Tired of This Campaign

Perhaps you have noticed that I haven't written much about the election lately. Last night there was a primary in Wisconsin and I should probably have an opinion about the Cruz and Sanders victories. I should, but I don't. I'm tired.

It has been mentally exhausting watching this primary season. While some of it has been entertaining, much of it has been an embarrassment. The further we get along in the process, the more it becomes clear that some sort of fix is either already in or is being currently devised, especially on the Democratic side of things. Poor Bernie Sanders is out there firing kids up and hustling his a** off, but Hillary just plods along with that knowing, maniacal laugh of hers, secure in the knowledge that she has bought everyone who matters off. Over at the GOP, the grand poobahs are spending money like its going out of style trying and finally succeeding in destroying Donald Trump. The current beneficiary is Ted Cruz, but those same poobahs hate him almost as much as they hate The Donald. A brokered convention seems a sure bet at this point, and the chances are high that neither Cruz nor Trump will be the nominee. So, all those rallies, all those speeches, all those debates will count for...nothing. This isn't how my 12th grade government teacher described the democratic process, but that was a long time ago. So...I'm tired.

Yesterday, my daughter asked my opinion of this meme type thing that came from the Bernie Sanders website describing how he planned to pay for all of his policy presents to the American people. First thing I thought was, well...at least he is admitting that it's gonna take a boat load of money to pull off. Kudos to him. It was an enlightening list of tax increases, all of which assumes that the targets of these higher taxes will never change their behavior to avoid paying them, a classic mistake of tax increasers. Most of the items listed would raise chump change. But the two biggies were both enormous new levels of taxation on income which would effect almost every demographic in America. That's fine and all. I mean, if you want a government to provide stuff to you, you've got to be willing to pay for it at some point. But then my daughter asked me why it is that most of Europe has governments that do these things? Why are most of them so into the welfare state and we are mostly not? I explained that most of Europe moved quickly to the left after WWII, having lost so many of their men in that horrible conflict, and with many of their cities in ruins, a strong and paternalistic government was for them a necessity. We, on the other hand, lost a fraction of our men, and none of our infrastructure was destroyed. And by the end of the war, Americans had grown weary of the overbearing excesses of much of the New Deal. We went the other way...it was time to make some money. The next two decades saw America grow into an economic juggernaut that left Europe and the rest of the world in the dust, despite the fact that we helped rebuild Europe through the Marshall Plan, and our defense budget became the defense budget for all of Europe essentially, since NATO was basically the United States Army.

But, that was then. This is now. Maybe my country has changed to the point where we don't want to be the world's street cop any more. Maybe we want a much smaller defense budget. Maybe we have changed to the point where we no longer desire the freedom to create and innovate if it carries with it the freedom to fail. Maybe we are ready for a large benevolent state that provides cradle to grave care for its citizens. Surely, such a state would always be benevolent, right?

So, I suppose I've grown  weary of always being the guy who defends free enterprise and extols the virtues of limited government to a world that is increasingly not interested in either. My quaint views seem to have gone the way of the ideas of our founding fathers, curiosities in the Museum of Antiquities.

What a Weekend!

I had a great weekend. First, I pulled off my April Fool's prank perfectly. Then I celebrated my birthday with a couple of meals out with family and friends. Finally, my son sent me an amazing music video of his own creation, which I have played over and over for the past two days. Now, for the details...

Several years ago, I introduced the bright orange ping pong ball to my work mates. I bought hundreds of them and boobie-trapped all sorts of things with them on the big day. One of my buddies at work is particularly susceptible to attack. A few years back I got him three different times. I perched a container of ping pong balls precariously on the top of his office door. When he entered that morning, obliviously on his cell phone, he was showered from above by 100 of them. Later, I had deliberately removed all the paper from the copier, making it necessary to get a fresh ream from the cabinet above the machine. Only, I had filled the cabinet with...you guessed it...100 more. As fate would have it, it was Lynwood who got hit. Finally, later on in the day, I was able to place 100 more in the cabinet above the coffee maker. Knowing that Lynwood enjoys an afternoon cup, I emptied the coffee jar of its contents, forcing him to open the cabinet to get more. Bam!! The trifecta!!!

So this past Friday, I played it very low key. Lynwood was wary all morning, as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs, but when lunch time came and nothing had happened, he began to relax. However, earlier, during his morning trip to the bathroom, I knew I had a ten minute window to swipe his keys from his desk and fill the cab of his truck with hundreds of strategically placed orange ping pong balls. The resulting hilarity was filmed by two different cameras and was posted on Facebook on Friday. The best part is, it's not even over!! I can safely share this because my man Lynwood isn't on Facebook. In maybe a couple of months, he will find cause to open his glove compartment, maybe when he gets pulled over by a cop for speeding. When he does, 100 beautiful orange ping pong balls will rain down, providing comic relief for the cop, and for me something close to a Christmas in July moment. 

Despite the fact that I paid an insane amount of money to educate him, my son's musical training never gets used for my benefit. Asking him to perform a song for his family usually nets me...nothing. Since he started dating Sarah, a vocal performance major in college, I have been pestering the two of them to sing a duet for me. Thanks, no doubt, to Sarah's insistence, I finally got my wish on the morning of my birthday. The two of them recorded a duet of that classic song from the Movie, The Jerk..You Belong To Me. Patrick played the keyboard, and the two of them sang beautifully. But then, just like in the movie, Bernedette Peters' trumpet solo was performed by Patrick's roommate, Elias, who burst through the door at the perfect moment. Then, some guy I didn't know strolls in playing a green ukulele at the end. As of this morning the video has 4,000 views. Maybe 25 of them are mine!

So, a wonderful weekend. It was still strange not seeing either of my kids on my birthday. But, you can't have everything, right?

The Ten Best Beatle Songs...(show your work)

I blame my brother. He was ten years older and ten times cooler than me in 1964, and so I wanted to be just like him, which meant I had to become a huge Beatle fan. There we were on the living room floor, huddled in front of our RCA Victor black and white tv with the tin foil wrapped around the antenna watching Ed Sullivan. Our parents were on the sofa, arms crossed, looking throughly disgusted. Then..."close your eyes and I'll kiss you, tomorrow I'll miss you..." It was all over but the shouting.

So, today I submit for your consideration...the ten best Beatle songs of all time, along with my rationale for each. If you disagree and think you can do better, by all means, have at it. Just to clarify, this is a list of the ten best, however, the order in which they appear is random, since it would be a metaphysical impossibility to pick one over the other as the all time greatest. Here we go...

1. Revolution

    That mesmerizing electric guitar that gets more and more distorted as the song progresses, and the fantastic keyboard by Nicky Hopkins.

2. If I Fell

    Beautiful harmony

3. I Saw Her Standing There

    A rollicking, toe-tapping blast. About the most fun song of all time.

4. Norwegian Wood

    Evocative lyrics and haunting melody..always a wicked combination.

5. You Can't Do That

    Unlike another famous song, this one has the perfect amount of cowbell.

6. Oh! Darling

    The best vocals of Paul McCartney's long and storied career, especially the pitch perfect shoutout to Little Richard.

7. Here, There, and Everywhere

    Beautiful melody, touching lyrics, and stirring harmony.

8. In My Life

    Might be John Lennon's finest composition, and George Martin's piano solo was perfect.

9. Don't Let Me Down

    Brooding Lennon at his best, and Billy Preston's keyboard is magical.

10. A Day In The Life

     Probably the most creative and original recording in their library of brilliance. Masterpiece material.

What a foolish exercise this was! What could I possibly have been thinking?? How is it possible to construct a list of the best Beatle songs and leave off Let It Be, Hey Jude, the She Came In Through The Bathroom Window/Polethene Pam/Golden Slumbers compilation, and Here Comes The Sun?? Oh well, what's done is done.

Things I Never Thought I Would Live To See

My Dad used to start conversations with the line, "I never thought I'd live to see the day when..." Since tomorrow is my birthday, it's my turn to give it a try.

I never thought I'd live to see the day when...

1. The Cubs were the consensus preseason pick to win the World Series.

2. I would type the word genderqueer on my blog.

3. A witless, bloviating, filthy rich, congenital liar would be poised to win the Presidential nomination of both American political parties.

4.  A police force of a modern democratic state would threaten it's people with a home visit if they were caught saying something unnecessary* and unkind on social media.

5. Dodgeball would be something that adults cared about.

6. I would be handed a six page beer menu at a restaurant.

7. That said menu would contain not one beer that I had ever heard of.

8. The wisdom of the world, all four thousand years of recorded history and the accumulated scientific knowledge of all of civilization could be accessed from a device that fits in my pants pocket.

9. One of the most valuable companies in the world got so by convincing millions of people to pay $4.50 for bitter, acidic coffee.

10. Tattoos would become such a thing for people not in the Navy or members of a motorcycle gang.

Well, that's a decent start. Even though I will turn only 58, another line I heard my Dad say once bears repeating..."If I knew I was gonna live this long I would have taken better care of myself!"

*- note to Scotland policemen...all of social media is unnecessary.

A Morning Thunderstorm

The rain is coming down and soft rolls of thunder are drifting in from the west, making this a wistful morning. Lucy isn't a fan of wistful. She slinks around, lower to the ground than is necessary, alert for the next peal of thunder, like a battle-fatigued GI waiting for another incoming mortar round. I try to reassure her that everything is fine, but she isn't buying it. She trembles from head to toe, hunkering down in our closet for the duration of hostilities. It gets darker suddenly, a large storm cloud loaded with rain hovers overhead, blocking the sun, then empties its payload in a mighty rush of wind and fury.  Somewhere up there a wave of thunder is born and becomes an adolescent ten seconds later, and by the time it shakes the windows of my house it has transformed into an angry old man. The raindrops get larger and more determined, splatting on my sidewalk like tiny Kamikaze pilots onto the deck of the Intrepid. By this afternoon it will be sunny, and the rain brought by this storm will begin doing its life giving work. Why we are not amazed by this is anybody's guess.

My Take on Bathroom Laws

Over the past 24 hours I have taken a hard and quite bizarre journey into the new world of gender identity. In order to make sense of the controversy surrounding the bathroom debate in North Carolina, I had to wade through the new sexual identity lexicon. I'm still quite sure that I don't understand any of it, but here they are, just in case you're wondering:

Transgender, pansexual, bisexual, asexual, cisgender, intersex, queer, genderqueer

Incidentally, approximately 99.7% of us are not transgendered, so therefore, not subject to either the protections or violations of this North Carolina law, depending on which side of this issue you happen to be on. In other words, most of us are cisgender. Despite the minuscule number of people involved, apparently Charlotte, North Carolina is the epi-center of transgender life in America since that city saw fit to craft a law that allowed its citizens to use whichever bathroom they feel most comfortable with, rather than the one which matches what's on their birth certificates, or as the Trans folks like to say, "the gender you were assigned at birth." I found this phrase amusing, since it conjured up an image of some gray haired old kill joy arbitrarily assigning gender on a spiteful whim, rather than by just looking and saying, "Ok, that one's got a penis. Male...check!

Anyway, once the Governor of the State got wind of what the city of Charlotte was up to, he hastily called the state assembly into special session to put a stop to it by passing, he insists with bipartisan support, NC house bill 2. This bill requires that all North Carolinians use the bathroom that corresponds with the gender identification on their birth certificate. If someone who has actually gone to the trouble of having all of the operations necessary to become fully, physically transgendered, they could have their birth certificates changed and use their new preferred sexual identity bathroom. If they haven't bothered to have their birth certificates changed, then they will be in violation of this new law. So a person who was born female but identifies as male, would have to go the ladies bathroom. Conversely, a person born male, but who identifies as female, would have to visit the men's room.

 I blame all of this on indoor plumbing. You didn't have these types of problems in the days of outhouses. Back then, the only thing anyone was concerned with come bathroom time was coming out alive! This is what happens with all of these fancy new gadgets. Somebody developes advanced plumbing methods and pretty soon you've got long rows of shiny urinals as far as the eye can see. It was a recipe for disaster from the beginning!

Couple of things...I don't understand what horrible wrong the Charlotte law was trying to remedy. Has there been an uptick in sexually charged bathroom attacks throughout the city? Or is this a solution in desperate need of a problem? I mean, we're talking .3% of the population, right? Maybe the LBGT crowd figured that they've been on such a winning streak lately, what the heck? Why not go for bathroom equality? But, I also can't quite understand what the North Carolina Governor was aiming at with his law either. Here's why.

Ok, when I pop in to your garden variety public bathroom, I'm a pretty single minded guy. I'm thinking, this place is disgusting, why didn't I go before I left the house! My mission is to find a urinal which is farthest away from any human as possible. If not, I want the one next to the best dressed, least odiferous human. Once in place, my eyes are front and center baby, there's no turning to the right or to the left. I'm not interested in anybody else's work, I'm trying to set the all time land speed record for getting the hell out of a public bathroom, that's all! Now, if the Charlotte law were the law of the land, my chances of sidling up next to a transgendered man are roughly as high as my chances of winning the lottery while juggling chainsaws, as I walk on a tightrope across the Grand Canyon.(slightly higher in Key West). Nevertheless, if, against all odds it were to happen, if I understand the physics properly, then the woman/man standing at the urinal beside me, wouldn't be, because she/he would most likely be in a stall...because of...you know, biology. So, I will most likely miss out on my chance encounter. For my wife, her chance encounter would be similar since the man/woman standing at the urinal next to her wouldn't be standing there because there are no urinals in the ladies bathroom! So this elusive transgendered person would be going about his/her business in the privacy of his/her stall. So...what encounter?

But Doug, but Doug, you may be thinking...how would you feel if some ripped, hot, twenty something male model walked into the same bathroom that your wife was in the process of using? I probably wouldn't like it very much, but that isn't what this law is about. Yeah, I know. Slippery slopes and all that. Well, in the immortal words of Ted Kennedy, let's drive off that bridge when we get there!

Yesterday I published a quote from a transgendered man named Charlie. I repeat it here:

"Some of us transition physically, some of us don't. Some of us are more feminine or more masculine with no correlation to what gender we are. Some of us identify as nonbinary/gender nonconforming, and I realize these might be new terms for folks. Look it up. Educate. I am a transgender male and nonbinary, and yes, that is possible."

Never in a million years will I ever be able to understand what Charlie's life must be like. To go through life fraught with so much physical, sexual, emotional, not to mention spiritual confusion is not something I would wish on my worst enemy. So, part of me thinks, listen, if it gets him through the day, he can go in whatever bathroom he wants. I admit, I don't know the statistics on sexual assaults among the transgender community. Are they many times more likely to commit sexual assaults, especially on children? If so, maybe the North Carolina law is a good thing. But if not, maybe we should all just chill out for a minute and ask ourselves whether either one of these laws was a necessary step. How about we all just remember to go before we leave the house? Even better, why don't we all consider reinstating the outhouse?

I now will officially retire this subject from further discussion ever on this blog. Yes, I wash my hands of this business forever!

This is Going To Be Harder Than I Thought

Ok, after this morning's blogpost about the North Carolina transgender bathroom kerfuffle, I have been bombarded by my readers with articles, news releases and videos to help me educate myself on this contentious issue. So much so, that I feel a sudden urge to relieve myself...of my obligation to write a follow up piece. If I do write it, afterwards I intend to wash my hands of the whole business. I am learning all sorts of things though. Did you know, for instance, of ure-inate expectation of privacy in a public bathroom? Me neither!

This issue, when boiled down to it's essence, involves a couple of things...number 1 and number 2, and who exactly we should be doing either in the presence of. When writing tomorrow's blog, I will try to cover my words in at least a thin tissue of respectability. This will not be easy since at the moment I am flush with loads of bathroom humor. Yes, I know that this is a very serious issue and we are all adults here. However, it's difficult to resist middle school humor with a subject which can reasonably and appropriately begin with the phrase...Two transvestites walk into a bathroom.

But, I promise that after tomorrow morning, no more stall-ing. I will not dump this responsibility onto anyone else. I fully intend to delve deeply into the bowels of the issue, and produce a reasoned and fair presentation of the facts. Who knows, maybe my words will start a great movement.