"To discover the mode of life or of art whereby my spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom."
-James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Driving up Highway 77 to the gym this morning, I came up on a dump truck bearing the ubiquitous warning among dump trucks, "DO NOT PUSH".
It left me wondering who, exactly, needs to be warned not to push a dump truck, and what might happen if one were to defy this command, creep up on the tailgate of the truck, and give it the faintest bump? Might the tailgate swing open, swallow my poor little pickup, and send me into some portal to another galaxy?
The credit union across the street from the gym has changed its name again. "Loyalty Credit Union", it proclaims itself.
My understanding has always been that the name of a credit union generally bears some relationship to the community or group of people it serves. Mom banked at Texans Credit Union because, well, she was a Texan, born in Waco and died in McKinney. But who exactly banks at "Loyalty Credit Union"? And should we call it "banking" if it isn't actually a bank? I've sometimes been disloyal, switched sides in things like political conversation. Can I open an account there? And are they trying to suggest that loyalty is a universal virtue? Is being a loyal Nazi or Chinese Maoist a good thing?
Taking my place on the elliptical machine, I'm assaulted by an array of screens with closed captioning to ensure I don't miss any of the wisdom being imparted, as I dial up on Spotify REM's 1988 "Eponymous" album, which I purchased just days after returning from the war. I start rocking out (can someone my age actually "rock out"? The visual seems absurd) to "Radio Free Europe" at a decibel level that can't be healthy, but I'm already deaf so what the hell.
One screen broadcasts images of protesters blocking a bridge in New York City and waving Palestinian flags, while on the adjacent screen the news squawkers discuss a report that those very same people our protesters are supporting refuse to release their female hostages for fear these womens' stories of serial sexual assault will become public. Anyone who has anything nice to say about Hamas is a numb nut, Fox News fodder at its worst. But anyone who doesn't realize that murdering 15,000 mostly women and children in retaliation for the 7 October debacle is just the Israeli political class trying to save its ass after a massive intelligence failure. And both sides will tell you God is on their side, a perennial excuse for the very worst organized human behavior over the millenia. If anyone around you starts spouting "Gott Mit Uns", watch out.
Speaking of wrapping oneself in virtuous victimhood, the other screens with more of a sports bent anguish over the decision to leave Florida State out of the college football playoffs, apparently a tragedy of equal gravity with the murder spree in the Levant. For those who don't follow these things, Florida State won the ACC, went 13-0, but was passed over for the playoff in favor of one-loss Alabama and one-loss Texas. The reason? Florida State's amazing quarterback, Jordan Travis, suffered a horrible injury in the penultimate game of the season, and the Noles have been mediocre at best ever since.
On the one hand, I can see FSU's gripe that they ran the table and found ways to win even without their star. I can also see the argument from the Bama crowd that this is about picking the four best football teams on the date the playoff lineup is selected, and FSU clearly isn't on that list. On yet another hand (that would be three, manifestly a birth defect of some sort) who gives a sh*t? I mean really folks. Babies are getting vaporized by 2000 pound bombs in Gaza (who uses 2000 pound bombs in tight urban areas? The IDF apparently. Our Air Force never did, for this very reason).
Plus, well, college football isn't what it used to be. The game has always had a dark side (just ask Peg, one-time tutor to the Vols' "student" gladiators), but now we have the revolving door transfer portal, brains in jars at Boston University as the coda to a career of hard knocks, young men refusing to play in meaningless bowl games that might bring an injury that would preclude a career in the NFL. "FSU's snubbing undermines the integrity of the game," I heard another lawyer say the other day. What integrity?
And the Wee Guv says he's budgeting $1 million as a litigation reserve for yet another round of jurisprudential theater to satisfy the rubes. The suggestion is that they'll sue the playoff committee for well, they'll figure out some theory, however risible. I guess they can reallocate the funds from prior line items for book burning, dismantling higher ed, and placing teachers in legal jeopardy for inferring there's such a thing as homosexuality.
This is the problem with the old Joycean stream-of-consciousness writing. Better to keep my stream to myself.
A pretty day out there, if a little cloudy. I'll spend lunch finding a Christmas tree for the office, bill mostly a full day, then take the beautiful Peggy W. Bowen as my date for the Bay County Bar Association's Christmas Party. All good.
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