This Week in Bull Shit

As a general rule, I cannot fathom the hullabaloo surrounding a visiting pontiff; popes are not my particular interest.

But what I really don't get is the credulity with which various press folk have bought the notion that the visit has included apologies for the Church's role in abetting the molestation and rape (let's use the right words, shall we?) of children.

Apologies have a basic framework: "I did ____; I was wrong; I am sorry." In the best instances, that statement would be followed by, "And I will do everything in my power to make right what I did wrong."

An apology does not involve having an underling (in this case, a cardinal) busily disclaiming on your behalf any responsibility:

“I personally do not accept that there is a broad base of bishops who are guilty of aiding and abetting pedophiles, and if I thought there were, or knew of them, I would certainly talk to the pope about what could be done about it,” the cardinal said.

“I am aware of bishops who have admitted to making mistakes, but those seem to be mistakes grounded in taking counsel that didn’t turn out to be good advice,” he said, explaining that he was referring to reports from psychologists and therapists.

To quote a great American playwright, MENDACITY!

A side note: my other favorite part of this long nightmare is that the large number of abused girls is underreported, giving us two wonderful offenses in one phenomenon:

1. Some members of the Church claim, and some people actually buy, that the abuse is in any way related to homosexuality.
2. The suffering of molested/raped girls is ignored.

Dewey Iacono, R.I.P.

A few weeks ago, my mom had to put the much beloved Dewey to sleep. I don't know why I haven't written about it until now, except that the Dewmaster deserves a better eulogy than my hectic schedule was permitting.

If you have ever visited my other site, you know that Dewey was, well . . . too dewy. This led to him living a life of accommodated exile where he was fed, sheltered, and cared for by our family, but disallowed entrance to the house. Instead, Dewey made the garage, the deck, and the yard his domains.

The thing was, though, that Dewey's defining characteristic was that he was happy--pretty much always. So this meant that when he was put outside, he cheerfully persisted in attempting to regain entrance to the house. For about 15 years. Every Iacono assembly-line formation to bring in the groceries was accompanied by cries from my mother of, "Watch him! WATCH HIM!"

In the early years of his banishment, Dewey's sunshiny outlook would invariably mean that, having gained access to the house, he would head straight to whatever area of the house would be most upsetting for my mom. (A favorite is the time we kids searched in a panic to hustle Dewey out of the house before our mother caught on . . . only to find him curled in a ball on my parents' bed. "Death wish," said my brother, and he may not have been wrong.)

In later years, he seemed to understand that he wasn't supposed to stay inside and, having gotten inside by the downstairs door, would walk along with us to the upstairs deck door and head out the moment it was opened. "My point being made . . .", said my brother (again).

The one thing I want to make clear is that despite his outside ways, we took very good care of this cat. One winter, when the yard was under about 15 inches of snow and Dewey was confined to the garage and walkable parts of our drive, my dad shoveled a path between the driveway and the deck so that he could have full access. The sight of the tip of Dewey's tail bopping along above the snow--his tail was almost always up, the better to communicate cheer and to whiz--is one of the most endearing memories I have of both Dewey and of my dad.

For my part, I bought Dewey a succession of snug, woolen cat beds that hugged close and plugged in for extra warmth. Winter's arrival was marked annually by a call from my dad telling us that, "Dewey's in his hat."

Even Dewey's misconduct tended toward the hilarious. I have held forth at length about how this cat taught me the important distinction between love and trust. I always welcomed him, let him follow me around, and played with him--but I never turned my back on him. The stories of those who did have a certain uniformity. The best was my mother's.

It was before Dewey was sent outside--it was, in fact, the clincher in that decision. I was in the kitchen, I think doing my homework, when I heard my mother yelling in the next room. I stepped out to see my mom standing up in front of the couch with a book in her hand, yelling at Dewey. Her summary, "I'm sitting here thinking, 'God, it's warm.' The son of a bitch pissed on me!"

And so Dewey was sent outside. But that changed little; he was an important part of our family all the same. I already miss him terribly.

Overheard in the subway

Yesterday morning, before we had managed to travel a full stop, our subway train stopped with an announcement that somebody was injured on the tracks. The power was shut down (auxiliary lights came on) and we sat still for 27 minutes. It wasn't that bad, just strange; even when trains are stopped, there's usually a hum of speakers and paused engines. It's rarely that truly quiet.

The conductor herded us up the length of the train to a car that was in the station and we were then free either to wait for the situation to be resolved (if, you know, you had a spare few hours) or to exit the station and make our way as best we could. This led to my favorite snippet of dialogue from the day:

Cop to querulous member of public: Do you have to wait for the train? No, you can do something else.

An Open Letter to This Evening's Subway Enemy

Dear Jerk,

I'm sure you spend a lot of your life being called "entitled", and because you are an idiot, you probably think that means you are actually endowed with more rights and privileges than others. Allow me to clear this up for you: people are using that word to avoid calling you an asshole. That, however, is exactly what you are.

Having thus provided you with needed information, I now feel entitled to ask you a question:

Did you really think that when I saw you, on a reasonably crowded F train, taking up a whole three-seat bench--with your spread-out legs, perpendicular elbows, and bag of crap--I wouldn't do something about it?

There were other seats. There were even other people violating the common laws of the subway--pole huggers, door blockers, etc. But your conduct was so appalling I knew I could not look away, could not possibly approve of myself if I did not do all in my power to put a stop to it.

This is why I deliberately sat on the nice end seat by the door, giving an insincere "excuse me" as I forced you to move over and take up a mere two seats. It is also why I made eye contact with the next person who got on the train, gave a head tilt, and got her to sit on the other side of you.

You are an asshole, and I will combat your socially unconscionable conduct wherever I encounter it.

I hate you.

And tonight, I defeated you.

Next time, act right.

Adair

My oddities.

Shiny tagged me to do this. I usually greet chain letters/emails/recipes with a wrathful binning, but since this one carries no threat and is instead a mere interesting exercise, I'm going along with it.

So:

Ten Weird Things about Adair

1. Capitalized prepositions hurt me. (That's why "about" is lowercase in the title; when not the first or last word of a title, a preposition of any length should be lowercase.) There's part of me that will never understand why people didn't absorb this rule in English class or don't care about getting it right.

2. I count words and have a weird system for doing so. This is going to make me sound absolutely batshit, I know, but here's how it all works:

When people speak, I count their words off on my fingers. Not always, but often. (When I was little and developed this habit, it was all the time.) I don't move my hands at all while doing this, just mentally assign the words to a digit and carry on conversation as though nothing else were happening. I don't just count off, though. It goes like this:

Counting the ten fingers:
Left pinkie, right pinkie; left thumb, right thumb; left ring, right ring, left pointer, right pointer, left middle, right middle -- from the outside in with the left going first.

Counting the spaces between:
Left between pinkie and ring, right between pinkie and ring; left between thumb and pointer, right between thumb and pointer. And so on, again working outside-in, left to right.

Unifying the hands:
Each hand gets a word of unification (left then right), and one word to unify them both. If this third, unifying word does not end a sentence, the unification does not happen at all. Instead, a cycle of 10 (and, if needed, 8) begins again. Unification can happen after any 10 or 8, but not any other time. When unification happens, I can start over or set it all aside.

And so, I love sentences of 13 and 21 words a lot.

3. When I was little, I had weird shoelace issues. I hated -- still kinda do -- the way the end of a lace will flap against your shoe after a bow is tied. So I would pull it in right against the knot. Since I also hated my shoes being loose, this meant that there would then be a hell of a lot of string in the bows -- bringing the annoying flop issue back into play. And so I would not just double-knot my laces, but stack knots on top of knots, all of them so tight as to render the knot superstructure immobile. When I went over my friend Christina Leonard's house to play and had to take my shoes off, it took forever.

4. Despite the crazy-train obsessiveness one would think is associated with habits like those detailed in #2 and #3, I am incredibly messy.

5. I hate Paul McCartney. It's atavistic and almost violent. Every time I hear his voice, all I can think is "BULLSHIT!" There is no life story associated with this, nothing about his personal history or any event in my life that makes this so. I've tried to like his work because everyone assumes that everyone else likes the Beatles and Paul, and it would make my life easier if I did. But whenever I hear his work, I am possessed with a certainty that he is where authenticity goes to die. And so I have no use for the Beatles' records, but get along famously with the Lennon solo albums and am friendly enough with George Harrison's solo work. Hell, even Ringo's put out a fun song or two. But Paul McCartney? HATE. HATE. HATE.

6. My left thumb is shorter than my right thumb. Dunno why. It looks like it didn't cook long enough or something -- the top phalange just stops short, nail bed included.

7. I remember lyrics to songs really well. This is an asset come karaoke time.

8. I hate coffee.

9. I love Mother Goose liverwurst. No substitutes. All other kinds -- peh. Good luck finding the good stuff, though.

10. I am very streaky. I'll want the same food for a long time, paint in the same color/style for a long time, listen to the same few songs for a long time. And then my fixation will wear down to a gentle affection.

The people I tag will be tagged in private, as I am fairly sure none of them will go for this. I don't need my pull dismissed publicly.