Category Archives: News
Shocked and Awed
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Fuzzy Math
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Cliff Diving
“Obama’s proposals are not strong enough, per se, to undo the very large inequality increase the U.S. has experienced since the 1970s, particularly when it comes to the incomes at the very top. To really make a dent, you would need to consider more radical policies.”
– Emmanuel Saez, University of California at Berkeley economist, in the Washington Post.
At the rate we’re going, with the partisan bitchery in Congress, it’ll take a few eons before economic conditions even out. But hey – maybe the Mayan apocalypse will sort it all out for us before then!
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Oh, Lord, please set that fire and kill as many as you can! Amen!
“Our prayers, part of our seven year campaign to re-Christianize the City of Springfield, have included an appeal to God to destroy the works of Satan in this city. We have specifically included the strip clubs in these prayers. Yesterday the three story Scores strip club on Worthington Street was completely obliterated in a gas explosion, right down to the ground. I believe this was the hand of God at work in answer to our prayers. We are giving Him all the glory and praise for this occurrence, since it is only by His power that any of our prayers can have any effect.”
– Pastor Scott Lively, of Scott Lively Ministries, on the explosion of a strip club in Springfield, Massachusetts on November 23.
A Massachusetts state fire official confirmed that the explosion was caused by a utility worker who accidentally punctured a gas line, after responding to reports of a gas leak in the area. The explosion and ensuing fire injured 21 people, mostly firefighters.
Damn! If his prayers were powerful enough to cause an explosion, imagine what would happen if he’d prayed to end hunger or something worthwhile. The possibilities are endless!
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AP Discourages Usage of “Homophobia,” “Ethnic Cleansing”
In an update to their style guide for reporters, the Associated Press officially announced they will cease listing “homophobia,” “ethnic cleansing” and other terms in its Stylebook.
The update reads, in part:
Phobia – An irrational, uncontrollable fear, often a form of mental illness. Examples: acrophobia, a fear of heights, and claustrophobia, a fear of being in small, enclosed spaces. Do not use in political or social contexts: homophobia, Islamophobia.
“Ethnic cleansing is a euphemism for pretty violent activities; a phobia is a psychiatric or medical term for a severe mental disorder. Those terms have been used quite a bit in the past, and we don’t feel that’s quite accurate,” says AP Deputy Standards Editor Dave Minthorn.
The AP makes no suggestions for replacement terms.
George Weinberg, who coined the word “homophobia” in his 1972 book, Society and the Healthy Homosexual, does not approve of banning the term.
“I just want to go on record as disagreeing with the AP’s decision not to use ‘homophobia,’ the word. I am a psychologist and author who coined the word a long time ago. It made all the difference to City Councils and other people I spoke to. It encapsulates a whole point of view and of feeling. It was a hard-won word, as you can imagine. It brought me some death threats. Is homophobia always based on fear? I thought so and still think so. Maybe envy in some cases. But that’s a psychological question. Is every snarling dog afraid? Probably yes. But here it shouldn’t matter. We have no other word for what we’re talking about, and this one is well established. We use ‘freelance’ for writers who don’t throw lances anymore and who want to get paid for their work. Fowler even allows us to mix what he called dead metaphors. It seems curious that this word is getting such scrutiny, while words like triskaidekaphobia (the fear of the number 13) hang around.”
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Fellow blogger “Travel Spirit” has compiled some great photos during her romp across the country in recent weeks, but this set really left me in awe. These are from a sand sculpting competition in Fort Myers Beach, Florida, where imaginations are allowed to run wild. Thanks, TS, for posting these!
This year’s Fort Myers Beach Sand Sculpting Championship was amazing! I’ve never attended a competition and it was exciting to see them up close. Their site online said it started at 9:00am…so I arrived there about 8:45am…wanting to get early morning light for good photos. Once there I found out it didn’t start until 10:00am…so I had an English muffin at the Holiday Inn (where the competition was) and took a walk on the beach…
There was a fence with black netting around the sculptures so you couldn’t see them…until you paid the $5.00 entrance fee. Since I’m tall…I snuck one…
I was the first one through the entrance and was able to get some photos without people in them…
The event is for 10 days and began on Friday the 16th. The judging took place on the 18th and I attended on Monday, the 19th.
This is the sculpture…
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Writer Philip Roth Is Frustrated – and Retires
After more than 6 decades of writing, Philip Roth has become weary of the frustrations and decided to stop. “The struggle with writing is over,” he scribbled onto a Post-It note that he affixed to his computer. Roth, who will turn 80 in March 2013, has penned some 31 books since 1959, when he published Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories. Apparently, he’s had enough – whatever that’s supposed to mean to a writer.
Roth actually made the decision to retire 2 years ago, after completing Nemesis, about a polio epidemic that struck his hometown of Newark, New Jersey in 1944.
“I didn’t say anything about it because I wanted to be sure it was true,” he told The New York Times last week. “I thought, ‘Wait a minute, don’t announce your retirement and then come out of it.’ I’m not Frank Sinatra. So I didn’t say anything to anyone, just to see if it was so.”
As with many people, though, his health is an issue. He had back surgery this past April continues to heal with regular exercise. But, he apparently feels that could have a negative impact on his writing. “I know I’m not going to write as well as I used to. I no longer have the stamina to endure the frustration. Writing is frustration — it’s daily frustration, not to mention humiliation. It’s just like baseball: you fail two-thirds of the time.”
“I can’t face any more days when I write five pages and throw them away,” he added. “I can’t do that anymore.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t be critical, since I haven’t published anything outside of this blog yet. But, I can’t imagine retiring from writing. Like politics, it seems to be something people can do forever. Writing, of course, actually has a purpose. My mother retired at age 70 from a half century in the insurance business. My father was forcibly retired in 1994 from a printing company where he’d worked for more than 30 years. Neither misses their jobs, even though it left both with bitter memories. I don’t miss the engineering company that laid me off 2 years ago, in part because of the crap I had to put up with there at the end. I don’t know anyone who’d miss, say, working at a sewage plant or a coal mine. People may miss their coworkers or the camaraderie that comes from the friendships they develop. But, no one really longs for the work itself. The writing life is ideal for me. Enjoying something while making money at it? That’s not working!
But, Roth wants to clarify one thing. “I do not believe the novel is dying. I said the readership is dying out. That’s a fact, and I’ve been saying it for 15 years. I said the screen will kill the reader, and it has. The movie screen in the beginning, the television screen and now the coup de grâce, the computer screen.”
In that regard, I couldn’t agree with him more.
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In Memoriam – Larry Hagman, 1931 – 2012
Actor Larry Hagman, best known for his roles on the TV series I Dream of Jeannie and Dallas died Friday morning, November 23. He was 81. He died after complications from throat cancer. Born in Weatherford, Texas on September 21, 1931, Hagman was the son of actress Mary Martin who had a lengthy stage and film career.
After a stint in the U.S. Air Force, Hagman moved to New York and landed a role on the daytime drama The Edge of Night. But, his popularity soared when he landed the role of an astronaut who discovers a genie in a bottle on I Dream of Jeannie in 1965. Barbara Eden portrayed the genie. Hagman rejuvenated his fame as the villainous oilman J.R. Ewing with Dallas, a prime time soap opera that premiered on CBS in 1978.
Hagman’s off-screen persona was even more eccentric. In 1967, rock musician David Crosby turned him on to LSD, which Hagman said took away his fear of death, and Jack Nicholson introduced him to marijuana because Nicholson thought he was drinking too much. When he first met actress Lauren Bacall, he licked her arm because he had been told she did not like to be touched and he was known for leading parades on the Malibu beach and showing up at a grocery store in a gorilla suit. Above his Malibu home Hagman flew a flag with the statement “Vita Celebratio Est (Life Is a Celebration).”
By the 1990s, however, Hagman’s hard lifestyle caught up with him. He developed liver cancer and cirrhosis. He says he began drinking alcohol as a teenager and didn’t stop until 1992, when a doctor informed him he had cirrhosis. He also claimed he drunk up to 4 bottles of champagne daily for more than a decade, including during his stint on Dallas.
In July 1995, he was diagnosed with liver cancer, which led him to quit smoking, and a month later he underwent a liver transplant.
After giving up his vices, Hagman said he did not lose his zest for life. “It’s the same old Larry Hagman,” he told a reporter. “He’s just a littler sober-er.”
In his later years, Hagman became an advocate for organ transplants and campaigned against smoking. Hagman told the New York Times that, after his death, he wanted his remains to be “spread over a field and have marijuana and wheat planted and harvest it in a couple of years and then have a big marijuana cake, enough for 200 to 300 people. People would eat a little of Larry.”
I have my own personal Larry Hagman story. I met him and actress Linda Gray on the set of a Dallas episode in 1987. I was an extra, appearing as a waiter in a banquet scene where a man professing to be “J.R. Ewing’s” father suddenly appeared to announced he was still alive after being presumed dead. I held a platter of caviar, while standing near a table where Hagman and Gray were seated. Gray asked me how long I’d been holding the platter. “Well, they should be about ready to hatch,” I replied. She and Hagman burst into laughter. They were both actually very polite – and much taller than I’d imagined either to be. That’s when I thought of being an actor, but decided writing was more important.
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Malicious Mesquite Mall Melee
Here’s yet another reason why “Black Friday” shopping is for the mentally-impaired. A fight broke out at Town East Mall in Mesquite, Texas this morning. What some people thought was a gunshot was actually a trash can slamming into the floor. Stores need to invest in Xanax dispensers. In fact, I think I just found a great business idea: I’ll drive down to México in mid-November and purchase as much Xanax as I possibly can; then, sell it to people waiting in line for “Black Friday” deals. Oh my God! I think I can pay off my student loans in a day!
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Chief Writing Wolf 
Attack of the Leftist Trolls
“The person’s posts are usually short and snarky, with reasonably correct spelling, grammar and punctuation, suggesting both intelligence and education. The posts are on the edge of acceptability, with little or no profanity or vulgar language that would get the post flagged immediately. The person has a high ratio of posts to the number of days on the site, suggesting he’s posting comments nearly full time and is getting paid to troll. The person posts politely on progressive websites but nastily on conservative websites, using the same username and IP address. The person’s posts are consistently belittling, rather than intelligent objections and points. The person’s posts address a broad spectrum of topics rather than focusing on one or two subjects of particular interest. The consistency is in the support of leftist policies and positions taken by the Obama administration.”
– Jerome Corsi, complaining that the Obama Administration is paying “trolls” to post comments on the World Net Daily web site.
I’m glad that Corsi – a devout birther who claims Obama is a Kenyan, Marxist, communist – appreciates my attention to grammar and punctuation. I’m a writer and have an English degree, after all, so even if I piss off religious extremists, I don’t want them saying, ‘Hey, that’s loaded with grammar errors! We can’t take this shit seriously!’
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Tagged as Jerome Corsi, stupid comments, World Net Daily