The Strain of Gaiety

“All I ask is one thing, and I am asking this particularly of young people who watch: Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record, it’s my least favorite quality. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get, but if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. I’m telling you, amazing things will happen.”

And with that, Conan O’Brien signed off and ended his tenure at NBC.

Conan came out of this debacle smelling like a rose. He went out with a smile, with wit, with charm and — in the last moments — with heart. I couldn’t help but think of how badly NBC managed this entire thing as Conan leaves with the fans, the public and the media on his side. NBC has put all of their chips on Leno, on the status quo. They’re betting on looking backwards, instead of forward, and it’s possible their blunders will cast a very long shadow on their ratings and reputation.

I look forward to the September and Conan’s inevitable new project, at which time he will be on the cover of every magazine in the country and he will emerge doubly victorious.

I strayed across an archive of my old, old blog. This is a word-for-word repost of a bit of “comedy” I wrote in the summer of 2002.

Aries – Love is in the air tonight, Aries. However, so is dander. Be prepared and bring tissues for both.
Taurus – You will receive a handsome reward. Even though you never thought your deadbeat uncle was handsome.
Gemini – Don’t look for that big promotion at work, Gemini. Instead, look for that three-hole punch. Someone keeps moving it and that is bullshit.
Cancer – Easy there, Cancer. For today your rampant anti-Semitism will land you in hot water. When you land this hot water, relax, because you’ll be soaking in a hot spring resort that doesn’t allow in any Jews.
Leo – Leo, Leo, Leo. Would you hurry and gay it up already?
Virgo – That certain special someone is ready to listen to what you have to say. They’ve grown accustomed to that weird thing on your face and will be able to listen without distraction.
Libra – Stop drinking caffeine. That’s no way for a Mormon to behave. You are a Mormon.
Scorpio – Take on a long put-off task and finish it. No, not your model of the Romulan Warbird, you fucking dork-ass.
Sagittarius – For the answers you seek, you may have to seek a higher power. If you want answers from a fictional, invisible life force that has time to govern physics, destiny, time, space, and whether or not you should go back to drafting school.
Capricorn – Go to Vegas. Go to the Frontier Hotel. Room 2009. Do not eat or drink anything for at least 18 hours before you arrive. The human body is very resilient.
Aquarius – Use today to post some pointless funny material to your website. Do not dismay when no one reads it and no one ever gives you any feedback on it.
Pisces – Go fuck yourself.

I recently got sucked into a political debate in the comments section of a Facebook friend’s update, where he posted a link to Sarah Palin’s obviously ghostwritten op-ed in the Washington Post on global warming politicizing science. At first I took the bait and came out swinging with my two cents, but as my blood began to boil at the rote, pig-headed, teabagger mentality, paranoid conservative song and dance, I remembered Thomas Jefferson’s quote, “Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them.”

So I changed my tact and tried simple ridicule. Tommy J. really had something, because I ended up having a LOT more fun comparing this one particular nincompoop to a harmless teddy bear than I would have had vivisecting his delusional ravings with logic and reason. I started using his full name just for sport, but halfway through I wondered if I was subconsciously trying to Google bomb him in the hopes that someday some would-be employer would find his angry, racist, homophobic, ignorant sputterings and toss his C.V. in the trash.

(This exchange has been edited to include only the relevant barbs.)

Jason Brock: My evidence that Obama is a scumbag idiot is in his incredible lack of experience or qualifications and the mountain of scumbags, communists, tax cheats and felons that he surrounds himself with…Is this news to you?..He was put in office by the media who essentially donated $100s of millions of fawning coverage to him, and a $700 million dollar war chest cobbled together by the most filthy liberal bag-men America has to offer.

Jason Brock: Emissions reductions logically will cost both consumers and manufacturers handsomly. To claim that it wouldn’t is so astounding that only a blind eco religion faithful would claim it would not…Palin is correct. Developing alternative energies, and forgoing domestic exploration for fuel, is not only a fruitless endeavor but it is a massive sinkhole in search for the currently impossible…Of course there are many eco-industrialists who want us to believe otherwise because they stand to siphon off billions of dollars of taxpayer monies to fund bottomless research attempting to find something that doesn’t currently exist…All this predicated on a FAT LIE that the Earth is warming and it is 100% the fault of humans, based in a premise that Co2 is a pollutant…WTF?…I suppose H2O is a pollutant too?

Danforth France: She makes no sense at all. She’s misrepresenting several key facts in the first three paragraphs. The fact that one of her first points is that the “environmental agenda” will hurt our economy is a red flag that Palin, and anyone else who puts the word experts in quotes, is more concerned with short-term money-making than the truth. Palin and her ilk love to dismiss experts in any category because it’s easier to ignore their warnings and chase after the dollar. Ruin will always be more profitable than conservation. She’s basically full of shit. She’s asking that global warming data not be politicized while politicizing the data in the same breath. It’s a classic, pandering appeal to the ignorance (she calls it “common sense”) of her base, while using code words to delegitimize the honest, hard work of people 10 times smarter than her. Economic impact cannot be a legitimate counter argument against scientific findings. The fact that it costs money refutes nothing.

(Here’s where I make my turn.)

Danforth France: Oh, and Jason Brock is adorable.

Jason Brock: The relevance of the “what magazines do you read” question escapes me. I fail to see the “gotcha!” moment. What is the implication? That she does not read the leftist tripe masquerading as journalism? She clearly knows far more than Katie “I am a liberal whore” Couric. What has she said that “contradicts facts”?

Danforth France: If there was a plush version of Jason Brock, I would keep one next to my pillow. So cute.

Jason Brock: Danforth, please. Palin is absolutely correct in her indictment of the pseudo-scientists that are attempting to extract monies from the Fed by falsifying computer models to create a massive green industry. Global warming is a hoax of proportions unrivaled. Climate science has become a religion and all dissenters summarily dismissed as heretics, if they aren’t burned at the media/government stake.

Danforth France: When Jason Brock talks, I just want to pinch his cheeks!

(At this point he starts to ignore me and go after someone else in the thread.)

Jason Brock: Kevin, what do you smoke? What leads you to believe science and belief in God are incompatible? God created the universe and the laws of physics in it. You may think the Earth is an age incongruous with Biblical theory, on the other hand you probably believe that evolution is an incontrovertible fact. Which makes you as blindly faithful to an uproven speculation as Sarah Palin.

Danforth France: Jason Brock, come here so I can feed you a great big marshmallow! When you chew you look just like a little man!

(He continues to ignore me.)

Jason Brock: Eric, I read no magazines. I see right through them. They are by-and-large propaganda. I do, however, read some of the articles published in the liberal yellow-journalistic rags to keep on top of what the scumbags are pumping out into the small minds of the faithful left…If the stupid question was asked of me, I wouldn’t have an answer either. I read pretty much none of them literally, yet I know what they contain based on reading the articles online.

Danforth France: Jason Brock, if you don’t see the difference in the educational value of a magazine as compared to a tampon, may I suggest you aren’t using either correctly? Also, if I bought you a little cowboy outfit, would you wear it?

Jason Brock: Danforth, the worth of the most widely distributed liberal rags masquerading as journalism is about as valuable for education as a tampon, a used one at that.

Danforth France: C’mon, Jason Brock. At least put on the little hat.

Jason Brock: To fulfil your liberal perversion? You want a monkey, you got one and he resides in the White House. (lest some liberal think I made a racist comment, let us not forget how many times Bush was called a monkey) Palin makes Obama look like the Democrat party black community pimp he was. Mind you, his only qualification.

Danforth France: A monkey would be awesome! They are so smart and so much like us, if you believe the agenda of the liberal geneticists. But I’m happy with cuddling with you, Jason Brock, my little magical tickle bear.

Jason Brock: As for Andrew Sullivan. That marijuana addict homosexual activist is still claiming that Trig wasn’t Palin’s son…These are the type of scumbags who manufacture bullshit for the soul purpose of slandering Mrs. Palin.

Jason Brock: Eric, Couric is a Democrat party whore. Her intentions in interviewing Palin were not righteous. She was looking to destroy Palin and she got nothing. Couric reserves her softballs, or blowjobs, for her Democrat buddies…If you seriously believe that that asinine question of Palin demonstrates anything damning than you are a complete idiot, which is quite common of Palin haters.

Danforth France: Jason Brock, would you mind trying to get the last of the honey out of this giant, over-sized jar? Try not to fall into the jar, because I would just DIE seeing your little bear cowboy boots sticking out. JUST DIE.

Jason Brock: Remember Winnie the Pooh was always the character that got the other retards out of their predicaments…Which character most fits you, Danforth?

Danforth France: You wanna play dress up, Jason Brock? I thought you’d never ask! What a fun little darling you are!

(At this point, things seemed to die down. The end.)

I wanted to address the anniversary of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor by remembering being at the actual Pearl Harbor memorial in Hawaii many years ago. I can remember the American tourists giving Japanese tourists the stink-eye. The picture-snapping and posing at photo-ops by the Japanese struck the Americans as “insensitive.” There were a few glances and murmurs in the direction of the Japanese, and a grumbling sense that they were unwelcome, as if they were ruining people’s reverence.

But standing there, on the little platform, some feet above the sunken wreck of the USS Arizona, I can still remember considering the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and thinking we’d paid the Japs back pretty good. I remember I wished we’d all draw a line under everything and just be friends.

This entry is the WWW-equivalent to mailing myself my own idea in a sealed envelope to stake a claim to coinage of a term that needed… er, terming. I just googled the word “vestigiolism” and got NO hits. So when Wired or some such trade magazine needs to give credit where credit is due in a few years, consider this the source.

A vestigiolism is a noun or a verb that refers to an obsolete thing or activity that hangs on in usage to the point where it passes being an abstracted metaphor or fossilized word.

I’ve created it to foster legitimacy and shun embarrassment when saying things like, “Roll down the car window,” or “Dial 911!” Inevitably these idiomatics are said within earshot of some clever, clever boy who will attempt to bust your balls by pointing out that you do not, in fact, literally roll down a window, nor dial on your Blackberry. To this tiresome wag, you may now say, “It’s a vestigiolism, you life-draining pill.”

Then, dust off your hands with cartoonish satisfaction and be on your way. Unless you’ve called 911. You should probably wait for the ambulance.

This term may also apply to symbols. For example, clicking on a little icon of a floppy disk to save something. Depress your finger with your head held high, knowing you are selecting a vestigiolismic pictograph and you damn well know it. Then, explain to your niece or nephew what a floppy disk was and be prepared to rejoin, “No, Uncle Danforth did not ride a dinosaur to school.”

I’m certainly guilty of paying attention to the Sarah Palins and Rush Limbaughs and the Glenn Becks of the world. Scrutinizing them to ridicule them. They are the pied pipers that cynically manipulate their stupid followers into the hijacking and re-framing the debate on health care reform in such a way that it shanghais the nightly news. They certainly are villains. Their misinformation has caused some lawmakers to want to yank out the death panel section of the reform, even though death panels weren’t even in the bill.

But the real enemy is the corporate interests who maneuver unseen, who influence congressmen, who pour millions into lobby groups. Money and assurances are how things get done in Washington. These meetings and phone calls and handshakes don’t get on the news and that’s exactly how these profit-motive forces want it.

I don’t know how to advise the reporters, news anchors and humorists to go after these companies and make it as interesting as zinging the conservative media’s buffoonery, but someone should try. If anyone is, it is probably the foreign press. I should go check. Excuse me.

Months back I read Dan Koeppel’s book Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. It’s a real interesting look at the banana from all points — economic, biological, historical, etc. Reading the book can give you banana-vision. I was at Comic-Con a few weeks ago, saw a Dole banana boat in port in San Diego, took a picture and tweeted the photo to Dan Koeppel and he wrote about it in his blog! Follow the link.

Tweeting Banana Arrivals in San Diego @ Dan Koeppel’s Blog

To add to the increasingly tangled mess of my online-ity, I am trying out Tumblr (see: http://danforth.tumblr.com/) Between the RSS feeds and auto-updating of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, blog, Tumblr and so forth, my computer presence is quickly becoming a snake eating its own tail. Here’s hoping we get no closed loops of me re-posting my shit into infinity.

Got up early. Had a coffee. Got a bunch of these to snack on.

Then did the Glendale News-Press crossword with little to no help from the cat.

Turns out a German coal region is The Ruhr.