Wednesday, May 16, 2012

PLUGGING AWAY AGAINST THE SMART GUYS. When you think about it, the rationalists, the atheists, have an insurmountable task. Their baseline position when all is said and done is that nothing matters. There is no guiding hand. No matter how much things might seem to have meaning, they really don't. We can impute meaning, they argue, and believe it to the point of affirming principles which should govern us because ethics are good even if there's no real reason we should have them. 

The problem is, people see meaning in all kinds of things. In fact, meaning is essential to the history of civilization, the brain is wired to perceive meaning, and it doesn't take a Ph.D to infer that if everything's just some big accident, there's not much point in going to work tomorrow, not shooting your annoying neighbor, raising children, or sacrificing anything for future generations. Why Europe is dying, if you want to get specific about it, and why Islam and its Sharia imperative are slowly taking them over. Why God can't be an asshole if you value civilization and freedom. Society needs a benevolent God even if smart people don't.

Reason would therefore tell us that a kindly, personal God is necessary to the human race, and that the attempt to destroy, deny, or eliminate God entirely or recast him as something so impersonal as the world's smartest MIT professor is anti-rational. It subverts human survival. So what's the evolutionary advantage of warring against God? None. All societies that have ruled God out of existence have been murderous charnel houses. Fact.

Those of us who are not entirely rational and superior to the idea of a Big Guy in the Sky have learned to look for God in the details. Which makes us fools, to be sure. But it's a kind of folly that makes the rationalists look utterly dreary.Their lack of imagination causes the mind to fail at the challenge of of imagining so much lack of imagination.

Thanks to the Internet, most of us know part of the story of Susan Boyle. She showed up on the stage of Britain's Got Talent and stirred everyone. Few know she didn't actually win the competition. Fewer know that she suffered brain damage at birth and was regarded in her Scottish hometown as a kook, a useless eccentric.

Until she was plucked from obscurity to become a worldwide star. An accident? Surely. But also a global event. It's easy to jeer at the idea of sainthood. Catholics have draped the concept in so much religious mumbo-jumbo that they make life easy for skeptics. They insist on documented miracles. Vatican religious forensics are as rigorous as they are silly.

I propose Susan Boyle as a nondenominational saint, as an indicator of God. She came from anonymity to become a record-breaking recording star. This plain, middle-aged, solitary woman is the only person to have to have Number One records in the U.K. and the U.S. for two years running since the Beatles. And it has been far from easy for her. She doesn't want stardom, vast riches, or constant media attentiom. She's as vulnerable as your shyest daughter. Except that she has this gift which propelled her to step out from the shadows in a display of courage that is almost unthinkable.


Sudden celebrity almost wrecked her. But she regained her footing, and she hasn't moved away from her Scottish hometown, she doesn't spend the big money she's making now, and she's still the person who set foot on that mass media stage -- an innocent.

Which is the most interesting part. The intransigent machinery of show busines has somehow bent itself around her to accommodate the uniqueness of her innocence. Simon Cowell feels responsible for her well being. He agonizes about his actions anent her. Her producer concedes that he records her differently from other singers; she has to feel the song or she's no good. Her manager is walking a tightrope -- expose her to a 100,000 person audience in China to innure her against performance anxiety or subject her to the smaller and more savage audience of critics in the west.

Boyle herself is a chirpy reminder that she doesn't actually care about the show biz angle. She's fine in China. She still brews her own tea in her bleak Scottish town. She remains the innocent, slightly risque, boldly unstarlike, and reduced to tears at a moment's notice every day. Why she sings like she has a splinter of God embedded in her heart.





Sometimes the finger of the divine reaches down to touch us. Every single soul is important and lovely in some way. We are reminded of this many times in our lives, but sometimes with a smack in the face. Who is smarter? The ones who shrug a smack off as a momentary chill or those of us who stop in our tracks and say, "God Damn"?

God Damn.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

HISTORY. THE USELESS NECESSITY. Couple points. One serious, the other not so.

ESPN has a series of sports documentaries that run at odd hours but are also available on demand. Whirlaway is one of these. Definitely worth seeing. As I told my wife (who loves horses but shies from horse races and horse movies because they usually end sadly), Whirlaway lived to be fifteen and is a grand story of animal personality. His early trainers called him Whirlie and said he craved attention. As a racehorse, he was, uh, difficult. He was a kind of reluctant Secretariat, a superhorse who just didn't like to be in the middle of a bunch of other running horses. He was a three-year-old in 1941 -- a very traumatic year in the U.S. -- and the oddsmakers had a hell of a time with him.

Everyone knew he was blindingly fast. Problem was, he preferred to run well away from the other horses. As a two year old and early in his three year old season, he kept veering wide, committing himself to running much longer distances than other horses to reach the finish line. He still won. But he lost his last two races before the Kentucky Derby because his jockey was a talented youngster who, according to the ESPN film, Whirlaway played like a veteran against a gullible rookie. So the owner flexed his muscles and brought in the top training and jockey talent available, who were collectively able to trick Whirlaway into running with the (ugh) other horses. He lagged then made his trademark rush to the finish. His Derby record stood for 32 years until it was broken in 1973 by guess who. Then came the Preakness. Whirlaway hit the back straight ten lengths behind the last horse in the pack. He won by six lengths going away. At the Belmont, only three horses entered against him. The jockeys conspired to slow the race down, given that Whirlaway always wanted to loaf behind the pack, to preserve their strength for the final stretch. Jockey Eddy Arcaro saw through it, took the lead and ran away with it. Again, sound familiar?

I don't know about you, but I find his tale entrancing. A goofy superhorse.

Unlike Secretariat he ran for another year after his Triple Crown win, and in 1942 he was an inspiration to U.S. troops overseas who could listen on the radio and hear the change in the announcer's voice when he intoned, "And here comes Whirlaway!" He came to be known as Mr. Longtail because his owner didn't believe in trimming horsetails at all, convinced that other horses didn't like those final feathers tickling their noses as they attempted the chase.


Now for the not so serious part. Hollywood loves repeating past successes. Sea Biscuit and Secretariat have earned a ton of money, but you just can't do Sea Biscuit 2 or Son of Secretariat. A Whirlaway movie is the obvious answer. Too bad nobody thought of it in time to boost Obama's reelection chances. Whirlaway's owner, a woman-loving CEO (not THAT way: he manufactured the best baking powder in the land) named Warren Wright, wore pincenez a la FDR and could be played by Edward Herrmann. The brawling trainer could be played by a bloated boozed up Alec Baldwin (if he could act against type for just one movie), and Eddy Arcaro by Sean Penn. Mark Wahlberg, or some other lefty Hollywood dwarf. Tom Cruise would be best, but we understand he still maintains he's tall. And maybe the talented young jockey who couldn't quite dominate Mr. Longtail might be played by Lance Bass or Neil Harris or Daniel Radcliffe. The movie could be a kind of "Occupy the Great Depression" or "Forward WWII with the 99 Percent" kind of thing, with a bit of contemporary flounce arising from the longtail meme.

Alternatively, maybe you've noticed the Whirlaway story is short on female characters. Maybe Hollywood (and only Hollywood) would see the box office potential of an all-gay approach, with David Hyde-Pierce as the pincenez-ed owner, Harvey Fierstein as the ball-busting trainer, and Clay Aiken as Eddy Arcaro. With Whirlaway (Melissa Etheridge) just killer with that silky tail whooshing around that ample ass after the run for the roses...


Sorry. I warned you I was grumpy.

But it's still a great story. And it would make a great movie. Even if Whirlaway wasn't a Lesbian but the stud who saved French thoroughbred stock after the war. Details. They can be adjusted. As we've seen.

Hope I haven't ruined it for you.

P.S. On the other hand, what does it take to be a champion racehorse siring other champion racehorses? As it happens, there's an actual intelligent essay on the subject from Bill Whittle. But forget that. Who needs intelligent essays? I'm thinking, contrary to what I said above, Whirlaway could have and would have said it better. Have you ever thought about being being retired "to stud"? Think about it. You'd have to have a penchant, a bent of some sort. Probably not gay. Or beta male. Or even metrosexual. You'd probably have to be a f***ing rock star.


Like Secretariat. But unlike Secretariat, Whirlaway would wear a funny hat. Maybe like this one.


Sad really. Sappho always loses when it comes to the super alphas, funny hats or not. So sad. Why their divorce rate is 150 percent higher than, uh, the gay divorce rate. Which is 50 percent higher than... oh, you don't want to hear this.

And neither do I. Some things aren't gay things but alpha things. Why they're so bitter.

Monday, May 14, 2012

LYING TO THE KIDS. It's the season of banal commencement speeches. Prompted me to think what I would say if, perish the thought, anyone asked me. So I wrote a speech. About 30 minutes worth. I know you believe I don't care who I offend or what anybody thinks, but I ran my draft post past two people whose opinion I respect. Neither liked it, yet neither would actually tell me it sucked. Too dark, though neither would say it in so many words. Just polite hints. One thought it should be posted anyway, the other hedged. I value their opinions so much that I'm only going to post the setup. Make of it what you will. I won't post the rest of it unless people are interested. Responding to the setup with your own thoughts doesn't count as voting to see mine. As I reread it, they're right. Too dark. But love of darkness (i.e., libertarian joie de Robespierre ecstatique) doesn't count as a vote for seeing it. Only intelligent curiosity counts. (f you're nice about it, you can ask what I said about individual items...) Otherwise, you get to make the rest of the speech up for yourselves.


Then I proceed to explain why I think this list is important. I'm sure you have your own ideas why or why not. You're disqualified from offering an opinion if any woman handled your utensil needs beyond stab with a fork and jam in your mouth after puberty.

otoh, the more I see the bald list, the more I like the idea of standing up before a graduating class, reciting it, and sitting down again. Once a punk, always a punk.

ADDENDUM: As promised, here are specifics, beginning with Apoth's nonspecific but relevant question about why my treatment of "Erma Bombeck" platitudes might be dark:


Lake asked about these items in particular:

If somebody's bullying you, punch him in the nose. Bullies are all cowards. Yeah. Who the hell remembers real fathers? They were absolutely right about this. Every guy who ever became a man knows that a victim who stood up to a bully gained allies thereby, even if he lost the fight. Standing up is the important thing. The life and death thing. Nobody else can do that for you.

You're not leaving the house dressed like that. Period. Horribly enough, the one old parental cliche that turned out to be more important than all the implicitly moral stuff. And the one parents forgot most completely as well. Raise your hands: How many of you have tattoos? How many tramp stamps, girls? Meaning, how many of you 21st century feminists have such withered self esteem that you feel obliged to provide supplementary reading matter to the guy who's f***ing you from behind, as if he were reading the Sporting News on the toilet? How many have already published your tattoos on Facebook? And don't think you guys are off the hook. When you're bidding for partnership at the Wall Street law firm of Me, Myself & Obama in 2026, are you going to be hiding behind towels in the squash court locker room the same way your sister will be ordering custom bridal gowns to hide the "Pulled a Train at Yale" ink on her right shoulder and forearm?

dj moore wants to see these:

Never hit a girl. The sexes aren't the same. This rule is a symbol for a much deeper philosophical, even metaphysical, point: Never hit a girl. If you haven't learned it yet, you are doomed, whether you know it or not.

Don't hit your brother. He knows he's not allowed to hit you back. The flipside. Women have been hitting men for a generation in the full expectation that they won't hit back. The danger is not that they will ever hit you back. It is that they will cease to admire and desire you, and see you as arrogant pretenders to a cultural, intellectual, and artistic authority there's no sign you've ever earned. Worst case? While you're celebrating your friendly, fashionista gay allies, all men could go gay on you. Don't forget that the purest form of the gay male (according to Camille Paglia, no less) is someone who regards women, all persiflage aside, as negligible.

I think that's it for now.

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