Paraprosdokians

A friend sent me this today. I guess it must be making its way around the internet. It gave me a chuckle. Maybe you'll find it amusing, too. (I especially like #3 and #14.)

Winston Churchill allegedly loved paraprosdokians which are figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected; frequently humorous. Here are a few I've collected.

1. Where there's a will, I want to be in it.

2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on my list.

3. Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

4. If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.

5. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

6. War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

7. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

8. They begin the evening news with 'Good Evening,' then proceed to tell you why it isn't.

9. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

10. Buses stop in bus stations. Trains stop in train stations. My desk is a work station.

11. I thought I wanted a career; turns out I just wanted paychecks.

12. In filling out an application, where it says, 'In case of
emergency, notify: ' I put 'DOCTOR.'

13. I didn't say it was your fault...I said I was blaming you.

14. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut... and still think they are sexy.

15. Behind every successful man is a woman and behind the fall of every successful man is usually another woman.

16. A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory.

17. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

18. Money can't buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.

19. There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.

20. I used to be indecisive; now I'm not so sure.

21. You're never too old to learn something stupid.

22. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.

23. Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

24. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

25. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

26. Where there's a will, there are relatives.

And my favorite is...
I'm supposed to respect my elders, but it is getting harder and harder for me to find one!

"It's tough being a Southern liberal."

Karen L. Cox, a history professor at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, had an op-ed piece in The New York Times a couple of days ago that caught my attention. She had me with her first sentence: "It's tough being a Southern liberal."  As a Southern liberal who has lived most of her life surrounded, not to say overwhelmed, by a multitude of rabid conservatives, I know the truth of that sentence only too well.

Cox was discussing the recent election results, of course, but she had an interesting point to make - a point that I had not seen made anywhere else.

Many pundits analyzing the election have made much of the fact that although President Obama won the country, Romney won the former slave-holding states of the Confederacy, except for Virginia and Florida. In doing this, they opine that this section of the country is very different from the rest of the nation. Professor Cox reveals that her analysis proves just the opposite - that, in fact, the South very much followed the trend in the rest of the nation.

She states that throughout the South, voters in many urban areas gave President Obama a majority of their votes, just as voters in urban areas in other parts of the country did. In particular, she mentions that "voters in Charlotte, N.C., Atlanta, Nashville, New Orleans, Birmingham, Ala., and even Jackson, Miss., gave Mr. Obama substantial majorities, not because they are out of step with the rest of the country but because they are part of the same urban-rural divide that drives voting everywhere. "

She might also have mentioned Houston, Texas. The monster city just thirty miles from my doorstep, and indeed its county of Harris, gave President Obama a clear majority of votes. Meanwhile, here in Montgomery County and in many of the more rural counties adjacent to Harris, the split was more like 80/20 for Romney. Again, my blue vote was drowned in a sea of red.

I find this very interesting though and heartening for the future prospects for liberalism/progressivism in the South. As the demographics change and as the population becomes more urbanized and less wedded to and weighed down by the past, I think it is very likely that we may see that sea of red turn purple, and finally blue. I would love to be around to experience that and to feel what it's like to be in the majority among my neighbors!

Silent Sunday: The old Terlingua cemetery

In One Person by John Irving: A review

This book about a bisexual man and his multitudinous and varied sexual liaisons contains many of the themes of a John Irving novel - wrestling, the missing father, mentions of bears, and unconventional sex.

Over the years, in his writing, Irving has explored human sexuality in all its many expressions and, here, he brings all those themes full circle as he asks his readers to accept that all of those expressions are legitimate and are merely a part of the human experience. Of all the Irving books I've read, this one reminded me most of The World According to Garp in its delineation of Irving's favorite themes.

As the narrator of this story, Irving gives us William Abbott, Bill or Billy to most of his friends. This is Bill's story. He had grown up in a small Vermont town where sexual repression seemed a way of life. He attended a local all-boys school where all the boys - at least all the ones we get to know - seemed to be homosexual.

Moreover, the town had a librarian, Miss Frost, who was transgender. She had once been Al Frost - Big Al - and was a famous wrestler at the all-boys school. Bill was not aware of this history (because this was a town that was very good at keeping secrets from its kids) when he met her and developed a heavy and "inappropriate" crush on her. Later, he has his first sexual experience - sort of - with her and learns that she has a penis, a word which Bill is unable to pronounce because it is steeped in such emotion for him. He says "penith," rhyming it with zenith.

His experience with the transgender librarian causes her to be sacked and permanently embitters Bill against his mother and his aunt who were prejudiced against the librarian from the start. Oddly, all of the male members of Bill's family seem perfectly accepting of his sexual proclivities and of Miss Frost, or Big Al as they knew her. Indeed, they are admiring of the librarian and defend her, to no avail, in the big kerfuffle that leads to her dismissal.

Bill Abbott survives his high school years, not without trauma, and heads off to Europe with a school friend. There, they engage in, what is for both of them, their first fully homosexual affair. They do "everything," the narrator tells us. By the time they return home, Bill is aware that this companion is not for him long-term, and he is eager to move on. This becomes the recurring theme in his life and sexual history. He's never there for the long-term. He's always eager to move on to the next experience, the next anus or vagina.

Humor is always a part of an Irving book and that is true here as well. The funniest bits seem to be about vaginas and about Bill's faux pas in regard to them, including a memorable description of a vagina as "not ballroom-sized" which unaccountably(?) offends its owner. Our narrator seems essentially uncomfortable with that orifice and unable to deal with the person attached to it.

Bill finishes college and begins a successful career as a novelist. He also continues his career as a sexual explorer and experimenter. His novels reflect his sexual interests.

He moves from one sexual affair to another, most of them with men, but occasionally he dabbles in women. His best friend throughout is Elaine with whom he had bonded in childhood. They try sex together but it is unsatisfying. Nevertheless, they live together, platonically, on various occasions throughout their lives.

This story is being told by Bill as he nears 70 and looks back over the decades of his life. Those decades are marked by a series of sexual affairs, but he never seems to find "in one person" that soul mate he is seeking. Or is he really seeking a soul mate? The closest he comes is with Elaine, but he is perfectly happy with his casual affairs and he will never give them up.

I was engrossed in this book for about two-thirds of its length, but then it began to feel really repetitious to me. After a while, the recitation of serial affairs began to pall. Moreover, we entered the AIDS years and much of the story began to revolve about the horrible symptoms suffered by Bill's friends who were sickening and dying all around him. Not that that isn't compelling stuff, but I needed more context for these victims. In spite of his serial sleeping-around, Bill was never infected because, as he assures us, he had always insisted on the use of condoms since 1968. Plus, he was a "top," and it seems that "bottoms" are more susceptible to infection. Who knew?

Irving wants us to accept his characters as perfectly human, perfectly normal, despite their different sexual appetites and expressions and I have no problem with that, but it would have been easier if I had found the characters a bit more sympathetic. Mostly, I got really impatient with them before the end.

A recurring sentiment is expressed by Bill Abbott in the final paragraph as he speaks to the son of a long-ago school mate who had tormented him: "My dear boy, please don't put a label on me - don't make me a category before you get to know me!" Trouble is, I never really felt I got to know him.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan can't stop insulting voters

First it was Paul Ryan blaming the Republicans' loss on "urban" voters. Wonder who he could have been referring to? No doubt all those people who listen for "dog whistles" understood him very well.

Of course, Ryan neglected to mention that his ticket also lost predominately white and rural states like Iowa and New Hampshire, and underperformed in Midwestern states, but then the flimflam man has never lived in a reality-based state. 

Speaking of the state where he does live, Wisconsin, he lost that, too, AND he lost his own home town! 

Then along came Ryan's partner in losing, Mr. Romney. Speaking this week to donors to his campaign, he blamed the loss on President Obama giving "gifts" to various segments of voters. Here's just a snippet of his insulting remarks about "those people" who didn't vote for him; you know, that irresponsible 47 percent. Except it turned out to be 51 percent.

With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest, was a big gift. Free contraceptives were very big with young college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people. They turned out in large numbers, a larger share in this election even than in 2008…

You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity, I mean, this is huge. Likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus. But in addition with regards to Hispanic voters, the amnesty for children of illegals, the so-called Dream Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group. 

Every word drips with disdain.

After he was caught out with his remarks about the 47 percent at that meeting of his backers in Boca Raton, he said that he had not expressed himself "elegantly," which may be the understatement of the year. He went on, of course, to assure us that he really cared deeply about 100 percent of Americans. But this latest meeting with backers gives the lie to that. The Romney who dismissed the "47 percenters" and the Romney who has nothing but contempt for "those people" who are swayed by "gifts," that is the authentic Mitt Romney. The sore loser.

Now, if Romney had been elected, you can bet he would have been passing out "gifts" left and right to his super-rich friends. Slashing their tax rates and putting in special breaks in the tax code that only apply to the very, very rich and, of course, doing away with that regulation thing and generally making the world safe for robber barons.

What a piece of work these two guys are. Real charmers. Wonder how they ever lost?

If they really want to know, they could look in the mirror. But that would probably be more reality than they can bear. 

Wordless Wednesday: The watcher

Will I have to self-deport?

It seems I may have to move after all. Texas, along with several other states, is petitioning the White House website to secede from the United States. Well, to be perfectly clear, it isn't Texas that is submitting the petition; it is about 64,000 particularly benighted Texans. And the truth is you could probably round up that many Texans to support most anything, and that is just another indictment of the educational system in this state.

This particular action has gotten attention because the White House website rules indicate that if a petition has more than 25,000 signatures it requires a response. Even though equally benighted citizens in other states have sent in such petitions, apparently there aren't as many of them as there are in Texas so they haven't reached the 25,000 threshold. Once again Texas stands alone in its specialness.

In this instance, even Rick Perry, who once floated the idea of secession, has distanced himself, releasing a statement to say that he "believes in the greatness of our Union and nothing should be done to change it." Well, I'm glad he cleared that up.

So, if Texas secedes , then I guess I will have to - in Mitt Romney's famous words - "self-deport" to a more congenial state, one that is perhaps not quite so ignorant of the benefits that a state receives from being a part of the United States and perhaps one that is less divided by racism. Because, yes, that is what is at the bottom of this. There are still white people in this country who cannot stand the thought that a majority of the voters have now elected a black president - TWICE!!! They are so filled with hate and fear that they cannot see past the ends of their own noses. I guarantee that most if not all of these petitioners are white. Moreover, I can further guarantee you that most of them are men.

Anyway, the 64,000 signatures represent just 0.2 percent of the population of Texas, so I'm thinking that rather than having the rest of us leave, a better solution - a much better solution - would be for these 64,000 to self-deport. Perhaps they could pool their resources and buy a desert island somewhere, so that they could set up their own government and be free at last. They can build their own highways, hospitals, and schools, train and support their own first responders and their own army, navy, and air force. That might prove difficult though since they don't believe in the concept of taxation.

These crazy Texans and all those crazy people from other states who think they want to secede are out of luck. As constitutional law professor Bill Funk points out, "It's not in the president's power under the Constitution to let a state secede. In fact, it's not clear whether anyone, even Congress, could let a state secede. It might, in fact, take a constitutional amendment."  And that constitutional amendment ain't gonna happen! The fact is, this question was settled back in the 1860s and all those cranky folks might as well get used to it.

But if they really, really can't stand the thought of having a black president, then again I say, self-deport yourselves! And don't let the door hit you on the backside on the way out.

And if you do somehow manage to secede, let me make one thing clear: You can't have my house and yard! If you can secede from the United States, then I can secede from Texas and become the proud and free State of Dorothy.