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Ask Dr. Babooner

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Dear Dr. Babooner,

Ann_Landers baboon 2 copy

Summer has just begun and I feel like its already over.

The rain has been constant and the mosquitos have been huge. I’ve been working like crazy at my job and spending the rest of my time cutting up trees knocked over by the violent storms we’ve been having. Plus, I had to eat the entire contents of my freezer in one afternoon last weekend because the power went out. I still feel dangerously overstuffed and on the verge of exploding, I can’t sleep and I think I gained 40 pounds in spite of all the physical activity.

What’s worse, I made a bet with my sister-in-law that the Supreme Court would uphold the Defense of Marriage Act, and now that I’ve lost I’ll have to pay her by watching every minute and taking detailed notes on every episode in her boxed-set collection of Season 3 of Glee.

I haven’t done any of the enjoyable warm weather stuff I said I was going to do back in February when I was dreaming about right now, and I can feel the time slipping away.

This might be the worst summer ever.

Dr. Babooner, I know my attitude stinks and I’m focusing on all the wrong things. How can I deal with my frustration, guilt and regret, and still have a good summer in the (almost no) time that remains?

Sincerely,
Fallen Behind

I told Fallen she should resist the temptation to grade her summer. Once you establish a set of expectations you become too much like the stock market – everything is measured against what you thought would happen rather than what actually does happen, and you become tiresome to other people who are not in on the secret reasons for your suffering.

In Summertime, adding any project to your “to-do” list should require Congressional Action – that’s the only way to keep your schedule clear.

And you should never, ever make political bets with anyone. Especially not a relative. But if you have to wager with punishment by “Glee,” choose Season One, which was much better than Season Three.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner.

The Baboon Congress

Rainbow TV

Video 63 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Steve Grooms

It is fun and instructive to consider the social messages hidden in TV commercials. The people who make commercials concentrate so hard on making the big sell that they often send other messages that are more interesting than the main one.

color-bars_large

In earlier discussions here on the Trail we noted that it now seems that men are fair game in ads, often being depicted as buffoons. Women are usually presented as wise and adult. That, of course, is a total switch from the way gender was presented in the earlier days of television. Women then were shown as silly, empty-headed shoppers whom their husbands tolerated because they were attractive.

I easily remember when African-Americans never appeared in commercials. When that became controversial in the 1970s, blacks began showing up in ads, especially if the ad featured several white faces with maybe one dark one among them. Happily enough, over the years blacks have appeared in so many commercials that I think few audience members pay any attention to blacks in ads now.

I was puzzled the other day when I noticed that relatively few Hispanics are shown in commercials. That seems odd, particularly in view of how politically important that demographic has become. Then I remembered that Hispanics have many Spanish language channels. Madison Avenue must feel that is where Hispanic actors should be prominent in commercials.

The issue that has intrigued me most is the still-touchy area of interracial dating. I have carefully watched commercials, hoping to spot the first one to show romantic partners of mixed races. To my surprise, in one week earlier this year I saw interracial relationships featured in two prominent commercials. Both are still running.

The first one that I noticed was a State Farm commercial that showed an Asian man partnered with a light-skinned African-American woman. And indeed, they have a child in a stroller. This is the ad where a mime tells the couple about a great Sate Farm policy. The infant in the stroller says, “Am I the only one here who finds it weird that the mime is talking? Freaky!”

Just days after seeing that commercial I saw a romantic, impressionistic commercial for Apple iPhones with cameras. That ad has many quick cuts, one of which presents an attractive young couple posing for a photo together. A Caucasian male is apparently dating a light-skinned African-American woman. Apple has a similar ad running now with a couple that very well could be biracial, but both young people are so Goth in appearance that nobody could say what races they represent! You have to look fast – it’s at the :46 second mark.

It was fun to see two commercials that were not afraid to show relationships crossing
racial lines, but I told myself that I would probably not live long enough to see a commercial with a black man married to a white woman. That flaunts the most potent racial taboo of all.

Well, I was wrong. There is a commercial now running for Cheerios in which a white woman is in a relationship with a black man, and they have a child. The ad cleverly pulls its punch by not showing the black guy and white woman in the frame at the same time, but that did not save it from controversy.

That ad by Minnesota’s own General Mills has ignited a firestorm of bigotry.

In spite of the controversy, General Mills defends the ad and continues to run it. I wonder how long it will be before this controversy seems odd to us all. And I wonder how many years it will be before we see a gay couple in a commercial.

Have you seen something interesting in a television commercial lately?

Uncategorized

Charged Up!

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Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden.

drained_battery

Hey Mr. C.,

I’ve really been loving the power outage we’ve had since last Saturday. I know my plan for summer was pretty much to sit in the basement at our house and play video games with my buddy Oscar other losers who also don’t have jobs. But all that gets thrown out the window when the power dies and your devices don’t work.

Then I realized this was a business opportunity!

So I grabbed my dad’s gasoline powered generator and went down to the nearby strip mall and found a table outside the Starbucks and put up a sign that said “charge your phone for $5”!

You wouldn’t believe how popular that was!

I ran the generator all day and using a power strip from the garage I was able to charge six cell phones at a time. It took about 2 hours to charge each phone, and I worked a 10 hour day, so do the math!

No, I mean literally, do the math, because I have no idea how to figure this out.

All I know is that running the generator all day long took ten gallons of gas at 3.54 per gallon and I think I wound up with more money than I had when I started. But it also cost me something in explaining time, since I had to argue with people pretty much nonstop about the noise and the fumes.

I think what with our infrastructure breaking down and all these mega-storms popping up, this could be my career – cell phone charger mogul. I hear they do it all the time in those “third world” countries, and my Uncle Dan says that’s what we’re turning into.

He’s kind of sour most of the time.

He also says that the word to remember for a young person looking to find a career used to be “plastics”, but today it’s “batteries.”

So anyway, I think this is going to be my great strategy – to charge batteries in places where the power has gone out.

Or I could just try to meet this girl I saw on CNN and convince her to marry me. Then I’d be set for life because she’s going to be rich. I’m pretty sure she’d like me a lot, though it would take some effort on her part because people say I’m not easy to know or understand.

But that’s OK – she seems like the type who isn’t afraid of a little work!

See you on Easy Street!

Your Pal,
Bubby

Describe a Get Rich Quick idea of yours that didn’t pan out.

Uncategorized

Blackout Haiku

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Power_tower

I was just a kid delivering newspapers along Sunset Road in Montrose, New York when the power went out across the Northeast and parts of Canada back in November 1965.

Lots of Minnesota kids had a similar experience this weekend, as power outages from storms on Friday darkened large parts of the Twin Cities and central Minnesota.

The blackout I experienced as a ten year old was memorable for the way adults reacted – up to that point I had never seen my parents so helpless. And of course every blackout, no matter how long it lasts, reveals to us just how completely we rely on having an uninterrupted power supply. Habits are exposed and we realize how fragile our infrastructure is the moment we flip that switch and nothing happens. It takes a blackout of several hours before I can begin to change my expectations.

Whether you have power or not, I’m guessing you’ve had enough experience with outages to summarize it in three lines – with five syllables, seven syllables and five syllables.

I.
I enter the room
anticipating a light
that does not come on

II.
Every appliance
gets its button pushed again
before I say “duh”

III.
Refrigeration
Doesn’t happen without help
on Summer’s first day

Share a Blackout Haiku.

Songs

Burn On

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Burning_water-1-

This is one day out of several in its history when Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire.

The year was 1969, and we remember it today because someone at Time Magazine decided to write about it and Randy Newman processed it in a way that’s simply unforgettable.

The song only lasts two and a half minutes but it says as much about man’s ability to foul his environment as all the words that have been applied to the topic in the 44 years since. That’s the beauty of a great topical song – it can deliver its message quickly, discreetly, and in a way that gets inside your head.

Of course many topical songs become obsolete by the next news cycle, but for me, this one endures.

Apparently there are no known photos of the Cuyahoga burning that day, but Newman’s song is vivid enough to drive home the point that it is ridiculous and fundamentally wrong for a river to catch on fire.

Even if you are a pro-jobs, anti-regulation, big-industry loving, right wing Ohio voter, you could be tempted to sing along with this charming ditty about the smokin’ Cuyahoga. That’s the real power of a well-crafted piece of musical commentary.

What song do you love to sing, even though you don’t necessarily believe the words?

Songs

Opening A Northwest Passage

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On or about this date in 1940, the first successful west-to-east navigation of the Northwest Passage began, starting in Vanouver, BC and ending in Halifax, Nova Scotia, two years later.

The Northwest Passage is a sea route above the North American continent. For many years and quite a few explorers it was an elusive prize. Searching for it brought pain, despair and death to too many adventurers, who wound up with their vessels trapped in sea ice very far indeed from any hope of rescue.

shipwreck

It seemed the Northwest Passage was a myth, like Bigfoot or the Easter Bunny. But With our relentlessly progressing climate change, the ice has gone out and stayed out longer, and what was once thought impossible is now increasingly common. So common, nations have started arguing about who controls the route, which, when open for commercial uses, will save shippers an enormous amount of time and money.

Is this a silver lining in the saga of global warming? Ask a polar bear who is swimming and searching in vain for something solid to stand on.

I can only guess how members of the doomed 1845 Franklin Expedition might have processed the news that their goal could be reached with no trouble if only they were willing to wait 160 years. The bravery of a handful of long distance travelers willing to sacrifice comfort and life itself could not accomplish what billions of less valiant people have done simply by choosing to ride down to the corner for a pack of cigarettes. The Northwest Passage is destined to be opened by those of us who don’t mind idling in front of the neighborhood convenience store.

Of course it reminds me of this favorite song.

Back in the 1970’s when Stan Rogers wrote about tracing the Northwest Passage over highways in a car, little did he know he was talking about the very activity that, multiplied many times over, would cause a Northwest Passage by sea to finally open up.

When have you found your pathway blocked?

Poems

Poetry Futures Slip

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America’s singsong Poet Laureate Tyler Schuyler Wyler found himself moved to the rhyming dictionary at the news yesterday that a handful of comments from one person can send financial markets into a spin.

trading-floor

It has always been his dream to utter strings of words that change the world. But rather than wallow in jealousy and resentment over the ease with which a mere Economics PhD can upend powerful people using only his voice, TSW decided to immortalize the irony of the situation with some insightful lines.

When words issue forth from Fed Chairman Bernanke
the tycoons of Wall Street all reach for a hanky.
These captains of industry – lords of the deal
become delicate flowers when Ben starts to spiel.
They cry “sell”. They feel faint. Gurgling rather queasily.
Aghast at the thought of cash flowing less easily!
Money was loose because Bernanke freed it.
A discouraging thought – that we still don’t not need it.
We were deep into stocks but now that cash is walking
And won’t turn around until Benny stops talking.

I’m afraid the instant reviews are in and the Sing Song Poetry Community’s expectations of this work were not met by the unsightly word clump that TSW produced. His imagery is lacking. The subject matter is non-universal. Even though the meant-to-be-clever turn of phrase “… we still don’t not need it” is technically correct in describing some attitudes toward an endless stimulus, it was thought by the analysts to be a clear example of Trying Too Hard.

Based on this single effort, Tyler Schulyer Wyler’s global value has slipped. But we were already aware that he was not a real poet because he spends too much time thinking, foggily, about finance. A true artist is aggressively ignorant when it comes to money. You can be Rembrandt or you can be Rockefeller, but you can’t be both. Who knew word choice could matter as much for the banker as it does for the bard?

When are you most careful about the words you use?

Uncategorized

Pirates and Their Preferences

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Today’s post was scrawled on a soggy boot that was fished out of a holding pond for parking lot runoff in Inver Grove Hights.  The lab analysis is incomplete, but apparently it comes from the outlaw commander  of the Muskellunge, Captain Billy.

Artists Approximation of Captain Billy
Artists Approximation of Captain Billy

Ahoy!

I is writin’ this here missive in an effort to clarify a few points regardin’ a new study of pirate behavior.  It simply ain’t correct that true pirates favors one African coast over another when it comes to choosin’ a location from which to plunder vessels an’ plague civilians.

The very idea that lawless fellas such as ourselves would take local ordinances an’ crime fightin’ techniques into account when establishin’ our bases of operation suggests that we recognizes th’ authority of shore-based entities t’ regulate our activities.

We don’t.

Bein’ lawless don’t mean simply bein’ in the habit of breakin’ laws!  Rather, we holds an abidin’ disdain fer th’ very activity of law makin’ an’ enforcement!  Now it may be th’ case that that certain rank amateurs has entered into pirate-like activities an’ favors a particular area as bein’ close t’ home.  So be it, but don’t confuse such characters with actual pirates, for whom the very concept of “home” is unfathomable.

Th’ entire world is our home, an it ain’t allowed by our Code of Conduct t’ foul it without good cause. Th’ outlines of our code is confidential only t’ us, in order t’ keep it from bein’ misinterpreted by unworthies. An’ them what would point out that havin’ a code of conduct runs counter t’ th’ very thing I just said about “disdain fer law makin'” is exactly the sort of individual I has in mind when I says “unworthies”.

Suffice it to say that stories of cruelty perpetrated by impostors claimin’ t’ be pirates is certainly regrettable.  Me and me boys would never be cruel t’ another human unless they truly deserved it!

Likewise, we shows no particular preference with regard to riches.  I sometimes overhears folks sayin’ “Oh, my booty’s too big,” or “nobody is interested in my booty on account of it ain’t sufficienly well rounded.”

Me and the boys says “hogwash”.   All booty is equal in our eyes, an’ equally subject t’ appropriation.

Let that be a warnin’ t’ ya’s, an’ a guarantee!

Yer humble swashbuckler,
Capt. Billy.

It appears the Captain sees himself as a moral man, as measured by secret standards of his own design.

What would be a principal tenet of your Code of Conduct?

Science, Uncategorized

Your Name Here

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I love this new picture from NASA of the surface of the planet Mercury.

Image of the Day from NASA
Image from NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

This past March, the Messenger spacecraft (launched in 2004), achieved its goal of photographing 100% of Mercury’s surface. Since it is the closest planet to our Sun, I assumed Mercury’s surface was nothing but a molten mess of bubbling goo – not too inviting as a tourist destination. But now I can see that the surface is solid and it has craters. What’s even better, a naming convention has been established to pair Mercury’s pockmarks with dead writers, painters, musicians and other artists.

One of the most recent names approved for a surface feature on Mercury honors the Hawaiian slack-key guitarist Gabby Pahinui. Alvin Ailey, Bela Bartok, Glinka, Goethe, Goya, Grainger and Grieg are other names attached to similar Mercurian blemishes .

There are more standards when it comes to bestowing space names. On Venus, the International Astronomical Union names craters for women no longer on our planet, who, while they were here, made outstanding or fundamental contributions to their chosen field.

If you want to get your name on a crater of our very own Moon, you need to be an astronaut, cosmonaut, scientist or polar explorer. All dead, I’m afraid. It appears you can’t plant your name on a distant planet as a living person, which makes sense. Otherwise everything out there would already be tagged with the names of politicians and tycoons.

There are other guidelines for naming features on various bodies in outer space, though to qualify you would have to be, among other things, a mythological deity, a character from Shakespeare, or a coal field.

I’m guessing, were you able to take a survey of those who have received this unusual honor, only the astronauts, cosmonauts and some of the scientists might have taken a moment to consider that their life’s work would someday cause their name to be permanently attached to a crater. But I’m fairly certain it never crossed Vivaldi’s mind.

Walt Whitman, however, probably knew it was going to happen for him. And it did!

What in the world (or outer space) should be named after you?

The Baboon Congress, Uncategorized

Surrounded By Ideas

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Today’s guest post comes from tim.

I was in the bookstore waiting for my wife the other day. I still use it for a meeting place but have begun to think maybe a park is as good a spot now with the internet serving the purpose that the bookstore once did. The diference being that the book store has stuff to put your hands on and touch and suggest that your brain would never come up with on its own.

Or would it? That is the question.

bookshelves

If left to your own design you would be able to come up with all the cool stimulation of thought to send you surfing into infinitium and off into uncharted worlds like a book store can do. You don’t have to do anything other than pick up a copy of whatever is on the shelf to see if you care. How many times have you picked up a book at the bookstore read 10 words and put it back down. A look at a cover an author a theme that takes you off to somewhere else where you see a realted idea you would never have googled but as long as it is this easy you just pick it up and browse for a minute. It may be that I am more of the mile wide and an inch deep than the average person but I love the ability to walk through the bookstore and breathe in all the possibilities for avenues to cast my brain into.

I think of the time I waited in barnes and noble in galleria to get jimmy carters signature on my book. I got there an hour or so before the book signing was to begin and found the end of the line was already a good ways back through the lower level of the store. Jimmy being the overly conscientious man that he is has anticipated the demand and was there over an hour early signing a book in a little over one thousand one one thousand to one thousand three with a pair of assistants on either side one ot place the next book in front of him, one to take the signed copy form him and prepare for the next and the next and the next. The line in this scenario kind of inched alone even ½ a mile back which is about where i believe when I began.

As I wound my way through the bookshelves I recognized all the authors topics genres as the went by. The line organizers did me the favor of running it through the fiction section and the Margaret atwood kickoff followed by the brontes the and so on past faulkner, hesse, hemmingay twain, Vonnegut, wolfe and into the genre stuff of travel and poetry western and I realized how much I enjoy the process of seeing the title and author and the idea that comes to mind with the snap associaton.

Today I was looking at dc comics and marvel comic section across from manga that new form of picture books that are action stories where the pictures tell the stories and the words go along instead of the other way around. I was looking for the brother of a friend who is a gifted comic book artist. And I came across anne rice who I had been telling my daughter about and suggesting she look into as kind of the grandmother of the vampire flying death angel genre my daughter is very into these days. I thought it was in the wrong place then I discovered it was a picture book version of the story and it did a decent job of telling the story. I looked next to that and there was a copy of farenheit 451 by ray bradberry. He had writen a preface about how farenheiht 451 came to be with a 50 year hindsight viewer as an aide he hadn’t been able to use before. He talked about how he arrived at farenheit 451 from a little incident that happened to him a couple weeks earlier and that he had always attributed that to the origins of the story only years later did he ralize that the story came from deep down in his subconscious and he recommended that when you write you allow the ideas to flow and follow them rather than thinking you have an idea of what you are doing,

Ray bradberrys close on the preface was this: if you had to memorize one book like the people in farenheit 451 did for preservation and to contribute to the furthering of the world, which book would you chose and why?