Linguistics, part deux

Every @#$% thing we buy is @#($&*% made in @!#$(&% China! How old does one have to be to absolved from the admonition that "you'd better start learning Chinese"?

Higher Logic

The logic of those who would have us believe they have a special relationship with a deity is nothing if not fascinating, infuriating, and entertaining. Some examples:

• Professional athletes who make some sort of religious gesture when they come to bat, prepare for a foul shot, or line up for a field goal. Leaving aside the chutzpah implicit in the assumption that the deity has nothing better to do than take part in their activity, what happens if they make the gesture and are unsuccessful? Does it mean that the deity favors the other team or likes some other player better or that this player is unworthy of help? If a player constantly prays before coming to bat and then hits for a low average, does the player reexamine his or her life and try to become more worthy of help? What if a player prays before the action and then cheats by, say, taking steroids?
• The religious right who are praying to god to create more vacancies on the Supreme Court to replace the godless activitist justices with more correct justices, justices who would allow the placement of the ten commandments in court buildings (despite the fact that, as Bill Maher has pointed out, only two of the ten commandments are actually laws) and permit prayer (Christian prayer) in public school. If god is all powerful, then how did the current justices get on the Court in the first place? Did they sneak in whilegod was on his annual five-week vacation? And if god is all powerful, and justices are removed by death or illness, are the people who pray for that to happen accessories to attempted murder or reckless endangerment?
• The settlers in the Gaza strip who resisted leaving because they claimed that god had placed them there. Isn't it also a possiblity that god now wants them to leave?
• And leave us not forget to mention people who feel that god wants them to kill people by committing suicide, despite the fact that there is no scriptural authority for this contention.

Some Things the Porn Industry Should Consider

There is a porn movie called "Bikini Cavegirl," the plot of which (it has a plot?!) revolves around (and the plot revolves?!) a prehistoric man and woman going through some sort of time travel device which transports them to the present, where they learn how to spice up their sex life before going back to their own time. Two problems: The man, like all male porno actors, has absolutely no body hair, quite a stretch for a prehistoric man. The woman, like all female porno actors (and all male porno actors and apparently most of the general population) has some very elaborate tattoos, not something that could easily be fashioned with a flint arrowhead or a bone needle. Not that there's much consistency in these films in general. They're just an excuse for sex. But since these movies actually claim to have "directors," "producers," and "screenwriters," someone should put a little thought into these issues, n'est-ce pas?

Linguistics

There was a picture on the New York Times web site of an antiwar sign from 1969 that said "War Is Over." I hope that current antiwar activists realize that to have any impact today, the equivalent sign would have to say: "War Is, Like, So Over."

Burning Questions

I hope that at least on my deathbed, if not sooner, I will receive Enlightenment in the form of an answer to the question: What is the opposite of Old Navy--Young Navy or New Navy?

Poor Texas

Texas is now a majority-minority state, i.e. a majority of the population consists of “minorities.” Just think... for all these years they've been executing as many minority criminals as possible as fast as possible to keep this from happening, but it didn't work!

The Extinction of Species, part 1

In the movie "Shanghai Noon," the marshal asks the inept outlaw: "How do you survive out here?" I sometimes wonder how the species homo sapiens has survived this long. Here are some examples:

• A man in Taiwan died after sitting in a cybercafe playing video games for 32 hours straight.
• The bakery industry has spent years and millions of dollars trying to figure out how to make whole wheat flour white. And they've succeeded. So very soon we will have white Wonder whole wheat bread.
• In the recently passed transportation bill, Congress appropriated $223 million (approx.) to build a bridge in Alaska from the mainland to an island with a population of 50. The bridge has to be high enough to allow cruise ships to pass underneath.

More to come, natch.

Divine Providence

If, as our President would have us believe, there is a divine agency governing the universe, then we as a nation must have committed some terrible crimes to have been punished by having a president such as he.

Commercials, part 1

We really need to pay attention to commercials--to listen to what they are actually saying and carry it to its logical conclusion.

• A friend of mine told me of the following experience: He and his sister shared a credit card with their mother. It was a MasterCard issued by one of the large banks. At some point he tried to use the card and had it rejected. When he traced the problem to its source, it turned out his mother had decided to replace the MasterCards with Visas. Why? Because she had seen the Visa commercials advertising that at certain locations (the Olympics, certain theme parks, certain restaurants) you should "bring your Visa card, because at . . . they don't take American Express." So she had decided that Visa was better than MasterCard. And he had to tell her: "Look, Ma. First of all, we're not planning to go to any of those places. Second, they're only talking about American Express, not MasterCard."

• I love the commercials for some organization that's supposed to help people without healthcare coverage pay for drugs. It's sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. First, if drugs weren't so damned expensive people might actually be able to afford them. And don't tell me that they have to spend all that money on research. Drugs companies actual pay doctors (by means of "goodies") to prescribe their products. Plus they spend all this money on consumer advertising for drugs which can only be prescribed by doctors. Second, the healthcare industry (of which pharmaceutical companies are a large part) spent $500 million to defeat plans for universal healthcare in the early days of the Clinton Administration. So, oh yeah, let's thank the pharmaceutical industry for being so generous in trying to help people buy their drugs.

If It Ain't Broke..., part 1

The principle “if it ain't broke, don't fix it” has been replaced by “if it ain't broke, break it.”
Example: For over a year, about every two months I had been getting deliveries from a place called the Soda Club (these are supplies for making my own soda). At the time of delivery, there would also be a pickup of the expended CO2 cartridges. Because I live on the fifth floor (walkup) I would leave the empties in a store on my corner, and a courier would drop off the new stuff and pick up the empties. The delivery regularly occurred three days after my online order. About two months ago, I placed an order and when it hadn't arrived even several days late, I called the company. They said they no longer used the courier but were using UPS instead. Because the address of the store didn't specify that it was on the ground floor, UPS was holding it for an apartment number. I called UPS and told them that it was a store and it was on the ground floor and was told that it would be delivered the next day. After two weeks and at least 10 phone calls to both UPS and the Soda Club, the Soda Club had to send a replacement shipment. I eventually got both the original and the replacement. This time, as I was making arrangements to have UPS make the delivery directly to me, I was told that the Soda Club had gone back to using the courier. Might I add... "Duhhhh!"
Note: There will be more on this subject because it is one of the main sources of aggravation in modern, everyday life.