Like Andy Rooney Died

Last week we were struck down with the flu bug that has been making the rounds here in Little Rock. Accordingly, we were ordered home by our physician where we spent four days. Which is something of a record. This gave us plenty of time to reflect and to make the following observations. As if Andy Rooney is not dead yet. As if we needed more proof that an idle mind is the devil's workshop.

1) We have a job and are not home much during the day. We were amazed at how often the phone rang with calls from political action groups and solicitors. We thought we were on that list that would bar these sort of calls. If we are, it obviously is obeyed mostly in its breach. Equally irritating was the fairly constant barrage of itinerant gentlemen holding themselves out as "yard men." Some of them even had tools and mowers with them. One guy knocked on the door offering his services, even after my yard had obviously been raked and mowed by the college kid I use for this purpose. We were sufficiently irritable as it was, running a fever of 100 degrees for 4 days will do that for a person, without the unbidden intrusion of these solicitation. A sign is going up on the door next week. That'll show 'em.

2) Being confined to quarters as we were, we were able to linger over the "Letters to the Editor" section of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. We are always amused by people who write these screeds against Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Or conversely in support of the teaching of "intelligent design." When we were a kid, the fundy types we knew eschewed scientific explanations for such things as the origin of the universe, reposing trust in their belief that " you can't find God in a test tube." Which they certainly had every right to believe. The problem with this as a matter of tactics is clear. You can't put God-or at least a certain kind of God- into the classroom without getting Him into the test tube first. Otherwise, you are teaching religion. Which, last time we looked, was still against the law.

So how did the Bible-bangers get around this? They made stuff up. They created their own colleges and think tanks, which produced experts who came up with a theory. And since all Darwin had was a "theory" the "theory" of intelligent design should be accorded equal dignity to Darwin's and taught alongside the theory of natural selection.

And now that the educators are presented with an "alternative theory" you have people who write to the paper "supporting" the use of the alternative theory, just like people write letters in support of bond issues. No matter that the Darwinian model of evolution is pretty much accepted as Gospel by professional biologists. No matter that we run the risk of exposing our kids to bad science. If you can frame this lunacy into an issue of choices then it simply becomes a "fairness" issue.

Is this a great country or what?

We at TMFW are not so sure that this matters all that much mainly because we don't pretend to be scientists. Unlike the letter writers who argue that evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. We had no idea that so many evangelical types were amateur Lord Kelvins.

Rather, we repose faith in a God that created His universe and the creatures therein in any way He Himdamn well saw fit. And that the science explains what it explains. Without regard to fairness or political correctness.

But those letters to the editor sure are funny.

3) There was much speculation last week as to whether or not Britney Spears is preggers. This is because recent photographs of her relentlessly overexposed midriff seem to suggest that she is gaining weight. We have no idea as to whether Britney is expecting or whether she remains an entropic system as the proponents of intelligent design might say.

And like those proponents we offer an alternative theory. Britney, when you get down to it, is white trash. Our experience with white trash women is that typically they are as pretty as they come up until around the mid-twenties. By then the lifestyle dedicated to serial marriages to worthless men, smoking Newports and raising a trailer full of kids takes its toll, accelerates the rate of decay and they go to seed.

We know that Britney smokes and we know that she has had a tempestuous love life leading up to her recent nuptials to one the few ostensibly straight dancers we have ever heard of. Which must present its own kind of stress.

At least if she doesn't have one in the oven we will now have a theory that the condition of being white trash is genetic and should be monitored much as people with a genetic predisposition to diabetes monitor their blood sugar.

And this could be taught in the public schools.

As an aside, if you wish to learn Britney's thoughts on semi-conductor physics go to http://britneyspears.ac/laser.htm. It's at least as stupid as anything else mentioned in this post.


4) We also love it when Baptists get all huffy. We come from a long line of Baptists ourselves. We have a beloved aunt in Oklahoma who is so Baptist she pronounces the word BAPtist exploding the "p." we like to poke gentle fun at our aunt. She once asked us why we drank. We told it it made the pills go down easier. She never asked us another question like that again.

Anyway, one of the polemicists that grace the Letters section of the paper made reference to Baptists as Protestants. Whoooo boy! You would have thought that he had called them the Bolshoi Ballet from the responses from all of the readers whose noses were put out of joint by the suggestion.

The typical response was to the effect that the Baptist church is the one true church founded at the Pentecost and that all the other denominations, teevee ministries, websites and cults that have spun off since are offshoots therefrom. Which certainly raises the question of just where the hell they were while Rome and Constantinople were fine tuning the theology and coming up with the secret handshakes. Their answer to that is this was the period of time that the Baptists "went underground."

We do not believe this. "Going underground" is very unBaptistlike behavior. But we have an open mind on this issue. Their having gone underground would explain the absence of accounts of them meddling with Roman politics, why the Bible does not mention that baked ham with pineapple was served at the Last Supper and why the art of that period depicts Jesus as having long hair and a beard, which no Baptist deity would tolerate.

We shall keep an eye on the Letters section for further teaching on this issue.

5) During our convalescence last week, it occurred to us that the antivirals we were consuming by the fistful would be greatly potentiated by the application of alcohol, martinis to be precise. So we slowly and painfully went to a merchant down the street from us that sells a certain variety of olives that we fine particularly therapeutic during times of stress, illness and female troubles.

We could not help but notice that the guys behind the counter were discussing baseball while looking at the computer monitor on the counter.

" Sure Palmero can hit, but do you need 2 first basemen on the roster?" the older one said to the younger.

Our knees began to buckle and we reached for our inhaler.

"Don't tell me you guys are...."

"Fantasy baseball? You bet!" said the older one. "Want in on our league? Yahoo runs a great league. Been doing it for 20 years."

"20 years?" we said, rapidly fanning ourself with a cheesecloth." Yahoo hasn't been around 20 years."

" But fantasy baseball has been." he replied.

We declined the invitation. We know us some baseball but we don't pretend to know baseball, say, the way evangelicals know thermodynamics or Baptists know the History of Christianity. Which is how you have to know baseball to play with those guys.

Besides, we wouldn't consider the league to be sufficiently lifelike or accurate without fantasy drug testing, fantasy paternity suits or fantasy Congressional hearings.

But we were comforted by the thought that even though baseball may be screwed, blued and tattooed right now there are a couple of guys excitedly getting ready for the season in a chic-chic food store in the Heights surrounded by a day-spa and interior decorator. Only baseball can survive itself.

And these are the things we thought about as we stumbled our way toward 98.5. Like we said, idle hands. Like Andy Rooney died.