Adaptive Curmudgeon

Part 1:

Making fun of the TSA is shooting exceptionally stupid fish in an unusually small barrel. Yet here we are. It’s 2015 and rent a cops with a 95% failure rate fondle my junk at great expense while I’m en route to Disneyland. Why? Because Saudis hijacked planes 14 years ago? Let’s dispense with the pretzel logic that tries to connect those dots and move on. I have a point and I’ll get to it shortly.

A few weeks ago the Senate debated whether it should or should not continue shoving the NSA’s nose up your smartphone’s ass. Let’s cut the shit and collectively admit that nobody with a pulse believes the NSA will stop monitoring phones regardless of what’s theoretically authorized. Nobody sold the Patriot Act (pushed, I might add by a panicked Republican) based on tapping my domestic, internal, local, phone call to my wife. (I’m pretty sure I’d have remembered.)

At the time (as I fumed about the pending legislation) I found more allies among the lefty crowd (they seem to grok civil liberties but only when they’re not in power). Normally lefties consider me something like a weird but harmless bug that’s interesting but best kept out of the house. Strange bedfellows no? Neocons were ready sign anything if it meant we’d pop a cap in some Afghanistan Terrorists’ ass. They brushed off my warning that “someday your worst enemy will have these powers”. Which is ironic because the left has indeed been in power several years now and the right has spent nearly a decade whining about how the Constitution has been flushed ignored. Raise your hand if you didn’t see it coming.

So what to do? Suppose I could go back to 2001 and say “in the future the Secretary of State will run a secret communcations presence, pretty much everyone in the Middle East will be busy killing each other, and the IRS audits enemies, but America mostly frets about old guys on Wheaties boxes and gay cakes”. If you believed me and accepted this strange data, for which party would you vote?

Neither party likes my theology of “don’t create the ring of power in the first place”. Regardless of what is “authorized” or who is in power, asshattery like wiretapping and TSA’s security theater will continue. This is because we give the jerks a budget and more importantly we’re acting like wimps. Forget politics. Beyond Rand Paul, who is doomed, neither party has a shining record. Politics does not care about you, your privacy, or that which emanates from it… your dignity.

Part 2:

So what does a free man do? Here’s where I become a ray of friggin sunshine. Act like it. Become free within! Quit shoehorning yourself into the role of a subject and stand on your own hind legs like a citizen. Duh!

You should have done it long ago. Why didn’t you? Being free at heart is simply exercising the soul… get your internal lard ass off the spiritual couch. (Special shout out to TUAK and others who are weightlifters in the freedom category. They know who they are.) Also, eat your vegetables, brush your teeth, turn off the TV, and read a friggin’ book. Sheesh do I have to explain everything?

America en mass either waits for their deliverance to come from without or fades slowly into infantilized wilful helplessness. Here’s a hint, Captain America isn’t going to ride in on his motorcycle and kick the NSA’s ass so I implore every deskbound spaz out there to suit up and buy their own motorcycle. Furthermore if you think you’ve got nothing to hide so you’ve got nothing to fear you’re already seriously weakened of mind and heart; go ahead and flop on the fainting couch with half of Europe.

As for the rest of us. Try this mental exercise. Picture this guy.

John Wayne as Tom Doniphon, a man who will not let you search his bags at the airport. Also pictured, James Stewart as Ransom Stoddard, a man who actually read and obeys the Constitution. (Every time a person views this image God kills two lobbyists and gives a politician hemoroids.)

Now picture this guy going through his luggage.

Welcome to Newark Mr. Wayne, get off your horse and come over here. (Link to image here.)

You think the Duke would let the TSA mess with him? I say no. (For that matter neither would that overgrown boyscout, James Stewart.) They would tell the TSA to take a hike not because they were terrorists but because they were free men.

Am I suggesting you’ve to swagger around like a cowboy? Not really. (Though that would be awesome.) Instead I’m barking that none of us should go quietly into that dark night. Whether it’s a bully in the local zoning board, some dweeb in the NSA, or the damn president, if you are an American it’s time to exercise your right and obligation to be obstreperous. It takes practice to be a pain in the ass. Don’t let those skills atrophy.

Part 3:

Why am I mentioning this today? Because I’m several thousand miles from home and yet I just plunked down cash to fuel my truck and roared past an airport that could have taken me home. All they got from me was the figurative one fingered salute of an obstreperous citizen who isn’t about to let the TSA noodle about in his crotch.

The road into the airport is clogged with shuttles and buses stuffed with hollow businessmen about to be groped… there’s no lack of TSA’s hamsters. But not me. I used to fly often. Now I don’t. How did this happen? Rewind a few years into the past. I was standing in a line at an airport. Hundreds of people, young and old, big and little, smart and dumb, lined up in perfect obeisance. Kids handed over teddy bears, women let men rifle through their purses, men slipped off belts and fretted over pocket knives. It was all smooth and orderly.

Waiting in line I fumed. When it came to the big Orwellian pervo-scan I opted out and it didn’t even cause a hicckup in the system. They sighed and did a very professional search. It was all quiet and orderly. Nobody caused a fuss. Nobody made a scene. Everyone was quiet and avoided eye contact with their blue gloved inquisitors. Americans had been trained.

I decided then and there that I was done. I was not going to continue marching in perfect harmony through the perv-scan, past the luggage scrutinizer, and straight onto the aerial cattle car du jour. Sometimes a man needs to look at a situation and say “Fuck it… I’m out”.

I could have flown today. It would have been (modestly) faster. I refused. My alternative wasn’t without effort. The trip took a little longer. My ass is sore from the dually’s suspension. I had to eat at McDonalds and stay in a shoddy hotel. But was it terribly difficult? Nope. It was pretty easy. Plus there are other benefits; the scenery was nice, I got to meet some interesting people, I had time to think.

More to the point, I made a choice and deliberately dodged a certain amount of bureaucratic bullshit simply because you don’t screw with the Duke’s saddlebags. I have nothing to hide but a man and his truck is freer than a subject strapped in a tiny seat begging for a bag of peanuts.

It’s worth it.

Medicinal Latte (Noun) – A type of drink one orders when they  desperately need caffeine topped with six kinds of sugar. As implied by the term ‘medicinal’ these concoctions should be used in moderation. They’re habit forming, expensive, and when consumed in excess they may lead to pretension and goatees. They’re best reserved for moments when you’re so fully exhausted that paying $4 to have a pierced pseudo-intellectual spray whip cream on perfectly good coffee seems logical. (See also: medicinal liquor, recuperative beer)

I’ve been on the road seemingly forever and thus unable (unwilling? uncaring? unmotivated?) to post. For those who’ve noticed my absence… I was not killed by a tractor or a badly felled tree. Thanks for asking.

Today I was exhausted to the core. I stopped to get a medicinal latte. Usually they ask your name so they know to whom the drink must be delivered. Then they carry on like making an espresso is rocket science and you get a chance to relax and jack into the wifi.

This time they nodded and sent me off like my name didn’t matter. How would they recognize me when it was done? Who cares! I was so tired it didn’t seem relevant.

I waded through a throng of hipsters staring at their iPads and teenage proto-hipsters mainlining smartphones, found an empty chair (nicely stuffed!), dropped my little pile of “food” on a table, and slumped back like I’d been shot. I zoned out a bit and apparently fell asleep.

When I came to the drink was right next to me. Awesome!

Then I noticed the clue on the receipt.

The lamest superhero ever. Even aquaman can talk to fish. What the hell can “beard man” do?

There you have it, I’m officially a superhero… the lamest one ever.

In keeping with my current obsession theme of deliberate illiteracy and, more importantly, why it pisses me off, I present this:

You’ve got to be kidding!

Remember folks, they walk among us! Returning to the article that set me off:

“What I wonder is whether everyone needs to be taught how to write an essay.”

Yes. Yes they do. You can stop wondering now.

A.C.

(Hat tip to Lonely Libertarian.)

I stopped at a purveyor of pretentious prattle coffee shop. They had a chalk board. You know the drill; they ask a peppy question of no import and let “the masses” post their irrelevant opinions… because empowerment. Some fool left the chalk out. See if you can spot my response.

Wisdom from a rapper(!). (Lyrics NSFW… because rap!)

From a long cancelled cartoon show:

I am… sadly… the victim of public school. Most (nearly all) of what I learned in my youth was despite their best attempts. Given sufficient resources, a public school can and will turn everything it touches into a shambling mound of stupidity.

However, a few good teachers got through the system. That minuscule tortured minority actually taught. One, while dragging my teenage brain through Sophocles when I was more attuned to REO Speedwagon, said something I’ll never forget. This not my Curmudgeonly Gem of insight; it is hers. Even now it rings as true as it is cruel:

“You will find that there are people who can write and there are ones who can’t. In general the ones who can’t write don’t matter.”

Ouch! It was enough to motivate me to finish Oedipus and write a bang up report to redeem myself. (It wasn’t so bad, there was sex and violence and what more does a story need?) Incidentally you can read Oedipus for free.

The End Of Writing (Hat tip to Maggie’s Farm) pointed me to Why Kim Kardashian Can’t Write Good. You can read the whole thing but the main point (using Ms. Kardashian as an example) is as follows:

“Writing is language in its Sunday best, and in a world where writing was is as central to communication as it used to be, as even a modestly educated person you could barely escape high language.

Those days are over for good. What Kardashian’s tweet reveals is not someone strangely neglectful. She didn’t go to college, and her high school education, as a modern one in today’s increasingly oral society (see below) unsurprisingly did not teach her the finer points of how to write a sentence.”

So, Ms. Kardashian can’t write. So what? I suspect she can’t change a tire or fit a non-linear model either. On the other hand, I look like a sack of shit and she has ta ta’s that pay the rent. To each his or her own.

The author can’t stop there. One doesn’t sell ad space by writing “the hot chick is semi literate and I’m cool with that”. Instead he posits that we, the human race writ large, should shift into a post literate world. Where have I heard this before? Oh yeah, everywhere all the time. It was wrong then and it’s wrong now.

To bolster his argument he refers to some fellow named Cornel West:

“a revered public intellectual who has not written academic books in a quarter-century now, does not write published refereed academic articles, and overall does not like writing and does as little of it as possible.”

I’d never heard of Cornel West. I checked everyone’s favorite unverified (but written) information source (Wikipedia). Apparently he’s a public intellectual and also a Democratic Socialist. (The photo on wikipedia also indicates the guy can rock an afro. It seems a shame to leave that out because it’s epic.)

Frankly I have my doubts about “public intellectual” being synonymous with “wicked smart”. In my personal experience many of the smartest people out there are “privately intellectual”. Is it not smart (or perhaps wise) to display sufficient mental acuity to get through the day while keeping plenty in reserve for cleaning me out at the poker table? I’m convinced there are a lot more brain cells at work quietly doing mental jobs (brain surgeon, transmission repair, etc…) than are loudly and publicly churning out “journalism”.

I’m nothing if not charitable. If he couldn’t find an example of a turbocharged mind that doesn’t like to write but yet still impresses me, I’m going to assume one exists. Again, so what? There’s a genius out there that doesn’t spin verbiage like Mark Twain. Who cares.

“the reception of West is also a symptom of an increasingly oral society.”

Really? Again? This is where it always goes. Premise, example, then a conclusion which always comes out as “toss many years of historical precedent and go with the hip new thing”.

“I submit that a public intellectual’s main work could, with all dignity, consist of a series of 15-minute podcasts released every month or so—kind of like Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats…”

No. No they can’t. Podcasts are ephemeral. Once they’re done, nobody cares. I looked up Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats (they are on the internet) but I had no desire to actually listen to them. Why would I? In another hundred years nobody but academics and dweebs will even consider listening to someone mouthing words into a microphone from the distant past.

If only there was some sort of written versus podcast comparison. Maybe another Roosevelt that, unlike FDR, wrote. What’s this? Theodore Roosevelt, who left office in 1909 (some 106 years ago and 36 years before FDR) has an Author’s Page On Amazon? Color me shocked! He’s got 19 titles. I’ve purchased and subsequently read a few of them myself. Meanwhile the semi-literate Roosevelt has a smattering of books of what other people thought of him.

So there you have it. The Roosevelt who could write is selling books right friggin now and the Roosevelt who couldn’t left behind some “podcasts” that nobody cares about. This, mind you, is the example I’m supposed to emulate in our “increasingly oral society”. Nope!

Words last; at least the very good and very lucky ones. As a literate person I’ve read about slaying beasts 1,040 years ago, creepy Greek sex 2,456 years ago, and an elk hunt 130 years ago. How long do you think a podcast will maintain an audience? Just to tie what’s hanging around right now on my bookshelves (or Kindle) you’d have to expect a podcast will still be relevant in the year 3,056 (Beowulf), or 4,471 (Sophocles), or even merely last to 2,145 (Roosevelt).

I’ll stick to the little scribbled code we call letters. Of course the author isn’t done yet:

“might we stop pretending that ordinary people need to be able to write on a level higher than functional?”

Why? Because it’s a good and noble thing to be a dumbass? Perhaps folks don’t need to be able to write on a high level, but we might aspire to it (excepting of course Social Democrats, Fireside Chatters, and the chick with the ta tas). It is wrong to set the bar low because jumping over is hard.

“What I wonder is whether everyone needs to be taught how to write an essay.”

Yes. Yes they do. You can stop wondering now.

“It may be time to understand that the writing culture of an earlier era was a matter of fashion…”

Indeed. A fashion that started around the time of the Greeks (or if you wish pick your favored precursor civilization) and continues to this day.

“Nor is it true that one can only make a serious point with big words and long sentences, a view that implies that most humans on earth are incapable of higher reasoning.”

The shit is getting deep now. Who among us thinks serious points require big words and long sentences? Mark Twain wrote “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Clever eh? If verbosity meant excellent writing, people wouldn’t make fun of Dilbert’s boss and his bureaucratic gibberish.

Want an example that hits harder? Hemingway wrote “[t]he world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places”. Serious point, words so small I can worm them into a Scrabble game.

Nor am I convinced that most humans on earth are capable of higher reasoning. Have you been to a WalMart lately? Or perhaps they’re capable but they’re busy reading Ms. Kardashian’s Tweets?

“Note that an oral approach to composition lends itself to precisely the qualities so fashionable in today’s education schools.”

I’m not sure it’s wise to appeal to me by referring to what’s fashionable in today’s education schools. As far as I can tell, “what’s fashionable” involves churning out great herds of drooling Marxists wingnuts (and an occasional good teacher that somehow slips through the mesh). They, in turn create another generation of people who can barely think but have impressive student loans. Some of them go on to suggest that I should lower myself to Ms. Kardashian’s level.

“Meanwhile, what are the chances that teaching of composition is going to improve?”

Based on what is fashionable in education schools? None!

“One approach to that is to gnash one’s teeth. Another, however, is to accept that the prevalence of high-level writing in the old days was a temporary condition. Humans have existed for 150,000 years while writing only came along about 6,500 years ago.”

Well there’s that. There’s no doubt that civilization is very hard. Then again civilization is a pretty excellent idea. Humans lived in mud huts and shit in the weeds for 150,000 years too. Shall we advocate for that as well? “Due to Ms. Kardashian’s literacy levels I think it only natural we all bash a rabbit with a stick for dinner and then crap on the lawn”.

“Kim Kardashian and Cornel West, of all people, are symptoms of the same thing—and not necessarily a bad one.”

Wrong! They’re merely people. One who is said to be a brainiac who dislikes writing and the other who… Well I’m not really sure what Ms. Kardashian does (other than sport a decent rack).

The symptom is the idea that they are somehow beacons in the darkness and we, like trusting sub-literate sheep, should follow and that is a very bad thing. There’s no cure for this particular stupid idea. Every generation comes up with it and they always think it’s a great and original concept: “Some 6,500 years of literacy led from planting wheat with a stick to a 78 year life expectancy. However literacy is hard and cool people get by without it. We should all be  like the cool people.”

My old teacher (one of the few who taught) once said; “read the damn book and for God’s sake try to think.” I read the damn books and tried to think. It worked. You won’t find me doing podcasts about Ms. Kardashian and how we should all emulate her.

Mrs. Curmudgeon is the greatest person ever! She gave me a present:

That’s Odinforce and Death Wish coffee by the delightfully named Death Wish Coffee Company. Plus a patch and a bitchin coffee mug:
I added a present to myself. 1792 is my favorite brand of bourbon:
I haven’t tried the coffee yet but when I do it’ll be the most metal cup of coffee ever. The 1792 scarcely made it home before I popped the top and poured some in my new mug.

“A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.” Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

So what does this mean? Hard to say. My dog is huge, noble, and terrifies the UPS guy. (I’m no help with that. “My dog doesn’t bite, probably, but then again I’m sure everyone says that. Why don’t you hand me the box and just stay in your truck?”)

If the shit hit the fan I’m pretty sure my dog would kill and eat a dragon to protect the house. Cool! Other times it acts more like a draft animal than a dog. WTF? Also it’s baffled by the whole concept of “fetch”. (“Dude, if you wanted that thing why the hell did you throw it? SQUIRREL!”) Also it sheds all over the house, might as well have a herd of sheep in the living room.

This weekend it indulged in a maddening habit. It won’t crap during the rain. Bigger and tougher than a wolf but it doesn’t like to get it’s feet wet? Happy to frolic in a snow drift but you’ve got to drag it out of the house if it’s raining. Really? It spent all weekend “holding it” and ripping farts that should be banned by Geneva Convention. We’re safe during the zombie apocalypse but only if it doesn’t coincide with a rain shower.

Dangerous but friendly, noble but goofy? Maybe Sherlock was on to something.

Wise words from Jonah Goldberg (read it all):

“Here is wisdom: Have a kid? Get a dog. Want a kid? Get a dog. Don’t want a dog? Get a cat, which is like training wheels for dog ownership. Have a cat already? It’s probably time to get a dog. Don’t like dogs? You’re wrong.”