Monthly Archives: July 2012

07/31/12

Electric Bill

In honor of NBC’s coverage of the London Games, I recorded this entry yesterday but am offering it on tape delay only now.

So, anytime that something happens to “half” of India, it’s a pretty big deal. Same with populations of “all the ocean creatures;” “all the women who watch ‘Chelsea Lately’;” and “all the people that saw this video.”

But, when that something also includes the loss of electrical power, it’s even more serious.

I know, right. Who knew half of India had electricity to lose?

After claiming that more than 600 million people were left without power for the failed grids, this Guardian article sheepishly ends:

But any connection to the grid remains a luxury for many. One-third of India’s households do not have enough electricity to power a light bulb, according to last year’s census.

So which it is it? A lot of people without electricity or a theoretical lot of people that could have been without electricity had they had electricity to start with?

It’s like some sick blackout of a blackout. Zero times zero.

Unfortunately for a population as subjugated as certain elements of India’s has been for millennia, even a half a billion times zero is still roughly zero. Just mostly what they had. Or I guess didn’t have. The essentials.

Humble-brag time. We support a boy in Sri Lanka named Aniket, who is almost, to the day, the same age as my son. We can’t even send him simple pictures of our home for the massive relative wealth it represents. And, trust me my crib is jumping.

There’s a fine line between the modern conveniences we swear “we could never live without” and the threshold accoutrements of life that all peoples in the 21st Century should expect to have, if they so choose. I’m beginning to count electricity among them.

So, the irony is that there is a power failure in India of critical human proportions. It just has nothing to do with this week’s grid failures.

I won’t link to it for the language, but the Onion.com has a pretty pitch perfect piece that nails the absurdist nature of the power going out on a country already, in so many ways, suffering a suffocating darkness.

[Olympic Note: What the heck happened to the Russian women's gymnastics team?! What's with all this crying and moping around. I want my soulless, killer-commie, soviet block, android gymnasts back. If Nadia Comenici had screwed up a floor routine, she would have done an Ivan Drago, raised her fist, and yelled at the fake Mikhail Gorbechev in the box seats, Ивана Драго я победа для меня!!!!" (Roughly translated, "I win for me! For me!!) I'm just saying. Russians don't cry. Come on. These Olympics stink.]

Performed by ipoetlaureate. Music produced by Sundance.

Today’s song blog here:

Times Zero

07/27/12

“Have You Hugged Your Foot Today?”

I was watching this memorable moment in Olympic history and I noticed the old school Nike shirt. That’s what sport is about right there. Romancing your gear. I can remember fighting sleep pillow-talking my Air Revolutions in the bed next to me. I won’t repeat what I said. But, let’s just say it was pretty smooth.

The opening ceremonies of the XXX Olympiad games are tonight. Olympic athletes model something for us that transcends sport. They remind us that to build anything of significance we have to tear and pound and break down. And, to gain we have to lose. And, to win we have to fail, over and over. That there exists some cosmic rule that without pain there literally is no gain. We can’t grow crops without tilling the soil or muscle without ripping the fibers. Businesses or churches. It has to hurt.

They toil in anonymity mostly. And, yet they are derivative of a host of witnesses that have cheered them through it all, parents, coaches, friends, teachers. They run and swim and jump and laugh and cry with a crowd in their hearts. Sometimes even a father has to come down onto the track. Winning is not an individual sport. (I think that’s what Obama sort of meant.)

Poor Mitt Romney, though, has been in London this week. As you might recall, he was called in to save and, did successfully, run the Salt Lake City games. How could you forget right? So it’s been just a week of foot devouring for the GOP candidate. One misstatement after another. But, it started with offering concerns over the unpreparedness of London to host the games. Now Britain, in its typical fashion, has expressed self-deprecationg concerns about its own readiness. Security for the games, for example, has faced some setbacks. But, Romney’s comments came off, at best, as sort of ungracious and, at worst, as an attempt to make London some political point of reference for his own well-administered Olympics and management chops.

But, what Mitt misses, and maybe even London overlooks in its panic as host, is that a “successful” Olympics isn’t some logistical accomplishment. It’s not good traffic flow or sufficient infrastructure. Winning isn’t coming in administrative first place. It’s a celebration of the incalcuable sacrifice of men and women to push human physical achievement to its limits.

Biggest, fastest, strongest matters in sport. That’s sort of the point. But, the Olympics has a way of reminding us of what winning looks like even in failure. And, it has nothing to do with being a well-run event.

One last thing. And, I’m just going to go there. There’s probably a whole separate wing in the underworld for people who do what I’m about to.

But, did you hear about this “blind” archer that set the world record at the Olympics in London today? Surely, you did because it was the top story on every web domain in the entire world apparently.

Ok, look. I’m aware of the concept of “legal” blindness. My mom suffers it. And, I get that those of us blessed with normal sight stupidly assume that only pitch black darkness qualifies. But, come on.

You’re either blind and incapable of repeatedly driving an arrow, from 70+ meters away, into a tiny two inch black eye until you score a world record some 700 points. Or . . . YOU’RE – NOT – BLIND. They’re like, “He can’t even read a newspaper!” Well, if we were in the Periodical Perusing Olympiad, then I would marvel at his ability to speed read above the fold and the back page in record time. But, it’s not. So, maybe he’s blind for reading or arm wrestling purposes but he plainly isn’t blind for shooting-arrows-really-accurately purposes.

Right? Am I missing something??!

We’re not talking about blindfolding Robin Hood or William Tell for a trick shot at an apple off a maiden’s head. He’s an Olympic archer. He does this over and over and over again. I’m pretty sure he can see the target.

But, if he can’t. I’m a big, big jerkwad. Pretty much am anyway.

By the way, watching the opening ceremony as I type. Is it just me or is there an eery resemblance between the Industrial Revolution phase of the ceremony and Saruman’s Isengard? I’m medium terrified that Uruk-hai are going to birth gelatinously from the stadium floor.

Wait? Did Queen Elizabeth just base jump into the stadium?! I can’t tell if she’s furious or about to vomit. They just said, “She has a ‘wicked’ sense of humor.” It looked like she had a small Warbler in her mouth at that exact moment. She does not look pleased.

Oh no. They just panned an ariel view of a giant baby doll in the middle of the arena. And, that’s after having just forged the all-seeing Eye of Sauron out of the one Olympic ring to rule them all. This has to be the most terrifying Olympics ever.

I renege. I think Romney got it just about right.

Performed by ipoetlaureate. Music produced by djclutch.

Today’s song blog here:

Torch Bear

07/23/12

The Rise

My deepest, deepest condolences to all of the victims, their friends and families.

This is a fairly unprofitable story to attempt to cover in song. Something about the victims, themselves, turns pretty quickly into unintended sap and what Andrew Sullivan calls, hathos. Something thematic or narrative threatens to be too dark and insensitive.

Still, between the Colorado shootings and the continuing demise of Penn State, this musical capsule of time would be incomplete without some vignette.

I’m pretty compelled by these sorts of incidents. And, I hope it’s not all morbid curiousity, though surely some percentage is. I realize it’s a higher calling to remember the victims instead of memorializing the predators. But, this razor thin line between James Holmes, son, friend, sibling, accomplished student, and James Holmes, the apparently lost, psychotic, maniacal movie mass murderer, is ceaselessly important to me. Same with Sandusky. His sins, and those of the individuals that would have concealed them, have now forced Penn State to take down the statute of what was the winningest coach in Division 1 Football history and the NCAA to levy sanctions of such unprecedented scale as to essentially destroy the program. Not to mention the real human tragedy — the countless child victims. You can’t help but renew questions about the nature of who we are fundamentally as people, something of divine imagination or base animal evolution.

The spiritual mystic, St. John of the Cross, wrote of the “Dark Night of the Soul,” the difficult separation from this world as we move toward closer union with God. That notion has been expanded in Christian parlance to describe any sort of severe crisis of faith. Even Mother Teresa confessed her own deep, deep darkness.

I think the incidents in Colorado and Happy Valley induce a collective dark night. Tired theological apologetics about the opportunity for true love and goodness coming only at the concomitant risk of true hate and evil ring sort of unpersuasively abstract when nearly 60 people are senselessly gunned down by a stranger playing dress up and comic villain. And, no matter how much you’d like to think Holmes is some creature apart, easily condemned, there is Joker in us all.

I’ve tried to remember where I was going with this. But, I don’t really have a closing sentiment or pithy summarizing turn. I’m just really, really sorry.

Performed by ipoetlaureate. Music produced by pumpkinFoot.

Today’s song blog here:

Dark Night

07/19/12

Drawn and Quartered

On the road tonight. Pretty exhausted. Wanted to say something about Syria before I crashed.

I’ve been reading Steven Pinker’s new book, The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined. It makes the claim that we live in an evolutionarily less violent time than any other before it. To me, this seems a point that required something significantly less than the 832 pages he wrote to establish. A second or two’s thought about Mel Gibson’s disembowelment in the closing scene of Braveheart, mimicked by puppets in effigy, has long persuaded me. But, in conversations with others, the position is not as self-evidenct as I assumed. And, I think that’s largely attributable to the dynamic and 24-hour coverage that violence receives today and the general horribleness of violent acts relative to our increasingly heightened sensibilities against it. In other words, precisely because most of us don’t encounter medieval violence as a regular incident of living our lives, it is that much more grotesque when Al-Queda beheads an engineer — even though, comparatively so, such mutilation is in fact much less frequent.

But, I think these kinds of reports out of Syria make you wonder:

The top official said Iraqi border guards had witnessed the Free Syrian Army take control of a border outpost, detain a Syrian army lieutenant colonel, and then cut off his arms and legs. Then they executed 22 Syrian soldiers in front of the eyes of Iraqi soldiers.

And, I think FSA are the “good guys.” Syria has fallen into civil war and the Al-Assad regime, worthy of our disdain, is near to fall. Whether we really want what rises up in its place, like with the whole of the Arab Spring, is yet to be determined.

My wife and I just finished watching the first season of Walking Dead. I can’t imagine sawing through someone’s leg. I can barely watch costume blood and prosthetic sci-fi. One of the characters saws his own hand off to be freed of a handcuff. Sort of like the hiker in 127 hours. I literally don’t know what order of magnitude rage or desperation I would need to sever mine or your limb, alive.

Whatever war we still perform, whether more or less than our ancestors, still remains horribly uncivil.

Performed by ipoetlaureate. Music produced by Sundance.

Today’s song blog here:

Civil War

07/17/12

No Spin

So the science community is again threatening us with finding the Higgs-Boson. Notwithstanding the admitted and sheer improbability of ever finding the “G-dd@amn Particle” in the avalanche of data compiled by the various particle accelerators around the world, every six months or so the physics community, the mainstream media, or some conspiracy of the two warn us that they’re about to. Watch out. Oh you thought it was called the “God Particle”? Sorry. No. That’s the sanitized-for-public-consumption version. It’s called the “G-dd@amn Particle” because they can’t find the dang thing. Honest.

Theoretical physics is awesome. This idea that men and women scratching lonely numbers on a sheet of paper could make, not simply educated guesses, but Battleship direct hits on some of the greatest and deepest mysteries of the cosmos, without the aid of clinical experiment, is pretty special. And, to those on political philosophy only, books about it are my favorite.

But, there is some irony in it all. Richard Dawkins and others are ruthless in condemning a kind of “god of the gaps” mentality among the religious. I don’t know the answer, so it must have been “god.” I can’t explain creation, so it must have been “god.” Tebow can’t throw, so it must have been “god.”

But, that’s sort of precisely what theoretical physics is, right? There is a hole in the data. A paradox in the theory. A gap in the explanation. And, these brilliant individuals make a guess, albeit educated and well measured, but a guess nonetheless about the “god” necessary to bridge the gap. String theory. Multiple universes. Higgs-Boson. These are all a type of “god of the gaps” — the only explanation we can come up that makes the rest of what we do see and experience make sense. To be sure, many a scientist has been rocked by an unexpected empirical turn. Expanding universe. The attributes of light. But, regularly we are looking for those things as we’ve imagined them to exist.

And with Higgs-Boson, specifically, scientists have all types of expectations about its character. It has no spin. It’s massive. Other particles are generated out of its decay. It’s actually part of an enormous and ubiquitous background Higgs field, that gives reality it’s physical structure.

The famous theoretical physicist Lawerence Krauss said, “That’s the difference between science and religion. We don’t require the universe to be what we want — we force our beliefs to conform to the evidence of reality.”

But, isn’t that precisely what the search for Higgs-Boson is? Expecting the universe to be exactly as we believe it must be?

For a change, though, it would be nice to “discover” something we didn’t expect.

Performed by ipoetlaureate. Music produced by pumpkinFoot.

Today’s song blog here:

All Spin

07/15/12

Half-Life

Please check back. I have a weekly round up loosely based on the suspicious almost-discovery of the Higgs-Boson particle presently under construction.

07/9/12

Sporks over Knoons

So, we’re on vacation.

My wife and I are finally getting around to watching Forks over Knives, the convicting documentary I’ve discussed previously concerning plant based nutrition. As in, we’re literally watching it as I type.

So, I thought I’d do a running journal review.

8:58 Put in Forks over Knives.

9:00 My son calls me into the guest room, where he’s sleeping, to share some sabermetric pitching statistics about the Negro League ball club, the Homestead Grays. Don’t ask me. Your guess is as good as mine.

9:10 Movie makes it’s opening case: A plant based diet would cure our overweight and diseased generation.

9:11 I separate Tollhouse Chocolate Chunk cookie dough slabs by the recommended inch and a half on the bake sheet and slide into oven. Assuming “plant-based” diet, includes the Nestle plant in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Set timer for 14 minutes.

9:15 All three kids standing in the den at various stages of clothedness. My daughter has a dollop of toothpaste on her brush that could end gingivitis in Nepal.

9:22 Alarming statistics correlating animal proteins and cancer.

9:27 Line each of our bowls with a cookie, and spoon indiscriminate quantity of Blue Bell Cookies ‘n Creme on top. From logo on half gallon drum, now have devastating reason to believe that ice cream is somehow derived from what appears to be a four-legged, cloven hoofed “animal.” Thought it was a grain.

9:28 Return in time to catch a tight shot of a human chest splayed open for bypass surgery. Luckily only the slightest resemblance between deep tissue and an ice cream sunday.

9:28:30 Halfway through my own bowl. Have abandoned use of all utensils, forks, knives, and ladles. Just troughin’ it.

9:46 Terrified by frozen smiles of families enjoying the first processed foods in footage from the 50s. These clips likely represent the only remaining evidence that one could actually enjoy themselves in the company of family.

9:54 Slipping into dessert coma.

10:23 Motivational triad of “pleasure seeking,” “pain avoidance,” and “energy conservation” blamed for everything from over eating to the Iran Contra affair to Dick Vitale’s voice. Strong alibi next time I’m called a cowardly, lazy, pervert.

10:29 Speaking of lazy, wife catches me allowing last melted ounces of ice cream to pour slowly into my mouth from bowl held aloft over my reclined head.

10:42 85 year old woman confesses to using “a lot of gravy” in her life.

10:43 Think to myself, “I love gravy.”

10:49 Speaking of perverted. I’m fading fast, but I believe that an elderly asian gentlemen just said that a plant-based diet helps men continue to “raise the flag” so to speak. I know it’s nearly two hours in, but this movie officially has my attention.

10:54 Impressive string of anecdotal and clinical successes. Numerous individuals have had serious heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, fatigue, and all variety of other chronic conditions halted or even dramatically reversed.

10:55 Lick my fingers.

11:06 My wife and I discuss a hybrid strategy to incorporate, better, a plant-based diet for our family. Baby steps. Something like sporks over knoons.

But, speaking of cowardice errrr I mean “pain avoidance,” I don’t suspect I’ll have the guts to do any of this stuff. Because, frankly that’s what it will take in our culture of convenience and indulgence — some serious guts to change what we put in our guts.

I thought I’d repost the blong from a year ago.

Performed by ipoetlaureate. Music produced by Jaq from Germany.

Today’s song blog here:

It's like shhhhh

07/6/12

The Last White Point Guard

Since 1985, this is what I came up with:

Mark Price
John Stockton
Scott Skiles
Jason Williams
Steve Nash

Five white guys, roughly of North American descent, who were regular fixtures, over any meaningful span of time, as starting point guards in the NBA. Hinrich has run point. Dragic has too (although a Euro). Steve Blake plays real and quality minutes. But, like guys that ran a team — this is it. And, I’m not including 2-guard/hybrid types. Think Danny Ainge. Five Starting white point guards, give or take, over the last 30 years. American, European, Viking, Chitwood, or otherwise.

Steve Nash was traded to the Lakers two days ago. And, it hit me. This might be it. Nash might be the last starting white point guard in the league for the foreseeable future.

I’m admittedly using some shorthand, here, by saying “white.” It’s a sloppy phrase. But, come on. You know the guys, I’m talking about? [Does the upside down, O-K hand-goggles.]

I’m sure no one thought at Bird’s retirement that he would be the last white, American-born superstar. Tom Chambers would deliver. Or Big Country. Kevin Love is at least respectably in the conversation. But, Bird retired and then the long silence.

Aaron Craft is nice at Ohio State. I saw him play in person at the Final Four. He has all the typical white point guard attributes plus he has deceptive ability to guard the ball, the common deficiency and critique of white guards at the highest levels. Maybe he’ll get a shot.

But, this might be the end of the road for decades.

I’ve admitted that I “want” to see more successful white point guards if for no other reason than, regardless of how unrealistically slight the probability, my son would have at least some evidence that it’s possible. (In the words of one of the most famously white guys, “So what you’re saying is . . . there’s still a chance!”)

But, otherwise, I really don’t care the race of my athletes as a fan. I mean, I might care a little. But, mostly I just want them to be able to dunk over cars and do ball fakes that wrap around the back, sit on the opposite hip, and then circumnavigate the waist for the last second dish. You know. Stuff that only half-black/half-alien people can do. (You cannot tell me that Rondo’s mom isn’t one quarter E.T. As in whatever kind of alien E.T. was.)

This is what the hall of fame track and field legend, Michael Johnson said, just this week:

I always believed that I became an athlete through my own determination, but it’s impossible to think that being descended from slaves hasn’t left an imprint through the generations. Difficult as it was to hear, slavery has benefited descendants like me – I believe there is a superior athletic gene in us.

I think it’s proven to be enormously dangerous and ignoramously betraying to speculate too specifically as to how they got to this point — slavery, original genome, opportunity, cultural emphasis, hard work. Even Johnson sort of falls prey to the more seductive but ultimately unprofitable question, “why?” And, I mean unprofitable because history has taught us that there’s little public benefit to be derived from doing so, not because the question isn’t worth asking.

As with any complex query, the solution is most certainly a stew of reasons. Some genetic, some sociological, some cultural, some having to do with opportunity and commitment and dumb luck.

There will always be some financial incentive to associate white players. Maybe even to play them in particular roles. Jimmer Fredette might be a function of this sort of calculation/perception, although we’re a long way away from seeing whether there’s a real place for him in the league at guard, shooting or point.

But, this is a real moment. Nash might be cold-blooded history. When he hangs it up in a few years, a page might be permanently turned.

So let’s raise our Pabst and throw on some Foreigner and give one last cheers to the shaggy and mustachioed, crew-cutted and short-shortsed, on-top-of-the-ball dribbling white guys who did it so well, for so long.

We’ll have our moments, still. But, hat tip to the professionals. The brothers that run magical game.

Performed by the ipoetlaureate. Music produced by dj clutch.

Today’s song blog here:

On Top

07/5/12

Not Guilty

A year ago today, Casey Anthony was so found. There was a good bit of outrage, as you might remember.

I don’t have much more to say beyond what I already have. This, of course, is not about the “correctness” or accuracy of the verdict but rather the condition of our own hearts, as we consider and even participate, as jurors, citizens, and public observers, in the administration of justice.

The blong from that entry, included again below, is a personal favorite and the song I performed at TEDx in March.

Performed by the ipoet. Music produced by dj clutch.

Today’s song blog here:

Nancy Ain't Grace