The Kyra Carnival

Just a quick note on all the hype over Kyra Phillips and her national bathroom moment-

Kyra and her husband John are very good friends and it’s rather surreal to see her going through a bunch of hoopla over off-air comments made public- after she was so helpful to me back when I was dealing with fallout caused by inadvertently open microphones just a couple of years ago.

It looks like she’ll fare a bit better than the Reg Guys did. After all, most of her private/public comments were positive things about her husband. As for her future relations with her sister-in-law. That’s to be worked out between family members, and who knows how ugly that will get before it’s resolved?

We haven’t spoken directly since the incident. But through several traded voice-mails my sense is that the whole thing has been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster. At first she was in good spirits about it, making jokes, etc. But day two brought on a lot of unexpected criticism that seemed to change the mood a bit.

I didn’t get all that inquisitive over the phone because Jane and I had been planning to get together with Kyra and John for dinner tonight- so I thought I’d wait to see how the whole thing shook out. Then I received the last in the series of voice-mails this afternoon and she broke it to me that they had to cancel dinner because she was going to New York to appear on Letterman tonight.

So there it is- the full circle. She was embarrassed, then attacked by Rush and comics all around- and now she’ll appear on Dave and be her charming self and win people over. It’s quite possible that this will end up being the biggest boost her career has ever had.

It’s a funny world.

Anger Management

What to do with 'nagging' anger?

I believe that anger is something that should be temporary in most cases. I’ve never had much interest in people who harbor grudges, or worse yet, the types that appoint themselves Karma sheriff and set out to make sure the deserving get their comeuppance.

My philosophy is that in the present we should only really care about the things that we’ll still care about when laying on our deathbed. Chances are the petty grievances we have with family members and co-workers won’t matter much to us as we contemplate our lives from the vantage point of our last breath. I suspect that most of us will be wondering whether we were good friends, good parents, etc. So I try to put things in perspective and keep lasting anger at bay.

But sometimes...

...sometimes anger makes a strong fight to stay in the foreground of mood and conscience. It becomes difficult to overcome when someone else makes a mistake that affects us in a negative way. I can handle it when I screw up my own affairs, but others aren’t so welcome to do the same. Especially when the consequences are irreversible.

It’s a small thing really-

My wife decided that our Tivo memory was full of too many old programs last night and decided to do some drastic housecleaning. If she had taken the time to look at what she was deleting I’m sure she wouldn’t have dusted the only record of the only national TV appearances ever done by yours truly. But she didn’t bother to look and they’re gone forever.

I haven’t looked at those things in years and I have no idea why I wanted them there to begin with. Perhaps I thought my grandchildren would see them or some such nonsense. But the irreversibility of the whole thing was frustrating and old-man anger tugged hard at my afternoon mood.

He said, “stop being so rational and keep sulking- you have the right- that bitch screwed you up!” And he had a good argument that I found convincing for a half-hour or so.

But then I came to my senses and realized, as usual, that seething anger is a waste of time. Those shows are gone and they ain’t coming back no matter how much I pout about it. Then the realization hit me that I would eventually get over it.

And so long as I’ll eventually get over it- I might as well immediately get over it. To do otherwise (seething & pouting) is simply a waste of time.

And that was it- the anger was gone.

Poof!

The power of rational thought can be quite awesome.

Besides:
I hear Einstein used to make a habit out of throwing away all of his notes every few years in an effort to keep his work fresh and sharp.

Chances are my wife didn’t toss anything that was as important as Einstein’s notes- although that first dust-up with Michael Medved and Bill Press on CNBC was pretty good.

Oh well.

Reminder!

Just a quick reminder. There is no show today. There is no show next Saturday
either.

BTW:
We're looking to add a few things and give the page a light overhaul over the next couple of days. So keep an eye out-

libertarian hippies unite,
eric

Pluto, we hardly knew ye...

Well, that’s it- Pluto has been demoted. Poor little Pluto is no longer a planet.

School children the world over will mourn but this new reclassification is as close to a good decision that could have been hoped for out of The International Astronomical Union. The group has been meeting for what seems like forever to clear up the planetary mess that’s developed over the years and they appear to have bitten the bullet and done the right thing.

Pluto’s status as a planet has always been a topic of scientific debate. We weren’t taught that in school and so we’ve always considered it to be as legitimate as the big eight, but it never was.

The twin facts that kids love it and that it’s the only planet discovered by an American kept it in the show longer than it ever deserved. The death knell came when another planet was discovered recently that’s a bit larger and three times farther from Pluto than Pluto is from the Sun.

It became obvious that new and better telescopes were going to keep finding these pieces of round cosmic debris from the Kuiper Belt and calling them all planets was going to lead to an absurdly crowded neighborhood. So the experts did the right thing and acted to rectify the situation.

We can all be thankful that the idiotic ideas floated out of this meeting a few weeks ago (see earlier blog entitled ‘Outer Space Outrage’) that would have added three planets, including a couple of moons, were shot down.

In fact my suggested solution in that earlier blog was very nearly completely adopted. I wanted to see a system of Major and Minor planets and Pluto’s new designation as one in a new classification of ‘Dwarf’ planets is much the same idea.

I didn’t get everything I wanted. It’s my contention that in order to be a planet the sizable round object should be required to orbit the sun primarily, ruling out all moons. This doesn’t seem to have been made into a hard and fast rule but the qualifier that the round object must “clear the neighborhood around its orbit” goes a long way toward the goal of insisting that a planet have the Sun as it’s main dancing partner.

Now those smart guys should get together and have another meeting to decide on a proper name for our own moon. Other planets get moons with really cool names like Titan, Callisto, and Charon... but our moon is just called the moon. That seems kinda crappy.

Premise Fatigue

Political argument is increasingly leaving me in a frustrated state of mind these days. Reasoned positions debated with passion have become a thing of the past.

A Leftist friend recently accused me of being a ‘Bush cultist’ because I don’t favor an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. A conservative buddy of mine is trying to convince me that the War on Terror is nothing more than a ruse being used by politicians of all stripes to reclaim the relevance in constituent’s lives they’ve lost over the last few years. And I overheard a discussion in the office today between three ladies talking about the new Spike Lee Katrina documentary that held as its unquestionable premise that the Bush administration doesn’t give a damn about black people.

How is it possible to engage in rational dialogue with those that cling to such silly beliefs? Isn’t it at all possible that the politicians we don’t agree with are just wrong? Must they be demon-ized and assumed to be the hydra-heads of large conspiracies against the general public?

Ayn Rand hit the nail on the head when she repeated tirelessly to anyone who would listen to her ornery ass- ‘Check Your Premises!’

It is impossible for a good argument to rest upon a faulty premise.

The president is not a cult leader. The War on Terror is not an illusion crafted to distract an otherwise unhappy public. And the current administration is not geared toward stripping the dignity from ethnic minorities. These are not arguments worthy of retort.

That is not to say that there are not an awful lot of good arguments against this president and his administration. It’s just that none of those good arguments are based in conspiracy theory.

I’d like to think that I could make the decision to debate only sane people but they are getting so difficult to find as of late.

Mad Pundit Radio Preview for 8/19/06

On Saturday August 19th, 2006 the cast and crew of Mad Pundit Radio will descend upon the studios of 640 WGST at 1pm to grind out the next political dance-party. Here are some of the issues in the hopper:

Mid-80’s Peter Gabriel look-a-like John Mark Karr is arrested in Thailand for the murder of Jon-Benet Ramsey. As Lucky put it in a voice-mail to the pundit, “he looks like he’s guilty of something.” The pundit agrees. But is he guilty of this particular crime? His ex-wife has cast doubt on the story saying he was with her during that Christmas season. But Thai officials seem to believe they’ve got the right man. And what’s the deal with the Boulder D.A.?
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The cease-fire is on in Lebanon and Hizbollah is busy buying the allegiance of the Lebanese citizens with rebuilding grants for those who lost property during the Israeli bombardment. Let’s leave aside the truth that the Lebanese citizens are being bullied into accepting funds from Hizbollah under threat of reprisal from the militia group.

Let’s concentrate on another question. Where in the hell does this band of outlaws get all of this reparation money from? Syria? Iran? Is it okay for any country to step in and buy loyalty from these folks? If so, why not us? We have more money than Iran. Let’s buy ‘em if we have to.

We’ll also get into the general state of the cease-fire. Is it as advertised, a chance for international troops to get in there and disarm Hizbollah, or just breathing space that will allow the militia to resupply for the next round of rocket attacks?
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Cynthia McKinney claims that the electronic voting machines now being used in the state of Georgia are ‘designed’ to steal elections. Mind you she’s not saying that they are faulty. She’s not saying they could malfunction and declare a wrong winner. She’s saying that they are actually designed at the factory to steal elections, presumably from minorities.

Ms. McKinney received a standing ovation from over 200 people at the church where she made these statements. The pundit would like to explore the phenomenon of racial paranoia. What kind of person falls for this load of crap?
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The pundit is beside himself over something that most have paid no attention to. A group of elite astronomers are about to change the definition of the word ‘planet.’ The solar system made up of the nine planets you were taught about in school is about to change drastically and the so-called experts have gotten it all wrong! Tune in and the pundit will rant and rave and convince you he, and only he, has the right system of planet classification.
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That’s the stuff in the hopper. As usual we may get to it all... but will probably run out of time. And there’s always the chance your host will decide to go in a completely different direction at the last minute. You can bet on a Lightning Round or two- but the rest of the show depends on whatever mood overtakes the pundit just before we go on-air.

Please join us.

Strong Women

Just a quick thought before I lay me down to sleep:

I think it’s interesting that whenever a person criticizes a female liberal icon they’re likely to be told that they’re just afraid of a strong woman. This comes as quite a surprise to those of us Libertarian conservatives who were rather heavily influenced by the work of Ayn Rand. But the criticism is leveled nonetheless.

Hillary detractors are often bombarded with this sort of thing. To disagree with her policies is to reveal yourself as someone who simply can’t handle the idea of empowered women getting their turn at the leadership wheel. It couldn’t be that you simply have a problem with her ideas. The truth, so say the sycophants, is that your manhood is somehow threatened by her presence at the table.

The few remaining Cynthia McKinney advocates pick up the Hillary chant and up the ante with the race card. According to these devotees of the recently deposed representative of Georgia’s 4th district anyone inclined to debate her is not only afraid of a strong woman, but even worse, live in fear of a strong black woman.

The truly interesting thing about all of this is that conservatives never counter with the same logic even though they have more opportunity to do so.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is, by virtue of her position as spokesperson to the world for the planet’s only remaining super-power, arguably the most powerful black woman in modern history.

She is an opinionated ideologue with many detractors. She is often vilified by the opposition for her neo-conservative outlook. The Rolling Stones tore her to shreds recently with their song Sweet Neo-Con and an editorial featuring her speaking in ebonics on the topic of nuclear proliferation ran in many mainstream papers after her appointment to the cabinet. The point is that a lot of people don’t like her and opine about how idiotic her ideas are constantly.

And yet-
I’ve never heard a single conservative accuse her critics of being afraid of a strong black woman. Could it be that the right has a greater respect for the concept of debate based on ideas than the Left?

Outer Space Outrage!

I’m a fan of space and astronomy and all that wild blue yonder stuff. So it hurts me to say that there are two stories in the news today that have left me in a state of annoyance.

The first is the unbelievable information that NASA has apparently lost its original footage of the Apollo moon missions. How in the hell does something like that happen?

I know they’ve worked on a lot of projects in their history and I’m sure there’s a gazillion things on file- but landing human beings on the moon is considered by most to be the most important success in that history. How does that get misplaced?

Next time file it under M for Moon, or Moron.

The second disturbing story comes out of Prague. A group of elite astronomers and other eminent space-folk have been holed up for quite some time trying to come up with an internationally recognized definition of the word ‘planet.’

This early report proves the point that 2500 brilliant minds are sure to screw up just about anything. Pluto is the sticking point. In the way-back days certain moons were considered planets. Then they were stripped of the status and Pluto was discovered and bestowed the title of planet- but that was before we figured out that Pluto was really a part of a larger system known as the Kuiper Belt.

The Kuiper Belt is a whole mess of orbiting debris just beyond Neptune that resembles the asteroid belt that orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. These belts are a bit like still-born planets, a field of debris that never quite gained enough gravitational attraction to coalesce into a proper round planet like ours.

I don’t have a problem with Pluto being considered a planet but the reclassification of certain moons in the solar system as planets is simply wrong.

Pluto is a planet because it’s gravity is strong enough to make it round and it is orbiting the Sun first. Meaning it is primarily orbiting the Sun. A moon of any kind orbits something else first and the Sun second. If we include one of Pluto’s moons, why not include our own?

If Pluto is a planet then any other round object in the Kuiper Belt that can be found is a planet as well. Which can get dice-y because there’s a lot of crap out there, surely some of it will be found to be round in the future.

The answer is to copy the star classification system. Astronomers are happy with two categories; major and minor stars. Likewise we should classify the stuff within our own solar system as being either major or minor as well. We should have major planets and minor planets. Let the experts agree on what it takes to be a major planet and classify all the rest as minor. At the end of the day we’d end up with eight to ten Majors and potentially thousands of Minors.

But no moons!

The Sun must be their first dancing partner damnit!

BTW:
Did you know that Pluto is smaller than the United States of America?

It’s also 3.7 billion miles from the Sun.

It takes sunlight eight minutes to get from the Sun to the Earth- but it takes it another 241 minutes to get to Pluto.

The Pundit Succumbs

Let hypocrisy reign!

After railing against MySpace.Com repeatedly since the advent of the viral internet phenomenon I have succumbed- well, sort of.

The collection of so-called friends that have never actually been met, the hounds trolling for sex, and the non-stop basking in personal fame that permeates the personal pages still turns me off. But the ability to connect a small radio project with its audience was too much to resist. So we’ve created a page for MPR: Mad Pundit Radio on the dreaded beast.

www.myspace.com/madpundit is now the online headquarters for our little Saturday afternoon talk show on Atlanta’s 640 WGST.

It’ll be nice to have a place for listeners to correspond with us and amongst themselves. We’ll preview each show with topic lists, as well as solicit topics from our faithful friends who will be encouraged to let us know what they’d like to hear us pontificate upon on upcoming broadcasts.

The most important reason for making the move to My Space is to help get our live shows, the mythic Pundit Panels, back on track. We had a great time doing live shows back in ‘04 and it’s high time we got that insanity back in gear. Our plan is to move the live shows from local bars to college campuses in an effort to get a more engaged audience, and we’re hoping that the viral marketing of My Space will help us fill the shows with enthusiastic audiences.

We’ll see.

Memory Strip Pt.II

Memory #4
I wake up in the middle of the night a few times because of some god-awful squealing coming from under my bed. It’s high-pitched and otherworldly and doesn’t stop. Someone lifts me out of my bed and takes me to another room. Later that day I’m brought back to see a box filled with the litter of puppies that were birthed beneath my mattress.

Memory #5
We bring dad home from prison. I give him a tour of the apartment and when he bends over to pet the dog I warn him to be careful because, “she pees all over the place.”

Memory #6
Mickey the dog is dead. I see her limp body in the alley by the side door. I think she’s asleep but she doesn’t respond.

I find out years later that she was poisoned by a neighbor who had some kind of running feud with the family concerning the disposition of the dog. I liked her but apparently my neighbor did not.

Memory #7
We’ve moved down the street to a larger house right next to a brick drugstore and I have two dreams that haunt me at a marrow level to this day.

[Dream 1] The Sun King-
I’m looking out to the backyard. The yard is a hill that rolls down to the train tracks and access road at the bottom of our lot. But my eyes are skyward, trained on a sun that looks like a man’s face with what appears to be a large straw-like hollow cylinder running sideways through the whole thing. The sun’s cheeks are puffed up (Dizzy Gillespie style) as he blows a large swirl of windy air up and out the top of the straw, exiting just above the ear.

I later came across this image in a list of archetypal dreams while reading a Karl Junge book on dreams. It’s interesting that it is the sun that creates the wind. But I can’t claim any sterling insight- I was just a five year old dreaming.

[Dream II] Killer Giraffes-
Why this one scares the hell out of me is a puzzle. It frightened the daylights out of me then and the thought of it still brings immediate goose-bumps to this day.

It’s a simple image:
I dream (or was it real) that I wake up and open the window curtain.

My bed is right up next to the window and I pull back the curtain to see the long necks of seven or eight giraffes (no bodies, just necks and faces) lined up against the brick wall of the drugstore next door. In unison they lean toward my house and window in an effort to get me. Up and down they bob their heads and I’m paralyzed with fear.

It know it seems innocuous, comical, and not the least bit disturbing. But I’m getting creeped out right now just writing about. So I’m gonna stop.

Memory Strip Pt.1

By any standard of blogging I should be posting something to do with the latest foiled terrorist plot to blow up several trans-Atlantic planes heading from England to the United States. But- I mean... really, everyone is opining on that. And I’m sure someone else has covered the same ground I would have tread so let’s do something else.

I alluded in an earlier blog to the fact that it becomes more difficult to retain memories the older we get. Since it’s important to know your own story I think it might be worthwhile to record the stuff I still remember at my current tender age of 42. That way I can remind myself of what happened in the future even if the memory center begins to experience slippage.

The memories that stand out appear to be random. Why do we recall one or another days from our childhood? Why do I remember certain moments spent with friends and not others? Who knows? But certain things do stand out and as closely as possible I’ll try to relate these memory vignettes in a linear sort of order. Hopefully by the time I make it to the present I’ll have something like a memory filmstrip that I can unwind and take a look at from time to time.

So here we go-

Memory #1
The very, very first thing I remember is bleeding in the bathtub.

I’m probably about 21/2 and I think we live in a rundown place in Detroit.

Someone has left a razor on the lip of the tub and the memory begins after my curiosity has gotten the best of me. I look down to see blood in the water then I look up to see a bigger person pulling me out of the tub. End of memory-

Memory #2
I’m sitting on a couch with a couple of other kids. Someone has put a big floppy hat and sunglasses on me in an attempt to cheer me up. I’m screaming my head off because my mom has left me with a sitter that I don’t know. The poor lady is doing everything she can to get me to stop crying- she holds me up to the mirror to see what I look like in the wacky hat and glasses. It’s not working. I’m still screaming like a banshee when the memory goes dark.

Memory #3
This is my first full memory. It is early morning and still dark outside so it must be 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning. I’m just shy of my 5th birthday and I am again looking back at myself in the mirror. But this time there is a connection. This is my first fully conscious moment. By that I mean I actually seem to wake up to being alive in this moment.

It’s the beginning of wonder and abstract thought and all of that. I seem to look at myself and say, “hey, that’s me.”

The lighting is stark. I’m standing on one of those kiddy step-up ladders beneath an exposed fluorescent bulb, the kind that twists into concentric circles, and I’m combing my cowlick-plagued hair. The family is getting ready to visit my father in a prison located somewhere in Ohio (my best guess is Columbus since we were living in a small town called Ashville on the outskirts).

The next thing I know the whole family is eating Kentucky Fried Chicken (it wasn’t KFC yet) with my father in a room made up of picnic tables on a concrete floor. The place is full of other families doing the same thing with their incarcerated kin. This is the first time I have any notion of having a father. He went to jail when I was two, shortly before the razor incident, and I have no practical perception of his existence until this moment.

My recollection jump cuts to playing with my older sister and other kids in a small playground surrounded with what appear to be very high concrete walls.

Another jump cut and I’m back in the dining area and I’m running around the picnic table even though adults are telling me to stop. Then the guy they call my father tells me to stop or else. I clearly remember thinking, “I don’t even know this man, what’s he gonna do?”

-Jump cut to being stomach down over his lap while he smacks my ass-

-End of memory.

Who knew prisoners were allowed to spank their kids?

I Love Starting Projects- it's the finishing...

Ah... the obligation to blog. It can be such a pain sometimes. I’ve taken the opportunity afforded by god-awful temperatures and the two week absence of my wife and 8 year old to do very little of anything, including posting to this blog.

When I say I haven’t done anything I mean anything that others might consider worthwhile. I’m always doing something- it’s just that most of it, while fun, usually adds up to nothing.

I spent last Friday afternoon having a blast trippin around Little Five with Greg and Lucky. We’ve been working on an idiotic idea I have for turning an old Foto-Caption piece we did called Homeless Like Me into a short film using the old pictures augmented with movement (PBS ‘Civil War’ style) and recorded dialogue and ambient sound. The idiotic idea was then stymied by reality.

Greg and I both work at radio stations, but they compete and it’s a bit of a number to slip one or the other into the studio of their competition to record the dialogue properly. I finally got permission to make it happen from my program director- but then he turned around and quit before the recording date arrived. Since I don’t really know much about the folks above him in the management chain I’m not in the mood to ask again. So screw it- we’ll do something different.

After Greg went to work Lucky and I hashed out an idea that should be easy to shoot. It’s about a single guy dealing with three different types of women that he takes on dates at the same coffee shop. Greg’s dealing with that world right now- so good dialogue should be easy to bleed out of him. And I’m fascinated with the different types of women that can make the same man turn his head. I think it’s a good study that could make for an interesting seven or eight minutes of film- and I have a friend who owns an ice cream\coffee shop- so it should be easy to find a set.

I’ve also gotten this stupid book I’ve been thinking about or writing on and off for the last four years into some kind of linear shape. I finally have it type-set but there are still things I want to change every time I read it. It’s funny. It’s not very long and the more I work on it, the shorter it gets. For the most part I’m happy with where I have it but there’s still a little bit of ‘suck’ in there. So my wife is doing the illustrations while I try to remove the remaining amount of ‘suck’- and then I’ll figure out how to get it published. Maybe I’ll publish it myself. I’m good at wasting money like that.

I should write a book about wasting money. I could emerge as the all-time guru on that one.

The Civilized & Enlightened Pt.2

I had lunch with a friend today who told me about a friend of his who hates George W. Bush so much that she gets beside herself every time his name comes up. She is a smart person who shares his love for science and knowledge but has no interest in entertaining a single idea that might portray the President in a favorable light. Why?
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My mother-in-law recently returned from Europe blaming Israel for all of the blood and gore that has been featured in the 24 hour news cycle lately. Why?
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I saw another in a long line of pundits on television recently blaming politicians and business leaders for the violence that plagues the inner-cities of our country. His reasoning that societal neglect left young people with no option other than criminality to make money was accepted without debate by the reporter conducting the interview. Why?
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The answer to all of these questions is that it is easier for most people to blame the messenger than it is to accept the frightening message they bring.

We are a civilized and enlightened people who find it difficult to believe that the world is chock-full of uncivilized and unenlightened enemies of peace.

Because we know the fruits of civility and enlightenment it is hard to accept that anyone else would knowingly choose anarchy and bloodshed without good reason. Many people reason that we must have done something to deserve this level of wrath from those who target us for everything from terrorist attacks to common muggings.

This transference of blame allows those in denial to cling to the notion that the rest of the world is every bit as enlightened and peace-loving as they are. This is why so much of the criticism of the Prez, Israel, and big business is bolstered with conspiracy theories that create a rationale for their supposed evil behavior.

According to these critics Bush pursues war in Iraq in order to line the pockets of his Big Oil buddies. They can regale you for hours with tales of Haliburton and cross-country oil pipeline deals.

These same folks will seize on any weakness in the Israeli form of democracy to prove that Israel is no more freedom loving than its Arab foes. And if you stick around long enough they’ll take pains to point out that the lack of a boost in the minimum wage over the last decade has left inner-city youth with no choice but to join a criminal enterprise to make good money and get ahead.

This myopic vision of a planet full of like-minded peace-loving citizens being forced into abhorrent behavior as a form of self-defense from American and Geo-Corporate hegemony is a complete fallacy.

But it serves to shield these enlightened souls from the painful truth of local neighborhoods enslaved by a conscience-less criminal element that takes control and sets the rules of the street.

Or worse yet- the reality of a large slice of humanity held hostage to the whims of bloodthirsty dictators with an eye on regional and world domination.

No one could be that cruel without legitimate provocation, right?

It must be Bush.

It must be the Israelis.

It must be the big corporations.

Right?