Kennedy, The Radical Right, Mein Kampf

As you know, Senator Ted Kennedy passed on last week. I’ve spent much of the last few days watching his funeral on TV or following it on the Web.

I was particularly struck by the celebration of his life that was held at the John F. Kennedy Library. As an aside, I know the building. I’ve done rather a lot of research in the archives there. And it is a magnificent site to recall the last surviving member of that particular generation of Kennedys.

It was interesting, and moving, to hear leading Republicans appear and express their admiration for the man. Orrin Hatch and John McCain made it clear that they had respected Kennedy, liked him, and, in a way, even loved him. Hatch put it best, I think, when he said (here paraphrasing) that he would miss most fighting with Kennedy in public and joking with him in private.

Those men were good and true.

But, Hatch and McCain are conservatives. They seek to “conserve” something they feel to be of value in America. Such men do not control the Republican Party any more, even as they are its most famous sons. The GOP today is the property of men like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, as well as the Radio Radicals—Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Michael Savage, and so many others. These men are not conservatives. They find nothing to preserve in America as it has been these last two hundred years. They seek, instead, to sweep that America away and replace it with one of their own creation…an intolerant and regimented America—an America “managed” by a small cadre of executives and the population manipulated by cynically political Churches (Protestant and Catholic alike) and talk-show demagogues.

And already, these men and women have begun their Swift Boating of Ted Kennedy’s memory. The columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson has noted that within days of his death a Google search for radical right criticisms of Kennedy turned up two million hits. (“Hatin’ on Ted Kennedy,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/hatin-on-ted-kennedy_b_270830.html)

Why this sudden and determined attack on a man who worked with Republicans and was admired by them? On, indeed, someone who is already dead?

Because the extremists cannot do otherwise. They cannot possibly be gracious or chivalrous. They must speak ill of the dead or their followers might begin to wonder if all liberals are really so terrible … if, perhaps, it was possible for two sides to argue and debate, and not regard the other as treasonous.

To illustrate, consider this sage advice from a famed work on political action: “Inasmuch as ones own propaganda recognized a shadow of right upon the opponents side, the ground is prepared for questioning ones own right. The masses are not in a position to distinguish where the opponent’s right ends and ones own begins. In such a case they become uncertain and mistrustful…”

The book? Mein Kampf. The author you know. The consequences, you will recall.


Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

Al-Megrahi

We were at breakfast with a friend of ours and Martha began talking about the news. Specifically, she was angered at the Scots for releasing Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Libyan agent convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. You’ll recall that in that attack 270 innocent people died in the sky. Al-Megrahi has never expressed remorse. Yet, he is being released as an act of compassion. He is dying of cancer—or so, anyway, we are told.

Martha was furious. Why should the Scots demonstrate compassion when this man had shown none for his victims? But, our friend gently rebuked us. It was the Christian thing, she said, to release the terrorist that he might spend his final days at home. All the more Christian since it required real emotional effort. One had, that is, to look into the twisted face of the murderer and still perceive the features of suffering humanity.

I suppose she’s right.

Yet, what concerns me is not so much what happened to al-Megrahi in Scotland, but afterwards. Upon arrival in Tripoli, he was greeted as something of a hero. High officials, including Gaddafi’s son, met him at the airport. “Several thousand” young men cheered him from the tarmac.

The pundits who cover such things write that one shouldn’t take this too seriously. The return of al-Megrahi was actually, they say, a low-key affair. The Libyan government might have easily made the man’s return a national celebration. The fact that it didn’t shows that Gaddafi and his heirs are working hard not to antagonize the West. Thus, they say, it is All Good. If anything, the release of al-Megrahi, who is going to die anyway, may have been an excellent trade. It cost the West nothing and betters our relations with Libya.

Which is all probably true. But I’m troubled by those “several thousand” young men at the airport. They came, it seems, quite without prompting. It was not their government’s idea to assemble on the runways, but their own. And that makes sense. For decades now, leaders throughout the Arab World, and the Islamic world beyond, have used Anti-Americanism as a conscious part of their statecraft. It, along an orchestrated hatred of Israel, has been the ever-effective means by which political elites distracted their subjects’ attention from their own corruption and incompetence.

Today, that popular loathing of all which we represent is as much a part of the political psyche of the Middle East as are national flags and monuments to fallen liberators. It has been long nourished, and now flowers energetically.

Thus, I worry. Even if Gaddafi and his imitators want to better their standing with the West, is it too late? Have they done their work too well? So that, no matter what governments may want and Fearless Leaders decree, we will still have to confront someday the people who so energetically danced and sang when the Towers fell…and thousands died in horror and flame?


Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

Men With Guns

I had not seen MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show until a week or so ago. It wasn't that I had avoided her. I simply don't watch lot of TV.

But, a while back I did tune. It was quite impressive. In this particular episode, she listed the seemingly endless stream of insults, injuries, and even violence that Democratic (and some Republican) Congressmen have suffered at the hands of the Right Wing during the ongoing Health Care debate. She concluded with the remarkable case of the man who appeared at an appearance of Barack Obama with a gun strapped to his leg and carrying a sign that was a more or less overt death threat to the President. (He was later presented, rather sympathetically, by certain elements of the conservative press.)

That most of this chaos has been orchestrated by a combination of corporations that would be impacted by any health reform and the GOP is more or less universally known. That the leading "moderate" elements of the Republican party have stood apart from the excesses of the "Birthers" and the "Deathers," while being more than willing to encourage, organize, and exploit it, is also well known. It is, in fact, nothing more than the standard program of dirty tricks, lies, hysteria, demagoguery, smear, and blatant disregard for civility which has been characteristic of certain (albeit, not all) circles within the Republican party since Joseph McCarthy's witch hunts of the 1950s.

What I had not thought, but which Maddow pointed out, is that there is something new going on here. The GOP is now using proxies who are not just confrontational, but who more or less openly calling for violence against elected officials. They are not just calling for impeachments or recall elections. They are openly talking about killing people. And, more, they are doing this with the support of not only fringe politicians but senators and representatives. Maddow went on to compare the current situation to the Abortion debate, which is now no longer a debate but rather a controlled war in which anyone supporting the procedure may well find themselves in the cross hairs of a sniper rifle.

She noted that the pro-life/pro-choice discussion too began in relative civility, then moved to aggressive confrontation, and then ended with firearms as anti-abortion mainstream activists discovered that they could use "extremists" to silence dissent while still remaining on the moral high ground. (In a genuinely just society, those who incite violence would share the blame with those who carry it out. As such, indictments for the murder George Tiller would begin in Rome and the offices of Operation Rescue and work their way down.)

Maddow concluded that it is all too likely that we shall see the Rightists following exactly the same course. I fear there is some truth in it. Simply put, terrorism works and certain people within the GOP have discovered that fact. If you cannot "Swiftboat" your rival, or cheat him of his electoral victory by manipulating the vote, or shout him into silence at town hall meetings, then encouraging an extremist (and then disavowing his actions) is cheap, effective, and relatively risk free. It's all too likely that within 20 years or so, we will see violence (or at least the threat of it) implemented as a regular part of Republican strategy.

Which is frightening—for all of us, and, indeed, even the Rightists who today employ the technique. It is a game anyone can play. Eventually, Democrats, too, will follow the Republican lead. And, after them, still other actors, perhaps more dangerous than we can imagine.

For you see, the Bible is quite right. The Republicans have sown the wind. The peril is that they, and we, shall harvest the storm.




Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

New Mexico #4

Okay, so, this time, I’m finally going to get to the next installment of the tale of my recent trip to New Mexico.

This time we’re going to have Rail Runners, filthy rich dingbats, dogs that poop in the night (or, anyway, in the street), and a whole bunch of other fun stuff.

Plus…

A death.


*

Okay, I’m going to skip over a lot of things now. I’m not going to tell you a lot about my visit to my parents or their home in Albuquerque. That’s because we had a good time. And good times are good…but, well, they don’t make for interesting writing. I suppose that’s not particularly profound. Everyone from Tolstoy to Tolkien has already said something like it. But, it’s amazing how true it is all the same.

So, I won’t tell you about the flight there, nor our arrival, nor meeting my parents and finding them fit and hale—which is good news for me, really. At the age when many people are barely able to move, they are up and active, eager to travel and explore. Every year they drive (with their two dogs, Sarah and Princeton) to and from their beach house on South Padre Island on the Texas coast, which is not a small journey, particularly when you have two full-grown Welsh Corgis with you.

Every year, too, they travel at least once to Las Vegas. They do not gamble. They never have. But it amuses them to go and watch the shows, eat in the casino restaurants (where the food is cheap to encourage the gamblers), and, at most, play the “penny slots” where they can find them. These are a dying species of slot machine, designed not to take quarters, or the heavy dollar coins that the Treasury still promotes in a futile attempt to placate the makers of vending machines, but rather (obviously) mere pennies. A penny a pop, in other words, to watch the little wheels go round. Payments, in the unlikely event of a jackpot, are of course tiny. But, that doesn’t matter, particularly. And so my parents will take a dollar and play it away in an hour or so. Then they’ll go do something else.

Sometimes, too, I think, they go to watch the other players—the men and women their own age or older, who have no interest in the pennies. Rather, they are at the big machines, the quarter slots and above, and who you can see squatting in their wheel chairs, smoking but connected by long and transparent tubes to the tanks of oxygen beside them, pulling the handle or punching the button of the Machine, as compulsively as a heartbeat, watching their social security checks vanish in the flash and fury of simulated ecstasy.

*

And I won’t tell you, finally, about our time at my parents’ house…the place they have in what’s called the North East Heights. It is suburban but not exactly in a suburb. That may need to be explained. Easterners, and some from California, misunderstand Western cities. They expect a city core, like New York’s or Boston’s, and then a circle of microtowns around it—the Dariens and Greenwichs, or, on a more modest scale, the Lexingtons and Concords…or even, in its way, little Winchester, Massachusetts (where I am now).

But Western cities—Albuquerque, El Paso, Dallas, others in Texas and Arizona and beyond—aren’t like that. Or, at least, aren’t yet. They may be someday. But, for the moment, they sprawl vast across the land, advancing their borders with each new subdivision or development, and their suburbs are not bedroom villages but rather the oh-so-better sort of neighborhood, middle class and quiet, as opposed to the (said in faint tones of distaste) the “other” ones. The ones downtown, or on the river, where one can find the crystal and the crack, the gangs and the decay, the Illegals in their thousands…

Another thing that Easterners don’t understand is Western downtowns. They expect Western cities to have cores, again, like New York. They expect to go “into the city,” and find Life…people living in high-rise apartments, or brownstones…theaters, stores, crowds, restaurants. But, with a few exceptions (and those mostly on the Pacific coast), that’s not the case. Rather, Western cities have dead, concrete, and empty hearts—the inevitable consequence of the fact that they had their major growth in the auto-centric 1950s and 1960s, rather than the horse and the trolley of the nineteenth century.

And so, Western cities are full enough on weekdays. Everyone works downtown in office buildings and courthouses. But they work there only. At night, on holidays, or weekends, they go home. The city core empties out almost completely. To walk downtown on, say, a Saturday is to be alone. Your footsteps will literally echo between the cement facades of office complexes.

That’s if you’re lucky. If you are not, you will have company—the gangs and their knives, the junkies and their needles, the homeless and their untreated schizophrenia…

And, indeed, it was exactly into that world of concrete and emptiness that we were about to … albeit briefly…descend.

*

My parents were eager to do something new with us. And, newest of all the state’s attractions was the “Rail Runner.” This is an innovation in New Mexican affairs. It is a train that runs from Albuquerque to Santa Fe. As a rule, riders include both tourists eager to see to New Mexican countryside without having to drive through it, and commuters who work in Santa Fe but cannot afford to live there.

No one can live in Santa Fe. Well, that’s an exaggeration. But, it has become an expensive place, indeed. In my boyhood, it was simply one more city in the state—the capital of the state, yes, a tourist city, and recognizably a prettier city than Albuquerque, but a city all the same. Middle class people could live there easily, and working class people, too. At one point, my parents considered moving there. It was only a matter of luck that I did not spend my youth as a Santa Fe boy.

But, as I say, Santa Fe had been uniquely burdened. For one thing, it really is beautiful. More, it has long had a certain cache among artists and intellectuals. It isn’t quite Taos, with that town’s associations with D.H. Lawrence and all the rest, but Santa Fe does sport a considerable colony of painters and sculptors and writers. The wealthy, for whatever reason, followed as a kind of intellectual tourist class. These formed a diverse and weirdly interlinked community of money and the arts—a mix more common than you might think. (Recall Cape Cod.)

By the 1960s, movie stars had begun to settle there as well. Seeking relief from Hollywood, and association with the presumed purity of the desert and its more exotic (if stereotypical) inhabitants, they came in droves…first to stay in the ancient and romantic hotels in the center of the city, then to buy (ever more costly) homes within and round it.

The result of all of this has been to drive real estate prices through the roof and REAL people with REAL incomes find it increasingly difficult to discover places to live in the city. So, they take up residence in little towns that have sprung up around Santa Fe, or else live in Albuquerque.

If Santa Fe isn’t careful, it will eventually become one of those places that have somehow drifted off the map. They are, that is, no longer quite real, like the sort of seaside community that attracts yachts like flies to garbage, or ski towns in pristine mountains where even the snow-machines project Perrier. Once that happens, it can be very difficult turning back. You become artificial and irrelevant, at best an entertainment, like Main Street U.S.A., and, at worst, an insult to human intelligence, like certain college towns, where tenured professors in air conditioned offices proclaim reality an illusion, and add that you don’t understand this fact because, after all, you (unlike them) are too stupid to see it.

But, still, perhaps Santa Fe will escape that awful fate. There are, you see, still places in town—at least away from the city center—where you can find dust in the streets. That is a hopeful thing.

*

Two things strike me on re-reading that last. First, I realize that Santa Fe and cities like it are suburbs in reverse. That is, the typical Levittown is the place to which the middle class (and, sometimes, the rich) flee the poverty and dangers of the city. What’s happened in Santa Fe and its cousins is that the affluent have occupied the town’s center and driven everyone middle class or below to communities outside city limits. It is not, actually, without precedent. In the Paris built by Napoleon III, the working class was re-settled in suburbs just outside the city proper. The idea was to make certain that proletarians wouldn’t be able to threaten the state by occupying its capital. So, for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Paris was circled by the “Red Belts,” working class neighborhoods that voted consistently for the Left and terrified All Right Thinking People.

Second, I have made cutting remarks about those cities or towns which become fashionable and wealthy because of their ability to attract celebrity, fame, and (as in the case of some college towns) the children of the rich. Perhaps I have exaggerated. Well, of course I have exaggerated.

Yet, there is some truth to it. There really are communities whose entire existence depends on the fact that they find themselves celebrated by association. Aspen’s place in the world is as much a product of Hunter S. Thompson and John Denver as of its ski areas. Sundance would not be what it is without Robert Redford and his film festival.

And, one wonders, what happens when fame ebbs away? When some other community or coastline becomes THE cool place for cool people to be? When the famous and the infamous discover that, by George, all the REALLY interesting artists and Neo-Vorticist potters and Reformed Tonalist HTML novelists have gone somewhere else? And beckon them to follow?

What then?

An aside: North of Boston there is a string of little seaside communities. At one time, they were the toast of New England, and perhaps New York City as well. To them, came the rich and the mighty, as well as the creative and the artistic. You can still see the huge wooden structures of their mansions and their hotels up and down the coast.

They are dead.

The rich and powerful long ago departed for other places. The wooden hotels and resorts emptied out, were abandoned to decay, or burned in mysterious fires. The communities became bankrupt and empty. Only today, and only in certain places, have these towns begun to return, and then only as suburbs and bedroom villages, or tourist traps by the coast, where visitors on buses can get fried clams and fake Scrimshaw and tasteful souvenirs of superglue and seashells.

There is a prophecy there, somewhere.

*

But getting back to my parents…

They wanted to take us someplace fun and new…and to go there a new way…

So, one morning, we clambered into their mini-van, and headed off to the depths of the city on a Saturday, all concrete and silence.

And from there we would make our way to roads of steel.

But that’s for next time.







Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

DC Beer Summit...

So, like a lot of people I’ve been watching with interest President Obama’s attempt to smooth over the small but national crisis that grew out of the confrontation between Harvard professor Skip Gates (who’s Black) and James Crowley, the (White) Cambridge policeman who arrested him. You’ll recall that Obama invited the two of them to the White House for a beer and a tranquil chat.

It seems to have worked. The two men “agreed to disagree” and said nice things about one another. The crisis itself has receded from the headlines. If society’s underlying assumptions that led to the confrontation in the first place haven’t been overcome, at least they’re being discussed.

And yet, a day or so ago, there appeared in our local paper an angry letter from an outraged woman critiquing the Beer Summit from a Feminist perspective. She informed her readers that it was a shameful display of patriarchal attitudes, with sexist good old boys working out their typically shady deals over alcoholic beverages.

There is, of course, a message here, to wit: whatever you do, no matter how benign, benevolent, humane, and successful, there will always be someone—usually, albeit not always an academic or an intellectual—eager to tell you that it was shameful, and you, yourself, ought to be hanged, drawn, and quartered on public TV.

Oh, and disemboweled after that.

But not before you apologize. In a nice way. Ever so contritely. And in triplicate.

In Washington...

I have been fascinated to discover that the GOP in this country has already put its sleeze machine into high gear. Right now, on Townhall.com you can find banner headlines accusing Obama of “corruption.”

There is something amazing in this…even breathtaking. One has to admire any organization that can accuse a sitting president of graft, with no evidence, while itself having presided over an eight-year span when the only thing not for sale in Washington was Tom DeLay’s hairpiece.

Nun of the above

So I read in the newspaper (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/us/02nuns.html?_r=1) that American nuns may be coming under a bit of scrutiny by the Vatican. It seems that the folks in Rome may feel that American nuns are being a bit too modern, too forward, too non-traditional…

Now, let’s put this in perspective, shall we? While all this is going on, the Church is still dealing with the fallout of the child abuse scandals of the ‘90s. And, then there were all those damning revelations about nuns AND monks AND priests running horrific orphanage-sweatshops in Ireland. Then, of course, there was that embarrassing affair last year when the Pope invited members of a schismatic sect, The Society of Pius X, back into the Church . . . without, apparently, bothering to check on the little fact that the Society was chock-o-block full of Holocaust deniers.

Oh, and, then outside the Church, the world bears its usual cross of war, famine, disease, despotism, murder, rape, pillage, poverty, and, well, you know, pretty much everything the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse can dish out in a single serving, and which the Church could actually be trying to work against.

And, in the face of all this… all these horrors and terrors and scandals and shames . . . the Church responds by launching a war … against nuns.

Groovy.

Tune in next week, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages…when the Holy Father will announce papal bans …

Against warm fuzzy puppies, Teddy Bears, kittens with mittens, girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes, and, of course, Saint Francis of A-freaking-ssisi…

Intermezzo -- Michael Jackson

I will remain silent on the sudden death (and rather tragic life) of Michael Jackson. However, something has begun to concern me. Specifically, after his death, his CDs flew off the shelves. Or, to put it another way, he—like Elvis—is as important economically in his grave as he was alive.

What worries me is that this may be part of a major larger trend. People have already noted that a successful celebrity is less a person than a business. But, more, the celebrity has become an object. Whether or not he lives or dies is irrelevant so long as his image remains to be animated and marketed.

Thus, it is all too likely that, eventually, the human will be extracted entirely the system, and discarded. Our idle hours, what few remain to us, will be consumed by shimmering artificialities—whether generated Matrix-fashion in the soul of a new machine, or else materially, as creaking automata, chill and predictable, like plastic presidents in theme park attractions.

Intermezzo

Questions that haunt me…

If something can be inert, does that mean that somewhere there’s an ert that’s out?

New Mexico #3

Okay, so this week we get to three a.m. flights, killer burritos, and Michael The Walking Attack Bloat.

Got that? Good. It’s going to be SO much fun.


*

Okay, catching up, I’m in the middle of an extended memoir of my trip to visit my parents over the summer.

You’ll recall also, however, that this particular trip has to happen under some fairly strict parameters. We had to leave on Friday morning and be back on the following Wednesday so I could teach a history class on Thursday and so that Martha could teach a class on Friday and we both could get to our son’s graduation on Sunday. If anything goes wrong on our trip…anything at all! … and we should get delayed… then, we are, uh, er, how to put this?

Ah, I’ve got it. Scr*wed. Yes, I think that sums it up. We’d be sc*ewed. Maybe Philips-head scr*wed at that. Or, hell, let’s go all the way up to Pozidriv. Or Tri-wing triangular slotted. Or hex socket. Look ‘em up. I did. Google. That’s how I knew about ‘em in the first place. Very useful when you’re talking about getting scr*wed. Gives it that note of DIY in his age of diminished economic expectations.

Where was I? Oh, yes, so we’re off to New Mexico. But, we’ve already had all sorts of problems even before we got off the ground—like the car overheating, the traffic jams, and the fact that I had to lecture on LBJ and the Vietnam War to a collection of students for whom those things are ancient history and for them Ipods and PCs are antiques and I’m feeling really, really old and if my hair turns one more shade of whiter than white (and I mean white, not gray) I’m going to have a major hissy fit. So stand back. Wouldn’t want you to get caught in the blast and the fallout.

But, finally, we got to the hotel. Our plane left Boston’s Logan airport very, very early in the morning. I’ve forgotten exactly what time in the morning. So let’s just say it was gawdawful o’clock and leave it at that.

So, given the fact that we had to deal with all sorts of parking issues otherwise, we just took a room at a hotel near the airport. We could park at the hotel itself (quite reasonable fees) and then take a shuttle into the airport.

So, soon, we made it to the hotel and checked in. The next question was dinner. Well, it turned out that there was a Mexican restaurant in the hotel itself. There’s not much in the way of Mexican food in Boston … unless you count Taco Bell … so it was kind of a surprise to find some there. “Let’s just eat downstairs,” Martha says. “It’ll get us ready for New Mexico.”

“Sure, okay, fine,” I smile. I also start to sweat. And shiver. And tremble. And turn a lovely shade of ashen green. Or maybe “gray” is the word I’m after. Or asparagus. Boiled and then canned. So that it has lost all taste and has a texture roughly the same as that of garden slugs.

Why? you ask? Ah, I answer. There in lies a tale. Or if not a tale, then a tail. Here’s what I mean.

I’m a poor traveler. Oh, I don’t mind flying. I can deal with the crowding and the lines and the taking off your sneakers for airport security. I’ve even grown reconciled to the fact that airline food now means peanuts at a penny a pop.

But…

My guts bubble.


*

Yes, I know, that sounds pretty damn unattractive and if your span filter is set to max this whole email probably just went whizzing off to into bulk mail hell…there to rub shoulders with offers for cheap mortgages, Canadian pharmacies, fake Rolexes and wing-wangs the size of a Louisville slugger.

But … alas…it’s true. When I get above a certain altitude, the old tummy just expands like a beach ball on the wrong end of a power washer. I’ve been asked if I was pregnant. Or, failing that, if I’d ever thought of Jenny Craig. Or failing both of those, pursuing a career in the fast paced, high paying world of marketing. Say, at Thanksgiving. Outside of Macy’s. As a blimp.

Most of the time I can kind of keep things in shape if I don’t eat heavy before I get on the plane. Or, if I do eat heavy, then something not too … um…gaseous.

Okay, now, that’s background.

And we’ve already talked about the Mexican restaurant in the Hotel.

Do we need any more foreshadowing?

Didn’t think so.

*

So, that night, we show up at the restaurant. Martha orders a Margarita, and since I like tequila drinks, and because, well, I didn’t want to look like a wimp, I had to order one too. And there may have been another drink (“after all, you’re not driving). And then she had an enchilada, and since I didn’t want to look like a drip, I had to order a burrito. And then there was dessert. I don’t think there was Irish coffee involved. But, on the other hand, I can’t exactly say otherwise either. Not for sure, anyway. Tragic loss of memory, etc.

Then we were upstairs, and then I seemed to be very, very much asleep. And then…

And then…

And then…

By some very mysterious process (not wholly subject to rational analysis)…

It seemed to be…

Oh. God.

Morning.


*

Well, technically it was morning. I mean, it was after midnight. So that made it “a.m.” And that meant it was morning. In theory. In a chill, dark, dank, cold, gray black, middle-of-the-gawdamn-night kind of way. But morning just the same.

And, of course, there was the small, tiny, itty-bitty complication that I didn’t feel quite right. I don’t mean I was ill, exactly. And I’d never say I was hung over. Oh, no. Never that. Not on just one drink. No siree. So, let’s just say that I had a headache that was…er…ah ….do you remember the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where the bad guys’ heads explode? Sort of like that.

And we won’t go into just exactly what the inside of my mouth felt or tasted like. Suffice to say that I’ve met dyspeptic wart hogs with better breath that I had right then.

Well, okay, I’ve never met a dyspeptic wart hog, but you get the point.

But, I’m happy to say that in spite of everything…I still had a goal. And an end. And dream I needed to realize.

Specifically, I wanted to lie down and die.

But, quietly, so as not to disturb anyone. Nothing worse than a noisy cadaver.


*

Martha, of course, is up and at ‘em. In fact, she’s chirping like a gawdamn canary back in the days when they still put pot seed in bird food. (They did. Look that up, too). “This is going to be great,” she says, brightly.

I think about putting her in one of the suitcases and shipping her to New Mexico that way. But, well, it doesn’t seem quite fitting with my image as a sterling husband and modern day gallant. So, instead, we gather up our suitcases and go trotting off downstairs. Or, rather, she trots. I wobble.

The hotel maintains a free shuttle to the airport and, a moment later, we’re on the thing. It’s a little van with room for about ten people plus their luggage. Martha and I sit in the back and a number of early travelers file after us.

The van is just about to leave when one last traveler dashes onto the van and parks his leather luggage in the aisle. I get a glimpse of him in the light from the lobby. He’s a guy about my age in a very expensive suit. He has a hair cut that probably cost more than my computer. He has a cell phone. He’s yelling into it, “And make sure my Beamer gets a tune up.” He has an MP3 player with one ear bud in his head and the other out so he can talk on his phone. The ear bud which is out is playing Abba. Loud. He shouts at the driver, “Don’t leave until I get back.” Then he’s off the van and into the lobby again.

I realize I have just seen a Yuppie. A Yuppie my age. Which means he’s no longer young. Which means he’s not, strictly speaking, a Yuppie, which stands for Young Urban Professional and was something everybody was. About twenty years ago. Now they’re Aging Urban Professionals (Auppies). Or Middle Aged Urban Professionals (Maupies). Or just Just Pains In the Ass (JPITAs).

We realize that he is one of the latter, when he doesn’t come back. His luggage sits in the aisle and people stumble over it on their way in and out of the van. And we wait. And we wait. And we wait. And we’re all getting worried because we’ve got planes to catch. And promises to keep. And deeds to do. And where the freaking farpdooldes is that idiot?

Finally, the driver gets off the van and heads into the hotel. A moment later he reappears. He is mumbling to himself. As near as I can tell, he is making a complex philosophical observation about the need to decapitate assholes. Which is an interesting paradox in that I’m not sure holes have heads.

Be that as it may, the JPITA guy shows up a few minutes later looking peeved. We look at him in the dark. He makes nasty comments to himself about idiots who don’t understand he was going to be back in just a few minutes. Right after he checked his email, had breakfast, got coffee to go, and had a shoeshine. Because, really, those are important. And why we’d think we’re so special?

And all the people in the van consider slaughtering him. But, in the end, we’re all too sleepy. More lynch mobs than you think get stopped just that way. Snoring is the sound of civil peace.

*

Anyway, we make it to the airport. I’ll spare you all the stuff that follows after that—the lines that stretch from here to infinity, the airport security guys (and gals) doing full body cavity searches on 80-year-old grandmothers, the crowding, the rush, the panic…these are a few of my favorite things.

Suffice to say that we finally got on the plane and, just as dawn was breaking over the horizon, we lifted off into the friendly skies.

“Well, we made it,” Martha says, happily.

“Uh-huh,” I answer, wittily.

“Now,” she says, while smiling, “we can sit back and relax.”

“Right,” I say, grinning like an idiot.

“Thank goodness,” she concludes, and then she leans her head back and goes straight-away to sleep.

I’m left sitting in the chair next to her.

I look down at my gut.

It seems to be moving. All by itself.

And as for the burrito…

You know the scene in Aliens?

*

Next week, the Celebutantes of Santa Fe.

Until then,

Onward and upward.








Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

July 4h, N. Korean Kooks, the GOP...

As I feared, I didn’t get around to writing a full-fledged Xcargo this week. Sorry. Those seventy some odd papers to grade really got in the way. Damn this having to make a living by honest labor! If only I’d been gone to law school and become a regulator at the SEC assigned to monitor Bernie Madoff during the Bush years. Now that’s a career. Low impact. No heavy lifting. With required napping. Hell. And Teamsters think THEY’ve got a tough union. Ha, I say. And Ho.

So, anyway, since I didn’t get an Xcargo done, here’s some Intermezzi…

*

Happy Fourth, everyone. If you’re American (and probably if you’re not) then you know that’s our national day of independence. Or else it’s the day when Will Smith nuked the aliens from California and/or Pluto. Either way, we’re grateful. And it’s a great excuse to drink beer, light fireworks, and blast bits and pieces off ourselves in the process. The Founding Fathers would have been so proud.

*

Speaking of which, I see that on the fourth Kim Jong Il launched seven missiles into the seas off his starving country to show how tough he is. You betcha. And since none of the missiles carried warheads, and none got within miles of any serious targets, and nobody was entirely sure that the North Koreans had the slightest idea where they were headed when they lit the fuses . . . afterwards, the world basically went back to thinking about Michael Jackson. Which is understandable given the respective merits of the late Jacko and living Wacko.

But, actually, I think we should be paying very great attention to President Kim. After all, who else do you know who invested so much money, and so much effort, in firing off such big rockets on the fourth of July?

I mean, quite flattering really.

*

And, as you know, Sarah Palin has resigned as governor of Alaska, perhaps to run for president in 2012. In particular, she says she has been called upon (perhaps by God) to help lead the nation toward Conservative values.

At the same time, however, a very public squabble over just how much of a ditz she is or isn’t has broken out in the GOP, with much of the dirty laundry being washed on the napalm setting in the pages of publications like VANITY FAIR. And, of course, this is all going on while the nation learns that South Carolina’s Mark Sanford has been preaching morality in theory has been practicing polygamy in the flesh. (Don’t cry for me, Argentina.) And let us not forget that dear Newt Gingrich (a.k.a., Devil in the Blue Dress), that strange being who flamed out so dramatically during the Clinton, is now back for a second helping . . . and in the process doing battle with Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney for the soul of the Republican Party.

Now, I’m a liberal by bent, but I genuinely believe that this nation needs both Liberal and Conservative voices in its political discourse. We must have each to keep the other honest and true, and uncertain of its power.

But, as I watch the circus that American conservatism has become, I shudder. How can the Republican Party survive? As it falls prey to opportunists and caricatures, and leaves behind its party faithful?

And that sound you heard in the distance? Bill Buckley. Weeping in his tomb.

*


MORE TO COME










Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

Intermezzo

Hello, Everyone,

Well, today I’m supposed to be giving you “To New Mexico 3,” a.k.a., the next installment of our adventures in the Land of Enchantment. I’m just sure you’re finding them fascinating. Really, really fascinating. Downright compelling, even. You betcha. So stop snoring. And going face down into your keyboard. It distracts from the vast dignity of this situation.

Where was I? Oh, yes. I was going to write #3, but, here’s the thing, I’m running out of time. Over the next two weeks I’ve got to grade forty blue book exams, plus another forty papers, file my grades for two classes, prep another class for its first blue book exam, prepare for another class that begins two weeks from yesterday, write the syllabus for a third class that starts in July, and, oh, yes, edit between three and six chapters (depending) of a technical manual. I’m doing that last on a freelance basis. Great fun. So long as you like prose that reads sorta as follows: “The lesser wingnut of the self-steering Autopilot developmental impact environment for Closed or Semi-Open projects being restructured for OS2 compliance is probably the most important virtual fastener in the programmer’s quiver.”

I kid you not.

Still, I suppose it could be worse. I could be reading Postmodern historical theory. Or income tax forms. Or memos on torture from lawyers from the former Bush administration. This is better. But, then, so’s waterboarding.

Anyway, so I’m establishing a new kind of Xcargo. It’s called an “Intermezzo.” I call it that because is sounds much classier than, “A couple of paragraphs that I dashed off at high speed so I’ve actually got something to post at the end of the week but that’s Okay because you won’t read ‘em anyway.” Besides, it requires 31 fewer words. And in this day of resource scarcity and declining expectations it’s important for us all to conserve where we can. I think it’s very Green of me. And I ought to be proud. For being green. And I’m not even hung over. Which is when I’m usually puce. Or is that pucing? Whatever.

Oh, and there’s another reason for me to have Intermezzos. That’s because I like to have Martha, my wife, read my column before I post. She catches the occasional typo, and the rather more frequent descent into total incoherence. And when I say, “total,” I mean TOTAL. No halfway incoherent for me. No sir. When I do a job, I do it well. And incoherence is something I’m really good at. Why, I could get an advanced degree in pure gibberish. Goes along with the Ph.D. I didn’t get last year. And worth just about the same thing.

But, anyway, I like to have Martha read my material so that if I mention her in the text, she isn’t surprised when it goes live on the Blog or goes out via email. And that, in turn, cuts down on the possibility of her being insulted and taking after me with a baseball bat. Or a meat cleaver. I hate those. Terrible headaches afterwards. And, so, by showing her my text before hand she can inform me, gently, lovingly, and tenderly exactly where I’ve gone wrong. And then whack me with a frying pan. Which is much softer than a meat cleaver. Though it is, admittedly, stereotypical, but one must always applaud the maintenance of fine old traditions.

But, you see, the thing of it is that now and then Martha is as busy as, or busier than I am. She barely has time to breathe, much less go over my interminable prose. And I’m reluctant to ask her do so when she’s already flat out taking care of twenty-seven other tasks at once. For one, I hate to make her cry. For another, I worry about that frying pan. It’s getting some serious dints. Poor thing.

So, that’s why I’m introducing today the Intermezzo. It’s a shorter form of Xcargo which may be only be a couple paragraphs long but which I’ll be able to write and post in the limited time I’ve got, and with a relatively limited number of errors if Martha’s unable to read ‘em before hand. It’ll be sort of like Depth Charges, but one at a time rather than all at once.

Ergo, in future, you can look forward to Intermezzos on politics, science, philosophy, world events, art, music, literature, and other good stuff like that about which I know pretty much nothing at all. But, hey, that never seems to stop anybody else. So why should I get left out? I mean, really.

Right, so, next week, I’ll be back with a New Mexico if I’ve got time, or an Intermezzo if I don’t. But, one way or another, I shall return.

In the meantime, though, go check out my newest little venture: The Compleat Kick Ass Guide to Writing In College. You can find it at:

http://stores.lulu.com/compleatkickassguide

This is a little ebook that provides a few tips and tricks about how to survive the questionable joys of writing for university professors, instructors, lecturers and others of that ilk. And, speaking from the perspective of being one, I can assure you that some of us are very ilk indeed.

So, until next time…

Onward and upward.

mjt




Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

To New Mexico #2

Okay, everybody. This week we get to Lyndon Baines Johnson, traffic jams, toxic fogs, mutant margaritas, and, of course, how Martha didn’t whack me with a tire iron, though, God knows, she had reason.

And that’s before we get off the ground…

*

So, anyway, you’ll recall from last time that we were on our way to visit my parents in New Mexico. You may also recall that we’re on a super-tight, super-crunched, super-unforgiving schedule. We absolutely, positively, 200% have to be able to leave on Friday morning and be back on Wednesday so that I could teach on Thursday, and both of us could teach on Friday, and Martha could get to the Tufts graduation on Sunday morning, and both of us could get to our son David’s graduation on Sunday afternoon and if anything, anything AT ALL, should go wrong and delay us…we’re in deep-doo-doo with a side order of Oh-Freaking-Farpdoodles on toast.

Right. So, comes the Thursday before we leave and I have to teach a class in U.S. History at Cambridge College. Which is in … get ready… Cambridge. Surprise, surprise. You didn’t expect that, now did you? Thought not. So, little lesson for you. Next time, be on your toes.

Anyway, it’s in Cambridge. The one in America. Not the other one. Which has punts and guys who wear funny hats. And it’s a kind of boat. I mean the punts. Not the hats. And besides, that other Cambridge is in England. And nobody wants to confuse our Cambridge with their Cambridge. No siree. Because you never know where that kind of thing will stop. Why, next thing you know, you’ve got people with funny accents saying things like “Tally-ho.” Scary, isn’t it?

Where was I? Oh, yes. So, Cambridge College is just up the street from Harvard. But I like Cambridge College better. For one thing, I got a part-time job there. If I sent a vita to Harvard, well, you could hear them laughing clear to Cleveland. Though, truth to be told, I’m not entirely sure I would want to teach at Harvard, even if I could.

You see, Cambridge College teaches people who want to get a degree, gain one or more skills, and actually go out into the world and do something. Where-as Harvard…let’s just say that it is a school with a rather different clientele. I’m not saying that Harvard students aren’t scholarly, or energetic, or intelligent. But, sometimes, on occasion, at least among some of them…I feel that they are not on a journey, precisely. They have already arrived.

Anyway, I was doing a class in American history at Cambridge College. It was a good class and I liked the students, but it met at exactly 4:10 and ran to 6:30 pm. So, Martha and I had a plan. We’d get packed after we got home and then we’d drive down to Cambridge together. We live in a little town called Winchester, which is a really great place if you don’t mind suburban. Which is not to knock suburbs. I mean, hell, John Cheever made a career outta ‘em. If I could only find a bit more blatant corruption and decadence around here I’d be a happy man. So, for heaven’s sake, you guys, come up with a few dozen wife-swapping, Satan-worshipping, drug-using, alcoholic embezzlers. I’m counting on you. There are bestsellers to be written.

But, anyway, so the plan was we’d drive down, she’d drop me off, I’d go teach my class, and she’d park and go have a coffee at a local coffee shop. I’d meet her there and we’d drive over to the hotel near the airport where we would spend the night before catching the plane in the morning.

Great plan. Couldn’t be simpler. Sure fire. Idiot proof. Right?

Well. Er. Ah. Depends on the idiot. I, for instance, am a top of the line idiot. Major. Massive. I mean, the idiot proofing that I can’t unproof hasn’t been invented yet. So there, too.

Martha drops me off and I go teach my class about Lyndon Baines Johnson, the Great Society, Vietnam, and a whole bunch of other stuff that happened in the 1960s and 1970s. (I’m teaching American history from the Revolution to the 1990s. Makes for some symmetry. You got George III on one hand and George W. on the other. Kinda like bookends, you know? Or those salt and pepper shakers in the shape of Tiki Heads you got for your mother when you were eight and didn’t know better. Lot of similarities but with fewer holes in the foreheads. )

Martha, meanwhile, goes off to park.

It’s not easy to park in the area around Harvard University. Technically, it is known as Harvard Square, and it is chock-o-block full of shops and restaurants and other trendy places that attract people with very large checkbooks. This means that there’s also lots of cars there, and they all fight for the relatively limited numbers of spaces available. You can, if you are unlucky, spend a whole evening going around, and around, and around…finding nothing. I regard it as metaphorical. Sort of like my time in that doctorial program. But with fewer chances of road rage.

But, because Martha is Martha, and she finds parking lots while the rest of us are still stuck behind that garbage truck that mysteriously materialized just as we headed up the one way street, she finds spaces just exactly three feet away from the front door of wherever she wants to be. It’s quite obnoxious, really. I tell her to stop showing off. She doesn’t listen. She so rarely does. And a very good thing, too. I mean, considering the source.

And, furthermore, on the day in question she finds a lot in less time than it takes me to sneeze. ‘Course, with a nose like mine, that’s a complex process and tends to take a while longer than for normal people. I mean, just getting the sinus strain gauges up and running can take the better part of fifteen minutes. And we won’t even talk about how long it takes to get the shockwave dampeners and the muzzle flash suppressors screwed onto the nostrils. I mean, heck, I’ve been known to sneeze on Tuesday and not get any results before the following Friday.

So, anyway, Martha is driving in Harvard Square and she sees a guy pulling out of a parking lot. Great, she thinks, and she pulls over and lets him leave the lot. She notices … oh!...that as the guy’s car pulls out, there seems to be a greenish fog behind him. Poor fellow (she thinks), his car is over-heating. He might have a problem. There might be a repair issue. He ought to go to a garage. Because, of course, everyone knows that you should regularly check the oil and coolant in your automobile. And if you don’t do that, well, then, you could get into trouble. And what kind of twit wouldn’t have their car on a Regular Program Of Preventative Maintenance?

And he pulls out. She pulls in. Then, she notices something else. To wit, the fog? It’s still there. In fact, it’s getting thicker. And deeper. And smellier. And it wasn’t coming from the car ahead of her at all.

No.

It was…however… coming from . . . OUR car.

It is at this moment that my beloved wife realized EXACTLY what kind of twit wouldn’t have their car on a Regular Program Of Preventative Maintenance.

My kind.

And now I must (alas) report an unfortunate failing in my wife. I must, with deep sadness, explain that she has the habit of holding me responsible for my own actions. And for no other good reason than that I did them. And at at fault. And thoroughly to blame for the whole situation. Which is very unfair of her, I think. I mean, really, once that sort of thing gets started, where do we stop? We might have to end up holding people accountable. Which heaven knows would be a mistake. Why, if we did that, whole presidential administrations would be unworkable. And several CEOs of large corporations would be in jail instead of on beaches in tax haven countries with underage sexual partners in very little clothing. Why, it would be the end of civilization as we know it.

So, anyway, Martha gets parked and realizes that yes, indeed, my radiator is boiling over. I’d been meaning to flush the thing and/or top it off for quite some time. But. Well. You know. One thing led to another. And then a third. And two the seventh plus or minus the square root of pi. And, er, that is, I never did it.

Right, she says, sitting in the car, watching it boil.

She reaches down and hits the button that supposed to pop the hood. Then she heads out and goes to see if she can fix things. Only, when she gets to the front of the car, the hood doesn’t quiet open. You see, when the designers of this particular vehicle invested their brain cells, they put ‘em in places like the engine and safety. But the hood? Well, that’s another matter. Not a neuron got spent.

So, to open the hood, you actually have to wiggle your fingers in under the lip of the the thing and find a concealed clasp that can only be reached by a mutant orangutan with index fingers the length of a Mashie Niblick. This task is made particularly amusing, for orangutans and others, because, of course, the engine is hot. And, so, you’re having a wonderful time getting scalded while you’re also NOT getting the hood open.

Martha tries, and tries, and tries, but can’t get it open. So, she asks a guy on the street if he can figure it out. He tries, and tries, and tries, but he can’t get it open, so he asks another guy on the street, who tries, and then asks… well, let’s just say it was quite a party when it was all done. I understand they were just getting ready to call out for pizza when the hood got bored and popped open all by itself.

Okay, so now Martha had access to the radiator. The question was what to do about it. As you may or may not have guessed, getting a gallon of anti-freeze in Harvard Yard is not necessarily an easy thing. Oh, tons other stuff you can get. Miniskirts, microbrews, monographs, those, sure. But not anti-freeze. This is because no one in Harvard Square ever has car problems. Just a need for drunken Ph.D.s in miniskirts. Which is a terrifying thought, when you consider it.

The point being that there’s no anti-freeze to be found. But, Martha’s a resourceful woman and shortly discovers a gallon of distilled water at a local shop that offers such items chiefly as a means of cooling high powered, turbo-assisted, fuel-injected hyper-spatial super-bongs (but in a very scholarly way, of course). This she pours into the radiator and it stops steaming. It does go Weeee! and afterwards has a severe attack of the munchies. But it stops steaming.

Martha, however, is only getting started steaming.

Meanwhile, I’m back in my class, blissfully ignorant of the facts. As I am of so many things. It’s a long standing policy of mine. What you know can’t hurt you. Or, rather, it can, but at least you don’t worry about it before hand. And afterwards you can say it was a Learning Experience. I lie a lot.

Where was I? Oh, yes, so I’m finishing my lecture on LBJ and the Great Society and how the most liberal and compassionate president of the second half of the twentieth century yet managed to somehow get involved in the Vietnam War. Truth be told, he only inherited it, but he did keep it, and that made all the difference in this tragic world of ours.

So, I conclude my lecture and all the students go filing out with the looks of vague but total incomprehension that I so often produce in my students. Good to know I inspire them.

Then, I gather up my books and head down to the cafe. Strangely, Martha isn’t there. That’s odd, I think. But, I add, she’s probably just busy shopping and forgot the time. Found something interesting. Time just slips away. You know how women are when they get to shopping. Ha. Ha. Ha.

I look up. She’s coming through the door. I plan to tease her about her shopping. Ha. Hee. Ho.

She looks at me. I look at her. I see her expression.

Ha. Ha. Ha . . . whimper.

“You,” she says, as the comes to the table, “are going to buy me the biggest margarita on the East Coast.”

Oh, I say. Right, I add. Salt or no salt?

“With…freaking … out.”

Okay, I say, in a wee small voice.

Truth to be told, Martha is remarkably controlled about the whole business. She never once suggests what anyone else in such a situation would be perfectly justified in suggesting. Like, where exactly to put the steering wheel and how many degrees to turn it after. Oh, and here’s fun ideas about what to do with the break pedal.

Anyway, we gather up our kith and caboodle, and head off for the hotel.

Which is when the fun part starts.

Yeah. Fun. You betcha. Just a barrel of monkeys.

But that’s for next time.

Onward and upward.








Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

To New Mexico #1

Okay, folks, fasten your seat belts, put on your crash helmets, say a brief prayer, and get yourself fixed. As we used to say in the Old Country. Don’t worry. It’s not like what they do with dogs.

No. Today, I’m going to start the tale of our recent trip to New Mexico. And back. And a load o’stuff in ‘tween.

Heaps of fun.

You just wait and see.

*

So, here’s the thing: my parents are now getting on in years. Oh, they’re still hale and healthy and all that, but they are in what we so commonly and so hypocritically refer to as Their Golden Years. Though, come to think it, why not copper, zinc, or Yttrium? I’ve never known. In fact, truth be told, as it is so rarely, I’ve never no known what a Yttrium is, or how many Yitts are in a Rium and whether they’re better with mustard or sauerkraut.

But, anyway, now and then, we need to go visit my parents. This provides the opportunity for a number of things to happen, such as: a) we get to check on them, b) they get to check on us, c) Martha gets a bit of vacation, and d) I get to decide, once again, that my parents are wonderful people… who deserved a lot better kid than the piece of rotten dorf-burger that I am and it was a horrible accident of fate that I got born to them and didn’t get hatched as frog-specific toe nail fungus in Love Canal. And this is after several years of therapy. And enough Prozac to pulverize a pachyderm. Ah, Medical Science. Sigmund Freud would be proud.

Anyway, so we ought to go visit. The kicker? They are in New Mexico. We are in New England.

No problem, you say. You just get on a plane and go, right?

Well, sorta right. But there are a couple of other complications. First, both Martha and I teach. Most of my classes (in writing, as a rule) are online. So I can do those anywhere. But, this Spring and Summer I was also doing a U.S. history course that met in person and on Thursday afternoons and ran from four to six.

Martha, meanwhile, teaches at Tufts and has lots and lots classes and she can’t miss most of ‘em.

Ah, but there’s more. Martha also needs to be back from New Mexico in time to go to the Tufts graduation on Sunday, 17 May. You see, she’s faculty. And students (and their families, who pay bills) like to see faculty now and then. Preferably in caps and gowns. Makes ‘em seem so terribly learned. Little do they know. Ha. Chortle. Laugh. Etc., etc., and, of course, etc.

But, don’t tune out now, further complications are on the way. And in full living technocolor. I have to be back in town on Thursday, 14 May, to teach the last session of that U.S. History course that meets on Thursday. AND, the next morning, Friday, 15 May, at nine in the morning, I have to be downtown at Northeastern where I’m beginning a new class. Specifically, I’m doing another U.S. class, this time to fifteen Chinese exchange students. Many of whom speak very little English. But no stones tossed. My entire knowledge of Chinese boils down to “Ni hao,” which, I gather, means “hello.” At least that’s what it says on the Internet. For all I know it really means, “My left ear closely resembles a cod fish kissing a leprechaun.” Couldn’t say for sure. But it might explain some of the looks I get.

Anyway…but, we’ve still got a couple more wrinkles in the warf and woof. You remember I said that Martha had to be at Tufts on Sunday, 17 May? Well, that’s in the morning. In the afternoon, our own son, David Tillman Tucker, is ALSO graduating from college. He’s getting his Batchelor’s from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), and it’s been a long time coming, and we’ll be damned if we miss seeing him get his diploma. Well, actually, they don’t get diplomas at the SMFA graduation ceremony. They get flowers. Which, when you think about it, is sort of what you’d expect from an art school. That or a nice set of watercolors. And a brush. Or a chisel. With a cute little two ton block of marble. One to a grad. Be fun to watch ‘em carry it.

Okay, so, there you have the temporal parameters. But, there are spacial ones as well. We’re leaving from Boston’s Logan airport. That’s not something without its own challenges. Parking is expensive and there may not be any of it. Security is tight (the 9-11 attackers came from here, you’ll recall) which means lines are long. But, that, of course, is assuming that you can get to the airport in the first place. You see, Logan is basically on the same highway that leads in from the North into Boston proper. That means that the road is always, Always, ALWAYS crowded. Basically, at any one time you have one of three options: 1) bumper-to-bumper, 2) gridlocked, and 3)Bang Your Head Repeatedly With The Door So You’ll Be Unconscious And The Pain Will Go Away. (That’s one of my personal favs.)

Such being the case, it is usually easiest for us to drive to a hotel near the airport, stay the night, park the car in one of the long term lots around the area, and take a shuttle bus to ‘port in the morning. This is particularly true if it’s an early flight. At some ghastly hour. Say, three or four in the morning. Which it always is because God, in his wisdom, degreed on the eighth day of Creation that no plane shall leave Logan for Albuquerque save for at the most inconvenient times humanly (or inhumanly) possible. It’s a trial and a test for the faithful by which we shall prove our worthiness of heaven.

So, we’ve made reservations at just such a hotel.

Okay, but, now, let’s go over all this again. Let’s get it down so we’ve got it, as it were, straight.

We have to:

*Go to Albuquerque,

*BUT, we can’t leave until after six on 7 May,

*AND we have to be back no later than 13 May

*BECAUSE I have to teach a class on 14 May

*AND I have to start a new class on 15 May,

*AND Martha has to be at Tufts graduation on the morning of 17 May,

*BUT we BOTH have to be in downtown Boston that afternoon for our son’s graduation.

Got all that?

Now, you may have noticed that in all the above there ain’t much room for error. A slip up here, a slip up there, and the whole thing goes down like …well…like a bushel of bowling pins on the wrong end of a wrecking ball.

So…

Shall we have some foreshadowing here? Okay. Here it comes.

Gee. Golly. What’s that we just heard in the distance?

Why, it sounded for all the world like Godzilla and King Kong slamin’ down a couple o’ spares at the Smash & Crash Bowladrome.

Wonder what that means…

Onward and upward.




Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

Depth Charges!

Hi, Everyone.

Well, I’m back from New Mexico and I’ve got lots and lots and LOTS of stories to relate. There’s the flight, the train, the trip to Old Town, the return, and the Graduation We Almost Missed and how this might have resulted in the scragging of a subway car operator.

But…

Before I get to all that, I’d like to restart an old Xcargo tradition. To wit, today, we’re going to have a visit with the lowest form of explosive-cargo…

Death Charges!

*

So I’m really kind of fearful for the Republican Party. Oh, it’s not that the GOP is doomed or anything, despite the excessively hopeful pronouncements coming out of the DNC. Remember, just a few years ago Republicans were saying the same thing about the Dems.

But, it is true that the current party leadership seems depressingly weird. You’ll recall that Dick Cheney is leading an apparently successful crusade against Colin Powell on the grounds that he, like Mr. Obama, is not tough enough.

Thus, once more, we have the interesting image of a man who’s never gotten closer to an armed conflict than a Baghdad drive-by photo-op in an armored plated limousine accusing an honest-to-God-war-hero of cowardice.

I mean, sheesh.

That’s like Barney Fife hating on Arnold Schwarzenegger for insufficient biceps.

*

While we’re on the topic, the chap that Cheney is promoting (as the next GOP presidential candidate?) is Rush Limbaugh.

Now, I’ve nothing against Mr. Limbaugh or any other sideshow freak, but the other day I saw a video of him performing his radio show. He was bouncing, bumping, and spitting, and, God forgive me, but the only thing I could think was that he resembled a large and angry mushroom.

So, you see my point, I trust. There is just something scary about the Party of Lincoln taking as its public face…a dyspeptic fungus.

*

Speaking of Dick Cheney, is it true that he was produced when German geneticists gene spliced a pit bull and Donald Duck in mid conniption fit?

Just checking.

*

Speaking of the GOP reminds me of Arnold Schwarzenegger which reminds me of the Terminator which reminds me of the new Terminator movie (“Salvation”).

I’ve been interested in the film since it came out. I probably won’t ever see it, at least not on the big screen, though I will rent it on DVD when it comes out. I like to be able to fast-forward through the boring bits, like all that tedious plot and character development, so that I can get to the explosions. You know. The good stuff.

Anyway, when I first heard about the film, I was sure the new Star Trek would clean the Terminator’s clock. I figured that the special effects would bring in the fanboys (and girls) in droves, while the teenaged James Kirk and twenty-something Spock would get the un-fan girls (and their mothers) into the theaters as well, sort of the way that Orlando Bloom did for Hobbits and Pirates.

Now . . . I’m not so sure.

You see, I think I may have underestimated the appeal of _ Terminator: Salvation _ . I think, in fact, that it touches something real and important in the hearts of almost all men and most women.

To wit, the sincere desire to go out and blast the holy living shit outta sumthin’.


*

Actually, I’m kind of serious. I think most of us (it’s certainly true for me) really, really want the cathartic release of violence, but without moral consequences.

So, zombie movies (Dawn of the Dead), vampire movies (Blade), and Frankensteinian machines (Terminator, Matrix) are perfect. You get to destroy something without actually committing murder. You can’t kill something that’s already dead, or was never living in the first place.

But, also, I think there is another factor at work.

Specifically, I think most of us, secretly, when no one is watching, are at least a little bit on the side of the zombies, the vampires, and the killing machines.

You see, if they win…well, it’s the end of the world, but… on the other hand…

That guy that cut you off in traffic this morning, the snotty woman at the personnel office, the bully who stuffed you in your locker in eighth grade, that dipsh*t at the DMV, the highway cop that caught you doing 56 in a 55 mph zone, your ex-husband or wife or their lawyer, that pompous ass on the dissertation committee, the guy who yells into his cell phone in public places…

They all get nuked, too.

Might be worth it.


*

Actually, I’m very interested in movies from a cultural perspective. Whether they mean to or not, they tend to reflect the social discourse of our age. They reveal to us what the larger society says we can and cannot say and believe.

For instance, a few years ago I was watching the bonus features on the DVD of a famous horror film. The film in question was rooted in Catholic belief; characters went to hell and heaven and limbo, and were eternally damned for suicide (even if, or particularly if, it was actually an act of self-sacrifice designed to spare others pain and suffering).

Truth be told, it was a pretty gruesome film with a pretty gruesome conception of God, but, be that as it may, it had great special effects. In fact, the special features included an interview with one of the talented FX chiefs involved.

In the middle of the interview, the man said an interesting thing. He said that his effects may have been more successful because he was Jewish, not Catholic, and so brought a new perspective to Catholic conceptions of hell.

Now, there was nothing wrong with him saying that. Not a thing.

But…

Suppose, just for a minute, that a Catholic filmmaker were to make a horror movie based on a not terribly respectful reading of the Torah.

Can you imagine the storm of protest that would result?

*

Besides, which…

Why go to movies? If you want a real Catholic horror story, you just have to open up your copy of the New York Times or any other major newspaper in recent months. There, you will probably find a story about a major report released by the Irish government about child abuse in Catholic reform schools and orphanages. It seems, according to the report, that nuns and priests systematically raped, beat, abused, and exploited tens of thousands of children under their care.

Moreover, it seems that the larger Church made no effort to discipline the pedophiles and sadists among its clergy. Rather, it spared no expense to cover up their crimes, and, more, blackened the names of their accusers.

And this . . . THIS . . . is what we receive from those who present themselves as our moral superiors, who claim a direct link to God, and announce that they are thus empowered to judge our failings.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not just nuns and priests that I object to here. I’ve seen my share of corrupt Protestants. There have been Buddhist murderers and Hindu tyrants. We all know about the 9-11 hijackers. And, yes, Stalin and Pol Pot had their faiths as well. They were evangelical atheists in good standing.

The point being that there are an awful lot of people out there claiming divine justifications for pretty terrible things. And we all know that. We know it, and yet, somehow, we end up following them just the same.

Which makes me wonder.

Could it be that another reason that we find apocalyptic movies attractive is that we know, on some level, that when and if God comes, he’ll have the Terminator with him…

And we’ll damn well deserve what we’re going to get?


*

Onward and upward.

mjt





Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

Busy, Busy, Busy....

Okay, everyone,

This week’s column is going to be kinda short and next week’s is going to be even shorter. In fact, it isn’t going to exist at all. I’m not doing an Xcargo for the week of May 11, 2009, or for the week of May 18, 2009.

That’s because I’m busy. Very busy, Very, very busy. As in Holy Jumping Catfish-&-Cattle-Prods busy. As in I’m-never-gonna-get-this-all-done and afterwards they’ll-find-me-propped-up-in-front-of-my-computer-and-gibbering busy.

That’s because ye ole bunch-o-things are happening. Specifically, next week I’m flying off to visit my parents in New Mexico. I’m so looking forward to the flight. You betcha. The three a.m. departure times. The lines. The almost missing the plane. The friendly Homeland Securitoids with large caliber fire arms. The teeny-weenie chairs. The knees under my chin. The scrumptious airline food which now consists entirely of small indigestible nuggets of something or other that’s hawked at a penny per peanut. Golly. Gosh. Good times.

But there’s more. Before the whisper jet leaves the tarmac, I’ve got other stuff to do. Like, I’ve got to finish up editing several chapters of technical manuals. You see, since the overpaid-underworked-Academic gig didn’t pan out (no great loss, really. I look terrible in tweed), I’m trying to make a living by, first, teaching lots and lots of classes at lots and lots of different schools, and, second, doing freelance tech stuff.

The aforesaid techie stuff I’m doing right now consists of wading hip deep through a 400 page guide to a certain open source programmer’s tool with tons of easy-to-read prose like “The autodingdong pre-code process generation wingnut should be first de-pre-referenced and objectified under the GNU-non-compliant FLANGTHORB variable where Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you.”

Oh. Joy.

Actually, it isn’t as bad as reading postmodern literary criticism . . . nor the last three books of my former dissertation committee…but, on the other hand, so’s a happy afternoon spent sticking toothpicks under your fingernails.

Anyhoo, then there’s teaching. This week I’ve got to finish grading the papers from my English 1 class. And I’ve got to do the lecture for it. And I’ve got to prepare the next paper assignment. And I’ve got to get ready to do the final grades. And I’ve got to do it all while at least pretending I know what I’m doing. I don’t. Know what I’m doing, that is. Not really. And I’m proud of it. So there.

Oh, and here’s a little tip. It isn’t just me. NONE of us knows what we’re doing. Next time you’re taking a class and you wonder about your instructor, rest assured, he’s just as clueless as you think he is. Or she is. More so. Teaching is very often the art of staying just one step ahead of the class. Or running to catch up with it. Then you try to have a good attitude about it.

And there’s the rub. The nastier your instructor, the more pompous, the more often he/she refers to “professionalism,” “scholarship,” or “academic rigor,” the further behind they actually are. They’re scared (even if they don’t exactly know it consciously). So, if you’re student, and you do your very level best, and you turn in the finest paper you can possibly write . . . and he/she still grades it like it was toxic waste and suggests you pursue a career as a crash test dummy (and we’re not talking the musical kind here, buckeroo), remember, you already have your revenge. Your instructor is three quarters in the grave. And knows it.

But, anyway, after I get the English 1 class done, I’ve got to get my English 2 class ready to roll. That means I have to write several lectures, come up with a syllabus, plan my lessons, and hope to God that none of the students have already taken my English 1 class because they’ll see how much I’m basically just repeating myself dully. And I do dull well. Some would say I’m the Duke of Dull. Or the Tsar of Tedium. Or the Baron of Boring. Insert additional alliteration here and snore. Then repeat.

BUT, that’s not all. I return to Boston on a Thursday. The next day, the Friday, I get to start a whole new class. This time it’s a course in American history. You see, I’m teaching an undergrad seminar for thirty or so students . . . most of whom are Chinese. It’s part of a program, you see, by which foreign students come to colleges to Learn Our Wisdom. Boy. Have we got a surprise for them. We haven’t got any. Wisdom, I mean. We’re dumb as a brick. They should have realized that when we let Wall Street brokers loot our economy. And voted for George W. Bush. And invaded Iraq. But, apparently they weren’t watching. And we’ve already cashed the check. Now, there’s a learning experience for ‘em.

So, anyway, I’ve got to come up with ANOTHER bunch of lectures, and another syllabus, and an assigned textbook, and a passel of handouts, and several assorted readings. By next week. While editing GNU-complaint dozy doats. And grading papers. And planning English 2 classes. And flying places. God help my students. Somebody has to. Sure ain’t going to be me.

(In fact, truth be told, it’s going to be an interesting class. You see, I’ve taught a lot of Chinese students in my time. We’ve gotten along fine. But, I’ve always wondered, will the day come when, finally, we face the reality that people may be friends, and nations may be allies, but ultimately, states do not marry until death do them part. Ultimately, they seek their own ends. Will my students ever sit before me as I lecture, smiling, but with that fact in mind? Theirs is, after all, a rising power. Whereas, in the last twenty years, we have done so very much to waste our own energies, resources, and dignity.)

But, moving on…

So, that’s what I’m up to. And that’s why I’m not going to be writing an Xargo next week or the week after. It’s hard. I know. Still, buck up. I’ll return. My absence is only temporary.

But I can’t write much more at the moment. I’m too busy with all those other chores.

Oh, and something else. I forgot. There’s another thing that is commanding all my time and energy. It’s a question that haunts me, that occupies my thoughts, and demands all my attention.

To wit: If there is a didgeridoo…

Is there also one that doesn’t?

Until next time…

Onward and upward.
















Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

I’m Sooooo Confused

Okay. We all know I’m not too bright. Indeed, Dumb As A Brick springs to mind. And we’re not talking a high quality class o’ brick here, Buckeroo. Not one of those snotty red ones with pressed corners. No. We’re talking cinder block. The kind that have big empty spaces in the forehead.

That being the case, I get confused. A lot. With extra stupidity and a large side of dim. In fact, you may consider what follows today as an official SOS, Mayday, and Oh-Heck-&-Halitosis we just took a low yield nuke up the left nostril. Which is all to say that I’ve say that I’ve listed some things below which really, Really, REALLY confuse me and I’m hoping someone out there—some wise and informative soul—will explain ‘em to me.

So, put your thinking caps on, assume a learned expression, and please send me your answers ASAP. Or, failing ASAP, then just generally SAP. People say that a lot about me. He’s the biggest SAP I know, they say. Nice to know that I’m outstanding in my field…

Anyway, here goes:


*

In the news recently there have been a number of disturbing stories about environmental/animal rights terrorism. There have been multiple fire-bombings of the offices and even the homes of individuals whom activists have judged unworthy of life. A neuroscientist at UCLA who uses animals in his work had his car blown up (it was a matter of only luck that he wasn’t in it at time). Last year, another scientist AND her family were attacked in her own home by SIX masked animal rights activists. Meanwhile, the FBI has officially listed Daniel Andreas on its most wanted list. Andreas allegedly firebombed the offices of companies and organizations that he felt were anti-Earthish.

But, the people responsible for these things are just a few extremists, right? Just a few crackpots? The bad apples which spoil the barrel of quite legitimate animal rights activists? Responsible organizations, like, say, People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) would never, ever, dream of doing such things, would they?

Right?

Well, then, how to explain another story, also in the news, but somehow not receiving a lot of attention? Everyone knows about how the Obama family got a new puppy. Less know is that Vice President Biden’s family also got a dog. They bought a little German Shepard pup from a legitimate and humane breeder by the name of Linda Brown.

Now, remember, the People Who Know Best have been telling us for years that if we’re going to buy a dog, we should only buy from a Breeder. They aren’t like those nasty “puppy mills” that used to supply pet stores. So we should all give kudos to the Bidens and we should all be happy, right?

Wrong. PETA decided that the Bidens should have gotten their new dog from a shelter. Much more humane, you see. BUT, Biden is vice president of the United States. He has all these Secret Service agents around him. Hard to get through a wall of Secret Service agents. They have guns. They shoot back.

So who does PETA go after instead?

You got it, Linda Brown.

She was PERSONALLY singled out for abuse in the organization’s advertising campaigns. Her business was repeated inspected by state authorities (apparently acting on PETA’s allegations that she was running a puppy mill) and, while she was ultimately cleared, she was out some $4000 in legal fees.

She is quoted in the press as saying that she will never, ever again sell a dog to anyone famous.

Now, all of this leads one to uncomfortable places. If there is a difference between the animal rights extremists and PETA, then why has PETA attempted to ruin the life of an innocent person? How far is it removed from the firebombs of the fanatics? How close is it to the masked thugs who invaded the home of a woman and beat up her husband?

And most of all, how do we bring ourselves to believe that this organization is benign? How do we convince ourselves that it doesn’t have, at its heart, cruelty rather than kindness? That its activists are not motivated by a love of the earth, by rather overt sadism? Who delight in making other humans suffer in the name of a good cause?


*

Next thing that confuses me…

There has been quite a bit of furor of late regarding the Obama recovery plan. I don’t know whether it’s a good one or not (I can’t balance my check-book, much less understand how to keep the national economy running) but it has been interesting watching the debate itself. Most (but not all) liberals and progressives are for the plan. Most (but not all) conservatives and libertarians are against it.

But, most interesting of all has been the “Tea Parties.” Certain groups of conservatives and libertarians are presenting their opposition to government intervention into the economy as resistance to tyranny, and so they link their protests to the Boston Tea Party of the Revolution. As you’ve doubtlessly heard, they state that their goal is to “teabag the White House”—this, of course, to the great benefit of late night talk show hosts and The Daily Show. Always nice to be handed a punch line on, as it were, a silver platter.

Okay, but what is far more curious is that “the Tea Party” begins to look more and more like a political organization, perhaps even an alternative to the GOP. That’s fine…political activism is an American right . . . but where things get hinky is in the Party’s relationship with Fox News, which has (more or less) openly sponsored the movement. Indeed, despite repeated (and heated) corporate statements to the contrary, there is some speculation that Fox basically created the Tea Party in all its baggy wonder.

Oh, and Fox News itself has become famous (some would say infamous) for its ultra-nationalist, ultra-Americanist, super-patriotic commentators, weeping over the fate of the nation, and launching into barely coherent rants about crypto-communism in the Oval Office.

But . . . Fox News is owned by Fox Broadcasting…which is owned by Fox Entertainment…which is owned by News Corporation . . . which is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Now, Murdoch is (at least according to the Wikipedia entry I just scammed) now an American citizen. But, he was born Australia and spent of his career there and then in Britain where he was associated with right-wing political organizations. He only moved his company HQ to the United States in 2004.

So, here we have the Tea Party, an organization presenting itself as the defender of American values and American liberty, that is (in effect) controlled and created by an Australian multi-billionaire who has spent most of his life anywhere but America.

And nobody seems to mind.

Which confuses me.

I mean, suppose that someone from some other country, say, China or Egypt, were to move to the US, buy a TV station, and began preaching Liberalism…

Can you imagine…even begin to imagine!…the pure hell sh*tstorm that would follow?


*

Last thing that confuses me…two apparently unrelated stories.

First story: like most everyone else with access to YouTube I was stunned by the performance of Susan Boyle, the Scot who appeared rumpled and plain on a TV talent show and then proceeded to blow-away the place. Like most everyone else, I found her story inspiring and her talent amazing. And, maybe, the thing I loved most about the whole affair was the sight of the program’s smirking judges getting plastered to the wall.

However, here’s the kinky thing. Since then, I’ve started to pick up jeers in the news and on the ‘net. A number of self-described critics are saying that Boyle is some kind of fraud. Those Who Know Best have begun to say that she was not as poor, as lonely, as disadvantaged as we thought… merely ALMOST as poor, lonely and disadvantaged. Therefore, they say, we should reject her. They say she is a fake Horatio Alger story, manufactured for the sake of ratings, and that we should not consider her “real.”

How profound and insightful of them, I’m sure.

Second story: In the news today I see that two men in Michigan have been arrested for (prepare yourself) burning a six year old child with a blow torch. The report, as I have seen it, is that the two men were brothers. One of them was the child’s father. For reasons not revealed, they allegedly took the torch to the child … for amusement? As a punishment? For simple cruelty’s sake? We do not know.

The men are in jail. The child is in protective custody.

And here’s what confuses me.

Given the second story . . . given its horror … given what it may say about us as a society, why does the first story exist at all?

That is, considering the enormity of the problems facing us, all the places where we might expend our energy to protect the innocent, to heal the sick, to feed the hungry…

Why is it that Those Who Know Best, secure in their corporate offices and tenured positions, have chosen instead to slander a powerless woman . . . whose only crime has been to pursue the personal expression and personal success which, or so they tell us, are legitimate goals for us all?


*

So those are some of the things that confuse me.

For all I know, they confuse you, too. But I’m hoping they don’t. I’m hoping that you’ve got some great answers. And you won’t mind sharing ‘em. Soon. By return email. Right now.

Cause, otherwise, I might just start suspecting that maybe . . . just maybe …a whole lot of people who are telling me that they’re morally superior and devoted to all things good and wonderful and American … are, in fact . . .

As full of sh*t as a Xmas Turkey.

And nobody wants me to think that.

Do they?

Onward and upward.



~Michael Jay Tucker














Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker
All rights reserved

Scholastic Inaptitude Test: A Quickie

Just a quickie today, because it’s late in the game and I’ve got deeds to do and promises to keep and lots (and lots) of papers to grade and a chapter to edit. So, sort of as a follow-on to S*cks to be me…

I’m teaching a lot these days. Sometimes it’s in person. Sometimes it’s online. Sometimes it’s English. Sometimes it’s History. Sometimes it’s at one college, sometimes another.

Now, this is interesting because I don’t have a Ph.D. and probably never will. But, the students don’t seem to mind, particularly. And this is in spite of the fact that one of my own former professors said that I was incapable of scholarship and that I was “Unfocused.”

Maybe my students tolerate me because they aren’t particularly focused themselves. Oh, not that they’re aren’t focused on getting their degrees…their eyes are on the prize indeed…but they are not, shall we say? Homogenous. They are a diverse lot.

In just the last couple of semesters I’ve had students who were from pretty much every place on earth. There was a Hungarian, a Peruvian, five Nepalese, an Austrian, a Moroccan, a Saudi, three Chinese, one Taiwanese (“I think of myself as a citizen of Greater China”), a Japanese, several Koreans, five or six Indians, an Ethiopian, a Columbian, a Nigerian, an Israeli on leave from his army service (he was a sniper by training), a Belarusian, two Bulgarians, two Russians, a Salvadorian (“I’ve survived three earthquakes”), an Ivorian, an assortment of Brazilians, a Venezuelan (“I decided I wouldn’t go back after I was kidnapped. I mean, the second time”), and, of course, just to top it off, a very articulate gentlemen who was born in Brazil but made his first fortune in Peru, travels the world as multinational consultant and was a visiting professor at MIT. But, you see, he doesn’t have a bachelor’s. Many European and South American educational system don’t, that is, require them. So, he was in my class…

This was, of course, in addition to the usual assortment of students who were more “typical” albeit not always less colorful. There was, for instance, the woman who bred ferrets for a living, the young man who had danced professionally with the Twyla Tharp Company, the Marine Corps vet who looked as though he were 12 (he was all of nineteen) and who had earned a Purple Heart in Iraq, and one very intelligent young man who identified himself as a “member of the deaf community” and came to class each week with two signing interpreters.

I like to think we get along fairly well. I watched with some amusement while the two Bulgarians discovered one another and began, over the course of the term, a mild flirtation. Then, too, there was the delicately negotiated relationship between the Peruvian, whose parents owned a Guinea Pig farm (her research paper was on the proper way of preparing one for dinner. It seems you serve them with potatoes), and the woman who raised ferrets and was, we soon discovered, a member of PETA.

But, my story actually doesn’t involve my class, but rather one of my professors. The same one I mentioned above. The one who said I was unfocused. He is very Focused. He is Tenured. He is Outstanding In His Field. He is a Recognized Authority. I came to call him “The Hindenburg.”

Anyway, one day, before I left his program (as unfocused as ever, as incapable of scholarship as before), I was standing in a hallway and happened to be telling some friends about all my many sorts of students. He came out of an office and heard me. Then, he looked a little pained and asked, “How do you stand it?”

At first, I thought he was joking. But, a glance at his face set me straight. He meant what he said.

I stammered out something about enjoying my work, and that the students were fascinating. Meshing my world-view and theirs was a delightful puzzle. Each time I succeed in teaching them something, it was a personal victory to be savored.

My professor looked at me coldly. His mustache quivered. Then, he said, “ I suppose . . . if you’re interested in …teaching.” He made the word sound like a disease. “Those kind of people.”

Then, with a dismissive shrug, he waddled off to some class or another. There, he would face (I knew) a comfortingly monolithic community. A bland assortment of suburban youth, secure in their upper- to upper-middle class privilege, would snore comfortably and non-threateningly in the tightly linear rows of seats before him. They would offer him no challenge. He would present them with nothing unexpected. Everyone would be happily focused.

And as he left, I realized something.

I do not miss being “capable of scholarship.” I do not mind being unfocused. I would rather strive (however feebly) to be a teacher than a Tenured Authority In My Field. I would rather stay among my night students and my part-time students, at Community Colleges and Programs of Continuing Education.

Or, to put it all another way…

Given a choice between my professor’s privileged Few and my energetic, exciting, and sometimes challenging Many, I’ll take the Many.

You meet a better class of people.

Onward and Upward.

































Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

S*cks To Be Me (#9): Slip sliding Aaawwaaay

So. Here it is. The pièce de résistance. Or maybe even an extra big pièce de résistance. Or, hell, a whole damn pizza de resistance. With anchovies and whip cream. And a side of slaw. And yes, that does sound revolting. And it is one of the many reasons I didn’t become a professional chef. You can thank me later.

Anyway…as you know, I’m doing a humongous series on my adventures in the last few months of 2008. It is titled Sucks To Be Me. And I’m understating. About the sucks part. I mean, the word “Vortex” springs to mind. Insert images here of whirlpools, undertows, ships going down with all hands, and Bermuda Triangles. With or without UFOs and giant squids. Your choice.

So far, I’ve gotten through Martha’s chest wall injury, my eye surgery, a flooded basement, and getting kicked out of a certain academic program by three professors who shall remain nameless. Except, of course, for a few quick references to Larry, Moe, and Curly. And Tweedledum and Tweedledee and Tweedledumber. And The Three Walking Analogs Of Rectal Gonorrhea. But, otherwise, my lips are sealed. I’m good like that.

Today, though, we are going to get to the final little chapter of my 2008 saga. It involves ice.

Lots of ice.

Lots and lots and LOTS . . .of freaking… ice.


*

Okay, so when we left off last time, we’d just had an ice storm. I had rushed outside to move the cars before Tom . . . the really nice guy we hired to plow the drive . . . arrived.

You see, as I said last time, we live near the top of a little hill where (in effect) three different roads intersect. The city snowplows coming from three different directions drop their snow . . . here. Which is how we normally end up with drifts of the stuff in our driveway that are “as high as an elephant’s eye.” Or, at least as its scrotum. Which is really more appropriate to the story. At least, when you think about it.

Most of the time, I go out with my handy little shovel and whittle that all away . . . after six or seven days of backbreaking labor. But, this time, because of the eye surgery and a few other facts (like realizing that I’m, shudder, 52 and not 25), I allowed Martha to convince me (she only had to bash me with the snow shovel two or three times) to hire someone with a plow truck to do it for us.

Ah, but the kicker is that to let Tom plow the drive, we have to get the cars out of it first. This usually means my hurriedly shoveling enough of the snow away so that I can back our cars out and then park them on the street while he does the rest.

Now, some more background. We have three cars. Two of these are Hondas. The other is a sporty little Toyota that used to be Martha’s pride and joy. She’s a car fanatic and she particularly loved her little Celica. The problem was that it is no longer easy for her to get into and out of it, so, a while ago we decided to get a more sensible vehicle and sell her old one.

That was the plan. It has been sitting in the driveway ever since. Somehow we never get around to selling it. Funny thing about that. And I’ve caught Martha standing in the driveway at mid-night, petting the car, and telling it not to worry because mama’s right here.

So, that’s the three cars.

I run outside to move them.

Then, I stop running.

However, I do NOT stop moving.


*

Everything . . . EVERYTHING … is covered with a sheet of ice. It had sleeted during the night and now the world is doing a pretty good impression of Ice Station Zebra. The sidewalk is under about a inch of the stuff and I seem to be drifting along, gently, toward the curb.

Well, “gently” may be a bit much. More like . . . well, did you ever hear that joke about the dancing chicken? The one they put on the hot plate? (“What do you think makes the chicken dance?”) Sort of like that. But with fewer feathers and more squawking.

*

I finally managed to come to a stop ‘round abouts the lamppost. I then take careful stock of the situation.

Oh, I say. Gosh, I add. Then I say something else. I will not record what it was. Suffice to say that it made some of the ice melt. And turned the air blue. And sent mothers rushing to cover the ears of the innocent young children. Who, of course, already used words like that and were texting their friends about the boring guy who didn’t even know how to swear properly.

Anyway, I finally made it to the cars and, after much bashing of ice off doors, I get them open and began my moving operations. Mine is a CRV and has four wheel drive, so it was pretty easy for me to get the thing out of the drive way and parked on the street. Martha’s had new snow tires, so it did pretty well, too.

That left . . . the Celica.

I got in. It sneered at me. I started it. It chortled. I started to back out. It began to giggle.

*

It was when I backed all the way out and was in the street that I realized something interesting was happening.

To wit… I was sliding.

I don’t mean that I was sliding forward. I don’t mean I was sliding backward.

I mean, I was sliding sideways.

I mean, the car was sliding SIDEWAYS…

I mean, I’m in the car and it is sliding In The Street . . . SIDEWAYS.

As in, the driver’s side door is even now headed toward the fence of the guy who lives down where the street curves to the left.

As in, yes folks, step right up… I’m screwed.


*

Now, I’ve been driving cars on the ice when they have decided to skid nose first into something.

And, I’ve been driving cars on ice when they have decided to fish tail their way into oblivion.

But I have never . . . ever . . . been sitting STILL in a car, and then had it slide. Sideways.

If you’ve never tried it, I suggest you give it a shot. It is a wonderfully quick way to get religion.

*


Somehow, I managed to get the car slowed down enough to point its nose down hill and toward the main street. Then, I managed to drift it to the intersection and make a right hand turn.

Crisis averted, right?

Well, no. ‘Cause, of course, I still have to get the car back UP the hill.

Okay . . . I’m not a great driver on snow. I’m not used to it. It’s particularly annoying because Martha drives in snow really, really well. So much for my macho image. Well, not that I had much of one anyway, but, it’s the principle of thing.

But getting back to my story…

I have to think this out. There is a short side of the hill and a long. I’ve just come down the short. But, it’s pretty steep and I don’t think I’ll be able to get the little car up it again . . . at least, not given the ice.

But if I drive down the main street a block, and make a right turn, then I’m back on our street and the Long Side of the hill. If I can get moving fast enough maybe I’ll be able get back up to our house.

Brilliant, I think.

I go down the block, I make my turns, I get into position, and put my foot on the gas!

By God! I find myself moving up the hill like a Celica-stallion! I’m sliding a little here and there, but I’m doing it! By God, I’m doing it!

And then…

This little old lady lives down the way. She is 339 years of age. And three quarters. She drives a huge Detroit beast of that sort that my son and his friends used to call a “Pimpmobile.” She has never been known to go faster than 25 mph. On the freeway. In the high speed HOV lane.

It is this exactly at this moment that she elects to exit her driveway. Into the road. In front of me. At a snappy six or seven miles an hour. And then, of course, she begins to slide backwards. Towards me.

At the last second I managed to get my car off to one side . . . well, technically, into a snow bank, but who’s being technical? She drifted on past me down the hill. She gave me a friendly little wave.

I think I heard later she finally stopped somewhere around Providence, Rhode Island. I understand she’s bought a condo there.


*

Okay, I say to myself. We’ll try this again.

I get the car dug out of the snow bank, drift back to the bottom of the hill, and once again, start the dash up the ski slope … I mean, the road.

And once more, I’m doing it! I’m doing it! I’m dashing along like Santa on Steroids! I’m almost to the top of the hill…

And then…

You know the guy on your street whose got no neck but lots of derriere? The guy who bought the pit bull so he’d have the meanest dog on the block? The guy who has a gun rack over his Jacuzzi? The guy who bought a four-wheel/four-door stretch luxury pickup truck (with DVD player) that he needs like a hole in the head because he never takes it anywhere ‘cept maybe the Mall? The guy who you’d like to ask, sorta in passing, Say, Just How Small Is Your Penis, Anyway?

Well, as I’m going UP the hill, our version of that guy in his shiny four-wheel drive is coming DOWN the hill, at high speed, taking his half of the road from the middle….

Wanna guess who ends up in the snow bank again? Wanna? Huh? Wanna?


*

Anyway, I finally make it back up the hill. I get there just about the time Tom, the plow guy, arrives.

He watches me fish tail into a spot sort of in front of our house. I roll down my window. He rolls down his window. “Like to a buy a car?” I ask. “Cheap?”

He shudders. “Think I’ll pass,” he says.

*

With Tom’s help, and quite a bit of sand, I finally get the Celica in place. Then, the driveway gets plowed. And everyone’s happy. Or, happier, anyway.

I stagger back into the house. Martha meets me and says, “You know, in the all the time you were out there, I didn’t see a single City snowplow or sand-truck. I think you ought to call the department of public works and complain.”

For a moment, I consider it. Then, I realize I already know what they’ll say if I do. They’ll apologize and then add, “We tried to get up your street an hour ago, but some damn fool in a Celica was sliding down it sideways and blocked the way.”

No, I think. I’ve suffered enough. Besides, we have a bottle of tequila in the cabinet. And it’s calling my name.

*

So, that was (mostly) the last of my adventures for 2008. There were a couple of more snowstorms, but no more sleet. Christmas came and we enjoyed it hugely. New Year’s followed, and we bid the old year farewell.

Actually, it wasn’t so much bidding it farewell as hoping we’d never see anything quite like it again. But, then, it probably doesn’t want to see us, either.

But, since then, things have been quite a bit quieter. My new bionic eye works fine. Martha’s gotten over the chest wall injury. The basement’s dry and the appliances work. I’m teaching and writing . . . though, I’m still trying to figure out what to do about my former dissertation committee. I had thought of inciting a crazed mob to grab torches and pitchforks and head up to the castle to scrag the good doctors Von Frankenstein. But, alas, all the lynch mobs I know are heading over to Wall Street. All those bankers, you see, taking bonuses…

I guess I can understand. It’s all a question of priorities.


*

So, that was the end of 2008. At least for me.

But…

Let me be serious for half a moment. I called this series Sucks To Be Me. But, come, it was hardly that bad. The eye surgery was scary, but it proved benign. Martha’s injury was painful, but, over time, she recovered. The appliances were (briefly) an inconvenience. But, they were only an inconvenience. I can survive washing dishes. My dissertation committee did me real economic and emotional harm. But, in the end, they were no more significant than any schoolyard bully. Perhaps it is true what they say about the banality of evil. Perhaps small evils are the most banal of all.

All in all, not so bad…

At least I do not know famine and slaughter, as does so much of the world. At least I do not have AIDS/HIV, the way that millions have here and abroad. At least I am not in a war zone.

Which makes me wonder . . .what would it take . . . how much effort would it be . . . to make my problems the worst the world knows?

It may be that the price cannot be paid. The effort would be too vast. The intent is too utopian.

And yet…

And yet . . .

Would it not be a lovely thing to try?

*

Onward and upward.



















Copyright© 2009 Michael Jay Tucker