Recently in Rant Category

Driving down US-29 this morning on the way to work, I spotted a disabled car along the side of the road. Further on down US-29 I saw a guy carrying a gas can in the direction of the parked car. In an instant, that bear trap I call a brain thought "I'll bet that guy ran out of gas."

That got me to thinking. I thought of all those times I had run out of gas. All those times I've been forced to walk from my inoperative car, gas can in hand, to go get more fuel. All those times I've run out of gas.

Except there are no times I've run out of gas.

Never. Not once, ever, in 37 years of driving, have I run out of gas. How can you run out of gas? The gauge in the car tells you how much remains. All you have to do is look at it. But it's broken you say. Well then, you get it fixed and keep track of your miles using a pad and pencil until you do. Only a totally unobservant ignormus could run out of gas. To run out of gas, your obliviousness has to be so enormous that doing so is almost wanton evil.

Not that I'll get any takers after that tirade, but how about you? Have you ever run out of gas?

We'd all love to hear about it.
K-

National
Governor Mike Huckabee yesterday apologized to Mitt Romney for disparaging Romney's Mormon religion. Gov. Huckabee caused the issue in published comments when he innocently suggested that according to Mormon teaching, Jesus and Satan are brothers. Presumably the apology was not over this specific point of Mormonism - Mormons really do believe Jesus and Lucifer are brothers (cf. D&C 76:25) - but that he brought up religion at all. Nevertheless, this is exactly the kind of political discourse our Founding Fathers wanted: presidential candidates cowed into defending their ways of worshiping God by a powerful minority determined to impose its religious tenets as a test for holding public office. May all Republicans rejoice!

Local
The demise of Columbia, Maryland's, Christmastime poinsettia tree has caused not only a little sadness in Howard County but a protest as well. For forty Christmases, the cultural, social, intellectual, and spiritual heart of Howard County's planned community - The Mall in Columbia - has boosted community Yuletide morale by providing Columbians with a huge poinsettia "tree" at the center of this venerable establishment. Unfortunately the Mall's new out-of-town management ditched the beloved tradition in favor of a tacky, crass, and tawdry "Santastic" experience (Where Santa believes in you!). Brokenhearted Columbians, desperate for solace, succor, and any last shred of the true spirit of Christmas, have been found as far away as Arundel Mills Mall in a futile attempt to regain the magic.

Sports
Major league baseball is issuing a report today naming names in the ever-growing steroid scandal. Evidently some pretty big names are going to be mentioned. Baltimore Oriole's-own Jay Gibbons has already admitted to steroid use and has been suspended for 15 games at the start of next season. Other Orioles are almost certainly going to be named. But you know what? So what else is new? Buzz was pitch-perfect on this one: Marion Jones was the last straw. Now I believe all world-class athletes - no matter the stripe, no matter the sport - are on steroids. I figure that kid who won the national spelling bee is on steroids.

Science
Scientists and anthropologists now understand why pregnant women don't tip over like bowling pins. Researchers from Harvard have discovered that skeletal adaptations of the female lower back can be found in early hominid fossils. These adaptations help relieve strain on the female lumbar region as women naturally lean back during pregnancy. Hominid women so equipped would be better adapted to their environment than hominid women without. It also explains the apparent lack of beer-gutted australopithecine men in the fossil record.
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When you're my age - twilight years, kids gone, nothing but cheap thrills to keep you going - pet peeves take on significantly more importance in your life. You nurse them. You give them names. You join clubs so you can talk with other like-minded pet-peevers. I'm a champion pet-peever and I cherish mine. I have a couple of pet peeves with hats on them.

Take those disposable roadside signs, for instance. Real estate, estate sales, yard sales, garage sales, garage roofs, roof repair, car repair, junk cars, junk houses, junk itself, you name it, those 2'x3' disposable signs appear at every intersection of every goddamn road in Howard County. They are a major pet peeve of mine. The signs are ugly, block my view, and have no business being posted on public thoroughfares. Arrogant, stupid, I'm-just-gonna-do-what-I-feel-like bozos with something to sell put up these signs with absolutely no accountability. These people are nothing more than spammers and litterers. Remember Alice's Restaurant? People won't sit next to litterers. People move away from litterers. That's how reprehensible litterers are.

Turns out I'm not alone.

Led by our clear-sighted, forward-thinking, shiny-green county executive, Ken Ulman, an army of highway workers is this week - today - as we speak, sweeping Howard County clean. Sweeping clean our roadways of commercial blight! Sweeping clean our intersections of vertical spam! Sweeping clean our median strips of unnecessary signs! Sweeping clean our neighborhoods of every disposable placard they can find! Sweeping clean the Howard countryside of all that unwanted, despicable, advertising! I'm renewed! Invigorated! Reborn!

It's the rapture! I feel it! Hallelujah!!! Give God praise and glory!

Now if Ulman could only do the same thing with movie talkers.
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For my junior-year literature seminar, my professor chose several works of science fiction for us to read. At first I was leery. A science fiction seminar sounded dangerously trite to me. I considered transferring out of that section into a seminar with a more conventional syllabus. I only stayed because nothing else fit my schedule.

I didn't much like science fiction. Unlike most nerdy, geeky, teenage engineer wannabes, I pretty much detested it. I could never understand what all my nerdy high school friends found so enthralling about science fiction. They snorted the stuff. I thought the whole genre was crap. No, worse than that. It was stupid crap.

But after reading Earth Abides, Stand on Zanzibar, The Left Hand of Darkness, and even the monumentally pretentious, self-important Dune, I discovered science fiction wasn't all crap. You could have reasoned, intelligent discussions. The seminar motivated me to seek out more quality science fiction.

So when this book was published, I bought it. Shikasta sounded so interesting from the cover. I recognized the author's name, Doris Lessing. It was published by Alfred A. Knopf, not Dell. Even the cover looked interesting. Surely this was quality science fiction.

But I could never get into it. Despite several attempts, I found the book dry and boring and pretentious. For me, Shikasta failed as fiction, science or otherwise. Undaunted, I then bought this book, the second in Lessing's Canopus in Argos: Archives series. I hoped that by having a series of books, I'd be compelled to read the first, move on to the second, and not be out $40.

Nope, didn't work. I now had two dry and boring science fiction books from a dry and boring science fiction series. The books were just more crap from the science fiction genre. I eventually pitched both. I decided I'd never again waste my time looking for - let alone reading - science fiction.

Today Doris Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Shows you what I know. If I had only realized that Lessing's dry, boring science fiction was Nobel-Prize-quality literature! I guess the Swedish Academy sees more in Shikasta than I ever did. Am I mortified. So today, if you were to ask me my opinion about science fiction, what would I say? That's easy.

"Yeah, it's crap. Nobel Prize-winning crap."
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Yesterday, Maryland's highest court upheld a statute defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman. It was a close vote: 4-3. Gays cried, traditionalists exulted.

The court certainly didn't close the door on the same-sex marriage issue in Maryland. It merely punted the whole thing into the lap of the legislature. "In declaring that the State's legitimate interests in fostering procreation and encouraging the traditional family structure ... our opinion should by no means be read to imply that the General Assembly may not grant and recognize for homosexual persons civil unions or the right to marry a person of the same sex," said Judge Glenn T. Harrell Jr., who wrote the majority opinion.

The same-sex marriage issue does merit discussion. In the Maryland case, same-sex couples argued that the Maryland law is a form of sex discrimination. Like the court, I don't really see it this way. Currently everyone has the right to marry someone of the opposite sex and no one has the right to marry someone of the same sex. We all have the one right; we're all denied the other. There's no discrimination against any one group. That this situation works out to the satisfaction of heterosexuals and not of gays is almost beside the point. Same-sex marriage is such a big expansion of the rights of everyone we need debate. What is the impact to society? We need to discuss it. Same-sex marriage is not the no-brainer some folks - both conservative and liberal - want it to be. In this case, the legislature is the proper place to begin.

Personally I have no problem with same-sex marriage. If two people want to create a stable, loving family unit why should society stop them? The high divorce and teen pregnancy rates seen in this country as well as the amount of spouse and child abuse do not lead me to think hetero-marriage is the noble, pro-family, society-sustaining, life-affirming institution traditionalists suggest it to be. The notion that marriage is for producing children has never been anything but antiquated. Senior citizens get married all the time without any intent (or capability) of producing offspring. All the hysterical, slippery-slope predictions suggested by traditionalists ("What's next? Marrying animals? Marrying dead people?") are nothing but canards. And please, please, please don't wave your Bible in my face and shout about biblical injunctions and abominations before God. Two verses plucked from a Pauline letter, devoid of any historical context, are not a sound basis for public policy. We need a 21st-century solution for all of society not just conservative Christians.

I expect the issue to surface again when the House of Delegates begins meeting in January. Gay couples are smarting from yesterday's ruling and religious zealots want to seal current law in the state constitution. The legislating will be difficult. But in the end, the fair and compassionate thing to do is ensure that everyone in Maryland is treated as equally as possible by the law.

I'll keep you posted.
K-

I was able to turn a recent blog entry into a letter to the editor in today's Baltimore Sun. At least my blogging was good for something. You can see what was published here.

I'm always happy when one of my letters is printed but I really hate when they massage my words. Today's letter, for instance, is not how I originally sent it in. I won't claim the edited version is better: I'm a serious blogger for heaven's sake! I'd like to meet the guy who modified my words. It better not have been some snot-nosed intern blue-lining my prose and looking for clichéd writing. I always avoid clichéd writing!

Like the plague.
K-

One of the great things about having a personal blog is that you can comment on anything you wish. Whether you have any credibility in the subject or have any business even proffering an opinion doesn't matter. It's your blog and if you want to go off... well people know where the back button is.

So it is with this post. I've got no real business commenting on this but I feel like it anyway.

I've been watching Don Imus flail and thrash around after his "nappy-headed hos" comment about the Rutgers women's basketball team. Imus claims he was trying to be funny. I don't know, I didn't hear it. I've never heard Imus on the radio and I've only occasionally surfed by him on MSNBC, though I'm certain had I heard the comment, I wouldn't have thought it funny.

Now let me be clear. I don't like talk radio. And my going-in opinion is that if you're a talk radio personality, you're pretty much of a dickhead. Don Imus, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, or Diane Rehm, I don't care who you are or what you talk about, if you're in talk radio and you're talking to me, we negotiate up from dickhead.

So had the "ho" comment come from a normal human being possessing some semblance of conscience, it could only be viewed as racist, mean-spirited, cruel, and undeserved. But it didn't. The comment came from a talk radio personality. That's what those people get paid to do. Make base, contemptible comments posited as humorous, trenchant observations. Imus was just doing his job... validating the thoughts and prejudices of his small-minded listeners.

For now, Imus will don the brown helmet and make the mea culpa rounds. People will lament the coarsening of society and wag their fingers at the medium. Some people will be understandably - and properly - angry and indignant. But I don't see Imus losing his job over this. The whole thing will probably attract listeners.

Listeners who should be ashamed of themselves.
K-

I like to think I'm a moderate when it comes to Nanny-Statism. I've no problem with the government looking out for my health and well-being, but only up to a point. For instance, Howard County just recently banned smoking in all county bars and restaurants making it the fourth jurisdiction in the Baltimore-Washington metro area to do so. That's good.

But now a Maryland doctor and a consumer group have sued KFC in an effort to stop the chicken chain from cooking with high-fat, partially hydrogenated oil. That's bad.

Not that I'm advocating the use of trans-fats over healthier alternatives. And I'm not an especially big fan of KFC (although I do start salivating whenever I think about those fried potato wedge things they serve). It's just that everyone knows what they're getting into when they dine in a KFC. The chicken is fried, the potatoes are fried, the biscuits are fried, it's all fried. That's why people go there... to get fried food. We're not going there to eat healthy food. We are choosing to eat not-healthy food. We step carefully in the store so as not to slip on the greasy floors. Grease is what we want.

Seems like an intrusion into individual choice for some judge to order KFC to adjust its menu. The doctor says he is suing to force KFC to change its cooking practices "for my son and others' kids, so they may have a healthier, happier, trans-fat-free future." A healthier, happier future at a KFC? You've got to be kidding me. Here the Nanny State is going too far and I hope the suit gets tossed. There's a conscious choice here and everyone knows the consequences. Common sense will work.

Next they'll be going after cheesesteaks and meatball subs.
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