Shot In The Dark

Você Pode Ter Meu Pistola Quando Você O ergue De Minha Mão Fria, Inoperante

Brazilians decisivelyl rejected a national gun ban supported by - natch - their nation's elites.

Reading the piece, from an English-language Brazilian newspaper, it's interesting to see all the anti-gun assumptions that even their media uncritically accept as fact.

Interesting, but not surprising or unfamiliar.

The good news:

Sao Paulo, Brazil: From sprawling cities plagued by violence to the backwaters of the Amazon, Brazilians voted decisively yesterday to keep gun sales legal in the country with the world’s highest death toll from firearms.

In the nationwide referendum, about 64% rejected banning arms sales, the electoral court said, with more than 90% of the expected 122 million votes counted.

Only 36% supported the ban, even though more than 36,000 people were killed by guns last year in Latin America’s largest country.

You'd have to be a news reportere not to see the absurdity in that statement.

We didn’t lose because Brazilians like guns. We lost because people don’t have confidence in the government or the police, Denis Mizne of anti-violence group Sou da Paz said.

"The patient isn't coughing because he enjoys hacking up phlegm. He's coughing because it's a symptom of a disease!".

Guns aren't intrinsically "likeable" to everyone (although I enjoy recreational shooting quite a bit), any more than a hammer or screwdriver is "likeable". A gun is a tool you use to do a job - in this case, defend yourself from Brazil's surging mass of drug-dealing scum - the ones who are doing the killing.

Many voters had expressed concern before the vote that a ban would leave them defenceless against heavily armed criminals. Public confidence is low in a police force widely considered inefficient, abusive and corrupt.

This referendum . . . is not going to end violence, said Assis Augusto Pires (60), who voted against the ban in Sao Paulo’s wealthy Jardim Paulistano district, where high walls, electrified fences and private guards protect residents.

In Rio de Janeiro’s Rocinha shantytown, scene of a raging gangland turf war, Carlos Eduardo Ferreira, a 40-year-old electrician, said he was voting for the ban.

I am for the ban; I am for life. I’ve already seen kids hit by bullets here, he said.

Fancy that - even though as the article notes a few grafs later...:

The ban failed in all 26 states and the federal district of Brasilia. Rural areas rejected it overwhelmingly.

The press is trying to cast it as a referendum on the current President, who is embroiled in a number of scandals, and who treat guns with the same patronizing ignorance as a typical Code Pinko:

I think that for an ordinary person to have firearms is not going to give security, so I voted ‘Yes’, [President] Lula said.

Many blamed the loss on a bribes scandal that has weakened Lula’s government and hurt his popularity.

2/3 of a huge, mind-warpingly and nearly-ungovernably diverse nation vote as one to reject a gun ban - over something as temporal, wonky and commonplace as a bribery scandal?

It's those crazy peasants and their "don't shoot me down like a dog" and their "where are the police when I need 'em?"

Don't they know their place?

That Buzzing You Hear Is The Rending Of Garments All Over Highland Park

It's the third anniversary of the death of Paul Wellstone.

Three years ago, I noted both the genuine bipartisanship of the mourning, as well as observing that some seemed to be slipping the surly bonds of reason.

Today - well, the unreasonableness seems to have taken complete hold.

I can excuse people keeping their little green stickers on their cars, or their green signs on their lawns or peering out from their living room windows. It's a little worrisome on a personal level - when people wallow in grief for that long, it's probably because they enjoy the pain, one way or the other.

But on the Channel 4 news this morning, they had a piece shot at the Paul and Sheila Wellstone Community Center, which included a series of paintings, apparently of Paul and Sheila Wellstone standing in front of groups of sitting disciples amid pastoral settings, the sun itself beaming approvingly above them, as the followers are warmed by the presence of their avatar...

Gack! It was reminiscent in every way of Russian Orthodox icons on one extreme - or the hagiographic portraits of the likes of Hussein, Kim Jong Il, Castro or Stalin on the other.

He was a Senator; a personable and charismatic but not especially effective one, and one who reflected the collective id of the sixties generation that spawned him.

Which is what a good deal of the chest-beating and garment-rending, of course, is about.

Barone on Fitzgerald

Michael Barone on Fitzgerald's efforts:

It is a general principle of law that when the government wants to criminalize acts other than traditional common law crimes like murder or theft, it must set out with great specificity the conduct that is forbidden. To visit the rigors of criminal indictment, trial and punishment on someone who has done nothing that is specifically forbidden is unjust -- the very definition of injustice...In the absence of a violation of the underlying espionage acts, any indictment here arising from the course of the investigation would be, in my view, unjust and an abuse of prosecutorial discretion. It would also be, as the liberal commentator Jacob Weisberg has pointed out, a long step toward something like the British Official Secrets Act -- a precedent that would staunch the flow of information from the government to the press and the people.

That leaves the question of whether Rove, Libby or someone else will be indicted for perjury, obstruction of justice or making false statements in the course of the investigation. But why should there be indictments if there was no crime?

True, Rove and Libby did seek to discredit Joseph Wilson -- as they should well have done. As the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a bipartisan report in July 2004, just about everything Wilson said publicly about his trip to Niger was untrue. He said that he had discredited reports that Iraq sought to buy uranium in Niger. But the CIA people to whom he reported concluded that, if anything, he substantiated such reports. He said that he pointed out that certain other intelligence reports were forged. But the forgeries did not appear until eight months after his trip. He said his wife had nothing to do with his trip to Niger. But it was she who recommended him for the trip. And on and on.

Lawyers close to the Plame investigation say that Fitzgerald will indict Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson for obstruction of justice and perjury. In addition, Wilson will be indicted for outing his wife, who was a covert CIA agent. Additional charges are being considered against Valerie Plame for her role in selecting her own husband for a government assignment in a concerted political effort to undermine the administration.

Now, that's actually not true. But, given the media's handling of this matter, this post should be treated with the same credibility that the media is presenting statements of "lawyers close to the Plame investigation." In point of fact, there are several lawyers on this site who have kept up with the material and they are probably as close to the investigation as the ones being quoted in the media, which is to say not very close at all.

The Puff Continues

The Pioneer Press' Hot Dish blog serves up...

...well, cold, puffy softballs re Al Franken:

Lately, Air America Radio has had some ups and downs -- things are going fine in Cincinnati [Actually, they're a slightly better grade of crappy than elsewhere - Ed.], but not so great in Washington D.C. [Just stay it, dude; Air America is *gone* in DC - Ed.] At least one thing remains constant -- Air America personality Al Franken's outspokenness. The host of "The Al Franken Show" is known for his biting humor that finds its way into his many talents -- host, political commentator, writer, comedian -- and on Tuesday, he's voicing his opinions on the small screen. Franken, who was raised in St. Louis Park, will promote his new book, "The Truth (with Jokes)," with appearances on NBC's "Today" show and CNN's "American Morning" on Tuesday morning followed by a stop by Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" Tuesday night. His book tour will eventually hit the Twin Cities -- he's scheduled to sign copies on Dec. 4 at the Edina Barnes & Noble in the Galleria.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XIV

It was October 25, 1985. A Friday, the end of my first full "work" week in the Twin Cities.

Well, I was learning that looking for a job was hard work, anyway.

A bit of background; my first radio job was at KEYJ in Jamestown, ND, in 1979, starting the summer before my junior year of high school. My first boss, Bob Richardson, had a great philosophy; the community kept him in business, so he was going to give back by (among other things) teaching the young 'uns how to do radio. He made a pretty strict point of keeping a couple of high school or college kids on the part-time staff. And it was a great part-time job. Bob was gruff enough to make Lou Grant run yipping up a tree, but a kid coming out of his station knew a lot about how radio was done. High school kids could find themselves covering the news (I did), calling play by play, learning sales or engineering or pretty much anything you could do in a station. Many people went on from KEYJ to big careers.

In 1980, a couple of slick late-twentysomething weasels who'd been knocking around the business for a few years bought the station, changed the call letters to KQDJ - and, a few weeks, later, fired most of us locals and brought in a bunch of their own people. It was a valuable lesson at 17 - never get attached to a job. It was a lesson I learned 10 years before most of the workforce; it was a crappy feeling at the time, but it's served me well.

I went on to work at a couple more stations during college - KDAK in Carrington, ND and then back to KQDJ, which was under new management. But while it was still a decent part time job, the horizons were decidedly narrower. Part time announcers...announced. Part time. No play by play, no news - and barely any disc jockeying; much of the nighttime lineup was via satellite. I began to learn the misery of so many radio gigs in the eighties and nineties - the "Live assist" job, better known as "watching the needle bob" in those days when a radio station still needed to have a live human in the building when it was on the air.

So I was pretty well sick of radio by the time I got out of college. I figured (except for one brief, miserable job interview for a news gig in Fargo) that my radio days were over.

==========

Another long day on the road; I made plans to meet my host for a demonstration later in the day. More on that later.

I started out the day with another job interview, again over in Edina, but this one - a switch! - a solo interview with one person!

The gig was with a personnel service; I'd be working as a recruiter. The interviewer was a late-twenty-something guy who looked like he'd already been eaten and crapped out; pale, ulcerous, he looked like a poster child for excessive job stress. Immaculately dressed and wearing tinted glasses, he also seemed to be doing fairly well in the headhunting business.

We talked for half an hour. I was slowly learning - I thought - the big lesson of job hunting; tell them what they want to hear.

At the end of the interview, he looked at my resume, grimaced like he had something wrong with his stomach, and groaned as much as said "Are you sure you want to do this?"

Huh? "I beg your pardon?"

"Well, it's just that you're from a small town. Maybe you should find a job that's more suited to that sort of background"

I sat, more or less shocked into silence. "OK...any suggestions?" I asked, not really listening to the reply. I politely waited for him to finish, and took my uncomfortable leave.

Driving away, I punched the steering wheel the way I wished I'd punched the interviewer. I resolved that my jitters and inferiority complex about being just off the turnip truck had to turn into something else. I sprouted a huge chip on my shoulder that day; no more passive-aggressive Scandinavian nice guy. It served me well in coming months.

I killed a few hours in a library, and went to my next appointment, to check out another "Roommates Wanted" lead. I'd been to a few of these the previous week; this was the last remaining ad.

========

The stop was a huge improvement; the guy, a late-twentysomething who I remember only as "Dave", was a nice enough guy, who'd had a roommate bail on him; he needed someone to help share the rent in a two-bedroom basement apartment in South Minnepolis, and pronto. $212.50 a month, all utilities except phone paid, $175 deposit, preference to people who wanted to get moved in in time to pay October rent. I peeled off $175 and made a reservation on October 1.

Apartment? Check. Now there was the little matter of a job.

========

My host - a college friend - had parents who ran a mission in the inner city of Minneapolis. Among their goals was to get the pr0n industry out of the inner city.

Mildly libertarian as I was, I had a qualm or two about the goal of forcing legal businesses out of town, and the infringement on property rights - but I figured after a week and a half of squatting on the couch for free, I owed everyone some shoe leather.

Everyone was picketing the Rialto Theatre, an old theatre at the corner of Lake and Chicago that had long since gone to seed; it was an XXX theatre, along with peep shows and a bookstore.

Outside, my host's parents were joined by two dozen other people; I was one of about four males there, the only one under age 50, one of two taller than 5'10. One could say I stood out in the crowd.

I picked up a sign, and started pacing in the oval with the rest of the protesters, mostly older women. The traffic raced past on Lake; some people honked; others gave one figure salutes and taunts. Someone leaned out of one of the upstairs windows and dropped a water balloon - or at least I remember hoping it was water - which landed on the sidewalk between a couple of protesters, splattering several. However, having a 6'5 guy in a bandanna and a battle jacket was making the response a tad more polite than it usually was on a Friday night, some of the marchers told me.

Another sign that I was conspicuous? A reporter (who I later learned was Alan Costantini, long-time reporter at KARE11, which at the time was still WUSA11) crossed the street with a cameraman and a microphone. "Mind if we ask you a few questions?" So I did my first standup interview, there on Lake Street, looking a little goofy and disheveled in my Union Jack bandanna.

After Costantini left, I realized - "Crap! Networking opportunity lost!

As I mentally kicked myself, I heard a sonorous voice. "Excuse me, sir. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions".

It was a shorter guy, with longer, non-TV hair. He carried a professional-grade cassette recorder - the kind only radio reporters and anthropologists carried.

"Sure", I replied. "But I have a question for you, first. I'm just down from North Dakota, and I need a job, and I've worked in radio, and I was wondering if you could take me to your leader?"

The guy's eyes widened. "North Dakota? Where?"

"Jamestown".

"Ah. I'm from Casselton", a little town 15 miles west of Fargo.

He introduced himself as Tom Myhre, and we did an interview. I must have done a good job; at the end, he snapped off the cassette and handed me a business card. "I'll tell my executive producer, Bruce Huff, about you. Call him on Monday, OK?" I wrote the name on the card as Tom went back to his car.

I finished out the protest, and we adjourned to someone's house for pizza and pop and the 10PM news, where I got to watch my weird-looking mug try to equivocate about property rights and the neighborhood's right to deal with nuisances.

And I nearly wore the card out, checking and re-checking it, memorizing the phone numbers and names and addresses.

And before I went to bed that night, I took out my old portable typewriter and re-wrote a resume that read less like a 1930's perfume ad and more like a radio guy. I was ready for Monday.

Quote Of The Day

In re the vote fraud scandal in Milwaukee, Learned Foot from KAR has this:

"If you don't have evidence, you don't have fraud," said Colon.

Got that? It's only wrong if you get caught.

• Empty, content-free indictments that will be trashed by the first impartial judge that gets a chance to rule on them (read: Delay): cause for endless bloviating celebration on the left.
• Trucks full of evidence - but no indictment? "Eurasia has always been at war with Eastasia, Winston".

Above The Rules?

The far left has decided that November 2 is a national Moonbat holiday.

Not only that, they've decided to make it a school holiday, too.

Someone at Protest Warrior sent me a heads-up; the Minneapolis Left has broken into Grampa's liquor cabinet again.

This is from an email sent to local pro-Dictatorship groups:

Urgent solidarity needed! [I love that - "Urgent Solidarity". What's the next level down - "Laconic Solidarity?" - Ed.]

Students are being threatened with failing classes for walking out on November 2nd

*** Help mobilize our defense! ***

As of October 19th, nearly 1,000 high school students across the Twin Cities had signed the "November 2nd Walkout Pledge," and we expect that number of grow substantially in the remaining 12 days before November 2nd. This tremendous response to Youth Against War and Racism's call to action has taken place in the face of threats to fail students who miss tests that day.

Wow! This must be serious!

By an unfortunate coincidence, many Twin Cities schools scheduled a finals day on November 2nd, the anniversary of Bush's "reelection" [A "re-election that, ironically, happened on the same day as his re-election! - Ed] and the day chosen for nationally coordinated student walkouts against the war and military recruitment in schools. But other students who miss class that day for reasons school administrators deem legitimate will not be fail their classes. They will get to take a make-up final.

Is it too much to ask that anti-war students who choose to participate in this justified act of protest, who are taking action to secure a decent future for our generation, also be given make-up tests?

Seriously. If an NRA convention or pro-war rally comes to town, and I tried to take my kids out of school, I'd have some 'splainin' to do, and they'd be on the butt end of some consequences.

But I'll tell you what; I'd almost be willing to support these 1,000 little morons' day off, if they can pass a simple little quiz;

1. Find Afghanistan or Iraq on a map (2 points).
2. Name the ousted rulers of both countries (2 points).
3. Describe, in 100 words or less, what "Halabja" means (5 points).
4. The United States took four justifications for invading Iraq to the United Nations. Name them (4 points).
5. How many commercial airliners were turned into cruise missiles on September 11, and name their targets (5 points).
6. On what day and year did "September 11" happen? (2 points)

I suspect that'll whittle the field among the petitioners down to two digits.

We feel confident that, with enough community pressure, we can convince school districts across the Twin Cities to provide make-up tests for the hundreds or thousands of students who participate in this walkout. Here is the plan and several ways that you can help:

1. Press Conference and Protest

Tuesday, Oct. 25, 5:00 PM

807 Broadway St NE, Minneapolis

Outside the Minneapolis School Board meeting, students will stand beside parents, community leaders, and elected officials to demand an end to military recruitment in our schools and to demand school districts across the Twin Cities do not punish or fail student who participate in the walkout. We will be announcing the thousands of signatures we have received on petitions to kick military recruiters our of our schools.

On the day after our press conference, we are asking community supporters across the Twin Cities to call the District Superintendents of several area school districts, to urge them to allow students who choose to walkout against war and military recruitment on November 2nd be allowed to take make-up tests.

3. Help distribute NEW walkout leaflets in high schools!

Thousands of Twin Cities students have heard about the walkout and want to participate, but are understandably scared they will be punished and failed. [Let's hope so! Ed] We need to let these students know that we have their backs! We need to let them know that they will NOT be left defenseless if they choose to walkout, and that we are already mobilizing to defend them. We are producing tens of thousands of new leaflets explaining all this, and we need your help to pass them out. [Note to moonbats; please, please hand me one. Oh, I pray, get me one.]

4. Be ready, after November 2nd, to defend students facing repression

We hope that all our efforts leading up to the walkout will be adequate to convince school administrators that it is in their own best interests to avoid punishing or failing students who choose to walkout on November 2. However, we have to be prepared act immediately and decisively to defend any youth activist facing persecution. Please be ready.

That sounds interesting.

Stay tuned.

The Perversion That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Let's call this straight; of everyone involved in "Das Booty", the Vikings' Sex Cruise of a few weeks back, it's the bar staff - the waitresses and bartenders who were working in the bar, below decks, where most of the debauchery was taking place - whose voices have the greatest danger of being squashed between those of the Vikings, Al and Alma's boat company, and the politicians and lawyers involved on all sides.

At least until the facts start coming out, and every plaintiff's bar lawyer in America calls up with a contingency offer.

Let me say this: If a Viking - or anyone - were to harass my daughter the way the Viking apparently did with the twenty-something women working on those cruise boats, a lawsuit would only the the last of their problems.

As it should be.

Let me also make it known that while I generally think Nick Coleman is among th worst columnists working in America today, he has his occasional good moment.

And with material like this to work with:

"Her life has been totally disrupted by the stupidity and thoughtlessness of the Vikings. She told me she has dreams about it every night, and that she can't stand it."

But Nick just can't make it to the end of his most recent column on the subject without letting his faux-populist roots show.

This is the sort of story that a "community columnist" is supposed to knock through the uprights, as it were, especially a columnist whose claimed goal is to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted". And Coleman even gets most of it right. Read the column. You be the judge.

"My daughter saw it all, but she has been told not to talk and she won't even answer my questions anymore," Emily says. "One guy offered her $100 to 'dance' for him. If this was in a restaurant, she could have run away, and she would have. But on a boat, you're trapped.

"She wants to get over it, but she isn't getting over it. She sees this when she closes her eyes at night. It's not like I can say, 'It's OK, Honey. I went through this when I was your age, and you'll endure.' I have never been to an orgy when I didn't want to be there."

Emily laughed at that point, clarifying for me that she has never been to an orgy, voluntarily or otherwise.

And then...:

When millionaires behave badly, the innocent often end up slimed.

So we're blaming "millionaires"? Buncombe; if you put the managing partners at an accounting or law firm on a boat, the odds of an orgy breaking out would be somewhere down below James Lileks' chances of posting up Allen Iverson. And if you put the board of directors of, say, Minnesota Public Radio or the regents of the University of Minnesota in a limo (does Volvo make a stretch limo?) with a case of champagne, do you supposed they'd pull over and whiz in someone's azaleas on their way to a party?

This isn't about "millionaires"; there's no "millionaire culture" that prompts people with seven digits in their bank account to act like slime.

No. This is about the dual loopdielands of our nation's predominant urban culture, and the culture of the professional athlete, as they mix and splatter on the innocent bystander.

Professional athletes are all too often sidetracked at an early age (early teens, sometimes earlier) where expectations and consequences are grossly warped, compared to those that most of us live with; many coast through high school and "college" scarcely cracking a book, never holding a real job, never having to learn to show up for work or class on time (or suffering consequences for it); they're treated as exceptional long before they're mature enough to handle it.

As to the dominant urban culture - well, there's nothing that happened on Das Booty that you can't see over and over with a one-hour swerve onto MTV or BET (only the women in the videos are paid to bump and grind on cue; they do it for a living). The ultimate value system of the dominant urban culture - whether in South Minneapolis or at Lakeville High School - is "Life Ain't Nothin' but Benzos and Hos. The culture glorifies excess, violence, and a consequence-free life. It denigrates work (except for athletes), learning, intelligence (beyond the animalistic "street" level) and ethics.

At the downmarket end of the scale, the two cultures' clash has led to illegitimate births in most major cities; to unemployable punks gathering in gangs and turning much of Minneapolis into a free-fire zone; to a subculture that is working overtime to disassimilate itself from the ethical, moral and intellectual life of this nation.

At the upmarket end? Professional athletes devoid of ethics, of any moral guide outside their own desires, spoiled rotten from adolescence, who believe the world revolves around them (and those are the one in ten thousand that are talented enough to make it to the bigs; the tens of thousands left behind at college, high school and the playground with no social or job skills; they're not partying on Lake Minnetonka).

When will someone in the local media have the nerve to call it straight? It's not the money that causes the problem; it's the view of the world.

I hope the subjects of Coleman's piece are in court, soon, on the plaintiff's side of the room, with a firm grip on the parts of the Vikings involved that cause the problem in the first place.

I'm talking, of course, about their stunted sense of ethics, right and wrong, and morality, of course.

Pay No Attention To The Code Behind The Curtain

The war against drunk driving long since slipped the surly bonds of reason, and became a holy quest; to the supporters of groups like MADD, like supporters of any holy war, no excess is too excessive, no atrocity is too over-the-edge.

We've talked about the idiotic - and expensive - efforts to lower the Blood Alcohol Content level from .1 to .08, which serve only to criminalize social drinking, since the vast majority of accidents involve drivers whose BAC is well over .1.

But we've spent less time on the enforcement side. Fact is, DUI is a cash cow for county government, raising jillions of dollars in fines, fees and forfeited property, and requiring the extra manpower that is manna from heaven for empire-building local bureaucrats. Wog has documented many of the excesses of the law enforcement system in the chronicle of his last 18 months or so.

Of course - we can trust law enforcement to at least supply valid data - things like blood alcohol content measurements from field tests. Right?

Kathy from Cake Eater Chronicles has a story that might make you wonder.

Things I Detest Almost Beyond Reason

• Ed, Edd and Eddie - There have been many cartoons that have gone beyond "I don't get it", and swerved into actively pissing me off; Cat/Dog, Cow and Chicken, Tom Meets The Mayor, The Oblongs all irritate me to one degree or another. I never liked Ren and Stimpy, and even Spongebob Squarepants' endless repetition starts sanding my nerve endings to a raw pulp after a few minutes. But Ed, Edd and Eddie is the worst cartoon on the air today, or maybe ever; it combines artistic ineptitude (it looks like it's drawn by people with crayons taped to their noses), the most grating voice-overs in history (I could describe the irritating traits, but then I'd just get angry, and worse, it might tempt some of you to watch, which would defeat my goal), and writing that - how to describe it? - is desperately unfunny. Wanna get me to talk? Stick me in a room with this garbage on a permanent loop.
• "Babe", by Styx - The rule, of course, when grading music by Styx - the seventies arena pomp-rock warhorse - is this: If it's sung by Dennis DeYoung - the singer with the high, whiny voice who sang "Come Sail Away", "Babe" and "Mr. Roboto", as opposed to Tommy "Blue Collar Man" Shaw or John James "Miss America" Young - dock a grade point. If it's written by Dennis DeYoung, dock another. If Dennis DeYoung plays both the Fender Rhodes Piano and the foofy synthesizer in the song, dock another grade point. If Dennis DeYoung sings about the rigors of life on the road as a huge rock star, dock another. If Dennis DeYoung's song involves science fiction (starships, robots) or deep openings of the heart, dock yet another. By my count, then, "Babe" starts with a solid "F", even before we start taking apart the oozy-sappy lyircs, gloppy harmonies and just general awfulness. It was as if all the poison of the worst of seventies pop-art-rock came gushing out in a huge, collective spasm of cultural vomiting, leaving a bucket of "Babe". This song is associated with most of the worst memories from my senior year of high school
• Those EHarmony ads.
• Expending much energy describing my irritation with a musician - and then hearing a song I not just like, but genuinely love. I have never been able to stand much of John Mayer's oeuvre - but I heard a song of his on the radio the other day that was just stunningly good. I have no idea what it was. Argh!
• People for whom it's not enough to plaster a car with moronic bumper stickers; they have to create foot-tall messages out of colored tape that cover entire trunks or side panels.
• The all-purpose use of the word "dude".

UPDATE: James Young, not John Young. Side note: How pathetic is it that I don't remember my daughter's social security number - but I can remember the names of all five original members of Styx? I said original, mind you, fully aware that Tommy Shaw didn't replace Chuck Curulewski until 1976.

I need coffee.

What Did They Do To Deserve This?

According to the fine journalists at North Korea Times, the US talk radio industry is helping train new Iraqi talk show hosts.

Several leading names in U.S. talk radio are helping hone the skills of women working in Iraq's emerging radio industry.

Air America's Laura Flanders,

[Scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatch]

Laura Flanders? What on earth is she going ot teach them?

"Right. Open the awnvelope from Medier MAHttahs, read the pahts that ah highlighted for you..."

Monica Crowley of WABC and MSNBC

The Whole Damn System's Out Of Order

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's got a blog.

Courtesy of her pal Algore...

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XIII

Monday, October 21 1985. Beginning my second week in the Twin Cities.

It was starting to dawn on me that the city wasn't necessarily going to carry me in on its shoulders.

9AM job interview in Edina. It was another "group interview", this time for a gig selling Encyclopedia Brittanica, door to door through the suburbs. I went because I figured I should - any kind of job interview was better than nothing, and it's all good practice. Right?

I sat for two hours, listening to the ins and outs of the job, and finally figured "Even I'm not this desperate". I left without accepting a position.

I had a few hours to kill before my next appointment, to check out a "roommate wanted" ad over by Powderhorn Park, in south Minneapolis. I found my way in to Uptown Minneapolis, and killed an hour at the old Odegaard's books, at the new Calhoun Square. In a state full of Waldenbooks and B. Daltons, I'd never imagined such a thing - a big, huge store where you could browse, read, sit! I dragged myself away and chugged slowly down the decaying morass of West Lake Street, getting to the appointment just in time.

The ad said they were looking for a Christian guy, to pay 1/4 of the rent for a room in an upstairs duplex just off Powderhorn Park, a pretty little urban park surrounding a curious little lake, right in the middle of a neighborhood that was well on its way toward becoming one of Minneapolis' biggest, nastiest crack dens. I didn't know this at the time.

I rang the doorbell, and the guy - six-footish, late twenties, wearing a full beard and mustache, answered. He showed me around the place - kitchen privileges, one bathroom, smallish but cozy bedroom, not much storage (not that it mattered to me), $175 a month, heat included. "Nice", I said. "I'm interested!".

"Well, we gotta talk first. Let's go take a drive".

Unusual.

We walked out to his Chevette, climbed in, and took a turn around the neighborhood. "So - where are you at with your faith".

"Um..." - Huh?

Now, bear with me a bit, here. I'm pretty articulate about a lot of things. Religious faith is not one of them. I certainly have a lot of it, but expressing it is one of those things I pay ministers to do in church.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

Wrong question.

"Look, me and my roommates are charismatic Catholics. We need to make sure you're in kind of the same place on your religious journey as we are. So - have you ever had a charismatic experience?"

"Well, I haven't - but then, I've never seen anything that says one needs to, to be a Christian".

"But you do!", he said, emphatically.

"But what about...", I started, quoting a verse from Corinthians that says, in about as many words, that each of us is called to faith with different gifts; speaking in tongues is one of many; mine was...

"Look, I'm just covering my ass here", he said, turning back up the street to the duplex.

Wasn't aware there was a biblical injunction to cover your ass, I thought, and have wished for twenty years that I'd said.

I am pretty sure I shook my head visibly as I took my leave and walked to the car. I'd imagine he did the same.

Then it was back to Burnsville for more job hunting. It was looking like it was going to be along, dry autumn.

If In New York...

...anytime in the four or five weeks after November 12, make sure you check out Sheila O'Malley's new play.

At $19 a ticket, it's gotta be the best entertainment value available for a night in NYC (that doesn't involve throwing things at people). And it'd be great if the play got extended from overwhelming demand, ifyaknowwhatI'msaying...

Top 12 Reasons I Read "Nihilist In Golf Pants" So Rarely

"Twelve is one more than eleven".
-- Nigel Tufnel. I think.

12. Sisyphus' name has too many vowels. If his name only had fewer of the accursed vowels...

11. Who do they think they are - the Fraters' B-squad?

10. Because Miami Steve would kick Ronnie James Dio's ass.

9. Because Mr. Nihilist works for a big, evil corporation.

8. Because beating them at Keegans' Trivia Night isn't nearly big enough a thrill anymore.

7. Hell - Patti Scialfa would kick Ronnie James Dio's ass.

6. Because he's not actually a Nihilist. Although he does wear golf pants (when he wears pants). Half is not good enough.

5. I'm too busy waiting for Michele Bachmann to come out against pro sports team sex scandals; this only proves that heterosexual sex is the greatest danger facing our society. What is this world coming to?

4. Nihilist is a blasphemer. [Aretha on] "Don't you be blasphemin'!" [/Aretha off]. (Note to "JB": Aretha Franklin is known as the "Queen of Soul". You're a country fan, so you might mistake her for Snoop Dogg. Think of her as a black Wynonna Judd that you can dance to)

3. NIGP lacks the measured, Buckleyesque meter of Tom Swift's Friday Funnies (NSFW).

2. "Fuzzy Niestche" is a clumsy attempt to slur the blessed memory of the '65 Packers, with Fuzzy Thurston and Ray Nitschke. Have these people no shame?

and the Number One reason I read "Nihilist In Golf Pants" so rarely:

1. I'm usually too busy reading Powerline.

Oh, I'm lying. Read Nihilist in Golf Pants daily. What they lack in musical knowledge (or indeed, music literacy or comprehension) they make up for in...uh...spunk.

A Pattern

Which of the following doesn't belong?

1. A friend and political associate of Mike Hatch - a county attorney in southern Minnesota - files charges against former MNGOP chair Ron Eibensteiner based on a "scandal" in which Hatch himself would seem to have had a rather prominent role.
2. Former US Attorney and perennial DFL Senate hopeful David Lillehaug, acting as a figurehead for a group of well-heeled, left-leaning suburban megachurches, files a suit against the Minnesota Personal Protection Act with a DFL-leaning pet judge in Saint Paul, resulting in a ludicrous ruling that stymied the will of the people's elected representatives for nearly a year.
3. A strongly Democrat-leaning county attorney in Texas files a nearly content-free indictment against - in theory - Tom Delay, not coincidentally resulting in one of the most effective GOP congressional leaders losing his leadership position because of GOP rules.

Let me head off the first, specious but inevitable response; if it were Republicans abusing the legal system for purely political means the way the Democrats are today, yes. Yes, I would be upset, and I'd be telling my party so, and exactly why. Just as I am about their abuse of spending, today.

That the Dems are using the courts to end-run the electoral process is nothing new; FDR was famous for it. That they're using it to harass Republican leaders - well, buckle up, everyone. It's going to be an ugly year.

TPaw Endorses Jeff Johnson

Governor Pawlenty has endorsed Representative Jeff Johnson for next year's Attorney General race.

“Jeff Johnson will make an excellent attorney general for Minnesota,” Pawlenty said. “I worked closely with Jeff in the House and have seen the quality of his work and his character. I know the Attorney General’s Office under his leadership will be focused on the protection and betterment of Minnesotans, not on politics. I’m proud to say that Jeff is also a personal friend and I’m proud to announce today that I am an enthusiastic supporter of his campaign for attorney general.”

While nobody cares about my endorsement - and justifiably so - I'm going to agree with the governor; I firmly support Jeff Johnson for Attorney General, and I urge every Minnesota Republican - and every non-Republican who cares about ethics and the proper role of government - to do the same.

The thought of Matt Entenza as AG for the State of Minnesota should make your blood run cold.

Full press release below the fold.

The entire news release:

With the 2006 election just over a year away, Governor Tim Pawlenty today officially endorsed state Representative Jeff Johnson, R-Plymouth, for Minnesota attorney general.

“Jeff Johnson will make an excellent attorney general for Minnesota,” Pawlenty said. “I worked closely with Jeff in the House and have seen the quality of his work and his character. I know the Attorney General’s Office under his leadership will be focused on the protection and betterment of Minnesotans, not on politics. I’m proud to say that Jeff is also a personal friend and I’m proud to announce today that I am an enthusiastic supporter of his campaign for attorney general.”

Pawlenty is the latest Minnesota Republican leader to publicly endorse Johnson’s campaign, which he launched in February. Johnson also has the backing of:

• Ninety of the state’s 97 Republican legislators, including House Speaker Steve Sviggum, House Majority Leader Erik Paulsen and Senate Minority Leader Dick Day.
• The last four Minnesota Republican Party chairmen: Ron Ebensteiner, Bill Cooper, Chris Georgacas and Bob Weinholzer.
• Republican Party of Minnesota National Committeeman Brian Sullivan, who is serving as co-chair of the Johnson for Attorney General Finance Committee.
• Republican Party of Minnesota National Committeewoman Evie Axdahl.
• The last three Republican-endorsed candidates for Minnesota attorney general: Tom Kelly, Charlie Weaver and state Senator Tom Neuville, along with the last elected Republican Minnesota attorney general, Douglas Head.
• Congressman Jim Ramstad.
• Former Minnesota Governor Al Quie, the honorary chairman of Johnson’s campaign.
• Hundreds of Republican activists and party leaders throughout the state of Minnesota.

“I am honored to have Governor Pawlenty’s support,” Johnson said. “I share his values, admire him as a leader and person and look forward to campaigning with him.”

Johnson, 38, serving in his third term in the Minnesota House, is an assistant majority leader and chairman of the Civil Law & Elections Committee. Outside of the Capitol, Johnson is a small business owner and a private-practice attorney, specializing in employment law. He lives in Plymouth with his wife, Sondi, and their two sons.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XII

Unspoken - to most people - among my motivations for moving to the Twin Cities was a craving to get into the Twin Cities music scene. Whatever it was.

Sunday, October 20, I drove downtown to try to find it.

In '84 and '85, Minneapolis' musical output was peaking. For white-boy punks like me, the likes of the Replacements and Hüsker Dü were breaking out of the regional ghetto, even getting on the national charts.

And then, there was Purple Rain. To a guy who was used to playing in high school gyms and divey bars, the "First Avenue" in Purple Rain - Prince's one good movie, and it was a great one - was irresistable; a kaleidoscope of colors, styles, attitudes; people break dancing in the balconies!; a stage with actual lights and a sound system that sounded like it worked; Apollonia running out of a cab and straight into your gig!. Even the seamy, seedy underbelly of Minneapolis music looked good. Jeebus, I was so looking forward to being in a music scene with a seamy underbelly! At gigs in North Dakota, the seamy underbelly was someone selling angel dust in the parking lot.

I went downtown that night; I had to make it an early one, because I had a 9AM job interview the next morning. but I had to get to the First Avenue and see what the fuss was all about!

Eyes darting between the road and the map, I found my way downtown. I took the first parking spot I could find - it was on Eighth Street over by the Normandie Inn, probably a mile from the First Avenue, but I didn't want to take any chances. I parked, plugged the meter (it was at the end of the evening that I read the meter and noticed that they were not enforced on Sundays, to a dollar's worth of chagrin), and started walking.

First stop - Northern Lights records, on Hennepin and Seventh. I walked inside and took my first deep drag of the gloriously skanky, funky miasma of a big-city underground record store. Heaven!

I browsed the aisles, seeing vinyl wonders that never made it west of Saint Cloud; Throbbing Gristle! Black Flag! Pigbag! Pure farging heaven!

There was a bulletin board in the back, crammed with posters for bands looking for people, people looking for bands, bands looking for gigs; I tore off a couple of phone numbers, carefully put them in my wallet, and killed a couple of hours in dank, skeezy style.

Finally, it was closing time. I bought a copy of the new Replacements album (Tim, still one of my favorites, partly because of its association with this whole time, mostly because it's just a freaking great record), walked out and turned down Seventh.

And then I saw the sign - the same big, black edifice from the movie, the "First Avenue and Seventh Street Entry".

It was a Sunday night; I don't think any bands were playing in the Entry; the Main Room had a DJ playing music and vids (I remember some Sonic Youth song, although not the name - not that it makes a lot of difference - and the vid for the Replacements' "Bastards of Young"). Nobody was on the floor. The balcony had a couple of tables full of people, drinking and smoking and talking. Not a break dancer to be seen.

I walked through the door, around the edge of the huge dance floor, past a couple of pinball machines, and the little pizza bar that used to be just off stage left, on the ratty, dark carpet, past innumerable sparsely-populated stools. I looked around the joint - at the dingy rafters, the large but oppressively flat-black stage, the tile floor and the ratty risers. And I thought...

..."It's just a bar".

Just a big, dark, dirty, smoky bar!

I laughed. What did I expect, Graceland? I certainly should have known better than to expect Apollonia, break dancers; I was less crestfallen than mentally kicking myself for falling for a movie image.

I kicked myself a few more times, ordered a beer, and plotted my band's first gig on the mainroom stage. And how I was going to put that band together.

After I got a job, of course.

Yet Again...

...I did not win the Powerball. Of course, I never buy tickets - but more about that in a bit.

I've at least managed to avoid scenes like this:

I'm one of those eleventh-hour buyers, I only buy when the pot is just silly huge and the real reason is I just don't like being left out, but once I have my ticket I'm so sure I'm gonna win. I even told Molly I'd buy her a pony. What was I thinking?? The first thing she said when she wandered out of bed this morning was "Did you win? Can I have a pony?"

"No, Mol, we didn't win..."

What she heard: "I don't love you."

Of course, I never buy Powerball tickets. I tell everyone that I'm even for life; when the scratchoff games first came out (I think it was in 1990) I bought four; all of 'em busted. The fifth ticket I bought was a $5 winner. I figured "I'm going to retire at break-even, which is better than 99.9996% of lottery players do". And I have stuck by that for the past fifteen years.

With one exception.

Back when I first got married, my family - my eventual-ex-wife, my stepson, daughter Bun in 1991 and son Zam in 1993 - were poor.

"How poor were you?"

My ex and I made $18,000 in 1991. Together. I donated plasma to buy diapers and groceries, twice a week for the better part of a couple of years. And even with that, we fell behind; the monthly tapdance with the landlord never got any easier, the NSP bill never got any lower...

One Tuesday afternoon in the summer of 1992, I was standing at a SuperAmerica on Snelling Avenue. I was buying $5 in gas. I had $7 to last until my next Plasma Hut run (which I couldn't do until the next day). My next paycheck at the worst temp job ever (#2 in the linked piece) was four days away.

As I was waiting to pay for my gas, a clear, crisp voice in my head said "Buy a Lotto Ticket!".

Huh?, I thought.

"Buy a Lotto Ticket".

Now, I believe in miracles. I've actually experienced one (and will write about it someday). I figured - hey, stranger things have happened.

So I plunked down a buck from my tiny stash for a Lotto ticket.

It busted, of course.

That crisp voice must have meant to buy a Gopher Five.

Fearless Predictions

1. The indictments against Tom Delay will get thrown out of court faster than Colin Farrell getting tossed from a Young Life meeting.
2. The tossing of the indictments will make page C-24 of the NYTimes and the WaPo.
3. Patrick Fitzgerald's got nothing on anyone inside at the White House. Oh, he's going to toss around some indictments, but nobody at the White House is going to be even close to trouble.
4. Joe Wilson will host a reality TV show in 2006; Valerie Plame will be a regular bit player, with one of those thin rectangles over her eyes.
5. By this time next year, there will be a pullout from Iraq. By the media. There "won't be a story" there anymore; while there'll be a low-level insurgency, it will neither pose a credible threat of civil war nor of toppling the Iraqi government. The Iraqi economy will have passed out of "Dead Cat" territory, and even most of the Sunni will have turned on the terrorists. And that, of course, won't be a story.

UPDATE: Colin Farrell, not Colin Firth. Farrell, Firth, whatever. It's not like either of them gets my name right...

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XI

On October 19, 1985, I was wrapping up my first partial week in the Twin Cities, after moving here on Tuesday the 15th.

It had been a long, long week.

• After spending Wednesday trolling through want ads for both roommates and jobs, I had a couple of bites. Thursday was a big day!
• You should be getting the impression by this point in the series that I was pretty much straight off the turnip truck. At no time was this more evident than my first Thursday in the Twins, the 18th. I had to get from Burnsville, in the far south 'burbs of Minneapolis, to the northeast end of Roseville, a north suburb of Saint Paul. And I had to be there by 8AM. I maneuvered out onto Cedar Avenue, and drove north to 494...

• ...and instantly felt like Jed Clampett going out on the 405 for the first time. People were barrelling along at 70 miles per hour, practically bumper to bumper (by my bucolic rural experience); I hit my target heart rate by the time I got to Portland Avenue, then doubled it...

• ...just in time to run smack into my first traffic jam. Almost literally I was trying to find a place to merge into the center lane, and turned my head to see a river of red brake lights around Diamond Lake Road. I had to slam on my brakes and shimmy into the breakdown lane, probably two feet behind the car in front of me. I broke into a cold sweat.
• I'd left plenty of time to get to Roseville, though - which is a good thing, because my habit of always, always getting lost in the 'burbs, which had started on Tuesday, was already firmly established. Oh, I got to Highway 36 and made the turn toward east Roseville just fine - but I didn't notice until I was even with the lane that "Rice Street" was the same as the highway number I was looking for. I had to cloverleaf around...
• ...and come back to my first "group interview". It was with a financial services company, for an all-commission telephone sales job. Even right off the turnip truck, the job screemed "scam" to me, and the "interviewer" (an early-thirtysomething who fairly screamed "snake oil" - let's call him "Mr. Oily") seemed like a used-car salesman who'd just gotten paroled for fraud. There were 24 of us in the room. At the end of a 45 minute presentation about the company, Mr. Oily asked everyone to write down a number between 1 and 10, with 10 being very interested in the company and 1 being not so much. I hedged on the number. "Everyone who wrote a six or less, you're free to go", he said with an air of almost spiteful finality. About half of the room got up, seemed confused, and walked out the door past Mr. Oily's almost-angry glare. "Now, for the rest of you...", he continued, and talked for another hour about the gig. I figured I'd have written a "3" before, but my curiosity got the better of me - and what little common sense I had at that time of my life drove the number down to a negative 10. I slipped out of the building during a break, feeling vaguely guilty about walking away from a potential job.
• I next drove to an appointment with someone in the "Roommates" column in the Strib. It was for a house on 33rd and Colfax, deep in the heart of what later became Minneapolis' crack alley. On the way there, I noticed that it was just south of "Little Tin Soldier". Now, for those of us who grew up playing Avalon Hill wargames in North Dakota, "Tin Soldier" was legendary; a store that sold games, and actually had tables where you could find other people to play the games with!. Jeeeeeeez. How perfect! I made a mental note to return after I saw the place...
• ...to which I got, right on time. It was a nice place, a four-bedroom house with three other twenty-something guys. I thought it was perfect - but they seemed to grow disinterested when I told 'em I didn't have a job yet. Mental note to self...
• ...and then, off to Tin Soldier, where I killed a happy couple of hours, in hog heaven, awash in military history books, games, miniatures - I felt like a kid in candyland. Friday morning - a day of job hunting and phone calls. I landed another interview for Monday!

The Smear Spreads

Last week, I wrote about Chris Hill, the former U of M student who was smeared in the 10/13 edition of The Nation as a "chickenhawk". We also interviewed Hill last weekend on the NARN show.

CBS News has picked up the story, virtually verbatim:

YAF official Chris Hill told The Nation that he had been a member of his university's Navy ROTC program and the moderator of a blog where he offered advice to aspiring soldiers on how to obtain a military commission.

But he chose to seek a master's degree rather than join the armed forces. Asked about this decision, he said, "But I know people over there, and that's a fact."

The only problem, of course - as we found out last week on my blog and the show - is that Chris Hill is an Ensign in the US Navy, and a candidate for naval aviation. That'd make him a Seahawk, not a chickenhawk.

Neither The Nation nor CBS has corrected their gross error in fact yet.

Back To The Woodshed

Vikings Stadium off the table for another year?

Andy at Residual Forces thinks so:

It is unconfirmed so far, and shaky at best, but the stadium plea by Wilf and the Vikes is being shelved. Wilf never intended to just own an NFL team like his predecessor, and is taking the recent behavior and performance (or lack there of) of his team to heart and he is focussed on building a professional sports team that Minnesota can be proud of before he builds a stadium...rumor has it that Wilf will be pulling his pitch until 2007 or later...Not that this is a silver lining in any way, but there does seem to be one less pro sports team owner with their hand out right now. We may have even gained a guy who wants a good team rather than any team. He has even called local officials to personally apologize for his team’s behavior, and promised that this is not the Vikings he is content to own.

That'd involve doing it without the taxpayers, of course.

W00t!

For the first time ever - thanks to a 10,000-visit Instalanche on Friday - my Ecosystem Traffic Average is on the brink of the top 200:

Hey, it's fun. It won't last; my average will be back in the low 300s by the end of the week.

But it's a kick. Thanks, visitors!

Henceforth And Forthwith...

...the "Vikings Sex Scandal" shall be known as:

Das Booty

Things I Have No Choice But To Believe Until Further Notice

The short list:

1. OJ was framed. Nicole did it; it was a murder-suicide.
2. In his 1984 classic "Sunglasses At Night", Corey Hart sings during the chorus "Don't trust the maaaan who don't waaaaanna shave no more....
3. The moment the staff the the KQ Morning Crew says - even once - that the Vikings have a shot at the Super Bowl, the season is over. Every single winning season has been accompanied by Tom Barnard growling about how awful the Vikings are, up until about Week 12 (or even into the playoffs); once Barnard comes around and supports 'em, the wheels come off.
4. John "The Rocket Man" Hinderaker of Powerline could race into a burning building to save a child who carried the cure for cancer in his teddy bear, win the Powerball and donate every nickel to cancer research, and quit the law to devote himself to researching the history of quaker hymnology; 25 years from now, someone from the Insufficiently Bright Community would will go "Man, that Hinderaker is such a hothead!" because he blew - once - at a local moron leftyblogger at the end of a day full of Kossacks trying to get him into trouble with his boss.
5. When asked to provide an example of conservatives being inflammatory, members of the fantasy-based community are unable not to say "What about when Rush Limbaugh said "Feminazi?"; this 17 year old example is the closest they can get. And it's wrong anyway.

Steckel V. Tice

Mr. Cheer Or Die's Vikings Underground asks the question; who, if anyone, would win a matchup between Mike Tice's '05 Vikes and Les Steckel's '84 squad?

Go and vote (it's in the left margin).

The current results are...interesting.

Two Elections

Strategy Page compares the two Iraqi elections so far:

The government is getting better at running national elections under the threat of terrorist attacks. The legislative elections last January had fewer than ten million people voting (69 percent of those registered), and over 40 people killed by terrorists opposed to the elections. This vote, on the new constitution, brought out over ten million, and left fewer than ten dead. There are several reasons for this progress. First, the government is getting better. There are more police, and more of them are trained and reliable. The government has used its experience well, and the country was basically shut down for yesterday's election, making it difficult for terrorists to move around.

And apparently the terrorists did not move much, and attacked even less. But another reason for that was the effort by many Sunni Arab anti-government groups to get Sunni Arabs to vote against the new constitution. If the three mainly Sunni Arab provinces could get two thirds of the voters to go against the new constitution, the constitution would have to go back for more revisions and a new vote. Many Sunni Arabs decided that they could live with the new constitution, and turned out to vote that way. As a result, it appears that the Sunni Arabs did not stop the constitution.

All of this is another major defeat for the al Qaeda and anti-government forces. These two groups have not been able to stop any elections, and their efforts are weaker with each round of voting. Al Qaeda's efforts to goad the Shia Arabs into a civil war with Sunni Arabs has not worked either, although it has caused a lot of ill-will and violence in areas where Shia and Sunni live close together.

The anti-government forces have little to sustain them. The October 15 election was just another of many major defeats. And every day, there are numerous lesser defeats. But some of the Sunni Arab terrorists will keep at it, and it will be years before this threat is completely gone from Iraq. That's been the pattern in other Arab countries over the past few decades.

Omission?

For a bit, I thought Mark Steyn was indulging in hyperbole in Friday's column about the media's reluctance to associate Islam with terrorism:

NPR's "All Things Considered" had one of those bland interviews between one of its unperturbable anchorettes and some Russian geopolitical academic type in which they chitchatted through every conceivable aspect of the situation and finally got around to kinda sorta revealing the identity of the perpetrators in the very last word of the geopolitical expert's very last sentence.

Right?

When the NPR report started, I was driving on the vast open plains of I-91 in Vermont and reckoned, just to make things interesting, I'll add another five miles to the speed for every minute that goes by without mentioning Islam. But I couldn't get the needle to go above 130, and the vibrations caused the passenger-side wing-mirror to drop off. And then, right at the end, having conducted a perfect interview that managed to go into great depth about everything except who these guys were and what they were fighting over, the Russian academic dude had to go and spoil it all by saying somethin' stupid like "republics which are mostly . . . Muslim." He mumbled the last word, but nevertheless the NPR gal leapt in to thank him...

Bride of Christ, Bride of Industry

Joe Carter is one of my favorite "Godbloggers" (a term I'm both uncomfortable with and would, were I one, shy away from, but they called their confab the "Godblogcon"; when writing about Rome, write as the Romans do...). He's been a guest on the NARN show several times; he's always a great read and a thought-provoking guy.

He wrote a piece the other day, the evangelical outpost: Industrialized Sex:
How Christians Can Restore True Intimacy, which is, as usually, both highly opinionated and thought-provoking.

One of the thoughts it provoked, as it happens, is that one of his opinions is wrong. Of which more below.

The remainder of this post is rated "R" for the sort of subject matter and, possibly, language you normally find on Nerve.com or Blind Cavefish. And I mean a post-1990 "R", not a 1977 "R". We're clear on this, right? You've been warned. I don't wanna hear anyone squawking about Mitch working blue. Kids, and adults of delicate sensitivities; please flip to a different post.

Second Disclaimer: Any resemblance between the contents of this post and my own life are purely coincidental, as are any differences. Unless expressly stated, nothing in this post is autobiographical.

OK. On to below the fold.

The timing of Joe's post - on the industrialization of sex, the turning of the whole act and aura of sex into a commodity - is perfect, of course; what is a better symbol of the debasement of sex than a bunch of overpaid buffoons flying prostitutes in for an orgy on a boat, after all?

That it shows how far the public ideal (forget about private practice for a moment; yes, I know Babe Ruth chased women through trains and Ty Cobb made Prince look like James Dobson; it's irrelevant, for now) for sex has eroded, even in most readers' lifetimes is obvious; that it shows some reserve of, well, reserve is mildly encouraging.

But only mildly. You don't need me to tell you that sex is an advertising hook, a commercial commodity (and only partly in the literal sense, prostitution; have you looked at what high school kids are wearing these days? Have you seen what gets on TV after 8PM?)

So yes; I'll go along with Joe when he quotes Wendell Berry:

It is odd that simply because of its ‘sexual freedom’ our time should be considered extraordinarily physical. In fact, our ‘sexual revolution’ is mostly an industrial phenomenon, in which the body is used as a idea of pleasure or a pleasure machine with the aim of ‘freeing’ natural pleasure from natural consequence.

Like any other industrial enterprise, industrial sexuality seeks to conquer nature by exploiting it and ignoring the consequences, by denying any connection between nature and spirit or body and soul, and by evading social responsibility. The spiritual, physical, and economic costs of this ‘freedom’ are immense, and are characteristically belittled or ignored. The diseases of sexual irresponsibility are regarded as a technological problem and an affront to liberty.

Industrial sex, characteristically, establishes its freeness and goodness by an industrial accounting, dutifully toting up numbers of ‘sexual partners,’ orgasms, and so on, with the inevitable industrial implication that the body is somehow a limit on the idea of sex, which will be a great deal more abundant as soon as it can be done by robots.

In fact, of the 12 main point to Joe's thesis, I have to agree with the majority:

1. We should continuously point out that the term pre-marital sex is an oxymoron...Saying “I do” with the body may not carry the same consequences as it does in a marriage ceremony, but the effects on the soul are similar. [Hard to argue with that.]

2. Some people will claim that there is something valuable to be gained by having multiple sexual partners before settling down for lifelong monogamy. These misguided souls completely miss the point. Sex is not a technique to be mastered but a means of communicating...Having multiple sexual “partners” as a means of preparing for marriage is like mastering the art of lying in order to become a paragon of honesty. [Again, I agree - but we'll come back to this point later. There's a clinker here.]

3. The bookstores are filled with books and magazines that offer tips and advice on maximizing pleasure, providing multiple orgasms, and other ways to have “better” sex. This desire to improve and be more productive is a hallmark of industrialized sex. But there is no objective standard by which sex can be measured against. “Good” sex is not found by following a formula which will lead to the efficient maximization of sexual pleasure. Sex cannot be measured by the number of orgasms per hour (OPH) or any other idealized unit of measure anymore than a good conversation can be measured by the number of words spoken. [And we'll come back to this, too.]

4. How long should lovemaking sessions last? Ideally, from the beginning to the end...Watching the clock takes the focus off the proper object: one’s spouse. [True, and not really a contention.]

5. Although sex is not tied to the Gregorian calendar, it is cyclical, often following the natural rhythms of the female body. [Dude, I was married for ten years. Again, true.]

6. Having sex can lead to having children. Industrialized sex views this as a potentially unfortunate hazard that should be avoided. Deciding to have a child is a decision that should be made prayerfully and with God’s guidance. And the choice of using technology – whether a thermometer or the Pill – to avoid an untimely pregnancy is a matter between a couple and their Creator. But sex should never be completely stripped of its conceptive role. [I agree emphatically; while I support all family planning short of abortion, any view of sex that ignores the purpose it's really there for is flawed.]

7. Sex may be a joy and a sanctuary but it is also a marital duty...Denying our spouse food or sleep would be cruel and unjust. Withholding sex is no different. [Not really a contention.]

11. A last bit of advice for young people: You may foolishly decide that you need to “make your own mistakes” rather than rely on the hard-earned experience of those that have gone before you...With Christ there is redemption and the hope of restoration. But before you make a rash choice, weigh the cost. It is never worth the price of true intimacy. [Pretty true.]

12. Christian couples are not only joined in union with each other but are united within the body of Christ...The church, therefore, must take an interest in the sexual needs of couples just as it would in the other spiritual and physical needs. The community of believers needs to show that the Bride of Christ rejects industrialized sex. [Can't argue with that, either.]

And this next point...:

8. While it hardly needs to be said, p*rnography has no place in marriage. Sex is intended to be viewed from the place of a first-person participant, not a third-person observer. One of the reasons pornography becomes addictive is because it leads to the attempt to fulfill an impossible desire. When observing p*rn, a person shifts from an I-Thou relationship to the place of the Other, forever outside, waiting to be invited in. That invitation never comes, leading to an endlessly frustrating search for fulfillment that can never be met.

But let's look at the broad brush again. Joe's next two points are squishy. As it were.

9. Equipment belongs in the factory, not in the bedroom. If you need battery-operated tools to enhance your sexual experience you have a problem.

Says who? Show me any biblical authority on this, Joe!

As Joe himself said earlier, "Sex is not a technique to be mastered but a means of communicating". And yet isn't Joe reverting to technique here - in this case, proscribing rather than prescribing the techiques by which couples communicate?

How different is it than saying "books belong in the bookstore" or "if you need a third party to enhance your ability to talk with your partner you have a problem?" If it's between two consenting, healthy, married adults, then how Joe Carter's opinion on their choice of toy (or lack of it) any more appropriate than one on their child-rearing choices?

And this next one - a little foggier, perhaps, but again...:

10. Most of what gets classified under the category of sex has nothing to do with sex at all. Fetishes, sadomasochism, dominance and submission, etc., are always about something else (usually power) and never about intimacy and communication. Sort out your psychological issues on your counselor’s couch, not in your marriage bed.

The Bible is, oddly, silent on each of these; and yet even if Joe is correct and each of these practices is "usually" about "something else" - so what?

Marriage is full of "something else"; couples where one partner's education, verbal polish, income or accomplishment are vastly different than the other's have "something else" to deal with, a great disparity in power. They find ways to work around the difference - or they don't. If the way they work around the differences in a healthy, functional way, then it's a good thing. If they work around them in a way that on the other hand harms either of them (and raises a generation of screwed up kids in the bargain), then not so much.

And a "counselor's couch" is nothing but a form of communication, in this case via a third party; it's a third cousin of sex, twice removed. And many counselors agree that it's less effective than actually just learning to communicate on one's own.

So if a couple, within a marriage, decides that they want to communicate about power, dominance and so on via sex, and we assume that they're both in the marriage for each other's good (and we certainly hope that for any marriage, don't we?), then whose business is it exactly how they do it?

Isn't saying "don't use sex to communicate about this" just about as nonsensical as saying "don't talk about this?" Aren't they the same thing within a couple?

As Joe disclaims his post, the whole thing is aimed at couples who have a Christian outlook on life; the principles are likely enough foreign enough to non-Christian (or at least non-religious) couples as to be very difficult to reconcile. But if one assumes that a couple is Christian, and thus operating in their spouses best interests, then who is Joe Carter or any other prospcriptive evanglical to tell them how that is best done? Marriages are between a couple and their creator; if their physical relationship makes them a better couple, not a worse one - and that is the goal, right? - then what is the problem?

Role Models

It was inevitable.

The best thing about the Viking Sex Cruise (beside the traffic I get by typing that phrase once a day)? Minnesotans can still be outraged by moral decadence.

I didn't think we had it in us.

The Greatest Day In The History Of Sports

Chicago 28, Minnesota 3.

Brian Urlacher had two sacks to lead the Bears to a 28-3 victory over a Vikings team reeling after allegations of drunkenness and sexual misbehavior on a charter cruise last week.

Life is that little tiny bit better today. The spirit of Mike Ditka looks down from above and smiles.

(Yes, I know he's still alive - but he is that big a deal...)

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today (Or Yesterday), Part X

I woke up on the morning of October 15, 1985 knowing that I wasn't going to get any last-minute stalls like unplanned federal holidays. Nope, it was the REAL D-Day.

I went to the bank - open, today - and pulled out my cash. I loaded all my stuff back into my car, shook Dad's hand, hugged Mom goodbye, and drove off up Second Avenue, the street I'd lived on for 14 years. It was about 11AM. I saw Mom crying in the rear-view mirror. I kind of understood - and as I am four-eight years away from my own oldest leaving, I know I do, today.

Anyway, I turned onto main street. The freeway was off to the left.

I took a right. I wasn't done yet.

I topped up my gas tank, stocked up on munchies for the road, and took one last drive around town. I drove up main street; the old post office was in the process of being converted into some sort of senior citizen's home; the JC Penney's that had replaced my grandmother's old photography studio was shuttered (it had moved to a mall on the "South Hill"); most of the other old stores were either closed or reeling from years of lousy farm prices.

Up the hill, through the college one last time, then out on Airport Road to the long-cut to the freeway, the ten-mile back-road detour that led through durum fields and along the Northern Pacific tracks to the Ladish Malting Barley plant, a huge concrete monolith that looks like a three-times-larger, Soviet grain elevator. I used to bike out there all the time; it was a strip of Old Highway Ten, a road that used to link Billings with Chicago, but these days was mainly a utility road. It was a gorgeous fall day, chilly and windy, but with a deep blue sky and cumulus clouds that piled up in serried waves, 180 degrees across the sky from horizon to horizon.

I slipped a cassette of John (nee "Cougar") Mellencamp's "Scarecrow" in the tape player as I gunned down the access road to the Spiritwood exit, a little truck exist off I-94 that really connects the freeway to, almost literally, nowhere. "Minutes to Memories" came on:

On a greyhound thirty miles beyond jamestown
He saw the sun set on the tennessee line
He looked at the young man who was riding beside him
He said I’m old kind of worn out inside
I worked my whole life in the steel mills of gary
And my father before me I helped build this land
Now I’m seventy-seven and with God as my witness
I earned every dollar that passed through my hands
My family and friends are the best thing I’ve known
Through the eye of the needle I’ll carry them home

Chorus:
Days turn to minutes
And minutes to memories
Life sweeps away the dreams
That we have planned
You are young and you are the future
So suck it up and tough it out
And be the best you can

The rain hit the old dog in the twilight’s last gleaming
He said son it sounds like rattling old bones
This highway is long but I know some that are longer
By sunup tomorrow I guess I’ll be home
Through the hills of kentucky ’cross the ohio river
The old man kept talking ’bout his life and his times
He fell asleep with his head against the window
He said an honest man’s pillow is his peace of mind
This world offers riches and riches will grow wings
I don’t take stock in those uncertain things