The $250,000 Question

What kind of second home can you get these days for 250,000?

That's the question bothering The New York Times and its impoverished and restless readers. Appropriately enough, the articles was in yesterday's Escapes section.

Yeah. That's the question keeping me up nights.

Truth be told, we would be lucky to get $90,000 for our recently painted house. Clarification: our first house, not our weekend home or summer demesne. Location, location, location. City, city, city.

Of course, those poor unfortunates struggling to buy a second home for 250,000 beans are not considering locations like the urban location of our manor. (Mind your manors! HAHA!) Oh no. It's got to have a view or be near water -- ideally with a view of water on a hillside. And they certainly do not want messy things like people nearby, especially nonwhite, nonupperclass, nonprofessional people. (Animals are okay, though. "We just love the varied wildlife here.")

I'm willing to wager these are the same folks who have fear and loathing of the "wild life" of our cities, who devise terrific policy solutions for our cities, and who proudly sport their so-called tolerant and liberal-minded moral credentials.

How much do you want to bet?

Bets starting at $250,000 being accepted now.

Right here, right now.

As Tony Soprano might say, while grabbing an important portion of his anatomy,

"Right here."

Free At Last. Maybe. Kind Of. Sort Of.

Well, "they" let me out of the chip rehab. Somebody asked me if I wanted "to get with the program" (or did she, Nurse Ratchit, say "programme", thinking I was an Anglophile?); I thought she said "reprogram"; and that's what they did. They reprogrammed me; put in a new chip. I'm cured.

Of potato chip addiction.

Not that I've ever exhibited any other type of addictive traits.

I just said that for laughs, of course. (It's part of my blog description, part of the nomenclature, nominally.)

I am a little worried, though.

I may fall victim to what novelist Stephen King termed the old-couch syndrome, or words to that effect. What he meant was, tamp down one addiction, and another one is sure to pop right up, just like the springs on an old couch. Hmmmm. What the heck could those other addictions be? Do you have any?

Based on the minimal number of comments I received when I was in chip rehab, I'm thinking that many of you either a) didn't give a rat's ass, b) didn't believe me, c) didn't care or d) were simply dumbstruck. I don't blame you in any event. There's a lot more pressing stuff in the world than alleged potato-chip alleged addiction. Isn't there? (Gosh. I'm glad I didn't tune in to Ersatz Presidente Bush last night; that would've driven me straight to the 20-ounce bag of kettle chips.)

No one called while I was in chip rehab. Not even The Cornflake King.

Maybe I wouldn't've answered anyway.

Are you like that? I do not like to have anyone answer the phone during suppertime. It's sacred (the eating event, not the phone). Not cellphones or land lines or any phones. They (the eating-event participants, sometimes called family; not the phones) all ignore me anyway. Even I ignore myself sometimes.

Anyway, it's late, and I sound hungry, angry, lonely, and tired (at the rehab they told me to be careful of that, and told me to remember it with an acronym: HALT).

Whew. I sure could use a juicy, greasy, salty potato chip. Just one. Please? Pretty please?

Just be patient with me. They say it takes time for the new chip to start working properly. It'll take a while for me to get back to alleged so-called quote normal unquote.

Laugh. Or....

Else.

p.s. I got new glasses today. Very Euro, whatever that means. I've never had so many compliments so rapidly and uninvited for a new pair of specs. Maybe vanity is my new addiction.

Chipping Toward Gomorrah

Dear Blog Readers,
I am writing this from a chip rehab. That's short for The Sierra Mesa Pines Chipaholic Rehabilitation Center. Location: Cannot be revealed. This lovely high-security prison is more or less a degreasing facility for poor slobs like me who can't overcome their addiction to potato chips. (They are called crisps in England and Ireland, right? Sounds leaner to me. I wonder if that gang called The Crips got their name, as well as their ferocity, because of potato chip addiction?) Oh, you know how it goes. I'll have just one. In my case, that would mean "just one 11 oz (311g) bag, thank you." Or just one hour at the potato chip trough. But the bag declares, "No Cholesterol. All Natural." I think I am going to be here longer than the typical 30 days. They keep wanting me to take something called The First Step, and all the while I keep wanting to take The First Chip. Little commandants walk around murmuring, "You need a meeting, not a chip." Maybe you can send me some chips of love over the Internet. Oh, you saw it coming all right. Yesterday, he's blogging about free will (or the lack of it). Today, he's crying the blues. Blues over chips. Blue-chip blues. (Excuse me, the rabid wordplay must be a side-effect of the detoxification process.) They've intentionally left some reading material in my little monastic room. One book had writings of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard with the book's spine splayed open like Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan getting out of an SUV, with this passage highlighted by felt-tip neon marking pen: "Ah, one speaks of so many various things which a man may love most dearly: a woman, his child, his father, his mother, his fatherland, his art, his science: but what every individual loves most, more than his only child, the child of promise, more than his only beloved on earth and in heaven--is his own will." Some wise guy added "potato chip" to the list of loves posted by Kierkegaard. Hahahaha. Very funny. Salty humor. The (potato) eyes have it. No skins off my back. Then the smart-alecks who run this chip-free resort left a Zen Calendar in my cell with its convenient little January 8 "scripture" that blares with a quote from Henry Miller: "I know what the great cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world." And some smart-ass scribbled by hand: "while your little heart still beats, Mr. Chipaholic" -- accompanied by one of those saccharine smiley faces (it's a good thing sweets aren't my addiction). (Henry Miller? Whew. I thought he was addicted to something else; and it wasn't pussywillows.) I was going to write a haiku about potato chips, but it only increased my carbohydrate-laced craving. Some lecturer this morning told us we have a thinking disease, not an eating problem. I think not, Herr Rehabmeister. Anyway, I say, "A chip, a chip, my queendom* for a chip."
Yours,
Pawlie Kokonuts

*Since so many of my readers are women (or pretend to be), I thought I'd throw that in there, for sympathy. I ain't getting any (sympathy, that is) in this chip rehab. No sirree, baby.

Free Will Hunting

Scientists are arguing about whether humans possess free will. A recent popular article by Dennis Overbye in the New York Times about this stated the view of cognitive scientists, science philosophers, and bookies (just wanted to see if you were still reading). It said free will is nothing more than an illusion, a monkey riding on a tiger's back.

Well, that conveniently explains the rationale for the phenomenon of spanking the monkey, doesn't it? We can't help it.

Whew.

What a relief.

Why didn't anyone tell me this? Why didn't anyone tell me this, say, in any year from 1965 onward?

So, all you who foolishly made New Year's resolutions: beware.

Give up.

I kid, but the article quoted scientists, philosophers, priests, paupers, sex addicts, neurologists, compulsive eaters, alcoholics, physicists, strippers, cab drivers, ballerinas, and talk-show hosts. (I made up most of that list. But interviewing such folks would undoubtedly have made for a much more interesting and less-snoozy piece.)

What about good?

What about evil?

What about dieting? Or cheating? Or heroism? Or being late for work? What about deciding to do the "right" thing? Or not doing the "wrong" thing? Most of the "experts" quoted said it's all an illusion. You think you are making a decision, but your brain has already decided even before you are aware of it.

Will power is only the tensile strength of one's own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce. -- Cesare Pavese (1908-1950) Italian poet, critic, novelist, and translator.


We defy augury. There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'Tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.
-- William Shakespeare (1564-1616) British poet and playwright.

We run the full range here, folks, from the silly to the sublime.

Carry on.

Laugh. Or....

Else.

You have no choice.

Or do you?

Let's Stop Serial-Comma Killing Now!

We know society exhibits moral outrage over serial killings, as well it should.




But why the widespread apathy over the death throes of the serial comma?




Fight the good fight. Become a Serial Comma Commando today!


The serial comma, also known as the Oxford comma or the Harvard comma, is the comma found in this construction:

Hurray for the red, white, and blue.

Believers of the use of this construction (like me) insist on that comma after the word white.

My particular reasons are straightforward: consistency and lack of ambiguity.

At least I thought so until I checked out the entry for topic at Wikipedia. I must say, the entry is exhaustive and entertaining.

It gives cogent arguments both for and against.

I used to be a newspaper copy editor. Nearly all newspapers (at least in American and Canada) do not use the serial comma. The New York Times and The Washington Post, excellent newspapers, do not employ that comma after the word white in the example above. Nearly all book publishers used to use it. The New Yorker magazine still uses it.

I reject the argument (made by some, including Lynne Truss of the popular book Eats, Shoots & Leaves) that this style decision is variable depending on context and circumstances. (Oh, of course, you can find an exception to any rule. So, yes, all such decisions are potentially variable. I'm not talking about that. Oliver Wendell Holmes said something like you have to know the rules before you know how to break them. I'm talking about the rule here, not the exception[s].)

I say adhere to the rule, or not, but do so consistently.

It is troubling in recent years to find myself reading a novel and to encounter style usage all over the place on this.

Sloppy.

Most of you say this is all silly and does not matter.

I'll close with the wonderful example from The Chicago Manual of Style (which, naturally, supports the view of the serial comma embraced by The Laughorist):

According to the erudite and entertaining folks at the University of Chicago Press (check out their FAQ section), not using the serial comma can put you in this pickle with this hypothetical book dedication:

"With gratitude to my parents, Mother Teresa and the pope."

Laugh. Or....

Else.

Freegonomics: Food for Thought -- and Word Blenders

As you know, I like wordplay. The title of my blog declares it. (Of course, laughorist is a blend of laugh + aphorist.) So, when I read an online piece today about some folks in the San Francisco area who succeeded in complying with their vow not to shop for a year (with some exceptions), I was all set to declare myself as the inventor of the blended neologism "freegonomics."

Read on.

The news story made reference to so-called freegans, people who advocate minimal consumption -- with some going so far as to eat out of Dumpsters. (Please note: the former newspaper copy editor in me warns you that Dumpster is a brand name and should be capitalized when you read it in print or online.) The word freegan itself, of course, is a linguistic blend of free + vegan. (Turns out that some freegans are meagans, because they allow themselves to eat meat.)

Well, I cannot claim to have coined the term freegonomics (the link here to the word is actually a thought-provoking essay by columnist Lucy Siegle in The Observer back in February 2006). A simple search of "freegonomics" indicates that several others already beat me to it, by months if not years.

Even if I did not coin the term, I feel the concept raises issues worth considering. When I was in college, during the Vietnam War, I remember a philosophy professor, John McNeill, challenging our class at LeMoyne College with respect to those who protested the war. He said something like this:

"A Franciscan movement could end this war in 90 days. But you can't do it. If everyone from, say, the ages of 15 to 30 disciplined themselves to the point of buying only necessary goods, you would be able to get anything you want from the government in no time. The economic effect would be huge, and you would be able to stop the war. But you don't have that ability to sacrifice."

Something like that. And I suspected then, and now, he was right.

There's little doubt that consumption (is "overconsumption" a redundancy about redundancies?) in capitalist (well, in all societies) involves abuse, destruction, waste, and greed.

But couldn't the same be said ever since Adam and Eve (easy on those apples, kids)?

I don't disagree that we (we in the U.S. and the so-called developed nations, as well as we who pollute the air and foul the rivers of a booming China) are ravaging the planet. But on a macroeconomic level, if "we" all were to cut back even to a sensible minimum of consumption (a sensible minimum, however you define it), does that impoverish thousands, if not millions, of suddenly jobless people?

I am neither a microeconomist nor a macroeconomist. I tend to be quite frugal (some would say cheapskate). I am not an extravagant buyer. When clothes are given to me as gifts, I feel sheepish (well, that's true for anything made of wool - HAHAHAHA).

I don't know what to conclude about any of this.

Just some food for thought.

And, speaking of word blenders, as opposed to food blenders, even Wikipedia (the source of many definitions above) is a blend of wiki (Hawaiian for fast) + encyclopedia.

You can look it up.

Laugh. Or....

Else.

Unperson of the Year, 2007

Well, today it is things back to normal, more or less, back to not being Time magazine's Person of the Year 2006. In fact, it is back to being Potential Person of the Year 2007, or Potential Nonperson of the Year 2007, or even potential person, or potential nonperson (I threw that in for existentialists and FOSK [Friends of Soren Kierkegaard]).

And what is "normal" on New Year's Day, anyway? It is not a normal day. It is a day groggy with the hangover of the memory of ancient hangovers, after a night of no imbibing, except for the intoxicating vision of numbing television, including the watching of the Waterford cystal ball falling, by increments of seconds, backwards-counting seconds, like those manned-spacecraft or unmanned (neutered?)-spacecraft launchings we watched in my youth. This, a scene from the new, Disney-fied Times Square, a far cry from the ancient, tawdry carnal "Midnight Cowboy" fleshpot carnival of yesteryear, though I admit to sometimes missing its vulgar, if menacing and perilous, "atmosphere" and allurements.

New Year's Eve. The memory -- my memory -- of retching mercilessly by the clock at Grand Central Terminal (frequently mistakenly called Grand Central Station, which is a post office), slobbering onto the marble floor, oblivious to the star-spotted cerulean blue, majestic ceiling. New Year's Day. "I'll never do that again. I promise." Those powerless vows. One such first day of the year taking the train from that very terminal (not the day after the oblivion onto the marble), drinking again, cavorting, parading, mock-marrying, annoying, dancing, falling, menacing for four, five, six hours. And then after the train ride making the rounds by car and foot and lechery through blurry strip clubs, Marvin Gaye music, a crack-up somewhere, knocking on strangers' doors at 5 a.m., fearing I was in Brooklyn (where I had never been). And then deigning to go to work the next day! These days, I'd have been fired on the spot -- and arrested too perhaps (cardiac or otherwise).

And so this sometimes unperson surprises no one when he says his New Year's Eves -- and the other 364 eves -- demand at the very least a modicum of sobriety, not so much as a virtue but as a personal, communal, and redeeming necessity. Achieved only by surrendering to and embracing grace, with an uppercase G, never the less. But always enough. An Abiding One-Day-At-A-Time Unearned (except by pain) Grace.

So what was "normal" today? Getting up around 10:30, everything thrown off. Sitting outside Toys R [with that obnoxious backwards, Cyrillic-alphabet-like inverted R] Us and laughing out loud at Steve Martin's genius novella The Pleasure of My Company. Laughing out loud as chubby suburban wives and surly dads and restless children run into the store and see an older man in a car reading a book -- and laughing. Do they think me a potential pervert? A molester? Let us hope not. (And somehow I think such miscreants are not inclined to wholesome laughter. Roaring laughter. Laughter at sheer humor, as well as the utterly distinct pleasure of reading someone whose style you love, whom you'd love to emulate, who just-plain resonates with you. Me, that is.) (The novella reminds me of Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine for its vision of daily minutiae.)

Did some dishes.

That's normal, isn't?

(We do not have one of those dish-washing machines, and I am glad.)

One never knows, you know? Today, in checking my emails, I found a very nice note from one of the authors on my list of 14 books, and authors.

Yikes! Who reads this stuff! question mark

It could be anyone!

Case in point: In November, I got an email from BBC Radio because I once mentioned A Perfect Spy by John Le Carre -- and they invited me to ask him a question for a radio show. And I did! I talked to him by phone! (enough of the exclamation points, dude)

Whew.

Merry New Year.

Laugh. Or....

Else.

p.s. Thanks for stopping by, Mr. Mystery Author Author. Clue to readers: I enjoyed The Nervous Breakdown.