It’s been a while. It feels good.

C.S. Lewis once wrote:

Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling “Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,” or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils.

I suppose I could take this as a tonic not to get too excited by the ongoing SCANDALPALOOZA. If this turns out to be less than we’ve imagined, that will be good, right? If Obama really is schocked and offended by what the IRS was doing, and takes  steps to prevent its future ocurrence, that will be a bonus for everyone, yes?

I must admit this. But I also must admit — because it is true — that I deeply enjoy watching my ideological opponents fail. I enjoyed watching Obama run like a frightened squirrel from the podium after promising us that he was like, REALLY MAD, YOU GUYS! I’M SERIOUSLY! It was fun seeing Eric Holder be all “DURR, WHAT ARE CELL PHONES?“ I really dont’ mind watching Jon Stewart losing his temper and realizing the epic truth that the right have been promulgating for decades:

In a few short weeks, you’ve convinced people that when it wants to do some good, Government managerial competence is somewhere between David Brent and a cat chasing a laser pointer. But when Government wants to flex its more malevolent muscle, you’re {expletive} Iron Man!”

I enjoy this more than I should. Even though I know that Stewart and everyone else is just hungering, like a sad dog, for a reason, any reason, to blow this whole thing off. Even though I know that he’s sincere when he states his belief that Big Daddy White Boss really does have everyone’s best interests at heart. It’s just nice to hear someone on the other side admit that what you believe has validity.

So whatever happens, however this plays out, whatever heaping mounds of taural fecal extract that the spin masters manage to cover this in, I can think of no better expression than this:

Buzzfeed has a speculative post with spoilers at the end, which I did not read. I’ll leave that up to you.

Someone spent a lot of time on this.

It includes a couple of disturbing fan theories:

• The Mother is Dead When Ted Starts Telling the Story. That would explain why he’s spending so much time telling the kids all about her. Except it doesn’t, because he’s been telling them about his single life before he met her. And it doesn’t explain why the kids have been sitting there, respectfully patient, but clearly bored out of their skulls. If these were children of a dead mother, they would want to know everything about her.

• The Mother is Tyler Durden. Which is to say, there is no mother: she is a figment of Ted’s imagination. So are the kids. He’s sitting there, miserable, rambling to no one in particular. Of all the possible resolutions, this one would irritate the most, because it would make everything we’ve watched utterly irrelevant. Sure, Newhart did this, but no one really cared about Newhart, least of all Bob Newhart. 

The scenario I consider far more likely:

•  We Almost See the Mother, But Don’t Quite. We spend the whole episode at Barney and Robin’s wedding. Cliffhanger at the train station. She sits next to him, he looks up. Fade out. The throwaway scene has Barney, Marshall, Lilly, and Robin. Closing credits, possibly including the words “HA HA SUCKERS!” or “TROLOLOLOLOLOLOL” or some such.

Nevertheless, I feel the need to dedicate myself to a few projects for this summer. Books, mostly, and a long-considered re-working of Riposte Publishing’s web site into something more functional. GoDaddy, maybe. I’m good at overlooking bad marketing campaigns.

There’s a long post in utero, something I’ve had on me mind for some time, and finally resolved to express. It’s not important, even in a small scheme of things (that phrase should work. It’s alliterative. But it sounds wrong). But it my free up some headspace on the commute, which is where I do most of my thinking.

See?

And there was where I had to abandon using the BlogNow! app I’d gotten for my iPad. Simply loading that picture was too complicated. There’s a whole separate feature for adding pictures to blogpost with the app, and I didn’t feel like wrestling with it. So I pulled out old trusty laptop and got the link from my Tumblr (Instagram doesn’t let just any fool copypasta with pictures, for which they are to be commended, I suppose. Even when it’s my own picture).

Anyway, big meaty geeky rant forthcoming. For the nonce, enjoy this lanky Kiwi/Brit getting off on Prime Americana while rocking like 1965 just woke up in 2013 and decided to split the difference and party like it was 1995. Via Third Man Records, because Jack White’s taste just seems to get better as he ages:

My mind is filled with misgivings on this. In the first place, reality shows have less than a proven track record at distinguishing the truly talented from the merely photogenic (Name the debut albums of any five American Idol winners). I can’t escape the notion that a genius is going to lose to an attractive mediocrity in the race to be the first extraterrestrial human.

In the second place, can humans actually, you know, live on Mars?

How are they going to get food? What are they going to live in? How will they get air to breathe? Sure, they’ll be sent into space with these things, but a lifetime’s supply?

Also, Mars has complexities beyond it’s image of a planet-sized Arizona:

Mars is poorly suited for human habitation. There’s some ice at the poles and perhaps some water in underground repositories. Gravity is only 38 percent as strong as on Earth. The atmosphere is thin and consists mostly of carbon dioxide (95%). So colonists would have to either take air from Earth or make air on Mars. Plants efficiently separate the oxygen bound to carbon and therefore can make air we can breathe, so colonists should take plants along.

The Martian atmosphere is too thin to hold oxygen, which would just escape to space. So the plants would have to be cultivated in greenhouses and the oxygen they produce kept in flasks.

Mars has a very weak magnetic field, and its atmosphere offers little protection against radiation from space. So the Martian colonists would have to build radiation protection into their houses and wear thick suits. Unlike Earth, where most incoming meteorites burn up in the atmosphere, many meteorites crash dangerously onto the surface of Mars.

The Martian weather is awful. It’s cold: the average temperature of the southern hemisphere is minus 60 degrees Celsius; even at the equator, it’s seldom over zero. Winds are fierce and blow at speeds of several hundred kilometres an hour, and storms can last for months. The wind whirls up fine dust that penetrates everything and sticks to all surfaces, which literally would toss sand in the gears of vital mechanical and electronic equipment.

And even if all of that is overcome, what’s the next step? Are the First Martians merely going on an extended vacation, or are they planning on breeding? Since the contest is going to narrow things down to 4 people, does that mean 2 men and 2 women? We know that sex in space is well, difficult, and reproduction in space may be highly unlikely (and inadvisable anyway, due to the hightened levels of ratiation). Will Mars be any better? Even if the radiation issue gets handled, Mars’ gravity is not going to get any stronger.

Let’s keep in mind that it takes a little under a year to even get to Mars, and that’s when the planet is closest to us. So those winners better have monastic discipline even to survive the journey. If growing food doesn’t work out, resupply operations will probably be available at three-year intervals, at best. And unless some means of blasting off the planet is developed, a rescue operation is impossible.

Bottom line: The Martian Roanoke, without the thrill of mystery.

The blue-on-blue is particuarly encouraging. Is this a function of Obama’s declining coattails, as donkeys seek distance in preparation for 2014?

I wonder how long before Obama feels the need to throw Hillary — or some other mucky-mucks at State — under the bus?

He should make sure he does it on a Saturday night…

Jammie-Wearing Fool wants to know:

Where was Obama the night of September 11? And why is nobody asking that question?

Slept in late at the hotel, which always seems to happen — the bed, after all, is what you’re really paying for. But there’s that checkout time to be contended with: leave at 10:58 and you’re in the clear, but 11:02 means another night. We got dressed with an old Law & Order keeping time for us. When the lawyers show up, you know you’re at the bottom of the hour. We sailed out before McCoy got to grill the guilty SOB.

I tend to believe in benevolent neglect as far as lawn care goes. My father-in-law, who is retired USDA, reinforces this, telling me that the grass will be healthier if I don’t cut it too short. But yesterday the seeds were starting to stick up, so when we got back from Pennsylvania I threw on shorts and a hoodie (it was brisk, but I don’t like to get grass on my pants) and mowed front and back. Then an afternoon of grading with Deadwood on Blu-ray. It gets better with repeated viewings.

This morning I was up early, out the door early, planned my day early, and feel very satisfied with myself. Really quite tired, but profitably so, like there’s earned repose to look forward to.

The Tories have responded by insisting UKIP has no real policies, to which I would say that this hasn’t held them back. Their ragtag combination of Keynesianism and liberal dogma doesn’t represent a coherent response to the mess we’re in. Then there’s the accusation that UKIP is merely a protest party that will dilute the conservative vote and let Labour back in. Well maybe they are a protest party, but the point of protest is to force change. If the threat of a Labour victory persuades the Tories to go back to their roots and adopt some of the ideas advanced by UKIP, that protest will have done its job. I would gladly vote for a Conservative Party that thinks like Nigel Farage.

Is there an election coming up? I really have no idea.

We can learn from classics that most of us are more likely to resent superiority than to reward it, to distrust talent than to develop it. With classical training, our impatient youth might at least gain some perspective that the world is one where the better man is often passed over — precisely because he is the better man.

There is a profundity about the human soul in that truth. It grates. It offends. Man is not Just. Man is indeed wolf to man, as the old Roman proverb goes (homo homini lupus). We find ourselves then seemlingly forced to choose between abandoning justice or abandoning man. But neither choice seems right, does it?

And thence, to the discussion of the rerun of the decadence of ancient Rome that we are experiencing:

It is not just that plenty of slaves, purple dye, marble, forced vomiting, and piped-in water mean that we don’t have to rise at dawn to hoe the vineyard and bathe in ice-cold streams and therefore become lazy, corpulent, and decadent. Rather, material progress is usually accompanied by moral regress largely because of the leisure to master a critical consciousness and intellectual gymnastics well apart from the fears of religion: if we can explain, in a sophisticated and convincing manner, why something bankrupt is true, then it surely must be true: Vero possumus! Who is to say that Lindsay Lohan is not more interesting than Gen. Mattis?

Language in the postmodern world becomes more layered — and fluid — (compare “overseas contingency operations“ for terrorism or “investments” for deficit spending). The sophistic citizen has the leisure and training to third-guess ancient protocols. Without a soul, the good life here is it. Sarcasm, cynicism, skepticism, and nihilism so abound that there must always be a third and fourth meaning.

Languages ceases to be a tool and becomes a game, and then a hustle, and finally an incomprehensible fog. We wound our own nature, as creatures which name things, when we dance these monkeyshines. We condemn ourselves, as creatures of rationality, to confusion, and helplessness, and ignorance, because we have convinced ourselves that knowledge is impossible.

The good news is, as the classics remind us, is that these moments of decline are not the end. Falseness and weakness do not survive. Achilles may suffer at Agamemmnon’s hands, but Agamemmnon is going to get got.

The truth will set you free.

Why do I work again?

Happy May Day, Comrades.

To each according to his need, right?

Two police sources—a former gang investigator and a veteran detective—bluntly acknowledge that even if the police know of dubious dealings between an alderman and a gang leader or drug dealer, there is little, if anything, they can do, thanks to what they say is the department’s unofficial rule: Stay away from public officials. “We can’t arrest aldermen,” says the gang investigator, “unless they’re doing something obvious to endanger someone. We’re told to stand down.” The detective concurs: “It’s the unwritten rule. There’s a two-tier justice system here.”

Beyond providing protection from police—the gangs’ number one request—public officials can help in other ways. Gang leaders, particularly the most powerful, are usually looking to build on the riches they already have. Knowing an alderman or a state legislator—or even a congressman—can help. Traditionally, aldermen have almost total say over what gets built and what sorts of businesses open in their wards. They also have considerable sway over city contracts, which can mean tens of thousands to millions of dollars for gang-owned businesses.

The whole thing. Read it.