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Our school’s once-a-year celebration of diversity is this Friday and I’m feeling a bit left out. We have belly dancers, a Multicultural Choir (which seems to avoid the “Multi-”), and some quality teacher lip-syncing. Sadly—and I’m partly responsible for this, since I didn’t appear for a tryout—there’s nothing to celebrate my English and Welsh heritage.

I searched the web for a Wales jersey and couldn’t find one. By that I mean I guess I could find one, but I’d have to send it from Wales, and it would cost $100. Apparently there isn’t much of a Welsh contingent in the U.S. (Okay, so that haven’t qualified for anything since the 1958 World Cup. Go ahead and kick them while they’re down!) I was going to rep my heritage all day long. No such luck.

So to all my Welsh readers…forget the Paypal donations and send me a Craig Bellamy jersey. C’mon, the guy took a golf club to his teammate’s legs! That’s some proud heritage, there.

How come when a guy writes its when he really means it’s it gets blamed on his high school English teacher, even if the guy dropped out in 1974? As though he hasn’t encountered 38,263 uses of it’s/its in in the intervening  years and couldn’t once have said, “Eh, that’s weird. Two different its. Wonder what the difference is.” Nobody looks at an old, fat guy and thinks, “Man, his gym teacher should have done a better job. Back in my day….”

(Yeah, I’ve been reading the Columbia Tribune comments section again.)

It’s easy enough to get down on the 21st century and think about how much better it might have been in the past. However, a few pages of the right history book can quickly change your mind. As I always say each time I sit down in the dentist’s chair, “It could be worse. I could have a toothache in Constantinople in 832 A.D.” (Okay, I don’t really think that, but it’s something similar.)

After reading The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 by Chris Wickham, I decided to keep up my history kick with The Last Day: Wrath, Ruin, and Reason in the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 by Nicholas Shrady. (I should point out that this had nothing to with Haiti. I’d hate to be lumped in with those people who seem to wallow in a natural disaster with an ugly mix of trauma and fascination. My interest was historical and tied closely to my love of Voltaire’s Candide.)

Short version of a longer thought: This century sucks at times but it’s a lot better than the past! In the good ol’ days you get fascinating documents like the Romanus Pontifex of 1455 whereby Pope Nicholas V gave Portugal the right to:

to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery

Ouch! Add to this slavery a lot of greed, a lot of anti-Semitism, dynastic politics, and the  Inquisition and you begin to understand Voltaire’s gloomy conclusion to An Inquiry into the Maxim Whatever Is, Is Right:

What is necessary, o mortals?
Mortals it is necessary to suffer
To submit in silence, adore and die.

So here’s to 2010, where at least the dentist has Novocaine!

So I saw the Coinstar machine at the grocery and my first response, as usual, was, “Who the hell puts change into a machine that takes 15% just for counting it?” I guess if you were an illegal immigrant and couldn’t open a  bank account then it might make sense, but other than that it doesn’t show great financial acumen. Even more perplexing was the “Don’t put dirty money in the change machine!” handwritten sign taped to it. What does that mean? ill-gotten wealth? But what crime causes a criminal to end up with bucketfuls of change? Small-time crack dealing? Parking meter theft? If it means dirty as in unclean, then how do you judge whether your change qualifies? Clumps of dirt might cause the machine problems, but how can pennies with fingerprints and other gunk harm a high-tech counter? And do they really think the person who brings his or her change to the grocery store to abandon 15% of it in exchange for not having to count it is going to read the sign and then not dump the quarters in because of their impure state?

These are the pointless thoughts I’m forced into when the 98-year-old lady in line in front of me suddenly decides she needs a carton of Pall Malls and is then thoroughly (but in a time consuming manner) perplexed that they now come in a thoroughly un-Pall Mall-ish bright orange color.

There’s not much I love more than a good ethical dilemma. They force you to balance the brutality of logic with our innate human emotions. So the question of whether it’s ethical to make a cruise ship port-of-call in Haiti while hundreds of thousands are suffering has kept me thinking off and on all week. (Article HERE.)

Here’s my take on it: It is really no more or less ethical than it was in the weeks before the earthquake. I think if a person could  justify a stop in Haiti during 2009, then the earthquake hasn’t changed the equation. Why would proximity to suffering change the ethics of a decision? One exception: If your location actually increased the suffering.  If you set up an all-you-can-eat buffet within sight of starving people, I’d call it unethical.

Whether it is ethical to be on a cruise ship while 50,000 people die every day from starvation and preventable water-borne diseases is a much more complex ethical question. (Just to show I’m not being a hypocrite, the same question can be asked when you take your kids to Disney World or purchase a plane ticket for summer travel to Spain.) But it seems a bit unfair to target a few cruise ship aficionados who are choosing to spend their money in Haiti and add the slightest bump to a terrible economy.

So you go, Carnival Cruise passengers! (Unless, of course, starvation makes the whole travel industry unethical, then…uh…you’re on your own with that one.)

I’m sure I’ve said the same thing fifteen times before, in various ways.

A nice and mostly balanced interpretation of what the voting in Massachusetts means for Obama over at the New York Times. However, it reinforces in my mind how difficult it is to be a consistent politician in this country because of the contradictory positions held by most Americans.

Here’s what I mean: The problem with most Americans is that they want politicians to achieve two contradictory goals at the same time. I laugh at this attitude every time gasoline goes about $3 a gallon. The television station will interview people at the pump who are normally opposed to big government but now want the government to do something to lower gas prices. And when that’s not easily accomplished, they fall back on some simplistic conspiracy theories: “It’s expensive because of the additives the government forces them to add” or “If only they would allow drilling everywhere in America we would get nickel gas for the next thousand years.”

So it is with health care. Americans want lower health care bills and steadier insurance coverage, yet they get upset when the government tries to tell insurance companies what to do, tries to control costs by using science to measure the effectiveness of a treatment, or attempts to require everyone to maintain coverage to prevent expensive emergency room primary care. It’s an impossible task. It leads to weird contradictions like Republicans fighting to support excessive Medicare spending (a program they fundamentally oppose), or older people being against socialized medicine yet sneaking into Canada to purchase discount pharmaceuticals whose prices have been lowered due to government involvement.

Thus the failure of health care will be due to the Democrats’ inability to speak clearly and honestly, the Republicans’ pandering to base human fear, and the average Americans’ unwillingness to realize that he or she can’t have everything and that difficult choices have to be made. That’s the problem with politics. It targets the myth that we shouldn’t have to make difficult choices.

The final clear example: “Obama needs to work on jobs and housing!” The problem is that the same people argue against deficits and large government programs. So the government is tasked with fixing a problem yet asked not to intrude in any major way. What options are left? Tax cuts?

Blah. It’s like arguing with a student who says that knowing how to read and write won’t help her because she wants to be a nurse. This is my “I’m glad I’m a teacher and not Obama” post for January.

This is me being lazy: taking posts that I never finished and dropping the rough draft on my blog just to have an “update.” Whatever works.

It might be starting to seem more like a crush than a mild obsession with a modern writer, but damn I’m in awe of Roberto Bolaño. First I sent off $12 to New Directions trying to purchase copies of the poster on the left, then I spent last Sunday morning reading the latest translation—one of his earliest novels, The Skating Rink.

I was prepared to finish the book only mildly impressed, since it seems to have been a first novel by a writer who considered himself a poet and seemed to approach novels like others approach the writing of commercial jingles or advertising. It’s no Savage Detectives, but it’s still a very good book and a great starting point for somebody who has not read Bolaño before—the plot a bit more solid, the atmosphere a bit less disorienting.

Let me try to explain what it does, and why I think Bolaño is the finest of modern writers:

Here’s one funny thing about calling it an obsession: I really don’t care much about Bolaño’s life. In the typical modern fashion, those who treat him like a legend are followed by those who destroy the legend. I’ve read a few articles lately questioning the myths of Bolaño’s life, primarily his heroin addiction and his arrest during the Chilean coup against Salvador Allende in 1973. (He, of course, supported Allende.)  Maybe I’m too cynical to search for inspiration in a writer’s legend (unlike my early Kerouac worship). I care that he committed to writing, and that he spoke often and vibrantly about his opinions, and that he struggled to balance restlessness with life. That’s enough for me.

Just a few random snow days thoughts. And not just regular snow days but the rare “night before” snow days—Thursday’s called at 9:00 p.m., Friday’s at 3:00 p.m. I should start a new blog entry category called “Now why did I agree to be a teacher…?” That way when I’m about to lose it on a student, I can quickly click and remember the benefits.

Benefit #1 = Sixteen days off for Winter Break, three days of teaching, then two snow days (a.k.a. the four-day weekend).

Random Thought #1: It’s no secret that Missouri rarely makes the national news in any way that doesn’t provoke laughter. If we’re on CNN, it’s usually because somebody from Missouri wants to marry a goat, or an entire hillbilly family got arrested for turkey rustling on Christmas Eve, or parents marched on a high school in protest over the school musical department’s provocative presentation of “The Wiz.” So it was nice to read an article in the New York Times stating that “Mr. Paterson’s task force was rightly impressed with Missouri’s juvenile justice system…New York clearly needs to follow Ms. Carrión’s advice and adopt a Missouri-style system.” We’ll take what we can get.

Random Thought #2: I played a mound of Lego Star Wars on the Xbox 360 over break, but I also got into Assassin’s Creed 2. It’s easily the most beautiful game I have ever viewed, filled with amazing panoramas of Florence in the 14th century. However, much of the scenery either (1) rushes past as my character stumbles through the streets and frantically attempts to evade guards, or (2) spreads out from frighteningly exposed perches, accessed only by having my character climb hand-over-hand up windows and rails to reach the tops of the towers. (And, even worse, then I have to make him climb down!) I’m stressed and sweaty and filled with vertigo the entire time! Laugh at me if you haven’t played it, but if you have, you know what I mean.

Random Thought #3: Yes, I should have insulated my pipes better. I tried to seal the cracks in the foundation from the outside, but “50 effective” doesn’t count for much in the face of epic cold. So they froze, exploded, took out part of my basement ceiling, caused us to be without water for 24 hours, and cost me more than $700. Rough week. Now I’m starting the “Small jobs that you need to stop slacking on, Bill!” list. (Excuse in my favor = We have lived here almost eight years and it hadn’t happened before. It lulled me  into laziness.)

Again I should start by pointing out how fully unqualified I am to discuss Alex Ross’s The Rest Is Noise. My experience with music lasts all day every day (if possible), but my formal knowledge is slim and my knowledge of classical music doesn’t go much beyond Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Vivaldi, and Peter and the Wolf (since I had the record and loved it as a kid). Anyway, I’m 400 pages in and here are a few observations:

First, I guess I’m surprised how un-shocking the early modern composers sound today. I checked out Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, and Arnold Schoenberg from the library. I like them all—especially Mahler—and I’m sure they sound revolutionary compared to Bach, but they aren’t especially grating or disorienting like I expected them to be. I only notice that the sounds are a bit more aggressive and the mood less Romantic. Just by chance I also listened to Black Sea by Fennesz and Drum’s Not Dead by Liars today. I guess if I’m comfortable with these sounds—one seems to lack coherent rhythm or progression, the other is all rhythms diluted with flatness—then I’m a product of Modernism more than I expected. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that my reaction is not that different from the common attitude toward Modernism in painting. We’ve grown accustomed to rule violations and it takes a LOT to surprise a mildly accepting modern human.

Second, perhaps my favorite part of Ross’s book is his constant connection between music and politics. I’m sure a few people disliked his obsession with German politics and its interconnectedness with 20th century music, but I think it’s essential. I’ve mentioned numerous times my respect for Roberto Bolaño, especially his insistence that you can pretend that art and politics don’t intersect—but that avoidance is in itself a political statement. People who argue “Art for art’s sake!” are either (1) hermits or (2) living off a trust fund. Number one I can respect, but if you’re number two—like most proponents—then your rebellion is reactionary. Richard Strauss comes across as a #2 in Ross’s book, which is only a step better than Wagner’s entire family (who sympathize with the Nazis and deserve the shameful stain of historical judgment). I digress. My point is that I’m fascinated with how artists respond when politics forces its way into the purity of art, especially in the cases of Strauss/Hitler and Shostakovich/Stalin.

“Everything begins in mystique and ends in politics”—Charles Peguy

Finally, I really dislike Theodor Adorno, in whatever context I stumble upon him. His statements always reek of authoritarianism, which is ironic since his goal seems to be denouncing the same. It comes from this view of life:

“[Modern music] has taken all the darkness and guilt of the world upon itself. It is happy only when representing misery; it is beautiful only when rejecting beauty’s illusion.”

Okay, it’s almost the end of the year, so I’ll finally have to settle on my list of the best my favorite CDs of 2009. Here it is (in no particular order except alphabetical):

• Brakes—Touchdown
• Future of the Left—Travels with Myself and Another
• Girls—Album
• Japandroids—Post-Nothing
• Matt & Kim—Grand
• The Pains of Being Pure at Heart—The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
• Pink Mountaintops—Outside Love
• The Thermals—Now We Can See
• We Were Promised Jetpacks—These Four Walls
• White Rainbow—New Clouds

Favorite CD = Either Japandroids or Future of the Left

Most Overrated CD = Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors

CDs that I Half Hate and Half Love = Throw Me the Statue, JJ, Passion Pit, The Avett Brothers, Phoenix

Final Question= Okay, people, do you really love Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion? It’’s number one on almost every list. Hell, even Entertainment Weekly had it at number one! I’ve been listening to them since Sung Tongs and I’m still less than awed. Respected more than loved, perhaps?

Update: Okay, I think I’m going to drop Pink Mountaintops and upgrade the ranking for JJ No. 2. Maybe it’s the need for sunshine on a cloudy day.