excerpts from the Lay of Healthcare

And lo, there arose from the depths the great monster, Boondoggleous Takeover Bill, or the great Reformicus Rex--depending on who's shouting at you--and with him, Skullduggerous Nancy, she of Cackle and Gavel, or Pelosi Handmaiden of Justice-for-All, depending on which blogs you read. Together they bestrode The Bought and Paid for Representatives of the Marxist-Socialist America-Hating Special Interests OR the Democratically Elected Representatives of the Will of (Especially) the (Under-rich) People, and either Micturated from a Great Height on the Bent-But-Not-Broken remnant of True Patriots and also the elderly, OR delivered the Stroke of Equal Access and Amelioration of All Woes in a wonderful sweet rain of justice and non-ideological pragmatic its all for the good statesmanship.

Whereupon the heavens turned to blood (or lollipops) and opened, and, depending on where you're sitting, rained down either a deluge of Burning Constitutions and the Sulfurous Tears of Those-Waiting-in-Lines, or Affordable Prescriptions and the Laughter of Those With Preexisting Conditions Whose Lives Will be Spared (or Covered) Just Long Enough Not to Have to Pay for All of This.

And behold! the Catastrophic/Historic Monster/King was met with such a firestorm of Vituperative Tweeting and/or Encomium-ing Facebookery that, verily, The Internet nearly exploded. "It is Meet and Good that our Great Leader Shouldst Betake Himself to teh Reforming of Healthcare! FTW! LOLZ" said one. "Lament! Lament with An Angry Voice 4 Our Citadel is Betrayed and Our Country is Toast & Kansas Has Lost & My Bracket is Ruined! :-( twote another.

Meanwhile, the Unemployment Rate was Still Nearly 10%. Fear not gentle reader! For ever and anon do the Wheels of What We're Paying Attention To turn, and soon The Mighty Warriors of Right and Left (or Wrong, depending on who's SHOUTING AT YOU) will Begirdle their Loins and begin again the Sacred Dance of Name Calling Demagoguery, each from The High Ground whilst they Lament the Unseemly Dissembling and Hate Speech of those Nasty Republidemocransicats.

Lessons

I've always assumed my ever-burgeoning man bosoms are the result of my indifference towards regular exercise coupled with my intractable penchant for pizza, but recent events have led me to believe that a more sinister cause, a less pepperoni flavored cause, may be the real culprit. I am beginning to believe that I may be turning, without consent or knowing participation, into a woman.

I know what you're thinking: "but that wouldn't explain your matching thighs and rapidly-moving-out-of-the-sub-compact-range spare tire." True. But not important. What is important is that one of my beginning students cried in a lesson today, and my first (devastated) instinct was to console this poor kid with a big maternal hug and maybe some cookies (see: penchant, pizza et. al.). I mean, it was heart-rending. Not the appropriate response for the crustily cynical manly man I am occasionally successful in believing myself to be (at least emotionally. In other respects, manly might be a stretch. see: penchant, pizza et. al.).

This kid, Brian, is a polite, cheerful, respectful, and generally happy kid. I have him for a half hour saxophone lesson on Tuesdays, but I occasionally also see him on Mondays, the other night I teach at the music academy. If he sees me he will stick his head in my room (assuming I'm not in a lesson) and say hi. We get along pretty well, is what I'm saying. Brian is also at the academy on Monday, but thats for his guitar lesson. On Tuesday he has saxophone...and piano, and violin.

The problem for Brian is that he's taking two hours worth of private music instruction every week in four different areas, and he's expected to practice outside his lesson for each of those four lessons. Brian is in fourth grade, making him all of 10 or 11 (right? I can never remember what age goes with what grade).

So the past few lessons, Brian has been moving backwards saxophonically. He's a smart kid who can read music well, but I think the notion of one more unique set of fingerings to correspond to each note, plus having to breathe and articulate is just too much. So we're going over a pretty basic tune, one that introduces us to the F# at the top line of the staff. Brian already knows this note, but there are some useful articulation things in this little piece in the Essential Elements book, so we're looking at it.

What Brian will do, and has been doing for the past couple of lessons, is give me thirty seconds of concentrated attention to whatever we're doing, and make it most of the way through his piece. Then, we're supposed to go back and make corrections, and play the piece again. What happens is that Brian zones out. He'll play completely random notes, stare off into space, and just generally give up. He'll still answer all of my questions (politely), but there is a major disconnect happening between the things he knows about music (what note is that?) and what he knows about the saxophone (how do we finger that note?). So today, the same thing was happening, and I'm trying to bring Brian around. We're going note by note at this point: "What note is that? How do you finger it? How many beats does it get?" etc. We've been doing this for about ten minutes, when Brian finally just quits. He's been quiet and polite this whole time, not acting out or being disrespectful, just not entirely there. What follows is excruciating to watch, at least for me.

Brian does not make any kind of scene. Brian, at 10 years old, is at least twice the man I am, based on his handling himself in this situation. He puts the saxophone in his lap, and just quietly begins rubbing his eyes. When this lasts longer than a normal eye rubbing should, I begin to fear the worst: "are you ok there, Buddy?" Quiet eye rubbing, just the tiniest hint of a quiver. "Hey, hey, its alright, you're doing ok Brian..." Now Brian is crying, but its amazing: none of your histrionic sobbing or convulsing. Just a sort of efficient, workmanlike drip, but with almost no sound. Fortunately, his mom comes to his lessons, so she swooped in to the rescue, gave him what amounts to a leaning-over standing hug/arm pat and tells him he's only got a couple minutes left of his lesson, it'll be ok. So Brian composes himself, neither abashed nor angry, wipes his eyes with maybe a whisper of a sniff and looks at me, as if to say: 'ok, lets keep going.' We basically ended the lesson there, and I gave him some easy review stuff to work on for next week. He put away his saxophone with the same deliberate care as he always does: swabbing, drying, etc., and then said goodbye as he left.

This kid has more gravitas and dignity at ten years old than I will ever hope to be able to feign. He's got four different instruments to learn, on all of which he's a beginner. Its obvious that he's a bright dude, and also that he wants to do well, that he's serious about learning. But at this point, he's so loaded down with obligations (esp. in piano and violin, from what I gathered. Snobby classical killjoys.) that it must feel like he's working a full time job plus overtime just to keep from drowning. It seems unfair that a kid that young should have to think of music as a burden, a deadline to be met, rather than a fun activity with a cool instrument.

In any case, he came off far better in the exchange than I did. While I didn't cry, I did feel pretty awful. I can handle making a kid cry when they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, and they don't have any good reason for not doing it other than being a snot. But I never once raised my voice or got annoyed with Brian, I was just asking him to do the millionth thing he'd been asked to do that week, and that was one over his limit for this particular day.

So, to conclude: I suspect that my feelings of soul-melting bless-his-little-heart sympathy and lament are unseemly in someone who purports to be a man, and may in fact be symptoms of late-developing hermaphroditism, thus, to bring it full circle, explaining my hairy b-cups. And while this is not to suggest that men are incapable of such advanced and complicated emotions, it does make me feel better to think that it might explain my doughy physique. Although nothing can explain away the thighs. (Not even Denise Austin, am I right girls? I mean, you eat one bag of Dove bars when you're 13 and it stays with you for life, eh? eh? ladies?)

Facebook

So Facebook has finally learned its lesson. Instead of making a huge change all at once for everybody, they've made a huge change in waves. Brilliant. By slowly introducing the radically new homepage to groups of users at a time instead of all at once, they've successfully diluted and diffused all the apoplectic rage and just general honked-off annoyance they inevitably generate with each new change. Now by the time everyone is switched over, most people will have made their peace with the new iteration and there won't be as many "We hate the new FB, change it back" groups.

They've successfully managed to saw off at the knees any sense of unified, populist sentiment against the changes they've made to an already popular product by controlling when we get to complain about it, and knowing that our attention spans are so short that we'll eventually cope with it and move on before everyone can be pissed off together.

I don't really care too much about what Facebook looks like or how it works. I'll figure it out. But imagine what our country would look like if Congress figured out how to do this.

Petsmart

the 'lets-face-it-a-little-bit-frumpy-middle-aged-women' to 'putatively red-blooded american male' ratio in the cat section at Petsmart today was approximately 74.5 to 1, the half being a woman who may have been lost, and looking for ferret food instead. The unspoken camaraderie we were all feeling in the pursuit of just the most darling little nibblies and num-nums for our respective mr. snuggles-es and whiskers-es and socks-es (and Finnegans!) began to manifest in me as a sort of atavistic nausea, as my (undoubtedly) fierce warrior/hunter ancestors announced a genetic protest at this shameful loss of manliness. Indeed it was a harrowing look into my future: a future to be characterized by stringy gray ponytails, raised-texture t-shirts, and an unmistakable feline funk. Best to adapt now though, as later it may be more difficult to adjust to a life of hungry-man frozen dinners and early-evening network television. Still, at least Finnegan now has something other than my box spring to scratch. And he IS just the scratchiest little booger, darn his cute little paws.

Live dispatch from Barnes and Noble

What follows is the exciting word-for-word transcription of an encounter with a just distractingly good-looking young woman (JDGLYW) seated directly across from me at the Barnes and Noble cafe here in Fayetteville.

Me: "..."

JDGLYW: "..."

fifteen minutes of respective book-perusal

Me: "..."

JDGLYW: "..."

exit JDGLYW.

I am going to die grumpy and alone, buried under a pile of unread books and peanut butter jars.