Entries from December 2004 ↓

A tsunami killed over a hundred thousand people in Asia last week. Everything reeks of that tragedy, everything is filtered through it, and everything seems completely trivial in comparison.

What is there to say? I have trouble even thinking about that many lost and ruined lives. Some reporter in Sri Lanka interviewed a guy he found sitting stricken in the middle of a field of rubble that used to be his house, surveying the devastation around him. The guys said that he and his fellow villagers had two things they needed to figure out: (1) whether they have the resources to rebuild their decimated village; and (2) whether they really have anything left to live for, anyway.

In another story, a reporter in Indonesia was asked about the suffering of all the people who’d lost loved ones. She said yes, there’s a lot of that, but not as much of it as you would expect; because, often, entire families were simply wiped out. Many of the dead can only mourn themselves.

And looming just over the horizon of this tragedy are the certain, slow tragedies to come. How are these people going to recover? Are they going to recover? How many more lives will be lost to the epidemics that are sure to sweep through these devastated, corpse-choked places?

But of all the questions out there, the one that’s most difficult to answer is why. Why did it happen? In a rational universe, how could something like this be even possible?

Any answer to this fundamentally unanswerable question would seem to depend, largely, on your spiritual beliefs. If you don’t believe in a god, or a divine purpose, or a grand universal plan, then the answer is simple: it happened because it happened. Which is to say: if you’re looking for a reason that rises beyond the minutiae of hydrodynamics and plate tectonics, you might as well stop now: there isn’t one.

This isn’t, needless to say, enough. We’re talking about over a hundred thousand people here, people who were, for the most part, I’m sure, doing nothing more sinister than living the lives that were so suddenly taken from them on that day. There has be something. It can’t be completely arbitrary, can it? I mean, it can be. It is. Of course it is. But how can it be? Events like this shake the anti-faith of even the most ardent atheists.

On the other hand, anyone who subscribes to an organized religion has probably been assured, over and over again, that there is a reason for everything, that it’s all part of a grand scheme that we don’t know anything about, and wouldn’t be able to understand anyway, because it’s beyond mortal ken.

I don’t believe in god, so I can only speculate on whether this is enough. But I can’t imagine that it is. Even if you place absolute trust in a divine sovereign, even if you’ve dedicated your life to Him, even if you prize Him above all else — wouldn’t you still, in your heart of hearts, distrust the motives of any entity, no matter how infallible, that permitted this kind of horror?

Either way, we’re left sputtering. Whether or not the world is completely arbitrary in meting out its senseless punishments, it certainly appears to be that way.

Ultimately, I don’t think there’s any sense in asking why. The only thing to do is to try to help the survivors get through this as best we can. To make that our Purpose and our Reason. That, at least, we can control.

I’ve often heard it lamented that our present political age is so ridden with nastiness and ill-will, so marred by backbiting and vitriol, that it’s impossible to hold public office without having everything about you — from your character, to your upbringing, to your sex life — examined, reviled, impugned, and just generally spat upon. Which is, I think, true.

It’s also sometimes said that, in the days of yore, when our Republic was young and our principles still intact, politics were all enlightened discourse and gentlemanly debate. Disagreements were settled amicably in dark-paneled rooms over an early supper and moderate quantities of warm brandy.

Not quite. During the election of 1800, between incumbent John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, a Republican journalist/essayist/agitator named James Callender wrote a series of loud, frothing screeds against President Adams, all of which were laced with some of the basest, meanest, nuttiest, most over-the-top epithets I’ve ever seen directed at any politician. He called Adams:

• A repulsive pedant
• A gross hypocrite
• One of the most egregious fools upon the continent
• A strange compound of ignorance and ferocity, of deceit and weakness
• A hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.
• A wretch that has neither the science of a magistrate, the politeness of a courtier, nor the courage of man.

… and much, much more. Mind you, these weren’t the ravings of a lone madman shrilling away in some anchorite’s cave in the desert: this dude published a bookful of this stuff, and had the tacit encouragement and financial support of Jefferson himself. Which is to say, Callender was to Jefferson as the Swiftboat Veterans are to Bush.

But the comparison isn’t really fair, because Callender really puts those Swifties to shame. What makes his insane rantings all the more remarkable was that they came out during the era of the Aliens and Sedition Acts, when it was a criminal offense to say anything bad about the President. Clearly, these people felt very strongly about their party politics.

So next time I see some RNC shill hurling outrageous, vindictive charges at uppity Democrats, I’ll think wistfully back to the early 19th century, when proto-Republicans, already up to their old tricks, at least conducted their character assassinations with real gusto and eloquence.

One of the very few downsides to being married is having to attend your spouse’s office Christmas party at the end of every year. We went to my wife’s last night. It was a pretty nice fete: a DJ, mounds of food, raffles, prizes, good cheer.

I was miserable.

There’s nothing quite like a large social gathering filled with people I don’t know to highlight all of my inadequacies, in stark, excruciating detail. I very rarely know what to say to anyone, or how to act, so I mostly just sit staring stiffly forward, my expression alternating between goofy smile and steely death stare. This behavior is sufficient to ward off most people, but there are always some ardent, gregarious types who insist on trying to “draw me out”, usually through the ancient art of conversation.

Now, I’ve complained before about my nonexistent conversational skills, and I’m sure I’ll complain about them again. But I think it’s worth resurrecting the lament now, because last night’s event was a perfect example of my affliction in action, and yet more proof that I should just go ahead and have my vocal chords torn out. Here’s a typical exchange with a well-meaning interlocutor:

Friendly Person: Hi, I’m Lisa.

Me: Yes.

[Pause]

Friendly Person: Are you here with S?

Me: Yes.

Friendly Person: Oh great!

[Pause]

Friendly Person: So what’s your name?

Me: [blanking] Gerefmen … grod.

Friendly Person: Oh. [pause] That’s an interesting name.

Me: Yes.

Friendly Person: So what do you do for a living?

Me: Computers.

Friendly Person: Really! That’s great. What do you do with computers?

Me: [blanking] I make them … go.

Friendly Person: Oh, so you … write software?

Me: Software. Yes.

Friendly Person: My husband writes software too! I’m sure you two probably have lots to talk about. Oh, there he is over there.

Me: [panicking] My pancreas is on fire.

Friendly Person: [eyes widening] Oh.

Me: Have to go put it out. Bye.

And I ran to the bathroom, intending to lock myself in a stall until it was all over. But the only stall was in use, so I just crouched under one of the urinals until someone called security.

The other thing I don’t do well is dance, and there’s always dancing at these things. This time there was a preponderance of disco and hip hop, grinding beats, loud baselines, shimmering loops. I am to dancing as a fish is to walking, but I do my level best, because my wife absolutely loves it. At the appointed time, I led her out to the little parquet floor at the front of the room, and we started grooving to a song called, as far as I could tell, “Ass Ass Party Shake Ass Grind Ass.” I went immediately into my normal routine, a sort of stuttering, bouncing sway, with my lower lip gripped tightly between my teeth.

My wife said: “You need to shake your hips.”

“I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Fine.” I shook my hips.

“You’re still not doing it.”

“Yes I am!”

“Do you even know where your hips are?”

I pointed.

“Good. Shake them.”

I shook them.

She looked at me critically. “You look like you’re wedged ass-first in a hole in the wall, and you’re trying to wriggle your way out.”

This sounded like a perfect metaphor for the evening, so I nodded happily, and started moving my arms in a sort of flailing windmill rotary motion.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m dancing.”

“No, I mean what are you doing with your arms?”

“Dancing.”

“Because now you look like you’ve got your ass stuck in a hole in the wall and someone just set you on fire.”

“Hey I like that. We should invent a dance called Ass-Stuck-In-Wall-While-On-Fire. It’d be like the electric slide for uncoordinated people.”

She patted me on the head. “That’s very good, Honey.”

My wife is a wonderfully tolerant person. She endured my dancing for a while longer, and then we left, another Christmas Party successfully navigated.

I’m already dreading next year’s.

I love going to the movies. I love the whole process: the scanning of movie listings, the negotiations with my fellow movie-goers, the selection of theater, the standing in line, the rush for the best seat. But my favorite part of the process is, without a doubt, the eating of popcorn. There’s nothing like settling down in a nice plush cup-holdered seat among a buzzing throng, looking expectantly up at a dark screen, and savoring the prospect of that first soft, white, salty, butter-chemical-enhanced kernel. Nothing.

But with great happiness come great sacrifice. Movie popcorn is, as we all know, ridiculously expensive. Many of our local theaters have installed little banking annexes in their lobbies, so you can take out the necessary small loans before buying their condiments. But — again — that’s all part of the experience. I would feel cheated if I somehow managed to see a movie without halving my net worth.

However, given the massive outlay of funds involved in buying popcorn, you really have to be careful with your investment. You need to resist the temptation to eat any of it before the movie starts, you need to share it with no one, and you need to finish the entire bag/tub/barrel, no matter how much your body complains of fluffy maize overload. But, most of all, you need to not drop any.

This is crucial. Every dropped kernel represents a massive loss of capital. I’ve done some calculations, and it turns out that every kernel in an average-sized Washington-area cauldron of popcorn costs, after taxes, between five and six dollars. Drop twenty kernels, and you’ve just wasted a hundred bucks. Drop sixty, and you’re out an iPod. Drop the whole bucket, and you’ll have the equivalent of the entire gross domestic product of Haiti scattered at your feet.

I’m particularly susceptible to popcorn droppage, as I am not generally satisfied with eating one kernel at a time. My preferred method is to plunge my hand into the bucket, grab as large a handful of the stuff as I possibly can, open my mouth wide enough to admit a small Rottweiler, and then place my entire fist inside, open it, and let the popcorn fall where it may. Besides being extremely unpleasant to watch, this technique is highly inefficient, as I usually spill a Hope-diamond’s worth of popcorn with every bite.

And so, when I go to the movies, I always wear the Popcorn Catcher©, a device of my own invention. It’s basically a large cone, made out of thick polymer, that you fasten around your waist, sort of like a reverse hoop-skirt. Once donned, it forms a sort of conical catch-all that extends all the way up to your shoulders and gathers any popcorn that happens to fall on its way to your mouth. There’s a small door in the side for spilled popcorn retrieval. It’s simple, practical, and brilliant. Also people tend to stay away from you when you’re wearing it, which means you get to use both armrests.

I’m also working on the Popcorn Straw©, which is a large tube, about the diameter of a belgian waffle, that allows you to suck popcorn right out of the bucket and into your mouth. This essentially reduces the chances of droppage to nil. Unfortunately, it also drastically reduces your chances of surviving the movie, as that volume of sucked popcorn tends to clog windpipes. But I’m working on making it safer, and hope to have FDA approval very soon.

In the meantime, cherish your popcorn. It’s more valuable than you know.

I once met a man
With a head made of twine
And a smile divine
And a soft-spoken gait

He asked me to dance
In his lope-lovely voice
But left me no choice
As the hour was late

So I stripped off my skin
One strand at a time
Like a burgeoning mime
Like a silhouette broken

And sang a sweet song
Of silence and quiet
A small vacant riot
Of soft speech unspoken

And sang a sweet song
All murmur and whisper
A sibilant vesper
Of sadness unspoken

The twine man looked on
With his absence of eyes
And stripped off his thighs
And slipped off his feet

And unwound his head
And drew out his knife
And we danced out of life
Our unmaking complete

And so we dance still
A sashaying couple
Our nullity supple
Our absence entire

We trip down the halls
Of death and creation
Of storm and sensation
Of tundra and fire

When nothing remains
And all here has faded
You’ll see us paraded
Down streets of nowhere

Whirling and dipping
Far-seeing myopic
Complete and entropic
With all time to spare

If there’s one fact we can glean from the recent string of cabinet-level departures from the Bush white house, it’s that executive branch officials really, really like spending time with their families. Whether they’re being forced out, hinted out, hectored out, hurried out, chased out, or beaten out, it’s clear that they can all fall back on the same abiding passion: hanging out with the wife and kids.

It kind of brings a tear to your eye, all of this saintly devotion to the simple pleasures of familial togetherness. But still, after the ninth ousted official gets up in front of microphones and spouts the same excuse, often using exactly the same language, one begins to suspect that our country’s officialdom might be suffering from a lack of imagination in the making-shit-up department.

I mean, these are talented, intelligent, ambitious men and women. Can’t they do any better than this? I understand that pleading the pleasures of home is a safe, unassailable position in our values-based society, but would it kill them to deviate, just a little, from the script? If only for variety’s sake?

Here’s the thing, though: I think they really want to, but don’t know how. I’m sure they feel like total knobs up there, repeating the tired mantras they used to mock their predecessors for; but their minds, stunted by years in the Washington bureaucracy mill, are literally incapable of coming up with anything different.

So, as a service to these poor, rejected pariahs, I have put together a folio containing a list of answers to the “why are you stepping down” question, organized by sex, age, and job description. I plan to set up a kiosk in front of the Whitehouse tomorrow, and sell it to passing cabinet secretaries.

1. The Ridge: It is time for me to realize my life-long ambition of opening a duct-tape factory.
2. The Powell: I came to the conclusion, after noticing that my office door was always locked, and that the locks had been changed, and that someone had crossed out my name with thick red marker, and that the President called security every time he saw me, and that, whenever I actually managed to make it past the guards into work, I was eventually caught and bound and gagged and rolled into a carpet and dumped in the trunk of a limo and driven to the Potomac and thrown in … after remarking on all that, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to spend more time with my wife. Who I’m told will be released from custody as soon as I submit my resignation.
3. The Christy-Todd-Whitman: I’ve run out of principles to compromise. Heading up the Environmental Protection Agency for an administration that can’t stand the sight of unspoiled countryside, that actively despises all plants and animals, requires a really breathtaking array of compromised principles. The thing is, you can only compromise a principle so many times. It’s like trying to re-use the same kleenex for three years, you know? Eventually, you’re just blowing snot in your hands. So I’m going to spend some time with my family, maybe get elected governor again, amass a really solid body of principled, compassionate, smart legislation, and then come back and blow it all the next time one of the Bush boys gets elected.
4. The Ashcroft: Having realized my lifelong ambition of saving the world and securing America from the onslaught of the Muhammedan hordes, I can now move on to my next calling: killing all filthy atheists. God bless you all. Well, not you, towelhead.

And there’s more where that came from. I realize I’m getting in on the tail-end of this — there just aren’t that many more officials left to purge — but I hope to make up for it by charging forty billion gajillion dollars for each folio. Normally, I’d be worried about selling anything at those prices, but we’re talking about people who have no problem at all mortgaging the entire country’s future for the benefit of three or four very rich people, so I don’t think it’ll be a problem.