Beefcakes and weasels

I read an article long ago which suggested that there are only two kinds of people in the world, a classification that becomes evident in high school: people who prize brawn and people who prize brain. (Note, prizing of something does not automatically indicate possession of it.)

The article went on to explain how long after the jocks have left their football field and the brainy/creative/artistic types have given up their soul patches and sired children, we still identify with those who fit whatever group we fell into in high school.

Gross generalizations are dangerous.

Sure, I myself prized brain over brawn in high school. Sure, I don't tend even today to enjoy the company of chest-thumping, butt-smacking NFL fanatics -- but neither do I go to froo-froo art gallery openings or Star Trek conventions. Couldn't tell you the difference between Kant and Kerouack to save my life.

And I just read this week in Parade Magazine a wonderful article about beefcake Matt Damon and his international humanitarian efforts and came away thinking, man, if I was a beer drinker, I'd love to sit down and have one with that guy. Heck, I'd go sit in the bleachers at some ball game with him just to be close to his awesomeness.

Here's another blog-post about the article: http://www.ecorazzi.com/2009/10/12/matt-damon-writes-about-charitable-giving-clean-water-for-parade/

Ig-Nobel Peace Prize: the death of a great idea

Today it finally hit me:

Whilst the Nobel Prizes in medicine and other fields, are honorable and generally deserved, the Nobel Peace Prize itself, being actually administered by an entirely different body of judges -- a handful of secret folk from one little country in Europe on Planet Earth -- no longer means anything.

It now bears all the grandeur for thinking folk of an award from MoveOn.org, PETA, the NRA, the Moral Majority or a committee of delinquent kids in your local middle school. It is purely and completely in the hands of determined leftists, a sham, a mockery of the grand idea that it once was. As such, without some attempt to broaden the judging pool, it no longer deserves respect.

I began to understand this when Jimmy Carter won the last time and it was made quite clear that he received the award as a poke in the eye of the-then president of the U.S.

I don't like Jimmy Carter. I hate his politics, his disaster of a presidency and his recent generalizations. BUT, even so, I can recognize that he is a hard-working man who has labored for decades in the cause of peace. I could understand the case for Carter getting the Award.

But Obama?

Has Obama ever confronted a dictator? No, he shakes their hands.

Has he ever promoted democracy? No,he is doing his best to ensure that it dies in Honduras.

Where was he three years ago? In a gulag? Under house arrest in Burma? Confronting the People's Liberation Army in China? Hardly.

Maybe Obama will eventually do wonderful things in the world. But even some of his strongest supporters concede that this designation was a little too early given.

Wise Words

"The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it." -American writer H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Awful

Bang. Bang.

I heard the sound from my study room late last night. Maybe firecrackers. Or just some fool firing off his gun in a backyard.

But then the sounds were followed immediately by the yelp of a dog in pain.

Shots again.

I left my book on the floor, jammed on a shirt and ran outside. Slipped around the side of my house in the dark, heart pounding, trying to figure out what had just happened, without being spotted.

Saw nothing. Nothing but an old white car near the intersection in front of my house that may have had nothing to do with the situation.

Heard nothing. Nothing but a slight rustling from the darkness a house or two over by the treeline. Might have been someone walking, might have been a possum creeping along.

For the first time in my life, I called 911. Told them I thought I had heard a dog being shot.

Don't know if it was one of our trashy neighbors or some outsider, like the child-of-hell demon-spawn scumbag who once threw a dog out of his car in the street in front of our house -- a dog whom we took in and loved, sweet little thing, til the day he died.

So 911 asked me if I had seen anyone or any vehicles in the neighborhood. I told them what I remembered.

To their credit, two police cars were in the neighborhood within a few minutes. I don't know if they discovered anything. They drove up and down and then drove away.

By dawn's early light, our neighborhood appears quiet and seemingly deserted. People have hauled their recycling to the curb.

But something happened here last night. Something terrible was done.

YD SPRZL

Note to the world: If you are going to drop the 10 bucks or whatever it costs these days for a vanity plate on your car, maybe you should pick a combination of letters that actually means something.

Unless of course you get the giggles just from riding around making people wonder what the &^&% your secret acronym means.

Or maybe I'm just really stupid and everybody else in the world but me can solve this riddle.

Maybe it's a line from some movie I missed.

Maybe it's Yiddish.

Maybe it's Martian.

Well, happy YD SPRZL to you too, buddy.

Mean People Suck

Mean People Suck.

That used to be a bumper sticker you'd see around.

So true.

I detest the Simon-Cowellization of our culture. Suddenly, everybody thinks they are entitled to be a critic and to rip up other people at every possible occasion.

Go on Youtube sometime and observe the downright vicious comments people post on videos of anybody attempting to do anything creative. Most disturbing is when the putrid vitriol is directed against children.

The sort of boorish nastiness that used to be the provenance of comedy club hecklers, has now infected our entire society.

I tried to watch America's Got Talent one night. I couldn't stand it -- not because some of the performers were awful (and some indeed were!) but because of the way they were hooted and hollered and virtually chased from the stage.

Back in the day when society had a little more class, back before we handed over the job of evaluating talent to the mindless mob, things were done differently. The judges don't tell a Miss America contestant that Her butt is too bony and Her singing voice sounds like an angry alleycat trapped in a garbage can. They give Her a performance number, no more, no less.

There is a time and a place for criticism -- constructive criticism that helps a performer improve. Such criticism includes basic steps, the advice of true experts, such as "you need to sing more from your chest, not your nose." Such advice does not include Kindergarten-level insults or the suggestion that the would-be performer go away somewhere and kill themselves for the good of society.

I fear that people today do not grasp this concept.