The Wagging Dog

I notice that many of the better bloggers have sponsored ads on their sites. That seems like a good idea. I need some visual punch, and a nice ad would be a good design element. But I want to choose my sponsor carefully.   I want something reasonably connected to the blog. Not something random, like penis enlargement pills. Which don’t work, by the way. I know you think they would, because people are selling them everywhere. I must get two or three emails a week offering me a deal. The companies that sell them seem well intentioned, but they should invest more time in training their staff. The emails are always full of really bad typos. Like ‘p3n1s’ for ‘penis’. You’d think that people who work for a penis enlargement company could at least spell ‘penis’. Weird. Anyway, they don’t work. I was thinking about a good sponsor when I remembered a ‘story’ I heard about something that ‘happened’ when someone was reading this blog. Apparently, this has ‘happened’ to a number o...

Downside: You have to pay per episode for past seasons, but it’s a bargain. Trust me. 1)    You will gain a deep appreciation of Phil Collins’ “Something in the Air Tonight.” It may become your favorite song. This could be seen as a pro or a con. 2)    Like me, you may have started watching the show and gotten turned off by just how dislikable to protagonists (Phillip and Elizabeth) are. They are basically “good Nazis”-- just following order to do unspeakable things. Walter White and Tony Soprano are angels in comparison (exactly why they seem so much worse than, say, a mob boss, is hard to say. It could be because one of the baddies is female…).   Anyway, time to come back. The truth has been sinking in for awhile, and the good Nazis are starting to realize they have been good Nazis, and are owning up to the damage they’ve done. 3)    The immigration and cold war themes have been a strong part of the show, but they are taking a back seat to...

Thesis: Insufferable assholery is a preexisting condition that ought to disqualify a person from voting on the AHCA (or any other social welfare legislation). First, let’s get a picture of who we are talking about. Ron Johnson is a US Senator from Wisconsin. During a telephone town hall I attended, he argued that it was unfair to make healthy people pay the costs of treatment for sick people. Mo Brooks, a Representative from Alabama, said that we need to reduce costs for “people who lead good lives” and are healthy. Presumably in contrast to those lazy bad people who are off getting sick instead of working. These are just two instances. Reagan gave us, “blame the poor.” Now we have, “blame the sick.” In identifying this condition as “insufferable assholery” I am not (merely) trying to be offensive. “Asshole” is a technical term, described by Aaron James in his book,   Assholes: A Theory . James writes: an asshole, "allows himself to enjoy spec...

I have decided to start blogging about my family. I have made this decision, not to strike fear into my wife and children, though that is a bit of a side benefit (keep them on their toes), and not because I have noticed that on Facebook if you post about your kids you get like 50 likes and comments, but if you post a well-reasoned essay about obscenity and trigger warnings, you get close to zippo. I admit there may be subconscious motives at work, so I can’t discount the second entirely. I believe I have decided to start writing about my family because I was thinking about my dad, and about how he would have enjoyed blogging (and how he sort of did, in fact, have a blog). So I was going to start writing a post about my dad, and then I thought of President Obama (He is actually still president, right? This is all just some sick joke, I assume). I do try to take Obama as a model, as a point of comparison. I guess it’s kind of embarrassing that I compare myself to Obama. It’s kind of...