Thursday, December 20, 2007

GETTING A HAIRCUT
The decision to have a haircut is hardly one that should need much soul searching. Spending time thinking about the morality of cloning or pondering on the ethics of testing potential life-saving drugs on animals are arguably worthwhile intellectual and spiritual pursuits. But a trip to the barber? Apart from the cost – which, as you ladies will know, can be around the gross national product of a small, South American country – the main difficulty comes from the different definitions of “long” used by my wife and myself. For me, “long” kicks in at exactly the same point that she thinks it’s just right. When the length of the hair at my temples is such that I see a shock of gray that screams “old man,” she sees a distinguished flicker of silver. And as the length feels to me to be dangerously close to making me a Fabio clone, she perceives a romantic sweep of Byronic tresses.

Despite my wife’s assurances that the distinguished Romantic image is appropriate for a forty-five-year-old writer, my inner Self continues to remind me that Byron (1788-1824) died at the age of thirty six and, as far as I am aware, never wrote anything along the lines of On a Visit to the Stylists for Quick Trim and a Blow Dry, or The Stylist of Athens. Unless on some unconscious level his poem The Corsair is nothing more than a pun on “coarse hair.” In this poem, he writes of the pirate “Sun-burnt his cheek, his forehead high and pale; the sable curls in wild profusion veil.” Nothing that a good barber couldn’t fix in a few minutes using little more than a sharp cutlass and a dollop of extra-hold mousse.

There is definitely an appeal to the well-groomed long-haired look. As an English democrat, I was brought up to believe that Oliver Cromwell and his Roundheads did the cause of democracy a great service by usurping the power of the King. But in terms of style, you had to give full marks to the Cavaliers. The long hair and feathered hats; the voluminous shirts; the pantaloons with high leather boots, all finished off with a majestic cape, which was free to be tossed aside just before taking on a group of surly men with pudding basins on their heads, no doubt covering their short, scurvy scalps. And why has The Three Musketeers been remade so many times by Hollywood? It’s not because Dumas’ book is incredibly popular because as everyone knows, nobody has actually read it - they’ve just seen the movie. No, the multitudinous remakes are because films are primarily a visual art form, and the sight of well-dressed noblemen fighting against the backdrop of palaces and pastoral imagery, along with beautiful women in abnormally tight bodices, is guaranteed to ring up the cash tills at the box office.

Then again, men have it easy whatever the hairstyle. It’s true that with age, women go gray but men become distinguished. Sure there are products such as “Just for Men” and “Grecian 2000” that can be used to tone down the silver, but who needs it? Richard Gere still ranks as one of the sexiest men in movies and his sexiness seemed to increase in direct proportion to the intensity of gray. Tom Cruise is also on the list of aging hotties and his new silvery style for the movie Collateral hasn’t keep women away from the box office. And whatever you may think of Bill Clinton’s politics or morality, he’s unlikely to be coloring his locks in the near future.

There is, in my opinion, one definite no-no for the graying guy: Do not, under any circumstance, be tempted to grow a ponytail. Sometimes referred to as “Biker’s Neurosis,” the post-40 ponytail is an affectation that only looks cool in the eyes of the beholder. A desperate, last-ditch attempt at holding on to youth, the gray ponytail is probably the reason Delilah took the shears to Samson. “Look, Delilah. See how strong and manly my hair is. Is it not amazing that a man of my age has the virility to maintain a luxurious mane? Watch as I toss my flowing locks with gay abandon.” “Yes, my love,” she answers, “Such a glorious river of silver adorns your pate. Wouldn’t it be a great pity if, by some bizarre twist of fate, you were to fall asleep next to a pair of very sharp scissors and, while turning over, your hair was to get tangled in them and end up shorn from your scalp.” No. Once past the age of 40, hair that’s long and gray should only be found on the back end of donkeys – and old donkeys at that. Willy Nelson may well be close to 100 and have braids, but he is (a) stinking rich and (b) unlikely to ever find himself in GQ’s Man of the Year edition.

Inevitably, as my hair reaches Rapunzel-like proportions, I have to choose between an appointment with my stylist or letting my cosmetology student daughter practice her art. Having seen what my darling offspring can do with razor-sharp scissors and a dummy head, the money I spend at my hairdresser’s seems like a trivial investment.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

XMAS STUPIDITY
Add yet another item to that interminable list of things that irritate me: People trying to be clever when they are, in fact, stupid. This is all the more annoying if they do it in public.

As I was driving home from my local grocery store, I passed by an evangelical church. There are two giveaways for evangelicals. The first is that it has a name longer than four words, such as “The Church of the Resurrected Christ,” “The First Church of the Holy Resurrection,” “The Second Church of Christ Resurrected,” or “The Holy Church of the Resurrection.” The use of a cardinal number is typical, although if you get to the “fourth,” you begin to wonder just how important the church might be.

The second giveaway is that the head honcho is called “Pastor,” a title that anyone can adopt or sign up for on the internet for around $20. I, myself, am an ordained Pastor in the Church of the Unified Christ. This means I can marry people, perform services of worship, and try to get an upgrade on a room at a Holiday Inn (“No, that’s Pastor, not Mister.”)

The Pastor had tried to be witty and clever by inventing one of those catchy slogans designed to draw people into the church – sort of like the old “Ch—ch: What’s missing? U R!” His ersatz-catchy and politically tendentious offering was “Xmas is just Christmas without Christ.”

Well, clearly here we have a guy who puts his faith in the good Lord when he would be better served putting it in a good dictionary – or even a not-so-good dictionary. If he had bothered to check, he would have found that the word “Xmas” is actually derived from “Christmas” by replacing the word “Christ” by the letter “X,” which in turn derives from the greek letter “chi,” the first letter in the word “Christos.” It seems that the pastor’s knowledge of all things Greek starts at gyros and finishes with feta.

Related to this is the error other folks make regarding the meaning of the symbol known as the Cross of Constantine.This is NOT, as a non-Greek-speaking pastor may try to say, a representation of the word “pax,” an inference based on the erroneous interpretation that the symbol shows the letters “P” and “X” joined together. In fact, they are the Greek letters chi and rho, the first two letters in the word “Christos.”

Pastors – or any individuals who claim to be spiritual leaders – have no excuse for making such errors. If your career is based on your preaching and teaching from some holy text, then you should know something about its contents and its origins. Considering that early versions of the New Testament gospels were written in Greek, not at least recognizing some of the Greek derivations of Christian symbolism shows a lack of analytical desire and a weakness of intellect.


Wednesday, November 21, 2007

WINE TIPS FOR BEGINNERS
In a world where people want so desperately to be unique, special, and an expert at something, let me proclaim that I am not a wine aficionado. I can’t even spell the word without a dictionary or a spell checker. So it is with this admission in mind that I offer my personal list of essential facts for the budding connoisseur.

  • When the guy next to you swooshes the wine around in his mouth and spits it into a bucket, this is GOOD. Do not say “Whoa dude, that bad, huh?”
  • When the guy next to you swooshes the whole bottle in his stomach and throws up in a bucket, this is BAD. Do not say “So, an amusing little Merlot, yes?"
  • Red wines go with cheeseburgers; white with McNuggets; blush with large pepperoni and extra anchovies. Nothing goes with Taco Bell products.
  • It is OK to say that any French wine is undrinkable. That’s because in general it is.
  • Do not snigger when someone says they like Australian wine. They may be Australian and they have some innovative ways of opening a bottle.
  • Remember, although it may take a lifetime of wines to become a Master Sommelier, it only takes one crate of wine to become a drunk.
  • It is NOT acceptable to shake the bottle first, point the cork towards your colleagues, and shout “Look out suckers or you’ll lose an eye!” Unless you are from Dartmouth College.
  • Or any other Ivy League College.
  • No matter who tells you this, there is no such thing as a green wine; not even in Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day. If the wine is green, do not drink it – period.
  • If you’re eating Road Kill, look for wine that comes in a beer bottle and has a label that includes “Grandpa Joe’s…” “Uncle Jim Bob’s…” or “XXX.” Keep the bottles in an ice bucket and be prepared to use the bucket for other things once the wine has gone.

Feel free to share these words of wisdom with any of your friends. Especially the pretentious ones.

Monday, November 12, 2007

ON THE ARRANGING OF BOOKS
The Great Library of Alexandria; the Bodleian Library of Oxford; the Library of Congress; and even Jorge Luis Borges’ Library of Babel – all world famous examples of cathedrals to bibliophilia – the love of books. Since the first caveman scrawled the prehistoric version of “Kilroy was here” on the walls of his rocky condo, mankind has sought to record his story, laying the foundations for a cultural existence. And as the number of literary efforts increases, so does the need for cataloging and organizing them. Whether on tablets of stone, in jars of clay, or engraved onto the surfaces of grains of rice, accessing what has been written is a important as the actual content of the text.

When Melvil Dewey devised his system of classification back in the 1870s, who could have thought that this would become the standard method of choice for the world? And who would argue that this relatively simple and efficient system didn’t make life easier for the common reader.

Well, the editor of In Style magazine for one. The February 2006 edition of this veritable vade mecum of fashion answers the age-old question of how best to organize a collection of books. And here is it, in black and white, from page 325: “Books look best when organized by size or grouped in color blocks.”

So there you have it. Problem solved. And thank goodness, I say, that the Oxford English Dictionary is made up of individual volumes that are (a) all the same color and (b) all the same size. However, bad luck if you’re looking for a copy of the Bible. Considering that there are bibles in as many colors and sizes as rainbows and rocks, finding one might turn out to be a bit of a problem.

Imagine the scenario:

Student: “Excuse me, my fine fellow. Pray, tell me, where might I find the latest offering by that goodly scribe, John Grisham?”

Librarian: “Ah, my honest scholar, wouldst that be the big brown one, the big blue one, or the more portable small black one?”

Student: “Goodness, my educated friend, in truth, I know neither of the size nor the color.”

Librarian: “Ah, my hapless seeker-after-wisdom, then art thou up a raging river without aid of a rowing implement. Without such critical information regarding appearance and girth, I am, alas, unable to help thee in thy quest.”

Student: “Oh, sweet mother of mercy, is there not a way of finding it by, for example, using the first letter of the honorable scribe’s surname of ‘Grisham?’”

Librarian (chuckling softly): “What a unique suggestion, my witty colleague! But if we were to adopt such a method, wouldst it not then make it almost impossible to find, for example, yonder large, green tome? Why, how would I decide where to locate a new middling orange epistle?”

Student (crestfallen and dejected): “Aye, there’s the rub.”

Librarian (surprised): “’Struth, art thou familiar with the contents of the large, thick work – in green, red, and brown – found on the third shelf on the twentieth case in the fourth room?”

Student (equally surprised): “Yes, although in my own humble abode, it is found on the first shelf, next to a fetching gold small tome about a young girl named Alice who finds herself in a bizarre world of fantasy.”

Librarian: “Ah yes, fantasy indeed. A little like your joke about ordering books by letter.

Exeunt Librarian and Scholar, slapping each other’s backs, laughing together at the absurdity.

Monday, October 29, 2007

CONCEALED WEAPONS
On the almost second anniversary of Ohio's law allowing conealed carrying of arms, it's worth taking a look back at how this came about.


Under the heading of “disturbing philosophical arguments,” file the discussions found at Vermillion’s “Open Carry Shipping Day,” where for a two-hour period, the good citizens of the Harbor Town area of Vermillion, Ohio, were treated to the site of gun-toting patriots walking in and out of local stores and restaurants. In an attempt to promote the legalization of concealed weapons in Ohio, around 70 folks strapped on their firearms and wandered around the streets looking for bad guys. Well, maybe just looking for a Christmas present for the kids.

Chuck Holliday, who sounds like he has a relative called “Doc,” wasn’t taking any chances and decided to wear both a .40 Beretta and a .357 Magnum – you can’t be too careful when living in Vermillion. Chuck’s words of wisdom include the phrase, "We are common-sense people." I always worry when anyone appeals to "common-sense" because the definition appears to be “whatever I think is a good idea.”

One of the common-sense notions that Chuck advances is that "When criminals think somebody may be carrying a weapon, they won’t mess with them." Now this raises so many questions that it hardly qualifies as an answer in the first place. If I’m a rootin’, tootin’, pistol-packin’ hombre who thinks some dude’s packin’ heat, it’s in my best interest to plug him first. Hey, the concept of the Pre-emptive Strike is pretty popular these days, especially amongst our leaders.

Of course, if concealed weapons are OK for Joe Average (and it seems a testosterone-fueled thing because one rarely hears from Josephine Average that she wants to pack heat) then it’s OK for Al Capone, Don Corleone, and Tony Soprano to do the same.

A worried shopkeeper calls the police at 1:30 am because three suspicious guys with bulges in their pockets are positioning themselves at the gas station; one by the pumps, one at the door, and the third inside the store heading toward the counter. The cavalry arrives and finds – surprise surprise – that all the guys are carrying guns. But what’s the charge? Well, nothing! They’re carrying the pistols for "personal protection" and were just looking for a late-night coffee. And then they sue the police for harassment.

Ron Wise, another “guns for peace” promoter, feels that carrying arms is a great idea. However, his wife, Betty, thinks, “this is the most stupid thing I’ve heard of in my whole life.” Josephine Average? According to Betty, “We’re not living in the Old West. Everybody doesn’t need to carry a gun. We’re supposed to be civilized.”

Ron, on the other hand, says, “If everyone carried a gun, everybody would be civilized.” Which reminds me of an old joke: A man walks onto a plane and the security folks find a grenade, a gun, and a knife in his hand luggage. When asked why he is carrying all this stuff, he replied “Well, I heard that one in a million people will have a grenade on a plane, one in another million will have a gun, and one in another million will carry a knife. I reckon that if I’m the one carrying all three, I’m going to feel much safer!”

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

SHAVING AND SIN
My battle against chronic procrastination continues, but with a new moral twist. Is it OK to submit to one of the seven deadly sins in order to conquer another? Is a little evil OK to defeat a bigger one? Before we plunge into this, remember that your editor is not a theologian and so prone to error. However, he is a human being and so faces the same dilemmas as everyone else in the world. So let’s start with a little background.

For many years now, I have been toying with the idea of removing my mustache. The small hairy caterpillar sits quietly above my mouth, hiding an imperfection in my top lip. It’s not that I grew the ‘tash to do that; it just happens to fulfill that role. Apart from a period of about one week some fifteen years ago, this little furry patch has been there since I was able to rub hair from my spotty teenage face with nothing more than a wet cloth. Other than a few baby pictures, I suspect there are no images of me in existence that exclude my fluffy friend.

Yet with age comes two changes to how facial hair works; it gets grayer and more brittle. Most of the time I now look like I’ve been eating an ice cream cone and forgotten to wipe my face. And the brittleness is such that when I use scissors for trimming, there is an audible “click” as the blades snicker-snack through the tiny trees. By the time I reach fifty, I suspect they’ll be a noise abatement order taken out against me. So removing the mustache sounds like a good idea.

However, here’s where the moral issue sneaks in: removing the ‘tash is clearly a sop toward one of my much-discussed sins – vanity. There’s no life-threatening condition here, and the fate of my family or career does not depend on whether or not I keep the fuzz. Therefore, it’s plain, old vanity stepping in, tempting me to take a dip in that fictitious fountain of youth in a desire to stop looking older. One the other hand, I’ve been putting off this action for years now, saying, “Maybe next week” or “As soon as the weather gets a little warmer,” and this strikes me as the rumblings of another sin – sloth. Regularly readers will be aware that I have tackled both vanity and sloth over the years, but more so vanity. This is probably the first time both have appeared at the same time.

It seems to me that I can “leverage” vanity to fight sloth, and if that’s the case, is it right? Or would it be “better” if I used sloth to temper the vanity, bearing in mind that I think vanity is my greater failing? And all because of a mustache! Who would have thought that such a moral conundrum could reside in a trivial case of how to deal with facial hair?

I don’t recall St. Thomas Aquinas devoting a paragraph to “On the removal of whiskers and the sin therein” in his Summa Theologica. Then again, I don’t know whether he had a mustache himself, so maybe this sort of issue is the province of the more hirsute philosophers. I know Karl Marx and Friedreich Nietzsche were both particularly hairy, but Das Kapital and Also Sprach Zarathustra were both noticeably quiet on the issue of personal hygiene. So, no help from the moral philosophers then – it’s up to me to solve the problem myself. I shaved it off. Forgive me for pandering to vanity, but I dragged a sharp, new, triple blade across the petrified forest and returned my face to its baby-soft original state. I chalked up a victory against procrastination, followed the same day by another mighty swipe against indolence – I replaced a light fitting in the basement laundry room that hadn’t worked for years: it took me 30 minutes including the trip to the hardware store.

Oh the shame! I don’t know how long the mustache will be gone. Maybe it will be back in a week; maybe never. Doubtless they’ll be suggestions from my family and friends as to which way I should go, but then if I use this advice, am I not submitting again to vanity, growing or not growing it to “look better?” No wonder Aquinas, Marx, and Nietzsche gave this one a wide berth.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

BURGERS AND RESPONSIBILITY
Hippocrates once said “Everything in excess is opposed to nature.” His name, curiously enough, comes from the Greek words hippos, meaning horse, and kratos, meaning power. Fortunately for the car sales industry, engine makers opted for abandoning the Greek hippo to describe the power of their machines. I’m not sure folks would be wowed by a Porsche that was described as having the equivalent pulling power of 605 hippos.

As well as being almost famous for sounding like a huge, fat, water horse, Hippocrates is acknowledged as the founder of modern medicine, with the Hippocratic Oath being named after him. As a doctor, he apparently not only talked the talk but walked the walk when it comes to looking after oneself. According to legend, he lived into his 80’s, with some sources claiming he hit the century mark. Clearly, avoiding excess and adopting the maxim of “moderation in all things” worked out just peachy for old Hippocrates.

Contrary to this philosophy, Oscar Wilde once wrote, “Moderation is a fatal thing... nothing succeeds like excess.” Not exactly noted as a believer in temperance, Wilde died at the age of 46 – only half way towards Hippocrates’ expiry date.

However, the spirit of excess lives on in the USA. If Wilde had been alive today, no doubt he would have found his way to the Heart Attack Grill in Tempe, Arizona. Armed only with your check book and a portable defibrillator, you can tuck into their infamous “Quadruple Bypass Burger,” (QBB) a name that is as accurate as it is graphic.

Here, for the morbidly curious, is the list of contents for a QBB, from top to bottom: Bun, lettuce, beefsteak tomatoes, bacon, red onion, cheddar cheese, ½ lb beef, more onion, more cheese, another ½ lb beef, more onion, more cheese, yet another ½ lb beef, more bacon, another onion, an unashamed fourth ½ lb beef, gourmet sauce, and a bun.

I should say that in a nod towards healthy eating, the lettuce is described as “crisp” and the tomatoes as “fresh,” so things could be worse. For those on a diet, it is possible to order the less destructive “Triple Bypass Burger” (only 1 ½ lb of beef in total), the middling “Double Bypass Burger,” which is barely meaty at all with a measly 1 lb of beef, or the supermodel special, the “Single Bypass Burger,” which with a mere ½ lb of beef makes it practically vegetarian.

For those of us who think that a flight to Arizona just to sample a huge burger is just a little too extravagant, there is the more mundane option of popping in to the local Burger King and ordering a “Quad Stacker.” For a lot less than a plan ticket to Tempe, you can fill yourself with 1000 calories, 68 grams of fat, and another 30 grams of saturated fat.

Burger King management are unapologetic about the burger (as are the owners of the Heart Attack Grill). In an official BK statement, a marketing executive said, “We’re satisfying the serious meat lovers by leaving off the produce and letting them decide exactly how much meat and cheese they can handle.” Notice that “produce” is used as a euphemism for “vegetables.”

Although sorely tempted, you intrepid Editor has so far been able to resist the lure of the Quad. However, I have to admit to having tried the Triple and lived to tell the tale. I guess I’m OK with one Triple, which is surely an example of “all things in moderation.” My concern is that not everyone knows when to stop; when to “just say no”; when to draw that proverbial line in the sand. At what point does the individual have his or her right to gorge on excessive foods be taken away because “someone” thinks it is bad for them? If a line has to be drawn in the sand, who should be drawing it; the individual or Society?

Consider the following: Russian Natalya Kashuba, 27, is the owner of an up-market clothes shop. She drank up to three liters of Coke every day for five years. Then, at the beginning of this year, she took legal action against the soft drinks giant after claiming that she had suffered insomnia and heartburn. Miss Kashuba said she had become addicted to the drink as a result of a promotional offer that allowed consumers to swap Coca Cola caps for prizes. And guess what? She won! Although the damages were a token $100, the principle is that it was not her fault but Coke’s.

I know this might sound a little off the wall, but does anyone else think that three liters of ANY sugary soft drink per DAY might be just a tad bad for you? I’m no nutritional scientist, but it’s been fairly common knowledge for as long as I can remember – and that’s about 40 years – that excess sugar = bad.

Maybe Hippocrates had a point after all.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

REPEATED WORDS

How often do you find yourself in a situation where you’re writing a letter or article and when you review it, you see you’ve written the same word twice? If you use a word processor, a good one will pick this up and highlight it for you. But how often is it actually correct to use multiple instances of a word?

Over the weekend, my daughter and I were deciding on when to go to the movies. She said she wanted to go to the late show, to which I responded with “Do you want the early late show or the late late show?” For a few moments, we looked at each other wondering if there was anything wrong with either the notion of an “early late” show or even the double-barreled “late late” show. “It’s OK,” I said, “to have ‘early late’ and ‘late late’ so long as we understand that ‘late show’ is actually a single noun meaning ‘a showing that is held in the evening at some indeterminate time, but such that it would not be considered early.’”

Before you stop reading, I should explain that yes, we do talk like that, especially when we’re having breakfast and just “chillin’” or “shooting the breeze” – though how you can shoot a gentle waft of air is probably best left for a future column. The more ridiculous the topic, the more we talk. “Of course,” I continued, “If the late show in question was now no longer in existence, we could have the sentence ‘We used to go to the late late late show,’ because this new use of ‘late’ refers to something now passed on.” This triple play of “lates” got us to thinking about how many such words you could get into a sentence legitimately. Examples such as “Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes!” as said by an excited child who’s just been asked if he wants a trip to Disney or a free bucket of ice cream would be excluded. The sentence has to be coherent and valid.

So we moved on to the notion of a city having a “down town” area. If that area had a region that was depressed and unappealing, you could use the word “down” (as in “I’m feeling a little down today”) as a descriptor. You can thus have a “down down town.” Then, if that city was built on a slope – Seattle, for example – you could conceivably have a physically higher area described as the “up down down town” and a correspondingly lower region called the “down down down town.” Finally, you could use the word “down” again to describe the action of going somewhere, forming the sentence “Let’s go down down down down town.”

At this stage, we were finding it hard to keep up, and as I was writing this article, my word processor was having a real hard time with so many multiples of the same word, drawing many red lines under them screaming “Stop it, that’s not allowed!”

This is not the longest word run of which I am aware. Stephen Pinker, in his book The Language Instinct, gives the following example: “The Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.” Frankly, if you can work this one out, you’re way too smart to be reading this column! But if you can’t, let me know and I’ll end you the reference.

Saturday, September 08, 2007

STUPIDER AND STUPIDER
So who was it that started tossing around the notion that with Age comes Wisdom? The wisest thing I can offer is that as far as I’m concerned, with Age comes Ignorance. Day after day, I am reinforced in my knowledge that in truth, I know very little. And the more I add to my tiny sponge-like brain that soaks up trivia like an Oreo soaks up milk, the less I understand about the world. Sure, I know an awful lot about the tiny piece of the world of linguistics that I use to make a living (I’m a Speech Pathologist by training who specializes in language disorders amongst folks with severe physical disabilities) you could fill a solar system with the stuff I haven’t a clue about.

Take the word apophasis, for example. Doubtless some of you dear readers have heard this word before and can even define what it means. But for me, it is a new one. And that’s all the more depressing for a guy who gets paid for his so-called skills in the English language. Fortunately, I at least have access to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, a two-volume tome that is possibly the most valuable investment I ever made; until I can pluck up the courage – and the cash – to buy the complete Oxford English Dictionary. Wedged between apopetalous and apophlegmatic, both of which are not picked up by my spell checking software, is apophasis, [Late Latin – from the Greek meaning denial] Rhet. A figure in which we feign to deny or pass over what we really say or advise. You may not have known the word itself, but you have doubtless seen it in action.

Politicians in particular seem to be positively apophasic when it comes to talking about their opponents: “I don’t intend to mention Senator Chamber’s seventeen felony convictions because what’s important is how our party intends to deal with crime.” What is also troubling is that while looking up the meaning of this new word, I discovered that I also didn’t know the meaning of the words immediately before and after it in the dictionary. In fact, I had to skip over eight unknown words until I found one that I knew – and that was apoplectic, something I was beginning to feel.

So if I only understand around one out of ten words in the dictionary, and I am supposed to be a linguist, how much more don’t I know about other fields. Physics, chemistry, math, biology, history, geography, football, baseball, boules, and even the plot of Days of our Lives. The more you try to educate yourself, the more stupid you feel.

This realization probably explains how irritated I get with people who claim to know everything about everything. You know the sort – it doesn’t matter what topic you’re discussing, they have something to add. And to make things worse, it isn’t always easy to refute what they are saying because you don’t know. I look back fondly to a conference some years back in Antwerp, where a group of researchers from a UK university did a one-hour presentation on a special software package they had developed that they claimed would make machine-generated language easier. To support their argument, they drew heavily on earlier research carried out by a Professor Van Balcom.

At the end of the presentation, they triumphantly announced, “Any questions?” and scanned the audience. From the back of the room, a portly, bespectacled gentleman stood up and said, “I’m afraid what you’re doing will not work.” Stunned, the lead presenter asked what evidence he had for this statement and the man replied, “Because I am Professor Van Balcom and the reason I stopped working on this line of programming was because it didn’t work.”

If Pride goeth before a fall, then the virtual thunder of researchers hitting the ground was deafening. And schadenfreude is a word that I do know the meaning of.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

CELL PHONE ETIQUETTE: TAKING A DUMP
Where oh where is "Miss Manners" when you really want her? Probably not multi-tasking in the toilet I dare say.

I'm not sure about the rights and wrongs of the phenomenon of using the cell phone while dropping a log in a public lavatory. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't do it, but is it OK for other folks? Are busy executives really so short of time that turning off the cell for a quick crap is too much? I don't know about anyone else, but I'm pretty sure that I would be mildly disturbed to realize that the bloke I'm chatting with over the phone is simultaneously drowning the kittens at JFK.

Sure there's not much else to do as you sit down to heave a havana, but it somehow seems a little tacky to fill in the spare time by chatting about your latest business venture. If life is so hectic that spending five minutes and a penny is time poorly spent, then I suggest reviewing your career choice.

Time management gurus may well be proud of their students who can squeeze extra job time and a loaf at the same time, but I can't persuade myself that it is the right thing to do. Why not treat unleashing the holy leviathan as a moment for introspection and self-examination, not an opportunity to simultaneously drop a call and drop a cobra.

Folks, do yourself and your communication partner a big favor and try turning off the phone while you make a deposit at the porcelain bank. Please!

Friday, July 27, 2007

LAPTOPS FOR THE WORLD? I DON'T THINK SO!
Boy am I in a cynical mode today! According to the One Laptop Per Child group, their new XO laptop computer is set to change the world and level that proverbial playing field - again. In an article from the good folks at eWeek, the $175 laptop is poised to give disadvantaged kids around the world the same access to porn, MP3s, viruses, adware, Instant Messaging, and rabid hate-speech as every other member of civilized society.

So handing laptops to the world makes it all better, eh? Folks, 90% of people who currently have computers have no clue how to use them, spend half the time downloading porn, have great difficulty copying a file from their hard drive to a USB drive, and complain that it's "too difficult." And you don't have to spend long in the Blogosphere to discover that those folks who at least grasp the basic concept of stringing words together and tossing them onto a web site end up writing the most pointless, egocentric, turgid drivel about their babies, pets, vacation in Cancun, and how much they hate foreigners.

No, a cheap laptop solves little, particularly in a world where most folks should stick to the technology that best suits their abilities - a piece of paper and a pencil with an eraser on the end; as complex a "delete" function as they can understand.

Friday, July 06, 2007

A B.A., A B.Sc. OR JUST A DD?
In Italy, it's now not enough for a girl to graduate from college with a few letters after her name. Now she's not going to settle for anything less than a DD - and I don't mean a Doctor of Divinity.

According to web site Ananova, the most common graduation present for young ladies is now a boob job. The liberated, educated college graduate may revel in her intellectual independence and a first-class honors in Physics, but unless she's got the jubblies to go with the academics, life's clearly at an end. After all, who wants to hire a woman physicist with a flat chest when there are others whose attributes are large enough to generate a gravity field capable of sustaining a small moon.

Meanwhile, back in the USA, just as Italian women are using their boobs to further their careers, one American woman was forbidden from using hers to - well - feed a baby! Retailers Fossil settled out off court rather than go through a law suit brought by clothing buyer Lass King. On a visit to a New York showroom to meet with another buyer, King was told that she was "making people feel uncomfortable" by breast feeding her 8-month-old son, Cody. Of course, if she'd simply gone to "Scores" nightclub and waved them around a bit for men's pleasure, no-one would have cared AND she'd have ended up with her panties stuffed with dollar bills. But actually using her boobs to feed babies is obviously sick and twisted.

"Fossil" sent a letter of apology and a few thousand dollars, presumably after finding that New York law says that women can breast feed "in any location, public or private, where the mother is otherwise authorized to be." Good for New York!

It's worth remembering that mammary glands are there for the purpose of feeding babies, and that folks who are offended by this need to get some therapy.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

EVANGELICAL CYBER-SQUATTER'S "BAIT-AND-SWITCH"
It seems, as ever, that God needs as much help as He can get when it comes to promoting His agenda. And if that help includes just a smidgin of sharp practice - nay, maybe even fraud - then that appears to be just fine for some evangelicals. Although not quite up there with the bizarre rationalization that shooting doctors who perform abortions is "doing the Lord's work," creating dodgy web sites is one more manifestation of the lengths some folks will go to to do God's job for Him.

In a recent posting to the "Daily Telegraph" online edition, I erroneously entered my blog address as "thenakedbystander.blogpot.com." Notice the missing "s?" Well apparently I didn't but someone had figured out that this is a typical mistake to make. anyone clicking on my link found themselves at a biblical message site filled with evangelical cant at its best! The "Mega site of Biblical Studies" not only tosses out pop-ups for crap but runs an ad for an iPod, a Capitol One account, and some other dubious fluff.

The site is a wonder to behold if only because of two things; its stunningly bad design (clearly not "Intelligent Design" and the topics available, running from Armageddon to the Voice of Satan - and all points in between. Running the ads seems to be a bit pointless because one of the main thrusts of the page is that the End is Nigh and opening a long-term Capitol One Savings account doesn't strike me as being worth the effort.

Now, by snagging the "blogpot.com" domain, you'll find that if you type pretty much anything in front of it you'll end up at the Mega Site. I tried "satan.blogpot.com" and I was saved! And to make sure errors are leveraged more, the misguided malefactor has also registered "blogpsot.com." This practice is not illegal, but you have to ask what the motivation is of the people who buy such domain names, who clearly know what they are doing. And waht they are doing is at least shameful and at worst fraudulent. And doing it in the name of the Lord just makes it all the more tackier.

And who is this mastermind? Here's the WHOIS entry:

Doug Powell (DME) use this one (BLOGPSOT-COM-DOM)
PO Box 10142
St Petersburg, FL 33733
US
+1.7275428374
amazingbible@verizon.net

Feel free to call or spam him, and give him my regards.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

OHIO PRUDES PUSH NUDITY-FREE STRIP CLUBS
"Rules forbidding touching of strippers and requiring them to keep on some clothes when dancing past midnight were approved today by a House committee as a compromise on a statewide crack down on adult businesses.

The no-touching rule for customers and the semi-nude dancing provision are part of a new version of legislation that was brought to lawmakers through petitions circulated by Citizens for Community Values, a Cincinnati-based Christian group.

The group, which also backed Ohio’s gay marriage ban, agreed to the changes to its proposal that originally had sought a 6-foot clearance between dancers and patrons and a ban on stripping after midnight." (C) Associated Press.

One more nail in the coffin for “Progressive Ohio.” While the business bureaus try to encourage the world to come to Ohio to create jobs and industry, the spirit of Puritanism lives on in the hearts and febrile minds of “concerned individuals” who are little more than religious bigots trying, as ever, to dictate how things should be. It appears that up until midnight, nudity is OK, but then between 12:01 and 5:59 am, strippers must wear something. I hate to state the obvious, but you go to strip clubs to see naked women and if the women are not naked, you don’t go. Which, of course, is precisely the aim of the Citizens for Community Values group.

Apparently, the logic seems to be that prior to midnight, Strip Club patrons are reasonable, sensible men who are out for an evenings entertaining. However, at the stroke of12, their animal lusts take over and they become slobbering perverts desirous of the most heinous and depraved acts of sexual lust. Unless, of course, they are members of the Citizens for Community Values, who have long been sleeping after reading an uplifting biblical verse before retiring. And, as we should know, these folks are capable of controlling their animal urges whereas other people are not.

I hope the CCV will now be big enough to reimburse ALL Ohio strippers for their lost earnings. My guess is that (a) they won’t, and (b) they don’t care, because “caring” is something religious bigots are not good at. And by the way, perhaps the CCV might want to consider that their sense of “community values” are as skewed and biased as any other special interest group’s values.

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it."
-- Mark Twain

Would somebody care to pass the milk to those folks at the CCV - it's past their bedtime and they need to go sleepybies.

Monday, April 16, 2007

MORIBUND - BUT NOT DEAD YET!

So what's been happening with the Bystander? Why is three months since the past post? Is he dead, kidnapped, the victim of a Fatwa? Maybe he's just decided to quit writing altogether.

Sadly, none of these is true. Despite what it may seem, the Bystander has a real job, one which requires him to produce stuff and do lots of traveling. Glamorous the international jaunts may be, but they take up lots of time before, during, and after the events.

The job also requires the writing of documents, depressingly staid ones at that. A technical document on the merits of a new algorithm for creating new databases is hardly an opportunity for rollicking satire and misanthropic barbs. The occasional footnote can be added as a momentary diversion, but that's really about it.

With a trip to Montreal coming up in two days, the Bystander may continue its gentle side into obscurity and pointlessness, but even if there's only time for a few lines of comment, your Editor is still keen to maintain a presence in the Blogosphere.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

LET'S START THE NEW YEAR WITH A GOOD OLD-FASHIONED LYNCHING

Talk about lost opportunities! Following last year's successful pay-per-view seance with John Lennon, you have to think that someone in the international media would have had the sway and cojones to sign up Saddam Hussein for the first global hanging in human history. But it seems neither Rupert Murdoch nor Al-Jazeera was able to pull off the Big One. No. The kudos goes to some unknown bystander with a cell phone camera who managed to snag some grainy footage of Saddam's Last Stand - followed by his Last Fall.

And clearly the spirit of Capitalism has yet to take a hold in newly democratized Iraq because the phone-toting idiot appears to have passed on the images free to anyone who has an Internet connection. Yeah gods, even Paris Hilton can operate a web browser, and my cat seems to have grasped the fundamentals of point-and-click.

So, no tie-ins with Burger King ("free dangling Saddam with every Kids Meal combo"); no Special Edition T-shirts from Nike ("Just did it!"); no Super Bowl-style multi-million ads between noose-wrapping and lever-pulling ("...we'll be right back to the Big Drop after a word from these sponsors..."); and no Limited Edition Franklin Mint Commemorative Plates ("...and edged in fine, gold leaf, the noose around Saddam's neck is counterpointed by the realistic bulging veins...")

In the rush to get the whole thing over and done with, the Iraqi government simply hustled him away to what looked like a warehouse outhouse and unceremoniously hanged him. If only the US had dropped marketing textbooks instead of bombs, this could have been a major triumph for 21st century television.

And of course, we all know who's to blame for Saddam's death? Yup, that's right - Saddam Hussein. Oh, wait... sorry... I mean George W. Bush and America. His supporters have rallied in the streets to proclaim his innocence and how he has been murdered by Bush and all who sail with him. They, naturally, brush aside Saddam's massacre of Kurds and Iraqis, which was obviously legitimate and ordained by Allah. Yes sir, St. Saddam has been poorly treated by the Infidel.

But didn't Saddam believe he was "destined by God to rule Iraq forever"? Well, it looks like he was stunningly wrong on that score. Doesn't it occur to the Sunnis that maybe Saddam's death is the will of Allah and that Allah was royally pissed off with what Saddam had done to his own people? If Allah loved Saddam so much, how come He allowed him to be bombed, found, tried, sentenced, and hung? Clearly Allah either didn't like Saddam or doesn't exist. The latter appeals to the Bystander.

Still, I'm sure that CafePress.com will soon be hawking the "Saddam's Well Hung" and "Saddam Lives - NOT!" paraphernalia within a week. Oh wait, I'm too late. You can already get the official "Saddam Hussein: Hangman Champ 2007" stuff here, or "Hangin' With Saddam," or even "I HUNG Saddam Hussein and all I got was this stupid SHIRT!"

Now THAT'S what I call Capitalism.