The Whining Stranger on Politics and Current Events: Oh, Christians!

Just in time for the holidays, a bunch of conservative Christians aiming to put the spectacle back in spectacular bigotry.

Read about their efforts to bombard Wal-Mart here: http://www.savewalmart.com/

And then make sure to drop them an email reminding them that the so-called Radical Homosexual Agenda they're trying to suppress was inaugurated by those notorious maverick queers, the Founding Fathers.

The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day: 20 November 2006

"Lucky to Be Me" by Bill Charlap (as composed by Leonard Bernstein, from the album, Somewhere: The Songs of Leonard Bernstein, 2004)

A lazy, swinging standard to commemorate a shortened Thanksgiving work week. The way Charlap comes in with bass and drums after the just-piano introduction is cause for thanks. And really, I need to say it out loud more often: "I'm so lucky to be me."

Musings: Ah, old scholar.

I realized this morning that my not infrequent grumbling about students' work ethics and yard ethics and driving ethics etc. may rehearse one of the more tired cliches of university life: The "What's wrong with these kids?" & "Back in my day" & "Now is worse than then" cross-generational divide. If I gave you the impression that I am united among my colleagues on the faculty in a constant misanthropic judging of today's youth, then I apologize. Such is not the case.

In fact, as I rediscovered at a faculty party this weekend, the professoriate has perhaps a greater ability to stir my ire than the earnest if underachieving undergrads about whom I sometimes rant.

Case in point: the tenured colleague from another department who brazenly and proudly told my partner and I that--

1. He hates cats and would be happy to shoot them if they came into his yard. ["Um, you do live out of the radius of my cat's wanderings, right?"]
2. He has pulled himself up from his bootstraps over the course of his career, the evidence of which is the fact that when he first moved here to [unnamed college town] he lived in a neighborhood where [sotto voce] he "was the only white person around." ["Um, it is truly inspiring how you've left those insidious black and brown folks behind."]
3. The university needs to stop hiring so many ugly women, and when he's on a hiring committee makes sure to vote against any unattractive women candidates. ["Um, what is the number for the campus ombudsman again?"]
4. He doesn't feel you need to be able to talk with the person you're fucking. In fact, he had a thing with a 17 year old a few years back. The pussy, he insisted, was great. ["Um, did a tenured faculty member just say "Pussy" and proudly admit to statutory rape?"]
5. The Mexican-American fellow colleague of ours who's thinking of running for the House of Representatives in the future should borrow his white wife and children to impress voters, unless of course that would hurt the "obvious" advantage of being a minority candidate. ["Um, we are talking about the United States, right? What fucking advantage?"]

Sigh.

Musings: "The reports of my death..."

...as Mark Twain wrote in 1897, "are greatly exaggerated."

My apologies to any readers of The Whining Stranger who've missed my daily billets absurd, my cranky meditations, my pop culture obsessions. Maybe that reader is me most of all, who's been sad to let this blog slide for sometime now. But it's been a busy semester. And after the Tigers' collapse in the Fall Classic ("Practice throwing to third base come Feburary, ye Motown pitchers!") I fell, quite frankly, into a bit of autumnal melancholy.

So, what I have missed reporting on?

Well, I published a short story last month, which was exciting. And my classes continue to go well, though we're into the grading monsoon period of the semester. I've worn innumerable pencils down circling comma splices and writing "vague topic sentence" in the margins of undergraduate term papers. Today I felt the first surge of impending Yuletide spirit when I booked my trip home for the holidays. 32 and still waking up in the old childhood bedroom on Christmas morning... Which means, yes, Mom still hasn't sold the house. But she will, I assume, at some point.

Politically, the Democrats restored some equilibrium to that mess up in Washington. And joy of joys, that bonehead rummy, by which I mean, Mr. Donald, stepped down. Shame it took 2800 American military casualities--to whose families my heart goes out, and my prayers are directed--before he was willing to admit things weren't going so shit hot. Speaking of matters political, was anyone else as digusted as I was being forced to endure that lousy Chevrolet commercial throughout the baseball playoffs, in which John Mellencamp celebrates "Our country" to a series of contradictory images: Viet Nam, Ali in the ring, Rosa Parks, Nixon saluting from the plane, MLK, Jr, Katrina, the Twin Towers... And all to sell more fucking big trucks. I wait for moresuch inspired commercial spots. Maybe "the Trail of Tears" to sell Pop Tarts; Japanese internment camps shilling for Chef Boyardee; a Swiffer sold by veterans of the Tuskegee experiments... Ah, our country indeed. And history makes for good marketing.

See, cold autumn winds, post-Series depression aside, I remain critical, and whining, and stranger.