Books and television

I've been remiss in posting here, but not without good reason.  Besides getting the homestead livable, I overindulged my passion for reading and read six books this month.  Three would find little audience beyond geeks, but the other three have found an audience beyond that with which I usually keep company:  The Stieg Larsson trilogy.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest were some of the most enjoyable reading I've done in a long time.  Far from being the much-derided chick-lit, these books had great suspense and twists that kept my interest.  Much like the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies, the second installment suffers in comparison to the bookend pair, but that in no way detracted from the experience.  What's more, if sordid sexual tales are expected, that only involves a fraction of the stories.  Larsson deftly weaved the three books into one continual story.  How Hollywood is going to follow up The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo should prove interesting.

Sunday my girl and I built a much-needed tool shed in the backyard.  We did it over four hours and partly in the rain.  Regardless, when we were done we were tuckered out, so we crashed on the couch and got caught up in a series entitled Amish:  Out of Order.  It's another one of these reality shows that focuses on a little-known segment of society involving what are called Ex-Amish.  I thought it might be a focus on rumspringa, but it wasn't.  The stories are moving and sad, but captivating all the same.

We were fascinated by the story of one girl who wanted to become Amish.  For the life of us, we didn't understand it, but we wanted to see whether she followed through with it, so we kept watching episode after episode.  Along the way, a kid Cephas Yoder appeared.  As nice a guy as you'd ever want to meet, Cephas had a bet with the main person in the show that was whimsical yet sweet.

As we came to what we thought would be the episode where the girl made her decision to join the Amish, it was disclosed the Cephas had died when he tried to avoid hitting a deer early in the morning on his way back from his job in the oil fields and flew off the embankment, being killed instantly.  He was only eighteen-years-old when he died.

I don't typically pay much attention to current cultural trends.  I watch only two reality shows with any loyalty -- Top Chef and The Amazing Race -- and read next to no contemporary literature.  Yet within the same month, I finished three books of recent vintage and blew an entire Sunday afternoon transfixed by a social trend of which I knew next to nothing.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Shaking my head

There are some things I just don't understand.  I don't mean intrinsically -- I mean the action themselves I understand.  But why anyone in his or her right mind would want to engage in them boggles my mind.

To wit:  Who thought it would be a great idea to ingest smoke into one's lungs for pleasure?  People die from smoke inhalation, for crying out loud.  What could possibly be healthy about this???  Then, when it was discovered the tobacco companies had lied about the addictive effects of nicotine...people continued to smoke.  Now, I understand that those already addicted would continue to smoke, but what about younger people who had never smoked a day in their lives who ostensibly were against Big Business, etc., and who had been availed of the information their parents and grandparents lacked?

Gambling.  Why would you possibly take a risk of losing money on the off chance a pair of dice or a ball hurtling around a spinning roulette wheel will land favorably for you?  What control do you have of the outcome?  Where does skill enter into this?

Tattoes.  With the possible exception of pirates, is there anyone who really needs to put ink under his skin?  I can almost make an exception for someone who discreetly has a tattoo placed where no one but his or her lover can see it, although even that escapes my comprehension.  But when you deck yourself out as some sort of walking billboard, I fail to understand the reasoning.  Basketball players, actors and actresses and rappers all seem to have drunk the Kool-Aid.  I can't wait for thirty years to pass so we can see how ridiculous these fools look.

Piercings.  I fully understand earrings and have no truck with them.  But nose rings, lip rings, belly rings...and other body parts?  Why?  In what way do those make a person look more attractive?

There are more things, I'm sure, but these things really mystify me.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Titles

This is apropos of nothing, but when does a title cease being used.  That is, when a person occupies a position and attains some measure of success or notoriety in that position, does that entitle the person to use the title for the rest of one's life, no matter whether one retires or changes occupations?

The first time I noticed this annoying trend when Bob Knight, the former college coach, was being interviewed on a pregame show.  Bob Knight was one of my favorite coaches.  I still think, contrary to many who believe that Dean Smith bested him, the Knight was the greatest college coach of his era and one of the top five of all time.  Be that as it may, by the time this show was airing, Knight had been out of coaching for a good year or two.  Yet, the anchors and other talking heads tripped over themselves to address him as coach.  It's respectful, I get it, but why not call him Mr. Knight?  After all, he's been that since at least the age of sixteen and he'll be that until the day he dies or decides to go Chaz Bono on us.  He was a coach for a few decades, but since his retirement, he's become a color analyst for college basketball games.  He no longer coaches.  This usage seems out of place.

Other professions that get this treatment are presidents, judges and priests.  There may be others, but I can't think of them at the present time.  Of the three, the only one I can agree with is President.  Since there have only been forty-four of them, and all but five of them are alive.  When it comes to Supreme Court justices, I might make an exception for them, too.  But lesser court judges?  Priests?  Why?

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

The Catholic Church

I am a Christian.  In the past, I would describe myself first as a Catholic which, in my mind, included the characteristic of being a Christian.  There are pleny of Protestants who believe that Catholics are not Christians, and they're wrong.  But I choose to describe myself now as a Christian first because I am fed up with the institution of the Catholic Church.

There are plenty of doctrinal issues that, taken collectively, could mount a case for leaving the Church.  Priestly celibacy, ordination of women, Vatican II leniency -- the list is endless.  For me, however, there are two principal reasons for my personal schism with the Church.

First, what the Church did as a religious institution in the wake of the revelations of priestly pedophilia was a travesty.  The notion that a Church that prides itself on the one true original Church would go the lengths it has to protect pedophiles and those that protected pedophiles is disgusting.  Sending Cardinal Bernard Law to Vatican City so he could be beyond the reach of civil authorities is nauseating.  To act like nothing happened for so many years and then lie about what was known is hardly the mark of an institution practicing what it preached.   How can it lecture the flock about sin when it was committing one of the most reprehensible sins against its own people, the very people to whom it was supposed to minister and protect?  No measure of Jesuitical sophistry can absolve the Church of this hideously ugly behavior.

Speaking of Jesuitical sophistry, the Church's position on artificial insemination is indefensible.  It rests its argument on the law of nature and a bunch of other gobbledegook to dress up its position as being supportive of loving, nurturing relationships.  In the first place, how does in vitro fertilization detract from a loving, nurturing relationship?  If a couple loves each other enough to overlook infertility -- which, ironically, is grounds for an annulment in the canons of the Church hell-bent on protecting loving, nurturing relationships -- what can be more loving and nurturing than to subject oneself to the scientific and sometimes humbling processes involved in in vitro fertilization to bring life into being?

But the Church finds itself in an conundrum of its own making, to wit:  If man is allowed to use the genius God gave him to devise and make weapons that will take human life in a just war as authorized by no less a personage as Thomas Aquinas, why can he not use the genius God gave him to devise and make instruments that help create life?  Taking life is against the Sixth Commandment.  Using artificial means to create life violates no Commandments.  Therefore the Church, resting on the syllogism of one of its learned saints, trumps the Word of God, but uses no such support to ban a procedure that is not in contravention of God's Word.

The Church is more concerned about its image and its rules than it is promoting the Word of God.  For that reason, I no longer attend Mass.  My Catholicism was a gift our Mother gave me, but as is sometimes the case with gifts, this one has become worn, broken down and almost useless.

I am a Christian.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

PED's

I used to be somewhat athletic.  I can no longer do much of anything, given my age and infirmities.  But I do pay attention to what's going on.

One issue that's raised its ugly head in the last couple of days has been PED's.  I think anyone who knowingly uses them is cheating.  Many, many people in many, many sports have been banned for their use.  Without examining every case, I tend to believe that the governing bodies got it right when they banned the offenders.

There are three case, however, where I think that either the sport got it wrong or where I'm totally confused by the allegations.  In each case a high-profile player is involved.  But due to certain facts, I think the players are either innocent or at least reasonable doubt exists -- absent an explanation from an  expert in the field -- that the players are guilty of using PED's.

The first case involves Rafael Palmeiro.  Anyone who saw him play knows he had one of the sweetest, most natural swings in the game.  When it was announced that he had tested positive for PED's, I was stunned.  Other announcements didn't faze me; Raffi's did.  When he was asked about the positive test, Raffi said that Miguel Tejada had given him what he thought was a vitamin supplement.  As far as I know, Tejada never addressed the issue, although I may have missed any comment he may have made.

A few years later, Tejada was listed in the Mitchell Report as having tested positive for PED's. 

As far as I'm aware, no one has ever gone back and addressed these events.

The next player who tested positive, allegedly, was Ryan Braun.  Another hitter of exceptional ability, Braun allegedly tested positive during last year's playoffs.  He ultimately won in arbitration to have the results thrown out on procedural grounds and was villified for having done so, even though he was well within his rights under the collective bargaining agreement to challenge the process.  What Braun said in his own defense was that none of his measurables ever changed, and this year he's batting just about the same as he did prior to the scandal, presumably while being tested.  If a player's measurables are unchanged, if the test was so out of whack as to be unbelievable, and if his performance after the test in question shows no fall-off, what are we to believe?  I believe Braun was clean at the time of his test, that he is clean now and there was some problem with the collection or maintenance of his sample.

The final example is Lance Armstrong.  From reports I've read, Armstrong isn't the most personable athlete out there.  Perhaps he's no Ty Cobb, but even so, he's not going to be confused with Mr. Robinson, either.

But here's what I can't fathom:  After having endured cancer and the rigourous and invasive chemotherapy that he did, after riding in grueling Tours de France that tax even highly-conditioned athletes, how is his body not breaking down?  Instead, he's now competing in triathlons.  We've seen the effects of PED's with wrestlers and other athletes, so if he was using PED's during his glory Tour days, how is it that he's unaffected by all his body's been through -- cancer, PED's, seven Tours -- and the aging process, to the point that he's able to compete in triathlons?

I don't know whether Armstrong used PED's, but until a medical professional can answer that question to my satisfaction or the governing bodies find the smoking needles, I reserve opinion as to whether he used PED's.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Moving

Choosing where to move is an inexact science at best.  One can look at all sorts of empirical data, such as tax rates, school quality rankings and other such minutiae to determine what neighborhood suits his or her family.  Until one resides in the neighborhood, however, the true nature of the community isn't revealed.

Recently, my fiancée and I moved down the road to a more traditional suburban neighborhood.  Sidewalks, street lights, families with children and pets -- it has all the stereotypical elements any movie or book would contain.  Our house is smaller than the former house and almost fits our needs, were it not for the precipitously steep stairwells and the smaller dimensions that required us to divest ourselves (mostly me) of possessions. 

Our first indication that something was different about this neighborhood was that while we were moving in -- a process that took several days over the course of a couple of months -- not one of our new neighbors saw fit to approach us and introduce themselves.  It's entirely possible that people were put off my my appearance -- generally sweaty with a heavy dose of grunting as I lifted overweight boxes of books out of trucks and cars and into the house -- but that doesn't explain their reticence toward Karen.  One woman -- in fact, the woman whose house is directly across the street from ours -- spent so much time working on her lawn and landscaping that I thought she would appreciate the opportunity to take a break...but it wasn't to be.  Even though our move is largely over, we still have not met this woman.

Of course, since we moved in right at the beginning of summer, we thought it might be that so many people were busy with plans and such that meeting new neighbors ranked relatively low on their list of priorities.  In fact, we have met the neighbors on either side of our house, as well as the fireman two doors down whose daughter rescued one of our errant Generals who escaped the backyard one night.  But the opposite side of the street may as well be a foreign country to us.

Were that all there were, it would merely be an oddity of the neighborhood.  But there are some other eerie characteristics that we've noticed that make us wonder whether we've moved to a middle-class Stepford.  For example, an inordinate number of homes in the neighborhood have cars parked in the driveways and not in the garages.  Why?  Because the garages are being used as de facto storage units.  To be fair, so is ours, but we're still moving in.  Other homes with garages chock-full with household items house families that have lived there for months, at least, if not years.

The next thing is that when it's garbage day, the neighborhood looks like it sprouted identical garbage cans and placed them in very similar locations at the curb in front of their houses overnight.  I've never seen a neighborhood with uniform garbage cans.  It's as if the mob came in and told everyone who would be hauling away their garbage and which cans would be used in that job.

But the most startling trait of the neighborhood is that after nine o'clock at night, no matter what day of the week, the street is a quiet as a graveyard.  Seriously.  The street lamps shine brightly, the wind rustles the tree leaves, but otherwise, there isn't a sound to be heard.  It's as if the neighborhood has shut down for the evening.  What makes this even more unique is that there are plenty of families with teenaged children in the neighborhood, which would make one think that there would be a modicum of noise at all hours of the day, or at least until eleven o'clock on the weekends.  No chance.  This place shuts down at nine o'clock, weekday or weekend.

Other than that, it's a pretty nice place to live.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Soccer

I'm not much of a soccer fan, but I do love the Spanish national team.  I know I should root for either the United States or Ireland, countries of which I am a citizen, but the truth of the matter is that when it comes to soccer I am, as I was told in another context by Spaniards, españolizado.

The recent triumph of the Spaniards in the Euro Cup was on a par with what the United States used to do to teams in Olympic basketball.  When you consider that the Spaniards didn't give up a goal in the knockout rounds, that's as amazing almost as the Dream Team not calling a single timeout during the '92 Olympics in Barcelona. 

Soccer is, in my humble and some would say highly uninformed opinion, quite flawed.  The games are tedious, the flopping a joke, the lack of technology to get calls right a travesty, the offsides trap a detriment -- in short, it's the perfect sport to either play or watch the highlights of, only.  But in no way does that diminish the Spaniards' accomplishment.

¡Enhorabuena, España!

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles