A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, right? And yet a pile of shit by any other name does not necessarily stink. Let's take for instance the pile of shit known as bribing members of the United States Congress. We call it "lobbying" and—voila!—nobody seems to notice the odor anymore or care all that much about it.
Oh sure, some of us may wrinkle our noses or even pinch our nostrils. But the practice is generally relegated to the category of business as usual.
Um ... hello! LOBBYING IS BRIBERY. I can't put it any plainer than that.
So where's the media furor? Why isn't, say, Brian Williams furious? Why doesn't he go purple with indignation and sputter vituperation on NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams? No, it's not because he's sworn to impartiality as a network news anchor; it's because this insidious activity gets waved through the barricades via the odious agency of euphemism. It's like everyone just accepts that nothing can—or even should—be done about it. Thus ...
BRIAN: This bill or that bill failed to clear the House or Senate today because this lobby or that lobby wielded its considerable influence.
[Shrug shoulders. Simper like Stan Laurel. Cut to 30-second Viagra spot.]
Huh? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that this bill or that bill failed to clear the House or Senate because the bribery specialists spread an assload of moolah around?
As Napoleon Dynamite so perfectly put it ... God!
Our country's legislators take bribes from lobbyists as casually as you and I take coffee breaks—and with an even greater sense of entitlement. They get away with their sleazy conduct because most of the bribes they take take the form of campaign contributions. Well, here's a tell-it-like-it-is-Dandy-Don newsflash from the Crapsack Department of Revulsion:
ACCEPTING CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS FROM LOBBYISTS IS GRAFT.
Let's put it this way: If you tried to "lobby" a certain daughter of mine on the issue of not issuing you a citation for public intoxication, you would find yourself in handcuffs for attempting to bribe a peace officer faster than you can say "cash donation to the Police Athletic League." On the other hand, if she accepted your "contribution" and let you go your merry way, what would that make her?
Get me?
The unfortunate distinction where Congress is concerned is that the foxes are in charge of the chicken coop and aren't about to deprive themselves of all the poultry they can eat. Meanwhile, you and I get our pockets assiduously picked by the credit card industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the financial industry, and especially the oil industry thanks to the tons of anti-you-and-me legislation bribed onto the books by lobbyists.
So, with all that in mind, I've got another name besides "bribery" to propose for this revolting bullshit. Let's really put the putrid back in the poo and call it ...
ORGANIZED CRIME.
It's organized. It's criminal. And it's being regularly and reprehensibly perpetrated on "We the People" by the very men and women elected in good faith to represent our interests, not theirs.
Click here for the full lowdown on one of the most blatant and infuriating examples of our elected representatives' grabbing the graft while giving all of us the shaft.
# # #
Monday, March 30, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Random acts of appreciation
When my tenth-grade English teacher took maternity leave midway through the school year, she was replaced with an eager, fresh-out-of-college sub named Miss Cizek, whom I think of as Stephanie now, having virtually caught up with her in age.
Miss Cizek bore a striking resemblance to movie actress Juliet Prowse, so we boys naturally hung on her every word, typically to the point of forgetting to swallow.
As it turned out, listening closely to young Stephanie Cizek wound up having a life-altering effect on me. Because, out of the clear blue sky one morning, she launched into an aside containing possibly the most profound advice I've ever received from a teacher or anyone.
She said we should never fail to compliment people to their faces whenever we notice something admirable about them. Strangers included. "Don't be afraid to speak up," she said. "You could make a huge difference in how that person is feeling right then. And they'll never know you're thinking something good about them unless you tell them."
(This, from a 22-year-old.)
I've never forgotten Miss Cizek's words, and have put them into practice countless times—frequently receiving in return the rich reward of a startled expression of acute gratitude from the recipient of one of my impromptu compliments.
Beyond the warm-and-fuzzy feeling that comes from making a fellow human being feel good about herself or himself, I've benefited from Miss Cizek's advice from a sharpened awareness occasioned by dozens of years of simply paying a little more attention to others.
So, if you're not already incorporating random acts of verbal appreciation into your daily routine, I urgently recommend getting in on the program immediately. Start startling others—with compliments—today.
And now to give credit where due: This post was inspired by Three Cheers for Compliments, posted yesterday at a lovely blog I follow called "Finding Happy." Check it out by clicking here.
# # #
Miss Cizek bore a striking resemblance to movie actress Juliet Prowse, so we boys naturally hung on her every word, typically to the point of forgetting to swallow.
As it turned out, listening closely to young Stephanie Cizek wound up having a life-altering effect on me. Because, out of the clear blue sky one morning, she launched into an aside containing possibly the most profound advice I've ever received from a teacher or anyone.
She said we should never fail to compliment people to their faces whenever we notice something admirable about them. Strangers included. "Don't be afraid to speak up," she said. "You could make a huge difference in how that person is feeling right then. And they'll never know you're thinking something good about them unless you tell them."
(This, from a 22-year-old.)
I've never forgotten Miss Cizek's words, and have put them into practice countless times—frequently receiving in return the rich reward of a startled expression of acute gratitude from the recipient of one of my impromptu compliments.
Beyond the warm-and-fuzzy feeling that comes from making a fellow human being feel good about herself or himself, I've benefited from Miss Cizek's advice from a sharpened awareness occasioned by dozens of years of simply paying a little more attention to others.
So, if you're not already incorporating random acts of verbal appreciation into your daily routine, I urgently recommend getting in on the program immediately. Start startling others—with compliments—today.
And now to give credit where due: This post was inspired by Three Cheers for Compliments, posted yesterday at a lovely blog I follow called "Finding Happy." Check it out by clicking here.
# # #
Friday, March 27, 2009
At the ballet on Saturday night ...
I saw a middle-aged couple in the lobby. The lady wore a black floral print skirt, charcoal hose, and a cream-colored sleeveless top. Her hair, a blond dye job, was arranged in a loose French twist, and her skin looked leathery and lightly tanned. The man was about six inches taller than she. His left hand and wrist were encased in a funky elastic bandage resembling a fingerless glove, and he was wearing horn-rimmed glasses, grayish-brown slacks, and a cranberry polo shirt. His straight brown hair was shiny-slick with some kind of preparation. After a short while, the woman and man turned to move elsewhere; in doing this, he grabbed her arm and jerked her toward the direction he had in mind, as one might roughly redirect a child who'd already been scolded twice that evening.
At the ballet on Saturday night ...
someone sitting near me was broadcasting the camphoraceous smell of moth balls.
At the ballet on Saturday night ...
the heavy velvet curtain continued lowering long after touching the stage, its vertical pleats forming a chorus-line of red and wrinkled elephants' legs.
At the ballet on Saturday night ...
I saw a teenage couple in the lobby. The young man wore a gray shirt with button-down collars and a striped tie. He had a floppy mop of sandy hair and a meager mustache and goatee. The glowing young woman clinging to him had tawny skin, darting eyes, and shimmering shoulder-length hair the color of Godiva chocolate. Her spaghetti-strapped crimson sheath plunged deep below her waist in back and confirmed the absence of panties with form-hugging chutzpah. Turning toward Susan, I nodded in their direction and said, "That boy doesn't have a chance."
# # #
At the ballet on Saturday night ...
someone sitting near me was broadcasting the camphoraceous smell of moth balls.
At the ballet on Saturday night ...
the heavy velvet curtain continued lowering long after touching the stage, its vertical pleats forming a chorus-line of red and wrinkled elephants' legs.
At the ballet on Saturday night ...
I saw a teenage couple in the lobby. The young man wore a gray shirt with button-down collars and a striped tie. He had a floppy mop of sandy hair and a meager mustache and goatee. The glowing young woman clinging to him had tawny skin, darting eyes, and shimmering shoulder-length hair the color of Godiva chocolate. Her spaghetti-strapped crimson sheath plunged deep below her waist in back and confirmed the absence of panties with form-hugging chutzpah. Turning toward Susan, I nodded in their direction and said, "That boy doesn't have a chance."
# # #
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Try not to dangle your modifier
Speaking as someone who began writing for pay in 1980, I am frequently appalled by the gross grammatical errors being committed at what seems like a growing rate by other people who write for pay. If they don't know not to say "Send the shipment to Sally and I" how in heaven's name will young people ever learn it's supposed to be "me"? (For a whimsical take on this mounting problem, see my February post entitled The death of me.)
It's bad enough that text messaging is doing everything in its prodigious power to eradicate the art of writing during what's left of my lifetime; I don't need paid copywriters accelerating the destruction.
If you don't write for a living you're forgiven in advance for not knowing that all those supermarket signs should say "10 Items or Fewer." You're also forgiven in advance for not knowing (a) what a dangling modifier is and (b) how to fix one.
A dangling modifier is a modifier that's left hanging, that doesn't have anything to modify. Here's an example I happened upon recently in a publication sure to surprise you (it sure surprised me):
Standing before a fawning crowd at a private fundraiser in San Francisco last April, Senator Barack Obama's usually finely calibrated rhetoric loosened up.
Who was doing the standing? The finely calibrated rhetoric? See what I mean? The opening participial phrase is a dangling modifier because there's nothing for it to modify. The writer got lost or changed her mind midway through her sentence.
To fix this problem the sentence would have to be rewritten more or less as follows:
Standing before a fawning crowd at a private fundraiser in San Francisco last April, Senator Barack Obama loosened up his usually finely calibrated rhetoric.
Ah. That's more like it. Now we've got someone capable of standing.
Maybe the writer wrote the sentence my way in the first place, then thought it would flow better the way it wound up in the magazine, not noticing the resulting dangling modifier. Whatever.
The really surprising thing for me is where I found it: in the opening sentence, rendered in extra-large type, of an essay appearing in the Columbia Journalism Review. Which pretty much gives you and me (not I) a free pass on dangling modifiers until the end of time.
# # #
It's bad enough that text messaging is doing everything in its prodigious power to eradicate the art of writing during what's left of my lifetime; I don't need paid copywriters accelerating the destruction.
If you don't write for a living you're forgiven in advance for not knowing that all those supermarket signs should say "10 Items or Fewer." You're also forgiven in advance for not knowing (a) what a dangling modifier is and (b) how to fix one.
A dangling modifier is a modifier that's left hanging, that doesn't have anything to modify. Here's an example I happened upon recently in a publication sure to surprise you (it sure surprised me):
Standing before a fawning crowd at a private fundraiser in San Francisco last April, Senator Barack Obama's usually finely calibrated rhetoric loosened up.
Who was doing the standing? The finely calibrated rhetoric? See what I mean? The opening participial phrase is a dangling modifier because there's nothing for it to modify. The writer got lost or changed her mind midway through her sentence.
To fix this problem the sentence would have to be rewritten more or less as follows:
Standing before a fawning crowd at a private fundraiser in San Francisco last April, Senator Barack Obama loosened up his usually finely calibrated rhetoric.
Ah. That's more like it. Now we've got someone capable of standing.
Maybe the writer wrote the sentence my way in the first place, then thought it would flow better the way it wound up in the magazine, not noticing the resulting dangling modifier. Whatever.
The really surprising thing for me is where I found it: in the opening sentence, rendered in extra-large type, of an essay appearing in the Columbia Journalism Review. Which pretty much gives you and me (not I) a free pass on dangling modifiers until the end of time.
# # #
Monday, March 23, 2009
The Zen poems written right before our eyes
This Zen poem about geese flying over a lake had a revelatory effect on me when I first read it at 17:
The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection.
The water has no mind to receive their image.
And yet the reflection happens, and the to-gasp-for beauty is there for the beholding. Like frosting, in other words, on life's cake, courtesy of physics and physiology.
I'm constantly being figuratively stopped in my tracks by similar visions of inordinate beauty that randomly occur before my very eyes. For instance, I was walking down a long hallway in an office building one day, and ...
That lean Indian woman striding purposefully past me: Can she possibly comprehend her hair? A single waist-length braid swinging with every step like a black satin pendulum, completing every sweep with a fetching flick.
And if that lovely sight in itself were not enough, the hallway's overhead pot lights ...
took turns forming bands of sheen that slowly descended from the crown of her head to the nape of her neck as she passed from light to light.
You don't have to be "baked" to tune into this stuff. All you have to do is look.
# # #
The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection.
The water has no mind to receive their image.
And yet the reflection happens, and the to-gasp-for beauty is there for the beholding. Like frosting, in other words, on life's cake, courtesy of physics and physiology.
I'm constantly being figuratively stopped in my tracks by similar visions of inordinate beauty that randomly occur before my very eyes. For instance, I was walking down a long hallway in an office building one day, and ...
That lean Indian woman striding purposefully past me: Can she possibly comprehend her hair? A single waist-length braid swinging with every step like a black satin pendulum, completing every sweep with a fetching flick.
And if that lovely sight in itself were not enough, the hallway's overhead pot lights ...
took turns forming bands of sheen that slowly descended from the crown of her head to the nape of her neck as she passed from light to light.
You don't have to be "baked" to tune into this stuff. All you have to do is look.
# # #
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Why nobody wrote the colonel
I saw something on TV that made me sheepishly realize I've been expecting far too much in expecting others to answer my e-mails.
You know, I've heard stories about people routinely abandoning people like me who've been laid off and can't land new work. People like me make people like them uncomfortable. On the other hand, I'm old-fashioned enough to find not answering e-mails despicably discourteous; as rude as blowing off a friendly hello in the hall.
But what do I know?
Not much, evidently, according to what I saw on ABC's What Would You Do? last week. The show's producers conducted a hidden-camera test in broad daylight in New Jersey. They had an actor disguised as a homeless man collapse and lie motionless on a busy city sidewalk, to see how long he'd have to lie there before someone at least whipped out a cell phone.
Sure, the empty beer can in the actor's hand might explain why 88 people walked right by as though a fallen man wasn't there. But how about this: The 89th person, a limping African-American woman who later told What Would You Do? she'd been homeless herself on occasion, not only stopped to check on the apparently unconscious man, but stood there begging passersby to please call 9-1-1. She even removed the built-in beer-can turn-off. A total of 26 people ignored her pleas before another compassionate woman deigned to make the call.
What the heck.
But there's more. As a preamble to the foregoing, the show aired surveillance-camera footage of a real-life incident in which a woman fell to the floor and lay motionless for 45 minutes in the waiting room of a New York hospital, ignored not only by everyone else in that waiting room but even by several members of the hospital staff who looked at her and kept going. She died where she lay, mis amigos. Dead right there.
I'm not trying to blow my own horn when I say I know for certain I would have helped both those people lying motionless on the ground; it would not have occurred to me not to.
And on that basis I reckon the fault lies with me for believing others should answer my e-mails.
# # #
You know, I've heard stories about people routinely abandoning people like me who've been laid off and can't land new work. People like me make people like them uncomfortable. On the other hand, I'm old-fashioned enough to find not answering e-mails despicably discourteous; as rude as blowing off a friendly hello in the hall.
But what do I know?
Not much, evidently, according to what I saw on ABC's What Would You Do? last week. The show's producers conducted a hidden-camera test in broad daylight in New Jersey. They had an actor disguised as a homeless man collapse and lie motionless on a busy city sidewalk, to see how long he'd have to lie there before someone at least whipped out a cell phone.
Sure, the empty beer can in the actor's hand might explain why 88 people walked right by as though a fallen man wasn't there. But how about this: The 89th person, a limping African-American woman who later told What Would You Do? she'd been homeless herself on occasion, not only stopped to check on the apparently unconscious man, but stood there begging passersby to please call 9-1-1. She even removed the built-in beer-can turn-off. A total of 26 people ignored her pleas before another compassionate woman deigned to make the call.
What the heck.
But there's more. As a preamble to the foregoing, the show aired surveillance-camera footage of a real-life incident in which a woman fell to the floor and lay motionless for 45 minutes in the waiting room of a New York hospital, ignored not only by everyone else in that waiting room but even by several members of the hospital staff who looked at her and kept going. She died where she lay, mis amigos. Dead right there.
I'm not trying to blow my own horn when I say I know for certain I would have helped both those people lying motionless on the ground; it would not have occurred to me not to.
And on that basis I reckon the fault lies with me for believing others should answer my e-mails.
# # #
Monday, March 16, 2009
Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy ride.
I'm not an atheist. I used to be a Catholic, but couldn't hang with it once I started thinking for myself; Catholicism did not compute, and I've always been of the "in for a penny, in for a pound" mentality, so cafeteria Catholicism was never an option.
Once I rejected Catholicism, I drifted around but couldn't stick to much of anything but Eastern philosophy. Eventually, Tom Paine talked me into deism. If anything, I'm a deist—someone who, as my dictionary puts it, believes that "God created the world and its natural laws, but takes no further part in its functioning [as evidenced by the flies crawling on starving babies' eyes in Ethiopia]." I added the latter bit in case you were wondering.
That said, I invite you to consider this. ...
So there was this program on one of the God channels recently, about the Rood and Christ's crucifixion thereon, and one of the talking heads with a turned-around collar was saying how God harbored so much love and compassion for mankind that he allowed his only son to become a man in order that his only son could then be offered up to him as the blood sacrifice necessary to appease his otherwise eternally and fatally implacable anger toward mankind.
He didn't say that exactly, but that's exactly what he was saying; and the thing that curdled my blood (besides the Manson-like arrangement of his facial features) was that he obviously saw nothing illogical or unconscionable or reprehensible or grotesquely pagan—or even mildly disappointing—in the "rationale" he was spouting.
I mean, it's so perfectly reasonable. ...
I'm sorry, but if that makes sense, so do thousand-dollar Hannah Montana tickets.
Seriously. Are you seriously going to tell me that the only way God could feel mollified, could stop feeling so goddamned hateful toward human beings, was through the grisly slaughter of his own son? That's insupportable. Couldn't God, being God, have just simmered down? More to the point, couldn't God, being God, have just not hated the imperfect beings he himself created in the first place?
Forgive me, please, but I like to give God credit for having more, um, humanity than that. Speaking of which ...
Sometimes I think there's just no hope for humankind; that this is still the Planet of the Apes. Bonobo chimps seem more rational to me than we. Ditto for whales, elephants, dolphins, dogs, and assorted farm animals.
And sometimes the malevolence that seems to underlie the general insanity of human existence makes me literally shudder.
Don't throw any Bibles at me for this one. I've already read both Testaments. I've also read Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, and wish more people would do the same.
For further reading:
Inquisitive minds want to know ...
Phew! So grateful I didn't make altar boy after all ...
And for your penance, ten years in the laundry, missy ...
# # #
Once I rejected Catholicism, I drifted around but couldn't stick to much of anything but Eastern philosophy. Eventually, Tom Paine talked me into deism. If anything, I'm a deist—someone who, as my dictionary puts it, believes that "God created the world and its natural laws, but takes no further part in its functioning [as evidenced by the flies crawling on starving babies' eyes in Ethiopia]." I added the latter bit in case you were wondering.
That said, I invite you to consider this. ...
So there was this program on one of the God channels recently, about the Rood and Christ's crucifixion thereon, and one of the talking heads with a turned-around collar was saying how God harbored so much love and compassion for mankind that he allowed his only son to become a man in order that his only son could then be offered up to him as the blood sacrifice necessary to appease his otherwise eternally and fatally implacable anger toward mankind.
He didn't say that exactly, but that's exactly what he was saying; and the thing that curdled my blood (besides the Manson-like arrangement of his facial features) was that he obviously saw nothing illogical or unconscionable or reprehensible or grotesquely pagan—or even mildly disappointing—in the "rationale" he was spouting.
I mean, it's so perfectly reasonable. ...
GOD: I am mad at all of mankind for something just two of them did. I will therefore allow malicious, sadistic men to beat the bejesus out of my only begotten son, and then cruelly and slowly murder him in order to make me feel better. See? See how much I love mankind after all?
I'm sorry, but if that makes sense, so do thousand-dollar Hannah Montana tickets.
Seriously. Are you seriously going to tell me that the only way God could feel mollified, could stop feeling so goddamned hateful toward human beings, was through the grisly slaughter of his own son? That's insupportable. Couldn't God, being God, have just simmered down? More to the point, couldn't God, being God, have just not hated the imperfect beings he himself created in the first place?
Forgive me, please, but I like to give God credit for having more, um, humanity than that. Speaking of which ...
Sometimes I think there's just no hope for humankind; that this is still the Planet of the Apes. Bonobo chimps seem more rational to me than we. Ditto for whales, elephants, dolphins, dogs, and assorted farm animals.
And sometimes the malevolence that seems to underlie the general insanity of human existence makes me literally shudder.
Don't throw any Bibles at me for this one. I've already read both Testaments. I've also read Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, and wish more people would do the same.
For further reading:
Inquisitive minds want to know ...
Phew! So grateful I didn't make altar boy after all ...
And for your penance, ten years in the laundry, missy ...
# # #
Friday, March 13, 2009
Why I believe in a sweet hereafter
First, there's the near-death experience (NDE) described in encouragingly consistent forms by throngs of returners from the brink of doom. The NDE, more than anything, including that song by Blue Oyster Cult, persuades me not to fear the Reaper.
Thanks to the NDE, I fully expect to ...
Second, there are these reassuring and compelling passages from Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason:
Just imagine: Maybe all those dreams we've had of soaring high above the world below are, in truth, visions of what's to come once we have "quit the dunghill." Visions benevolently bestowed by a kind and caring God.
For further reading:
Life After Life, by Raymond A. Moody Jr.
The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine
* See February post entitled My idea of heaven
Magic 8 Ball is a registered trademark of Mattel Inc.
# # #
Thanks to the NDE, I fully expect to ...
- Hover overhead after drawing my final breath, personally witnessing and profoundly moved by the heroic measures being applied in vain to retain me in the here-and-now, as well as the inconsolable grieving of those inconsolably aggrieved by my demise
- Float through a long tunnel toward a brilliant light
- Encounter, on emerging, not only every loved one who's gone before me but a spirit-being from whose side I shall never wish to stray
- Make really good use of the Ultimate Magic 8 Ball® *
Second, there are these reassuring and compelling passages from Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason:
The most beautiful parts of the creation to our eye are the winged insects, and they are not so originally. They acquire that form and that inimitable brilliancy by progressive changes. The slow and creeping caterpillar-worm of today passes in a few days to a torpid figure and a state resembling death; and in the next change comes forth in all the miniature magnificence of life, a splendid butterfly. No resemblance of the former creature remains; everything is changed; all his powers are new, and life is to him another thing. [If] we cannot conceive that the consciousness of existence is not the same in this state of the animal as before, why then must I believe that the resurrection of the same body is necessary to continue to me the consciousness of existence hereafter?
... [T]he belief of a future state is a rational belief, founded upon facts visible in the creation; for it is not more difficult to believe that we shall exist hereafter in a better state and form than at present, than that a worm should become a butterfly, and quit the dunghill for the atmosphere, if we did not know it as a fact.
Just imagine: Maybe all those dreams we've had of soaring high above the world below are, in truth, visions of what's to come once we have "quit the dunghill." Visions benevolently bestowed by a kind and caring God.
For further reading:
Life After Life, by Raymond A. Moody Jr.
The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine
* See February post entitled My idea of heaven
Magic 8 Ball is a registered trademark of Mattel Inc.
# # #
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Maybe they should call it the Hypocritic Oath
Remember Hippocrates of Kos?
No, not him. The other one. No, not that one either.
Oh, come on! The one they call "the father of medicine"? The one who founded the Hippocratic School? The one who died in around 370 B.C.?
Oh, forget it. I'm talking about the one they named the Hippocratic Oath after. No, not that oath. The Hippocratic Oath doctors are supposed to follow even if they don't actually swear to it with one hand resting on a Bible.
God!
Well, the Hippocratic Oath, contrary to what some may have come to believe, does not actually contain the words "First, do no harm." It contains similar wording, though, about abstaining from causing any.
And that's where this post comes in. Because I think doctors violate their avowed prohibition against doing harm on a daily, if not hourly, basis. They violate it because, as I like to say, they are too often clever without being wise. They do the things they do because they can, in many cases, regardless of whether they should. And they are, of course, out to make a buck just like the rest of us.
So they do harm by helping a hapless single mother up her kid-count from six to 14. Because they can, and can sure use the do-re-mi.
They do harm by helping to pave the way for MRSA and other killer superbugs by over-prescribing antibiotics—when they, of all people, should readily appreciate how doing so accelerates Darwinian evolution to the benefit of microbes and detriment of humankind. Their rationale? Their patients will simply go to other doctors for the antibiotics they, the patients, believe they need. A buck's a buck, after all.
Thanks in large part to the reckless over-prescribing of antibiotics, there are microbes out there today—most of them infesting your favorite hospital, as a matter of fact—that no antibiotic, not even intravenous, can touch.
In other words, all those times your doctor coughed up a scrip for ampicillin or erythromycin or some other antibiotic when you presented yourself or your child with a viral infection and expected not to leave empty-handed, he or she was doing harm.
But being too often clever without being wise is where I think they do the most harm of all. Bear with me, please. ...
Let's set the Wayback Machine to 1962 and accompany little R. J. as he takes in a first-run screening of The Brain That Wouldn't Die, starring Herb Evers and Virginia Leith. The publicity poster in the theater lobby bears this tantalizing teaser (which contains, for the present-day R. J., a scathingly prescient commentary on modern medicine):
A romance of sorts, The Brain That Wouldn't Die tells the story of Dr. Bill Cortner's devoted efforts to keep his fiancée's head alive after she literally loses it in an automobile accident. The cinematic special effects of that era were good enough for me, and I carry to this day the mental image of dear Jan Compton's living albeit detached noddle resting in a tray of liquid, secured by elaborate mechanisms, nourished and stimulated by various tubes and wires.
So. Here's this head of Jan Compton bossing Dr. Cortner around from a liquid-filled tray; and that look-ma-no-body noggin was not only the stuff of science fiction back in '62, but the stuff of ghastly science fiction whose solitary raison d'être was to shock and horrify and repel the likes of adolescent moi.
A head fed by an unspeakable horror from Hell, remember ... much as the head of poor Christopher Reeve, the late actor who starred in numerous Superman films, was kept alive atop the liquid-filled tray of a lifeless body, by the not infrequently unspeakable horror from Hell we call medical science.
Only, now we regard what once repulsed and terrified us as a miracle.
Sorry. I'm not buying it. I submit that no material difference, horrifying-wise, exists between a Jan Compton and a Christopher Reeve.
I submit that, notwithstanding his bravery and unflagging upbeat demeanor (for the cameras at least), the quadriplegic, unable-to-breathe-unaided Christopher Reeve would sooner have died that awful day he broke his neck in an equestrian event.
I submit that in cases such as his, plus countless others, the physicians' Hippocratic Oath may as well be called the Hypocritic Oath.
Watch The Brain That Wouldn't Die at the Internet Archive.
# # #
No, not him. The other one. No, not that one either.
Oh, come on! The one they call "the father of medicine"? The one who founded the Hippocratic School? The one who died in around 370 B.C.?
Oh, forget it. I'm talking about the one they named the Hippocratic Oath after. No, not that oath. The Hippocratic Oath doctors are supposed to follow even if they don't actually swear to it with one hand resting on a Bible.
God!
Well, the Hippocratic Oath, contrary to what some may have come to believe, does not actually contain the words "First, do no harm." It contains similar wording, though, about abstaining from causing any.
And that's where this post comes in. Because I think doctors violate their avowed prohibition against doing harm on a daily, if not hourly, basis. They violate it because, as I like to say, they are too often clever without being wise. They do the things they do because they can, in many cases, regardless of whether they should. And they are, of course, out to make a buck just like the rest of us.
So they do harm by helping a hapless single mother up her kid-count from six to 14. Because they can, and can sure use the do-re-mi.
They do harm by helping to pave the way for MRSA and other killer superbugs by over-prescribing antibiotics—when they, of all people, should readily appreciate how doing so accelerates Darwinian evolution to the benefit of microbes and detriment of humankind. Their rationale? Their patients will simply go to other doctors for the antibiotics they, the patients, believe they need. A buck's a buck, after all.
Thanks in large part to the reckless over-prescribing of antibiotics, there are microbes out there today—most of them infesting your favorite hospital, as a matter of fact—that no antibiotic, not even intravenous, can touch.
In other words, all those times your doctor coughed up a scrip for ampicillin or erythromycin or some other antibiotic when you presented yourself or your child with a viral infection and expected not to leave empty-handed, he or she was doing harm.
But being too often clever without being wise is where I think they do the most harm of all. Bear with me, please. ...
Let's set the Wayback Machine to 1962 and accompany little R. J. as he takes in a first-run screening of The Brain That Wouldn't Die, starring Herb Evers and Virginia Leith. The publicity poster in the theater lobby bears this tantalizing teaser (which contains, for the present-day R. J., a scathingly prescient commentary on modern medicine):
ALIVE ... WITHOUT A BODY ... FED BY AN UNSPEAKABLE HORROR FROM HELL!
A romance of sorts, The Brain That Wouldn't Die tells the story of Dr. Bill Cortner's devoted efforts to keep his fiancée's head alive after she literally loses it in an automobile accident. The cinematic special effects of that era were good enough for me, and I carry to this day the mental image of dear Jan Compton's living albeit detached noddle resting in a tray of liquid, secured by elaborate mechanisms, nourished and stimulated by various tubes and wires.
So. Here's this head of Jan Compton bossing Dr. Cortner around from a liquid-filled tray; and that look-ma-no-body noggin was not only the stuff of science fiction back in '62, but the stuff of ghastly science fiction whose solitary raison d'être was to shock and horrify and repel the likes of adolescent moi.
A head fed by an unspeakable horror from Hell, remember ... much as the head of poor Christopher Reeve, the late actor who starred in numerous Superman films, was kept alive atop the liquid-filled tray of a lifeless body, by the not infrequently unspeakable horror from Hell we call medical science.
Only, now we regard what once repulsed and terrified us as a miracle.
Sorry. I'm not buying it. I submit that no material difference, horrifying-wise, exists between a Jan Compton and a Christopher Reeve.
I submit that, notwithstanding his bravery and unflagging upbeat demeanor (for the cameras at least), the quadriplegic, unable-to-breathe-unaided Christopher Reeve would sooner have died that awful day he broke his neck in an equestrian event.
I submit that in cases such as his, plus countless others, the physicians' Hippocratic Oath may as well be called the Hypocritic Oath.
Watch The Brain That Wouldn't Die at the Internet Archive.
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Monday, March 9, 2009
Scream Tennis
Chris didn't howl. Martina didn't growl. So what's with all these present-day tennis ladies making so much—here it comes—racket? Are they simply paying collective homage to proto-grunter Monica Seles by dint of over-the-top emulation?
It's astronomically asinine. Ridiculously risible. Outrageously outré.
On the other hand, it can also be lotsa fun—when you settle in for a side-splitting match of SCREAM TENNIS!
Don't need no rackets. Don't need no net. Don't need no tennis court or togs. Don't need no yellow balls. All you need for a fast set of Scream Tennis is sturdy lungs, supple vocal chords, and an enthusiastic willingness—or better yet, a perverse eagerness—to disturb the peace big-time.
My daughter Kelly and I spontaneously invented this consummately cathartic divertissement while watching the French Open. There was a whatever-round match featuring Serena Williams versus some Russian lady, and we just could not get past the Russian's shrieks and Serena's grunts.
Next thing we knew, Kelly was mimicking the shrieking, and I was returning her "serves" and "ground strokes" with grunts, and she was mopping the court with me at 40-love. (Her hilarious whooping-and-looping screams kept making me laugh too hard to go on volleying.)
Seriously. You need to play you some Scream Tennis. Preferably really early in the morning or really late at night. Or in the lunchroom at the office. Or—an inspired suggestion from my son—across adjacent stalls in a public restroom.
Read what Martina said about screaming.
And "Happy Birthday!" Kelly.
# # #
It's astronomically asinine. Ridiculously risible. Outrageously outré.
On the other hand, it can also be lotsa fun—when you settle in for a side-splitting match of SCREAM TENNIS!
Don't need no rackets. Don't need no net. Don't need no tennis court or togs. Don't need no yellow balls. All you need for a fast set of Scream Tennis is sturdy lungs, supple vocal chords, and an enthusiastic willingness—or better yet, a perverse eagerness—to disturb the peace big-time.
My daughter Kelly and I spontaneously invented this consummately cathartic divertissement while watching the French Open. There was a whatever-round match featuring Serena Williams versus some Russian lady, and we just could not get past the Russian's shrieks and Serena's grunts.
Next thing we knew, Kelly was mimicking the shrieking, and I was returning her "serves" and "ground strokes" with grunts, and she was mopping the court with me at 40-love. (Her hilarious whooping-and-looping screams kept making me laugh too hard to go on volleying.)
Seriously. You need to play you some Scream Tennis. Preferably really early in the morning or really late at night. Or in the lunchroom at the office. Or—an inspired suggestion from my son—across adjacent stalls in a public restroom.
Read what Martina said about screaming.
And "Happy Birthday!" Kelly.
# # #
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Two true tales about principles
1. Well, good for you ...
A nighttime U-16 girls' soccer game in Royal Oak, Mich., circa 1996. Thea's team is playing two players short and without any subs; the other team's coach, however, has elected to field a full 10-player team—versus eight—and send in four or five substitutes at a time. We are getting shellacked, of course, and with every goal scored by the opposing side, the opposing side's parents and supporters scream like maniacs and stomp their feet and applaud wildly, just loving the way their girls are kicking our girls' fatigued and outnumbered asses up and down the field. It gets to where I can't take the psychotic demonstrating any longer, and make some audible critical comment about the lack of sportsmanship I'm witnessing, on and off the field. This raises the ire of a woman sitting near me, who turns and snarls, "You'd play it the same way if you were coach!" And I snap back something to the effect that I sure as hell would not, to which she mockingly replies, "Well, good for you—you have principles."
2. That wouldn't be fair ...
Mid 1980s. I'm looking to buy a used car. I find a clean subcompact at a Ford dealership about six miles from home. I take the car for a test drive and detect an intermittent clunking noise that sounds like it's coming from the rear axle. I stop by the house and fish through the glovebox, where I find the previous owner's name and telephone number on one of the documents there. I call the previous owner and tell him I'm thinking of buying this car but am concerned about a noise I'm hearing in the rear end. Could he tell me anything about that? Had he had any problems with the car? He refuses to answer any of my questions, saying it wouldn't be fair to the used car dealer. I guess that man had principles.
# # #
A nighttime U-16 girls' soccer game in Royal Oak, Mich., circa 1996. Thea's team is playing two players short and without any subs; the other team's coach, however, has elected to field a full 10-player team—versus eight—and send in four or five substitutes at a time. We are getting shellacked, of course, and with every goal scored by the opposing side, the opposing side's parents and supporters scream like maniacs and stomp their feet and applaud wildly, just loving the way their girls are kicking our girls' fatigued and outnumbered asses up and down the field. It gets to where I can't take the psychotic demonstrating any longer, and make some audible critical comment about the lack of sportsmanship I'm witnessing, on and off the field. This raises the ire of a woman sitting near me, who turns and snarls, "You'd play it the same way if you were coach!" And I snap back something to the effect that I sure as hell would not, to which she mockingly replies, "Well, good for you—you have principles."
2. That wouldn't be fair ...
Mid 1980s. I'm looking to buy a used car. I find a clean subcompact at a Ford dealership about six miles from home. I take the car for a test drive and detect an intermittent clunking noise that sounds like it's coming from the rear axle. I stop by the house and fish through the glovebox, where I find the previous owner's name and telephone number on one of the documents there. I call the previous owner and tell him I'm thinking of buying this car but am concerned about a noise I'm hearing in the rear end. Could he tell me anything about that? Had he had any problems with the car? He refuses to answer any of my questions, saying it wouldn't be fair to the used car dealer. I guess that man had principles.
# # #
Monday, March 2, 2009
Profile in courage
There seemed to be several hundred kids on the sprawling soccer fields of Oakland University that muggy July evening, but I picked out Thea from about five hundred yards away. There was no mistaking her trademark all-legs lankiness, swirling copper hair, or reckless abandon.
Her team, "Scotland," was winning its Mini-World Cup final. Thea waved to us from her sweeper position then redirected her attention to the pitch.
Her coach, Billy Gilmore, a ruddy, paunchy, balding, thin-legged Englishman in his latter forties or early fifties, strolled up and down the sidelines in a white T-shirt and blue shorts, whistle in hand, checking his clock and pronouncing his judgments with cordial calls of Play on! ... Free kick! ... Well done!
He shouted "Well done, Thea!" after Thea got knocked down hard while tackling the ball away from an opposing player; kept asking her if she was all right after she was back on her feet chasing the action.
Thea assured Coach Gilmore repeatedly that she was fine. But the ferocious collision with her male opponent had hurt her a lot. The boy had basically run right over her. I knew Thea would not cry no matter how much she wanted to: I’d seen her take a vicious ball in the face at age 9 and keep right on going, suppressing the tears-impulse for all she was worth. (That, in an age group where most kids screamed for their mommies and writhed on the ground after stubbing a toe.) Years later I would unknowingly watch Thea play an entire soccer game with a fractured forearm.
So I knew Thea would "play on," which she did.
My feelings at that moment were actually a mixture of pride and shame—pride in Thea's bravery, shame for her parents' oversight in forgetting to include a bottle of sunscreen when helping her pack for a five-day camp. What weren't we thinking? Yup. Poor fair-skinned Thea had been "playing on" most of the week with a painfully sunburned neck, arms, and thighs; paying the price for her parents' pitiable lack of foresight.
Then the match was suddenly over and we were hugging Thea and apologizing all over ourselves for her salmon-colored skin.
There was a short farewell ceremony at a distant set of bleachers, where awards and certificates got handed out.
Thea, unfazed by physical insults ranging from stomped-on to sunburnt, began crying at that point—dismayed and deflated by the average grades she'd received from Coach Gilmore in the skills section of her final evaluation form.
Walking back to the van, I tried as best I could to help her see the light: Coach Gilmore's "average" ratings had all been levied in things like passing and dribbling—things she could readily improve through dedication and practice.
In truth, Thea had succeeded well past admirably in all the categories that mattered more—in life as well as in soccer. Had received uniformly glowing praise from Coach Billy Gilmore for demonstrating, for example, the courage and determination to get back up and play on whenever a boy ran over her head.
# # #
Her team, "Scotland," was winning its Mini-World Cup final. Thea waved to us from her sweeper position then redirected her attention to the pitch.
Her coach, Billy Gilmore, a ruddy, paunchy, balding, thin-legged Englishman in his latter forties or early fifties, strolled up and down the sidelines in a white T-shirt and blue shorts, whistle in hand, checking his clock and pronouncing his judgments with cordial calls of Play on! ... Free kick! ... Well done!
He shouted "Well done, Thea!" after Thea got knocked down hard while tackling the ball away from an opposing player; kept asking her if she was all right after she was back on her feet chasing the action.
Thea assured Coach Gilmore repeatedly that she was fine. But the ferocious collision with her male opponent had hurt her a lot. The boy had basically run right over her. I knew Thea would not cry no matter how much she wanted to: I’d seen her take a vicious ball in the face at age 9 and keep right on going, suppressing the tears-impulse for all she was worth. (That, in an age group where most kids screamed for their mommies and writhed on the ground after stubbing a toe.) Years later I would unknowingly watch Thea play an entire soccer game with a fractured forearm.
So I knew Thea would "play on," which she did.
My feelings at that moment were actually a mixture of pride and shame—pride in Thea's bravery, shame for her parents' oversight in forgetting to include a bottle of sunscreen when helping her pack for a five-day camp. What weren't we thinking? Yup. Poor fair-skinned Thea had been "playing on" most of the week with a painfully sunburned neck, arms, and thighs; paying the price for her parents' pitiable lack of foresight.
Then the match was suddenly over and we were hugging Thea and apologizing all over ourselves for her salmon-colored skin.
There was a short farewell ceremony at a distant set of bleachers, where awards and certificates got handed out.
Thea, unfazed by physical insults ranging from stomped-on to sunburnt, began crying at that point—dismayed and deflated by the average grades she'd received from Coach Gilmore in the skills section of her final evaluation form.
Walking back to the van, I tried as best I could to help her see the light: Coach Gilmore's "average" ratings had all been levied in things like passing and dribbling—things she could readily improve through dedication and practice.
In truth, Thea had succeeded well past admirably in all the categories that mattered more—in life as well as in soccer. Had received uniformly glowing praise from Coach Billy Gilmore for demonstrating, for example, the courage and determination to get back up and play on whenever a boy ran over her head.
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