Agitprop

Back during the salad days of my misspent youth, during the era of Soviet Communism, there was an arm of the Central Committee of the Communist party actually called...The Department of Agitation and Propoganda, which if nothing else, will be remembered as the most honest name for any political organization in history. It's where we get the modern term, agitprop, which can be defined as the widespread dissemination of political messages, especially through art and literature. For the old Soviets, everything was about politics, and the idea was to flood the zone with the gospel of communism 24/7, even if the subject at hand was no more political than a ham sandwich.

In modern America we have our own Department of Agitation and Propaganda. It's called, Hollywood. If you are a person of the left, and by that I mean a dedicated progressive, committed to the laundry list of liberal projects, your views on the political issues of the day are constantly validated and celebrated in the public realm. Television shows, movies, books, and especially late night television cheerleads your team and belittles the other side virtually 24/7. It must be a heady feeling, to always be on the same side as all of the good-looking celebrities who our culture worships. It must be an incredible comfort to always be reassured, consistently affirmed in your core beliefs. The spokespersons for your beliefs tend to all be popular and beloved, and unnaturally attractive. The spokespersons for my beliefs tend to be mostly dead guys. Surely, if all of the beautiful people agree with you, that's what really matters, right?

As a libertarian, small government guy, I must say...yes, I am jealous, and that jealousy does me no good whatsoever. Long ago, I became aware that my views on state power and the liberty of the individual were never going to have nearly the appeal of the nanny state handouts sold by the left. Those guys were pitching unlimited unemployment benefits, and handing out free cell phones at about the same time as I was preaching self-reliance and freedom from government, always a tough sale.

Am I bitter? Do I feel resentment every time I get lectured by a sit-com, beat over the head with the glories of the collective in movies, or routinely portrayed as an anti-science racist, misogynistic homophobe by the media if I'm unwilling to turn over the sovereignty of my country to the United Nations so we can better combat Global Warming? Well...yes, I suppose I am.

But, I'll get over it. No matter how long I live, Hollywood will always and forever be the Department of Agitation and Propaganda. The sooner I accept it and move on, the better.

My Daughter's Birthday

I was not ready for this girl when she arrived into this world thirty years ago today. I thought I was, but nothing that I had done in my twenty nine years, one month and eight days on this earth had adequately prepared me to be a parent. Nevertheless, there she was, this tiny marvel looking up at me, changing my life forever.

I was probably the worst expectant father in the history of St. Mary's hospital's maternity ward. I walked the equivalent of a half marathon in the rooms and hallways, pacing back and forth, asking stupid questions and generally making a nuisance of myself. Pam, on the other hand, was the very picture of grace and composure, despite being in periodically excruciating pain.

Back in 1987, very few people knew what the sex of their unborn child was before the fact. Both Pam and I had the feeling that Kaitlin Elizabeth Dunnevant was going to be a boy. So, when she arrived, pink and healthy, I was releaved and grateful, but for the first few hours of her life...disappointed. I had mentally prepared for and really wanted...a son. What an idiot I was. Thankfully, all of that disappointment melted away the very first time I held her in my arms.

This little girl was the single greatest thing that had ever happened to me. Being a parent changed me in profound ways, and I felt the changes immediately. I loved my parents. I love my siblings, and I am in love with my wife. But I had no idea how much love would find it's way into my heart for my child. It's a different kind of love, one born of care, protection, and responsibility. Pam and I had actually created this little person and brought her into this dangerous world. Now, we had a mission...to protect her, to bring her up right, to provide. Not long after bringing her home, I was rocking her to sleep one night when it occurred to me that I would storm the gates of hell for this child. Thirty years later, nothing has changed.

So, on this special day, I would like to wish my first born, my one and only daughter, the happiest birthday. She has exceeded every single expectation I ever had for her. She is beautiful, smarter than me, nicer, kinder, more compassionate than me. Her grammar is so much better than mine. She took all of the best parts from her mother and me and combined them in a bright new person. She makes me proud every day, not just on her birthday. But, on her birthday...she gets a blogpost.

Off The Radar

I must confess that over the past two or three months the daily ebb and flow of politics has completely dropped off of my radar screen. Maybe it's the fact that baseball season has arrived, perhaps incredulity has set in, or maybe it's just Trump-Fatigue. But, for whatever reason, I have tuned it all out for the first time in the past forty years or so. This morning's headline that James Comey had been fired seemed like it should have been a big deal and that I should have read the story. But all it got out of me was a "...Huh..," then I hurried along to the box scores to read all about the latest bullpen collapse by the Nationals.

You see, I've been so consumed with transforming literally every aspect of my business, at such a cost and insane level of frustration, to comply with a regulation cooked up by a thousand government lawyers at the Depart of Labor, I haven't had a lot of spare time to keep up with anything else happening in Washington. While everyone else gets their shorts in a knot about the latest fascist outrage from the Trump administration, I'm busy dealing with leftover outrages from the Obama administration, whereby a gaggle of unelected bureaucrats have brought the full weight of the regulatory state down on my head. To comply with this new edict will cost me upwards of five figures in new computer software, higher costs and lost revenue...every year. Virtually none of these new edicts are in the best interests of my clients, since their costs will also go up. However, the vast regulatory regime in our nation's capital is positively ecstatic with this new regulation since it's power will dramatically increase.

So, by all means, wring your hands about the latest Trump news. Exhaust yourself screaming about Comey, the Russians stealing the election from Saint Hillary, and the horrors of the Obamacare tweek. Meanwhile, down here on the farm, I'm desperately trying to figure out how to comply with the latest command from on high, dutifully paying whatever it costs to do so. I don't have time to carry a sign and chant, "What do we want? Impeachment!! When do we want it? Now!!" I don't have time any longer to engage in social media debates about creeping fascism. Creeping bureaucracy has me completely engaged. By the time the workday is finally over and I have temporarily banished its anxiety from my mind, the last thing in the world I want is to read about more Washington dysfunction.

Thank God Almighty in heaven for baseball.

The Worst Thing I Saw This Weekend

I attended a minor league baseball game this past weekend. Towards the end of the game something truly terrible happened. This terrible thing was totally avoidable, an unforced error, and illustrates what is wrong with not only baseball, but indeed...the world.

Because this was a minor league baseball game, the names don't matter, which is a good thing since I don't know any of them. This was single A, and the only player on either team anyone had ever heard of was Tim Tebow. Nevertheless, there were 6,600 people in the stands on a chilly, rainy night. Most of the players not named Tebow were kids, 19-21 years of age. The starting pitcher for the visiting team was a skinny left-hander and he was dealing. He was cutting through the Columbia Fireflies lineup like a knife through hot butter. Although I only saw one pitch from him all night that broke into the 90's on the radar gun, he was mowing them down with an array of offspeed stuff. Then, something terrible happened. In the bottom of the ninth inning, with two men out and this skinny kid one out away from a no-hitter, his manager inexplicably walks out to the mound and takes the ball from him in favor of a relief pitcher. That's right....you heard me correctly. This twenty year old kid is about to pitch the first no-hitter of his professional career and his manager removes him from the game. The reason? Apparently, the suits in the front office had put him on a pitch limit of 110 pitches. He had thrown...113.

I could go on for hours listing all of the things desperately wrong about this thing. Even if you're not a baseball fan, you can sense the raging stupidity on display. It is this sort of micromanaging, too clever by half nitwittery that is killing the world. Let some analytics guy a thousand miles away from the action literally rip the drama out of actual human achievement at the absolute worst possible time, and then call it progress. 

Sandy Koufax. Don Drysdale. Nolan Ryan. Steve Carlton. Tom Seaver. Greg Maddox. None of these guys had a pitch limit. Trying to imagine Walter Alston attempting to take the ball out of Koufax's hand, one out away from a no hitter, is truly hilarious, and unfathomable. But now a bunch of businessmen have decided that protecting their "investments" is more important than competition. This timid, bean-counting is the sort of thing that drains the life out of everything it touches. The trouble is, the bean-counters are taking over the world.


Heading back to the office this morning to check back in to my real life to see how it's been going while I've been away. Hope nothing terrible has happened in my absence....

My Rocking Chair Moment

Last night, after a fun evening watching Columbia Fireflies baseball, we all settled down in our pajamas in Kaitlin and Jon's living room, Kaitlin and Pam on the loveseat, Jon and Jackson on the sofa, and me in the rocking chair, with Lucy nervously walking in circles around us all, on the lookout for God knows what. I was catching up on the big league scores on my iPad. All was peaceful, everyone was chilled. Then calamity and hilarity broke out at roughly the exact same time.

The rocking chair in question has been in the family for what seems like decades. It had been banished to somebody's attic at some point, but had been given a reprieve when Kaitlin was setting up house at grad school. I have sat in this chair without incident many times. But on this night, there I was, calmly checking the Nationals box score when I heard a disturbing cracking sound. Everything that followed was in slow motion.

As I began rocking back, the crack came, then an awareness that I seemed to be going farther back than seemed normal for a rocking chair. By the time I realized that I was about at the point where the laws of motion and gravity were about to kick in, it was too late. I remember thinking, Wait...am I going to crash through the window behind me?? By the time everyone looked over in my direction, all they could see was the soles of my feet flying up in the air. It was one of those ass over tea kettle moments. I landed at the base of the dreaded window, solidly on my left hip, the chair good for nothing grander than kindling. The pain was excruciating. My loving family soon gathered around, staring down at me, spread-eagled amongst the splintered rocking chair, and all they could think to do...was laugh.

Sure, for about thirty seconds or so, they were concerned about my health status. But, as soon as they realized that there was no blood, and no broken bones, all decorum left the building. My daughter and my wife began a bout of hysterical, belly laughing...the kind that makes your face cramp up and tears fall down your face. Their eyes began to swell from all of the laughing. For a minute I thought they might suffocate themselves. Apparently, the sight of me flayed out on the floor in a pile of knarled wood was the single most hilarious thing that they had seen in years.

However, I must admit, after I had a handful of Advil in me to treat the throbbing pain in my hip, even I started in with the laughing. What is it, exactly, that is so hysterically funny about seeing someone flip over backwards in a rocking chair? Well, I don't know the answer to this question, except to say that despite all of our advancement as a society, we humans still love slapstick.

Yes, Trump is in the White House. Yes, global warming is killing the planet and we are all going to die because of corporate greed, and yes, Obamacare's repeal will result in widespread death, pestilence and destruction across the fruited plain....but, this is still funny!!

The Gala

Ok, I have steadfastly refused all of the baubles that society throws at you for attaining a certain age. AARP has probably sent me a couple dozen congratulatory letters since I turned 55 years old, extolling the virtues of their parasitic lobbying organization. I have thrown all of them directly in the trash, all of them unopened. I have accepted no senior discounts for anything. I have never hit from the senior tees. No bluebird specials have been indulged. However...with the passage of enough years comes the roll of lovable curmudgeon, and I can assure you all...I am up for that challenge. In light of this truth, a few observations about the events of the past 24 hours...

Last night's Teacher of the Year Gala, held at the Columbia Convention Center, was fully funded by BMW, a big South Carolina employer who has chosen to engage the public by generously supporting K-12 education. The winner receives the use of a beautiful new car, which was displayed ostentatiously in the hall. There was an open bar, the attire was formal. Despite what was billed as a celebration of the 81 finest teachers(out of over 50,000)of 2017 throughout the State, I've seen more celebratory proceedings at a county board of supervisors meeting. Actually, that's a lie, since wild horses couldn't drag me to a board of supervisors meeting, so I have no first hand knowledge of what their meetings are like. But I have a working imagination and something tells me I'm not far off.

I loved meeting Kaitlin's principal. Seriously cool guy. The other people at our table were nice. But, once the proceedings began, it was like watching paint dry while wearing sandpaper underwear. I made three trips to the bathroom to prevent boredom-induced spontaneous combustion. There was a local news anchor personality with a sing song voice doing the MC honors. She did the very best she could with a program which seemed put together by the same committee that gave us C-SPAN. There was a very old heiress type who made a presentation. There was an interview conducted between some suit and last year's Teacher of the Year along with this year's Supervisior of the Year. This was done while we were finally allowed to eat, so the acoustics were horrible. Of course the Supervisor of the Year helped out by pointing his hand held mic at the back wall while speaking.

Then the featured speaker took the stage, and impressive man who held both a PhD in Medicine from Harvard Medical school as well as a Doctorate from MIT. Oh, and he was an astronaut. I assume that the point of his presentation was to highlight the fact that this amazingly accomplished man was a product of South Carolina public schools. Instead, there were pictures of weightless men and women floating around the inside of the Space Shuttle, and a slide that showed us just how tiny Earth is compared to the rest of the Universe....which was all great, but the dude didn't seem even slightly interested in the subject at hand, i.e.. the education of South Carolinian students by the capable people filling his audience.

Maybe I'm asking too much. But, if I had been in charge of planning this gala, there would have been loud music, at least one high school dance troop, couple of clowns, a paid comic, several blooper reels from past galas and somebody, anybody capable of inspiration.

...which I suppose is exactly why I'm never in charge of this sort of thing.

An Eerie Dream

I had a crazy dream last night. It was one of those terribly realistic dreams where you remember every detail when you wake up. It felt like the dream ended precisely at the moment when my eyes opened and I was suddenly wide awake. It felt so real that I immediately grabbed my cell phone to check the news and confirm it to be true. I dreamed that Tiger Woods had killed himself.

To my great relief I discovered that it was just a dream. Tiger is alive and well. But, when I first woke up, I would have bet the house that he was dead.

In the dream, I was at my office when my phone rang. I let it go to voice mail since I was with a client at the time. But then it rang again...and again. Somebody was really trying to get in touch with me. So, I apologized to my client, explaining that I had to answer the call. As soon I picked up the phone, in that dream sequence sort of way, my client disappeared and the friend who was calling appeared at my office window to inform me that Tiger Woods had committed suicide and it was all over the news. I thanked him(?) for the heads up, then hung up and started searching the Internet. Sure enough, there were stories about Tiger's tragic end everywhere, including pictures of the paramedics at the scene. There was a huge story in Golf Digest. I read well written paragraphs, some adoring and some critical. I scanned through the comments sections of these stories and saw the same, some lamenting his loss, others talking about reaping what you sow. Everything I read felt so authentic.

I've never been a huge Tiger fan. He's great. Golf is more fun to watch when he's playing. But, I never much cared for him. He seemed too robotic, too cold blooded killer for my taste. Listening to his press interviews after his latest win always left me cold. It's like he expected to win, so what's the big deal? When he backed his Buick into that fire hydrant in 2009, I must admit to the uncharitable thought that ran through my mind...Maybe this will wipe that smugness off his face...a terrible thing to think at the time and a thought that I am ashamed to have had. Since that epic failure, times have been hard for Tiger. He just recently endured his eighth back surgery and in all likelihood is finished as a professional golfer. He will be lucky to be able to walk without pain, let alone swing a golf club. Add to this the loss of his marriage, and Tiger Woods is actually the sort of person where a suicide attempt would be believable, I suppose. But after this astonishingly real dream, I wish the man every success in the world.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, I'll be working from home this morning waiting on the Guirkin Man. Spring AC checkup scheduled and the upstairs unit not functioning properly...which is no dream. Trust me on this...if my wife has to endure even one night of no AC in 90 degree heat, my life will become a nightmare!!!