When I was a kid I loved plays. There were a lot of reasons for this. One of them is that I have a very good ability to imagine the play in my head. I don’t need or even particularly want a lot of detail: I’ve got that covered. Plays are by their nature kind of the Elmore Leonard style of writing; and given how popular his novels are, I think a lot of people feel the same way. The biggest reason that I read plays when I was young is related to this. I did (and still do) suffer from both forms of dyslexia. As a result of this, when I was young I was a painfully slow reader. But I could read a play in one night. And so I did: very many of them.

One of those plays I read was Lanford Wilson’s Hot l Baltimore. I remembered it as being a funny play. When I was a kid, I was so impressed with people who could write humor; it seemed almost magical. So I think I remember comedy more than the other things. Well, I just read it again and I would certainly not call it a comedy, even though it is an amusing read and would be quite funny performed. If I had to describe it in one word, it would be “poignant.”

It tells the story of a bunch of people living on the margins in the rundown old Hotel Baltimore. That’s where the title comes from: the “e” in the hotel sign has burned out. About midway through the first act, we learn that the hotel is going to be demolished and everyone is being evicted. But that doesn’t particularly matter, although there is much talk about it. The eviction is just part the fragility that is all their lives. It reminds me of Melissa Harris-Perry’s counter to the meme that the rich should be rewarded for their risk taking:

But like all people on the margins, the characters in Hot l Baltimore keep pushing forward because they have no choice. The play culminates with April, an aging prostitute, forcing stunted Jamie, whose sister has abandoned him, to dance. It ends with them dancing as April shouts to the night manager about the radio, “Turn it up!”

What I probably didn’t understand when I was a kid was that these people’s lives were already over and they knew it; they were just keeping up appearances. There are multiple assertions from the characters, “I have plans!” The climax of the play, leading up to the end of the second act, is then “Girl”[1] informs Jackie that the land Jackie’s bought in Utah cannot be used to farm because it is a salt desert. Jackie claims she is lying, but Jackie knows the truth; Jackie probably always knew the truth.

If you aren’t going somewhere, then you’re just treading water. Soon, you’ll get tired and drown. Until then, “Turn it up!”

[1] She is the only character without a name. She is perhaps the only one who hasn’t given up. Instead, she is forever disappointed in the world. She is especially upset that the trains don’t run on time. She is a frightening reminder that disappointment is just a phase we go through on the way to hopelessness.

Yesterday, Matt Yglesias wrote a sentence that needs to be shared, “I continue to think that conservatives are write to believe that the tax code should in fact favor the accumulation of production equipment…” I bring it up because Yglesias is a very smart man. He certainly isn’t ignorant of the difference between the words “write” and “right.” Yet there he is, writing “write” when he means to write “right.”

I do this all the time. As I do a quick read through before publishing an article, I often find these kinds of errors (and often don’t find them, even though they are there). My biggest problem is with “there,” “their,” and “they’re.” By default, I tend to type “their.” So I’m especially on the lookout for that. But not that long ago, a reader noted that I used “cite” when I meant “site.” That error is strange, because I’m not in the habit of typing that word. But she was right, even though I certainly know the difference between “cite,” “site,” and “sight.”

I think the reason we do this kind of thing is because once you type well, you don’t really type letters. I don’t so much have the keyboard memorized anymore. When I’m presented with an onscreen keyboard, I have to hunt around for the letters, even though I know that left third finger up is “w.” Now, when I think of a word, it just gets typed. I’m not conscious of it.

The problem exists because the word patterns on the keyboard seem to interact fairly directly with my homophone information rather than my meaning information. This isn’t totally the case, because under most circumstances, I do get the right homophone. But there are enough incorrectly typed words, that I’m sure that there is a very strong connection between the sound of a word and the keys that I type.

I found an interesting discussion of this over at MetaFilter. No one seems to know, but the more compelling ideas basically come down to what I proposed above. One person, however, mentioned a friend who wrote “Boston” when he meant to write “Austin.” I can’t remember any examples, but this happens to me too. It goes along with more obvious errors like typing “other” instead of “another.”

I write this as a kind of self-justification. When I see others like Matt Yglesias do it, I totally understand. I don’t think less of them. But it is hard not to feel that other people think I’m a total idiot when they read me writing “their” when I mean “there.”

Have you ever noticed how Republicans get apoplectic at the slightest thing that a Democrat does wrong? There could be ten Republicans who murder their wives. Then a Democrat is caught cheating on his wife. And the Republicans are everywhere screaming that this isn’t just an outrage; it is perhaps even worse than the ten wife-murdering Republicans. Well, we have a new example of this.

Joe Salazar is a Colorado House representative. He was talking about House Bill 1226, which would invalidate concealed-carry permits in university buildings. He made a pretty standard (and good) argument that having people carry guns is prone to cause them to shoot others for little or no cause. Here’s what he said:

The Republicans are all over this one! Republican Colorado House representative Lori Saine shot back, “I guess, Rep. Salazar, if a woman doesn’t know she’s being raped, she doesn’t fear it.” I don’t even know what that means. Is she saying that women should just shoot anyone they think might rape them?

According to the article, Republicans are likening his comments to Todd Akin’s notorious comments about women having special spermicide that is released if they don’t enjoy the sex. I’m not sure how they see that. Maybe I’m just a guy and there is something I don’t understand here. He isn’t saying or even implying that while a woman is being raped she wouldn’t be sure. All he is saying is that you can feel threatened when there is no threat. I just don’t see how he is minimizing rape in any way. With the ridiculously high rape incidence on college campuses, a woman would be forgiven for shooting first and asking questions later. And that seems to be the point.

But Salazar’s speech at worst falls under the rubric of inartful comments. So why the Republican freak out? I think we all know. Given not only their language, but their ideology, Republicans have to latch on to any comment they can. Personally, I don’t see that it does anything but make themselves perhaps feel better. No one outside the right wing bubble is going to think much of Salazar’s comments, and they certainly don’t speak to the Democratic Party generally. But comments by Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock do indeed speak of a Republican Party that doesn’t much care for women.

There are eight million stories in the naked city, and this is two of them. The water in the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles was trickling in. Two British tourists, Michael Baugh and his wife, complained. “What kinda country you got here? You don’t know about water pressure?!” So the management checked out the system. The pipes seemed fine. That’s when they found an obstruction in the water tank. It was a dead body.

It’s a sad story—two sad stories. You see, the people were having trouble brushing their teeth. And if that’s not enough, there was that soggy dead dame. She was 21-year-old Elisa Lam from Canada. She was supposedly going to Santa Cruz, which is over 300 miles closer to Canada than where her body was found. There are 60,000 stories in Surf City, and this was not one of them.

The authorities are trying to figure out if her death was the result of an accident or foul play. I wonder—I really do! According to the Associated Press, “The opening at the top of the cistern is too small to accommodate firefighters and equipment, so they had to cut a hole in the storage tank to recover Lam’s body.”

I’m thinking “accident”: she takes the elevator to the top floor; she climbs the stairs up to the roof; she deactivates the alarm and picks the lock on the door; she climbs the later up to the tank and then climbs up the straight sides of it; And then she squeezes into the small hole at the top, because, you know: who hasn’t wanted to go swimming inside cistern; but she forgot she couldn’t swim and drowned. It’s the most likely thing to have happened!

As for the more important story: that poor British couple brushed her teeth with that water. Even more shocking: they brewed coffee with it. Personally, I’d rather be murdered and have my body disposed of in the bottom of some hotel cistern. But the police say not to worry! The only thing to worry about is from fecal material. Apparently, when people die they often defecate. That’s right: defecation.

There are eight million stories in the naked city, and two of them have to do with murder and brushing your teeth with the victims feces.

Afterword

Before anyone gets on me: my point is that as creepy as the couple’s story is, what most matters is that this young woman was murdered. But the murder alone would not have made the AP.

Have you heard the joke about the football player who is an “influential voice for his religion”? Oh, you have? You just didn’t know it was a joke? Well it is. It is a big joke about the pathetic state of religion in the United State.

The football player? Tim Tebow of course. Over at Yahoo! Sports (That’s a good joke right there!) Jay Busbee reports on Tebow’s important journey as the spiritual leader that God’s gift of good legs and a strong left arm have prepared him for. And the great thing is that he doesn’t even need to read the Bible. This is really important because Matthew 6:5 is like a direct insult:

You may be wondering why there is all this fuss about Tim “Public Prayer” Tebow. Well, he was going to speak to the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. But he had to back out. You see, he learned—What a surprise!—that the pastor of that church, Robert Jeffress, thinks pretty much everyone is going to hell: Muslims, Jews, Mormons, and Catholics. This kind of exclusionary Christianity is apparently not good—at least, not good for Tim Tebow, LLC.

But here’s the thing. All Christians think that Muslims and Jews are going to hell. They may not run around saying it, but it’s true. That’s been my biggest problem with Christian friends: knowing that as much as they may think I’m a good guy, they also know I am going to hell because I do not believe that Jesus is my savior. Certainly, if you could get Tim Tebow alone and off the record he would admit that, yes, Frank Moraes is most certainly going to fry in hell. So what’s the big deal?

On the Mormon and Catholic issue, I think most Protestants go along with Jeffress too. Christians I’ve talked to don’t accept that Mormonism is a kind of Christianity, even though it most certainly is. And Catholics are betraying the First Commandment with all of their saint worship. Protestants generally think that Catholics have gotten away from the true way of the Church. And thus, they are more than likely going to burn in hell.

People! You either believe your religion or you don’t. The Bible is either the word of God or it isn’t. And if it is, that means that slavery is okay. It means you should stone to death anyone who works on the Sabbath. It means that David totally rocks by sleeping with one of his soldier’s wives and then having him killed to avoid detection. (And let’s not forget about the fags!) Don’t give me all those slippery apologetics about how Christ brought in a new church and so the old laws were no longer valid. Jesus explicitly said the old Judaic law should be followed.

And the Bible says that Jesus is the one way to salvation. So if you aren’t a Christian, you are going to burn in hell. And if you are a Christian, then you must believe that. After all, isn’t it easier to believe that all non-Christians are going to burn in hell than to believe that God would send his son to some backwater to live a poorly documented life and expect all of humanity to “believe in” him in order to get to heaven? I urge Tim Tebow to follow his convictions.

Say it loud, and say it well: all you fagots will go to hell! Yaaayyy Jesus!

Adam Serwer has a great catch. He compares Ronald Reagan’s immigration plan with Obama’s, Obama’s Immigration Plan Is Far Harsher Than Reagan’s. You know Obama’s plan: the nonstarter. And you know Reagan: the Grand Poobah of Conservatism; the shining actor on the hill; the man who would solve all our problems if only he were still alive and suffering from dementia half the time.

In the bill that passed and became law, the Immigration Control and Reform Act of 1986, undocumented immigrants could apply for a green card after 18 months. In Obama’s proposal, they would have to wait 8 years. That would mean that it would take at least 13 years to become a citizen. So people my age stand a very good chance of dying before they become a citizen.

This begs the question: if 13 years is a nonstarter and just too liberal a policy for Republicans, including wonderboy of Latino outreach Marco Rubio, what would be acceptable? Perhaps 65 years? That way, if a baby is brought to this country illegally, he might be able to get citizenship by the time he dies. All others need not apply.

I am reminded of Ari Melber’s observation that Republicans really don’t want the things they claim to want. This is a great example. They don’t actually want immigration reform. They want to appear like they are doing something but they don’t want to actually do something. I think they are making a mistake. They assume that just because their base is happy with a party that gets nothing done but grandstanding, that Latinos will be equally impressed. I just don’t see that happening.

Afterword

I think this whole Republican push is a fool’s errand anyway. Latinos are not going to start voting for the Republican Party in large numbers just because they pass immigration reform. The number one reason that Latinos vote for Democrats is that as a group, Latinos are poor. Repulibcans are the party of the rich and they demonstrate this every day in every way.

John Avlon made a great catch over at The Daily Beast, The PowerPoint That Proves It’s Not Obama’s Sequester After All. And then he went all wrong, but first let’s discuss what he got right. This has been driving me crazy the last week or so. All the Republicans have grabbed on to this talking point and they aren’t letting go of, “The Sequester was all Obama’s idea!” Yet again we have an example of the Republican Party en masse acting like a bunch of first graders.

Avlon goes on to provide a slide from a John Boehner presentation that completely lays out how the Sequester will work. “Sets up a new sequestration process to cut spending across-the-board—and ensure that any debt limit increase is met with greater spending cuts—IF Joint Committee fails to achieve at least $1.2T in deficit reduction.” Boehner, of course, has countered that this doesn’t make it his plan; he was just reporting what the president was forcing him to do. It’s all a bunch of garbage. If the Republicans had not held the country hostage via the Debt Ceiling there would have been no Sequester. Regardless, everyone voted for it, so it is everyone’s decision. Claiming that Obama made them do it is ridiculous on its face; Boehner got 98% of what he wanted but Obama made him?

All of this is fine, but then Avlon dives head first into some good old fashioned false equivalence:

This is Very Serious Villager crap. Yeah, Bowles-Simpson offered an alternative to sequestration: one that was heavily tilted toward the Republicans. But it’s just “Liberal Democrats” who were against that. And that means both sides are equally at fault! The left flank of the Democratic Party is as unreasonable as the entire Republican Party. See: they’re both equally wrong!

And then we get this nonsensical Joe Scarborough line about the unsustainable debt. Then he adds that we can’t just cut or tax our way out of said mythical hole. The fact that this is the Obama administration’s position doesn’t change the fact that both sides do it!

After all of this, I see now why Avlon made such a big deal of correcting the Republican line about Obama being solely responsible for the Sequester: it can’t be just Obama; it always has to be half and half, regardless of the facts. And that means that sometimes idiot Villagers are right. But they don’t stay that way for long.

I like David Corn. He’s a good reporter. But people have made far too much about his article, SECRET VIDEO: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters. That was the infamous 47% video. In announcing that Corn had won the George Polk Award for the story, the sponsor said that it was “a story that rocked the nation and perhaps cost Mitt Romney the Presidential election.” Please!

There are two problems here. First, this isn’t exactly Watergate Cover-Up investigative journalism. Paul Farhi explains how Corn got the story. He “spent about four weeks coaxing the person who had surreptitiously shot the footage to hand over the full, undoctored video.” So the guy who made the tape, gave parts of it to Corn. Over the course of four weeks, Corn got him to trust enough to hand over the whole thing. Oh my God: give that man a prize!

The second problem is the more serious. There is no way that the 47% story lost Romney the election. Stories like it gain traction because they are not shocking. People already knew that Romney held these kinds of beliefs. The story was just a handy example of it. And as we know with all the examples of Al Gore’s dishonesty: if the facts don’t fit the narrative, the media will manufacture the facts. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war!

I don’t mind David Corn getting an award. He seems to be a good journalist with some significant and important stories (like breaking the news that Valerie Plame was a covert agent and so it was wrong for the Bush administration to leak her name to reporters). But in the 47% story, he didn’t do all that much journalism. What’s more, although the story was popular, it wasn’t important. But I guess that kind of sums up modern American journalism.

Sure, you’ve heard that “Friends of Hamas” doesn’t exist and so Chuck Hagel didn’t give them a paid speech. But what about the “Junior League of Hezbollah”?! Huh? The word is that a reporter asked if Chuck Hagel gave a speech to that group. And that’s about as solid a bit of evidence as you can get. It has even been suggested that Chuck Hagel may weigh the same as a duck. Burn the witch!

Dan Friedman has a hilarious and horrifying story to tell. Two weeks ago, he was looking into aligations that Chuck Hagel had given speeches to controversial groups. He contacted a Republican congressional aide via email and asked him if they had any, you know, knowledge of groups that Hagel had spoken to. Then he facetiously asked if he knew that Hagel had given speeches to, “Junior League of Hezbollah, in France? What about Friends of Hamas?” If Friedman had wanted to be obvious, he would have written, “The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan? How about the American Nazi Party?” What a mistake! He should have known that conservatives don’t understand humor!

The very next day, Ben Shapiro wrote, “Senate sources told Breitbart News exclusively that they have been informed one of the reasons that President Barack Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, has not turned over requested documents on his sources of foreign funding is that one of the names listed is a group purportedly called ‘Friends of Hamas.'” This spread like wildfire on a global changed Southern California. And it is obvious why: conservatives really believe that anyone they are instructed to hate must be in league with terrorists who want to destroy everything that is good about America.

It’s an interesting story. Look, I don’t consider myself a journalist; I’m just a ranter. But I know my MO: if I got that information, the first thing I would have done is google “Friends of Hamas.” I would have found no evidence that the group existed. That’s what I always do just because I’m interested. (Also: I try not to look like a total idiot.) David Weigel did the same thing. He said that it took him all of 20 minutes to prove that the group didn’t exist.

This ought to make Ben Shapiro embarrassed, but of course, it doesn’t. He justifies his reporting by saying that he wrote the piece so that it was technically true. (There is not even an update or correction on the page!) But that doesn’t mean much. Nor does it justify all the other sources that picked up the story. This is just partisan yellow journalism. And there is no equivalent on the left. Just check out The Socialist Worker; it provides consistent quality journalism. Yes, it has an ax to grind. No, it isn’t a rumor mill for the Democratic Party. Like I say more and more: how do smart conservatives deal with the humiliation of watching their comrades act like this? Those big paychecks must help.

Quick philosophical note. If a tree fell in the woods and no one heard it, did it make a sound? No. When the tree falls, it creates compression waves, not sounds. It is only when something with an ear that can interpret those compression waves that a sound is created. Thus: no listener, no sound.

Oh! You thought it was a philosophic question?! So I guess what you want to know is if reality exists if no one is around to experience it.

Grasshopper: let me answer this question with a story. The great philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was standing in the middle of a flower bed in a public park lost in thought. A constable saw him and yelled out, “Who do you think you are!” Schopenhauer, driven out of his reverie, looked at the constable and said, “If only I knew the answer to that!”

In other words: your guess is as good as mine. Well, maybe not quite as good as mine, because I’ve given this a lot of thought. No, I take that back: giving it a lot of thought doesn’t actually make for a better opinion.

When I was a kid, like most people, it occurred to me that maybe all of what I thought of as reality didn’t really exist. The only thing that existed was me. This is what the Solipsists believe. But over time, I came to see that as a primitive mode of thinking. Until recently, when I started to think that maybe there was more to it than I had thought. Think of it this way: our senses are really just input devices to a kind of virtual reality. What’s more, reality doesn’t make any sense itself. So why not assume that when I die this all goes away. As far as my consciousness goes, it does go away. (Question for people who think heaven exists: do you really think that your consciousness would survive the journey? Note: that’s a rhetorical question; I’m not interested in your answers.)

Here’s the thing, Grasshopper: wisdom is nothing more than the process of becoming comfortable with the paradoxes of existence. You will never answer these questions, but you can get to a point where you can slip into them like you do a warm bath. Ahh, that feels nice!