Coulda been a contender

*

Well, whatever, I guess. Liberal bloggers everywhere all pumped by the "open letter" that Vikings punter Chris Kluwe wrote to a bullying, homophobic Maryland state legislator on Friday. You can read here, in addition to the letter, the circumstances prompting Kluwe to write it. I don't have any reason to doubt the authenticity of his motives for writing it, and he falls on the same side of both issues he addresses---freedom of speech and equal rights for gays---that I do. Hooray for both of us and all our fellow travelers! But after reading the piece line by line I ended up feeling like I had wasted my time.

I have a classical view of public communication: in order to have impact, it should have a clear purpose and a target audience. In a case like this, I'd expect Kluwe's purpose to be persuasion, and the target audience---beyond the purported addressee, Maryland state delegate Emmett C. Burns Jr.---to be the mainstream media for maximum reach. If not, then why not... and what instead? The only two answers I can think of are (1) self promotion and (2) stirring up the pot for laughs.

Kluwe is obviously articulate and thoughtful, so I thought it was too bad that he squandered his shot at the public ear with pointless obscenities and stock badboy smack talk. An articulate and thoughtful person can cut any stupid asshole to ribbons with a simple, logical rebuttal and festoon it with plenty of invective that could still feasibly be discussed on Sunday morning networks or even NFL pregame shows (assuming the purpose of saying anything in the first place is impact and reach). Even assuming that probably wouldn't happen, because they are the corporate media, after all, there would still be no room for anyone to dismiss what Kluwe wrote with prejudice simply because he couldn't restrain himself from using the swear words.

Yet check out the second-to-last paragraph in his letter, where he buries the serious, well-thought-out point of his piece:

I can assure you that gay people getting married will have zero effect on your life. They won't come into your house and steal your children. They won't magically turn you into a lustful cockmonster. They won't even overthrow the government in an orgy of hedonistic debauchery because all of a sudden they have the same legal rights as the other 90 percent of our population—rights like Social Security benefits, child care tax credits, Family and Medical Leave to take care of loved ones, and COBRA healthcare for spouses and children. You know what having these rights will make gays? Full-fledged American citizens just like everyone else, with the freedom to pursue happiness and all that entails. Do the civil-rights struggles of the past 200 years mean absolutely nothing to you?

I don't object to Kluwe's deft deployment of the term "cockmonster" here, because it forcefully and justifiably ridicules the consciously rationalized premise of homophobes. (Myself, I would have framed the word in quotation marks since it is a term of art, so to speak.) It's too bad that this---Kluwe's actual point---is virtually invisible, and it's one purposeful obscenity neutered by the three gratuitous paragraphs that precede it.

The story could have been "NFL player treats politician, club owner to lesson in rights". Instead we have a patronizing story line, relegated to the liberal blog ghetto, about a pro athlete playing against the widely held public stereotypes of ignorance, homophobia, and conservatism. In other words, the story is mostly about Kluwe the celebrity and the novelty of his letter, and hardly at all about the thuggish and chilling machinations of whistledick state lawmaker Emmett C. Burns Jr. That's too bad: Kluwe coulda been a contender.

Apropos of nothing still

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I've decided that I swear too goddam much. It sounds slovenly to my ears, except on the occasion of a well-selected, well-timed interjection that provides or reinforces an aspect of the communication that can be provided in no other way.

So, while I am not promising to swear off the practice (nyuk nyuk nyuk BONK! D'OHHH!), I do commit to reducing this verbal litter in my beautiful walled garden that is Fifty50. Please do make a note of it, and thank you for your attention in this matter.

Apropos of nothing

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I think that the most inherently funny word in the English language is "turd."

It is the perfect comic word. A person doesn't need to know what it means to find it funny; it just sounds funny independently of its meaning. And for that matter, I don't even think a person needs to speak English to find laughter in the word. Turd. It pretty much sounds like what it is.

Social science experiment: ask people of diverse linguistic heritage to repeat "turd" out loud five times and then guess what it means... and don't even tell them what language it is. I am confident that a landslide majority of the survey subjects would get it in one or two guesses.

Reluctantly acknowledging that opinions may differ from mine, tell me: what do you think is the funniest word in English? As always, thank you for your attention in this matter.

Apropos of nothing

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It's 10:30 p.m. on 20 March 2012, the first day of spring. The outdoor temperature is 70 degrees. There is a fruit fly searching for a grapefruit rind in the kitchen. I'd go hide it in my bedroom, but the possums might find it.

Apropos of nothing

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Recently, after reading a biography of Jolly Jack "King" Kirby, the late comic book penciling legend who co-invented Captain America, the entire genre of romance comic books, and most of the early superhero stable at Marvel Comics, I randomly remembered that Kirby's characters sometimes employed the epithet "liver lips" to insult an adversary. This thought cracked me up, now as it always did in my slap-happy youth, so I wondered what the hell it meant.

Happily, such mysteries are much easier to investigate today than they were 45 years ago. My first stop was Urban Dictionary, which revealed little that I would consider to be valid etymological information except that in some usages the term has a racist undertone. That interpretation made no sense to me since Kirby was known by all to be a dyed-in-the-wool (as his characters would sometimes say) New Deal liberal straight arrow. And the term was typically used by the good guys (mainly The Think, Sergeant Fury, and possibly The Hulk in his more lucid days), but never in reference to an African American. So I kept searching, thinking maybe it was a New York Yiddish bit of slang, since we sometimes hear the question "What am I, chopped liver?" in Jewish humor. My search didn't get too much farther, because I found everything I needed to know about the term on an old, obscure web page.

The post starts with the intrepid ronda54 describing a youthful brush with fame in the form of "Uncle Miltie" himself: Milton Berle. It seems that ronda54's family lived next to Berle's daughter, Vickie, and son in law, and somehow her parents were enlisted to pick Berle up from the airport and bring him to the daughter's house.

The report was that Milton was rather quite and polite…non descript just like his daughter, although he and my dad cracked a few dirty jokes which increased the respect factor in my dad's mind. I'm sure mom was trying to keep her eyes on the road instead of the freak show in his crotch and she must have managed because when she relayed the story to me the focus was on Milton's lips, not his schlong. His lips looked like two slabs of liver glued to his face. I'm afraid, Vickie had the same problem but hers were less pronounced. I thought this was hilarious and forever more he was known as "old liver lips" in our household. Dad would bellow that he had to give old liver lips a ride to the airport.

So Berle came from a Jewish New York family and was only about 10 years older than Kirby, so perhaps this term was simply used in the Jewish community in reference to big-lipped people in the neighborhood, and... wait a minute! "Hold the phone!" as Frazier Thomas used to exclaim. "Freak show in his crotch," she says? Well, I guess so:

[Berle's] moniker was "Mr. Television." I was more into Cheech and Chong so he was still sounding pretty boring until mom told me about his legendary humongous penis. Milton was getting less boring, now. I guess this thing was a killer…we are talking 14 inches long. We got a 12 inch ruler out of the drawer, added 2 inches and stood there aghast. How was this possible and who would ever marry a guy like this? He may have been a famous television personality but everyone knows that the penis -in a train wreck sort of way- was the real draw. Mom and the neighbor gals all agreed that they would pay money to stare at it.

Wikipedia connects a few more dots regarding "old liver lips" and his legendary unit with some celebrity anecdotes:

Phil Silvers once told a story about standing next to Berle at a urinal, glancing down, and quipping, "You'd better feed that thing, or it's liable to turn on you!" In the short story 'A Beautiful Child', Truman Capote wrote Marilyn Monroe as saying: "Christ! Everybody says Milton Berle has the biggest schlong in Hollywood." Saturday Night Live writer Alan Zweibel, who had written many Friars Club jokes about Berle's penis for other comedians, described being treated to a private showing: "He just takes out this— this anaconda. He lays it on the table and I'm looking into this thing, right? I'm looking into the head of Milton Berle's dick. It was enormous. It was like a pepperoni. And he goes, 'What do you think of the boy?' And I'm looking right at it and I go, 'Oh, it's really, really nice.'"

Oh yes, I'll just bet it was. And thanks to King Kirby and ronda54, I've solved the riddle of liver lips with extreme prejudice.

Multiple choice

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Here is a pop quiz, based on a fact I learned yesterday. Your three choices are:

a. Bill Clinton
b. Ron Paul
c. Gabrielle Giffords

Which one do you think said this:

I have a Glock 9 millimeter, and I’m a pretty good shot.

Yeah, me neither. I heard it last night on Fresh Air; Terry Gross was interviewing a guy who just published a book about Glock. Here's something else you hit when you google "giffords glock":

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/09/01/gop-in-giffords-district-holds-raffle-for-glock/

Not being familiar with firearms, neither had I heard of "Glock foot," a condition sometimes contracted by law enforcement officials who switch from a Colt service revolver to a Glock and find out the hard way that the Glock's easy trigger action greatly increases the probability that one will shoot oneself when de-holstering the weapon.

Appropos of what, I do not know.

Happy holidays!

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And by "holidays" I mean Groundhog Day, St. Valentine's Day, and Presidents Day. Which is to say, I will retire Santa to his digital Rubbermaid container sometime soon. Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Christmas doom and redemption

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This Christmas season brings memories of the paterfamilias, to whom we shall refer on this blog as Selig, who used to torment his children into compliant behavior during the Christmas season with a dread three-word phrase that spelled Christmas doom: "jak sie masz". It is pronounced yock-sih-mosh, with minor accent on the first syllable and major accent on the last. In our household, the term was both an interjection---a command---and a transitive verb. The latter usage would be something along the lines of "Get back into bed right now or I'm gonna jak sie masz you!"

A jak sie masz-ing would commence when Selig set down his bottle of Drewery's on the kitchen counter, snatch the receiver from the chrome cradle of the flesh-colored* wall phone, and twirl out a sequence of numbers on the rotary dial. He was calling The North Pole, of course, and I remember listening with dread as that dial chik-chik-chik-chikked it's way back to rest, awaiting the next pluck of Selig's index finger to advance the fateful call.

The intent of this exercise was to modify the behavior of an irritating child before Santa picked up the line. When successful, the old man would hang up the phone without having to rat out the kid. But if any of us called Selig's bluff long enough for Santa to pick up, then Christmas perdition was imminent. You see, jak sie masz is "Eskimo" for something like "Don't leave [Big Otis or Little Oscar or Gooch or Piggly Wiggly or The Gobber] any presents this year!"

I remember this technique being highly effective for behavior modification purposes between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. Almost always, the offending child would back down long before Selig's call to the Jolly Old Elf was completed. Nevertheless, there were  instances when some of us actually did get jak sie masz-ed (certainly BO did). However, I further remember that Selig would later phone Santa to annul said jak sie masz. I do not know why the old man would relent after he cast the die, given that he was monster enough to unleash this weapon in the first place. But Santa complied with his directives.

Well, now it so happens I am happy to announce that apropos of nothing I have been inspired to revive Selig's innovative holiday personnel-management tactic here at Fifty50. Long story short, I have jak sie masz-ed the whole bunch of you! But don't worry---it works differently here at my place in the 21st century. Being a progressive citizen, I have prebuilt amnesty into my call to The North Pole: I know you've all been rotten this year, but you can't help it because you're not normal. For that reason I've instructed Santa Crutch to deliver each of you a nice, bloggy Christmas present sometime this month. So look out.
_________
* A more accurate description would probably be "caucasoid-colored."

After hours

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Apropos of nothing, here's a nice snapshot of Norma Jean Baker looking young and somewhat indisposed, getting fingerprints all over her 10 in. 78 rpm hit parader. I wonder what's going on here: it's a flash photo, but the outdoor light could indicate either twilight or dawn (noting that her makeup looks too fresh for a dawn after a late night). Her face and hair style look similar to her appearance in a 1954 wedding photo alongside Joe DiMaggio; did he take the picture? (Lucky slob.) The room's furnishings look mismatched and ratty, so I'd be surprised if the picture was taken in her own home. Questions, questions flooding the mind after hours.

Image linked from How To Be A Retronaught; original post attributed to Dangerous Minds.

Fifty50 housekeeping notes

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After treating my router to a milkshake made of Fleet's Phospho-Soda and epicac, directly before a nice waterboarding session, it seems to be performing its mission here at Fifty50 Headquarters once again. The previous situation was getting old very fast and cannibalizing the time that I prefer to dedicate to you, my valuable readers. (I'm afraid I may be forced to use the same prescription on a nice lady named Alice who, after six years of working for me as a contractor, still doesn't seem to fully grasp the concept of "washing silverware.")

Also, apropos of nothing, I've changed the setting for the comments page so you no longer have to deal with that irritating popup window. Now we're set up just like the big kids over on the next block.

Finally, I've enabled the blog's settings to load a mobile template, specially designed for "smart" phones, which customizes the display when Fifty50 is viewed on such devices.

Please form an orderly line for purposes of thanking me. I do so hate it when the masses "teem" with spontaneous delight.

Apropos of nothing

*

You'll shoot your eye out, kid!



Greenie Stickum Caps!!!

Via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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A lyric emblematic of the nation I've lived in for the past 10 years. [End of pseudo-topical but not insincere political lead-in hook.]



Oddly, and apropos of nothing, in the back of my mind this song always reminded me vaguely of Jesus of Nazareth. No, really. It may have something to do with the upbeat treatment of the narrator's comeuppance, and my derivative interpretation that Bobby Fuller was somehow really telling us that the law really didn't win.

And in the case of Fuller's 1966 death, the law really didn't win. Accounts of his demise indicate that the investigation was seriously inconclusive, and the purported cause of death (self-asphyxiation by gasoline in a closed but unlocked automobile) seems a bit farfetched as a suicide mode for a successful, rising rock star. Some theorize that Fuller was done in by the notorious LAPD due to his relationship with a mob-connected girlfriend, but if we want to theorize it would seem to make more sense that the mob might finish him off, perhaps for "dishonoring" his young lady or maybe because he accidentally ended up with some dangerous information. Not exactly JFK at Dallas, of course... but then there is that Lone Star connection with Texas native Fuller. Hurm.

Anyway, this is a neat performance from Hullabaloo. I like the rocky jailhouse set, but I think that a few more imprisoned go-go girls are called for here. As always, I wait with anticipation for the crowd-pleasing, percussive six-gun sextuplet (over a whole measure). As a kid I imagined performing this passage with a quintuplet over the measure, instead of six, to indicate a bad round in one of the revolver chambers... perhaps in order to help explain how the law beat down the irrepressible Bobby Fuller.

Personal indulgence detour: As I watched the close-up of Fuller strumming the rhythm solo at the bridge (about 1:20 into the clip), I was reminded of an occurrence at Blackburn College during fall 1977, shortly after I returned there to complete my bachelor's degree. I had dragged my thrift store 45 record collection with me to Carlinville, Illinois, stuffed in a thrift store physician's bag, and came to share many of these '60s sides with an interesting kid named Bruce Pavitt, then from Park Forest, Illinois (near my hometown). I will take credit for first exposing Pavitt, who later went on to found Sub-Pop Records in Seattle, to a number of proto-punk sounds from my 45 collection, in particular "Talk Talk" by the Music Machine. I can't remember if I actually introduced him to "I Fought The Law" or if he previously knew it, but I clearly remember that he was absolutely awestruck by the bridge; as an interested but not highly motivated guitar noodler, he confessed that he had no idea how Fuller played that solo. We listened to it over and over on the third floor of Butler Hall during my "salad days."

I Fought The Law, The Bobby Fuller Four (1965, date unknown, live performance broadcast on the pop music variety show Hullabaloo, NBC-TV), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Addendum: double-dig the groovy band intro provided courtesy of The Serendipity Singers!

Barometer of pathos

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I live in a Big 10 university community, which I believe to be the lamest in the conference. I've always been amazed by how little this town has going on for itself in any respect---musically, artistically, socially, politically. But just how pathetic is it? Well, my friends, these twin cities, occupied by close to 150,000 souls, can literally generate only two Craigslist "missed connections" ads a month... and one of them is usually spam!

This city typically has about as much life as you might expect in a place like Tuscola. The leatherfaced men gaze hatefully through dead cinder eyeballs from under the visors of NASCAR baseball caps; all women seem to be upholstered with cottage cheese and cud. I see more fire in the eyes of a single Amish lady on her quarterly field trip to Target than I can sense upon walking the entire length of Green Street in campustown, where the girls seem to use Photoshop instead of makeup, and boys roam in herds from bar to bar dreaming of their next opportunity for date rape.

Take, that, Garrison Fucking Keillor!

Apropos of nothing

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This is another iPhone photo taken during my spontaneous 60-mile, shoulder-trashing bike ride last Monday. The "developed" image shown here is actually somewhat more ambitious than it may look.

First, the sun blinded me when it peeked through the gaps between as each coupling passed, immediately alternating with deep shadow during the late afternoon. The finder was barely any help in framing. For that reason, shutter release timing was complete guesswork.

Second, the iPhone's digital shutter is pretty unresponsive compared with any mechanical shutter, and changes in the available light may slow it down in unpredictable ways. This "dynamism" further challenges the photographer trying to guess when to release the shutter.

Third, the scene was a worst-case example of extreme backlighting, which makes it very difficult for the low-end camera sensor to expose either the background or the foreground correctly.

I think the result is interesting. Making only two exposures, I lucked out and framed the train just as I'd hoped to. The classically bad lighting was treatable in Adobe Bridge, and it even gave me a bit of aesthetic lens flare radiating from upper left. The exposure and color adjustment tools in Bridge are very good for bossing pixels around; don't know why they don't use the same interface in Photoshop, but there's probably a reasonable explanation. Anyway, the exposure tools let the user get very selective about scene exposure, information recovery from blown-out highlights, and finding detail in deep shadows, even with an underwhelming cell phone camera. The Bridge detail tool helped a lot to define edges in the deep shadows. And the interface for the color adjustment tools made it possible to goose up color that was almost invisible in the raw exposure, in this case the greens and golds in the field beyond the carriage coupling and even some blue, reflected from the sky, in the rail heads.

The other interesting aspect, which was none of my doing, is the significant skewing of the railroad cars in the opposite direction of their movement. It's almost an animation-type motion-exaggeration effect like you might see in a cartoon. This effect is accounted for by digital shutter technology, which scans what the lens sees similar to how a photocopier captures the image of whatever is laying on the platen. A digital shutter can create other random interesting effects, too: if you snap someone who blinks shortly after the shutter is activated, for example, the result can be a portrait in which the subject has one eye opened and the other closed.

Saturday Matinee (Eels "encore")

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Here are E's band intros for the current incarnation of the Eels, recorded about a month ago in "København," as the native Swedish say. This is pretty much how the formality went at the Metro in Chicago on 1 October 2010, and it gives a good feel for E's style of showmanship. Be sure to stick around for "Talkin' 'bout Knuckles," aka "The Knuckles Theme Song."



Incidentally, the band isn't always styled with Ray-Bans and "epic" beards; the look seems to be part of some sort of running gag by or preoccupation of the enigmatic Mark Oliver Everett.

Live Band Introductions and Talkin' 'bout Knuckles, E and The Eels (8 September 2010, from a live performance at Store Vega, Copenhagen, Denmark), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Friday Evening, Way After Hours

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Phone snapshot from a Friday evening field trip to the Metro in Wrigleyville, Chicago, to see The Eels, 1 October 2010.

Dramatis personnae, from left: P-Boo, Koool G Murder, Knuckles, Mark Oliver Everett (E, band leader), and The Chet.

The shorties and I have seen this band four times now. They first caught my ear, and the offsprings', on the University of Illinois college rock station in the late '90s with "Novocain For The Soul." Geezers: you've probably heard something by E in a movie or on TV (click through the Wiki link above). The man has been---and appears to remain---a tortured soul, who has been plagued not only by the loss and alienation well known to anyone who explores so-called romantic love, but traumatic losses to death during more tender years. Two of the performances we've seen have been skewed toward his more introspective, even bordering on maudlin, lyrical compositions. They are outstanding and unique compositions, often voiced with anachronistic instruments like the harmonium, the saw and bow, the autoharp, and even a drumkit fashioned from vintage luggage and (I think) a leather ottoman. I'm biased toward shows with more upbeat content, humor, and electric power. The Metro show fell into that latter category, mostly delivered by three guitars (including E's odd-looking collection of Danelectros), bass, and drums.

I'm not so good at remembering song names by latter-day bands these days, so I can't authoritatively report the set list. (Beer-D or Dutch Boy, Esquire [freshly minted by the Illinois Bar 2 hours before the show], feel free to document it in the comments.) As usual, E provided a little clowning with, apropos of nothing, two summer-themed oldies: "Summer In The City" and Billy Stewart's arrangement of Gershwin's "Summertime" (during which the snap above was, er... snapped). I say "clowning" because during "Summertime," he flung ice cream bars, popsicles, and Drumsticks across the main floor and in the balcony of the small 19th century auditorium. I was trying to catch a Drumstick when I should have been shooting pictures.

Here's a live TV studio performance by the Eels With Strings lineup we saw several years ago at the Park West in Chicago, minus their glamorous eveningwear. This is the most upbeat tune I remember from that tour. Note the drumkit. Also note E's choice of vocal microphone, the classic "green bullet," a vintage-design, low-def analog radio dispatcher's mic adopted by the postwar generation of blues harpists to help amplify their Hohner Marine Band harmonicas.



Hey Man (Now You're Really Living), Eels With Strings (2005, live performance on "Later... With Jools Holland," BBC Two), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Apropos of nothing

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As captured by Big Rock Head Friday evening through the southwest-facing pane of my bay-style picture window, a hummingbird briefly loitering near a feeder (not visible, stage left). I think it's an impressive shot considering that (1) BRH snapped it using the low-res camera in an iPhone 3G and (2) these shorties dart around like something out of Area 51, on crank. At this point my avian guides are failing me on identification. More research is needed.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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Apropos of something, here are The Hawk and Bird from a 1950 studio session. This is part 1 of 2 of the session available on YouTube. Part 2 doesn't feature Hawkins or Parker, though.



Apropos of what, one might wonder? The juvenile Cooper's hawk perched on my woodpecker feeder Wednesday morning, that's what. With the exception of a few stray birds --- I guess you could call them Yardbirds --- the avians have been very scarce around the homestead for several days. Likewise, the squirrels have been less visible.

Anyway, this is a rare look at some giants. It's a shame we can't see what Bird's fingers are doing --- just hard to comprehend how they can move so fast and clean in sync with the tonguing. You will hear some "clams" by Bird in this set. He's past his prime here, but there are certainly lots of reedmen out there who might give their right thumb to duplicate what he's doing on this clip. But, then, it would be difficult to do that without a right thumb.

Incidentally, as a bonus, take note that our hero Buddy Rich is the guy banging the tubs in this set. Presumably he didn't lecture Parker about the "clams" after the film stopped rolling.

Finally, apropos of nothing, Parker's nickname originated not with this definition, but is most popularly thought to be linked with this one (first on the page). Myself, I favor the last two that are discussed in this short informative essay on the topic.

Ballad and Celebrity, Coleman Hawkins [ts], Charlie Parker [as], Hank Jones [p], Ray Brown [b], and Buddy Rich [d] (1950, film of studio session, provenance unknown to RubberCrutch), via YouTube.

The asparagus ranch revivified

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I never informed you about the fate of my asparagus experiment station, which first inserted itself in our shared folklore about here and here. The short version --- short for me, at least, is this:

On April 17 I gave it up, mourned for the asparagus crowns that I had abused the life out of, and backfilled the trench with its 3 tons of Illinois clay loam. It was my intention that after a respectful period of grieving for the little fellers I'd plant the ground with some native wildflowers or grasses. The next weekend, as I glowered over the plot trying to figure out what to do with it, I spotted a stiff purple shoot breaking through the ground at the northwest corner. "Crap," I thought. "Since this one plant is here I'm now obligated to let it grow and reserve the rest of this dirt for another try next spring." I don't like waiting for things to happen, but that's the way it would be.

Meanwhile, Rudy's long-suffering wife had, for reasons not relevant to this post, given me a St. Francis plaque to display near my garden. She had not told me that she'd blessed it with Holy Water before wrapping and delivering the gift. So I chainsawed a groove at the north pole of a walnut log and displayed the placque sort of like a Franklin Mint plate, facing the moribund asparagus patch from the east. Starting the next day, more purple shoots broke the soil. I was bemused, and started marking them with stakes. Well, by cracky, every last one of those hapless asparagus "crowns" eventually made their way to the surface, and as of yesterday I was still seeing new growth. So, as illustrated by the photograph below, which was taken late afternoon on Thursday with a phone camera, this for me truly is the dawning of The Age of Asparagus.* Thank you.

______________________
* I'm afraid I can't take credit for this pun. To the best of my knowledge it was coined by Robert Crumb in 1969. Also, apropos of nothing, the ornamental rectangular prism near bottom left is a genuine 1901 Culver Block brand embossed street paver.

Undereducated guess [updated]

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Something about the layout and editing of the HuffPost front page from tonight, shown below, gives me the strong gut feeling that Obama will not fire his insubordinate 4-star general. Check the wording on the subhead: "President Obama Rebukes His Top Afghan General For 'Poor Judgment'."

Nope. If you're going to fire the guy, you don't make Peep 1 about it for the Tuesday evening headline writers. Why would the president bother with public "tough talk" before having the guy's ass on a platter in person? If my hunch is correct, I must say that it would be a really witless move with zero upside. BHO will get mau-maued whether he cans McChrystal or lets him stay. But in the latter case, Obama will also look like a king-hell pansy. And he should expect more of the same in his future. Limbaugh wins much less if Obama emerges from the oval office with the general's blood dripping from his socialist fangs.

No one is indispensable. Meanwhile, insubordination is unacceptable in any job, period, and it's always cause for immediate dismissal. Soldiers know this as well as forklift operators and Wal-Mart associates and Army public affairs officers. Maybe McChrystal wants to get fired and become the newest political darling of right-wingers (a role I still see Petraeus playing even if he retires along normal lines). So let him. Whether you support the Afghanastan mission or not, the good general has jeopardized its execution with his hi-jinx and he knows it. Not exactly a career-crowning achievement on which to base a political campaign, though. Basically, his motives seem pretty murky to me unless he just can't hold his Bud Lite Lime (the drinking of which should certainly be sufficient grounds for loss of rank and dismissal).

Update: Florida Rep. Alan Grayson has a few more reasons why McChrystal's presence can no longer be tolerated, including an incident last year when he publicly showed-up Obama about Afghanistan troop strength. And, incidentally and apropos of nothing, Grayson is my leading candidate to become the next Huey Long. Just a disinterested observation....