A Pilgrim’s Digression

This Primary season has worn me out emotionally. It has been exciting, but there comes a point at which one just wants it finished. When you invest yourself in a candidate, it can be deeply hurtful to find that candidate rejected at the polls, for whatever reason. Lynn and I both have felt that way about John Edwards, Lynn more so than myself. I like Edwards very much, and I would not be disappointed if he came out of the Democratic Primaries with the nomination. But my emotions are primarily tied up in the campaign of Barak Obama, and there have been some depressing moments there, too.

I have indeed at times felt depressed over this election. After the heady experience of his win in Iowa, his losses have been sobering. Then, hearing him in the debate last week with Hillary Clinton, I felt even worse about his chances. At times it just feels like he is facing a Sisyphean task, trying to take away the Clinton’s best chance at a shot at the White House.

And hopefully this isn’t a racist comparison–I confess I can be a bit tone deaf at times–but his campaign also reminds me of the old legend of John Henry, with Barack in the starring (and ultimately tragic) role. The Clintons, of course, play the role of the steam hammer, the smooth and impersonal, modern political machine ready to work Obama into the ground until his heart literally bursts.

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I receive literally hundreds of spam emails a day recommending various remedies for my apparently under-developed male member. “Enlarge your penis up to four inches…,” the email subject header reads; or, “A bigger member in just four weeks…” and “Gain up to 8 plus inches…”(there seems to be a general preoccupation with the number four and its multiples, such as eight and twelve, in these emails).

Now just think about this a minute. In these “male enhancement” products, you have a drug that promises to somehow, miraculously, make a part of your body enlarge to twice its size permanently and in a short period of time. In medical terminology, that would be called “chronic swelling.” If you took a pill you bought over the internet and your thumb swelled four inches, you would be calling a doctor for immediate medical attention (not to mention the police so they could track down the quack who sold the drug to you).

And of course that presumes that the pill actually works as intended. And how could it work? I am no doctor or physiologist, but I know that I cannot make other parts of my body grow by taking a pill. Steroids might make me bulkier in terms of muscle mass, but I won’t get any taller than my present 5 foot 6 inches in height. So why do people think that the penis is any different than the rest of the human body? Once the body is finished developing naturally in the early twenties, it’s over. The penis is not going to grow.

There are pumps, and even (ahem) a hand exercise that supposedly lengthen the penis, and some men have gone to the trouble and pain of hanging weights from their penis to stretch and lengthen it. The latter gives new meaning to the expression “a pair of brass balls” perhaps, but it does nothing to achieve the desired end. For the penis to actually be longer, one would actually have to grow more skin and tissue there in the first place.

This isn’t science, really. It’s simple common sense. It’s rather ironic that men, who are supposed to be the rational ones according to popular sexist prejudice, are the ones fooled by claims of miraculous penile transformations. I’ve been listening to XM radio quite a bit lately, and even though much of the programming may be legitimate cable news or entertainment programming, sandwiched in between the audio broadcast of Hannity and Colmes are advertisements for Extenze. Apparently men call the 1-800 number or visit the website and order the product, otherwise where else does the advertising revenue come from?

Go to any online medical site, such as WebMD, and read articles debunking the myth that the penis can be enlarged by taking pills. In the “Comments” section of these articles, almost the first thing you will find is some sap asking, “So how can I enlarge my penis?” It’s like once they are told that pills don’t work, they immediately assume there must be some other method that does work.

It would be great to think that the only ones who fall for these mythical penis size “treatments” were teenage boys who don’t know any better. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that adult men, especially men in their thirties and forties, are probably the intended targets of these scammers and spammers. After all, they are the ones with the credit cards.

The debate last night between the three Democratic primary contenders had to be one of the most relentless, bloodthirsty debates I have ever witnessed. I think it is difficult to say that either Clinton or Obama came out on top, due to the harshness of their attacks. Edwards was the only one of the three who remained above the fray, but whether that translates into support or not is difficult to say.

Speaking for myself, if I were an uncommitted South Carolinian, I would be giving Edwards a hard second look. Clinton and Obama both came across as intensely angry at each other, whereas Edwards seemed to be more preoccupied with the economic concerns of voters than the accusations of his opponents.

But as an Obama supporter, the debate was disappointing more than it was satisfying. He came across as far too defensive and even nervous. I don’t think I have ever heard him more stumbling in his speech patterns, to the point that he seemed inarticulate. The only thing I can attribute it to is his anger. I don’t think he is by nature an angry man, but he felt the need to respond angrily as a way of showing that he is not going to be trod down by the Clinton attack machine. He does not appear in the best light as an angry man, and I don’t think that anger is the kind of passion people have been responding to in him.

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Something I have only recently noticed about Brendan is that he has started making up his own jokes and telling them to us, usually at dinner or while driving in the car. We usually help him refine his jokes a little, but some of them are actually quite clever for a six year old. Here are a couple samples:

What do you call a Christmas cat? Santa Claws.

And a variation: why did the cat love Santa? Because Santa had Claus.

What do you call a snail aboard a ship? A snailer.

Who did the Burger King marry? The Dairy Queen.

And then the following joke, told to us in the car today, made us giggle for entirely inappropriate reasons: what was the rubber’s favorite school activity? He liked playing in the rubber band.

Last night in World of Warcraft, I ventured into Karazhan with my guild for the first time. Since everyone else has been inside Kara multiple times, I needed some one-on-one instruction and lots of patience from our raid leader. It was a memorable and throughly enjoyable night worthy of a blog post, I think.

Raiding Kara has been a long-term goal of mine since I first began hearing about it several months ago. Friends venturing inside brought back stories of the ferociously difficult battles and the superior loot to be had inside its crumbling walls. Having seen it for myself, now, after all this time, I have to say that everything was true.

It is a beautifully designed instance that shows off Blizzard’s attention to detail and sure grasp of what makes a game fun. Although we use the term “dungeon” and “instance” to refer to these special places in Azeroth where the bosses hit harder and the better loot drops like rain, what I thought of when I first climbed the stairway from the stables to the banquet hall was Hotel California.

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So last night I was doing something only a modern father would do for his six year old son: I was using a Q-Tip to spread a vaginal anti-fungal cream between his butt cheeks.  He has had a fiery yeast infection for about a week, after being on antibiotics for a strep infection at Christmas.

I say “only a modern father” because I can’t imagine my Dad or Grandpa doing this.  My own father refused to change my diapers, according to my Mom.

Anyway, so here I am spreading this cream on my son’s butt, and he says, “Dad, do you think this yeast infection will be over by the time I am married?”

I said, “Yes, unless you plan to get married in the next day or two.”

He didn’t say anything, and after a pause in which I found myself stifling laughter, I added, “Besides, you’d have to be married fifty years before your wife would do this for you.”

“This year, I am going to work harder while on the clock,” I say, as I begin to write a blog post while on the clock.

Ah, crap.  That one’s already blown.

My work gets done on time, sometimes early, and my annual evaluations are always outstanding.  I sometimes feel guilty about that because I know how lazy I am at heart.  I may not appear lazy–I don’t lounge in my chair reading comic books, or crawl under my desk for a nap–but at heart I am a slacker.

It’s difficult not to slack, when one sits in front of a computer all day.  There are so many temptations.  “I’ll just find out how the New Hampshire primary is going,” I say, browsing over to the Washington Post.  Then I read one article, two articles…I go back and work a little bit.

Then, “Hmm, let me check the New York Times…”

Browse.  Work.  Browse.  Work.  Write blog post at lunch.  Work.  Browse.  Browse some more.  Browse.  Browse.  Work a little. Browse.  Go over to the cafe for a skim cap no whip.  Come back to my desk and work a little.  Browse while I sip the last of my pick-me-up.

As the day gets longer I tend to browse more.  The hours between three and five are difficult.  People are quietly leaving the office or in the last of the day’s meetings.  I’ve just about finished everything I needed to do today, or else decided it won’t be finished by the end of the day and will have to wait until tomorrow morning when I am fresh.

The life of the modern worker bee.  I watch the show Mad Men on AMC and wonder how office workers made it through a day in 1960 without Internet.

I guess the answer is, they boozed it up on the clock and sneaked away for mid-afternoon sexual trysts.

Hm.  Now that I think about it, maybe folks in the sixties had it better.

It’s difficult not to feel some measure of disappointment in Hillary Clinton’s victory in New Hampshire last night. As one radio commentator said today, it feels almost like we were set up for disappointment by the pollsters who had Obama with a ten or twelve point lead over Clinton, right up until the end.

On the other hand, I ought to have seen it coming. Both Iowa and New Hampshire are anomalous in Presidential politics, with the winners of those two states often being different people, and the party nomination often going to a third person entirely who lost both Iowa and New Hampshire.

In a way, the real Primary race begins today. Now we find out if Obama is tough as well as eloquent, and whether Clinton really did “find her voice,” as she stated in her victory speech last night.

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Metro car doors do not open when striking a foreign object. I found this out this morning when I slipped through the door onto the train just as the door was closing.

“Doors closing. Stand clear of the door.”

I felt the door strike me, and I squeezed through, all except for my left arm and my bag. I yanked my arm free quickly and painfully, then had to struggle to pull my bag out of its grip. I almost fell backwards when it came free. I felt pretty foolish, certain that people were watching me with ironic amusement.

My mind has been elsewhere today, occasioning all sorts of foolishness such as trying to squeeze between two closing Metro car doors.

For one thing, I am still sick, my head thick with mucus, my ears as congested as my sinus passages, to the point that any sound originating outside my own wheezy chest passes through my auditory nerve as clearly as molasses through cotton.

Yesterday I thought I was getting better. Today, I still feel miserable and I wonder if I have another week of this ahead of me.

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It’s hard not to feel excited about what happened last Thursday in Iowa. Insiders and pundits will try to tell us it doesn’t matter, but there is a quite palpable feeling that it really did matter, and no amount of conventional wisdom can dispel that good feeling. Indeed the feeling grows with each passing day, as real and seemingly inevitable as a wave on the ocean.

It’s hard to say from whence it stems. For me personally, it stems from the overturning of assumptions about how the political party apparatchiks choose our candidates for higher office. No such proverbial “smoke filled room” existed in this caucus. Indeed by all accounts, independents and first time caucus-goers chose dark horse candidates over party operatives in both cases. Currently in the process of reading a book on Lincoln, I am reminded how that other Illinois Senator began the 1858 campaign as a distinct underdog and rose to prominence as perhaps our greatest President.

Bob Herbert of the New York Times writes that what Americans have responded to in Obama is a message of “hope, healing and change,” and I think he is exactly right. I would go further and compare Obama to the greatest Democrat politician, Franklin Roosevelt, in that he inspires confidence and courage where previously, there was doubt and fear. Always smiling, always cool, even when faced with the most outrageous assaults on his character by the Clintons, this is the kind of man Americans want as President. His ideas will no doubt come under increasing scrutiny as the campaign progresses, and especially if he becomes the nominee, but for right now all that matters is how he makes us feel. And that feeling is good, hopeful. For me, it has become an emotional attachment that elitists on both the left and right scorn, but it is powerful nonetheless. I recall people, especially women, making similar illogical expressions of emotion regarding the Clinton/Gore team of 1992, and even 1996. I scorned them, at the time, but now I am fully willing to give in to emotion in this case.

This is heady stuff. If Obama is elected, even if he is only the nominee and is defeated in November, it will change this country in ways that no one can foresee right now.

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