Horsemeat and Other Indelicacies

Recently Andy Rooney started one of his 60 Minutes essays talking about spinach making people sick and ended with some observations having to do with the eating of horsemeat. I’m not actually sure what he was saying in-between because I was drowning his voice out with my screams. Later I spoke to Timothy “Perfess’r” Harris, our director, and asked him to shoot me if I ever wrote like that and he indicated that in that case I’d be shot about once every four weeks.

This may be one of those times. I’m high on NyQuil and I feel an irresistible urge to lead you all on a tour of my mind.

Speaking of tours, I was watching Rick Steves’ Europe the other day, and he was touring Turkey. While my eyes were watching, my mind was spinning with thoughts of cattle swimming the Bosporus, the cow jumping over the moon, and questions like, “If Turkey can be part of Europe, then why do we have wars, and why can’t we all have vacation property on Bora Bora?”

As my questions went unanswered I noticed that Rick Steves was playing backgammon with some Turkish people on the screen, and I listened long enough to hear him say that you can’t make a bad move in backgammon when playing the Turks, they won’t let you.

I immediately thought of Sudoku, to which I have lately become addicted. Sudoku isn’t remotely like backgammon, except that it’s a game. For the purposes of my immediate thought the only significant feature of Sudoku is that you do it by yourself. Therefore the great thing about doing Sudoku, the thing that makes it so appealing for me, is I don’t have to play it with some ego-crazed spoiled crybaby sitting across from me.

You see, I used to think that I might like to play chess. But I discovered that everyone within a radius of 3000 miles of me who was willing to join me at it was an ego-crazed spoiled crybaby. Thanks to Rick Steves I now know that I only had to move to Turkey to find people who could enjoy a friendly chess game like human beings. Provided I first hid their dice from them.

You may be wondering what any of this has to do with eating horsemeat. Well, one of Andy Rooney’s points, or pointlets, was that he was an American and Americans don’t eat horsemeat, and he, for one, wasn’t about to start.

Likewise, I would like to make a point, or pointlet, that I am an American, and that we Americans are by and large ego-crazed spoiled crybabies, and I, for one, have just about had it.

I’m not talking just about the lack of civil discourse evident during the current political campaigns, although that’s part of it. I’m talking about all the mean-spirited and uncivil and unsportsmanlike conduct that is revealing itself throughout our society at all levels, especially the highest, where it does the most monumental harm.

How can it be that I now have to write columns arguing against pre-emptive warfare and torture?

Last week George Bush signed the Military Commissions Act, which deprives almost all human rights to all non-Americans. It doesn’t prevent them from being tortured; it only requires torturers to avoid doing anything that might feel like organ failure or life threatening. So genital-electro-shock is out, thumbscrews are in.

The Act not only allows torture, it also lets the military tribunals use the evidence so obtained against the unlucky suspect. So if you are suspected of being a terrorist and they beat you or someone else into saying that you are a terrorist, then by the new rules, you’re a terrorist.

One of my former chess acquaintances made up the rule that he would always be White, because Black loses too much. I quit playing right about then. How soon before the rest of the world quits playing with America?

How long before the rest of the world catches on that our law treats them like dogs?

Yo Military Tribunal Is A Finger

Being a member of the editorial board of this august rag, I periodically meet with other editorial board members to do editorial board stuff. For example the other day we all sat around a table eating pizza. But right now I'm thinking of a time when we were not only eating pizza, we were thinking. We were thinking about stuff that we could put in the paper.

Usually I'm not any good at that kind of thing, because I don't know anything. So I keep quiet while other people talk. But this time I had a cool idea. I said we should write about this military tribunal business.

Then one of our editors, Michele "Process! Process! Process!" Marchand, said something positive and encouraging about my idea. I think she said, "Why don't you write about that in your column, Wes?"

Unfortunately, now that I sit down to write I am high on Nyquil and my brain is telling me that what Michele said was "Why don't you stick your finger in a lamp socket, Wes?" This has triggered the following flashback.

It was just about forty years ago, 1961. I was 12 years old. My parents had hauled my ass to Guadalajara to live in an apartment building in the suburbs next door on one side to an escaped Nazi, and on the other side to some self-exiled former American commie. We were just there to take advantage of the inexpensive low standard of living. Eggs rancheros! Two cent bus rides! A free nacho with every martini!

But I digress. On this particular day, I was home alone, reading, when the light in the lamp burned out. So I unscrewed the bulb and got a new one. Then I thought, "Hey, I wonder what it would feel like if I stuck my finger in the socket?"

I probably wouldn't have even considered it for more than a second if I was in the US. I mean, we've got REAL electricity here in the US of A. But I was in Mexico where the electricity was probably made by rubbing a thousand balloons on poor people's heads or something like that. So I did it.

Don't try this in your own homes, kids. I stuck my finger all the way into that lamp socket. It immediately felt like a big whomping firecracker went off in my arm, concentrated in my elbow. My whole arm jerked violently, which was probably really good because it pulled my finger out so my finger wasn't fried. It just burned a little.

But the cool thing was that now all the lights were out in the whole apartment. So I went out to find the building manager, to get the fuse replaced. Then I found out that all the lights were out everywhere in our building. By the time I found the manager, he had replaced the burned out fuse, but it didn't get the lights on, BECAUSE ALL THE ELECTRICITY WAS OUT IN OUR WHOLE END OF GUADALAJARA.

The grid was down, and it stayed down for two hours! It was so awesome! And I did it all by myself with my own little index finger!

Of course I had to tell everybody how it had happened. And then after I told everybody about my adventure with the light socket, I realized I could be in big trouble. What if the Mexican police found out an American 12 year old was sabotaging the city electrical system? I could have experienced puberty in a Mexican prison, learning a Spanish vocabulary of a sort that would be of absolutely no use to me in a career as a botanist.

It occurs to me now, with the hindsight of forty years, that sticking my finger in that lamp socket was a mistake. Sure, it looked good at the time, and there were some thrills associated with it, but all in all it wasn't worth the risk, now that I look back on it.

And that's what I think we'll all feel about military tribunals, in a few decades down the road.