Author: Dale

Fear and Loathing

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I’ll get back to Burning Man plans tomorrow.  Today I want to toss out a couple of links that have been sitting around waiting for me to share them.

People, there are crazies among us.  Lots of them.  Many, if not most, of them completely conservative wackadoodles.

Do not mistake me: I don’t like name-calling, and there are plenty of ways to be conservative/Republican and still make a valuable contribution to society. How and also ever, because of the internets we are now able to see into the deepest recesses of the fearful, unhappy lizard brains of the far right.  Worse, they’re able to put it out there where we cannot help but see it.  It’s really squicky.

I suppose we’ve always had these people around, but mostly they kept to themselves (and for reasons that will become clear in a moment).  If they published anything, it was apt to be typed and mimeographed and handed out at the lodge meeting.  Now, they have the magic of 21st century technology at their fingertips, and they use it.

Check out these links, and then we’ll chat.

These next two are, scarily, not fringe lunacy:

I had another link, to a roundup of conservative religious reaction to Russell Crowe’s Noah movie, but I can’t find it.  And I could have clogged this post with dozens/scores/hundreds of similar websites.

So why do I find this display of human frailty endlessly fascinating?  I think it’s the absolute fearfulness with which these people view the world. It’s like they’re literally zombies, infected with some virus to which the rest of us are immune but which reduces them to paranoid automatons.  The first two links are just amusing crazytalk, but the last two are worth noting because of the twin responses to this virus, rage and fear.  The prepper is consumed with anger at the world; the endtimers retreat into fearful incantations and shibboleths.

Here’s the most important point: their fear is not occasioned by their worldview—they’re not scared because they see things to be scared of.  It’s the reverse: their brains seem to be hardwired to be fearful, and so they see things to fear.  And if they don’t really see things to fear, their brains organize the randomness of reality into some really scary shit.  Where you and I would see some domestic and international political problems that require our attention and teamwork to be resolved, these people see vast machines that are out of their control, and their main response is to run away.

It’s exactly like our little dog Mia.  Whenever the doorbell rings, she barks and barks and barks. Even when we invite the people into our home and talk amiably with them, she barks.  Even when it’s the cleaners who have come every week for years, she barks.  Is there a threat?  Not even, but she barks: her brain is so fearful that she has no choice.  (She flinches even when my lovely first wife, whom she adores, reaches to pet her.)

Why do their brains work this way?  Pleasure, pure and simple.  Just like most of us go see 3 Days to Kill or Captain Phillips or Non-Stop for the frisson of adrenalin we get from the fake fear, these peoples’ brains provide them with an emotional rush every time they think of black helicopters or the Anti-Christ.

All I can say is, bless their hearts.  It’s a hell of a way to live.  And there is no cure.

Burning Man

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So I’m going to Burning Man.

The question must be asked: Why would an aging East Coaster travel to a  desert two hours away from any city of note and spend a week with no electricity, no food, and no water, except for that which he brings with him?

The answer is not simple.  Part of it is that I am aging: I turn 60 in May, and this is a kind of birthday present to myself.  I’ve known about Burning Man for years and have been fascinated by it; especially after being let go from GHP last July, the idea of going really presented itself, although I had already thought about the possibility of taking off a week in August anyway.  So it’s kind of a bucket list thing.  In fact, it’s the only thing on my bucket list.

Another part of the answer is that I’d like to have a “life-changing experience” like GHP.  Sure, each summer was wonderful, but I was in charge.  At Burning Man, I will simply be one of 68,000 campers.  (For a week, this barren desert is Nevada’s third largest city.)  I get to experience the art and the music and the fun without worrying about whether someone’s going to have to be taken to the emergency room.

I figured I’ll document my journey there and back again, because what could be more entertaining than watching a stable member of the community morph into a dirty hippie freak?

Part of the deal that is the phantasmagoria of Burning Man is the Ten Principles which guide the entire enterprise. You should go and read them—they’re pretty solid.

The principle that I worried about first was Participation.  You can’t just go and watch; you have to be a part of the show.

That immediately raised the issues of expense and logistics.

If you go and look at some of the theme camps, you’ll notice right away that these people are committed: huge art projects, mutant vehicles, large structures where hundreds of Burners can gather—there was one guy who schlepped nearly a ton of king crab from Alaska and served it to whoever showed up.  (Another principle in operation here: Decommodification.  The only things you can buy at Burning Man are ice and coffee.  Everything else is to be bartered or given away.)

Whatever I chose to do to participate, in other words, had to be dragged all the way across the continent, set up, and then taken down and dragged back across the continent.  (When they say Leave No Trace, they mean it.)

I should note that I’m not alone in this venture.  When I announced my intention to celebrate my 60th like this, my friend Craig said he’d join me for the same reason, and then another friend David said he’d like to go too.  (He’s turning 50, I think.)

So our parameters are: three men of a certain age, participation, inexpensive (or at least not involving either my life savings or fundraising), easy to transport.

I will pause at this point to allow everyone to consider the possibilities.  If there were any actual readers of this blog, they could leave comments.  (No fair peeking, those who already know the solution.)

Some bar blogging

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As part of my reclaimed daily schedule*, I intend to blog at least a little bit each day.  Today’s post is a bit of bar blogging, just in case anyone had feared that I had lost interest in cocktails.

On Sunday we went to lunch at a bar/burger place in Decatur, The Imperial, owned and operated by an old friend.  (Seriously, Kenneth: a website and a sign outside your place would be really helpful.) The food was great, the weather was beautiful, and the menu was literature.  In particular, the liquor listings were intriguing, and I ended up with two separate gin and tonics, using two small batch gins with which I was unfamiliar.  They were distinctive and tasty.

My son suggested I look for these gins at the Decatur Package Store, where he had gotten my gift of Root liqueur previously.  Small, but choice, he said.

Indeed.  I will say now that this is a slippery slope, branching out into crafted gins.  If I were wise, I would stick to Bombay Sapphire and Hendrick’s and call myself cool.  But now I’ve started, and soon the gin bottles will start piling up just like the single malt scotches did.  The problem is that I don’t have another room to put the gin in.

Anyway, the DPS did indeed have a fascinating collection of gins, including one of the ones I had at lunch, and so I emerged with two.

The first, St. George Terroir, is what I had at lunch.  St. George makes several gins, and I think I’m going to visit all of them soon enough.  This one is very different from your usual gin, with—as the makers say—strong aromas of Douglas fir.  It has a very “earthy” body, quite tasty.  I would hesitate to use it in any of the usual cocktails because of its strong personality, but a gin and tonic is very nice indeed.

The second is Bols Genever.  (I’ve linked to the site, but it’s overly slick and silly, even for a website trying to sell booze to hipsters.)  Genever is gin’s half-brother and used to be far more popular and today can only be officially made in the Netherlands.  This particular brand is a reconstruction of a recipe from way back.  The stuff is very malty and is not only fine with tonic but also in some of the classic cocktails like the Corpse Reviver #2 or the Barnum Was Right.

I’d recommend both for exploration.

However, the package store’s real star line-up was their display of bitters!  You name it, they’ve got it (except for Fee Bros. Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters, which I was actually in the mood for), and I was hard pressed not to buy everything.

As it was, I limited myself to the Fee Bros. Celery Bitters, and two from “Dr. Adam Elmegirab,” Boker’s Bitters and Dandelion & Burdock Bitters.

Boker’s Bitters is another reconstituted recipe.  Before Prohibition killed the company, Boker’s ranked alongside Angostura in popularity, and mourning its loss has been one of those status markers for the trendier cocquetailistes.  (I think I just made that word up; I like it.)  Who knows if this product is an accurate reproduction?  Anyone who could verify that for us is long gone, but the question is irrelevant.  The product is excellent whether it’s authentic or not.  It will become a preferred ingredient around here.

The other, Dandelion & Burdock, is even better. Based on the traditional British drink, it has an herbal body that is quite delightful in a vodka tonic.  This one will get some exploration.

As for the Celery Bitters, it did not appeal to me in a vodka tonic, but it might be useful in layering with other substances to do something horribly hipster.

And that’s how I spent my Monday night.

—————

*I am, as far as I can tell, completely retired.

Speaking in tongues

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Every once in a while, back when I was media specialist at East Coweta High School, I would peruse a copy of Popular Mechanics or Car & Rider just to see if they were still written in code. They always were.

I got the same feeling during curling during the Olympics, and again this afternoon at an airport bar where they had a golf tournament on closed captioning. The sentence was:

“The question now is whether he has to lag it or cozy it down.”

I mean to say, wot? (Of course, all sports talk sounds like this to me.)

Yes, I know, it could very well be bad lip reading on the part of the automated CC’er. (For giggles sometime, go to YouTube and turn on closed captioning.) But somehow I don’t think it is. I think it’s plain old jargonitis, the curse of insiders and specialists everywhere.

They think they are speaking to fellow aficionados, and as long they’re sure about that audience I have no problem with it. But if there’s even the slightest chance that some of the people listening to you are not part of your club, and it is part of your mission to make them a part of your club, THOU SHALT NOT SPEAK IN JARGON.

I am saying this not as a complaint about CBS’s sportscasters—because as far as I’m concerned they are correct in ignoring me as a viewer—but as a warning to my fellow educators. Do not ask your students to fleem the gnargles or to adjust the gobo on the miniPAR or click on the widget in the navbar without double–checking your own assumptions about what those words mean. If there’s any chance that your audience’s eyes might glaze over, stop it..

Just stop it. Stop talking to the boys in the club. Start teaching instead.

I think Ted Cruz is right

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Go read this.

Did you catch it?

Cruz added that gay rights advocates go up against “the facts” and urged listeners to pray against marriage equality: “I think the most important thing your listeners can do is simply pray because we need a great deal of prayer because marriage is really being undermined by a concerted effort and it’s causing significant harm.”

Absolutely. Marriage is being significantly harmed by a concerted effort, and the best, most important thing Ted Cruz and his tribe can do for this country is to go into their closets and get down on their knees.

And preferably stay there. Then the rest of us will fare a lot better.

The labyrinth in snow, 1/28/2014

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[slideshow_deploy id=’3133′]

Ah, snow.

I appreciate the beauty of the earth when it snows, but really, people, how nasty can you get?  And when the National Weather Service issues a Winter Storm Warning (that’s warning, not watch), you stay home.  Then you can take lovely photos of your surroundings rather than wonder whether you’re going to die in them.  It’s not that hard.

Here’s a little clip of a piece that has the title The Labyrinth in Snow.  It’s just a sketch/proposal for the piece I wrote for the Ayrshire Fiddle Orchestra in 2011; they chose to go with the Variations on ‘Resignation’, so I still have this lovely bit to play with.  Anyone up for a second cello sonata?  <raised_eyebrows_pursed_lips> Then play the first one. </raised_eyebrows_pursed_lips>

A realization

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I set out from work this afternoon in Carrollton, heading to Atlanta to hear John Tibbetts II sing in GSU’s production of Massenet’s Werther. It turned out to be a bit more of a journey than I had anticipated.

I was not long on I-20 before I realized that I was heading straight past exit 44, Thornton Rd in Mabelton. In a perfect world—where naturally neither you nor I live—I would not be driving from Carrollton to Atlanta, but from Atlanta to exit 44: tomorrow is the first weekend of GHP state interviews.

I was not unaware of this, of course. Despite my silence on the matter since August I have been going through the various stages of grief, and the big dates did not pass unnoticed by me: deadlines for nominations, forms, etc.

And the interviews always loomed large, because they’re huge. Three thousand students and their parents/entourages descend on two high school campuses over two weekends to be interviewed and auditioned by hundreds of volunteer interviewers. It’s a massive undertaking even in a good year, and this, if I may be pardoned for being blunt, is not a good year.

So my realization as I sped towards downtown was that I had in no way been thinking about/gnawing over all the preparation in which I would have been engaged over the last week or so. In a perfect world (vid. sup.) I would have been printing out boatloads of schedules, team score sheets, score sheets, instructions—cases and cases of forms and paperwork, all of which would now be in my car as I traveled from Luella High School in Henry County to Pebblebrook High School in Cobb. I would have been coordinating with the great subject area folk down in Curriculum on the 17th floor. I would have been rounding up last minute interviewers. I would have been calming nervous parents and coordinators. I would have been lurking in the Facebook GHP Nominee Support group, quashing rumors and directing kids to appropriate sources of info.

OK, so I’ve been lurking. But I have not thought once about the rest of any of that until I found myself heading towards my annual pilgrimage spot. Well, I thought, that is odd and interesting.

And I approached the exit, Pandora began to play a track called “The Kiss,” from the movie Last of the Mohicans, a sweeping piece of sad music that Joe Searle used to play at Convocation, the last morning assembly at GHP. Joe had this fabulous playlist of all this beautiful, sad movie music to play as our kids entered Whitehead Auditorium for the last time, just get them well on their way to weeping. Genius!

So there was that.

I realized that while I had been paying attention to the looming day of the interviews themselves, I had given no thought to all the other crap that I did in preparation, crap that I did well and with joy. That struck me. Perhaps I should try to assign meaning to that. Perhaps.

The Milk Root (a new drink)

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Last  Christmas, my son gave me a bottle of Root, a liqueur.  Lovely bottle, chic label design. The flavor was, as described on the bottle, very root beer-like, not at all unpleasant although I’ve never been a fan of root beer.  Still, as a mixer, it was a puzzle: such a strong flavor didn’t really call out for anything else to enhance it.

Friends gathered at our house this weekend for eating and drinking purposes—and by that I mean came on Saturday and ate and drank for 24 hours—and on Sunday morning I was pulling out all kinds of liqueurs for tasting and testing.  We came upon Root, and all agreed that it was tasty, but what to do?  Several combinations that I attempted were poured down the drain without even being offered to the group.  It was a tough one to crack. (The liqueur’s own website seems a bit at a loss as to how it might be used in a cocktail.  Their suggestions are kind of slack.)

Then one of us applied his analytical skills to the problem: what does one do with root beer anyway?  A root beer float!

And thus the problem was solved.  Behold, the Milk Root!

The Milk Root

  • 1 oz Root liqueur
  • 1 oz brandy
  • 1/2 oz Tuaca or other vanilla liqueur (optional but recommended)
  • 2 scoops vanilla ice cream (we prefer Kroger’s Private Selection Double Vanilla)
  • 2-3 oz milk

Put it in the blender, smoosh it up, and serve.

(You’d probably be mixing more than one at a time, of course.)

We debated about whether it needed anything else, but finally agreed that it was lovely just as it was.

Science: How does it work?

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There is a lovely little church on GA Hwy 16 between here and Carrollton, and recently I noticed their little sign board had changed. I don’t mean to be mean, but the snark is unavoidable.

The sign says, “WHY DOES THE ASPIRIN THAT WORKS ON MONDAY MORNING NOT WORK THE SAME ON SUNDAY?”

I think it means, “SO, YOU GODLESS HEATHEN DRUNKARD, YOU CAN DRAG YOUR ASS TO WORK ON MONDAY BUT CAN’T BE ARSED TO GET UP TO WORSHIP THE LORD THE MORNING AFTER?”  I think that’s the point.

But my inner self wants to answer, “Well, actually, given your crowd’s usual understanding of science in general and of biology in particular, IT MUST BE A MIRACLE!”

I regret my unkindness.

The superior rich

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One of the most gobsmacking brainfarts on the part of the conservative side of America is the inherent contradiction in their positions on a) tax cuts; and b) social welfare.  In a nutshell, it says that if we give the rich more money, they will work harder (with undoubted benefit to all of us), but if we give the poor more benefits (even if temporary, as is the norm), they will just get lazy.  We laugh, but the right wing believes it.

How, you might ask, is this even possible?  The answer is essentialism, a term I encountered recently in this Slate article.  As amateur philosophers, we all recognize that things can be grouped into categories, and often we base those groupings on the essence of the individuals.  For example, as the article says, dogs are “doggy” and cats are “adorable, fluffy little jerks.”

The philosophical trap we fall into, however, is that we start to believe that many surface attributes are in fact essential when they are not.  This would include some physical traits, such as sex, race, etc., but it can also include social traits or abstract traits, like gender (not the same as sex—see what I did there?) or religion.

Or economic status.

The researchers in the article devised statements to test peoples’ sense of essentialism with such phrases as ““It is possible to determine one’s social class by examining their genes.”  In other words, that’s just the way “those people” are—they were born that way.

Rich people were found to be much more likely to believe that their class status and that of others is determined largely by essentials.  Poor people are poor because they’re… you know… poor people.  People like us, on the other hand…

None of this surprises me at all.  I’m just glad to have a name for it.  Now if we could just find a cure for it…