Need rhinestones?

This is a plug for family. My niece-in-law, Audriauna, is doing quite well at turning a hobby into money — she blings stuff. You can see her work on TikTok (kids these days & their weird social media!), Instagram, and, of course, on Etsy. If you are a member of the cult of Starbucks, why are you drinking out of cardboard?

For better or worse, I live in a Starbucks desert. This is Caribou Coffee country! She doesn’t seem to have cups for my kind, but as she lives out there in the Seattle/Tacoma area I guess that’s to be expected.

Every town has got one

Spotted in Morris: crude, ugly “WE ALL MATTER” sign, dirty American flags and blue line flags, and to top it all off, “JESUS” on the roof. It really needs a few Trump signs for that special je ne sais quoi, but maybe those went down after the colossal failure.

I’m sure the neighbors appreciate the reduction in property values all around — it keeps the taxes lower, you know.

How far will Milo go?

Failed scandal-mongerer and outrage-generator Milo Yiannopoulos (remember him? He used to be in the news all the time) is in the midst of a major rebranding effort, but it’s really just more of the same: embracing the worst possible takes on everything, following along behind any fleeting trend and straining to amplify it even more. So what is he up to now?

Professional right-wing troll Milo Yiannopoulos has declared himself no longer homosexual. In an interview with the right-wing LifeSite, Yiannopoulos claims he is “ex-gay” and will direct his future endeavors to St. Joseph: “I treat it like an addiction. You never stop being an alcoholic… I hope people will support and pray for me, if for no other reason than they share my delight at the prospect of Milo Yiannopoulos furiously and indignantly railing against homosexuals for sins of the flesh.” He announced a new vocation as well, a dedication to the discredited and widely banned practice of forcibly subduing homosexuality: “Over the next decade, I would like to help rehabilitate what the media calls ‘conversion therapy.’” It is unclear whether Yiannopoulos remains legally married: “The guy I live with has been demoted to housemate.” And he took some time during the interview to indulge in transphobia as well, claiming “trannies are demonic.”

The key phrase in that statement is the hope that people will “support” him…he’s always on the grift, this is just his newest angle.

Man, he is desperate to recover some relevance, yet all he knows how to do is this clown-like capering for the most hateful audience he can find. What a sad pathetic wreck of a life he has — I guess if he really wants attention, he is going to get some pity out of this latest maneuver.

My birthday haul

There were presents. Mary got me some ultrabright portable work lights that will come in handy when spider-hunting season finally gets here. But mainly what she did was spend a big chunk of yesterday calling all over the state trying to get me scheduled for a vaccination. There is an utterly insane website under our freaking insane American health care system that lists all the pharmacies/clinics that have a few slots open, and like some kind of goddamn video game you have to click on to book the appointment, and if you aren’t quick enough someone else might click on it before you. Then, if you do succeed in being the first to click, you better be prepared, because you will be confronted with a complicated form demanding all kinds of information about your insurance. PCN? Bin? Group? What the hell?

Anyway, Mary spent most of yesterday evening locked to her phone, punching the screen in the worst and most stupid video game ever. End result: I have a vacccination appointment for Monday evening at a site 3 hours away, to which I must arrive within a 17 minute window to get my injection.

Those of you living outside the US may now begin laughing at the idiocy of our healthcare and the havoc the insurance system wreaks on our lives. I remember as a young man that a staple of American news was propaganda mocking the Soviet bureaucracy — ha ha, they have to stand in line for groceries, and they don’t have 50 brands of toothpaste to choose from! — and I wish people here would have the self-awareness to recognize how foolish our system is, and fix it.

In case you were wondering how I would celebrate my birthday…

I regret to report that I did not complete my grading yesterday. I was up late slogging through it all, but it was a long exam and a lot of students and a couple of the questions involved careful calculations that I had to trace through, and so I only got halfway through the stack. Today, I try to finish it.

Unfortunately, on Tuesdays I have a long morning class starting shortly, and I have a lab most of the afternoon, and I have to attend two senior seminars, so I’m going to be working late again.

I estimate that maybe I can spare a half hour around noon. So, lunch. Which because of my advanced age and feeble condition will probably consist of a lump of fiber.

Yay. Birthday. They just get better every year.

Prophecy…validated

This story is numerically accurate, at least.

Paul McCartney wrote this song in 1956, a year before I was born, and before Mary Gjerness was born. He was 14.

It was released to the public on the album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, in the spring of 1967. I was 10. Mary was 9. We had met the year before. McCartney was 25. We had not and have never met him.

I heard the song, and the whole album, often that summer. It was the Summer of Love.

Mary and I might have fled to Haight-Ashbury together, except our parents would have disapproved, and, well, we didn’t know each other that well. Also, we were kids.

The song may have implanted ideas in my head, though, because 7 years later, in the fall of 1974, I worked up the courage to ask her on a date.

It did not go well.

Shortly afterwards, Mary departed for Southeast Asia, where she studied martial arts and eventually returned to the United States to right great wrongs as the Batwoman.

I fled the opposite way, to languish in exile in exotic Indiana. I returned having learned no lessons, to repeat the same mistakes yet again. In the summer of 1976, when the song was 9 years old, I asked Mary out on a second date.

It went a little better.

I was 19. Mary was 18. Paul McCartney was 34 years old. He had nothing to do with us, but we all kind of wish we were that young again.

It was about this time that I began to wonder whether she would still be interested in needing me and feeding me when I turned 64.

She said the word. We filled in a form. We got married in 1980, when I was 23 and she was 22. Tentatively, the answer was “yes”, but I still needed empirical confirmation of the robustness of the agreement.

Suddenly! Unexpectedly! To everyone’s surprise! Forty one years flew by. Finally, I can answer the questions in the song.

When I get older, losing my hair
Many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a valentine,
birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I’d been out till quarter to three,
Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty four? Ooh
You’ll be older too.
Ah, and if you say the word,
I could stay with you.
I could be handy mending a fuse
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside,
Sunday mornings, go for a ride.
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty four?
Ev’ry summer we can rent a cottage
In the Isle of Wight if it’s not too dear.
We shall scrimp and save.
Grandchildren on your knee;
Vera, Chuck and Dave.
Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say,
yours sincerely, wasting away.
Give me your answer, fill in a form,
Mine forevermore.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty four? Ho!

Yes, she still sends me valentines and birthday greetings. No, she doesn’t drink…wine.

Yes, she will lock the door if I’m out very late. But I have a key!

She probably needs me less than I need her, but she will still feed me.

Mary, unfortunately, must wait until September to find out if I reciprocate.

Wait, the song is over! What happens now? What about when we’re 65? 74? 103? I guess I better find out. My new mission: to determine the accuracy of the lyrics in the song, “In the Year 2525”.

One in-box is empty!

It is glorious. I am completely caught up on grading in my introductory biology course, and the website shows no pending items awaiting my perusal. That feels so good, even if I know it is fleeting.

I’ve already started pounding on my genetics backlog. I have once again given myself a goal of getting it completely done today. I will persist and overcome. I will taste the heady joy of a brief freedom from obligation late tonight, no matter what. I might even have a few days this week with a little time for the spider work.

Although I do have the students launching a new fly cross this week, so lab will be busy. It’s weird how I find working in the lab relaxing and not at all stressful, but sitting at home in front of my familiar computer just reading and judging student writing is agonizing. I’m already getting a headache contemplating the rest of today.

What else would you expect from royalty?

For some reason, this Oglaf cartoon seems particularly appropriate today.

Maybe an institution built around the notion of an intrinsic inherited superiority, which raises its members in a warm bath of entitlement and privilege, isn’t the best structure for producing an enlightened leadership? We should expect the products of such an upbringing to be, naturally, self-serving bigots?

I don’t know why that came to mind today.

(By the way, that Oglaf cartoon is a two-parter, but page 2 culminates in someone getting a good consensual pegging, as Oglafian humor tends to do.)

The banality of Jordan Peterson

Psst, wanna read a review of Jordan Peterson’s new book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life? It’ll spare you the trouble of reading the whole thing.

Russia got Stalin and Dostoevsky. Who’s Canada’s most dangerous thinker? Professor Dad over here, yelling up the stairs about William Blake and the “overwhelming mystery of Being” and, hey, would it kill you kids to clean up after yourselves once in a while? Some of us have tenured jobs to go to.

This disconnect between the way Peterson is advertised and what he in fact writes is the most deflating thing here. If this is what the enemy looks like to you, you’re going to have to find a new war. This one is too boring to fight.

That’s the impression I got from his first popular book, too — it’s a lot of trite, boring trivialities recited as if they were Deep Thoughts, and what needs to be fought isn’t Peterson, but the shallow wave of ignorance rippling among his devotees.

This requires a lot of explaining, and even, God help us, some poetry. The ratio of sociology-term-paper-gobbledygook to English runs at roughly 2:1, yet we are introduced to “the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates.” This is deep thinking slimmed down for people who aren’t totally sure whether Socrates was the toga guy or the gyro guy.

Here are his 12 new rules:

  1. Do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or creative achievement.
  2. Imagine who you could be and then aim single-mindedly at that.
  3. Do you not hide unwanted things in the fog.
  4. Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated.
  5. Do not do what you hate.
  6. Abandon ideology.
  7. Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens.
  8. Try to make one room in your home as beautiful as possible.
  9. If old memories still upset you, write them down carefully and completely.
  10. Plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship.
  11. Do not allow yourself to become resentful, deceitful, or arrogant.
  12. Be grateful in spite of your suffering.

I do not need to read the book to know that that is incoherent garbage. It’s like being served up a load of bad fortune cookies.

Like a meteor!

David Silverman’s fall has been spectacular. A few years ago, he was running the US’s largest atheist organization with panache — he was not uniformly beloved, but he had influence and a loud voice and was shaking things up. He was the face of atheism. He was regularly on Fox News, punching back at the buffoons running that crapshow. He was the brash, arrogant American at international conferences. Top o’ the world, Ma!

Then it is discovered that he’s using his position to pressure women into having sex with him.

Boom, that was it. He lost his job, he lost his family, he lost his platform, they aren’t inviting him on Fox News anymore. If he hadn’t been such a terrible abuser, I might be feeling some pity for him, just because the contrast was so stark. And now look what he is reduced to: desperately looking for affirmation from Republicans, who are mostly far-right Christian Evangelicals any more, and moaning about how so few atheist organizations want anything to do with him.

And now, in the name of skepticism, he is defending Donald Trump, trying to suggest that he didn’t actually incite an insurrection, because he didn’t literally use the words “storm the capital”. This is pathetic. You know, Hitler didn’t ever actually say out loud, “Round up all the Jews and murder them,” either. It’s the effect and the actions that count.

As a former friend to David Silverman, I would say…David, snuffling about in the garbage bin is not the way to regain honor and respect, but is only a way to foul yourself further. I know you want to make a comeback to some degree, but aligning yourself with Trump Republicans is not the path. You are especially not going to ever acquire the regard of humanists, intellectuals, progressives, and the kind of people who think all genders and races are equal. You are aligning yourself with bigots, racists, misogynists, and the worst kind of Christians.

Further, I would add that you’ve made no amends and obviously haven’t accepted that your past actions were wrong, or you wouldn’t be associating with the kind of people who would assure you that your abuse of power and treatment of women was appropriate and right, and that that kind of behavior isn’t a major obstacle to their acceptance of you, personally. In other words, hanging out with ignorant rat bastards doesn’t make you less of an ignorant rat bastard.

This whole mess…if they made it into an opera, I’d say it was a little too overblown, melodramatic, and histrionic.