Monthly Archives: January 2011

Temperature Up, Windows Down

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My Californian friends will be appalled to learn that yesterday’s high temperature here in Worthington was -1. It’s a sad, sad day when your high temp is a negative number.

Today we seem to be getting some relief from the biting cold, though. I think it must be 20 or 25 degrees out. It’s so warm I rolled my windows down on the way home from the beauty shop to enjoy the brisk, winter air. No, seriously, this actually happened.

It’s been so darn cold here lately that 25 degrees feels like heaven.

Unfortunately, Beth just came in here and said the four-letter s-word.

So it seems we’ll be trading our prickly cold for a bit of snow, today, at least. Hopefully it doesn’t last too long.

Don’t Hate, Appreciate… the Squirrel

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Today was National Squirrel Appreciation Day.

I’ve always appreciated squirrels, from the nearly-black squirrels who hung casually around my grandparents’ cabin up north to their more citified brethren that frequented the garbage cans at Augsburg College.

These Augsburgian squirrels were a strange mixture of being totally feral and completely tame; they would wait until you got within two or three feet and then suddenly go into a complete, demented panic and try to skitter away. Except that these squirrels were usually so fat from having eaten high-cholesterol college student “food” that they couldn’t manage anything faster than a drunken stagger.

The squirrels were so prevalent at school I started an opinion piece in the college paper called “Squirrel Bites,” which were a little bit like sound bites, but… well, they were a mixture of being totally feral and completely tame. They were snippets of opinions from students, who all answered a single question via email. I’d collect them all and run them together in a single column, so you could see the breadth of opinion on critical, life-changing issues like the quality of the cafeteria food.

Like real squirrel bites, they were small, often painful and occasionally, rabid.

A Random Selection of Randomness

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Many Things to Many People

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The Tucson shootings, the Arizona massacre, the shooting rampage. The media, far from being a faceless monolithic institution, has come up with a number of ways to refer to the recent tragedy in Arizona, in which 19 people were shot and several died.

Even more varied, however, are the number of ways people are interpreting the incident. The Arizona shootings have become, in a way, a sort of Rorschach inkblot test. People see different things in them, depending on the ideas they already have.

Within hours of the Tucson shootings, commentaries popped up suggesting the nation’s toxic political rhetoric was to blame for the deaths and injuries wrought by Jared Lee Loughner. And the things people said during the most recent few election seasons have gone far over the top, although I can’t honestly recall whether the vitriol was really any worse  than it had been in previous years. How can that be measured?

Public officials saw security issues in the inkblot almost immediately, reviewing their security practices and wondering what they could differently, more safely, without shutting out their constituents. Should they be hosting these small-venue events? How could safety be improved?

Then Loughner’s writings and YouTube videos were found, and people began to see mental illness in the inkblot. What was someone who was schizophrenic, or if not that, so obviously in need of help, doing wandering around on his own? If his classmates, professors and parents saw the signs of mental illness, was there anything they could have done to avert the massacre? Was there anything that anyone could have done?

Gun control advocates and gun rights advocates see firearms in the inkblot. Some of them even see the same firearms, because no one really wants people with severe mental illnesses to have guns. Was there any way Loughner could have been prevented from getting his hands on a weapon? Would changing Arizona’s permissive gun control laws make any difference?

Sometimes the inkblot shows questions about capital punishment or presidential leadership. Maybe all these questions are helpful. Maybe they’re not. And maybe the inkblot will swirl into something else again tomorrow.

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Taking Music Literally

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TV stations hardly show music videos anymore, which is a pity, really. I always liked the art form, especially when the videos tell a story or have some sort of coherent narrative.

But you can’t help but notice that a lot of times, the narrative doesn’t have anything to do with the actual song. What does Stone Temple Pilots’ “Sour Girl” have to do with terrifying teletubby-like demons? What does “Safety Dance” have to do with… uh, anything in its awesomely wacky ren fest video? It’s just confusing.

Luckily for you folks, there is a cure: the literal music video. (Warning: these do have some relatively mild profanity. If you don’t like that, please do not watch them. Thanks!)

My favorite is Total Eclipse of the Heart. I’ve seen this video before, and it’s full of wonderful 80s cheese, but I never noticed how very little sense it actually makes. “Staring at the swim team gets you killed by a gang” is a pretty representative sample of what occurs in this video, as narrated by someone who sounds close enough to Bonnie Tyler to be pretty funny. (I may have linked this before; if so, sorry!)

Then there’s another 1980s classic, Take On Me, an iconic and pioneering music video that… doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the song, but it’s cool.

The video for the Barenaked Ladies’ fast-talking hit One Week also didn’t make sense, especially when combined with the lyrics of the actual song.

But if you want to go really far back, really really far back? They didn’t make sense then either.

There are quite a few of these out there; some are definitely better than others.

Extra Crazy

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Jared Lee Loughner, who murdered six people and wounded 19 more over the weekend in his attempt to murder Rep. Gabrielle Giffords this weekend, was, I think, very, very crazy.

That’s not a technical term, obviously, and I’m not qualified to diagnose anything, but a lot of people have been using the term “schizophrenic” to describe Loughner’s writing and his series of bizarre, incoherent and ranting videos.

BoingBoing has done an excellent job rounding up the primary sources about Loughner. Here is information about his social media activities. Here are his YouTube videos, along with complete transcripts. (These are what said “schizophrenic” to me, by the way.) Here’s a summary of the beliefs of one of the groups that Loughner may have been influenced by.

The New York Times cautiously left just “hints of alienation” in its headline, but its summary of Loughner’s beliefs is disturbing and as far as I can tell, accurate. The Atlantic’s James Fallows had an interesting piece about “the cloudy logic of ‘political’ shootings.”

There’s plenty of talk about how the toxic political atmosphere may have led to the shooting, but I’m not so sure. There were a lot of violent and scary threats when Bush was president as well; I am surprised so many people seem to have forgotten about that already, given how short a period of time it’s been since then.

I tend to be cautious about drawing those sorts of conclusions. One thing I’ve noticed while studying history is that everyone thinks the times they’re living in are especially violent, that the children of their era are especially disrespectful, that their lives are faster-paced — than ever. Everyone in every era believes this.

I don’t know. What do you think?

Bonehead Slides into Ditch on Perfectly Clear Day

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What a bonehead!

What a bonehead!

Normally we don’t use the word “bonehead” to describe someone in a headline at the Globe, but in this case we have permission.

Today, someone who will remain totally anonymous was driving on Nobles County 5 south of town. She was not supposed to be driving on Nobles County 5 south of town. She was supposed to be on 35, wherever that is. She never did figure out where that was, actually. It’s probably in the Bermuda Triangle, right next to Shangri-La and the socks that disappear in the dryer.

But she was going the wrong way, and she knew it, so she slowed down and tried to turn around, heading onto the shoulder. Unfortunately, her car decided to just keep on going, and she slid partway into the ditch. The whole thing happened very slowly, with the car practically floating  into the snow, coming to rest with a crunch. I, I mean she, was totally powerless to stop the car, which ended up with two wheels buried in about two feet of snow, and two wheels still on the shoulder.

“Shoot,” she said. Only she didn’t say shoot.

She called her coworker and quick as a wink, not just one but three coworker-rescuers showed up, armed with boots and mittens and hats and shovels. And then one of their dads came with a truck and a chain and pulled the car right out of the ditch.The car was fine.

It was like magic. Magic with a chain and an axle and a four-wheel drive truck. And four people who are, in fact, awesome.

Thanks for bailing me out, guys. Bonehead Girl will avoid the shoulder in the future. I promise.