The Monthly Post

Bad advice

There's a story I like telling, which I am reminded of for no particular reason.

When I was a freshman in high school, lo these many moons ago, we held an election to determine what our class mascot would be. The Simpsons had just spun off of the Tracy Ulman show, and Bart Simpson graced every other T-shirt in the school, so it wasn't necessarily surprising that he overwhelmingly won election as our mascot.

Also not surprising was that the older generation declared Bart Simpson, with his sassy mouth and underachiever ethic, to be the latest threat to Western Civilization. Thus, they set out to foil the democratic process, but being much wiser than we, they did so not with force, but with words.

Simply, they told us all to think twice about our choice, not because Bart Simpson was hardly appropriate as an academic mascot, but because chances were, just as we disavowed any knowledge of our pre-secondary school selves, we would feel very embarrassed in four years when our mascot was so passe. Moreover, popularity's fickle finger would be ever unkind.

"In four years, nobody will even know who Bart Simpson is."

I could be telling you about how the administration tried to hold us down, but we held strong, and now, seventeen years later, although I cannot remember the names of most of my teachers, I still watch the longest running show in prime time history.

Instead, I am telling you about how we ended up going with a reggae theme, choosing a lion as our mascot, and choosing, as our class colors, the reggae ensign of red, green, and gold. Unfortunately, school policy was that you couldn't use red or gold, as they were the school's colors, so we ended up with some half-assed chromatic euphemisms, one of which was "crimson orange," the other of which I can't recall.

I offer this tale without moral, because the only advice you could glean from it is that you shouldn't take advice, but that seems a bit problematic.

Where have you been?

The other day I wrote a lengthy entry, which described not only a sea battle of epic proportions, but explained that I have been working on a project for the past month. I explained that while I have been blogging about the project, I haven't been posting those entries, because the person heading the project would rather it fail silently, should it come to that.

There's an expression, "the exception that proves the rule," that I've never understood. Normally people use it to describe an exception that would, by its very nature, seem to disprove the rule, or at least, weaken it somewhat. However, while I'm sure I'm using it wrong, here is one story where it makes sense:

My rule with web forms is to never directly input more than a few words. Having lost more than a few hours of my life to post errors and timeouts, I've learned to work offline and copy-paste or upload. Unfortunately, I sat down to write but a few words in what ended up being both great of length and great of quality. Then, I lost it all when I hit the wrong button.

In other news, we got a cat. It's a two-year-old Egyptian Mau named "Nala." She's currently residing under the bed, where she will no doubt stay for a week or more. Such are the foibles of adopting an adult cat. Nevertheless, I'm glad our six-month quest to get this cat has finally ended, if only because I was starting to feel silly have all these cat accessories with no cat to use them.

James Madison's Cock

Lately I've listened to the audiobook of "The Pirate Coast," a book about the little-known Tripolitan war of the early 1800s. It ended with the run-up to the War of 1812, another little-understood event I decided to investigate. It just so happens there's a book called "1812," which I decided would be a good place to start.

The Mexicans have a word I think pretty well sums up my opinion of this book: "No." What I didn't realize, of course, was that this was not non-fiction, but rather, a historical novel. Frankly, it read like a tawdry romance, with graphic descriptions of the founding fathers taking their titles a bit more literally than usually intended. I don't mind a little naughty with my nice, but frankly, it was poorly written.

"James Madison knew his erection was visible through his pantaloons, but he didn't care, because she was looking at his face."

I mean, come on! Plus, when the Madisons and the Jacksons weren't busy humping, and when General Winfield Scott wasn't busy have oddly homoerotic feelings for his men, the writing was just as bad. The author used a device that always annoys me. I call it the low-budget play device. That is, all the action in the book is either people standing in a room talking, or people standing in a room talking about something else.

"Well, I guess we'd better go fight that battle."
"Yes, we should."
Later...
"Well, we sure fought that battle."
"Yes, we did."

It's a book, people. Travel is instant, special affects are free, the impossible is possible. Go outside, for gods' sakes!

It's not all fuss and feathers, of course. I also read a good book, "Everything is Illuminated," by Jonathan Safran Foer. Lord, how depressing. I mean, it wasn't even a tenth as good, or as depressing, as "Kokoro," which holds the dual distinctions of being the world's best and the world's most depressing novel, but it was still pretty good, and pretty depressing.

It was also a bit hard to follow sometimes, and I wasn't always sure what was going on, or if I was getting everything I was supposed to be getting, but it was not bad, and unlike most audiobooks, the reader did a great job of holding conversations with himself without sounding like a twit. (See "The DaVinci Code").

Anyway, I'm looking forward both to the movie, and to "reading" his next book, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," which I am to understand deals with the very uncomfortable subjects of September 11 and the bombing of Dresden.

And speaking of uncomfortable, how about that season finale of Battlestar Galactica? I mean, the end was very, very satisfying, but the middle, shit. I had to take a long, hot shower after that.