Does Christmas smell like oranges to you?

Bouncing about on thefacebook, I came upon a student group devoted to Unity '08. The online Brown contingent had 187 members. One hundred and eighty-seven members, longing for a return of the "aspirations, fears or will of the majority of Americans" to political discourse. That's quite a collection of earnest young citizens. But what is Unity '08?



The national website for Unity '08: A People's Movement to Take Our Country Back claims a lot and says quite little. It would move American governing politics back to 'the middle' by holding an online convention to nominate a bipartisan ticket of one Republican and one Democrat. Online discussion groups would create a consensus platform; in the meantime, Unity '08 limits its specific concerns to denouncing "special interest money" and drawing a line between "crucial issues" (terrorism, nuclear proliferation, national debt, education, health care, etc) and "important issues" (abortion, gun control, and gay marriage). The main problem in national politics, it believes, is the shouting of voices at the far ends of the spectrum.

The practical outlook for this sort of organization notwithstanding (i predict ... 38,000 voting online, after the Glenn Reynolds provides a quadrasyllabic link, with John McCain taking home the $200,000 in small-donor contributions), this kind of return-to-wholesome-politics spiel is particularly silly. All government is an ugly struggle between interested actors (see: legislation and sausages, making of). Sure, procedural safeguards are important. Healthy arguments are important. But ultimately, a group like Unity '08 smacks of intellectual laziness: a certainty that the correct answer lies in the happy middle ground between left and right, rather than with any particular set of ideas or values. Smarter people than I could explore this further, but I'm tired and have other things to do -- and in any case I posted this simply because the site reminded me or Hal Philip Walker's Replacement Party in the movie Nashville, a call to meaningless consensus through non sequiturs, cliches, and platitudes:

Who do you think is running Congress? Farmers? Engineers? Teachers? Businessmen? No, my friends. Congress is run by lawyers. A lawyer is trained for two things and two things only. To clarify - that's one. And to confuse - that's the other. He does whichever is to his client's advantage. Did you ever ask a lawyer the time of day? He told you how to make a watch, didn't he? Ever ask a lawyer how to get to Mr. Jones' house in the country? You got lost, didn't you? Congress is composed of five hundred and thirty-five individuals. Two hundred and eighty-eight are lawyers. And you wonder what's wrong in Congress. No wonder we often know how to make a watch, but we don't know the time of day.

chuck norris is abe simpson?

Shorter Chuck Norris:

(1) Consumer goods are an important part of celebrating Christmas. Without explicitly Christmas-themed marketing by retail stores, we could lose our entire Christmas-centered way of life.

(2) I believe Christmas is about more than buying gifts and material wealth: it is a time to remember to love and be charitable to our fellow human beings.

(3) So go see “The Nativity Story,” a new film about Christmas from New Line Cinemas, a Time Warner Company!

Somebody get this guy a corncob pipe and a front porch.

“In the pursuit of being politically correct, I believe we have sold out to a neutered nativity — taking no sides to the slow elimination of ''Christmas'' in retail and culture.

Just say 'Merry Christmas!'

Of course I'm not against December commerce, just the overcompensation of sensitivity that leads to Christmas compromise.

…

If we don't stop the decline of Christmas language now, imagine what the yuletide will be like in a few years: full of ''holiday'' trees, ''holiday'' gifts, ''holiday'' wreaths, ''holiday'' dinners, ''holiday'' music, and ''holiday'' church services. Come to think of it: we're almost there!

It's time to just say ''Merry Christmas!'' Or there will be nothing merry about it for our children and grandchildren.

…

Most of all, I still believe what mom taught me: the heart of Christmas is found in a stable not in a store.

No business can take away that fact from any of us.

(One of the best ways you and your family can be refreshed about the true meaning of Christmas this season is by seeing the new family-friendly movie, ''The Nativity Story,'' opening in 3,000 theaters nationwide this Friday, Dec. 1. I recommend it highly!)”

[via Sadly, No!]

G'hey!

per usual, Metsrdamus sez it awl.

from the 'conservative wit' department

Here's a question for all the bloggers at The Corner: with all the disdain you show for your pet targets -- France and soccer being two -- what would you say to anyone who dismissed, say, NASCAR or Wyoming with your level of vehemence? For that matter, how many prominent writers can you name who mock 'Heartland' pasttimes with this much vitriol?

That isn't a rhetorical quesotion. I'd genuinely like to see examples. Because what John Podhoretz just wrote about the World Cup finals isn't worthy of a college magazine.

World Cup Observation [John Podhoretz]
Instead of playing the match and losing, why didn't France simply surrender the way it always does?
Posted at 5:12 PM


More World Cup Observations [John Podhoretz]
This is astounding: A French player assaulting an Italian player during the finals match. I gather that the incident began when the Italian player said, "You know what? I like Jews."

attention, all hands attention

The 80s are over, and we live dreary lives devoid of innocence.




That is all.

photo courtesy of Jack Black's Body

more self-reference

and by gum, can i leap on a keyboard, too!

i-o-v-a

walmart: not merely taking manufacturing jobs from working americans

... Now taking retail jobs from working Americans, too!

So I was at the local Wal-Mart today, looking to pick up some consumer electronics at low-factory-wage-covering prices. Now, the store was staffed with plenty of blue-aproned minimum-wage shopwalkers. But one of the checkout counters advertised self-service. No way was I to leave without trying this thing out, wide-eyed scrivener that I am.

And it is pretty astounding. I got to recreate those happy moments swiping bar codes at Price Chopper. I avoided eye contact with the harrijans. And I saw Wal-Mart's clever solution to the shoplifting possibilities that had long hindered the advent of similar self-serve checkout stations: after one swipes their product, they place it in a bag on a weighing station. Any failure to produce the item with the correct weight will, presumably, end the transaction and alert the local police. I didn't test the process today, though -- I wanted to establish a baseline. Maybe next time.

And of course, the self-serve station is right in front of the supervisor's stand. So they don't really save money from reduced workers as they do improve the shopping experience.

This may be the first time I've ever bought anything from Wal-Mart (it was a $25 "Durabrand" discman with car adaptor kit to go in the Jaunty Volvo (a Blue Volvo, might I add)). It was a moment of Friedmanian rapture when I walked down the aisle and surveyed the unfolding visions of cheap consumer goods. A Continental Theorist would have more to say on the subject, probably involving the words 'reify' or 'reification,' but the goods on offer are an approximation of expensive doo-dads that I could never have imagined in the Caldor-roaming days of my youth. Leather footrests, satellite radios, barstools: these would be luxury goods, if a luxury good cost less and lasted longer than a fill-up at Mobil. In the lee of the economic gales are the working middle-class who fill their homes from those shelves.

Should talk more about purchase as identity and other hip themes, but it's late and this is less coherent than I'd like. I can't talk right, but by gum can I rant on the keyboard, generally.

three cheers for immigrant labor (sorry, mom!)

today i had my hair cut by a lithuanian woman.

she started at 6:35, even though 'the men's room: barber lounge & spa' normally closes at 6 in the summer, because i walked in at 6 pm and i had on my swank intern clothes and looked like a high-rolling motherfucker. some friend called her at 6:45 because she was late. but she buzzed the sides too short and so i made her cut the top all over again to even things out. by this time it was 7:05. then, because it was a rather swank establishment, she had to spend about fifteen minutes clipping the ends to make them look tidily uneven, and giving me a straight-razor shave, and massaging my scalp while wearing this orgasmic vibrating-massager that fits over the back of her hand. but she was a good lithuanian haircutter, because she did this all slowly and with great care even though she really, really wanted to be somewhere else. i didn't leave irina's chair until 7:25 at the earliest.

i think i could love making people sacrifice themselves for my benefit. it's kind of an insecure needy thing. but i tipped her at 25%. that's gotta mean something.

so i wrote this up because of the appointment she was late for. apparently her husband won't move out of sleepy Rochester. and he won't let her buy a cat that has long hair. but finally she found a cat she liked with short hair, and she was going to go look at it at six, except i came in and made an appointment for 6:30. it was a siamese cat that was all white except for its ears, which were orange, and its eyes, which were blue. how's that for relevance? i need a picture for this site. maybe i'll go back after hours next month and let her fix the mess she made of my formerly stylish 'do.

Remets-les!

So, uh, back to the titular subject of this blog, as I put off my five hours of pre-exam sleep.



Been some great ball the last couple of weeks, but I guess I'd rather miss games in May than in September ... so long as we don't spend September the way the 21st Century Mets generally have. Not a whole lot to say. But I do want to record for posterity this story about the lovable, huggable profile of Pedro the lion:

Off Mound, Mets' Ace Loosens Up in His Garden
By JULIET MACUR
Published: May 9, 2006

* * *

After every game in Queens, he goes home to Cruz, and to a wonderland. A winding paved driveway leads to his house, which is about a quarter of a mile from the road. Two waterfalls trickle down a 20-foot-tall formation of rocks. In the distance is a pond big enough for a rowboat. Chipmunks scurry between the shrubs. Bumblebees bounce from tulip to tulip. The sound of birds chirping is so constant that it seems like a piped-in recording on the property, which a landscaper helps Martínez maintain.

* * *

Connecticut is too cold for mango trees. Even so, Martínez said he planned to keep the house once his baseball career was over. He will use it as a winter vacation house for himself and for relatives who, he said, "get a kick out of snow."

Martínez hates cold weather, but has been outdoors a lot lately in the mild temperatures, gardening and playing with his three 3-month-old puppies: a chocolate Labrador retriever, a golden retriever and a cockapoo, a cross between a cocker spaniel and a poodle. When Martínez walks outside, they bound his way, tongues out, tails wagging.

"Stop eating my tulips!" he yelled last week to Typhoon, the golden retriever, who was gleefully chomping on a red petal.

With the house, the land and even his mischievous puppies that seem to have an appetite for his azaleas, this is his new oasis, Martínez said.

"I always wanted to have a home, finally," said the man in whom the Mets have so much invested. "This is my house, this is my town. I'm going to stay here."

This is great. Pedro lives on an 8-acre estate in Greenwich. It's like a Thomas Kincaid painting -- but in a good way. Seriously, I'd be smiling even without the mention of flower-chewing puppies.

David Bowie in the City

From a Reuters article in the NY Times:

Bowie to Curate New Music Festival in New York

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Semi-retired rock star David Bowie will curate the inaugural High Line Festival, to be held next May in New York.

As part of the programming, Bowie will play a large outdoor concert, his first show in New York since 2003. He will also select musicians and artists to appear throughout the festival, which will take place in neighborhoods underneath the High Line, a public park being created atop a long-abandoned elevated railway line on the west side of Manhattan.

* * *

He recently told New York magazine he is taking a sabbatical this year.

``I'm fed up with the industry,'' he said. ``And I've been fed up for quite some time. I'm taking a year off -- no touring, no albums. I go for a walk every morning and I watch a ton of movies. One day, I watched three Woody Allen movies in a row.''

What a dull article. First NY concert since 2003? THREE Woody Allen movies in a row? Ziggy, where's the decadence? How do you expect the culture warriors to cry 'Decline and Fall!' when you sound like a columnist for Good Housekeeping? What, do you expect us to believe you stay up late playing gin rummy and drinking English Breakfast Tea?

re: Lapham

Well, I wrote the above post a couple weeks ago, and figured I was only about halfway through. But it's been kind of busy lately and I don't remember where I wanted to go. So I'll just say I've been thinking a lot, lately, about how we convince others through language. The problem is that when different people have different goals, political writing seeks agreement only rarely (as opposed to some legal contexts, eg).

So, not a particularly profound thought to memorialize the Editor's career. But I will say there's a touch of irony in Lapham's defense of clarity: for a man who writes with such rhythm, he is surprisingly unmemorable. Something about the density of the language, I think -- it's the opposite of pointillism. Reading his essays, I would get so caught up in the punchy little metaphors and analogies and allusions that the (rather basic) argument was left by the wayside before I'd even gone ten pages into the magazine. And then the figures of speech followed, having nothing to attach them to. Yeah. Density, a real killer. Something to bear in mind.

In Memoriam L.H.L.

I know said I'd write a lot on the Mets, but fear not, gentle un-Metsthusiastic reader: my Vision roams far beyond the Diamond. To that end, I'll begin this blog with an exercise in superfluity, and append a few words to those of Lewis Lapham.

Lapham, editor of Harper's since before I was born, retired this month. I've subscribed to Harper's for the last couple years, largely because it costs only ten bucks a year, unlike those shameless profiteers at The Atlantic or The New Yorker (also, Harper's sends renewal notices every couple months or so, so it's easy to sign up for several year's worth on the rationale that "Well, who knows if these clowns will ever replace Lapham if they aren't guaranteed readers through 2017?"). I don't know that I'd begin a subscription today. I've generally enjoyed their articles. I've even remembered some of them: David Foster Wallace attempting a modern history of linguistics here, Arthur Miller writing fiction about beaver dams there, first-person essays on Kentucky strip mining and Colorado evangelicals. Sure, the unabashed left-wing approach of most articles grows unjustifiably shrill, at times; but much of the writing itself is very good and, at the very least, lacks the bullshit patronizing anthropology of, say, a New York Times Magazine feature. In any case, the writers' hearts are in the right place.

Among the Harper's writers, this verdict particularly suits Lapham himself. His monthly Notebooks (to be continued 6 times yearly) opened each month's issue with three breathless, hyperbolic pages of political observations, cultural pronouncements, and punchline-metaphors. He was a political hipster, spouting assertions of taste. He was a white Elvis Mitchell, free-associating with gusto. Lapham's columns were intellectual comfort food of the worst, flab-inducingest, kind, but every month I'd take them out to Lincoln Field and read with uneasy joy as he excoriated Washington's war on a proper noun. Even in one of his more recent excesses -- when he described watching as speeches at the 2004 Republican Convention "affirmed the great truths now routinely preached from the pulpits of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal," in an article published before the Convention -- are excused somewhat by their accuracy.

Predictability, curmudgeonliness, and disdain for scoundrels, served up in a stew of fatty sentences: fitting that Lapham signed off as editor with a Notebook lamenting the decline of clear prose in an age of corporate advertisements and a video commons. With the assistance of quotes from Wallace Stevens, Walker Percy, Orwell, Simone Weil, J.M. Keynes, and G.K. Chesterton, he concluded vaguely that thoughtful citizens and writers make society healthy. Yes, he had a point, but one so broad as to be unremarkable. Nobody disagrees that a people 'suckled at the machine-made breast of corporate entertainment' are less well-off than those ... well, not so suckled.

This will be my blog. It'll talk about the Mets. Also about other things. I'd like to use moveable type, eventually. But I'd like to do a lot of things. For now: this will do.