Race and the MSM

Ordinarily, I wait until the next day to make another post about something that piqued my interest, but today I've decided to forego the wait and just let loose.  I was reading, as I do almost daily, nbcnews.com, and saw an article about George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon Martin, waiving temporarily a hearing on the stand your ground immunity defense.  Because I'm not from Florida, I don't particularly understand all the intricacies and nuances of the SYG defense, so I wanted to see what waiver of the defense meant in practical terms.  I still don't know what it all means because I got sidetracked by more editorializing by the MSM.

In the third paragraph of the story, this nugget appeared:

Zimmerman, who has pleaded not guilty, is a former neighborhood watch volunteer of white and Hispanic descent who has maintained he shot Martin on Feb. 26, 2012, in self-defense after Martin attacked him.

Unless one has been living under a rock for the last year or so and is unaware of the basic facts, Zimmerman was a member of some self-appointed Neighborhood Watch outfit who shot and killed a black teenager, Trayvon Martin, allegedly in self-defense under the SYG law.  I don't know whether Zimmerman has a valid defense or not.  That's not the issue here.

Look closely at the part in bold.  For those of you not familiar with Zimmerman, here's a photo:

Zimmerman is the son of a Caucasian father and a Peruvian mother.  Martin, for all I know, is strictly African American.  What galls me is that the MSM is splitting hairs in an attempt to sway bias against Zimmerman.

How is that, you ask?  Well, let's go with what we know:  Zimmerman is biracial.  Yes, he's of white and Hispanic descent.  Those are facts.  It's not the facts themselves but how they're presented.

If the headline read Hispanic Shoots Black, would the outrage be as great as if it were White of Hispanic Descent Shoots Black?  Of course not.  By injecting the white v. black angle, what now exists is a racial controversy.  Why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

Rahm Emanuel is credited, lately, with pushing the phrase Never waste a good crisis.  The MSM is taking it a step farther and pushing its agenda by the presentation or non-presentation of the news.  By couching this story as a white of Hispanic descent shooter, the MSM ups the racial ante, ensuring that readers are going to think that there was a racial motivation -- or at least moreso than if the line read that Zimmerman is Hispanic. 

It's undeniable that Zimmerman is biracial.  I'm not arguing that he isn't.  Factually, nbcnews.com is correct.  But compare and contrast that with how it describes other high-profile biracial people:

When is the last time you heard Barack Obama, Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey, Derek Jeter, Shemar Moore, Lenny Kravitz, Tiger Woods, Soledad O'Brien or Halle Barry described as whites of African American descent?  For that matter, when was the last time anyone in the MSM dared to call them biracial?  Because they're accomplished in their respective fields, they are black.  But if outlets like nbcnews.com are going to bend over backward to be factually correct, shouldn't these folks bear some hyphenated, awkward yet accurate description?  Or is it only when someone is charged with a crime that factual accuracy is important?

One possible argument in favor of such hyperaccuracy is that for too long, blacks who were the product of biracial couples weren't extended the same courtesy.  By that measure, whites should endure four hundred years of slavery.  In the same breath, why does Zimmerman deserve to bear the weight of faceless white racists to whom he bears no relation?  The MSM knows full well what it's doing:  It's invoking a corollary of Emanuel's dictum about using a good crisis for political gain.  Here, the MSM is using hyperaccuracy to ratchet up the sensationalism of its story to attract and keep readers.

It's unfair.  There's no other way to describe this.  If and when I'm charged with a crime, I want my headlines to be accurate: white of Irish, Polish, Russian and German descent charged with....  That way, people can draw their own conclusions from the stereotypes contained in my DNA:  I did it because I'm a lush, I'm stupid, I'm a Communist and because I'm warlike.  Perhaps then I'd have a built-in defense.

My touchstone in this is what my liberal friend Bill said after the Benghazi affair:  the MSM is letting the country down.  By its constant editorializing by presentation of the news, the MSM is closer to Dr. Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl than it is to the proud tradition of the free media that flourished in the most free country on earth.  This is demagoguery at its worst, wielded by those who have control of news outlets.  Unless and until this changes, the country will continue on its downward spiral from greatness to mediocrity to worse.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Satellite radio

Before there was Facebook and Twitter there was radio.  Not the old time radio where soap operas and baseball games were aired, but the more recent vintage of talk radio, where mere sports and news was a prelude to talk shows about sports and politics.

When this changed exactly I'm not sure.  But sometime in the last thirty years, talk radio exploded. Sports talk shows probably ran neck-and-neck with political talk shows, although to call them talk shows would be a little bit of a misnomer.  Sports talk often involved more shouting than anything else, and were it not for the medium political talk shows would have involved deaths, given the vitriol often heard on those shows.

From Wikipedia I see that satellite radio in the United States began with an application to the FCC in 1990, but that it wasn't until 2001 it began broadcasting (and of all people, Tim McGraw was the first artist aired on satellite radio.  Tim McGraw?  Seriously?).  Subscribers have been slow to transition to satellite radio, mostly because it's not free, but automakers have been including the service in their cars for limited periods upon the purchase of new vehicles, and some buyers have renewed their subscriptions when they expired.

That's what happened with Karen.  When she got her new Chevy last year, it came with a free subscription to Sirius/XM radio.  Sirius/XM has so many channels it's inconceivable that a person could listen to all of them sufficient to decide which are good and which are crap.  It's easy to pick out the favorites pretty quickly, but to listen to every offering would take far too much time.

This past weekend we made another six hour trip in the car.  This time we took Karen's Chevy, because my Volvo is still in the shop awaiting a transplant or two.  Although I prefer my car for several reasons, the one feature about Karen's Chevy that I really enjoy is her Sirius/XM radio, to  which we listened the entire time.

What's interesting about satellite radio is its diversity.  One can listen to music from every era, from the 20's all the way through the present day.  There are more sports channels than one can reasonably listen to and political radio has staked its very territorial claims stridently.  We even discovered that there's a Mel Brooks channel that features songs from his movies.  Perhaps it even airs interviews of the comedy legend.  Who knew?

The most fascinating channels are the political ones.  Given my conservative bent, I don't find much on the conservative channels that offends me, except for the occasional condescending attitude of the hosts.  I don't enjoy debates where people talk over each other, belittle each other and make snide, sarcastic comments.  This is what passes for rhetoric on the conservative channels.

What's most entertaining about the conservative channels is the callers themselves.  More often than not -- with notable and very infrequent exceptions -- the callers are wired, antagonistic and condescending themselves.  More than anything they're ill-informed, citing statistics that would make Ronald Reagan's reliance on Reader's Digest positively academic.  There is nothing like a liberal to make a debate go because their mantra, as I've often said, is Do as we say, not as we do.

But whatever the conservative channels may be, the liberal channels are that much worse.  I've never heard such cloyingly mawkish, self-righteous, cluelessly strident balderdash in my life.  Some young radio host on one of the liberal stations was talking about the recent bombing in Boston and invited people who agreed with him to comment on the AP's decision to remove Islamophobia from its working lexicon.  First of all, I don't know what good removing a word from a dictionary does; people are either going to use the word or not, and if AP writers use the word in defiance of their employer, does that mean they can be fired?  Second, the thrust of the host's argument was that by removing it, the AP was treating it as if there was no more hatred for Muslims when, obviously, there still was.  His argument was that the word needs to remain in circulation to more properly describe the situation as it's portrayed by the Left.

There are a couple of things that are amusing on this front.  First, is it wrong for people to fear a group that has declared its intention to destroy those same people?  To be sure, we can't generalize, but it makes sense that if Islamofascists (I can only imagine how the Left would react to that word...) are bent on our destruction, we shouldn't welcome them with open arms singing Kumbayas.  Second, if we're trying to be more accurate in our descriptions of things, shouldn't the term pro-choice be replaced with the term pro-death?  Whether you believe the fetus is a human being or not, it's a living something, and by terminating the pregnancy you are killing it, i.e., making it dead.  So if one is going to contort oneself about the use or meaning of the word Islamophobia, we should strive to be more accurate in all our descriptions, and what is more fundamental to humans than life or death?

The First Amendment guarantees the right of all Americans to free speech, whether they pay for it or not.  I certainly follow the Voltairean approach to free speech and will willingly die to protect another person's right to say something I find distasteful, but I will also acknowledge the abject hypocrisy of certain people who insist on foisting their mores on me.

Plato descried democracy because its natural evolution brought it closer to anarchy.  Liberals often forget that even in a democracy, brakes need to be applied at times lest the whole system go careening off a cliff.

But if it does, Sirius/XM will be broadcasting along the way.

For a monthly fee, of course.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Cleaning out the basement

This past weekend I spent helping Karen get the house shaped up to either rent or sell as we move from one of the worst states in the Union to one of the best.  It was no fun at times and fun at others.  Having Sherman and Custer around made it more enjoyable.

Karen's biggest beef is that I have way too much stuff.  She thinks I'm a hoarder, which I'm not. The problem has been that I have had to move offices several times and usually that meant bringing home boxes of materials that either I had to sift through or that I needed to keep for my job.  The one thing that I will readily cop to is that I have an inordinate amount of books.  One time Karen, the former librarian, asked me to keep only those books that were my friends and I innocently and very honestly replied, But they're all my friends which, on some levels, is too sad to acknowledge.

But beyond the mountains of books (I do not exaggerate on that point...) there were boxes with papers that I hadn't looked at in ages.  Many of these boxes hadn't been opened in ages since the time that I hurriedly threw papers into them in the hopes that I would be able to go through them to weed them out.  I found stuff in these boxes that defied explanation, small Post-Its with phone numbers and names that didn't jog my memory at all.  I found business cards of financial people with whom I couldn't remember working on a case at all.

There were briefs and memoranda and seminar materials by the bunches.  Some of them were outdated and got tossed.  Others were still relevant and were reboxed to follow me to yet another office and out of the basement.

Yet as I leafed through the seemingly endless reams of errant papers, there were some surprises and wistful memories with which I became reacquainted.  I saw old sports articles that I'd saved in the hopes of framing them and putting them on a wall in my basement.  I found articles of important events, like the headline that announced the hanging of Saddam Hussein, that I kept for memorabilia.

I found articles of events or people that had touched my life.  I found the obituary of Henry Lilienheim, the attorney to whom my aunt introduced me when I was still in school, who had not only survived Dachau but who was invited to be in David Ben Gurion's first Israeli cabinet, only to demur because he had to search for his wife in postwar Europe.  He found her and then wrote a memoir Aftermath.

There was the article about the man who would have been my high school basketball coach (had I not been screwed over by the sophomore coach) who was approaching 700 career victories.  I must have kept the article in shock that he was nearing that milestone because he had a proclivity for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.  It was a testament to his persistence and the district's tenure program that he lasted as long as he did.  If nothing else, he would be remembered those who came in contact with him because he wore a buzz cut hair style until the end of his career in the 1980's.

The Playboy magazines I'd collected and hardly looked at in ages -- no, I never did read an article -- went into a file drawer.  There were articles on how to throw certain pitches with a baseball, others on the size of military units, and others that explained certain historical facts about Ireland.  I discarded the redundant or useless ones and kept a few of the others.  Someday I may well pitch the rest of them.

There were the funny emails that I got, like the one explaining the differences between men and women, how you knew if you played an FPS too much and how 24 lacked verisimilitude.  I got a few chuckles out of them and kept the ones I thought were worth passing on.

Then there were the games that often circulate around offices.  One was a page with thirty or so corporate logos that we see everyday but without the names of the companies associated with the logos.  The task was to put the name with the logo.  I remember getting all but a couple when I first did it; a few I would never have gotten because they weren't national logos but regional logos.  Then there was the devastatingly difficult game that asks one to fill out the phrase.  For example, 26=L.of the A. is 26 Letters of the Alphabet.  Coincidentally, there are twenty-six such mindbenders.

There were also the touching memories.  Friends' letters from bygone days, people whose society enriched my life in various ways.  Annie, the woman who guided me in Spain, the expat who was left stranded in Europe at a tender age who had made her life there and flourished.  Professors, fellow students, coworkers and clients.  Thank you notes from people who lives I touched in mostly small but sometimes big ways.  I was transported back to those times and smiled.

Not one of those, however, touched me as much as the random pieces of paper I found from our Mother.  Notes that she'd jot down, reminders of things to look for, her kindness and generosity there as vibrant as the moment in which she shared it.  I noticed how delicate her handwriting was, how much I emulated it and tried to copy it, as I would try to copy her kindness and generosity.  Mom was a far better person than I'll ever be.  Just seeing those handwritten notes made me miss her all the more.

I'm glad I kept them.  They may be meaningless and clutter, but in truth there were only about four sheets and they remind me of a woman who not only gave me life and saved my life on several occasions, they remind me of the woman who made me the man I am today.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Anniversaries

Anniversaries are yearly remembrances of events that have significant meaning to the people celebrating them.  They can be for weddings, or sports championships, or victories in war or whatever else people choose to remember with a special feeling.

Sometimes the commemorations are joyful, other times they are somber.  They can be public or they can be private.  What matters not is that they follow a certain script but that for the people to whom significance arises, they are meaningful and memorable.

I have a thing for dates.  I'm not in the Ed Begley, Jr., or Marilu Henner class of memorization by any means.  Karen would even tell you that I have a habit of forgetting things that she tells me (she's only right sometimes; I have a slight hearing disability that keeps me from hearing some of what she says, especially when she's in another part of the house walking into another room while I'm trapped in a closet elsewhere...but I digress...).

Ostentatious celebrations are not my style, at least if I'm the person who's to be feted.  Nor do I like to put someone in the position of being the center of attention if that person isn't comfortable with it.
I love to celebrate Karen whenever I can, but so far I've only be able to do so privately.

Today is a very meaningful anniversary for us.  A few years ago today something happened that changed our lives for ever, and for the better.  I know it did for me.  It was such a life-changing event that only one other occurrence is on a par with it.  My life, fortunately, has never been the same since then.

Unfortunately, we're struggling financially.  The economy, contrary to the POTUS and his minions, is not improving.  Karen and I have met with reverses that are both unfair and unexpected.  What's more, no matter how hard we try to get our financial house in order, we stay behind an ever-growing eight ball.  This puts additional stress on both of us, and Karen cannot afford the stress.

When I tell people Karen is the love of my life, it's not mere words.  Besides being the most beautiful and kindest person I'll ever know, she's one of the savviest, sharpest, most prepared people I've ever been around.  Sure, she can be emotional at times, and she needs to rein in this tendency to worry about everything.  She can borrow trouble like it's nobody's business.

But if I have to go through this troubled time, there is no one with whom I'd rather do it.  Because for all her beauty, intelligence, kindness and preparedness, she's the most loyal and resilient people I'll ever know.  I would gladly lay down my life for her, and I know she'd do the same for me.  Love isn't tested by how well we treat each other in the best of times, but how well we look after each other in the worst.  I am the best-loved person on the planet.  We'll get through this and we'll get through this together.

A couple of years ago today, we shared the most beautiful of human experiences.  Our love was declared and bonded for all eternity.  Today, that anniversary is keeping a smile in my heart as my face struggles to keep one with my mouth.  I am the most fortunate man alive because Karen loves me.

Happy Anniversary, sweetheart.  Thank you the most wonderful years of my life.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Soft drinks and health

Recently, I heard someone say that scientists don't know where the chemicals that are in diet soft drinks go, but at least they know where the sugar in regular drinks goes.  I have never been much into soft drinks, preferring unsweetened sun tea, but I admit that I drank Diet Coke for a long time. Once I heard that comment, I tried to switch to regular soft drinks.

Thinking that because I liked Diet Coke (and Diet Coke with lime in particular) I'd like regular Coke, I tried that again.  I hadn't drunk regular Coke since I was a teenager at best.  I took one swig of it and hated it.  I don't know why, but I just did.

I'd always liked Dr. Pepper.  So I opted for Dr. Pepper as my drink of choice.  I drink about two cans of that a day when I'm at the office because I have nowhere to keep a pitcher of iced tea.  I will admit that I can drink about a gallon of iced tea a day, and in an office setting with a shared refrigerator, it's just not possible to keep a pitcher of iced tea.

While I'm on the topic of iced tea, is there a more vile drink than sweet tea?  It's positively wretched. I know I've just offended almost the entire portion of the southern United States with that comment, but it's the truth.  It's like drinking syrup with a hint of tea flavor.

But I also like ginger ale.  Karen hates the stuff, which simply means there's more for me.  I also like 7-Up.  I don't know if this ruins my street cred or not, but I've like Fresca since I was a little kid.  I hear that now if you drink Fresca as a man it telegraphs, supposedly, one's sexual orientation. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Nowadays, energy drinks are all the rage.  Things like Red Bull just don't attract me.  What's more, people put them in glasses with vodka or other spirits.  They may well taste good, but I'm not that adventurous.

I never liked Gatorade.  I just don't like its taste.

As far as alcoholic beverages go, for whatever reason I detest champagne.  Wine's all right, but I'm a snob and only drink domestic or Spanish wines, especially the latter.  Beer is really just a couple: Sam Adams, Miller Genuine Draft or Guinness, which is really porter.  I don't drink much hard liquor but will sip whiskey occasionally.  I'd like to try brandy, bourbon and cognac.  Mixed drinks do nothing for me, although I have had a Long Island Iced Tea or two.  Oddly enough, I've never had a martini. I remember our Grandma used to drink Old Fashioneds.

For now, I'm either drinking a ton of water, a Dr. Pepper or two or iced tea.

And that's just fine with me.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Boston Bombing and the Miranda warnings

A debate has ensued over the issuance or lack thereof of the Miranda warnings to the surviving Boston bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.  For the benefit of anyone who doesn't understand the controversy, allow me to explain.

The Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the United States Constitution read thus:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.


Many people are familiar through movies with the Fifth Amendment and the defendant's right to plead the Fifth.  Less familiar to people both within and without the United States is the Sixth Amendment which, essentially, boils down to a right to a speedy trial, a right to confront one's witnesses and the right to an attorney.  The last portion of the Sixth Amendment was upheld in the case of Gideon v. Wainwright.

The Miranda warnings issue from the case Miranda v. Arizona and a lesser-known case that came afterwards, Escobedo v. Illinois.  What people confuse is that the Miranda warnings are not constitutional protections in and of themselves but the implementation of constitutional protections by advising the person under arrest of their constitutional rights.  But as with other constitutional rights, there are limitations and exceptions.  For example, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote, a person does not have the unfettered right to shout Fire! in a crowded theater where there is no fire for obvious public safety reasons.  Likewise, although the Second Amendment guarantees citizens the right to bear arms, there is no reasonable need for a citizen to be able to own and operate an Abrahms M-1 tank.    The limitations and exceptions have to be reasonable.

In the present case, prosecutors have declared that they are claiming the public safety exception to the Miranda doctrine, and I believe they are right, provided they don't abuse the exception.  I don't believe there is any question as to guilt, so any questions they ask in that vein are both unnecessary and probably violative of the exception.  But to ask questions about other bombs, other members of a cell, whether there's a factory somewhere, anything that is designed to protect the country and its citizens, is probably fair game.

Those people who complain about Tsarnaev's rights being violated should consider what would happen in another country.  Were he caught in the Middle East, there is little doubt that he would be subjected to torture on his way to the square where he would be beheaded.  In Europe, although he wouldn't be given the death penalty, there would be less protection for him while in custody than he is receiving here.  In England, he's presumed guilty and would have to prove his innocence.  So no matter how off-putting this move by the prosecutors might seem to be, he's still getting off easy.

Insofar as the move by some senators to declare him an enemy combatant and ship him to Gitmo is concerned, I think that's a non-starter for a couple of reasons.  First, Tsarnaev is an American citizen.  He may have been engaged in jihad, which would open him to a charge of treason, but that doesn't mean he should be subjected to the Code of Military Justice.  Federal law has more than enough available to charge and convict him for treason.  Second, he committed the act on American soil.  He wasn't in Yemen or Somalia directing operations against the United States.  Third, even if he's an operative of a foreign force bent on destroying America, there is no declaration of war by another country that would subject him to enemy combatant status.  The problem with the internees in Gitmo is that they are affiliated with a group or groups that have no allegiance to any one nation.  At this point, it is unclear with what Tsarnaev is affiliated, although an off-shoot of Al Qaeda is the most reasonable culprit.

Tsarnaev will be incarcerated where he will die eventually, and that's what should happen.  Right now, it's important for authorities to secure the public's well-being with information that only he can provide.  His motivation to cooperate is a possibly reduced sentence, although I'm not sure how life in prison without possibility of parole can be whittled down meaningfully to sixty years to life.

The political rhetoric needs to stop.  The advancement of agendas needs to stop.  We need to protect America and its citizenry.  That is the paramount concern here.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Boston bombings and the MSM

Time to drag out the soapbox again.  This is getting quite tiresome.

The Boston bombings had people unhinged, and to a certain extent that was to be expected.  Anyone who was in either the race or Boston or who had family in either was naturally on edge.  I understand that.

What completely mystifies me is that otherwise sensible liberals (I know, it's oxymoronic, but I have a good liberal friend who is perhaps the most sensible person I know besides Karen, and I owe that to him if not to his confederates) go nuts whenever something untoward happens.

For example, before the Tsarnaevs' identities were announced, talking head Chris Matthews of MSNBC declared that domestic terrorists tend to come from the far right.  Lawrence O'Donnell, also of MSNBC, stated that the NRA was helping the bombers get away.  Michael Moore averred that the Tea Party was involved in the bombings, Jay Mohr the actor blamed the bombings on the gun culture in America, and some CNN analyst named Peter Bergen questioned whether right wing extremists were to blame.

Of course, we know now that it was a pair of Chechen-born brothers who, for reasons as yet not ascertained, did the cowardly deed.  They didn't use guns, they weren't affiliated with the NRA, they weren't right wing extremists or members of the Tea Party.  None of what these tools said was remotely correct, but they were trotted out and allowed to spew their hatred because their agendas are approved by the MSM platforms.

If anyone has any doubt that the MSM is coopted, they only need to review what these morons said over the last week and the absolute silence about retractions or corrections.  I'm sure the networks would point to the speakers and disassociate themselves from the chatter, claiming that those views are solely those of the speakers and not those of the company.  Poppycock.  If that had been a conservative speaker who was brandishing an equally offensive sword, there would be cries to revoke the company's FCC license and pay huge fines.  But because these warped, twisted viewpoints blended nicely with the networks' own agenda, they were not only allowed to air them but also were  protected from any blowback.

What's more than frustrating to me is that liberals actually believe this crap.  Why can't they see through this transparent propaganda?  Why don't they learn to think for themselves?  They will readily claim that conservatives are the ones who are brainwashed and sit back with their elitist belief that they alone possess the true knowledge.  Conservatives are no more right or wrong than liberals, and there are those who walk in lockstep with Limbaugh, Beck and other talking heads, but there are conservatives like me who not only don't follow those personalities but also think for ourselves.  It's high time liberals began to question those whom they hold out as leaders and inspect just where their lives have been led by these people.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

How things are made and done

Right now I'm reading a book entitled Road of 10,000 Pains:  The Destruction of the 2nd NVA Div. by the U.S. Marines, 1967.  I read a lot of military history.  I still don't have enough books on the Vietnam War, but a friend lent me his copy and I'm thoroughly engrossed in this one.

As with virtually any history of the war in 'Nam, rice paddies are mentioned liberally.  Apropos of nothing, I stopped and wondered, as I always do, how rice paddies work.  That is, how are they planted but, more curiously for me, how are they harvested.  This is how my brain works.

I am enormously curious about things.  Perhaps it's not macho to admit, but there is a lot about a lot that I simply don't know.  For someone supposedly as educated as me, that may come as a surprising comment, but I've always maintained that my studies have shown me just how much I don't know.  Like how rice is harvested.

Cable television is scorned, with good reason, for its myriad bad shows,  There is more vapidity, more inanity, more emptiness on basic cable television at which one can shake a stick.  But for all that vacuous programming, there is also a lot of very interesting stuff on as well.  The Discovery Channel. the National Geographic Channel and some other channels offer really informative and educational stuff.  I can sit transfixed watching a show on the animal kingdom or, I believe on the Discovery Channel, a show where they show how things are made.

I remember one episode where they showed how modern hockey sticks are made.  I had thought -- and back in the day they probably were -- that hockey sticks were made of wood.  Now, they are made of a composite substance that begins as a sheet of material that's molded around shafts and then heated to make the composite adhere to itself as it's wound around the shaft mold multiple times.

I've seen how whiskey is distilled.  I've watched baseball bats made.  I could sit there for hours and watch any of these things.  I don't need car crashes or sex scenes of shoot-em-ups to enjoy what I'm watching.

One would think that with this innate curiosity I'd be more mechanically inclined.  If I had ample amounts of time and stuff that I could work on cost-free I'd tinker for hours.  I've never had that luxury.  It would also be nice to have someone with infinite patience who could guide me and explain how things work.  I've never had that.  In fact, I had quite the opposite.  I'm not stupid, just untutored.

For now, though, I'll just keep watching these shows, fascinated what God's gift of ingenuity has allowed man to figure out.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Naming children

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, or so wrote Margaret Wolfe Hungerford.  I know this is true, because there are plenty of people who think Jennifer Aniston and Cameron Díaz are gorgeous, and I don't.  But much the same could be said for names.

I never had children, much to my everlasting regret.  I think I would have been a good parent, although then again I may not.  One thing I would have concentrated hard on doing was giving our children good, solid names that would have grown with them.  I eschew names that are cutesy names befitting an infant, even a toddler, that look positively stupid for a teenager or, heaven forbid, an older adult.

To be honest, I do like some names that are out there.  For girls, I love the names Marisa, Daniela and Gabriela though, to be clear, I could only have given those names to daughters whose mothers were Latinas.  I would never have given the product of two Irish or any other non-Latin union those names.  That would have been absurd.

I do think Seamus and Brendan are solid names for boys.  I would never have named a son after myself for myriad reasons.  First, it's selfish.  Second, it doesn't give the child his own identity.  Third, there's no way I'm burdening a child with a title such as Junior or II.  Uh uh, that wasn't going to happen.

Karen gave her sons names taken from the Bible.  They're good, strong names that harken back to their namesakes.  Karen says that if we'd had had a son, there is no way she would have consented to a son being named Seamus, fearful that the child would have been ridiculed in school and worse.  I don't agree.  I was ridiculed in school and my name was nowhere near as colorful as Seamus, so I don't think that would have mattered.  Besides, Seamus would have had my teachings and would have beaten the tar out of anyone who made fun of him.

But there are others out there, notably celebrities, who think that naming their children is like naming a new business.   Instead of giving the child a solid name that will grow with the child, they give him a name that is designed to grab attention, much like naming a brand to be catchy and give it marketplace recognition.

Some celebrity children aren't burdened like this, but many are.  Gwyneth Paltrow, that paragon of self-indulgent excess, named her daughter Apple.  Sorry, but that's just plain stupid.  But that's comparatively tame next to these horrible names:

Kal-El -- Nicholas Cage's son
Pilot Inspektor -- Jason Lee's son
Fifi Trixibelle -- Bob Geldorf's daughter
Sage Moonblood -- Sylvester Stallone's son
Audio Science -- daughter of Shannyn Sossamon (whoever that is)

Moxie Crimefighter -- child (son? daughter?) of Penn Jillette

But two of the worst have to be Tu Morrow, child of Rob Morrow and Jermajesty, child of Jermaine Jackson.  In neither case is the gender of the child readily identifiable, meaning that there are more unisex names out there beyond Leslie, Kim, Jamie, Carmen and Kelsey.

Even assuming that a child is given a relatively normal name, sometimes he opts for something not as mundane.  This morning while listening to the CBS Morning News, a reporter by the name of Chip Reid came on.  A distinguished looking fellow roughly my age, I wondered why someone of our vintage would be named Chip.  When I got to the office, I looked him up and saw that he is, in fact, roughly my age, and his given name is Charles.  Now, I would balk if someone tried to call me Charlie (I loathe diminutives), but Charles isn't so bad and Chuck has a masculine quality to it.  Chip sounds like someone trying desperately to hold onto his adolescence. 

A former quarterback of the University of Texas is Colt McCoy.  Down there, that may ring true, but would I want to be named Colt?  Doubtful.  I suppose after awhile one gets used to it, but that's just not my cup of tea. 

The name a child is given usually sticks with him for life.  Sure, the child can change the name, or go by another name.  Sometimes even the child makes a bad choice as did Richard Trickle, who chooses to go by the first name Dick.  But parents ought to be more responsible when naming their children.   Even if the child later changes his name, he's going to be asked at some point about his former name, especially if he's the child of a celebrity.

Seamus would have understood.  I hope he would have been proud of his name.

Even though his mother would have been glaring at me every time she heard his name.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Hawaii Five-0 episode

The phrase jumping the shark came from a reviewer who coined it after watching a Happy Days episode wherein the Fonz while waterskiing jumped a shark.  The thrust of the reviewer's argument was that if Happy Days had to resort to such a nonsensical device to attract viewers, the show was for all intents and purposes done -- it had jumped the shark.

Last night I was pretty much toast, so I watched my weekly The Following episode (did the directors of The Blair Witch Project take over this show...?) and kept the TV on while I read my book.  The next show that was on -- I turned the channel so I didn't have to watch the repetitive coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings that was coming on Fox -- was Hawaii Five 0, a show typically that I don't watch at all.  I kept the television on for background noise, to be honest, and when it came on I remembered the theme song which, in my opinion, is one of the best and most recognizable theme songs in television history.

What I watched for the next hour almost defies description.  Prepare to suspend disbelief....

The episode, entitled Olelo Pa'a, involves the main character, McGarrett, and his trusty and quite watchable love interest Catherine Rollins, who go to Korea to retrieve the remains of one of McGarrett's former comrades and best friend who was killed in a covert op to kidnap an international trafficker in arms and drugs in North Korea.  First of all, the exchange takes place at a location that looks like nothing I've ever seen of Korea.  Most of the pictures I've seen aren't nearly as lush as this supposed checkpoint.  What's more, the exchange would almost have to be somewhere along the DMZ which is only one of the most fortified places in the world.  The idiots who produced this episode made it look like a border checkpoint at a remote location in a desolate place in South America.  I've seen better obstacles crossing the road at Thanksgiving Day parades.  Just to make it seem more real, though, the actors playing the North Koreans scowled really, really hard.

Before we go any further in this unbelievably bad show, let's stop and ask this question:  Why is McGarrett tasked with bringing home the remains of his fallen comrade?  Isn't he with the Hawaii police now?  Even assuming that he was once a SEAL (which the flashbacks tell us to provide background), he's no longer a SEAL.  I have a hard time believing that State is going to pluck some policeman -- no matter how good-looking he is -- to send on what's essentially a diplomatic mission just because he knew the guy who died.  What's more, they send along his hot love interest because she's in naval intelligence and happens to be stationed in Hawaii with Mr. Love Muffin?  Is someone trying to tell us that there are no professional diplomats capable of handling what's essentially a glorified gofer job?  Seriously?

To introduce the players, let's get the visuals out of the way.  Here are our protagonists:

Because after all, all covert ops people are unbelievably gorgeous in addition to being competent, experienced and skillful.

Anyway, back to our ludicrous story.

They take the remains back to a hanger somewhere in South Korea and McGarrett has an odd idea to look inside to verify the remains as his friend.  I don't remember how he pried the simple pine casket open (at this point I wasn't really paying attention), but he does and there in the box are the quite dessicated remains of...someone else.  Well, of course it can't be his friend because, in another flashback, you learn that just before they did their HALO jump into North Korea, the now-dead friend revealed he'd (a) gotten a tattoo, (b) gotten married and (c) was now expecting a baby girl.  Cue the pathos.

At this point, I might have been able to overlook the fatuous border crossing, the unnaturally good-looking policemen cum diplomats and the unexpectedly verdant terrain, but the show was about to go one better than jumping a mere shark.  It was about to jump Moby Dick.

McGarrett gets on the phone to his father (at least I think it's his father) and asks him to put him in touch with someone local who knows the terrain.  Just as happened regularly in the show 24, McGarrett has no difficulty whatsoever reaching on a cellphone his father who's on a horse in Montana -- from South Korea!!!!  My cellphone won't work from one US state to the other, let alone internationally.  But the father puts him in touch with this guy. 

Hold onto your seats, folks.  You might fall out of them.

The next scene starts with some Asian bartender holding a snake on the bar and taking a cleaver to behead it, then squeezes the blood into a glass that already has some milky substance in it.  As if this isn't unhygienic enough, he stirs it with his finger for good measure and, but of course, slides it down the bar (that looks like it was built with rough pieces of wood by studio workmen a few minutes before the scene was shot ) to the wizened man who catches it.  Who is that man, you ask?  Well it's none other than Jimmy Buffett.  Was Buddy Hackett unavailable?  Yes, I know he's portraying someone else, but who better to portray a retired covert operator in what looks more like Margaritaville than South Korea than Jimmy Buffett.  All he was missing was a Cubs' cap.

Fast-forwarding to the next inanity -- because we're barely a third of the way through them -- Buffett gives them some castoff communist weapons and takes them to an old smugglers' trail that, miraculously, wends its way through minefields.  This through the most defended border in the world, where electronic listening devices, fixed emplacements and roving patrols exist.  Again, Buffett's character points them through terrain that has to be a remote section of some Hawaiian isle, but it's far too much to expect verisimilitude at this point.  Gamely, McGarrett and Rollins begin their trek into North Korea.

At this point, a picture is worth a thousand words.  Here's a shot from the episode roughly from this point in the story:

Well.  Notice a couple of things:  First, they look like they were dressed by L.L. Bean.  When they went to retrieve the remains at the exchange, they were in camis.  So if I understand this correctly, when they decide to violate international law and trespass, they get decked out for a photo shoot?  And for someone who's allegedly in naval intelligence, how smart was it for the hottie love interest to go through the bush with her hair loose and flowing?  This wasn't a shampoo commercial, for crying out loud.  I mean, won't that get caught up in the bushes and branches of this most inhospitable landscape?  It was as if Ken and Barbie were on a field trip.

Somehow, they come upon the target location and are able to spy on them undetected.  Just to add to the authenticity of the scene the producers, who dressed these two up like wayward models, made sure to camouflage the binoculars.  Amazing.  That they can do.  McGarrett recognizes the guy who's the leader of this group who met with the guy McGarrett kidnapped when his friend was killed.  The leader jumps in a car -- not just any car but this car, in fact:

and drives away.  Look at that car for a second.  Does that look like the kind of car that is going to (a) be in an impoverished nation like North Korea, (b) kept by smugglers and (c) be in that condition?  But of course it is!  This is realism at its finest.

I've gone a little bit ahead of myself.  What you seen in the photo above is the result of McGarratt and his girl getting around the smugglers' camp without being noticed, running through the rough terrain and being able to intercept the car on a desolate road -- and the smuggler, instead of flooring it, acquiesces and stops the car, at which point Ken and Barbie hop in.

The photo shows the moment when Mr. Smuggler jumps out of the car, which proceeds to crash into a tree.  The girl is hurt -- we learn later she broke a rib; more on that anon -- but McGarrett, though momentarily shaken up, races to tackle the smuggler.  A guard from a nearby bridge -- remember, McGarrett and the girl were able to bypass the camp and now presumably the bridge guard -- hears the scuffle and comes to investigate.  He gets to within fifteen feet of where McGarrett is holding Mr. Smuggler's face in the ground and then leaves, unable to see anything.  Mr. Smuggler, for his part, not only cooperates and doesn't try to struggle but also doesn't suffocate from having his face pressed into mother earth.  

McGarrett then impresses upon the smuggler that he only wants his dead friend's remains and the guy guides him to a nondescript location without a marker of any kind and tells McGarrett this is the place.  McGarrett tells him to start digging while girlfriend stands guard, her long locks blowing in the slight breeze.  After only a minute of digging, the body is revealed in a shallow grave.  Apparently, standards have lessened over the years because the body is shown in gruesome detail.  Leg bones are broken, the eye socket has been caved in.  Neither of those have any skin on them.  But miracle of miracles, McGarrett is able to pull back the sleeves on the body and brush away some dust on the arm to reveal the identifying tattoo.   First of all...huh?  No skin on the leg bones but the tattooed arm survived?  Second, wouldn't the elements have gotten to the body in such a shallow grave?  Third, there is no way I'm touching that skin no matter how close I was to the man.

I am admittedly a little confuddled on how we get to the next sequence.  Mr. Smuggler is tied up next to the gravesite and a grenade with the pin pulled is put underneath him.  McGarrett and the walking shampoo ad then get back to the bridge somehow and take out two of the guards in hand-to-hand combat and McGarrett expertly kills a third by throwing a knife in his chest (remember, she has a broken rib).  So far, not too bad...even though it's hard to believe the guards never once shot their AK 47s.  But we're about to venture into Keystone Kops territory.  From both ends of the bridge more brigands wielding AK's attack, and they're not just carrying them, they're shooting them.  Badly, as it turns out, but this appears to be a contest to see who can shoot worse, because neither Ken nor Barbie is hitting any of the twenty men coming at them with no cover.  The AK is not a particularly accurate gun -- at distance.  But these shooters are no more than forty yards away, and there are at least twenty smugglers.  Not one person goes down.  

McGarrett and the girl are hustled back to camp where they meet the capo de capo.  He snarls at McGarrett and threatens him with imminent death.  McGarrett and the love interest are taken back a few feet to prepare to meet their Makers when the scene cuts back to Mr. Smuggler who's been found by one of those roving North Korean border patrols that our intrepid duo skirted getting into the country.  Because McGarrett had the foresight to bind and gag him, he's unable to warn the do-gooders about the grenade and as they hurry to release him from his bondage, the scene returns to the equally trussed pair of Americans when the blast of the grenade goes off, startling the smugglers.  The pair guarding Ken and Barbie turn to the sound of the blast giving them the opportunity to execute a perfect drop-and-kick maneuver that allows them to kill their captors and seize their weapons (remember she has a broken rib; it must be adrenalin working), setting off a furious gun battle in which, finally, people are shot.  But then, of course, there's the flashback in homage to his fallen comrade, when they kidnapped the trafficker.  An equally furious but even more stupidly bad gun battle erupts, with the soon-to-be fallen comrade fending off the smugglers.  Now, I've never been in combat, but I've read plenty of books on military history, and one thing I know is that SEALs are expert shooters.  They know weapons.  The dead comrade is firing what seems to be a variation of a SAW, a Squad Automatic Weapon, that has a rate of fire anywhere from fifty to 100 rounds per minute and an effective range of 870 yards.  This trained SEAL is laying down fire at no more than thirty yards -- and is hitting absolutely nothing!  Well, not people, anyway.  Not one smuggler dies.  What's more, he's firing this thing like he's got rigor mortis of the finger.  That's a surefire way to overheat the gun barrel.  Any SEAL would know that.  But for the producers, he has to act like Rambo and fire away, hitting vehicles and empty oil drums, the bullets ricocheting off (not through) with bright sparks to heighten the realism.  Meanwhile, the smugglers, none of whom can have the weapons proficiency of a SEAL, hit him twice, despite the fact he's partially behind an obstacle.  These are some of the same fools who later can't hit Ken and Barbie when they're on the bridge without any cover.  Remarkably, they never try to disable the truck that McGarrett is guiding the trafficker to, nor do they ever try to flank the pair.  Instead, they come directly at the SAW operator in I can only describe as a sleepwalking banzai charge.  Only after the guy's dead do they turn their attention on the vehicle that McGarrett has backed up to rescue his fallen comrade.  Random bullets ricochet off the chassis, but McGarrett gets away unscathed.

The next scene thankfully brings us to the only realistic part of this wasted hour:  The repatriation of the fallen comrade's remains and their burial.  It's hard to screw up military burials and not even Hawaii Five O could do that.  McGarrett and his squeeze were in their military dress uniforms and the rest of the Five 0 crew attended off to the side, suitably dressed.  Scott Caan is a one trick pony -- he's there to look good and act snarky -- but in reality he's just a smaller and less talented version of his father.

Mercifully, the show ended without any more stupidity.  Why, one might ask, did I stick with it?  It was so horribly bad, so laughably wrong, that it was like watching a slow motion train wreck and being unable to turn away.  Every time I thought it couldn't get worse it did.  I realize that it's only supposed to be entertainment and that realism is too much to be expected, but when they go to the extent of showing the supposed remains of the fallen comrade, is it too much to ask that they go to a military surplus store instead of L.L. Bean to outfit the trespassing pair?  Furthermore, someone who's supposed to be in military intelligence should know how to put her hair up in a bun, right?  Jimmy Buffett is the local contact?  Really?

What I can't imagine is how stuff like this gets greenlighted.  There are actually people that get paid gobsmacking amounts of money to write, direct and produce this stuff.  Amazing....

Karen always kids about me picking apart shows for their shortcomings.  There are obvious mistakes that everyone catches.  But sometimes, stuff like this just gets glossed over.  At least it provided me some fun in ripping it apart this morning.

But come to think of it, I can't believe I actually watched Happy Days.... 

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles 

Trains

For whatever reason, trains have always held my attention.  It doesn't matter what kind of train, but for me there's a romance about them I just can't explain.

Our maternal grandfather had been the head of the trucking division of the Pennsylvania Railroad sometime during the last century, but I doubt that was it.  He was a gruff man, probably a teddy bear inside but with that hard exterior, and I never really knew him, since he died when I was about eight.  Our Mother didn't regale us with stories about his career, other than his putative involvement in the invention of the device that carries multiple cars on trains.  So I don't have a family history on which to fall back.  I just happen to like trains.

I've ridden trains to the East Coast and in Spain.  I would love to take a train ride through the Pacific Northwest and especially through the western portion of Canada.  Odd, but the Orient Express doesn't call to me at all.  Yes, I've read a few of Paul Theroux's books on train rides.  Once I got past his sardonic tone I was able to enjoy them for what they are.

Visually, trains entrance me.  I like nothing more than watching a train from a distance as it snakes its way through the terrain.  Watching a train from up above and either to the side or from behind is also quite nice.  The reason I want to take the trips I do is that I've seen plenty of footage of trains making their ways through the mountains and think that it would be an unforgettable experience.

In fact, when I lived in Spain I took two notable train rides within a week or so of each other.  The first was to Pamplona for the sanfermines, commonly known here as the Bull Runs.  We left Madrid and instead of taking a direct route, went circuitously through Palencia and then Burgos.  That only made the trip that much more memorable, because the train was of an older vintage, much like those I'd seen in old movies, and it was full of revelers getting ready for a week of debauchery and good times.  One specific memory is forever emblazoned in my head:  The train was rounding a bend through some hills and turning to the northeast.  I happened to be by the window which was opened since it was mid-summer and I poked my head out to see people's arms and heads dangling out of the windows in the cars before me, bottles being passed back and forth and the steady hum of singing and shouting barely audible over the noise of the train as it made its way to Pamplona.  It was evocative a scene as I've ever had on a train.

The other notable journey I had on a train was along the Picos de Europa to Arriondas, Spain.  The narrow gauge track wound through the countryside between the peaks to the south and the Bay of Biscay to the north.  Fortunately, it was a perfect summer day, the sun shining with a light breeze blowing.  I had virtually the entire car to myself and although as old as the one I'd taken from Madrid to Pamplona, it was in a better condition and maintained better.  It was almost the perfect train ride.  On one side I could watch the gentle surf of the Atlantic as it washed up on the northern littoral and on the other I could look up at the majestic mountains with snow-capped peaks.

Reading this one might think I had a miniature train set as a child.  I didn't.  I never even had a conductor's cap, although I did buy a pair of overalls that were striped like a conductor's hat would be.  Frankly, miniature train sets hold no interest for me.  I want to ride on the real thing and see the great country through which it passes.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Reading handwriting

This afternoon I had to prepare and send off my taxes -- an annoying task for anyone but the most twisted CPA -- and I signed my name to the return with a flourish, although not with as much panache as John Hancock (would that I had Hancock's money...).  I looked at my signature and thought for a moment about signatures and all they entail.

My own signature is misleading.  I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic grade schools, so I received strict instruction in the Palmer method.  It would be a far juicier story were I to have had my hands whacked with a ruler when I was practicing my penmanship, but the truth of the matter is that I admired our Mother's graceful hand so much I tried to emulate her as best I could.  Despite the fact that when I reached adulthood I towered over her and outweighed her by probably one a half times, my handwriting's belies my masculinity.  It is so deceptive that one time in college, I forgot to put my name on an assignment in a philosophy class.  The professor, complete with rabbinical beard, passed out the graded assignments and said quietly If you didn't receive your paper check with me after class because one was turned in without a name on it.  It looks to be a woman's handwriting as best I can tell.  Since I hadn't received a graded paper but knew I'd turned one in, I approached the professor and told him I hadn't gotten a paper returned and asked if I could see the one he hadn't handed out.  When he showed me the one he had I noticed immediately my handwriting and told him it was mine.  He apologized to me nervously and told me he didn't mean anything by his comment.  I told him not to worry and chuckled to myself as I walked away with my paper.

I've always noticed how people hold their pens when they write.  I was taught to hold the pen between my thumb and my forefinger, resting the pen on my middle finger.  Despite this, I notice people holding the pen with their middle finger and resting it on their thumbs, holding it with both their forefinger and middle fingers and resting on their thumbs and lefthanders holding the pen above the line they are writing.

It's always mystified me how handwriting analysts can tell a personality simply by the person's writing they're examining.  My handwriting differs depending on whether I'm writing on a level surface, whether I'm standing, whether I'm writing on a softcover book while standing, or any variation thereof.  Where there's a loop in my L's sometimes there isn't other times.  My initial B's are hit or miss, my R's are sometimes brilliant and sometimes horrific.  One day I could seem to be the most erudite man in the world and the next day I might seem to be an axe murderer.

How women of a certain age write fascinates me.  The way their O's were rounded, almost like caricatures unto themselves, almost indicates their age, because schoolgirls all wrote the same way during a certain period.  Then there are doctors who, by and large, are renowned for their sloppy penmanship.  I also had trouble with someone who's handwriting was so indecipherable one would have thought he was a doctor.  He wasn't; he was just an avid devotee of teen pornography.

Historians often have to review ancient writings and how they are able to make sense of some of it amazes me.  Then again, they could be making it all up and I'd never know the difference.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Barack Obama

When Barack Obama was elected, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.  He represented a freshness in American politics.  He was, of course, the first minority president this country's ever had.  I thought he might be more moderate than his opponents painted him to be.

I was wrong.

The president who sits to day in the White House is as divisive a president as we've had in a long time.  Sure, George W. Bush was polarizing, but that's to be expected, what with the MSM coopted and Hollywood nothing more than the unofficial public relations organ of the liberals.  And yes, W made some mistakes, chief among them, in my opinion, his handling of post-Katrina New Orleans.  He also jumped the gun with his Mission Accomplished bragging.  But he was certainly no worse than some of the fops we've had in there, most notably Slick Willy Clinton, he of the cigar and Monica Lewinsky.  It's often forgotten that Slick Willy was the one who opened the doors to anyone who wanted to buy a house, whether they could afford it or not, and who deregulated many industries that led us to the financial collapse in 2008.

But Mr. Obama is a snake of a different sort.  I don't really care that much about the birthing controversy.  At this point, does it really matter?  But he came into power preaching reconciliation and bipartisanship and all he's done is blame the conservatives for everything.  He doesn't rein in the likes of the horrible Harry Reid and the shrewish Nancy Pelosi.  He attacks one news outlet because they criticize him, going so far as to have their press passes revoked in a fit a pique.  His colossal mistake at the beginning of his reign to focus on health care and not the economy just drove the country deeper into a financial morass from which it hasn't recovered to this day.  His spinning of statistics and rhetoric to make things seem better than they are is unforgivable, and how he wiggled his way out of the Benghazi mess is simply frightful.

To be sure, he's had help all along the way.  The MSM has been complicit in letting down the country, as my very wise liberal friend Bill said.  Hollywood is nothing more than a reincarnation of Josef Goebbels and Reni Riefenstahl which is ironic given the composition of most of its studios.  But Obama has done this largely with his charismatic personality that's gone unchecked because of the complicity and because of white guilt. 

The country will recover, eventually.  The next election cycle gives the States the opportunity to balance out the inequities of the last six years and set the stage for a reversal of fortune in 2016.  There may very well be a Republican Obama lurking somewhere, someone with the charismatic power to captivate voters sufficient to turn the tide.  Voters themselves may finally wake up and see just how little their lives were improved under this regime.

For the moment, however, we're stuck with this man and his minions.  I was worried about the members of Congress, and with good reason.

But I was woefully wrong to have any hope that Obama might be moderate.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Random thoughts, a continuation

For want of anything substantive, today's post will be random thoughts about celebrities and their doings.  As always, the views expressed here are solely mine and mine alone and have not been influenced by anyone or anything other than the celebrities themselves:

Justin Timberlake is a fabulously gifted performer as a dancer and an actor, but I think he sings like a girl.

Likewise, Taylor Swift is a gifted songwriter and can even act.  But she can't sing worth a lick.

Omarosa is simply a conceited nutjob.

Alec Baldwin is simply annoying.

For that matter, I never got into the show 30 Rock despite the fact I like Tina Fey. 

Do people really find Jay Leno that funny anymore anyway?

I wish I had watched The Wire.

Mad Men is something I could never get into for whatever reason.

I don't get awards shows. 

Why is How I Met Your Mother so popular?

I enjoy watching The Following despite some of the 24-like incredulity inducement (how on earth was this fringe group able to penetrate so many government agencies so covertly???), but I have to agree with Karen:  Can this show last more than two seasons at most?

Whatever the shortcomings of The Following, Kevin Bacon is as solid an actor as there is.

Isn't it time for people to catch on about Kim Kardashian?  And what was she thinking sleeping with Kanye West of all people?  There wasn't a better black man available than Kanye West???

What in heaven's name were Stevie Wonder and Pitbull doing on the ACM's the other night?  Since when do they have any interest or connection to country music?  Was it their idea, their agents' ideas or country music's?  And while we're at it, when was the last time major country stars were prominently displayed as performers at award shows for other genres of music?

Who's worse (and death is not an option):  Lindsay Lohan or her parents?

Amy Poehler's brand of humor escapes me more than I get it.

I'm glad Melissa McCarthy's found success.

I'm amused by all the formerly hardcore rappers with their pseudo-gangster and anti-establishment personas who have gone mainstream now:  Kanye West, Ice-T, Jay-Z, Queen Latifah, Dr. Dre...have they lost their street cred now?

Taylor Swift really needs to reassess this boyfriend bashing music.  Pretty soon no one will even touch her with anyone else's ten foot pole.

John Mayer has a problem.  And his music isn't even that good anymore.

I don't find Jimmy Kimmel that funny, but he's way funnier than Conan O'Brien ever was.

I miss the days of St. Elsewhere.  Every other medical drama pales by comparison.

Ashley Judd, for as beautiful as she is, is so full of herself.  Then again, the whole family has a monopoly on self-righteousness.

I wish I had the nonchalance of Anthony Bourdain.  He just doesn't give a %$#&.

Speaking of celebrity chefs, revoke Gordon Ramsey's visa already.  Please.

The people on these entertainment magazines are so breathless and unctuous about everything I wonder how they ever emote in real life.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Language and words

Years ago I thought I'd read that William Shakespeare had an active vocabulary of over 100,000 words.  I tried to imagine how many words there were in an average English dictionary and gave up, but the figure of 100,000 seemed staggering to me.  So yesterday I looked it up online and found that some people had actually spent time counting the number of words Shakespeare used in his plays and what not.  They came up with this:

In his collected writings, Shakespeare used 31,534 different words. 14,376 words appeared only once and 846 were used more than 100 times.

I can't imagine being tasked with doing the accounting.  Moreoever, how do you decide whether 'fore and before count as two separate words or not?  Is 'tis a separate word?  And how boring must one's life be to not only want to count the words but actually do it?

Be that as it may, the same article I read goes on to state the following:

Using statistical techniques, it's possible to estimate how many words he knew but didn't use.

This means that in addition the 31,534 words that Shakespeare knew and used, there were approximately 35,000 words that he knew but didn't use. Thus, we can estimate that Shakespeare knew approximately 66,534 words.

Feel free to follow the link.   I spared myself.

As a devotee of language, I'm fascinated by this and worried at the same time.  Nowadays, from what I understand, social media is corrupting our ability to use simple as well as complex declarative sentences.  Contractions such as aight and whassup are overtaking the language.  It's getting that those of us of a certain vintage need a decoder ring to understand not only what the young people are saying but what the MSM is saying, since the MSM is aping what the trends seem to be.  Then add things like Twitter that require blurbs to contain no more than 140 characters, forcing people to economize for the sake of putting as much content into their messages as possible and the result is the dumbing down of the English-speaking people.

Circumlocutions are no better.  The likes of William F. Buckley are to be despised as much as admired for their use of obscure and sometimes moribund words that comes off more as an attempt to impress than an attempt to communicate clearly.  The use of Latin or French phrases may or may not count in the equation, but again using such linguistic forms grates more than it impresses.  It always cracks me up when someone's trying to use a highfalutin word and does so incorrectly, as last night someone was trying to show off her Ivy League education by using the word simpatico at absolutely the wrong time.   We've all done it at times, but I get a kick out of it when someone's putting on airs.

To return to the seminal point of this post, I wonder how many words I actually know and use correctly.  Karen corrected me on my use of turgid which, now that I've looked up the word, I see that I used correctly but in a little used way.  Do I know ten thousand words?  Twenty thousand?  Five thousand?  How would anyone be able to quantify it, since my writings are nowhere near as copious as Willy the Shakes?  What would someone do with Lope de Vega, the prolific Spanish playwright who wrote Fuenteovejuna among his more than 6,000 pieces of work?

Communication is becoming a lost art, at least insofar as standardized language is concerned.  With the focus turning more and more to computers, binary language is replacing the written word.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Reality television

I saw a promo for yet another reality television series, this one set to compete with The Bachelor to help some guys find the elusive true love.  Nevermind that the whole concept of finding true love on a contrived television show has about as much chance as I do of being on the cover of GQ, but these people are on these shows, in my opinion, to gain fame and fortune, not true love.

Be that as it may, seeing the beefcake contestants and the women selected for them, a couple of thoughts came to mind:  First, true love is only for perfect people, if we are to judge by the contestants chosen by the casting directors.  Apparently, to qualify for these kinds of shows, one must possess absolutely flawless physical features or be willing to disrobe to one's skivvies at the drop of a hat.  Of course, it's presupposed that if one's willing to drop one's skivvies, the resulting visual will not turn viewers to turn off their televisions or change the channel.  What was more appalling still is that, from the little I've seen in the promo -- and believe me, I do not watch nor will I be watching this show -- even the supposed marriage counselors who are on the show are beautiful.  Which begs the question -- if beautiful people already rule the world, why do they need a television show?  Do they need to continue to shove it down the throats of imperfect people?  Or are they trying to show how similar they are to imperfect people?  Regardless, it makes me puke.

The only show in this vein that I had any appreciation for was the late Beauty and the Geek.  There, beautiful women were paired with geeky and quite physically unattractive men.  To be fair, there should have been a companion show, entitled perhaps Hunk and the Wallflower, where gorgeous men were paired up with intelligent but less attractive females.  The show never poked fun at just one side of the equation:  The men looked as ridiculous at times as the women looked stupid.  But at least there was an infusion of reality in this show; not everyone in the cast was a beauty.

To believe the latest incarnation of this show, the guys are all could-be models who are pursued for marriage by could-be model women.  The people deciding on the eugenic pairing are themselves beautiful.  It's a load of hooey.

I remember one time seeing an episode of the old Twilight Zone series called Number 12 Looks Just Like You wherein a woman is perceived to be the ugly duckling.  The only faces seen in almost the entirety of the episode are those of the people judging the ugly duckling.  Their faces are swine-like, if I remember correctly, with upturned noses and unattractive features besides.  At the end of the episode, the ugly duckling is revealed to be this beautiful blonde woman who, in the episode, is regarded at uncommonly unattractive.  It's quite the commentary on society.

That gives me a segue into the second thing I pondered while I watched that distasteful promo.  I wondered what it would be like to be perfect.  Not that I care to be, mind you, lest I traipse into Rula Lenska or Kelly LeBrock territory. 

But I wonder what it would be like to have perfect teeth, a perfect smile, a perfect body.  To be able to say things that met with no disfavor, at which everyone laughed.  To be smart beyond reason, to know how everything worked.

There are people out there like that.  I have a cousin who was accepted at Stanford Law School.  But he was so socially maladroit -- go figure, someone from my family who's socially maladroit -- that he hardly qualified as a beautiful person.  He's also not that tall and definitely physically beautiful. 

Sure, beautiful people complain that their looks are held against them.  They're underestimated, thought of as being brainless and not taken seriously.  But that complaint rings hollow.  Because of their good looks they get so many advantages that whatever shortcomings they possess are often overlooked. 

I know there's no accounting for taste.  Karen loves me and is attracted to be contrary to any source of reason, and I know I'm quite fortunate to have the love of a good, intelligent and hot woman.  There are many from my generation who felt that Farrah Fawcett was a goddesss; I felt there were many other better looking women deserving of my attention.

But this fascination with the trials and tribulations of beautiful people is at an all-time high.  It's hardly representative of reality, as most humans aren't as drop-dead gorgeous as the people who inhabit these mindless searches for true love on television.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Spain and the Arabic World

I'm reading a book that's an examination of the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia.  It traces the modern history of Saudi Arabia and the growing closeness between it and the States based on its oil reserves which, I'm quite sure, is about to transition into scrutiny of the kingdom's role in the 9/11 attacks.  What can I say?  If you only had three television channels, you might read it also.

Even if I had more channels, I'd probably pick up this book because the Arabic world intrigues me.  I can state with some certainty that my interest stems from having seen up-close the Arabic culture left behind when Fernán e Isabel kicked out the Moors in 1492.  Just look at the monuments to the Arabic culture that remain standing to this day:

La Alhambra and el Generalife in Granada, Spain:

La Mezquita, Córdoba, Spain

La Giralda, Sevilla, Spain

There are more, many more, but that gives one an idea.  The language itself has residuals from Arabic as well.

But the romance that is Arabic life, when stripped of all its bellicose languge, jihadi elements and sharia law, fascinates me.  The music, the deserts, the language, the food, the calls to prayer, the clothing -- for whatever reason, they call me.  I'm not about to become a Muslim nor do I want to have four wives, but I would love to follow just a portion of the travels that Ibn Battuta and explore the Arab world using his blueprint.  Of course, this would be impossible, given that I'm a kafir and would almost certainly be kidnapped, killed or both.  Yet in a perfect world I would be able to move around and learn about the cultures that comprise the Arabic world.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

The vagueries of reality television

Today yet another story broke about an incident involving reality television participants.  I won't refer to them as celebrities because, frankly, they aren't.  But with each passing season, the absurdity that is reality television reaches new lows.

In the interest of full disclosure, I do watch a couple of reality shows.  The competitions I watch are Top Chef and The Amazing Race.  I also watch Wicked Tuna and Yukon Men.  Beyond that, if I catch an episode of a reality show, that's about as much as I can handle.

A couple of years ago I got hooked on watching an arc or two of The Real Housewives of....  The one I started with was Orange County, because one of the wives there was a former model who was in a ZZ Top video (Sharp Dressed Man, I think it was) on whom I'd had a crush back in the day and who had married a baseball player.  I didn't know who the baseball player was, tuned in to watch it and found out one of the women originally came from where I used to live.  Pretty quickly it became evident that it was nothing more than high school with more money and older women, because the things that happened were straight out of high school.  The only new things for me, at least, was the amount of plastic surgery; I don't remember any of the girls getting plastic surgery in my high school.

Spurred on by that, I then saw the New Jersey version.  With all due respect to the denizens of New Jersey, you're nuts.  Well, at least the women on that show were.  Talk about stereotypes!  The reason I watched this arc was because they teased that there were going to be arrests of the cast.  There weren't, really, but just to see how low people who think they're highbrow can go.  Wow.

The other one I watched for a short time was the New York one.  I watched this because the transparent superiority complexes these women held were hysterical.  One involved Bethanny, the darling of women everywhere who've overcome weight and other personal issues, who was selected to be the cover model for some society magazine over on the East Coast.  I'm sure to her and her set, this was a great honor.  In talking about it to the camera, she said that it was a really big deal, a real coup d' etat.  Immediately, I checked to see whether our government had been felled by this development and was relieved to find that the Republic still stood.

The report today involves those wacky New Jersey folks whose husbands have allegedly assaulted a photographer.  I have no earthly idea who's in the right and who's in the wrong.  And as far as the press is concerned, I think the vast majority of them deserve a good, old fashioned horse whipping.  But this notion that because someone is a participant on a reality show gives them a heightened status just defies reason.  All they've done is allow a station to film them in artificial situations that very few hoi polloi can experience.  The idea that these housewives are real in the sense that they represent what real housewives go through is a joke.  That why when they speak of toppling governments with their appearances on the covers of society magazines I laugh even louder.

We're in an age where everyone has to be acknowledged, whether it be on Facebook, Twitter or reality shows.  Andy Warhol may have been a little nutty but he certainly hit the nail on the head with his comment about everyone having his fifteen minutes of fame.  The problem is, these reality participants sometimes get more than a few hours' worth of fame.  The trend nowadays is to go from one reality show to another; one of my biggest gripes about The Amazing Race is that it's allowed participants from Survivor and Big Brother to participate on the Race.

Yes, there is an inherent hypocrisy in my complaint, since I write my blog.  But my identity remains unknown but to a few people.  I'm not out there posting pictures about me and my accomplishments.  My sardonic and sometimes caustic views do, it can be argued, suggest that I think I'm better than people which, in limited instances, I do.  For example, I know the difference between a coup and a coup d' etat, no matter how poor I am.  But these are more in keeping with the essays of Addison and Carlyle or even Benjamin Franklin.  I like to write and I'm opinionated, hence the blog.

Besides, as Charles Barkley is wont to say, opinions are like buttholes -- everyone's got one.

(c) 2013  The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Sherman and Custer, an update

It's been some time since we've checked out the Generals, and much has happened.  In an eerie similarity to his namesake, Stonewall had to leave us.  He was an affectionate puppy, but he was too aggressive in his play.  He would go up to Sherman or Custer, grab one of them by the jowls and pull sideways with all his might.  He was no longer the cute little furrball we'd gotten.  He was their size physically even though his head was still the size of a headhunter-shrunken skull.  He was also a sneak-peer, meaning we always had too much to throw in the washer every week.  He also reverted to eating his own poop which, according to the vet, when taken together with his unnaturally small head, seemed to indicate some sort of true mental deficiency.  Fortunately, after much wrangling with the rescue outfit from whom we got him, we were able to place him with our old dog-walker, who says he's doing fine.  All we have left are the memories of him and this impossibly cute picture of him as a wee pup with his older brothers:

Meanwhile Custer, the big brute in the lefthand side of the frame above, all of a sudden stopped eating for Karen and, to compound the problem, starting ejecting green bile a la Linda Blair.  Or at least I think it was like Linda Blair.  A visit to our trusty country vet left us with the uneasy realization that Cus was going to need to be opened up because he had a blockage that was going to prove fatal if left untouched.  Poor Karen had to go get him after she had a procedure done that required her to stay out of the sun and came home with a boy with a zipper running up his belly.  He wasn't the worse for wear, although he could still die because he has some necrotic tissue around his pancreas, but he's getting back into fighting trim, even if he still cries a lot because of the pain.

This is what the doctor gave Karen as a memento of what Custer ingested:

It looks like he ate part of the lawn.  In fact, it's accumulated dog hair glommed onto part of some rubber chew toy that Custer ate.  Sometimes I wonder whether Custer's part goat.  More than a year ago he ate part of our walnut bed; a wag commented to Karen that we should buy him a 2"x4" for his birthday.  Had we just listened we might have avoided an expensive veterinarian bill.

Amid all this turmoil Sherman remained stalwart.  Well, that's overstating it just a tad.  In fact, Sherman felt liberated.  When Stoney departed, Karen said you could feel the tension leave the house, and she was right.  But for as stalwart as Sherman was, he was that much happier.  His nemesis had departed, leaving him to sleep his days away in relative calm.  But when Custer went away for his three day stay at the vet, Sherman was virtually a dancing bear.  He was so fun and active it was as if he'd found the canine fountain of youth.  He would belushi and wrestle and play.  He even pulled a Custer and ran up the stairs ahead of me to get to the landing so he could attack me playfully as I ascended the staircase.  Our neighbors, on the other hand, must have wondered if we were Korean since we went from three dogs down to two and then to one.

Sherman's world would have been perfect right then had it not been for his yeast infection that necessitated the one thing Sherman fears most:  Water.  More specifically, a bath.  At the best of times, Sherman grudgingly allows himself to be bathed, grunting his displeasure the entire time as if he's carrying a fifty pound weight on his back.  I was crafty this time and picked him up from where he was lying on his bed and carried him into the tub.  The last time I'd tried to bathe him, he would find any way he could to not walk to the bathtub, detouring to the bedroom door, then the other side of the bed and finally to the walk-in closet before being goaded into the bathroom proper.  This time he had no such opportunity.

But there was more in store for our water-resistant General.  Not only did he have to be bathed, he had to be bathed with a special anti-bacterial shampoo that had to stay on him for ten minutes.  For Sherman, anything over a second in the water is a hardship.  This was going to be pure torture.

I bathed him as quickly as I could to start the clock running and then got my book and sat down on the toilet to make sure the wily oldest brother didn't jump out of the tub.  He may not be that spry anymore, but he's crafty.  So there I sat on the toilet, the ludicrous tableau including a dog lathered up in the tub with his owner sitting on the toilet reading.  I kept checking the time to make sure it wouldn't last a nanosecond longer than ten minutes and when we got to eight minutes, Sherman started to cry.  He cried as if it was pure hell.  I tried to reassure him -- as if he understood a word I was saying -- and when we got to ten minutes, I rinsed him off, then dried him off and lifted him out of the tub to finish drying him.  Sherman commenced his ritual shaking to get the few ounces of water still lodged somewhere in his hair out and then ran around like a crazed dog, wanting his release from the torture chamber.  When I opened the door to the bedroom, Sherman tore down the stairs as if her were Custer.  Custer makes a sleek, almost graceful descent down the stairs.  As I always tell Karen, Custer has the best male butt in the family.  Sherman, on the other hand crow-hops his way down, usually waiting for either me or Karen as we follow them.  This time, Sherman ran down the stairs so fast I thought he was going to do a lipstand on the landing. 

For as traumatized as Sherman was, and contrary to all dog experts who claim dogs don't remember anything beyond fifteen minutes, Sherman awaited me in the family room with the expectation of his ritual cookie:  I did what you asked, no give me a darn cookie.  I earned it.

Proving once again that the tail sometimes wags the dog or, in this case, the dog walks the owner, I gave him the cookie.  He walked away from me as if I didn't even exist, happy, finally, to have little water on his back and a cookie in his mouth.

Cus is back home now.  With any luck, he's going to be all right and have just the zipper stitch on his belly as the cruel reminder of his folly.  Sherman's treating his younger brother like a baby, loving him up and enjoying the relative calm provided by Stoney's absence and Custer's convalescence. 

Life in Bullyland is back to almost normal.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles