underdogishere

We were in a restaurant, and at a nearby table the waiter was wrapping up serving a party. Overheard:

Waiter: Happy Holidays!

Patron: Where I come from, we say "Merry Christmas."

Waiter: We're supposed to say "Happy Holidays," so we include people who don't celebrate Christmas.

Patron: First we were entertained by your stupidity, and now we're being entertained by your bulls**t.

Except this obviously pious Christian didn't censor himself with asterisks.

Labels: Overheard

A young man speaking:

My grandma is kinda mostly sane. Sometimes.

The color commentator on a broadcast team covering a college football game:

The kid's got a good imagination. When he graduates, he wants to be a fictional writer.

I guess if you go around telling people you're a writer, but you don't write a word, then that would make you a "fictional writer." No?

Finally, a woman speaking with a young man who appears to be in a relationship with her son:

Woman: Does your mother smoke?
Young Man: No, she never has.
W: Does she drink?
YM: No, she never drank. But once when I was little I ate some of her brownies and... they weren't right.

Labels: Overheard

A couple of months ago, on Morning Edition, there was a professor who specialized in Pakistani history talking about why so many Pakistanis have such crazy ideas about the United States (for example, that the U.S. funds the Taliban). She said it was due to a "reality deficit."

Reality deficit! The term struck me immediately. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Now, I don't want to imply that every boneheaded belief is due to ignorance. For example, I suspect that most Young Earthers are well aware of the preponderance of evidence regarding the true age of the Earth. They aren't boneheaded because of a deficit of reality. They're just boneheaded because they choose to be.

On the other hand, I think there's a constant stream of evidence that the boneheaded ideas of many so-called Tea Party members and many religious conservatives can be chalked up to reality deficits. Some good examples are the many so-called Tea Partiers that I've heard claiming that Obama should be impeached for violating the Constitution, or that the Constitution states that Christianity is the official religion of the U.S., but who, when questioned, admit that they have never actually read the Constitution. This ignorance creates a knowledge vacuum -- aka a reality deficit -- that can be filled in or made up by any talking head or radio jockey saying pretty much whatever he wants. You see, the real value of the idea of reality deficits, as expressed by that Pakistani professor, isn't just that people are ignorant. No, the real insight goes a step further: It's how this missing reality leaves a gap into which obviously wrong ideas can be easily poured.

So much attention these days is being directed at budget deficits. In my humble opinion, those aren't the deficits that should really be scaring us.

Labels: Dubya, Language, Musing, Overheard

Judi, as we were leaving a bar-b-que restaurant last week: "I'm leaving with wings on my fingers and ribs on my toes."

Labels: Overheard

From time to time I teach classes where I work. In one particular class, all but one of the students arrived early. While we were waiting for the final student, the ones who were there were talking among themselves. The following snippet occurred between a young, blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman, who I will call Sue (not her real name), and a young man from India working for us on a Green Card, whom I will call Umang (not his real name). You should know that my employer bunches our holidays together so we get a week and a half or two weeks off over the Christmas and New Year holiday -- that's our "Christmas Break":

Sue: Are you going back to India during Christmas Break, Umang?

Umang: No.

Sue: You did last year, didn't you?

Umang: Yes, but it's too expensive for me to go every year. I go every other year.

Sue: Do you even celebrate Christmas?

Umang: No, I am a Hindi.

Sue: Does that mean you worship the Devil?

Me: ::head bang on podium::

Labels: Overheard

A while back (okay, five years ago -- how times flies) I posted about the magical effect of the phrase "bless his heart." Last week a coworker informed us that she nags her father, but, she added, "it's all good."

"It's all good." Such a breezy statement. Just as it seems you can say anything bad about anyone if you include "bless his heart", you can also confess to any crime and be forgiven as long as you wrap it up with, "it's all good." The Urban Dictionary has this entry for "It's all good":

Platitude that covers so many emotions and situations that it says little; its only real meaning is that the speaker is trying to rise above whatever problem exists, without expressing their underlying negative emotions.

Ouch. C'mon, Urban Dictionary, don't hold back.

Anyway, as with "bless his heart," let's see how far we can push this. Let's start with the original inspiration for this post:

I nag my Dad, but it's all good.

Okay, she seems to be saying, "it's not like it sounds." She might even be implying (or intending to imply) that her Dad doesn't mind being nagged.

Let's kick it up a notch:

I wrecked my Dad's new car, but it's all good.

Okay, we can buy this, too. Maybe Dad is simply grateful that his child wasn't hurt. And who knows? Maybe he was already regretting buying that particular model, and he's relieved that fate took it off his hands.

I got mad at Dad and threw a glass and cut him over the eye, but it's all good.

You know, this example begins to show the real power of "it's all good", because it works. "It's all good" is so obdurately positive that it convinces you that, somehow, something positive came out of this incident. It somehow ended well. The world is a better place for this assault and battery.

One final try:

I framed Dad for that armed bank heist that I pulled, and now he's doing twenty-five in the state pen, but it's all good.

Doesn't this leave you with a sunny, happy little feeling? It is all good. And, somehow, we are deflected from the question of, for whom?

Labels: Language, Overheard

I was standing in the back aisle of a supermarket, waiting for an employee to check on something. I was trying hard to overhear a young man -- a scruff of hair on his chin, wearing black jeans and a black t-shirt showing upper arm tattoos -- was monologing while two two women -- one apparently with him and one an employee, hopefully not on duty -- listened. This was the line that first caught my attention:

"I was so Dostoevsky, and she was so J. K. Rowling."

People really talk this way? To other people? In public? Really?

Unfortunately I couldn't hear everything, so I couldn't get the drift of the conversation... er, monologue. But I heard this:

"I so did not want to move in with my mom and dad. I would have done anything to get out of it. I would have sold an intestine."

Dude, I would suggest that you sell a kidney first. You need your intestine.

Labels: Out and About, Overheard

ESPN Radio has taken over a station in my area. I'm not much of a sports fan, but sometimes I like to listen to talk radio, instead of music, and ESPN is loads better than Rush. Anyway, I heard both of these gems on ESPN Radio on the same day:

"You can't see the forest through the trees."

Yes, there's a forest over there, but you wouldn't know it because some durn fool went and planted trees.

"You don't wanna know what skeletons they're going to dig up in his closet."

For some reason I always thought that ESPN personalities were pretty well paid, but apparently this one is so destitute that he lives in a house where the closets, at least, have dirt floors. Here I am a lowly computer programmer, and even I live in a house where the closets have carpet-over-concrete floors.

But these aren't what's embarrassing (the title of this post). No, what's embarrassing is this: I was checking my server logs, and found that someone had come, not to this blog, but to one of my trip albums over on http://beaglewriter.com/albums, by searching Google Australia for the string "i undressed to my boxer shorts".

Really?

Really. You can try it for yourself:

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=i+undressed+to+my+boxer+shorts&start=39&sa=N

In my defense (such as it is), the passage that the result links to was meant to be innocuous:

I think I've mentioned how hot it is here [St. Maarten]. You can only wear an outfit once -- it gets so soaked with sweat, it's toast after that. To wit: By the time we got back to the resort today, and I undressed, my boxer shorts, clean that morning, had a solid white stain at inch high all the way across the front, where they crease while I'm sitting. It was salt. From sweat.

Still, embarrassing.

Labels: Language, Musing, Overheard

While I'm on an "as heard on All Things Considered" kick (look back a few posts), several weeks ago they ran a series on the science of spirituality, and one of the segments was about an area in the brain that seems to be active when people experience visions or other spiritual revelations. It turns out that this area is stimulated by some mental illneases and produces symptoms such as seeing visions and hearing voices. One scientist has even invented a "God Helmet" that stimulates this area magnetically to create artificial visions. The speculation is that when ordinary people (meaning those without mental illness) have spiritual revelations, it's due to activity in this part of the brain, which has been nicknamed the Godspot.

One question that the ATC segment asked is whether this discovery calls into question the credibility of spiritual revelations -- whether or not revelations are merely expressions of mental disturbance in the Godspot. One scientist stated flatly that the Godspot "proves there is no God" (or words to that effect).

Really?

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know I'm an atheist, so I don't have an axe to grind here, but at the same time I have trouble abiding stupidity and illogic. If I were a theist (which I'm not), the discovery of the Godspot wouldn't shake my faith in God. Rather the opposite: If no Godspot had been discovered, I would have considered that a challenge to belief in God's existence. The Godspot strengthens the argument for God's existence.

Why?

Well, let's look at an example vision. It doesn't matter which one -- let's take the angel's appearance to Mary to announce she would become pregnant with Jesus. Any vision will do, but we'll use this one:

Looking at this revelation from a theistic point of view, the angel is a supernatural manifestation. The angel exists in the supernatural world. However, when it's all over, Mary's experience of the angel resides in her memory -- a biological and chemical state in her brain which is natural, not supernatural. So what's happened is that the experience of the angel has bridged over from the supernatural world -- a world that Mary can't access under normal, every-day circumstances -- to the natural world -- the chemistry in Mary's mind. Since Mary herself is not a supernatural being and does not have supernatural senses, there has to be some mechanism that allows the supernatural manifestation to translate into a natural manifestation. Call this the "Natural/Supernatural Interface," or, since I'm a geek, the NSI.

Now, if you aren't thinking this completely through, you might say that there's no need for an NSI -- that God just "communicates." But that's simplistic. The end result of the communication is a chemical state in Mary's brain, and somehow that had to be brought about. That "somehow" is the NSI.

So, what is the nature of the NSI? Well, the simplest NSI that I can imagine is that the supernatural angel emits natural light and sound which is perceived by Mary's eyes and ears. So Mary sees and hears the angel the way she would a natural person. But there's a couple of reasons why God would consider this NSI to be subpar. First, we are very limited in the depth of experience that we can perceive through only sight and sound, and I assume that the supernatural world is even richer and more intense than our natural one, so relying only on sight and sound would require a big dumbing down of the supernatural experience. Also, we know from studies where groups of people are exposed to the same event and then asked what they saw that the experience of sight and sound is pretty unreliable; different people perceive the same scene differently, which hardly makes it a great choice for receiving God's communications.

Another possible NSI is that the supernatural being simply made the chemical changes necessary in Mary's brain so that she "remembered" experiencing the angel. But this seems awkward to me, especially for real-time communication, as Mary would have to first recall each step of the experience in order to form a response.

No, it seems to me that the most effective way for God to ensure that He and His supernatural agents could communicate with natural beings would be to provide a Godspot -- an area of the brain where the supernatural could "draw" the experience directly into the brain of the natural being, as on a slate or blackboard, but affecting many senses and on many levels. That God would create in us a Godspot makes perfect sense.

Well, you might say, if the Godspot is a Divine creation, then how does it become diseased (in people with delusional mental disorders)? Wouldn't God make it immune from disease and reserve it solely for his use?

Um... no. The Godspot is, after all, on the "natural side" of the Natural/Supernatural Interface, and so, like all natural things, it must be subject to disease. If it weren't, it would be, well... unnatural. It also makes perfect sense that the Godspot, being part of the natural brain, would be subject to artificial stimulation that would create false revelations.

So I would find vindication of my faith in the discovery of the Godspot. If I were a theist.

But I'm not.

Labels: Musing, Overheard, Transcendental

I know my posts have been pretty sparse lately. I hope to change that, and in particular I have a lot of butterfly news to get caught up on. In the meantime, I wanted to mention a line I heard on NPR's Morning Edition this morning. The mayor of a suburban Miami town was talking about his town's effort to score funds from the upcoming economic stimulus package:

"We're barking up every tree in the forest."

I guess if you're going to bark up a wrong tree, why not bark up every wrong tree. As well as the right one, hopefully.

Somehow, it seems like a very beagle-ly strategy. :) I wish him and his town well.

Labels: Overheard, Princess Sunni

...a coworker:

You know, we didn't rectally deliver that.

Labels: Overheard

Overheard, at work, where a new person is being trained:

"Undo is your friend."

Amen, sister.

Labels: Inner Geek, Overheard

...by Judi, to me, about someone else whom we both know:

"Why does she always go out of her way to make herself miserable? It's like she can't be happy unless she's miserable."

Labels: Overheard

On one of those radio "morning shows" with the multiple DJs who banter back and forth, one of them (male) said:

Gay guys are constantly having sex because they don't have a woman to tell them "no."

My first thought was that, by inference, lesbians never have sex at all. ;)

Labels: Gender Issues, Overheard

"I'll start wearing Depends before I give up drinking coffee."

(For the record, I do not drink coffee.)

Labels: Overheard

This morning I was driving my car and scanning through the channels on the radio, when Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart came on and I heard this line:

There's no one in the universe as magical and wonderous as you.

It's true, you know. It really is.

Labels: Overheard

I finished my discussion over on the Nero Wolfe Mailing List. It went pretty well. Hopefully I can now devote some more time to this blog. I did have an overheard this morning. I was walking through the factory and I heard a female voice say, loudly, "Yay! I mean, Whoops!"

Labels: Nero Wolfe, Overheard

(Okay, one last quick post:)

I was just at the gym. On the radio station that they blast from the ceiling, the DJs were talking about a recent survey that apparently found that a majority of American women would give up sex for a year in return for a closetful of clothes. The headline was "Women prefer clothes over sex." Something like that.

Anyway, there were two jocks on the ab benches near me, doing crunches:

Jocks: Grunt, grunt, grunt, grunt....

Jock #1: Did you hear that? Women would give up sex for a year in return for clothes. That's unbelievable!

Jocks: Grunt, grunt, grunt, grunt....

Jock #2: Yeah.

Jocks: Grunt, grunt, grunt, grunt....

Jock #1: But you know most guys would probably give up sex for a year in return for a new Harley.

Jocks: Grunt, grunt, grunt, grunt....

Jock #2: You gotta point.

Labels: Overheard

I have to confess that this is a repost of a comment that I left on another blog. But I wanted to post something to get the taste of the mail-order bride post out of my mouth, and this was the story to do it. And, hey, as an extra bonus, it was already written. Sorry, T and W.

This is a true story. It happened the final time that Judi and I ate at Wolfie's, the wonderful delicatessen that was in Miami Beach for almost fifty years. It was a melancholy meal to begin with, because it was the last day the restaurant was to be open. It was in 2002, and the man who had started it and run it had just died, and his sons had sold the place out so it could be flattened and a high-rise condo could be built on the spot. But at the table next to us they seated a very elderly woman and man. The man clearly had Alzheimers. Just as clearly, they had been there many, many times. The waitress didn't even offer them menus.

"I want spaghetti," the old man told the waitress.

"Honey," said the old woman gently, "you don't like spaghetti."

"I want spaghetti," the old man said, petulantly.

"Bring him spaghetti," the old woman said to the waitress, "and meatloaf. I'll have soup."

"I don't like meatloaf!" the old man said as the waitress left.

"I ordered you spaghetti," the old woman said soothingly.

"Good!" said the old man.

Wolfie's was a New York-style deli, with the pickles and cole slaw on every table.

"I want a pickle," said the old man.

"Honey," said the woman, "you don't like pickles."

"I want a pickle!"

The old woman handed him a pickle. He took a bite, made a face, and dropped the pickle bite out of his mouth. The old woman was ready with a napkin and caught it.

"That's awful!" he said.

"You don't like pickles," she said quietly, taking the rest of it from his hand.

Their food arrived. The waitress put the soup in front of the woman, the spaghetti in front of the man, and the meatloaf on the other side of the table. The old woman watched expectantly. The old man took some spaghetti on his fork, and, trailing strands behind, lifted it to his mouth. He put the fork in his mouth, then made a face and spit the spaghetti back onto his plate.

"This is awful!"

"You don't like spaghetti," said the old woman gently, and she switched plates with the meatloaf. "Try this."

"I don't like meatloaf."

"Here, just try a bite," she said, and she fed him a bite. He chewed.

"This is pretty good!"

"Meatloaf is your favorite."

The old man picked up his fork and dug in. The old woman ate her soup, but she watched him constantly and cleaned up -- usually anticipated -- little accidents that he kept having.

Judi and I watched without saying a word. After they left, Judi said to me, "She was so gentle and patient! And who knows how many years he's been like that, and how many more he may be?"

And all I could say was, "She must love him very much."

Labels: Overheard, Seen, Uplifted

Judi: Do you feel like the little bald-headed stepchild?

Me: I think the phrase is "red-headed stepchild."

Judi: Not in your case.

Labels: Aging, Overheard