A Pilgrim’s Digression

Peggy Noonan must email her columns to the Journal, the way some people email their blog posts to their blog. Does anyone edit her work anymore? Her column this morning is a recap of 2005, ’05’s Big Five, and I found the following glaring typos in the article.

Writing of President’ Bush’s comeback: “But history moves quickly. His people hit reseat; he announced a refocus.” I think she means “reset,” as in the button on a Playstation that starts the game over. Gee, I didn’t realize Conservatives thought of the President as little more than a pre-programmed automaton, too.

Second error, writing of Iraq: “Are you a pessimist? Then you’re thinking Eccliastes: “Vanity, all is vanity.” An optimist? Think Lawrence of Arabia, at least in Robert Bolt’s screenplay: ‘Nothing is written.’” Eccliastes is obviously some classical Latin writer I’ve never heard of.
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Unlike most of my friends, I had not read the Narnia books before this year. I began reading them only this summer, in preparation for seeing the film. I’ve read as far as the fourth book, Prince Caspian, which I am reading now, and like best so far. I was not impressed with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, upon which the film is based.

I liked the second book—The Horse and His Boy—but I found it disappointing that Lewis seemed to be telling tales of Narnia disconnected from any overarching story. Perhaps this is unfair, but I was comparing Lewis unfavorably with his pal Tolkien. Lewis’s Narnia simply seems so much smaller, less expansive than Tolkien’s Middle Earth. The difference is one between fairy tale (Lewis) and mythology (Tolkien), so yes, perhaps it is unfair to judge Lewis’s work against Tolkien’s massive achievement. But I cannot help my preference for myth.

Now, in beginning to review the film based on Lewis’s book that left me so cold, let me say first off I think the movie is better than the book. It is better because of rather than in spite of alterations to Lewis’s story, and the film gives me a greater appreciation for the story itself.
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Mainly because I have no idea how I’d ever work this into a piece of fiction, I am printing here a parody of a commercial I thought of this morning, while lying awake before dawn.

[Advertisement begins with a college-age girl sitting on her bed, listening to her iPod. Her Dad enters nervously, hesitates, then sits down on the bed beside her; she pops her earbuds out of her ears to hear what he has to say.]

Dad: Honey, I’m going to be leaving on a cruise to the Bahamas with my new “friend” Valerie. I was wondering…well…do you have any more of those little blue pills?

Daughter: Dad, you don’t have to be embarrassed.

[Daughter reaches beneath her pillow and pulls out a foil pack of blue tablets. Dad takes them gratefully, blushing.]

Daughter: Remember, Dad, just one little blue tab a day and you’ll feel twenty years old again.

Dad: [Laughing] They’re even the color of my new sports car.

[A man dressed in the white coat of a doctor walks on camera.]

Doctor: If you’re a man going through a mid-life crisis, you should ask your daughter or son about new non-prescription Vaygar™. It completely breaks down the inhibitions that prevent you from achieving the happiness you deserve at your age. And just one little blue tab a day helps silence the prickings of conscience that may keep you from acting on your impulses. You won’t even remember your ex-wife’s name, let alone that you left her for a younger woman.

Announcer: [speed reading] Side effects will include overwhelming lust accompanied by heart palpitations and shortness of breath at sight of young women, an erection that lasts longer than 24 hours, excessive use of credit cards on unnecessary purchases, and sudden marriages.

Doctor: So ask your daughter about new non-prescription Vaygar™. After all, you’ve worked hard all your life. Why should young people have all the fun?

Announcer: New Vaygar™. Also available in new Vaygar B.C.™, for children worried about their Dad replacing them with step-siblings. Vaygar B.C.™: birth control for your Dad.

There has always been a little of the obsessive/compulsive about me, and if anything it was more pronounced when I was a kid. Perhaps this mental disorder explains why Christmas meant so much to me back then.

Christmas is perhaps the only time of year when ritualistic behavior, repetition of speech patterns, and following routines are not only common, but accepted. At Christmas, one can engage in all manner of comforting behaviors in the name of “tradition.”

Decorating the tree allowed me to obsesses over placement of specific ornaments, some of which had emotional meaning to me because they had hung on our tree since I was very small (which hadn’t been very long, but that’s not the point). And on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the gathering of family, opening of presents, and other activities had to follow a certain pattern that I believed had always been part of our Christmas, or else I felt the holiday was losing its meaning. For example, I not only helped my Mom decorate our house, but I insisted that my Grandma not do any decorating until I was there to assist. I wanted to make sure everything was in the same place and order in the Great Chain of Being as it had been the year before.

Eventually, Christmas lost its meaning for me despite my best efforts to keep it unchanging. There’s a passage at the end of Chris Van Allsburg’s book The Polar Express in which the boy says that the bell he took from Santa’s sleigh, representing the spirit of Christmas, still rings for him. The bell hasn’t rung for me in a long time.

I’d just as soon skip Christmas, these days.

Therefore in the spirit of the pre-heart-engorgement Grinch, let me give you my top ten list of things I won’t miss about Christmas.

10. Christmas travel.
9. Commercials touting diamonds and Lexus automobiles as the ideal gifts for a woman.
8. Commercials touting “scratchers” (lottery tickets) as the ideal gift for everyone.
7. Eggnog (yuck!).
6. Crowds a-shopping.
5. That person in the office who wears a Santa hat to work every day ’til Christmas.
4. Commercials touting carpet as the ideal gift for Christmas. [I kid you not: I saw a commercial for a carpet warehouse last night, and the pitch was "Give your home the gift of carpet this year."]
3. That dreadful poem about a soldier’s “night before Christmas .” It’s always sent as an email-forward by some friend who never writes, but forwards endlessly.
2. Salvation Army bell ringers giving me the evil eye.
1. O’Reilly and “The War on Christmas” bullshit.

Just some things I’ve always wondered about…

1. Do female rock bands have groupies? For example, does Delores O’Riordan of the Cranberries (one of my favorite bands from the nineties) pick men from the audience with whom she will have sex after the concert?
2. Has anyone in the history of the Windows operating system ever used the “Briefcase?”
3. If a forty year old man mentions living with a “roommate,” does it always mean he is gay?
4. Does a woman’s orgasm feel the same as a man’s?
5. Will people set foot on Mars in my lifetime?
6. Is there a biological purpose for ear wax? What is that gunk anyway?
7. Why doesn’t a majority of people use the Macintosh OS?
8. If it were possible to live to be hundreds of years old, a so-called “Biblical” age, would it affect people’s faith in God positively or negatively?
9. How many years before the majority of us work from home in front of our computers? [Considering many of us could do this now, if our employers would allow it, I'm betting on ten years.]
10. And finally, the quintessential question of questions: Why can’t we all just get along?

I don’t know how often you use the Amazon.com site, but recently I discovered a feature I rather like, and that I’ve even found useful from time to time, the “Search inside this book” feature. It allows you to do a keyword search on a book in the Amazon.com catalog, as long as that book has been digitized and encoded for searching.

To give you some examples of how it works, I’ve been reading a book titled McCarthy’s Bar: A Journey of Discovery in the West of Ireland. I went to Amazon, looked up the book, and clicked the “Search inside this book” link (you can also mouse over the image of the book cover for a search box, as well). I typed in “sod.” And these are the results I got: four pages in the book where the term “sod” is used, mostly vulgarly.
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I had breakfast at Pete’s again today. The $7.35 I was charged last time was no mistake, as it turns out. Looking over the tab, I’d guess the price of a cup of coffee went up to pay for the renovations. A cup of coffee is now $1.75, while the breakfast has remained the same at $4.95.

Ah well, I still left a dollar under the coffee cup as a tip. It’s worth the price once a week to feel like I’ve got a leg up on the tourists. They come here and end up eating in all the expensive restaurants that are in their guide books. I live here and eat in the expensive restaurants that aren’t in the guidebooks.
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I’m going to allow this story to speak for itself. Bill Would Allow Arrests For No Reason In Public Place.

Cleveland — A bill on Gov. Bob Taft’s desk right now is drawing a lot of criticism, NewsChannel5 reported.

One state representative said it resembles Gestapo-style tactics of government, and there could be changes coming on the streets of Ohio’s small towns and big cities.

The Ohio Patriot Act has made it to Taft’s desk, and with the stroke of a pen, it would most likely become the toughest terrorism bill in the country. The lengthy piece of legislation would let police arrest people in public places who will not give their names, address and birth dates, even if they are not doing anything wrong.

WEWS reported it would also pave the way for everyone entering critical transportation sites such as, train stations, airports and bus stations to show ID.

“It brings us frighteningly close to a show me your papers society,” said Carrie Davis of the ACLU, which opposes the Ohio Patriot Act.

There are many others who oppose the bill as well.

“The variety of people who opposed to this is not just a group of the usual suspects. We have people far right to the left opposing the bill who think it is a bad idea,” said Al McGinty, NewsChannel5’s terrorism expert.

McGinty said he isn’t sure the law would do what it’s intended to do.

“I think anything we do to enhance security and give power to protect the public to police officers is a good idea,” he said. “It is a good law in the wrong direction.”

Gov. Bob Taft will make the ultimate decision on whether to sign the bill.

WEWS was told that Taft is expected to sign the bill into law, but legal experts expect that it will be challenged in courts.

If you don’t subscribe to the email version of the FactCheck.org Special Report, you ought to sign up today. Since the election ended, the Fact Check reports have become rarer and broader in scope, but they are still excellent sources of unbiased information.

Yesterday, Fact Check published its report on the issue of torture, A Tortured History, which offers an outline of the debate about treatment of enemy combatants from its origins immediately after 9/11 to the present.

Much of what the report contains is nothing new to those who have followed the issue. However, to see the issue presented in a bare bones, chronological way—just the facts, as the police officer would say—does help reorient us to what’s at stake. Having a fact sheet at hand also helps us make proper judgements. Seen in that way, “A Tortured History” is a keeper for us who will continue to write about this subject.

Here are some highlights:
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Have you ever had a dream that you remember upon waking, and you realize you may have been having the dream off and on for some time? This morning, the alarm awoke me from a nightmare that I am pretty sure is a recurring nightmare.

In the nightmare, I am a little boy about Brendan’s age, that is about four. The setting is a house that could be my paternal grandparents’ house as it was twenty-seven or eight years ago. However, in the dream I don’t recognize it as my Grandma and Grandpa’s house, at first.
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