De Gustibus

I went to Starbucks yesterday. Which is something I try very hard not to do.

Airports. I'll go to Starbucks in airports. But other than that, I shun them like the cancerous growths they are.

Why? I don't know. I try to avoid chain stores in general, but I go to Walgreens for shampoo with very little compunction. And as chains go, Starbucks has pretty good labor and environmental policies. I don't know--I just hate it.

There's something about that metastasizing green and chrome. And the aggressive cheerfulness. And very existence of something called an "Eggnog Latte." Ugh.

There's something irrational about my hatred for Starbucks. So I've been thinking about other irrational dislikes. I made a list.

1. Steely Dan

There are probably worse bands, but I really hate Steely Dan. To me, they are pretentious, bland, and their songs have an unsettling capacity for getting stuck in my head. I once had "Deacon Blues" stuck in my head for three years.

2. Squeezable Bottles

Especially water bottles. They're infantilizing and they make rude noises.

3. Henry James

Entirely too much nuance. If I were that attuned to nuance I would kill myself. Although it would probably take 34 pages. Because I would have to describe the gun. In detail. In nuanced detail.

4. Alan Alda

Do I need to explain?

5. The Busker Who Sits Outside My Bank

Sir, I do not wish to be unkind, but I simply cannot believe that you are playing that thing right. Now, I realize an instrument with only one string is perforce going to have its limitations. But I am certain that whoever designed that instrument never intended the sound you make. I am at a loss as how to describe this sound. It has a high pitched and anguished quality that somehow evokes a chipmunk being sodomized. But that is not adequate to the awfulness of the sound. If Courtney Love's parenting skills were translated into sound waves, that would be close. But, Sir, I am genuinely sorry. I am sorry that I hate your instrument. You seem like a very nice man, which is why I put a dollar in your Kleenex box when I pass. Please do not take it as encouragement to continue playing.

Ok, that last one might not be entirely irrational. It really is an awful sound. Although that one chipmunk does seem to like it...

Any irrational dislikes?

Read This and Have a Better Day

Click........here

Wish I coulda said it that good!

Happy Birthday, Gitmo!

"Torture is a grotesque piece of compensatory drama," writes Elaine Scarry in The Body in Pain.

Tomorrow marks a grim anniversary. Five years ago, the first detainees were transferred to the Guantanamo Bay facility, contravening not only international law, but our own laws as well.

Guantanamo Bay is emblematic of the unabashed lawlessness of this administration. The President wiretaps without warrants. Habeas corpus is no more. The PATRIOT ACT allows for violations of the Fourth Amendment. And at every step, they are alarmingly upfront about the contravention of laws.

And although they don't want us to know what they are, members of the administration admit to "alternative interrogation techniques."

Illegal detentions and alternative interrogation methods and warrantless searches not only violate the victims, they create an atmosphere of threat and uncertainty.

Scarry argues that torture objectifies pain and makes it visible in order to translate it into a "spectacle of power." She writes that it is "precisely because the reality of that power is so highly contestable, the regime so unstable, that torture is being used."

It sounds a lot like terrorism. And it's unsettling to think that this now means us. Not Chile or Cambodia, but us.

The march on the White House was yesterday, but for all of us who couldn't make it to DC, here's a list of local events.

This isn't about politics. This isn't even about the war. It's about demanding that the government obey its own laws.

Walking in a Wiki Wonderland

I just got (yet another) student paper which uses Wikipedia as a source.

I think wiki technology is great. I think Wikipedia is great. But it's not an acceptable academic source. How do they not know this?? Encyclopedias in general aren't really legitimate academic sources. How do they not know this???

But the explanation was priceless: "Well, it was the only place that had any information on the subject."

Oh, really?

There are more than 10 million volumes in the library system here. We spend millions of dollars each year to subscribe to just about every database known to man, and Wikipedia is the only place that had any information? It strains the credulity a bit.

He's a senior, and his research abilities is limited to...google?

He's a nice kid and his paper didn't suck. Which makes it all the more aggravating.

Argh.

World's Laziest Blogger

Here's a poem I like:

"Nothing Will Cure the Sick Lion But to Eat an Ape"

by Marianne Moore

Perceiving that in a masked ball
attitude, there is a hollowness
that beauty's light momentum can't redeem;
since disproportionate satisfaction anywhere
lacks a proportionate air,

he let us know without offense
by his hands' denunciatory
upheaval, that he despised the fashion
of curing us with an ape--making it his care
to smother us with fresh air.


Not bad for a Yankees' fan. I guess we all have something we need forgiven.