The World Around Us, Part III

I came late to the internet, late to blogging, late even to the use of a computer as a research tool. As late as 1996--and it embarrasses ne to recall this--I forbade my Comp II students from counting internet research as one of their five mandatory sources. I used to hold mandatory scavenger hunts in my composition class (based on Prof. Kingsfield's use of same in the TV version of "The Paper Chase") that compelled students to hunt through the University of Houston or Rice Library, to Xerox and list each item in turn ("an article published in Time magazine the week you were born"). Do a scavenger hunt on the internet? Never. I'd spent 13 years of higher education in those smelly old stacks, so they could damn well spend one Saturday afternoon.

It was through National Review that I made two discoveries. The first was in the mid-nineties, when a NR article I read aadvanced the notion of newspapers delivered through telephone wires or even through the air, the notion of sitting in a jet plane at thirty thousand feet and I paraphrase, "reading Anthony Lewis on your laptop." (Deliberate ugh line, but I was fascinated.) My next discovery I remember distinctly. Spring, 2000: I was walking through the faculty room at one of our campuses and saw a scrap of paper on the desk. I picked it up, saw it was something typically trenchant and graceful by George Will--but at an unusual length, five or six paragraphs. The subject was a chuckle (if that's correct) about how many environmentalists were being driven crazy by SUV purchases.

(Pause here. The war against SUVs is one of those endlessly fascinating sideshows of American life, waged by people who are either uninformed or myopic or both. It seems that half the people on HuffPost raging against the Vehicle of Satan travel by private jet. And Andrew Sullivan, who seemingly ranks SUVs two notches below torture, betrays an almost touching ignorance of the duties and obligations involved in raising a family. When one mother wrote Sullivan to state, Look, I've got three kids, they legally all must be in child seats, and an SUV is pretty much the only vehicle large enough, Sullivan's incredible response was, Well, why not put them in a station wagon? The answer to that, of course, is that current child restraints are about as big as bathtubs, and that a mother and father could squeeze one or two of the smaller ones (infant-3 years) in a station wagon--and only if no else rode in the car. My youngest brother's three kids--two of them extremely tall for their ages--would not fit in his car were it not for the third row of seats. Beyond that, the saving in gas between an SUV and a standard mid-sized--a Taurus, say--is marginal at best, so even if a bachelor drives his SUV to work alone he's scarcely doing any harm, at least not enough for it to be anyone's business. Okay, back to the post.)

I saw the url of Will's missive: nationalreviewonline. This was funny: my favorite magazine had an online version? I knew so little of the internet that it took me a half-hour's serious typing to find the home page of National Review Online.

(Pause again. National Review distilled my thinking, as an insitution, the way George Will did as an individual. My only regret was that it took until 1987, when I was in graduate school and the course of my career was in motion, for me to discover The Most Consequential Small Magazine Ever. Even in the relatively conservative confines of USC, there was a decided liberal bent to the editorial pages of the Daily Trojan, the only real outlet for expression on campus. There was no Dartmouth Review, no Heterodoxy, no publication to cause this-or-that grievance group to steal, then destroy, an entire press run. I had come to USC expecting to transfer into the film school, but was bored to death by camera and lighting classes. This was my stab at journalism, but I only felt at home in the Entertainment Department, and I knew I didn't want to go to some paper in Iowa and do puff pieces about local theatre while waiting for the in-house film critic to die. So, it was off to the English Department.)

(Pause again, Part II. When, in 1987, as a graduated student at Binghamton University, I came across Natinal Review, I thought--as I've thought a few other times--that God had read my mind. To turn the page and say yes, yes, and yes again. My first year in Houston, I developed a every-other-Saturday afternoon ritual: drive of the laundromat on Alabama and Shepherd, load my clothes in the wash, cross Alabama, cross Shepherd, buy the newest NR at Bookstop, buy a big cookie at the old Whole Foods next door, come back, load the dryer, and read while the clothes spun behind the glass circle. Good times. Okay, back to the post.)

It amazed me how much my life changed in about two weeks: discovering links, web pages, Jonah Goldberg, etc. George Will was published sporadically in the Houston Chronicle; one would have to wait years for a new book to take in his view of events years past. Here I could read him, every Thursday and Sunday. The effect on my was as if Bartleby the Scrivener had been shown a Xeros machine and electricity on the same day. When I had been in Binghamton I needed to cross the campus every morning for the Daily News and Post, then--around four, before an early dinner--make my way to the news stand in the Student Union for the delivery of that morning's New York Newsday. Now? Fiteen hundred miles away, and Mike Lupica, Phil Mushnick, and Roger Ebert were a few key strokes away.

Then there was this: finding brilliance I never would have discovered otherwise. Mark Steyn. Michael Kelly. And James Lileks, a Twin Cities columnist whose daily "bleats" move so effortless from this . . . .

On the way to Target I was listening to the Medved show; he had a fellow who was parsing the particulars of the Iranian President’s missive. Since this was HATE RADIO, of course, you could expect all the callers to demand the expunging of Persia from the crust of the globe, right? Well, one after the other: callers defending the Iranian president. Progressives who regarded any talk of an Iranian threat as a fear-mongering distraction. Muslims who accused the host of a Zionist agenda. Right-wing isolationists. Christians who agreed with the Iranian prez: why, this was a sinful nation. Of course, the show always skews towards the disagreeing call, but it was still immensely depressing. Mind you: the guest was against attacking Iran. The show’s topic wasn’t even how to handle the nuclear threat. The topic was the Iranian president’s letter, and the phone banks were full of people who agreed with it.

When your world view is made up entirely of round holes, your mind is a lathe that can turn everything into a cylinder.

. . . . to this . . .

And then the grocery store. They had a sale on, God help me, DaVinci cheese. I couldn’t help wonder whether this was a movie tie-in. But no, it’s part of a series of “masterpiece” cheeses, all named after famous painters. The Vincent VanGogh is particularly good, as is the Rembrandt, but I’m waiting for the Dali (looks solid, but it’s actually quite runny) or the Duchamp, served up in giant pink wheels that look like urinal cakes. Or the Michelangelo, aged 80 years and very bitter. Or the multi-artist sampler, called the Vasari. Ba-dum bum! Art history major humor! Can’t get enough.

. . . to this . . .

Today I left a handwritten note weighed down by a rock for the contractors. Should they show, anyway. It’s my best guarantee of getting my point across. By noon today the water in the top tank was down another inch since the previous night; by three it was down another inch, which means the Oak Island Water Feature, after their repairs, leaks more. The note was simple: It has been one month since you restarted repairs. The project still leaks. The project still drains. Fix it. Now.

I left the note, not expecting anyone to come. After all, it was sunny and warm, a perfect day for working . . . on someone else’s project. Someone else who still has goodwill to be wasted. But when I came back two hours later, the note was gone – apparently they’d showed up to check the water level. This constitutes “work” – not showing up Monday, showing up Tuesday to fill it up, then showing up Wednesday to check the level. As opposed to calling me, say, FRIDAY, and asking if I’d fill it up Sunday and call them Monday morning with the results. But of course I’m thinking like a homeowner, not a contractor. If there’s anyone deaf to the sound of Time’s Winged Chariot, it’s a contractor. Time slows, expands, moves sideways, becomes a 2-dimensional Mobius loop, refracts into anti-time, wherein the project actually moves backwards.

Anyway, the note was gone, so I expect someone to come by tomorrow and take the thing apart some more and engage in more inefficacious jiggerypokery. They have until June the First.

After that: the nuclear option.

Again: Good times.