Themes

I'm rereading Richard Toscan's Playwriting Seminars, and recently reread his section on Theme, where he advises you not to try to write a play with a message.

Nearly all contemporary playwrights would say it’s a fool’s errand to try writing a play driven consciously by a predetermined theme or message.

It's more or less the opposite advice from what Lajos Egri gave in his famous The Art Of Dramatic Writing.

Central to Egri's argument is his claim that the best stories follow the logical method of thesis, antithesis, synthesis, or dialectic, to prove what he calls a "premise." A premise, as Egri describes it, is a thematic truth.

My newest play, currently entitled "O'Brien & O'Brian", was done by the first method. But I felt like it had some thematic unity, so I sat down today and thought about what the story meant. Sure enough, I perceived a thematic thread.

I've tried both ways, conscious and un,
depending upon my vision.

I think either way can get the job done,
and neither deserves derision.

At The Mound, On Stage

That's a photo from last night, left to right you can see Sam Bell as the pitcher, Gavin Maloney as the catcher, and Greg Wittenberg as the umpire. (Not pictured is Vince Nuno, who played the coach.) I thought the young men did a fine job with my play.

The young men playing the pitcher and catcher actually play those positions on their high school team. Which made costuming easy for them!

Of the 9 baseball plays, mine was the only one that involved actors playing players on the field. You can see where it would be hard to put much of a baseball game on the stage - the stage is too small, the actors aren't real baseball players, etc. In a movie, of course, you can make it work quite well. But I was able to "cheat" by putting up an "at the mound" discussion, the impromptu conference where a catcher goes out to talk to a pitcher about what is wrong. At the game, in the stands, it's an odd sort of moment. You watch the discussion, but you hear none of it. You wonder what they are saying, but you just don't know.

In my little plot,
they say quite a lot.

The Energy of Grief

My 10-minute baseball play, At The Mound, seemed to play well last night. The 4 young actors did a fine job playing pitcher, catcher, umpire, and coach. I had an all male cast, which kind of balanced some all female pieces.

The play, whatever else it is about, is partly about one of the ways men, young men especially perhaps, deal with grief - by channeling the energy - the anger - into something else.

I'll see it again, tonight.

The energy of grief
seeks relief.

ORCA Needed LARP

You may have read about ORCA:

It was supposed to be a "killer app," but a system deployed to volunteers by Mitt Romney's presidential campaign may have done more harm to Romney's chances on Election Day—largely because of a failure to follow basic best practices for IT projects.

What "best practices" would those be? Beta testing and stress testing. In beta testing you let end users test the product. And in stress testing... well, let's look at how the competing campaign handled that:

The election was still 17 days away, and this was a live action role playing (LARPing!) exercise that the campaign's chief technology officer, Harper Reed, was inflicting on his team. "We worked through every possible disaster situation," Reed said. "We did three actual all-day sessions of destroying everything we had built."

If you want a product that's best,
that is how you test.

As someone who has supported himself for some decades by writing computer programs, I suspect some sort of managerial groupthink hubris infected the ORCA effort.

The elephants built some tech, but failed to test in beta,
while the donkeys recruited nerds who really knew their data.

Cliff!

I heard a knowledgeable economist say that he didn't really know what the effect of going off the fiscal cliff would be. He seemed to think it might even be beneficial. I mean, at least it would involve "spending cuts," although he indicated that, as so often, they aren't really reductions in what was spent this year, they are reductions to scheduled increases for next year.

Is it mainly the word "cliff" that makes it sound
like a fully fatal fall to the ground?

Play Ball!

Join us tomorrow and Saturday for the Upper School fall show. "Play Ball" is a collection of one-act plays about baseball, including a piece about the MPA baseball team by alumni parent John Enright and the world premiere of an all-female piece adapted from best-selling novelist Jane Heller. Showtime is 7 p.m. tomorrow (Nov. 16) and Saturday (Nov. 17). Tickets are $7 for students and $10 for adults.

The traditional wish to the cast is: Break a leg!

It has the ring of superstition, as if by officially wishing disaster, you could trick Fortune, by reverse psychology, into favoring a performance.

I expect they'll do great,
sliding into home plate.

Snooper's Dream

Google is popular with your government - as a source of data:

The search and ads company today released figures revealing that it was asked to hand over user data 7,969 times by US agencies in the first six months of 2012 - an increase of 26 percent over the previous six months.

Which brings us to General Petraeus, and the story that just keeps rolling downhill:

Oddly enough, the leader of the intelligence gathering agency was brought down by Gmail...

Well, Gmail and his email with a female...

Reducing National Debt

Jason Fichtner:

At more than $16 trillion, the United States’ gross national debt has grown to equal its gross domestic product—a level that for other nations has marked an economic tipping point.

I think this is why economics is called the dismal science. When things are looking dismal, economics tells you your glass is even less than half empty.

I've decided on defiance
against the dismal science.

Why worry about the national debt?
We don't really have to pay it yet!

If we just keep growing it bigger,
it'll pay itself, I figger.

Productivity Runneth Over

Whew. What a writing-productive long weekend. (Had Veteran's Day off.) Finished first draft of new full-length play, previously entitled "High Water," and then "Over Flow," now provisionally entitled: "O'Brien & O'Brian". Of course, the title may change again, but this is the first title I've had a good feeling about as fitting the play. What I don't know is whether that title will sound attractive to anybody. Well, we'll see who complains about it.

Over the years, I've had to rework the "final exchange" dialogue quite a bit. I'm hoping that's not true this time. Well, we'll see that too.

It's a play that features lots of Irish names,
and characters pursuing secret aims.

Currently 800 Something

Illinois uses its electronic highway alert signs to flash a running tally of state traffic deaths, in between useful traffic alerts. That means I end up looking at the sign longer.

That's dangerous, I fear.
And, yes, traffic deaths are up this year.

Honoring

I'd like to say "Thank you, vets",
but they come in 2 separate sets.

And today I'm skipping the healers of pets,
and thanking the ones with rifles and jets.

Brecht and Copyright

From David Mamet's book, The Secret Knowledge, which I was just previewing on his website:

As a youth I enjoyed—indeed, like most of my contemporaries, revered—the agitprop plays of Brecht, and his indictments of Capitalism. It later occurred to me that his plays were copyrighted, and that he, like I, was living through the operations of that same free market. His protestations were not borne out by his actions, neither could they be. Why, then, did he profess Communism? Because it sold.

This is funny and apt, but there's an underlying question, of course.

Why did the road to hell
sell so well?

Chekhov Shorts

You don't usually think of Chekhov as being laugh-out-loud funny, but the audience was laughing out loud tonight at Chekhov Shorts, a collection of 3 of his early farcical one-acts.

I went because a friend of mine, Chad Sheveland, is the cast. You can see him below, struggling for control of a dueling pistol in "The Bear".


Chad's performance was excellent, as I expected. And I was pleased that the other actors were also playing at a high level.

Chekhov's mature plays have a reputation for subtle humor, but these early plays are loaded with humor of a broader sort.

His later plays are thought of as delicate flowers,
but his early efforts already show raw power.

UPDATE: Belatedly realized that I had previously met another actor in the show, Ginger Leopoldo. She was also very funny, so here's her picture too:

Never Take Counsel Of Your Fears

Never take counsel of your fears. Have you ever heard that phrase? Have you wondered where it came from? I like it, so I've wondered.

I started looking it up today, and I saw some people attributed it to Andrew Jackson or George Patton. But on Google Books, it first appears in 1858, in Brownson's Quarterly Review, in a piece called Conversations Of Our Club:

"Never take counsel of your fears," replied Father John, "and always hear a man's whole thought before you fly in a rage at him. I wish the Catholic public in our country to take higher views of what a collegiate education should be;"

I can't quite tell who really came up with the phrase. The piece claims to be "reported for the Review, by a Member." Was it really just a piece of reporting? Was there really a Father John who said exactly this?

Or did Anonymous, as from his earliest days,
turn this perfect phrase?

The Demand for Flammable Flags

Stimulus:

Many Pakistanis fear President Barack Obama’s re-election will mean a surge in America’s unpopular drone campaign, but for those making and selling US flags to burn at protests this could be good news.

Yes, they manufacture the Stars & Stripes -
just to express some anti-American gripes!

Well, even without the drone campaign in particular, you could expect a lot of anti-American protests in Pakistan. They weren't too happy when we coptered those SEALs into Abbottabad to kill Bin Laden, either. I'm not sure what it would take to get them to like us again.

Not that being liked is, or should be, the chief goal of our foreign policy.

We could always try the Ron Paul strategy of not being Team America: World Police. He's pretty consistent about it. But a lot of people aren't.

Some say they want us to stop
playing global cop,
until some outrage occurs that they don't like.

Then they're on the phones
calling for the drones
to strike.

Current Affairs

Undercover boss

takes a lover and a loss.

In Passing

A penny in the pool goes splash and dives,
The waves pulse out a pattern that goes on.
We're here a while, plunging through our lives,
And leaving love behind us when we're gone.

Last Hurrah

Going out in glory:

Dead candidates win elections in Florida, Alabama

Their days were done,
but still... they won!

Dietary Preference, For Future Reference

An explanation is offered for why animals might "get the taste for human blood":

"Since human blood has more salt than animal blood, once wild animals get the taste of salty blood, they do not like other animals like deer," Dhakal told CNN.

If predators like to eat us because we're salty,
my pretzels-for-breakfast habit may be faulty.

Thoughts on Directing

I've been directed, and I've watched a bunch of directors work intensely with other actors, but I hadn't tried it myself until last week. So these are just some first thoughts on actually doing it.

I was lucky in my cast, which was assigned to me - two very talented young women who worked very well together. And they had to work pretty closely together, since they ended up inside one double-dress, playing conjoined twins.

I was lucky in my script. It was a literary, poetic script, which plays to my strengths. And it was by a friend, so I had a preliminary feeling for the emotional tone and intention.

My first crisis was finding a place to rehearse. The theater was available - but not during the time slots we needed to rehearse, given our three schedules. One of my sisters was able to give me downtown space to use, for free. Well, I arranged for free admission for her and my brother-in-law in return, but it was a lot less than I would have paid to rent space!

I could have rehearsed at my house, but I'm far south of downtown and the actresses both live north of downtown. It would have meant extra travel time for them.

So, we had some deep conversations about the script, sharing insights and suggestions. The actresses came up with a lot on their own. I did feel I was able to contribute something material now and then to how it was being acted. This felt to me like the most mysterious part of the process, but it seemed to go well enough. I followed my "instincts" mostly, since you don't have time to do much else.

As one of the actresses said afterward, a lot of being a director is scheduling and finding props! I did round up a nice set of props, from a couple of thrift stores and from stuff belonging to my wife. I found a nice photo of a garden to be projected behind the scene, and I found some fun introductory and closing music. I worked with the person running tech to actually develop a lighting change during a certain part of the script.

One thing I didn't really get to do was blocking - telling the actors when to move and where to stand. My actors were sitting at a table for the whole script - until the end when they stood. That's what the script specified, anyway, and we stuck with it.

Being conjoined, they were stuck on each other.
I wondered what giving birth was like for their mother.

In My Experience

Electoral joy may soon cloy. But nothing about defeat tastes sweet.

Animal Scandals

If an alligator makes an allegation, must the ostrich suffer ostracization?

TOW7 is History

I was very pleased with both of the plays I was directly involved in at Theatre of Women 7, which is now history. I had fun watching the other plays too.

As my brother in law said, the great thing about 10 minute plays is that:

Even if one leaves you vexed or perplexed,
it's over soon and time for the next!

Okay, that's not an exact quote from my brother in law. He said it without rhyming it.

I see that Anna Menekseoglu has uploaded a video of Saturday night's performance of "Two Girls, One Heart", which I directed.

Falling Back

Cat thinks I need to get out of bed,
so she can be fed.

And she doesn't understand me when I say:
we've got an extra hour to sleep today.

Ending Soon On A TV Near You

This may seem controversial
but my favorite thing to view
is a juicy election commercial!

What will I do
when the races are through?

They leave me reeling
with dizzy fun.

(I like the feeling
of being spun.)

The Ick Factor

Eww.

David Axelrod described the message coming from President Barack Obama days before Election Day as "coming from his loins."

Is this part of the macho dominance narrative - the idea that voters pick whoever seems like more of Type A leader? A lot of people see the dramatics of debate as really being settled by who seems to "own the stage" more.

It's okay if you speak from your heart,
I'll applaud if you speak from your head,
But when a pol speak from his loins,
I don't want to hear what he said.

Secret Cases

The Chicago Sun-Times reports on a local judge who says there are "secret cases" which are ruining her life. They must be very secret, because the head judge says they don't exist.

McDunn insists, “I’m not paranoid.”

"I'm not paranoid,"
is one of those phrases you want to avoid.

Just saying it makes you sound
unsound.

Disturbance in the Force

Disney buys the Star Wars franchise and plans to do more sequels or prequels?

Well, good luck to them.

Lucas, despite being the genius behind the first 3 films, was also the sub-genius behind the second 3 films. I hope Disney feels free to override his ideas for whatever comes next.

Help us, Walt Disney Company, you're our only hope!
Do I think they will equal the first three? Nope.

What Deserves To Be Preserved?

Here in Chicago, Northwestern University has been fighting with architectural preservationists. Northwestern wants to tear down an old Ob/Gyn building. But the preservationists say no!

For some reason, the mayor and city council get to decide who wins. And now the mayor has decided to support the tear-down.

In a statement, Emanuel declared that 2,500 construction jobs, 2,000 full-time jobs and an estimated economic impact of $400 million was simply too much to pass up.

Here's a pic:


The architect liked to do buildings with round shapes, cylinders of various sorts.

You can't save every old building here. This isn't Rome.
It's Chicago, where we like to tear down and rebuild our home.

New York Underwater

I've lived and worked there, decades ago. That city is loaded with resourceful people. They will, mostly, recover. But this is one unholy mess.

 When a skyscraper's basement floods... well, it's hard to get everything in there working right again. I remember when here in Chicago we merely had an underground tunnel flood. A lot of big buildings were knocked out for months.

I hope my New York friends are all right
on this wet, wet night.

Two Girls, One heart

We started rehearsals yesterday for Theatre of Women 7. It turns out I am directing a play written by my friend Anna Weiler Menekseoglu, "Two Girls, One Heart." I'm happy. I have talented actresses who share my enthusiasm for the play.

But the play disrupted my life last night!

I couldn't sleep, I stayed awake late,
tossing and turning over ways to make this production great.

Ayn Rand Explained on Amazon

A week or two ago I mentioned that my wife had edited / revised / added new material to Ayn Rand Explained: From Tyranny To Tea Party. It's being put out by Open Court.

I'm assured it's now available  at Amazon. There doesn't seem to be a Kindle version at this point, but you can get an actual paper copy if you'd like.

And if you happened to see this story, you may be thinking paper has its advantages.

This week, science fiction became science fact as a Boeing CHAMP missile knocked out a building full of electronics in the Utah desert at Hill Air Force Base. There was no explosion and no flying shrapnel. There was only the sound of the missile’s engine as it flew overhead and the sputtering of sophisticated computers crashing as they were hit by a beam of high-energy microwaves.

Paper seems like a quaint
and ancient artifact
but at least it ain't
susceptible to CHAMP attack.

A Smile That Lights Up The Night

I see Jack O'Lantern's leer.
Halloween is growing near.
Time to knock my knees in fear!

Joy of Dentistry

Even when you're numb, it really isn't fun, to sit still for drilling to get a new filling.

Worse yet, sitting through "breaking down"
the tooth for a crown.

McArdle's Complaint

Megan McArdle:

It seems to be some sort of universal that women who make forceful political arguments garner a particular sort of vitriolic reaction.

She thinks it's worse than the vitriolic reaction which men receive.

I don't know. We could run a controlled experiment, I suppose, with undergraduates. You know, take two random sets of people, show them the same forceful political argument, but tell one set of people it's by Megan McArdle and tell the other set it's by Michael McArdle. Have them write critiques addressed to either Meg or Mike. Work out a scoring system to scientifically scale their respective vitriol volumes!

She says it's not just men.

I'm (painfully) reminded of the progressive woman who wrote a long and spiteful note, the upshot of which was that since my husband is younger than me, he'd probably eventually leave me for a younger woman.

She says it's not just conservatives:

...self described progressive men go out of their way to write me notes in which they sound like sexist jerks. They deploy words that I won't repeat, because this is a family blog, but which center around my reproductive parts, and what I might or might not be doing with them.

From all this, should I conclude...
that I need to get rude, crude, and lewd
so my meaning is not misconstrued?

Mamet on Theatre Again

I've been re-reading David Mamet's book, Theatre. He is so contrarian. I know, what a shock, who would have thought that Mamet was the type to raise eyebrows?

If theatre were a religion, explains David Mamet in his opening chapter, “many of the observations and suggestions in this book might be heretical.”

He blithely trashes accepted contemporary theories of how plays should be written, of how they should be directed, of how they should be rehearsed.

I am deeply sympathetic to his view that the key task of the playwright is to make people wonder "what happens next" until the play is over.

I don't actually always agree with him, by any stretch of the imagination. But he makes me laugh. Well, not out loud. But inside.

I'm reading his book at the Chicago Public Library, and I just came across this, from a speech he gave there:

The media exists to enflame us, and I hold no brief—at least in the liberal arts—for that which calls itself Higher Education. The library is, and has always been, our national schoolhouse.

Typical!

Contrarian to the core,
he makes me want to read more.

Decisions Decisions

Monday Night Football... or a presidential debate. Which should I watch live?

Well, my father's coming over, so I think it will be the Bears.
He's already got his mind made up on who will be better at foreign affairs.

Faithful Guardian of the Hose Reel

Just TRY to reel in that hose -
soon you will feel his cold nose!

Nothinggate

I'm waiting for "binders full of big birds". Maybe some cartoonist has already done it. It could be a fanciful tale about Romney firing Big Bird because Big Bird is overpaid, but there are binders full of resumes of big bird wannabes.

"Democratic operatives with bylines" continue to pump these binder and big bird memes, but they seem like very weak tea to me.

If Obama had said "binders full of women" it would be okay. A turn of phrase in that case would not have been "wince-inducing" to the left. It would not have been "emblematic of a larger issue". It would have been "nothing to see here, move along".

Obama frequently turns phrases that are "not optimal". The right notices them. The left ignores them.

Turns of phrase, gaffes, may be good for a few raised eyebrows and laughs, but who chooses among candidates that way? Well, I guess the meme-pumpers are hoping to influence the "undecideds," whoever they may be, whatever they may be undecided about.

Maybe a vague sense that somebody said something bad will be enough to sway
the button they hit on election day.

Overnight Play

I showed up at Dream Theatre after 10 pm. I was the last of the writers to show up. I was given photos of 3 actresses, for whom I was to write a short play. I was asked to choose from among a set of 4 Mab Graves paintings of what seemed to be young superheroines. I chose this one, entitled "Jane".



The idea was to write a play somehow inspired or launched by this painting. By noon the next day. I liked the suggestion of a "firestarter" because it gave me the vaguest idea of an action to start the drama.

But, really, at first glance, I was drawing a blank. The painting, by itself, didn't seem to be yielding a strong sense of dramatic action or conflict.

And then, I think, something about the painting reminded me of the classic dominatrix persona. The shiny blackness of the outfit, perhaps. And suddenly I had an idea for how to open the play - just a visual image - an eye catching situation: a woman alone on stage, tied to a chair.

I had no story arc - no idea of where this was going to go.

But it was all I had. So, in desperation, I sat down on a chair in the theater lobby, opened my laptop, and started writing, letting one line suggest the next line, following my sense of: what would be interesting to see next?

After about 4 pages, very worried, I stopped, and asked myself if I could figure out a direction, a path to completing this story - a path in which something interesting was resolved - by page 10. I wrote some notes to myself, came up with what seemed to me an acceptable arc that would actually be able to use the core of what I'd already written.

I didn't finish till 4 in the morning, sustained by Fritos and Mountain Dew.

It pleased me, but I felt too close to it to be objective. My wife read it today. She thought it was cute and liked it, and she has good taste, so it can't be all bad.

In 2 weeks, it will be on stage for 2 nights, Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 3 & 4. I'll post some info about that as the time draws closer.

I call it Playing With Matches.

When you play with a match,
no matter what you desire,
what you catch
is fire.

In A Tight Space

Later tonight, I'm going to Dream Theatre. I have to write a 10-minute play for the upcoming Theatre of Women 7. I'm not allowed to start till 9:30 pm, and I have to be done by noon tomorrow. No pressure.

Hopefully my play won't make anyone think of this story:

A pregnant Seattle woman says she was kicked off a bus because of her baby’s diaper odor—an ordeal that made her “feel like crap.”

She felt like crap,
her kid smelt like crap,
but doesn't the driver deserve a slap?

I mean couldn't he have just opened a window? Or maybe it was one of those modern buses where it's impossible to open a window.

She believes it wasn't fair,
but her son was polluting the air.

Deeper in the Darkness

Dream Theatre is running their annual Halloween show, Anna in the Darkness, with a fabulous new set, and with Megan Merrill playing the title character.

Merrill was on fire, tonight, opening night.

It's a scary play, it's a tragedy, it's a tale of heroism. It's about a teacher for the emotionally handicapped who runs afoul of community sensibilities in a small Southern town - by introducing her students to books they actually enjoy reading - thrilling tales that the community does not approve of.

None of the books are actually named in the play. But among the prop books, in the candlelight, I spotted one by H.P. Lovecraft, and one by Ayn Rand.

Once books open the door to a mind,
you don't know what a person will find.

Overnight

The wind, that blustery vandal, stripped the oak's clothes and left it exposed. What a scandal!

Roughly 9:30 CST

Obama says something about "community colleges," and the moderator is heard saying "yeah, right" as she is seen nodding her head.

I don't think she meant to be heard. I have no idea what it meant.

The debate is tense and furious,
but her comment left me curious.

Hot Off The Presses

My wife got a heavy box in the mail. Wasn't sure what it was. Oh, it was from the publisher:

Ayn Rand Explained is a completely revised and updated edition of The Ideas of Ayn Rand, by the late Ronald E. Merrill, first published by Open Court in 1991.

Yes, revised and updated by Marsha Familaro Enright. She wrote 3 new opening chapters on the woman and the movement, which include her own thoughts, for instance, on what can be inferred about Rand's relationship with her husband.

The book's new subtitle is "From Tyranny to Tea Party".

I seem to recall Rand being asked once whether it was time for a new tea party, and her replying: "It was time long ago."

She had a reputation
as an intellectual hellion
causing a sensation
and encouraging rebellion.

I Can Hardly Wait

Christmas season keeps creeping earlier in the calendar - at least at the mall - and something calling itself RetailMeNot.com is embracing the trend wholeheartedly.

The group has even gone so far as to trademark a term for the phenomenon, “OctoNovemCember,” and it plans to center a new marketing campaign — complete with a mascot, the Pumpkin-Headed Turkey Claus — around the idea.

Rather than making jokes,
I just want to know - is this a hoax?

Stone Bridge Marathon

Ran this very well-run small-town marathon, which started in Belvidere IL and ended in Roscoe IL.

As you can see, I came in second in my age group. I suspect there were only the 2 of us in my age group.

The forecast was warning of rain and even thunderstorms, and I considered canceling, but, hey, I'd paid my entry fee, so why not go for it?

I awoke at 4, left the house by 4:20, and got to the starting spot by 6:20 or so, after only one wrong turn in the dark!

I heard there were 100 starters. I fell in toward the back, and as we started up the street a pleasantly talkative woman remarked on the sofa someone had left at the curb. "Must be for us!" she said. Anyway, I fell to talking with her, and her goal for the race was to come in under 5 hours. Her best marathon time ever was something like 5:20. So I said my goal was also to come in under 5, and we started running together.

It wasn't raining when we started. The rain held off until mile 17 or so. It wasn't a downpour, but it was enough to get you wet. It never did turn to thunderstorms, which was a good thing, because the organizers planned to shut down the race for safety reasons if lightning appeared.

At mile 24, my quads began cramping. They had been warning me that they might cramp, and they finally made good on the threat. So I told the woman I was running with to go ahead, that I had to walk for a while to work at getting rid of the cramp.

She made her goal, coming it at 4:55, 25 minutes faster than her previous marathon best. I like to think I helped by running with her until my quads misbehaved.

I made my goal too, coming in at 4:58.

As for my quads - they are the body part that has been threatening, all year, to make trouble. Each year there seems to be one body part that stands out as the weak link in the chain.

The struggle to strengthen every link in the chain
seems to be a pursuit that's vain.

Atlas Part 2

We saw the new Atlas Shrugged movie tonight. I liked it. Unlike part 1, it didn't feel like a made-for-TV movie. It did still feel low-budget. And there's a reason for that - they had twice the budget, but it was still low.

This is an indie film of an epic.

In many ways, it was better than part 1. There were a lot of great moments. The money speech, which was cut profoundly short, still packed a punch.

My chief lament is that this Dagny didn't seem to have much sexual chemistry with either Rearden or Francisco. Dagny One sizzled. Dagny Two seems too preoccupied to sizzle, and that was too bad.

Or... maybe they were damping down her ardor in order to make the romantic developments in part 3 more acceptable?

Well, assuming it will be,
we'll see
how they handle part 3.

Small Potatoes

Justice weighs in:

A City of Chicago zoning inspector found guilty of taking bribes has had his conviction overturned — in part, because the bribes weren’t big enough.

Apparently they had him for taking 2 bribes of 600 dollars each. In return, he issued certifications of occupancy for homes he hadn't actually inspected.

But the law they convicted him under required the prosecutors to prove that the inspector had corruptly provided more than 5000 dollars worth of services or goods.

But, how to value the certifications of occupancy? There's no legal market.

Prosecutors constructed some kind of argument that the monetary value to the homeowners was more than 5000. But the black market clearly had set the price of the certificates at 600. And, in the end, the federal judges accepted the illegal market price as carrying legal weight.

Keep your bribes fairly small
so they barely count at all.

Dr. Barbara Bellar

Barbara Bellar, a physician and former nun, is running for the Illinois State Senate in my district. I don't think she's going to win, but she's pretty funny. Here she is with one humorous long sentence summing up Obamacare.





It really doesn't take long
to suggest what might go wrong.

Walking Home

I was walking home from work today, and found these 3 things on the ground, separately.

In mild weather,
at evening hour,
some leaves and a flower,
piled together.

DIM - Mini Review

I enjoyed reading Leonard Peikoff's new book, The DIM Hypothesis. I think I liked it more than his summa on Rand's philosophy, but less than his first book, The Ominous Parallels. To be fair, it's quite different than both of his previous books in tone and subject matter.

(Most fans of Peikoff's works like his summa better than his Parallels. I'm in a distinct minority with my preferences.)

The book pretty much assumes knowledge of, and agreement with, Rand's philosophy. He takes a lot of controversial things for granted, without arguing for them. This is not designed as an outreach effort. Not at all.

Instead, it's a somewhat meditative review of the course of Western culture and philosophy. He brings a lot of broad historical knowledge to the task of arguing for what he calls the DIM hypothesis.

DIM is an acronym for Disintegration, Integration, Misintegration. His hypothesis is that the broad sweep of Western culture, from the Ancient Greeks to now, is best understood in terms of a kind of intellectual competition among 3 basic philosophies which take different stands, as he sees it, on conceptual integration.

Plato he sees as the great advocate of Misintegration, by which he means something like rationalist supernatural idealism. The Plato he sees is, one might say, the Plato of the neoPlatonists - of Plotinus and Augustine.

Aristotle he sees as the great advocate of Integration, by which he means something like logical scientific secularism. It's worth noting that he thinks Greek culture was already Integrationist before Aristotle, since he speaks of the 3 great Greek tragedians as being Integrationist, and they all predated Aristotle by a generation or two.

Kant he sees as the great advocate of Disintegration, by which he means something more than simple skepticism. He sees Kant as achieving a system of philosophy with nihilism as its end, a sort of system designed to keep its adherent from thinking in principles.

A lot of the book is spent reviewing "cultural products" from different periods - literary productions, systems of education, political systems, etc. The periods get classified by the acronym letters in a process the author calls "mode hunting". Very curiously, he has trouble classifying the Renaissance.

As his thesis develops, there's more than just D, I, and M. Instead there's: D2, D1, I, M1, M2.

D2 and M2 are the original D and M, I gather, the essential Kant and Plato as he sums them up. D1 and M1 are hypothesized as blends of Kant or Plato with Aristotle, mixed cases, not so bad as the full "2" strength versions.

You might ask about a combination of Kant and Plato - D and M - how would that be categorized? He doesn't think that has ever been a widespread cultural phenomenon, although he recognizes it can exist as a tension in one person's mind, to be sure.

In the end, I was not convinced. I think it's probably true that Plato, Aristotle, and Kant are the most influential philosophers in the history of Western Philosophy. I think there's a lot of truth in the ancient saying, with which he closes his book: “History is philosophy, teaching by examples.” But I thought these things going in.

One thing that's curious to me, actually, is that I agree with so many of his premises, but can't get to his conclusions.

I was definitely not convinced by his conclusion that the U.S. is teetering on the edge of Christian fundamentalist totalitarianism or his parallel conclusion that Europe is teetering on the edge of Muslim fundamentalist totalitarianism. I can imagine such outcomes - but bear in mind that I have a fairly active imagination. Neither outcome actually seems likely to me.

I suppose I will continue to mull over his hypothesis and its elements. It gave me something to think about. He made me look at a broad sweep of history in a somewhat different way than usual, which I found stimulating. My personal reaction to it is a bit like my personal reactions to Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations or Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, And Steel. My sense in all three cases is that they went too far with their overarching theories, but that I gained something from their efforts anyway.

I think the case for full-fledged DIM
is still too slim.

Discover

Even if something is already known, you can discover a fact on your own. Columbus thus must be reckoned, even if he sort of came in second.

If It Looks Like A...

On a walk, by a pond, met some white crested ducks. They greeted us with quacks, not clucks. They waddled along with webbed feet in the muck. I concluded at last that they really were ducks. Not to sound logically aloof, but I obtained certainty through inducktive proof.

Mazetown

When lost in Boston follow the signs.
You'll get lost more, but that's mostly fine.
It's part of the tour, so don't dare whine.

Federal Misdemeanor

It's illegal to disturb a manatee. They have a tenuous grip on sanity. Anyhow, Don't call one a sea cow, They don't like that name now.

Debate Viewership

For some reason, the debating
had a very high TV rating.

I don't recall anyone predicting that. It's almost as if people are worried about where the nation is heading. Well, I don't blame them!

Indefinite borrowing is no way to live.
Tomorrow arrives, and something must give.

Surfing the Web after Yoga

Watching debates
is something I hate,
but reportedly Romney won.

I don't suppose Obama is done.
Next time he'll try
to bounce back high.

What Is Wrong With This Picture?

From the motherland:

A cardboard policeman used as a crime prevention aid in a Yorkshire supermarket has been stolen.

A cardboard cop
of minimal heft
failed to stop
its very own theft.

A picture is not
the thing itself,
and won't do a lot
to keep goods on the shelf.

Religious Totalitarianism

I've gotten to the point in the DIM Hypothesis where Leonard Peikoff predicts that America's future is likely to be: Religious Totalitarianism. And that's because we're fundamentally like the Weimar Republic, but are more likely to go Fundamentalist than NAZI.

I thought this was coming, but it still took me aback.

I will grant that what you might call the totalitarian tendency - the urge to control the devotee's every waking moment - has a way of popping up in a lot of religious traditions. A lot of times, when it's on a small scale, we call that religion, or religious faction, a "cult".

I understand the dangers of such groups. I even wrote a novel that was set in a renegade Mormon cult. Yes, the cultists were the bad guys. And in my book the cultists have ambitions to conquer the nation and the world. If you research the topic, you will find that cultists often have a tendency to think big - they think in terms of converting the world and ushering in a new golden age of truth and light as they see it.

But at the moment I just don't see the U.S. collapsing into any form of religious dictatorship. Even if the national government were to collapse due to economic catastrophe - which I also think is highly unlikely - what reason is there to think that most religious people - i.e., MOST AMERICANS - would support a dictatorship?

He has some reasons - some theoretical, some journalistic - but I am deeply unconvinced.

Embracing Christianity
is not the same as endorsing insanity.

Running is for the Birds

On my run yesterday, my interesting wildlife encounters were ornithological.

Around mile 3, I ran by a big hawk perched atop a utility pole. He wasn't especially interested in me, but he did seem to keep an eye on me as I ran right by the pole. There are several kinds of hawks here, and I'm not sure, but he may have been a red-tailed hawk. He looked something like this:



Around mile 13, I heard some odd squawking, looked up and saw 2 green birds flying into a stand of trees. Monk parakeets, they're called around here. They're from Argentina originally. People think they got up here as pets - and then got loose.



I wasn't sure how these 2 species got along, so I did some research.

As I suspected, hawks
are don't mind dining on something green that squawks.

Almost There

My GPS claims I ran 25.7 miles today. I think I'm now fully prepared to run a marathon.

I still haven't decided which one to do. When I say this to people it evinces strange reactions. I think most marathoners pick their race first, and then build their schedule around it. This is a must for a race like the Chicago Marathon, which sells out months in advance. But most marathons aren't like that.

And I want to run on a cool day. I've run a number of marathons on hot days, and - trust me - cool is better.

So that's my new scheduling rule -
wait for a forecast of cool.

A Very Terrible Father, Revisited

Dream Theatre has remounted one of my favorite Menekseoglu plays: A Very Terrible Father.

I wrote about the earlier production here, and I somehow forgot to include a rhyme with my post, I think because the emotional experience of the play was so preoccupying my mind.


Jeremy Menekseoglu as Matthias, and Megan Merrill as Lilli.

It's a play about a dying man, Matthias, who is trying very hard to do something right with his life. You might think, from the "terrible father" of the title, that the play is about a man who has treated a child badly. That's not it. It's about a man who has had nothing to do with his child, but who has journeyed to America to see her, one last time, to deliver a message.

It turns out to be hard to deliver the message. But, in a terribly poignant, inspired scene, he does his best.

Megan Merrill is lovely as Lilli, who is something like a profane angel of redemption, the agent of change in Matthias's heart. Katharine Swan was utterly convincing as the still-heartbroken mother of Matthias's daughter. Alex Woodruff, as his daughter, captures the inarticulate angst of a young teen caught up in the deep waters of her parents' history.

Finally, Giau Truong plays Bill, the American stepfather, with creepy sincerity. I love this character, in some twisted way: a healthy-living enthusiast who seems oblivious of the fact that he is, underneath it all, a fear-ridden control freak.

To communicate what matters
in the face of grief that shatters
is no easy task.

But sometimes it's what life asks.

Turnover

Summer goes stumbling
away with the breeze.

Autumn comes tumbling
like leaves from the trees.

Stench

Politico's Roger Simon wrote a column in which he claimed that Paul Ryan was referring to Mitt Romney as "Stench".

A lot of people - even a certain Nobel prize-winning economist-turned-pundit - took the claim to be true and pontificated about the story - and spread the story.

But, it wasn't true. Simon says it was intended as satire. Ann Althouse has an alternate explanation.

This was a deliberate attempt to pollute the public debate, to promote Simon's candidate. He would never fun with Obama like that. He kept his deniability, but he put it way down where no one would read. His writing doesn't merit the click to page 2.

Simon lobbed some stench
into his opponent's trench.

Another case of: "He who smelt it, dealt it."

Wanted: Poetic Ghost Writer

The Chicago Tribune Theater Critic wrote a piece about whether the Romney campaign could use a poet-in-residence.

Given the week that Mitt Romney just endured, it begs a question: Does the Republican nominee for President of the United States have current need of a poet?

He thinks that Romney,
instead of just harping on the economy,
needs to find a poet
to help him not blow it
with inelegant phrasing
that no one is praising.

Learning Words As Needed

We spent the weekend in Connecticut, guests at the home of my daughter's future parents-in-law. We hadn't met them before, but they were truly lovely people.

While we were there, I somehow brought up the topic of "what relationship are we to each other"? I'd been told that in other languages there was a word for it. So today my son came up with the Spanish word: consuegro, which translates as co-father-in-law.

Co-father-in-law turns out to be an English word,
albeit one I don't recall having ever heard.

Change

When you're running for reelection  It's dangerous to insist that we need a change of direction, Especially if we've been hearing That you're the one who's been doing the steering.

Dreamy Stream

From our hiking, A view to my liking.

What Does Not Kill

Driving around LaGuardia
Makes a driver hardia.

Back Channel Diplomacy

Lynn Sweet reports some unusual maneuvering:

I've learned that Mayor Rahm Emanuel met Thursday with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak--who is delivering a message from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu--that he is not attempting to interfere in the U.S. elections on behalf of Mitt Romney.

He couldn't just send him a letter?
For some reason the passed-along personal message is better?

No Plans In That Direction

The U.S. was signing some agreement with Mexico, and the signing ceremony was not open to the press, and one reporter wanted to know why:

The journalist asked, “This isn’t some secret thing … to invade Canada or something like that?”

The U.S. said it wasn't anything like that.

We have no plans to go forth,
marching into the North.

We did try it once. It's the bicentennial of that war!
The Canadians repelled us so they celebrate it more.

Lost Not Found

When leaving the train in a rush,
I clean forgot my umbrella.
I never cared for it much,
perhaps it's just as wella.

It was a free umbrella, emblazoned with a company logo. It was good for keeping the rain off. And it sprung open with surprising force when you pushed the little button. But it was annoyingly hard to close. Not so annoying that I would pay for a replacement, but annoying enough so that I don't miss it.

I never liked it quite.
But the price was right.

Perils of Talking Tough

Karen Lewis, the head of the local teachers' union, did a great job of whipping her people into a hopeful fury. Only, now that she has worked out a deal with the administration, some of that fury is turning on her:

Leaflets calling Lewis a "sellout" for concessions agreed to with CPS were distributed to union delegates at Sunday's meeting.

When you go in with strong demands,
but come back with less in hand,
you may lose a lot of fans.

Can You Dig It?

I came across this sentence in the Chicago Sun-Times, online:

She digged at Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his handpicked school board that includes hotel heiress Penny Pritzker.

My question is: is "digged" proper for some reason, rather than "dug"? "Digged" is listed as "archaic" at dictionary.com.

The meaning, in context, lines up with the usage "get in a dig," meaning to make a hurtful or critical remark.

Of course, people occasionally do use 2 different forms of the past tense for a verb, depending on the meaning of the verb.

Most men would rather be hung than hanged.

Would you rather be digged or dug?
Or does the question merit a shrug?

Training Run Trivia

On yesterday's run, all 3 of our GPS devices kept telling us the mile markers were short. By the time we were done running the marked course of 20 miles, our GPS devices only had 19 miles and small change. At first, everyone else thought the markers were wrong, but I put my trust in the markers.

Why would GPS devices be wrong? Well, we were running in fairly dense woods, along curvy bicycle trails. The trees have a tendency to interfere somewhat with the GPS signals, so I figure the devices did not *always* know exactly where we were.

So, suppose you have run from point A to point B, on a non-straight path. Next suppose the device has lost track of where you were between A & B.

How does it imagine you got from A to B? I figure it draws a straight line, thus shortening the actual distance covered.

I believe my GPS
sometimes has to guess.

20 Miler

Ran an organized run that was like a race, but not a race. You paid to get in. There were bathrooms and aid stations all along the way. There were pacers to help you maintain pace.

But... they didn't give you a time when you were done.
It was only meant as a marathon training run.

I actually looped back, after I was finished, revisited the Mile 19 marker, and ran back to the finish again, just so I could get 22 miles in. And, as a result, I got a second big welcome to the finish line.

Karen, our pacer, was wonderfully fun. In her 50s, she took up running about a year ago, and started winning her age group right away. You know, a natural - although she does have a coach.

Falsehood

The president's press secretary:

This is a fairly volatile situation, and it is in response not to U.S. policy, not to, obviously, the administration, not to the American people.

Of course it's about us and our policies. It's about us honoring freedom speech. It's about us legally protecting what they see as blasphemy. Remember that slogan about "they hate us for our freedom"? This is one of those freedoms they hate.

Our current executive branch would like to that video pulled off the web. They've exposed the true identity of the person who put it up. They've asked Google to pull it from YouTube. But Google/YouTube stood up to the executive branch:

We work hard to create a community everyone can enjoy and which also enables people to express different opinions,” a YouTube spokeswoman said in a statement.

A community which enables the expression of different opinions?

To me it sounds great,
but that's what they hate.

The Power to Destroy

I was in a discussion with an immigrant Muslim today. He was quite upset about the riotous assaults on our stations in the Middle East. He was puzzling how to stop them.

He sees that YouTube movie about Muhammad as part of the problem, and was trying to figure out an end-run around the first amendement, to stop that sort of film from being made.

He found inspiration in John Roberts' recent ruling on the healthcare law. The theory of the ruling was that we can't make people eat broccoli, but we can TAX them for not eating broccoli.

So he proposed taxing people who make inflammatory videos.

He was quickly told that his approach was no-go. But I was impressed by his logic.

If you can't quite give something the axe,
just slap it with a tax!

Spring Sprung

Diplomacy vaunted as smart
suddenly looks... not up to the part.

Play Ball!

I have a ten minute play that's going to be part of Morgan Park Academy's Fall Show.

It's a play about baseball, featuring a high school catcher and a pitcher. I'm told it was cast today, and the actors actually are, in real life, a high school catcher and a pitcher.

It's funny. I always say actors end up knowing things about the characters that the author didn't know. But these 2 guys will come to the first rehearsal with more detailed knowledge of catching and pitching than I have!

Since they wanted the roles, I guess I didn't get any serious details wrong.

While writing, to avoid looking the fool,
I did look up at least one rule.

Disavowed

Well, color me glad:

The Obama administration is disavowing a statement from its own Cairo embassy that seemed to apologize for anti-Muslim activity in the United States.

The government can't be apologizing every time someone insults someone else's religion.

I mean, Mormons have been taking it even harder than usual lately. Do we want the government to start apologizing to them for every magic underwear crack on Facebook?

Free speech is spendid,
even though your feelings may be offended.

DIM

I've been reading The DIM Hypothesis, Leonard Peikoff's new book. I'm enjoying it, but I feel unsure where he's going with it.

Well, in one sense I'm pretty sure where he's going with it, since the subtitle is: "Why the Lights of the West Are Going Out". But I'm not sure exactly how he's going to get there.

DIM
by the way
is an acronym.

But it works well with the "lights going out" theme, I have to say.

I was surprised today when the book took a turn into Western literary history since the 1700s. For a view from 30,000 feet, I thought it was a sensitive account.

I suppose my personal tendency is toward optimism.

I'd rather the lights stayed on.
I believe in dawn.

Craziness

I wish I understood craziness better. Perhaps I want to understand it because I wish I could help. Once in a while some acquaintance or other slips into a bout of madness, the kind of state where they can't be reasoned with. Once there, they often lash out darkly at friends, revealing what seem like huge long-simmering resentments.

Thomas Szasz, somewhere or other, said that it was important to learn to say "no" about small things, that otherwise you might end up holding onto all your small noes and saying one big NO that will actually prove calamitous.

In my youth, I was very impressed by Szasz's critique of the "mental illness model". I still think there is a lot of overrated science involved in the whole DSM approach to the categorization and diagnosis of mental disturbances.

I thought this was interesting from the Wikipedia article on Szasz:

Szasz argues that only mental illnesses are defined based on consensus and symptom clusters. It has been argued this is not the case. Critics claim physical illnesses such as Kawasaki syndrome (a disorder of the heart and blood vessels)[33] and Ménière's disease (a disorder of the inner ear)[34] are similarly defined.

We know so much more
than we did before,
but the detailed workings of the brain,
whether sensible or delirious,
mostly remain
mysterious.

Emily Images

Photographs of Emily Dickinson are rare. So rare, that experts are only sure about one of them:



At the moment, there's another photo that *might* be a later picture of her, with a friend. Scholars are trying to figure out if it's her, which turns out to be a harder exercise than you might think.

Kelly said perhaps the best evidence is an ophthalmological report that compared similarities in the eyes and facial features of the women in the photos. "I believe strongly that these are the same people," concluded the doctor who wrote the report. Researchers are also trying to get higher resolution pictures of the dress in the picture, to see if it matches fabric samples known to belong to Dickinson.

On vague impression,
they will not rely.
Instead they've gone
all CSI.

Gratuitous Public Shaming

The organizer of  the Chicago Marathon has announced that he is banning Lance Armstrong from running in it.

Not that Lance actually applied to run in it:

“I have had no direct contact from Lance or anyone representing him,” Pinkowski said. “We had some indication from his charity (Livestrong) that Lance might have been interested in running.”

I do suspect Armstrong was guilty of using various substances he wasn't supposed to. I suspect that was true of most of the Tour de France crew.

But I don't know. Not for sure. And I get the sense the American "anti-doping board" isn't playing fair. So I am tempted to defy them, and organize my own marathon. It would be very small, mind you, but it would be 26.2 miles.

And even though he's banned
I'd extend Lance a hand.

Private Cities

Honduras is a total mess apparently, but they've inked a deal with developers to start up some "private cities", modeled - I'm guessing - on Hong Kong. Michael Strong, whom I've met, is involved.

The cities will have their own laws, governments, police forces and tax systems. They will have the power to sign international trade agreements and set their own policies on immigration.

My funds have run low,
which is a pity,
since I'd like a go
at running a city.

Concerned

I'm worried about the well-being of concern trolls.

A lot of people are onto their games,
and are calling them names.

Maybe if they just stopped concern-trolling for a while,
everyone would like them again... and they'd have a reason to smile.

Disorderly

I have deficit attention disorder.

Every time I pay attention to the deficit,
I get scared to death with it,
so I turn my mind instead
to topics less loaded with dread.

Maybe I should just say to heck with it!

Amusement

Not as tasty as cotton candy:

Authorities say a 35-year-old man tried to swallow several counterfeit $50 bills after he was caught trying to use the bogus money at a New York amusement park.

One of the charges is tampering with evidence, although "tampering" hardly seems to do it justice.

It's harder for bills to be tested
after they've been digested.

Round and Round

Last night I had a strange dream - my mountain bike's front wheel was missing, but somehow I could still ride it - in a normal position.

I couldn't understand how it functioned. I remember puzzling over the question of whether the front brakes still worked. I looked, and the front caliper brakes were missing.

I biked uneasily, on a wheel that wasn't there.

Was this somehow inspired by Eastwood's empty chair?

On the Beach

Dune flies launch surprise attack.
Soon I am their pre-lunch snack!