Pun Salad

P.J. O'Rourke's latest. Enough said? Probably, but this post would look pretty lame if I ended things here. I received this book as a Christmas gift from my thoughtful family.

The book's topic is especially appropriate: I, like P.J., am a Baby Boomer. Although our current political positions are roughly similar, we got there by wildly different routes. We grew up in the Midwest (him: Ohio; me: Iowa and Nebraska). We both wound up in New Hampshire (although in very different parts of the state). And he's a wildly successful author, and I'm a computer geek at the University Near Here.

One thing for sure: he consumed a lot more substances along the way.

But, heck, he speaks for me. Why not? Better him than me.

The book is also a memoir, wrapping P.J.'s observations about his generation around tales of his early life. It may be the closest he comes to writing an autobiography, although (as he admits) he's changed nearly all names, times, places, and incidents. But: "Only the most outrageous and unbelievable things in this book are recounted exactly as they happened."

For example, P.J.'s stint working at a Baltimore underground newspaper called Puddles is recounted. Anyone with rudimentary skills at the Google can discover that it was actually named Harry. However: one day the newspaper office was invaded by a local radical group, armed with a List of Demands. The name of the group was the "Balto-Cong"—and the name really was "Balto-Cong". P.J. explains: "It's the one name of any consequence that I haven't changed in this book. How could it be improved?"

As he notes:

That's not to say we're a selfish generation. Selfish means "too concerned with the self," and we're not. Self isn't something we're just, you know, concerned with. We are self.

And appropriately enough, the yarns and observations in this book are self-deprecating. P.J. is not nostalgic or sentimental about our generation. Although some of the observations may only make sense after a couple slugs of good scotch, because that's how they were probably written.

It's tempting to type in a lot more quotes. Instead, I'll point to an excerpt at the WSJ.

• Have you ever wondered what a Supreme Court amicus curiae brief from the Cato Institute might look like if P.J. O'Rourke helped write it? Wonder no more. Trust me, it's hilarious, and you don't need to know your amici from your curiae to have a good time.

  It's written for a current case, "Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus", a suit challenging Ohio's law that (to use USA Today's language) "bars candidates and issue groups from lying in their campaigns."

  Here's the sample everyone is quoting:

  After all, where would we be without the knowledge that Democrats are pinko-communist flag-burners who want to tax churches and use the money to fund abortions so they can use the fetal stem cells to create pot-smoking lesbian ATF agents who will steal all the guns and invite the UN to take over America? Voters have to decide whether we’d be better off electing Republicans, those hateful, assault-weapon-wielding maniacs who believe that George Washington and Jesus Christ incorporated the nation after a Gettysburg reenactment and that the only thing wrong with the death penalty is that it isn’t administered quickly enough to secular- humanist professors of Chicano studies.

  Indeed. Double your money back if it's not the funniest thing you read all day. (As a bonus, it makes serious points in defense of the First Amendment.)

• Continuing the funny: excerpts from Dave Barry's new book here (Dave muses on his daughter Becoming A Woman) and here (Dave reviews 50 Shades of Gray). From the former:

  If it were up to me, our house would be surrounded by giant (but humane) traps baited with some kind of bait that would be attractive to 13-year-old boys, such as fireworks or shorts that are even baggier than the shorts they’re already wearing. Every now and then we’d hear the loud THWONK of a steel door slamming shut, indicating that a 13-year-old boy had come too close to the house. I would then go outside and, after a stern warning, drive the boy out to the Everglades and release him into the wild.

  I know how he feels.

• And it keeps getting funnier, assuming your ribs are tickled by yet another example of President Obama's illegal, politically-motivated rewriting of Obamacare. Key point:

  The explanation for the rumored delay is purely political. There's not even a pretense of a policy justification.

  In other words: it's designed to keep as many Democrats as possible in elective office. Because if they implemented the law they actually passed, it would send (for example) Jeanne Shaheen back to Madbury.

  Here's hoping that happens anyway.

• Both xkcd and Slashdot look at the amazing (and somewhat sad) story of the spacecraft ISEE-3/ICE, launched in 1978 (almost 36 years ago), explored the outer magnetosphere, encountered a couple of comets. The mission was declared over in 1997. And NASA turned it off.

  Or tried to. But now its solar orbit is bringing it near Earth again, and—to everyone's surprise—it's still alive!

  But—here's the sad part—NASA can't talk to it any more; the transmitting equipment it used is long gone, and it's too expensive to reconstruct it.

This comedy was pummelled by critics (only 30% on the Tomatometer) and was a box office dud. Yet both Mrs. Salad and I found it funny and clever all the way through; especially refreshing after a bunch of alleged comedies where the laughs were sparse.

Keri Russell plays Jane, a 30something single American woman obsessed with all things Austen. She has a lifesize cardboard cutout of Colin Firth playing Mr. Darcy, and that's just one example of the Austen flotsam that clogs her apartment. Her obsession is doing damage to her own romantic prospects, but that doesn't seem to concern her overmuch. She espies an ad for "Austenland", an immersive role-playing environment in England, and quickly decides to blow her savings on a weeklong excursion.

Quickly things turn out to be not quite as imagined. Jane can only afford the Copper package, while the other attendees have splurged on the Platinum experience. Although part of the package is a make-believe romance with one of Austenland's fine character actors, her apparent assignee is moody and off-putting. (Hint: just like Mr. Darcy in the book.) She gets on much better with the stable keeper, who is (she's told) supposed to have only limited interaction with guests.

Performances are fine. Especially funny is Jennifer Coolidge as another attendee who's only got a hazy idea of what the whole Austen deal is about, but has a good time nevertheless, participating with what she imagines to be cheerful English idioms in what she imagines to be an English accent. Also: Bret McKenzie (from Flight of the Conchords) as the stable lad, James Callis (Dr Baltar in Battlestar Galactica) and Jane Seymour as Mrs. Wattlesbrook, the conniving proprietress of Austenland.

But it's really weird to see Keri Russell in a frothy, funny comedy, just when I'd gotten used to her as a ruthlessly murderous KGB spy in The Americans. She's a very good actress.

I can't quite remember how this book got into my things-to-read list. It might have been this mention from Gene Healy at Reason, where it's billed as a "near-future comic dystopia". (And claimed to be a more likely future than, say, The Hunger Games books.) And, the library at the University Near Here owned a copy, so the only thing it would take is time. So…

It's the story of Lenny Abramov (middle-aged son of Russian immigrants) and Eunice Park (daughter of Korean immigrants). The tale is told in alternating chapters: excerpts from Lenny's diary and Eunice's "Globalteens account", the dominant social media site of this particular future.

Lenny and Eunice meet in Rome. She's on vacation, and Lenny has been sent by his employer, a life-extension company, to scout out HNWI ("High Net Worth Individual") customers. Lenny is immediately smitten with Eunice. This seems unlikely, because (even in his own telling) he is a desperate schlump, on the verge of professional failure, and way too old for the lovely young Eunice. But, unlikely as it sounds, they have a physical encounter; Lenny sees this as life-changing.

Eunice's side of the story reveal that, instead of the saint Lenny imagines, she's shallow, frivolous, foul-mouthed, and promiscuous. In contrast to Lenny, she views their brief sexual rendezvous as a one-off, something that she did because she could think of nothing better to do.

Unlikely as it seems, a relationship blooms between them when they return to America. Unfortunately, the US is in decline. It is broke, corrupt, dominated by international corporate interests, and reeling from disastrous foreign military ventures. "Anti-terrorism" measures have been cranked up, ubiquitous militarized checkpoints that are less about keeping the country safe, and more about keeping the rabble in line. But everyone's plugged in via their "äppäräts", supersmart devices that will (for example) instantly tell you (and everyone around you) your sexual and financial worth.

Eunice (it turns out) is very much a product of the crass and postliterate culture that surrounds her. She, like everyone, is bemused by the fact that Lenny actually owns and reads physical books. It's not illegal; it doesn't have to be.

So the country is going down the toilet. Eunice and Lenny are semi-aware of this, but they're also trying to make their relationship work, explain themselves to their respective families, etc. But (sorry for the spoiler, but see the title) there's no happy-ever-after ending.

• Frank J. wonders (among other things):

  So are the Koch brothers a real thing or just the name the left has given the screeching demons inside their heads?

  Both. I think the answer is both.

• Jonah Goldberg ponders the recent uproar about Arizona's failed effort to legalize a business's (theoretical) refusal to do business with a customer for religious reasons. (Which got translated in most media to "anti-gay".)
  Future historians will likely be flummoxed by the moment we’re living in. In what amounts to less than a blink of an eye in the history of Western civilization, homosexuality has gone from a diagnosed mental disorder to something to be celebrated — or else.

  Indeed, the rush to mandatory celebration is so intense, refusal is now considered tantamount to a crime. And, in some rare instances, an actual crime if the right constable or bureaucrat concludes that you have uttered “hate speech.”

  "Progressives" used to whine about religious types "imposing their morality" on others. Now the shoe's on the other foot.

• Tom McGuire is a fine responder to this morning's NYT editorial advocating a hefty minimum wage increase. The editorial asserts: "Paying workers more can help companies lower turnover and improve productivity."

  You really should Read the Whole Thing™, but Tom's response is neatly summarized by his headline: "From The People We Look To For Business Advice".

• Pun Salad is nine years old today. If you'd like to see the brave first post, it's right here. The major change since then is my move off the network of my (then and current) employer, the University Near Here. Which allowed my current blatant commercialism (tasteful Amazon links, which I hope you'll use to buy, buy, buy). Also, I figured out how to do RSS feeds along the way.

  Thanks, as always, for reading.

• Bradley A. Smith, writing in the WSJ, notes the docile response of the MSM to the IRS targeting of conservative/libertarian 501(c)(4) groups for legal harassment.

  The mainstream press has justified its lack of coverage over the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups because there's been no "smoking gun" tying President Obama to the scandal. This betrays a remarkable, if not willful, failure to understand abuse of power. The political pressure on the IRS to delay or deny tax-exempt status for conservative groups has been obvious to anyone who cares to open his eyes. It did not come from a direct order from the White House, but it didn't have to.

  Smith outlines the history, and demonstrates the IRS's efforts were almost certainly in response to demands from the President and other powerful Democrats. Including New Hampshire's own Senator Jeanne.

  You'd think the press might take a bit more interest when unbridled government power is used to silence opposition. Especially when it's cheered on by elected officials.

• Speaking of which:

  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Wednesday that the conservative Koch brothers are "un-American."

  This was reported at the Washington Post website, in a lead paragraph, so good for them. Senator Harry, however, is simply following other prominent members of his party (e.g., Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi; Jennifer Granholm) in applying the "un-American" smear to his political opponents.

• Years ago, back when I listened to radio stations, a local DJ was a fan of guitar hero "Johnny A". I quickly became a fan too; Johnny (or should I call him "Mr. A"?) can make an electric guitar do just about anything he wants to do. And (fortunately) what he wants to do is to make amazing music. Rock, blues, jazz, surf, country, classical: it's all one to Johnny.

  Johnny is about to release his third studio album. He is raising funds to promote it through PledgeMusic, and I gratefully plunked down a pledge this morning. And I never do this sort of thing.

  As I type, they've blown well past Johnny's original funding goal, but that's OK. I encourage you to check it out. Get his album, you won't be sorry. Or, if you have a few kilobucks rattling around, he'll even come to your house and play a set for you.

• Ann Althouse has a terrific pair of posts inspired by NYT food cop Mark Bittman's op-ed touting a recent book by (CUNY professor) Nicholas Freudenberg. (Lethal But Legal: Corporations, Consumption, and Protecting Public Health).

  The headline of Bittman's column is: "Rethinking Our ‘Rights’ to Dangerous Behaviors". The sneer-quotes around "Rights" should tell you nearly everything you need to know about the Bittman/Freudenberg thesis. Big corporations are profitably selling us unhealthy stuff, so government must step up, etc.

  Professor Althouse:

  Bittman likes Freudenberg’s debunking of notions of "rights and choice," because he agrees that "we need... more than a few policies nudging people toward better health." As Freudenberg told Bittman: "What we need... is to return to the public sector the right to set health policy and to limit corporations’ freedom to profit at the expense of public health." Oh! Did you see that? Freudenberg said "right." He said "right" in the context of government, and he spoke of returning this "right" — a right to control people — to government. He's saying "right" where the legal term is actually "power." He wants government power at the expense of rights. And the fact that he speaks of the "return" of power to the government is either deceptive or unAmerican. We are free and have a right to do what we want until we give power to government. If the laws that restrict us are repealed, it makes sense to speak of returning rights to the people, but it's wrong and really offensive to characterize new restrictions in terms of returning a right to the government.

  Pun Salad went on kind of a anti-Bittman kick a few years back (for example: here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here). But Bittman kept saying the same thing over and over, and I realized that if I wanted to respond, I'd have to say the same thing over and over. So I got off that merry-go-round. But I'm glad that Professor Althouse has stepped up.

• The GOP has a new tax proposal out. At the WSJ, Congresscritter Dave Camp, chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, gives the highlights: two brackets (10% and 25%), a surcharge on "the rich", and "simplifying" the code. And at NR, Eliana Johnson discusses the proposal's efforts to curb IRS abuses.

  Mark Calabria at Cato is (on the other hand) not a fan of the proposal's "Bank Tax".

• A. Barton Hinkle has some fun with the new Obama budget proposal.

  “With the 2015 budget request,” The Washington Post reported last week, “Obama will call for an end to the era of austerity that has dogged much of his presidency.”

  Well, it’s about time! The end of austerity cannot come soon enough, as far as your humble correspondent is concerned. And a quick look at the historical budget tables shows why: In 2008, the federal government spent just a hair under $3 trillion. After six years of President Slash-and-Burn, spending has shrunk to almost $4 trillion. If we keep cutting like this, it will be down to $5 trillion before you know it.

  I think he's being sarcastic. Not sure.

• Glenn Kessler of the rabidly right-wing Washington Post sadly notes that President Obama's assertions about Obamacare's benefits continue to be truth-impaired. To wit, his recent claim that “We’ve got close to 7 million Americans who have access to health care for the first time because of Medicaid expansion.” After doing some rudimentary research, Kessler concludes this is a Four-Pinocchio whopper:

  In any case, no matter how you slice it, it does not add up to 7 million. It is dismaying that given all of the attention to this issue, the president apparently does not realize that the administration’s data are woefully inadequate for boastful assertions of this type.

  That's an overly charitable interpretation. Mine is: he's lying. Because he thinks he can get away with lying.

• A perceptive point made by Thomas Sowell:

  It seems as if, everywhere you turn these days, there are studies claiming to show that America has lost its upward mobility for people born in the lower socioeconomic levels. But there is a sharp difference between upward "mobility," defined as an opportunity to rise, and mobility defined as actually having risen.

  I smell the social-engineering mentality behind this confusion. In that view, the mass of people can and should be pushed/nudged/regulated/controlled/etc. into furthering grand societal goals imagined by their betters. The obvious corollary: if those grand societal goals aren't being accomplished, it can only be due to insufficient pushing/nudging/regulation/control/etc.

  Need I encourage you to read the whole thing? Didn't think so.

• Ricochet headline du jour is "The Duke Porn Star Is a College Republican".

  And it gets even better with the first sentence, which starts "Well, she's actually a libertarian…"

  Now that's diversity, kids. Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown has a positive reaction here.

• Kevin Williamson recalls a historical Republican who also had to deal with others' poor opinions.

  “She drinks whiskey, and she swears, and she is a Republican, which makes her a low, foul creature.” That was one schoolgirl’s description of Mary Fields, a.k.a. Stagecoach Mary, who is an obvious candidate for induction into the inaugural class in the American Bad-Ass Hall of Fame. Miss Fields was a freed slave who worked for some years as the foreman of a Catholic mission in what was then the Montana territory, hauling freight through blizzards and fighting wolves to defend the nuns’ cargo.

  There's a link to an Ebony article where Gary Cooper (yes, that Gary Cooper) tells Mary's story.

• A lot of appreciations of the late Harold Ramis are out there. I especially liked this one where Matt K. Lewis shares Charles Murray's plug for Ramis's Groundhog Day in his latest book. (The Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead: Dos and Don'ts of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking, Clear Writing, and Living a Good Life, which I've just pre-ordered.)

  It was never sold as a smart or important film, but, instead, as a Bill Murray comedy. In this regard, Murray says that reminds him of Huckleberry Finn: ”In the very beginning of the book, there’s a notice to the reader, something about ‘anyone attempting to find a moral in this book will be banished,’” Murray says. “Mark Twain is saying to his readers,’ hey, this is just for fun.’ And Groundhog Day was similar in this regard. It was presented as a really fun Bill Murray movie.”

  As far as I know Bill and Charles Murray are not related. Also see Jonah Goldberg's classic 2005 essay on Groundhog Day.

  And if you have 28 seconds, enjoy the odd chemistry between Ramis and Annie Potts in Ghostbusters:

• I seem to have been watching a lot of "comedy" movies lately that generate, at most, an occasional amused snort.

  So when I heard that Harold Ramis had passed away, I went to his IMDB page. And just the "Writer" category has: Ghostbusters; Groundhog Day; SCTV; Caddyshack; Meatballs; Stripes; and (last but not least) Animal House.

  The world just got significantly less funny. RIP.

• I've been a Tom Wolfe fan ever since I used to sneak peeks at my dad's copies of Esquire back in the 60s. George Neumayr has a good interview with him over at the American Spectator website. For example, this story about hanging out with Muhammad Ali and his retinue:

  Most of [Ali's] hangers-on had nothing to do with boxing. One night we went to a nightclub. There must have been a dozen people at a big table and everybody was ordering drinks and every kind of food. When the waiter brought the desserts, Ali got up and stretched, said it was a little stuffy in the restaurant, and left. I was pretty quick to get out too. That was the kind of thing that that story was full of. Ali just didn’t want to pay the bill.

• I missed Breaking Bad in its first run, but AMC had a marathon of all 62 episodes at the end of 2013, and that is precisely what TiVo is good at. Mrs. Salad begged off, but I finally managed to watch them all when she was asleep or out of the house.

  Holy cow, what a fine show. Only problem is, when I'm out in the real world… That guy over there with the metal-band shirt? Meth addict! Two guys just sitting in that car? Meth dealers! That restaurant that nobody ever seems to go to? Money laundering for the meth trade!

  It's probably a good thing I read Jacob Sullum's "Meth Mouth and Other Meth Myths." Bottom line:

  Over-the-top warnings about methamphetamine—encapsulated in the slogan "Meth: Not Even Once"—aim to scare people away from a drug that might harm them (but probably won't). By contrast, Hart argues, exaggerating the hazards posed by methamphetamine causes definite damage by encouraging harsh criminal penalties (such as a five-year mandatory minimum for five grams), fostering distrust of accurate warnings about drugs, suppressing useful information that could reduce drug-related harm, driving users toward more dangerous routes of administration (as efforts to reduce meth purity, if successful, predictably would do), and justifying ineffective policies that impose substantial costs on large numbers of people for little or no benefit (such as restrictions on the methamphetamine precursor pseudoephedrine, a cheap, safe, and effective decongestant that is now absurdly difficult to obtain). In other words, hyperbole hurts.

  Although Breaking Bad's overall theme is probably still on point: becoming a drug criminal is probably not good for your family, friends, or your own self.

• Back in 1968, computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra wrote a letter to the editor of the Communications of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery). Begins:

  For a number of years I have been familiar with the observation that the quality of programmers is a decreasing function of the density of go to statements in the programs they produce. More recently I discovered why the use of the go to statement has such disastrous effects, and I became convinced that the go to statement should be abolished from all "higher level" programming languages (i.e. everything except, perhaps, plain machine code). At that time I did not attach too much importance to this discovery; I now submit my considerations for publication because in very recent discussions in which the subject turned up, I have been urged to do so.

  The editor, Niklaus Wirth, stuck on the title "Go To Statement Considered Harmful"; the "Considered Harmful" phrase took on a life of its own.

  But after 46 years, the go to statement is still claiming casualties, as this Wired article about Apple's recently-revealed iOS vulnerability in its Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) code. If you know any C or C++, you'll get a chuckle out of the bug.

Warning for fellow geezers: this movie shows high school students drinking, using bad language, and having ze sex. I guess that's what's happening these days. IMDB bills this as Comedy/Drama/Romance, but (just like Blue Jasmine) there aren't a lot of laughs.

Plot: high school senior Sutter Keely (really) is the self-admitted "life of the party", but his hot girlfriend Cassidy dumps him (for some reason I didn't quite get). Now, Sutter is a nice guy, but he is way too fond of ethanol. And getting dumped is a fine reason to overdo even more. So one morning he wakes up on the lawn of Aimee Finicky (again, really), a fellow student.

Aimee is an introverted nerd, a reader of science fiction and fantasy. And not as hot as Cassidy. Aimee knows Sutter—everyone knows Sutter—but he's been unaware of her. They are drawn to each other, becoming friends at first, then graduating to a more serious relationship. Sutter's friends are dubious about the whole thing. Can this relationship work?

Both Sutter and Aimee are sympathetic and likeable characters. But we discover the serious cracks in their personal foundations, especially Sutter's. He's the product of a broken home, and his mom has kept him in the dark about the details. I already mentioned the boozing. He's also neglectful about his future plans, living in the "spectacular now". This is a pretty unusual theme for a teen movie to hit on, I think.

It's cleverly written, not predictable, and the acting is first-rate. Although this was a low-budget indie movie, the main actors are moving into bigger roles: the guy playing Sutter is going to be Mr. Fantastic in the new Fantastic Four movie, and the girl playing Aimee is the heroine in the Hunger Games ripoff, Divergent. So good for them.