Posted on by rjonakait

Random Thoughts

Without Any Sense of Irony

Without any sense of irony, Trump announced from Mar-a-Lago that federal workers could not work remotely.

In E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction (1990), the great and tragic David Foster Wallace wrote that irony is “not a rhetorical mode that wears well. . . . This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. . . . Irony is singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisy it debunks.” Wallace makes reference to Third World coups overthrowing corrupt hypocritical regimes without establishing a superior governing alternative. “All U.S. irony is based on an implicit ‘I don’t really mean what I am saying.’ So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say?”

Without any sense of irony, Trump blocks refugees into the United States but maintains that other countries should take in the people of Gaza. There is a lot of sparsely settled land fifty miles west of Mar-a-Lago that could easily settle a million Gazans. And if Trump thinks the Gazans would not like the Florida humidity, there is a lot of arid land in west Texas, Arizona, and Nevada where they could be settled. Of course, some of this is Native American land, but when has that ever stopped us?

Hair We Go!

We attorneys love to draw distinctions between situations. A precedent does not apply, we argue, because that situation is different from that of my client.  The spouse, although not having gone to law school, seems to have picked up the lawyerly trait. For example, when she looks at my disheveled, gray, wispy hair, and I say that the hairdo was good enough for Einstein, she draws a distinction.

Is this another reason to distrust the Bible? Proverbs 20:29 says, “The glory of young men is their strength, but the beauty of old men is their gray hair.”

The spouse did not want to go out last night, but her hair looked too good to stay home.

Super Bowl Retribution

I root against both Kansas City and the Eagles, so I may not watch the football game. Even so, I wonder if this will apply to the Super Bowl: “Philadelphia, where no good deed goes unpunished.” Steve Lopez, The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 15, 1995. Quoted in Craig Johnson, Kindness Goes Unpunished.

Trans—gression

During the election season in Pennsylvania with contested presidential, Senate, and House races, I saw ad after ad of candidates seeking votes by promising to stand up to the trans people, focusing particularly on trans girls in girls’ sports. I wondered at the time how many transgender athletes are in girl sports and asked Siri. She gave me links to news articles that said that in 2023 there were maybe 100 in college sports and five in K-12. Five.

In the picture I saw of Trump signing an executive order seeking to end transgender girls playing sports showed him, pen in hand, surrounded by a crowd of pre-teen girls. I noted to myself that those girls in the signing photo are much more likely to encounter an abusive coach than compete with or against a transgender female. Oh, wait. They were standing next to a sexual abuser.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

I have been watching too much sports, but I have noticed something important. Whoever scores last in baseball, football, basketball, lacrosse, hockey, or soccer game does not necessarily win. But invariably in tennis whoever gets the last point is victorious. So, to be a good tennis player, just win the last point.

If the United States is to become more like Florida, expect more breathing difficulties. A recent report documents that air quality improved across much of the country from 2015 through 2021. It, however, got worse during this period in Florida.

The pope said that women could participate in a meeting of bishops that will help the pontiff determine the future of the church. Only twenty-one centuries for this tiny step. God does move in mysterious ways. The pope, however, according to the news article, “remains adamant in his opposition to ordaining women as priests and cautious about making women deacons.”

Parental rights. That is the cry to keep the mention of gender or same-sex relationships out of schools. Parents, it is said, should decide how their children should be introduced to such issues. States are also loosening child labor laws under the banner of parental rights. Parents, not the state, should determine whether a fourteen-year-old can work at night in a meatpacking plant. However, states have been banning transgender medical treatment even if the parents would consent to it. I might think it is matter of parental rights to educate children on religion, but Texas is moving to post a version of the Ten Commandments in all classrooms. Parental rights don’t always seem to matter.

Kansas has banned transgender girls from competing in high school athletics. A news report said that there are three transgender people competing in girls high school sports in that state among the over 41,000 girls involved in such sports. I guess every more pressing problem in Kansas has already been addressed and resolved.

New York City still fascinates because it still often mystifies me. We old guys had lunch at a small hot dog place. We decided to move on to another place after downing our food to let others have our places. To our surprise, in that neighborhood we had trouble finding a suitable coffee house. After wandering a few blocks, I peered into a coffee and tea place and saw three or four unoccupied tables. The server, a young woman, said it was all right if we hung out for a while but notified us that their credit card machine was not working.  No problem, I replied.  The four of us came in, and I announced that I was buying.  The server, the only visible employee, seemed inexperienced, and it took a long time to produce a large espresso, a latte, a macchiato, and a bubble tea. I then saw a sign that said that no bills larger than a twenty were permitted. I only had a few singles and a $50 bill. I told her that because I was paying for everybody, it should be all right for her to take my fifty. She was hesitant but consented. I then bought $7 worth of herbal tea to make the change for the fifty even less. The total bill was $31.25. She calculated the bill by noting on a pad the price of every ordered item and brought out a calculator to get the tally. I dug out two dimes and a nickel and the single, which I placed down with the fifty expecting a twenty back. I sat down, and she brought over my change, which turned out to be two fives, nine singles, and four quarters. I wondered what kind of place this was. It did not accept credit cards but did not have a twenty in the till. I looked around and did not see a cash register. She started making the coffee drinks and said that they were out of milk. Was almond-vanilla milk okay, or perhaps half and half? Again, I thought about what kind of coffee-tea place does not have milk. We were there for ninety minutes. During that time only one other customer came in and quickly left. Twenty minutes later an older Asian lady walked in and said something to the server. I could hear the server say, “She left a while ago.”  The Asian woman turned and left without replying. This could not really be a coffee-tea place, I thought, but if it were a front for something else, I could not figure out what it was.