Walter Blevins's Open Salon Blog

Prepositions in the Age of Sequestration

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 13:02:41 -0500

When I was a graduate student in the early 1970's I decided to use "linguistic analysis" as my research methodology. My thinking was that this is what would let me more fully understand the meaning of philosophical concepts and constitutional issues.

After all these years my mind still picks at these concepts and worries at them much as a dog worries away at an oversized bone. Sometimes I take myself all the way back to my early education when I was learning grammar. That's where my head took me this week--back to elementary school and learning about prepositions and prepositional phrases.

Remember having to diagram sentences--or is that not done anymore in this age of tweets and texts?

We were taught about adverbial prepositional phrases and adjective prepostional phrases. In, for, with, at, of, by and others were all common prepositions modifying subject or predicate, noun or verb.

So what's the point?

One of the most famous uses of prepositions came from Abraham Lincoln when he said "that the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth" at the end of the brief, poignant and still meaningful "Gettysburg Address".

Now that was some good use of prepositions. Here's my point and I'll try to be as succinct as Mr. Lincoln.

It seems to me that our political "leadership" is being "prepositionally selective". The whole concept of "of" and "by" have long disappeared. And it seems to me that the preposition "for" is either on its last legs or it has become totally selective. All three have been replaced by a new prepostional phrase--which would turn Mr. Lincoln aghast--"to the people".

Seems to me that those in elected positions are all to willing to let bad things happen "to the people" rather than thinking in terms of "for the people" or "by the people" and especially "of the people".

And if one attempted to invoke the concept of "polis", every politician from the President all the way through the dingiest hall of Congress would frown, get a vacuous look and mutter "sounds like Greek to me".

(and by the way, regarding "polis"--look it up)

A Little Rainy Day Music--Eddie Arnold

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:10:41 -0400

Eddie who? Eddie Arnold.

He was arguably my favorite country singer "back in the day" when I was just coming out of high school in those "hippie dippy" days of 1969. But I liked Eddie. And I liked Chet Atkins.

And being a romantic sort--what else are you going to be as a typical "angst ridden" 17 year old getting your heart broken on a regular basis?--I enjoyed this song on those summer rainy days when I was "pining away" for some girl or another in my room.

Even though there's only a couple of mentions of rain in this song, it was still my "rainy day" song. Correction--it IS still my rainy day song. And today is the first rainy day in SoCal in months, so I'm tripping back to Eddie Arnold's "But for Love". Here it is. Enjoy it with me.

So Maybe I Shouldn't Even Bother to Vote

Sat, 6 Oct 2012 21:10:58 -0400

I saw an article this morning in my Yahoo News feed that some “experts” are “calling” the Presidential election outcome in some states and there won’t even be exit polling taking place in those states.

One of the states mentioned was California, where I live. I’m kind of used to my vote not “counting”. I’m a liberal who lives in the Congressional district “represented” by Darrell Issa. (Represented is in quotes because the gentleman certainly doesn’t represent me—nor is he interested in doing so).

So does this mean that it’s fruitless for me to even vote (although the experts are “calling” it in favor of Obama in California). What would happen if a whole bunch of us decided to do that—to not bother to vote?

Of course, prevailing Republican strategy would dearly love to see a low turn-out. They would love to see voters with low efficacy just stay home. They would love to have Democratic voters believe that either their vote doesn’t count or that Obama is a “shoo-in” in their state. That favors the Republican party which historically does much better when turnout is low.

Yeah, I’m feeling marginalized right now. I’m a 61 year-old, well-educated male except I have always preferred penny loafers to earthshoes or sandals (if you don’t know what an “earthshoe” is Google it).

Is my vote even going to count? It will be counted but what does it count for? I’m a bit of an electoral enigma. I voted for Carter the second time around and voted for George H. W. his second time around. My record of “second time around” obviously isn’t real good (I don’t even need to mention that I voted against Nixon in ’72, do I?).

Well, I’m a permanent absentee voter anyway so I’ll be marking my ballot for Obama. Let’s see if my luck finally changes this go round and I finally pick a 2nd term winner.

Besides, there’s a whole bunch of referendum measures on the California ballot. It’s always interesting to figure out which group of moneybags interest groups it’ll be the most fun to give a big old “Eff you” to on my ballot. That makes voting almost fun.

Randy Newman's "I'm Dreaming of a White President"

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 11:09:13 -0400

This has got to be the ultimate satire from a master of musical satire--Randy Newman.

He has just released a song and video "I'm Dreaming of a White President". What do you think? Is this over the top? Did he go too far? Or is he tweaking the buttons and making all of us think about our own fears and prejudices?

Errors, Errors, Booted Grounders, Epic Fail, Errors, Errors

Wed, 5 Sep 2012 13:09:14 -0400

Just a quickie. OS is full of errors. It's virtually impossible to get here, post, read, comment or enjoy.

That's really too bad.

ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR

That's about all we get anymore.

Hey! Who has the Major League Baseball all time record for errors in a season? Would you believe it's a tie?

Herman Long of the Phillies committed 122 in 1889

Bill Shindle of the Orioles committed 122 in 1890

Damn that's a lot of errors when many players today commit fewer than 10 in a full season.

But, other than Open Salon, what is the biggest error of all time?

How about this one--Bill Buckner's infamous "boot" in the World Series in 1986:

That error pales compared to all the crappy errors every day as people try to get on and use Open Salon.

GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER!!!