Scientific exegesis of Nostradamus is not *actually* science. Sorry, History Channel.

I'm watching this show on the History channel right now - mostly because Pete teasingly suggested it and I had to call his bluff - and it is, well, silly. That is really the best word for it. It is chock-a-block with "scholars" talking about scientific interpretations of Nostradamus' quatrains. Seriously. Men who have trained in real sciences (yes - only men) are using their understanding of nuclear and cosmic radiation to explain... Nostradamus. Their justification is that Isaac Newton believed in alchemy and prophesy. Yes - and he also believed that leeches were a valid treatment for disease. Time and place, Scientists! Time and place!

The problem with this kind of "science" is that it's all predicated upon a completely ridiculous supposition: that Nostradamus could predict the future. He predicted Sadaam, you know. Here is their evidence. Quatrain 8:70.

He will enter, wicked, unpleasant, infamous,
tyrannizing over Mesopotamia.
All friends made by the adulterous lady,
the land dreadful and black of aspect.

Okay, that is not even English. That does not make any kind of grammatical sense. Here is the French.

Il entrera vilain, mechant, infame
Tyrannisant la Mesopotamie,
Tous amis fait d'adulterine d'ame,
Terre horrible, noir de phisonomie.

Admittedly, my French is a wee rusty, but I believe that "dame" is "lady" and "d'ame" is "of soul." I read this more as "He/It will enter ugly, mean, infamous / Tyrannizing Mesopotamia / All friends made by the bastard of soul / horrible earth, black physiognomy." It is interesting to note this definition of "physiognomy" from the wiktionary: "The art of telling fortunes by inspection of the features." I this this is really about a soul singer turned fortune teller who is good at neither avocation. But I digress.

Has there ever been a time when human beings didn't think the apocalypse was right around the corner? No. There has never been such a time. This program is looking for concordance between the Mayan End of Days Calendar, Hopi folk tales and a the poetry of a 16th century French pharmacist. Oh, and the Bible Code. The answer is: The world will end in 2012. Well, the Hopi say that the Fifth Age will begin in 2012. I say, "Fair enough, Hopi." To the rest of them, though, I can say only this: you are not doing science! Please stop pretending that's what you're up to!

I know what you are thinking: why keep watching if it is so ridiculous? Well, it's on the HD History Channel and it has all these gorgeous images of space (you know - predictions and cosmic rays all come from constellations). And now that it's muted, it's way less irritating.

Pete's take: "It's a stretch for being history, too." Maybe they should call it "pre-history" or "peri-history." Or, you know, "bull shit."

Okay, it just ended with shots of Portland and a guy saying something about "when new Rome fell." Um, hello? We're Little Beirut? Geez - it's like he's totally out of touch with the world or something.

Hopefully a final Palin Post

There is buzz out there in the electronic world that Palin may step down. McCain's people are trying to rally, but it doesn't really give one much hope for her as a candidate. For the sake of her future political career, she really ought to. Really, though: she ought never to have accepted in the first place. She knows how unqualified she is.

But there are some weird things about her that I haven't mentioned. I would link to them, but it's late and everyone has the Googles, so I'll leave it for now. (If I remember, I'll come do it later, but no one hold their breath.) Okay, time for another bulleted List of Laziness. Weee!

• She was a member of an Alaskan secessionist group. Or she spoke at their convention and said, "I totally agree with all your views." (I know - I should be providing links because without direct reference I suck at facts.)
• Her husband works for an oil company (although this is from an Alaskan friend who has never heard of her).
• That same Alaskan friend made me laugh out loud today, writing that if she's governor of Alaska and has an 80% approval rating, she must 1) be in bed with big oil; and 2) be a republican "i.e. she doesn't believe in evolution, photosynthesis, or gravity."
  
• There were shenanigans when she got into the mayor's office in Wasilla - a town of dirt roads without sewers, it appears (hey, a link! I know, it's amazing). I don't have a link for this right now (Pete read it to me yesterday), but it seems that she fired everyone, eliminated the office of Town Historian (or similar) and was implementing loyalty tests... in a tiny town without paved roads. Wow. Just, wow. Can you say "power mad"? I can. Power mad. What would she be like as Vice President? I imagine the Bush-Justice Department scandal is probably a pretty good template.
  
• This is just an observation: she had a crazy accent and now she doesn't. If you watch videos of her from her sports casting days on YouTube, she has this crazy almost-Canadian accent. It's really charming. It's gone now - I wonder how much work that took - but I wonder if you could give your campaign the same kind of folksy feel with that accent as with a Southern accent.
• She isn't all bad: she enacted a big tax on oil companies, including on windfall profits. That's pretty impressive. Pete says, "What I like about Kevin Drum is he will give credit where credit is due without reservation." And of course, I want to be just like Kevin Drum so that Pete will still like me too. Plus, it leads me to believe that you will find this gem at Mother Jones.
• Maybe she was only vetted via Google. (Okay, I'll link to things I've read in the last six hours.) Now if I were only vetted via Google, I would come out looking pretty good. I went to U of O recently, I'm middle aged and living in Cedar Rapids where I donate a lot to various charities, I worked on something related to stroke... Yes, truly, I am a woman of the world.
• Oh yeah, and she's under investigation and has hired a private lawyer for her alleged misdeeds in the firings of the safety commissioner and her ex -brother-in-law.
• Anything else I forgot is probably here.
  

I just think this is the craziest thing. I don't understand how they could be so careless. I know: McCain wants to court the far right. But there are plenty more appropriate people to put on a ticket who could accomplish just that, I'm sure of it. All I can do is hope that this is the last I'll feel compelled to write about this woman. Unless I try to think of some other LOLVPs. What scares me is that she won't step down or be taken off the ticket and people will still vote for McCain knowing that if/when he dies, she'll take over.

So here is what I tell myself to feel better. Chester A. Arthur was a purely political pick for VP on Garfield's part. He was not considered desirable or necessarily qualified and I don't think he and Garfield even really got along. He wasn't supposed to take the job, either. When offered, though, he said, "This is a higher honor than I have ever dreamt of attaining. I shall accept!" This is one of my favorite quotes ever because it's exactly what you should say in that situation. When Garfield was assassinated, Arthur became president. Wikipedia says:

Publisher Alexander K. McClure wrote, "No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted, and no one ever retired… more generally respected." Author Mark Twain, deeply cynical about politicians, conceded, "It would be hard indeed to better President Arthur's administration."

Although they represented completely different views on the subject of civil service reform (I think), Arthur felt it was his duty to respect the late President's wishes and turned his back on his people, the Stalwarts. I'm sure I'm the only person to ever say this, but I hope there's a little Chester A. Arthur in all of us. And I hope that there's a big Chester A. Arthur in Palin and that she'd do the right thing if the opportunity presented itself. (Also, everyone should read Sarah Vowel's Assassination Vacation, which is where I first learned about all this. That book is so good - I have to find it and read it again.)

Cap'n Ferret Fancier

Nothing can make you mean like watching a documentary on people who "show" ferrets. Like a dog show. But with ferrets. Pete and I went from kind, caring, gentle shows, to the meanest, most judgmental jerks in about five minutes flat. It was the horrible ferret song sung by one of the ferret ladies. Seriously, though: if there is a real cross-section of America that "shows" ferrets, this show (on OPB) did not give it fair representation. But if the OPB show is representative, ferret people are almost universally obese 60+-year old women who either had children who have grown up and moved away, or who never married and never had children. They're weird. They like country-style furnishings and those tapestry pillows with scenes of rabbits and flowers. And tie-dye. And turquoise. I'm not kidding: even if you only have one mean bone in your body, ferret ladies will turn you into a trash talking ass hole.

Pete said at one point, "I bet there's one ribbon per ferret at that show." Here's how OBP ended the program. "327 ferrets entered the show. [pause-wait for it...] 400 ribbons were awarded."

Rose-Colored Memories of TriMet

In high school, I road Tri-Met buses twice a day, every week day for like three years. Mostly I road the 9 or the 8 (once or twice the 41 and walked home from Fremont, or the 33 and walked home from Grant High School), although when being too lazy to walk from the bus mall to school, I took the 57. And sometimes I took the 20 up over the hill to where Mom worked at the time, or the 15 to look at clothes I would never be able to afford (much less fit into) on 23rd. And once, as a Freshman, I road the 12 all the way to the airport and back just to see how long it took.

The 9 ran Powell in SE, to the bus mall, and then into NE (Weidler to 24th to 27th). I caught it on 24th and Brazee and it was mostly filled with adults heading downtown to their white collar jobs. They read, listened to music, or stared out the windows quietly, occationally two would chat softly about their kids or someone they knew from work. It was very laid back, the other riders were just trying to get from one place to another without having to pay $100+/month for parking.

The 8, on the other hand, ran from deep inner NE to the bus mall, and then up the hill to the VA hospital, next to OHSU. From NE to the bus mall it was usually filled with gang bangers at the back and crazies at the front. I never saw truly lunitic people on the 9, but the 8 was like a magnet for them. From the bus mall up the hill, it was filled with sick veterans. From the VA to the bus mall and back out to NE it was also filled with sick veterans. And gang bangers. My brother, who is pretty much as white and non-threatening as you get (being above average height, but not over 6'; fit and slender, but not very "Fight Club," as it were; and a natural dirty blonde, which just fails to threaten the way, say, Goth Black would), Aren always chooses to sit at the back of the bus with the gang bangers when he rides the 8 rather than at the front with the creepy pedophiles and crazy cat ladies. He said that the bangers don't really know what to make of him. He's not a threat to them, he doesn't want to chat with them for some kind of passing, insane person's "street cred," and they probably feel the same way about the people at the front of the bus, so they leave him alone.

Anyway, this is all to say that I road the bus a lot and had a lot of contact with people from varied, um, "walks of life." But when I look back on those three years of riding the bus, I always think, "Man, TriMet is really a good system. It's clean, it's friendly, it's on time, and there really is a pretty decent social contract in place: I leave you alone, you leave me alone. Sure, I once saw an abusive drunk (or drug addict) get denied access to the bus, but as abusive and dangerous as he seemed, the bus driver held her own and he backed the fuck down. And if anyone was a chatty nutter, they made a bee-line for Aren anyway, so everyone else's social contract was still intact.

After my allergist appointment last Monday, I decided to take the bus to work. It was kind of a neat route: take the 20 down Burnside to E Burnside & Grand Blvd and then get on the 19 at the same stop. The 19 drops me off literally across the street from my office, and not the busy street (Glisan) either: the little numbered avenue that no one ever uses but the people who live on it. It's not often that you can transfer from one bus to another that usually run parallel to one another at the same stop when you're not on the bus mall.

The 20 was late and a little smelly. The other people on the bus were just people, I didn't mind them and they didn't mind me. Admittedly, the guy who sat down in front of me may have been the King of Hobo BO, but he took his odor with him when he got off just before the bridge. But when I got off at Burnside and Grand, there were these, well, assholes waiting at the stop for another bus. I got off the back of the 20 to the sounds of this dickwad yelling at the bus driver at the front. What was he pissed about? That it wasn't the 12. Like this was the driver's fault. "Oh, I'm so sorry sir, let me just dump these other passengers and change my reader board and we'll be on our way! Fuck the other people waiting for this bus!" The bus pulls away and he yells after it, "Fucking BUSES!!!" He had two or three buddies with him. And here is where I expose myself for the classest jackhole you always knew I was: they had that look of uneducated, alcoholic, NASCAR ghetto, white trash losers who can't hold down a menial job and think that the world owes them something for being loud mouth, anti-intellectual bastards all the time. The three or four of them stood there and the first guy shouted about how TriMet employees are all assholes and it's all a conspiracy against him and the other guys nodded and laughed and smoked and jeered whenever the first guy said, "Fucking buses!" or "Fucking TriMet!" Then the 12 came and they got on and were probably assholes all the way to wherever they were going. I went and checked the bus schedule. The 19 was probably about five minutes away. So I waited. And after five minutes or so had gone by, I checked the schedule again. And then I saw a bus coming over the bridge. It was another 12. I was like, "Seriously? Two in a row??" So I checked the 12's schedule: identical to the 19 at that time of day. Another couple minutes, and another bus on the bridge. The 20. Finally the 19 showed up, but it was like it had just flat out skipped a scheduled bus.

Then 19 reeked. Like full-on Bum Stink all throughout the bus. And no bums, to speak of. But the 19 did aquire a couple of moms and their kids at Providence Portland (47th & Glisan, or thereabouts). They were sweet, the mom and daughter who sat at the front were smiling and talking together. The mom removed lint from the knees of her daughter's tights (the girl was maybe 8 or so), and ran her hand over the girls head and down her braids, hugging her to pull her back up into her seat, which she was falling out of as she squirmed around to tell her Mom something else about someone at her school. It was just so sweet and intimate and thoughtless (as in, "natural," not as in, "uncaring").

I don't think I'll be signing up to take the bus to work any time soon. My memory of TriMet was that it was clean and safe and friendly. But in reality, it has always been like this: cleanish, kind of smelly at times, safe enough (if you're aware of your surroundings) and friendly in small doses. And that's how all mass transit is, everywhere I've ever lived or even just visited: Portland, Moscow, Paris, Lyon, DC... I never road the train or bus in NY or LA, but I'm sure it's the same. It's really a question of necessity. When I had to ride the bus because I didn't have a license or a car, it was great. But now that it's a choice, it's just so much less enjoyable. And I feel bad for complaining, because I know that I should ride the bus more to be a better citizen. But that is a concern for another post on another day because this one is already ridiculously long.