Sunday, March 17, 2024

The lilt of Irish slaughter?

Well, it's that day again.


If I had to guess, I'd say the Irish people have become the most popular immigrants we've ever had in America, and that's not just because they've got a day strongly associated with drinking that goes back to colonial times. Other cultures do just as much whoopin' it up and have more popular food, too. But one thing the Irish people and their US descendants have going for them is their sense of humor. 

At a time when everyone's looking to be angry at on behalf of their long-buried ancestors, do the Irish waste their time doing that? 

You'd better believe it. I know third- and fourth-generation Americans of only partial Irish descent who hate the English as if the English had collectively and personally insulted their mothers last week.

Can the Irish be belligerent? What makes you even ask? 


Look in some dictionaries under the word "belligerent" and you'll see a picture of Paddy throwing a roundhouse. If you're wearin' o' the orange in some places today, you might be wearin' o' the black eye tomorrow. 

But the Irish have a much-admired sense of humor. The Jewish people in America do as well, famous for it going back to the 19th century, but their humor carries more of the fatalism that centuries of pogroms will inspire. Irish jokes are usually intended to show how clever they are, how dumb others are, or just how silly people can be. And who has a problem with that? We're all doofuses sometimes. Even Chuck Norris, I'd wager, although no one has ever seen it. (And lived.) 

(Chuck's about half Irish, BTW.)

Let us give thanks today for the Irish, for managing to keep a sense of humor in this difficult old world. Life is hard whether you can laugh or not, but it's harder if you cannot. 

Friday, March 15, 2024

Upside-down world.

It's hard not to feel like the world has been turned completely on its head. We have a government in the United States that seems to despise its citizens, monetary policy that makes money worth less daily, militaries that can't win wars or defend the nation, government agencies intended to protect Americans that target Americans, fathers who abuse children and mothers who kill them, schools that teach everything but what they're supposed to teach, recycling programs that stuff landfills, and a ruling class that does not rule and has no class. Sometimes it appears that the airheads are all rising to the top by nature of their empty heads, because that's what seems to be in charge. And sometimes that's the optimistic view. The worse view is that only some of them are stupid; the smart ones are all evil. 


We know in our hearts that things are upside-down and have always been, even if it makes no rational sense -- if things always seemed wrong, why would we expect something better, something right? I find the supreme example of this inversion in the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, where we see that everything is a cruel funhouse image of what it ought to be. The religious class that ought to love God instead persecutes Him. He is betrayed by a kiss, a sign of love, and abandoned by His friends. The Roman authority tries to administer justice by scourging the man declared innocent -- I find no fault with this man, so we'll beat him half to death. The crown Jesus deserves is not the crown of thorns He gets; He is exalted, but by being lifted aloft on the scornful, torturous cross. Everything is a cruel mockery. 

It informs me that while life may get better in many ways, we just can't escape the grip of evil on our own. And now, in this utterly unprincipled era, we find less hope that there is anything to fall back on, any law on the basis of which we can hope for justice among men. 

But we have hope. St. Francis of Assisi, they say, saw the world upside-down, or perhaps right-side up by being upside-down. Writing in The Crisis, Michael Warren Davis notes: 

St. Francis called himself the Jongleur de Dieu—God’s court jester—precisely because his virtue was so absurd by the standards of our own convention. But to say that he looked foolish in the eyes of the world is an understatement. His charity gave as much offense as any sinner’s meanness. St. Francis’s spirituality demands such uncommon virtue it’s offensive to common decency.

The most famous take on the Jongleur in the English language must be from our old friend G. K. Chesterton from his book about the saint, who explains that the jongleur is not a juggler so much as a tumbler or acrobat, and Francis came out of the darkness of despair from his crushed dreams of being a noble knight as if he'd been turned on his head:

Francis, at the time or somewhere about the time when he disappeared into the prison or the dark cavern, underwent a reversal of a certain psychological kind; which was really like the reversal of a complete somersault, in that by coming full circle it came back, or apparently came back, to the same normal posture. It is necessary to use the grotesque simile of an acrobatic antic, because there is hardly any other figure that will make the fact clear. But in the inward sense it was a profound spiritual revolution. The man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again; in that sense he was almost as different as if he were dead, as if he were a ghost or a blessed spirit. And the effects of this on his attitude towards the actual world were really as extravagant as any parallel can make them. He looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole walking on his hands.

This may have given him a unique perspective:

This state can only be represented in symbol; but the symbol of inversion is true in another way. If a man saw the world upside down, with all the trees and towers hanging head downwards as in a pool, one effect would be to emphasise the idea of dependence. There is a Latin and literal connection; for the very word dependence only means hanging. It would make vivid the Scriptural text which says that God has hanged the world upon nothing. If St. Francis had seen, in one of his strange dreams, the town Assisi upside down, it need not have differed in a single detail from itself except in being entirely the other way round. But the point is this: that whereas to the normal eye the large masonry of its walls or the massive foundations of its watchtowers and its high citadel would make it seem safer and more permanent, the moment it was turned over the very same weight would make it seem more helpless and more in peril. It is but a symbol; but it happens to fit the psychological fact. St. Francis might love his little town as much as before, or more than before; but the nature of the love would be altered even in being increased. He might see and love every tile on the steep roofs or every bird on the battlements; but he would see them all in a new and divine light of eternal danger and dependence. Instead of being merely proud of his strong city because it could not be moved, he would be thankful to God Almighty that it had not been dropped; he would be thankful to God for not dropping the whole cosmos like a vast crystal to be shattered into falling stars. Perhaps St. Peter saw the world so, when he was crucified head-downwards.

We can rail against the upside-down world, but we ought to remember that in the end it is destined to be flipped and placed on a firm foundation as it ought to have been from beginning. That is the hope, that is the divine expectation. 

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Off to a bad start.

 

So today started off with a bang. Walking dog Izzy in the dark, thanks so Daylight &@#^* Savings Time. It's recycling day, but unlike our late party dog Nipper, Izzy is not terrified of trash cans. Or at least he wasn't until this morning. 

This morning he decided to dash to the curb and go around the large garbage can someone had left on the sidewalk. That unfortunately put the can between him and me, and when he closed the loop he knocked over the can, sending recyclables everywhere -- mostly plastic bottles but plenty of aluminum cans. This made what is known as a Loud Noise, which startled Izzy, who decided to put a couple of miles between himself and the source of the noise. I, caught by surprise, still had the leash in my hand, which suffered a small laceration between the ring finger and the pinky as the slack zipped through. It was too dark to see how much blood was unleashed (ha) but there was some. 

After restoring order, putting all the stuff back in the garbage can, we returned home -- of course, all this happened at the point of the circle farthest from our house. But we made it, and the injury was not too bad. However, it was a perfect way to start a very busy day, and I mean that dripping with as much sarcasm as I can muster. 

Help me, Obi Mr. Coffee! You're my only hope! 

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Dope fiends!

I have a couple of friends who are pharmacists, and I would not like to do that job. 


Under ideal conditions, it's still difficult. There are about a million drugs you have to know about -- the names (trade and generic), the prescribable uses, the off-label uses, the side effects, the doses, the dosing, the cost, the content, the special warnings for particular populations (pregnant women, kids, diabetics, and on and on) -- and about two million drug laws you have to know about -- the rules for dispensing, your responsibilities (and career-ruining culpabilities), the permissions needed, the requirements for dealing with doctors' offices, and on and on. Then add all the health insurance variations. It might drive you to drink -- and if it does, you'd better have teenage George Bailey working for you or you'll kill some kid by accident. 

And most pharmacists work under less than ideal conditions. Once upon a time a pharmacist might be a drugstore owner, running his own respectable business, a well-regarded figure in town. Now you're far more likely to be a cog in some corporate chain. And in some neighborhoods your CVS or Walgreens will be overrun with crime (especially if your town has a Soros-funded prosecutor); but in any neighborhood you'll probably have to deal with thugs and scammers and no-account losers trying to get at the sweet, sweet opioids in your drug safe. 

Maybe you work in a nice town with a functioning judiciary and constabulary, for a pharmacy that doesn't even stock the really hot stuff (our nearest supermarket has a pharmacy that warns in LARGE LETTERS that they do not dispense opioids). Well, you still have to deal with the public. And the public can be dumb. Also rude and really bad about taking their pills. The medical journals used to complain about patient compliance, meaning patients not following the instructions on their prescriptions, but the term "compliance" was thought to be too authoritative, too patriarchical. So now they call it "adherence," and it's totally different. Now the medical journals complain about patient adherence. 

And if even THAT is not enough to make you want to sample the drugs yourself, Joe Pharmacist, you're now expected to administer shots to the rubes who roll up, because the doctors' offices can't be bothered, or because your customers would rather die than go to the doctor for a routine physical. So you're stocked with vaccines for flu and COVID and shingles and tetanus and RSV and HPV and hepatitis and freaking monkeypox and yellow fever and everything else, and now you are poking around arms, and you don't even have an MD or a heroin addiction. 

It's an important job but maybe not a fun one. You may say "It beats diggin' ditches," but few ditches are dug by hand anymore. And if they are, remember: people pay good money for gym memberships to get that kind of exercise. Of course, they don't actually show up at the gym, but they pay for it. (Is that "gym compliance"? Or "gym adherence"? I give up.)

Friday, March 8, 2024

Whole lotta love?

How well we remember the words of the Impressive Clergyman on that grand and popular topic, marriage:

Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder today. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam... And wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva... So tweasure your wuv.


But what is true love, anyway? 

I ask because the question has been lingering in the air since the push began for same-sex marriage throughout the West. Years ago Canadian genius Mark Steyn predicted that this would lead to successful pushes for marriages among multiple partners, as once you start redefining that holy state, there's no natural stopping point. That no argument for same-sex marriage could not also be made also for bigamy, incest, and other such things.

I expected Steyn was right, but the push in the United States for bigamy has kind of stalled. Sure, there's been some desensitization going on -- favorable press for its practitioners ("thruples" and the like), stupid shows like Sister Wives on the Freak Channel TLC -- but it just doesn't seem to be catching on. I think it's more of an issue in Steyn's other home of England, where more of the hordes spilling over the border are Muslims. And the reason that's a big issue is that families with a dad and thirteen moms can apply for vast welfare benefits. Dad is, after all, unlikely to make enough money to pay for his brood of thirty-four children on his own, so the British taxpayer must step in.  

At least that's the state of play these days, and I wonder if bigamy will really be the bridge too far, or at least the bridge too far for now. After all, science fiction writers like Robert Heinlein had predicted future states with marriages among multitudes decades ago. Then again, the more Heinlein I read in my youth, the more I got to think that he'd want any kind of future that would assure him a constant supply of broads for his boudoir. 

On the other hand, long before Heinlein, science fiction writer Jules Verne had something to say about bigamy, although not in one of his futuristic novels. Around the World in Eighty Days is a great book, fast-paced and fun. We in America tend to forget that what made the improbable wager of Phileas Fogg possible when the book saw print in 1872 was the completion of many great railroads -- including the completion in the United States of the Transcontinental Railroad just three years earlier. Because of that, Fogg was able to board a train in San Francisco and cross the continent (with some adventures along the way) to New York City in a week.

The reason I bring up that particular book is a scene that's always stuck with me, when Fogg and his French manservant Passepartout arrive in Utah. Following a short note on the polygamous rules among the Mormons of the time, our heroes pop into Salt Lake City to take in the sights: 

Passepartout could not behold without a certain fright these women, charged, in groups, with conferring happiness on a single Mormon. His common sense pitied, above all, the husband. It seemed to him a terrible thing to have to guide so many wives at once across the vicissitudes of life, and to conduct them, as it were, in a body to the Mormon paradise with the prospect of seeing them in the company of the glorious Smith, who doubtless was the chief ornament of that delightful place, to all eternity. He felt decidedly repelled from such a vocation, and he imagined—perhaps he was mistaken—that the fair ones of Salt Lake City cast rather alarming glances on his person.

Surprising that a Frenchman would be so frightened of the idea of multiple ladies at his beck and call? But Passepartout, like Sancho Panza, is a most levelheaded sidekick, and aware of the many possible downsides of a family with that many wives. 

Then, this:

At four the party found themselves again at the station, took their places in the train, and the whistle sounded for starting. Just at the moment, however, that the locomotive wheels began to move, cries of “Stop! stop!” were heard.

Trains, like time and tide, stop for no one. The gentleman who uttered the cries was evidently a belated Mormon. He was breathless with running. Happily for him, the station had neither gates nor barriers. He rushed along the track, jumped on the rear platform of the train, and fell, exhausted, into one of the seats.

Passepartout, who had been anxiously watching this amateur gymnast, approached him with lively interest, and learned that he had taken flight after an unpleasant domestic scene.

When the Mormon had recovered his breath, Passepartout ventured to ask him politely how many wives he had; for, from the manner in which he had decamped, it might be thought that he had twenty at least.

“One, sir,” replied the Mormon, raising his arms heavenward—“one, and that was enough!”

Ah, mawage! A dweam wifin a dweam. 

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Eggcitement.

My wife saw this gadget and thought it looked like Easter fun. 


The Eggmazing Egg Decorator is a clever idea. You put your hard-boiled egg in the battery-powered device, and rollers spin the egg while you color it with the food-safe markers provided. A clever way to decorate Easter eggs beyond just dipping them in vinegary dye and splotching on stickers. It did look like fun. 

It also looked vaguely familiar. 


Back in the stone age, before electricity was invented, there was Dudley's Decoregger -- as seen on TV. (Our televisions were made of rocks -- haven't you seen The Flintstones?) This too was a lathe-type device that spun the egg while food-safe markers made the drawings. The difference is, instead of you holding the marker, you turned the crank to rotate the egg. The markers were held in a clamp. 

Read these dumb directions! 


They were advertised on TV heavily, which is why it was seen there (duh), pitched as a product from a man in a large rabbit costume named Dudley with a dopey voice. Can we find the commercial? Alas, we cannot. But we can find an ad for another Dudley product:



It makes McDonaldland commercials of the era look like an Avengers movie. 

Nevertheless, the Decoregger was not a bad product and worked as promised, although in the hands of small children hardly produced the beautiful results seen in the commercial. What ever did? So you got some eggs with lines drawn around them. Whee! And at least Mom wouldn't have to keep the art up on the fridge forever. Even hard-boiled eggs don't last that long. 

I don't want to sound jealous of today's tots with their electric decorating aids. The little cherubs will also fail to produce museum-quality art, as we know. The whole thing is, will they have fun? I say yes. I quite enjoyed egg-decoration day as Easter approached and remember it fondly. The smell of white vinegar would linger at the kitchen table for hours, but it was all worthwhile. 

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Blame Ben.

This weekend we lose an hour of sleep. And for what? Daylight savings time? So we get an hour more of daylight at the end of the day. But we lose an hour of daylight at the top. It seems like "finding money" by taking a sawbuck out of your left pocket and putting it in your right. 

Does it really save energy? Today where I live, the sun is coming up at 6:24 AM and setting at 5:50 PM. The whole workday is covered in sunshine now. If DST had gone into effect, the sun would come up at 7:24 AM and go down at 6:50 PM. Where's the big savings? People will be using electricity and such either at work, getting to or from work, or at home either way. Is it really a big advantage? 



Sam Segal at Stanford found that overall, any energy savings from screwing around with the clocks was minimal and dwindling, that "future trends will make energy savings from DST less likely." He admits that later sunsets may mean less crime and fewer car accidents, but then there's no reason then not to switch to DST all the time and just make it ST. It just seems like a lot of trouble and disrupted circadian rhythms for nothing. 

Blame Ben. 

In William Cabell Bruce's book Benjamin Franklin: Self-Revealed, A Biographical and Critical Study Based Mainly on His Own Writings (G.P. Putnam, 1917), we have this passage:

Franklin enters upon a series of elaborate calculations to demonstrate that, between the 20th of March and 20th of September, the Parisians, because of their habit of preferring candlelight in the evening to sunlight in the morning, had consumed sixty-four millions and fifty thousand pounds of candles, which, at an average price of thirty sols per pound, made ninety-six millions and seventy-five thousand livres tournois. An immense sum! that the City of Paris might save every year by the economy of using sunshine instead of candles; to say nothing of the period of the year during which the days are shorter. This computation is succeeded by a number of suggestions as to the different means by which such of the Parisians as did not amend their hours upon learning from this paper that it is daylight when the sun rises could be induced to reform their habits.

It seems that Mr. Franklin's basis for proposing daylight savings time comes from the fact that Frenchmen are slugabeds who stay up too late carousing. This would be like setting some sort of national policy based on the behavior of people who can't stop binge-watching shows even though they have work in the morning.


I will grant you that 64,050,000 pounds of candles is nothing to sneeze at. That's a lot of wax. And 96,075,000 livres tournois is a goodly sum, something like $1,067,914,981 or a cool billion in modern dollars if you go by the currency converter at Historical Statistics (which requires a few assumptions, but let's say it's close enough). 

On the other hand, electricity and natural gas with an extant infrastructure are not candles; the delivery of the latter is much easier and far cheaper. I daresay that if Franklin did his calculations based on modern technology for a city with the same number of residents as the Paris of his visit, he'd come away with much lower savings -- and that would maintain even if he threw in the price of firewood to warm all those Parisian carousers. 

I'd never spurn old Ben, a truly unique man and definitely a genius, but I believe that even if his analysis was correct for the 18th century, it has led to a solution in need of a problem in the 21st. More trouble than it's worth is the phrase that comes to mind. I know of few things that cause as much universal peevishness in America as daylight savings time, and it should be abolished. 

You may say "What about Franklin's statement on death and taxes? Don't they cause more peeves?" Well, we can't stop death, only slow it down, and taxes inspire hatred, not irritation. If anyone has an idea on how to get rid of taxes short of complete anarchy, I'm listening.