This Is Drivel

We were sitting around the dinner table last night when the world exploded. The sound of shattering planets came from somewhere behind me and when I turned to look over my shoulder I fully expected to see an army of celestial soldiers joining battle with the ethereal forces of darkness right there in my back yard.

Instead it turned out that the shelf over the back door and everything that had been on it were strewn and wrecked on the floor of the rear entryway. A half-dozen Mason jars had plunged to the floor with another half-dozen glass drinking jars, where they’d crashed together so cataclysmically that much of the floor in the entryway was ankle-deep in jagged shards of glass. Up until that moment, we’d been sure that Mason jars were all but indestructible.

The force of the explosion threw several shards into the dining room and, even more tragic, one of them managed to spear My Darling B in the foot. She pulled it out easily and with stoic resolve, but was bleeding badly and had to retreat from the scene of after handing me a broom and dustpan in order to clean and dress her wound.

Only five minutes before, I’d been in and out through that back door, starting up a fire in the Weber grill to cook the traditional meal of bratwurst and Polish sausage for our Memorial Day dinner. If my timing had been off by only a few minutes I would’ve gotten one hell of a bonk on the head and probably a row of stitches under the best of circumstances. Under the worst, I probably would’ve been shredded like Chinese chicken.

The track gang finished laying the roadbed around the three-track loop a little more than a week ago. They did it so quickly and so well that, when they finished and lined up at the pay car, they found to their pleasant surprise that I’d authorized the clerk to dole out a bonus of five silver dollars to each of them for their much-appreciated work. I didn’t lay eyes on them again until the very early hours of Thursday morning when they dragged their hungover asses into the bunkhouse and slept until late Friday afternoon when I sent Dominick Books, the boss of the track gang, over there to wake them up, a job that he did with relish. I heard he used a fire hose.

The boys worked the rest of the weekend into dusk on Friday grading the right of way and laying roadbed through the approach to the loop, and did a damned good job of it, everything laid out according to the plan. Even Cadwallader, the chief engineer, was pleased with it, and that was after he dragged the chains and transit out there to measure the geometry and make sure the crossover and switches would end up in the right place. The Old Cad is a man widely known never to have smiled at his own mother, but he had a grin on his ugly mug and was even whistling when he sauntered back to the office yesterday evening, plans rolled up under his arm.

After talking it over with Dominick about what might be an appropriate token of my appreciation, we agreed that putting a double sawbuck on the bar at The Thirsty Camel would give them a good head start on their day off this holiday weekend. They drank it up in under an hour but Patch, the manager at the Camel, put the rest on their tab, knowing that next Friday is payday.

The Sierra Nevada brewery has brewed a double IPA strong enough to strip the paint off your car, so you wouldn’t want to bring it to a tailgate party unless you were drinking it out of the trunk of a car belonging to somebody you didn’t care much about keeping as a friend, but for just about any other celebratory occasion, such as a long Memorial Day weekend featuring barbecued weenies on the grill, or any hot, summer day when flipping burgers figures into your plans, this would be ideal. It’s not a beer you should guzzle, leaving it out of the class of summer “lawnmower beers.” I think you should sip it a little at a time, then sit and gaze into the sky for several minutes between tastes, wondering how we ever lucked on to the magic that is beer, but even though I’m a lightweight in a world of chuggers I would urge you to take your time and savor this lovely little pale ale. Look for the “Brew Camp” label.

We went into town this evening to support our local brat fest, one of four that are taking place this weekend. Here in Wisconsin, our bratwurst festivals are such a big deal that we need several days in many different locations to properly do them justice.

What really happened was, we have this annual bratfest at the convention center that sells something like a half-million brats in two days, but all the brats are donated by Johnsonville, the meat packing company that infamously donated a bunch of money to help get Scott Walker elected governor, so the lefties have organized their own brat festivals. This is Madison, after all.

Never having done this before, they weren’t quite ready for the response they were going to get. The People’s Brat Fest we went to this morning didn’t fire up their grills early enough and ended up behind the curve for more than an hour trying to serve brats to a line of people that kept getting longer and longer no matter how frantically they tried to catch up. Next time, guys, start burning brats at least a half-hour before your scheduled start time. And turn the heat down. There are few foods more unappetizing than an overcooked brat.

When we strolled up to the Wurst Fest this evening we were pleased to see lots of people in attendance, but disappointed to hear from the people checking us in that they were sold out of bratwurst because so many more people showed up than they anticipated. It was a brat fest without brats. We stuck around for an hour or so anyway to check out the bands and drink a beer, but left earlier than we thought we would because we were getting hungry and knew of a bar just down the road, The Alchemy Cafe, that had some really good food. One way or another, we were going to get that food. And we did. Nom.

This literally makes my head hurt: Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, listening to testimony regarding man-made climate change, asked a witness if any thought were being given “to subsidizing the clearing of rain forests in order for some countries to eliminate that production of greenhouse gases?” Ouch. Really? Ouch. Yes, really. Ouch.

Leaving aside the question of whether or not climate change is being aggravated by human activity, I thought that everybody that’s ever been to school knew that trees take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. I thought everybody knew that trees store carbon dioxide, but emit it as soon as you kill them by cutting them down. I thought everybody knew that there is no way to dispose of a tree that does not emit carbon dioxide.

I thought every person with a basic grade-school education knew these facts. I’m pretty sure I learned about photosynthesis as early as third grade, and I know they threw it at us more than once in grade school, junior high and high school. Just as an aside, it seemed like every time somebody made a film about photosynthesis, and it felt like they did that about once a week, they sent it to our school to try it out on us. Which is why I kind of assumed that anybody with a grade-school education had heard of photosynthesis, but now I’m not so sure.

Maybe Congressman Rohrabacher is not an educated person. Or he went to school but he was sick the day they explained photosynthesis. Or he was there and he read it, but he didn’t believe it. Or, the teachers at the school he went to didn’t explain it because of budget cuts, or because they didn’t believe it, either. The possibilities are endless, really. And they still make my head hurt. Ow.

Mr. Rohrabacher doesn’t believe carbon dioxide causes global warming, as his press statement makes clear (ouch), although the rest of it is confusing. “I simply asked the witness, Dr. Todd Stern, … if he was considering a policy that would address naturally emitted carbon dioxide, which makes up over 90% of emissions.” So even though he doesn’t believe carbon dioxide is a problem, the amount of naturally emitted carbon dioxide is still a concern, for some reason. Ouch.

I just heard a right-winger and a left-winger on a morning talk show debating the latest political circus acts here in the great state of Wisconsin, the most recent being the enactment of a law requiring citizens to present two forms of photo identification in order to vote, but touching on other topics such as the elimination of collective bargaining for public worker unions and the proposal to allow everyone to carry concealed handguns regardless of whether or not they’re trained to use them. The left-winger and the right-winger had nothing new to say, really; I’ve heard the party positions so many times that it doesn’t make me think about the issues so much as it just pisses me off, so I don’t know why I even listen to their crap any more.

The legislature virtually eliminated collective bargaining because, as the governor repeated endlessly, the state is broke. The voter ID law was enacted to eliminate voter fraud. Oddly, there’s very little evidence of voter fraud in Wisconsin. Evidence from the recent recount backs this up and suggests, in fact, that the procedures used by clerks and poll workers to handle ballots are pretty sloppy, but yeah, let’s enact a multimillion-dollar voter ID law.

Hey, I thought we were broke.

I’m sick and tired of that refrain. State government is not a business. Legislators can raise revenue, or they can lower spending, but the state cannot go broke and there’s no semantic issue of laws being the product, or our vote giving us the same kind of choices that consumers get. I’m a voter, not a consumer, and elected officials are not offering us a product that we have any choice in buying because voting one legislator out of office so that another one can shove his product down our throats is not a choice. They’re not asking us for our input any more, they’re telling us what we have to buy. That’s not business.

And the idea that requiring us to show ID to vote is somehow reasonable because businesses ask us for ID when we cash a check doesn’t wash with me, either. First, same reason as above: The government is not a business. I’m not cashing a check, I’m voting. I should be able to walk in and say ‘aye’ and walk out again. That’s voting. Having to prove who I am before I am even allowed to speak is, well, you know what that is. And if your argument is that a vote is so much more important than cashing a check that I should be in favor of more ID, not less, then my argument right back at you is, if it’s that important, then you shouldn’t be asking for an ID card that anybody with a computer printer can make counterfeit of. A nationwide database of every citizen’s DNA would be the only sure-fire way of proving our identities. Would you be willing to have your throat swabbed every time you cast a vote? Don’t even think of saying yes.

Second, have these legislators even been to a store lately? I haven’t presented my ID card to make a purchase by check or charge in I don’t know how long. Nobody asks me to show ID any more. Card goes in, money comes out. The checker at the Menard’s doesn’t even look at me when I pay with a card.

Third, if the state’s going to require that we present two forms of photo identification in order to vote, then they damn well better provide each and every voter with two kinds of photo ID free of charge. make it possible for every last citizen to acquire two forms of photo ID free of charge. As it is now, a driver’s license, the de facto photo ID issued by the state, costs thirty-five bucks. So now we’re required to pay a fee in order to vote. Ever heard of a poll tax?

Lastly – well, no, not lastly. I’m sure I can think of lots more, and though this may be last for now it is certainly not least: Requiring people to show ID whenever a government employee asks for it is the kind of shit we used to make fun of the Soviet Union for, yet for reasons that I cannot grasp, most Americans think this is okay now. It’s so weird. I enlisted to fight the Cold War, and was told that we won. How did I wake up in the Twilight Zone?

[edited to add the part about free voter IDs – and a tip o' the hat to My Darling B!]

In last night’s dream I was seated at a restaurant table by the seaside, watching low, gray clouds roll in ominously over the ocean. Smoke from the kitchen’s chimney rose up through the air in a long, continuous curve that disappeared into the clouds. A few small boats were crisscrossing the water a few miles away. I remarked to My Darling B how quiet it was.

Then a space shuttle fell out of the clouds. At first I thought it was just a piece of a space shuttle because it was so small, but it was some kind of pygmy space shuttle, very short with stubby little wings. It fell flat instead of nosediving or spinning, a trail of sparks in its wake. Another space shuttle followed it, then another. Very quickly it was raining space shuttles, falling into the water all around a giant inflatable jumbo jet.

It was obviously not a jumbo jet, it was like a bouncy castle that you would rent and set up in your yard for the kids to play in, but we all through it was a jumbo jet, a really huge one. The space shuttles were tiny compared to it. And it was terribly orange-ish. Terribly, awfully reddish-orange. Think of the most revolting shade of orange you’ve ever seen.

People were running all over the fuselage and wings, chasing each other while waving sabers over their heads. They were very bloodthirsty about it, screaming at the tops of their lungs, their eyes bugging out, banging each other over their heads as hard as they could, but their sabers were made out of sponge foam, like pool noodles. They were Nerf sabers. They couldn’t hurt each other at all with these things no matter how hard they tried.

I was going to tell My Darling B something about the fight, but when I turned to speak to her I found that the waiter had put her on a tray and was about to give her a good shove across the table into the sea. I told him to stop, but he just smiled and gave her a shove anyway, and off she went.

The cats jumped on my legs and woke me up just then, so I don’t know how the dream was supposed to end.

It’s my Friday night, tomorrow being the last furlough day in the fiscal year here in the great state of Wisconsin. We have the following Monday off, too, to observe the Memorial Day holiday, probably by mowing the lawn, weeding the garden and firing up the Weber grill to roast a whole brace of bratwurst. Four-day weekend, here we come!

Nathan Bootz, Superintendent of Ithaca Public Schools, in an open letter to Michigan Governor Rick Snyder in the Gratiot County Herald

Consider the life of a Michigan prisoner. They get three square meals a day. Access to free health care. Internet. Cable television. Access to a library. A weight room. Computer lab. They can earn a degree. A roof over their heads. Clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children.

This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison. The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?!

Fucken A well told.

Did you know you can order pizza on line now, just like you can order computer parts from New Egg or books from Amazon? Well, maybe you can’t, but we can. T-Dawg came over for dinner last Saturday night and, just to switch things up a bit, he treated us to dinner, instead of the other way around, with pizza from Glass Nickel. B went to look up the menu on line and it turned out to be interactive. She could choose pizza size and customize toppings with clickable pull-down menus, and she could even track the progress of our order. Too much fun! She put in the orders, then kept checking up on it while we sat around shooting the shit. When it seemed to be taking an awful long time for them to prepare our pizza, B reviewed our order and discovered she hadn’t clicked on the “submit order” button. Oops.