The world as it should be

The Republican primaries for President are a joke, but at least all that spending is helping the economy – especially for media companies.

I could have told you six months ago that Mitt Romney would be the front-runner by now and the eventual nominee. The American people like to play around a bit, but they always end the love affair and come back from the political plaything to the political spouse. Ultimately, the edges of the continuum are more frightening than someone a bit closer to center. Kind of political entropy.

Willard M. Romney is fooling no one with his johnny-come-lately conversion to conservatism. He has all the qualifying characteristics the American voter likes to see in a President: tall, not bald, great smile, genial loquaciousness and comfortable on television. Left or right? Stance on issues? Doesn’t matter. He’s “electable.”

A story in the WSJ Saturday, January 14, pointed out that Romney is doing better in the “monied ‘burbs” than he is in other parts of America. The monied burbs are where, generally speaking, the stakes are highest, the desire to hold on to what they have the strongest. Conservatives, or even sham conservatives, always do well with haves who don’t want to share with (or become) have-nots.

It is also easy to be politically liberal when you are young because you don’t own enough or make enough money. When you get older, making more money, are paying a mortgage, are married with kids, and so on, you don’t want to share. Taxes suddenly are onerous and government intrusions into your life, although you likely benefitted from tax breaks and other “intrusions” to get you where you are. Now that you have “stuff” you don’t want to be told you have to share. So you pout like a 3-year-old and say that you want a new daddy.

Of course Obama is evil and must be defeated: he is currently steering the boat. Let’s blame him for the bad weather. Let’s elect another captain, one who will promise we won’t have to share our blankets with other passengers, the ones shivering and alone in the wind and rain.

For the past year or so, I have noticed more and more instances of someone saying, “I graduated college” instead of “I graduated from college.” It’s worse than hearing fingernails scraped down a chalkboard; it’s more like listening to Donald Trump talking about — uh, well, talking about anything.

Admittedly, I am old enough to remember when it was considered correct to say, “I was graduated from college,” because it is the college that confers the degree on you, not you doing something to the college. It slowly became more acceptable to simply say, “I graduated from college.”

I suppose that grates on the ears of some members of the elderly cohort, but I hadn’t yet received my Curmudgeon’s license so the sonic pain didn’t register when that change occurred.

Now the phrase is being made even shorter, dropping the “from,” something I consider a major annoyance. (I am easily annoyed.) I believe that in 10 years, it will be considered correct to say, “I gradded coll, LOL.”

I know grammar changes over time. Language, in a sense, is a living thing. But I don’t have to like the grammatical evolution. I am allowed to complain falling standards. After all, I gradded coll.

NEXT POST: What’s the difference between the pelt of a dead muskrat and The Donald’s hair?  The answer may surprise you.

Seriously, Florence. You’re a mess. Hair is a rat’s nest. Dress color is terrible. Go away.

Ruffalo – you NEVER should have let your wife/hooker/girlfriend out of the house in that dress. Ignoring you the rest of night.

Giuliana looks like an alien! I can’t even look at her!

Are those boobs real?

I think Ryan and Spacey are secret lovers. But it’s not such a secret.

Effin Celine is doing the song during the dead people montage. Makes me want to vomit

What the hell is that? Looks like a leftover from a Charo appearance on The Love Boat.

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Well, that’s enough. All the above are tweets from an Oscar night Twitter feed, or from at least as long as I could stand to follow along. The main “snarkers” carried on this screed for about 7 hours. People joined in on the fun as the evening progressed as they saw that all present embraced the obnoxious. I could stand only about an hour.

The fact that people think it is funny to rip into other people’s fashion choices, hair, etc., is not a surprise and even calling someone’s wife a hooker or claiming two men are gay (just for fun…) is, I suppose, a fair game in Hollywood. People can say what they want to say.

What surprised me was that the newspaper’s management seemed to support this effort by highlighting it in ads, as if they thought the “snarkfest” was a solid, journalistic idea. Is this what newspapers have become on the web and on social media?

I have let this blog slip a little. Dr. Design and The Muse have been bugging me for the last couple of months. They are used to more publicity. The Muse even complained about me to Lady Gaga. Her response: Meh.

One of the things I have been working on is my social media site and blog. That and preparing for a move and my first cold in probably a decade put me behind the proverbial eight-ball.

But more posts are coming soon!

…and may you have a happy a wonderful 2011!

I realized with a bit of horror yesterday that I had jumped the shark. Getting old without realizing it was apparently not enough pain for the universe’s troll that runs my life. It was an awakening.

Jumping the shark, of course, comes from an episode of Happy Days in which Fonzie jumps over a shark while on water skis wearing trunks and a leather jacket (don’t ask). It’s a saying in the idiom that stands for the moment when — in this case — your favorite TV show starts to lose quality and popularity.

In my case, it means that I have lost relevancy as an academic leader and teacher. I’ve lost whatever mojo I once had. At least it appears that way to me, and maybe even to my colleagues and my students.

But I am going to try what Fonzie never did: jump back over that shark, not by backing up, but by making a U-turn and facing the great fish head-on. Stay tuned.

What about you? Have any good jump-the-shark or pmuj-the-shark stories to share? Tell me below.

UPDATE: Southwest provided me with a money-off voucher for a future flight. That was the right thing to do.

The saga with Southwest continues. You may remember that they broke something I had in the middle of my suitcase, something packed to a fare thee well, and it was a pretty beefy decorative plate, so to break it took some conscientious effort.

I called and got the runaround and finally got the response that said, rather cold and lawyer-like, check the rules of carriage or whatever: Southwest isn’t responsible for breakage of any kind whether it is in the overheads or in the belly of the plane.

I finally broke down and called Customer Service (did you ever notice that the Customer Service and Complaint lines at most companies are never 800-numbers?) because I was promised I would receive a response from them in 5 business days. At this moment it has been seven.

A woman told me that she personally would corner the e-mailer who never wrote and make sure she called me by end of day. She was in a meeting. Of course. About an hour later, as the hour of closing appeared, I figured I would make a pre-emptive phone call and after a longish wait, got a third person in the Customer Relations Dept. She told me that the woman who was supposed to call me was still in a meeting, and that she thought she would call me before she left for home….

But she could sense that I was ticked off (I told her that I was), so she offered to escalate it to one of her bosses to be sure I would get a phone call tonight. Yeah, right.

It’s now been two hours since I called and it’s an hour past their closing time (which is mis–stated on the web site by an hour: clever). Have I gotten a call from Southwest’s Customer Relations office? From either person?

What do you think?

Yeah, bags fly free, but the real question is: will they actually reach their destination without being trampled?

Much to my complete surprise, I was not awarded a “genius grant” of $500,000 again this year by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. So it remains on my bucket list.

They picked a bee breeder, a jellyfish scientist, the guy who wrote “The Wire,” a stone carver, and a violinist, among others. They did not pick the owner of News Design School, an institution that brings the light of newspaper design to downtrodden small daily and weekly journalists.

Since 1970, there have been 828 recipients, and I still am not one of them. I need to find out that group of anonymous nominators and see if they even read newspapers. Even the judges are anonymous. Probably not a newspaper person among ‘em. Sheesh.

I’ve reached another milestone in life. It was bound to happen. It’s a biological reality. Doesn’t make it any easier to take. I have been rendered invisible to young women.

Can’t say as I am handsome, never was, but at least women would take a look, check me out. Occasionally a few would even flirt with me, an act that does wonders for one’s ego. No more. Old men don’t have egos.

It’s not because I am married, either. I don’t always wear my wedding ring because it hurts me when I carry a briefcase, which is often. And anyway it never stopped them before.

Now, as I fade away — less hair and what I have is getting lighter and lighter — women tend to look through me. As if I weren’t there. I am a jogger, a customer, a fellow shopper whose cart is simply in their way. They look at the cart, but they don’t look at me.

I guess I have become seen as an asexual being. Trouble is that inside I still feel 23 or 33, certainly not 63. I look at women, even much younger women, no differently than I did in my salad days.

To them, however, I apparently don’t exist. This is the real inconvenient truth. I know I am not missing anything, but it would be nice to not be invisible.

The keyboard is mocking me again. All the words I need are right here, nearby, but my fingers can’t seem to find them. I mean, c’mon — all the letters and punctuation — they are all right here. I just sit and stare with the vain hope that maybe the keys will organize themselves into words. I am going to lie down on the couch again until it happens.