It was a quiet weekend in Lake Woebegone (to paraphrase a program I stopped listening to years back). The weather was mild for July hereabouts. On Saturday I made a full frontal assault on my renter’s door latch and finally got it working properly. On my uncle Orvis’ advice, I took my Dremel tool to the hole in the striker plate. After some work I discovered that the hole needed to be extended, not sideways, but up. I wore down a grinder head (they made those old striker plates strong back in 1929. Nowadays they’re thin brass. I think this one must have been cast iron), but I prevailed in the end.

Another crisis met and mastered.

On Sunday I actually went to a museum to look at paintings, something I never do.

It came about in this fashion: My friend Chip called me some time back and said he had tickets to this exhibit of Scandinavian landscape paintings at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (the link includes a slide show featuring some of the artworks, in case you’re interested).

I took it for granted he’d gotten the tickets from somebody, didn’t want them, and was trying to give them away. Most anything Scandinavian is fascinating to me (except for their furniture and their politics), but I wasn’t keen to drive around looking for parking in that particular “vibrant, diverse” neighborhood. And anyway, I had no one to use the second ticket. So I told him no.

Then he explained, and I comprehended at length, that he actually wanted to go himself, and was planning to go, and just wanted company. So I agreed.

I enjoyed it more than I expected. The sorrow and pity of the thing was that as the exhibition went on (it was more or less chronologically arranged), the paintings got less interesting to me. I loved the earlier, realistic, Romantic pictures with ships at sail and big storms and bent trees. As the fashion grew more impressionistic and abstract, it all became more and more about the artists and their own states of mind (usually depression). Yes, I’m a Philistine, and I’m proud of it.

Still, it was all interesting. I can look at art with a small trace of comprehension, because I used to draw myself. A lot.

When I was a kid, my life plan was to be some kind of artist. Not a fine artist, but either a commercial artist or a cartoonist. I drew obsessively. Whenever I run into an old classmate, I can count on them asking me, “Are you still drawing?”

My subject matter was a “dead” giveaway. I liked guns. I liked swords. I liked fighting and battles. If were a school kid today, they’d ship me off to a psychologist for counseling (which wouldn’t be a bad thing, come to think of it). My chief subject was the Civil War, until I discovered Vikings. Then I drew Viking battles. Two recurring characters in those old Viking pictures eventually became Erling Skjalgsson (as I think of him) and Lemming, both familiar if you’ve read The Year of the Warrior.

And then, toward the end of high school, I started writing. I think the catalyst for the change may have been my learning to type. I’d always been frustrated with my drawing. What ended up on paper was never exactly what I’d been shooting for, and I always felt I was hammering at the brick wall of my talent limitations. When I started making stories, that frustration vanished, or at least was greatly reduced. I felt I had (or would be able to attain) real mastery of this medium.

So I stopped drawing, pretty much unconsciously. It was some time before I even noticed I’d given it up.

But it’s still enjoyable to look at well-done painting.

There were a couple Edvard Munch’s (the Scream guy’s) works in the collection, but give me J. C. Dahl, for my money.

Where do you like to read? Favorite chair? In the tub? Down on the ccean floor? I have a chair in my house which is cursed with a sleeping hex, I suspect. Whenever I try to read in it, I have to fight off sleep.

In which each player lists eight facts/habits about themselves, the rules of the game being posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed, eight people tagged at the end of the post, listing their names. The player then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read his blog.

In this post, I am to list eight facts/habits about myself, and I’m tempted to list such banal observations as my possession of ten fingers and two ears. No matter what you think about me, I do in fact have ten fingers and, though I can’t see them at the moment, I also have two ears. What else is there to know about me?

1. Here’s a deep one. Though I believe a newish pair of khakis shrunk an inch in the wash, I still wear them. I look silly in them sometimes, but I am silly sometimes so maybe it fits me perfectly.
2. Like Lars, I have read The Lord of the Rings aloud to my wife, children, and sister-in-law–The Hobbit and part of The Silmarillion too.
3. I also read The Man Who Was Thursday off the Internet to my fabulous wife, and my oldest girl, who was three or four, heard part of it and asked to hear it again a little later. She is so cute.
4. I wear size 11.5 shoes and currently own two pair of ECCO brand. They have been great, comfortable shoes, but when they wear out, I think I’ll buy something cheap. Maybe a penny-loafer.
5. I am in the habit of rising promptly with my morning alarm and falling asleep in a chair a few minutes later, sometimes bending over in such a way that my arms or legs go to sleep too. I’m trying to break that habit.
6. I work as an in-house graphic designer for CBMC.
7. Sometime this year, I hope to start a fight in the steel cage at iStockphoto. I don’t have the skills for it yet. The photo editing I did a little while back–kid’s stuff.
8. In college, a friend and I wrote a little murder mystery for our friends to role-play. It didn’t come off the way I wanted, but it was fun, so I supposed we succeeded in our first time at role-playing a story. My co-writer got herself murdered because she knew who the real criminal was and wanted to see all of the action, so she pursued him, not thinking she could easily become a victim.

Tags: Jared of Thinklings (and whatever other blogs he plants)

Philip of Thinklings

Mark Bertrand

Gaius at Blue Crab Boulevard

Kevin of Collected Miscellany

Scott, who is the nameless warrior

Amy of Books, Words, and Writing

and You. Leave a comment to let me know where you post your list. (Most links removed because they ain’t good no longer.)

Listening to talk show host Laura Ingraham in the mornings doesn’t usually lower my spirits, but today was just depressing.

She made a comment about guys who don’t know how to kiss. “They’re the worst,” she said, if I remember correctly.

Cut me to the quick, that one did.

Now I know how liberals feel, getting personally attacked on talk radio.

The issue never actually came up in my life, social phobic that I am, until the time I played Tony in “You Can’t Take It With You,” (Jimmie Stewart played him in the movie version, because I was unavailable [that is, not yet born] at the time). I’d always assumed that the thing must be fairly easy, but the mechanics gave me unexpected trouble. I’d never realized that you had to do something about The Nose In the Way Problem.

I’m sure the woman who played Alice thought I was a complete dork.

I’m also sure she was right.

But as far as Laura Ingraham is concerned, I now begin to see the logic behind the Fairness Doctrine. If that rule were in place, maybe I could go on the air and offer a spirited defense of socially handicapped dorks everywhere. Call for a federal program or something.

In closing, I offer this link to a brilliant recent post on the Iowahawk blog. I’ve been meaning to share it for several days, and it’s as good a way as any to close out this embarrassing post.

Beautiful day, if a little windy. The temperature is in the 70s, and it looks like tomorrow will be much the same.

Walking through the park this evening, I saw a man standing all by himself, practicing some kind of dance that called for stomping his feet with his knees bent and making elaborate motions with his arms.

I envy him his lack of self-consciousness.

But only that.

Sherry at Intellectuelle has tagged Phil and me with an Eight Things meme. These are the rules:

Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Hmm, that’s a challenge. Not to write eight things about myself, it goes without saying, but to try to think of eight things about myself I haven’t told you already. Two or three times.

But let’s give it a shot.

1. I’m not a genius. That ought to be a no-brainer (to put it weirdly), but some people seem to have gotten that impression, probably because of my intellectual arrogance. My IQ, at the last testing, was 126. A nice, comfortable upper-middle range figure, but nothing that would get me into MENSA.

2, I have a rather nice singing voice. Indeed, I spent nine years with an obscure Christian musical group. However I have a lousy ear and no ability whatever to play an instrument.

3. I’ve visited Norway 4 times, and have gotten as far north as the North Cape. I’ve also visited Iceland once, and I’ve been to the Leif Eriksson archaeological site at L’Anse Aux Meadows, Newfoundland.

4. On the American side, I’ve visited Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace, his childhood home in Indiana, and his home in New Salem, Illinois. I’ve also been to Ford’s Theater, and the Peterson House across the street where he died. Oh yes, I’ve also visited a house in Tennessee built by Davy Crockett, and Wild Bill Hickok’s grave in Deadwood.

5. In community theater, in Florida, I played Mordred in Camelot, Prof. Moriarty in a Sherlock Holmes play, the leads in both Larry Shue’s comedies, “The Foreigner” and “The Nerd,” Tony in “You Can’t Take It With You,” Crichton in “The Admirable Crichton,” and Clive in “Write Me a Murder.” I also did a local TV commercial for kitchen fans.

6. My personality is almost entirely synthetic, by which I mean it’s man-made. I wasn’t born programmed to be the man I am. As a child (I’m told), I was happy, outgoing and talkative. I grew up to be depressive, introverted and famously taciturn. The difference came because certain people in my life didn’t like my original personality and set about changing it, with complete success.

7. I once read the entire Lord of the Rings out loud (to my roommate). But not in one sitting.

8. I can wiggle my ears.

As is my custom, I shall not tag anyone with this meme.

I hate to admit it, but I actually had a pretty good weekend. I know that’s a disappointment to those of you who come to this blog for a daily fillip of angst, alienation, futility and despair, but even I can’t maintain perfect consistency all my life.

Saturday was quiet and uneventful, which suits me just fine. Picked up a couple needed items at Kmart and had lunch at my regular Chinese buffet. Took my renter’s door off its hinges and shaved the top down so it would close better. I discovered then that there remains yet another problem—the latch won’t engage in the hole in the striker plate. Which means I’m going to have to figure out how to move that hole just a whisker.

Whoever painted that door has much to answer for.

Sunday was, as I mentioned on Friday, Norway Day at Minnehaha Park. I first attended Norway Day in 1980 (I remember because I was attending Brown Institute of Broadcasting at the time). I was living in an apartment house just up the street. I walked down there on a Sunday afternoon just to get some fresh air, and lo and behold, My Own Tribe had gathered. It was a pretty big event, with lots of vendors and food stands, and they’d brought in a folk dancing group from Norway for entertainment.

I went back the first year I was back from Florida, and it was much the same.

But in the years since, the event has shriveled visibly. I don’t think it’s just because the old people are dying off and the young people are all half German now. I suspect there’s some tragic story of organizing groups finally reaching the breaking point and saying what they really think, and people taking their fish balls and going home.

I hope the decline hasn’t been due to the presence of the Viking Age Club & Society in the last few years.

At this point our encampment is almost half the event.

We’re crowd-pleasers, though. Our combats gathered enthusiastic crowds, and I think we gave them a pretty good show. It was only Eric and me this time, and I’m happy to report that I was on my game and beat him about three out of four bouts in two presentations. He missed the chance to get his revenge in the third, when the sky darkened, somebody opened a giant refrigerator door, and heavy rain cut loose on us and set everybody to tearing down tents, packing vehicles and driving away.

We needed the rain, though.

I also did a decoration job on the sheath of my new saex. I’m pretty happy with the results:

As a final note, I’d fail in my predictability (and render this post’s title meaningless) if I didn’t note that this week is the 50th Anniversary of what many consider the greatest cartoon short ever made, “What’s Opera Doc?” featuring Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny doing Wagner. They tell me it’s much more impressive on a big screen. But it’s funny even on YouTube.

Have you been following the Harry Potter stories? Want to know the end now? There are five possibilities, as detailed here. But you being you-and-all could guess where this is going. The characters will all go out in a “blaze of glory.” (wink, wink)

In other news, note this from Ursula K. LeGuin on a serious writers. She writes:

Could he not see that Cormac McCarthy — although everything in his book (except the wonderfully blatant use of an egregiously obscure vocabulary) was remarkably similar to a great many earlier works of science fiction about men crossing the country after a holocaust — could never under any circumstances be said to be a sci fi writer, because Cormac McCarthy was a serious writer and so by definition incapable of lowering himself to commit genre?

Today, 07-07-07, is the day of the Live Earth concerts, an effort by world scientists to instruct us in the coming doom and how, if possible, to prevent it. These scientists knew a Ross Perot-style chart lecture wouldn’t communicate bo diddley, so they are masquerading as rock stars. Their message, as you know, is the sky is falling.

The latest news to this effect is the refusal to resign by the director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Some feel he has undermined confidence in the center’s forecasters. Also, a lake in Chile has run off into the sea due to global warming. The horror!

The Live Earth scientists want you to know that you are to blame, especially if you are an American. China can’t help it if they pollute the earth while trying to compete in your corrupted economy. Your keep-up-the-Jones greed forces them to produce cheap goods and ignore common sense environmental guidelines. You should be ashamed of yourself and thankful that righteous men and women will take time out of their busy schedules to educate your butt about your need to stop driving all over the planet and shopping at all hours of the day and night. The sky is falling, for pete’s sake.

Okay, let’s sing about it.

The bulls have been slaughtered and their entrails carefully examined by the meteorological priesthood. The shamans declare that we are entering into a period of heat and drought. This isn’t a tough call in Minnesota in July, but we always hope we might catch a break, and it’s their job to dash that hope.

I plan to potter around Blithering Heights on Saturday, staying indoors as much as possible. On Saturday I shall imprudently join the Viking Age Club & Society for an encampment at Minnehaha Park (it’s the annual Norway Day celebration). Stop by if you’re in the area. (I actually have a strong suspicion that I’m our only reader in the Minneapolis area.)

I always enjoy our events at Minnehaha Park, having lived in that part of town, off and on, for several years in the aggregate, sometime back around the time when Minnehaha Falls was brand new.

Here’s what I’m worrying about today:

As you’ve noted, I worry about everything. And I’m confident that everything I worry about will happen, even though several of them are mutually contradictory. I operate on the theory that just because the guy on my right has punched me, that doesn’t mean the guy on my left can’t follow up with a kick to the kneecap.

Anyway, I was worrying today.

Here’s what’s bothering me. Back when the American Founding Fathers were hammering out the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, they were working off a shared, common world view. You frequently hear people insisting that “all the Founders were Deists.” This is a) a considerable exaggeration, and b) irrelevant in a sense. Because for all the theological differences between the Deists and the Christians, they shared a basic agreement on the operation of reason and the nature of truth. They believed that if A is larger than B, and B is equal to C, then A must also be larger than C. They took it for granted that reasonable men would always agree on such things. It was an honorable thing, a sign of great-mindedness, to yield to the weight of logic.

This was a primary reason for their insistence on freedom of speech. It wasn’t (regardless of what you may have heard) because of their concern that pornography should always be freely available, but because they believed that if all the facts were stated, and all opinions heard, Reason would force all men of good will to agree in the end on the correct solution. Because Reason had objective existence, and followed scientific laws.

This is not believed much anymore.

Today, you have one side screaming its own set of facts, and the other side screaming its set of facts, and these sets of facts bear no relation to one another. The Iraq War that I follow in the news is nothing like the Iraq War that most Democrats follow in the news, for instance.

And there’s no place in our culture for the two sides to find common ground. We both suspect everything the other side says—because we’ve all been lied to too often, and we’ve come to suspect that any “fact” or news report we disagree with was probably doctored. And in the case of the Left, many of them doubt that there is such a thing as objective reality in any case.

We face a situation where the Left and the Right live in entirely different worlds, and can hardly communicate. And it’s not just a matter of Left and Right. There are an infinity of positions out there (this is one of the things that makes the Fairness Doctrine unworkable), and each opinion builds, as it were, its own self-contained universe.

I don’t see any solution for this problem.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Apparently, if you want to argue that your country needs a radical makeover, a complete rebuild from the source code, then you will want to write intellectual books describing the horrid genocide by the country’s founders even if it didn’t actually happen. That’s what Theodore Dalrymple suggests in article on a skirmish in Australia over that nation’s history.

“There is nothing much more attention-grabbing than the claim that your current happiness and good fortunes is founded on a pile of bones,” he writes. “With a bit of luck, this claim will even turn people neurotic and increase the need for therapists.” And praise you for shining the light on the historic darkness and need for change. Let us be one nation, victimized, divisible, with liberty and justice for those who deserve it. (via Books, Inq.)