What's on the bookshelf lately.

It's book report time.  I read a lot.  I don't get a chance to often to talk to anyone about the things I read, tho.  I don't usually go for the latest NY Times best-selling mystery thrillers from the likes of Koontz, Grisham et al.  What I do like are fictional works that are still educational in some way - historical novels and such - and a lot of non-fiction.  Like my taste in music, my preferences for books change with my mood.  One day it may be some dry scholastic work, while the next day may bring a hankering for some Kurt Vonnegut.  So on to it, here's a few words about some books I've read and been affected by lately.

Human Accomplishment: The Persuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950.  This book, by the coauthor of the controversial bestseller The Bell Curve, is an attempt to quantify emminence in accomplishment of those, as the title would imply, who have contributed to the arts and sciences during the specified years.  I'm about as far from a math whiz as a human being can possibly be, but I love a good dose of statistics and this work does not dissapoint.  But what I like most about this book is author Charles Murray's unflinching readiness to forgo political correctness and expound on the merits of some accomplishments versus others.  To quote at length on judgement, Murray says:

"The widespread attitude these days is an extreme reluctance to be "judgemental" in any arena, an ethos that has spread across questions of morality, religion, politics, and the arts.

 My first objection to this stance is that bgeing nonjudgmental is internally contradictory and an impossibility.  If you refuse to accept that there are any objective differences, expressible as continua from negative to positive, between the nude painted on black velvet and Titian's Venus of Urbino, between a Harlequin romance and Pride and Prejudice, between How Much Is That Doggy in the Window and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, you are not standing above the fray, refusing to be judgmental.  It is a judgment on the grandest of all scales to say that How Much Is That Doggy in the Window is, in terms of quality as a musical composition, indiscriminable from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.  And if you really believe it, you have also made a sweeping judgement about the capacity of the humand mind to assess information."

It's no surprise how Murray's work has come to be very controversial.  As he admits, the lists of emminent people provided in the book amount to a "who's who" of dead white males. That could be looked at as a problem, except that, as Murray explains, women and minorities have not historically had the same opportunities for expression as those who make the lists of great accomplishment have.  I guess it could be looked at as elitist to formulate any such lists, but if the goal is to inquire into the reasons behind why a group of people in a specific area at a specific period of time have made such a large contribution, then I fully support such inquiry.  If we had a better understanding of the conditions under which human beings flourish and innovate intellectually, we'd be in a heck of a better position to replicate the boom in Human Accomplishment covered in this book.

De Profundis.  Oscar Wilde.  How can you not love this guy?  Or at very least, love to hate him.  De Profundis is a very long love letter sent from jail to his friend, lover, and reason for being behind bars, Lord Alfred Douglas.   In late 19th century England, libel was taken more seriously than we take it today in this country.  At that time, Douglas' father had publicly accused Wilde of sodomy which was a felony.  So Wilde sued Douglas' father in court for libel, but when it was through various means proved to be a factual charge (Wilde was gay, after all), Wilde was sentenced to two years hard labour in jail.  De Profundis was written from Reading Goal where Wilde had spent over a year at that point.

Throughout the letter, Wilde throws bitter recriminations at his former lover as much as he does toward himself for allowing himself to end up in the devastating position he finds himself in.  Wilde writes:

"Our ill-fated and most lamentable friendship has ended in ruin and public infamy for me, yet the memory of our ancient affection is often with me, and the thought that loathing, bitterness and contempt should for ever take that place in my heart once held by love is very sad to me: and you yourself will, I think, feel in your heart that to write to me as I lie in the loneliness of prison-life is better than to publish my letters without my permission or to dedicate poems to me unasked, though the world will know nothing of whatever words of grief or passion, of remorse or indifference you may choose to send as your answer or your appeal."

And so goes the constant back and forth, love and hate sentiments that pervade the letter.  One moment his friend was the most beautiful young man full of promise he'd ever beheld, the next he pronounces their friendship as intellectually degrading the absolute ruin of his art.  However, somewhere in between the extremes Wilde shows himself to be the genius that he is.  I usually don't like it when people talk all artsy-fartsy, but one can forgive it in this letter, even tho it is ubiquitous.  There are gems to be found among the talk that ranges from the nacississtic to the utterly realistic. In De Profundis is found one of my favorite quotes among all literature, a quote that, blessedly, I can relate to someone in my own life:

"I remember talking once on this subject to one of the most beautiful personalities I have ever known: a woman, whose sympathy and noble kindness to me, both before and since the tragedy of my imprisonment, have been beyond power and description; one who has really assisted me, though she does not know it, to bear the burden of my troubles more than any one else in the whole world has, and all through the mere fact of her existence, through her being what she is - partly an ideal and partly an influence: a suggestion of what one might become as well as a real help towards becoming it; a soul that renders the common air sweet, and makes what is spiritual seem as simple and natural as sunlight or the sea: one for whom beauty and sorrow walk hand in hand, and have the same message."

Some of that could be said of Wilde himself - a soul that renders the common air sweet, for sure.  Read De Profundis and find out.

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time.  This book, written by David Oliver Relin about and with the help of Greg Mortenson, is a heartbreaking yet inspiring and hopefull look at the work that Mortenson has been doing in Pakistan and Afghanistan for almost two decades. There, as a village chief Haji Ali tells Mortenson, "we drink three cups of tea to do business: the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything - even die." 

Greg Mortenson has a peculiar means of fighting terrorism, if it is compared to the means we HAVE been employing in Iraq and Afghanistan for some time.  Forget the bombs and bullets, give them buildings and books.  Mortenson has gone from mountaineer to humanitarian hero after a failed attempt to summit K2, one of the most unforgiving mountains in the world.  Getting lost on his trek out of the mountains, he found himself in the small village of Korphe in rural Pakistan.  Like many similar villages around the world, the basic necessities of life take priority such that luxuries like education are nearly non-existent.  Mortenson set out to change that, for at least one village.  Three years after first stumbling into Korphe, Mortenson oversaw the completion of their school. 

Since then, and with the help of many contributions from people in the mountaineering community (and others), the Central Asian Institute of which Greg Mortenson is the Director, has built dozens of schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan.  How does this fight terrorism? It gives the children in these impoverished areas a choice.  Whereas before, economic necessity barred many of the children of these areas the opportunity for an education, they now can choose.  Previously, much of the availible lines of education in rural areas were from madrasses that ended up pumping out many of what would later become Taliban extremists.  Mortenson has hedged his bet on the idea that, given a choice and the opportunity to allow children (especially girls, who in Islamic countries have not had the same level of opportunity as males) to persue whatever educational paths they chose, extremist forms of indoctrination in such madrasses will become less appealing. 

It makes sense to me.  I'd just as soon see someone handed a book instead of shot at. Seems that giving people the means to help themselves will always win out over trying to force them into a position that they neither understand nor have a vested interest in.

Working the night shift: Brain-dead and dangerous.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health lists sleep problems, digestive issues, and heart disease as major issues for long term wokers of irregular shifts, most specifically night shift.  I have worked the vast majority of my adult life on such graveyard shifts, and I can attest to some of the negative physical affects that, over time, you can definitely notice from essentially asking your body to perform in the exact opposite timeframe that it is designed for.  However, to that official list of NIOSH safety issues for night workers, I can attest to one more:  random acts of complete retardidity (a Spaky Brown word, I'm pretty sure).  Sometimes, somewhere in the middle of the night on a random work night, you will for no good reason lose all manner of reasoning capacity and if you are unlucky, motor skills will soon follow in the general mutiny against yourself.  This is the state I found myself in last night, and it sparked a conversation with my supervisor about another such night, both of which I'll describe below.

It began last night routinely enough.  I went down into the basement at work to put something away, and found my supervisor, Bob, down there trying to move a pallet of salt bags via a manual pallet jack.  He wasn't having much luck, so being the nice guy that I am, I offered to show him how to properly use the device, whereupon I proceeded to mount the pallet on the jack and prepare to move the 2,500ish pounds of salt down the ramp and next to the water softener where it belonged.  To anyone who knows what a pallet jack is and how they are used, you would know that if you intend on using one to move a heavy load down an incline, you NEVER put yourself on down side of the load. 

It's pure physics, really.  I think it's the 27th Law of Thermonuclearquantumdynamics (I'll have to check with my sister's step-dad on this, he would know) that states "an object that is in motion will tend to stay in motion, unless acted upon by an outside force".  In other words, 2,500 pound of salt will roll right over your ass if you get in the way like I did.  As soon as I pulled the jack over the incline of the ramp, it started lumbering out of control at me.  It looked something like this:

  Realizing quickly that I just pulled the dumbest, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal inspired move, I tried to jump out of the way, but it's a narrow ramp and lined on either side by quarts parts that run into the multiple thousands of dollars each.  So while my boss looked on in abject horror, I jerked the pallet jack toward one side, where it demolished a box of aforementioned quarts parts.  I'm thinking, surely, that I'm screwed now.  But no, my supervisor just starts laughing hysterically once it's clear that I'm unharmed and out of danger.  And he says "Ray, that's the dadgumbedest thing I ever did see".  Bob, my supervisor is from the backwoods of Arkansas.  Anyway, he continues, "I haven't seen anyone do anything that dumb since I heard of someone a few years ago nearly light them self up with a bottle of alcohol and one of the dryers upstairs".  To which my feeble response was "Yea, I know about that too, because it was me who did it".  I think the only reason I didn't get in any trouble for being a complete moron tonight was on account of Bob's damn near passing out from laughing at me. 


   So a few years ago, I was all caught up on my work and looking for things to pass the time. I decided I'd clean my area and the machines I run and make sure everything was nice and spiffy.  I moped, I scrubbed, I shined, and generally did stuff that would make that bald guy that pops off cleaning supply bottles in the commercials very proud.  Then I noticed my dryer's intake grate was a bit dusty.  The dryers look something like this:

  So, while it was plugged in and running, I had the bright idea that I'd take one of the water bottles lying around and squeeze some onto the air intake grating and then towel it off to clean it.  There are two problems with this idea.  One, you shouldn't EVER use water on an electrical appliance that is plugged in and running (I had some silicon wafers in front of it still, drying).  Two, you should REALLY never use pure alcohol on an electrical appliance that is plugged in and running and happens to have a heating coil that is red hot and can easily spark a fire from said alcohol fumes.  Can you see where this is going?  Mistakenly thinking it was a bottle of water, I squirted a long stream of pure isopropyl alcohol into the intake of this heater, whereupon it IMMEDIATELY turns into a huge, flame-throwing catastrophe.  In case you've never seen a complete fool light alcohol off in such a manner, it burns BRIGHT blue. 

My buddy Brent happened to be standing a few feet behind me while I did all this, and he tells me later that as soon as the fire started to shoot out the dryer, I jumped probably 3 feet straight in the air and proceeded to jump up and down in similar fashion for the better part of 20 seconds, all the while screaming like his little daughter.  As shocked and disoriented as I was from the accidental flamethrower, I still realized that my wafers were now straight in the path of the flames, so I stuck my whole arm in to pull them out.  Now, two more things.  Burnt hair stinks badly.  I have lots of arm hair.  By the time I stopped jumping up and down like a man possessed, the alcohol had all burned out and all that was left was some charred silicon and the wretched stench of an arm full of curled up black lumps that used to be hair.  Like Bob, my buddy Brent is a bit of a backwards country boy, and he too says to me at the time, "Ray, that was the dadgumbdest thing I ever did see". 

The moral of this story?  Don't play with fire?  Respect the 27th Law of Thermonuclearquantumdynamics?  I think it's much more basic than that.  I think the moral is, go to college.  Get a degree in something that doesn’t even HAVE a night shift.  Spare yourself the life-threatening possibilities of being awake and at work at 3a.m. on some random Tuesday night and getting physically mutilated by fire or squashed by a load of salt.  In the mean time, I have to work tonight again, so it's sleep time here. I'm gonna throw a little salt over my shoulder for good luck (just a pinch, not 2500 pounds) and head off to see the sandman. 

A vag, a wiener, and some shady logic.

    Recently I was listening to the podcast of director Kevin Smith and buddy Scott Mosier, and something they touched on rehashed old frustrations of my own.  They mentioned the deletion of original material from the published Diary of Anne Frank, most notably the parts where Anne writes about her own private parts.  She also had plenty of negative things to say about her parents during the hardship they all endured whilst in hiding.  To be clear, I have no particular interest in the nether parts of any 15 year old girl, nor the bickering that such a girl might have with her parents from time to time, but when those topics and those instances are part of a larger picture, as in the case of Anne Frank, I can't but wonder as to why an editor would choose to withhold them.  They are part of the tale, another lens through which we can focus on the trials and tribulations of a girl caught in a terrible circumstance who decided to chronicle her ordeal.  Some may argue that, especially in America where the Diary is required reading in many schools, the inclusion of sexually explicit material would be inappropriate for kids.  I see it as not only appropriate, but also one more opportunity for learning.  Deal with the sensitive topics with honesty and in a contextual manner instead of just tearing those pages out of the book!

   Another book that suffers from time to time at the hands of those who seek to change it's original form is the Bible.  Translations which utilize "inclusive" language do so at the cost of saying things that simply are not there.  Think of the Bible what you will, and interpret it how you like, but for Christ's sake, let Jesus keep his wiener!  Inclusive language aims to sever that most august of appendages by turning Scripture into some sexless glob of gender-neutrality.  I'm not arguing that it's always best to use masculine language when able (like "man" when referring to all of humankind), but in the case of Scripture, the original texts (or, as original as are available) do use almost exclusively masculine designations.  That being the case, I want to read Scripture accordingly - ACCURATELY.  At any rate, I don't see a problem with terms like "mankind" or "humanity";  they certainly sound better than "peoplekind" and "hupeopleity". 

    While I'm on a semi-religious rant, what's the point in using the more politically sensitive date notations B.C.E. and C.E. (Before the Common Era and Common Era, respectively) in place of the universally understood B.C. and A.D.?  Both sets reckon time from the birth of Christ, so what's the difference?  If we're going to throw out B.C. and A.D. because of the religious link, we'd better be ready to throw out nearly the whole calendar as well.  Most days of the week, as well as months of the year are named after various gods - Wednesday from Wodin's Day (Odin), Thursday from Thor's Day (Thor), January from Janus's month (Janus), and on and on.  It irks me to see something change for no reason other than "that sound too religious, we don't want to offend anyone".  I don't worship or honor Odin or Thor, but I'm happy to accept a day of the week named after them, it doesn't detract from me one iota. 

     A few years ago I was taking classes at the local community college, and I got a handout from the English department when I signed up for an English Comp course.  This handout was general outlines of expectations that the English department had for students as well as some guidelines for the correct manner of writing college-level papers.  One of the things that sticks in my mind to this day is the admonition against using the word "lady" in reference to a female.  I couldn't (and still can't) imagine how or why "lady" has apparently become a term of contempt instead of a mark of distinction that it once was.  Any word can be utilized in a disparaging manner, and "lady" is no exception, but why single it out?  Why not object to "gentleman", as "ladies and gentleman" are the usual pair.  Can't a lady just be a lady?  I can think of a plethora of worse things to call a woman - anything from a "broad" to the dreaded C word.  I think I'll stick with lady and save myself a couple swift kicks to the groin. 

Super Sunday

     It's that time of year again.  The culmination of a season’s worth of blood, sweat and tears on the gridiron will come to a head today on national tv with millions of people around the world watching.  Those involved work all year long to make it there, and for a few short hours the fruits of their labor will have people on the edge of their seats in anticipation.  It's Super Commercial Sunday!  The most entertaining ads for all the goods and services we don't really need are upon us once again!  Oh yea, and there's some football game on too at the same time.

     So yea, I may be a minority among guys, and I may jeopardize my man-card for my opinions here, but I am just not a fan of most professional sports.  I could give a crap less who wins the Superbowl today; it's amazing I even know what teams are in it.  My indifference to most sports wasn't always the case; over the years my interest in football and baseball in particular have slowly declined for a number of reasons.  One of the bigger reasons is the salary situation with pro athletes.  I'm one of those people who are unimpressed with anybody - I don't care how hard you can hit a ball or how well you can throw a football- who has a pissing match with an employer over how many millions you need every year to play a game.  A game. 
    
      I'm all for Capitalism, supply and demand, all that stuff; however when a team's salary is such that a fan ends up spending 12 dollars for a soda and 9 bucks for a bag of peanuts just to keep these poor athletes gainfully employed and swimming in dead presidents, I call bullshit. There is no reason that an average family of 4 should need to spend 1,000 dollars or more to enjoy a day at the ballgame.  That is, IF there is a ballgame.  IF there's not a strike going on whereby a players’ union is holding out for more money or more this or more that for those undercompensated athletes.  And I don't mean to just pick on the players - the team owners and operators are just as guilty.  They all need to take cuts across the board and bring the costs shoveled off on the fans down to reasonable levels.

      I think another reason that my interest in mainstream pro sports has waned is on account of attending a number of smaller leagues/venues and realizing that they end up being just as exciting, if not more so, than their mainstream counterparts.  Arena football games, minor league baseball and hockey, and even high school sports are all good examples of entertaining competition that has most of the pros of the big leagues and few of the cons.  The team rosters may not be full of bright lights big city stars, but they most times are full of people who lace up and put on a show worth watching. 

      So tomorrow morning when I get home from work (I'll miss the big game tonight, oh darn), I'll definitely be watching the highlights reel to see how things unfolded.  But the stars of the reel I'm going to be watching won't be guys in pads, it'll hopefully be things like frogs and lizards pushing beer, babies selling stocks and bonds, people opining about going to Disney World, and Betty White getting tackled for a Snickers.

I like it like I like it.

Do or do not, there is no try - so saith Yoda.  I agree.  If you're going to make a movie, then don't try to make a movie, make a movie with a beginning, middle, and an end.  Otherwise kindly turn your video camera off and listen up.  I've noticed a lot of movies lately shying away from any sort of finality.  Even movies as great as Inception suffer from it, as the top spins at the end and fades to black, maybe she's in a dream still, maybe not.  Most of the time, I want a movie to end with something that amounts to "TADA!" I want the film maker to tell me his or her story; I don't need to feel like I have to supply the ending because the one provided was sufficiently ambiguous as to be able to be taken various ways. 

Ultimately, I want to judge a film.  In order to do so, I need the Titanic to sink and Jack to die so the story can move on to its terminal point.  Perhaps my preference for story finality is one of the key reasons I love the Lord of the Rings trilogy so much.  Now there is an ending worth talking about.  Hell, truly there are about 27 endings in LotR - pretty much every mouse that farted somewhere in Middle Earth got a send-off into the sunset of sorts in the last installment.  They don't always have to be triumphant, happy endings either.  I can cope with Scorsesian "everyone dies in the last 2 minutes of the flick" sort of endings just as well. 

This whole issue is not limited to movies either.  Most long time fans of The Sopranos were, like me, more than a bit frustrated at how the series "ended" after 6 seasons.  Does Tony end up dead? Jailed? Does he live happily ever after?  You sure won't get a clue from the series finale.  Resolution, people!  The next time I'm sitting on the edge of my seat with a bowl half full of popcorn and the screen fades to black and the credits start to roll without any resolution, there will be hell to pay!