One thing Americans should be thankful for this Thanksgiving

...is that they have not put on as much weight as the average turkey. Between 1960 and 2008, turkeys bulked up by around 11lb (5kg) to 29lb, an increase of 64%, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Coincidentally, in that same period the average American man gained 28lb, almost the equivalent of a turkey, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, another government agency, and a Gallup poll of 2008. This year an estimated 250m turkeys will be raised, 8% fewer than a year ago, but still almost enough for one bird each for America's 308m people.



-The Economist

Twenty-three by Liam Rector

When he was 23 and beautiful
He liked to hang around
With other beautiful people.

He liked to get intoxicated with them,
Have sex with them, make money
With them. Among them,

He found, one did not have to strain.
Other people
Wanted to hang around with them

And came bearing gifts,
A little something. (These
Gift-bearers were a lot like

Politics itself is, "Showbiz
For ugly people.") In this world
If anything went wrong there

Was always enough money around
To cover it. After he was through
With this crowd he started hanging

Out with a bunch of academic
Gangsters. These were
A different crew altogether:

Smart, on the main, but mean
And eaten alive by resentment.
They never had enough money

And were bitter beyond belief,
Compared, say,
To a troupe of electricians.

Freud said somewhere
In our unconscious
We are always 23.

("Twenty-three" by Liam Rector, from The Executive Director of the Fallen World. (c) University of Chicago Press, 2006.)

Dicks.

On this day in 1973, school officials in Drake, North Dakota, burned copies of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five. Kurt Vonnegut had served in WWII, and he was captured by the Germans and held as a prisoner in Dresden when the Allies bombed the city. For years, he tried to find a way to tell his story. Meanwhile, he went to graduate school in anthropology, worked at General Electric, got married and had three kids and adopted three more, and struggled to find his voice as a writer. His stories kept falling flat -- too serious and straightforward. But finally he wrote his masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five, which was published in 1969. It was extremely popular and for the most part it got great reviews, but it has been banned many times, for being obscene, violent, and for its unpatriotic description of the war.

In 1973, a 26-year-old high school English teacher assigned Slaughterhouse-Five to his students, and most of them loved it, thought it was the best book they had read in a long time. But one student complained to her mom about the obscene language, and that mom took it to the principal, and the school board voted that it should be not only confiscated from the students (who were only a third of their way through the book), but also burned. Many of the students didn't want to give up their books, so the school searched all their lockers and took them, and then threw the books into the school's burner. While the school board was at it, they decided to burn Deliverance by James Dickey and a short-story anthology.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a letter to one of the members of the school board, and he said:

"Dear Mr. McCarthy:

I am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake School Board. I am among those American writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school.

If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life.

If you and your board are now determined to show that you in fact have wisdom and maturity when you exercise your powers over the education of your young, then you should acknowledge that it was a rotten lesson you taught young people in a free society when you denounced and then burned books -- books you hadn't even read. You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information, in order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and to survive. Again: you have insulted me, and I am a good citizen, and I am very real."

In recent years, several churches across the United States have organized public burnings of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.

The Writer's Almanac for November 10, 2009
Listen: http://www.elabs7.com/ct.html?rtr=on&s=fj6,j144,dv,mjb,z6o,ddg7,fqwa

Me and media (online reports & radio), a conversation from last night. (or: the Day the Military Died)

A little more than twelve hours ago:

It’s come home. Again. But, maybe, only truly for the first-time. Finally, here, the meta-psychical costs are being paid, at the home front—the worst shooting at a military base, ever. They, whoever—some guy—were, are soldiers. The apparent antagonist is a psychiatrist. And he’s alive. I’d like to hear what he’s got to say. I don’t like the looks of him, his name. This might be a big fucking pebble in the pond. I can only imagine, since I’ve no access, in what way the cable news channels are tweaking-out on this. This is going to be, this is big.




[Headlines:]

Muslim groups fear backlash after Fort Hood shooting

Muslim, Arab Groups Condemn Fort Hood Shooting, Brace For Backlash

“At this juncture, again, there is no concrete reporting as to whether Nidal Malik Hasan was in fact a Muslim or an Arab. All that has been reported is that he served in the Department of Psychology at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress at the Bethesda Naval Facility in Bethesda, Maryland. He is believed to be 39 or 40 years old.”

“…his family is shocked by Hasan's actions and that Hasan was a "good American":

Both his parents are American, I want to make sure everyone understands, he was a good American, and we are shocked.

Contrary to prior reports, Hasan has "always been Muslim" and is not a recent convert.”




[Oh, this is fucked:] Stand up to the aggressors. Shooting at Little Rock. Bombs in Times Square.

Nidal Malik Hasan. Barack Hussein Obama. [This is not good. Not good, at all. It is] “horrifying,” Obama says.

[I’m scared to turn on the radio. But I do. It’s not any better.]

A psychiatrist on his way to Iraq. A motive? Yes. Two others? High kill count, begs more shooters. Still on lock down. Someone in your own mist…. And on Wall St., today. Shortage of seasonal flu vaccine because of swine flu vaccines priority. Bernard Kerik screwed. Global warming bill held up by Republicans. Such people will go to hell, says Taliban leader. Militants in Yemen.

Same day as Saddam Hussein sentenced to death 3 years ago today.

[Looking to be a serious case of shooting one’s own foot.]

Palestinian parents. [Oh, that’s great.] Looking more and more like only one shooter. From Virginia Tech, [ha. Lee’s, his former co-worker, is beginning to get fucked.] Why didn’t he come forward before?

Born and raised American. When do we hear about the religion of murderers? …Naval oranges. [Hassidic construction tips. Catskills.] Absorption. A huge, huge problem. [Hassid-lish. He’s hawking tiles. He says, he doesn’t usually do this. Sure.] These tiles can withhold heat or cold.




[Why didn’t they let him out?]

Why didn’t he shoot up the chain of command? Why these servicemen? This is gonna be white-washed, says military psychologist, the MI screwed up.... Eventually, we’re just gonna say enough of it, and treat them all like the enemy. Muslims need to step up, or they’ll be suspect. We’re just gonna get tired of it. –I like him. He's a psychologist, but he talks real: doesn't make excuses for abhorrent behavior.

Nine Bodies

About Australia's Black Saturday wildfires, earlier this year.

The Inferno by Christine Kenneally
The New Yorker, October 26, 2009

"The death toll rose from fifteen to a hundred and seventy-three. It was clear that some bodies would never be recovered, having been effectively cremated. Others were found unburned in positions that suggested that they had simply dropped dead while running from the flame; the radiant heat from a bushfire, which can ignite mattresses and curtains through closed windows, can kill at a considerable distance more or less instantaneously. Survivors with even more excruciating stories. As people had escaped, they had seen they neighbors bodies lying in the streets. A few days after the fire, police found a house with the remains of nine bodies: eight adults had formed a protective huddle around a baby."