RANDOM THOUGHTS NOT FRENCH: SGT PEPPER, TALIBAN, iPHONES, AND MORE #2

SGT. PEPPER

Music is essential. Spotily brings classical music to our house in the morning, jazz in the evening. When I need to, I put on my headphones and let Led Zeppelin get loud. Very essential. 

 But I need more room on the shelves in my office and my CD collection is so old school. So I'm verifying that all of the tunes on all of my CDs have been ripped to my portable hard drive. (I only ripped my favorites on some of them.) As a result, I've been listening to stuff that I have put aside for a while. In that vein, I listened to St. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (SPLHCB), all the way through, from start to finish without stopping, for the first time in over 30 years. At least.

I'm going to pick nits. SPLHCB is not my favorite Beatles album. Revolver is. SPLHCB is basically a pop album, and their pop is my least favorite Beatles music. Fully half of the songs on SPLHCB fail to impress. On Revolver, only Yellow Submarine doesn't work for me. And that may be because I don't have kids. On SPLHCB, my favorite may well be Within You Without You. Yes, I'm one of those folks who enjoys Harrison's work at least as much as Lennon/McCartney's. Maybe more.

Oh, and Ringo is the best drummer ever. Only the fact that his drumming is so damn appropriate to the song draws your attention to it.

AFGHANISTAN 

Like a virus, unless they are totally flushed from the system, the Taliban were always going to recur. The question was never whether or not the Taliban would attempt to return to where they left off twenty years ago. The only question was whether or not they would succeed in doing so. And that turned out to be no question at all.

Get in. Punish the Taliban. Kill bin Laden. Get out. That was the mission.

Why have we waited twenty years to leave? Is there any chance that we have learned our lesson? Is there any chance that the USofA will turn itself into a modern, slightly decadent European-modeled social democracy any time soon? Hope springs eternal...

iPHONES

If I ever return to the USofA again, and if I happen to find myself near the cemetery where Steve Jobs is buried, I just may stop by to give the SOB a piece of my mind. 

I used to own a perfectly good tablet with WiFi that cost under $100 that connected me to the internet whenever I needed to. I used to own a flip phone that cost less than $50 that made and received telephone calls with ease. (You remember telephone calls, don't you? You called a friend and you talked to them. Actually talked.)

Noticing my ancient phones, friends made fun of me. It became a running joke. I didn't care. But then, suddenly, tragedy struck. I was gifted an iPhone 7 from a friend who had upgraded. Hearing that, another friend pulled an old 5 out of a desk drawer to give to Cathey. Both phones were kind of funky, chipped and cracked. But displays weren't effected and they worked just fine. And just like that, we became addicted. Like crack cocaine, all that it took was one hit. And now, Cathey and I each carry an iPhone Xr.

If I find Steve Jobs' grave...

STUPID

It's no longer funny. It's hard to remain polite. I don't care if Eric Clapton is tired of dealing with it.

COVID is real. It's killing people, possibly twice more than the official count. The hospitals are full of unvaccinated people dying of COVID. Hospitals are NOT full of people having bad reactions to the vaccine. Refusing to wear a mask in public spaces is not a choice. It's attempted manslaughter.

We got into this mess by abiding stupidity in too many aspects of our lives. The herd has not been sufficiently thinned. I don't know how we make up for this failure to adhere to the laws of natural selection.

IRA'S STUPID STUFF AND A SONG - LATE AUGUST, 2016

 1. Hostess tries something new...Deep Fried Twinkies. Just what we needed...a Twinkie that is actually more unhealthy than the original. Who thinks this stuff up? Where do you apply for the job? How much do you get paid?

I've got loads of ideas. Bacon Wrapped Twinkies. Chocolate Chip Twinkies. Egg Cream Twinkies (NYC only). Grape Nehi Twinkies.

Or maybe we could go the other way. Organic Twinkies. Gluten Free Twinkies. Free Range Twinkies. Pescatarian Twinkies. The possibilities are endless.

2. The right-wing, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany political party has called for a loosening of Germany's very restrictive gun laws in light of a series of attacks by terrorists and the mentally ill. Because in the US, with about 300,000,000 guns in private hands, nobody ever gets shot by the mentally ill or terrorists...

3. The Connecticut Supreme Court says that you shouldn't be fired for smoking dope at work. Well, not exactly. Here's the deal. A maintenance worker at a Connecticut university was caught smoking dope on his break. Connecticut is not a state that has made marijuana legal. So he was fired. His union took the case to arbitration. The arbitrator said that the penalty was too harsh, that he should have been suspended without pay and, when he returned to work, subjected to random drug testing. The university appealed to the Connecticut District Court. The District Court overruled the arbitrator and OKed the firing. The union took that ruling to the state Supreme Court, which said that the arbitrator's ruling should have been final. So it's back to work for the stoned janitor.

I'm conflicted. It's clear that soon it will be legal to smoke dope in a majority of states. So what's the big deal? On the other hand, using illegal drugs on the job IS a big deal. If it had been me, I would have expected to be fired. I'm conflicted.

4. North Carolina takes its case for restrictive voter ID laws to Supreme Court. Says that it's to prevent fraud. No proof of fraud in the past is offered. Their new law is patterned after a North Carolina law passed in 1876 restricting voting by giraffes. Success. Not a single vote by a giraffe has been recorded since.

But seriously, an op-ed in Newsweek Europe quotes two Pennsylvania lawmakers as saying that fraud is rampant. They offer no proof except their opinion. The authors of the op-ed, who also offer no proof that widespread voter fraud exists, concede that voter IDs won't stop absentee ballot fraud, won't stop machines from being hacked, won't prevent hanging chads. So what the hell are we talking about?

Giraffes?

AMERICAN ELECTION BONUS: Roger Ailes joins Trump's campaign. Because Trump is already doing so well with women...

As Paul and Ringo continue to prove, The Beatles were one of the great live bands. Even at a time when they really didn't like each other very much, their vocals were tight, their playing was spot on, and they were generous enough to feature the Fifth Beatle. My heroes...

#16 - BEATLES OR STONES, HIROSHIMA, DROUGHT

BEATLES OR STONES
Keith Richards is quoted in a recent interview as saying of Sgt. Pepper, “Some people think it’s a genius album, but I think it’s a mishmash of rubbish.”

Well, the First Amendment guarantees that even elderly, slightly confused Brits have a right to their opinions. And I will not dispute that The Stones are the most enduring bar band in history. (I would cede them the title of Greatest Bar Band if it weren't for the fact that Springsteen and I are both Jersey boys.) But The Beatles were different.

The Beatles were a band that honed their skills in clubs and could hold their own with kick-butt versions of tunes like Roll Over, Beethoven and You Really Got A Hold On Me and Twist and Shout and Money. But then they went a step further. They created or heavily influenced entire genres, from acid rock to thrash metal to casino crooners. Steps further. And oddly enough, those steps included paying back their roots influences by giving folks like Stevie Wonder tunes like We Can Work It Out.

I'm glad that Keith Richards is still capable of walking and chewing gum. (Kidding. He can still lay down a fine groove, too.) But let's not get huffy over a competition for hearts and minds that was over nearly 50 years ago.

HIROSHIMA
As the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima approaches, folks are questioning anew the need to have dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese homeland. Self-examination is generally a good thing. But let's be clearheaded in our review of history.

I have no doubt that history will not look kindly on the scientists who created The Bomb and Truman for having authorized its use. "I am become Death," said Oppenheimer. Einstein rued both his scientific and political contributions to Hiroshima, however peripheral. And Truman was clearly conflicted. He had experienced war first-hand and knew its horrors. His later writings suggest that he became fully aware of how Hiroshima would shape his legacy and the future of international conflict.

But Truman viewed the Japanese through the lens of Pearl Harbor and through the Japanese treatment of prisoners of war. He had been briefed extensively on the projected cost of an American invasion of the Japanese home islands, 200,000 or more American casualties. And contrary to the current narrative, no credible proof exists that the Japanese were ready to surrender unconditionally. True, feelers from dissident Japanese had been received. But they were never officially sanctioned, never included unconditional surrender - necessary after Germany's total capitulation, never panned out, and in retrospect smelled a tad like the unofficial and ill-fated mission of  Rudolf Hess to England. The official Japanese response to peace feelers at the time was to treat them with contempt. Until Hiroshima, all the evidence points to the Japanese military planning a final, if fruitless, mortal struggle on Japanese soil.

I have often said that Americans have memories equivalent to that of fruit flies. In this case, that's assuming that they've ever heard or participated in a serious discussion of this issue at all. Our young people have difficulty locating their own navels in the dark, much less islands in the Pacific. And of all academic regimens subject to periodic mass testing, history always fares the worst. So the question should not be reduced to polling that asks random Americans their opinion of whether Hiroshima was necessary. Rather, we should do our due diligence to determine whether Truman's decision was justified by the information that he had at hand in 1945.

Yes, I think that it was. And may no American President, no world leader, no sophisticated dissident with a grudge and a handful of plutonium ever be tempted to enforce his/her will in a similar way in future.

DROUGHT
In 2014, President Obama and Governor Jerry Brown visited the farm of Joe and Maria Del Bosque in California's Central Valley. Due to the persistent California drought, portions of Del Bosque's 'viable farmland' (as described in an article on Yahoo! Politics) lay fallow. Now, one year later, Del Bosque is reportedly wondering if Obama understood his problem. Why has nothing been done? Why must he refrain from planting additional fields due to lack of water for irrigation?

Putting aside for the moment the history of rampant corruption when it comes to water policy in America's West, we have in microcosm the coming major cultural upheaval that shifting weather patterns will cause around the country and around the world. The agricultural 'viability' of Del Bosque's land was predicated on the availability of water for irrigation in a part of California where that water was not naturally available through rainfall or the aquifer. Just exactly what is government supposed to do about that? What is government capable of doing about that? And what will government be able to do when seawater pollutes the freshwater aquifer in south Florida?

'Viable' farmland will no longer be viable. Expecting politicians to bring rain or deepen the snow pack is ludicrous.