Go now, grieve later

CW FISHER Size, like all things, is relative. It's how there can be a large crumb, or a small galaxy. Big things, such as wars, tend to tromp all over small things, such as babies. Yet a tsunami, in two minutes, kills with such effortless authority as to make all manmade horrors seem puny and pointless. Days later the death toll still rises just as the waters rose, unstoppable, silent, smelling of death and more death to come. Fear now the small things: the microbial cocktails now acook in the bloating bodies of loved ones; plotting their escape, these microbes plan to take down at least as many as the tsunami itself. They're wearing lobster bibs. But it's a timed event. The deadline is passing for bulldozing the corpses. Grief is for later. The disaster isn't over. Governments need to stop counting the dead and get all survivors out of there, or they'll be counting them too. Every ship in the Indian Ocean should drop its freight and board survivors. Those closer inland should continue in that direction. Every helicopter and light aircraft in the area should be conscripted for search and rescue. Leave the dead to the professionals, or to God and the gulls. Go!

Does I Bother You?

CW FISHER All blogs are personal blogs, especially political blogs, but the ubiquity of I is alarming. I is a tripping wall wherever I appears. The conventions of writing have a standing order barring I at the gate. I is unwelcome even in journal form, even in the first-person singular monologue, because it fills the shoes of the reader and leaves nowhere to stand. In Strunk & White's classic little book, The Elements of Style, #1 is: Place Yourself in the Background. It's a hard law, easily violated, but it's there to serve a greater principle, which is that nobody, nobody, cares what happened to you today (except other bloggers who've also been inhaling the heady air of the blogosphere and likewise believe The Story of My Day may one day become a major motion picture). The writer of this blog says fine. Make a spectacle of your measly life. Tell me the one about your dog dragging your sanitary napkin around at your Christmas party. Bore me some more with how you're bored or hungover. Write an open letter to your boy/girlfriend letting him/her see how s/he likes public humiliation. I'll read it all right. But I won't like it.

Watching the tsunami

CW FISHER Blue sky, blue sea, yellow beach, heaven. A man takes movies from a cabana, comments on the strange behavior of the sea. "It's coming!" he shouts, runs to get a better shot. "Again?" says another. But the sea's the same sea; he's crazy we figure. The same beach, better view, littered with sunbathers, acrawl with walkers and gawkers, stippled with the silhouettes of children and old people. Nearer the hotel, lugging lawnchairs, the tired and the hungry climb the greens to repair for lunch. Everyone here has money, even the grass. This is Phuket. "Shit!" says the shooter. On the beach, brief screams, a wider band of white that keeps coming. A moment of silence as it rolls over the natural seawall, not so dramatically, simply rolling as a wave rolls, up, up, up, crashing high and white against obstructions but finding its way around and through. It was just a big wave, only a wave that was nowhere near stopping, coming faster, getting deeper. Now hysterical screams of parents running toward the beach, fat tourists waddling too slow are swallowed whole. Shooter races through the dark bar to a balcony outside. There are no screams now and far fewer people. An older couple under a sidewalk umbrella rise to their feet, water at their ankles. Arm in arm they take three steps when they're shoved against a fence. From the same balcony another man reaches out his hand, a ridiculous gesture given he's 15 feet away. Gripping each other and the fence they're ripped away. Without pause for reflection their would-be rescuer rushes back into the bar, and is never seen again. "Shit! Shit! Shit!" says the shooter. A young man in a swimsuit climbs onto the balcony and stands next to the shooter. Neither man talks. There's nobody left but them. The young man is figuring out how to climb higher as the shooter returns to the bar, now swirling with fast rising water and twirling tables. He steps onto a heavy wood counter, soon to be afloat, curses or prays in another language under the roar of the water and crash of breaking glass. He slides into the swirl, his camera held high, and records a grainy last look at the cheap decorating and ugly advertising of another outdoor tourist trap, and almost completes a 360 before his camera shorts. See it here.

When God was Dead

CW FISHER When Bernie Taupin and Elton John remembered a "Christmas Day when the New York Times said 'God Is Dead,'" it was a day of great jubilation for my college roommate Ross, whose father was the killer. The song refers to a NYT article about the death of God movement spearheaded by William Hamilton, radical theologian and author of On Taking God Out of the Dictionary. Ross'es dad had thrown kerosene on the embers of Neitszche, Melville and Job. Using far fewer words he presented a full idea that was universal in appeal, a guaranteed soul-sticker that provoked scratching amongst peoples Athiest to Zionist. The death of God was an irresistable ball to kick around the universe, if briefly, a good opener to a twelve pack or a bag of Mexican, and every seven years I've had a different view on the subject. But until recently I'd never read any of Hamilton's writings that still strip the altar and challenge us to start over. With the casual cool of a well-mannered doorman, this small-'c' christian ushers us in and out of the big building Belief, turning us first toward the corpse of the known God of Abraham then back out again to the unknowable G-d we know so well, the malleable god of our present purposes. Bill Hamilton is essential reading, especially in the present danger of a world so ripe to blow. Locked as we are in a religious war over which kid Father loves best, it might be wiser to bury the old man once and for all and simply grow up.

Crossing Christ out of Xmas

CW FISHER Whenever I ask myself that insipid question: WWJD? I find myself embarrassed and ashamed because it's almost never what I'm doing. Would Christ be blogging the day before the day before Christmas, when he hasn't even started his Christmas shopping yet? Believe what you want about Jesus, but you can't deny he was the most radical thinker of all time. All he wants for Xmas is for us to love our enemies. Even Santa's scratching his head. Love our enemies. Love them? Love our enemies, our neighbors, our God as we love ourselves? Is he kidding? Who does that? First of all, I have a problem loving myself. Frankly, I don't deserve it--but that's between me and me. It'll change and I'll love myself too much again. I go from self-loathing to self-gratification to self-adoration like clicks on a dial. This probably explains a lot about the way I love God. It's true that, in times of my life, I've had high expectations of myself, and of God, though not anymore so much, thank God. Loving my neighbors remains easier when they're loveable, and loving my enemies is only possible when I "put it in God's hands" and distract myself with something else. If we loved our enemies, what would we do? If we loved them like we love ourselves, how could we kill them? We couldn't. We'd raise a white flag, call a time out, talk, hug, make spaghetti. If you don't think Christ is radical, read a Gospel. Pick one of four short books. Each tells a slightly different version of the same events. Mark is shortest and most to the point, John the most moving. Just concentrate on what Jesus does and says. You'll notice how often he snaps the neck of human logic. It is heartening to know that no church or political party can lay claim to anything Jesus stands for since they are all speaking and acting in utter ignorance of his commandment. Our greatest weakness is our greatest commonality, and that is our striking tendency to travel in the opposite direction from the one we need to travel in if we are to live together harmoniously. We shouldn't feel so bad for failing so often and in such spectacular fashion. Obviously we can't help it. But the truth is we never tried. We keep waiting for our enemies to love their enemies, us, in other words, and miss the point entirely.

The End of MS?

CW FISHER Scientists just found a way to reactivate a dormant gene that repairs nerve damage caused by multiple sclerosis. The idea that new gene therapies might actually reverse the damage of MS is beyond anything imagined by anyone who's ever been touched by the disease (my wife has lugged it around for years). While the researchers at Harvard and Cambridge universities are still in the mouse stage, the breakthrough is real and the implications are enormous for other neurological disorders. Could Parkinson's or Cerebral Palsy or Alzheimer's be next?

Wolfe in Twain's Clothing

CW FISHER I admire Tom Wolfe's work, though not so much his suits, which infringe on Mark Twain's, hitherto America's only white-suited author. To Mr. Wolfe's credit, he does differentiate: the spats, the cane/hat/gloves combo. Clemens has a frog in his pocket, look. Suits aside, these two great American authors share another commonality: both have written more bad books than good. But only one wrote "I Am Charlotte Simmons." Only one jumped into subject matter unbefitting an old man, namely present-day college life. And only one chose to describe present day sexual behavior. That one is Tom Wolfe, of course. Twain didn't write about sex because nobody wrote about sex then; sex was a rumor. Wolfe writes from a time slippery with it. Now certain British people have taken it on themselves to award Mr. Wolfe the British prize for bad sex in fiction. The British, who are known for their sly humour and bad sex, annually strike down some hapless author, using the blunt instrument of their own words ripped from context "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel." Tom 's not going. Would you? I wouldn't. What, to have some laughs? This sort of thing is good for sales then? Slave for a bit o' slander, is that it then, all in fun? Here's how the winning sentence begins: "Slither slither slither slither went the tongue..." Prethithly. This line is impossible to read without annoying the tongue, which may be what Wolfe had in mind. He's very clever, you know, and not at all shy about trying new things, for example, his latest book, "I Am Charlotte Simmons." Clearly, he's no Charlotte Simmons. But all right, I suppose I was apalled. All right, I was. I read it many times. I got the idea. It was clear. Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, it's cunnilingus,seven words, three dots. Does Wolfe know squat? I don't know. I haven't read the book either. But even out of context it's clear to me that Mr. Wolfe is playing. The joke is obvious. Say "slither slither slither slither went the tongue." You can't say it fast; it's pointless. You have to be careful. It takes practice. There are rrr's and many esses. And that flicking ell. "Slither slither..." Cunnilingus is a lingual exercise. These are guesses. I don't know what comes after the dots. It that bad sex? Or bad sex writing? Or neither? There's more. From a different section. "But the hand that was what she tried to concentrate on, the hand, since it has the entire terrain of her torso to explore and not just the otorhinolaryngological caverns -- oh God, it was not just at the border where the flesh of the breast joins the pectoral sheath of the chest -- no, the hand was cupping her entire right -- Now!" Huh? I'm sorry, what? That's not bad sex. I haven't read the book yet, I will, but I've read enough Wolfe to know what Wolfe sounds like, and that sounds like Wolfe all right. For my careful vivisection of the copy above see above. British humor. It's so hard to tell the difference sometimes. Tom Wolfe is the first "winner" in the 12-year sideshow to decline. That's funny.

Who needs metal?

CW FISHER Ever wonder what those old cars on your front lawn are worth? Lots. Chances are they're long gone to China by now, building cities. As anybody with a speck of scrap knows, China can't get enough. Out here they had to hire more cops to patrol the new subdivisions because guys with saws keep stealing all the copper tubing. What happens when a penny's worth a buck and a half? It occurs to me that all this useless metal we are currently exporting will not be returning any time soon, and that it could be useful in the event of war or economic recovery. Our great great grandfathers pulled that metal out of the earth by hand so their great great grandchildren could sell it to the junkman for enough to order Chinese. If China were run by evil geniuses, they'd pay top dollar for the world's metal, and once they had it all, they'd declare war and watch the enemy roll up in Saturns. Keyword: plastic.

Horrorism

CW FISHER A family sits at a kitchen table laughing over something that happened today. Bursting in from three sides are six armed men who cuff them, tape their mouths and take them to a car. The parents watch as their children are carefully chained together in the back seat, leg to leg, brother to brother and sister, to opposite doors. The parents are then uncuffed, the mother is handed a cell phone, the father is told to drive. They're advised to answer the phone. They're told that noncompliance will result in their immediate detonation. Left to ponder their situation, the parents first tear the tape off their mouths, then answer the phone. They drive as directed into the center of traffic on a busy street in a major city and are blown to shrapnel by remote control. It's happening in Iraq, and may have been happening for some time, according to ABC News. What were initially assumed suicide bombers are now clearly something quite different: family abductions. The evidence tells everything: a leg found attached to a door, a pair of ankles, blocks away a handcuffed fist. Saddam Hussein once sent messages by similar means. The taking down of families was once a grand hallmark of the Hussein tradition, wherein any whisper of infidelity could result not in your demise but that of your brother and his wife and children. This kind of thing has a way of shaping up a community fast. There's an election coming up in Iraq. And a song in my head, goes: just direct your feet to the Sunni side of the street.

Why they're called "deadlines"

Over 40, under deadline? Please, sit down. You're going to die. Not yet--you have 24 hours. Oh, it's not for certain, calm down. It's just that your risk of a heart attack is six times greater in the 24-hour period following a deadline. That sounds bad, but then, the word itself is fair warning. Originally it was a prison term. Other findings of a study published today: risk of a heart attack doubles when you're put into a competitive situation. And the risk is slightly higher for being praised by the boss. That's what it says. For praise you get a heart attack. Winning is so hard. The boss says nice hat, we drop dead. Just knowing this information increases your risk. Next time your boss gives you a deadline, call the cops. Or ask the boss to reconsider, and call your lawyer if you get an incorrect answer. Swinging into action also ensures the boss won't sideswipe you with a compliment.

Superhoney and the Neo-non-newness of Nothing

CW FISHER When King Solomon observed a few thousand years ago that there was nothing new under the sun everyone marveled because they'd never heard it before. Now it's just another old saying. Band-Aid recently came out with a revolutionary new liquid bandage that predates Solomon by three millennia and wasn't exactly new when the Egyptians first described it. This ancient liquid bandage could stop bleeding, seal wounds, kill infections and speed up healing -- and left behind scarcely a scar. They used honey. And when Cleopatra had breast enlargement surgery, you can bet she wasn't the first. First they shaved her with a clamshell, then they made incisions using clamshells, and under the breast tissue they inserted clamshells. (Nice big ones, one slightly larger.) They sewed her up and dressed her wounds with honey. Cost of the operation: 50 clams. For her. But the marketing was worth it and soon there wasn't an honest breast in Egypt. What's new about any of this besides nothing? Nothing. We're always rediscovering the neo-non-newness of nothing, tripping over the same amazing facts we knew a hundred years ago, stuff we unlearned through disuse because we followed "improvements" that weren't. Honey was last used as an antibacterial agent for wounds sometime during WWII. The introduction of the sexier penicillin, followed by one exotic new antibiotic after another, sealed honey's fate as a remedy of the past, good for tea, good for thee, left to the care of the last dying hippie. Remembering that nothing is new and that all things are in a constant process of decay -- how cheering -- it should be no surprise that these once sexy antibiotics have grown old; they plod across the stage in their slippers, hobbled over holding up loose bikinis, and doctors have no choice but to politely rate them as "gradually losing their effectiveness" when what they really mean is they don't work. Luckily, the audience is coughing so violently they can't hear the explanation, which is that the doctors, in dispensing antibiotics like Skittles, created in the very viruses they were trying to kill a preference for red ones, green ones, yellow ones -- yes! -- the little bastards wanted more! This happened because small things adapt faster than big things. Where it might take a billion years for a star to be born, it only takes a season or so for a virus to jump from a bird to a human -- a trick that merely requires them to change the shape of their bodies. This ain't easy, as any dieter knows, but for these little guys, it's like a carpenter changing a blade on a Sawz-all. This miraculous transformation, once called evolution, no longer occurs in certain areas of the Christian world where God can't be seen through microscopes or telescopes due to His prior existence on the pages of a book. What's new? Nothing. But. There's so much more of it than usual. Guess what just stepped onto the stage? Of course. You saw it coming. Honey! And not the old honey either, but a new one, newly created not by hands of man but the glands of bees and the gizz of a flower. On the northern island of New Zealand, honey's been doing push ups in its spare time. Somehow the bees and the manuka flower got together and created a superhoney with a broad spectrum of action against bacteria, fungi, protozoa and all antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria including staphylococcus. Research doctors are using manuka superhoney to treat post surgical wounds. They've had extraordinary success with diabetic patients who would otherwise heal poorly and slowly. No job's too big for superhoney. Say you've got a fungating wound where your cancer breaks through your skin. Get the honey. Or maybe you're covered in ulcerated wounds from the gentle radiation treatments you've received. No prob. Just one more spoonful. If you've been following honey's progress through the modern world, you probably already know that honey's got a lot more tricks up its sleeve, from lowering cholesterol to reducing alcohol abuse to supercharging the most lethargic libido. You didn't know that? It's true. Honey is the secret ingredient in the world's only acknowledged aphrodisiac. The other secret ingredient is alcohol. Put them together, you've got mead! Mead can make a zebra hump an aardvark. Solomon knew this too, which is why he had 500 wives. For the wisest man in the world, that's the dumbest thing I ever heard. But oh well. Another man, another manuka flower, stricken.

Wordkill Wishlist grows

CW FISHER Yesterday I listed 10 words I wanted dead -- "blogosphere," "wtf," "microsoft," "lol," "So" (to begin a post), "rumsfeld," "faith-based," "pro-choice/pro-life," "cool," and "terrorist." Based on your suggestions I want to make some changes. I'm still deciding. Overnight respondents gave big thumbs down to "lol," "So" and "wtf," which sends them to the top of the hit list, or the bottom if we go Letterman style. Montreal writer Kirsten Cameron places "lol" in the first ten positions. Heather Anne just posted on her hatred of "So." So Willful Expose finds the word "so" so right so often that she's hereby absolved by The Apologist and excused from participating in its actual murder, which appears imminent. Epistemological is so far the only one to single out "terrorist" for word heaven. Vandamonium sticks "faith-based" in the top three. Amy of Living Poetry defends "cool" but phones a hit on "red state/blue state." Brad at Almost Lucid actually wants to kill the word "blog" (but then what would we call our thingee?) (Note: add "thingee" to list). Mindless Drivel adds "pundit" to the fire, Secret Narcissist Rebecca throws on "rant" and "rave," Gary at matchingtracksuits chucks "ramble," and "nonsense." Snarkhouse Stacy throws out "mommy blog," Mike d throws up "synergy" and "pro-active." Curmugeon goes for two with "moral values." This morning I had an amazing epiphany and added "amazing" and "epiphany." Londoner Deek Deekster of the Blog of Funk added 7 of his own: "regime change," "yay!" "freakin" (what's wrong with the profanity?), "yes...no..." (before giving an opinion), "leaning to the (right) or (left)," "just war" and "blogroll," which is to Deek worse than blog. Of course we need to be careful. This is murder we're talking about here. To us maybe they're just words, but to the people who use them, they're like shoes. And we're sick of being walked on. Think of the success we had with "liberal" and "conservative." It was we, the people, who knocked off "dittohead" and "dufus." And the only reason why nobody thinks anything is super anymore is because "super" turned up in the wrong trunk at the wrong scrap yard, got melted down and sent to China. Can we do it with "cool?" It's hard to say. Maybe the larger question is should we. Maybe Amy's right to blame me for jokingly pointing a gun at "cool." First of all, it's not cool. Second, how cool is the loss of cool? Third, it would leave us with only "O.K." Which is O.K. , but uncool. Amy, I've changed my mind on cool. It's cool. Cool?

What Words Will YOU Retire?

CW FISHER All I want for Christmas is the power to send ten words or phrases into pastspeak. I've got my wishlist done. 10. Blogosphere 9. WTF 8. Microsoft 7. lol 6. So (when used to begin a post) 5. Rumsfeld 4. faith-based 3. pro-life/pro-choice 2. cool 1. terrorist What's on your hit list?

How to Leave

CW FISHER There are many exits from the public arena, from retirement to resignation to imprisonment. The Apologist endorses them all. Life is a series of comings and goings, and how we go out defines character almost as much as how we come in. We can't always choose how we're expelled, fired, canned, yanked, set aside, shunned, taken off the schedule or kicked into the street, but we do have complete control over how we leave, that is, whether we stomp, shuffle or stroll off the stage. Let us then review six recent public exits, ranked best and worst. Stomp, Shuffle Stroll Top 3 Worst Exits of 2004 Colin Powell, longheld shufflestomping stroller, disappointed everyone by standing perfectly still for four years, then announced his retirement on the eve of a major summit, attended anyway. Stumble. Dan Rather, careerlong stomper of conspiracy, hypocracy and cover-up whose ice cold manner and Hooverlike investigative style finally brought down the biggest kahuna of all, Dan Rather. Shuffle. Ken Lay shuffled into an elevator, then shuffled people, places, things, got rich, lost and caught and now lays low, shuffling in his feety jays, wondering what is the frequency. Shuffle. Stomp, Shuffle, Stroll Top 3 Best Exits of 2004 Martha Stewart, who taught us how to live a branded lifestyle, showed us then how to use ordinary household courage and a bit of total surrender to disarm all opponents. Her choice of prison over appeal was an exit of grace and cunning that diminishes to pipsqueaks the rest on this list. Transcendent. John Ashcroft, in leaving office, executes his single greatest achievement and immediately makes America safer; sadly leaving behind his investigation of the White House itself, Mr. Ashcroft neither stomps, shuffles or strolls but soars away with the eagles! Soar. Tom Brokaw strolled in and out nightly, strolled out the same way, nightly, in a series of specials celebrating his life and times so ubiquitous for a time that everyone was truly glad to see him finally go. Stroll.

God Sends Locusts

CW FISHER We've talked about the melting ice caps; we've pretty well covered the flu (we've got the dead all counted already, so we're ahead in that respect). Time now for The Almighty's Next Great Pestilence. The locust now swarms across the Holy Land, stripping it of food. The swarms rose out of Africa but saved their appetite for Isreal. Trees are stripped bare in minutes. Whole fields devoured in hours. Poodles shaved to nothing. Frenzied, thick, beating into you, caught in your hair, your mouth, screeching in your ears. Probably spitting that yellow 'nicotine' stuff. A single locust eats its own weight every day. But a ton of locusts, which is only a fraction of what an average swarm weighs, eats the same amount of food in a single day as 10 elephants, 25 camels or 2,500 people -- and never gains a pound! These aren't your typical green grasshoppers. For one thing, they're locusts. For another, they're red. And for a third, they're out of their frickin' gourds. But why? What's the mechanism that causes the locust to swarm? Scientists recently discovered the answer. God tells them to. See, your regular locust hops around happily, out of sight, eating, but not overdoing it. Otherwise how would they hop? All is well. But touch them right... here, right in this spot inside their back legs, and they go nuts. It's their G spot. Researchers just figured this out this year. One of them got a paintbrush and started tickling a locust. He was bored. But when he touched that spot, the locust began swarming behavior. Touch him there, he rises up out of the grass, sees somebody else over there, joins him, somebody below looks up, says, yeah! gives herself a little rub to kind of get in the mood, and up she goes -- it's over, man. Up they all go, and they don't have an off switch. Spring break in the insect world. Scientists hope to "block the neural pathways that lead them to swarm by developing new control chemicals," according to The Australian, which is not a person but a great newspaper, quoting some scientist. Drug them, in other words. Confuse them into beaching themselves. Meanwhile, many people consider the red locust a delicacy, which is to say they eat them. Fry them up, crunch, yum. Yet what is the word "delicacy" but a delicate way of describing any alleged foodstuff that releases in normal people a gag reflex, and in abnormal people a thrill of temporary superiority unless or until they puke. They ought to have a contest to see who can eat their own body weight in 24 hours.