The Whining Stranger's Daily Haiku: 24 January 2007

infinitely blue:
the sky, the trail of music
I follow them both

The Whining Stranger's Daily Haiku: 18 January 2007

I live in trivi-
alities, traffic in the
mundane. Yet sometimes--

Musings: 10 December 1994 - 23 December 2006

To the greatest canine companion a neurotic intellectual would-be-writer boy could ever have asked for, who traveled everywhere I went from age 21 to age 32, who lived in two provinces and one state and two countries with me, and who kept me going through dissertation-writing and book revisions and losing Tiger seasons and so many trying times, on the day of his death from old age.

I'll miss you, buddy.

A poem by Pablo Neruda, in tribute:

A Dog Has Died

My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.

Proustian Years in Review: Part 6: 1999

After re-seeing Kathryn Bigelow's film Strange Days (which takes place around New Year's Eve 1999) last night, I got to remembering what that resonant fin du siecle year had been like for me.

So, as always, let's revisit my madeleines.

For me, 1999 was:

• tuna sandwiches on crusty rolls and strong coffee, bought from a deli every afternoon on a week-long trip to Germany I made in March.
• the soundtrack to Bertrand Tavernier's film Round Midnight, a former favorite LP on vinyl, which I replaced in my music collection as a CD in summer.
• Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, read in paperback over the holidays.
• Sam Shepard's play Seduced; I played the lead role in a graduate school production in December.
• my old Gateway 2000 laptop, which proved to be Y2K compliant.
• Tiger Stadium, which I visited for the last time in September, with my family.

And what, may I ask, was 1999 for you?

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.

The Whining Stranger on Politics and Current Events: A T-Shirt Everybody Should Buy

Click here to see it.

The Whining Stranger on Sport: World Series Bound!

World Series Bound!



The ball goes sailing from Magglio Ordonez's bat into the left field seats at Comerica Park and I am somewhere between ten years old and thirty-two. More than two decades I have waited, ever faithful about baseball, but cynical about so many other things. I've grown weary with age about politics, about religion, but baseball. Sweet baseball. Those heartbreaking Detroit Tigers, in whom I put so much faith and hope every April.

Finally.
The World Fucking Series.
Finally.

Amen.

Musings: Real Men Use Umbrellas

Last night, at a bar with a couple of friends to commemorate Monday Night Football with ultra-manly activities (read: drinking beer, eating pizza), one compadre began to tease me for having an umbrella with me. (It was rainy; I walked!) Apparently, he'd been listening just yesterday to two morning radio louts go on and on about the potential unmanliness of using an umbrella. (Their reasoning had something to do with not being able to work a barbecue, hold a beer and carry an umbrella all at the same time. To which I say, unironically, I've got big hands. And you know what they say about men with-- Er.)

Anyway, is this--dear Mary Poppins--the face of umbrelladom? Is this the popular image of the umbrella post-Neville Chamberlain?



Need I remind people that one of the scariest, most mysterious figures in twentieth-century American history is the so-called Umbrella Man in Dealey Plaza the day John Kennedy was killed? This is a spooky figure who carried an umbrella--and had it open as Kennedy's motorcade passed--even though it was sunny and warm that day. He's an insidious villain who may or may not have fired a poison dart from said umbrella and thereby paralyzed Kennedy so he couldn't react to the incoming hail of gunfire.



That example, noted, though, I will of course point out that not every man with an umbrella qualifies for real man status. Look at the unreal man pictured below. He's--dare I say it?--all wet, umbrella or not.

The Whining Stranger on Sport: Hasta la vista, New York Yankees!

Sweet jubilation! Unbound joy!

I thought this series was basically over after Game 1 in the Bronx? How many times did we have to hear about this New York team possibly sporting the greatest line-up ever assembled? And wasn't Kenny Rogers supposed to be a playoff dud?

No, all around. Of course.

Just as the Detroit faithful knew it would be.

The Whining Stranger on Sport: My Hero!

God bless you, Zoom-Zoom. And how do you like them apples, Jeet?

Musings: On Headphones and Dark Sunglasses and Monday Mornings

A brief procrastinatory meditation as I try to kill ten minutes of would-be work time before I justify more non-work time with a noontime lunch break...

I like busy weekends with much socializing, for the most part, but they make me exhausted come Monday morning. Not a good way to start the week. I need to sleep more, perhaps. Saturday morning, for instance, I ran a 5k race on just under three hours sleep after too much beer and good fun the night before. My time was good given the obvious fatigue and dehydration, but I have to admit I'm not a kid anymore. ("I admit I'm not a kid anymore.") Sunday followed a long birthday party for a friend on Saturday night. I was slow moving till dinner time. Then it was about time to go to bed and call it a weekend. This morning's 9am meeting was unwelcome in turn.

In other news, I'm loving the mobile private bubble of my mp3 player and dark sunglasses combination on walks to campus each morning. The new shades that I got (black, Marcello-ish) for a dollar-fifty at a thrift store last week are clearly the darkest sunglasses I've ever owned. I won't even wear them for driving because they impede visibility so much. But that's good when I have to pass Casa Barbarian next door, and for general, "Don't get in my consciousness" ambulation time before meetings and classes.

Still reeling from the Tigers' collapse against KC this weekend. I am soliciting a general abundance of pro-Detroit, anti-Yankees vibes from anybody who reads this. Boo Yankees!

OK, there. I look at the clock. It's just about midday. By the time I post this it'll be time to get my lunch out and ignore the stacks of books on the desk for a little bit more.

The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day: 2 October 2006

"God Must Be a Boogie Man" by Joni Mitchell (from the album Mingus, 1979)

A charming bit of swinging theology from one of the great songwriting masters. This tune opens Joni's tribute album to the great Charles Mingus and was inspired by the first few pages of his autobiography, Beneath the Underdog. (Never read it? You should. He turns the expectations of genius-artist this-is-my-life writing on its head so thoroughly that you'll either laugh or cry or throw the book across the room or all three, but you won't be unstimulated for one second.) While I don't like to think too much about the nature of God for the unavoidable vertigo that follows (I'd rather just assume there is a big master-blaster up there and that s/he loves me and that there are no floods or turns-into-salt coming my way), I can't help but think that Joni's refrain about the cosmos adhering to "a cock-eyed plan" is spot-on.

Musings: The Barbarian Invasions Continue

Leaving the house today to walk to campus, my partner and I noticed that the rich barbarian undergrads next door--they of the BMW and the Jeep Cherokee in the driveway, of the garbage on the lawn, and the ratty couch on the front porch--were hosting a stack of crumpled Bud Light cans all over the front lawn, just steps away from one of their gas-guzzling expensive vehicles.

Now, I'm not one for neighborhood policing, or gated communities, or homogeneous middle-class living, I swear it. But could you spoiled little assholes at least make the slightest bit of effort to step up the evolutionary scale and join civilization? Christ, for proprietary's sake, even if you're refuse to adhere to the common sense (and humane) convention of not driving-while-shitfaced, could you hide the evidence of your drunken attempts at vehicular manslaughter?

Idiots.

Musings: Ah, Gouranga, you big galoot.

Bizarre email in the junk-mail folder at work today, sent from someone called Neateye, and reading as such:

Call out Gouranga be happy
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga!
That which brings the highest happiness

Needless to say, I was intrigued, and did some googling--ah, my procrastination knows no bounds!--and discovered that I have been enfolded into an Internet-wide phenomenon: http://www.joewein.de/sw/spam-neateye-gouranga.htm#example.

Speaking of Internet-wide phenomena, I am searching high and low without success for an mp3 of John R. Butler's "The Hand of the Almighty," which may be the funniest country song I've ever heard. Where oh where oh where?

The Whining Stranger on Sport: Back in the Hunt--Finally!

The thirteen year old boy has become a thirty-two year old man, but he's no less giddy than the adolescent he was in October 1987.

Back to the playoffs again at last.

Proustian Years in Review: Part 5: 1987

For me, 1987 was:

• a white sweatshirt bearing an image of Bill the Cat, which I wore to a football game on Saturday, 3 October, the day before the Tigers clinched the AL East pennant against the hated Toronto Blue Jays.
• copies of The Beatles' Abbey Road and The Beatles [aka "the White Album"] that I bought in summer with earnings from my paper route.
• a yellow hardcover journal that I bought at the drug store in the neighborhood, and which began the long string of diaries I continue to keep to this day.
• a pair of oxblood penny loafers that I wore with my school uniform each day, and with jeans on weekends.
• paperback copies of Animal Farm, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and The Catcher in the Rye, read on the couch in the basement or curled up under the blankets in my bedroom.
• chocolate cream sandwich cookies and turkey sandwiches made on croissants and consumed with big cold glasses of milk.
• my beloved beat-up Tiger cap.

And what, may I ask, was 1987 for you?

The Whining Stranger on Sport: It's Been a Long Nineteen Years; or, One is the Magic Number

As I write, the Detroit Tigers currently lead the Royals 1-0 in this afternoon's game. If the Tigers win, they have clinched a spot in this year's post-season, making it to the playoffs for the first time since 1987. Nineteen years. Nineteen long years I have waited since the last time they were even in long sniffing distance of the World Series.

When the Tigers last clinched a playoff spot--with a 1-0 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays on 4 October, 1987, in the last game of the regular season--the number one box office-earning film in the country was Fatal Attraction; Ronald Reagan was the President of the United States; the number one song on the radio was Whitney Houston's "Didn't We Almost Have It All?"; and the above Calvin and Hobbes comic strip was part of the Sunday funnies.

Long time.

And in the time I've written this entry, the Tigers have scored four more runs. 5-0.