Whining Democrat Style

In the law there's an adage about argument. When one has the law on her side, she is to argue the laws.  When she has the facts on her side, she is to argue the facts.  When she has neither the law nor the facts on her side, she is to yell louder than her opponent.

That is what the Left is doing these days.

Surprised by the stunningly bad campaign run by the doyenne of the Democratic party and the unexpected win by Donald Trump in the 2016 elections and unable to admit that it was as much their fault for losing as it was President Trump's tactics that brought him to win, the Left has engaged, since the election, in a strategy that is devoid of substance but chock-full of distraction and empty rhetoric.

According to the Left, the POTUS and his followers are nothing but sexist, racist homophobes bent on keeping poor people in chains.  Did they learn nothing from the backlash that was had when Cankles referred to us as Deplorables?  While this language may stir their base, the Left is hardly convincing many independents to go over to their side.

Riots, violence and protests involving very graphic and vulgar rhetoric are staples of their campaign.  Lately, however, they've turned to public shaming of Trump administration employees, claiming that they are complicit with the policies with which they disagree.  From not allowing them to eat at public restaurants in peace to asking them to leave said restaurants to throwing eggs at Trump supporters -- and worse -- these actions evoke pre-war Nazi Germany which, ironically, is how they themselves are describing the Trump administration and his supporters.

Talk about projection.

Even congressmen are getting in the act.  Maxine Waters, stooping to new lows even for elected officials, is calling on people to harass Trump administration in public.  This amounts to a call for mob action, since these employees are entitled to private lives even when they're out in public.  Legally, should anything happen to these peoples, the statements Ms. Waters is making may be actionable.  The trouble with that is twofold:  Litigation would give these cretins a platform and may also expose the plaintiffs to judges appointed by Clinton and Obama; all bets are off if that happens.

Since his election, there have been calls by the famous and the not-so-famous to assassinate President Trump.  Kathy Griffin infamously sacrificed her career to pander to her audience by standing with a mock-up of the President's severed head.  Peter Fonda just took it on the chin publicly when, in support of the removal of detention centers and the end of family separation, he called for Barron Trump to spend a night in a detention center away from his parents but with pedophiles and other criminals.  Thinking himself immune to criticism and safe from reprisal, he learned the hard way that conservatives are fed up:  His personal information was quickly spread over the internet, with every address, every phone number, every piece of contact information made public.  He also undercut the very argument in favor of open borders -- that the people streaming over our borders are just innocent refugees looking for a better life -- by implying that there are pedophiles and criminals in the detention centers. 

Actions have consequences.  Conservatives have had this preached to them for nearly a year and a half now.  Much like a tracer bullet, which shows not only where the shot is going but whence it came, their actions, no matter how well-intentioned they believe them to be, are bringing them unwanted consequences.  Their tactics are eerily reminiscent of the Brownshirts of pre-war Germany.  Roughing up opponents, heckling speakers, preventing opponents' rallies -- these things were done by the Nazis.  There has even been at least one attempted murder by a deranged liberal. 

During the Obama era, when plenty of things were suspected to have been done wrong, the conservatives kvetched but largely kept the protests civil.  Not so the liberals.  Overreacting as only liberals can, egged on by the coastal elites that are comprised of many in the entertainment industry with platforms far more substantial than the average citizen, these people act as if they're repelling barbarians and ousting them from the castle walls.  Civil discourse does not involve such conduct as the liberals engage in.  Their whining has become not only annoying, but dangerous.

I hope and pray that when the liberals resume power in however many years that may be, the country rights the ship and returns to the era when only the words were rough.

(c) 2018 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Year of the SCOTUS

All right, vacation's over.  In truth, it wasn't a vacation but a combination of being overly busy at work, out of town on the weekends and without a computer for the last so many months.  But I have a couple of days whereby I can write, and so I will.

In the last couple of the days, the Supreme Court of the United States -- otherwise known as the SCOTUS -- has delivered opinions in 5-4 decisions upholding the travel ban put in place by President Trump, striking a decision that required a Christian family planning center to inform clients about abortion as an option and striking down the requirement that state employees must pay certain union dues even if they don't belong to the union.  In each case, the conservative position was upheld by the Court.  Personally and professionally, I saw each outcome before it happened, meaning that I thought that would be the proper result.  That each outcome was what it was is both shocking and refreshing.

Many on the Left are complaining that the SCOTUS is bought and paid for by conservatives.  Oddly, when decisions went their way during the Obama Administration, there was no equivalent gnashing of teeth and rending of garments.  Chris Matthews, whose career is best defined as political gadfly, was apoplectic at the first two results.  Here's hoping the Janus decision on union dues pushed him over the edge.

What's as surprising as well as troubling is the dissent in the travel ban case reads as if it's out of the Left's playbook.  Invoking Korematsu, the execrable 1940's decision allowing the internment of Japanese-Americans on the basis of national security, Justice Sotomayor railed at the anti-Muslim bias of the travel ban, invoking then-candidate Trump's comments about Islamic terrorism.  Nevermind that the ban, on its face, was neutral in that regard and, as any lawyer would point out, the first level of inquiry of any statute is the plain-language of the statute. 

The hysteria on the Left is entertaining, because it's equivalent to a child whining when it doesn't get its way.  To be sure, disappointment and sadness are to be expected, but the Left's rhetoric -- which in recent days has reached historic lows, a topic for another upcoming post -- smacks of hysteria.

That hysteria is about to go into overdrive.  Today, on the heels of the trio of SCOTUS decisions, Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement.  Assuming the POTUS's nominee is approved by the Senate, which necessarily will happen because the Democrats misplayed the Gorsuch nomination forcing the Republicans to invoke the nuclear option, conservatives will have a 6 to 3 majority in the SCOTUS.  That majority will increase sometime in the next two years, in all likelihood, because Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg is older than Justice Kennedy and has been rumored to be in ill health.

Of course, nothing is written in stone.  Anyone with any sense of history about the SCOTUS will recall Dwight Eisenhower's ill-fated appointment of Earl Warren as Chief Justice in 1953.  Justice Warren led what many believe was one of the most liberal and activist Courts in its history.  Many conservatives have complained that Chief Justice Roberts suffers from the same malady, not being nearly as conservative as they expected him to be when he was appointed.  Ideally, this means that the nominee is independent in thought and action and not doing the President's bidding.  Time will only tell, but for now it doesn't look good for the Left.

I think the SCOTUS reached the right decisions on these three cases.  I don't have a vested interest in any of the outcomes beyond that of any American citizen.  As an attorney I think the right result obtained.

It will be interesting to see how the rest of the Year of the SCOTUS plays out.

(c) 2018 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Ugly Beauties II

It's been awhile, but I've seen too many guys online with their tongues hanging out about certain women that caused me to scratch my head and say to myself, Really?  Margaret Wolfe Hungerford knew of what she spoke when she wrote that Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but with some of these women, I think many men need to get to the optometrist, stat.

Kate Upton:  I know I'm in the minority on this one.  She's cute.  She can be sexy.  And she's clearly bodacious.  But she just doesn't do anything for me.  Again, I'm in the minority, but no matter how sassy she is, she holds next to no appeal for me.

Anna Kournikova:  How I admitted this woman from the first list escapes me.  She's about as plain as plain can be.  Sure, she's fit and she's blonde, but beyond that...what?  She wasn't even that good of a professional tennis player.

Rhonda Rousey:  When she was the hottest ticket in women's MMA, people oohed and aahed about her. Granted, compared to many in that sport, she's not butt ugly like they are, but she ain't pretty at all.  On top of that, she's rude.  In no way is this woman attractive, let alone beautiful.

Savannah Guthrie:  There are so many anchors who are better looking than this woman.  I can only hope that her hiring was done on merit and not looks.  Mind you, I don't like her regardless, but if anyone considers her a beauty, they're seriously deluded.

Anna Koimann:  This is the American version of Anna Kournikova.  Another blonde, perky, fit woman, she's just not attractive.  At best she's cute.  But to read legions of men online, she's the second coming of Marilyn Monroe.  I wish I could go all Lloyd Benson on them, but I never knew Marilyn Monroe.  Ms. Koimann seems like a very nice woman, but not only is she not beautiful -- I might be willing to go to cute if paid enough -- she doesn't seem to have a lot of wattage upstairs, either.  She does seem to be very nice, if that's any consolation.

Samantha Smith:  Another Fox News anchor, Ms. Smith once posed languorously for racy shots in a bikini.  Now she wants to be considered a hardcore newswoman.  I suppose the plight of women trying to make their way in that business is harder than it is for men, but I have trouble taking her seriously after seeing those shots.  She ran track for LSU; isn't that enough exposure?  To top if off, she just isn't attractive.  She ain't ugly, but she's not beautiful by any stretch.

Kristen Stewart:  Ah, the actress for whom so many fake vampires and werewolves died.  She's on the Tara Reid career path, letting herself go precipitously.  Fortunately for her, it isn't a long way to the bottom, because whatever attraction she might have had was gone by the time hit her twenties.

Jennifer Lopez:  The Latina Kate Upton, another one where I'm in the minority.  I like Latinas just fine, but I can think of dozens of Latinas far prettier than Ms. Lopez.  She can look good at times, but by no means is she in the pantheon of beautiful women, no matter how many shocking dresses she wears in public.

Kerry Washington:  The self-proclaimed member of the Obama administration has men throwing themselves at her in her show, and all I can wonder is, why?

Adriana Lima:  There used to be beautiful Victoria's Secret Angels.  Then they just starting picking tall women with thin bodies.  Ms. Lima qualifies as an exotic version .  She's attractive, I suppose, but she isn't in the same class of Angels of yesteryear.

Miranda Kerr:  See Adriana Lima, above.  What was Orlando Bloom thinking?  Then again, he's with Katy Perry now, so his judgment unquestionably is suspect.

Emily Ratajkowski:  This woman cam to prominence in the Robin Thicke's video Blurred Lines.  I've never seen it.  I'm not a Robin Thicke fan.  But this woman...is evidence that to most guys, boobs trump all.  She's not pretty.  She's not attractive.  She's not cute.  She's got a pair of boobs and is willing to titillate at various stages of undress.  Perhaps she's a genius and a very nice person.  But a looker she ain't.  Of all the women on this list, this is the woman who's supposed charms I understand the least.  But good for her.

Anna Paquin:  When she was young, she was cute. Then she grew up.  Age is a tough taskmistress.

Katie Holmes:  She may be cute, but what caused Tom Cruise to jump on a couch on national television and Jamie Foxx to risk Cruise's opprobrium?  She's not all that.

And there you have the 2018 class of Ugly Beauties.

(c) 2018 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Top Twelve War Movies of All Time (So Far)

I'm a consumer of good war movies.  Not action movies, per se, but movies in war settings, hopefully from actual battles that were fought.  I've seen a heck of a lot of war movies, although by no means every one ever made, so I think I'm somewhat qualified to put out my own list of the top twelve war movies of all time. 

There are other movies that people regard as war movies that are nothing of the kind:  Kelley's Heroes, which I consider a joke, and The Dirty Dozen, which is a fun movie but historically inaccurate.  Fictional history doesn't make the cut here.

My requirements for these movies are that they are based on historical fact, have plenty of battle scenes and don't stray too far into fictionalization.  Just because it doesn't make this list does it mean that a particular movie is unwatchable; I just can't put it in what I'd consider the Hall of Fame of War Movies.

In reverse order, then, these are my Top Twelve Movies of All Time (So Far):



12.  The Patriot:  Yeah, it can be slow at times, but the action scenes are great.  And any movie that shows the Brits losing is just fine by me.  It's an amalgam of incidents in which Francis Swamp Fox Marion was involved, and it shows just how asymmetrical warfare was first visited on a standing army.

11.  Wake Island:  For the sheer heroism of the action, this movie gets a place in the rankings.  To be honest, no one is quite sure what exactly happened on the island, given how the Nips took care of the captured garrison.  Still, it captures what is generally regarded as the official history of what took place on that fated island.

10.  Objective:  Burma:  This is a thinly-veiled story of Merrill's Marauders which, apparently, generated a lot of controversy with the Brits when it was released because (go figure) it didn't brag enough about the Chindits.  That issue aside, it's a great action movie.

9.  13 Hours:  This isn't really a war movie, but since it involves one heck of a siege and battle scenes, it gets on the list.  The story of the assault on our consulate in Benghazi, it shows the resolute defense by a handful of ex-military security forces against a few hundred well-armed thugs who wanted to make a statement on the anniversary of the attacks on September 11.

8.  Pork Chop Hill:  One of the few movies about the Korean War and one of the even fewer good ones, this shows the absolute insanity of that war at ground level.

7.  The Battle of the Bulge:  One of the few very good movies about World War II made in the 60's.  Interestingly, it almost completely avoids any depiction of the higher-ups, concentrating on the men who actually fought the battle.

6.  Sink the Bismarck:  Loathe as I am to include a Brit movie, I have to be fair. This is one of the finest depictions of naval warfare ever made. 

 5.  Gettysburg:  Martin Sheen's almost gay rendering of Robert E. Lee notwithstanding, this is the best movie about the Civil War for a couple of reasons:  It's audacious and largely accurate.  That it gives credit to Brigadier General John Buford, who made the crucial decision to locate the line of defense around the town of Gettysburg, is of everlasting credit.  And that it was filmed on the actual location is phenomenal.  Watching Ted Turner, who financed the movie, get killed in it is also a plus.

 4. Platoon:  This qualifies -- just barely -- because it's based on Oliver Stone's experiences as an infantryman in the Vietnam War.  The gruesome honesty of the battle scenes is almost overwhelming at times.  Although it might seem as if some of the actions are exaggerated, my reading suggested that a lot of things were toned down.  The killing of Willem Dafoe's character Elias is one of the most chilling in war movie history.

3. Saving Private Ryan:  If it weren't for the unevenness of the anti-war messaging contrasted with the full-on battle scenes and some very poor editing (why is Captain Martin heaving heavier mortar rounds when the shot clearly shows lighter hand grenades on his belt?), this would rank higher.  The unflinching depiction of the assault on Omaha Beach is classic.  The climactic scene defending that bridge is one of the greatest in war movie history.  And Adam Goldberg's character's Mellish's struggle and ultimate death is the most frightening in war movie history.

2. Zulu:  It pains me to add yet another Brit war movie, but until the arrival of the number one movie on this list, this was the best war movie I'd ever seen.  It's a depiction of the gallant stand made by some 150 wayward Brits in Rorke's Drift in South Africa against upwards of 4,000 Zulus who had just decimated another British army at Isandlwana.  The action scenes are top-notch and the emotion is palpable.  The film is also noteworthy for being the debut of Michael Caine.

1. We Were Soldiers:  I can't help it.  If this movie comes on TV, I watch it.  No matter how many times I've seen it, I'll watch it.  Mel Gibson is excellent as Hal Moore, Sam Elliott is perfect as Basil Plumley and the supporting cast is excellent. Even the inclusion of the women on the home front works.  The battle scenes are marvelously done and the accuracy to the book on which it's based is superb.  The only drawback is that the movie only recounts the first half of the book.  After Hal Moore left the battlefield with his troops, the Americans who replaced them were ambushed and slaughtered, just as Moore feared would happen.

Special Mention:

The Pacific and Band of Brothers:  The only reason these two productions aren't included above is that they're mini-series.  Both are exceptional and deserve to be included.

Honorable Mention:


The Longest Day

Midway

Patton

Wake Island

The Tuskegee Airmen

Glory

(c) 2018 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Random Thoughts and Ponderings

So far, 2018 has stunk.  I don't remember a year that started off so poorly:  Two cars lost within two days, with one needing to be replaced; one broken toe; one crown loosened; business suits held captive since before Christmas by the dry cleaner because it lacks the staff to get things done; and news today that a dear friend has pancreatic cancer, but needs heart surgery before they treat the cancer.

Is it 2019 yet?

So in an attempt to distract from all the doom and gloom, here are random thoughts and ponderings:

--  This summer as I drove back from court on the other side of the state, I heard an ad for Wendy's offering for fifty cents a small Wendy's Frosty.  The thing that struck me was that the offer was limited to people in the continental United States -- the lower 48 -- but not available in Hawaii or Alaska.  One can question whether Frosty's are popular in Alaska -- this was during the summer -- but what about those two states excludes them from these promotions?  Wendy's isn't the only outfit that excludes them.  Can't they get the ingredients there in sufficient quantities?  Are there special trade restrictions? 

--  The Super Bowl is in a couple of weeks.  Typically, Karen and I go to a movie.  But we've been so disgusted by Hollywood's treatment of the President that we're not planning on going to a movie this year.  At least I don't think we are.  So what should we do?  And don't say home repairs, because...

--...last weekend we nearly killed ourselves doing home repairs.  We have a couple of more things to do, but I've been promised that we're resting this weekend.

--  I find the hysteria over the President's injudicious comment about certain countries entertaining.  On the one hand, it was perhaps uncouth, but when one is in a closed-door meeting with other legislators, a certain degree of privacy should be expected.  Even so, it's not the worst comment ever made, and there's truth behind it.  Still funnier is the explanation for the hysteria:  We shouldn't denigrate these people (he didn't; he denigrated the countries from which they come) because they're fleeing horrible circumstances.  Um, that's the point.  One genius even tried to defend the hysteria by saying that the President is obviously racist because he lumped the entire continent of Africa in one bucket, while there are very good countries like South Africa (very biracial), Egypt (largely Arabic) and Morocco (again, largely Arabic) on the continent.

--  Funnier still is the handwringing over the announcement of President Trump's physical.  The reactions range from incredulous to mocking.  Unless the POTUS is on his deathbed, I don't care.

--  Keep an eye out for more condemnation from the Brits about the Republic of Ireland and the border between the Republic and the Six Counties.  Tensions are mounting, largely because of the disaffected Protestant community in the Counties.

--  Why is it that certain groups with whom people have a problem are labeled as hate groups while others, with whom these same people agree, who do worse than the alleged hate groups, are not labeled as such?

--  I'm fully supportive of women being able to work without being harassed, and I'm fully supportive of equal pay for equal work, and I applaud the bravery of women who have come forward to accuse their abusers, but I hope as a society we're ready to hit back when false accusations surface.  There are other examples -- the UVA frat rape story in The Rolling Stone, for example, or the Duke lacrosse team members -- where false accusations have ruined men's lives.  I don't care much for Matt Damon, but he does have a point, however ill-timed.

--  So there's a conservative movement afoot in California to split the state in two, divorcing the coastal liberal section from the rural conservative section.  I'm not sure that this will be politically possible.  Better to wait for the big one to take the coast and its liberals awy.

--  Both Hawaii and Japan has false alerts about incoming ICBM's within the last week.  I say it's too unusual to be coincidence for human error to have occurred.  North Korea may be trying some white noise to decrease the efficiency of our alert system, or trying to see how quickly it reacts.  Expect more false alerts in the near future.

--  I think Ellen DeGeneres can be very generous, but she can be cruel in the search for humor.  Her new game show has funny moments, but she apparently has the dumbest audiences I've ever seen.  And they all scream.  All of 'em.

--  Why would anyone in his right mind elect this Manning person to be a United States Senator?

--  My wife makes the best shepherd pie.

--  I deleted a friend from Facebook after announcing that I would distance myself from anyone who engaged in political name-calling.  She posted a meme that likened Trump supporters to jock straps.  I don't think she even notices I unfriended her.  Bumping into her in town might be interesting.

(c) 2018 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Marriage and Home Repairs

Throughout history, man has sought answers to explain how best a marriage can survive the rocky shoals upon which it has been known to founder:  Infidelity, money problems, illness, addiction, abuse, children -- you name it.  Psychologists, men of the cloth, marriage counselors and simply friends and family have warned young couples of the challenges marriages face and tried to prepare them as best they could.  Myriad permutations explain either the success or demise of a marriage.  Factors serious and simple combine and then it's up to the couple to face them as they will.  Sometimes they fall back on the examples they saw in their own parents, other times they rely on the advice of others, and yet again they may simply rely on prayer and themselves to see them through. 

Of all the sage advice people have given couples, of all the threats to their marriages couples can anticipate, one rarely if ever mentioned is one that doubtlessly plays out in homes throughout not only the United States but the rest of the world as well.

Home repairs.

I say this not because our marriage is on the rocks or because we've come back from the brink of divorce due to home repairs.  I say this knowingly because every time a home repair project ensues, blood pressures rise, tensions rise and tempers flare.  This is due in large part to my inexperience and incompetence crossed with my wife's experience and competence. About the only thing I have on her in the field of home repairs is brawn.  Everything else positive falls on her side of the ledger. 

It's a recipe for turmoil.

As I may have mentioned before, I grew up with a father who taught me next to nothing.  If the phrase children should be seen and not heard is true, my father would probably have suggested that not being seen was even better.  Because I was the oldest child, it fell to me to assist him whenever he took on a home improvement task  Pretty much unskilled in these matters himself, his frustration didn't take long to boil, and I was usually serving my highest and best use when it came for him to have someone on whom to take out his frustrations.  As a result, I never learned anything.

The crime in all of this is I come from a family of tinkerers.  Not Tinkers, although I suppose that's possible, but tinkerers.  My maternal grandfather, according to family lore, took apart and put back together a Model T when he was a teenager.  One would think I'd have a modicum of mechanical ability.

Not true.  For me, DIY doesn't mean Do It Yourself, it means Damage It Yourself or, in a worse-case scenario, Destroy It Yourself.    I'm always worried that I'm going to burn the house down, flood it or bring it down by unwittingly removing the one structural linchpin on which the entire house rests.

Karen is very supportive.  No one's had a more supportive wife.  But patience only lasts so long with mortal beings.  Eventually, she gets tired of my tantrums -- which are directed at uncooperative inanimate objects, a father who was worthless when it came to teaching his son anything and YouTube videos, which lie.  Still, she's not wrong.  It has to be oppressive after a while.

I've put in toilets -- one of which, contrary to YouTube's lofty promises, took me four days instead of three hours.  I've gotten a stripped piece of pipe out of a showerhead...after three days of intermittent attempts.  I've taken down the stairs to the deck, but the onset of winter and Karen's broken ribs prevented me from trying to install the new ones.  That cheery prospect awaits me this spring...

...For months, Karen's been wanting cabinets installed in the laundry room on the walls over the washer and dryer.  O', and she wanted a new light fixture to replace the old one in the entryway that caught on fire a couple of weeks ago.  Since we're in need of the space in the laundry room and we need a roof over our head, neither request was asking too much.  In fact, both made much sense.  But I faced both of these with trepidation with good reason.

The light fixture worried me on two fronts.  First, I typically swear off anything dealing with electricity or plumbing.  On the rare occasion when we've dealt with an electrical issue, fights have erupted over flipping the breakers in the electrical box.  Combine its location -- north side of basement -- with the location of the stairway -- south side of basement -- and my poor hearing and the Keystone Kops would do a better job of it.  Add to that Karen's expertise and experience with electrical matters -- long story -- and this is just a tinderbox for fights...pun unintended.  Second, Karen fancied an LED fixture.  Neither of us understood what this meant until we began the project.

Somehow, Karen opted not to try both projects on Saturday, which helped, because after we tried the light fixture, trying to put up the cabinets would have been a nightmare.  The fixture was so compressed in its size that neither of us could get our hands in between the fixture and the light box to attach the wires.  Then the screws didn't come out far enough to attach the pan to the ceiling, which necessitate a trip to nearby Lowes.

(I forgot to mention that I'm one of Lowe's favorite and least favorite customers.  Many of its patrons that I see there are clearly tradesmen or people who have tried these things a time or two.  At least they know the difference between a lug nut and a hex nut.  Lowe's must like me because I'm always there to buy things from them because I don't know what I have or what it's even called.  They must hate me because they have to explain things in idiot friendly terms that they don't have to use for most of their customer base.)

After I returned with the screws of the right length, we struggled mightily to get everything attached and put together.  The LED light looked more like something that could go inside a computer.  There were no lightbulbs whatsoever.  The instructions, which we did read -- more of those anon -- told us to keep our mitts off the "lights," but that was well nigh impossible unless we'd been born Japanese.  So when we finally got the light in and were starting to feel exultant, our ecstasy soured when after turning the power back on we got a whole lot of nothing.

Instructions written for these things border on the meaningless.  Because of the heavy emphasis on STEM teaching, simple communicative skills have deteriorated to the point where we're barely ahead of cavemen.  Written communication is almost worse.  The instructions written for products DIYers are to use are so vague and/or contradictory and assume an understanding of basic mechanics as to be positively osmotic.  Trying to decipher the instructions sometimes takes more time than the actual installation.

That ended a noble but failed attempt on the next to last day of 2017 to install a light fixture.  We salved our wounds by watching Game of Thrones out of order because the rental place gave us the wrong disc.

The last day of 2017 found us installing cabinets.  Karen was positively giddy as she disconnected the dryer and washer and moved them away from the wall where we'd be trying to hang the cabinets.  Karen'd found them at Habitat For Humanity and got a great deal on them.  Stylish they're not; function was all we were going for.  Part of her giddiness was rooted in cleaning up underneath the moved appliances -- who are we kidding?  Karen is in love with Mr. Clean -- but also because her long-held dream of cabinetry in the laundry room was one small step closer. 

I watched the video she'd been pestering me to watch -- aside from my lack of confidence in YouTube videos, I've found that unless I watch them shortly before I start the project, I forget crucial steps in the process (not that it matters, ultimately) -- and dutifully put up the 1" x 4" as a guide.  We got it level and then started finding the studs.

Studfinders have come a long way, apparently.  This first cabinet's installation worked like a charm.  Even with two math-challenged DIY'ers at the helm, we were able to figure out not only where the studs were, but also where to drill the pilot holes in the cabinets.  In fact, the first cabinet went up deceptively easily.  About the only thing that went wrong was that I didn't follow directions (remember, I always miss something from the video) and screwed the screws in all the way instead of leaving them just a little bit out.  I also may have stripped one screw.  I was waiting for the inevitable crash but surprisingly, it never came.  Add to that that few cross words passed between us and one would have thought we'd just finished building the pyramid of Cheops.

We took a break and then resumed.  The second and last cabinet would be more of a challenge because the pipes for the water were eerily located in the vicinity of where we expected a stud to be.  There was also the prospect of electrical wiring in the neighborhood, because an outlet was only a few inches to the right of the hose hook-up. 

Karen was in charge of the stud-finding (I could insert a pun here...but who'd believe it?) because of her experience and expertise...or my inexperience and incompetence, take your pick.  It shortly became worrisome, because the studfinder that had worked so magnificently on the first cabinet was mysteriously failing us now.  If this had been me, the studfinder would have been in a thousand pieces, dashed against the far wall for failing me.  Karen's patience won out and she eventually found a stud.  But to do this, we had to use our lifeline, her cousin's husband and DIYer extraordinaire Robert, who guided us from Kentucky as to how to locate the errant studs. 

No good deed goes unpunished, and our good deed of getting the first cabinet installed mostly without a hiccup came back to haunt us.  Words were exchanged -- well, not really.  I cursed myself and my incompetence while Karen fumed at my childishness -- and we finally located the studs, using a method that I can only call the Swiss Cheese Method of stud finding.  By the time we got done spelunking for studs, our wall resembled Swiss cheese.  Robert's method of locating studs had guided us to drilling pilot holds a quarter inch in either direction until we hit paywood.  Well, eight or nine holes later, we had our studs, and a perforated wall.  Thankfully, the cabinet would cover the holes. 

The gods of DIY weren't done with us yet, however.  In exchange for making the first cabinet's installation relatively easy, the second one would be filled with travail.  After doing so well -- and ingeniously, if I do say so myself -- in marking where our pilot holes should be drilled in the cabinet to affix it to the studs, this process mirrored our attempts to find the studs in the wall.  By the time the two remedial math students finished with this cabinet, it had a surfeit of markings and holes to remind us what amateurs we really were.  Despite this, and full in the knowledge that this cabinet was destined not to hold fine china but doggie diapers, we pressed on and got the thing up on the wall.  Miracle of miracles, it held!  Nothing came crashing down, no wall peeled from the studs.  DIYers of the World Rejoice!  We had our cabinets.

Almost. 

Being the perfectionist that she is, Karen noticed a couple of (smallish) gaps that existed between the cabinets and between the first cabinet and the wall.  Had this been a bachelor pad, I'd have called it good.  Because Karen wants it to look not so icky, we made plans to remediate the gaps, but mercifully Karen decided it could wait until another day.  We still had to shim the cabinets to make them even and, although they ain't perfect, they ain't too bad.

Karen's happy with the result (imperfections notwithstanding).  I'm relieved.  It's been two nights since they were installed and I haven't heard a crash in the night like I was anticipating. 

We cleaned up the area and put back the tools that were only for this project and then resumed playing catch-up with Game of Thrones.  At least now we knew how the season ended.  How they got to that point was still a mystery.

The new year for us is as intrepid as ever.  We visited Lowe's again, who weren't happy to see us because we returned the LED light without a receipt.  The store credit was fine, because we found a conventional light for twice the cost and stuff to fix the cabinet's gaps.  We may even have gotten more for the return than we were entitled -- shhhhhhhh -- and returned to the Casa de DIY to put this up.

For as difficult as the first attempt at installing a light fixture was, this was comparatively easier.  This fixture was built for people from the West to install it.  I'd say we had that sucker installed inside of a half hour.  With the first installation, we didn't have the wires connected for over an hour.  Sometimes, the old ways are better.

Power was returned and the light worked so well it can be seen from outer space. 

The tally of our weekend, therefore, amounts to this:

                One set of cabinets installed.

                One wall preserved.

                One light fixture installed.

                One house not burnt down.

               Game of Thrones caught up. 

               One glorious fire in the fireplace on New Year's Day.

               One Rose Bowl watched.

               One marriage still intact.

In truth, were it not for the LED lights, the fuse box's location and the wandering studs in the wall, the projects would have been infinitely easier.  Unfortunately, the faithless YouTube videos don't give any such warnings.  Much like pre-marriage counseling, YouTube only covers the foreseen, and precious little of that.  It's a testament to Karen's patience and experience that these things got done.  I actually enjoyed myself putting up the cabinets.  Before this triumph, my signal accomplishment was getting that piece of stripped pipe out of the showerhead pipe.  This feels better because there's more utility to the finished project.  I also have a better understanding of what can be done and what should be done.  In fact, I'm looking forward to the next project that doesn't involve electrical work or plumbing.

Besides, it's a lot less confusing than trying to keep track of who's who on Game of Thrones. 

So my beautiful wife is still my beautiful wife, and our beautiful home continues to improve with her vision and knowledge and my brawn.  I figure by the time we leave it it'll be in far better shape than when we bought it.  I'll take some pride in the fact that we put the improvements in ourselves and didn't just pay someone to do it.  Sure, Robert helped with his guidance.  Without that we'd have been lost.  And I don't feel like Tom Hanks in Cast Away after he made fire.  But there's something satisfying about DIYing it, fear or no fear.

And what's best I did it with my wife.  With whom I'm still married.

(c) 2018 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Open Letter to Jodie Foster

Last week, Oscar-winning actress and Yale graduate Jodie Foster jumped on the Hollywood lecture circuit to make the following declaration:

"Pretty much every man over 30 has to really look and start thinking about their part. And I guarantee, lots of it is unconscious. When you’ve been in a privileged position where you haven’t had to look at your part, you didn’t 100% understand you were in a bubble. It’s an interesting time for men.

"I have two sons (ages 16 and 19), and I know their perspective," she continued. "They go to a great school that has put them through the wringer about what consent is, what is humanism, what’s integrity. I just wish my generation had the benefit of that, and that everybody had the benefit of that."

 

Well.

 

Where do I begin?

 

In the law there is such a thing as broadness, for which a statute can be stricken because it is overbroad, meaning that it affects people or actions beyond the stated goal.  An example of this, ironically in this case, is President Trump's initial immigration executive order which, in truth, needed to be scaled back -- and it was, rightfully.  That doesn't mean the law as originally intended was bad, only that its reach affected too many people or actions incorrectly.

 

The same holds true here.  Foster's point -- that men should take a look at themselves when it comes to their behavior with women -- is a valid one.  Where she goes off the rails is by stating that "pretty much every man over 30" has to really look at himself and the part in sexual harassment.  Really?  Pretty much every man over thirty? 

 

I don't know how many men in this country are aged thirty or older and I'm too lazy to find the latest numbers on that.  But let's stipulate that there are a few millions out there of men that fit into that category.  How do we quantify "pretty much every man" of that group?  If we assume there are fifty million, does pretty much equal forty-nine million, forty-eight million?  And if that's the case, how are we do know that those forty-eight or forty-nine million men are truly deserving of our condemnation?  Do we know that they have either been actively engaged in sexual harassment or complicit by their silence in such behavior?  Come to think of it, how do we even know that "pretty much every man over thirty" has been engaged in such conduct?

 

This is a typical liberal ploy.  We see it most notably when there's a shooting.  Despite the fact that there are over 300 million privately-owned firearms in this country (or at least that's the figure I saw most recently), only a minute fraction thereof are used in mass shootings, yet gun-control advocates' arguments range from the total confiscation of privately-owned firearms to background checks and other rules that would make private ownership nearly impossible.  Here, there are countless men who combat sexual harassment or do not countenance it on a daily basis, yet Foster believes that we're unconscious men guided by our penises and not our minds.  To suggest that this is patently offensive is obvious, because were a man to make a statement that when distilled suggested women were guided by their vaginas there would be a hue and cry so loud...

 

...but I digress.  The next part of your statement that's severely flawed is the part about being privileged.  To what exactly are you referring when you say that men are in a privilege position?  Is that being an executive?  Or is it simply by being male we're in a privileged position?  If it's the latter, how non-white men feel about being lumped into the privileged group, especially when there's an argument about white privilege?  Should non-white men over thirty be subtracted from this equation?  If so, does that render the "pretty much" portion of your argument null? 

 

I'm not sure what living in a bubble even means.  Is that like living in Hollywood, where surreality is the new reality?  Or how about attending an Ivy League school?  Is elitism a bubble?  To just what kind of bubble are you referring?

The most egregious portion of your proclamation is the second paragraph of the quote.  Because you have two sons who are attending a "great school" (is that a bubble?), you know their perspective.  If that's true, good for you.  But logically, because you have no idea about my origins, about how I was raised and about my Mother, you have no frigging clue about me or how I treat women to make the statement that lumps me in with sexual harassers.  It's patently offensive for you to claim the moral imperative when you know nothing about me or my situation.  And the same goes for virtually every one of those men over thirty whom you've lumped into the same category with Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer and Roger Ailes.  That you can't see the logical inconsistency in your own statement puts your Yale degree to shame.  Just because I didn't attend a "great school" doesn't mean I wasn't taught the necessary virtues of consent and integrity.  Because I didn't attend Yale, I eschew the notion of humanism and replace it instead with a word that is notably absent from your screed: Respect.  I was raised by a Mother who taught us to respect every person regardless of social standing.  It's something that's sorely lacking in every sector of society, but it's something with which I was imbued and have never forgetten, despite the fact I went to public schools after graduating from Catholic grade school.  This notion that only those under thirty years of age have been raised with a solid grounding is ludicrous.  It is entirely possible that men over the age of thirty were raised with the same lessons as those under the age of thirty and, for various reasons, eschewed them, just as it's possible that there are those under thirty who will do the same.  After all, look at those men who have been caught, finally: Weinstein, Lauer, Ailes.  One thing they have in common is great wealth.  Is that not a lure for some people to do wrong?

But one glaring omission from your lecture is the glass house phenomenon.  Have you lectured Hollywood?  I mean, Meryl Streep's protestations notwithstanding (is cognitive dissonance a required class at Yale...?), it is well-nigh impossible for people in your industry to have been so ignorant of the misdeeds of such powerful men.  Don't women share secrets?  Where are the newly empowered women of the world standing up and demanding justice and equality?  For what did Anita Hill risk her career if not this very mistreatment?  That took place over twenty-five years ago, yet that fellow Yalie's strength was wasted on you actors.  Whether she was right, she stood up for her beliefs.  Where was Meryl Streep when her pal Harvey was denigrating fellow actresses left and right?  What part did the women of Hollywood, many of whom have now come out of the woodwork to tell their own horror stories, not glean from Ms. Hill's bravery?  If anyone had something to fear by telling her story, it was a black woman in a predominantly white male industry.  Yet, it is incumbent on millions of American males, many of whom know not privilege or bubbles or conduct similar to that displayed by Weinstein, Lauer and Ailes, among others, to look in the mirror and ask what role, if any, they have had because a pampered, elitist actress fails to do the same thing?

It seems you and the Hollywood elite feels that the glass house analogy doesn't apply to you because your houses are made of bulletproof glass.

For as much obliged as I may count myself to have received your lecture, I'll take a pass.  I was raised by a Mother who preached respect, not just for elite people but for the lowest of the low.  I was taught to respect women and treat them as ladies.  I was raised to behave like a gentleman, not a privileged cretin entitled to act on troglodytic impulses. 

And I was taught to spot a hypocrite from miles away.

(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles