Cheerios commerical controversy

I believe in a color-blind society.  In the past, I dated women who were from different ethnic groups. Had it been right, I might have even married one of them.  So interracial couples are not offensive to me and in fact I applaud them for their strength and commitment.

Recently, apparently, there's been a kerfuffle (my new word of the moment, I know) about a Cheerios commercial where a little biracial child approaches her white mother about her cereal. Here's the ad from Youtube:

Frankly, I see nothing wrong with the commercial.  A child approaches her mom -- who happens to be white -- about her dad eating her cereal, and her mom tells her to check with her dad -- who happens to be black.  End of story.  What's the problem?

Ironically, there are actually black people upset about this ad just as there are white people angry about it.  I would never have thought black people would be angry because races were mixing.  In fact, I would have thought they'd welcome the implicit equality that signaled.  I guess I was wrong.

We have long been taught that the military was a force that brought civil rights into action.  Given the military's emphasis on merit, blacks and other minorities were given opportunities that were enforced through the hierarchy of the military -- with civilian authorities enacting the laws -- that allowed minorities the upward mobility they were denied in the private sector.  We've seen African-American admirals, generals, pilots and statesmen rise from the ranks of the military.  That is how it should be.  That is how it always should have been.

The private sector, with its overreliance on the specious protections of the Constitution for privacy, has hidden in its own ethnic enclaves, keeping minorities out.  As a result, stereotypes are allowed to fester.  What white person isn't familiar with the image of a black kid, pants slung low over his butt, hair pick in his hair, smoking a cigarette or throwing down gang signs, talking a lingo that is referred to as street, and oogling white women as some sort of trophy?  Sure, there are blacks out there like that.  But that's not the majority image by any means.

There are plenty of African-American professionals who are every bit the button-down, briefcase carrying, articulate businessman or -woman that whites are.  For every straight-laced white guy out there, we have our own countervailing stereotypes:  White trash, hillbillies with improper language skills, white supremacists with swastika tattoes.  Are all white people like that?  Methinks we know the answer to that.

Besides the military, however, I believe a force for changing popular opinions or stereotypes about race has been advertising.  More and more, as society itself sees more interracial couples, it's moronic to ignore them in popular media.  As with gay couples, interracial couples are a fact of everyday life, and advertising, probably from motives more rooted in profit than altruism, are glomming onto this fact.  Why not?  If we have couples with older men/younger women, older women/younger men, black men/Asian women, Latino men/African-American women -- why shouldn't all these different pairings be represented, somehow, in culture?

To be sure, there are those who still believe in miscegenation.  There is still a handful of people that believe the world is flat, that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone and that 9/11 was a government conspiracy with Zionist elements.  But the irrefutable proof is that there are biracial couples that produce biracial children.  Can anyone deny that Lenny Kravitz's parents were a black woman and a white man, or that Taye Diggs is married to Idina Menzel, with whom he's had a son?  If we're so willing to accept celebrity biracial couplings, why are we squirmy when it comes to seeing biracial couples represented in commercials?  Or is it only when the high and mighty, the beautiful and rich, mix races that we're comfortable about it?

I for one applaud Cheerios and whoever the ad agency it was that came out with the ad.  There's nothing offensive about it in the slightest unless, of course, we're talking about the people involved in the kerfuffle.

There, I used the word again.

Because the same people who are nonplussed about the ad probably don't know what kerfuffle means.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles 

Chicago Blackhawks, Stanley Cup Champions

(Warning:  MASSIVE Sports Crappola references.  Massive, as in huger than huge.)

Last night, my beloved Chicago Blackhawks, who only sport the best uniform in all of professional sports:

won their second Stanley Cup in the last four years, defeating the Boston Bruins in a tough six-game series.  It was by far the best series I've ever seen, and that's not just bias talking.  Game Six was phenomenal.  This piece -- http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/52303392/ns/sports-nhl/ -- is an eloquent retelling of the game.

What many people outside Chicago don't understand is just how foreign this is to us.  For years, the owner, Bill Wirtz, nicknamed Dollar Bill for his penny-pinching ways, did everything he could to stymie the growth of the club at the expense of his wallet.  The stories defy belief:  Home games couldn't be seen in Chicago because he wouldn't sign a television contract, first claiming that he didn't want to disrespect the season-ticket holders, then claiming that he wasn't going to just give them away for nothing. The problem with his argument is that Michael Jordan torpedoed it with his run of six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls:  The Stadium was sold out for virtually every one of his games, yet they were also broadcast on local television, and Jerry Reinsdorf, the chairman of the board for the Bulls, is no fool when it comes to money, so he wasn't just giving them away for nothing, either.  The truth laid in the fact that Dollar Bill's son, Peter, owned the concessions for the United Center, and with Dollar Bill's underperforming teams, people stayed away from the United Center in droves.  Every paying customer who didn't go to the UC was one less buying customer for Peter's concession stands.

One would think that the Bulls' example would lead a savvy businessman like Dollar Bill to put money into the team to maximize his profit.  The problem with that theory is that he already had his financial empire.  The team was his plaything. Dollar Bill had a liquor distributorship called Judge & Dolph that allegedly sold two out of every three drinks in Vegas.  Whether that's accurate or not I can't say, but that's what I heard.  What he did have was a virtual monopoly given to him by the Illinois legislature that guaranteed him almost ninety percent of all sales of liquor and beer in the state of Illinois.  That law was later struck down by a federal court as being violative of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

Then there was Dollar Bill's attempt to quash free speech.  A frustrated fan, tired of the shenanigans with which the team was being run, published and distribued a flier outside the UC that was critical of Wirtz and his ownership.  Wirtz had the Chicago police confiscate the fliers and banish the dissident.  Again, a federal court ruled that was violative of the First Amendment.

During his ownership, the club was run for all intents and purposes by Bob Pulford, a member of the last Stanley Cup winning teams in Toronto in the 1960's.  This gave Wirtz the appearance of propriety, since Pulford had the bona fides as a Hockey Hall of Famer.  The truth of the matter was that Pully, as he was known, was Dollar Bill's drinking buddy and lackey.  He did next to nothing to improve the team.

Wirtz ran off Bobby Hull, the face of the franchise for so many years, when he flirted with the WHL. Consequently, when Bobby's son Brett was a free agent, he wouldn't come to Chicago.  Other free agents by-passed Chicago because of Wirtz.  He ran off Jeremy Roenick and Ed Belfour, two of the team's top players in the 90's.  He was a cancer in the organization, but he was also the owner.

Sometime within the last ten years of Wirtz's reign ESPN rated the Blackhawks the worst professional organization in all of professional sports.  Yes, they were rated as even worse than the Chicago Cubs, who haven't won a World Series since 1908 or even been in one since 1945.  That's saying something.

When he died, the local Comcast outlet tried to broadcast as many games as it could despite the fact that Wirtz died just before the start of the season.  Since his death, we've won two Cups, compared to no Cups for forty-nine years before his death.  It's amazing how much influence, good or bad, one person can have.

After they won the Cup in 2010, each member of the team, as is tradition, got the Cup for one day.  There are various and sundry stories of what players have done with their days with the Cup.  Two pictures emerged from the day Andrew Ladd -- who had to be traded after the season due to salary cap considerations -- had with the Cup.  They are, to date, my favorite pictures with the Cup.  I think they are evocative of so much more than simply winning the Cup.  I can only imagine how Ladd felt with that Cup in that place.  Here they are:

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 2013 Stanley Cup champions, the Chicago Blackhawks:

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Handwriting analysis

I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic grammar school.  The nuns weren't as wicked as popular culture makes them seem.  Not one of them ever rapped my knuckles with a ruler.  But they were stern when it came to our studies.

One of the things I can remember being taught was how to write.  I remember the broadly lined paper 
on which we practiced our letters.  The repetitive exercises to make the loops correct, the finishing tales perfect and the spacing just right were tedious then, but I can see the value of them now, when much handwriting is virtually illegible.

But that's not what I'm thinking about, although illegibility irks me to no end.  Although, while I'm on that thought, how do archivists and historians make sense of old writings?  I've seen manuscripts that were purportedly written in English and it seems like pure guesswork that what those experts say things mean actually mean that.  I can look at a scribbled line on some dusty parchment for hours and come up with about ten different possibilities for the word.  And that's not even taking into account the differences in old spellings, like when F's and S's were confused.

But I digress.

No, what is on my mind is the so-called science of interpreting personalities through handwriting analysis.  Sure, there are people who have probably devoted time and energies to figuring out whether a flat L indicates a suicidal tendency, or if a broadly drawn A indicates an excessive personality.  All I know is that when I write, I just try to write as legibly as possible, and when it isn't so legible, it's just that, and nothing more.

But for these experts, interestingly, depending on how I write a particular letter, I could be a serial killer, a monk, a gameshow host or a rapper.  The funny thing is, I've noticed that depending on the surface on which I write, or the angle at which I'm writing, or even how tired I am, my penmanship is affected.  For the analysts' perspective, it would change everything.

I learned to write using the Palmer Method.  That's not to say I have immaculate handwriting, but for a guy, it's not too bad.  I'd say it's legible with some feminine tendencies, to be honest.  I always wanted to imitate our Mother's handwriting, which I thought was beautiful, but I fell short.  I abhor scribbled handwriting; anyone who won't take the time to make something legible is not going to have the time to take something I have to say seriously.  I can understand a badly written thing once in awhile, but all too often, people resort to, in effect, making their marks instead of handwriting.  How, then, can an analyst be sure of what a particular writer's personality is like?

For me, my writing varies depending on a number of different factors.  How anyone can intrepret my personality accurately by using a given sample of my handwriting defies reason.  It's the same as someone trying to predict the future:  Throw enough stuff against the wall and something's bound to stick.  I don't mean to belittle the effort people who specialize in this area make -- although I realize that's just what I'm doing -- but I don't get it.  I like the color green.  Does that make mean I have a particular personality?  I don't write in any other tint but black.  Because I like the color green but don't write in that color, am I self-loathing?  Do my letters as formed indicate that tendency?

I just think there's too much guesswork and not enough science to support the notion.  I can understand looking at signatures and determining whether they belonged to historical figures.  But insofar as determining a personality by the way a person forms his letters?  That's just too far-fetched for me.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Ivy League POTUSes

On one of the sites that I frequent, a discussion is being had wherein unrest in this country is a concern. Several points were raised and I brought to the discussion the fact that in this country, too many of our politicians are from the Ivy League, as if attending one of those fine institutions is a guarantee that the person is endowed with intelligence, discretion, judgment and virtue.  Although there are plenty of examples of graduates possessing those traits, we've also seen all too many graduates of those august schools who are severely lacking in them as well.

During the recent men's NCAA tournament, one wag said that since this is supposed to be a tournament for universities, schools of higher education, perhaps it would be a good idea to rank the teams according to the number of Nobel laureates with connections to each of the sixty-eight schools.  Harvard, of course, ranked first, but the third- and fourth-ranked schools were not Ivy Leaguers:  Illinois and Michigan.  So I delved into the online archives to see just where these latter two schools ranked in Nobel recipients, and I was pleasantly surprised:  My alma mater has received the twenty-third most Nobels, and Michigan has received the thirty-second most -- in the world.  If you consider only the American schools, Illinois ranks fourteenth and Michigan nineteenth.  Other non-Ivy League schools and their rankings among American schools:  UC-Berkeley (5th), Johns Hopkins (9th), NYU (10th), Cal Institute of Technology (12th), Rockefeller University (15th), Washington University (16th) and UC-San Diego (17th).  The Ivy League (and similar schools) rank:

1. Harvard
2. Columbia
3. Chicago
4.  MIT
6.  Stanford
7.  Yale
8.  Cornell
11.  Princeton
13.  Penn

There are more Big Ten schools on the list than there are Ivy League schools (I say that with no small amount of pride and just a little smirk of a smile).  So it's obvious that although the Ivy League boasts, quite correctly, some very fine institutions, it isn't alone when it comes to academic excellence.  Either way, the number of Nobel laureates is an arbitrary way of judging presidential timber, but it also shows that schools outside the ambit of the Ivy League also excel academically.

Why, then, are we focused on the Ivy League?  I can only speculate, and my observations will come off like sour grapes.  Besides, it's not as if I'm suggesting we abstain from ever considering anyone with credentials from these schools, but that we expand the pool to include public universities and graduates from other, non-Ivy League public schools.  Smart people attend those schools for a variety of reasons: Location, discipline, professors, scholarships, upbringing, whatever.  It's not as if anyone who didn't attend an Ivy League school applied to and was rejected by them.  Some people just don't want to attend them.

But that's only the inquiry involving intelligence.  That doesn't address either morality, discretion or judgment.  There is no accurate measurement for these qualities and admission to or graduation from an Ivy League school can in no way guarantee that a person is ethical, discreet or decisive in a sound way. In fact, there is an argument that all too often graduates of the Ivy League are lacking in one or more of those qualities, having grown up with the mentality that the world is theirs and the rest of us are here to serve them.

For a supposedly egalitarian society, we tend to pay far too much attention to pedigree, as evidenced by our national fascination with royalty.  For a country that once threw off the cloak of elitism, we sure do like to see what the royals are doing.  Unfortunately, we have also created royalty in this country, with certain families allowed to be treated as if they're somehow different than the rest of us.  This is supposed to be a meritocracy, with upward mobility determined by the sweat of one's brow, not his bloodlines or his bank account statement.

It's time we looked beyond the Ivy League for our leaders.  We won't necessarily be doing worse.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Networking

Networking is a funny thing to me.  I've never been socially adept.  Karen thinks I have a mild form of Asperger's, but I disagree.  The way I was raised which, in all honesty, was just short of living a hermit's life, contributes to my social awkwardness.  Since I take offense at less than most people, I don't see why people take such offense at my foibles, but they do.

Now that I'm in business for myself, by necessity I have to socialize.  I've never suffered fools lightly, and as I age I find even less tolerance for them.  What's more, I'm not adroit when it comes to small talk, chit-chat if you will.  I can easily zone out while someone's telling me about their beloved kitten because, (a) I'm not a cat person, (b) I want to know how to get more business from them more than I want to know about the cat's litterbox habits and (c) there's a sporting event on somewhere that has more importance than any of this.  At the same time, I think the other person should be fascinated by my talking points because, well, they're mine.

So I've launched myself into this networking thing without a safety net.  Thus far, I haven't caused any notable or lasting damage to either myself or my interlocutors, although only time will tell. Along the way, and contrary to every preconceived idea I had before I began this, I've actually enjoyed a lot of the meetings I've had.

In the group to which I belong, we're encouraged to do one-to-ones, otherwise known as 121's.  I've taken to pimping myself out, my derisive term for being brazen enough to invite perfect strangers to sit down with me, break bread, and tell me their lifes' stories.  Of the approximately twenty-five people with whom I've met, I can honestly say I was never bored, although I chafed a little bit at being told by one person how to conduct a client consultation, something I've been doing for over two decades perfectly well without the assistance of this well-intentioned but uninformed former minister.  Men and women, young and old, they've all had some interesting facet of their lives that I've gleaned and which made my life richer for knowing.

I met a man whose parents were missionaries, so he ended up born in Brazil, is a dual national and who speaks fluent Portuguese.  I met a German woman who came here while I was in Spain and has blended into society with her still noticeable Teutonic accent.  I met a former hockey prodigy whose life was derailed by an Achilles injury right before he began college, costing him his scholarship.  I met another woman who was married twice and is now trying the dating scene again, fearlessly, as she raises her three sons.

There was the vet who served in 'Nam, the former prosecuting attorney now a criminal defense attorney, and the accountant with the heart of gold.  The insurance guy who belongs to virtually every organization under the sun and who lived next door to where I used to live sponsored me into this group, the guy whose children were adopted from Russia before Putin cut off foreign adoptions to this country and the young attorney about to take the bar all had their stories to tell.  What I read once is really true:  If I speak I tell you a story I already know, but if I listen to you I learn something I didn't know.  How true, how true.

I'll still never be suave and debonaire.  James Bond has nothing to fear from me.  I'll never write any how-to guides on etiquette.  But I'm enjoying this foray into society, finding that whatever my shortcomings may be, I haven't scared anyone yet.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Chicago politics in D.C., II

There are people who simply don't understand the problems that the State of Illinois has.  They think that it's just a simple matter of voting out the scoundrels who have run the state into the ground. Would that they were correct.

Back in the 1940's and 1950', Richard J. Daley built what is widely regarded as The Machine.  The Machine controls life in the state.  It is part and parcel of the Democratic Party in the state.  Some might say it is the Democratic Party, and they wouldn't be wrong.  The way Daley pére ran the thing, the state was beholden to the City of Chicago, inasmuch as the city populated state government with its cronies.  Springfield essentially did Chicago's bidding.  This, no doubt, built up resentments downstate to the point that there were those who wanted Chicago to secede and become its own state. Repeated attempts to overthrow the Democratic stranglehold on state government have largely been unsuccessful.  As a sop to conservatives, every once in awhile the Republicans are allowed to sit in the governor's mansion.  But it's been a long, long time since either house was controlled by the Republicans.

The state is mired in an economic morass generated by corruption, greed and incompetence.  There isn't, in the words of a recently disgraced former governor, enough testicular fortitude to end the vicious cycles that plague this state.

Patronage and nepotism are the by-words that the Party, and by extension, the people of the state live. In other words, if you ain't with them, you're against them.  And those people whose livelihoods depend on playing nice with the pols make sure the pols are happy.  Enter corruption.

Right now, Michael Madigan, the Speaker of the Illinois House and the head of the Democratic Party in Illinois is the de facto leader of the state.  He controls virtually everything.  And so slick is the Machine's organization that he is insulated from any attacks as to his operating style.  Not so coincidentally, his daughter, Lisa Madigan, is the state attorney general.  She seems competent enough and doesn't seem to do her father's bidding, but he sure seems to have plans for her.  Talk is that Madigan is hamstringing the present governor, Pat Quinn, in order to weaken him for the next primary so that his daughter can win the Democratic candidacy for governor.  In Illinois, that would virtually guarantee her the governorship.  And once she's governor, it will be interesting to see just how pliable she is.

Meanwhile, back in Chicago, the mayor, Rahm Emanuel, is being talked about as a potential running mate for Cankles in the 2016 presidential election.  A stretch, you say?  Not so much, if one understands anything about Chicago politics.  Emanuel, a notorious partisan, has paid his dues.  He was an assistant and chief advisor to President Bill Clinton.  He later served as President Barack Obama's chief of staff during his first term.  He therefore has deep knowledge of the inner workings of the White House and proven loyalty to his elders.  He is also a tremendously ambitious man who, I suspect, would love nothing more than to become this country's first Jewish president.

The problem with this is that the aforementioned personalities, aided and abetted by David Axelrod, another Chicagoan and campaign strategist par excellence, are coopting state and national elections with a Machine-like approach not seen since the days of Soviet dominance in sports in the Olympics. The Machine approaches every election with a life-or-death mentality.  It threatens weak-kneed supporters and crushes opponents with methodical tenacity.  Where other Democrats are compassionate, these Machine Democrats are ruthless in their campaigning, seeing nothing wrong with dissembling and misrepresenting facts about their opponents.

If the scenario described above plays out, the White House will have been occupied by someone with close Chicago ties for all but eight years from 1993 through 2015, or fourteen years, with the prospect of adding at least another four years under the Cankles regime.  In other words, a generation would know little different than the Chicago Way of government, and that isn't a good thing for anyone other than the people in power.

Keep a close eye on Chicago and the State of Illinois.  Developments there may portend horrible things for the country.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Random thoughs, redux

Random thoughts on a couple of recent attention-getting headliners:

Edward Snowden is a traitor.  I know no other way to describe him.

I don't doubt his moral convictions.  He's entitled to his opinion. But to leak sensitive information under the guise of a desire for more transparency is mere poppycock.  This man is vaingloriously seeking approbation as some sort of cyber white knight.

Whistleblower laws exist to encourage people to do the right thing.  Here, Snowden took it upon himself to determine what is right in matters of foreign policy.  In so doing, he has put in mortal danger people who are serving this country behind the scenes -- and in some of the most inhospitable places for Americans on earth -- with his disclosures.  What's more, he stands to benefit with asylum offers from countries whose transparency is opaque at best and jet black at worst.  How he can be anything other than a traitor is beyond me.  He and Bradley Manning are cut from the same cloth.

------------------------------

Charlie Sheen and some reality personality named Farrah Abraham are engaged in some sort of Twitter spat.  Apparently, she tweeted him and suggested they meet, partly in the hopes that he would get her a role on his television show.  She then took it upon herself to make public their Twitter exchange, which set Sheen off and prompted a public diatribe against her.

What I find amusing is that Sheen considers himself in a position to dress anyone down publicly, given his antics over the last four years.  Anyone who's talking about drinking tiger's blood, considers himself a warlock, shacks up with porn stars and thinks that he's bi-winning is hardly in a position to be lecturing anyone about her behavior.

I don't know whether the protocol that controls the Twitter world sanctioned what Ms. Abraham did.  I don't know whether Sheen did anything to give her the idea that it would be all right to make their exchange public.  I don't really care.  It's just another example of a pampered, quasi-talented person who makes his living by playing make believe having an overblown sense of his own importance and imposing it on the rest of the world.  That anyone pays attention to such narcissists is amazing to me.

 -----------------------------

So Vladimir Putin stole Robert Kraft's Super Bowl ring, eh?  Big whoop.

For one, I really don't care.  It's another ridiculous dispute between the ultra-rich and the ultra-powerful over a toy that few normal people can ever touch, let alone own.  Again, whether Putin was given the bauble or Kraft only offered to show it to him is of little consequence.  What's more, that Kraft, who is allegedly worth $2.3 billion, is complaining about this at all is priceless.  If in fact Putin did steal the thing, I'd mention is slyly and chuckle about it, not complain about it or make wishy-washy accusations.  If Putin did steal it, he should return it.  But to squabble about it like two kids in the sandbox arguing about the bigger pail is not mildly amusing, it's hilarious.  Either of them can have another one of them made in a jiffy.  Kraft had so many made for his organization that to have another one made would be an inconvenience, nothing more.  Putin could commission someone in a gulag to have it made; I'm sure the KGB could steal the designs somewhere.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Father's Day

I am not a father. 

I never will be a father.

Through a series of well-intentioned but misguided choices, every year on this day, I am on the outside looking in.  And the sad fact is that there was nothing more in this world that I wanted than to be a father.

There are men who loathe the prospect of being a father.  Some who become fathers abdicate their responsibility.  There are fathers who wish they'd never had children.  I was never and would never have been any of those men.

When I was a child I was beaten by mine.  He put a roof over our heads, food in our stomachs and clothes on our backs.  We were encouraged to get an education, of which I took full advantage.  But that was where it ended with him -- he was a provider and a stern disciplinarian, but he wasn't a father.

He threw me into walls, kicked me down a staircase and one time I went to school with a bruise on my face.  Sure, he spanked me, and sometimes I deserved it.  I don't consider spanking abusive.  When I was too big for him to beat anymore, he started with the emotional abuse.  I lived in fear of him as a child and we are not friends today.

There are those who believe that if a child is abused, the odds of that child being an abusive parent are great.  I know that I would never have beaten a child.  Sure, I would have lost my temper.  Parents tell me that until you've actually been a parent, you don't know how you would react in a given situation.  Although that's partially true, I know what I wouldn't have done because my father gave me the best example of how not to be a loving father.

When I think about my loss -- and its absence is truly a loss -- I tear up.  It is one of a couple of things that can make me cry.  Not even our Mother's death makes me cry, because in the end, that was the natural course of things.  Not being a father is, to me, unnatural. 

I will never hold our child in my arms, never soothe him when he's sad, never teach him to read.  I'll never teach her how to ride a bike, cheer for her as she plays her sports, protect her from the boys who court her.  I'll never see the children grow to adulthood, laugh with them as we remind each other of the silly things that we each did when they were children and beam with pride at what good people they've become.

No, I won't have to deal with their missteps, growl at them when they broke their Mother's vase that I distinctly warned them to care for, tell them not to watch their video games and study instead or make sure to clean their plates and do the dishes.  I won't have to deal with adolescent angst, hormonal changes or sassy mouths.  But even those I would have preferred to what I don't have.

I've met the love of my life too late.  We are no longer young enough to have children.  It is one of the other great losses that makes me cry.

The next time someone says that a woman's biological clock is ticking, think of men, too.  Sure, biologically I could go out, woo some young woman, have a child with her, and when that son or daughter turns sixteen in the natural course, I would be sixty-eight-years-old.  To have a child at this age is selfish.  I would leave a child with more questions than benefits.  People would think I'm their grandfather, not their father.  I can't do that to my children.

Even if I never have children, I still worry about them.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

More questions

I've got nothing today.  No pressing national crisis to address, no personal foible to expose.  I guess I'm just going to ask questions that have me confuddled today.

How is it people get paid for the inanities that appear on the television and movie screens?  I'm no critic, but there are some things that just reek.  Everytime I see How I Met Your Mother, I wonder who it was that greenlighted the thing to waste the limitless talents of Neil Patrick Harris.

Why can't people get gut-wrenching and heartrending straight?

Is it all right for news anchors to vote?

How does a publisher know what manuscript will be a bestseller?

Why is there no hockey team whose team colors are black and kelly green with grey, white and silver piping?

How does someone win the lottery multiple times without cheating?

Speaking of cheating, why do Europeans think flopping isn't cheating?

How can anyone like the smell of cooked eggs?

Who decided it would be a good idea to test porcine intestinal mucosa (heparin) or rat mucosa (coumadin) for human usage?

Who decided it was a hashtag and no longer a pound sign?

Can anyone pronounce Chiwetel Ejiofor without looking it up?

Why have the Brits apologized for black slavery but not said one word about what they did to the Irish?

Why is it that when I'm driving, the bug always collides with my windshied directly in my line of sight?

Just how many things does a person need to be able to do with a cellphone?

Why doesn't Custer break my skin when he nibbles on my wrist bone?

Aren't engineers being taught how to write in English anymore?

Why is it always such a pain to format things in Word?

Is it possible to enjoy spicy food even if my olfactory sense is off?

Can autumn get here faster and just bypass the heat and humidity of summer?

Why do so many people like Jay-Z and Kanye West?

For that matter, why do so many people care about the Kardashians?

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Affirmative action

Another issue is cropping up again in front of the Supreme Court. Affirmative action, a remedy seeking to balance out centuries of discrimination, is once again being contested.  I don't know whether affirmative action will suffer a reverse or whether it will be strengthened.  And frankly, I don't know what the answer should be.

I grew up in the age of affirmative action.  I attended a school in the early '70's that had kids bused in from the inner city for a couple of years.  Back then I certainly didn't know what to make of it.  I wasn't scarred by the experience.  Honestly, I don't remember much about the period other than all of a sudden one day, there were black kids attending our school.

Throughout my academic career, I learned next to minority students, more and more with each level I progressed.  I can't say that I noticed a huge difference between them and me anymore than I noticed a difference between me and other white students.  When I taught, I saw more differences, especially in grammar.

I cannot, however, attribute the differences in those students to any one cause.  It could have been socio-economic, but it could have been indolence as well.  There's also some backlash in the black community that by talking properly, one is talking like whitey, which is frowned upon in some sectors.

In all my time in academia, I only heard one white person complain about the effects affirmative action had on him, and he was speculating.  If I was ever affected by it, I never knew it.  I don't think it played a role in how I was educated and what opportunities I had, but I'll never know.  And I don't really care.

But there are legitimate questions as to the continued viability of affirmative action.  George Will, a prescient thinker who bases his opinion on reason and facts more than most people, has descried efforts to prolong the civil rights movement as the Forever Selma project.  Agitators like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would have people believe the Jim Crow continues to reign in this country.

To be sure, there are pockets of abject discrimination.  Yet courts are far better equipped and more resolute in prosecuting claims of discrimination than they were before the 1960's.  No longer is it likely that a claim of discrimination will be thrown out simply because it was brought by a minority.  For some people, however, any verdict that is not in favor of the plaintiff is evidence of racism.

Affirmative action has a stigmatizing effect.  There are whites who will look askance at minorities and wonder if it was merit or law that put them in their positions.  But there are troubling questions that persist irrespective of whites' attitudes about minorities and affirmative action:

If a wealthy black celebrity's child is in competition for a slot with a middle class white person's child, what are the hindrances or hurdles that the black's child has had to overcome?

How do we apportion the time for affirmative action to particular groups?  That is, how long are blacks to receive preferential treatment?  When does affirmative action end for Latinos?  How about Native Americans?

Do we apply affirmative action to all groups who have suffered discrimination irrespective of race? The Irish were discriminated against at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries.  Should they get a period of affirmative action to redress the wrongs they suffered?

The people who suffered the discrimination are no longer with us, but their descendants are.  Those that discriminated are no longer with us either, but to balance the scales, the descendants, who in many cases have never done anything wrong, are now asked to bear the burden of their ancestors' wrongs.  Are the proverbial sins of the fathers being visited upon their children, and is that fair?

Asians suffered discrimination, equal to that suffered by blacks, but bore their grievances more quietly.  At the same time, Asians excel better than any other minority group.  How are we to redress the wrongs they suffered?

How do we decide when the imbalances have been corrected?  What empirical standard should we apply?

Blacks excel in sports; they comprise nearly eighty percent of the NBA.  Should there be an adjustment to provide opportunities for other groups and mandate that so many positions be held open for other minorities in the NBA?

There are infinitely more questions that can be asked and not easily answered.  I don't know whether the Court is going to strike down affirmative action; if I had to make a guess, I'd say it won't.

Either way, the debate isn't going to end with the Court's latest pronouncement.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

MSM and Hollywood in extremis

Hope and change.

That's what we were promised.

To this date, I think we're still hoping and waiting for change to come.

I'm not a Republican.  As I've said many times, I'm a Marxist:  I'd never join a club that would have me as a member.  But I am a conservative.  I believe in fiscal responsibility, a strong military, social liberties that are fair and balanced, less government, less taxes, a foreign policy that protects the United States and its interests but stays out of foreign squabbles and sensible immigration laws.  I'm sure I'm missing some things, but those are the things I can come up with right now.

In the last nine months, we have had scandals or controversies involving:  The attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, the use by Secret Service members of  prostitutes in Colombia, the IRS profiling conservative groups, the seizure of the Associated Press logs, the gun control debate, the Verizon wiretapping and now a whistleblower who's leaked information to The Guardian.  Taken individually, none of them is good.  Taken collectively, and it's a wonder that there aren't calls for the President's head.

But it's not that surprisingly, really.  Remember, the MSM is coopted.  It's been in the President's hip pocket since he made his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.  For the MSM, he can do no wrong.  If you doubt this, watch as the MSM bends over backwards to explain away any involvement he may have with any of these controversies.  It's always lower-ranking bureaucrats who take the fall.  Both he and Cankles are made of Teflon; nothing will be allowed to interrupt their marches into the glory of history.

Is it fair?  Ask yourself this:  Were George Bush at the helm for any one of those incidents, much less every one of them, would the MSM have treated him with the kid gloves that it uses with both Obama and Cankles?  That the MSM has to cover these stories puts it in a very difficult position, one that is like a cheerleader having to report on the star players' indiscretions to the principal.  Whether the MSM treats the controversies with the same aggressive spirit it would had a conservative been in the White House remains to be seen.

Another group put in a terribly tough position by all this is Hollywood.  Hollywood loves the President, so much so that Jamie Foxx once referred to him as our Lord and Savior Barack Obama. Lest you think I'm making this up, check this out:

Hyperbole aside, it's evident that for Hollywood, Obama is the Second Coming, if not of Christ, then at least of John F. Kennedy.

That begs the question:  Is Hollywood going to treat these issues, and if so, how?  It has never had a problem dealing with conservative missteps:  All the President's Men dealt with Watergate, Rendition and Lions for Lambs about Iraq.  Despite plenty of evidence about Kennedy's infidelities, treatment of them waited until he was long dead.  His apathy regarding civil rights has never been addressed, the preference being to tout him as a supporter of civil rights despite the fact that authors whose works focus on the Civil Rights Era, like Juan Williams in Eyes on the Prize, paint a much more Machiavellian picture of the Kennedys' approach to equal rights.

So what is Hollywood going to do about this?  For that matter, where is the rage that would certainly be palpable were the aforementioned scandals and controversies the result of a conservative president's administration?  Why aren't more people asking these questions?

The answer to that last question is simple:  To whom can they ask that question and receive a critical, meaning analytical, investigation?  The MSM is already doing the President's bidding.  Hollywood won't do anything to besmirch the administration.  Its silence so far is deafening.  To expect anything in the way of criticism, either disapproval or analysis, is foolish.  The very same organs that would have lynched a conservative president immediately upon the release of the information are, at best, taking a wait-and-see approach, preferring instead that it blows over and they can ignore it.

Although there is no direct link between the government and the press, the way the two seem to be operating in an almost symbiotic fashion does remind one of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century.  To mention any by name risks treading into Godwin's Law territory, which I've done in the past, but the similarities are starkly present.  When the Fourth Estate voluntarily ceases to do what it considers to be its most important function -- keeping the government honest -- is loses all credibility.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Abortion

Abortion is an issue that confounds resolution.  In fact, when it's discussed, it's one of the most hotly debated topics imaginable.  For too many people, it's a very incendiary topic, one that inflames the rhetoric and leads to some very odd bedfellows.

For the record, I am unapologetically pro-life.  I come to this conclusion not from any dogmatic compulsion but because logically, I can see no other way to believe.  To put it simply, the fetus is a human life in being from the moment of conception.  To rationalize it in any other way is wrong and potentially criminal.  People have contorted themselves morally to justify abortion probably, in my opinion, so they can live with themselves and their decisions.

The argument in favor of life is very simple:  Fertilization occurs when the sperm of a man joins with the egg of a woman.  Both the man and the woman are human.  Not trees, rocks, books, tables, fish, jelly, Coke, straw, but humans.  It is incomprehensible to me how anyone can deny that the fertilized egg is anything less than human.  Of course, the pro-death argument turns on the point of viability. Specifically, unless the fetus or fertilized egg can live on its own outside the womb, it cannot be considered human life.

Well.

The counterarguments to this are myriad.  Is a person in a coma who is hooked up to life support any less of a human because he needs to have his life continued by a machine?  Are brain dead people no longer human?  What of those people whose hearts have stopped only to be restarted by defibrillators?
Former SCOTUS justice Sandra Day O'Connor hit the nail right on the head in a concurring opinion in an abortion case.  She said, in essence, that pro-death advocates were, with their viability argument, on a collision course with technology, because with advancements in neo-natal technology, the day is coming when a fertilized egg may very well be viable at conception.  If and when that occurs, what argument will the pro-death crowd use to sanction what is essentially murder?

The law is equally confused about the unborn.  Whereas a pregnant woman can decide whether the life growing inside her is human or not, the law gives that unborn life property rights.  If the father of the unborn child dies pre-birth, the child under the law is in line to inherit money or property from the decedent's estate.  If the mother and unborn child are killed by a drunk driver, the drunk faces two counts of aggravated murder (or whatever the charge is under state law), not just one.  Here's a conundrum to consider:  What if the drunk driver hits the car while the mother is on the way to the abortion clinic to kill her unborn child?  Is the drunk guilty of one death or two?  Who determines, in the absence of the deceased mother, whether the child's death counts as a charge?

Lest anyone think that I'm speaking without any personal experience because I will never be a father, consider this:  One of my sisters was raped on a date and had the child, and the other sister gave birth to a child with a serious defect, osteogenesis imperfecta.  Because of our sisters' selflessness and hard work, our nephew and niece have reached adulthood and are productive members of society.  It wasn't easy by any means.  The sisters sacrificed and guided their children who, had they been killed, would not have had a chance at life.  Sure, one of them has challenges, but she's overcome many of them and lives a productive, largely happy life.

There will be those who say that many women with low incomes and a lack of the kind of support our sisters have enjoyed would be faced with insuperable challenges.  There are some, to be sure.  But there are families throughout the country who would gladly adopt babies no matter what socio-economic background into which they were born.  But pro-death advocates would rather take the choice away from the child and leave it with the woman, denying the child's humanity and the most elementary of rights -- life.

The pro-death segment of this country has become so confident of itself that it has even turned a blind eye to the recent trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell.  Who is Dr. Kermit Gosnell, you ask?  Here's a snippet of the trial that went largely uncovered by the MSM:

"Among the relatively few cases that could be specifically documented, one was Baby Boy A. His 17-year-old mother was almost 30 weeks pregnant – seven and a half months – when labor was induced. An employee estimated his birth weight as approaching six pounds. He was breathing and moving when Dr. Gosnell severed his spine and put the body in a plastic shoebox for disposal."

That was just one of the incidents for which Dr. Gosnell was convicted of murder.   


The question that must be asked is:  Does the manner in which the death occurred really matter?

Not surprisingly, the MSM avoided this trial like the plague, passing over the outcome with barely a mention.  Had it been a pro-life activist who killed an abortionist, the news would have been on every network show throughout the trial.  As one online report said it:

“If you’re pro-[death], do you really want anybody to know about this,” he said, motioning to the filthy medical equipment set up in the courtroom.

It’s a good point. As saturation coverage of the Sandy Hook elementary school coverage has caused Americans to reconsider the limits of the Second Amendment, saturation coverage of Kermit Gosnell’s clinic would likely cause the same reconsideration of abortion rights.

Yet the outcome was the irony of ironies:  Dr. Gosnell, in a plea bargain, exchanged his right to appeal his sentence for life in prison.

Would that the children have had the opportunity to make a choice.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Random thoughts once again

I think it's time for a random thoughts blogpost:

Is anyone surprised that one of Michael Jackson's kids is crying out for help?

Smores just don't even look appetizing.

There are true sports fans and sports fans.  True sports fans don't mind difference of opinion and love discussing sport for sports' sake.  Sports fans are only interested in unzipping and measuring, usually by proxy with their sports heroes.

It sure seems as if those liberals who howled when the Patriot Act was enacted should be a lot more vocal nowadays what with the Verizon matter and the IRS scandal going on.  But curiously, they're quite quiet.  I wonder why.

Esther Williams died today.  What a lady.

I really need to cut back on soda.  Back to making sun tea I guess.

Is there any professional sports draft with more uncertainties than the Major League Baseball draft?

Negotiating is fun, especially when negotiating for someone other than myself.

I can't believe they have graduation ceremonies for pre-school nowadays.

When I bought my office chair, the hydraulics on it worked fine.  Now, after about fifteen minutes, I have to get up from a lot lower, making me feel like a Chinese coolie.

What a great idea:  The spork.

For whatever stupid reason, I prefer black ink to blue ink.

I hate summer, and it hasn't even started yet.

I'm not a huge fan of holiday weddings.  Just sayin'.

I suppose if Lance Armstrong did it, Ryan Braun may have as well.  But I thought the only two people who were clean among the accused were Braun and Raffy Palmeiro.

Every once and again, I enjoy nothing more than a good salad for dinner.

I wonder why I never collected baseball cards.

The only thing I really like about golf are the courses themselves.  The game itself sucks.

Planned obsolescence is just another way to say job security.

I'm not sure I could work from home.  Too many distractions.

Tonight my girl comes into town.  Hopefully, this is one of the last times when we'll have to do this commuting thing.  I'm so proud of her; she's held up like a trooper.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Mother

Seventeen years ago today, our Mother died of lung cancer brought about by nearly four decades of smoking.  Mom was the glue that held the family together.  She was the teacher, the nurturer, the cook, the parent, the cheerleader, the doctor.  She was the best Mom I could have had and I miss her dearly.

Karen says that I look like my Mom.  I think of all the kids I probably do.  I was also her favorite; there's little point in trying to deny it. I'm her firstborn, the one who spent the most time with her and the one who knew her best.  She taught me, raised me, protected me.  She was my best friend and the most influential person in my life.

I was there the day the oncologist told Mom she had months to live.  That was as daunting an event as I've ever experienced.  It's something we all knew would happen one day but hoped it would be many years down the road.  Mom had actually quit smoking some years ago with the help of an acupuncturist but they found the mass in her chest a few years later when she had some trouble breathing.  I think she lived another three years before she succumbed.

Mom fought.  She fought hard and she never complained.  I don't think I ever heard her cry or seek pity in any way.  She faced her fate stoically and bravely.

When my brother called to tell me to get the hospital, I got there as quickly as I could.  We took the elevator to the floor on which our Mother had been brought and I stopped to say hello to my other siblings and my young nephew and godson.  As I was holding him, the nurse came out and told us Mom had died.

I was horrified.  Mom, who was always there for me, had gone and I was out greeting other relatives. My first move should have been to get in that room.  No one told us that she was near death right then, but even so, I made the wrong choice.  I'm not haunted by it, but I'm disappointed in myself.  I could have had one more moment with the woman who gave me life, fed me, taught me, raised me, and I missed it.

The next three days were a blur.  Her funeral was small.  We buried her in a small, rural cemetery to which we had no connection, thinking she would have liked the rustic nature of the place over a more manicured space.  I don't know that anyone ever talked with her about that, but we should have.  Perhaps we were in denial.

Over the last seventeen years, my life has undergone serious changes, both personally and professionally.  I handled them as I thought Mom would have counseled me to, although I know I did some things of which she would have disapproved.  We weren't always in agreement on everything, although we never had any big fights.

One thing that will always bother me is that she never got to meet Karen.  The two of them would have been so close...and tortured me in the process, but I would have loved it.

I am a better person for having had her as a Mother.  I'm sure I disappointed her in some things, and I know she wouldn't have approved of some of my choices.  But she was my best friend, my counselor, my teacher and my Mom, and I miss her dearly.  I can easily say that I miss her more today than I did the day she died.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

High school classmates

Well, Karen got me on Facebook recently, more for marketing purposes than anything else.  I am not a fan, let me just say.  I don't have the energy to do what most people do on there.  Not being very well-connected with any family, it's of little use to me in the ways it is for other folks.  And I understand that.  With families dispersed around the country if not the world, Facebook serves a purpose.  I'm just not one of them.

One thing that Facebook does that drives me nuts is provide a forum for all those people who, in emails, send chain mail.  Not only do they do that in abundance on FB, but FB now has these games that require people to beg other members for gifts and what not much in the same dependency-inducing way that chain mail works.  There's just too much goofiness for me on FB.

That being said, it is a necessary evil.  Since I've eschewed much of what passes for mainstream technology these days -- smart phones, hybrid cars, large screen TV's, -- this is a small concession to the onslaught of the binary world.  I do what I have to and get out of there.

But today as a break from business blogging I went on my FB and trolled around looking for other members of my networking group whom I've missed when sending out friend requests (seriously? You have to ask someone to be your friend?  And this came from someone who attended Harvard? Wait, strike that.  That makes perfect sense coming from Harvard...).

Anyway, along the way I saw a name that I thought was from the past, but wasn't.  It was a name of a particularly obnoxious high school classmate whom I loathed.  So I checked it out.  It wasn't him, but I went to find him and...lo and behold, there was Mr. Wonderful himself.  Same toothy grin, same air of superiority he always had.  Only now he's clutching his wife, another classmate of ours, who must have lost her mind when she decided to date and then marry him.  Who says people don't go over to the Dark Side?

All of us look older, for the most part, and it's hilarious to me to now see those girls, now women, who had tongues hanging out all over town.  One in about a hundred (not that I saw that many of them, I'm just saying very, very few) of them retained any semblance of their looks.  The same could be said for me if I'd ever had any looks with which to begin, I know, but these girls had guys pining for them.  If we'd only known then what we see now...

What's amusing to me is the newfound friendships that have arisen over the years.  The nerds have been befriended by the jocks, the wallflowers by the homecoming court.  Strange bedfellows indeed. And if you look at the friends' lists, it's all the same people mostly.  At least for my high school, incest rules.

There's even some goofy program where distinguished graduates of the high school receive some recognition.  It lapsed a few years ago but apparently it means so much to some of these folks that they revived it.  You'd have thought they'd raised the Titanic if you read the backslapping posts about that.  Again, virtually the same seventy-five people or so are involved.  I wonder whether, after every one of them receives the award, they go back to the first honorees and give them a second award.  This could go on ad absurdum.

One of the funniest recurring themes to me was the inclusion on virtually everyone's friends list of the quarterback of the football team.  He was liked by many I suppose, although he and I fell out because he went after me unfairly at a party (and I was the one drinking, not him.  Go figure). Anyway, this doofus was good enough to play in the NFL for a time, although he was at best a journeyman with no hope of reaching Canton by election.  Talk about a narcissist.  He's skipped around the country since his career ended yet he needs to dredge up memories of his glory days from high school.  Lest anyone think this is sour grapes or envy speaking, he was a student at our school for a whopping two years and left the area after graduation and never came back except for a visit. It's not like he has strong ties to the area.  Karen raises the point that perhaps he just accepts every request he gets.  Yeah, sure.  That's why he ran for and won class president, was a quarterback, was homecoming king and has owned several businesses with his name plastered all over them.  He's just an accomodating sort that one is.

I admit to curiosity about the members of our foursome with whom I ran around in high school, so I looked them up.  Jeff, who had a near-parenthood experience our senior year, found religion and became a minister of some sort, a fact that FB confirms.  Good for him.  I figured he'd keep on the right path.  Evan, who got busted at the Harvard of the South for using university WATTS lines, is now on the Left Coast doing something in finance.  When I first pulled his name up, the internet offered me a choice to look up arrest records which, if true, would only be fitting.

The final member of our group, Jim, became a born-again Christian and disowned me when I politely refused to convert to his brand of Christianity.  He was last seen in Texas during the oil boom of the '80s.  He came back after we had our failed discussion/negotiation with his fiancée and introduced her to the rest of the gang but not me.  As I learned from a minister in a documentary I saw on HBO about the country singer who came out of the closet, Chely Wright, Christians are never as mean as when they're mean for Jesus.  Well, I hope Jim is doing well.

If someone were to reach out from high school and make a friends request, I'd delete it.  I have no interest in going back there, figuratively or literally.  To keep in touch with people who made no effort or who had no interest in my well-being simply so they can bump up their friends' list or lay claim to having unearthed a long-forgotten classmate holds no interest for me.  I've often said that the only way I'd go to a reunion was dressed up as a waiter for the catering staff so I could eavesdrop on the others.  I didn't have a great interest in most of them when I was in school with them and those in whom I had any interest apparently lost any interest in me.

They can have as a playground Facebook and the hometown in which many of them still live.

I've moved on.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Ethnic foods

It is possible that today, if things break right, Karen and I will get to eat at one of our favorite restaurants, a Lebanese restaurant outside a major U.S. city.  The food is ridiculously good and its abundance is almost shameful.  I even asked the waitress how the restaurant made any money considering how much food one receives for the cost.

I like to eat, perhaps too much so.  I wish I had the metabolism of some people who can eat all day long and not gain an ounce.  I see food and I gain weight.  I'm not morbidly obese but I am overweight.  Still, I don't eat that unhealthily (do not expect me to write I eat unhealthy; that's just not going to happen).  Typically I don't snack after meals, I don't eat a lot of candy or cakes and I'm not a huge drinker.

Over the years, I've eaten many different kinds of food.  I think by now, I know what I like and like what I know.  This, then, is my list of favorite and disliked kinds of food.

I absolutely love Italian, Spanish and Greek foods.  The Mediterranean tastes appeal to me as none other.  When I lived in Spain I got hooked on Spanish food, and the Greek and Italian food I've eaten mostly in U.S. restaurants I absolutely crave.

I used to like Mexican food.  But the more I've eaten it, the more I've come to realize that it's essentially very bland.  At the same time, I find Tex-Mex food to be much more to my liking, since it's very, very spicy without being inedibly hot.

I like Chinese food in moderation.  I don't like much of what Asians eat.   It's like something I'd expect a contestant to eat on Fear Factor.

French food is too frou-frou.  German food is too heavy.  Same for Scandinavian food.

South American food does something that I just can't abide:  It loves to mix fruits with meats. Slathering a perfectly fine piece of beef with mango chutney is heresy to me.  It loves things like yuca which I find to be almost tasteless, then fancies it up with any number of exotic fruits.  Taken individually, I like the elements, but I don't like the combinations.  One exception to this broad rule may very well be Argentian food, but I haven't tried it yet.

Canadian food I can't identify as being very original except for one vomit-inducing dish called poutine.  Consisting of french fries, cheese curds and brown gravy, it seems like a perfect way to ruin otherwise fine french fries.  When I finally make it to Canada, that's one dish I will not be trying.

Speaking of nasty combinations, there are things people do differently with foods that sound interesting and that I might try.  I know some people eat french fries with mustard instead of ketchup.  In Chicago, it's against the unwritten laws to eat hot dogs with ketchup.  I've tried the fries that way; they're not bad.  Notwithstanding the parochial pride, I prefer hot dogs with mustard. Some people put salt on apples and watermelon.  I've eaten pickled corn (it's all right) but I'll never try pickled eggs because I hate eggs.

I'm just learning about Middle Eastern food, but Moroccan and Lebanese food appeal to me.  Like Italian, Greek and Spanish food, there's an elegance in the simplicity of the cuisines.

I'm not terribly adventurous when it comes to food.  I know what I like and like what I know.  If something piques my curiosity, I may try it, but the odds are against it.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles