published versions, which will probably come off the presses in late January.

But here's the thing - what do I do next? Any literary agents out there who have read some of this online and are convinced of the Genius of the Cornell? Getting the book disgorged from my brain was a long and tedious exercise, but it's done. I fear that getting the book actually published may prove to be a more daunting task. If anyone has any ideas as to how to jumpstart that process, I'm all ears.

Christmas Report

Two days before Christmas, I was discussing our Christmas Eve celebration with my father. The celebration takes place up at my parents’ home, and Cornells from hither and yon gather to eat, yak, and listen to little kids sing and/or play their piano recital pieces. The performance part of the Christmas Eve program ranges from the wildly talents (i.e. my kids) to the somewhat talented (i.,e. most of the other kids) to the spectacularly untalented (i.e. weird kids I don’t know.) I asked my father if I could use the occasion to croon “The Miracle of the Christmas Poo” to the rest of the Cornell clan.

“No,” he said flatly.

“But I sang it for a ward party, and it went over OK.”

“No,” he said again.

“But I don’t get into describing the poo per se…”

“No.”

“But…”

“No.”

I sang it anyway.

After considerable goading from my sisters, I changed the line that said “I dreamed of pretty flowers” to “I dreamed of all my presents.” Heather O., who was present for the performance, welcomed the alteration and gave the whole thing a thumbs up. Afterward, my father stood up and said, “In most families, a story like that would be written down and buried in a journal somewhere.” Not with the Cornells, baby!

Christmas itself was delightful, as always. Readers of this blog will take special note of the gifts I received from my sister wbpraw, who gave me a notepad with a caricature of Yul Brynner in the corner that said “From the desk of Stallion Cornell.” I also received a set of address labels with the same pic and the return address “Stallion Cornell/The Hearts of All Decent Folk” printed on top, followed by my home address which I will not reveal here. She also gave me a deck of Yul Brynner playing cards, and, my favorite, a t-shirt for my youngest son with a picture of Yul Brynner in pirate garb and the name “Stalliondo!” written in bold letters.

Stalliondo does not fully appreciate how cool this was, but I do, and I thank them publicly therefore.

For the most part, Christmas came and went without incident, although I can’t say the same for my son Corbin’s faith in Santa Claus.

As I’ve chronicled here, I believe in Santa Claus, and I think Christmas is much more fun for other who do, too. Cleta, our oldest, admitted that a conversation with a carpool friend in 1st grade made believing difficult for her, and evidence suggests that Chloe is simply putting up a good front. Three-year-old Stalliondo believes, I guess, but he’s still pretty unclear on the whole concept.

“Santa’s coming because it’s my birthday?” he would ask. No, we patiently explained, people get presents on Christmas, too.

“Christmas is my birthday? I’ll be four?”

No, Christmas is not your birthday. You're still three. We told him this many times, but he didn’t believe us. But he did believe Santa was coming, so we took what we could get.

The kids who are on the cusp, however, are seven-year-old twins Corbin and Cornelius.

Cornelius didn’t say or do anything to indicate that he was uncertain, but Corbin asked a lot of questions, up to and including, “Are you Santa?” When he asked this of his mother, she said, as I would have, “I believe in Santa Claus.” That wasn’t the answer Corbin was looking for, but it’s the one she repeatedly gave, and it didn’t satisfy him at all.

On Christmas Eve, we faced another problem.

In Mrs. Cornell’s family, every family member gets to open one present on Christmas Eve. This was heresy in the Cornell family, and I resisted this tradition infecting my own progeny for as long as I could. However, Santa used to leave the Cornell children a new set of pajamas. So, as a compromise measure, we’ve arranged to have our two cats give us each a new pair of pajamas every year, which is the one present we get to open the night before Christmas. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s one everyone can live with. And it gives me a reason not to hate my cats.

As we performed this annual ritual, Corbin came up to Mrs. Cornell, and, in a very sheepish voice, said, “There’s something I have to tell you.”

See, the goal of Mr. and Mrs. Cornell for the past several years has been to get preparations for Santa’s visit out of the way prior to the wee hours of Christmas morning. In light of that goal, I had taken the kids roller skating – another Cornell Christmas Eve tradition – so she could accomplish certain wrapping procedures that Santa specifies. (In our house, Santa always uses a wrapping paper different from the ones our own presents come wrapped in.)

Well, it turns out that Corbin had walked into our walk-in closet, discovering a mound of wrapped presents that had not yet been placed under the tree. He wasn’t sure why they were there, and he left quickly, as he sensed he was seeing something he wasn’t supposed to have seen.

As it turned out, the Cornells were up past 1:00 AM redoing some of the wrapping preparations that had been made previously, in the hopes that Corbin wouldn’t lose faith. I even made a trip to Walgreens in my new pajamas, only to discover everyone in the neighborhood was there to greet me.

We made great efforts. Yet I doubt we were successful.

Corbin asked his “Are you Santa?” question the next morning. He also overheard us discussing one of the presents that Santa brought. Mrs. Cornell told Heather O. that, “We got these blue BYU wigs for Corbin and Cornelius,” not realizing that Corbin was within earshot.

“You got them!” Corbin said, pouncing on the admission. “That’s what you said! Not Santa! You!”

“I said ‘we got them,’” Mrs. Cornell explained. “You know, like, ‘we got them for Christmas.’ And we got them for Christmas because Santa brought them.”

That didn’t quite work, either.

I don’t think there’s much we can do to prevent them from growing skeptical. And I’m somewhat suspicious that Cornelius’ silence on the issue means he’s already gone over to the other side. That’s all right. People have to go through decades of skepticism before they start believing again.

And there’s always Stalliondo. Santa brings him presents on his birthday, you know.

More Christmas Movies

I'm up early on Christmas Eve, so I thought I'd blog quickly and then avoid the wrath of a wife who thinks I ought to be spending time with children instead of my computer. I shan't be blogging on Christmas Day, unless absolutely necessary. (What is wrong with me?)

Questions were raised in the comments about other Christmas movies, such as Scrooged, which is arguably the most rancid Christmas movie ever made. Bill Murray is usually very good at making unlikable characters likable, but he can't do the impossible. This movie is so nasty, so mean-spirited, that Murray's ultimate redemption rings utterly hollow. This came out when I was a missionary in Scotland, so I thankfully never saw it in theatres. I turn the channel every time it tries to inflict itself on me on television. 

Miracle on 34th Street is a favorite of many, but I've never gotten into it. Natalie Wood's character always strikes me as something of a spoiled brat, and the movie feels dated in a way that It's a Wonderful Life doesn't. The remake is entirely forgettable, although Richard Attenborough makes for a very twinkly Santa. 

I don't much like The Nightmare Before Christmas, either, although the animation is delightfully creepy. It's fun to see such elaborate stop-motion stuff made before the age of CGI. The story is pretty thin, though, and Danny Elfman's songs are surprisingly leaden and clumsy. The whole thing works better as an amusement park ride, which is what happens to Disneyland's Haunted Mansion every Christmas season. Unlike the movie, it only lasts about fifteen minutes, which is pretty much all I can take. 

My kids are fans of The Polar Express, which is a great piece of whimsy on paper but a bloated mess on screen. The children's book is about twenty pages long, which can't sustain a feature length movie. So they pad that sucker out with lots and lots of business that gives the whole enterprise a cluttered feel. Lots of people complain about the computer animation and the deadness of the character's eyes, but that doesn't bother me so much as the absence of any real justification for stretching the thing out over an hour and a half. 

Jim Carrey's Grinch movie has the same problem and an even worse solution. Instead of just adding Hamburger Helper to bulk up the story, they add a new, tedious backstory that contradicts everything that was so delightful about Dr. Seuss' original. Suddenly, the Whos aren't the kind, gentle creatures that Seuss intended them to be; they're consumerist Nazis, while the Grinch is a misunderstood outcast in yet another precious and preachy Hollywood fable about tolerance. Blech. And it doesn't help that Carrey is insufferable in the title role. 

Foodleking mentioned the Governator's Jingle All the Way, which is not worth mentioning. Home Alone, however, is worth mentioning, and it has much to recommend it, but it's not nearly as family friendly as you might think. Was it really necessary to have Macaulay Culkin call one of the burglar's a horse's ass? And the comic violence goes so far over the top as to be painful, not cartoonish. Still, a lot of it is pretty funny, and the subplot with the old man and his estranged son is handled with restraint, something missing from most of Hollywood's seasonal offerings. 

To sum up, the best Christmas movies are, in order:

1. It's a Wonderful Life

2. A Christmas Story

3. Elf

You can pretty much avoid just about everything else. 

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Movies

I thought I had more to say about Christmas specials, but reading back over yesterday's post, I realized I had pretty much covered it. Year Without a Santa Claus is probably my favorite of the stop motion thingees, but they went and ruined it with a live action version a couple of years ago.

Which brings me to today's subject: Christmas movies. Most of them really, really stink.

I can't stand movies where it's all about fights and Christmas debacles and things breaking. I saw the promos for Four Christmases and decided I'd rather have my bowels removed with an ice cream scoop before having to sit through something like that. Real Christmas celebrations are hectic enough without having to derive entertainment from the sufferings of others. Which is why I've never understood the appeal of Christmas Vacation, which I rewatched the other day with the ad agency that sent me the urine-themed Christmas card.

What about Christmas Vacation is funny?

It begins with Chevy Chase, who is easily the least talented Saturday Night Live alum with a movie career. Chase's contempt for the characters he plays is so unwatchably smug that I can't understand who would find it entertaining. As a real-life family man, I have no patience for watching Chase attempt to mock me without benefit of wit or affection. Every second he's on screen is like nails on a chalkboard.

The rest of the movie is exhausting. Things explode. Things break. Cats are fried. We get ten minutes on emptying the s---ter in an RV. It's busy, not funny. And it's mean. Old people are all buffoons. Christmas sentiment is ridiculed. Religion is a punchline. No thanks.

Much better is A Christmas Story, which, unlike Chase's atrocity, actually has affection for the things it mocks. Darren McGavin is delightful as the crusty midwestern Dad, even though he's too old for the part by about thirty years. The humor here is much gentler, yet much more on target. It feels like a real Christmas, even though it's entirely unlike any Christmas I've ever had.

I also love It's a Wonderful Life for all the reasons everyone loves it, but I also love the Beavis and Butthead version where an angel shows Butthead how much better the world would be without him. I enjoy Patrick Stewart's version of A Christmas Carol, mainly because I saw him perform his one-man version live back in the early '90s. Most versions of A Christmas Carol aren't really that good, although, surprisingly, obne of my favorites is Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, which has some fun songs and a very faithful rendition of the classic tale. I know most of the songs from the musical Scrooge, but I can't stand sitting through the actual movie, because the songs stop the action and just get in the way.

I also heartily recommend Elf, the best Christmas movie of the 21st century, due mainly to its deft and breezy scripty, as well as the flawless performances by all players involved, especially Will Ferrell in the title role. Ferrell is the anti-Chase - he plays Buddy the Elf without a whiff of cynicism. James Caan as his father centers the movie with his worldly disdain, and the whole thing works better than it should.

Anyway, I'm supposed to be cleaning the house. So Merry Christmas.

Christmas Specials

I watched the new Muppet Christmas special with the whole clan the other night, and I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. It was silly, hokey, and unabashedly sentimental, and A-list stars like Nathan Lane and Uma Thurman showed up and cheerfully made fools out of themselves. (Actually, are they considered A-list? I can never tell anymore. And I've never thought Uma Thurman was attractive. But I've never thought Nathan Lane was attractive, either.)

It got me thinking about the Christmas specials of yore that I enjoyed so much every season, and I'm surprised that the same ones that were popular when I was a kid are still the only ones my kids enjoy. We have most of them on DVD, and the ones with the crummiest animation are the ones we love the most. A Charlie Brown Christmas is so clumsily delightful after all these years, because of its flaws, not in spite of them. The children who are voicing the characters have no idea what they're saying half the time. Watch as Sally says "All I want is what's coming to me. All I want is my fair share," and you'll realize that the little girl probably learned the lined phonetically. If that's the best take they have, I'd be interested in seeing what they left on the cutting room floor.

Of course, Linus' recitation of the Luke chapter 2 is by the far the most moving moment in all Christmaspecialdom, and the kid who played Linus, now a man in his late forties, admits it all went over his head when he recorded the part, and now it moves him to tears every time he sees it. The special was considered very innovative for its time - no laugh track, a jazz music soundtrack, and real kids doing the voices instead of Caillou-style adult abominations. This one shows its age more than any of the the others, and yet it never gets old.

I'd say that Charlie Brown is my favorite special, except we just watched The Grinch Who Stole Christmas for the first time this year - the Boris Karloff masterpiece, not the Jim Carrey nightmare - and the thing is flawless. Absolutely flawless. The narration, the animation, Max the kind-hearted, put-upon dog who gets whipped mercilessly - imagine doing THAT in today's PC world - and, above all, the music.

"You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch," makes me laugh out loud every time I hear it. The lines are subversively brilliant: "You have termites in your smile," "Your heart is full of unwashed socks/Your soul is full of gunk" and, of course, "I wouldn't touch you with a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole." This special also manages to be with religious without really being religious. Christ is never mentioned or even implied - all it says is that Christmas doesn't come from a store, and that it's "a little bit more." It's up to the viewer to decide what that little bit more is, but the story of redemption and forgiveness fits perfectly with the Christian tradition wthout offending the nonreligious. It's the most spiritual secular Christmas story of them all.

I have a soft spot in my heart for all the Rankin/Bass stop motion specials, although for reasons other than they were intended. Watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer again and marvel at what a racist Santa is in the very beginning when he discovers Rudolph's unique schnozz. Gay characters abound in these pieces - Rudolph's Herbie the Dentist, the Burgermeister Meisterburger's faux Smithers character in Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and the squabbling elf lovers Jingle and Jangle Bells from The Year Without a Santa Claus, which also has dueling gay stepbrothers Snow Miser and Heat Miser, which implies that their mommy, Mother Nature herself, is a swinging divorcee.

Anyway, I'm out of time and I've got to go. Merry Christmas - more tomorrow, hopefully.

Get Ready for Senator Franken

I have a deep, abiding faith that there is a God. But as Al Franken is now just two votes away from stealing a US Senate seat, atheists could make a pretty strong case with me right about now.

On Election Night, Coleman was over 700 votes ahead. Then, suddenly, ballots started appearing from out of nowhere, and - surprise! - Franken gained over 500 votes. One jurisdiction came up with 100 ballots, all for Franken. The miraculous number of "corrections" and "updates" in Franken's favor is greater than all other ballot corrections in the state for all other Minnesota races combined.

Consider the case of the precinct in Minneapolis where one packet of 133 votes was fed through the machine twice on election night. When the recount demonstrated that those votes didn't exist in the physical world, Franken succeeded in getting the election night tally included in the recount, netting him 46 votes. Fine, Al. Does Coleman get to choose a precinct where the original count trumps the recount, too? No. The vote-stealing ratchet only goes one way.

Today, after reviewing a number of challenges, Coleman's lead has dwindled to two votes. Two votes. And Franken has succeeded in opening a can of worms by getting the state to consider a bunch of "improperly" rejected absentee ballots, most of which will likely come from Franken-friendly jurisdictions. Two votes ain't gonna cut it.

Guys, this is voter fraud. Blatant voter fraud. And nobody seems to care. And the most venomous, nasty human being to run for federal office in my lifetime is soon going to be a U.S. Senator as a result of this crap .

Merry freakin' Christmas.

I've screwed up the Moist Board...

I updated the Moist Board from phpBB3 3.0.0. to 3.0.4, and now it doesn't work. 

Hopefully, this is but a temporary glitch. 

Christmas Poo in Concert

So I recorded a rough demo of "The Miracle of the Christmas Poo." It's a big hit with my Facebook friends, so I thought I'd be bold enough to share it here. I'd like to do a legit studio recording thereof, but I doubt I'll have time before Christmas. 

I have since discovered, however, that South Park has a character named Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo (pictured left.)  My song is in no way affiliated with South Park, and it saddens me that anyone would mix poo and Christmas in such a manner, mainly because it means I didn't think of it first.

Anyway, without further ado, I give you Daniel H. Wells starring in ...

The Miracle of the Christmas Poo...

Cleta and Christmas Scatology

It’s getting very hard to keep up with this blog as Christmas gets ever closer, as preparations for Christmas start becoming more and more like a full time job. The decorations and lights are up; the cards are sent; about 75% of the presents are bought. But now there are the parties and the neighbor gifts and the recitals and the choir concerts and everything that makes this season so blastedly cheerful. I’m not complaining; I’m just making excuses. (I’m not sure which is worse.)

I did find time on Saturday, however, to immortalize my own Christmas miracle in song, which made its debut at the ward Christmas party as “The Miracle of the Christmas Poo.” I’m going to record a version, and I’ll be happy to post that here on my blog. (I sincerely doubt, however, that such a recording will take place prior to Christmas.)  I’m pretty sure it’s the first Christmas tune to combine yuletide cheer and excrement with faith-building results. I’m absolutely sure that it’s the first time such a song has been sung in a church. I’d like the ward choir to come up with their own arrangement, but that’s proving to be a tough sell.

As I get older, however, I become more of an embarrassment to my children. I practiced this little ditty throughout the day, and my oldest daughter Cleta was morbidly aghast.

“You can’t sing that in public!” she wailed.

“Why not?” I said.

“Because it’s about poo!”

That should have been self-evident, I suppose, but I’m not sure it’s an automatic disqualifier. I asked if I could sing Spinal Tap’s “Christmas with the Devil” instead, whereupon I was told to choose something “more appropriate.” So by that standard, I’m on solid ground.

I note, however, that Cleta’s aversion to Christmas scatology is hard won. Not long before I started crooning of Stalliondo’s dirty diaper, we received a Christmas card from an ad agency I work with that had a faux urine stain on the front of the envelope. On the cover of the actual card were four members of the agency standing in front of snow banks with phrases like “Happy Holidays,” “Feliz Navidad,” and “Season’s Greetings” written in yellow behind them. The fourth member just stood there looking angry, and behind her was a big yellow splotch. When you opened the card, a line of people in front of a snowy cabin stood with their backs to you, with their names written in yellow-snow cursive directly in front of them.

The headline of the card? “Wizzing you a Merry Christmas.”

Cleta has been hanging all of our cards up in the kitchen, but this particular one didn’t make it on the wall.

Almost-12-year-old Cleta is becoming a bit of a Grinch, announcing that Santa Claus is a “stalker” who should not be encouraged. So we let her know that Santa doesn’t bring presents to those who do not believe in him, so she dutifully wrote her letter to Santa Claus, thereby allowing her greed to get the better of her skepticism.

Still, the letter was not without its Grinchy charms.

It begins thusly:

Santa!

Hello, my parents say you need a letter. Can’t you just read minds or something?

She proceeds to detail her wish list, and then she closes with the following two post-scripts:

P.S. If you can see us when you’re sleeping, and you know when we’re awake, what was I doing at 11:47 AM on February 9, 2008? I expect an answer by Dec. 25. Buh-bye!

P.P.S. Does Rudolph take steroids to make his nose glow?

I have no idea where she gets this from. 

Stallion's Tickets

Last night, we were watching the news, and they said that Wicked tickets were going on sale this morning at 7:00 AM at the Capitol Theatre Box Office in downtown Salt Lake City. I saw Wicked in the Land of Languatron early this year, so I wasn't all that concerned for myself, but Mrs. Cornell has been dying to see it forever, and both my daughters have memorized every note of the CD. So I decided that I'd get up bright and early to get to the box office right at 7:00 AM. 

Apparently, several other people had the same idea. Lots of people, in fact. Many of them had started camping out the night before. When I got there right after seven in the morning, I started to walk to the end of the line, which extended to the end of the block. And then around the block. And then around the next block. And the next... 

It took me twenty minutes to walk to the end of the line. 

I stood there for about five minutes or so before somebody from the show came out and said that we would never get to the front of the line before 10:00 AM, when the tickets went on sale online, so we'd best just go home and take our chances on the Internet. So I did, and, of course, the server was so busy that I couldn't get through. I called the perpetually busy phone line to no avail. 

No Wicked for Stallion, alas. 

I have no room to complain, though. For the past few weeks, the Cornells have done quite well in procuring difficult-to-get tickets. Just one week ago, one of my clients called and told me he had two extra courtside seats to the Jazz game that he couldn't use, and would I be interested in taking them off his hands?

Ummm, yes. 

Mrs. Cornell was unable to go, so I took my oldest daughter Cleta, who was impressed that she was close enough to the Jazz bench that she could hear head coach Jerry Sloan swearing like a sailor. It's a very different game when you get that close to the action. We were sitting right under the basket, and if I was close enough to trip the Toronto Raptors every time they went in for a layup. I didn't need to do that, though, because the Jazz smoked 'em. And my daughter got a chance to have the Jazz Bear put a rubber glove on her head. Mrs. Cornell watched the end of the game at home and called us to ask us to flail our arms and legs when the camera got close to us. Which we did. And she could see us! My feet on ESPN! Good times. 

These tickets came just a couple of weeks or so after another work associate invited me to accompany him to Rice-Eccles Stadium to watch the University of Utah embarrass BYU in the annual "Holy War" football game, which is the hottest rivalry in the state. I didn't know BYU was going to be so badly embarrassed, so I foolishly wore my Cougar Blues and feared for my life as the Ute Reds outnumbered me by approximately one billion to one. I took my son Corbin - again, Mrs. Cornell was unavailable - and we watched as BYU quarterback decided to start throwing flawless passes to the guys on the other team. 

It got interesting, though, when I texted my brother, because I knew he had come to the game with some bigwigs, and I wanted to see if I could bump into him. Turns out he was seated in the President's Box, along with the Governor of Utah, the President of the University of Utah, an LDS apostle - the late Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin, who was there just a few days before he passed away- and the Second Counselor in the LDS Church First Presidency, Dieter F. Uchtdorf. We snuck in and sat in the back, and I felt compelled to take off my BYU threads for fear of offending the party I was crashing. 

It was a whole lot of fun. My brother introduced my seven-year-old son to President Uchtdorf, and they took a picture together. President Uchtdorf tried to stay neutral, but when pressed, he whispered, "It's no accident that the pinstripes on my shirt are blue." 

President Uchtdorf couldn't have been more gracious or charming. 

We went back down to the plebeian seats after halftime, only to discover that sitting directly two rows ahead of us were my brother-in-law who had driven up from California along with another family friend. We decided to take them up to the President's Box, too, only they hassled them for not having the requisite armbands that allow you to be in such stratified company. (I had no such armband, either, but I'd manage to sneak my way in earlier in the game.) As the security guards started to hassle them, I came out and explained that everything was all right, because they were with me. Since the guards had seen me fraternizing with everyone up in the box, they let it slide. 

So, karmically speaking, I can't really complain about not getting Wicked tickets. 

And yet I complain still. (I'm not a very good person.)

Shifting Educational Standards

I'm either too busy or too lazy to write a full-on blog entry, so I'll pass along a funny e-mail POUNDS forwarded on to me regarding shifting educational standards.
________

Last week I purchased a burger at Burger King for $1.58. The counter girl took my $2 and I was digging for my change when I pulled 8 cents from my pocket and gave it to her.

She stood there, holding the nickel and 3 pennies, while looking at the screen on her register. I sensed her discomfort and tried to tell her to just give me two quarters, but she hailed her manager for help.

While he tried to explain the transaction to her she cried.

Why do I tell you this? Please read more about the “history of teaching math.”

Teaching Math in 1950:

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?

Teaching Math in 1960:

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

Teaching Math in 1970:

A logger exchanges a set “L” of lumber for a set “M” of money. The cardinality of set “M” is 100. Each element is worth one dollar. Make 100 dots representing the elements of the set “M.” The set “C,” the cost of production, contains 20 fewer points than does set “M.” Represent the set “C” as a subset of “M.” Answer this question: What is the cardinality of the set “P” of profits?

Teaching Math in 1980:

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: underline the number 20.

Teaching Math in 1990:

By cutting down beautiful forest trees, the logger makes $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the forest birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down the trees? (There are no wrong answers.)

Teaching Math in 2000:

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $120. How does Arthur Anderson determine that his profit margin is $60?

Teaching Math in 2005:

El hachero vende un camion carga por $100. La cuesta de production es ……………..

Lincoln, Conservatism, and Daniel H. Wells

I hereby withdraw my contention that Abraham Lincoln was a great conservative.

POUNDS makes too many good points for me to be able to defend that contention, although I will say that I don’t think Lincoln fits today’s definition of liberal, either. The guy was an aggressive militarist whose suspension of habeas corpus for U.S. citizens in time of war would probably not get high marks from the folks at the Daily Kos. In addition, he was a deeply religious man, and in his second inaugural he cited God’s justice as one of the primary reasons for freeing the slaves, which would, again, get the secular Left up in arms.

I guess my affection for Lincoln-as-conservative stems from the beauty of the Gettysburg Address, which gave the nation an ideological framework to make sense of a gruesome and bloody war. With that short speech, Lincoln reminded America of its founding documents, citing a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” and a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” This was, as they say in conservative circles now, a “return to first principles,” which strikes me as a very conservative thing.

Yet were these considered conservative tenets at the time? Probably not.

I think what this discussion highlights is just how difficult it is to view events in early American history through a 21st century partisan prism. For instance, Lincoln was a protectionist. Today, the Left is more protectionist than the Right, but that wasn’t always the case – it was Utah senator Reed Smoot, a Republican and a right-winger, whose Smoot/Hartley tariff extended the Great Depression. Pat Buchanan – who is loathsome to me – thinks protectionism should be the hallmark of modern conservatism.

So which is it? Is protectionism conservative or liberal?

In addition, even the most ardent Leftists before Lincoln were advocating a state the size of which would be seen as ridiculously minimalist today. Hamilton wanted a national treasury, but would he have gone along with Social Security? Do you define a person’s political ideology by their position or their destination? That is, Hamilton wanted the country to move Left, but if you took his positions and plopped them unchanged into 2008, he’d be right at home with the hard right. So how do you make the label?

In America, at least, I think modern liberalism was born with FDR, and modern conservatism was born with Barry Goldwater. Which means even Winston Churchill doesn’t really fit the definition of a “great conservative,” because he was functioning under a set of circumstances where current ideological distinctions don’t really apply. And the idea of a strong military being uniquely conservative probably didn’t really come into being until the Vietnam War. A lot of the partisan distinctions we rely on today are fairly recent developments, and they’ve shifted significantly even in my own lifetime. Is George W. Bush a conservative? His brand of “compassionate conservatism” involves an expansion of federal power in ways that would have made Goldwater lose his lunch.

What this has illustrated to me is that conservatism, as a cohesive modern political movement, peaked with Reagan, stumbled to Gingrich, and is now intellectually moribund. It’s very hard to define someone as a great conservative when it’s no longer possible to define what conservatism is. Making that definition is the challenge that the Republican Party faces in its well-earned years in the Obama wilderness. I hope it’s up to the task, although current signs are not encouraging.

One last story, tangentially related to the above proceedings:

My great-great grandfather was a man by the name of Daniel H. Wells, a tall, gangly lawyer in Illinois at the same time Lincoln practiced. Wells later joined the Mormon church and moved to Utah, but it was in Illinois that Lincoln and Wells crossed paths, and Daniel H. Wells declared that Abraham Lincoln was a dead man.

“I promised myself,” Wells said to the future president, “that if I ever met a man uglier than I was, that I would shoot him on sight.”

To which Lincoln reportedly replied, “Then shoot me now! Because if I’m uglier than you, I don’t want to live.”

This story was recounted to me by my uncle after my cousin noted how much I looked like Daniel H. Wells.

Three Great Conservatives: Making My List

POUNDS, in yesterday's comments, noticed that I had limited the definition of conservatism to primarily economic factors. He's right; I consciously limited it to economics, not because that's the sum total of conservatism, but rather because it was the easiest way to set a working definition.

My point was that naming great conservatives is easier to do when you broaden the definition of conservatism to include more than just "resistance to change."

But in the case of social conservatism, "resistance to change" becomes part of the discussion, and I didn't want to get sidetracked. And "foreign policy" conservatism calls to mind a very large, very muscular government a la the military, so that complicates things even further. By today's standards, FDR and Truman were clearly "foreign policy" conservatives. But the Right has no claim on them. And where does that put LBJ who was both Mr. Great Society - wildly liberal - and Mr. Vietnam - not so liberal?

But POUNDS has made some wise stipulations, to which I agree. To be on the list, a great conservative had to have had a) a profound and lasting impact on society and b) have generated that impact as a result of their political philosophy, i.e. conservatism.

POUNDS suggests, then, that religious icons should be excluded, and I'm cool with that. Questions like "how would Jesus vote?" tell you a lot more about the person answering than it does about Jesus. Pat Robertson will tell you God is a Republican; Cornel West will tell you God is a Communist. You sort it out.

POUNDS also wants to exclude the founders from the discussion, but I think that's a little trickier. Certainly all of them would be termed "social conservatives" by today's standards, but I think Hamiltonians would be considered economic leftists, although Jefferson had profound leftist sympathies too, particularly for the French. I'd say Washington and Adams were men of the Right, but once you start going back that far, shifting societal mores get in the way. Even Lincoln, the first Republican president, would be seen as very much a racist if he were magically transported to the 21st Century. Although, racism aside, I think a strong case can be made that he was a conservative, although many credit his unwillingness to allow secession as the beginning of the bloated federal government we have today. So it's all a bit nebulous.

It gets easier if you stick to the 20th and 21st Centuries, where you can measure a person against a world that isn't so foreign to us. POUNDS put Churchill on his list, and he's an easy call. He was essentially the savior of Western civilization in World War II.

But does that mean FDR and Truman should be on there, too? FDR is the father of modern economic liberalism, but he was quite the hawk militarily. And Truman is the only person who has ever dropped an atomic bomb on a population center. You think the lefty peaceniks were OK with that?

How do you classify Soviet resistors like Lech Walesa or Vaclav Havel? The Left's sympathies were with the Soviets, and these guys fought the USSR tooth and nail. But are they really, on the whole, conservatives?

If POUNDS is unwilling to recognize the greatness of a Reagan or a Thatcher, then how about John Paul II? Too religious? Maybe. But he was also a fierce political opponent of the Soviet Union, and he, as much as anyone else, was instrumental in the Soviet Union's collapse.

If you look among U.S. presidents in the 20th Century, you see a lot of mediocre ones in both parties, and very few who could be considered "conservative." Calvin Coolidge? Yeah, probably a conservative, but hardly great. Teddy Roosevelt? Republican, yes, and Beavis McCain's hero, but hardly a conservative. (And, I don't think, nearly as great as his hype would have you believe.)

See, it's not an easy list to make, but not because conservatism is incompatible with greatness. It's because it's very difficult to fashion a definition of conservatism that anyone fits perfectly. I'm as big a Reaganite as anyone, but I have to concede that Ronnie was the guy who raised self-employment taxes by over 200%, which hits me squarely in the pocketbook.

Anyway, if I make a list, I think I can defend this one:

1) Abraham Lincoln
2) Winston Churchill
3) The John Paul II/Margaret Thatcher/Ronald Reagan trifecta. (Pick one.)

Let's see what POUNDS does with that sucker.

Can You Name Three Great Conservatives?

POUNDS and law geek have been battling it out in the last thread, and I invite all those interested in a bright argument to review those exchanges. POUNDS, I should have you know that I’ve promised law geek that I will appoint him Chief Justice of the Supreme Court just as soon as I’m elected president, so please keep that in mind.

Watching those two battle it out reminded me of an argument that POUNDS used to have with any and all comers about the greatness, or lack thereof, of political conservatives.

Put simply, according to POUNDS, there aren’t any, because conservatives fight change, while liberals embrace it. The people who are remembered as great leaders are those who shook up the establishment, he would say. You can’t do that if you’re protecting the status quo.

Because of that, he insisted, it was impossible to name three great conservatives. He’d give you one freebie – Benjamin Disraeli – and then insist that it was impossible to round out the list. I tried, though – I put Ronald Reagan on my list, and then I threw in Dwight Eisenhower. POUNDS rightfully found Dwight Eisenhower to be pretty thin gruel as far as great conservatives go, although I didn’t want to admit that, at the time, I had no idea who Benjamin Disraeli was. (The first and only Jewish Prime Minister of Great Britain. Wikipedia article here.)

Anyway, this greatly disturbed me at the time, but as I’ve mulled it over lo these many years, I’ve come to realize that POUNDS was, intentionally or not, running an intellectual bait and switch.

The first definition of “conservative” from dictionary.com is as follows:

Conservative: adjective:
1. disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.

Using that definition, then POUNDS is absolutely right. But notice that this definition doesn’t contain any real political ideology. If your traditions and institutions are solidly Leftist, then you can be termed a “conservative” if you act to preserve them. Thus, when Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms were undermined by a botched military coup in 1991, the media labeled those behind the coup as “hardline conservatives” in the Soviet Government. Same with Tiananmen Square in ’89 – it was supposedly “conservative elements” in the Chinese government that used tanks to mow down the pro-democracy demonstrators.

Looking at these examples, unless you questioned the underlying definition of the word “conservative,” you’d think Leonid Brezhnev and Ronald Reagan were essentially the same person.

And let’s take another look at Reagan, shall we? By this first definition, can he truly be termed a “conservative?” One who wants to “preserve existing conditions” and “limit change?” The guy came in and radically altered how Washington did business, both domestically and overseas. They didn’t call it the “Reagan Revolution” for nothing. Newt Gingrich in 1994 overthrew 40 years of Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives and turned the status quo on its head entirely. How is that “limiting change?”

The fact is that the word “conservative” also has another definition in the political arena, one that reflects a worldview of limited government and skepticism of statist solutions. It has nothing to do with “resistance to change.” It has everything to do with faith in the private sector, not the government, to produce the kind of solutions that will be of most benefit to society. If the US continues to move toward European-style socialism, then you’re going to see a growing number of political conservatives screaming for change with ever-increasing volume.

If they were alive today, how many of the founders would be registered Democrats? You think Washington and Adams and Jefferson would be thrilled with the metastasization of the state? And even by POUNDS’ initial definition, Lincoln could still be termed a great conservative – true, he took the radical step of freeing the slaves, but he did so largely to achieve the goal of holding the union intact. To “conserve” the union, if you will.

Sadly, too many Republicans have abandoned second-definition conservative ideology at the altar of first-definition conservative intransigence – preservation of power over principle, of status quo over small government. It’s time the Republican party got revolutionary again. THAT would be a change I could believe in.

Proposition 8: The Musical

Oh, my stars and garters. We hatemongers get quite a lampooning with this one! Get ready to chortle, 'cause it's time for Proposition 8: The Musical!

What always amazes me with things like this is just how mindless they are. Do they really believe this is how religious people think and behave? The answer is yes. They do. Which demonstrates that they've made zero effort to understand the opposing point of view, which reflects either laziness or stupidity. Or malice.

I'm going with malice. (You know. Hate!)

If they can, why can't I? They've tarred any opposition to dismantling traditional marriage with the black brush of "hate," and so they've ended all discussion. These crazy religious nuts don't need to be understood; they just need to be vilified. You want to listen to what that stupid preacher boob John C. Reilly is playing has to say? Really? It's just hate. He's a hater! Don't bother to argue with him - just shut him down!

But they still need us to vote with them, so they bring out Neal Patrick Harris to appeal to our sense of greed. Gay marriage will make me money?! Why didn't I think of that! Because, see, everyone knows that Republicans are all frothing-at-the-mouth hater zealots who vote with their pocketbooks. So let your greed conquer your hate, haters!

It'd be funny if it weren't so condescendingly stupid.

Hate is mindless. Hate ignores facts to feed angry feelings. Isn't that EXACTLY what these people are doing? Aren't they vilifying a huge chunk of our society by assuming the absolute worst about them? As I watched this, I kept thinking how much I like Jack Black. I like Neal Patrick Harris - he was so great in Dr. Horrible. I really like that black guy who plays Daryl on The Office. Not so fond of the girl who plays Elliot on Scrubs, but her part wasn't very big - if you blinked, you missed her.

I now know that all these people hate me.

The guy at the piano who wrote this got a Mormon fired from his job for supporting Proposition 8. Why isn't he a hater? I didn't vote for Prop. 8, but I would have if I'd lived in California. I didn't donate to Prop. 8, but I could have. I'm certainly supportive of those who did.

So all of these people want me fired, too.

Here's the thing. I don't want any of these guys fired. (Except Rosie O'Donnell. But her show tanked, so I'm cool with that.) I certainly don't want any of them raped or imprisoned or lynched or sold into slavery. If they find love whenever and with whomever, I'm way cool with that. I just think there's tremendous societal value in preserving traditional marriage. I think there are reasoned, intelligent arguments that make that case that don't have anything to do with Jack Black in a Jesus outfit eating shellfish.

But nobody on that side wants to have a discussion that doesn't involve malice. I'm just a cartoon to them. They want to hate me instead.

That's their right, and there's nothing I can do to stop them. But what they're doing is far more hateful than the people they're attacking, and it's time people of good will stood up and said so.

It's ALMOST DONE!!!

So I have a million things to do. I have a job assignment due on Friday, and several big projects in the pipeline.

But I spent all day today trying to finish my book. And that is a very, very good thing.

When I started this blog, it was supposed to be a tool to keep my novel writing on track. I was going to write two thousand words a day - a thousand blogging, and a thousand in the novel. At that pace, I'd have the thing done in just a few months.

I started this blog last September. The book isn't done. You do the math.

Writing a book is much harder than writing a blog entry. It's not just the classic writer's block where you can't think of anything to write. Actually, that's not really what writer's block is for me. Instead of thinking of nothing, I end up thinking of a bunch of stuff and running with it, only to discover I hate it when I get down the road a ways. Sometimes, it's thinking of something entirely new to write that's pretty good, so you have to go back and fix what you've already written to reflect the new direction. I began this book with a rough outline - I knew what I wanted as the beginning, middle, and end - but connecting the dots has taken me all over the map.

I've probably written at least 50,000 words that are unusable given the novel's current shape. That's not wasted work, necessarily, as it helped to flesh out my thinking, but it gets frustrating when you write yourself into a dead end. I've no got just under 95,000 words that I'm OK with, although I'm sure there are lingering pieces of old ideas in there that I need to scrub out.

I just want to be DONE.

So I wrote all day. Even when I didn't feel like writing. Even when I wanted to get up and go get a hamburger or something. I just kept writing, and I knew where I wanted it to go, and I got there. I'm now on the last chapter, which has been solidly in my brain since I began. The end is in sight. I can pass this whole stupid project like a kidney stone and move on to things that will make me money.

Having an unfinished book handging over your head like a sword of Damocles can be really, really taxing. I started the first version of this book in the early '90s. I finished the crappy first version on Christmas Eve ten years ago. I don't consider this a second draft; only about 5% of that first book has made its way into this one. But I've wanted to rewrite that early book for the past ten years, and it's only now that the end is in sight.

I just want it OUT. On paper. I don't care how much it sucks. Actually, yes, I do, but if I can at least get a draft done, I can fix it. Getting it on paper for the first time is like passing a kidney stone. I just want to be RELEASED. I want to be able to urinate peacefully again, metaphorically speaking.

Anyway, there it is. I should have skipped this blog entry if I really wanted to finish, but heaven help me, I just can't do that, either.

Driver's Ed

POUNDS’ questions from my last entry got me reminiscing about my many academic sins, and I now regret accusing my Driver’s Ed teacher of being a lush. True, he had that reputation, so I ran with it in the previous post, but I have no proof that such was the case. All I know was that the dude was practically comatose throughout class, and nobody learned a damn thing from him. Although I took it upon myself to occasionally liven things up. The only time I actually got the teacher’s attention was when I started going “vroom vroom” and then proceeded to drive my desk around the room.

He kicked me out of class that day. SOOOO worth it.

Driver’s Ed brought out the worst in me. The family discussed this over Thanksgiving, too, and my mother decided that I got along great with teachers I respected and then went out of my way to make life a living hell for the rest of them. There is some truth in that statement, although it ignores the fact that at one time or another, every one of those teachers I loathed ended up subbing in Driver’s Ed.

My brother recalled the time that Coach Moriarty filled in for McLeish. I didn’t know Coach Moriarty, he being one of those athletic types, but I knew instantly that I didn’t like him. So, during the course of the class period, I decided to insert a capped pen into my left ear.

I was sitting in the very back of the room. I said nothing. I was just sitting there, a placid smile pasted on my face, with a pen in my ear.

It didn’t take long to get a reaction.

“Hey, you!” Moriarty said after a minute or two, pointing directly at me.

I feigned surprise, even looking over my shoulder to see if perhaps he was addressing someone else.

“Yeah, you!” he said, angrier this time. “Take that pen out of your ear!”

“What?” I answered, perhaps a little too loudly.

“I said take that stupid pen out of your ear!”

“What?” I said again, almost shouting. “I can’t hear you. I have a pen in my ear.”

That got some nervous laughter from the rest of the class, who were a lot more scared of this twerp than I was. Still, it was enough to show that I had succeeded in undermining this little tyrant’s authority. This displeased him mightily, and you could actually see the veins in his neck begin to throb. Through clenched teeth, he asked me my name, and I gave it to him pleasantly. (The calmer I was, the madder he got. )

So he tried to up the stakes a little bit.

“What would your father say if he knew you were sitting in my class with a pen in your ear?” he demanded to know.

“Gosh, I’m not sure,” I said with wide-eyed innocence. “You’ll have to ask him, I suppose.”

“I’ll do that!”

The moment was gone after that. The rest of the class passed without incident. Although I seem to recall that I spent the remainder of the period with my head on my desk buried underneath my notebook binder, which I’d made into a little fort in the hopes of bugging him even further. But that got me nothing. I’d used up my best material with the pen-in-the-ear gambit.

My brother, who actually WAS a high school athlete, bumped into Moriarty after that, and the esteemed coach asked “What is with your brother?! That guy is out to lunch!” He then told my brother that he’d tried to call my father, but he couldn’t get him because he was out to lunch. “Not like your brother, though – he was literally out to lunch.” Because, you know, Dad was eating lunch. Unlike me, who was just nuts. Not literally nuts, like walnuts or cashews, but figuratively speaking.

Was there a point to this? Other than Driver’s Ed sucks?

State Science Fair Fraud

So I didn’t post my novel this weekend. I’m actually ambivalent about continuing to post it, as many folks are not interested, and those that are ought to be reading it all the way through, because this disjointed posting is leaving people more confused than they should be. So I’m going to focus on finishing a draft and giving copies to those who might be willing to read the sucker from start to finish. Is this a good idea, dear readers? Let me know.

Had a very fun Thanksgiving, and despite the presence of a multitude of people from all over the political spectrum, no blood was shed. No arguments ensued. And, coincidentally, my mother-in-law had laryngitis. Make of that what you will.

In the absence of political fireworks, my brother and I swapped Lee Shagin stories, which were pleasant, but they led to a number of Calabasas reminiscences that paint me in a less than favorable light.

Don’t get me wrong. By and large, I was a good student, and an honest one. Cheating wasn’t my thing, except in Driver’s Ed, where the teacher was too drunk to know or care that everyone had a photocopy of the answers to every test in advance. It was passed out by one of the teacher’s aides right before class started, and no one batted an eye. If you can cheat in full daylight on a meaningless test because your teacher’s sloshed, I don’t think that’s a black mark against your honor.

No, it is my Senior Science Fair project that still haunts my dreams.

See, my teacher on this occasion was the estimable Larry Walker, who would have been on the 1980 Olympic walking team if we hadn’t boycotted that year. Now, I know what you’re thinking – there’s an Olympic walking team?! Apparently, yes, - or at least there was. Or maybe Mr. Walker just confused his last name with his athletic prowess.

When he wasn’t walking, Mr. Walker taught AP Chemistry, which I took for part of my junior year before dropping out at mid-term as a result of my own scientific ineptness. I felt bad about letting Mr. Walker down, though – he’s a good guy, if slightly goofy – so the next year, I enrolled in Mr. Walker’s regular Chemistry class and sailed through the easier coursework. There were a number of differences between regular and AP Chemistry. Most of them centered on academic rigor – the regular course had less of it, which I liked. But those in regular Chemistry were also required to participate in a high school science fair. That was not a good thing.

I was supposed to pick a project and prove some scientific principle, and having absolutely no inspiration as to how to proceed, I turned to Mr. Walker for guidance. He came up with a suggestion that was both goofy and easy, so, naturally, I ran with it.

Mr. Walker proposed that I go to a boating dock and gather up a bunch of mussels encrusted along both sides. Then I would separate the meat from the shells and weigh them, measuring the meat against the weight of the shells. The goal was to determine if those mussels directly facing the waves developed larger shells as a result of their exposure to the tide, as opposed to those mussels who were more safely positioned away from the waves on the rear of the docks.

How hard could that be?

A few Saturdays later, I drove up to Oxnard and broke into a private dock filled with expensive-looking sea vessels, not realizing that I probably shouldn’t have been there in the first place. I scraped off a bunch of mussels and filled half of a black plastic trash bag with them, and then I drove home , insufferably proud of myself, despite the growing stench of rotting crustaceans in the back seat.

I’m not sure when the realization hit me that I had done nothing to separate the front-of-dock mussels from the rear-of-dock ones. Although I do remember getting home and dumping the mussels into a big, stinky pile in the center of our garage and realizing that there was no way in hell that I was going to learn anything of any value except how to make a garage smell like dead fish.

Not only didn’t I know which mussels were which, I also had no means of measuring them. We had this tiny little scale that measured in ounces, but it was nowhere near precise enough to give any semblance of accuracy. Even if I were to go back and get two bags of mussels instead of one, I wouldn’t have been able to get any reliable data without much nicer equipment.

So I made it all up.

Yes, you heard me. I falsified all my data. I measured a mussel or two and tried to guess at what a reasonable weight range and ratio would be, and then I – surprise! – “discovered “ that mussels facing the waves were “significantly” bulkier than their more sheltered counterparts.

I felt really lousy about it, so I mocked up a presentation that was lackluster at best. I taped a couple of mussel shells to some colored poster board and wrote up my finding s with a magic marker. It was the ugliest mock-up entered in the science fair, and I hoped it would get me just enough credit to squeak by and then the whole thing would just go away.

Naturally, Mr. Walker selected my project as one of three entries to go on to the state science fair.

I was aghast. I couldn’t refuse the chance to send the thing along, so I conveniently lost the entry forms. That bugged Mr. Walker, but I figured that someone at the state level would surely recognize me for the fraud that I was. (Although knowing what I know now, I’m betting the state would have been even more clueless than Mr. Walker, who was actually a good teacher, not a bureaucrat.)

I tell this story in the spirit of full disclosure, confessing my deepest, darkest sins in the hopes of absolution. But I also do so knowing that the statute of limitations has passed, and it’s probably too late to revoke my high school diploma. I also occasionally wonder if my findings were false-but-accurate. Do mussels that face the waves have bigger shells?

I could probably Google it, but what's the point?