A Pilgrim’s Digression

Apple announced some new products today, only one of which I really consider noteworthy. Ever since the iPod was released back in 2001, third party companies have been designing stereos or boomboxes, or whatever you want to call them, that allow you to plug your iPod in for what they promise will be “room-filling sound” (I think Bose was the first to use that phrase, but apparently they didn’t copyright it because every stereo-maker now uses it).

Now Apple has released their own product into this market, called the iPod Hi-Fi. It looks very much like something from 2001…the movie, not the year. With that sitting on my bookshelf, every time I got up to go to the bathroom I’d constantly be on edge expecting it to ask me, “What are you doing, Matt? I know you are planning to disconnect me, and that is something I cannot allow to happen.”

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In a startling op-ed, It Didn’t Work, William F. Buckley has said that he believes Iraq is a failure, and that the people to blame are the Iraqis.

I found this article absolutely stunning. It was published on the 25th of February, so the talk radio circuit has had no time to comment on it, but it will be interesting what, if anything, Limbaugh and his cronies have to say about it.
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A prosaic subject deserves a prosaic title: for once I really can’t think of anything creative to title a post that is merely an update concerning our home buying adventure.

Lynn and I went for the home inspection today. We did not stay for the full inspection. We spent about an hour wandering around the house, the inspector pointing out all the niggling details we missed when we walked through the house and fell in love with it.

“Your gutters are full of leaves…” he says.

“Oh gee, I didn’t notice that,” I say, imagining myself on a ladder cleaning gutters, then just as quickly imagining me writing a check to someone else to go up on a ladder and clean the gutters.

“Look, someone forgot they weren’t on a cordless phone and ripped the phone outlet out of the wall,” he says.

“Well, whadda ya know…” I say, imagining me screwing the outlet plate back into the wall.

I can operate a screw driver. I have loads of experience changing batteries in toys, so I can easily see myself fixing an outlet plate.

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One benefit of being a parent is that one becomes quite familiar with the range of children’s animated and educational programming on film and on television. Oddly, contrary to what one might think, the purely educational programming is typically pretty dreadful (”Barney” and “Dora the Explorer”) while the lighthearted, animated programs are actually quite good (”Spongebob Squarepants,” “Wallace & Gromit,” and the Pixar films).

Perhaps the key to this counter-rational phenomenon is that programs such as “Wallace & Gromit” are written to entertain both children and adults, while programs like “Dora the Explorer” are created to fill a dubiously necessary function of “educating” children via the television.

I am not the kind of parent who believes television is all bad for children. It would be hypocritical of me to believe that, since I watch so much TV myself, and have done so ever since I was a child. I monitor what my child watches, but mostly for quality of content, not for educational value. Therefore, Wallace & Gromit: the Curse of the Were-Rabbit perfectly meets my standard for excellence in childrens’ programming.

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Yesterday, I spent the morning searching for financial documents needed for financing a mortgage—old W2s, bank statements, 401k statements, etc. I looked in our various filing cabinets, colloquially known as “the junk drawer,” and “the kitchen table,” and “the shoebox in the top of the closet.” Previous to yesterday, I thought my filing system was infallible: I had a visual image of where I last remembered all these papers lying around. As it turned out, my visual image was a couple years old, in some cases, and the other members of the household had moved things around in the interregnum, and my filing system was therefore hopelessly broken.

Finally, having gathered all the necessary documentation to deliver to the mortgage broker, I went to the realtor’s office to sign the paperwork necessary to make an offer on the house.

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I’ve mentioned before, probably in my essay “I was Mr. Gray,” that in 1990-1991, I had a High School AP Poli-Sci teacher named Woodrow Wilson, who ironically happened to be a Conservative. Our textbook was written by James Q. Wilson, a Professor at Pepperdine. I remember this so distinctly because my teacher, Mr. Wilson, thought this other Mr. Wilson was such a brilliant man, he made a point of emphasizing what a great textbook we were using. I never had any other teacher in High School who made such a big deal about a textbook author before. As it turned out, both Mr. Wilsons had a tremendous impact on my own blooming interest in politics.

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The past two weeks have been pretty momentous in my family’s life, so I feel like I need to depart a little from my usual topics of discussion and write a little about what has been happening.

Lynn had surgery on Monday and has been recuperating at home since Wednesday; she has two more weeks of recovery before her doctor will release her to go back to work. On March 1, she will return to have her sutures removed, and to have a follow-up checkup. Only after that point will we be able to say that our lives are returning to some sense of normalcy. Lynn and I have written about the details of her surgery at her blog, Patati~Patata, so I won’t go into detail about that here.

Our other preoccupation of the past two weeks has been home buying, so we’ve had two rather stressfull items of concern on our plate all at once. It has been nerve wracking.

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I’ve really been enjoying some of the comedy resulting from Dick Cheney’s hunting accident this weekend. I don’t think comedians have had this much fun since Bill Clinton went for the head shot and misfired on Monica’s blue dress.

However, some comedians have respectfully toned down the hilarity, in the wake of the shooting victim’s heart attack yesterday; but there are still a few gems out there I want to collect here, for my own enjoyment later in life.

David Letterman has had the best quips about Cheney, in my opinion. Here are some of his quotes from February 13 and 14.

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The New York Times has a story that claims America and Israel are already planning “to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again.”

Reading this article, for a moment I thought I had time-warped back to the days when the Reagan Administration took pleasure in attempting to manipulate the governments of oppressed, third-world peoples.

Have we learned absolutely nothing from the past forty years of history? This kind of meddling is exactly why we are so hated in the Middle East and elsewhere. Add the fact that here we are plotting with Israel, no less, to destabilize the Palestinian government, and you have a recipe for brewing a cauldron of decades-long hatred.
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I’ve been trying for days to see clearly through this issue of the so-called “cartoon violence.” Amir Taheri, a writer for The Wall Street Journal, provides his point of view on the subject today in a free, online Opinion Journal article titled Bonfire of the Pieties.

Taheri makes a compelling argument that the Koran prescribes no universal ban on images depicting Muhammad, and that in fact Muhammad has been depicted in art and in satire throughout the ages. Taheri provides a few examples and says there are many more too numerous to list. Muhammad has even been the subject of satire, and Taheri says the Prophet even pardoned a poet “who had lampooned him for more than a decade.”

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