Lessons from the 2012 Presidential campaign

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It has taken me a little while to compose myself after Election Night 2012.  Now that I’ve stopped screaming with joy, however, I’ve jotted down a few things I’ve learned over the past few weeks and months.

 

 

As follows:

 

 

Probably you shouldn’t try to redefine the word “rape.” It doesn’t make you many friends. (Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock: hear me?)

 

 

Money doesn’t necessarily win elections.  When it’s quite evident that you’re trying to buy a House/Senate seat (McMahon in Connecticut, Hinckley in Rhode Island), you will probably lose. And Donald Trump publicly mocked Karl Rove for wasting millions of dollars of PAC money on candidates who lost. (As a Tumblr commentator said: Who knows more than Donald Trump about wasting money?)

 

 

Lying is very traditional in American presidential elections, but it’s getting easier and easier to disprove a lie. Probably people should try to lie less (or at least more cleverly). And they should not openly flout the fact-checkers.

 

 

In a state where people traditionally hate and fear state troopers (like Rhode Island, for example), the opposition party shouldn’t nominate a state trooper as their candidate. (Bye-bye, Brendan Doherty.)

 

 

Don’t make fun of your opponent. It makes you look small. (This one goes out to former Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who insisted on belittling his opponent Elizabeth Warren as a liar, as ugly, as untrustworthy, as a “college professor.” It didn’t work, did it, Scotty?)

 

 

Do not, in your concession speech, imply that God made your opponent win in order to make the Apocalypse happen sooner. (Okay, Mr. God-be-the-glory Todd Akin?)

 

 

Don’t assume that gay marriage is a passing fad. Before Tuesday, every popular referendum on gay marriage had failed, and the Republicans / social conservatives were convinced they had a failsafe way to defeat gay marriage: bring it to a popular vote. Well, on Tuesday, four states voted, and three (Washington, Maine, and Maryland) upheld gay marriage. You can be sure the GOP will be less confident in future about this particular strategy. (So Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee can take their Chick-fil-A sandwiches and jam them up one another’s asses. And they can make sure those sandwiches are up there real tight, too.)

 

 

And finally:

 

 

The country is changing. We are more diverse, and more tolerant, as a whole. (A commentator in 2008, shortly after Obama’s first election, said that bigotry and intolerance in the USA would decrease over time, but (like seawater evaporating) they would become more concentrated and intense. I remember thinking this was a very wise thing to say. Now, after four years of concentrated intense vicious hatred of Obama and the liberal agenda, I see how prescient he was.) But we are not Sarah Palin’s America, and we are not Mitt Romney’s America (whatever the hell that was supposed to be about). We are a multicolored America. We do not care to be ruled by Christian law, or Sharia law, or any kind of religious law for that matter. We like our marijuana. We like being married to our common-law partners. We like Planned Parenthood. We like knowing that, if we become ill, we will not go into bankruptcy if we go to the doctor. We have no problem with electing women, and gays, and differently-abled people; in fact, we’re proud to be represented by them.

 

 

Let the right-wing nuts shriek about socialism and the Death of America, kids. They’ll tucker themselves out in a while, and we can have some peace, maybe even through Inauguration Day.

 

 

And I’m sure the 2016 campaign won’t begin before June or July of 2013.

 

 

(I plan to vote for Hillary. How about you?)

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Adorably unsafe at any speed

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I was walking to the health club the other day, and I paused at the corner of Wayland and Pitman. It’s a bad corner: Wayland Avenue drivers are timid and hesitant, and Pitman Street drivers are aggressive and nasty.

 

 

I waited for all the cars to go through before I crossed. But the last car caught my attention. It was driven by a woman with something like a fox terrier in her lap. She was actually driving while resting her chin on the dog’s head. The dog was avidly looking out the side window, while the driver was looking straight ahead.

 

 

It was adorable, and terrifying.

 

 

I’m just thankful that the driver wasn’t on her phone, or texting, at the same time. Who drives with an animal in her/his lap? An idiot, that’s who.

 

 

In Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” all the trouble is initiated by a cat named Pitty Sing, who’s been smuggled into a car by Grandma. Disaster ensues.

 

 

Listen to Flannery O’Connor, kids. No matter how much you love your pets, don’t let them ride in your lap while you’re in the car, no matter how adorable they are, no matter how adorable you think you look while doing so.

 

 

All kinds of non-adorable things can happen.

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For Election Day 2012: Homer Simpson votes Republican!

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I learned a lot from this clip. I already knew that Romney invented Obamacare. However: did you know that the government actually paid Romney taxes for five years? And that Romney has six wives, all named Ann?

 

 

Enjoy.

 

 

And vote, for God’s sake.

 

 

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Twenty-five years of perspective

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I have been with my employer for twenty-five years. I have worked for over a dozen bosses during that time. I have gone from an admin role to a managerial role. I am still somewhere in the middle of the food chain, but I am happy where I am.

 

 

What have I learned?

 

 

Don’t take anything seriously, so long as you know you haven’t actually broken the law. I have been through lots of bad times, and been perfectly terrified of what might happen next, and everything turned out fine.This was largely because I’d done nothing wrong; it was mostly the fault of my higher-ups. Remember this.

 

 

Rush jobs are usually nothing of the sort. If someone wants a rush on something, it’s almost always a ruse. After a while, you learn which are the real rush jobs and which are the pretend rush jobs. Trust your gut.

 

 

Don’t be sarcastic or mean. It’s not worth it. I badmouth people all the time behind their backs, usually under my breath (although I slip once in a while), but most of the time I am patient and kind with people, even the stupid ones. Partly this is because of medication. Partly this is because I’ve been doing this for twenty-five goddamned years!

 

 

If you make a mistake, just come out and say so. There’s no harm in this; everyone makes mistakes. Most people will respect you for it. A few will mock and disrespect you for it, but most of those people will be gone within a year or two. And good riddance to them!

 

 

Get out of the building at lunchtime. Go eat. Go home. Take a walk. Do something. It will keep you far saner than your coworkers.

 

 

And finally: Remember that nothing lasts forever.

 

 

(Ooh, that’s sobering. I’ll have to think about that one.)

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For Sunday: "Here Comes the Sun," written by George Harrison, sung by the Beatles

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George Harrison wrote at least one song on every Beatles album. This was this “Abbey Road” song. It is beautiful. In fact, I think it may rank with the songs of Schubert.

 

 

Enjoy.

 

 

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The piano music of Frederic Chopin

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My routine over the past year or so has been to spend my last few hours before bedtime writing this dreadful blog.

 

 

I need background music to do this. Fortunately, I have a huge CD collection.  Since Partner’s in the next room watching “The Good Wife,” however, noisy orchestral music, and opera, and organ music seems inappropriate.

 

 

So I listen mostly to chamber music, and solo keyboard music.

 

 

I’ve gone through the Beethoven sonatas, and the Bach suites, and the Beethoven quartets, and the Mozart sonatas and quartets (and quintets).  I tried the Scarlatti sonatas (I own about two-thirds of them – you know I’m a maniac for complete sets of things), but it was like listening to the same thing over and over again.  I got out my set of the complete piano music of Federico Mompou and listened through that.  And the sonatas of Prokofiev, and Scriabin, and Shostakovich.

 

 

Finally, feeling bored and disdainful, I pulled out some ancient ultra-cheapo recordings of “The Favorite Music of Frederic Chopin," which I seem to recall buying for a dollar per CD.

 

 

After a few days of that, I went on eBay and bought a thirteen-CD set of the complete Chopin piano music for sixty bucks (which is a pretty good price, if you ask me).

 

 

Chopin I used to associate with everything that people hate about classical piano music: frilly, arch, virtuosic, all style and no substance, ornate frippery.

 

 

Oh how wrong I was.

 

 

This is music written in the first half of the nineteenth century – Beethoven and Schubert were only recently deceased, and Verdi and Wagner were just getting started - and it’s still incredibly fresh and energetic and daring. It changes key all over the place. The virtuosity is never just for show; it’s part of the structure of the piece.  The individual pieces are short; even the sonatas feel like suites.  The melodies are soulful and beautifully constructed. 

 

 

And the harmonies! They are amazing. Chopin tells stories with chord progressions. There's often solmething wild going on over the surface - some fancy figuration - but the progressions beneath them are telling the real story. Here, as an unvarnished example, is the C Minor Prelude (you may recognize it as a Barry Manilow song:)

 

 

20_24のプレリュード_作品28_第20番_ハ短調.mp3 Listen on Posterous

 

 

 

I’ve got the Polonaises going in the background as I write this.  I’ve worked my way through the Etudes, and the Preludes, and the Mazurkas, and the Sonatas, and the Scherzos.  (I still have the Waltzes to listen through, but I pretty much know those.) The performer is a Russian named Nikita Magaloff, whose claim to fame is that he did the complete Chopin piano music over and over again. He is precise, and unfrilly, and really very good.

 

 

When I was a kid, I didn’t like vegetables.  Now I love them.

 

 

Ditto Chopin.

 

 

How our tastes change as we get older!

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The Moulin Rouge

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Before we left for Paris, Partner got us tickets for the Moulin Rouge. The tickets were hard to get; the show sells out very quickly.

 

 

And now I know why.

 

 

First of all, the neighborhood is exactly what you want it to be: it’s a slightly less grubby version of the old Times Square in Manhattan, or Boston’s late lamented Combat Zone. We arrived early and had a drink in a sidewalk café, and watched a pretty young prostitute pick up a nice young man at the next table. Romance!

 

 

The show was old-fashioned burlesque: big costumes, big musical numbers, and a little dash of Cirque du Soleil. The theme was “Feerie”: Fairyland.  There were two jugglers, one serious, one very funny. There was a big “exotic” musical number that couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be Indian, or Chinese, or Japanese. There were little ballads. There was, of course, the Can-can. (We were seated at a table with two very serious Frenchwomen, who only applauded the Can-can.)

 

 

Then there were the breasts.

 

 

They were everywhere, and they gave me quite a turn. I think I must have seen seventy or eighty of them. They were (mostly) very pert. (There were lots of bare behinds too, but they made less of an impression on me, for some reason.)

 

 

There was very little beefcake. There was one very nice number with two handsome acrobatic male dancers, one shirtless and the other in a t-shirt, who did elaborate handstands and carries. I could have done with a little more of that.

 

 

Upon leaving the club, I realized I’d left my American cap behind. To hell with it! I thought. I went to a street vendor and bought a very rakish hipster hat for seven euro.

 

 

So now I take a piece of the Moulin Rouge wherever I go, and my little American cap is floating around Montmartre somewhere.

 

 

Who knows? Maybe that prostitute has it.

 

 

Vive l’amour!

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Caffeine nation

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I have not been drinking much coffee for the last ten months, because of my kidney stones. (I read something online about “dark beverages” making them worse, and – although no one can really quite agree about what causes kidney stones – I decided to make the great sacrifice.)

 

 

 

It hasn’t been that bad. I have a cup or two of coffee in the morning, just to wake up; then, at work, I switch over to a mug of ice water. I like the sound of the ice tinkling in the cup; it reminds me of summer evenings on the veranda.

 

 

 

But, while in France recently, I decided to drink coffee again. Why not? They brew coffee the way I really like it: brutally strong and dark. Even the instant Nescafe in the hotel was delicious. I had three or four cups every morning, and usually a cup or two more after lunch or dinner. It was invigorating. (Most days I took a Xanax too, just to keep from vibrating myself to death.)

 

 

 

The French love their coffee. There’s a café / bistro every few yards; I saw very few people eating, but everyone was having a cup of coffee. We watched a French TV game show one evening – one of those stupid panel things where comedians try to top one another – and they were jumping around and screaming so much, you’d have sworn they were all on meth.  Aha! I thought. Caffeine!

 

 

 

My kidney stones hardly bothered me at all during the trip. Okay, I thought. So much for “dark beverages.” So, upon my return to the office, I went back to my cup-of-coffee-every-fifteen-minutes routine.

 

 

 

I became a different person.

 

 

 

I was snappish and irritable. I popped off at people. I became anxious about stupid things. (Also, my kidney stones began gnawing at me again. Go figure.)

 

 

 

It’s just not worth it.

 

 

 

I’m back on ice water, and I’m a lovely sweet calm person again.

 

 

 

(For what it’s worth.)

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For Halloween: the Monster Mash, by Boris Pickett and the Cryptkicker Five

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 This isn’t the original, but it’ll do.

 

 

 

Happy Halloween!

 

 

And whatever did happen to the Transylvania Twist?

 

 

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Travel tips from Apollonia

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My colleague Apollonia has been to Europe many times over the past few years (she has family in Italy), so naturally I sought her advice before our recent trip to France.

 

 

 

She gave me ten euro in bills and coins, and some travel tips.

 

 

 

Here are the tips, and some commentary:

 

 

 

#1: “Wear this scapular on the plane. I wear it when I fly. It couldn’t hurt. You don’t want anything to happen, do you?”

 

 

 

No, of course I don’t want anything to happen. I wore the scapular on the flight from Boston to Paris, and sure enough, nothing happened. Then, as a control experiment, I carried it in my hand luggage on the return trip. Nothing happened then either. (Actually, the return trip was faster and easier than the away trip.)

 

 

 

#2: “You’ll need the change I’m giving you. You have to pay to go to the bathroom, you know.”

 

 

 

Only partially true. Some bathrooms have an attendant (whom the French call, charmingly, “Madame Pipi”) who collects her fifty cents as you go in. Some have an honor system: a little box outside the bathroom into which you can drop a few coins. Many are free altogether (we encountered many of these). Some, interestingly, are self-cleaning. Here’s how they work: you put in your money (usually thirty cents) and the door unlocks. You do your business and leave. After the door closes behind you, an infernal device sprays the toilet – and the whole room – with water and disinfectant.

 

 

 

(At the Deauville train station, an elderly couple taught us how to get around this: you pay your thirty cents, use the facilities, exit – but you don’t quite close the door. Your accomplice / partner dashes in while you hold the door, and voila! Free bathroom!)

 

 

 

(Of course, if you were to let the door close while your friend was in the bathroom, he’d get a blinding faceful of disinfectant.)

 

 

 

(Which would be very funny.)

 

 

 

#3: “Versailles was filthy. There were dust bunnies under the furniture. All the glass surfaces in the Hall of Mirrors were dirty. It was worse than Nazi Germany in there.”

 

 

 

Okay, I didn’t see any dust bunnies in Versailles. The mirrors are plenty warped, but – hey – they’re over three hundred years old.

 

 

 

As for Nazi Germany, here’s Partner’s comment:

 

 

 

“I used the bathroom in the Visitor’s Center in Honfleur. It smelled worse than a barn in there. I still have the stink in my nose. Please tell Apollonia that, if she wants to experience Nazi Germany, she should go to Honfleur and give that bathroom a try.”

 

 

Travel is so broadening, isn’t it?

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