Two Jokes

An opinion piece in The Independent led off with this:

There was a New York bagel maker called Finkelstein. He was the most unfortunate of men. The day after the insurance policy ran out, his store burnt down, which did not persuade the health authorities to drop the charges over the mice in his basement: placed there, he was certain, by a rival. On Yom Kippur, his daughter and only child announced that she was going to marry a goy. Truly, his suffering exceeded Job's. He was so desperate that he shook his fist at the sky and shouted: "God, why are you so down on me?" To his astonishment, the clouds parted, and there was God, saying: "I don't know what it is, Finkelstein, but somehow you piss me off."

Then there's this City Journal excerpt from a book as part of a review:

“In some languages,” said the Oxford philosopher J. L. Austin, “a double negative yields an affirmative. In other languages, a double negative yields a more emphatic negative. Yet, curiously enough, I know of no language, either natural or artificial, in which a double affirmative yields a negative.”
“Suddenly, from the back of the hall, in a round Brooklyn accent, came the comment, ‘Yeah, yeah.’”

Bugs Bunny Made Me Do It

A former poet laureate discusses a prime source of inspiration.

....I am free to confess that my own poetry would have not developed in the direction it did, for better or worse, were it not for the spell that was cast over me as a boy by Warner Bros. cartoons.

I think what these animations offered me besides some very speedy, colorful entertainment was an alternative to the static reality around me that dutifully followed the laws of the physical world.

This freedom to transcend the laws of basic physics, to hop around in time and space, and to skip from one dimension to another has long been a crucial aspect of imaginative poetry.

Strange as it may seem, these cartoons also provided me with an education about things that were not part of the curriculum of a Catholic grammar school of the 1950s. The nuns at St. Joan of Arc in Queens were adroit at teaching me spelling, geography, and lots of catechism, but Looney Tunes cartoons (despite their frivolous name) introduced me to much that lay beyond the precincts of a fairly sheltered childhood. They gave me my first taste of worldliness itself.

As unsophisticated as any nine year old, I had never been to an opera when I saw Chuck Jones's Wagnerian parody in which Bugs sings Brünnhilde's role in a blonde wig stuffed under a helmet with horns. The first symphony orchestra I ever saw was a cartoon one with a fat man playing a tiny flute and a studious-looking dog with triangle duties -- plus, a conductor wielding a "baton" and wearing "tails." There I saw my first bassoon. Before I had ever been to a French restaurant, there on the movie screen was a canine waiter twirling his mustache and pouring wine for a poodle and his date at "Café de Paris."

I had a similar experience growing up in a small South Dakota town in the 1960s. I had never heard of Gary Cooper or Gina Lollobrigida until they were mentioned in a Looney Toon.

As a young viewer, I had no doubts about the superiority of this gang to the characters of Disney. Disney cartoons were tame, conventional, Apollonian. Warner Bros.' were manic, unnerving, iconoclastic, spastic, Dionysian.

I largely agree, although Donald Duck had that barely-contained rage that would enable him to fit in at Warner Bros. This statement caught my eye....

And a Mrs. Daffy Duck? Inconceivable.

I thought I recalled Daffy having a wife......googling.....yes,indeed. (I'm not sure what it says about me that I remembered that.) He is right that domestic bliss was pretty rare in Looney Tunes.

I agree with what he said about directors Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones.

Freleng's work was energetic and zany, but Chuck Jones was blessed or cursed with a touch of divine madness.

On many occasions I have annoyed my wife (who isn't a big cartoon fan) and daughter (who is into anime) with such sentiments. One of the few items I have seen on the Antiques Roadshow that I would seriously consider buying was a Chuck Jones drawing.

Gun Law Guessing Game

As expected after the Supreme Court ruling, challenges to other local gun laws have been filed.
So now begins that long process that always runs with any nuanced legal issue. I commented at Faith in Honest Doubt that it resembles the game on The Price is Right where the contestant guesses a number for the price of something and the host says "higher" or "lower", then the contestant tries again. Various laws will be challenged, the Court will say Yes or No, new laws will be drawn up, and it goes round again until slowly some sort of guidelines emerges.

I found an interesting British analysis of this as part of a BBC Q&A article.....

Why does gun ownership matter to Americans?

Some observers relate the importance of firearms to the American psyche to the country's relatively recent history as a frontier nation, peopled by settlers who had to be largely self-sufficient.

Many Americans see their right to gun ownership as an essential personal liberty guaranteed by the Bill of Rights - and it is one they are determined to keep.

That attitude is supported by the National Rifle Association (NRA), a powerful gun rights lobby.

Surveys estimate that there are now 90 guns for every 100 citizens in the US, making it one of the most heavily-armed nations in the world - although that figure covers people who own multiple guns, and many Americans do not possess firearms.

Those who support gun control argue that easy access to guns makes it more likely that they will be used and call for greater restrictions on their sale.

Firearms, including handguns, are used in two-thirds of murders and about 42% of robberies committed in the US, according to statistics from the FBI.

This tone is fairly consistent with other overseas articles I have read. Basically they think we're a little nuts about guns here.

From what I can find, I don't think South Dakota has to worry about any court challenges of this type. We pretty much let any adult who can pass the federal laws buy weapons, and state laws prohibit cities from enacting stricter laws. Only concealed weapons have any special regulation.

Water Balloons Would Have Been Easier

I don't see how this could have been worth it even if nothing had gone wrong.

Two women entered a farm in the northern village of Eberholzen Wednesday evening and started to fill the stockings with manure.
"One of them slipped into the manure tank, right into the cow muck," said a spokesman for local police. "The other one helped her out. We found their clothes in a field. One seems to have run off completely naked, the other in her underwear."

Someone somewhere is going to work this into a movie script. As with much silliness in Europe, soccer may be the root cause.

Police said it was unclear what the women had intended to do with the "manure bombs," but added the incident could be linked to victory celebrations surrounding the Euro 2008 semi-finals on Wednesday evening, when Germany beat Turkey 3-2.

Car Trouble

Reuters has an article about the trouble U.S. automakers will have attracting investors.

Bankers and analysts say Detroit-based automakers could still find partners for limited tie-ups but caution it could prove impossible to find a deep pocket overseas for the cash the U.S. industry could need to ride out the current downturn.

The Truth About Cars website has a running series of articles on the plight of GM, Ford and Chrysler. The overall consensus there is that Chrysler is a goner as soon as it's private-equity owner can sell/strip/close it, and GM and to a lesser extent Ford are in serious trouble, at least as they currently exist. From the Reuters article.....

"What's wrong with GM is it's too big now. GM is also deep in the red and no one would want to buy it. I can't think of ways to help it except through restructuring," said Koji Endo, a Credit Suisse analyst in Tokyo.

This agrees with what I've read elsewhere. GM has too many divisions for it's market share, and the constant juggling means no one brand can get steady sales momentum. I've read articles by analysts who think GM should kill everything but Chevrolet and Cadillac. The problem with that is dealer franchise agreements make it very expensive; killing Oldsmobile cost over $1 billion.

Ford may be in better shape because it's smaller and has taken some tough steps to turn itself around,plus it has some good small cars. That said, it also mortgaged just about everything in the process, so if things don't work out soon, it could go down fast.

Chrysler......well, as I said in a previous post, when I recently walked though a dealer lot just to browse, I didn't see anything I'd want.

That last statement is at the core of the problems all three automakers. In addition to the bad reputation they garnered over decades of shoddy quality and indifference to customers, driving those customers to Toyota,Honda and others likely never to return, they spent years living off the fat of the SUV land and neglected their car lines, so that when gas prices took off they had no fall-back plan.

It's hard to see a good ending. It's possible two of the companies could benefit from the third going under. It's also possible that the first one to go through bankruptcy (assuming one could make it; would you buy a car from them?) could emerge leaner and more competitive, causing more trouble for the others. Speaking of others, Toyota and Co. won't just stand by and wait to see what happens; making and selling cars is only going to get tougher and more expensive as new technologies get tested. It took Toyota a long time to get back the investment needed for the Prius. That kind of long-term thinking has been largely absent at GM,Ford and Chrysler, and it's not going to be easy to do now, with the bill collectors knocking at the door.

Diving Nightmare

As if it wasn't bad enough for all involved in the Philippine ferry sinking......

Ten tonnes of endosulfan were illegally in the cargo, destined for a Del Monte pineapple plantation, officials said.

Exposure to endosulfan, an insecticide, has been blamed for mental and genetic disorders, skin diseases and nervous disorders, and even death.

Vice-President Noli de Castro said the consignment aboard the ferry had been bound for pineapple plantations of Del Monte Philippines.
He said the ferry operator had "a lot to answer for", AFP news agency reported, and warned it could face legal action over the breach.

I should think so. This adds to the other problems.

.....only the tip of the seven-storey ship's bow is above the water line, with the stern resting on the edge of a reef. At least 100,000 litres of fuel are also thought to be on board.

Cavett on Depression

Dick Cavett wrote a fine New York Times piece about living with depression. It was hard to pick a particular segment; this is one of many.......

The year before I had talked to a similar group of care-givers in Omaha in front of an audience that included what you’d think would be an entertainer’s nightmare: a hundred or more people in the throes of the disease. I expected no laughs.

I had just gotten started telling the grim faces that I knew what they were going through when a large man — in pajamas, as I recall — stood up and slowly made his way toward me.
“Paranoid schizophrenic,” someone stage-whispered to me. There was general tension in the room as the man continued to approach. When he stopped two feet in front of me, and stared at me, I heard myself say, “Come here often?” Loud general laughter broke the tension. He returned peacefully to his seat — probably without having heard me or the laughter.

Miraculously, I kept them laughing for perhaps an hour. Clearly the fact that I knew about their plight from my own experience had a lot — or maybe everything — to do with it.
I was able to say to them, I know that everyone here knows that feeling when people say to you, “Hey, shape up! Stop thinking only about your troubles. What’s to be depressed about? Go swimming or play tennis and you’ll feel a lot better. Pull up your socks!” And how you, hearing this, would like nothing more than to remove one of those socks and choke them to death with it. (Laughter mixed with some minor cheering.)

The reward from this was unique in my experience. Afterwards, those in charge seemed amazed and delighted. One said, “See Clara over there? She hasn’t moved a muscle in her face for six months and you had her laughing out loud.”

Sugar Bush Squirrel

Salon led me to this site, which has apparently been around a while but has escaped my attention, possibly because I see enough real squirrels (admittedly not dressed up) that I don't seek them out on the internet.

I think this is a fair assessment......

The brilliant concept? Well, it's simple -- Florida resident Kelly Foxton dresses up her pet Eastern Gray squirrel in elaborate costumes and photographs her -- but the result is beyond warped. (I don't want to ruin all the punch lines, so let me just say this: Castro.) Oh, it's all so wrong. But then why does it feel so right? -- Sarah Hepola

Watch for Stoned Sewer Rats

Andrew Sullivan pointed me to a Los Angeles Times article on looking for drugs in sewage.

Like one big, citywide urinalysis, tests at municipal sewage plants in many areas of the United States and Europe, including Los Angeles County, have detected illicit drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana.

It's better information than what they usually get.

Surveys, the backbone of drug-use estimates, are only as reliable as the people who answer them. But sewage does not lie.

The man who suggested it isn't interested in illegal drugs.

Christian Daughton, chief of environmental chemistry at the EPA's National Exposure Research Laboratory, first proposed the tests in 2001."To me, chemicals are chemicals. All chemicals, whether legal or illegal, have the potential to get into the environment, and living organisms have a potential to be exposed," Daughton said.

Daughton, who was interested in environmental ramifications, realized that the data could help law enforcement, sociologists and others trying to gauge trends in drug abuse.

It has downsides.

"This is sensitive for various communities because these substances do have a stigma attached to them," Daughton said. San Diego, for example, refused to grant permission to researchers.

The Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County don't test for illicit drugs because it would need Drug Enforcement Administration permits to handle controlled substances, said supervising engineer Ann Heil."It's too hard to test for it. We can't have morphine lying around to calibrate equipment," she said.

For now, this new drug test remains anonymous. Wastewater from thousands, sometimes millions, of people is pooled at treatment plants, so it cannot be tracked to any individual or specific location.But because waste also can be tested in local sewers, questions about privacy have been raised."You could take this down to a community, a street, even a house," Daughton said. "You can do all kinds of stuff with this. It's sort of unlimited."

I can imagine this being integrated into a police surveillence procedure for a suspected crack house or meth lab. I would feel sorry for the officer who has to install and maintain the equipment.

Just Pay the Bills

Andrew Sullivan lays out his tax philosophy.

To put it as plainly as I can: I don't believe in a governmental attempt to engineer a substantively "fair" society through taxation. I see taxation as a necessary evil to pay for those few social goods that private individuals cannot provide for themselves.
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Government's primary concern is to raise money as efficiently and as leanly and as equally as possible. I'm happy with the government then setting up programs to assist the poor, to provide better education for those at the bottom, safety-net healthcare and better policing. i.e. to gear spending toward social ends that might help the poor the most. These are measurable, practical goods. What I'm not happy with is the assumption that tax policy should really be about redistributing wealth, and engineering substantive economic outcomes.

I generally agree with this, if for no other reason than the fact that attempting to use the tax code for broader purposes has resulted in a complex, almost universally hated mess that fails to achieve the larger goals anyway.

Too Young, Otherwise Could Be Vice-President

Lisa Cullen at Time seeks a position for her baby:

References: Mommy, Daddy and big sister Mika. On second thought, scratch the last one; reference was last heard asking to return this job applicant to Mommy's belly.

Wombat Leave?

An Australian official is taking some time off.

Ken Henry, treasury secretary and animal conservationist, has warned that hairy-nosed wombats are "on death row".

Mr Henry will be looking after 115 hairy-nosed wombats in an isolated spot in northern Queensland, with no mobile phone coverage and two-and-a-half hours on a rough track from the nearest town.

Although he'll have some free time in a few months, I have a hard time imagining Henry Paulson taking off to care for manatees.

A Woman and Her Body

Lemmonex clears the air with herself.

Body, I have done some awful things to you. I have not treated you the way you have deserved. I have let how you look affect my whole psyche. A lifetime of hatred towards you permeated my entire being. I lived in a strange space, where you were fully ignored and an all-consuming preoccupation.

I have compared you to countless other bodies. I have cursed you for having thicker thighs than the women I pass on the street, a fuller stomach than the girls at the bar and a wider ass than the lady sitting next to me at the coffee shop. You have been subjected to a lifetime of unrealistic expectations.

To quote a novelty poem/song; man, I'm glad I'm a man.

Ditties

George Carlin and John McCain were born less than a year apart.

Whatever the practical arguments about driving with the windows down vs. air conditioning, driving down the highway with the windows down and the wind whipping around in the car can be exhilarating.

It's amazing how much noise hail can make without actually hurting anything.

Interspecies Love

A dog and a sheep develop a bond. Before the fundamentalists get the vapors, I need to point out they're of opposite sexes, so it's OK.

Crazy about Colonics

Some dedicated Russians get a monument to their profession.

A monument to the enema, a procedure many people would rather not think about, has been unveiled at a spa in the southern Russian city of Zheleznovodsk.
The bronze syringe bulb, which weighs 800 pounds and is held by three angels, was unveiled at the Mashuk-Akva Term spa, the spa's director said Thursday.

"There is no kitsch or obscenity, it is a successful work of art," Alexander Kharchenko told The Associated Press. "An enema is almost a symbol of our region."

There's something to put in the tourist brochure.

Sue the Home Wrecker!

Did someone lure your spouse away? Sue!

Two spurned spouses filed lawsuits in Minnehaha County last week against the persons they say broke up their marriages.The cases are unrelated except that both plaintiffs hired the same lawyer and both are alleging "alienation of affections," a rare tort permitted by only a handful of states.

It's not easy to win.

To succeed, plaintiffs must prove the defendant's intentional, wrongful conduct caused a loss of affection or consortium in an otherwise loving marriage.

I can imagine a lot of ways to wiggle around that. There has been success,though.

In the lawyer's best-known case, Sioux Falls man Richard M. Jones won $400,000 from a Las Vegas doctor whose romantic affair with Jones's wife preceded their divorce. The jury initially awarded $950,000, but the South Dakota Supreme Court reduced it.

Efforts have been made to eliminate this law.

When the South Dakota Supreme Court was asked to abolish the law in 1999, it said the question is one for the Legislature, not the courts.Three years later, the Legislature rejected an attempt to repeal the 1877 statute, and instead made the language gender- neutral, making clear that a spurned wife could sue over the loss of her husbands' affection.

I can imagine this being used as a bargaining chip to get a more favorable settlement in exchange for avoiding more court proceedings.

This reminded me of a quirk in South Dakota divorce law. The famed catch-all "irreconcilable differences" can only be used as grounds for divorce if both sides agree. Otherwise the filing party has to use (and prove) one of these:

1) Adultery;(2) Extreme cruelty;(3) Willful desertion;(4) Willful neglect;(5) Habitual intemperance;(6) Felony Conviction

If none of those has occurred, all the other person has to do is refuse to agree to irreconcilable differences and the divorce won't happen. It seems to me the potential to use this for settlement leverage or old-fashioned spite is considerable.

As the lawyer who handled my first divorce said, the Legislature has decided to make divorce more difficult here than in other states.

Custom Rugs

Drug smugglers continue to innovate. (my italics)

Drug traffickers in China's far west are smuggling heroin into the country woven into carpets imported from Afghanistan and Pakistan, state media said on Tuesday.

This caught my eye.....

While drug smuggling into China from the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia -- including Laos, Myanmar and Thailand -- had fallen, drug trafficking was on the rise from the Golden Crescent, which includes Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Here is a long shot idea......maybe we could use this to convince the Chinese to assist us with our troubles in that part of the world. We sure could use all the help we can get.

Research: Angry People More Likely To Get Mad

Another breakthrough in the study of the obvious......

Parents who succumb to fits of road rage are also more likely to blow a fuse at their children's sporting events, according to U.S. research.

"Taking things personally is a strong trigger for anger"

Those identified as "control-oriented" more often viewed the actions on the field as a personal affront, and reported more feelings of aggression than parents identified as "autonomy-oriented", or less affected by external factors.

You now have scientific research to back you when you think the guy yelling at a Little League umpire is a hotheaded jerk.

Car vs. Deer

Doug Wiken at Dakota Today had a close encounter of the Bambi kind.

I was driving the 1/4 mile from our farmhouse to the county highway when I heard a thump and a dark thing with 4 legs hanging down over the windshield for an instant. The old Mitsubishi Eclipse is relatively low and apparently a deer had jumped nearly cleanly right over the top of the car.

As I commented there, I'm glad no damage was done. The car/deer accident is a staple of law enforcement here. It comes in various forms. Mix and match the terms below.......

(1) Car hits deer (2) Deer hits car

(a) little or no harm done except possibly to undergarments of motorists
(b) light damage to vehicle, deer runs off
(c) light damage to vehicle, deer is crippled/killed
(d) vehicle is disabled, deer runs off
(e) vehicle and deer both history
(B-E) b-e with injury to occupants of vehicle

1c and 1d are the most common. The fall rut (which is also hunting season) used to be the main time for them, but increasingly they happen year-round. It's a tribute to the deer's reproductive prowess that there are still plenty to hunt.

I continue to espouse the theory that the deer know when hunting season starts, and they decide that if they're going down, they're taking someone with them. Actually the big motivator (at least during the rut) is similar to the mental "tunnel vision" noted in my previous post; the bucks have sex on their minds, and they aren't paying attention to anything else. Other than that, it's mainly bad luck and/or inattention on the part of the living beings involved.