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Now, where were we?

Hi again, everyone.  I’m back.  Ahhhh, west and wewaxation!  I had me a very nice break from bloggering.  And no major surgeries this time, I’m happy to say!  I have precisely the same number of internal organs I had when I went on hiatus, unless of course someone swiped one while I wasn’t paying attention.  I used my extra time productively, reducing my record times on minesweeper to 16 seconds (intermediate) and 105 seconds (expert).  In the outside world, I played an entire round of golf, and if you ask very very nicely, I’ll even tell you the story of Father’s Day 2005, when I went out and shot a dumb-luck 79 that featured three jawdropping putts on the final three holes, all of ‘em made with the thirty-year-old blade putter I’d found in the garage and tossed into my bag on a last-second whim as I was packing up the car.  You’ll love that story, trust me.  Also, I cleaned out my study at home and went to the gym and took a whole bunch of showers, not all at once.  What else?  I read some books, and will be happy to tell you about them.  I’ve also been watching some hockey games, but I promise not to blog about those.  Not today, anyway.

Many, many thanks to Amanda and Lance for their wonderful (and infallible!) guest blogging, for their incisive Go Fug Yourself-defending and Inner Liberal-embracing.  Quite apart from the west and wewaxation involved in a bloggering break, it was a real delight to stop by the site and find new great stuff every day.  Thank you both—and please feel free to call on me anytime for any kind of favor that doesn’t involve the commission of a felony.  (Misdemeanors are fair game.)

I’ll keep it short today.  You know what they say—after a long layoff, you don’t want to jump right in with a big heavy post and maybe pull a muscle or something.  We middle-aged bloggers need to take things gradually and rebuild our bloggering tolerance.  It’s no use pretending we’re still 23 or 24, when we could just fall out of bed one morning after a three-week hiatus and blog a few thousand words before breakfast.  Ah, those were the days.

So?  Did anything happen while I was gone?  Sloppy and opportunistic right-wing “reports” on the corruption of the universities?  Riots in Kabul?  Marines in Haditha?  Bold new literary theories that tell us to pay attention to what the author meant?  Bold new law-professor theories about how art is inherently conservative?  Bold new conservative readings of Lolita?  Has anyone heard any news about Fafblog?  Maybe some 5-4 Supreme Court decisions chilling the speech of government employees?  How about that Greg Easterbrook?  Did he write anything about how the very teeniest tiniest particle in the atom just may be the Holy Spirit, and how “science” dogmatically ignores people who are doing the important research into how the universe is held together by infinitestimally tiny “trinitrons”? 

Or, as I suspect, have things been pretty quiet around here lately?  Let me know what’s on your minds.  I missed you all, you know.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a brand-new Arbitrary But Fun Friday in which we debate the competing claims of the politics of recognition and the politics of redistribution!  Stick around!  It’ll be arbitrary—but fun!

Posted by on 06/01 at 11:49 AM

  1. I got hit by a car, then engaged Jeff Goldstein in a surprisingly civil debate about Walter Benn Michaels and authorial intent.  These two events are, of course, unrelated.

    Posted by Scott Eric Kaufman  on  06/01  at  01:19 PM

  2. Scott!  I read just last night that you were hit by a car!  A Honda Civic!  Speaking of felonies—I do hope they catch the miscreant, but more important, I hope you heal quickly and completely.  You 20-something bloggerers are a real inspiration, you know.  You can get hit by a car, go upstairs and blog about it, and then go to the hospital.  I am in awe.

    As for intentionalism, I personally don’t understand why people keep re-inventing that three-sided wheel every 20 years, but I do hope Walter and Jeff can get together and tell us what’s up with the closing lines of “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Because that one just gives me a headache, and I’ll feel much better once I find out what Keats really meant.

    Posted by Michael  on  06/01  at  01:31 PM

  3. My two favorite politics! How did you know?

    Posted by Bryan McKay  on  06/01  at  01:31 PM

  4. It’s quite a relief to hear that you tended to personal hygiene during your hiatus. And while I enjoyed Amanda and Lance’s guest contributions, I missed your regular posts, no matter how unwashed their writer may be. And congratulations on your organ retention, Michael.

    The universe is held together by Sony TVs? I always suspected as much.

    Posted by Orange  on  06/01  at  01:46 PM

  5. Richard! Thank goodness you’re back.

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  01:56 PM

  6. Welcome back Michael!

    (And damn you, Scott Eric Kaufman, for linking to—and starting—such an interesting conversation about such a vile and uninteresting one...the last thing I needed was another time sink.  And I was just feeling good about having not taken the time to wade throught the Thersites / Jeff Goldstein mudfight.  Oh well...)

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  02:10 PM

  7. You might not know this unless you’ve had access to the NY Times, or possibly cable television news, but it’s quite possible the Clintons spent the night together while you were away.

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  02:32 PM

  8. Michael- my alma mater went off its rocker and invited David Horowitz to a “debate.” You might be entertained by the letters-to-the-editor of the alumni magazine that resulted. 

    http://web.reed.edu/reed_magazine/spring06/columns/Letters/index.html

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  02:33 PM

  9. Thanks, Reedie!  And just half an hour ago I learned that U. No. and I are in today’s USA Today.  And stay tuned for David’s Festival of Venom, coming later this summer!

    V. Ed.:  Does David Broder know about this Clinton thing?  More to the point, do you have infrared photos? 

    Oops!  Gotta take another shower now.  Be back soon.

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  02:39 PM

  10. A couple of tidbits from the USA Today article that caught my eye.

    He is not a professor; he is a writer,...

    Ouch.  That’s gotta sting.

    “I will stake my life that there are professors all over this country in classrooms who are … venting their prejudices in classes where it has no place.”

    Wow.  That’s almost Churchillian (Winston, not Ward) in its resoluteness, if not its subject/verb agreement. 

    “We shall fight in the classrooms.  We shall fight in the dining halls.  We shall fight in the faculty clubs.  We shall fight on the quads and greens.  I have nothing to offer but rage, bile, pique, and whine.”

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  03:14 PM

  11. Welcome back!  Ummmm, what happened.... hmmmm....ummmm....oh yeah!  There’s this guy, ya know, people used to think he was kind of a dork and really, ya know, stiff and boring, well, guess what!  He has, like, a MOVIE out, and it’s, like, really scary because it is true, and, ya know, the funny thing is people are still talking about what this guy (like, I TOTALLY forgot his name) was wearing, ya know, a waaaaay long time ago… Anyway, I got to see this guy in NYC, ya know, and he was SUPER cool! He was wearing these wicked black cowboy boots, but I totally forgot what he was talking about.  Something about things getting hot around here. (captcha - “degree").

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  03:25 PM

  12. Sorry, Michael, the NSA took my infrared photos. I’ll bet Broder has enough security clearance to access them, though.

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  03:54 PM

  13. Welcome back, Michael, with all body parts where they should be! The world is yet falling apart under W, so no change. I did hear on NPR that the new Sec. of the Treasurey’s main hobby is environmentalism, so what’s up w/ that?

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  04:22 PM

  14. Welcome back!

    tell us what’s up with the closing lines of “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”

    Oh, one of my favorites:

    …

    The days, alas, are growing long,
    The nights are getting shorter.
    And Ari shouts, “I do all this,
    For only five and a quarter?”

    Again the sweaty Hellene growls,
    Exhausted now with rage.
    For he knows “what’s a Grecian urn?”
    It’s less than minimum wage.

    Now you might accept the standard Marxist critique that this poem is an indictment of the exploitation of cheap immigrant labor, but that’s because you don’t realize that all creative people are inherently—oh, no, wait. My mistake—these lines are from “Oh, Don!, a Grecian Urn,” by Fred Keats. You were probably thinking of the other one.

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  04:29 PM

  15. Welcome back, O Dangerous One, from your Garry Trudeau-ish sabbatical.

    Of course, while you were away showering, the Decline continued apace.

    Captcha word: “stand,” as in “the place where you live.”

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  04:43 PM

  16. What’s been happening? Canada’s going crazy, that’s what. Our new prime minister, Stephen Harperbush has been busy muzzling his caucus, reneging on Kyoto deals, barring reporters access to areas of the House of Commons, and cancelling a national Child Care plan that was minutes away from being approved. Don’t worry about that, though. He’s replaced it with a $100 monthly payment (before deductions) so that women can stay home instead. Oh, and every once in a while he throws his wackos a bone by reminding everyone that he will soon schedule a free vote to try and reverse the same-sex marriage law.

    Other than that, everything’s fine. Glad you had a good rest but I must say your reading material is hardly beach worthy. Why didn’t you read something more cheerful, like maybe A Million Little Pieces?

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  04:44 PM

  17. Hooray, you’re back!

    Posted by Roxanne  on  06/01  at  05:10 PM

  18. Important developments in the Fafblog mystery have surfaced.

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  05:20 PM

  19. I loved this bit from the USA Today article:

    Even so, Horowitz acknowledges his small staff can’t confirm every incident it receives, and his fact-checkers can be “very loose with the truth.” But he mostly dismisses the criticisms as inconsequential.

    Given this admission, I’d love to know what exactly he thinks fact-checkers should be doing with their time.  Y’know, if they aren’t really required to “check” “facts” or anything. 

    Hmmm… maybe it’s “checking” in the hockey sense…

    Posted by Marita  on  06/01  at  05:25 PM

  20. Just started reading a book called Public Access. It’s one of those tragi-comedies where you’re never sure how it will end—bang, whimper, whatever. Strange thing, the book was published in 1994 but talks of George Bush, Cheney, and lefty professors brainwashing right-thinking students just like in blogs today. Must be time dilatin’.

    Captcha: east. The other west.

    Posted by black dog barking  on  06/01  at  05:37 PM

  21. Welcome back, Herr Professor.

    The Main Event here was that I passed my master’s exam (suckers). I am a master. Of all I survey. And in time I will be D.B., Ph.D., d.b.

    Since I have nothing but time on my hands I got involved in this intentionalism debacle. I feel like I got a ticket for The Da Vinci Code and ended up watching a snuff film. I need a thousand showers.

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  05:41 PM

  22. The only thing i can remember that may have happend is that the Australian parliament experienced a hideous and vile debate over the use of some derogatory phrase, but otherwise nothing much has been happening at all. 

    There is that discussion regarding whether there is life after hockey this year, since there wasn’t any last year.  And a bunch of people drove around in circles a lot last weekend using up tremendous amounts of fuels to do so.  I vaguely recall some press secretary suggesting that his boss needed to tell a lie to the people, but i couldn’t make sense of the reason.

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  05:41 PM

  23. I think when you took your break the progressive blogs were still broiling about the corporate media ignoring Stephen Colbert’s skewering of the...corporate media. You’ll remember of course, the corporate media then went on to do handstands and back flips explaining why they ignored Colbert’s genius performance, but loved Bush’s really, really, really lame “comedy” skit. This continued, I believe, well into your break.

    But you are back just in time for the next round of the same sorry story. Rolling Stone just came out with a front page story by JFK Jr. about how BushCo stole the 2004 election.

    http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002891.htm

    From yesterday’s Bradblog:

    A damning and detailed feature article, written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for Rolling Stone and documenting evidence of the theft of the 2004 Presidential Election is set to hit newsstands this Friday, The BRAD BLOG can now confirm. The online version of the article will be posted tomorrow (Thursday) morning.

    So now we get to watch the corporate media do more contortions explaining why they have been ignoring this huge story since it happened.  What will their excuse be?  Will it be the Downing Street Minutes defense? “This is an old story, that’s why we’re not covering it”.  Will it be the Colbert defense? “It’s not funny enough for us to cover it”.  Will it be the Fair and Balanced defense? “We can’t cover it until the other side has its version of the story ready for us to transcribe and print verbatim”.

    Or will it be some entirely new fresh assault on our intelligence?  Whichever it turns out to be, I hope you slam ‘em good!  But please, no more photos of that Cohen guy. Welcome back.

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  05:43 PM

  24. Fiorentina (#11), I know, I know, I heard about that movie too! I think it’s called “Scary Movie 16” or something. I can’t remember the filmmaker’s name either but – guess what? – he’s the same guy who invented the Internets! How cool is that?!

    Michael, after trying on many, many blogs (political ones, literary ones, serious ones, funny ones, and pink ones with super-high wedges and a little bow in front that were adorable but, alas, impossible to walk in) I had settled on yours as my favorite blog in all the worlds. And then you left (sob, sob). But the subs were pretty good, and we did NOT hide the chalk from them once (although we did tell them that you let us sit anyplace we wanted and share our homework and they, like, totally fell for it).

    So welcome back, oh clean one! But I did miss your additional insights in your only area of expertise I regularly skip over as my eyes glaze over—the hockey field (different from the field hockey, I think?), as we’ve been experiencing an early Hurricanes season up here to the north. Go Sabres! (Really, I know nothing about hockey and COULDN’T care less, but there are some additional requirements, not even mentioned in the fine print, that you must comply with upon moving to Buffalo. I think it has something to do with that tribal identity thingy. And, perhaps, tomorrow we weep. But that’s part of the identity too: tough-coulda-been-contenders. They don’t call it the “City of No Illusions” for nuthin’ – or because they’re always off dreaming up some kind of “hyperreality”!)

    I agree with Clare (#16), as I was most disappointed when I clicked through to Amazon, expecting some juicy beach blanket books. What’s with all the depressiveness, eh?!

    And Marita (#19), yeah, hel-LO, their job would be to be, like, doing whaaat? I guess Horowitz is now all up with the “truthiness”

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  05:47 PM

  25. Mr. Kotter’s back!

    One of the sweatmonkeys: “Did you buy me anything?”

    Horshack: “An engraved mulligan? What’s that?”

    Posted by Kevin Hayden  on  06/01  at  05:48 PM

  26. Welcome back, Prof. Danger!

    Where *is* Fafblog?  I miss my pieblogging, dammit.

    Posted by tikistitch  on  06/01  at  06:03 PM

  27. Michael, thank heavens you’re back! The Internets community needs you!

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  06:57 PM

  28. Oh, sweet Jesus, not golf stories! We missed you and all but DAMN!  How about some hockey stories?

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  07:53 PM

  29. jpj is right to ask Our Sweet Messiah to eschew golfblogging. But Jesus, I think we’ve had enough hockey.

    Posted by Orange  on  06/01  at  08:03 PM

  30. Given your interest in the holy trinity of hockey, the internets and prognosticatin’ let me lay down a challenge to try and top a surreal inadvertent Hockey playoff Usenet prediction I witnessed a number of years ago. On the morning of June 3, 1993 one Jeff Bird posted the following on rec.sport.hockey Has anyone seen a call for a measurement this playoff year? This season?? And sure enough that evening the infamous Kevin-McSorely-Kings-v-Canadiens-stick-penalty-late-goal-playoff-series-momentum-changing thingie happened. Thanks to the wonder/horror of DejaNews/Google you can still read it here. Reviewing it now, it doesn’t come off as impressively as I remembered it - but recall that those were the days of but one Internet (and we were damned glad to have that!) with relatively low posting volume.

    I was reminded of this by the retroactive wild-game prediction that your predecessor made a few weeks back. So saying something like “I don’t know if I have ever seen Darius Kaparitis have a game-winning goal” before Sabres-Penguins Game 7 in 2001 would qualify. Shit ... speaking of which, look at the time.

    My entry:
    I once saw Kevin Stevens conspire with Ken Wregget to turn one of his shots on the opponent’s net into an own goal.

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  08:14 PM

  31. All is can say is, pass me an iced Briere.

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  08:48 PM

  32. Although I’ve only recently become a reader of your blog, in the short time I have been reading it I’ve come to really appreciate your voice.  So, welcome back and I hope your time away gave you the mental and emotional recharging you needed.

    I enjoyed reading your response in USA Today to the deliciously named Mr. Horowitz’s (Whoreowitz’s) comments about your teaching practices.  Having used your Chronicle article “Should I Have Asked John to Cool It” in a campus discussion group on issues of ideology and pedagogy, I find Horowitz’s sly insinuation that your teaching style is doctrinaire rather astonishing.  If that article shows anything, it shows that the politicization of that particular classroom rested squarely with John, and that the liberal/left positions that were espoused emerged rather slowly as a coalition formed among a variety of students (the social libertarian Keep-Your-Laws-Off-My Bong crowd, the undecideds, the anti-war students, etc.) in response to John’s increasingly abusive behavior.

    Here’s what worries me though about Horowitz, and why I sometimes fear he will win the war even if he loses his battle to pass an Academic Bill of Rights.  Contrary to what he claims publicly, I think Horowitz knows that most of the students who are bound for college in the U.S. are pretty conservative.  They may espouse liberal social positions on certain issues (on, say, abortion, or homosexuality, or what have you) but on all the issues that count most deeply to neoconservatives like Horowitz (belief in the value of free market capitalism, for example, and faith in the self-corrective capacities of liberal democracies) these students are, in my opinion, exemplary products of a fairly conservative educational system and culture.  To use an old-fashioned Althusserian term, I think it is fair to say the ISAs have done a pretty good job of inculcating in these students the values of free-market competition and respect for the process of law and electoral politics.

    And I think Horowitz knows this.  But what he also knows is that hand-in-hand with the traditional respect the vast majority of American students pay to these values is a fairly pervasive belief in the importance of hearing “all voices at the table.” This demand for recognition (originally voiced by historically underrepresented people and groups) is, in the hands of someone as politically savvy as Horowitz, politically quite flexible and can now be used to great advantage by those who--though well-funded by wealthy conservative think-tanks and who enjoy an astonishing cultural and political hegemony--can claim nevertheless to be an ignored if not in fact a persecuted minority within the halls of academia.

    So what does Horowitz do?  He toddles off to various campuses to which he has been invited and stages a performance of the very persecution he describes.  The important point here is that Horowitz deliberately and actively manufactures this performace of persecution.  Should he sense any murmurs of dissent or, god-forbid, hissing from the audience, he turns it into an occasion to deliver a barbed insult like “This is a demonstration of what brainwashing will do.” The deliberately inflammatory nature of such remarks has its desired effect and of course only leads to further grumbling from the audience, which then feeds back into the image of poor, persecuted David Horowitz and his like-mided, besieged conservative buddies.

    I have some ideas about why Horowitz engages in this behavior, but I think that there probably limits on the number of lines a person can post in one comment, so I think I’ll end it here and post my take on what Horowitz is up to in a followup post.

    Eric

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  09:40 PM

  33. Welcome back!  I enjoyed Amanda and Lance, and will become a more frequent visitor to their respective sites as a result. 
    But please don’t ask me to explain Greg Easterbrook.  Maybe Scott and Jeff can tell us what he really means.

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  09:40 PM

  34. So why does he do this?  I think there are several reasons:

    1) It serves to buttress Horowitz’s campaign to pass an Academic Bill of Rights.  Ignore the fact that it is all *completely* contrived (and I think Horowitz would, in fact, be absolutely disconsolate if he went to a campus and his appearance there did not occasion a minor uproar) Horowitz can gleeflully point to this as yet further evidence of the need for strong measures to ensure a conservative presence on campuses.  The last thing that Horowitz desires is a cordial reception and an honest and even-handed exchange of ideas, however much he may claim that this is his only goal--as he did, for example, in the Reed College performance.  For such a debate to take place serves no real useful political purpose for someone like Horowitz, who still likes the idea of hurling verbal molotov cocktails despite the fact that he has now decked himself out in the style of the Right. 

    2) It can be used not just as an argument for the need for an Academic Bill of Rights but also, should campuses fail to adopt such measures, as an opportunity for an even more severe reduction of federal funding of public universities.  Horowitz repeatedly claims that legislative imposition of an Academic Bill of Rights would apply only to publicly funded universities and not to private institutions.  Since state universities continue to represent the most affordable opportunity for many minority, first-generation and/or lower income students to attend college, reducing funding to public universities who fail to implement an Academic Bill of Rights ensures that higher education remains (by and large) the preserve of the already privileged and that elite interests are not threatened by too great an influx of students who *might* [and I use “might” advisedly because I don’t have any confidence that membership within certain racial or socio-economic collectivities predisposes one toward a particular socio-political outlook] adopt a critical and oppositional stance towards the liberal meritocratic myth and to the socio-economic system it supports. In short, performances like Horowitz’s provide the ammunition that “small-government” conservatives like when they get around to taking out or reducing lines in the budget, and it provides a wonderful stick/carrot to hold above/out to already cash-strapped public universities.

    3) Finally, performances of public “persecution” by Horowitz and other well-known conservatives on American campuses is absolutely necessary for creating a public script/narrative of the persecution of political conservatives in academia so that incoming students--who as I said are much more conservative in the main than Horowitz publicly acknowledges--have available to them a narrative that will, bloodhound-like, go sniffing out any instance it can seize on as an “experience” of “persecution.” In other words, the narrative has to be produced and circulated so that it can prepare/create the conditions necesary for the production of exactly the “experience” the narrative had prepared the student for and which, once “experienced,” confirms the fundamental truth of the public script.  That the narrative precedes experience rather than emerges from it is attested, I think, by Horowitz’s frequent use of fabricated “testimony” of student persecution in his public presentations.

    Okay,that’s probably a sufficiently long-winded comment from a first-time poster.  I’ll try to exercise more restraint in the future, but I felt I had to weigh in on the Horowitz debacle.  Thanks for maintaining this blog.

    Eric

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  09:41 PM

  35. Thank you for having us!  I had a blast!

    Posted by Amanda Marcotte  on  06/01  at  10:13 PM

  36. Given this admission, I’d love to know what exactly he thinks fact-checkers should be doing with their time.  Y’know, if they aren’t really required to “check” “facts” or anything.

    Marita, apparently Horowitz told his minions something like this:  just as “backchecking” in hockey doesn’t mean that you check people’s backs, “factchecking” doesn’t mean that you check people’s facts.  Surely, as a goaltender, you see the sense in this, since nobody really backchecks anyway.

    Michael, thank heavens you’re back! The Internets community needs you!

    Goodness gracious, Amanda F., that page does need work.  But am I eligible to do it?  While I was hiatusin’, Wikipedia gave me my very own page, too.  Even more prestigious than Discover the Nutworks! 

    And thanks to everyone for insisting that I tell my golf story!  It’s coming right up, all ten thousand words of it.  In the meantime, on the hockey front, this badly-prognosticatin’ blog mourns for the fine city of Buffalo and its world-famous iced Briere, but sends a hearty congratulations to Rod Brind’amour, Doug Weight, and all my former North Carolina neighbors for a most entertaining series.  The guys in red and white really were the better team, especially after Buffalo’s defensemen went down one by one.  Canes in six over the Oil, just for the record.  And here’s a bonus prognostication for JP Stormcrow:  when’s the last time you saw Bret Hedican score a game-winning goal?

    D.B., congrats on that master’s exam, and Eric J-D, thanks for the two-part comment.  You know, I think I said all that and more to Mary Beth Marklein of USA Today, but she took only about two dozen words.  Thank goodness they were a reasonably coherent two dozen.

    Posted by Michael  on  06/01  at  10:39 PM

  37. Your dreams were your ticket out! You know, if the world were more like this blog, your replacement barber would be as good as the regular one.

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  10:58 PM

  38. Darn it, Dick Durata (#18), and several others, y’all beat me to it.

    Of course, Michael, I could tell by your tone of voice and your surreptitious wink: you know, and you know we know, and you know we know you know that We Await Silent Giblets’s Empire.

    Just check for news at your local W.A.S.G.E. receptacle.

    Posted by  on  06/01  at  11:41 PM

  39. Oh, and it’s very clear that Keats meant exactly what he wrote, word for word, nothing more or less than exactly only WHAT HE SAID. I mean, duh. Just read the words on the page. He means what he means because the poem is about his life, and he just wants to say his own special personal thing. And we don’t need to interpret any of it, because everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but the words just mean what they say without interpretation. It’s all good.

    Get it?

    I’m just very concerned that You People might not Get It.

    Posted by  on  06/02  at  12:21 AM

  40. Glad you’re back, Michael. While I’m not nearly as educated and academic as you are, nor am I a hockey fan, I’ve nevertheless enjoyed your writing, even when it floats enticingly above my head. Be careful with that pruner and remember—pruners and showers don’t mix!

    Posted by Wren  on  06/02  at  02:04 AM

  41. I think we need to applaud DH’s great personal courage, as we see in the USA Today article. After all, he “came out” of the left, at great personal risk, given how many authoritarians of his ilk are persecuted every day in the US. For instance, he tells us how at the Pennsylvania hearings, the fearsome Curry “rammed it to me.” It’s no wonder DH feels he must “stake his life” on his beliefs. With only a “small staff” to protect him, and the threat of having “it” being “rammed” to him again and again, this definitely puts one’s life at risk, sanity and reputation having fled long ago.

    Posted by John Protevi  on  06/02  at  08:44 AM

  42. You shot a 79? Now Michael, was it an honest 79? I’m dubious of anyone’s “dumb luck” 79, but that could be because I’m still trying to shoot an honest/dumb luck 99.

    Great to have you back, and thanks to your guest bloggers for the good stuff in your absence.

    Posted by Trout  on  06/02  at  09:46 AM

  43. An honest 79?  What’s that? 

    Actually, it was a one-mulligan 79, but what makes it dubious is that the mulligan was a fairway do-over on the 13th hole, justified (at the time) on the grounds that the jerks ahead of me made me wait ten minutes before I could hit my second shot on a long par five.  (I then caught up to them on the 14th tee, after bogeying 13, and they let me play through.) I wasn’t thinking about my score when I took the mulligan, because I had to par 14 through 18 for the 79 and I didn’t think I had any realistic shot at it (largely because I had not managed to par numbers 14, 15, or 18 up to that point).  I took the fairway mulligan simply because I was pissed off.

    Then I hit all those bizarre putts, and lo!  Suddenly a mildly-tainted 79 was mine.  Too late to go back and do over the do-over on the 13th, though.

    The dumb-luck part consisted of making all three putts on 16, 17, and 18, while chipping in for a birdie on 11 where I would’ve been 30 or 40 feet past the hole if I hadn’t hit the stick.  I figured the way I was hitting the ball tee to green, I was good for about an 83 or 84.  I’d opened with a five-over 41 on the front (four pars to start, but a double bogey on the short, easy ninth), and it didn’t occur to me that I was in 80-breaking range until I teed it up on 16.

    Posted by  on  06/02  at  12:10 PM

  44. In hopes of avoiding any possible issues with some synchophantic mini-me Dr. No claiming you have been devious and/or disingenuous with this 79; i do not note above whether you made the official declaration regarding your position on the first tee as a scratch or handicap player.  And while mulligans grew out of the practice of spending too much time waiting inside the fairy rings along the coast of Scotland, yours seems most reasonably used, as long as it was seconded and agreed to by those playing with you. 

    Just to clear any potential flak shot your way by those, them, him.

    Posted by  on  06/02  at  12:46 PM

  45. when’s the last time you saw Bret Hedican score a game-winning goal?

    I confess my intial reaction to this was “lame choice, Dude”, given Hedican’s recent overtime-forcer. But on further reflection, I find it not mockworthy given the element of a repeated rare event.

    Even further off-topic; the self-mocking pruning saw parody reminded me of a delayed thought I had on your whole fallen tree episode.
    American men of a certain age and class confronted with potentially manhood status-affirming yet dangerous situations should pause and ask themselves: “What would Clark Griswold do?” Not that taking the anti-Griswold course of action is always necessary - but you really have to clearly understand your real motives and where you stand in relation to your “inner newb” before plunging onward. Donald Rumsfeld, for instance (and by extension, all of us), could really benefit from him following this practice.

    Posted by  on  06/02  at  04:20 PM

  46. A one mulligan 79? Damn. Well done. And I wasn’t actually doubting the fact that you could shoot a 79; I was simply flipping crap at a fellow golfer. I’ve seen plenty of iffy low 80s lately (mostly due to my beer swilling playing partners) and am honestly, truly, sincerely impressed. Sorry if my tone suggested otherwise.

    Posted by Trout  on  06/02  at  06:17 PM

  47. Trout—hey, I didn’t hear anything in your tone, so no apologies necessary.  Besides, it was a legit question.  The cool thing is that the 79 was gimme-free, because no scuffed three-footers were involved.  Anyway, here’s the deal.  The sixteenth hole really was the heart of the story:  as I suddenly realized that three closing pars would be good for 79, and that I was teeing off on a short par 5 I was capable of reaching in two (thus possibly setting up a birdie and giving myself some insurance on the tough 18th), I duck-hooked the drive into the trees.  Of course.  But a nervy 4-iron to within 50 yards put me back in play, whereupon I learned that the pin was impossible to reach, perched on the downslope of a little hill and tucked tightly behind a high-lipped bunker.  Cursing under or over my breath, I hit a loft wedge as high as I could, dead at the pin—and caught the downslope, rolling off the back of the green by a few feet.  No problem, I thought, I’ll just chip back up the hill and leave the ball a foot or so short!  Hah.  The ball went a foot past the hole—and then slid inexorably down the opposite side of the hill, rolling slowly until it was 18 or 20 feet away in a little valley.  Now I had to putt back up and over the hill and make the ball stop somehow on the downslope, with a nasty break right.  I hit the putt for a WTF par.  Number 17 was a save from sand capped off by a twisting 8-footer, and 18 required me to pop a short loft wedge over a greenside bunker and hold the ball on a terraced green.  I cleared the bunker with maybe six inches to spare, rolled the ball past the hole and down to the next tier of the green, 15 feet away—and then hit the comebacker anyway.  All with a crappy little putter I hadn’t used in 20 years.  Dumb luck doesn’t often arrive in such big hefty packages.  Oh, and the course is right here.

    And JP, I completely forgot about Hedican’s game-tying goal in Buffalo the other night.  Oddly, I was thinking about his game-tying goal in the first finals game in 1994 when the Canucks beat the Rangers in OT.  Lame choice, indeed. 

    Posted by Michael  on  06/02  at  09:12 PM

  48. "Trinitron”?!

    Excuse me, but the term “Trinitron” is already taken, the brand name of a Sony make TV.  This is America, bud.  If there’s one thing we take serious it’s the proprietary rights of TV makers, even more so than other capitalists.  As Colonel Bat Guano tells Mandrake, “If you’re wrong about this nuclear holocaust thing, you’re going to have to answer to the Coca Cola company!”.

    Posted by  on  06/05  at  11:53 PM

  49. Fafnir reappeared, appropriately, on June 6.

    Posted by  on  06/07  at  09:38 AM

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