Marking Time

Fill in the blank.

We’ve all said it. Many times, probably beginning the first month we could string a complete sentence together. Of course, at that point, we were probably saying, “When I grow up, I’m going to eat ice cream for every meal, nothing but ice cream.” 

What I never expected, though, is that I would still be using this phrase at age 42.

Some people, the George Baileys of the world, are just “born older”. Let’s call them the Settlers. I don’t mean anything negative in using this term. All I mean is that they find a groove early, they mostly stay in it, and they take whatever success or failure comes from this basically straight arc of a life path they have “settled into”. If they can get past that nasty old “midlife crisis” thing, they do pretty well for themselves, interpersonally and financially.

Some settlers start working at a young age, maybe even helping support their parents or siblings. Maybe they get married young or have a baby. Maybe they just have a clear vision and an ambition to get exactly what they are after, and they chase it down. High school, college, maybe grad school, then a steady climb up the ladder in a single field of work, until they hit some ceiling either within themselves or in society. They take a pre-worn path that makes sense to them, they have few regrets, and they take for granted certain “facts” and necessary compromises. Many existential questions, for a settler, are easily settled. There’s one right answer, and they live it out as best they can. They may not even be inclined to ask a lot of those kind of questions in the first place. Settlers are do-ers, and generally this is the type of person that makes the world go. 

And then there are the Searchers. I’m a searcher. I envy those damned settlers, with all their certainty and success and non-rebellious bliss. But I’m afraid I can never be one.

Searchers are internally tuned to search, to experiment, to wander through life a bit, to question what the settlers take for granted. A searcher can be like an advance scout, sent out to identify an entirely new path and test whether it’s safe or not, and where it will lead.

Except most searchers are self-appointed. We don’t often choose to be a searcher. No sane, responsible person would do something so foolish. To be a searcher is to agree that it’s okay to be lost for a time. Most seachers either intentionally leave or compulsively lose track of the path, a path that previous settlers so kindly laid out for them.

Sometimes a searcher is enticed to leave those well-worn paths by the promise of something exciting out in the woods, or just over the horizon in the other direction.

Other searchers are just dissatisfied with the path itself, and are compelled to strike out on their own by some vague internalized calling. They leave the path with a hope, and a faith (however they define it), that there is something better out there for them, and perhaps for everyone else as well. 

Searchers are not all narcissists, though. Most still want to play a vital role in the world. They hope to contribute to the community, but they have no choice but to do so by being a maverick (to borrow one of McCain’s favorite words), a discoverer, an outsider, a reformer, an advance scout in previously unexplored territories, using a machete to cut a wide and sometimes painful swath through the jungle.

[Since I brought up MCain, let me say I think the 2008 election may be the first in history, or at least the first since Reagan v. Carter, to pit two searchers against each other. Neither Obama nor McCain has proven themselves a true insider, entirely beholden to or accepted by their traditonal constituencies. If McCain's sidestepping of religious postures and Obama's "oreo" branding by Jesse Jackson and the black community has shown us anything, it's that these candidates are not afraid to go off-script in forging a political path for themselves. Certainly McCain is more a "company man" than Obama, but I think his basic identity is to be a reformer, which places him somewhere to the left of the neo-conservative movement. (My conservative ex-brother-in-law once called him a commie, but he was mostly just being the inflammatory jerk he's always been.) ]

Back to ordinary settlers and searchers like you and me:

I know several searchers now, over 35, who are in a similar place emotionally, professionally, or spiritually. One is adopting a child from Russia, at age 43. One is going to med school - she’s also about 43, though in a recent email she said she still feels 26 on the inside. My sister, now 36, is also back in school to get more training in some sort of design field. Whe she grows up she’s going to be some unique combination of artist and inventor, creating the next Furby, iPod, Post-It note, or other such triumph of creativity through new technology. Even my pastor, a classic searcher, is going back to school full-time to fill in all the gaps he’s felt for years in the what and how of his daily work.

While many searchers do have that hope that I discussed earlier, at our core we are perpetually dissatisfied. It may be a dissatisfaction with the world, and what all those doggone settlers have done to the place. It may be a dissatisfaction with ourselves, a drive to better ourselves, to find some essential answer to that age old question: Why am I here? It may just be a dissatisfaction with one particular area of life, like Dr. Richard Jarvik’s frustration over losing his father to a heart attack, which drove him to create the first artificial heart.

Whichever you are, searcher or settler, the bottom line is that we need each other. I’m married to a settler, for example. She’s very organized, high-functioning, and quite good at helping other settlers and searchers become smarter, stronger, more complete versions of themselves (myself included). But at her core, I don’t think she’s looking to reinvent the world. She’s just living in it, adapting to it, and whenever possible, admiring and appreciating it.

Whichever you are, go be the best you can be. And forgive the other type. They’re only doing what they gotta do, just like you. (Like my wife, who just kicked me off the computer, since I took too long to write all this up, and the day has 101 other little responsibilities that I have to take on.)

I’m reading real books again this summer, for a change. There’s a sort of weight and permanence to the printed word, on real paper, especially when bound in a hard cover. Maybe I’m a romantic, an old-fashioned old coot, but books still matter to me –in this age of dying newspaper conglomerates, bad novelizations of bad movies, and blogs (including this one) that seem outdated within mere minutes, as we move on to the next topic or political fetish. 

True to form, I’ve chosen some classic books and highly “literary” authors for my current reading binge: To Kill a Mockingbird. (O Harper Lee, Where Art Thou?) . Americana, a recent John Updike poetry collection. Grace (Eventually)  by Anne Lamott, which is my current book (I’ve slowed down, to savor it, not wanting to be done yet). And A Man Without a Country, a terrific, short, memoir-ish, doodle-filled, social critique sort of thing by the late great Kurt Vonnegut, the last book he ever put out. You might say it was his “parting shot”.

Kurt is someone I need to learn more about, partly because I am hoping to include him as a key minor character in my slowly-evolving Cape Cod novel (he lived there in the late Fifties and early Sixties, the time period of my novel). He’s the perfect mentor for one of the teenage kids in my disgruntled Eisenhower-era family, the McKittredges.

Vonnegut always lived the tough questions and contradictions: he was a WWII vet who became a pacifist, a scientist/anthropologist in disguise as a novelist, a pragmatic Midwesterner in spirit right up to the end (he was from Indianapolis) even while living in New York, a great American who knew that patriotism need not be reduced to jingoistic sayings and blind acceptance of stupid policies, an unapologetic Socialist sympathizer (but only the old 1930s brand of idealistic socialism), and one of the funniest mo-fos ever to walk the planet.

And it was a planet he loved dearly, too. A Man Without a Country has some of the best rhetorical arguments against fossil fuels that I’ve read anywhere. Though he’s cynical, too (or realistic, depending on your outlook), and doubts we can actually save the planet, one which he ruefully reminds us it took a mere hundred years for us to ruin.

Here’s a few choice quotes from Man Without a Country:

“Humor is an almost physiological response to fear. Freud said that humor is a response to frustration - one of several… I used to laugh my head off at Laurel and Hardy. There is terrible tragedy there somehow. These men are too sweet to survive in this world and are in terrible danger all they time. They could be so easily killed.”

“How do humanists feel about Jesus? I say of Jesus, as all humanists do, ‘If what he said is good, and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not? …But if Christ hadn’t delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn’t want to be a human being. I’d just as soon be a rattlesnake.”

“For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings… ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon? Give me a break!”

“Speaking of plunging into war, do you know why I think George W. Bush is so pissed off at Arabs? They brought us algebra. Also the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which Europeans had never had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.”

“There are two sorts of artists… one responds to the history of his or her art so far, and the other responds to life itself… what you resond to in any work of art is the artist’s struggle against his or her limitations.”

This last quote was actually Kurt quoting another friend of his, Saul Steinberg, who he called the wisest person he ever met. For me, Kurt may be the wisest man I never met, except through his books. His novels take a long view of human history, and they expose our species as the beautiful fools we’re often too afraid to admit we are. He can speak eloquently about science and deny the existence of heaven in one breath, and then by the end of that same paragraph express more genuine gratitude and appreciation for the life and words of Jesus than most Christians I know. In other words, he was wise: he knew enough to admit that he really only knew very little, with any certainty. As an avowed skeptic and misanthrope, he didn’t have what one could call “faith” — in God, in politics, in humans, in anything, actually. But he had the guts to keep asking the tough questions, to stay focused and informed, and to express his brilliant, hilarious opinions, right up to the end (which was in April of 2007).

I can only hope to be so lucky, or even half as gifted.

It’s always an eye-opening experience for me to go to a big, sprawling amusement park like Six Flags Great America (where I went yesterday), or one of the Disneys.

All the blinking lights, the noise, the walkingwalkingwalking, the junkfood, the tall purple-faced people dressed as comic book villains I don’t recognize, and of course the rollercoasters! It all hurts one’s brain and beats up on one’s body, but it’s a mildly pleasurable and necessary pain… the “no pain, no gain” type. The intra-body wave you ride, trying on purpose to get dizzy and euphoric and sugar-buzzed without going so overboard that you lose your lunch, is part of the fun.

So is the “taking the pulse of the country” aspect of being there, at least for me. Once again, the park reminded me that the culture I was born into is often simultaneously fun and toxic, brilliant and stupid. For example, I am often in awe of the scientific prowess and heavy-duty marketing knowhow it takes to build these rides and to run such a place, even as I bemoan the unconscionably high prices, and whine that the new Dark Knight coaster really sucked.

Yup, sorry to be the one to break the news, people, but Dark Knight-The Ride was not worth the 1+ hour wait (yes, an hour, …no I’m not crazy, just stupid, …and keep in mind that’s the wait on a non-crowded weekday). It’s an enclosed coaster which runs mostly in the dark, with mediocre blacklight effects and more of a semi-predictable, neck-thrashing jerkiness than genuine thrills, speed, or haunted-house scares.

I didn’t mind the “you’re in Gotham City now” pre-boarding total-immersion room, complete with a mock “live” press conference featuring characters/actors from the new movie shown on a courtesy screen in the mock subway station, with a red dot matrix fake Gotham news crawl running below it. But the letdown of exiting that room, only to board a coaster that doesn’t even equal the creative engineering of the Magic Kingdom’s Space Mountain (now over 30 years old), soon takes all the wind out of any Dark Knight rider’s sails. (Did someone say Knight Rider? I hear KITT came back again this year, too, but still sucked as much as the original… ha! The Hoff is such a joke.)

It wasn’t just our multi-age, middle class white party (ages 8-42) that thought the Dark Knight ride stunk, either. I made a conscious effort to listen to people as they were getting off, and also later that night when I again rode Superman next door (an awesome ride, BTW, day or nite). Both rides dump exiting passengers into the same DC Comics-oriented giftshop, and as people exited, it seemed nobody was impressed with Dark Knight-The Ride. It’s barely half the fun of the original Batman coaster on the other side of the park, which is a much underrated marvel (comics pun intended) of design and execution.

Maybe they just tried to squeeze DK into too small a space in the park. Maybe in their enthusiasm about all the high-tech pre-ride stuff, and the up-to-the-minute tie-ins to a summer 2008 Hollywood blockbuster, they thought the coaster itself wouldn’t matter to us. But it does. And it sucked.

That disappointment was piled on top of my already low-boiling chagrin over the massive “Virtual Army Experience” recruiting building Six Flags has allowed in the front parking lot. Apparently, existing propaganda that blurs the line between real violence and simulated violence still hasn’t been enough to fill the Army’s recruitment needs — not even with all the new Army-developed and endorsed “shooter” videogames on the market.

So now they are “taking their message to the people”, to where people show up by the thousands. I can almost hear their fatigue-clad carnival barker now :

Hey all you gung-ho twelve-year-olds! Hey you paintball fans! Come on in! Shoot at real holographic enemies! Test your speed and toughness! Plan a mission to take out the freedom-hating terrorists! Then go get youself a free t-shirt and a Coke, take a pamphlet, and go on into the park for other equally intense amusements, all at the low price of  $54 per person. Just think of it as your personal boost to our sagging economy,son. Amusement is your duty, and your right, as a red-blooded American. Now go do your duty, soldier!

Tomorrow: more reflections on Six Flags Great America, including how my body let me down, how the Geico gecko ruined my day, and the blessing of being with siblings who know you “by heart”.

Regarding the switch to digital cable from analog, I put it off for a year or two, not for any good reason, but because my cable needs were modest, a switch would be a pain, and I assumed that any kind of upgrade would end up costing more, whether they told me so or not.

Now I’ve gone through the process, made the switch (to non-HD), and meanwhile adjusted my account so that we no longer have a separate internet account. Except I’m not happy with what I’ve got now. I feel like we went backwards in some ways. This is not for the usual reasons, but because I expected more improvement than I’m actually seeing on my HDTV, and we also have not solved the technical problem (occasional dropout of our internet service) that was our main reason for upgrading.

I’m somewhat enjoying Comcast’s On Demand feature, but otherwise I’m frustrated. Internet still goes away unpredictably, even with a new modem now and a newish computer (2006?). The HD-level channels that were coming through the cable all along (!!!) and were formerly being read directly by my new HDTV are now being blocked by their non-HD box (they say an HD box is $10 a month more). So now I probably have to bypass the box if I want to watch an HD broadcast in true HD. Ridiculous.

Not to mention the appointment missed by the first cable installer, the rigamarole of rescheduling, the installation charge for the new box and moderately faster modem…

Why do we put ourselves through this? Why do we let them get us hooked on the junk?, and then we fall for the promise of more and better junk, and then they’ve got ya.

I’ve always been a sucker for a good metaphor, and one of my favorite writers on spiritual matters, Anne Lamott, put me in mind of a very good one today: the Wailing Wall, the last remnant of the ancient temple courtyard in Jerusalem. Here’s an excerpt from her most recent book, Grace (Eventually) :

… a picture of a young boy and his father in yarmulkes, pushing prayers written on paper into cracks in the wall. This is something I do all the time, shove bits of paper with prayers and names on them into desk drawers, little boxes, my glove compartment. I have found that… turning the problem over to God or the elves in the glove compartment harnesses something in the universe that is bigger than you, and that just might work.

Anne herself is a recovering alcoholic, and writes quite humorously and eloquently about her journey, about the various ways God chased her around northern California until she finally surrendered and came to Jesus. I’ve been thinking alot lately about the idea of surrender. Certain prayers and attitudes are a healthy form of surrender, as Christian and Buddhist theologians have been teaching us for years. They say that letting go, giving up control, embracing humility, is the way to peace and happiness. Yet in an uptight, me-first, macho, militarized, post-9/11 world, the idea of surrender is not fashionable. Then again, when have I ever been fashionable?

Surrender also came up in church yesterday (Redeemer Lutheran in Park Ridge), as one of the earliest of the Twelve Steps in traditional recovery program language. Here’s how people in “the program” usually put it:

Step 3
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

“God as we understood Him.” This phrase is where the conservative evangelicals that I occasionally keep company with tend to part company with AA, considering it either a respectable but non-Christian system, or else a cultish organization of anarchists and tool of the devil (though not many would go that far… given the number of recovering addicts and success stories, it’s hard to make a case that God does not support the program).

Why don’t conservatives accept Step 3 at face value? Because those who cling tightly to an exacting and narrow interpretation of the Bible would like to believe they already understand all they need to know about God, through relationship with His son Jesus. Surrendering to the possibility that some things just cannot be known or explained scripturally, or that God as someone understands Him would not include Jesus, is too much of a stretch for them. Therefore a more subjective view of God, however one is able to see or experience God, is also too much of a stretch. For me –getting more theologically liberal by the day in how I look at the biblical text itself– the jury is still out on some of what Jesus actually said and did, and what I should therefore do.

Jesus was just such a confusing cat at times, wasn’t he?

Don’t get me wrong, though. I have great respect for scripture, and the utmost respect for Jesus — at least on the days when I’m not a sinful, piggish, opinionated clod only out for myself. On those bad days, Jesus is my perfect older brother, and I have a severe distaste for Him, because how could I ever possibly measure up to such a high standard? Those are my depressive days. My lonely days. My angry days. My self-pitying, potentially addicted days, which I often fill with too much tv or non-prayerful computer use. Basically that’s Mondays, alternate Wednesdays, and any other day upon which I have to take some responsibility for the well-being of myself and my family, and yet don’t want to do that.

And there’s the rub: I have to surrender control, and yet still maintain an attitude of responsibility and steady service to the principles set down by a Higher Power. I can’t just give up, say WTF?, and move on with my own business. I have to follow the path that has been shown to work. I have to have self-discipline, and set goals, even as I give up an investment in the outcome (knowing that it will not exactly match what I want personally). At this moment of surrender, the proud young Turk within me wants to stand up and say, “Wait. What’s in this for me? Why should I follow, if this path is so hard, and the ultimate destination is unknown (or sometimes unpleasant, if you’re doing it right, like Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King)?”

At which point the Holy Spirit shows up (hopefully) and answers for God, saying, “Because this is the path to health, dipshit. The path to abundant life. Do you want to be healthy and growing, or miserable and lost, wandering around some more in your own private 40-year desert?”

See how God is not always as gentle as those nice evangelicals once told me He was?

Meanwhile, remember those old Catholics, the ones who used to whip themselves? Well they may have been overdoing it, but they were still onto something: they knew how to surrender, and they knew how tough it is to do, over and over again, every bleepin’ day of our whole bleepin’ life. 

Which leads me back to where I started, the Wailing Wall. It took God so many years to get the Jews to a point spiritually where they were wise and humble enough to build His City, and then to build those temples properly and with the right attitude. It took both strength and humility, as modeled by leaders like Solomon, to create and maintain the home where Jehovah and his Ark (containing the original “Twelve Steps”) could take up residence. And then God turned around and chastened His people yet again, taking down the Second Temple as well, leaving nothing but an old retaining wall that keeps the mountain from spilling over onto the temple courtyard. That’s our Wailing Wall… it’s a glorified earth dam, a retaining wall.

And here’s something I didn’t know till I looked it up today: that expanded courtyard and its Wailing Wall were built by none other than Herod the Great. This is the same guy who was one of the worst Roman collaborators ever, who was outsmarted by the Magi, Mary and Joseph when Jesus was a baby, and then later killed his wife and two of his sons. So why did they call this guy great? Goes to show you: power does not equal greatness. It’s no wonder God had to get rid of Herod’s precious Second Temple.  It was nothing but a monument to  gross injustices, slave labor and corrupt, reprehensible acts by a man who couldn’t carry Solomon’s jockstrap. 

Besides, with the coming of Jesus, God moved off the Temple Mount and out into the world anyway. So the remaining ruins of the courtyard wall aren’t much more than a tombstone, really — an important landmark to what once was great. The old Jerusalem, the old temple, the old ways — those are all gone now. We have to surrender to the future, to what’s healthy and best for everybody that has a stake in the New Jerusalem (which seems to cover just about everybody, right?).

Thus, a desk drawer or glove compartment will suffice from now on, as repositories for the prayers of those of us who still want to write down prayers for peace in Jerusalem, or for the healing of our wounds so we won’t drink or gamble or compulsively shop anymore, or for anything else that’s too big a problem for us to solve through merely human methods.

A computer and a blog work pretty good, too. Pardon me while I go finish my wailing in private.

“He wanted it, but I needed  it.”

So said American Joey Chestnut today, as he narrowly defeated perennial competitive hot dog eating champion Takeru Kobayashi in the Nathan’s world championship on Coney Island. At the end of the ten minutes (a time reduced from the former twelve minute period, to increase the pace) the two were tied at 59 hot dogs each –  ten more dogs than any of the other competitors. Then the regulation tie was resolved in a 5-dog “dog off”, a shootout where speed mattered more than ever. Chestnut finished his fifth dog not long after Kobayashi, who “stumbled” early, had just started his.

Chestnut, a Californian, kept the victory in perspective in the postgame interview. He put a nice patriotic spin on his response to “Why do you do this?”, responding humbly “I love to eat. I love the competition. We’re just having some silly fun, which is in the spirit of Fourth of July.” Chestnut was the defending Nathan’s champ, but last year Kobayashi reportedly had a jaw injury. Thus the statement above about “needing it”. Chestnut had to beat a healthy Kobayashi to secure his legitimacy as a champion.

Meanwhile, the commentators went on about Kobayashi having to win to maintain the image of “his brand”. What human being is, in himself, a brand? Is this what we’ve come to?

The competition itself was as weird, funny, and intense as one would guess… reportedly the best competition ever in the 80-plus years of the contest. And the first commercial after the crowning of a winner was from the main sponsor, Heinz Ketchup.

Ketchup?! On a hotdog?! That’s un-American right there. Or at least goes against the traditional hot dog rules here in Chicago, where we take our hot dogs VERY seriously. (Condiments allowed: yellow mustard, sweet relish, tomato wedges, celery salt, onions and hot peppers optional… any questions?!) Get away from me with that sauerkraut. Put the chili in a bowl. Save the ketchup for your burger. This here’s a Chacaago dog!

Maybe it’s a political thing, and Senator Kerry’s ketchup-mogul wife Teresa Heinz Kerry is the perpetrator. They’re swift-boating their condiment competition. You think it’s an accident that the leading yellow mustard on the market is called French’s? What’s next, Freedom Dogs?

Don’t let them do it, Joey. You’re America’s best hope to stay on top in the world. Not only did you need it… we needed it, too. And we’re right proud of ya.

Graham’s been taking a swimming class this summer, through the Skokie Park District. The district’s park and services were rated among the tops in the nation, and it’s a really nice perk about living here.

He’s doing pretty well in class, though he has a bad case of nerves sometimes when first getting into the pool. He’s six. It’s understandable. Plus, unlike me, he’s not a jump-in-headfirst kind of guy. Which is fine… a little innate cautiousness ought to keep him from doing too many of the dumbass things his non-cautious dad did (and still does).

But the odd thing for me, when I look at him during class, is how absolutely WHITE he looks. Part of it is the genes: he’s fair-complected, like my wife (whereas I’m half-Italian, and thus have some of that olive-toned Mediterranean melanin in my skin). But the main reason he stands out is that he’s literally the only caucasian student, in a class of about twelve or fourteen kids.

His teenage teachers –most of them probably members of the high school swim team– are all white. But Graham’s fellow students are all various shades of brown: Indian, Mexican, Israeli, Chinese, Uzbek (Uzbeki?), Persian — who knows?!!! Skokie’s such a diverse melting pot of a town, one gets used to a “don’t ask, don’t tell” kind of mindset.

Not that I mind Graham being the only child of full European descent in class. I actually rather like it that my son has an opportunity at an early age that I did not have, to get used to the “browning” of the entire planet and the blending of its cultures. Maybe he’ll eventually come to “not see race”, as our pal Stephen Colbert playfully boasts he’s able to do. (”Oh, are you black? I didn’t know…”)

I grew up in a fairly lilywhite, newish suburb, where my upperclass Cuban friend Raul, whose father was a physician, qualfied as my one minority friend. He said “Ciao” instead of goodbye, his family spoke Spanglish in their home, but in dozens of other ways he was passing for white… or better yet playing up or down his ethnicity as it suited him. I don’t blame him, either. “It’s hard out there for a pimp”, as they say. 

Raul got married to Kelly, a stereotypical “white” girl in many ways (and I don’t mean that in either an insulting or celebratory way) from the richer part of town. Raul then went on to become an immigration lawyer, and as far as I know, they and their blended children are living a happy, culturally-blended existence in or near that same suburb where I grew up. I don’t know why he made all these choices, and it’s not for me to say, anyway. Yet why didn’t he become a corporate lawyer, instead of an immigration lawyer? Perhaps he chose to buck some of the cultural expectations of the environment and cultural heritage he came out of, even as he embraced others. Sometimes you just gotta pick a lane and move forward.

My point (now that I’m finally getting to it) is simply this: that awareness of one’s difference within a certain context can build character, and develop a sense of ownership about one’s background. It also gives ample opportunity for appreciation of people from other backgrounds. If everyone around Graham looked and acted too much like him, he might not be challenged as much to think about concepts like “privelege” and “nationality”. But instead, he’s internalizing these concepts in swim class, without even realizing it. He’s swimming and going to school and going grocery shopping in an environment where the business and politics of the world get played out right here in his own town now and then.

For instance, Graham knows what a mango is. (I’m absolutely certain I didn’t know this when I was six.) He’s partial to apples, grapes and strawberries, though. (How Northern European of him…) Thus, in the strange, multi-flavored stew that is modern America, he’s the potato.

Or maybe he’s the sweet potato, because he’s really sweet and kind and unprejudiced, which is a great gift. Plus… sweet potatoes are just more interesting than plain old white ones. And we all know how essential it is to be interesting, right?

I hate to make light of something so serious… but let’s face it, that’s what I do. I’m a sophomoric middle class nerd who actually thinks blogs with “Aargh” in the title are funny.

But the actual news item that I base this alarmist posting on, is serious. A stranded yacht was boarded and hijacked yesterday off the coast of Africa, near Somalia.  (Or do you call it Somaliland? Or Puntland? Apparently there are a number of factions trying to carve their own dysfunctional sovereign nation out of the splintered mess that is present-day Somalia.) On the yacht were a family of three and their captain. The family is European, probably French or German, and the CNN article I got this from does not say how old the child is.

They did, however, bury the lead. Further down in the article, we get this:

Earlier this month the U.N. Security Council gave nations new powers to pursue pirates into the waters off Somalia in an effort to combat a new spate of hijackings off the Horn of Africa.

The Gulf of Aden in particular has become a treacherous stretch for shipping in recent months, with more than two dozen pirate attacks reported since the beginning of 2008, according to the International Maritime Bureau. Nine of those have been successful hijackings, the bureau said.

It’s a classic good news/bad news scenario: the good news is that this new breed are fairly inept pirates, if their hijacking success rate is just 9 for 25. And furthermore, a boat can’t fly through the air and bring down a major international pair of skyscrapers.

But the bad news is that the terrorist/pirates may have finally hired some good p.r. people, and are now using that whole Johnny Depp adventure movie mystique to improve their image among kids and morons in Europe and America.

Think of it… this kidnapping just reeks of Hollywood. A pompous French dad who drags his family out for a dangerous fishing excursion, a yacht out of gas, a vulnerable kid “saved” by the ugly yet charming captain named The Black Heron (played by Jack Black, in blackface). They’re gonna sell this turkey to Lifetime Network and make a killing (oops, maybe I should use a different word there, shouldn’t I?) .

Anyway, what differnce does it make. It should only be about a decade before the whole planet is submerged in water from the melting ice caps, at which point we’ll have to look to rogue/heroes like Errol “Fabulous” Flynn and Kevin “Waterworld” Costner to save us from the coming doom… a doom in which we will ALL run out of gas.

We now use an average of 25 barrels of crude per person per year. And we make our cleaning supplies, nylon fabric, and hundreds of other products using derivatives of crude oil, the cost of which we have not even begun to abosorb yet. (That will be the second wave of rising prices… watch for it.) So we’re either going to have to change how we make and do and travel and recreate, or we’re only going to sink this ship.

Mad Max, where are you when we need you?