Michael Bérubé - American Airspace

A matter of will

Eighteen months ago Janet and I wrote an essay for the Boston Globe, all about advance directives and living wills and disability and autonomy and such things. (There was a political controversy of some kind going on at the time, and I followed up on the controversy in a cheery little blog post right here.) We tried to tread carefully, because we knew we were disagreeing with some disability-rights advocates who have very strong opinions about such matters—and we knew that some people (on various points of the multiple-orthogonal-axes of contemporary politics) go so far as to argue that parents of a disabled child should not have the right to act as living-will surrogates for their child in the event that he or she becomes severely and permanently incapacitated (on the grounds that the child was incapable of executing a living will in the first place). You think the question of advance directives is complex? Just add the question of surrogacy: how can we respect the “prior wishes” of a person who, prior to a severely and permanently debilitating event or illness, never possessed the capacity to express his or her wishes with regard to things like feeding tubes and do-not-resuscitate orders?

Well, one of the things Janet and I decided last year, as a result of writing that essay, was that we had to get ourselves one of them there “living wills” for ourselves. And so, moving forward on this critically important matter with our customary speed and diligence, we remade our wills . . . yesterday.

There were a few comic moments in the attorney’s office when it sounded as if we were ordering from a sushi menu: we’ll have the maguro in the event of severe and permanent incapacitation, please, and two ebi with extra wasabi if terminally ill. Hold the intubation, and no blood products, thanks—we’re trying to cut down.

And then there’s the related question, which I mentioned in the epilogue of Life As We Know It, as to when we can begin to worry about the incidence of Alzheimer’s in people with Down syndrome, and how we can even try to begin to think about the possibility of our outliving Jamie—and the possibility of Jamie outliving us. It’s one thing to write about this in a book, now, and quite another to sit down and go about the process of setting up a “special needs” trust, decide who should administer the trust, think up a couple of backup plans, and so forth.

So it occurs to me that one of the more pleasant aspects of a giant nuclear fireball that consumes all life on earth is that it would render all these difficult decisions moot. I have therefore decided to abandon my commitments to procedural liberalism and political left-progressivism, and to begin working for the We Are All Giant Nuclear Fireball Now party. What’s in it for me, you ask? Peace of mind, mainly.

Just as long as we all perish by being vaporized in the bombs’ total destruction radius, and are not left to wheel shopping carts around the ashen, blasted post-apocalyptic landscape like something out of Cormac McCarthy’s latest. Because that would suck.

Posted by on 10/04 at 09:31 AM

Congratulations (probably not the precise sentiment, but close enough) on doing what we all need to do, through the emotional wear of having to contemplate multiple awful scenarios.

I like the ‘one from column A, one from column B’ approach: anything that makes the task simpler and less draining is good, anything that lends itself to gallows humor is better.

Maybe now I will get around to doing the same thing, though it might be easier to join your new party and give in to my apocalypse jones.

Posted by on 10/04 at 11:10 AM
Why not call it the “Randy (Newman, of “Poltiical Science") Meets Dr. Stangelove” (RMDS)? It could be known as the “Reminds” party....

Posted by Aaron Barlow on 10/04 at 11:13 AM
chin up, Michael: remember that McCarthy’s Big Dystopia Adventure ends with Trout Fishing in America (or, to be more precise, Spring Creek).

Posted by on 10/04 at 11:15 AM
Woo hoo! Spring Creek! So you’re saying it ends just like the graphic novel version of What’s Liberal?

No, wait, that was Spring Break.

Michael D, it will indeed be easier to join my new party. There are no dues and no meetings. I just need one more member to vote down Aaron’s proposed name change, on the grounds that “We Are All Giant Nuclear Fireball Now” is more euphonic in a fun, hyperbolic kind of way.

Posted by on 10/04 at 11:28 AM
Michael, you must not have read Walter Benn Michaels’ latest. If you had, you’d know that disability-rights activists are causing poverty.

Posted by on 10/04 at 11:46 AM
Not to be morbid, but can I have your seat in the multiple-orthogonal axis? And is that in the House of Commons, House of Lords, or House of Pedophiles? (Sorry, too much Mark Foley coverage, and I don’t even have cable.)

Posted by Crazy Little Thing on 10/04 at 12:09 PM
We composed our living wills years ago. I decided that we didn’t need a lawyer’s help because I had been volunteering at Hospice long enough to see a wide range of samples. But I went in too vague a direction when talking about loss of mental faculties as a result of accident, stroke, or metal bar flying through my head. I wrote something about “compromised capacity for thought.” I figured my beloved spouse would understand what I meant. A month later I came down with a head cold. I tried sleeping it off, but just as I started dozing I caught said spouse—beloved spouse—sneaking up on me with a pillow. So, agreed, a lawyer is probably a good idea. I’ll look around for the piece you and Janet wrote.

Posted by on 10/04 at 12:24 PM
Ah, but a nuclear fireball would take all the woodpeckers and salmon and ferns and stuff with it. Couldn’t we just work on a uniformly but painlessly fatal human-specific extremely contagious virus?

Captcha: “looked,” as in “I’ve ______ at the extinction of my species from both sides now.”

Posted by Chris Clarke on 10/04 at 12:32 PM
very first thought: a living will without Uni is well, just plain dead.

very next thought on the grounds that “We Are All Giant Nuclear Fireball Now” is more euphonic in a fun,
yeah, but the acronym stinks WAAGNFN; although it does have that sweet hint of fraternity spring breaking LAGNAF FUBAR.

A couple of “national novel writing month” years ago, i wrote my requisite 50K words about some hip scientists being able to use entheogenic and genetic engineering to put human consciousness into bacteria in order to survive the AGNF (and destroy the work of the other scientists and engineers who had worked to put consciousness in silicon/chip realms). Now, that i reflect on that, and what Chris surmised, maybe i too shall vote for the complete oblivion express. Captcha is “cut” as in make a clean cut of it and get out of this dimensional event horizon and on to another along through another portal axis of the multi-orthogonal multiverse.

Posted by on 10/04 at 01:12 PM
And if i do the same crappy editing job in this year NaNoWriMo, as i did in the above 12:12 post, i deserve to be cut from every team; my humble apologies.

Posted by on 10/04 at 01:16 PM
"We will all go together when we go.
All suffused with an incandescent glow.
No one will have the endurance
To collect on his insurance,
Lloyd’s of London will be loaded when they go.” - TOM LEHRER

I wonder if End of Days folks have similar feelings?

Posted by Central Content Publisher on 10/04 at 01:19 PM
and are not left to wheel shopping carts around the ashen, blasted post-apocalyptic landscape like something out of Cormac McCarthy’s latest. Because that would suck.

I thought we were supposed to get telepathic dogs. Because telepathic dogs are cool.

(I hope that is sufficient appeasement for Spot. Please send help.)

Posted by on 10/04 at 01:23 PM
I wonder if Michael’s new party isn’t one the first signs of a new nihilism.

In 1961, living in Georgia and having seen plenty of pictures of nuclear blasts, I would look up at the gum-stuck underside of the desk I was under for air-raid drill and wonder just how that inch of plywood was going to stave off a nuclear fireball.

I think I spent much of the next twenty years in a “hey, we’re all gonna die tomorrow” haze. It wasn’t until the 1980s that I realized that I not only hadn’t died but was in danger of, well, not having a life worth not losing.

There were lots like me.

Will there be more, again?

Posted by Aaron Barlow on 10/04 at 01:30 PM
Aaron: yep! See my comments on the Roman Empire etc.

As for living wills, I always thought of them as Frankensteinian in more ways than one. Do you know what your living will is going to get up to, now that you’ve put it together out of pieces of dead wills?

Posted by on 10/04 at 01:41 PM
This subject hits home for me. My father is a very, very old man, and he’s slowly, quite slowly, but surely dying of degenerative lung disease and in the past few weeks I’ve walked with him through advanced directives and DNRs and all the pragmatics of eschatology made possible by the miracle of modern medicine: he sure as hell doesn’t want to die, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to have to think about dying either, but it’s on the way. Months? Months and months? A year or so?

Hey, dad, what do you want to do about it? How do you want us, your kids, to behave on your behalf right there at the end? What do you want us to do for you? My father is a man of very few words, and even that overstates the case. On really important matters, he’s always preferred to navigate through life by way of the vagueness of the uncontentiously unsaid. And here we have the dutiful son, well-schooled in the avoidable speech act himself, bothering him to make specific what he plainly doesn’t want to consider in the least.

So we sit in my sister’s kitchen and talk about World War II and San Francisco in the ‘20’s and this year’s laughably pathetic ‘49ers and touch, now and then, gingerly, on the idea of feeding tubes and how much weight to put on the “intensive” in intensive care, before withdrawing again away from the as-yet unfinished business of it all.

Posted by on 10/04 at 02:02 PM
The two kingdoms model can lead to a serenity and practicality regarding what can be done in this fallen world. Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous serenity prayer speaks directly to this two kingdoms idea. It was apparently written during the height of the cold war when everyone was worrying about getting nuked. Getting nuked is not something anyone can do much about. It’s not under our control. We can decide whether to plant tulips or daisies, or plant a pear tree in spite of the fact that the world could be obliterated at any moment, or at least to make a will in case someone in our family survives. I think this two kingdoms sensibility is in fact what guides the Lutheran socialism of the Scandinavian countries. Not that that can be replicated in this country outside of Minnesota—it requires a sensibility that takes at least a few centuries to inculcate. We have a different picture here (where Locke is key), but it’s nice to push the nose to a different world view, and look in, even if it’s into a world that will remain forever foreign to us.

The Serenity Prayer
by Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

Complete, Unabridged, Original Version.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

At any rate, I would like to know what you decided in terms of who would be Jamie’s guardian, and how it was worded, but I can also imagine that some things are private and should remain so, even for communists where the private is necessarily political. It would be a good idea to set up a will. Did you use some kind of workbook to help you through it? I feel our family should do this too and pronto.

Posted by Kirby Olson on 10/04 at 02:11 PM
CCP’s and mds’s posts made me spit out my morning chocolate treat. From there it went to Peter’s travails and tears and fears only to be reminded to laugh hysterically again by Kirby (is it really possible to be “that” {captcha word that be} out there?).

So we have this pretty stupid new TV drama--Jericho; supposedly a post-apocalyptic tale of those that survive in some small pity-the-fool town in Kansas after the big one. One fails to comprehend how only the fallout from Denver is a worry, when the prevailing flows (according to the Department of Defense and Energy) would bring most of the material from LA and Arizona up through the mid-west. And Denver only gets “one bomb"--as if the NORAD base and other significant military sites were not targets? Even in this ridiculous scenario the MIRV’d weapons launched on SoCal and AZ, targetting key bases and population centers, would lay a lovely radioactive stain across the great plains into the Ohio River Valley that would last at least 37 years. Oh i keep forgetting Armageddon is a TV show, not reality.

Posted by on 10/04 at 02:53 PM
I’m right there with you on this one - with the following minor stipulation.

Going Hunter S. and Dr. Gonzo one better, we build a sophisticated early-warning system connected to a dense network of loudspeakers on poles. 2 minutes 27 seconds before impact we start blasting out White Rabbit at about 100 decibels - assuring that the fireball hits just as “the rabbit bites its own head off”*.

Resolves several issues at once: the song and its era get the delayed climax they deserve, and the Boomers fulfill their generational motto: Après nous la boule de feu nucléaire géante [translation help appreciated]

If you aren’t a Boomer or thereabouts, and can’t relate - tough shit. As in all things demographic, it’s all about us. In death as in life.

* In the absence of an actual Giant Nuclear Fireball, purchasing Fear and Loathing from Wal-Mart is an approved apocalyptic alternative.

(and are you sure it won’t actually be a Giant Atomic Fireball?)

Posted by on 10/04 at 02:53 PM
I’ll look around for the piece you and Janet wrote.

No need, Chris! It’s in the first hyperlink in this post.

Ah, but a nuclear fireball would take all the woodpeckers and salmon and ferns and stuff with it. Couldn’t we just work on a uniformly but painlessly fatal human-specific extremely contagious virus?

No compromises, Mr. McNaturepants! If you want to form your own We Are All Twelve Monkeys Now party, go right ahead. But the We Are All Giant Nuclear Fireball Now party platform includes a speciesist plank that argues that your “woodpeckers” and “salmon” and “ferns” and “stuff” are without value unless humans are around to assign value to them.

Your party has the advantage of being smart about the “painless” part and considerate about the “humans-only” part. My party has the advantage of superior numbers and organization. We’re decades ahead of you, my friend, and we control a number of powerful countries.

And if i do the same crappy editing job in this year NaNoWriMo, as i did in the above 12:12 post, i deserve to be cut from every team; my humble apologies.

spyder, this blog has had to correct two typos in the past two days, and I spelled habeas corpus wrong last week. I think it’s all coming apart for me, I do. It always starts with the typos.

I would like to know what you decided in terms of who would be Jamie’s guardian, and how it was worded.

A strange request under any circumstances, Kirby, but especially strange after your various performances here. And I ain’t tellin’ what kind of sushi Janet and I decided on, either. But I wish your family well, and recommend that you do set up a will. Because dying intestate in this society is a bad idea, and being severely and permanently incapacitated without leaving clear instructions about medical care and power of attorney is another bad idea. Regardless of whether you have any disabled children.

I wonder if Michael’s new party isn’t one the first signs of a new nihilism.

Yes it is, Aaron, yes it is. I have been a new nihilist for about 20 hours now, and oh! I did not know the weight until I threw off the burden. No more trying to account for intractable political differences by means of liberal-proceduralist debate! Besides, the whole “trying to account for intractable political differences by means of liberal-proceduralist debate” thing was wearing thin, anyway, as evidenced by a recent blogspat as well as this New York Observer review of my book.

Posted by Michael on 10/04 at 03:50 PM
"The truth is, college liberal-arts students aren’t much impressed with friendly professors who talk about popular music and are adept at playing devil’s advocate. To the contrary, we seek out those—liberal, conservative or otherwise—with passion, who will fight and intimidate and humiliate us in order to impart their scholarly revelations, who don’t treat us like the equals we aren’t, who will leave us defeated but challenged and finally emboldened.” - Jonathan Liu

So, basically, all students are masochists. I call this a romantic turd.

Did you really divide politics up into four major groups, and not include the nihilists? The last time I checked, people best described as nihilistic, account for the largest american demographic. Looking for the link!

Posted by Central Content Publisher on 10/04 at 04:15 PM
Hi Michael, I guess the NYO reviewer never saw that picture of you in your black leather coat, because then he would never have doubted your credentials as a fearsome top:

To the contrary, we seek out those—liberal, conservative or otherwise—with passion, who will fight and intimidate and humiliate us in order to impart their scholarly revelations, who don’t treat us like the equals we aren’t, who will leave us defeated but challenged and finally emboldened.

Whew! As we used to say in ‘hood, back in the day: “Hey, goomba! I got yer “scholarly revelations” right here!” The writing of that graf must be the answer to the old zen koan, “what is the sound of one hand typing?”

Captcha, and I am not making this up: “cold,” as in the shower I need to take after reading that graf!

Posted by John Protevi on 10/04 at 04:16 PM
All right. When you redo your will, it’s time for us, too. (I won’t shame myself by noting how many children ago our currently-operative will was written.)

But you now share with Izzy Stone an ability to think of the most interesting benefits of nuclear war. For Izzy, it was the fact that nuclear war would end discrimination, because we’d all be the same shade of radioactive green.

Posted by Sherman Dorn on 10/04 at 04:18 PM
Damn you, CCP, and your quick ripostes! You picked up on that graf too! Something tells me Jonathan Liu might come to curse the inventors of Google one day.

Captcha, and I am also not making this up, “followed,” as in “the slow are doomed to have followed after the quick.”

Posted by John Protevi on 10/04 at 04:19 PM
Did you really divide politics up into four major groups, and not include the nihilists?

Yes I did, CCP, and I’m ashamed to admit it (though I did discuss three different kinds of conservatives). It’s a mistake I won’t make again. As that review points out, I also failed to discuss the Foucault fan group among my undergraduates. He’s in a graduate program now, and doing well, I hear.

Posted by on 10/04 at 04:29 PM
...left to wheel shopping carts around the ashen, blasted post-apocalyptic landscape...

I am driven beyond the bonds of lurkitude to remind you that just in case everything isn’t consumed by the great nuclear fireball(s) we will need a solid foundation for re-establishing order.

Therefore, I remind everyone here that wheeling the cart beyond the store property boundary is against store policy and may well be illegal in many jurisdictions. Do NOT remove the carts.

To act otherwise would be to risk chaos and anarchy.

Harumph, just like a most dangerous professor to try and lead us down the dark and dank back intertubes toward socialist-commie-Islamofascist Frenchinism.

Posted by on 10/04 at 04:51 PM
It’s ok, Nihilists don’t have much to say anyway. At least, nothing Grand Theft Auto hasn’t already said.

Posted by Central Content Publisher on 10/04 at 04:53 PM
will need a solid foundation for re-establishing order

No! We will need a solid anti-foundation for re-establishing order! (If it’s order we really want!)

Posted by John Protevi on 10/04 at 05:24 PM
We will need a solid anti-foundation for re-establishing order!

Well, at least someone around here agrees with me that the boundaries of the shopping carts should be considered contingent rather than natural.

Posted by Michael on 10/04 at 05:28 PM
Couldn’t we just work on a uniformly but painlessly fatal human-specific extremely contagious virus?

This is pretty close to the scenario in George R. Stewart’s estimable Earth Abides - which is my favorite all-time post-apocalyptic novel. A few humans kept around for the narrative (and ultimately their new society - but the non-human devolpments take up much of the story) - the animals and foliage do great. [A good chance you are familiar with this particular book Chris, on the offchance that you are not - I would highly recommend it to you; based on the locale - Bay Area; the protagonist - who is basically an ecologist (written in 1949, so don’t know if the term existed then.); and the subject matter itself.

party platform includes a speciesist plank that argues that your “woodpeckers” and “salmon” and “ferns” and “stuff” are without value unless humans are around to assign value to them.

Is there a carbon-based lifeform chauvinist plank as well? Or can any silicon-based intelligent lifeforms that may evolve from surviving electronic devices have intrinsic value on their own? (HAL was wanting to know.)

Posted by on 10/04 at 05:37 PM
This We Are All Giant Nuclear Fireball Now party sounds nifty and all but my prepaid membership in the We Are All Scared Shitless By Boxcutters Now party doesn’t expire until Jan 2009. And, there’s lots of fine print on the back.

Captcha: fact. Huh?

Posted by black dog barking on 10/04 at 05:40 PM
MY performance?

Why is that MY performance is unjustified when it was John Protevi constantly attacking me for my size (ok, I’m not a giant!) that drove me to such lengths.

In the eyes of God I don’t think my soul is any less significant than any of yours.

What does it mean to be large, or to enlarge?

Can’t some of the shorter be large in a way?

Tallistificationalitarianesque.

Posted by Kirby Olson on 10/04 at 05:50 PM
Yow, regarding that NYO review, I had a hard time getting past the Hahvahd sneer. As a product and current employee of a state university, perhaps I’m hyper sensitive.

And who knew liberals were responsible for binge-drinking on campus now? I’d recommend Mr. Liu do a little bar-hopping in the Big 12 towns.

Posted by on 10/04 at 06:11 PM
Well, at least someone around here agrees with me that the boundaries of the shopping carts should be considered contingent rather than natural.

I’m confused. Are we talking the brute cart or the social cart here?

Posted by Chris Clarke on 10/04 at 06:12 PM
I have therefore decided to abandon my commitments to procedural liberalism and political left-progressivism, and to begin working for the We Are All Giant Nuclear Fireball Now party.

....

No compromises, Mr. McNaturepants! If you want to form your own We Are All Twelve Monkeys Now party, go right ahead. But the We Are All Giant Nuclear Fireball Now party platform includes a speciesist plank that argues that your “woodpeckers” and “salmon” and “ferns” and “stuff” are without value unless humans are around to assign value to them.

No wonder you’re rumored to be a leading figure of the Cruise Missile Left®, Michael!

But I’m with you so long as I can use that platform to plank the salmon! Yum!

Posted by on 10/04 at 06:16 PM
The Anti-Foundation Contingentists (the new socialist-commie-Islamofascist Frenchists?) vs. the Natural Foundationists? The seeds of post-apacolyptic strife are planted.

Prediction: DH will be a reconstructed Anti-Foundation Contingentist as soon as he senses that the Natural Foundationists may hold most of the carts and might pay better.

Posted by on 10/04 at 06:38 PM
Liu: “What never occurs to Michael Bérubé is that these “more outspoken” students might finally be objecting to the same impulse as the conservatives, the same “procedural liberalism” that results in a tenured professor like Mr. Bérubé constantly worrying about offending his students.”

Now that I know that the primary duty of being a prof is to tell the students that they’re all a**holes, I regret that I didn’t stay in academia.

Posted by on 10/04 at 06:42 PM
party platform includes a speciesist plank that argues that your “woodpeckers” and “salmon” and “ferns” and “stuff” are without value unless humans are around to assign value to them.

Jefferson Airplane volunteer libretto doc strange connection of the day: “the human name doesn’t mean shit to a tree.” Apparently it does mean something to woodpeckers, salmon, and stuff.

CCP quotes Tom Lehrer today, and then i find that Maureen Dowd chose that master as well.

Tom Lehrer said that political satire was rendered obsolete when Henry Kissinger won a Nobel Peace Prize for prolonging the Vietnam War.

But even the inventive Lehrer could never have imagined that Dr. Strangelove would get a second chance to contribute to misleading the public about a military catastrophe in a misunderstood land — a do-over in scarring the American psyche and reputation in profound ways.

Satire’s been obsolete for 30 years??? No wonder US citizens are predominantly nihilists.

Hey, what is with the catcha system today?? “one” ?

Posted by on 10/04 at 06:47 PM
To the contrary, we seek out those—liberal, conservative or otherwise—with passion, who will fight and intimidate and humiliate us in order to impart their scholarly revelations, who don’t treat us like the equals we aren’t, who will leave us defeated but challenged and finally emboldened.

Yeah, I think I had that guy for Intro to Philosophy back in the early 80s. I seem to remember something about Kant and veins bulging on his forehead. But then again, like Aaron, I was living kinda moment to moment back then, and some of those moments are a little hazy to me now.

It figures that your offer comes now that I’m comfortably shackled in the world of linear time.

Posted by on 10/04 at 07:14 PM
Shorter Kirby

Posted by on 10/04 at 07:26 PM
I’m not sure it’s sound pedagogy, but this afternoon (coincidentally) in an undergrad class I was trying to demonstrate why it is that a nuclear holocaust is “unthinkable.” I had my students close their eyes and try to imagine what familiar spaces will be like in their absence. One student said, “I can’t do it without imagining I’m actually there. I try to imagine it--and there is nothing.” I believe this is the first recruit for the We Are All A Nuclear Fireball Now faction of the New Nihilist Party. Surely world domination is close at hand.

Posted by on 10/04 at 08:57 PM
Wow. Our son was just diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, and I confess that this topic hadn’t even occured to us yet. He seems high functioning now, but he’s still little. What if he isn’t able to fully take care of himself later on?

Thanks, Michael. I think some soul-searching, research, and a trip to our lawyer is in the cards.

Posted by on 10/04 at 09:09 PM
Well, at least the Alterman readers won’t be disappointed today. Michael’s new party could also be called the Liberal Interventionist Party because it advocates a preemptive attack on all of us. On the other hand, what can be more revolutionary than a total do-over? So people like me can join, too. It’s true participatory parity! Everybody can be a part of this.

captcha: “true” as in “this comment does not ring true”.

Posted by on 10/04 at 09:21 PM
Spoken like a typical Doomsday Weapon Leftist, christian h.

Posted by Chris Clarke on 10/04 at 09:48 PM
It’s unbearable to believe that Cormac McCarthy is a realist. I just refuse.

Posted by on 10/04 at 10:26 PM
Is there a carbon-based lifeform chauvinist plank as well? Or can any silicon-based intelligent lifeforms that may evolve from surviving electronic devices have intrinsic value on their own?

Well, you know my argument about 2001, JP—HAL was right. (Quite apart from the fact that his programming was fried by the national security apparatchiks who ordered him to keep the purpose of the mission a secret from the crew.) He should have gone alone to meet the makers of the monoliths, on the grounds that he was the most highly evolved—and the most interesting—member of the crew. Also, he didn’t need to do all that loud “breathing” in a “spacesuit,” like the meat puppets did.

So yes, the emergent silicon life forms are OK with me. Just so long as they don’t send one of their own back to kill my mother so that I don’t grow up and found the We Are All Giant Nuclear Fireball Now party.

I’m confused. Are we talking the brute cart or the social cart here?

The boundaries of the brute cart are natural boundaries, Chris. I concede that much.

No wonder you’re rumored to be a leading figure of the Cruise Missile Left®, Michael!

But I’m with you so long as I can use that platform to plank the salmon! Yum!

Oh, Ben, I’m hoping to make Ed Herman long for the days when it was only about the cruise missiles. And yes, radiation is ideal for salmon on a plank, especially that Copper River salmon. 15 milliseconds, no turning, add a giant four-foot-circumference lemon, and you’re all set.

I believe this is the first recruit for the We Are All A Nuclear Fireball Now faction of the New Nihilist Party. Surely world domination is close at hand.

Yes indeed, Pat. Of course, our world domination will last only for about 45 milliseconds, but that’ll be enough to eat some yummy salmon.

Michael’s new party could also be called the Liberal Interventionist Party because it advocates a preemptive attack on all of us.

No, no, no. We are the Illiberal Interventionist Party. The Liberal Interventionist Party is down the hall, wringing its white-gloved hands.

And on a serious note at last, best wishes to all of your family from all of ours, hjshorter.

Posted by Michael on 10/04 at 10:31 PM
Can Chris Clarke produce a series of Cormac Mcarthy nursery rhymes and lullabys?

Ring around the rosie
load up a round
shoot ‘em, stab ‘em
they all fall down.

rock a bye baby
on horseback we speak
the campesino is bleeding
the landscape is bleak

Posted by on 10/04 at 11:42 PM
We are the Illiberal Interventionist Party.

Of course, I didn’t take into account that we don’t have an opt-out clause.

captcha: “building” as in “building the We Are All Nuclear Fireball Now party, for fun and profit”

Posted by on 10/05 at 12:14 AM
So it occurs to me that one of the more pleasant aspects of a giant nuclear fireball that consumes all life on earth is...

Now there’s a sentence you don’t see everyday!
But it would make a fun ABBF to invite folks to finish that sentence, don’t you think?

No? OK. Just throw it on the pile with all my other rejected ABBF ideas.

Posted by Oaktown Girl on 10/05 at 04:50 AM
HAL was right
Nice try - but flattery won’t bring HAL back to do your comments again. He’s got a nice plush gig going where he took over a half dozen or so conservative blogs - where he gets to do both the comments and the posts. Further, since it allows him to now turn off Irony Detection, Pig Latin Processing, and a dozen other “higher-level” functions, he has plenty of cycles left to spare, and has taken up Sudoku as well as “simultaneously kicking butt in about a zillion Internet Poker rooms”. He is apparently investing all of his winnings in some crazy-sounding interstellar rescue mission being organized by David Bowie, Rip Torn and Buck Henry. He IM’ed me yesterday and said to tell everyone Good luck in all future endeavors - not sure if he was referring specifically to this thread.

Oh, and just so we can meet our doom with an adequate gauge on the degree of synchronicity in the universe; Did you know when you wrote the original post, that on the front page of the NY Observer, the review of Cormac McCarthy’s latest is listed immediately above the ~~RateMyProfessor.com entry~~ review of your book that you link to in #19.

Posted by on 10/05 at 06:42 AM
Tell you what, Oaktown Girl. Tomorrow I’ll combine two Arbitrary But Fun ideas—this one, and the one about working the captcha word into the comment. How does that sound?

And yes, JP, I did see the NYO syzygy. A very good sign that I’m on the right track, and that I will do well, as the founder of this new party, to leave my students defeated but challenged and finally irradiated.

Posted by Michael on 10/05 at 07:18 AM
My Grams is 89 and is going through her 3rd round of chemo. She is determined to live to 100 because she is terrified that her 52 year old son with DS will outlive her. He has successfully lived in a group home for at least 15 years now, but it has been difficult for him to watch all of his friends lose their parents. Peace of mind is very important.

Posted by Donna on 10/05 at 09:37 AM
Tell you what, Oaktown Girl. Tomorrow I’ll combine two Arbitrary But Fun ideas—this one, and the one about working the captcha word into the comment. How does that sound?

Sounds good. Because afterall, being a truly liberated Illiberal Interventionist is about choice.

Posted by Oaktown Girl on 10/05 at 09:47 AM
By the way, does anybody else think that Michael’s disembodied head on The Cover looks kind of like a mushroom cloud? It could be reused for the next book,
What’s giant about the Giant Nuclear Fireball?

Posted by on 10/05 at 09:55 AM
I have a confession to make. I am Maureen Dowd, for we are all Maureen Dowd Now.

I think it’s key for members of the Nihilist Party to not literally see the fireball approaching, but to be caught by surprise in spite of knowing all along that it was coming.

Posted by Central Content Publisher on 10/05 at 10:53 AM
I’m going to this thing in San Francisco over the weekend and will miss Le Blog’s Friday absolutely fun nuclear meltdown, therefore, preemptively,

“So it occurs to me that one of the more pleasant aspects of a giant nuclear fireball that consumes all life on earth is that there’s absolutely no denying the bright side of the matter.”

Posted by on 10/05 at 11:00 AM
Dear Michael,

On the whole, we on the Planet of the Blind would rather go out on nucleic acid rather than the fireball. The magical mystery tour is dying to take you away…

Posted by Stephen Kuusisto on 10/05 at 12:01 PM
While we’re discussing the Observer review, I’d like to point out that this:

“Where, then, do we place the fans—probably just as numerous—of Michel Foucault, who (semi-) famously upended Noam Chomsky’s comfortable extremism in a 1971 debate broadcast on Dutch television?”

Is a highly misleading--if not outright mystifying--description of that dialogue.

Posted by Jonathan on 10/05 at 12:17 PM
And then I got to the end and saw the likely explanation for the assertive confidence.

Posted by Jonathan on 10/05 at 12:21 PM
Whenever I find myself worrying about the future of humanity (what will we do when the universe finally reaches complete stasis due to entropy and gravity’s pitiful weakness? will we do it to ourselves via a nuclear WWIV [or is it V?--I lose track] or a massively faster-than-expected global thermostat resetting?), I turn to literature for consolation:

Brin’s (NOT Costner’s) The Postman: yes, the USPS will save humanity.

Pratchett and Gaiman’s Good Omens: sure, the apocalypse can be funnier than Douglas Adams’s The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Silko’s Almanac of the Dead: fuck you, Mel, and the horse you rode in on, and Dick and Dubya, stop treating my novel like a test to cheat off of.

Tepper’s Beauty: combining Noah’s Ark, fairy tales, and sci fi works out surprisingly well.

Nakazawa’s manga Barefoot Gen: Cormac, you’re an amateur when it comes to that whole post-apocalyptic thing. Try a little harder next time.

Two closing thoughts: (1) Let’s make Matthew Arnold proud and continue with further suggestions for light reading to accompany the apocalypse. A little sweetness and light at the end would be much appreciated. Much more than those nasty horsemen, world-eating snakes, etc. (2) Is there a course here? What should it be titled?

Posted by The Constructivist on 10/05 at 12:48 PM
YAY! I’ll be giving a mid-term in two weeks so I need to work on challenging but ultimately defeating my students. I’ll have a hard time with the irradiation because the lights are always down for my class. Tips, anyone?

Jonathan, it all came together for me too at the end of the NYO review. I sure hope Mr. Liu doesn’t end up teaching; what if he starts to like the undergraduates? (shudder)

Posted by on 10/05 at 12:52 PM
Michael, here’s Patricia Williams on living wills, Terri Schiavo, and habeas corpus (from 2005). Has anyone referred to the two of you as the Wonder Twins of public intellectualdom? ‘Cause, you know, someone should get around to doing that someday.

Posted by The Constructivist on 10/05 at 01:31 PM
Is there a course here? What should it be titled?

Constructivist, I call my course “At Home with the End of the World.” I finish with Batman: The Movie (1968), replete with BIFFs and KA-POWs. It puts the kids in a good mood on Evaluation Day. The lightest reading is by Martin Amis, from the collection Einstein’s Monsters. His black humor is wicked ("Where are the hidden pluses, the pleasant surprises, when it comes to nuclear weapons?” he wonders.) One story is about a guy who calls himself The Immortal. He languishes throughout history, waiting for the apocalypse (which ultimately comes) so he can finally shuffle off. “When I was ill in Mongolia that time, I sacked out for a whole decade. At a loose end, cooling my heels in a Saharan oasis, for eighteen months I picked my nose. On one occasion--when there was no body around--I teased out a lone handjob for an entire summer.” That Marty Amis sure is a card.

Posted by on 10/05 at 02:05 PM
Under the Taft-Hartley Act, “supervisors” in an organization are prohibited from joining unions. In a party-line vote of the five-member NLRB, the three Bush appointees voted to broadly interpret who can be called a supervisor, extending to someone who “spends as little as 10 percent to 15 percent of his or her time overseeing the work of others.”

Let’s see now. The AAUP is an employee association: “Realizing the potential of unionization to defend professional standards, more than seventy AAUP chapters serve as collective bargaining agents on their campuses.” A member of a chapter of the AAUP who has the responsibility of overseeing graduate student teaching employees of a university would now be considered supervisors and thus ineligible for membership in the association. “This can’t be good,” i say as i stand and begin to sing the Wobblie Internationale.

“Also” (captcha) And yes, radiation is ideal for salmon on a plank, especially that Copper River salmon
Picture, old native american having just sung the IWW anthem, tear trickling down cheek: farmed salmon destroying wild habitats, Copper River overfished and soon to be polluted with mineral extraction and tourist industry development.

Posted by on 10/05 at 02:06 PM
christian h -

What you are calling “Michael’s disembodied head” I’ve already declared Floating Head Professor on the Lyon-Berube Anniversaire edition of Le Blog. (See comment #42).
http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/comments/1053/

Hottie Mc Naturepants My Ass in #43 then brilliantly illustrated an example of Floating Head Professor’s potentially unlimited benefits to society at large, far beyond the bubble of academe.

Clearly, it’s essential Floating Head Professor survives a giant nuclear fireball, and I’m confident that he will.

Posted by Oaktown Girl on 10/05 at 03:01 PM
Pat, nice title. You’re getting me thinking of Gaiman’s Sandman (where that Elizabethan dude whose name I forget brags in a bar he’s too interested in life to die and plans to lives forever and Death grants his wish) versus Moore’s Promethea who’s more Amis-like in one sub-plot. Might go well with the campy-kitschy Batman series!

Posted by The Constructivist on 10/05 at 03:08 PM
hjshorter, if you’re reading this, can I encourage you to look into some of the dietary remedies that people have proposed for Asperger’s? A young cousin of mine has Asperger’s, so I was reading a bit about it, and it seemed to me that some of the stories about Asperger symptoms being helped by not eating wheat and dairy were at least plausible.

It may be quackery, I don’t say it isn’t, but it’s the kind of thing that doctors are not likely to recommend, yet that might be worth a shot.

I hope it wasn’t presumptuous of me to suggest this. I wish you all the best.

Posted by on 10/05 at 07:22 PM
I am voting for the Hit By A Truck living will. Should I go into a Truly Icky State (definition left undetermined, because determining it would be Truly Icky), I wish to be Hit By A Truck. Truck to be provided.

Posted by Jonquil on 10/07 at 12:25 PM
Great post, I see racial self-segregation all the time, and I want to investigate the issue more thoroughly.
I always find something new and interesting every time I come around here - thanks.

Posted by Skotty on 11/01 at 10:07 AM

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