Canadian money

---

I took a friend to my bank to exchange some dollars a while back, because my bank has better exchange rates than his. He turned 354 American dollars into 345 Canadian dollars, just like that.

And what beautiful currency they have in Canada these days!

The twenty-dollar Canadian bills have a little clear plastic window in them, along with the shiny metallic strips. Some of the bills have pictures of Helen Mirren, or possibly Elizabeth II. The five-dollar bills have images of a sport – either curling or hockey, I couldn’t tell which. (My friend tells me that it’s curling, but he’s not Canadian, so how can he be sure?)

These are far more entertaining than our dull old American greenbacks. I’ve folded a one-dollar bill into thirds and made George Washington’s head into a mushroom too often; it just ain’t fun anymore. And who cares what car’s represented on the ten-dollar bill? (I always thought it was a Duesenberg, but evidently I was wrong)

Why can’t we put Walt Whitman on our money, or Mark Twain, or Edward MacDowell, or Leonard Bernstein? What about Humphrey Bogart, or Artemus Ward? We put everything in creation on our postage stamps – flowers and dragons and cartoon characters and movie stars. Why not on our money too?

Most countries celebrate their culture on their currency, not just their political history. They put their writers and musicians on the money. We don’t. I don’t think Americans like to be reminded that we have a “culture.” We’re far too macho to have “culture.” On our money, we have only Founding Fathers, Male Presidents like Wilson and Grant, and Miscellaneous Political Figures, like Alexander Hamilton and Salmon Chase.

I vote for variety, and culture, and entertainment.

If the Canadians can do it, then surely we can do it too.

---

British English and American English

---

A friend in England just sent me a nice little book: “British Language and Culture,” published by Lonely Planet.

I thought my knowledge of British English was moderately okay. I can read the Financial Times without a crib sheet, and even do the crossword puzzle. (The puzzle, sadly enough, often resorts to cricket terminology, which kills me, but I now know all about googlies and centuries and maiden overs, not to mention former Archbishops of Canterbury and Prime Ministers and managers of Manchester United.)

But this new book is a gold mine.

I opened the book randomly to Cockney rhyming slang. “Apples and pears” I knew from an Austin Powers movie (it means “stairs,” which rhymes with “pears”; you can say just “apples” if you’re feeling obscure). How about “Use your loaf” for “Use your head”? I assumed “loaf” was just a silly euphemism for “head,” because people’s heads were big and lumpy, like loaves of bread. But it’s rhyming slang too: “head” rhymes with “bread,” which leads us to “loaf of bread” . . . .

The book also includes Estuary English, and Zummerzet English, and Geordie English. It has a Cornish lexicon, and a Welsh lexicon, and a Scots Gaelic lexicon, not to mention a Lallans supplement.

It makes my head spin, that there are so many ways of saying the same thing.

Here’s a story from my own past:

Where I grew up – in the Pacific Northwest in the 1960s/1970s – “I have an idea” was a synonym for “I think so” or “I agree.” Example: if someone said “I think it’s going to rain today,” you could agree by saying “I have an idea.”

Then I came to New England in 1978, still using all my Northwestern idioms. I quickly stopped saying “pop,” and substituted “soda” (which seemed strange for a year or two, but which wasn’t such a big deal). I quickly stopped making fun of people who didn’t pronounce “ant” and “aunt” in exactly the same way. Ditto “ferry” and “fairy.” Ditto “Mary” and “marry” and “merry.”

And slowly I learned to speak New England English, or more specifically, Rhode Island English.

But it took me a long time to get rid of “I have an idea,” even though people reacted strangely to it. One person long ago said, wonderingly: “What? What idea do you have?”

Okay. I finally got it. No one understands “I have an idea.”

But I still think it’s a cute expression.

And isn’t it lovely that we have so many ways of expressing ourselves?

‘Bye now. I have to run up the apples and pears.

Such a s

---

The Little Golden Book of Words

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Brain Pickings, a website which curates interesting books and info, recently featured a children’s book: The Little Golden Book of Words, first published in 1948.

 

 

It’s no longer available, unless you can find an old copy on eBay or a similar site.

 

 

But it’s precious.

 

 

It is beautifully designed and written and drawn, first of all. Here’s the “things to do” page, very straightforward:

 

 

 

 

Then it becomes a little more obscure. Here’s how to tell the time of day:

 

 

 

Hmm. Maybe a little rural.

 

 

Best of all: here are the days of the week.

 

 

 

 

Can you imagine explaining this to a modern child? And here’s a better question: do you, the reader, understand what these drawings mean?

 

 

There was a time when these were universally understood. Monday was washday, Tuesday ironing day, et cetera. And, best of all, Sunday we all trooped off to church. (And that looks like a very Protestant group to me, somehow.)

 

 

It all seems very quaint now. The assumptions we made! And the ideas we had!

 

 

It makes you wonder: what assumptions are we making right now, that will seem silly and irrelevant fifty or sixty years from now?

 

 

Time will tell.

---

 

 

I am an amazing person

---

We are often told that self-esteem is important.  In the words of my spiritual master RuPaul: “If you don’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?”

 

 

I sense, however, that the modern American capacity for self-esteem has gone hog wild.

 

 

Some years ago, my boss (this was several bosses ago) completed her MBA over a period of two years or so, studying on nights and weekends.  This is a very worthy things to do, and I congratulated her when she got her degree.  She smiled humbly.  “Thanks,” she said.  “It really is an amazing accomplishment.”

 

 

Ding! Self-esteem activated!

 

 

Here’s another one: a few years ago, I was having a brief orientation meeting with a new employee.  I noted the long list of publications and other accomplishments that accompanied his resume.  “That’s very impressive,” I said.

 

 

He smiled.  “Thank you,” he said.  “I know.”

 

 

Ding ding!

 

 

And, finally, this, from just a few days ago:

 

 

I was on the University shuttle.  Two medical students were sitting behind me, chatting noisily.  One had been, in his undergraduate days, a football player for a large school in the Pacific Northwest.  “People ask you for autographs all the time when you’re a college football player,” he told his companion, who was apparently really eating this stuff up.  “You know.  In restaurants and everything.  Some of the guys are really stuck up about it, they don’t like people talking to them.  I thought it was great.”

 

 

Later, the conversation turned to The Game Itself.  “There’s a lot more to playing football than people think,” Football Hero said.  “It’s complicated.  The playbook was like this – “ (He must had demonstrated how big it was with his hands; I wanted to look, but had no excuse for twisting around in my seat.)  “And you have to memorize the whole thing.”

 

 

“Wow!” his companion breathed.  “How long did it take you to memorize it?”

 

 

Football Hero mused for a moment.  “About a month,” he said finally.  “It takes normal people about a year.”

 

 

Ding ding ding ding ding!

 

 

I nearly blacked out.

 

 

Well, that’s all for today. 

 

 

(And, if I do say so myself, this is an astoundingly well-written blog entry.)

---

 

"We don't have a TV"

---

I was talking to a new guy in the office the other day. I said: “Do you watch ‘The Simpsons’?”  And he said: “Oh, we don’t have a TV.”

 

 

I swear, it’s like saying “We don’t have electricity,” or “We haven’t put in one of those newfangled flush toilets yet.”

 

 

It happens at least a couple of times a year: someone telling me that he/she doesn’t have a TV, or that he/she doesn’t watch TV at all.  (At least this guy hedged and admitted that his family had Internet access, which means that Hulu and all kinds of other things are probably already polluting his kids’ minds.)

 

 

But I still feel that I’m been judged and found wanting.

 

 

I feel like someone in ancient Rome asking my neighbor if he’s going to the big Bacchus thing next week, and he says gravely: “Oh no.  We believe in Jesus now.” 

 

 

Don’t you just want to take that Christian neighbor to that Bacchus thing and offer him up as a sacrifice?

 

 

Well, hm, no one is pure these days, there’s that consolation.  This guy admitted that his kids probably watch TV on their computers.  A few years ago, a TV-hating friend of mine finally bought a TV, but only watched VCR movies (which she got from the local public library) on it.  I can tell you that, by now, she has certainly moved on, and I’m sure she’s watching “The Good Wife” as I’m writing this.

 

 

“Television,” after all, is no longer a discrete medium.  It’s just a delivery system, like a syringe.  You can absorb the sweet poison of your choice – “The Good Wife,” “NCIS,” “Jersey Shore,” “Bad Girls” – in so many other ways: mobile, laptop, tablet.

 

 

Televison sets seem so inert now.  You have to hook things up to them to make them interesting: a cable box at least, a Roku unit, a Wii, an Xbox, a DVR.  Otherwise, you (with your rabbit ears and digital converter box) will be stuck with four fuzzy local broadcast channels, just like when I was a kid.  (Well, we had five – the three networks, a Portland independent station, and PBS – but the PBS station had lots of static, and my mother was convinced that static ruined the TV set, so I could only watch it when she wasn’t paying attention.)

 

 

TV haters: come out of the closet!

 

 

We know you’re watching something!

 

 

Just admit it!

---

 

 

Hipster fashion apocalypse

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I don't understand fashion at all. It's like high-school type peer pressure, elevated to a cosmic level. If you don't wear this style, this year, this way - well, you're dead.

 

 

About a month ago I was walking to work and I saw a skinny local hipster waiting at a crosswalk. Shorts, porkpie hat, glasses.

 

 

He looked uneasy.

 

 

And, at a glance, I could tell you why.

 

 

He was last year's hipster. He was just a little too out-of-date. And that's pretty pathetic for someone in his (probably) mid-twenties.

 

 

How did I know this? I don't know. I am horribly unfashionable myself. But I keep up, and I read things. (Mostly the New York Times and New York magazine. Holla!)

 

 

This guy looked a little too ready-made. He looked like a product. There was absolutely nothing daring or original about his clothing, His ensemble was dull. The hat was yesterday. The shorts were just embarrassing. The glasses – well, doesn't everyone have those now? My friend Janet has those glasses now!

 

 

(Mind you, I was wearing a broadcloth shirt and pants from Kohl's while I was observing this. I do not pretend to hipness.)

 

 

(But I can still judge others.)

 

 

(Holla!)

 

---

 

Bar people

---

Partner and I wanted a light dinner one evening on the Cape, so we stopped in at a local bar & grill. It was cheap and cheerful, and very airy, and mostly a local crowd. (You can always spot tourists on Cape Cod: they look – well, they look like us.)

 

We ate, and we took in the local color:

 

The young(ish) couple at the bar. He's sitting on a stool; she's standing right over him, her face maybe ten inches from his. She's wearing a little too much makeup. He's got his knees open, and she's standing right between them. She's talking a mile a minute, staring into his eyes, never for a moment looking away . . .

 

The young(ish) guy at the bar, maybe three or four beers gone, telling a story to the bartender, so excited by his own story that he's standing up, almost hopping up and down, getting louder and louder . . .

 

The old guy sitting at the bar, weathered-looking, with a hat and a shaggy mustache. (“He looks like he's been here continuously for two weeks,” I whispered to Partner. “Are you kidding?” Partner said. “He's been here continuously for forty years.”)

 

The gruesome-looking couple emerging from the back room. He's big and bearded and looks either angry or constipated, and she looks either despondent or completely out of it. I look away for a second, and suddenly she's alone at the bar, and he's nowhere . . .

 

And most memorable of all:

 

As we were leaving, a woman was getting out of her car. She gives us a nervous grin, turns, and says in the direction of her car: “I'll be right back.”

 

I look at her car, and I see a little dog, maybe a papillon, perched in the back seat, its face pressed to the window, watching her go into the bar. “Look!” I say cheerfully to Partner. “How cute!”

 

Partner looked at me sadly/wryly. “You didn't see,” he said. “The dog's not alone. There's a little girl in there too.”

 

Ah.

 

The dog was foolish enough to watch Mommy go into the bar, hoping that she'd be back soon.

 

The little girl didn't bother to look. She knew better.

 

Happy Wednesday at the Sand Dollar Bar and Grill, everybody!

 

---

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beefy is as beefy does

---

I approached my work friend Apollonia's desk the other day, cautiously, as I always do. (I never know how she might react. Sometimes she throws things at me.) She was looking at her computer screen with rapt attention. “What is it?” I asked.

 

 

She looked up at me with dewy eyes. “Seals tossing the caber.”

 

 

“Harbor seals?” I asked. “Or Navy Seals?”

 

 

She giggled. “Navy Seals, naturally,” she said in a little-girl voice. (Apollonia and I share an appreciation for the same kind of men, which explains her caber-tossing fantasies.) “Arms are good on a man,” she said dreamily. “Shoulders. And you know what else? Backs.”

 

 

“Display,” I said. “It means: 'I'm big and strong. I can take care of you. I can protect you.'”

 

 

“Yeah,” Apollonia said. She looked thoughtful. “Whether or not it's true. Looks can be deceiving.”

 

 

In his book “Sociobiology,” E. O. Wilson says that just about all animal behavior, from coral organisms through social insects to crustaceans and monotremes and mammals and yours truly, has a biological basis. I vaguely remember a Time or Newsweek simplification of the theory from the 1970s: they took the old Charles Atlas cartoon of the scrawny guy and the bully on the beach and changed the dialogue. When the bully kicks sand on the scrawny guy and grabs the pretty girl, the word-balloon over his head reads: “My genes are good! Mate with me!”

 

 

But there are other urges. Apollonia, you will remember, has a Robert Pattinson fetish. Yes, Robert Pattinson, who looks as if he were made out of pipe cleaners and construction paper. This, I'd say, is more of a protective-mother thing. This probably also explains why I do not share Apollonia's depth of feeling for Robert Pattinson. I actually had the nerve to bring this up to her. “Robert Pattinson,” I said, “has neither arms, nor shoulders, nor back. And yet you love him. Why?”

 

 

She regarded me for a long time. “Oh, babe,” she said. “Those cheekbones. That chin.”

 

 

Gevalt!

 

 

Here, to clear your palate after thinking of the scrawny Pattinson, is a New York Magazine slideshow of the biggest biceps in this summer's movies. Chris Hemsworth, AKA Thor, is the clear winner of the contest.

 

 

He's big and strong, boys and girls. He can protect you.

 

 

But remember what Mother Apollonia says: looks can be deceiving.

 

---

 

 

The Eastside Marketplace at the end of the universe

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Some scientists say that there are parallel universes and alternate worlds all around us. They occupy the same space we do, but we don't see them.

 

I have found evidence of this at the local supermarket.

 

When I put my groceries on the checkout counter, the cashiers pick them up, scan them, put them back on the belt, take my money – but without ever speaking to me, or even looking at me.

 

Apparently they and I are in different universes.

 

 

The groceries are somewhere in between, I guess.

 

Once in a while, however, there is a glimpse of the other side.

 

The other night, I was buying one item: a bottle of Fiji water. The cashier was a fourteen-year-old girl, and the bagger was another fourteen-year-old girl. “I, like, love this water,” the cashier said, pushing it down to the bagger. (This dialogue should be read aloud with a Valley Girl intonation for full effect.)

 

 

“Whyyyy?” the bagger said. “It's, just, wa-ter.”

 

 

“It tastes better,” the cashier said.

 

“Whyyy?” the bagger said again. “It's, just, wa-ter.”

 

“Nooooo,” the cashier said. “It's delicious. It's, like, from a mountain or something.”

 

“It's from the South Pacific,” I said.

 

For a moment her eyes flickered up to my face. I think she actually heard me, across the universes. “Yeahh,” she said to the bagger.

 

I think this is a tremendous breakthrough.

 

Someone please notify Stephen Hawking.

 

---

 

 

Sunday blog: Daylight savings time

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Here, as a public service, is a little video from the FDNY about changing your clocks and replacing the batteries in your smoke detectors.

 

 

I think the funny little fireman is cute.

 

 

Thumbs up!

 

 

 

 

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Cultural blunders: international edition

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While I was living overseas, I tried very hard not to offend my Tunisian and Moroccan friends and acquaintances. I think I mostly succeeded.

 

 

My cultural blunders, however, provided my friends with lots of innocent merriment.

 

 

For example:

 

 

• While in Tunisia, I bought a cunning little satchel to carry my books, papers, cigarettes, etc., back and forth from home to the office. Finally one day, my friend and coworker Halim rolled his eyes at me. “I've been meaning to tell you,” he said in his unnervingly perfect David Niven-style English. “That's a school bag. It's like something a ten-year-old would carry.”

• I was always anxious to improve my Arabic. Sometimes I did this by copying the pronunciations I heard in the office. I noticed that a lot of the women in the office said “good morning” in Arabic in a very particular way, with a sort of sigh, eliding the final consonants. I figured it was the local accent, and started copying this, thinking that it made me sound sophisticated. Halim again, after a few days of this: “Please stop saying it that way. You sound like a woman.”

• When I left Tunisia, an American friend gave me a lovely white-linen scarf from Djerba as a going-away gift. I still have it. It has blue stripes and long fringe at either ends. I wore it a lot after I got back to the United States, until one of my bosses at Brown asked me in a strained voice if I was aware I was wearing a Jewish prayer shawl.

 

 

But sometimes there was sweet revenge.

 

 

One day in 1985, my American housemate Kathy came back from a trip to the United States with a big jar of pickled jalapenos. We were eating them right out of the jar. A Tunisian friend (whom I won't name, in case he reads this, but he knows who he is) scoffed at these American “hot peppers.” He'd seen me choking and wheezing on lethally hot Tunisian red peppers often enough, and reasoned that he was a lot tougher than I was. So he scooped a jalapeno out of the jar, just as he'd seen us do, and put it in his mouth, and -

 

 

Oh, my dears, it was spectacular. I expected cartoon flames to come out of his ears. He was literally crying, running around the house, flapping his hands.

 

 

It turns out that there are “hot peppers” and “other kinds of hot peppers.”

 

 

Isn't multiculturalism fun?

 

---

 

 

Malta

---

I spent a week in Malta back in 1987. Malta is a big rock sticking out of the water just south of Sicily.  It supports a few farmers, a few fishermen, and lots and lots of tourism.

 

 

I flew there from Tunis, on a small plane. We were flying low enough that I could see the ripples on the surface of the Mediterranean. Then, suddenly, there was Malta, a huge black cliff looming out of the blue water. There were cows grazing on the edge of the cliff. I could see the cows. I could see the spots on the cows. Oh my god! Too low! Too low!

 

 

Malta is a strange crossroads between Europe and North Africa. The Maltese language is mostly Arabic, with a lot of Italian vocabulary and tons of English borrowings (it was an British colony for a long time). I speak both Italian and Arabic (and some English), so Maltese was surprisingly transparent to me. One evening in a restaurant, a loud tourist woman complained to the waiter that her steak wasn't properly cooked, and she wanted a freshly cooked one. The waiter smiled, told her (in English) that everything would be taken care of, and said to another waiter (in Maltese): “This cow in the red dress would like a new steak.”

 

 

I nearly choked on my mixed greens.

 

 

Malta is littered with prehistoric remains. There is an underground cave full of strange carvings, accessible through a back door in a bakery in Paola, near the capital. The entire island is paved with Neolithic standing stones and circles and monuments. Thousands of years ago Malta was home to a breed of tiny elephants, whose bones are still found in caves and riverbeds. I remember looking at their delicate little skulls in a museum and thinking: Poor things.

 

 

I stayed in a pleasant cheerful place called the Hotel Plevna.  After dinner I'd go down to the lounge and read the Times of Malta. There was always a frail old lady there, no matter when I got there. She napped a lot. Once she farted in her sleep, which I found both amusing and endearing.  And one evening I heard her talking to a British guest about dinner, in a very high-pitched tone: “When I eat cauliflower it must be piping hot! With a nice cheese sauce!”   Someone later told me that the old lady was the widow of the former Greek ambassador, and a part-owner of the hotel.

 

 

It was twenty-four years ago, and she'd be well over a hundred now, if she were still alive.

 

 

I choose to believe that she's still there.

 

 

---

 

Tunisia

---

Tunisia has been going through interesting times lately. I lived and worked there for a couple of years back in the 1980s, and I still keep in touch with some of the Tunisians I knew and worked with. They're all okay so far; they're posting on a daily basis on Facebook, and I wish my Arabic were better, because the videos and news stories are pretty interesting. I wish them, and all Tunisians, a prosperous and happy future.

 

I was there during the last few years of the presidency of Habib Bourguiba, the original President of the Tunisian Republic, le Combattant supreme. He was then in his eighties and very frail, but the country was stable and open (lots of coming and going to Europe; decent relations with most of the rest of the Arab world, with the exception of Libya – but in those days, no one got along with Libya; a broad and very effective educational system, which emphasized secondary education). It was, as we said in our office communications, “the crossroads of the Arab world.”

 

 

I lived in the old city, about two blocks from the Casbah. We were within hollering distance of two of the most famous and most beautiful of Tunis's mosques, the Zeitouna and the Youssef Dey. Both had real muezzins who intoned the call to prayer five times a day (most mosques use recordings), but the muezzins in those two mosques managed it so they never faced one another as they circled their parapets. Sometimes we'd go up to our rooftop at sunset to listen to the muezzins and watch the lights come on all over the city.

 

 

I shared the medina apartment with a number of different people, all women. The elderly landlord was baffled by this, but refused to admit it. Naturally he deferred to me as the head of the household. All of my female housemates were referred to, politely, as “Madame.”

 

There was a good restaurant not far from the Zeitouna mosque, on one of the roofed streets in the Medina. During Ramadan (when you can't eat while the sun is in the sky), we'd get a table around fifteen minutes before sundown and order harira, the thick wholesome traditional Ramadan soup. They'd serve it about five minutes before sundown. We (and all of the other diners in the restaurant) would toy with our spoons. Finally, faintly, we could hear the muezzin begin the sunset call from the Zeitouna mosque. After a minute or so, a little boy stationed down at the end of the street would frantically wave his arms, signalling to us that the call was completed, and we'd pick up our spoons and begin to eat.

 

 

My apartment had a very small balcony facing north. From there, we could see the summer thunderstorms lining up over the Mediterranean. They never came inland, but we saw the lightning flickering from the clouds at night.

 

 

One day in winter, there was a little sleet mixed in with the rain, and one of my Tunisian officemates turned to me as we watched the weather from the office window and asked: “Is this what snow is like?”

 

 

Toward the end of my time there, two of my friends drove me to an undisclosed destination. It turned out to be the very tip of Cap Blanc, the northernmost point of Africa, overlooking the Mediterranean. We watched the sun go down from there.

 

 

It was very beautiful.

 

 

Here's hoping for a peaceful and happy outcome to the Jasmine Revolution.

 

 

---

 

My team big and good, your team weak and stupid

 

---

I've learned pretty much everything I know about sports from Partner.  Much of this information is garbled in my mind; I will not ever understand what a "safety" is, for example, because I made up my mind early on that it involves a football player running backwards.

 

 

But now and then something in the sports world catches my attention, and I strain to figure out what it's all about.

 

For example: back in November, there was an incident involving a football player named Derek Anderson.  His team was losing, and he had the nerve (!) to sit on the sidelines with a teammate and smile and laugh for a moment.  The crowds, and the sportscasters, were enraged. 

 

This is unforgivable, apparently. 

 

Unlike (let's say) dogfighting, or texting pictures of your genitalia to the world at large.

 

Yesterday morning I read a commentary in "Sports Illustrated" (don't blame me, Partner subscribes) about this event.  The columnist made it clear that the losing team is required to be stoic and grim.  Anything else lets down the team and the fans.  I quote: "It may seem irrational, but fans want their own passions validated by seeing the athletes they're rooting for show that they feel just as strongly."

 

Yes, babe, it does seem irrational.

 

I always knew there was a theatrical element in sports; I've just never heard it enunciated so clearly.  According to this guy, athletes aren't just supposed to play well; they're also supposed to represent the passions of their home fans.

 

Whoosh!

 

Now, players for any given team come from all over the country and the world.  But once you're on the team, you're a native son.  Once you're on the (let's say) Boston team, you become a Boston soldier, hup hup hup.  

 

Until such time as you're sold or traded, of course.

 

This goes way beyond the whole role-model thing.  This is all about rivalry, and tribalism, and ritual combat.  Cleveland is better than Detroit, Boston is better than Atlanta, the Bep Tribe is better than the Bap Tribe, Cave #73 is better than Cave #74.

 

 

Eesh!  Too serious!  I'm glad I'm not an athlete.  I'm not serious about anything.  I'd never be able to keep a straight face.

 

Sometime let's talk about the erotic element in sports instead.  All that running and chasing and grabbing. 

 

Now that's an interesting topic.

---

 

 

The dumbification of America

 

---

There was a recent piece on Nova.com about the new Spider-Man musical.  The blogger was okay with the musical, but didn’t like the idea that the villains are mad scientists.  Why make scientists the bad guys?

I usually have little sympathy with people whining about fictional victims. Fiction has featured mad scientists for a long time, and the USA doesn't have a monopoly on them: Doctor Faustus and Doctor Frankenstein come to mind.

 

 

But it's true that science, and scientists, aren't respected in our culture very much. We as a country, as a people, don’t put a premium on education.  The glory professions are all flukes and shortcuts: entertainer, singer, athlete, Kardashian.  You don’t hear kids talking about wanting to be doctors and lawyers and scientists anymore.  What modern kid would ever want to be a pointy-headed smartass?

 

 

There are people – let's be ingenuous and call them “anti-educationists,” though I think we all know who we're talking about – who encourage this galloping charge toward the dumbification of America. They are great believers in “common sense” and “native intelligence,” which is (according to them) a whole heap more valuable than book larnin'.

 

 

Anti-educationists dismiss science as a “belief system,” neither more nor less worthy of credence than any particular religious belief. (Never mind that it's based on empirical research rather than feelings and religious texts and I-say-so.) They've put evolution and "intelligent design" on a par with one another; if one's worthy of respect, then so is the other. They're both “theories,” after all.

 

 

However, as one particular judge in Dover, Pennsylvania can tell you, they are not both “theories,” and anyone who says so betrays his own ignorance of the meaning of the word “theory.”

 

 

Anti-educationists say that science is a useless smartypants charade, a way for sneaky people to waste money. I recently watched Senator Coburn of Oklahoma listing some wasted-money projects: one was “the study of cow farts.” How silly, right?

 

 

But science is always silly, girlfriend. Coburn would have had a lot of fun at the expense of Alexander Fleming fooling around with moldy bread in search of penicillin.  Because, hyuk hyuk, this guy's spending money experimenting on rotten food!

 

 

As you can tell, I have little patience with the anti-educationists. I do not believe that there is any such thing as “native intelligence” or “common sense,” or “God speaking in the heart” for that matter. God may speak to you in your heart, but just try asking him to calculate a tip sometimes and see how much math he knows.

 

 

I will predict right now that, in that instance, God will know exactly as much math as you know yourself.

 

 

You'll see I'm right.  I have weird powers of prophecy in these matters.

 

 

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The royals

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Partner and I saw “The King's Speech” on Sunday. Geoffrey Rush is especially notable as the nonconformist speech therapist who says disrespectful things, but says them with love. Firth is the Duke of York / King George VI, full of bottled-up rage, but a pukka sahib nonetheless. It's probably a harder acting job than Rush's, but it isn't as flashy.

 

 

There are lots of fun actors in the bits-and-pieces roles: Timothy Spall (Peter Pettigrew from the Harry Potter franchise), shaking his jowls like mad as Winston Churchill; Anthony Andrews (babe, where have you been since “Brideshead Revisited”?) as Stanley Baldwin; Derek Jacobi as the unbearable Archbishop of Canterbury; Helena Bonham-Carter as Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, plump and sugar-sweet and sure of herself; Michael Gambon, dumping the Dumbledore routine to portray a nasty crusty George V; and Guy Pearce, playing the Prince of Wales as a Jazz Age creep.

 

 

I commented to Partner on the way home, as we slogged through the snow, that I remembered something called “The Woman I Love,” which portrayed the Prince of Wales (the ethereal Richard Chamberlain) as a misunderstood romantic. In “The King's Speech," the Prince is a dimwitted simp, thoughtless and easily manipulated.

 

 

Funny how attitudes change.

 

 

I recently watched “The Queen” again. Watching Helen Mirren is like watching QEII herself; she has exactly the right reserve, the dry pursing of the lips, the very light touch of coarseness (deerstalking, corgis, big ugly scarves).

 

 

But she's a myth.  All of the royals are myths. I think Americans like me mythologize them more than the British do. They personify whole periods of history: the Victorian Era, the Edwardian era, the Tudor period for God's sake!

 

 

But they don't always personify what they want to personify.

 

 

If you asked Elizabeth II what she thought she stood for, she'd say something stolid and proper like: England. The United Kingdom. The Commonwealth. Traditional values.

 

 

And the real answer would be: The stubborn maintenance of outdated attitudes. The necessity of being polite to your grandma, even though you disagree with her about everything.

 

 

And, most of all, the importance of always carrying a handbag.

 

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Bad Santa

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As a kid, I loved Christmas: toys and lights and reindeer. But I was also vaguely aware that my mother hated Christmas, and I never quite understood why.

 

 

Now I am all grown up (and then some), and now I understand my mother's point. Blighted hopes. Overblown expectations. Social obligations.

 

 

Evidently my mother and I are not alone.

 

 

For some time now, television has been acting out against Santa Claus.  Here's a very incomplete incident list, just off the top of my head:

 

 

• 1966: The Grinch. Sort of the Antichrist version of Santa.

• 1987: Married With Children. A skydiving Santa crashes on the Bundy family's roof, dies, and is carried away on a gurney, sleighbells jingling.

• 1998: Just Shoot Me. “How The Finch Stole Christmas.” David Spade as the evil Finch spoils everyone's Christmas.

• 1999: Futurama. Santa in the year 3000 is an evil robot (voiced by John Goodman) who kills everyone who hasn't been good during the past year.  And that's everyone.

• 2003: Billy Bob Thornton as Bad Santa. And Lauren Graham, who has a sexual Santa fetish.

• 2009: Modern Family. Santa is a homeless ex-con who punches out Cam's hated rival.

• 2010: Family Guy. Stewie goes to the North Pole to kill Santa. It turns out, however, that Santa is a haunted wreck who hates his own life.

 

 

From Graham Greene's “Travels With My Aunt”:

 

 

“'It's the festive season,' Major Charge said. He blew another raspberry. '”Hark! The herald angels sing,”' he said in a tone of savagery, as though he were taking some kind of revenge on Christmas Eve and all its impedimenta of holy families and mangers and wise men, a revenge on love, a revenge for some deep disappontment.”

 

Ho ho ho.

 

 

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Who's a good boy?

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I was never much of a dog lover when I was young. We had one when I was a kid – a misbegotten cross between a chow and a husky, which resulted in a gigantic husky-sized chow with a purple tongue and a bad attitude.  I went without pets until years later in Tunisia, when I inherited a bipolar tomcat named Nimmer. Nimmer went feral every winter, then came home again in the spring for sardines and milk. He used to bring around his nasty-looking girlfriend, who had big white blotches on her face. I always shot her with a water pistol when Nimmer wasn't looking.

 

Partner adores dogs. His last dog, Willy, was a big golden retriever who worshiped him. When we were first dating and I tried to sit on the sofa next to Partner, Willy would jump up and sit between us. When Partner left the room, Willy would jump off the sofa, run across the room, turn his back to me, and sit in huffy silence until Partner came back.

 

Willy hated me.

 

Willy notwithstanding, Partner's love of dogs has rubbed off on me over the years. Our current apartment does not allow dogs, and apartment life isn't good for dogs in any case – too dull, too stifling. But we know all the dogs in the neighborhood; we know them better than we know the people, in fact. There are two golden retrievers who live down the street, who watch us walking to work every morning; they sit looking out the window side by side, their chins resting on the back of the sofa. As we walk by, they follow us with their eyes, but they refuse to turn their heads. It would be too obvious.

 

Then there's the little black Pomeranian whom we see walking her owner sometimes. She's tiny and she holds her head up like a lady, and she walks tap-tap-tap-tap, quick and very delicate. Partner says she reminds him of one of those Italian girls from New Jersey with a big hairdo and a big black fur coat and high heels.

 

There's a dachsund we always call “Barky von Schnauzer,” which name we got from a TV commercial, and I think the owner heard us calling the dog that one day, and he didn't like it. And the big husky with the fluffy coat and the lolling tongue and the big smile, who barks and sings to everyone, and who likes to be fawned on, very Big Man On Campus. And the nervous-looking whippet who lives across the street (well, whippets always look nervous).

 

And a host of others.

 

At Thanksgiving, our hostess had a long-haired chihuahua named Winston. “Be careful,” Hostess said. “He's nippy. He bit the DirecTV guy.” And, sure enough, Winston nipped my finger.

 

But in no time he was sitting in my lap looking up into my face dreamily.

 

You see? Time has passed, and now I can commune with dogs, soul to soul.

 

Or maybe I just smell like bacon.

 

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