A Glass Half-Full To Last A Long Weekend

I worry about stuff.  I worry about details.  I stress about problems, and when there are no problems, I worry that I’m overdue.  I worry that I’m writing crap and I worry that not enough people are reading the crap I write.  I worry about the things I’ve done, the things I haven’t done, and the things I don’t know that I’ve done or not done.  Take yesterday, for example.  I worried that my site statistics were on the decline and I stressed over having nothing particularly cogent or pertinent to share.  I did my usual article by article search of Huffington Post and CNN.com, and even noted the headline about the Supreme Court overturning another state’s ban on same-sex marriage, thinking to myself, “Great!  One more state down, thirty or forty to go,” and completely missed the story of the day by failing to click and find out that the state in question was my very own bright RED uber-conservative god-fearing Mike Pence-led Indiana.  My bad.  But here’s where the glass starts being half-full.  In the midst of my whining and failure to report a local scoop, I had more site hits yesterday than in the past two weeks.  Begging apparently has an effect.

Let me be the first (or more like the ten thousand and first) to congratulate Federal Judge Richard Young for ruling that Indiana’s ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional.  It was the right thing to do and it was about time.  It came right on the heels of a similar ruling by the federal courts in Utah on Wednesday.  Clearly the tide of progress, tolerance, and human dignity is building momentum, and that’s where that glass remains optimistically filling.  But there’s always someone eager to rain on even the happiest parade, and they are not far behind.  My gay friends in the Hoosier state would be smart to get to the altar sooner rather than later, because suits will be filed, stays will be contemplated and almost certainly issued, constitutional amendments will be pushed, and even marriages signed sealed and consummated today may be reversed and denied tomorrow.  But for today love and sanity are triumphing over hate and fear.  Glass half-full.

The federal courts were full of surprises yesterday.  The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the police need a warrant to search the contents of your cell phone, which is about the biggest concession SCOTUS has made to civil liberties since the Miranda decision.  So that’s good news.  The glass is half-full.  Still, it makes you wonder how the court can rule the contents of your iPhone to be sacrosanct, but the contents of your bladder to be in the public domain.  It’s the sort of dichotomy I’ll never understand.  At the same time, while it’s very nice that State Trooper Jackboot can’t see who you’ve been sending pictures of your tattooed and pierced junk to, the NSA not only has their names and numbers, but they know about that little rash you’ve been concerned over…it’s probably just from the heat.  Nothing to worry about.  The glass is half-full.

Which brings me back to me (it’s Kibbitz Corner, where it’s all about me all the time).  I may worry that I don’t have as many readers as George Will, but no one is accusing me of being a paternalistic insensitive mysogynist either.  In fact, I figure I have about two dozen people whose days aren’t complete without a dose of Wendellisms, and another two dozen who check in when the moon is in the correct phase.  I appreciate all of you.  When I finally write the book, I promise to autograph your copies.  The other sixty or so will be in my attic, just in case my fame multiplies posthumously.  In the meantime, I’ll be off the grid until next Tuesday, visiting my son in the Mile High City (make of that what you will).  But I should have some great stories and stunning pics when I return, so all in all, the glass is half-full.

BW

Good Thing It Wasn’t Aeschylus

Look, one of things I’ve discovered about this column is that people actually seem to read it, and some of them don’t take kindly to some of my attempts at humor.  The whole “dick-head” bicycle helmet incident comes to mind.  And one of the things I learned writing my previous blog, “Left, Right, and Centered”, is that among my readership was a certain predatory species, homo attorneyus disgustens.  That unfortunate revelation resulted in a rather expensive life lesson involving the concept of copyright infringement.  Having no particular inclination toward becoming more familiar with the finer legal points of slander and libel, I want to preface this piece with a little disclaimer: It’s intended as HUMOR (also, stop me when I’m lyin’.)

It’s bad enough that IU has a reputation for having the most reliably beatable football team in the Big Ten.  No matter how far they lower the bar, the Fighting Hoosiers can never seem to put enough W’s up to qualify for even the Roto-Rooter Toilet Bowl, let alone one of the prestigious games like…The Duck Commander Independence Bowl (I am NOT making this up).  And Tom Crean’s basketball program is lately most famous for taking some of the best recruits in America and molding them into a team almost magical in its ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  Even up the road in Indy, the Colts are renowned for invariably choking in the big game.

So if IU isn’t going gain its fame on the gridiron or the hardwood, you’d kind of hope that they’d make their mark in the classroom.  And every year, IU places right up there in the US News College Rankings.  The Kelly School of Business and Jacobs School of Music are routinely in the top tier.

But here’s the deal, and this is just personal observation: College students are morons.  The sheer number of them who can make it through four years of undergrad and another two to four of post-grad and still not be capable of composing a coherent sentence or knowing the difference between “there”, “their”, and “they’re” is simply staggering.  

It must be a particularly proud day for IU.  I’m sure that when Michael McRobbie awakened this morning and scanned Huffington Post for the day’s headlines, he felt a surge of delight when he saw the following headline (again, I’m not making this up): Worst “Wheel Of Fortune” Contestant Ever Blows Chance At $1 Million Prize.  It was college week on Wheel, and the contestant in question was an IU honors student, who had a puzzle before him with ALL the letters filled in.  All he had to do was READ the answer.  Go ahead and play the video in the link and watch for the 1:30 mark, where the honors student in question reads aloud: Mythological Hero Achilles.  Sadly for him, reading is apparently his Ay-Chill-Us heel.

BW