An Archive, 2007-10
My latest Missoula Notebook piece is up.
I stopped by the Kaimin’s campus offices to ask Alger why an assault that allegedly occurred in March is only coming to light now. The short answer is that Coach Hauck has imposed what Kaimin sports editor Roman Stubbs calls “a wall of silence” around the incident. That wall started crumbling during the season opener against Western State on September 5th.
There’s profanity and everything. Read the rest here.
My latest Missoula Notebook piece is up.
The pain was bad enough that she was vocalizing through it with little gasps and moans. She said it had first started around one o’clock. The web page I was looking at offered the following general advice: “severe pain should never be ignored, so call your doctor.”
I pulled out my phone.
Read the rest here.
On the heels of the gentleman congress member from South Carolina’s outburst during Obama’s address on Wednesday night, Thomas Schaller-the best professor I never had at UMBC- offers a quick review of South Carolina’s proud pronounced history of, well, something:
No state boasts a tradition of shrill resistance to the Republic comparable to South Carolina’s.
Thomas Jefferson removed condemnations of slavery from the Declaration of Independence to appease South Carolinian slaveholders. State loyalists helped the British recapture the state in 1780 from the patriots. By 1828, state icon and Vice President John C. Calhoun was advocating state “nullification” of federal powers.
In 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede…
It goes on.
I’m monkeying around with the site’s design and layout this afternoon, so that’s why things might look a little unfamiliar/not work right.
David Ogles, a self-confessed one-time “Paultard,” confesses himself startled to find the following passage in Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek’s book The Road To Serfdom, which-Ogle says-“essentially is to socialism what Noam Chomsky’s work is to capitalism” (for those of you who aren’t familiar with Chomsky, that translates to “highly critical”):
Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance ““ where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks ““ the case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong…
…Wherever communal action can mitigate disasters against which the individual can neither attempt to guard himself nor make the provision for the consequences, such communal action should undoubtedly be taken.
So, seriously people, enough with all of this “socialism” nonsense.
Tim Kreider, my favorite cartoonist of pretty much all time, has this to say in re: 9/11 on the New York Times Happy Days Blog:
I like to think that most people who got caught up in that bellicose hysteria experienced the attacks as a spectatorial event, as unreal, and so their reaction was also unreal – like the “payback-time” montage in an action film or the impotent revenge scenarios we play out in our heads. It wasn’t until I actually went to New York City a week after the attacks that I understood how empty and inappropriate an emotion anger was to bring to the circumstances; it was like picking fights at a wake.
He seems to have semi-retired from cartooning, but you can check out his past work here. Some of them are not safe for work.
If the final version of the health-insurance reform bill doesn’t include free Botox for illegal immigrants, death panels staffed by U.S. Postal Service employees, and the criminalization of the private practice of medicine, that will prove not only that (1) Obama still plans to take these steps but also (2) just how sneaky the man really is.
Obama gave a great speech last night, but-as I’m sure was the Republican Party’s fondest hope for the kind of thing people would be discussing the next day-I note that as of about 2 p.m. (MT) the 13th most popular Google search is “joe wilson south carolina.”
I’m sure that at least some of those searching for more information about Mr. Wilson just want to get his Paypal information so they can shout him a drink, but I’m thinking that the popularity of this particular search indicates that I’m not the only one asking this question: “Who is this guy, and what led him to heckle the president during a televised, joint session of Congress?”
It certainly wasn’t tradition. While some countries’ legislatures, such as the British Parliament, enjoy a rich tradition of heckling the executive branch, Wilson’s outburst was such a breach of customary congressional decorum that Nancy Pelosi actually spat her Orbit-brand Postively Pomegranate gum out onto her podium, while witnesses described seeing Michelle Obama shaking her head and muttering “no, he didn’t” “daaammmnnn.”
The answer is quite simple, really.
Wilson is one of that small number of Americans who understand that all Obama really wants to do is suction all of the money out of law-abiding Americans’ bank accounts (Republicans first, of course) and use it to pay for mandatory abortions, free Botox and breast enhancements for illegal immigrants (as if they weren’t spicy enough already), and the execution of the elderly, whose corpses we will then stack like cord wood in the streets.
Wilson and his friends know that all of this-and worse-is true. After all, it’s right there between the lines of the health-care-reform bill that Obama hasn’t even written yet. But they can’t seem to convince the majority of Americans that, not only was Obama not really born in Hawaii, he wasn’t really born at all.
If you can, consider how all of this looks to the Joe Wilsons of the world. A vicious monster has somehow duped the majority of stupidest Americans to elect him president. Despite repeated exposure as the ruthless, conniving man that he really is, he is not only allowed to address schoolchildren-who as we can all agree should be insulated from politics and allowed to concentrate on the acquisition of knowledge, such as that the earth was created just 10,000 years ago-but the elected representatives of the people actually gather to listen to his policy proposals and applaud his turns of phrase.
It’s as if no one understood the danger of looking into the mesmerizing spirals of doom the man calls eyes.
When you look at it this way, it’s clear that-far from forcing Rep. Wilson to apologize (and hasn’t he had to do it enough?)-we should be commending the man for managing to keep the lid on as long as he did.
Finally, simply for informational purposes, I note that the 12th most popular Google search is currently for information about Wilson’s Democratic challenger, Rob Miller. Should you wish to give Miller a little money, you can do so here.
Today I was jotting off an email to a client and closed, as is often my habit, with the word “Cheers.” I typed it and then I looked at it and wondered, “why the hell do I do this?”
Depending on the context, I sometimes also close with either “Best” or “All the best” or, when it makes sense, “Thanks.” Excepting the latter, I have no idea why I use any of these closings on such a regular basis.
Interestingly, I only use any of them in business-related emails. When I write to friends or family, I don’t use closings. I either just insert a dash and then my name or, in some quick exchanges, nothing after the message body at all. (And I mean nothing: I have Gmail set up to insert a signature block with my full name, phone number, and professional web site, and sometimes, when dashing off a message to a friend or relative, I’ll actually take the trouble to erase it, I suppose so that no one will think I am gloating over my glamorous station in life.)
But with business emails, I usually use one of the aforementioned closings. Why? The difference seems to be the extent to which I am trying to control how I present myself. To friends and family, I’m not trying to present myself at all-or perhaps, more accurately, I’m trying to present myself as someone who isn’t trying to present himself.
So how do I want to present myself to clients and business contacts? That’s an interesting question, one I don’t have a clear answer for. I mean, I know, but at a very elemental, kind of instinctive level. It’s not something I’ve ever tried to put into words before. Trying now, just off the cuff, I guess I’d say I’m going for some combination of cool, confident, in control, and glad but by no means desperate for business, with all of this in some way adding up to a bargain at whatever it is they’re paying me.
I can’t say when all of this resulted in the impulse to start closing emails with “Best” or “Cheers,” though. I imagine the anthropologists can or will one day be able to trace the arc of such emailing customs. I have a vague memory that, in the early days of email, we all treated messages more like letters and so probably used closings like “Sincerely” or “I beg to remain, Sir, your most humble and obedient servant.”
Then, as email messages began to take a more fundamental role in our day-to-day communications, their family resemblance to snail-mail faded away, feature by feature. I recently worked for a man who demanded that we type the date at the top of our work emails, but I think he’d be the first to admit that he was being self-consciously and rather proudly old fashioned. (Not to mention Scottish.)
I can’t remember when I first received an email closed with “Best” or “Cheers,” but I liked it at the time. Some charmer had gotten the idea to start gesturing at the old courtesies again, and these two closings seemed to me the perfect way to do it. They sounded at once polite and at the same time meaningless, a little out of tune, as if some moon colony started by Miss Manners were finally getting back in touch with Earth.
I was right that they sounded a little unfamiliar. Doing some research just now, I learned that the Wikipedia entry on valedictions-which is what these are, apparently-includes “Best” and “Cheers” among a list of such closings that “are used in casual email but very rarely in letters.”
At any rate, for me “Best” and “Cheers” are starting to feel played out. I’m particularly dissatisfied with “Cheers” for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on. Is it just that it feels a little cheekily exhortatory, like “have a nice day”? Or its tone of unseriousness? After I asked Twitter for help finding some replacements, someone commented: “when people write “cheers” I always wonder if they’re drinking right then.”
Here are some of the other suggestions I received:
“Together in pain”.
“Unified in hatred of Sutton Stokes”.
I think “peace” is making a comeback.
I’m sure this is very dated but for guys I thought it was “Later, Dude” and gals, “Chat later”.
Time to adopt TXT speak. TTYL, TTYS, GTG, BRB. You might even turn “All the best” into ATB
I sign all my emails “Boo-yah!”
I use “Best” or “Best regards” or occasionally “Warmest regards”
All quite helpful, but none of them really do it for me. Any suggestions?
What do you say when it’s over, and why?