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October 26, 2006
Befriending a Former President
In his by now chronic raspy voice, Bill droned on: “At all levels of government hearings the question always is whether the scandalous behavior being investigated is traceable to a a few bad apples, or is systemic. However,” he says, “I must say, this choice must surely be futile.” This is Bill Brickhouse, who used to be President of the United States, but now, more realisticly, is a regular stiff at Monty’s Krown. As an aspiring member of the Midnight Club, I was hoping he would go on, and go on he did. “The further any investigation goes the more this choice will be seen as a cover-up. Proposed by an invisible, master equivocator. It will turn out that the bad apples are the exemplars of the system, and this question has been proposed by the very worst one of them!”
Dear God! I thought. What will he say next? “It will turn out that it is a case of systemic bad apples,” he said triumphantly. And Brickhouse pounded the bar. Now, truly no one else was listening, except for a couple of distant girls, who were moving closer. I was fascinated at the way this former President (that is what he said he was, and we don’t require resumes, just proof of age here at Monty’s Krown) was laying his mind right out there, like the proverbial patient, what was it? "etherized on a table".
“Also, the word systemic gets changed along the way to systematic, which is entirely different,” Bill was fuming, smouldering in his rhetoric now. “The scandalous problem proposed was formulated with a sham distinction, and now the solution isn’t even aimed at the original problem!”
Oh yeah, I knew what he was saying. Things are thrice removed before you get them out of committee, and that is a metaphor for life. Happens in committee! Yes, systemic is far worse than systematic, for it calls for essential reform of the system itself. Mere systematic corruption, that can be rooted out without reforming the system itself, even if you are left with virtually nothing but the, um, skeleton. Of the system. Systemic, though--you can forget the whole deal! That’s really bad apples. I knew all this, and like the former President of the United States I was often fatigued at having to lay the riggings of my brain out, just so people could in the end gawk at them and forget I ever even had the reins of any power, how great or little, once.
In Monty's, though, it isn't life, doesn't have to be. But try getting anyone else to understand these distinctions while in the government. The damn truth it is only after you have been there, that you understand what it might have been. What a dream, to really run things! Much less a country! Even around here, where we are all on a break, it isn’t totally free air. But you’d have to say it was better now, and the former President was reconciled to the neighborhood, to the midnight walk to the bar, the always bracing weather . . . whether or not he ever was a greater or lesser man. Maybe he hadn’t lost everyone’s attention; Sally Underwood was moonfaced with just the idea of comprehending him, and the aspiring film maker Johnny was interested in the fact that the former President of the United States was still so motivated to comment on the ever puzzling nature of current events. Or non-events, which was more to Johnny’s unrealized, experimental film style anyway.
“We have the choice between believing the government is corrupt or is incompetent; that is the choice. Either they are evil, or they are idiots,” Bill Brickhouse then said. Looking at him, you could see he was a man of former stature and strength. And even this more radically familiar choice, as he phrased it, a dumbed down version of the earlier point, I thought, still boggled the mind of Randy DeSoto, who had already forgotten his own last name, until someone said to him, “you’re driving, DeSoto!” That sounded like a car. How ironic! Randy had to go home, it was almost lights out with him, and he had to be at work in two days at the tattoo parlour. Two days! An almost unfathomable amount of time. Seems they're making Presidents younger and younger these days; and with people living almost a generation longer now--you go figure it out. Anybody in this bar could be . . . anybody.
Posted by mortimer at 10:41 PM | Comments (6116)
October 17, 2006
Baseball Lingo 101
Hitting is contagious. He is I will tell you one of the most likable, if not the most likable, players in the game today. And that will stop the bleeding. Verlander hasn’t been fair to the Big Hurt tonight, he’s blown him away twice. There’s two of these players who started their careers when we were trying to get our first kiss, at the age of 16. You can bet the house that Kendell is taking on this pitch. When the Manager goes out there, you don’t talk mechanics. Jackets are coming off in that Tiger bullpen. Big Frank is swinging a piece of iron.That town loves its baseball. We all have our memories. Even if you were trying to get your first kiss at sixteen . . . Bill Freehan, did he get one at sixteen? Lelands magic’s working again. I saw a sign said Leland for Governor, and I believe it. What time is it? One thing for sure, it’s five o'clock somewhere in the world. When you lose a teammate it’s like a losing a brother. In the fraternity of baseball . . . That’s very important for the psyche of a young pitcher. Good at bat. That’s when you try to overdo, and you make silly outs. That’s the most misleading statistic in all of baseball. When you’re behind and you’re putting men on base and you have the middle of the lineup coming up. I am not saying I don’t agree. What I am saying is, base runners score. Wow. Wow is right. Leland’s feeling like a genius tonight, just by having him in the lineup. The opponents are in a world of hurt. You’re talking about a guy whose maturing right before my eyes. This kid is a star in the making, bright, funny. Good looking young man. When he strikes out, it bothers him.
(Commercial break: "When is a car more than just a car?")
And a crafty veteran like Jones coming in to close it? What we got coming out of that bullpen, this game is over. I want to know what kind of gum Jones is chewing, because he is certainly enjoying it. Because the A’s with a proverbial bloop and a blast could tie it. Well, they say its a game of inches. There was a swing that could have been either a harmless fly ball, letting Detroit out of here with a two game lead, or a grand slam that would have won it for the A’s. What, you don’t think these players grow a little facial hair to make themselves look more tough? Feel tough? I can believe it. Just like hitting, good pitching is contagious. The story when he first came over, his teammates wanted to make his brand new jersey look dirty, so they took a tire and messed it up, and he was upset by that. He said, you have to earn the dirt. They call him Mr. Intensity. Look at that ball tumble. Thinking, down. Again, the illusion of the strike. More than enough fastball. He almost double clutches the hitter, because he slows you down. You made a good point. I know Oakland doesn’t like to play that type of game, but I’ll tell you what, it’s a a great time to put the game in motion. Really good fundamental baseball. Probably best described as a meat and potatoes kind of guy. You want to put up some crooked numbers.Tried to shoestring it out there, but it got by him for a double. You gotta believe he’s hackin’, right, Lou? Yea, he’s cutting it loose. That is bad base running by Monroe. That one left a vapour trail off the bat of Ordonez.And there’s a rocket into right field by Guienne.They’re feeling it in the Motor City. This is how you win championships, take every inch of opportunity presented to ya. I guess when the umpire expands that strike zone a bit, it make the hitter stretch. Perhaps the season’s on the line for the A’s, when we come back. Players, as we know, have weird superstitions, almost all of them. If you have something you are doing right, you keep it up, like taking the same route to the stadium. He’s never stepped on a line in his life. Never had chalk on his shoes. Good pitching, like hitting, is contagious, like I said.
Posted by mortimer at 08:32 PM | Comments (5279)
October 06, 2006
The Devil Is Limping
" By comparing the genomic sequences of an ever-increasing number of organisms, we are now uncovering how our bodies came to be the way they are. Evolution, it seems, is a tale of détente: The need to adapt to changing environments is in a tug of war with the demand for precisely functioning biological machinery." Science Magazine, Genomic Tales (from 3 Quarks Daily)
Some of my well-meaning friends wonder why I keep popping up with little essays on topics that seem to belong more in the domain of science, than in, say, literature or poetry, which they think I should more profitably stick to. But stuff like the above quote drives me nuts. I can’t help reacting to what I am surrounded by, like intellectual pollution. It isn’t the scientists--who are hopelessly deluded--, but the Little Scientist in everybody else that gets me, the one who never got out of sixth grade biology class. Because he or she was buffaloed right then, done in by the premise and assumptions of that one-eyed monster: science; and his lapdog, logic.
Science does propose to explain how things are created, and in this effort effectively and permanently replace the need for a creator at all. This it vainly does by virtue of an explanation of the workings of nature, which is only description, backed up by repeated demonstrations and experiments, which don’t prove anything, except the unlimited power of circular logic. Because no matter what is done in the laboratory, no one can recreate the situation in which there is no laboratory at all.
Determining how something is apparently made does not establish how it was made, or could be made. It is only to be able to say, it appears to work this way. But if you replicate it according to what you have found out about how it is made, you create something else anyway. Even an exact repetition is not the original, for the original was made from nothing--or rather, something unknown to us. This is what people seem hard pressed to admit, and it is all because people, sort of greedily, mistake the discovery of a process for the process itself. This, I harangue my friends every chance I get (which is not that often, actually) cannot be done, by anyone. Why! Because the person's consciousness of the process is always involved in the discovery, both as an interpretation and an influence, and then involved again in the new creation.
Nature has happened, lucky for us!, and continues, without our participation. It has happened without us being involved. We are visitors, like with special visiting permits. We are so intimately a part of reality that we think we have the ability to intervene in processes of creation. Very unique situation, being alive. Put the popcorn on. The noise and confusion comes with Science’s bedrock assumption that to discover how something works is to discover how it was made. This is not only wrong by example, but wrong essentially. That is wrong everytime. It is not just approximately wrong, or just a technicality that we are not actually involved in the creation of anything. It is an absolute clue to our own being as a visitor in this world. You can stare and stare and marvel at the workings of nature, but you cannot replicate it; you can all but replicate it, and create lifelike artificial substances. But you cannot get yourself in the position of the creator of anything. And why is this? Because, children, you don’t have anything to work with, from the beginning.
Creation happens when there is no one there. We have no witnesses, and we not only don’t know how anything happens, but it should be clear to us that that fact is essential to their being anything at all. Our not taking part in creation is a circumstance that should not be ignored. The consequences of this ignorance, which I claim are willful, are the wages of sin. Here in a discussion of Thomas Aquinas' distinction between "the Good Angels and the Bad Angels", the writer of the blog SIRIS reflects: "Thus knowledge for the angels is not merely a bare acquaintance with things but a submission to Truth Itself -- as it should be for all of us. This is why Aquinas makes the qualification 'good angels' -- the fall of the wicked angels is a failure to move from the knowledge of things to the knowledge of God. The demonic life is a night without morning, because they do not attempt to look at what they know in the light of the rising Sun."
Thinking one has the ability or knowledge to be a creator does sounds like what we have heard is the crime of the devil. Configure the devil how you will, what we have to get clear is what his crime exactly is. It is not the crime of assuming the powers of creation, but the crime of ignoring the truth about creation. For one cannot actually get those powers; one can only assume they have them. And one cannot be punished (the devil is punished) for a crime one cannot actually commit. One would just laugh at the devil’s presumptions if they were harmless. It is the crime of not appreciating the creation that this devil has committed. It is the crime of not looking; this is paid back by a creator who says: “ungrateful child!” He does not say, “how dare you propose to be like me?” For no one can be like him, and he is not offended that anyone might hope to be like him; in fact he could only be flattered by that. The crime is in not worshipping him. He says, “how dare you ignore my handiwork, in creating the world and you yourself, you ingrate.” He is not even looking to be appreciated; but, for some reason, he needs to be acknowledged, and praised. Think this is religion? No this is just thought at its base level. The inescapable reverence for life.
It is at this point my well-meaning, but always intellectually curious friends, perk up and actually start listening. Strategically, I have positioned the killer part of my argument towards the end, knowing it would take a bit of prodding and poking to awake and keep awake with semi-painful jabs a practically comatose public. Make the popcorn! It isn’t that science and logic could create a world, but just didn’t create this one. Or that they helped create this world, like intervening somewhere along the way, and becoming commissioned builders of certain regions, adjunct developers of technology, for instance; --no, the truth is that science and logic cannot create anything at all. These men of no reverence for life have not the slightest ability to make anything, but can only reverse engineer nature at best. They can only, with triumphant skills and unabashed pride, analyse what is right in front of them, and take apart reality. But, they cannot put it back together again, because even if it looks the same, when they propose it, or fabricate it, or at the extreme say they have fixed it, is in every case fatally ruined.
As sure to rust as that metal scupture of the one-eyed devil in my backyard. (Credit to: Phil Florin).
But there is more. Science and Logic always speak with forked tongue, literally. The reason these arm-in-arm bullies have gotten credit for being as co-creators of creation, so to speak, is that they make to explain BOTH aspects of creation: the how, and the when. By claiming to understand how nature works, and simultaneously, as if part of the explanation, when it was formed, Dame Science and Duke Logic appear to run all other explanations off the field, or the kitchen table. No one can dispute them because slipped into to their argument is a time factor, posing as history. This completely flexible additive can make to remedy any observable process, by adding, say, a few million light-years to it.
Weakly, and ignorant of the devil’s cunning, what us good folks always do, to furiously oppose such appparent learning is to argue with the time factor. We try to correct them, argue that science itself doesn’t have a clean record, but moves by fits and starts, etc.. We try to show that history doesn’t back them up; mythology totally disputes them, etc, etc. But the strong attack is to attack the “how”. And show that nothing can be made from existing materials at all. There is always something novel in the mix, when reality is considered, and that novelty is the element that makes the whole greater than its parts. That forces thinking into a retrospection, and a reverie.
Posted by mortimer at 03:18 PM | Comments (489)