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Sometimes, when I’ve forgotten what it was I was going to write about, I make a list. The items on the list are always the same. The list has no basis in reality, it just serves a purpose, which is to remind me of what it was I was going to write about. I don’t know how it does it; it just does. Here it is:

Things I hate:

Midgets, of course; the Eiffel Tower; tongs; deja vu, when it serves no purpose; lettuce; people who say ‘Moo’ at inappropriate times; the Avery Island Buddha.

Oh, yeah. So about the ammunition dump in Iraq. I know nothing about it, and I’m going to keep it that way. Every once in a while, I opt out of the latest news, and it’s the ammo dump’s turn. Frankly, I can’t sustain the level of outrage necessary to deal with the cascade of shit that spews out of the media on a daily basis. I don’t know how anyone does. So I opt out. In this instance, I’ve decided to not click through to anything that has anything to do with ammo dumps, and I don’t read newspaper articles that bleat about it either. In my carefully-curtailed media world, that’s all I have to do to isolate myself from any developing story.

So I don’t know anything about it, except that it appears to be a fairly big deal, given the amount of press it’s gotten in the regular media, not to mention the liberal blogs.

But ignoring it just makes sense for me. I don’t care if this is a coup for Kerry backers, or if it’s a load of rubbish that will go away by next week. It makes sense to ignore it. In that way, I can conserve my outrage for other debacles that are barreling down the political turnpike.

It’s a way to freshen my outrage button, without actually lapsing into a much-needed coma.

This morning I awake to find that a Bush/Cheney sign has sprouted in my neighbor’s lawn, like a mushroom. It’s a week before the election, and now our short cul-de-sac is no longer an all Kerry bastion. Before, courtesy of Carole and me, our little dead-end road was staunchly democrat, in that the only signs up were in our lawn. Now my world has darkened.

It’s funny; I didn’t realize my neighbor pulled in over 200 grand a year and feasted on the bodies of children. I could’ve sworn he was a navy petty officer working part-time as a policeman to make ends meet.

I know others who eat babies, of course. My brother; the guy I sit next to in Microbiology; my mother (my own mother!). The garbagemen who picked up everybody else’s garbage today, but left ours on the curb, they almost certainly enjoy a baby from time to time.

May God forgive the baby eaters.

My mom’s old computer died on her, so she bought a new one. The old one—which had taken to not going past the Windows splash screen—was given to my oldest son in a fit of magnanimity.

I was pretty sure I could get it to work, and I tried to tell my mother that before she took on the expense and trouble of getting a new computer down at Wal-mart (yes! Wal-mart! she’s old).

She got a new computer anyway, and we got her old one. The first thing I did was to try to load up my XP using a Dell cd lying about, but that didn’t work, because it didn’t have enough RAM. So. I looked around for an old copy of Me or 98, but I guess I threw all that out years ago. With gusto! I love throwing away shitty OS’s that have wronged me over the years! I wish I hadn’t.

I did, though, come across an old ‘TurboLinux’ cd. What the hell; why not? I said to myself. I’m savvy. I’ve done Macs, I’ve done Windows, I’ve done DOS; hell I knew my way around the C-64, back in the day. Tape drives! Tape drives, back and forth from school, uphill both ways!

It still didn’t work. Subroutines kept telling me the hard drive was wasted.

So I went down to Wal-mart and bought a new hard drive. 40 gigs, 69 bucks.

After fiddling with the BIOS for far too long, I got the computer to recognize the hard drive. After that, TurboLinux loaded easily.

The thing is, it’s been a long time since I had to learn a new OS. It’s a shitty endeavor under the best of circumstances, but with a jury-rigged system, it’s more so. And there are completely new metaphors to learn. Usually, when something craps out on my Windows system, I can figure it out in fairly short order, because I’m experienced with it. I’ve had many things crap out on my Windows systems over the years, so this accretion of dismay, rage, and eventual triumph over the forces of Evil has given me confidence enough to believe that, no matter how evil and crappy Windows is, I can eventually browbeat it into working again.

Not so with TurboLinux. I mean, things are happening that my limbic system doesn’t know whether to urge me on in a fit of rage and disgust, or just quit and order a pizza. For instance: mounting the cd-rom. Apparently, I have to ‘mount’ the cd-rom almost everytime I start the computer, else the computer doesn’t know it’s there. Oh, there’s a function that can be set from a command line sort of interface, that should tell the computer that it has a cd-rom at start-up, but it doesn’t work all the time. And I have no idea what parameter is changing that the computer decides to make me re-mount the thing; I didn’t change anything, it just changes!

Also, I tried to load a DOS emulator into the system, to give it a little functionality. Meaning that it would allow me to play some ancient games that I haven’t played in years, yet I still have lurking in my closet. I followed the recipe I lifted from the site I got DOSemu from, which called on me to invoke commands that I was clueless about. It actually behaved fairly well. The loading, I mean; things scrolled by efficiently, as if other things were really happening. In the end, though, the load returned cryptic errors. Mysterious errors; errors that I wouldn’t even know were errors, except that the computer prefaced them with the word ‘error.’

I guess I’ll figure it out, but I’m kind of tired of re-learning shit like this. I just want it to work, anymore.

The Fed chairman rejected theories that the world will soon run out of oil.

“If history is any guide, oil will eventually be overtaken by less-costly alternatives well before conventional oil reserves run out,” Greenspan said.

The man is a fucking oracle! How did we let this happen, that we invest so much gravitas in one dude from NYC?

I’ve got one: “Pterodactyls will cry from their cribs in agony. The muffaleta reigns supreme.”

That was fun. I’ve also got some tea leaves I can swirl. I’ll issue a random opinion on some scientific issue I’m not qualified to discuss afterwards.

I am tired of watching the media snap up every inscrutable kibble of wisdom that falls from Greenspan’s mouth. He’s the God-hippo, festooned with kibble birds. Got a bit of a kibble bird problem.

This is why I mean to retire to some island in the middle of nowhere. I’m tired of the spectacle.

Somehow, some way, I will outrun Alan Greenspan.

The part of the debate last night where Bush defends the drug companies by preaching caution on the importation of Canadian drugs (as if the whole importation crisis hasn’t been brewing for months and years), and Kerry comes out for drug importation to lessen the expense for Americans made my skin crawl.

This is the biggest ruse in American politics today. How did the issue of health care in America turn into a pro- or anti-Canadian drug import debate?

The more we talk about legalizing the importation of drugs from Canada, the less we talk about the stupefying state of affairs in America that has made our drugs so expensive to begin with.

US companies make many of these drugs. They sell them in other countries for some price. In the US, the companies’ home, they are sold at a premium of that price.

I ask you: what the fuck? What sort of gimlet-eyed sleight-of-hand is it that can take the problem of our ridiculous healthcare system and replace it, before our very eyes, with the (more benign, by orders and orders) problem of drug importation?

The fix isn’t to allow Canadian drugs in, the fix is to dismantle the evil pricing scheme that allows Glaxo et al to make its profits on the backs of Americans while the rest of the world gets a freer ride.

So I’m disappointed with Kerry in that he’s only coming out ‘for’ Canadian drug importation, which, in a world where we actually take care of real healthcare problems, would be a non-issue.

Hopefully he’ll do something about it in office, but he sure didn’t mention it last night.

He’s not perfect.

But we can’t afford another 4 years of the other guy.

Our little worm-infested 6-month old shetland sheepdog, Karnak the Destroyer (aka “Little Bear”), is a veteran of two trips to the vet. After this last trip, I think we’ve finally gotten rid of the tapeworms and hookworms he was lousy with. As I left, the vet’s assistant gave me the paperwork and a heartworm pill package. I was directed to dose Karnak on October 4th, which was the monthly “anniversary” of his first treatment.

Today, I belatedly remembered the heartworm medication, so I dug it out of the paperwork sitting on a kitchen shelf.

The medicine is called “Interceptor;” it’s a monthly heartworm treatment. I opened the envelope and fished out the only thing within, which was a red square of paper with a dog’s profile stamped on it, and the words “Flavor Tabs” embossed below. That was all there was.

I looked on the envelope for instructions on how to feed this thing to the dog, but there were none. The other paperwork didn’t yield any clues either.

I looked at the square more closely, and discovered that I could pop out the center circle containing the dog’s head from what I now could tell was an adhesive backing. The circular piece of paper was kind of thick, and sticky on the other side. A Flavor Tab.

In fact, it looked just like acid blotter paper. Maybe a bit more professionally done, but still.

I held the circle between my fingers, trying not to get any of the sticky stuff on myself. It struck me that I’d never seen real medicine come in this form. It also seemed problematical. I mean, I know what to do with blotter paper,* but how will Karnak react to this? Is it tasty? Will it dissolve in his mouth, like butter?

It was very odd. And I knew I was just guessing here. I hadn’t been able to find any instructions. Maybe it wasn’t to be taken orally; maybe it was like a nicotine patch, and I was supposed to affix it to the inside of his ear so the medicine could seep in slowly, transdermally. Maybe, maybe it was like a suppository, and I was supposed to push it into his anus somehow. Maybe that’s what pet owners were doing these days.

But no; surely if any method besides cramming it down his throat was the right one, the vet would’ve clued me in on it before I left his office. I decided it must be tasty.

Having satisfied myself that oral was the way to go, I approached Little Bear with the Flavor Tab, making soothing noises.

I offered it to him, and he eagerly grabbed for it with his teeth. Unfortunately, part of the sticky side managed to grab onto his nose, and he spent the next 30 seconds frantically trying to dislodge it. Eventually it ended up stuck on one of his paws while he searched for it among the chair cushions.

I picked it up and went back to the computer room. I was now completely unsure about the whole thing, and I wanted to google up “Interceptor” and “heartworm” and see what the web had to say about it before I took another shot at the dog.

After a few minutes, I found the dosage instructions. It was an oral drug, just like I thought, but the site said the drug came in tablets. No mention of red circles with dog faces printed on them.

It dawned on me that what I had in my hand was a sticker. Why, it wasn’t a Flavor Tab at all! It was a sticker to put on a calendar so I’d know when to give a tablet to the dog. That made me…a moron!

It further dawned on me that my vet hadn’t bothered to give me the drug itself; no, he’d given me a nice medicine envelope that didn’t contain any medicine. I guess I’m supposed to go down to Eckerd and buy the actual tablets on my own, but my vet didn’t tell me that. Thanks, doc!

And here I was, contemplating stuffing a calendar sticker in my dog’s ass. Overcome by a fit of halfwittery! Jesus!

Best case, I would’ve stuck the thing in his ear. Labelled like a Christmas ham.

visitor: “What’s that thing in your dog’s ear?”
me: “Oh, that. That’s the little feller’s medicine. It’s good for him.”
visitor: “You’re a colossal idiot.”

THANKS, DOC! I feel stupid and dirty just thinking about it. I’ve gotta go now.

* blog spokesman: “Not that he’s ever actually seen one up-close, or done anything with one even if he did.”

Nice Guys, Inc

I think the Halfbakery is worth a look if you haven’t seen it. This one’s about paying people to be nice. It’s hard to tell whether it would be a good thing, or the last gasp of a cynical, dying culture. Still, we allow our government to spend money on things not nearly as, well… nice, so….why not?

Also, as a follow through to the whole metaphor thing, this is a valuable idea:

Bizarre Metaphors

“You don’t want to be caught measuring eagle droppings with toothpicks.” and

“Don’t go puttin’ fish’s arseholes in railway tunnels.”

Consider Anne Coulter. She’s obviously riding a magic conservative carpet to money and fame. Does she believe what she says? Things like “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.” Does she believe things like that?

Fuck no. She’s the political analog of the World Wrestling Federation. She doesn’t have a sincere bone in her body. It’s all about money and fame.

the difference between professional wrestling and murder

There is a difference. The problem is that many people can no longer see it. They simply can’t distinguish between the two.

It’s a huge problem. Why? Because there are too many people in the United States who don’t have a fucking clue that the world wasn’t built expressly for their own entertainment, and other people are dying because of it.

That’s why.

It’s Wednesday, which means that I’ve had 3 days to get over the fact that the Saints lost to a very bad team spectacularly. One of these decades, the Saints will return to the playoffs.

NYT, Oct 4 2004:

Determined to win the post-debate spin war on Tuesday night, the Bush campaign called on its supporters to flood the news media with quick declarations that Vice President Dick Cheney had come out ahead. Ken Mehlman, Mr. Bush’s campaign manager, delivered the request in an e-mail message to supporters early Tuesday morning.

“Immediately after the debate, visit online polls, chat rooms and discussion boards and make your voice heard,” he said in the note, sent to the six million supporters on the campaign’s e-mail list. “People’s perceptions are shaped as much by their conversations around the water cooler as by the debates themselves.”

Propaganda and Spin are Ignorance factors: mechanisms that act to depress an individual’s Intelligence Threshold. When a person’s Intelligence Threshold is low (either naturally or via the machinations of an I-factor) he can’t understand the problems facing his society. When he can’t understand society’s problems, he becomes worried and confused. At that point, he can be safely led toward a concept he can understand, like flag waving, like so:

My brain hurts. I like flags. Flag waving’s good; it makes me feel good. That guy running for office is also pro-flag waving; I’ll vote for him. Pizza!

Spin, when combined with other I-factors, like poverty and over-work, has finally become sophisticated enough to match or surpass many people’s ability to withstand it.

Conservatives think a majority of people no longer have the ability to withstand I-factor. It’s only going to get worse.

A Lesson to be Learned

So. Were the preceding 4 or 5 posts worth the payoff? Of course they were; I kept out of trouble and you got to rest your mouse-clicking finger. But beyond that, I think there’s a lesson here to be learned, viz:

“The love of a good metaphor is the love of discovering a hidden underlying structure.”

People love that shit. I know I do. The Masons make a hobby out of it.

Also, I learned a couple things about myself. One is that I like to use the construction “harshing my [blank].” It makes me laugh everytime I see it. Another is that, however painfully long it takes to explain a metaphor, in the end it’s worth it, if I can use the term “I-factor” afterwards.

Psychology, in some ways, is the retarded stepson in the Science family that’s let out of the downstairs closet only on birthdays. In other ways, it has matured to the point that it can be used in a profound and nefarious manner by the morally bankrupt. And inevitably, since it can be used against the forces of Niceness, it is used against the forces of Niceness.

Take, for instance, how the science of psychology impacts Lying.

I think we all, as humans, have a good grasp on what lying is, without having to study it as a phenomenon. But rigorously studying it (as a psychologist can) will yield facts and underlying processes that aren’t self-evident.

For example, there was a study conducted years ago (it was a new study back when I was a psych major) that showed that people were more willing to do something for a stranger if they were given a reason to. It didn’t matter what the reason was; “I need you to help me because I need some help” worked more often than only asking for help without providing a reason did.

That result was surprising. I wouldn’t have predicted it. In fact, I would’ve laughed at the researcher if he’d gone into the experiment predicting a vacuous reason was better at obtaining help than no reason at all.

The researchers in this example weren’t running the experiment to figure out how to become better liars. What they discovered did, though, help liars become better liars, if they were paying attention.

These kinds of experiments are run by psychologists all the time, and they glean information from them. Social psychologists are continuously revealing odd dynamics underpinning society that even the most experienced power-seekers couldn’t possibly have been aware of.

But power-seekers–politicians–damned-sure are interested now. They’re paying attention.

So, getting back to the point, I still have, in my Petri dish, a culture of Voters that has been infected by the Lie virus.

An infusion of Truth has been spread liberally throughout the medium, which has done a nice job of containing the virus up to now. But Miss Constance, the evil lab assistant, has come in overnight to surreptitiously add 2 cc of Spin to my culture.

I come in the next morning to find my specimen in danger of being destroyed by Lies! I leap into action, and sprinkle some Education Inoculant, some Intelligence Inoculant, and a little faerie dust on the dish. Tragically, they don’t take.

In a flash I remember that this particular batch culture is what we scientists call ’stupid.’ And I remember also that I’d already inoculated this culture with faerie dust, many times. More faerie dust wouldn’t be productive; there comes a point when more doesn’t add to a culture’s defenses, it just makes it worried and confused. I throw out the culture and return to ogling Miss Constance’s breasts.

Next post: summing up.

Republicans think that it’s no longer about the truth; it’s about intelligence. More specifically, they think it’s about lack of intelligence. They assume voters can be moved to a point where there voting decisions aren’t based on an informed reading of the issues, they’re based on a visceral reaction to emotional appeals. They assume that people can be moved across a line, beyond which form is the only thing that matters.

They assume that a majority of voters will thank them for handing them their asses back, provided the newly-packaged ass is wrapped with pretty ribbons. And they’re right.

It’s been a long time coming to this. Eisenhower didn’t think that, but Bush’s handlers do. Somewhere between them, something happened.

The body politic (and my sub-metaphor, the body politic’s ass) is under assault. Lies are like viruses, attacking the body, but there’s always been enough Penicillin (in the form of people who tell the truth) to go around to counteract this.

Yes, I know Penicillin doesn’t really affect viruses; you’re harshing my metaphor, and I’d advise you to settle down until the end of it, which is down here somewhere.

“Spin”

Let me first just get this out of the way: metaphor is powerful. When I learned the list of literary contrivances in junior high–your metaphors, your similes, your synechdoches, your metonymies, your litotes–I didn’t expect that any of them would have any use beyond English class.

I was wrong. They’re all great. Except for synechdoches, which are right out. I googled the definition not a minute and a half ago, and it’s already fallen out of my head.

Getting back to metaphor, though. There is a case to be made that everything is a metaphor. Everything. My body is a metaphor for society. Society is a metaphor for one way the universe might behave. Hotdogs are metaphors for packaged chaos. It’s endless.

The glee to be had in ferreting out a new metaphor is a wondrous, wondrous thing, and I really love to do it. It keeps me going.

So, before I get to my new metaphor about spin, politics, and how they can be linked to the processes of immunology in such a way that it sounds like I know what I’m talking about, a little background:

My initial problem arose from the spin-Fest after the Kerry-Bush debate. I asked myself, “How can this conservative man on the television look into the camera and say things I know to be lies?”

For a member of the public, such as myself, there are several ways I can react to such a statement. I can

1) pretend he’s telling the truth, and hope for the best, or
2) question my own sanity, or
3) explore the underlying, nefarious reasons why he’s lying.

Option 3 is my best bet, but it’s not an option that everyone can exercise. There are people who are simply too stupid to exercise this option. Let me explain in the next post.

I almost didn’t watch last night’s debate. It wasn’t necessary; even if Kerry had flipped out on national television, if he’d sprouted tentacles from his eyeballs, I’d still be voting for him in November. In a contest between Bush and Rakmoot the All-Destroyer from Sanctimonious 6, I’ll vote for the bug-eyed tentacled thing everytime, provided it can get on the ballot.

So I guess I’m a tentacular-dog Democrat now. I didn’t used to be. Every once in a while, in days of yore, a Republican could come along that I’d think about voting for. That seems like a long time ago now, and not only because I used the word “yore.”

Kerry, despite my fears, did a great job. Bush looked like Charley the curmudgeonly uncle from My Three Sons.

So after the debate, I watched an after-action report show on PBS, mostly to confirm my feeling that what I saw happen actually happened. And there was a conservative NYT columnist—they have one or two—saying his boy scored a TKO. Okay, I realize I’m biased—hell, I’m a tentacular Democrat—but what show was this guy watching? How can he be sitting there with a straight face, telling me Bush did well?

I couldn’t believe it. I got edgy and railed at the television. I railed at the pundit for lying to me, and I railed at the journalist sitting across the table from him for not saying anything about it. She didn’t say anything. She acted like it was perfectly alright for him to take a metaphorical crap right there on the table.

When did journalists become props? I know they’re all not like that, but most of them are. And it goes beyond the truth; it is simple common courtesy to tell someone that there’s dogshit dribbling from his mouth.

I, of course, know that last night’s pundit wasn’t interested in telling the listening audience the truth. His job was damage control. That I know this, that I am aware of “spinning,” doesn’t make it okay to me.

I am also aware that last night’s pundit isn’t trying to make it okay to me. He doesn’t care what I think about spinning. He only cares about his man winning the election. So he will lie to the public, if that’s what it takes.

I sometimes wonder why I’m getting so worked up about the post-debate Spin-fest, but then I answer myself: if a man can stare me in the face and tell me that bad is good, that up is down, that blue is red, then that same man will lie to me about anything.

Spinning is a political phenomenon, and the Republicans do it better. They’re better at it. The Democrats try, but it’s hard for them to muster the terrific loathing for the electorate that spinning requires.

This post was supposed to be about the metaphorical link between spin & politics on the one hand, and immunology on the other, but I’ve worn myself out. Maybe over the weekend.