Archive Listing
October 9, 2012 - October 2, 2012

Monday, November 21, 2011

LET'S TRY ANOTHER TACK. I'm part of a fairly recent influx of poor people into an otherwise affluent town. Lots of Mexicans, lots of poor white video game nerds who move here to work at the oversized computer store (do you have Fry's in your neck of the woods? It's like a Radio Shack the size of Costco). This overlap of wealth and privation has created one of nature's perfect marvels: A Goodwill store in a rich neighborhood. An inexpensive trove of treasures donated by the guilty well-off. Valuable old toys and games, kitchen equipment whose only defect is being 20 years out of fashion, designer clothes never worn with the department store tags still attached donated because it wasn't worth the hassle to drive all the way down to the boutique and try to return a measly thousand-dollar sweater without the gift receipt that the maid threw away by mistake.

But I go for the books. Not to tell tales out of school, but if the selection at the Goodwills in seedy neighborhoods is any indication, the poor only ever read John Grisham, Stephen King, Harequinn romances, the Left Behind series, and the Alcoholics Anonymous blue book. Night and day from my Goodwill. In the last month alone I've scored The I Ching Workbook, the brilliant 7 Events That Made America America, A Brief History of Time (revised 10th anniversary edition, whut whuuuuut), two collections of Camile Paglia essays from the 90s, and the Max Weber classic The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. All for about 3 bucks a piece. Also found a copy of The Case For Mars, a book I've wanted to read for a while, but I had to leave it on the shelf. They don't call me poor for nothing.

Out of that haul, the real prize is a tome called Cultural Literacy. The title's a little misleading. I thought I was getting an encyclopedia of cultural literacy. Or even an introduction to cultural literacy. What it is, is a case for cultural literacy. Preaching to the choir, in my case. The author's argument could be summed up in a sentence: Kids need to know about the world they came from. Maybe that's not a no-brainer for everyone else like it is for us.

The book redeems itself with its appendix, a big list of "what every American needs to know." Stuff from history, science, pop culture, The Bible, all fields of human thought and endeavor. A sample page:


I bought it with an eye towards googling and wikipedia-ing the entries in my spare time. Autodidact for the win.

On the way home, I worried at a nagging sense of familiarity, the way one worries at a cold sore with one's tongue. Couldn't shake the feeling I'd bought something like this before. I was through the door when it hit me: THE BOOMER BIBLE! Best book of the last century. That little thing. In particular, Cultural Literacy's index reminded mo of the discussions on the ancient Boomer Bible forum about the coyness of the Intercolumn Reference. There's a couple opportunities when the ICR could have unified the text of TBB in a big index-- but it suddenly goes silent. TBB wants to be understood, but she’s not the kind of girl who puts out on the first date. In the author’s blunt, immortal phrase, “work is required to get what you want.” That theme underlies almost everything he’s written. You want something? Figure out how to get it. Do the work it takes to learn.

Well, with the advent of the internet, learning has never taken less work. I don’t even have to walk the two blocks to my local library anymore. From the comfort of my own butt, the whole of history is open to me. With a few keystrokes, I can learn just about anything that ever happened.

Realizing all this, I was going to take Literacy’s index to Wikipedia and start typing. But September’s dust-up over God and history still looms in my mind. When he issued his 50-state challenge, I stalled out at around 37. Something from Psayings 5, maybe.

I’ve decided to make a game of it. Starting with the lengthy list of years from Psayings 5Y (to contrast, the Cultural Literacy index only lists about 7 dates), I’m going to see how well I know the dates I should. When I know the date, I’ll gloat, as is my right. When I don’t know the date, it’s off to Wikipedia’s handy year entries to see if I know history well enough to guess the important event.

Here goes nothin’.

Verse 1 In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Was that the same year he discovered America? Or was that 1493? He just set sail in 1492, right? Nope, hang on, incoming memory... He discovers America in October of 1492. Looking it up to see if I’m right... Yep. Nailed it. School wasn't a total waste after all!

3. 1776. That's funny. I remember not knowing most of the years in Psayings 5Y when I first read it (except for verse 35 of course). Maybe I didn’t recognize years when spelled out. 1776: Declaration of Independence signed.

You know what's cool about America? Besides a lot of things? We date the birth of our country from the start of the Revolutionary War. Not the end. We became independent the moment we declared it, by God. Britain just took an extra 7 years to convince. Yes, I had to look up when the Revolutionary War ended.

4. 1812. More low-hanging fruit: The War of 1812. Could I tell you when the war started if the year wasn't right in the name? Doubt it.

Something I didn't know: The War of 1812 lasted until 1815. Kind of misleading, right? A war's called the War of 1812, you expect it to be over and done inside the specified 12 month span. We don't call the Revolutionary War "the War of 1776," do we? Lasted way past '76! Maybe the name's a decent historical marker for a war that was about a lot of little things instead of one big thing.

What must that have been like? The old mother country invades and burns the capital barely three decades after the Revolution. How fragile our experiment with freedom must have seemed. Did the second coming of the British feel like history reasserting itself to the young nation? I can imagine the editorial cartoons of the day: A giant, open yoke coming across the ocean, balanced on the Royal Naval fleet. Dave the Dad calls it "a kind of strange and stupid war," but I bet we fought like hell.

5. 1860. Hmm. The Civil War was 1861 to 1865. 1860 was... secession of South Carolina? Gotta look it up.

Let's see... wow, 1860 was a busy year. "June 30 – The historic debate about evolution is held at the Oxford University Museum." That's probably not it. Nov 6, Lincoln wins presidential election? Could be. Lincoln's a big deal in TBB.

Hey, I was right after all: "December 20 – South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the United States Union." That’s the state that still flies the goddamn Stars and Bars over their capitol, right? I'm conflicted about that. On the one hand, it ticks the NAACP off, and I'm all for that. Maybe once upon a time the National Association for the Advancement of Colored (racist!) People was a force for good, but lately any action whatsoever they take is to batter their legacy. The organization that once crusaded against segregation and lynching now fearlessly leads the charge against racist greeting card companies that try to hide their racism behind a lot of fancy talk about "astronomical phenomena" and "science." To paraphrase Proverbs, opposing the modern NAACP on any issue, no matter what, is the beginning of wisdom.

(and sometimes their chapter presidents join the Klan in denouncing the international Zionist conspiracy, but I'm sure those comments were an abberation and in no way reflect the views of the black community at large)

On the other hand, it's the Stars and Bars. I don't care that half the Americans in my income bracket try to make it a symbol of rebelious individualism. It's the banner of slavery! Once upon a time, large swaths of Americans were so committed to keeping their slaves that they quit the country! That was evil, period, and should be revilled accordingly. Imagine if disgruntled Germans started flying the swastika from their pickups. "No, we don't hate the Jews or anything like that. We hate the European Union, and the swastika is from a time when Germany really stood up to the world, you know? It represents defiance and civic pride now. Not so much the other, nastier stuff." Would that just fine and dandy?

6. 1914. Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Start of WWI.

7. 1941. Pearl Harbor. America enters WWII.

8. 1066. What? No idea. To the wiki.

In Asia, a chap named Shen Kuo "receives a post in the capital China." Good for him. I doubt Shen Kuo is on Dave's radar. Maybe it's the Granada massacre? "A Muslim mob storms the royal palace in Granada, crucifies Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacres most of the Jewish population of the city." Damn, dude. Good thing those psychopaths didn't make it out of the Middle Ages!

Wait, here it is: "Conquest of England"! I bet that didn't happen very often. The wiki entry has a timeline of events, and some of the events have names and everything. Looks like it spanned the whole year-- BATTLE OF HASTINGS! I've heard of that once! Those words in that order, at least.

Fun fact: The Wikipedia contributor who wrote this-- Often erroneously labeled "the last successful invasion of Great Britain", it was in fact the last successful conquest of Great Britain (the last successful invasion of Great Britain in general – by the Dutch in 1688 – was upon invitation by Parliament to overthrow King James II of England)-- is an asshole.

Have to bookmark this page. There's a thousand-year gap in my mental chronology of the world where I've scribbled "Kings, knights, swords, crusades, bad science, no bathing" in parentheses.

9. 1215. Magna Carta. The reform seems meager to modern eyes-- now the king AND rich people have rights!-- but it was a huge deal at the time. The idea that the law be something other than the king's whim, that it be something objective, led to every good ­innovation in government since.

10. 1640. Pre-enlightenment, so again I have no clue.

Charles I, that’s something. That’s a name I know. Summoned the Short Parliament in April... but that can’t be notable enough. Ditto for the Long Parliament in November. (I’d heard of the Long, but not the Short. That’s kinda funny)

Aha: Treaty of Ripon. Scotland makes off like bandits. That’s gotta be a favorite historical event of R.F. Laird.

TOMORROW: Part Two.

Friday, November 18, 2011

BATTLING DESPAIR. I did the big post Monday because I wanted a few days off to think. Then it gets difficult knowing how to jump back in. Why I rely on serendicity so much. Eduardo had this to say when he grew tired of the Dexter discussion:


What he left out was the magic he was reporting on. The Tebow Magic. An almost cartoon hero, looking lousy for the whole game, then suddenly doing everything right to win at the end. Even people who are rooting for him are embarrassed by it. How can it be? How is it possible to have a talent for nothing but winning?

I was already thinking about it when I saw Eduardo's comment. Because in Philadelphia, we are facing the exact opposite situation: a whole team of great talent that keeps finding a way to lose late. The Eagles roll up yardage, points, and spectacular highlight plays, then collapse in a heap when it really counts.

I think both these phenomena are related to what I've been struggling with of late. (I concede Penn State was a kind of last straw... the one that broke this camel's back. The past is still alive in the present, and if some part of the past you trusted is corrupt, where does that leave you? Gasping.)

Why is the whole world falling so completely apart right now, so that the news is just sickeningingly awful every day, and not enough people appear to see it to take any decisive position against it? Obama is so utterly the worst president of not only my lifetime, but my parents' lifetime, including even FDR, that every even-toned discussion of how he might yet win reelection fills me with a sensation approaching panic. Polls showing the race close are like getting stabbed by glass.

There's way too much evidence to cite. He has set not just the poor against the rich, but the middle and upper middle classes against the rich, endorsed the "Occupy Wall Street" shibboleth of the 99 percent against the 1 percent. And the mainstream media endorse him in that idiotic characterization, so that polls for a long time indicated that ordinary Americans preferred incoherent, lice-ridden squatters -- with no political platitudes not plagiarized from expressly marxist 1960s SDS mimeographs -- to the Tea Partiers who asked, politely, and amazingly hygienically, for less government control of their lives. In the United States of America.

The Republicans keep calling him a socialist, but he's more national socialist -- i.e., fascist -- than marxist. The party with the closest links to the financial epicenter of the country is the Democrats, not the Republicans. Why Solyndra gets the sweetheart deal, why Goldman Sachs provides more money -- and White House functionaries -- to Obama than to the evil conservatives the dim-witted 'Occupy' thugs are so anxious to do in.

Why I keep saying -- and no one ever listens -- that the crisis facing us is not about hunger for money but the thirst for power. Last night, on Fox News's four-to-one against libs show The Five, a conservative insisted on describing the Penn Sate mess as being about greed. It's not. The people who run government, universities, and the media don't care about prosperity at all. They want to be vindicated in their belief that they're smarter than all us flyover fools, and more than anything, they want the power to tell us what to believe, who to believe in, how to live, how to bring up our children (uh, as theirs, or their compliant drones), and how to go gently into the good night of totalitarianism.

Sometimes, the devil really is in the details. You have the mayor of New York, a billionaire, who cites freedom of speech when he's approving a mosque nobody wants at Ground Zero but who refuses to tolerate religious representation at the tenth anniversary of September 11. He cites freedom of speech again when he refuses to crack down on dope-smoking 'Occupy' protesters who are incapable of any kind of articulate speech while he insists on regulating the tobacco, caloric and salt intake of the law-abiding citizens of his city. He just wants to be in charge, to be our daddy and mommy by turns, until we are only children waving pennants for sports teams.

What they all want.  And they don't care about prosperity for the real 99 percent. Especially Obama. They just want credit for pretending to care about people they demonstrably don't give a shit about.

Obama won't approve drilling for domestic oil or natural gas. Jobs? He won't approve a pipeline that would create what? Jobs. He pushes a government control bill that is guaranteed to raise health insurance premiums and lies about the fact that everyone's premiums will go up and many will have to give up plans he insisted they wouldn't? Does he care? No. He blames it all on his predecessor and the rich. Also why his whole approach to tax policy for stimulus is to pay the wages of teachers, cops, and firemen and perpetuate unemployment indefinitely rather than turn the much larger private economy loose to do the 'evil' American thing of creating new economic opportunities where bureaucrats typically see none.

Europe is financially imploding. Even the dumbest of the mainstream media used to know that if the United States catches an economic cold, Europe catches economic pneumonia. Now Europe has something worse than pneumonia, and the only remaining mechanism for reining in the world-bankrupting federal spending levels in the U.S. is an extra-congressional committee of octogenarians who are empowered only to trim a fraction of the automatic growth of a U.S. budget that hasn't existed in legislative reality since Obama became president.Try to find a description of the European debt crisis that places the blame for Euro-tuberculosis on American pneumonia. Good luck.

Foreign affairs? Oil prices spiking, rising, scaring? Obama doing nothing -- absolutely nothing other than bland talk -- about Iran's nuclear intentions. Withdrawing completely from Iraq. Promising to flee Afghanistan soon, if not sooner. He chooses to kill bin Laden, Awlaki, etc, rather than capture them because his political buttboy attorney-general is committed to trying them in New York City if they're captured alive, and the alternative of a mlitary tribunal in Guantanamo would be even more embarrassing. And maybe we'll be able to get rid of Israel too. Who doesn't want that in the American liberal community? Lousy goddammed Jews. Except for the ones who insist on helping us every step of the way. (They'll get something for their help in the end....)

Am I boring you? Back to first questions. What do Tebow and the Eagles have to do with this mess?

So, this morning, I heard two different sets of analyses. Maybe they were close to the truth because the facts are so stark, I don't know. A quarterback I know doesn't think Tebow has what it takes shook his head and said (something to the effect of), "You can't underestimate the power of belief. If he's really able to convince them they can win, that's an incredibly potent force in sports."

Conversely, I heard from multiple analysts who still believe the Eagles might yet be a force to be reckoned with this season (none of them from Philadelphia), I heard (and I'm just summarizing), "When bad things start to happen, you can start to look for the bad things, and then they happen."

I'm sure you all want a bottom line. I refrained from watching news coverage of the 'Occupy' nonsense that was happening yesterday. I watched a SyFy movie instead. All about the moon about to collide with the earth. Lady Laird makes fun of me for watching these movies. I enjoy them because we always escape Armageddon at the end. Totally unlike what we see on the History, Discovery, and Science channels. They actually can't wait for the end of the human race.

Which is where I come down on the whole subject. Since World War I, the so-called intellectuals have been rooting for the end of the world as we know it. They believe they killed God and the proof they seek is that we disappear into nonentity and meaninglessness. Which makes them look smart.

Simple as that.

Why do you suppose they have battled so hard and furiously against the idea of American Exceptionalism when the actual history is so decisively against them? The American Revolution is responsible for all the freedom in what we call the western world. Directly. Muscularly (given WWI and WWII and the Cold War). They want to die. They want us to die. To this end, they have conquered the educational institutions and the media, they have turned truth into lies (post-modernism), and they have created a phony ideal of a green world that if it had ever existed would not contain Gizeh, Athens, Pompeii, Michelangelo, Newton, Shakespeare, Paris, Einstein, or New York. Where most of them live or wish they did. Their fantasy is that we all live naked on the banks of the Amazon drinking bad beer made from capsum bark. While listening to John Lennon on our iPods.

Buying it? Not me.

But I'm buying the bigger point. Which is that the world is at a crossroads. The propagandists have succeeded in convincing something like a majority to give up. (William O'Blivion is looking forward to the breakup of the United States.)

The resisting minority have not perceived the extent of the danger. They believe that most people still believe. They are in error about that. Something cracked in the body politic after the end of the Cold War. They haven't caught up. The end of the Cold War thawed out the worst emotion of all -- Thanatos. They still think they are raising their children to participate in something like a continuum from the past. Wrong. The continuum was fatally sabotaged long long ago.

Why I am so, so unhappy. Death is advancing on everything we hold dear. Our children have to be raised not as good citizens but implacable warriors.

I'm too old to understand all the implications of my own statement. But it's making me close to catatonic.

I took down a post earlier in the week. I should explain. I apologize. But cover-ups go way way back. The roots of the "Occupy' movement go all the way back to my own adolescence in 1969, when a third of the student body walked out of Saturday Chapel at Mercersburg Academy. It was, perhaps, the moment when the Boomer Bible was born. I tried to go back. Thomas Wolfe famously said, "You can't go home again." He was mistaken. You can go home again. I have. You just can't go back in time. Everyone who was alive then has his own version of what happened, and almost nobody else remembers anything that could be called truth. There is only the myth of what happened.

So I spoke to old teachers and younger relatives of those who were, in fact, present. I was trying to understand how institutions remember things that changed their histories for good or ill. The answer? They don't. It's all a continuous present that ejects the past like shit from a goose.

Why do I trust my memory? I committed an historic event. I published an "Extra" of the school's award winning newspaper. I got it published in 48 hours. I documented what was said at the all-school meeting after the walkout, I solicited pro and con articles from members of the faculty, and I wrote an editorial. The only thing I don't remember is my editorial, except that I was opposed to what had happened.

What did my research disclose? Nobody knows anything about the event itself anymore, even though my Extra still sits in the annals of the paper, on record and accessible.. My favorite teacher doesn't want to know about the relevance of that moment to 'Occupy Wall Street' because it conflicts with what he wants to remember about his own liberal tenure. And the youngsters have been taught to remember that only my graduating class -- 1970 -- is somehow mysteriously bitter about their alma mater.

What does any of this have to do with Penn State or the state of the world? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Except I'm still stubbornly thinking about Tebow. And this:


And this, meaning the whole thing:

Watch My Life as a Turkey on PBS. See more from NATURE.

Including the moments when he learned that turkeys live quite alertly and consciously in the present... and the moment when his last turkey friend suddenly, savagely, attacked him as a male rival.

The human plus? We get to think about it. If we can. We can't go back, but we live not to die but to live.

Are we alive? Or dead like those others? Your call.

Monday, November 14, 2011

EVEN THE BEST HAVE THEIR WEAK MOMENTS. I read all the comments but I can't respond to all of them. That would be folly. The good ones need no particular remark unless they start a new line of thinking. The bad ones are usually self-evident unless they illustrate a pattern of some kind or are so absurd as to need calling out. But if you want your comments replied to, I can give you some guidelines. 1) Be brilliantly original or provocative. Or 2) Demonstrate that you haven't read what I've written, 3) Be nonresponsive to what I've written while pretending to respond, 4) Ignore what I've written to pursue your own personal agenda, or 5) Cherrypick what I've written to register some great gotcha that bores everybody but you.

I've made no secret in the last week or two that I'm disgusted with things in general, but that hasn't deterred stratagems 2) through 5). Which is your right, of course. And some of you have been valued commenters in the past. Like William O'Blivion, who has many erudite thoughts -- but not this week. Case in point. He replied to my post about how dumb conservatives are being thus:


A slap at my dismissal of Herman Cain, sure. Fine. Never mind that Harry Truman was anything but an amateur. He was a skilled Washington politician who got lots of attention for pursuing war profiteers when he was in the House of Representatives. Yes, he was a haberdasher at one time and never earned a college degree. Not quite the same thing as never having held any kind of  elective office. But that was just the opening salvo. The bottom line here is the bottom line: "Not even Reagan was a Reagan." Uh, yeah. He was. Mr. O'Blivion is wallowing in his own despair and wants us to wallow with him. Disgust is not despair. In fact, it's the opposite. He's welcome to his own agenda, but I write my posts. Comments should be written too, not splattered across the Internet.

There's also Pittsburgh Guy -- uh, Bud -- all bent out of shape because KDKA broadcast a football game on the radio in the 1920s and the Wiki entry I quoted about the University of Pennslvania claimed that laurel for Penn. Which justified a slander only half mitigated by one of those opaque Internet typographical prompts:


Never mind what the post was about. Meaning the worst scandal in the history of amateur sports. Or that I wrote an actual -- if wry -- love letter to Pittsburgh a week or so ago.

Wrenching the whole discussion into a back alley nobody cares about is its own reward. Cherrypicking is its own reward, however off topic, distracting, and dull.

Yes, I'm grousing. William O and Bud will understand that I'm just teasing them. Commenters are entitled to commit most of the sins I've enumerated. But Sins 2) and 3) actually piss me off. Which brings me to SkinnyDevil. He's a Paulista. Initially he was befuddled by this post.


Then he collected himself and (non)responded to what he didn't like.


I admit it. This whole post is about sneaking up on SkinnyDevil, who has his own blog and seems to think the weight he's throwing around is somehow equal to InstaPunk's. Wrong. He commits the cardinal sins that make Lord Laird mad. He hasn't read what I've actually written, which answers the questions he triumphantly asks, and he is nonresponsive to the central point of the post he presumes to be superior to.


The weakest argument in the world is presuming that your own lame assumptions bind the person you're disagreeing with the same way they bind you. ("You are well aware that if I shoot your brother I haven't harmed you in any way.") I despise Ron Paul's foreign policy precisely because it doesn't conprehend that events in the world -- such as the annihilation of Israel -- would also be crippling assaults on the United States. Not perceiving that fundamental point is the stated reason for my detestation of Ron Paul. Why I -- in the text of my post -- call him "not a politician" but "a cult leader." So SkinnyDevil can't or doesn't read. Which is my problem with all Paulistas.


Read what I fucking wrote: "The plan is published as a spreadsheet, with no description of how any transition is to be accomplished. The problem I've always had with libertarians. We're right. Who gives a shit about what happens when we finally take charge?" [Boldface added after the fact because it's apparently necessary for some of the tools in the audience.]

If Gingrich says he wants to do away with various federal departments, I know that he knows it requires more than the stroke of a pen and a crazy grandma smile of jubilation. Which makes him vastly different from the congressman who could guest star as the villain of the week on Criminal Minds without raising an eyebrow.

What part of that don't you get, SkinnyDevil?

 
Disgust, Part 2

BY ALL MEANS LET'S IGNORE THE DESERVING.. Disgust. Here are the winners of the Mark Twain Prize:


Disgust. Mark Twain was not a standup comic or movie actor or producer. Hemingway said of him, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." (Except that there was also Edgar Allan Poe.) He was a writer. Here's a reminder from a lovely and still affecting souffle called Innocents Abroad, which none of the winners could duplicate or even aspire to. So what else is new? As Keith Richards says, "90 percent of everything is crap." MT is an exception. Behold the American voice:


uh, yeah. Like I said. He was a writer, not a comic. Or the racist of Tina's ignorant imaginings. Here's the bed he died in.


I'm betting if he were still in it he'd raise himself up and cuss a blue streak against the shallow nothings who have been lent his name as an honor they feel free to dishonor.

He was a great cusser. Just like me.

      

NOT AS LOYAL AS THE PENN STATERS. I went to a lot of games when I was a student, and in those days the Patriots also played at Harvard Stadium on Sundays (yeah, I'm that old.) I saw Joe Namath subjected to the gentlest sack any NFL quarterback has ever received. They owed him.

But here's the funny thing. I never bought anything that said Harvard on it. I never bought a Harvard tee-shirt, sweatshirt, or class ring. I was so used to the squiggly-eyed look people gave you when they asked you where you went to college and you said "Harvard" that I just never went there. How many times can you hear people say "Hah-vid" and laugh as if it's the first time you heard the joke? Pahk the cah in the Hahvid Yahd? Fine. Go for it. Enjoy yourself.

Then I got married for the final time a few years ago. I introduced my bride to the fun of college football, which she had never cared about and suddenly fell in love with. We got Rutgers season tickets. And, as if by magic, I suddenly started getting all this Harvard stuff as presents from my wife. Tee-shirts advertising their frequent Ivy football championships, an official Harvard sweatshirt (my first one ever, at the age of 57), a long-sleeved gray jersey that felt almost discreet and another bright crimson one that boasted of the team Ryan Fitzpatrick led to the title. And my wife had a tee-shirt that contained the coats of arms of all the Harvard houses on the back. Presents for the female kids and grandkids turned out to be Harvard things, some of them involving glitter.

I was embarrassed. Sometimes I'd change my shirt before a family gathering or a trip to the hardware store. I always disliked people who wanted Harvard to be the first thing strangers knew about them. As if... well, who needs more snobs?

You know what, though? This week, I'm finally proud. Especially of Harvard football. Harvard Stadium has 40,000 seats, usually half-empty except for the Yale game. Franklin Field, Penn's home, has 60,000 seats, usually two-thirds empty when Harvard is playing there, and we've been there twice for that with abysmal results. The last time I actually had to apologize to the guests we'd invited to the dismal performance of Harvard -- it was the single worst, dullest college football game I've ever seen. Why I picked up the whole tab at the fabulous Ralph's Italian restaurant in South Philly.

I'm not apologetic now, though. I'm proud. Finally proud. With one week to go in the season, Harvard has clinched its 14th Ivy football title out of the last 56 years. It doesn't even matter what happens against Yale next week, except that Yale's quarterback should definitely attend his Rhodes Scholarship interview in Atlanta rather than play a meaningless rivalry game.

Which is why I'm proud at this point. Big time football has just exploded in a nuclear firestorm. The Ivy League ("The Ancient Eight" as one of my tee-shirts has it) has been, after all these years, vindicated. Harvard football players aren't physics majors and classics scholars. They tend to live with other jocks in Kirkand House. On the whole, they're dumber than the rest, but some of them still make it to the NFL, which they do NOT turn their noses up at. But, but, but... they are definitely, absolutely amateurs. They do not go to bowl games, there are no challenges or replays at Ivy games, and every one of us roots for Columbia to win at least one game every year, because they are the smallest undergrad population and we don't want them to become hopelessly discouraged.

Yesterday I had to run an errand that encompassed two states. I put on a 2006 Harvard football championship tee-shirt. I was just hoping someone would make a sleighting remark, so I could say we play football cleanly as a sport. Unlike some schools we could mention.

No one did.

I mean, who cares about Ivy League football? Let's be real here.

But we did help invent the game. Does that count for anything...?

uh, No. So be it. And I'm busting my buttons over it, for the first time in 40 years. Go figure.


We win. Or, rather, I win. Who out there has a wife like mine, who always knows what's important way ahead of time? I tell you, it makes me humble.

FAIR WARNING: I HATED SEASON 4. I promised myself I would do four posts today. I concede I'm getting tired after just three. But the Lady and I have been watching Dexter Season 5 in our usual fashion -- all at once -- and I have to confess I have a confession to make.

Maybe I was burned out by watching the end of the Harry Potter saga. Deadliest Hallows XIX showed up in the queue on Friday, so we watched it. Okay. Best of the whole 45-movie saga. I can admit that. Who among you can say I'm not fair about all matters not pertaining to the Rolling Stones? See?

But then there were the On Demand continuations of CSI New York, NCIS, and Not CSI Somewhere, USA, and I have to tell you there's such a thing as series burnout. Too much of a good thing is still too much of a good thing, and there's no way I wouldn't tell the truth to my faithful readers about such a thing.

Which is why I have to report that Dexter Season 5 is absolutely the best ever. They've changed the show without changing the show. How Michael Anthony Hall doesn't automatically win the Emmy for most killer TV performance every year is far beyond my poor powers of film criticism.

I can't say much without risking spoilers, so I won't say much. Just watch. Especially if you're a Christian. Oops. I said too much. What I meant to say was, watch especially if you're a homicidal heretic with a grudge against the world. Except that...

Something I never ever thought would happen. Dexter making me cry. With him, for him, by him being human.

He does that. Lady Laird left home half an hour early this morning to mail the DVD so we could get the last epsiode ASAP.

I think I can stop writing now. Four posts. All done. Except one thing: Franco Harris? Fuck you. Dexter would know what to do with you, and being an NFL fullback wouldn't make a particle of difference. He's a, well, killer.

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