PARE THE PROBOSCIS, PEEVE THE PHYSIOGNOMY

Paring the proboscis to peeve the physiognomy - cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face - is rarely a good idea. But that’s exactly what is happening as declines in state and local tax revenues force spending cuts.

There are certain state services that really need to be supported in order to maintain a functioning, habitable society. You can’t do without police and fire protection. And, although the effects of cutbacks are less immediate, you can’t do without education.

Teachers have a hard enough go of it even in good times. Salaries are well below those available in private industry, and under the current No Child Left Behind philosophy of ensuring that, by 2014, every child in the United States is above average - Lake Wobegon writ large - a teacher’s career, more than ever, depends on factors beyond his or her control. If you work in an economically disadvantaged school, or if you teach a class with a large cohort of students on the low end of the bell-shaped Intelligence Distribution Curve, you are well and truly fucked.

But now, with state money thin on the ground, teachers are getting hammered. I’m talking about involuntary furloughs, RIF’s (Reductions in Force, a corporate-sounding euphemism for “firing a shitload of people”), and elimination of whole programs. The net effect: Fewer teachers, fewer programs, and less pay... without any change in the huge Unfunded Mandates like NCLB that must be accommodated.

Cutting education spending may be an unfortunate and dire necessity, a cascade effect of declining tax rolls, a nation- and worldwide economic meltdown, and record unemployment. But it’s an action of desperation akin to eating your seed corn, the full effects of which will - make no mistake about it - be severe and long-lasting. [And it’s not as though Georgia has that far to go before its quality of education is ranked dead last.]

Good schools attract employers and help create a productive, competitive workforce. Conversely, bad schools drive away prospective residents, employers, and jobs. Maybe our honorable governor should rethink his priorities so that Georgia remains an attractive and economically sound place to live and raise a family.

FIRE IN EARTH AND SKY

The shimmering aurora borealis provides a backdrop for the glow of volcanic fires from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano. [Photograph ©2010 Arnþór Ævarsson. Used by permission.]

Volcanoes have always held a certain fascination for me. When I was a young snot-nose of five or six, I would gaze in rapt attention at the photographs of Parícutin, a volcano that reared its cindery head above the fields of Michoacán, Mexico in 1943 - a mere nine years before I was born. The incandescent fire of those lava fountains captured my childish imagination, tickling the back alleys of my brain-pan with a peculiar combination of fear and curiosity. And National Geographic, with its photos of the 1960 Kilauea eruption, planted in me a lifelong desire to - one day - see a volcano in action.

I have stood at the edge of the Kilauea caldera and looked deep into the Halemaumau fire-pit. I have walked the length of the Thurston lava tube. But, as yet, I have never seen Earth’s molten fire with my own eyes. That one’s still on the Bucket List.

Meanwhile, Ol’ Vulcan has been in the news lately, what with Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano blowing a monster plume of ash into the stratosphere and grounding tens of thousands of European flights. Perhaps the European aviation authorities are being overcautious, but anyone who remembers British Airways flight 9 won’t question their decision.

In June, 1982, BA9, a Boeing 747 enroute from Kuala Lumpur to Perth, lost all four engines when it encountered a cloud of ash from Indonesia’s Mount Galunggung. I’m sure there were any number of folks who filled their trousers after hearing the Captain’s masterfully understated announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them under control. I trust you are not in too much distress.” Fortunately, the crew was able to restart the engines after exiting the ash cloud... but not before a scary gliding descent to bring the plane down to an altitude with breathable air. The 747 limped into Jakarta on three engines, but with no casualties. (Except maybe those trousers.)

But back to Eyjafjallajökull.

The photograph above was taken by Arnþór Ævarsson (the letter þ - thorn - is pronounced “th”) in April, before the second phase of the eruption shut down European airspace mid-month. By a happy coincidence, the Northern Lights were in full play at the time, leading to a striking juxtaposition of lights from both earth and sky. As Arnþór himself says in another masterful understatement, it was “my biggest Kodak moment.”

Ya gotta love Iceland. Populated by the descendants of Vikings, packed with stunningly gorgeous blondes, and with active volcanoes to boot. I’ve gotta get me a ticket... when atmospheric conditions permit, of course.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

Houston Steve was kind enough to forward this piece of important late-breaking news from England:

The Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service... turned up with a special equipment unit from St Mary’s station in Southampton and seven firefighters to help, in what a spokesman understatedly described as a “delicate operation.”

Said delicate operation involved freeing a gentleman’s membrum virile from a stainless steel pipe in which he had somehow managed to get it, er, ahhh... stuck.

How this may have happened is best left as an exercise for the imagination. The article does not provide any sort of hypothesis, stating that “the man, thought to be aged around 40, did not explain to hospital staff how exactly the pipe got stuck around his penis.” Which leaves us to exercise our perfervid imaginations.

Of course, for some things no explanation is necessary. Or desirable, for that matter. All you need to know is, a guy was involved. [Although in this case he may more properly have been described as a “bloke.”] And some guys - the exact percentage is unknown, but it is not insignificant - will stick their John Thomases into pretty much anything that resembles a hole. Just ask Anna Nicole Smith.

There is no mention of whether alcohol was a factor in this incident, but I say you can take it to the bank: There was. Ogden Nash once famously said, “Candy / Is Dandy / But liquor / Is quicker.” And I’ll add, “If you have enough liquor / You might attempt something sicker / Than merely to dick ’er.” The question that must be answered, of course, is just how drunk do you have to be when a stainless steel pipe starts bringing Teh Sexy?

A guy, some booze, and something that resembles a hole. A recipe for disaster.

KILLER

The tragic death of trainer Dawn Brancheau, killed by an orca at SeaWorld Orlando February 24, has focused attention on the strange amalgam of science and showbiz offered up by the famous aquatic parks.

Brancheau, 40, was dragged underwater to her death by Tilikum, a 12,000 pound killer whale. “Killer whale,” a descriptor that has been largely replaced by the less-judgmental and more scientific name “orca,” is especially apt in the case of Tilikum, previously involved in the deaths of two other trainers.

SeaWorld resumed its orca-based entertainment three days after Brancheau’s death, although trainers will not be permitted to enter the water with the animals until SeaWorld and a group of outside experts complete a review of the parks’ orca-handling procedures. Business is business, after all, and a single orca is worth something in the neighborhood of $10 million. Gotta keep those assets working.

Killer whales are difficult to catch in the wild, and so these days, aquatic parks like SeaWorld breed them in captivity. No, they don’t charge admission and let the public watch, but I figure it’s only a matter of time. But here’s the scary part: A goodly number of the killer whales that have been bred by SeaWorld and other parks carry Tilikum’s DNA. From the AP article:

Captured nearly 30 years ago off Iceland, Tilikum has grown into the alpha male of captive killer whales, his value as a stud impossible to pin down...

...And no one is better at breeding killer whales than SeaWorld. The company owns 25 of the 42 orcas in captivity, and other theme parks sometimes come to SeaWorld to get theirs...

...SeaWorld got an emergency permit to buy Tilikum and the other two whales less than a year after [an attack in which he was one of three orcas that battered and submerged a fallen trainer until she died], and he became the company’s go-to sire. Of the 20 calves born at SeaWorld parks, Tilikum has fathered 13, the company said. [Emphasis mine.]

Holy crap. This means SeaWorld has been breeding a race of serial killer whales, folks... and using them to entertain our kiddies!

Does anyone else besides me find this a bit... disturbing?

SeaWorld has created a multibillion-dollar business that is based on the image of orcas as great big, harmless, cuddly animals. Stop in to one of the souvenir shops at any one of their parks and check out the plush, huggable evidence. But every once in a while, we’re reminded that Nature is red in tooth and claw. Just ask Steve Irwin. Oh, wait. You can’t... because he’s dead.

It’s one thing when a pissed-off orca grabs a trainer by the hair and drags her under the water to a horrible death. After all, probably half the people watching thought it was part of the act. “Oh, look, Mommy... they’re playing in the water!” But one of these days, some poor schnook is gonna get bitten right in fucking half when Shmammu the Kuddly Killer Whale has an acid flashback and thinks he’s looking at some weird-looking two-legged walrus. That’ll be a whole lot harder to explain to little Susie. “It’s just ketchup, honey. A whole lotta (gag) ketchup... and sausages...”

In unrelated news, PETA has announced an initiative to ban the use of the term “killer whale” and replace it with “cetacean, justifiably homicidal on account of having spent years in captivity as a slave to humans.” But since that’s too big a mouthful for the Average Joe, they propose to substitute the term “Kumbaya-Singing Whale.”

MARTA: SLOWLY GETTING SMARTA

From the “You Can’t Make This Shit Up” department comes this piece of news concerning MARTA, Atlanta’s rapid-transit rail system.

Seems that back in October, MARTA renamed their four rail lines in an effort to simplify navigation. I guess it was pretty difficult trying to figure out where the various lines went, what with complicated names like “North Springs” and “Doraville.” No, it made much more sense to color-code the lines... ’cause it’s so much more intuitive.

The two east-west lines were renamed the Blue and Green lines. OK, fine. The North Springs line - the one She Who Must Be Obeyed and I take when we need to go to the airport - was renamed the Red line. Excellent. And the Doraville line, which serves the northeastern quadrant of the city, was titled the Yellow line.

Uh-oh.

Problem is, the Doraville line serves Doraville and Chamblee (AKA “Chambodia”), districts with a significant Asian population. I know that in this day of Political Correctness, some ethnic groups tend to get their noses out of joint over pretty much any slight, even imagined ones... but given the past use of the term “yellow” in such Asian-friendly terms as “Yellow Peril” and “Yellow Scourge,” you’d think the double-domes at MARTA would have figured out that a different color choice might have been more, er, ahhhh... sensitive.

I mean, I notice that there’s no Black Line. Would that have been considered insulting to the city’s large African-American population? Would it have mattered which line it was? I don’t know, and I certainly can’t speak for that segment of our city’s citizenry - but I see that that was not one of the names selected.

There were a few folks that saw this (ahem) train wreck coming. John Yasutake, MARTA’s former manager of equal opportunity and conflict resolution, met with MARTA senior staffers a month before the proposed name changes took effect, reminding them that there was a very large Asian community in Doraville and its environs that might not look too kindly upon being told they had to ride the Yellow Line. But nobody seemed to think it was any big deal. At the time, anyway.

Culturally driven sensitivities being what they are, color-coding is fraught with the potential to offend. The Red Line? Commies! Or even worse, Alabama fans! Purple? Horrible. Not only does it remind people of Barney the Dinosaur, it’s the color of eggplant... and melanzane (eggplant) is a derogatory Italian expression for people of African descent. Blue? That’s on the Israeli flag, and it might piss off the city’s Arab population. Hey, even Crayola knew when to rename its “flesh” color crayon when they figured out that not everyone’s flesh was Whitey Pink.

Maybe that’s why the New York subway uses letters and numbers. Of course, with twenty-six different lines, color-coding the New York MTA would require dipping into the more exotic regions of the color palette: raw umber, burnt sienna, aquamarine, Indian red chestnut, salmon, et alia. And a Salmon Line might offend smoked fish-eating Jews.

To extricate itself from this mess, MARTA has agreed to re-rename the Doraville Yellow Line, giving it a name that is less offensive to Asians: the Gold Line.

Community leaders are pleased with the planned revision, indicating that it shows that MARTA is sensitive to their concerns. Albeit belatedly, I would add.

But I don’t think this goes far enough. Correcting MARTA’s faux pas requires more proactive measures. And that’s why I propose that the Doraville line be renamed the Lucky Dragon Triple-Eight Golden Success Happiness Sun Line.

TIGER EXPLAINS IT ALL...

...right here.

Or, more properly put, Skippy explains it all. L’affaire Tigre, that is.

FALL OF A WALL

For many of the younger people walking the planet today, it is hard to imagine that, once upon a time, a wall separated East and West.

Actually, there were many walls, most of them philosophical and political: the walls that divided the centrally planned economies and authoritarian governments of the East with the captialist, free-market economies and representative democracies of the West. But I refer to a physical wall, the wall that separated East and West Berlin.

The Wall was forbidding, surrounded by No-Man’s Land, topped by barbed wire, illuminated by searchlights, guarded by machine-gun nests. It was not built for defense or protection. It was no shield. It was, rather, like the walls of a prison... for those on the eastern side were trapped, unable to cross to the other side. Even family visits were forbidden, lest the good citizens of the East be exposed to dangerous alien ideologies.

The Berlin Wall came down twenty years ago this week... but the events that set that fall in motion started with Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberalization of Soviet communism. The glasnost and perestroika movements - latter-day attempts to create a more “human” communism - inevitably doomed it... for communism, as an economic system, can only be enforced by a heavy-handed, iron-fisted government. As the atmosphere of reform spread throughout Eastern Europe, riots and unrest struck East Germany.

I was in West Germany on October 18 1989, the day Erich Honecker - the leader of East Germany and the man who built the Wall - was forced to resign. We were on the Autobahn, enroute from Frankfurt to Worms-am-Rhein, when we heard the news on the radio. It was a little like hearing the rumble of a distant earthquake, one that would eventually swell to world-shattering proportions... reminiscent of that moment in Lord of the Rings when the evil Lord Sauron realizes, too late, that his Ring of Power is about to be tossed into the Crack of Doom and that he is well and truly fucked.

My German colleagues were ecstatic; they knew that with Honecker gone, reunification was just a matter of time. Just how little time it would take, of course, nobody could imagine.

Within two years, the Soviet Union itself would be history... and the Wall, the hated Wall, would be in the form of little chunks, all peddled to people interested in owning a piece of history.

WELCOME TO STUPIDVILLE

That’s the sign you see when you enter Newark, Delaware. Or at least, it should be.

The Grey Lady reports on yet another incident in which a well-intentioned but stupidly-written Zero Tolerance Policy resulted in a six-year-old getting suspended from school for 45 days. Young Zachary Christie’s crime? Bringing

...a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary was suspended and now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school.

Brilliant, just fucking brilliant.

Zero tolerance policies sound good. Administrators like ’em because they purportedly reduce opportunities for discrimination in the enforcement of school rules and policies... and they require exactly zero brains to administer. None of that strenuous “thinking” or “judgment” need come into play. Just enforce the policy, is all ya gotta do. Easy peasy!

I sure am happy these harebrained policies didn’t exist when I was a young Snot-Nose. I would have been thoroughly fucked.

As for little Zachary, my only advice at this point? Don’t drop the soap, kid.

WRATH O’ GAWD, 2009 EDITION

SOME say the world will end in fire,
Some say in flood.
Flood’s filled with Products of Digestion:
I hold with those who like combustion.
But for a third choice, I’d take dust.
Unlike a flood, it’s rather dry;
It formeth such a lovely crust -
Yet you can die
In crimson dust.

- Apologies to Robert Frost

Here we are in Atlanta, recovering from unprecedented flooding...


This shot was taken with a few miles of Chez Elisson. Yeef! [Photo: Brant Sanderlin, Atlanta Journal-Constitution]


At Six Flags over Georgia, the Georgia Cyclone looks like it was hit by one. The whole park was one Log Flume Ride, with nearby Interstate 20 submerged. [Photo: Phil Skinner, Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

...and meanwhile, California grapples with heat waves and fire-wrought devastation.


The Fillmore fire, as seen from the Simi Valley. [Photo: Jerry Foster]


Havin’ a Heat Wave in SoCal. [Photo: Jerry Foster]

The Southeast has been awash up until a couple of days ago, while, southern California roasts and burns. If we could only find a way to average this stuff out...

Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, a monster dust storm in the Outback blankets Sydney, Australia in powdery red silt.


Sydney’s famed Harbour Bridge is shrouded in crimson dust. [Photo: Getty Images]

The above represents just a few of the prizes that are awarded in the Daily Lottery o’ Life. You don’t need to buy a ticket - you get one free, every day you get out of bed!

LOST IN THE FLOOD

...Hey man, did you see that, those poor cats are sure messed up
I wonder what they were gettin’ into, or were they just lost in the flood?

- Bruce Springsteen, “Lost in the Flood”

I wrote about the generally Moist Conditions here Monday morning...

...but things got a whole lot worse later that day.

The entire Atlanta metropolitan area was visited by the kind of scenes I associate with Houston, having lived in that exceptionally damp and low-lying city for so many years. I never dreamed I would see such things here.

Seven people swept away, including a Carroll County toddler whose mobile home was demolished by fast-rising creek waters. Million-dollar homes along Columns Drive in East Cobb - just a few miles away from Chez Elisson - filled with stinking mud and water.

We dodged that big, wet bullet... although we were a little nervous as water began to pond in our back yard. The rain was relentless.

Fortunately, the area caught a break today, with most of the clouds rolling away and with actual sunshine appearing mid-day. We hadn’t seen that Golden Orb for over a week.

And, in an ironic note, Canoe, a restaurant located in nearby Vinings, was flooded. Diners will now need a canoe to get to Canoe... where they can, if they wish, order the Floating Island for dessert.

CHICKEN MAN

It seems that while Houston Steve, Denny, and I were enjoying a Winey Evening a few days ago, veteran New York news anchor Ernie Anastos was busy stepping on his dick.

By now, millions of people have seen the YouTube video clip of Ernie’s bizarre exchange with weatherman Nick Gregory. Entertaining as it is, I’m sure it was much more amusing seen live on WNYW-TV, the New York Fox affiliate.

“I guess it takes a tough man to make a tender forecast, Nick... Keep fucking that chicken.”

Some people - the kind of people that always want to believe the most innocent explanation - think Anastos intended to say “plucking” and was a victim of a slip of the tongue. To which I say “Bullshit.” Ernie knew exactly what he was talking about.

I am convinced that his Perdue chicken reference caused an instantaneous mental flashback... to an old story, a True Story. It is a story I heard from a customer back in the mid-1980’s, about a figure who had become a sort of local legend. I refer to the Chicken Man of Jackson, Tennessee.

It seems this fellow was arrested for having had sexual relations with a chicken. Several chickens, in fact. On the surface, one could be forgiven for considering this to be a Victimless Crime, but nobody asked the chickens... and besides, the happy burghers of Jackson, Tennessee had enacted laws against such behavior, lest the streets of Jackson run riot with Chicken Fuckers.

Strange as this was, stranger still was the fact that he had been turned in by his wife.

It takes a special sort of woman to stand up in court in front of the entire assembled community and finger her husband for being a Chicken Fucker. A confident, self-assured woman. A woman with a “I don’t give a shit” attitude. Because the unavoidable implication is that, given a choice between her schmutschkie and a chicken’s, her husband prefers the chicken’s. Ouch.

Turns out that she didn’t really care at first that he was dickin’ the chickens per se... what sent her over the edge was that he was killing them in the process. Double ouch.

The Chicken Man became a sort of perverse Local Celebrity as a result of all this. Whenever he showed up at a Friday night high school football game, he’d get a standing ovation, with the crowds cheering “Chicken Man!”

Whether it was this old story that inspired Ernie’s outburst Wednesday evening or some random Brain Fart, I think the best part is the look of horror on co-anchor Dari Alexander’s face. In the screen shot below, it almost looks as though her eyes are bugging right out of her face.


“Holy shit! Did Ernie just say what I thought he said?”

Yes, he did, Dari. Yes, he did.

CAMELOT IN TWILIGHT

Senator Edward “Teddy” Kennedy, the last of the Brothers of Camelot, has died at the age of 77 after his year-plus-long bout with brain cancer.

The youngest of the four sons of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., Ted was the only one to survive past the 1960’s. Like his elder brothers, he had Presidential dreams... but any hope he may have had of succeeding to his brother John’s place in the White House was drowned in the cold waters off Chappaquiddick forty years ago last month.

Despite the ensuing scandal, he became an effective senator, beloved by his constituents and able to work both sides of the aisle. His latest - and, as yet, uncompleted - mission was to reform this country’s health care system. But Kennedy, a co-sponsor of the clusterfuck known as No Child Left Behind, had had previous experience in drafting well-intentioned but completely botched-up legislation. I’m scared to death thinking what kind of health-care reform bill may still get shoved down our throats, especially now that its passage will be seen as a memorial to Teddy.

But I didn’t write this post to badmouth the man. Plenty of other folks will be all too happy to take him to task for his excessive drinking, his philandering, his unwillingness to face the consequences of his actions.

Oops.

No, I wanted to write this as an excuse to link to the one real Teddy Kennedy story I have... about the day I sat in Teddy’s Senate seat. Literally.

Teddy, ave atque vale. No need to pack your woolens - I suspect you won’t need ’em.

Oops.

THE DINGOES ATE MY PROFESSOR

Some people have an unreasonable fear of attacks by large reptiles.

It’s an unreasonable fear only in that the likelihood of being attacked by, say, a ten-foot alligator is quite low... especially if one lives in, say, New Jersey, where such beasts are not part of the naturally occurring local fauna. It’s more reasonable if you live in south Florida, where a resurgence in the gator population has made things rough for small dogs and children.

But if you want to get paranoid about being attacked by animals, consider the unfortunate case of Lothar Karl Schweder and his wife Sherri, who were killed by a pack of wild dogs. Their mauled bodies were discovered by Jehovah’s Witnesses sometime Saturday morning.

According to the news report,

Authorities said they believe Sherri Schweder was attacked by the pack of wild dogs as she went on her regular walk either Friday night or early Saturday. When she failed to return her husband, Lothar, went looking for her in his car.

Authorities [said] he was attacked when he got out of the car by the same pack of dogs.

Now that there’s some Fucked Up Shit.

Alligators are pretty rare around these parts... but dogs? Not so much. Which is not a reassuring thought.

Lothar Schweder was a retired German professor who had taught at the University of Georgia. Savor the perversity, if you will, of his having been snuffed by Hairy Dawg’s real-life avatars. “Let the Big Dawg Eat,” indeed.

It’s as though I were to meet my end by being devoured by tigers. Gotta admit, it’s less likely... but no less amusing.

TODAY’S PITH AND VINEGAR

Today’s Pith and Vinegar brings you a Brief Imagined Dialogue from the White House, where President Barack Obama joined Sgt. James Crowley and Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. yesterday evening for a few cold beers and a chance to smooth over the Great Racial Imbroglio created by Crowley’s arrest of Gates last week for disorderly conduct.

Obama: Gentlemen, I’m glad both of you agreed to meet here with me and sit down over a couple of brewskis. I firmly believe that there are no problems that Man cannot solve after having a few brewskis. Speaking of which, how do you like this beer? It’s a craft brew made especially for the White House by a Belgian guy we keep locked up in the basement.

Gates: Tastes great.

Crowley: Less filling.

Gates: Tastes great!

Crowley: Less filling!

Gates: Tastes great!!!

Crowley: Less filling!!!

Gates: Yo mama!

Crowley: You’re under arrest!

SNAKES IN A DRAIN

As if Jimbo weren’t paranoid enough with respect to Florida’s native fauna, we now have this story.

Here’s the money quote:

“The State of Florida recently declared war on the out-of-control python population.”

Roll that one around on your tongue a few times. “The out-of-control python population.” Jeebus.

[Tip o’ th’ Elisson fedora to Meryl Yourish for the link... and the post title.]

I WISH...

O, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer
Wienermobile
Shtupping garages would be
A real good deal

That dinky-ass Beemer
That skanky-ass Benz
Can’t love you like I do
They just your friendz

Just open up
That great big door
And I’ll give you
A whole lot more

Roll your gate up
Nice and wide
So I can slide my Hot Dog
Deep inside

Just like a train
Going into a tunnel
Let me cram my wiener
Into your Love-Funnel

Got a sausage with a length
Measured in feet
Gotta whole lotta lovin’
Gotta whole lotta meat

Wiener Mobile
Is my name
Satisfyin’ your homestead
Is my game

[Inspired by this breaking news story, forwarded to me by The Other Elisson as well as having been the subject of a recent post at All Atwitter.]

END OF AN ERA

Walter Cronkite (1916-2009), veteran newsman.

With today’s passing of Walter Cronkite, veteran reporter, a final nail has been driven into the coffin of the twentieth century. Cronkite, 92, was at one point considered “the most trusted man in America” thanks to a felicitous combination of professionalism and an avuncular demeanor.

Cronkite’s career took him from a brief stint in newspaper reporting to radio, from which he made the jump to television in 1950. He cut his teeth covering political conventions and hosted the program You Are There, which used a news reporting format to recreate historical events. Beginning in 1957, he hosted an narrated The Twentieth Century, a program that documented key events of (you guessed it) the twentieth century using newsreel footage. It was on that show that I first heard his unforgettable voice.

It was “Uncle Walter” who brought the major events of my formative years to the small screen. The Cuban Missile Crisis (I was ten years old and scared shitless); the assassination of President Kennedy; the Apollo moon missions... all of these are indelibly engraved on my brainpan with a soundtrack provided by Walter Cronkite.

It is unfortunate that Cronkite did not live a few days longer. Monday evening will mark the fortieth anniversary of the first manned moon landing, perhaps the most significant technological achievement of the human species... and covered wire-to-wire by Cronkite, of course.

I cannot name a single contemporary television reporter who can hold a candle to him. Alas, the Infotainment Biznis being what it is these days, I fear that I shall never see his like again.

Requiescat in pace, Uncle Walter. We’ll miss you... and that’s the way it is.

ANOTHER SNAFU BY THE GREY LADY

Several months ago, the New York Times website linked to one of my posts, placing me in the august company of real Content Providers like the Wall Street Journal and Time magazine.

The joke, of course, was that the Times somehow confused a post I had written about Hungarian Goulash with something that might conceivably be of interest to readers looking for “world news about Hungary, including breaking news and archival articles published in the New York Times.”

Amusing, to be sure, but not half as amusing as their linking to my recent piece about the Hubble Space Telescope:


Today’s New York Times webpage. [Click to embiggen.]

I’m sure our young nephew William will be pleased to know that the photograph he took of his cat’s asshole has now been linked by the prestigious, tasteful Grey Lady. And that same Grey Lady would be most displeased to know the same.

Ain’t Science grand?

DEPARTMENT OF EUPHEMISM

I was listening to the Big Glass Teat with one ear when I overheard a news report - something to the effect that the Obama administration has requested that people refer to swine flu as the “swine influenza (H1N1) virus” - or, even better, “the H1N1 virus.”

The rationale? Administration officials were concerned about the possible negative impact of the term “swine flu” on the American pork industry.

Did I hear that right? Or did I imagine it? If it’s true, it is the most creative exercise in Proactive Euphemism Creation since PETA came up with the harebrained idea of calling fish “Sea Kittens.” It ranks right up there with “Freedom Fries,” brought to you by the prior administration.

It’s doomed to fail. For one thing, “swine influenza (H1N1) virus” - or just “H1N1 virus,” for that matter - has too fucking many syllables. Swine flu has just two.

[That’s the same objection I have to the term “African-American.” Not only is it inaccurate in many cases, it’s seven syllables. Whereas “black” has one. “Caucasian,” with three syllables, isn’t quite as cumbersome, but it’s still nowhere near as efficient as the monosyllabic “white.”]

For another thing, when everybody is running around like headless chickens screaming “We’re all gonna die!” nobody is going to consult their Directory of Officially Approved Disease Terminology. They’ll go with simple and quick. Swine Flu.

But if you want something more creative, I have a few ideas.

The Mexicali Pork-Grippe - a creation of the inimitable James Lileks.

Chazzer Choleria - Leave it to the Jews, who aren’t supposed to eat pigs, to have the best words for them. Chazzer Choleria literally means “pig cholera.” Catchy, innit? A perfect name for a cartoon character, the Smokey Bear or Woodsy Owl of the New Millennium.


Meet Chazzer Choleria, official H1N1 virus spokesman.
(Apologies to Warner Brothers)

Porkulusterfuck - For those who prefer a political spin to their euphemisms.

How ’bout you? Can you come up with some creative alternatives to “Swine Flu”?

VENUS DAY

False-color radar image of the surface of Venus. [Courtesy NASA]

Today, April 22, is Earth Day... but unless you are a Planetary Chauvinist, you also know that it is Venus Day.

It’ll be Venus Day for a good while, too, since our Venerian solar days are over 116 times longer than an Earth day. And that will give us plenty of time to think of ways to save our planet.

Greenhouse gases are an issue, of course. We Venerians can’t get enough of ’em. All that carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide are absolutely necessary to maintain the balmy 860°F surface temperature that makes Venus the perfect place among planets.

“Save the Whales”? Pfaugh. On Venus, “whales” are the subject of science fiction... mainly because there are no oceans. Carbon-based lifeforms of any kind are thin on the ground, for that matter. All y’all wimps can’t take the heat. The local silicon-based biochemistry is much more adaptable.

On Venus, “Rock and Roll” isn’t music. It’s a dude and his food.

Not that there aren’t environmental concerns. While there are no icecaps, polar or otherwise, to shrink, the depth of the tellurium-gallium snow in the mountains occasionally is insufficient to support a decent skiing season. Opinion is strongly divided as to whether this diminution of snow cover is veneriogenic in origin.

Hey, ya gotta love our pearlescent little planet. Where else in the Solar System can you breathe seltzer instead of drinking it?