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The Inaugural Thrall

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Today’s post comes once again from Congressman Loomis Beechly, representing all the water surface area in the State of Minnesota.

My Dear Constituents,

Well, what with the long wait beforehand, the political stargazing, the ceremony, the speeches, the ride/walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, the delay before the parade, the parade when it was new, the parade at middle age, the rest of the parade, the parties and balls and endless evening hours of whatnot, I now feel completely and thoroughly inaugurated.

I loved my vantage point on the swearing-in and the president’s speech. From where I stood, he was about as big as a large freckle on the knuckle of my left hand. I was too far away to make much of the fashion conversation that was swirling around the event, though even at that distance I could tell the First Family was dressed in complimentary shades of blue. And my hat is off to the designers of the formless color blobs they were wearing.

Inspirational!

Sandwich

I sure am glad I grabbed something to eat while I was on the way to my post. Try the corned beef from The Star and Shamrock Tavern and Deli at 1341 H Street, NE. It’s amazing, and unlike my neighbor’s cup of chili from the Union Station Potbelly, it was able to pass through security without a glitch!

Lots of commentators were pointing out that from now on, Obama is free because he doesn’t have to face the voters again. That may be so, but at no point during the day did he look to me like a man who could do whatever he wanted, especially during that parade. It might have been nice to take a nap right then, but I don’t think he would be allowed to do it, even inside that awesome car he was riding in. No question – the president and his family were kinda stuck. I guess it makes a perverse kind of sense that to be officially installed in an office that you spend years running for, it takes up an entire day.

And although there was plenty of adulation, anybody who has ever held public office knows that nonsense stops as soon as the last marching band turns the final corner, and the criticism begins.

I could only hear some of what the president said during his speech, but as the person who represents an all-water district I have to say I was dismayed that he didn’t mention fish, fishing, cabins, recreation, docks, lures, worms or speedboats at all in his Inaugural address. You’d think it would be easy to insert something so appealing into a big crowd-pleaser of a speech. Something like, “We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity and a bucket of live bait alongside a Minnesota lake.”

Simple, but apparently too difficult to do. Sigh.

Am I offended? Let’s just say that I’m kind of thinking I’ll never vote for him again!

Anyway, now that the pageantry is over it’s time to get back to the business of governing. Thanks as always for your support, especially since I seem to have such trouble accomplishing thing. But remember that as your Congressman, I am here to do what you would do, and I suspect you’d have a tough time producing results too! In that regard, I am proud to say I’m probably your perfect representative!

Sincerely,
Hon. Loomis Beechly

It sounds like Representative Beechly has a little bit of regret that he committed to the full slate of inaugural festivities and also to another full term as a phony member of Congress. But like a good public servant, he persevered.

When have you felt locked in to participation in an endless event?

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Pompous Circumstances

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Today’s post comes from Congressman Loomis Beechly, representing all the water surface area in Minnesota.

Beechly Ice shark copy

Greetings, constituents, and H.I.D.O.! (Happy Inauguration Day (Observed))

I love the ceremony and tradition that surrounds the installation of a President of the United States, even if it’s just a re-swearing-in! This only happens once every four years. That’s why I’ll be there in the crowd, watching today.

I know – you’re thinking – “Hey, you’re a member of Congress – shouldn’t you have a special seat?” And yes, the answer is “I should, and I would if I was willing to schmooze and cozy up to the Powers That Be.” And it would also help if I was an officially recognized member of Congress, but that’s another story. Even some of the recognized members don’t have enough clout to sit up there on the platform. The truth is – I really love being among the people so watching with the thousands gathered on the National Mall is preferable – absolutely the best place to be.

And yes, of course I had to say that. Unlike SOME people, I will have to run for office again!

I know I’m in for A LOT of time spent on my feet. I’ll have to be at the mall several hours before the festivities start, and that’s extra true if I want to be able to see the stage. So while billions of people are viewing the festivities remotely, some in excruciating close-up detail on high definition plasma TV screens, I will be experiencing it as a true community event.

From my place standing near the back of the crowd, the president will seem like a very tiny speck hovering just above the left ear of the person in front of me – a man impossibly far away saying important-sounding things about common goals and shared values – a leader whose inspirational words will echo off the buildings all around me, his voice almost as loud as the grumblings of my empty stomach.

That’s why I intend to pack a meal.

I’ll have to keep it small since the security is going to be tight and anybody carrying a huge sack like the one I usually use for my picnics is bound to be stopped and questioned. Out of respect for those around me, I’ll hold the onions on my sandwich. And I probably shouldn’t bring peanut butter and jelly in case people near me have peanut allergies. I suppose the sandwich shouldn’t be too juicy either – ketchup stains have to be rinsed out right away! And I’m going to skip the kettle chips this time, because the crunching could be a distraction for my famished neighbors.

I guess that’s a true feeling of community for you – all of us packed in together, suffering equally and compromising for the sake of others.

Plus, I’m a public figure, so I have to be careful about everything that happens in and around my mouth. People are always looking for something they can use against you. As a politician, I’m keenly aware I could be accused of being locked in a “Baloney In, Baloney Out” cycle.

Hmmm. It’s starting to sound like I’ll be having two slices of lightly buttered bread – not exactly what I anticipated from a second term. But the real world so seldom measures up to our expectations!

Maybe I’ll just eat an extra-large breakfast.

Your Congressman,
Loomis Beechly

What’s your favorite sandwich?

The Baboon Congress

Pizza People

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homemade pizza

Today’s guest post comes from Jim in Clark’s Grove

It’s hard to imagine a modern American childhood that does not include a steady diet of pizza, but once upon a time, pizza was an exotic food in the United States.

I don’t remember going out to eat pizza with my parents. I became familiar with the food in the sixties as Pizza Hut and other pizza parlors spread across the country. Some time in the late sixties we discovered a recipe for pizza in our old reliable Fannie Farmer cookbook and made our first attempts at making our own pizzas at home.

With the increased interest in cooking in recent years, I am sure there are many people who produce excellent pizza in their own kitchens. When we started we didn’t know other people who cooked pizza at home -it was an unusual thing to do. We weren’t sure that we would be able to make a top quality product, but we have kept at it and it is now a family specialty and a Christmas Eve tradition.

Although there have been modifications, we are still using the same basic plan from the Fannie Farmer cookbook. I can tell you the recipe from memory. The ingredients for the crust are:

  • a cup of water
  • a package of yeast
  • one teaspoon each of salt and sugar
  • a tablespoon of cooking oil
  • up to 3 cups of flour

Mix the ingredients, knead the dough, and let it rise, spread it on the pan, and let it rise again. Then all you need to do is add the toppings and bake it.

Over the years I learned that it is best to add the minimum amount of flour required to get dough that can be kneaded. Too much flour gives stiff dough that is hard to work with and makes a crust that resembles cardboard which is what we produced when we started. The cardboard like crusts are edible, but not as good as they should be.

Our daughter learned about another technique – precooking the crust before adding the toppings.

Put the spread out dough in the oven until it is very slightly brown, then take it out and add the toppings before putting it back in to finish cooking.

The basic toppings, of course, are pizza sauce, and cheese with other optional additions known to all pizza lovers. When it comes to toppings, we found that a thin layer is better than a thick layer. You get a soggy pizza when you overdo it. Finish with fresh grated good quality mozzarella over everything.

Perfection!

What have you perfected over the years?

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R.I.P. Dear Abby

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I know I speak for all the Dr. Babooners in the house when I say we’re sad to hear that “Dear Abby” has passed away. It is truly remarkable that she and Ann Landers were twin sisters, and both in the mass advice business. It is a point of honor for Minnesota that she spent her final years here in the Twin Cities area.

This New York Times obituary also makes it clear that Pauline Phillips had a sharp wit, and was a clean, concise writer.

And of course John Prine sums it all up nicely.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

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Flu Bugged

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We are all Dr. Babooner.

dr_babooner_mask

Dear Dr. Babooner,

My cubicle buddy has terrible Respiratory Etiquette.

She’s always sick but she won’t stay home. Somehow she got the idea that the best way to handle a sneeze is to deflect it upwards, much in the same way raggedy militiamen in third world insurrections celebrate by firing their guns into the air.

Although she sits on the other side of a partition, I can hear her hacking and honking and moments after she coughs I’m pretty sure I can feel tiny droplets of infected mucous settling on to my bare skin.

I’ve tried talking to her about it, but engaging her in conversation feels like a scene from one of those war movies where the infantrymen have to run zig-zag and dive behind obstacles just to get across the courtyard. Of course she believes she’s indispensable and that the company wouldn’t survive if she missed a day of work. So instead, it’s her co-workers who are dropping like flies.

Not only does she sneeze clouds of snotty mist all around the office, but I often see her wiping her nose with a bare hand just before using that very same hand to open a door or greet someone who has just walked into the room.

I want to throw a Purel-soaked body sack over her and drag her to a nearby clinic but I know she’d complain to the HR department.
Of course I’ve tried to inform HR that she’s a health hazard, but there’s never anyone down there. HR staff are the only people in the company who follow the contagious disease policy.

Dr. Babooner, I’m at my wits’ end and I don’t know what to do! Should I move, quit, or force the issue by wearing a gas mask? I’ll hold my breath until you reply.

Desperately,
I.M. Gasping

I told I.M. we must all take our health very seriously for our own sake and for the sake of those around us. But it is difficult to tell someone who doesn’t see it that their poor hygiene is a hazard to others. I like the idea of a gas mask, although full body protection would be even better. Maybe you could start by declaring tomorrow Hazmat Friday?

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

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Taking a Walk

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An unusually large portion of today’s press coverage appears to be stuck on predictions and opinions about Lance Armstrong and what he might have said to Oprah regarding his powerful, tireless legs and how they got that way. So I thought it would be an appropriately contrarian move to head in the other direction entirely – towards a guy who is drawing attention by using his ordinary legs to move very slowly and deliberately.

Journalist Paul Salopek is taking a very long walk. He’s following the path of human migration out of the cradle of civilization in Africa, across Asia to the Bering Straight, and then down the western edge of the Americas to the last place on Earth to be settled by humans, Tierra del Fuego. The path is displayed on a website that will follow his journey, which is expected to take seven years.

Aside from the bunions and blisters, the sunburn, the frostbite, the aching joints and the pebbles in his shoe, Salopek will have to navigate past at least 30 man-made borders, which he expects to be the toughest obstacles of his journey. He should know – as a globetrotting journalist he has had some serious problems with suspicious governments, most prominently in Sudan in 2006.

Seven years! Considering how far he plans to go, it really doesn’t seem like enough time. But Salopek is 50 years old, so I suppose it’s now or never for a massive undertaking like this. Not that a fit 70 year old man couldn’t do it also, but at that age I would want to do it in a golf cart.

Seven years is the same as about 15,330 rounds of golf at the pace I play, a speed which allows for a lot of fruitless lunging and a considerable amount of fishing around in the weeds. I won’t come close to spending seven years walking around a golf course in my lifetime, but if I could reclaim some of those steps it would be more satisfying to put them towards a higher purpose, like this Out of Eden project.

Here’s a walking tune to wish Paul Salopek well. There’s about a minute spent on tuning at the beginning of this, but what’s your hurry?

What would you put in your backpack for a 7 year walk?

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Share and Share Alike

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After meeting the changeable tattletale/conspirator Thorin yesterday, it seems appropriate to consider more about animals and sharing today.

We care about fairness. Sometimes.
Chimpanzees do too. Perhaps.

Playing something called “The Ultimatum Game,” chimpanzees demonstrated a sense of fair play on about the same level as a group of 2 to 7 year olds, according to a paper published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Although there is some disagreement among researchers. The authors of an earlier study where chimps played “The Ultimatum Game” concluded the opposite – that our primate relatives really do not care about fairness at all.

And so there is a back-and-forth. Authors of the latest study defend their work.
Critics cast doubt.

I’m sure it’s all in the interests of gaining a greater understanding of our world, but when will the poop flinging start? That’s what I want to see. Don’t I get a reward too?

Here’s another primate experiment where Capuchin Monkeys demonstrated a visceral reaction to unequal distribution of the goods, seen on a bi-weekly basis among humans when women and men receive their paychecks for doing the same work.

The Capuchin in the video is doing something the chimps in the more recent study did not do – rejecting a reward because it is inadequate compared to what the other monkey is getting. Is that so very different from feeling bitter about the quality of someone else’s car, house, lawn or life?

I would like to see a study where Chimpanzees are given the chance to buy wedding dresses and flat screen televisions along with the mechanism to flaunt these purchases in front of the other chimps, who would, of course, fling poop. I’m guessing my study would have absolutely no scientific value, but the videos would have wonderful ratings.

How keen is your sense of fairness?

The Baboon Congress

Thorin

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Today’s guest post comes from Sherrilee

My Samoyed is named for Thorin Oakenshield, the king of the Dwarves from “The Hobbit”.

Thorin1

He was a rescue dog and came with two names. His first family named him Angel and his second family changed it slightly to “Aingie”. Ick. We didn’t even make it home from St. Paul with him before we knew we couldn’t live with either one of those names. Since “The Hobbit” was one of the very first fantasy/science fiction books that I ever read, we decided that would be a good place to troll for names.

Although we think Thorin is a great name, I do have to explain it to almost everyone.

Thorin is a very sweet boy but not the brightest bulb on the tree. He has allergies in the summer that lead to eye and ear sensitivities and he has an insatiable appetite for paper stuff. He loves tissues, toilet paper rolls and anything that finds its way to the floor, even empty boxes. He’s also sampled books. If you ever need to know how much the library charges for a destroyed book, just ask me. He once ate a scrapbook.

Online descriptions of Thorin, the character, paint him as “officious” and “greedy”.

These two words may not be enough to capture the literary Thorin, but they do describe my canine Oakenshield.

Officious? My Thorin has a tattle-tale bark. It is completely different from any of his other barks and yowls. If one of the other animals is getting into something, he barks his special bark to let us know the rules are being broken. When my other dog got up on the counter and was eating the chocolate chip cookies off the wax paper, Thorin barked. When the kitties got into a bag of cat food on the buffet, he barked.

Greedy? Oh yes. If the spoils are being shared with him, you don’t hear a peep. Obviously this goes against his tattletale urge. Over the years, Thorin has quietly shared banana bread, dog treats, devilled eggs and recently an entire jar of sauerkraut.

Two possible explanations.

  1. When his mouth is full, Thorin chooses eating over barking.
  2. Thorin’s silence is for sale.

What would it take to buy your silence when others are doing wrong?

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Stovepipe Hat

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Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden.

Lincoln_hat

Hey Mr. C.,

For my history class I had to go see the movie “Lincoln”, and I thought it was kinda good for what it was – a lot of old people in heavy clothes walking around in the dark, talking.

Anyway, my teacher, Mr. Boozenporn, said I should remember it because it’s the history of our country and it belongs to everybody.

Besides, he said, Daniel Day-Lewis is going to get an Oscar because he was the best Lincoln ever – even more Lincoln-y than Lincoln himself. I thought that was a weird thing to say, but how do you measure Lincoln-ness? With Lincoln Logs?

One thing I noticed from old pictures in our history books at school – Lincoln looked kinda stupid in that tall stovepipe hat, and Daniel Day-Lewis looked stupid in it too. So maybe that’s all the proof you need to know they are the same guy. Too bad, though, that Lincoln got stuck with that dumb hat as his “brand”. I’m guessing he owned other nice things that would have made classier trademarks for him, but if history even takes the time to remember you I guess you have to just accept what you get.

I wonder if the Stovepipe Hat is ever going to make a comeback. Lots of fashion trends do, but that one might not make it. It’s hard to get a large hat like that into a small space, like in a car. But I thought it was cool that Lincoln kept some letters and speeches in there, and maybe that’s where Daniel Day-Lewis tucked his script. I know he’s a great actor, but that’s kind of a cheat if he was able to do that.

Maybe the Stovepipe Hat would come back if there was a way to stick your smartphone in there. Or better yet, have your smartphone project its images and videos and stuff on to the hat itself. Cool! If I could walk down the halls of Wendell Wilkie High School streaming the movie “Lincoln” on the rounded barrel of my stovepipe hat, I’d wear one!

But then everybody else would stream THEIR favorite movies on THEIR hats, and people would get caught up in the action and they’d wind up bumping into each other and falling down the stairs, probably.

Lawsuit! Oh, well. It was a good idea while it lasted.

Anyway, one thing the Lincoln movie taught me is that it doesn’t matter how boring you are – Steven Spielberg could probably make a pretty good film about your life, and Daniel Day Lewis could definitely play you – even if you’re a woman or a little kid. But every day when you get dressed, you should ask yourself – Would these clothes look good on the big screen? That’s why I think I need to up my game in the wardrobe department. Based on where I am right now, any movie made about me is going to come out looking like Napoleon Dynamite. I’ve got too many t-shirts!

Your pal,
Bubby

What advice would you give the actor playing you in the movie about your life?

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Artful Dodgers

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Advertising represents a bid by well-financed entities to capture our attention and direct or change our behavior. Yet the baboons on our trail sound like they are exceptionally committed to avoiding this influence. From Verily Sherrilee’s use of the mute button to Ben’s channel changing, to That Guy In The Hat’s aggressive and possibly un-American refusal to own a TV, one could almost say living a low-ad lifestyle is a point of pride.

Spend your billions, Captains of Industry. We are unswayed!

What’s more, we are oblivious to your desires!

A research and consulting organization called YouGov looked at advertising avoidance, particularly as it applies to political ads. But they also looked at how assiduously their sample viewers skipped around other kinds of advertisements too.

The chart they published could have been drawn by Clyde, who appears to be having a personal feud with the Geico gecko.

Chart from YouGov
Chart from YouGov

One can see that the insurance reptile’s ads were ignored with a level of enthusiasm that must make people in the gecko animation industry think perhaps it is time to go about polishing up the resume.

Human attention is a prized commodity in our digitally interconnected world, and each person has a finite amount of it to trade on the open market. Right now, other people (producers, talk show hosts, movie stars, disc jockeys, bloggers) get paid to do or say things we will read, watch or listen to so intently that we might accidentally stick around for the things some lizard (pitchman or politician) has to say. What a disappointment to learn how expert we have become at ignoring the message.

Will it ever come to a point where large companies simply pay us directly to consume their ads? Would you give the Geico gecko your eyes, ears and brain for thirty seconds if he gave you a quarter to do it?

Fifty cents if you could pass a multiple choice test about it?

A dollar if you could force a friend (probably not for long) to watch it?

New models will be developed. How much is your attention worth?