I Wouldn’t Give You Four Nickels for Your Paradigms

KTK over at Lean Left has an interesting perspective on the concept of liberal and/or conservative indoctrination at college campuses.  I always subscribe to the notion that there is a time for everything…and that time is called college.

When receptive, sponge-like minds are exposed to new ideas, concepts, people, music and drugs they tend to soak up things faster than they can actually process them.  Which is why a lot of people are just now coming around to the fact that no matter how much fun it was to go to a Grateful Dead show and collect and trade all the tapes of the shows you couldn’t actually get to, they really never were that great of a band.  In fact, the entertainment factor was usually external to the stage or internal to your own brain.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But at a certain point, it is important to give up the delusions of what you experienced in college and instead use what you “learned” to form your own opinions and establish your own standard of ethics by which you will live.  Anyone who is willing to be “indoctrinated” has completely missed the point of higher education whether it be from the right or the left.

I went to a college which is widely considered to be pretty left-wing.  The president while I was a student was an cabinet member in the Carter  administration.  We had our share of Tiananmen Square sympathy sit-ins and anti-apartheid protests during a time when we felt like we were really participating in social change.  Hell, the Berlin Wall fell during my senior year and we thought that we had materially contributed to ending the arms race.  In truth, we were just around when the deficit spending of the Reagan administration bankrupted the Socialist state through military escalation.

Ironically, the architects of this exact plan were also on my campus at the same time.  The Hoover Institution is known as one of the premier conservative think tanks in the world and was filled with Reagan cronies.  We used to see George Schultz (not Charlie Brown’s dad) walking out in his bathrobe and slippers to pick up his newspaper every morning.  Occasionally he would wave hello at Edward Teller as he was making his morning rounds of campus.  “Morning, Ed.  Nice H-bomb you invented.”

My point is that in an ideal academic environment, there has to be room to present many paths to history.  It is the responsibility of the educators to explain that their opinions are merely paradigms, not necessarily truths.  The onus of the educated is to take these lenses and view the world through them, and then to interpret what they see.

I was lucky to take Poli Sci 101 from an avowed Marxist.*  He is best known for writing a book which looked at our Founding Fathers as a bunch of landed gentry who created the United States as a mechanism to maintain their “republican (little “r”) aristocracy” under the guise of a pluralistic society.

I’d say he was not normally the guy you would choose to teach your entry-level American Government class.  But my university had the guts to send him out there to mold our soft little minds.  He didn’t expect us to agree with everything he said.  He knew we had already been taught the basics of civics in high school, so rote memorization was unnecessary.  But his perspective on how the world worked warped my mind better than any ten minute Jerry Garcia guitar noodling solo.

If you simply regurgitated back what he said onto a blue book, you got a C-.  If you actually formulated a thoughtful opinion which took into account that there aren’t necessarily any certainties in liberal (small “l”) ideals, then you actually got a grade based on how well you interpreted what you learned and how well you expressed it.

So I have no fear of indoctrination.  I’m afraid of people who allow themselves to be indoctrinated.  Grape Flavor-Aid, anyone?

* My favorite story from Prof Manley’s class was when somebody tried to catch him in an inconsistency.  At the end of a lecture when he asked for questions, a cocky young fellow stood up and said, “Yeah.  I got a question for you.  I noticed when I was walking to class that you drove up in a brand new Mercedes, Professor Manley.  Now how the hell can you justify that within your Marxist/Socialist paradigm?!”

Manley didn’t miss a beat.  “I think everyone should drive a new Mercedes.”

Touche’.

Memorial Day Recommendation

We celebrated Mem Day a little early Saturday night by watching “Flags of our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima” back-to-back.  I highly recommend them both.  Not only are they really good movies, but the exercise in looking at things from different perspectives was very valuable.  Thanks, Clint!

My father fought on that particular nasty, sulfur-smelling black rock for almost a month.  He never talked about it much, but he was a Marine through and through until the day he died.  Remind me to show you the military haircuts he used to give me and my brothers.

Oohrah!

What I’ve Spent My Weekend Doing

High-tech hazing.

It’s a Good Thing I’m So Damned Charming

I’ve had a goatee for about a year now.

I shaved it off a week ago.

Not one single person has noticed…not even the woman I sleep with every night.

The dog did bark at me a little more than usual when I came down from the bathroom after shaving it off, but that could have been anything.  She’s wacky that way.

I’ve Been Really Busy Lately…

Did Sanjaya win?

Interesting Developments

There’s a fascinating discussion going on at NiT about the new “no period” birth control pill.

On a related note, due to some blood pressure issues, RUABelle is coming off of the pill for the first time in our seventeen years together.

Gulp.

<spins chamber>

<click>

Could it Possibly Be, Oh I Don’t Know…Monday Morning?

Somehow this weekend while attempting to close my briefcase which was stuffed with all the crap I needed to transfer from home to the office so I could ignore it in an entirely different location, I managed to change the combination of the lock.  It wasn’t all junk in there, so I needed to get inside.  After all, Aunt B.’s birthday card was in there!

Not wanting to spring the lock on the nice leather briefcase RUABelle had bought for my birthday last year, I proceeded to start at 0-0-0 and try every combination until I found the new one.  After wearing out the thumbnail on my right hand, I finally found it.

It was 9-9-7.

I got to my desk and was immediately confronted by a voice mail reminding me that I have a dentist appointment tomorrow morning that I had apparently forgotten to write down.  Any chance I can make up six months of flossing between now and tomorrow A.M.?

RUABelle loves to tell me about her new-age dentist who gives her nitrous for teeth cleaning appointments.  She listens to Stephen Halpern music and receives hot paraffin nail treatments and neck massages during her appointments.

My dentist is the son of the dentist I went to when I was four years old.  He is still in the same office I went to when his father pulled nine of my teeth in one scream-filled sitting prior to my braces installation.  He still uses the same tools in the same chair.  The big innovation of the past three decades was when he got the suck straw instead of the spit sink.  I swear he uses barbed wire to floss my teeth, so I usually wear a dark shirt to my cleanings because the carnage is usually bloody.

So why do I keep going back?  Well first of all, I haven’t had a cavity in almost thirty years (knock wood) so it’s obviously working.  Secondly, when my dad was at his crankiest and sickest in the final stages of Parkinson’s, my dentist was patient and comforting to him and gave him the respect that he had lost through the dehumanizing process of dealing with multiple physicians and research protocols with people who only knew him as a name on a chart.

Dr. Don knew him as a person and treated him as an old family friend.    Trips to the dentist were the only doctors’ appointments that we didn’t have to fight Dad to go to, and I’ll always remember that.

But if that sumbitch comes at me with a needle tomorrow, we’re goin’ round and round.

The Best Phrase I Heard All Week

“A high fiber diet would bring out the best in you.”

Now I Don’t Want to Cast Ass Persians or Anything…

But if I were you (and right about now I wish I were), I would avoid a certain restaurant in the Mill Creek section of town.

Let’s see how I can describe this without slandering anybody to people that wouldn;t ever eat there.

The type of food is commonly associated with kissing your sister.  No, it wasn’t Cracker Barrel. The strip mall contains a grocery store that appears to be owned by a couple named Kay and Roger.  The restaurant is located down the street from the Dairy Queen’s husband and next to a Mexican restaurant named after Rex’s cousin.

There, that should pin it down and ward off the curious.   Let’s just say the garlic chicken stir fry was very good.  Going down.

Not so much coming up.  Two exits, no waiting.  Blech.

Step Away from the Copy Machine

I guess that whiny, lazy blue bastard’s got something to do now…

They Sure Know How to Ruin a Perfectly Miserable Trip

Thanks to my bloodhound-like tracking skills, I was able to find my Isuzu Electron in less than ten minutes. Thanks for asking.

Speaking of asking, several folks have inquired how I survived a four-day business trip after my rum incident ruint all my clothes on the trip down. Besides the shirt and pants that I wore to work on Monday, I had one other pair of pants and one shirt that was only stained/dyed on the back. My socks were all already black and my boxers turned an attractive shade of “bachelor blue,” so I didn’t much care about them. Ever the fashion plate here at The Dry Spot.

I went to the sundry store to try to buy a golf shirt, but they were all Tommy Bahamaish crap priced $100 and up. Not for this cowboy!

Most of the clothes that I tend to travel with are microfiber, so you can basically clean them by banging them against a rock. So I ended up alternating between the 2 pants and 2 shirts, covering the back of the f’d up one by wearing a blazer.

“You certainly must like that outfit, and aren’t you hot wearing that jacket all the time?”

No and yes.

For the most part, I thought I’d get away with my sartorial trickerations by just not drawing attention to myself. Y’all know I’m usually not afraid to tell embarrassing stories about myself, so if anybody asked me I just told them what a dumbass I was for packing a smelly solvent on top of dark clothes on top of lights.

I almost maintained my inconspicuosity until the big banquet the last night of the convention. It was then that your humble author received an honor that left me shocked and speechless. I had just sat down from a trip to the bar when they announced that they had awarded me the NPTA’s Young Leader of the Year trophy.

Young? Me? Leader? Heh. I wish my boss thought so, but it was sure nice to receive the recognition by all the leaders and my peers in the industry.

As I walked up to the podium and stammered my thanks, somebody in the back shouted, “Sell the trophy and buy yourself a new damn shirt.”

That’s more like it.

This Should be Fun

It just occurred to me that I picked up my rental Yugo Screwyerself up from Hertz after dark on Monday night and drove to the hotel where my convention is being held. Then I parked it in the middle of a Disney-size parking lot. I don’t know what color it is or what it looks like, and it didn’t come with a remote door lock/trunk opener to use to play high-tech Marco Polo.

I wonder how I’m gonna find this sumbitch when my meeting is over this afternoon.

You Gotta Say One Thing About Jogging in Florida…

It may be hotter than hell and more humid than Calcutta, but a least it’s flat. Oops, I guess that’s three things. Oh yeah, and it’s on fire so the smoke makes it hard to breathe and your eyes sting. So there’s that too.

Well, This Trip is Starting Swimmingly

Since landing in Jacksonville:

1. Hertz didn’t have the car I reserved with the navigation system, which was crucial because I had no idea where the hell I was going.
2. The only car available with said navigation system was a sub-compact.
3. After shoehorning myself into the Hyundai Carbuncle or whatever the hell it is, the Hertz (N)everlost directed me to the middle of a swamp where all roads on the map disappeared.
4. The resulting u-turn triggered the attention of a county mountie who thankfully let me go without a ticket because I was obviously lost and clueless.
5. When I arrived at the hotel, cheapskate me parked in a surface lot, not realizing there were no sidewalks and I was a mile from the registration desk.
6. I was almost run over by the shuttlebus because I was dragging my luggage down a dark driveway.
7. Because I was late, the hotel gave away my room. After 20 minutes of polite begging, they managed to find me another one.
8. When I got to my room and started to unpack, I immediately found a slip of paper from the TSA informing me that my luggage had been searched.
9. Apparently in the interest of national security, they felt the need to remove the plastic travel bottle of rum from the ziplock bag I pack it in.
10. And they must have left the cap off.
11. So all of my clothes are soaked and smell like a drunken pirate’s chest.
12. Spiced rum, like all alcohol, is an excellent solvent.
13. Solvents cause dyes to lose their bonding qualities and allow the pigments to break down and run.
14. I packed a dark blue golf shirt on the very top of my suitcase.
15. I have a meeting that starts at 7:00 tomorrow morning.
16. I have no clothes and I have no rum.
17. Crap.

Join the Navy. See the World. Lurn to Spell.

[From today's Nashville City Paper]

Melanoma, Carcinoma…Definitely Some Sort of Noma

I had to make a quick trip to the Green Hills Mall this afternoon.  I found myself confronted by hundreds of guys apparently doing later-than-last-minute Mother’s Day shopping.  (That’s not why I was there, by the way.)

What was shocking was the number of flourescent post-Steeplechase sunburns that made them all look like a group of shipwreck survivors of the same rescue boat: brilliant scarlet with an undertone of green around the gills.

Ahh…I remember those heady times.

Personal Best

No…not the lesbilicious Mariel Hemingway movie of the early 80′s. (Note to self, add to NetFlix queue.) This morning I completed my first competitive 5-K in the Historic East Nashville Run. I finished in just under 27 minutes, which is definitely my fastest 5-K ever.

I took off with a fast crowd and kept them behind me for almost the whole race. I never had to walk, but my pace was in constant decline from the halfway point on. Lesson learned: don’t be the jackrabbit. I haven’t seen the results, but I’m guessing that should put me in the middle of the pack for both my age division and the whole field. I did lose to a guy pushing a stroller and to another guy running with a weimaraner.

Yeah, the damn dog may have beat my time, but I won the critical measure of fewest stops on the course to take a dump.

2-1.

More Pond Revelations

Did I ever tell y’all about the tiny little worms that live in my pond and often get stuck in the foam filters that I clean out weekly?

Oh, I didn’t? Good thing because it turns out that I would have been misinforming you.

They’re not worms. They’re leeches. Or else they’re just very hungry worms that have recently taken a liking to attaching themselves to my hand while I’m rinsing out the filters.

What’s the opposite of WOOT?

Gotcha’ Nose

I guess I’m way behind the curve, but it’s been 41 years (minus a week) since I was adopted by my parents and I was totally unaware of the concept of a “Gotcha Day.” As usual, it took the Hallmark section at Harris Teeter to enlighten me that I was supposed to be celebrating something. I’m sure Slartibartfast is much more enlightened.

It was a year ago today that we brought home Nervous Nellie the Pudelhund. Ruabelle had seen her first in a kill shelter in Murfreesboro and she hadn’t been groomed in forever and smelled like urine. Her original owners were getting a divorce and both have them had neglected their pet, either in a display of passive-agressiveness toward each other or just out of sheer ass-hatted neglect.

Nellie looked like this:

I was out of the country on business, so even though RUABelle felt a real need to rescue this pitiful poodle, she didn’t want to do it without my approval. By the time I got back to Nashville, she called the pound and found out that Nellie was no longer there. Knowing that dogs have a 5-7 day lifespan at this particular shelter, RUABelle feared the worst and was disconsolate.

The day I got back from China, I didn’t even know what day it was, but I was determined to support RUABelle and get her to actually get off of square one and pick a dog. I’m also a firm believer that the right dog has to find you.

So off we went to a “Dog Day” at the Tractor Supply in Murfreesboro. RUABelle had discovered a female golden retriever on petfinder.com that had been cut by a barbed wire fence and was in desparate need of a new owner that could offer the medical care she needed.

As we pulled into the parking lot, RUABelle exclaime, “That’s the dog I saw last week at the pound!” I still don’t know how she recognized Nellie since she had luckily been placed in a rescue foster home and shaved to clean up all her knotted dreadlocks.

The fact that we found her again was enough of a sign for me and we took her home. If you’re a long time reader of The Dry Spot, you know that it wasn’t easy early on. I still have the scars on both wrists to prove it.

But through a lot of hard work and training of everybody’s part, a lot of patience and a lot of love, Nellie finally came around. She is much more comfaortable with me and other people now. She’s turned into a very loving member of our family and a ferociously loud watchdog when necessary.

So happy Gotcha Day, Nellie! Somebody’s getting some new squeaky toys and a special dinner tonight.

Next In My Continuing “Things I’ve Learned” Series

Things I’ve Learned While Running

 

1.    It’s better to be passed by a pretty girl than an ugly guy.  Mainly because you have to run behind them until they get out of sight.

2.    Not unlike the uncontrollable urge to hit the guy in the lawn tractor picking up golf balls at the driving range, the paperboy will always try to hit you with a Tennessean if you’re out running that early.

3.    If I can lose 20 lbs. and still have a beer gut, there must have been a lot of beer in that gut.

4.    No hill looks insurmountable if you only look 6 feet in front of you.

5.    It really sucks to be 2/3 of the way into a 5K jog and have to pass through a cloud of Lucky Strike smoke from somebody in their bathrobe walking their dog.

6.    Getting my Under Armour shirt and tights on and off has become an important part of my stretching routine.

7.   The longer you stick with the running thing, the more people will be slower than you.  However, unless Kenya does something to piss off George W., there will always be somebody faster than you.

8.    When I go to the sporting goods store to buy a jock strap, I get a large.  When RUABelle does the shopping at her home away from home (Target), she buys me a medium.  They both seem to fit fine somehow.