Sarah McLachlan is a terrorist

Have you ever been filled with blind rage after those animal cruelty commercials? I have. When I see them, I feel a sudden and nearly uncontrollable urge to twist Sarah McLachlan's head off her shapeless Canadian shoulders.

If I don't beat my dogs, I shouldn't have to watch these commercials.

It's a testament to the power of sad music and low fps rates––the power to turn almost anything into a sentimental tear-fest. You could slow down footage of your children at the dentist's office or eating cat poop out of the litter box, play it during primetime, and probably get someone to donate money to you. People will be forced to believe that your kids were the victims of drunk drivers or mesothelioma. 

For the less pliable among us, these commercials are a shock to the central nervous system not unlike suddenly being dunked into icy water from a position of relative comfort. Let's say you're the average Joe unwinding with one of my least favorite shows (Two and a Half Men, How I met your Mother). You're giggling a little, because nothing you've seen is so much funny as uniformly tittered at by canned laughter. The show cuts inevitably to commercial, and your expectations are nil. 

Instead of a bland Pepsi ad or one of those insipid Campbell's Soup commercials narrated by Tim Allen, you're treated––without warning––to the pathetic countenances of dogs and cats at the pound, ostensibly the victims of animal cruelty. They have huge, goober–filled black eyes, mangy coats, and some glistening, watery snot hanging out of their noses. 

You have done nothing to earn this. You probably don't swing your cat by the tail or gouge out your dog's eyes. And if you do, you're a fucker unworthy of human dignity because cruelty of any kind isn't tolerated in this tribe. But if you're a normal person you're 1) not expecting the levity of, say, 3rd Rock from the Sun to contrast so savagely with McLachlan's mournful tune and the disheartened gazes of pound pups; 2) more than a little offended that someone would shill anything, no matter how noble, in such a discombobulating way; and 3) annoyed at the bleary-eyed self-righteousness of the whole affair.

Intelligent people see this as fertile ground for satire.

Believing in something so strongly that you alienate your family, friends and fans is a sign of mental illness.

Ibishcomedy got it right: These ASPCA commercials emotionally strong-arm you into donating money. No matter how worthy, no cause is worth the heavy-handed treatment you've received at the hands of this commercial. There's something icky––greasy––about it.

Most commercials try to influence your purchasing decisions through sheer saturation. If you've seen a thousand Burger King ads, you're more likely to buy a hamburger there, even if you're not predisposed to eating at Burger King. The reason everybody owns an iPod is because Apple made the image of the iPod ubiquitous. Next time you want a burger, you'll visit BK; when you need tunes, you'll reach for your iPod.

ASPCA doesn't work like that. There's no market for saving abused and neglected animals, but by hijacking your compassion it can create a market out of a moment's guilt. The word for this is "rude." Where every ad you see on television relies on pre-existing buying habits, the ASPCA elbows its way into your life on a road paved with pure pathos. 

Join ASPCA or we'll kill this dog.

What bleeding heart organizations have created are anti-ads that break you away from your passive, TV-watching state. They're not selling products, but a whole philosophy that's antithetical to the gentle drone of televised blather. But that's why we watch TV, and why ASPCA owes you an apology.

Why I can never eat at Pac-Out again

For me, Pac-Out was the local fast food joint at the bottom of my hill. At least for this Boisean, it occupied a privileged place in my imagination, as it was (and is) across the street from the nearly mythological McU Sports and that rainbow road to downtown, Harrison Boulevard.

And so it remained, enshrined in its past glories. It was my junk food joint of choice, and between the ages of 13 and 18, the home of the $4.85 Herby Special––a greasy pile of meat, lettuce, and pickles, hurled carelessly into a golden nest of french fries and served up with a white foam cup of Mountain Dew.

Imagine my disappointment when I revisited my old haunt yesterday, only to find that the Herby Special had almost doubled in price. I felt like Michael Douglas in Falling Down, when he trashes a convenience store over the grossly inflated price of Coca Cola. I wanted to jump over the counter and tip over the Soft Serve ice cream machine. I wanted to belch bile and fire and hate.

Luckily I didn't. I don't have enough money to replace a Soft Serve machine, and it would take years for the innocent high schoolers who work there to process such an outburst, let alone comprehend it. But I was truly crestfallen that such a magnificent facet of my youth was now prohibitively out of reach. There are better things for a guy like me to do with eight bucks and change, and there's a certain pain that comes from having your favorite junk food fail to meet the cost/benefit test.

When I came down with the flu in high school and lost 18 pounds, it was to the Herby Special that I turned to regain my strength. After my protracted fight with that illness (during which I couldn't eat, sleep, or even pee for three days) my stomach had contracted, and I couldn't even finish my meal; but being so full I might burst never felt so good.

During my junior year in high school, my then-girlfriend, Tanya, had a part time job at Pac-Out, and I well-remember visiting her there to stuff my face and gaze into her blue eyes. She had just gotten out of a relationship with her 26-year old manager, whom I met several times, and who could never remember who I was. (I was convinced he was the biggest idiot in Boise.) After Tanya quit and left for college, she told me that she still dreamed about the drive-thru buzzer going off.

Soon after I noticed that the burgers got a little greasier, and the fries a little drier, a little less scrumptious. I went to college myself, lost touch with Tanya, moved out of the Boise highlands, and forgot about my beloved Herby Special for almost a decade.

When I returned to Boise from graduate school I hit up my old haunts. In my opinion, you haven't settled back in to living in Boise until you've dined at Guido's Pizza, Chang Mai, and Parilla. Occasionally I'd be in that neck of the North End, and hate myself for not carrying enough cash to visit.

Last night was going to be Pack-Out's night. My lady-friend lives near 26th, and we were going to grab a bite to eat and do the First Thursday thing by visiting an art gallery. We parked in that no man's land between Pac-Out and Hill Road, walked to the counter, and peered myopically at the menu. My heart revved, fluttered, and sucked in bloody backwash: "$8.35 for a Herby Special? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?" I thought.

Those sweaty summer evenings when I would bike down and get a hamburger or visit Tanya washed over me like a tsunami and dragged me out to sea. After taking leave of time and space, I took leave of my senses and launched into an anti-Pac-Out tirade that I'm sure drove the new car smell from Vanessa's RAV-4 and will be the ultimate demise of our relationship.

My inarticulateness stuck in my craw: Why am I never as good at expressing myself with the spoken word as I am with the written? Why is the past always brighter than the present? My only consolation is that the Herby Special continued its slow decline and isn't coated in gold leaf like it is in my fondest memories.

Because Facebook needs a rulebook

Typically when I meet someone out in the world, my interactions with him/her are limited to quasi-formal social or professional gatherings, and I could care less if that person, say, obsesses over horoscopes or sends money to PETA. In fact, I'd rather not know, and thankfully commonly understood social protocols make it awkward for my passing acquaintances to expose their niche interests or psychological quirks in public.

But Facebook is a little different from out in the world. Everybody has that one friend who three times a day posts gooey inspirational quotations, or picks fights, or makes everything political. If you're that person, or if you're that person sometimes, there's hope. Just follow the six rules below, and let me know if you drum up a few of your own.

Never reveal anything on Facebook you wouldn't say to someone you're meeting for the first time in person.

Imagine the following scenario: In the last seven days, your grandmother (whom you didn't know all that well) died; and you've just had amazing casual sex with someone you've had a crush on for a long time. Which of these two events will you share with a person selected at random from your Facebook friends?

If you chose to talk about your sex life, grab a square foot of tin foil out of the pantry, roll it up into a ball, and chew on it. That's how you make everybody feel when you write about your sex life or troubled relationships on Facebook.

Think before you post.


I've had this happen to me way too many times: I'll have the perfect one-liner response to someone's post, but it's not exactly PC. I read over what I've written, and decide that I'm not comfortable having that one-liner under my name, so I move on. And every time I failed to move on, I regretted it later.

Remember that when you respond to a post or comment, everybody who has posted to that thread gets an e-mail.


So, you know how every time your super popular friend says something even remotely witty, he/she gets 35 comments and 60 "likes?" You might not realize this, but your popular friend receives an e-mail for every idiotic "u r so purty grrrl!" and "I'm so grateful to have such a wonderful person in my life!" your dumb ass decides to "add" to the conversation. So don't be the last person to say what everyone else already knows.

There's nothing more irritating than a cause.


Some time ago there was a trend of people changing their profile pictures to cartoon characters to protest child abuse. Here's the thing: People who beat kids don't give a shit what you think. They rough kids up in private, then threaten them into not getting help. It's just about the most heinous, fucked-up thing there is, and changing your profile picture to Goofy isn't going to do anything to stop it. What this show of solidarity amounted to was a bunch of do-gooders agreeing with each other that child abuse is wrong while achieving absolutely nothing.

Election season is coming around. I hear there will be one at the end of next year. So if you're posting Barack Obama's Christmas photos and taking cheap shots at Ron Paul, just remember that you're the reason why some smart people capriciously vote Republican––because anything is better than being like you.

Don't fish for comments.


Do you refer small decisions to your loyal Facebook followers? Does it bother you when you post something and nobody leaves a comment? Do you frequently post provocative details about your life to see if a certain person will respond? I was that guy way back in high school (before Facebook, when MySpace was king), and I only woke up from my sleazy little stupor when I realized how needy and insecure I was being.

People are who they are inescapably in the real world, and even more so on Facebook because social media offer the illusion that you can be whomever you want to be. Thus your crippling personality flaw––in this case, your constant need to be validated on account of your insecurity––is magnified to the point that every right thinking person in your social circle can see it in sharp contrast. It's the social version of Oprah standing against striped wallpaper and the only known cure is, for one collapsing-barn-that-is-your-heart moment, seeing yourself for the ass you really are. You're welcome.

Never, ever post song lyrics or inspirational quotes.


These two things may seem unrelated, but I know what drives you to sing on Facebook or wax philosophical: It's the overpowering (and false) sense that you're an individual, reveling in the joys and calamities of life and sharing perfect gems of articulation with your loving friends and family.

The problem is, people ignore serial inspirers the way they ignore fallen leaves and broken beer bottles on the side of the road, so these nuggets of wisdom and snatched-from-context song lyrics amount to nothing but clutter. What's more, this chicken soup for the Facebook soul advertises the poster's insecurities. Life has given your annoying friend lemons, but the fact that he/she is quoting Bartlett's on Facebook means that your friend isn't making lemonade right now because he/she can't find the sugar.

My guess is, posters of quotes and lyrics are the most likely to take offense by this blog post. They're probably asking, "Where does all this hate come from?" Shut the fuck up. The chronic do-gooders of the world only want to spread peace and love, and for the life of me I've never been able to convince them that painting the world in their saccharine false light doesn't actually make life better.

…

Like I alluded to earlier, this isn't an exhaustive list of annoying behavior on Facebook. There are some great rules out there that still need to be ferreted out and articulated so people will learn good social media citizenship. 

J is for Jeezus

J is for Jesus. I know this because the lady in the dinged-up 1990s minivan told me so.

My interaction with this person began innocuously: I had gotten off my bike at the foot of the Boise foothills to make a phone call. Coming to a halt at a nearby stop sign she rolled down her window and asked me if I was freezing. This is a perfectly reasonable question to ask a person wearing Spandex at five in the evening the day after Christmas. I told her that, yeah, I was fine. That would have been a great moment for this Good Samaritan to roll up her window and go on her merry way.

Instead she took the opportunity to brandish a candy cane and ask if I believed in Christmas; if I knew that J is for "Jesus," and R is for "chevron." Now, a question about one's belief in a major Christian holiday in Idaho is code for "are you a Christian?" and after a brief discussion that consisted of her asking pointed questions about what I believe and me nodding like an idiot bobble head doll, she eventually wished me well, waved, and drove off.

J is for "Jesus?" Chevrons? There's an acronym for that: WTF. It turned my head that after millennia of Christian dominance over the Western world, this woman had the gall to talk to me in ciphers, as though Nero's spies might overhear and feed the twain of us to the lions.

But once an oppressed group, always an oppressed group. Just think about all the people you know who life has kicked around, or social conservatives, or spokespeople for labor unions: Like Nietzsche's slave morality, these people carry the politics of oppression with them wherever they go, even when they're in charge. Within the broader oppressed community, authenticity is defined––as it always has been––by suffering and underground-ness.

So now that Christianity is a mainstream faith cherished two or three times a year by millions of sensible people the question is, who's the most hardcore kind of Christian? After all, these establishment Christians can't be the real deal.

The answer: Christians who speak to each other in code. J can indeed stand for "Jesus." And the chevron (usually with an eye drawn somewhere in it) is the original for the Jesus fish that now adorns so many car bumpers. Clearly I was dealing with one of the most hardcore Christians of all––a modern-day Paul or Arius––; one of those people who sacrifice the warmth and comfort of friends, intelligence, success, social competence for…heaven? Legitimacy? Communion wafers? It's impossible to say for sure.

I'd always been told that there are three topics that shouldn't be discussed in mixed company. Those are sex, politics, and religion. This formula subjects these three areas of life to the rules of propriety, which is the source of my general antipathy towards Pride Week, the Tea Party, and Evangelical Christianity. Some people prioritize their beliefs over manners and decorum just like how someone who hates pants might one day decide to not wear them to work, and the effect is a lot like when someone reads over your shoulder, or how tall people seem to tower imperiously over your personal space.

I'm not religious, and like most decent people I consider on-the-spot religious discussion a kind of intrusion. Though invisible from the waist down on account of her battered minivan, my candy cane-wielding believer was clearly not wearing pants. It was as though during her spiel about whether I was One of Us she had casually dropped them out the window as a token of our newfound familiarity. Except it wasn't. It was like something a crazy person would do.

What critics got wrong about Stieg Larsson

"We're not making any money off these Stieg Larsson novels, so here's my plan: Let's attach an intriguing director and an all-star cast to their movie adaptations so we can disregard Sweden's seminal film interpretations of those same novels and make zillions of dollars."

This conversation (or one like it) had to have taken place in some producer's Los Angeles board room, possibly accompanied by maniacal laughter, lightning bolt. And now that we Yanks have seen fit to make a version of our own, the English language Inter-tubes are aflutter with excitement.

A lot of this critical chaff zeros in on Lisabeth Salander, the trilogy's anti-heroine and feminist stocking-stuffer. The women's studies implications of Salander are voluminous: She's a battered woman with an interesting sex life who hates (and exacts revenge upon) men who hate women. She may or may not have the ladies studies merits of Pippi Longstocking.

Katie Roiphe's recent Slate post hints that there may be more to Salander than the armchair feminists and literary critics give her credit for. At the organs of right-thinking feminist prose, "you will hear the assumption of victimization…and the simultaneous assertion of power." What's more, this character has come to the forefront of our collective imagination on the eve of The Good Men Project and The End of Men. Coincidence? Roiphe thinks not.

Roiphe doesn't go so far as to explain what it is about Salander that makes her more than grease on the literati's gears. This is because critics are stuck on the woman-ness of Lisabeth Salander, and haven't broadened their scope beyond feminist cause celebre: that she's an archangel of democratic values.

Consider what she's up against in the novels. Her nemeses are misogynists, yes, but also the barrage of confusions of the rote application of the law and the pursuit of justice. Salander was committed to a mental institution at an early age because of the political significance of her father, and her further adventures are inhibited by her status as an invalid.

Like the cases of Solzhenitsyn and Ai Wei Wei (as I indicated in an earlier post), the label of mental illness haunts the footsteps of political dissidents, even in a place as genuinely concerned with the wellbeing of its citizenry as Salander's Sweden.

At one point in the first novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Salander's caseworker explains that based on Salander's history of antisocial behavior no-one would think twice about his revoking certain of her privileges: Everything would be Ordnung on paper. Much ado derives from how things look in official documents and reports, and the problem Larsson identifies in his novels is the disconnect between those documents and the values of truth, justice and compassion.

On the subject of paper, consider also the role of the press in Salander's life. Mikael Blomkvist is Salander's staunchest ally throughout the Millennium series, and in his capacity as muckraker he's freed to pursue Salander's twisted case down the most unlikely avenues. His investigations reveal more than Sweden's underbelly of corruption––they reveal precisely what is hidden from the police. In other words, the investigative reporter can dig where the detective cannot because Blomkvist remains forever outside the system.

Now consider where democratic values come from. Isn't, say, freedom of speech most important to people who say unpopular things? And surely the presumption of innocence is most valuable to the innocent man who just happens to appear guilty, so it makes sense that Lisabeth Salander embodies these things in series of novels about why those values require our eternal vigilance.

The significance of all this is that if critics merely see Salander as a stand-in for feminist values, the Millennium series becomes nothing more than a revenge tale in the mold of Inglourious Basterds. Yes, Lisabeth Salander is interesting from a feminist point of view, but Larsson's novels are a defense of the whole philosophical framework that makes feminist thought possible.

Steve Bloom: professor, pariah, punk rocker

Steve Bloom has, purposefully or not, become the Sid Vicious of Iowa journalism. And maybe more. Response to his recent article in The Atlantic is divided between those who take umbrage against Bloom's facts and conclusions, and those who see his perspective as a critique of journalism or Iowa or the upcoming caucuses or whatever. At any rate, Steve Bloom is the man a lot of Iowans love to hate––the man who brought a little punk to a place that may (or may not) be the urheimat of corn and hogs.


By now there must be dozens of full-length responses to the offending article. Those responses come from such notable corners as the Columbia Journalism Review and The Washington Post, and the headline is, "University of Iowa journalism professor kicks unlikely and 'frankly frightening' hornets' nest."

Ask his students if anyone really "gets" Steve Bloom

Anybody who has ever spent time in Iowa knows that the last thing the place is, is a hornets' nest. It's full of calm, collected, clean people––with the totally understandable exception of game days––who are proud of being forthright and slow to anger. If it ever seems like a boring place, it's because Iowa is perhaps one of the most normal places on Earth.


––Which is precisely what makes Bloom's article so damned amazing: It has managed to really piss these people off. 


Not every claim Bloom makes in his Atlantic piece is absolutely 100% accurate (as more than one Iowan has noted in the comments section of the article's online edition), but a lot of Iowa is rural. Some of it is crumbling and Podunk. Corn grows. People eat pork and think highly of Jesus. But Iowa's also exceptionally verdant, tidy, and toy-bright. Barns are uniformly painted lipstick red, lawns and men's hair are cropped close as golf greens, and people tuck in their shirts.


The insider truth is that Iowans accept Iowa's contrasts without remark––the green of the corn and the blue of the sky, calloused hands and fresh linens, a disconcerting mix of progressive and conservative––and expect the same from the rest of us. The only thing that could upset such staid and placid folk is a half-truth. They ignore the lie that Iowa is flat or that its people are stupid (no man knows his business quite like an Iowan) or that it's secretly Idaho, but Steve Bloom's half-truths are simply more than respectable people can turn their backs on.


Bloom's take-down of the Iowa caucus tries to prove that Iowans no longer represent mainstream America, but in so doing he painted a picture of Iowa that Iowans themselves swear they don't recognize. And just like punk rock, the more some finger-wagging, latte-sipping, city-dwelling liberal tries to define you, the more you're likely to rebel against his definition. As one Iowan mentioned on my Facebook wall, "Reading [the article] the whole time I felt a square peg / round hole vibe when I looked at my own life here."  


This is where most of Bloom's haters miss the point. Of course, they're justified in their quarrel with his depiction of their home, but Bloom's comments about "scuzzy" towns and corporate farms are just set pieces in an argument over whether Iowa can, through the caucus, continue to lay claim to being the "real" America. The bulk of America's population now lives in the 'burbs and on the heavily urbanized coasts, as do the media corporations that are increasingly the masters of public opinion.

Outside the world of Pace sauce, New York is the new Real America

There's a general consensus that the Iowa caucus plays a disproportionate role in the Republican nomination process, playing into the hands of the social conservatives who make up that party's grass roots. Like a Frenchman wearing a beret or Africans with bones in their noses, the Iowa farmer showing up at a caucus with his hog and flannel shirt is a quaint anachronism that defrauds political discourse. In a much more recognizable Iowa, that farmer might make his entrance in a coat and tie, just like everyone else in America. 


The irony is that in order to debunk Steve Bloom, Iowans will first have to debunk the image of Iowa the media presents to the rest of America through the spectacle of their caucus.

Why 'Huck Finn' is still the Great American Novel

Last weekend my aunt and uncle moved into a new house down in the valley after 30 years of living in Boise's highlands. When I arrived for the moving party I was shocked to see their old abode––which had always struck me as fabulously filthy and hopelessly infested with black widows––devoid of objets d'art and the nooks and crannies that usually hide dust bunnies and poisonous spiders.

As my aunt packed some miscellaneous books into boxes, she handed me a copy of the Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume I. "Do you want this," she asked. Of course I did.

I began reading it in earnest when I got home in much the same way he dictated it, haphazardly jumping from one story and set of reminiscences to another, and found myself laughing aloud at characters the master was able to paint in the space of a sentence or a paragraph. Twain is at his best when he's describing just what kind of hero or villain a given person really is.

In a fit of enthusiasm I drew from my bookshelf my copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and in doing so it fell to the ground, opening to pages 226 and 227, about three quarters of the way through. What I found there startled me with its prescience regarding the American soul and that novel's place in the canon.

But before I quote from the novel, let me suggest that like my aunt and uncle, the American novel has relocated from the heights and down into the lowlands. If, as Hemingway and Faulkner suggest, American literature grew from the seed that is Huck Finn, it's clear that much of the artistic work that followed in its footsteps has in some way been a reaction to it.

In my opinion, most authors side with either Twain's remarkable ear for the American voice, or his uncanny eye for the expanse of the American landscape. Few have tried––fewer still have succeeded––in capturing both. Consequently their readers must content themselves with being either deaf or blind.

Just take the work being produced today by the Jonathan Franzens, –Safran Foers and Eugenides of the world: So much of its focus is trained on the "alive"-ness of history and the 20th century's upheaval of sensibilities. Would The Help be much improved if it didn't take for granted the wrong-ness of mistreating house servants?

––Which leads me to what I found on page 227 of Huck Finn.

"So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter––and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather, right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

'Miss Watson your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. 

Huck Finn'"

The hilarious disgrace of the outcome of Huck's reasoning undoes the American fallacy of the easy decision. Huck faces a problem of the conscience, and his solution is to trivialize it.

Our hero wants to have his cake and eat it, too, figuring he can literally send his faithful companion up shit creek and pray for his own conscience later. Given its location within the novel, it's clear this isn't the catalyst for Huck's rambling adventure––it isn't the joke––: It's the punchline. When confronted with a choice between what's right (acknowledging the property of others) and righter still (acknowledging that Jim is a human being), Huck chooses what's merely right.

His dual sense that Jim is both man and chattel is an enduring feature of a distinctly American ethic. Wall Street holds that capitalism is the system that best puts security and material prosperity into the hands of the greatest number of people, and has admirably maintained as much in the face of millions of Americans losing their jobs and homes. 

A lot of bankers have made millions of dollars for themselves, their clients, and their shareholders, and I have to assume that they spend no small amount of their spare time praying for their eternal souls.

Like Huckleberry Finn, America is still a child trying to make sense of right and wrong, and we continue to feel blindly for the line between doing right by ourselves and doing right by the people around us. Russian novelist Mikhail Bulgakov acidly noted in his novel The Master and Margarita that "To speak the truth is easy and pleasant." But America is a young, naive place, and Twain's America hasn't yet the moral or ethical firmament to make Huck's––or Bulgakov's––dilemma a moral one until Huck feels the weight of his actions on his own conscience.

We can't laugh at either until we've felt for ourselves the pain of disregarding humanity or telling a convenient lie.