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where we could’ve simply kept quiet and appeared stupid but have opened our mouths and removed all doubt
Special Early March Edition
Friday, March 6, 2009 volume II | issue 11Please email questions or letters to the editor to [email protected] archives are held at www.procrastinatornews.wordpress.com
The Think Tank — Rusty LeePerspectives from the CCC — Morgen YoungAre You Not Entertained?!?! — Trey SmithObama’s First Basketball Game — Michael Orr NBA Rhymes — Ryan PravatoThe Quixotic Stimulus Package — Trey SmithResolutions are for Suckers: Why My New Years Resolutions Only Lasted Through February — Betsy Neely
The Think TankRusty Lee
Welcome, dear readers, to the Think Tank, our newest creative-endeavor here at the Procrastinator. Like most of our other brainchildren, the Think Tank took some time to hammer out; as we like to say, though, better late than never!
In this section you’ll find a puzzle (or brain teaser, or trivia tidbit, etc.) that is intended to stretch your mental capacities. Think Tank pieces may reference anything from sports to word trickery to obscure history; literally anything is “fair game.”
Each reader is invited to submit an answer attempt to each issue’s challenge. (Please send to [email protected]). All entrants who solve the puzzle correctly will be entered into a drawing. Prizes will vary by week – but each one will no doubt be special.
#1: Jumbleaya
Use the clues on the left to figure out each answer word located immediately to the right. Once all answer words have been entered, you will be left with 9 circled letters. Unscramble these letters to spell out this week’s Mystery Phrase. An additional clue has been provided at bottom.
Submissions eligible for the prize drawing must include 1) all 5 correct answer words and 2) the correctly deciphered Mystery Phrase.
School whose backcourt once featured Travieso and Padilla _____ _____ _____ _____ _____
President from Plains _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____
Wrestling clown of old _____ _____ _____ _____ _____
1814 peace site _____ _____ _____ _____ _____
Peter, Paul, or Mary, e.g. _____ _____ _____ _____ _____
Clue: celebrating sin _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____
The Ways of the World: Perspectives from the CCCInterview by Morgen Young, September 2008
An interview with three veterans of the Civilian Conservation Corps discussing their experiences during the Depression as well as the current economic downfall.
Morgen Young: Why did you join the CCC?
Donald Latham: How come I joined? Because I didn’t have nothing.
Jim Crocker: It was the Depression and we didn’t have anything. They set this thing up so we would make at least $30 a month and $22 of it would be sent home and you only got $8, because it was for family.
Pete Wheeles: Because of the Depression. We were in bad shape, real bad shape. But I tell you what, I think what we went through it nothing compared to what’s gonna happen to this country. Back then everyone was poor, lived on farms. Now people have things, have money and it’s affecting everyone. We’ll see what happens. I hope McCain gets elected. That Sarah Palin sure is fine looking. Say, your glasses look just like hers.
MY: Oh God. Um, no comment.
PW: Oh, are you for that Barack?
MY: Um….tell me more about being an enrollee for the CCC.
DL: Well, when I first went in, I went in on a Wednesday and they didn’t issue no clothes until Saturday. I had on my civilian clothes. Someone in the company gave me a pair of pants, they wrapped around me about twice and came up to my knees. I wouldn’t put them on and I was going to go home. I wasn’t going to stay there.
Another boy went in, a Moss boy from Union, and he had been in before and had a pair that fit and he gave them to me right then. If I hadn’t gotten those clothes that fit me, I would have been gone, I wouldn’t have stayed there.
MY: What did you do during free time?
PW: You want to know what we did when we were off duty? We chased things like you. Well, you went to shows. If you could get twenty cents, you went to a movie, you’d go to a little roadhouse and drink beer. Really, I’m serious. Right, Jim?
JC: We used to roller skate, he and I loved to roller skate. And two girls who went to school there, right out of the camp, we’d go out. I’d go out and meet this girl and talk to her. My wife worked for the Farm Security Administration in York and when I went overseas, this lady I would go over and talk to and she went over to her and said, “Are you Mrs. Crocker?” And she said, “Yes I am.” She said, “I used to date your husband.” And she said, “I thought he was going to marry me.” And she wrote me a letter to that effect. So they called me a Cassanova, but that wasn’t true.
PW: Well, they had a Sheik in every camp.
JC: Yeah, Lester McCaskill. They called him a Sheik. We would have square dancing and the women would almost fight to dance with him. He was a lover. He was a leader here, at the camp. I was at the camp ’38 and ’39.
PW: You know, one guy in camp, he drunked up one night and he wanted to do something a little not so nice, so the trucker had the hood of the truck up and the truck was running, and this guy he pulled up inside and he urinated on the spark plugs. And when he hit the spark plugs, he went up about twenty feet. That really happened! Now, you can’t record that.
MY: Oh I won’t.
PW: You had some colorful guys. You had the chowhounds. Jim done told you all the good stories. We wouldn’t have anything.
MY: I don’t know. I heard something earlier about moonshine and you and I think that might be a good story.
JC: Let me tell you something. We had a guy who would get drunk and he’d come back. You were supposed to be lights out at a certain time. This guy would get drunk and he’d come back. There was a kid who played the guitar and he’d come back and he’d wake him up say at two o’clock in the morning and make him sing. He stayed in trouble all the time. To cut a long story short, I went overseas and came back and was up at Fort Bragg (NC) processing guys who had been prisoners of war and so this guy, I was I in the chow hall and this guy said, “Hey so-and-so I know that S.O.B. right yonder.” It was that same guy! He had hash marks like you wouldn’t believe, he been made a tank commander and he had been a prisoner of war.
PW: They had what you’d call a roadhouse from where our camp was, and there was a creek down here. They had these little cabins and it was kind of like a juke joint. It has piccalo and it has these individual cabins. They had several call girls that would show up down there. These guys were on these bars just like bar flies, waiting on those girls to come around. And some of them were pretty gals. Really, no kidding. But where we was at was Limestone College. There were lots of girls you could date there. Back then you couldn’t get the girls out too well. You had to have a special method of getting them out to their home. What they would do, there was a big hedge out there and they would take a Coca-Cola bottle, the girls, and when they were ready to get into the car, they’d hold the Coca-Cola bottle up above
Jim Crocker, Pete Wheeles, Donald Latham
the hedge and the guys would come pick them up. You would never think of a thing like that.
MY: So, do you think this depression will be worse than the one you went through?
PW: I do. I think this will be much worse.
JC: We’ll see what happens.
Morgen is not so secretively wishing that a new Farm Security Administration could be started. Until then she can be reached at [email protected]
Sports: Are You Not Entertained?!?!Trey Smith
When I was a kid I loved pro wrestling. In second grade my best friend Garret and I would pretend to be our favorite wrestlers; the pectoral flexing Lex Luger (me) and the mystical Sting (Garret). Together we would imagine that couch pillows were a rival tag team and we’d pretend to dominate them with spectacular pain inflicting moves as the greatest wrestling tag team partnership conceivable.
As I grew up, however, my interest in wrestling waned. Today I might flip by it and watch ten minutes or so just to laugh at the story lines and marvel at the athleticism, but I don’t know the character back story of John Cena like I knew the history and background of Lex Luger. I think the reason I slowly slipped away from pro wrestling fandom is that I grew up, and as I did I needed more out of sports than what wrestling provided. I don’t mean that as a knock against wrestling or its fans, just that pro wrestling is what it is; pure and simple entertainment.
There isn’t a lot of substance to pro wrestling. The storylines are as believable and over acted as bad daytime soap operas. It’s all kind of silly, but the bottom line is that it’s all kind of fun to watch. Just about every wrestling match follows the same formula: The crowd favorite comes in, gets knocked around by the bad guy, and is put in a submission hold. The ref raises his arm once and it drops lifelessly to his side. His arm is raised again and again it falls. On the verge of being counted out, his arm is raised for the final time but, inspired by the cheering crowd, he doesn’t let his arm fall, miraculously breaks the hold and kicks the bad guy’s ass. Yes this is entertaining, but that’s all it is, entertaining.
In 1990 I was 9 years old and a fading wrestling fan when Duke went all the way to the NCAA Championship game only to get completely destroyed by UNLV. As a result I cried like a 9-year old bitch because, unlike wrestling, this was real. This was how Alla Abdelnaby’s Duke career ended. That was how history would view my favorite team, the guys who got beat 103-73 in the Championship game. It was a genuinely soul crushing defeat.
The following year, 1991, Duke went back to the Final Four only to run into UNLV again. However, this time two Christian Laettner free throws in the final seconds iced a 79-77 Duke victory. This is probably the first time in my life when I felt real redemption. My team stood up to the giant that was UNLV and pulled off an upset. Duke went on to win the NCAA Championship that year, the first in the history of the program. I was overwhelmed with happiness; the good guys (and yes that is a subjective view) had actually won.
These experiences, I believe, are deeper than what you get out of something that is just pure entertainment. Your favorite wrestler winning or losing can’t compare to the profoundness of emotions that accompany great sporting events. Compare a staged Lex Luger loss to Duke making it to the Championship game only to get trounced by 30 points. Compare a Lex Luger win to the euphoria of Duke upsetting UNLV in route to their first National Title. For a fan, there is just more going on in sports than in wrestling. In sports your heart is on the line, whereas in wrestling, you’re just looking to be entertained. It’s the difference between sleeping with your significant other and a one-night stand.
When the Red Sox came back from an 0-3 deficit, something that had never been done before, to beat the Yankees,
that was special. That comeback could have been scripted like any ‘hero beats the submission hold due to the support of the fans’ wrestling scenario, but it wasn’t. That actually happened. And so the celebration or sheer sense of wonderment or even the total heartbreak, if you were a Yankees fan, was genuine and beautiful. That’s why sports are great, because they can give you the same entertainment as something that is staged like wrestling, but because they aren’t faked the emotions you put in and derive out of sports are deeper and more truthful.
Unfortunately, truthful and genuine doesn’t make people rich. In order to make money, the powers that be in sports turned to the pro wrestling model. It is entertaining to watch a first round NBA draft pick be forced to play one year in college, but it’s to the detriment of the sport as a whole. It’s entertaining to see more home runs in baseball, but cheating sullies the spirit of the game. It’s like they’re giving you an endless supply of one-night stands but denying you the chance for a deep and meaningful relationship.
Increasingly athletes, owners and commissioners will say that the things they do are meant to make “the product” better. That’s how they view sports, as a product to be sold. It doesn’t matter to them that you’re confused about your feelings for your favorite team or sport because players leave early or are on steroids. In a ‘bottom line’ culture, your feelings, your heart and soul involvement in sports, can’t be measured in ratings and therefore are useless when selling advertising slots. So in favor of money, substance is sacrificed for entertainment.
Maximus Decimus Meridius as a gladiator was an entertainer who found purpose and thereby elevated the spectator’s experience beyond pure and simple entertainment. His accomplishments were bigger than what physically transpired in the coliseum. Modern sports, like Commodus, just want the simple distraction of entertainment without the deeper meaning. As a true sports fan, this vexes me. I am terribly vexed.
Trey is Commander of the Armies of the North. General of the Felix Legions. Loyal servant to the true spirit of sports and can be reached at [email protected]
The Ways of the World: Obama’s First Basketball GameMichael Orr
Last week, President Barack Obama made the five-minute trip from the White House to the Verizon Center in Chinatown to catch his favorite basketball team, the Chicago Bulls take on his new hometown Washington Wizards. After spending his first month in office traveling to and from recession-ravaged cities across the country and battling the No Party, aka Republicans in Congress, Obama finally took a wee break to watch a ballgame.
Obviously, sitting courtside at an NBA game is no feat of normalcy, even when it involves the moribund Wizards. But to see the young, energetic and legitimate fan in the person of the President was something to behold. This is not to criticize our previous President at all as he was as legitimate a fan of baseball as Obama is of basketball. President Bush threw out the most impressive first-pitch of all time at Yankee Stadium not long after 9/11 (while wearing a bullet-proof vest no less). But there is something different about Obama.
Whether it was the collarless shirt or his genuine fist pumps after Bulls’ baskets, Obama looked like a regular guy watching the game. He chatted with a young boy next to him and even drank a beer. While George W. Bush was supposedly the guy you’d want to drink a beer with, Obama seems more like a normal person than Bush ever did. Perhaps that view will change with time, particularly if failures or indecision start to mount, but for now, the new President looks like a man comfortable in his own skin.
So why does this matter? Well in some ways, it really doesn’t. It won’t make Republicans suddenly get off the opposition kick or make anything easier with the economy or Iraq. But there is a tangible quality to this man that can make a difference with non-politicians. He is a demonstrably good man taking part in the kind of activities to which regular people can relate. In politics one always wants to appear as close to the fabled ‘everyman’ as possible, else suffer the fate of people like Michael Dukakis. The important thing about Obama is that he does not have to fake it.
People will question what he was doing at a basketball game when the nation’s economic health is on the line and plans are being drawn for the fate of tens of thousands of American troops and their families. Yet if we all look at ourselves, aren’t there times where we go to a movie or go out for a few drinks when there is stress or trouble in our own lives? There are times to hold politicians to higher standards but there should be equal treatment given to the realities of holding the most difficult job in the world.
Michael thinks it was gutsy of Obama to pull for the road team. Other thoughts can be sent to [email protected]
The Fifth Column: NBA RhymesRyan Pravato
This former Association act cannot for his life remember the blur, the stir, the unheralded journey of his NBA tenure, seven in eleven, he donned the jersey of many a team but all his hopes of settling down would be but only a dream, if only this guard hadn’t resembled a trainer stretching out Hakeem or a new ball boy, eyes wide, full of unfazed esteem, he might have gotten more run for his body, the vagabond himself, the lefty, John Crotty.
Heart, flare, grit, mean, and lean undrafted but he lasted, that provocative skinny bean man that cat could get around he’d tee it up, unleash from downtown and he’d attack, remember the dunk along the base line Jordan came over late, eyed the ascension— the Garden shrine started from the Tulsa blacktop, ended in New York fame man I’d pay to see John Starks play one more game.
Lightening quick, so slick, feverously on top serenely cream of the crop dribble drive, pull up, hit the J put the D on tape delay.
Fourth pick in ‘05, a maniacal surprise I must despise the guys in ties did they not realize the actual size of the prize?
Mamba got the bling instead of kid sting lifetime achievement believe it only a ring can prove this thing if no cigars are lit the critics won’t quit.
Rift the franchise from the Crescent City then see it cease to survive another team’s gift spells another’s pity One must crumble, the other thrive.
Ryan misses both Johns equally. Tell him which John you desire more at [email protected]
Politics: The Quixotic Stimulus PackageTrey Smith
The story of Don Quixote is basically about this guy who loses his mind and creates a fictional reality for himself. In his conception of reality he is a knight, his neighbor is his squire and a local farm girl (who doesn’t know that she’s been incorporated into this reality) is his damsel in distress. After various misadventures, including fighting windmills that he believes are marauding giants, and practical jokes are made at his expense, Don Quixote becomes depressed and slowly slips back into sanity. The only problem is that regaining his sanity actually makes him even more depressed.
The book was so influential that is led to the creation of a new word: quixotic. The word quixotic is a reference to the main character’s last name, Quixote, and means to behave nobly or act chivalrously but in an absurd or impractical way.
I believe that the current stimulus package is in fact quixotic.
I must point out that my level of economic knowledge is limited to economic books intended for popular consumption. Therefore we’ll forgo a debate between the pure market-ism of Adam Smith and the interventionism of John Maynard Keyes in order to
just stick to the sentiments that drive the supporters of the bill and its detractors (although when you get down to it, Adam Smith was much more on an interventionist than he gets made out to be). It seems to me that the minutiae of the stimulus bill was derived from the sentiment, “well we have to try and do something” while the opponents of the bill adhere to the ideology of, “no, let’s do nothing and hope this all just works out.”
It’s easy to deride a ‘do-nothing’ attitude. The Democrats had that attitude when things were bad in Iraq; they just wanted to bail. But the Republicans were desperate to do something, anything. They were so desperate that they actually listened to General Petraeus’ plan for a troop surge even though it centered on logic and practicality, something the Republican administration had steadfastly avoided in Iraq for 5 years. Ultimately the surge was a success and made Democrats look like pansies for not supporting it. Moreover, in order to be proven right, Democrats were put in a position wherein the surge would have to fail. But that constitutes hoping that America fails, and in this case failure would’ve meant massive loss of life among Iraqis and American military personnel. Politics is not without irony, however, because now the Republicans find themselves backed into the same corner. It’s fine to oppose the ideology of the economic stimulus just like the Democrats opposed the ideology of the war in Iraq. But when the other side does something, the success of a do-nothing attitude hinges on the failure of the action taken. Thus, now the Republicans seem to be hoping for America to fail so as to prove that the stimulus bill was a bad idea.
Ultimately the question is whether or not the do something attitude leads to an action that is merely a short-term band aid or a sound long-term strategy or solution. I believe the surge was a viable long-term strategy because the absence of US troops would have allowed the country to collapse entirely. Due to the surge, there is space to build and grow a new country (of course this will take many years and require an American troop presence for a very long time). Conversely, I do not think the economic stimulus package is a long-term solution, but rather something that tries in vain to cover the overwhelming stench of corruption and greed that got us into this mess.
Our initial invasion of Iraq made it a temporarily collapsed state and therefore a blank slate upon which to develop a nation (unfortunately that rebuilding was bungled for 5 years). On the other hand, the US has been a developed nation for a long time. What was wrong with Iraq was reconfigured, blown up, or arrested. What was wrong with America went unchecked and tacitly encouraged and therefore became ingrained in the system. Their new government can marginalize Iraq’s ills while ours are so deeply entrenched that they actual exist within the society and government themselves.
Imagine a scenario in which America was afforded the opportunity to go back in time and told that if we acted less greedily and less financially irresponsible we could avoid this whole financial crisis. Even knowing what we do now I think people would travel back in time and fall into the same old bad habits. The few people that did take corrective action would be taken advantage of by the unscrupulous.
My master’s dissertation was about the potential social and political development of collapsed or weak countries. However, social and political development must be prefaced by economic development. Starting from scratch with a collapsed state, if you build a just and equitable economic system, then the society will come to value justice and equality
and their political institutions will reflect those social values. America’s problem is that our economy evolved on just and equitable principles but then devolved around corruption and greed. As a result, our society values radical self-serving individualism and our politics reflect that. There is a deep sickness in the system itself and it cannot be rectified by addressing the symptoms of the disease, which the stimulus package seeks to do. Even if we had the money we lost, we’d just lose it again on whatever the next ‘bubble’ investment is.
The stimulus bill is chivalrous in that it hopes that given the chance to do things differently, people would. However, we must realize, like Don Quixote did, that this world of chivalry is imagined. In the real world, the system itself is broken and any patchwork attempt to fix it is just tilting at windmills.
Until the internet ceases to exist and only the rules of Thunderdome apply, Trey can be reached at [email protected]
The Ways of the World: Resolutions are for Suckers: Why My New Years Resolutions Only Lasted Through FebruaryBetsy Neely
Anyone who knows me knows that I am a hopeless optimist, an idealist, a big-time believer in change for the better. Unfortunately, for girls like me, this cold world tends to deal a lot of big-time blows. After a pretty rough 2008, and in the wake of a pretty major economic downturn, I came into the New Year bright-eyed and ready to start afresh. Looking to reconcile my budget and maybe even make the world a better place I made two resolutions.
Resolution #1: I will not buy any new clothes in the year 2009. If the need for a particular garment arises or if I should find myself fiending for fashion, I will purchase my clothing only second hand. My reasoning behind this decision was twofold. First, I am broke, so I have very little choice other than to scale back on my shopping addiction. And second, I would like to live into my liberal ideals of lessening my own tendencies towards frivolous spending. I figure that being more intentional about living simply and supporting local business will do me some good personally. And maybe, through my lack of participation in industries that thrive off of sweatshop brutality, consumerism, etc., I can even make a difference in the world.
Now, this should be a fairly easy resolution to keep. I live in Nashville—a city that offers a large selection of very affordable, very cool vintage clothing stores in addition to your everyday Goodwill or Salvation Army hubs. Nonetheless, I have already found myself wandering the shops in Hillsboro Village with my girlfriends on a Saturday afternoon feeling quite the pariah because I could not buy that cute little dress for the party next weekend, and I have already failed at least once by purchasing new earrings and a bracelet to go with my old party dress so that I would not feel so out-of-date. I justified that purchase, however, by qualifying my resolution several weeks into the game. “New clothes” are now classified only as actual clothing items, purses, and shoes. The purses and shoes part might just kill me.
Resolution #2: I will not cut or color my hair in the year 2009. You may not understand this about me, but I am absolutely addicted to getting my hair done. With the exception of a few miserable intervals here and there, I have been coloring my hair for about the last 10 years, and there is nothing like a good cut and color to make a girl feel new. It’s like a cleansing—a reinvention. You walk into a salon feeling tired, dull, brittle and walk back out shining, bright and polished like a brand new penny.
Despite my addiction, I made this resolution and then proceeded to break it within the first week. I justified this by saying that I was going back to my natural color so that I could face the coming months without the devastating roots I would have otherwise had to deal with. Who was I kidding? First of all, I don’t even know what my natural color is, and second, like a junkie, I just couldn’t break the cycle.
My next failure came about one evening when I persuaded an unwilling friend to take scissors to my locks in an attempt to even up what was becoming a much disheveled-looking bob. When she protested, reminding me to keep my resolve, I argued back, claiming that my resolution only applied to haircuts that occurred in a salon and that incurred a fee. She was cutting mine for free right there in the bathroom…clearly within the bounds of my commitment, right?
These failures have led me to consider why I make resolutions at all. I am a vegetarian who ate pork roast for lunch, a Green Party volunteer who just bought a bottle of water in the airport Starbucks, and my “Sugar Saturdays” rule flew out the window last night when I helped myself to a gigantic spoonful of cream cheese icing straight from the jar. Maybe I am continuing down the weary road of justification, but I like to think that my resolutions are all about good-hearted intention. Each little broken promise makes a statement about the way I strive to live—the way I wish the world would work. And each time I fall, I try, at least for a little while, to get back up and live into my hopefulness that somehow I can do things well and maybe even make a bit of difference in this crazy, crazy world.
If resolutions are for suckers, I am the biggest sucker of all. And, even though I gave in and strong-armed my stylist into giving me a last-minute cut and color yesterday afternoon, I will keep looking forward—bright-eyed and ridiculously optimistic, seeking ways to make this world a better place.
Betsy actually got her hair cut again while writing this. Suggestions for better styles, colors, or directions to the nearest Haircutters Anonymous meeting are welcome at [email protected]
Darsey misses Paul Harvey. He began with conclusions, but never without taking us through the rest of the story. www.darseyculpepper.com
