A right to die
I was remiss in not acknowledging the passing of the euthanasia advocate, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, earlier this month. I decided to retrace my steps after reading the recent Stefan Kanfer biography of Humphrey Bogart (“Tough Without a Gun”). The author’s descriptions of the last few months of Bogie’s life in 1956 and early ‘57 after the actor had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer were plainly horrifying. During surgery to remove the growing tumor, he was sliced open diagonally across his body from shoulder to hip. Then during his recovery from the strenuous operation, his coughing fits—already extreme and alarming to others before surgery—caused him to literally cough his stitches loose and they had to be resewn. By the time he slipped into a coma months later, and following a second futile surgical attempt to excise the tumor, one of Hollywood’s most iconic figures and an enduring embodiment of the toughness adjective had dropped in weight to under 80 pounds. His young son and daughter were kept from him in his final days because of his concerns, and his wife’s concerns, that the children would only remember their father as a frail, dying man.
I thought of these passages again when I researched online news reports of Dr. Kervorkian’s death back on June 3rd, and I came across this comment from Ned McGrath, the communications director of Detroit, Michigan’s Archdiocese: “It is both ironic and tragic that Kevorkian himself was afforded a dignified, natural death in a hospital, something he denied to those who came to him in desperation, only to be poisoned and have their bodies left in places such as vans and motel rooms.”
To which I say: Fuck you, Ned McGrath. I cannot imagine a more upside-down and misrepresented assessment of Dr. Kevorkian’s principled and unselfish medical work than that. McGrath's skewed statement belongs in the sewer next to the argument that the ordination of women into the clergy is a moral offense equal to the raping of children. It belongs next to the defense that people in the developing world should be denied contraceptive devices when they’re dying by the millions-- mostly poor and powerless women-- from unprotected, and often forceable sex and sexually-transmitted disease. It falls in next to the idea that one person's religion can dictate whom
another person chooses to love and marry. McGrath is certainly familiar with these other opinions. He's paid to promote them. Speaking in his professional capacity, as he was earlier this month, it makes him a less than ideal candidate to offer worthy perspective on the dignity of life and death, or about what exactly it is that poisons us.
Jack Kevorkian is one of the heroic figures of our time-- indeed, a man far ahead of it. While it’s generally understood that his celebrated right-to-die efforts posed a monumental challenge to a lagging legal system in this specific area of jurisprudence, it’s less often acknowledged that his work was also designed to serve as a damning indictment of his own profession. His was the argument that a doctor has the duty to serve his or her patient above all else. Not the
business of medicine. Not peripheral cultural interests. And not any perceptions of an omnipotent, incorporeal being or mythology.
It’s rather pathetic to consider that through several years of very high-profile activity and the advocacy of a rather widespread and not-at-all-uncommon societal attitude about euthanasia, Kevorkian carried the banner of ethics in this area almost-singlehandedly in the United States. The rest of the medical field remained-- you’ll pardon the expression-- dead silent. It's collective arrogance by his colleagues to claim that Kevorkian is the only physician "playing God" in the field when that's precisely what medical persons are required to do almost every day of their working lives. Sadly, the right of the individual to determine how much they have to suffer before dying does not exist in this country, yet doctors are allowed to employ the preferred method of death of the Nazi concentration camps by starving and thirsting their comatose patients to death, sometimes over the course of days, and even weeks. This is unconscionable.
Many of Kevorkian’s patients had not been diagnosed “terminal” cases, this is true. But almost by definition of the intent, the longing for death by these individuals was often heightened by the fact that their “natural” end was
not imminent. A period of continued suffering was often indeterminate. It’s also true, as Dr. Kevorkian once stated, that “we’re
all terminal” from a very legitimate perspective.
Since the peak of Kevorkian’s advocacy in the late '90s, three U.S. states have legalized physician-assisted suicide, but even on this short list, the individual state laws each restrict the action to “terminal” cases. The level of physical pain cannot be a motivating factor. The combination of a medically-diagnosed sound mind and the principle of self-determination is legally meaningless.
Humphrey Bogart was one of the toughest of them all, but the thought certainly must have crossed his mind at some point to put an early end to his suffering, and this was a very different time in our history. Another tough guy, former NFL star Dave Duerson, suffered from crippling and unceasing headaches, a symptom of a concussion-related neurodegenerative disease that stemmed from his football career. Seeking permanent relief, he shot himself to death in the chest in February. He chose his heart as his gun's target, rather than his head, because he knew that it was important for other football players to have scientists be able to study his brain and his illness. A bullet shouldn't have been needed at all.
We're a very long way from where our laws and our values need to be. Religious ethics are drowning out medical ethics in our country's hospitals, and our pathological fear of death is suppressing freedom, reason, and our very humanity.
The cycle ends
You might recall from a previous post that I've been having washing machine problems. When the rotation begins, the unit shakes violently and the emanating noise measures in pitch and volume nearly equal to that of a space shuttle launch.
The repairman was out to the house Friday, and his professional prognosis was a dire one. Let's see if I can relate accurately what he told me, a mere layman: the clothes bin rests on three hydraulic shock supports that balance it and give it the spin and centrifugal force needed to keep my clothes sudsy clean and help keep the general odor of my person passable for discerning members of the opposite sex. One of the three supports came unhinged, causing both a wildly uneven spin and the hideous noise. During the ensuing melee, a second support had been busted and the third one bent. To repair the machine, the labor cost alone would be upwards of $800. After I quickly agreed with the repairman's inference that such an investment would be unwise, he counseled that the best course of action would be to keep the machine in as comfortable a position as possible, confine visits of friends to a precious few, and pre-order the funeral arrangements.
Because I'm thrifty, my immediate thoughts drifted to any and all alternatives to buying a new machine, which previous research suggested might run in the neighborhood of $1200. You see, a major issue with the price tag is that my current arrangement and the allowable space is for a
stackable washer/dryer combo. The dryer still spins like a dream and evaporates moisture like a motherfucker, but since its conjoined sibling is a terminal case, that seemingly makes it a terminal determination for both.
Or is it? I have a clothes
washing problem only. If I can just get them wet, I can easily get them dry. I do have options. First, there's the public laundromat, site of so many past visits, but I hate to go back. Leaving public machines behind was my personal triumph of 2007, and also I parted with them under harsh words. There's the local dry cleaner, and I've heard tell of a newfangled process called
Martinizing, but this still results in the away-from-home inconvenience, and I'm not sure I can envision my socks and my oh-so-delicates in one of those plastic bags. No, the only alternative is some old-fashioned bathtub washin'.
The repairman wasn't gone three minutes before I was searching online for 'how-to's and helpful hints on hand-washing clothes. The web experts all seemed to agree this was a feasible option. It won't hurt your tub. It's a very "green" alternative actually. (In fact, I could probably organize a Des Moines eco-laundry cooperative.) The use of rubber gloves would probably be a good strategy, they say, to protect my hands, and that's no problem. I've got hundreds of those. And the machine impact on your clothes can be closely replicated by hand. It just requires more time and a lot more effort.
When I was a kid, the family kitchen was decorated with old-fashioned bath and kitchen devices. An old churn of some kind sat high upon the shelf. I think there was a small handsaw hanging from the wall, and I know for sure there was a washboard hanging next to the "old-timey" telephone. I should investigate the current whereabouts of that washboard as I'm not sure how easy a new one would be to find in stores. If you look up the Wikipedia page for washboards-- and this is true- here, I'll
show you-- there's just a one-paragraph description under the heading "The washboard used for laundry." Then there's
nine paragraphs for "The washboard used as
a music instrument." The washboard is just about the most anachronistic musical instrument that one can name, yet how sad is it that the device is even more anachronistic when used for its original purpose? Very, I guess.
Oh well, I've rarely been described as "cutting edge." Or am I actually right at the very tip of the sharp precipice? After all, the eco-laundry in Portland, Maine
calls itself "The Washboard," and you know how cool people in Portland, Maine are. My summer loads are light anyway, and I'm committing to at least giving this the old college try. As a modern appliance, the washing machine has to be considered a luxury of the Western world, right? Not a necessity. Now I'm gonna prove it. This is not a tragedy, it's an opportunity. I mean it's a washing machine, right? It's not a television.
Civic tributes
In two different pockets of the country, a debate rages about the proper way to honor (or whether to honor at all) a locally-born and iconic rock 'n roll star. AV Club has
the story this week about the popularity of pilgrimages and fan-made memorials in Seattle to the late Kurt Cobain. Dead since 1994, Nirvana's front man is still not officially remembered by the municipality even though many people, as well as Google Maps, refer to Viretta Park, near the location of his suicide, as Kurt Cobain Park. The city of Seattle just named a park for rocker Jimi Hendrix last year, 40 years after the guitarist's death.
In St. Louis, Chuck Berry is a controversial figure even at the age of 84. A major progenitor of the rock genre of course, Berry is still regarded as a community liability by many St. Louisans because of his criminal rap sheet. Last month, a petition with 100 signatures was submitted to the city council opposing the use of public funds to accommodate on city property a bronze statue depicting a guitar-strumming Berry. While the issue of tax usage
was primarily cited by the opposition leader, the 86-year-old Elsie Gickert also comes perilously close to making herself a caricature of the small-minded old bitty, telling reporters that she objects to the plan because of her views on Berry's morality.
In both the Cobain and Berry cases, objections to civic endorsements seem to be based not on distaste for to the two artists' once-controversial musical style, but on perceptions of the hedonistic lifestyles that have always surrounded the music-- Cobain for his drug use, Berry for his court convictions on sex and property crimes. Among those three famous vices of the post-war era-- sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll-- it's the sex and drugs that seem to linger now as the least-settled matters within America's collective consciousness.
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Just when we think our nation's health care problems have been solved, an unemployed man in North Carolina has to
rob $1 from a bank for the purpose of getting free health care in prison-- and even
that didn't work.
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Last week on Bill Maher, MSNBC's Chris Matthews predicted, with some derision but without any hesitation in his speech, that Minnesota Congresswoman (and Waterloo, IA native) Michele Bachmann would be the 2012 GOP Presidential nominee. How the IRS tax attorney-turned-anti-tax crusader has risen from a frothing-at-the-mouth-from-the-backbench, female equivalent of Steve King to a serious contender for this prominent position speaks volumes about the modern political process in the United States-- and none of it good. Old media sees her as viable because she projects Sarah Palin's aging beauty queen vibe, follows Palin's playbook in doubling down every time she jumbles her facts, but unlike Palin, isn't getting dogged at every turn by a Levi Johnston or Kathy Griffin. But here's the positive part: Her political ascendency makes her now worthy of
a vicious and colorful Matt Taibbi takedown in the new issue of
Rolling Stone.The 21st century Hunter S. Thompson calls her "grandiose crazy, late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy — crazy in the sense that she's living completely inside her own mind, frenetically pacing the hallways of a vast sand castle she's built in there, unable to meaningfully communicate with the human beings on the other side of the moat, who are all presumed to be enemies." She is also "at once the most entertaining and the most dangerous kind of liar, a turbocharged cross between a born bullshit artist and a religious fanatic, for whom lying to the infidel is a kind of holy duty."
Bachmann has gained almost instant traction among GOP voters nationally, and shan't be laughed at by all the others, Taibbi says, because there are an awful lot of Americans "who believe that God tells them what condiments to put on their hamburgers, who can't tell the difference between Soviet Communism and a Stafford loan, but can certainly tell the difference between being mocked and being taken seriously." This Bachmann is in it to win it.
And a dog to be named later...
As a kid sometime during the 1980s, I remember buying a book at the mall that chronicled the most bizarre stories in the history of baseball. I no longer have the book, and I don't remember its title, but I remember that many of the stories contained in it, even the ones that I've heard repeated multiple times since, I recall first reading about in this particular book. This list of bizarro happenings included the tale of Bill Veeck sending a midget up to bat for the St. Louis Browns during a game in 1951. Most of you know that one. It included the story of the sullen and violent Ty Cobb going into the stands in 1912 and pummeling a heckler who had lost both of his hands in an industrial accident, and one about the early 20th century fad of ballplayers attempting to catch baseballs dropped from city skyscrapers or from the Washington Monument. You might know those. And it also featured the story of a pair of New York Yankees pitchers and roommates (both left-handers, of course) who swapped their wives and children with each other in 1972. You really
ought to learn about that one.
Just a few weeks into what would become George Steinbrenner's long reign as owner of the Yankees, it was reported that a former 20-game winner, Fritz Peterson, and his wife Marilyn were attempting this delicate maneuver alongside two-time 10-game winner Mike Kekich and his wife Suzanne. The off-season deal in the winter of '72-'73 turned out to be about as imbalanced as
Brock-for-Broglio. Mike and Marilyn crashed and burned. Fritz and Suzanne are approaching a 38th wedding anniversary. Fritz also came to Christ after his playing days, and has a new career writing books that speculate about which Yankees all-time greats are in heaven and which ones aren't. (I'm not making this up. Most recent title:
Mickey Mantle is Going to Heaven.)Now here's the best part. Ben and Casey Affleck, along with Matt Damon, are attached to a production now approved at Warner Brothers (entitled "The Trade") that will dramatize this entire episode. All three artists are South Boston natives, of course, as well as died-in-the-wool Red Sox fans.
New York magazine has
a must-read article about the Petersons and Kekichs in their most recent issue, and in it, Ben Affleck makes very little attempt to disguise the fact that he was drawn to the story-- and he may direct the film as well as star in it-- because it portrays the Yankees organization, as a whole, as detestable enough to have its players making off with each other's wives. As a viewer, I can appreciate a hatchet job on the Yankees. Hopefully, it's the type that will cause Billy Crystal to cough up his peanuts and Cracker Jacks. But as baseball's sexual deviants go, and they would seem to be legion, Peterson and Kekich at least deserve points for imagination. And definitely for audacity and aspiration.
Among the ruins
The city of Vancouver is so cool that even when it's rioting, it's doing so with style. I don't even care if
this photo is staged (because obviously the couple is performing to some extent), it's still the coolest image ever. It's romantic, frightening, and inspiring all at the same time. It's even ironic in the sense that the riot is so pointless that the subjects seem to be goofing on it.
Monday Night Videos
When the decade of the 1980s began, I was in preschool. By the time it ended, I had already become the man I am today. What I experienced in-between was the golden age of music videos.
Here are six of these classic short films, each smothered in creamy '80s deliciousness:
1) Huey Lewis and his band mates
engage in PG hijinks at the beach and on the boardwalk.
2) Madonna succeeds in
typecasting Danny Aiello as gruff but lovable Italian-American patriarch.
3) Paul Simon trades in Artie for
one of the stars of "Community". Hint: It's not Ken Jeong.
4) Greatest Duran Duran song? "Hungry Like the Wolf?" Common mistake. It's
"Rio".
5) Performing arts teacher
Lionel Richie is drawn to the inner beauty of a blind female student that also has a lot of outer beauty.
6) Sade-- my wife-to-be after she overcomes her phobia about living in the states-- gets tangled up in a bit of fateful espionage. This is
the expanded version of a classic.
More on Weiner's namesake
Today was an important day in the progression of the Anthony Weiner scandal. It was the day that new political stories began to move in and take its place in the headlines. At last the news cycle is moving on. But not here. I've still got some stuff:
I’m getting a little annoyed by the sanctimonious public defenses of Anthony Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, by complete strangers. The woman obviously doesn’t deserve to be heaped upon either, but she did enter into a social contract with a man that purposely thumbs its nose at human biological urges, and furthermore, she did it with a congressman. Didn’t she watch late night comedy shows while growing up? That’s what these guys do. They get Fergalicious. Huma's attracted to power, or at least she coincidentally found it. She worked for Hillary Clinton for years as a top aide, and we’re told often how personally magnetic both of the Clintons are. Then she marries a powerful and brash, dare I say
cocky, man cut from the same cloth. If she’s surprised by her husband’s general response to his professed female admirers or to his general weakness towards the seductiveness of celebrity and power, than that makes one of us. While we’re on the subject of unimportant issues and details, I’d like to point out that she’s a gorgeous woman, and don’t think that that doesn’t help in making this a much sexier story inside Washington, D.C., possibly the unsexiest city in America, or as many have called it-- Hollywood for ugly people.
Unlike
Joan Walsh of Salon, I don’t find new reports of Abedin’s pregnancy to be a game changer in respect to my opinion on Weiner's career. As a fellow feminist, I actually resent the implication that a pregnancy puts Abedin in a more psychically-or emotionally-wounded position. Pregnant ladies lose some mobility but they aren't more vulnerable in this way. Pregnant ladies can kick ass and take down names. (Didn't Walsh ever see "Fargo"?) Also, I'm not sure I've been able to locate the "coordinated right-wing effort" Walsh refers to in trying to drum Weiner out of office, unless she means ultimately putting a candidate up against him in the general election next year. Every story I read is about
Democrats trying to do the man in, but then Walsh spends most of her professional life covering for Democrats. Weiner's political future is his family's decision, not ours. In fact, as I stated yesterday, I’m prepared to butt out of the couple's personal life entirely.
Dana Goldstein of The Nation is worried because she gave in to temptation and looked at the penis pic online, and though she respects Weiner as a pol, she fears she now won’t be able to envision the congressman at his press conferences without thinking about his junior. Like her, I clicked on a link to the photo online, but my conclusion from it is that this danger is overstated. I was in plenty of locker rooms growing up, and I’ve seen plenty of deals in my time. To a man, when I see any of those guys today (some of whom read this blog), I can assure you-- and them-- that I'm not thinking about their deals, and I’m sure the feeling is mutual. I’ve also seen a few naked women in my time (not bragging if it's true) and when I converse with them after the fact, I don’t find myself distracted. I can function this way because I’m a mature adult. As studies probably tell us (I'm so confident about it that I'm not even going to look it up), we're actually better off knowing. When you're really curious about something, it's the element of imagination that always makes things much worse. I’ll give you an example. Try to imagine Newt Gingrich’s newt. Ugh. Pretty hideous, right? You’ve never seen it, but that doesn’t make the idea of it any better. I mean there's only so many kinds it can be, and each one is worse than the last to consider. And any putz blogger is capable of putting the idea in your head.
During all of his famous indiscretions, we never saw Clinton's slick willie, but one of his accusers (I lose track of which) described it for us. Remember in testimony she said that it bent to one side, which his most intimate supporters vigorously disputed on his behalf because the very idea of it not being a complete "centrist" violated the man's political principles. The imagining of it, for me, was just as bad as actually seeing it. In truth, seeing it would probably help to strip away its power. We're stuck now with only the legend. The public exposure would have humanized it. It would have lost its ability to define us as a people.
Part of me thinks that the reason so many of his colleagues are so bent out of shape (no, that’s bad)…
angry about Weiner’s penis pic is that he was being too open
in general. This is a generation of lawmakers whose dedication to secrecy by government officials makes Richard Nixon look like Ralph Nader. When officials are keeping secret tens of millions of government documents every year not because the information written on them is sensitive, but simply because they can, how do you
think they’re going to react to the type of privacy breach that involves pubic hair and the Opie and Anthony radio show?
That’s why, in a strange way, Weiner is now the most valuable representative we have in Washington, as citizens. He’s
already been quite literally exposed. And that’s why I’d like to see
every one of our Puritanical representatives, men
and women, forced to strip down to their all-togethers for public inspection, one by one, perhaps via a televised mass disrobing at next year's State of the Union address, and at least in time for the findings to be published in all the 2012 voter guides. They don’t mind violating
us. They're the ones responsible for all the gropings and the x-raying of pacemakers and colostomy bags at the airport. They're the ones that let the truly sexually-perverse violations of Abu Ghraib go unpunished. I say it's their turn now. Mr. and Ms. Legislator, show us what you got under there.
The real scandal
We finally found an issue that Democratic lawmakers in Washington can get passionate about: running one of their own (Anthony Weiner) out of town. What I resent most, as a citizen, is that this gaggle of elitist peacocks feels that it can work behind the scenes to impact a decision in respect to a fellow politician's future when the decision about his future should belong to Weiner's constituents in the Queens and Brooklyn boroughs of New York City. That's not just Minority Party Leader Nancy Pelosi trying to rid her caucus of Weiner, that's the representative from California's 8th district trying to force a change for New York's 9th district. More two-party bullshit. It remains to be seen what Weiner has been exposed of here besides having an active, and rather harmless, fantasy life, yet the den of thieves that is the nation's capital is quick to cast its typically-insincere collective judgment upon an individual's private family morality.
Contrary to most of the commentary we've been hearing and reading, the new cultural low that's been established with this story is not with the sexual behavior of a political figure, but with the
righteous clucking of Washington insiders, most of whom are probably at least as perverted as, and
much more disingenuous, than the "pervert" in question. These individuals stoop to presume that they can speak for a "wronged" woman they don't really know in almost every case, and to opine on marital vows that are private,
someone else's, and none of their frigging business. Weiner's fellow lawmakers are showing themselves to be spineless, vindictive hypocrites, and the "journalists" in town wouldn't know a
real government scandal if it bit them on the ass.
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Incidentally, if Maureen Dowd believes that Weiner's "web of lies" is "outrageous even for Capitol Hill," as she states in the opinion column linked above, then the New York Times is even more outdated and trivial than I already thought. Weiner's "web" comes in at about #540 on the overall rankings.
Well-meaning advice
Things are not going great for the Cubs these days. They're 23 up, 34 down (losing tonight also), trailing even the
Pirates by 4 1/2 games, banged up,
criticizing each other, and if the LA Times can be believed,
one of nine teams currently in violation of league policy in respect to the debt vs. earnings ratio. They were swept by the Cardinals this weekend, who were aided by the Great Pujols of Mound City becoming the first Major Leaguer in 16 years to win consecutive games with walk-off home runs.
On a drive half-way across Iowa yesterday, I listened to the post-game torment of a dozen Cubs fans during a WGN Radio call-in program. They lit up Cubs manager Mike Quade for challenging Pujols in the same hitting situation in back-to-back days while one of the hosts of the show made some bizarre comparisons to decisions he once made as a high-school baseball coach. (Chicago radio, really? You're better than that.) As a Cardinals fan, I wanted to defend the Cubs manager. First of all, Pujols was having an extraordinary weekend, but he was batting only .257 when the week began, with an OPS of just .722. In the Cards' lineup, he had been intentionally walked this year fewer times than the club's most-of-the-time 8th place hitter Daniel Descalso. Nearly every team has pitched to Pujols at all times, and few have regretted it. You simply do not walk this player with two out and nobody on at this point in the season,
particularly on Sunday when Pujols was 0-for-15 lifetime against the 10th inning pitcher in question.
It's only natural that Cubs fans would be calling for Ryne Sandberg to manage the club, and they were doing that yesterday. The fan favorite and Hall-of-Fame second baseman wanted desperately to manage the club in 2011, but was passed over by the new ownership during the off-season in favor of an interim manager that had posted a healthy winning percentage over the last two months of 2010. I had a different perspective than the callers and the hosts. I've watched a number of Cubs games this year, and as is the case with almost every team in the history of the sport, the success or failure of the club has not hinged ultimately on the actions or inactions of the manager. This club would likely be within a game or two of their current mark even if John McGraw was managing them. (Whitey Herzog, maybe.) That's just baseball.
Sandberg fans should be
grateful he was not chosen for this time and place. One of the most popular men ever to wear the Cubs' uniform would be having to shoulder the blame for this fiasco if he had. There's a reason that only a few Hall-of-Fame-caliber players even attempt to become managers-- it's because 95% of all managerial tenures end with a firing and at least a little animosity. A Hall-of-Famer's legacy is already secure, especially in the town where he posted his many triumphs. Why try to tamper with it? Ryno has dodged a bullet thus far, but something tells me he still wouldn't turn down the offer if he got it, and that offer may even be forthcoming in the next year if the Cubs' owner Tom Ricketts listens to the irrational pleas of some of their fans.
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Baseball anecdote of the day: From today's StL Post-Dispatch, one they'll still tell years from now,
"Tony La Russa doesn't tell this story often, but he thought it was worth repeating late Sunday afternoon in his office. After Albert Pujols had won a second consecutive extra-inning game against the Chicago Cubs with, in this case, a high-stepping, walk-off home run, the Cardinals' manager hearkened to the night in Phoenix in October 2001, when his team was eliminated in the last inning of the last game of a playoff series by the Arizona Diamondbacks.
The team had gathered at a steakhouse for a party sponsored by Chairman Bill DeWitt Jr., and, at one point during the night and early morning of commiseration and celebration, Pujols, then a rookie, asked La Russa to sign a photo of the two of them. La Russa said he "wanted to do right by it" and said he would give it to Pujols on the plane ride home the next morning.
When La Russa presented Pujols the photo, he had inscribed, "To Albert. The best player I've ever managed."
And this was after one season.---
Non-baseball anecdote of the day: Evolved from Chris Hitchen's
musings today upon the admitted-sexual creativity of Congressman Anthony Weiner. Included is some good advice for the next time you find yourself publicly-nude at the wrong time--
In my time at Oxford, there still persisted a quaint survival from the Victorian era. A special part of the river bank set among the willows was reserved for nude male bathing, with membership restricted to dons and clergymen. Prominent signs and barriers prevented boats and punts containing females from approaching this discreet stretch. On one fateful Sunday afternoon, however, a recent flood had washed away the signs and weakened the barriers. A group of ladies was swept past the rows of recumbent and undressed gentlemen. Shrieks of embarrassment from the boat, while on the shore—consternation. Pairs of hands darted down to cover the midsection. All but one, the hedonist and classicist Sir Maurice Bowra, whose palms went up to conceal his craggy visage. As the squeals were borne downstream, and the sheepish company surveyed itself, Bowra growled, "I don't know about you chaps, but I'm known by my face around here."
June First filler
I wish I had something to blog for you this week. I really do. Work has been crazy busy since returning from the long weekend. It was wild today, with the sole exception of 3 to 4 in the afternoon when I sat in a meeting about the company's 401(k) program. That hour was as boring as the rest of the day was busy. I have to tell you, these banking reps of ours conducting this venture put the
mutual fun in mutual funds. But I digress.
I came home at five with designs to do some laundry and to find a topic online to write about, but I was delayed trying to find my laundry detergent. It turns out that my washing machine had shaken so violently the last time I cleaned my clothes that the detergent jug had bounced off the stackable washer/dryer and became lodged behind the appliance. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but that was the day the civil defense siren went off in the city.
This washer/dryer unit is a slick little apparatus, but it's pretty immovable inside of its assigned space in my bathroom and three different parts of the machine are plugged into or attached to the wall behind. I spent about half an hour trying to lift the nearly-full 3-liter jug of Tide Mountain Spring out from behind the appliance using only a broom handle and a state school education. You'll be glad to know that I ultimately succeeded, but
note to self: Don't ever put the Tide on top of the washer/dryer unit again, or at least until the guy from NASA comes out and fixes the spin cycle. It's like I'm always saying-- if it's not one thing, it's the next. Like that time I saw the Monica Lewinsky slot machine. It said, "Insert Bill." But anyway, gang. I know I'm exhausting your patience. In the dictionary, you'll find "sympathy" between "shit" and "syphilis." Time to go instead. I don't want you to have to let you keep me. Back with the usual crap soon.
