Client Encounter

Every once in a great while, you meet someone and think, I wish we were best friends. This happened to me today, and because I'm easily amused, it didn't take much to prompt this feeling. I was chatting with a client about his business, and made some smartish remark, which caused him to say, "Ooh, that should be the name of your novel!" Then he repeated the phrase the same way I do. This led to some really unproductive discussions about my best-selling self-help book (cowritten with my sister), "French Cats Don't Get Fat", and my solo fiction debut, "Robot Heartbreak". He plans to write a book about Jack Kevorkian called, "Aw, C'mon, You Know You Want To".

Eventually, I had to get things back on track, but I wish I had met this guy in another context. We should be drinking beer and naming our rock bands, not designing indemnity agreements. This encounter did pull me out of a MOOD though, so it served a cosmic purpose.

What is it, though, that allows us to instantly recognize another person as an ally? Is it just narcissism, in the sense that we want someone to laugh at our jokes and share the same sensibility? I don't know what to say about that, so I suppose I will stop writing now.

Greatest American

So I was watching the "Greatest American" last night on the Discovery Channel, hosted by Matt Lauer. They had narrowed the field to five men: George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ronald Reagan and Ben Franklin. Poor Lauer. He's been through enough recently with crazy kookoo pants movie stars threatening to cut him for not knowing the chemical composition of Ritalin. Evidently, the title of "Greatest" was to be given to the individual receiving the most Internet votes. Lauer seemed to sense this would end in heartache, although he claimed that he was finding out the results as they were posted.

Based on his reaction to the eventual winner, I believe he was telling the truth. We eliminated the contenders Miss America-style, with the fourth runnerup being given a bouquet and hustled off the stage. So we get down to Lincoln and Reagan as the last two standing. They stood in their evening gowns, hugging each other, and Lauer made the announcement: "The first runnerup, and Greatest American in the event the winner can't fulfill his duties...is Lincoln! Reagan is the greatest American!!!"

Predictably, the place went bananas, and Lauer (and Al Roker, his co-host) got that constipated look so common to major media figures when it becomes clear to them that they have no idea what the "fly-over" states get up to. Now let me be clear. I don't know that Reagan beats any of the Founding Fathers on merit. However, if you set this contest up as a popularity contest to be voted on by the sort of people with computer access, you reap what you sow.

I can assure you that none of the NBC types ever thought it would go down this way. But come on, guys. Put the sash and tiara on the Prez, help him wipe the mascara, and quit acting surprised that many Americans couldn't pick Franklin out of a lineup even if he was wearing period clothing and the little round glasses. Reagan was on the tee-vee every day for my entire childhood. Of course he is currently more popular than some dude in a weird hat with concept facial hair. So I take my stovepipe off to you, Mr. Reagan - congrats!!

Weirdness day

Here are some things I observed or happened to me today, all of which seem sort of David Lynch-y:

1) I drove past a guy driving a motorcycle with attached sidecar. The driver was wearing an old-fashioned leather helmet and goggles.

2) I met a gravedigger who looks like Santa.

3) I met a person who had one family member killed by cops while the cops were pursuing a second family member on the wrong charge.

4) I had trial before a one-armed judge.

All these things happened before noon. I think I had better call it a day before a Fellini movie breaks out up in here.

The Awful Truth

I would define myself politically as pretty squarely in the libertarian camp. Unfortunately, some of my fellow campers are all wild-eyed "the federal government has no power to issue paper money", but on the whole, it's a fine group. The intersection of "liberal" elements and "conservative" elements has on occasion caused confusion among some of my traditional liberal and traditional conservative friends. The other day, a friend and colleague of mine inadvertently gave me a shocking insight as to why I can't align myself with the liberal element.

I do contract work for a collection firm, and every Tuesday and Thursday I process a bunch of civil suits against defendants who haven't paid their creditors (mostly credit card companies). Very few debtors appear to defend the claim, and I proceed to enter judgment against them.

On this particular Thursday, an attorney appeared on behalf of one of the defendants. This attorney works for the local version of Legal Aid, and she came in with the gleam of moral superiority; because I was in court on behalf of an evil, heartless corporate monster, and she was representing a little old lady. I pointed out that the little old lady in question had rung up some $15,000 on her credit card. We went back and forth a bit, when my very liberal friend came out with this astonishing comment: the credit card company was at fault because they should have known that she couldn't afford the purchases she was making. In essence, she was saying that the company should have intervened to prevent this lady from making her own bad choices.

This, to me, is the bottom line problem I have with the interventionist (liberal and conservative) mindset. They do not trust individuals to make their own decisions, and would rather step in to make those decisions "for their own good". The two political parties want to intervene in different aspects of your life, but they both presume to know what is best for you. This strikes me as an incredibly misanthropic worldview, which both sides would no doubt vigorously deny.

As Required By Law

I received an email today from Bob Internet, founder and president of the Internet, alerting me to my unfulfilled responsibility to write something about the new Star Wars installment. Apparently everyone with access to a computer has weighed in on this, so here it is. I would put Sith at a solid number 2 in the series, behind Empire. I completely agree with all the critics who have pointed out that the dialogue is terrible and that Lucas is terrified of directing actual humans. I would even agree that the script sounds like it was translated from another language by someone who has taken lots of classes in English, but has never lived in an English-speaking country. None of this matters to me at all.

I am going to this episode of Star Wars for the special effects, the battle scenes, and to see Darth Vader get strapped into his black suit. That's it. It delivered exactly what I wanted, and I enjoyed it immensely. The real problem is that today's critics were little kids when the first trilogy came out, and they have forgotten that those movies had terrible dialogue and wooden performances, too. (The exception being Harrison Ford, whose vast reserves of personal charm allowed him to get away with the terrible dialogue.) If those same critics went back and viewed the old movies with a totally fresh eye, they would have the exact same complaints they have about the new movies. Lucas hasn't changed, except to the extent that he has cooler toys at his disposal now.

At the end of the day, these flicks are meant to be enjoyed Eddie Izzard-style - with two-handed popcorn shoveling. If you sincerely believe that George Lucas signed up for or is equipped to handle the creation of Myth as Joseph Campbell would define the same, you've got the wrong guy. Go read some actual philosophy or mythology if that's what grabs you, but don't put the weight of those expectations on a sci-fi movie.

Interesting Stuff

Many thanks to Dad for pointing out this article to me. It is timely, as I have just learned that my little brother is heading over to Iraq. He is in the Marines, and although we knew this day was very likely to come, it's sobering. I think of him as being so young, and I fear the randomness of the violence still reigning in Iraq.

There's a great travel guide / history book / political science / essay collection called the World's Most Dangerous Places, that I highly recommend. It's out of date the day it's published, by its very nature, but there is some interesting historical stuff about the Middle East. The Guide talks at some length about the relative risks associated with different activities, in part to justify the crazy risks the guys who contribute to this collection are willing to take. They make a compelling argument with respect to the diminished risk associated with combat in this day and age, but that would undoubtedly be a hard sell to the families who have lost their sons, daughters, brothers, husbands, etc. There's an old saying that the probability of anything happening is 50-50...either it will happen or it won't. I'm nerdy enough to point out that this clearly is untrue - no one would fly, drive, shower or swim if the associated risks occurred half the time the activity was undertaken. It feels true, though, and I suspect that it relates to the concept of control.

It is factually wrong, but I feel that I control what's happening when I drive my car. This is demonstrably untrue, in the sense that another vehicle could slam into me, my car could have a mechanical failure, etc. However, even when presented with unexpected danger, I have the opportunity to take evasive action or otherwise rely on my experience driving to safely avoid or minimize the situation. Because I have no military training, I don't know what steps one can take to minimize or avoid disaster in a war zone. The risks facing my brother and all the troops therefore seem completely uncontrollable, and thus it's scarier to me than a higher known risk. This isn't making as much sense as I had hoped. I'm sure I'll return to this topic once I have digested this information.

I don't understand why people would be skeptical of these two. Look how comfortable they are together! It's not as though he is restraining her by the neck!! Ho ho. Yep, just two heterosexual people enjoying a smooch. 

Get Your Freakonomics On!

I have an enthusiastic recommendation for you - Freakonomics, by Steven Leavitt. It's the sort of analysis that I loved when I was just a young econ student with stars in my eyes. Essentially, the mission of the book is to poke at problems big (crime) and small (sumo wrestling) and determine what hidden causes may be at work. It's incredibly well-written and fun, so long as you are able to put yourself in the economist mind-set and leave all value judgments at the door. The purpose of such writing is not to determine whether crime is bad. The purpose is to see what external influences tend to cause more or less crime. There's a long section on the KKK, and its primary purpose is to uncover the incentives that prompted its popularity and the incentives that eventually dismantled it.

Unfortunately in the era of 24-hour news, many talking heads have seized on a small segment of the book and that is all they will discuss with Dr. Leavitt. Of course, it is the abortion-crime correlation. Again, this is value-neutral discussion. Essentially, he is trying to determine why the forecast crime boom of the late 1990s never happened. He makes the correlation between the years in which abortion was legalized in various states, and ultimately in the federal courts, and tracks crime stats to the time when these children would have been entering their "crime prime". Without exception, crime rates in all categories begin their decline in accordance with this formula.

Pundits are jumping on this, and I will admit that it makes me uneasy. This sort of data can be used to "prove" that it is Those People causing all our problems, and it can be used by the pro-abortion camp to indicate a great societal benefit as a result of abortion, and it can be used as an excuse to sterilize the inner city. But all of these things miss the point entirely. Economic analysis presents a set of information. It does not assign values to the actions people take as the result of that information. Certain incentives existed to join the Klan in the 1920s. That was unequivocally a Bad Thing. Not the point.

In any event, the book has loads of great stuff, so if you were turned off by the abortion business, it comprises about ten pages, so check it out anyway.