Dr. Metablog

Advice for Parents, Part I

On the telephone, The Daughter (as she sometimes calls herself) was fussing about her teen and tween children. "I'm on the warpath (her metaphor) about the mess. I'm tired of cleaning up after them. Right now T. has left a pile of her homework on the kitchen floor. She's at ballet for two hours. What do I do?  Walk around it or clean it up. Why does she do this?  And O. has left half a sandwich and piece of apple on the table. I failed to train them when they were young and now it's hopeless."

Every parent in North America, and perhaps every parent in the known universe, might make the same complaints.

I tried to console The Daughter. "If you'd like to take ten minutes to vent, I'm here to listen."

She vented for thirty seconds, then fell silent. Frustrated.

I said, "Here's the way I think of it now. You lose every battle, but you win the war."

"Explain," she muttered.

"It's obvious. When you and your brothers were growing up, there was some sort of conflict every day. One of you didn't show up for dinner. Whoever was supposed to take the garbage out, 'forgot' to do it. Someone would get into a screaming fit at someone else over nothing significant. Quarters would be stolen out of pants pockets. Some inches of liquor would mysteriously disappear. Sassy words would be spoken to parents and parents would be devastated. Someone wasn't sleeping at the house where he or she said he or she was going to spend the night. Mileage on the car speedometer would increase without explanation. There were horrible scenes when someone was asked to do the most minimal of chores.

And yet, despite it all, despite the fact that every day I lost the battle, I won the war. Each of you turned out to be what my own father used to call 'solid, taxpaying citizens.' You've all doing good works. All living upright, moral lives. All creating healthy, functioning families. All of you are excellent parents. The grandchildren are thriving.

So in the long run, I won. Lost every battle, won the war."

The Daughter said, "Blog it."

An Incontrovertible Proof of Evolution

'The placement of the human male genitalia is ridiculous and ill-conceived. What in the living heck are such sensitive and vulnerable organs doing right out there -- in front, dramatically positioned to be bumped by furniture or careless hands, struck by flying objects, or pummelled by grandchildren. In any intelligently-designed universe, the penis would be entirely retractable, making its appearance only when summoned. (Nor would it be a dual-purpose organ.  Every engineer knows that dedicated instruments always perform better than devices that combine functions.

Moreover, the testicles would be buried deep inside the body cavity, as, for example, the spleen or the ovaries -- not hanging loose, ungirded and swattable.

Freud once remarked that the male organs of generation have not evolved in the direction of beauty. And therefore not even the crassest male flaunts his stuff to attract a mate. Or never did, not until the coming of the internet. If the parts weren't intended to beautiful, then they might as well have been concealed and protected. But not so.

Why are they where they are?  The culprit, obviously, is evolution -- specifically, the shift to upright  posture. Four feet on the ground and the apparatus is tucked away behind the hind legs, way back there in the anterior. Protected, inconspicuous, and discreet. Stand up, and there they are just where they shouldn't be. A three-year-old child with a box of crayons could produce a better design than frontward-facing genitalia. 

Instead, we're left with either another example of divine under-achievement, or further and supererogatory confirmation that the universe is disorderly, aleatory, and improvisational.

It was when women joined in standing upright that breasts came into prominence. There is no other  mammalian species in which the organs of lactation are so clearly displayed. But female breasts had the good sense to evolve into an essential part of sexual display.  "Hey, mister, look at these. Look how well I can nurse your babies."

Now there, at last, is an evolutionary outcome that makes sense.One that a guy can bring himself to endorse and admire.

An Early Introduction to Political Foreboding

I was thirteen years old when Eisenhower-Nixon defeated Adlai Stevenson. I was of course horrified. In what sort of nation, I thought, could a doddering simpleton with a dark mccarthyite machiavel at his ear defeat an intelligent, educated, humorous progressive. Ghastly, ghastly.

Mullling this over this morning, I remembered that while Truman was still in office, postage stamps would be cancelled (hand-cancelled in those days) with the inscription, "Twenty-five years of Social Security." But right after the Eisenhower inauguration, the slogan was altered to "Pray for Peace."

A message about a concrete program that actually helped people suddenly turned into a meaningless, faux-religious instruction. "Pray for Peace" did not seem then, nor now, like a viable political position. "Pray for Peace" did not speak to me.

Sixty years later and the Republicans are still beating the same meaningless drum, still going backwards.

Not only have the damn Republicans not caught up with the age of reason, but they're still embracing the dark ages. The hole into which they've inserted their collective heads is not only deeper but considerably more vacuous.