Barry Bonds, The Saddest Man In The World

No one cares about Barry Bonds. The Dodgers don't want to talk about it. The rest of baseball just boos the man. One short of the Babe's home run mark of 715, and it's only the fans in San Francisco who give a crap.

Bonds' feat of 714 is nothing to laugh at. It's one of those things that take both great skill and incredible stamina. You've got to be the best in the game for over a decade to even think about it. And once you get to the point where you're breaking records, you're already a few years past your prime.

So why don't we care?

Because the guy cheated. He took drugs to make him a better player. And everybody knows it.

One of these days, Bonds will finally hit 714. Then 715. These should be some of the best weeks of his career. This man should be on top of the world.

But we don't care.

Adrienne Rich, Some Star Watching, Not Writing For So Long And Embarrassing Myself

I've gotten away from posting about things I really, really like lately. I'm trying to be better at that. It's hard, though, to write about subjects so near and dear to my heart. More often than not, it just turns into bits of rhetorical nonsense and/or melodramatic sappiness (see below). So for now, I'm going to post a short poem by Adrienne Rich, because I like her, and if you like poetry, even just a little bit, you should, too.


Planetarium

Thinking of Caroline Herschel, 1750-1848, Astronomer, Sister of William; and Others

A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them

a woman 'in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles'

in her 98 years to discover
8 comets

She whom the moon ruled
like us
levitating into the night sky
riding the polished lenses

Galaxies of women, there
doing penance for impetuousness
ribs chilled


in those spaces of the mind

An eye,
'virile, precise and absolutely certain'
from the mad webs of Uranusborg
encountering the NOVA
every impulse of light exploding
from the core
as life flies out of us

Tycho whispering at last
'Let me not seem to have lived in vain'

What we see, we see
and seeing is changing

the light that shrivels a mountain
and leaves a man alive

Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body

The radio impulse
pouring in from Taurus

I am bombarded yet I stand
I have been standing all my life in the
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-
luted that a light wave could take 15
years to travel through me And has
taken I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind.

(Adrienne Rich, 1971)

Superman and Icons and These Myths We Make

If you've been to the cinema recently, chances are you've caught one of the trailers for the new Superman flick. For most of you, it's probably just one more disposable, popcorn piece of fluff. But for a few, it's something more. Because, for us übergeek funnybook lovers, Superman is part of an iconic language that communicates something about our world that we find so hard to define.

Sure, it's about superheroes. But there's something more powerful at work, too. It's about images. It's about icons. It's about myth.


It's these icons, secular symbols of an irreligious faith, that energize the mythologies Americans have created for themselves in the sequential arts.

You've got to remember one thing about this country. We have no ancient myths. The old Western mythologies -- Artemis, Apollo, Bacchus, Diana, Sigurd, Fria, Arthur -- they were never ours. We left them behind in Europe. We left them behind in the wake of the Enlightenment. We left them behind in our desire to create a new world all our own.

And the myths of this continent -- the myths of those who were here before us -- were crushed to dust under the new American ideals of progress, uniformity and industry. Stamped down and put out before we ever had the chance to explore them.

Our first national myths were pseudo-historical tales of very real men -- Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt. But these myths were both too true and yet not true enough. These figures were written in the granite of historical fact. No matter how we dressed them up, they were never mythic enough to express every truth we sought to articulate.

So we created them. Supermen. Superman. Symbols. Not real men. Those weren't working well enough. But symbols of truth. Symbols of justice. Symbols of the American way. Symbols of determination, grit, and above all, nobility of character.


This was the first symbol of the our new mythology. But it wouldn't be the last. Just as religions have used icons in liturgical worship for centuries, our new American myths needed symbols and icons of their own. The Bat. The Captain. The X.


America, especially 20th century America, had grown too fast -- moving from a loose collection of colonies to global superpower in less than 150 years. We bought the Mississippi, forged a way across the Rockies, built a railroad from ocean to ocean, became the breadbasket and factory of the world in such a short time, that we didn't have the time to develop the mythologies of the past world powers -- the British, the Hapsburg, the Ottomans, the Romans, the Greeks. We went from something to nothing virtually overnight.

And we've spent the last 75 years trying to backpedal our way to a true American mythology. A mythology not bound by the constraints of history and scientific fact -- but a mythology that expresses American ideals without compromising those ideals by attaching them to actual, historical figures.

One of my favorite storytellers liked to say that myths are nothing more than "lies breathed through silver." They are, on the one hand, completely untrue. But on other hand, they express truths about ourselves that are otherwise inexpressible. They are breathed through the silver of the collective religious/secular ideal. Every American stands for truth and justice. But no one American stands for them in their most complete sense.

Hence, Superman.

These symbols mean something. They mean something because we give them meaning, breathing the truth into them with our stories and parables. They certainly are kids' stuff. But that are not just kids' stuff.

They are, at their most basic, the stuff of legends. The stuff of myths. The stuff of dreams.

They are truth. And they are true because of what they reflect. They are true because in the telling, they gain meaning.

Pretty Bird

Am I the only one who thinks it's a little bit funny that public health officials are having the same exact problems with ABC's Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America as the Catholic Church is having with the upcoming release of The Da Vinci Code?

I am, aren't I? Geeksville for me, then!

Anne Lamott Comes To Town And I Get Surprised By Life

So last night was Anne Lamott night at the First United Church of Oak Park. Unfortunately, I missed the first 20 minutes because I'm still not used to the fact that it can take 50 minutes to drive 15 miles in damn-blasted city-land. Bygones.

Upon entering, I noticed two things: This was a pleasant church (with a pipe-organ and real live pews!). Also, 90% of the audience was middle-aged women.

Now, I have nothing but goodwill towards middle-aged women. My mom is a middle-aged woman. And she's a really good mom. But I've never actually met an Annie Lamott fan who was a middle-aged woman. Everyone fan of Miss Lamott I know is either a college-age/20-somethingish, or has the last name Doughty. So basically, I expected a bunch of people my age, a smattering of elderly church goers, and the Doughty's. Instead, it was mostly just The View x 100, only with lots more gray hair and Bush-hating.

So now I need to go sit in a corner and rethink life a bit. Because if I was wrong about this, I could be wrong about everything else there is to be wrong about in life plus infinity.

Oh, and P.S., Miss Lamott was very funny, very frank, and very much in her element as a storyteller. As an audience, we were very well behaved, I think. There were plenty of hushed silences, hearty chuckles and bouts of applause to be had. Also, her voice is a little bit nasally. And finally, she signed books. Which was weird.

The End

When blogs sound like not-blogs, aka Hollywood films.

From the Chicago Tribune:

He labeled his students "criminals," saying they stole from teachers, dealt drugs in the hallways, had sex in the stairwells, flaunted their pregnant bellies and tossed books out windows. He dismissed their parents as unemployed "project" dwellers who subsist on food stamps, refuse to support their "baby mommas" and bad-mouth teachers because their no-show teens are flunking.

He took swipes at his colleagues, too--"union-minimum" teachers, literacy specialists who "decorate their office door with pro-black propaganda," and security officers whose "loyalty is to the hood, not the school."

Is this real news, or a review of that one Antonio Banderas/Michelle Pfeiffer/Edward James Olmos miracle-worker-in-the-inner-city movie?

Pick before you click!

Oops! All Goths!

....And we're back.

There's a fantastic article by Jonathan Ames in the latest issue of Spin Magazine about his experience at Gothicfest 2005 (held [somewhere] in the great Chicago suburbs). It's funny and articulate and insightful and everything else your college professor used to say when he talked about Anne Lamott. Or my college professor. Or whoever. I forget.

Just go read it. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are on the cover and it starts on page 64. Don't actually buy the magazine; it sort of sucks. But go read the piece. At like, you know, Borders or whatever. Or whoever. I forget.

Residents for Presidents!

I had to borrow this from j/ac's xanga....

Your Results:

1.	Your ideal theoretical candidate. (100%) Click here for info
2.	Kucinich, Rep. Dennis, OH - Democrat (69%) Click here for info
3.	Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat (69%) Click here for info
4.	Cobb, David - Green Party (69%) Click here for info
5.	Nader, Ralph - Independent (69%) Click here for info
6.	Brown, Walt - Socialist Party (61%) Click here for info
7.	Clark, Retired General Wesley K., AR - Democrat (60%) Click here for info
8.	Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democrat (60%) Click here for info
9.	Sharpton, Reverend Al - Democrat (59%) Click here for info
10.	Moseley-Braun, Former Senator Carol, IL - Democrat (58%) Click here for info
11.	Edwards, Senator John, NC - Democrat (57%) Click here for info
12.	LaRouche, Lyndon H. Jr. - Democrat (48%) Click here for info
13.	Gephardt, Rep. Dick, MO - Democrat (43%) Click here for info
14.	Lieberman, Senator Joe, CT - Democrat (40%) Click here for info
15.	Bush, President George W. - Republican (33%) Click here for info
16.	Badnarik, Michael - Libertarian (28%) Click here for info
17.	Hagelin, Dr. John - Natural Law (18%) Click here for info
18.	Peroutka, Michael - Constitution Party (4%) Click here for info

...because it just goes to show how thrilling it is to vote for President when you disagree with every candidate at least one-third of the time.

Oops! All Reactionary Racists!

No need to fear, good citizens. The U.S. Congress has saved us from the clutches of the evil terrorists once again. Dubai Ports World, a company based out of the United Arab Emirates, has decided to sell or transfer it's newly obtained rights to operate six American ports to a quote/unquote "U.S. entity." This after two fabulous weeks of racist BS from a perfectly jingoist Congress. That's the U.S. Congress. Or the Congress of the United States of America. You know, one of the most enlightened nations in the world? Or not. Depending on whether we're dealing with Arabs. Which we apparently cannot trust, at all costs, and who must be stopped from leasing any property in America containing boats, planes or snowmobiles.

On second thought, maybe snowmobiles are okay.

It's bad enough that most major security companies couldn't find any good reason why an Arab country couldn't handle the day-to-day operations of the six ports. It's bad enough that no one bothered to listen when the Coast Guard and U.S. Customs reassured the public that they were the ones who handle the bulk of security and cargo inspection. It's bad enough that Dubai, a member of the United Arab Emirates, has been nothing but cooperative since 9/11 in helping the U.S. track down dirty money used by Al Qaeda to fund their organization and operations. Not to mention the fact that the UAE sent us $100 million to assist with post-Katrina disaster relief!

And this is how we repay them? When one of their businesses, and a totally legit one at that, uses the free market (that we Americans swoon over every time we shop at our discount price marts), to purchase the rights to run the day-to-day operations of six American ports?

• Ports which are run by a number of other foreign companies, including one such firm from that gentlest of giants and supreme defender of human rights, the People's Republic of China.
• Ports whose actual security are ever maintained by the United States Coast Guard no matter who leases them.
• Ports that no one in Congress seems to be concerned with when they need some $1.5 billion in unfunded security measures (PDF) as per the suggestion of the Coast Guard and the 9/11 Commission.

Oh, but I forgot. It's an election year isn't it? And we all know the best way to win elections is by appealing to the fears of every red, white and blue-blooded American voter. Even if we have to create those fears by pandering to baseless, bigoted accusations that someone can't be trusted if they believe in Mohammed or Allah.

Racism wins elections! News at 11!

Democrats should be ashamed for jumping on the chance to have a national security issue to bash President Bush on, no matter how baseless it may be. "See," they said, "our president isn't always tough on the terrorists. He almost sold them our ports! Now vote for a Democratic congress!"

The Republicans did no better. With Mr. Bush's approval ratings hovering around 40%, they've been desperate to find on issue to nail the president on, and are clinging to this one like a fly to giant, steaming crapola. Giant steaming racist crapola. Giant steaming racist asshole crapola. With awesome stinking racist pieces of yellow-bellied bigoted corn poking their way out of this newly created pile of hyperpatriotic excrement.

I am making myself clear here, right? How, for once, our President was actually doing the right thing by awarding Dubai, our friend and compatriot in the war against terror, a bid to run a handful of our ports because they've been our faithful buddy in a time when so many in the world hate our freaking guts? And what did our Congress have to say? Was it a warm hearty thank you for dealing Al Qaeda a stunning financial blow to their ability to blow things up?

No, instead, Congress mostly just cried smoke when there was no fire. Draped in the flag. With a giant white hood on. And told the rest of the world that we're just peachy about Arabs running things, as long as they stick to Subway franchises and Laundromats.

Quizes will do...

ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY SELECTOR

The list below is modified by your input. The results are scored on a curve. The highest score, 100, represents the closest philosophical match to your reponses. This is not to say that you and the philosopher are in total agreement. However this is a philosophy that you may want to study further.

1.	Aquinas (100%) Click here for info
2.	St. Augustine (97%) Click here for info
3.	Ockham (87%) Click here for info
4.	Spinoza (68%) Click here for info
5.	Kant (64%) Click here for info
6.	Nel Noddings (64%) Click here for info
7.	Jean-Paul Sartre (59%) Click here for info
8.	Jeremy Bentham (59%) Click here for info
9.	Aristotle (57%) Click here for info
10.	John Stuart Mill (56%) Click here for info
11.	Prescriptivism (50%) Click here for info
12.	Plato (45%) Click here for info
13.	Ayn Rand (38%) Click here for info
14.	Epicureans (36%) Click here for info
15.	Stoics (36%) Click here for info
16.	Nietzsche (32%) Click here for info
17.	Cynics (31%) Click here for info
18.	David Hume (21%) Click here for info
19.	Thomas Hobbes (0%) Click here for info

Find your inner philosopher!

*******************

Possibly the most boring quiz on the face of the earth, but wait until Jake hears about my flirtation with Aquinas!