The universe is relatively fool-proof

What a time to live in America, when through talent, intelligence and hard work, a descendant of slaves kidnapped from Africa and brought to these shores against their will can grow up to become — the president’s wife.
Before and after the November election, a lot of pundits waxed on about how Barack Obama’s candidacy and victory show that anybody can achieve anything in this country. That kind of talk brings two question to my mind.
First, what do I have to do to get people to call me a pundit? I’ve been a professional journalist and columnist for years, and now everybody I work with is younger than me. I’m just sayin’.
Second, didn’t George W. Bush already prove that anybody can be president? With his (sort of) election, we showed that you don’t need competence, general knowledge or respect for the Constitution to occupy the highest office in the land.
So what’s the big deal with Obama, a handsome, charismatic, brilliant legal scholar?
It’s like Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays, two of the best players in the country, breaking the color barrier in major league baseball. They still had to sleep in separate hotels and eat at separate diners, and their middle- and lower-tier colleagues were all white. The game wasn’t really integrated until you could be mediocre and black, and still get a job with the Yankees.
Same for the White House. I’ll get excited about race and gender equality when we elect an African-American woman as incompetent as Bush to lead us into our next unjustified war.
Baby steps, I guess.
I have a colleague who would like to see Sarah Palin become president. Her arguments mirror those of B.D. in recent Doonesbury comics, so I won’t go into detail here. Suffice to say, she doesn’t consider a passing grade in high school geography a sine qua non to direct United States foreign policy.
I’m not sure what people see in these candidates the Republicans like to throw up, but I guess that’s why Karl Rove gets the big bucks. They attract people like Abraham Lincoln, Earl Warren and Colin Powell, then run Bushes, Palins and, bless his heart, Don Young.
According to one theory, average voters want to see someone like themselves in leadership positions. I’m far from the only one asking why we would want somebody as dumb as the average voter in the hardest, most important job in the world.
As against that, I can hardly argue anyone has a big enough brain to get us through what’s coming. Sometimes a no-win scenario deserves the name, and even if everybody handling luggage for the airlines were as smart as me, your bags wouldn’t get to the right destination.
The smartest human of the twentieth century was a devout, peace-loving guy who wanted the best for everybody. His work led directly to the invention of weapons that can wipe us all out, possibly starting next week in South Asia.
And maybe not. As Palin would ask, what does Indiana have against Pakistan that’s worth a nukyular war?
Even if Obama is as smart as Einstein and leads with the wisdom of Solomon, he can only buy Western Civilization a few years, at most. The whole human setup has reached a point that was probably inevitable from the day Oolgfrap figured out how to make the hot orange stuff out of sticks and leaves.
Apparently, Naeser’s Law applies even to the Almighty, which leads me to two more questions.
Will God tell the governor of Alaska to accept the Fox network offer, and what will people do if they schedule “Sarah” opposite “Oprah”?

Subatomic analysis of the vice presidential debate

Thanks to Sarah Palin, I finally have the difinitive response for foreign friends who ask me to explain the difference between Republicans and Democrats.

As leader of Republicans for the last eight years, George W. Bush established a precedent for distinguishing the parties, a simple litmus test we have sorely needed since the ascendancy of nylon and polyester put paid to Pat Nixon’s cloth coat. So Bush will be remembered for giving the English-garbling world “nukyuler” for a lot longer than anybody remembered constitutional checks and balances.

In her debate with Joe Biden Thursday, Palin repeatedly took up the nukyular mantle with an insistance worthy of a commander in chief. Her opponent subtly defended the Democratic-approved stance, meeting Palin’s verbal detonations by inserting the high-taxing, big government watchword “nuclear” into the gaps not otherwise filled by “darn” or “doggone.”

It swayed her no more than Biden’s pointed hints about the U.S. general in Afghanistan. Maybe her references to Gen. McClellan represent abortive attempts by the spirit of Abraham Lincoln to slip Palin some classical eloquence from the Great Campaign Trail in the Sky. He probably feels responsible for using up all the Republican literary mojo at Gettysburg and his second inaugural.

However it started, the Republican preference for mangled prose and malapropisms now stands as fundamental policy.

Some people probably still believe Colin Powell left the State Department becaue of disagreements about doctrine or pique over being used and humiliated with his U.N. speech in favor of war against Iraq. In the event, the problem was his un-Republican habit of expressing complex ideas in coherent, well-formed sentences. The lesson has not been completely lost on Condy Rice, who avoids meaningful content even while risking her job by correct pronunciation.

Both of them need to remember their roots and pay attention to the example of previous Republican SecState Al Haig, who used the power of his office to make “impact” a verb.

Deep down, that’s the kind of leadership Joe Six-pack, Jane Chablis and Bob Bacardi really want. Not, as Mike Dukakis impotently put it, a president “who can think and talk in complete sentences.”

OK, that was Jon Lovitz, but his version of the debate got higher ratings.

Now, I would like to support an Alaskan on a major ticket, but Palin and the Republicans have taken a stand that reveals an ugly prejudice against my ethnicity. As a copy editor-American, it falls to me to stand up for our rights before the Republicans tack a rider onto the next Wall Street bailout bill that legalizes spelling “barbecue” with a q.

The backers of English-only laws are also overwhelmingly Republican, begging the question of how they propose to govern without violating the statutes every time they open their mouths. If a federal law were in place, Congress would have had no choice but to begin the impeachment process immediately following President Bush’s first State of the Union.

So no Alaskan in the Blair House this time around. It’s disappointing, but if you care at all about the basic rules of pronunciation our founding fathers believed in, your choice in November is clear.

Excuse me — culear.

How to face the end

In six weeks, every subtle difference and shade of opinion in America will disappear into the Manichaean excersice of choosing between two candidates. You have that long to decide what to give up, expectations-wise.

A lot of truisms and their related spoofs start out, "There are two kinds of people in this world …"

I have correctly derided all of them, usually with no more rhetorical effort than it takes to refute a creationist. But one binary characterization of all humanity requires a little more attention, lest any more people get sucked into believing it reveals a deep, meaningful insight into two camps neatly divided by their respective weltanschauungs.

Some people drive straight in to parking spaces and then have to back out when they leave. Other people back in to park so they can drive straight out when they leave.

(Maybe some confused people — the sort who tell pollsters that they trust Republicans more than Democrats with fiscal policy — sometimes park one way, sometimes the other.)

Obviously, the total time either strategy requires for parking and leaving is exactly the same. So why pick one or the other?

Your facile psychologizer would conclude the back-inners have more foresight and are willing to invest their effort against a future convenience.

As one of the deeper-thinking back-outers, I know better.

Behold my logic: Someday the world will end. Statistically, I will most likely be parked when that happens, so any time potentially saved when pulling out of the parking spot never happens. The extra 20 seconds it would take to back in when parking gets wasted.

Since the two parking methods are time-neutral until that day, it makes more sense to drive straight in and use what may be the last 20 seconds of the universe to do something meaningful. I plan on recalling some of my favorite "Peanuts" cartoons, the ones where Snoopy puts on sunglasses, leans against a tree, and sums up all of existence in the last panel.

The real lesson? I drive too much.

Meanwhile, don't be the kind of person who thinks there are two kinds of people in this world. It's an overestimate.

Here's Joe Cool, ready for the end.

Presidential library to open in Wasilla in 2017

Republican presidential candidate John McCain scored a landslide victory over his Democratic opponent today — in the race for the weekend news cycle.
This morning, the Associated Press wire service the Kodiak Daily Mirror depends on for most of its national and international news gagged on the news that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will run for vice president on McCain’s ticket. When I tried to put together today’s Politics page, the AP Web site couldn’t show me any stories because the Palin announcement generated so much traffic.
I have never seen anything like it since the current Web-based AP wire system went operational. Even when I typed in “Obama” or “Democratic convention” as the search terms, all I got was Palin-McCain.
Astounding.
Then again, maybe it was just a slow day for the computer. That happens.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell when somebody is being serious.
About 20 years ago, I was a graduate student in Santa Cruz, Calif. While waiting to talk to my semantics professor, I shot the breeze with his office neighbor, Tom Lehrer.
Lehrer came to fame in the 1960s for his satirical songs, like “We Will All Go Together When We Go,” “The Vatican Rag” and “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park." He taught math at Harvard and later at Santa Cruz.
I asked him why he disappointed so many listeners by quitting his musical career. His answer: With the election of Richard M. Nixon as president in 1968, he couldn’t think of any jokes that would be as funny as reality.
He’s a funny guy. I thought he was joking.
I felt similarly confused when I heard Ted Stevens say that Lisa Murkowski is a better senator than her father ever was, until I remembered Ted never jokes.
Like so many Alaskans, I heard the news about Palin first thing in the morning, and wondered what crazy world I had woken up to. I also finally realized Lehrer wasn’t joking.
McCain pulled a stunt today, the kind I thought American politics had gotten past.
To me it looks like McCain, a politician I have long admired, chose Palin just to have a woman on the ticket.
He could have done that and chosen a prominent female Republican more clearly qualified to be president. Why didn’t he pick Elizabeth Dole, Christie Todd Whitman, Lisa Murkowski or even Condy Rice?
It reminds me of the Clarence Thomas appointment. In 1991, George H.W. Bush apppointed Thomas to the Supreme Court to replace Thurgood Marshall — after 24 years still the only African-American U.S. justice.
Bush could have tapped any outstanding, experienced, conservative jurist, a group that includes a great many African-Americans, if that was a consideration.
Instead he chose Thomas, whose lackluster performace on the bench surprised nobody who looked at his earlier record.
It looks like Bush got blinded by the perception that he needed to fill “the black seat” on the court, an echo from discussion about the 1939 appointment of Felix Frankfurter to replace Louis Brandeis in the court’s “Jewish seat.”
Palin ran a little town in Alaska. Then she ran all of Alaska — which is like running a little town anywhere else. There are aldermen in Chicago with more constituents. That’s not a presidential resume.
McCain cashed in a token to steal coverage today. I doubt it will prove politically worth it in the long run.
More importanly, it ruins the humor column business for me. I have used this space to exaggerate, mock, lie and go off on tangents to tangents to tangents.
I had some good material ready for today, making fun of Obama and McCain about equally, with references to Czechoslovakia and bowling, and maybe the odd crack about Bill and Hillary.
But I can’t top this one.
I now understand what Lehrer meant, and so I’m getting out. Maybe I’ll keep up my ramblings on a blog or in some other medium, but this incarnation of Out of the Loop ends here.
The AP wire wasn’t the only thing that gagged.
Thanks for watching.
Drew Herman is a copy editor at the Kodiak Daily Mirror.

Beware Olympic hype — take a polo pony to lunch

Sure, we managed to wipe their entire country out of existence 29 years later, but a lot of us are still smarting from the 1972 Olympic basketball final between the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R., and we could use a little more validation than our current hoopsters are likely to deliver.
So every four years, I remember the unsung heroes of past Olympics and overhaul my metaphorical accordion specially to sing them anew.
We could use a man like Thomas Hitchcock Jr. again. The handsome Harvard student flew for France in World War I, but came home to lead the U.S. polo team to silver in the 1924 Olympics.
Hitchcock and his crew had the real stuff, and given a few more decades, the U.S. would have cantered into international dominance. Every kid in America would have kept a pony in their room and practiced dropping their Rs during the off-season.
But after 1936, in a blatant bid to dim the glory of the U.S. athletic juggernaut, the International Olympic Committee dropped polo from the roster forever.
I blame fascists like former IOC head Juan Antonio Samaranch. And that’s not a slur about his management style — the man was a card-carrying member of Generalisimo Francisco Franco’s party.
Thus began the era of psuedo sports. Race walking? Rhythmic gymnastics? Synchronized swimming, for all love? If this stuff is sports, then I deserve at least a bronze for dodging traffic when I walk across the parking lot at Wal-Mart. Why not log rolling or darts? Heck, I’ve seen some balloon animal artists who work up a good sweat.
If this weren’t a humor column, I would mention cup stacking, but unfortunately that’s actually considered a sport in many U.S. school districts.
I had a linguistics professor who played cut-throat racketball — even in a singles game. He liked to say it doesn’t count as a sport unless you can hurt the other guy.
You only have to look at the butcher’s bill from the 1920 Olympic tug-of-war competition to see what real athletes risk. OK, no deaths or broken bones, but rope burns are no laughing matter. Maybe that’s why the IOC pulled the rug from under the tug, too.
In 1904, the United States swept all three medals in the Olympic tug-of-war. We lost a little ground after that, but I think we’re ready to resurge, and we lead the world in skin lotion production.
The world tug-of-war championships begin in less than four weeks, and flights to Stockholm are filling up fast.
Scriptor speculi Drew Herman sum. Ludes virumque cano.

Ni gxojas esti aux strangaj aux frenezaj

To read the original English version of this column, go to www.kodiakdailymirror.com and look in the opinion section.

MONTREALO, Kanado -- Raporto de membrokomitato de Esperanta Klubo Kodiako: ankoraux sole mi.
Bonflanke, tio signifas ke ni bezonas nur unu novan membron por atingi cent procentan kreskon. Aliaflanke, gxi ankaux signifas ke ni estas nun tute senestrigitaj, cxar la tri-jara terminolimo malpermesas ke mi ankoraux kandidatas kiel prezidanto.
Intertempe, kiel foririnta prezidanto, mi estas en Montrealo por cxeesti la 7an Tutamerikan Kongreson de Esperanto kune kun pli ol 200 aliaj partoprenantoj de Usono, Kanado, Kubo, Gvatamalo kaj aliaj landoj, ecx de Euxropo kaj Azio.
Esperanto estas intence inventita lingvo, kiel la Klingona lingvo, sed sen kostumoj. Pola okulisto kiu nomigxis Ludviko Zamenhofo kreis gxin en jaro 1887 kiel facile eklernebla dua lingvo kiun cxiuj povus uzi por plifortigi universalan interkomprenecon kaj tutmondan pacon.
Se vi cxeestis dum la 1960aj jaroj kaj ne estis tro narkotigxita, vi versxajne memoras la tutmondan pacon. Gxi devis atingigxi per sxvebigi registrajn konstruajxojn kaj per netrancxajxon de haroj. Kiel ido de 1970aj -- la Novgxersejo de jardekoj -- mi konas tutmondan pacon nur kiel respondo dum la intervjua parto de la Frauxlino Ameriko konkurso.
Cxiuj konas kiel estas bedauxrinde, ke la homaro ne pli enfokusigas la korsentojn kiujn ni cxiuj partprenas kiel civitanoj de la mondo, ekzemple zorgo pri la malricxoj kaj malsatoj, maltrankvilo pri la ekosistemo, aux malsxato pri Gxorgxo W. Bush. Zamenhofo ekpensis ke la homoj malpli konfliktus, se ili povus almenaux plifacile interparoli.
Pesimisto povus remarki, ke konfliktoj iam okazas ecx inter homoj kiu scipovas la saman lingvon, versxajne pro tio, ke ili sin komprenas ja tro bone. Sed Esperanto, kio signifas hoping, sin ne okupas pri pesimismo.
Esperanto kiel internacia lingvo estas unu el tiuj evidentaj bonegaj ideoj kiuj funkcius bone se la homoj donus malgrandan penon hodiaux por sxpari multe da mono kaj kapdoloron pli malfrue, simile al universala sanozorgo aux publika veturilajxo. Pro tio ke ni sxajnas kontentaj ke niaj profesiaj sanozorgistoj konsumas la plejparton de ilia tempo plenskribinte formularojn anstataux kuracinte pacientojn, mi decidis elspezi mian kontrauxventomuelilan energion por cxi tio monda lingvo. Ni Kodiakanoj povus gxin utile uzi, kiel rapida ponto inter la angla, la pilipina, la hispana kaj la volapukazxo kiun la junuloj sin tekstas per iliaj posxtelefonoj.
Nun, poste nur 121 jaroj, nia celo estas videbla. Je la nuna rapideco de la disvastigxo de la Esperanta movado, cxiuj en la mondo parolos gxin ne post la jaro 6011485, pli aux malpli malmultaj milionoj, supozante nulan populaciokreskon kaj la kompletan malaperon de Usonuloj. Ni jankioj ne tre sxatas paroli alilande.
Do eble ni esperantistoj estas optimistaj stranguloj. Fakte, la stranguloj ofte gxustas je mi-tion-diris-al-vi-ajxoj. Kiel mi vidis en Montrealo, nia inventita lingvo vere funkcias. Esperantistoj konversacias normale, prelegas, skribas librojn, kaj amikigxas kun homoj de aliaj landoj.
Kaj jen la subtenantoj: Williem Baden Powell, la fondinto de la knaboskoltoj, rekomendis gxin. La religia sekto Oomoto en Japanio postulas ke la membroj gxin lernas, kaj la Usona armeo antauxe uzis gxin kiel lingvo de la malamikoj je la militoludoj. Hitlero gxin nomas judan konspiron, kiel demokratio aux presa libero.
Hazarde estas Montrealo ankaux la hejmo de la profeto Rael, kiu en jaro 1973 anoncis ke aliplanedanoj kreis la teran homaron antaux 25,000 jaroj. Niaj eksterteraj prapatroj diris al li ke ni devas adopti komunan lingvon tra la tuta mondo, sed strange, ili ne indikis specife Esperanton. Ili ankaux diris al Rael ke ni devus kloni sin por atingi eternan vivon, kaj ni devus neniam trancxi la harojn cxar ili funkcias kiel antena sistemo por telepatio kun la eksterteruloj.
Kaj parolante pri Klingonoj kaj Montrealanoj, la unua plenlonga filmo farita en Esperanto steligis la Kanadan aktoron William Shatner, antuax ol li igxis Kapitano Kirk. Eble la tutmonda paco afero estas ete tro optimista, sed se vi lernas Esperanton, eble ankaux vi povas gajni Emmy-premion por ludi frenezan korporacian juriston en televido.

Leather guy, indian chief, construction dude, cop …

When that Carhartt and Xtratuf-clad icon of machismo, the Alaska fisherman, walks into a cafe and orders a skinny decaf strawberry latte, I feel like I have to hawk and spit, scratch something indiscreet, or maybe objectify the next woman I see, just to even up the karmic score.
The example above happened to occur this week, but don’t make the mistake of dismissing this as an “isolated incident.” Not three minutes after I witnessed that order, I hit the boat docks to watch crews stocking up. As one guy set off for supplies, his buddy yelled, “Don’t forget we’re out of tarragon.”
Tarragon? On the tough streets I lie about coming from, men don’t know what tarragon is, any more than they can identify mauve or chartreuse.
I hope they at least put it in a container labelled “rust flakes” before sprinkling it in their Alfredo sauce. Even writing about that incident makes me want to take apart a transmission or throw a handful of Doritos at the Mariners.
It’s just that a lot of us feel a little adrift these days, since the whole sensitive guy thing proved unsustainable after we sat through all those “Sex and the City” episodes. We really had no choice but to end the charade when it came out on DVD.
Let's face it — the macho movie icons have let us down lately. Where is today’s Duke or Bogey? Even the Fonz has more street cred than Brad Pitt. Maybe Clooney has some suave, but the wardrobe for suave costs too much, and Armani is a non-starter in Kodiak.
Not that I would recognize anything Armani, of course. I’m a little embarrased to even know the name. I assume they sell mauve shirts.
So fishermen, the next time you go to a cafe, remember that impressionable wannabes may be listening. For heaven’s sake, at least order a double shot with that creme de menthe.
Mirror writer Drew Herman is too cool to worry about his image.

Sophie gxuas la sunon sur nia boato.

It’s all over except for the muttering

With the long drawn-out race finally over, President Obama and Vice President Rodham have only a few months to get things done before the usual, short political “honeymoon” ends — probably in November, or January at the latest.
I don’t hold with the nattering nabobs who have already declared the Obama administration a failure. That’s just blatantly jumping the gun.
I mean, look at everything they have already accomplished. For example, appointing George W. Bush roving ambassador to Little League Baseball and other powerless allies was a stroke of genius, allowing the former figurehead-in-chief to fade away with dignity, a sort of diplomatic St. Jude spreading the joy of photo ops to lost causes around the world.
On the other hand, the Obamameister’s legislative agenda seems to have stalled, and I gotta ask, what is he waiting for? I hear he hasn’t cleaned out his old Senate office, and Michelle hasn’t even changed the drapes in the East Wing.
If I seem impatient, you have to understand what I’ve been through for seven and a half years. As a person whose relationship with reality is as who should say casual, I have had recourse to coping methods usually reserved for reading comic books.
In literary circles they call it “suspension of disbelief,” and you need it to shut down the law of momentum when Iron Man crashes into the earth at Mach 2, shakes it off and changes into a tux in time to dance with Gwyneth Paltrow. With all of Season 4 of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” on DVD to go through, I don’t appreciate having to expend my usually large reservoir of suspendable disbelief on Karl Rove’s applications of the U.S. Constitution.
Welcome back to the real world, President O.

Copy editor Drew Herman’s vote counts as much as yours.

Who's rich, dead or in jail?

DENVER AIRPORT — Last month, I googled a few of my high school classmates — people I knew long before the invention of googling, and for that matter before the Internet or triple-bladed razors.
I would have googled more of them, but I could recall only about a dozen names, and half of those turn out to have been characters in sketches by the original cast of “Saturday Night Live.”
But what can you expect? Guys at my advanced age deserve credit if we remember to shave at all.
For this weekend I will attend our 25-year class reunion, assuming I remembered the correct graduation year. Anyway, I got an invitation, which left me no way to deny that I am now, as who should say, something more than 30 years old.
At least I won’t have to endure childish comparisons of success and be humiliated by some former nerd we called “Weasel” who arrives in a chauffeur-driven limo with its own Starbuck’s. That’s because I went to a little school in a remote corner of Michigan from which students disperse to the four winds immediately after graduation to advance forward into the future that’s ahead of them. I expect little competition for hors d’oeuvres at the reception.
So now those futures are behind us. We can look back at living through an era of new technological wonders from touchtone phones to curved toothbrushes that overshadow even Gilette’s multi-bladed marvels.
OK, this whole reunion trip is mostly an excuse to go someplace where “spring” does not mean highs in the mid-30s with rain turning to snow toward evening, and where I can rent a sailboat without worrying where to stow a survival suit.
But I do look forward to the classroom visit part of the reunion festivities, when the school’s current students get to meet us oldtimers. I’ve put some work into the sage advice I assume they’re eager to hear and certain to follow. Although, I understand advice is now called “talking points” and high schoolers won’t notice them unless they come texted on a cell phone.
I will warn them to stay away from the two most pernicious temptations facing today’s youth: drugs and college, only one of which I was smart enough to avoid.
Maybe the students won’t care, and I sure don’t recollect what the visiting alumni told me a quarter century ago. Those crazy geezers were old, gray, out of touch, and probably still used straight toothbrushes.
This year’s graduates have never known a world without a weak dollar, and likely will think nothing of shaving with a quintuple-bladed razors. Thanks to gene replacement rejuvenation therapy, they won’t even be old and gray for their 25-year reunions.
But I bet their children will make fun of them for lugging around those clunky MP50 players instead of just downloading everything onto their brain implants.
Drew Herman is the Kodiak Daily Mirror assistant editor. Read past “Out of the Loop” columns at www.sputvalvo.blogspot.com.

After long enough, any career can smell rank

Who would have thought that little Davy Petreaus of Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y., would grow up to command the U.S. central command, and after only 34 years in the Army?
Hasn’t he ever heard of lateral mobility? Who stays in the same company that long anymore? Was it the medals, the titles, the free chipped beef?
If only the private sector —where five years in the same job now counts as a career-killing rut — could tap the military mystique. After almost five years, I am among the oldtimers at this newspaper, but do I get my own driver? (For the answer, shift the following letters one alphabet place to the right: mn.)
Maybe employees would stick around longer if they could look forward to becoming reception desk commander or colonel of custodial services. Think of poor Lt. Wombat, still waiting for promotion 24 years after Capt. Kangaroo retired. And I don’t even want to get into the ugliness between sergeants Iowa and New Mexico since Captain America died.
It could be worse. George Washington, after making it to commanding general of the United States Army in 1799, wasn’t promoted to general of the Armies of the United States until 1976.
Even without uniforms and salutes in every workplace, title inflation has a firm hold these days, as we were just reminded by National Administrative Specialists Week. Woe betide anybody looking for work as a mere secretary when other resumes sport that job description.
Is this part of the same trend that turned my grade school history class into social studies? When I was growing up, Gilette made razors; now they only offer shaving systems. Then again, maybe it’s because of the advent of disposable razors and the complications they cause that the garbage man of my youth has been replaced by our modern sanitary engineer.
Of course, there are also problems with the title rewards system, as the United Federation of Planets knows only too well. As I enjoyed watching “Star Trek” TV shows and movies over the decades, it got more and more interesting to see how the writers explain either a) the same ship with an entire crew of officers whose ranks entitle them to command their own ships, or 2) crewmembers serving onboard the same ship for 30 years without getting above lieutenant. Personally, I would find the cumbersome admiral’s braids a little annoying while washing dishes.
Mirror assistant editor Drew Herman is commodore of a fleet of two kayaks.

Streets paved with fish in Alaskan El Dorado

I’ve lived in Kodiak long enough that first-time experiences have grown rare, so I was moderately surprised when I stepped out of my front door Wednesday morning and onto a 30-inch halibut.
My second thought (right after, where did I last see Luca Brasi?) was, how am I going to explain this at the office?
It may come as a surprise to readers who know this column as the shrine to veracity I always intended, but sometimes, some of my colleagues doubt my assertions.
As a kid from the Midwestern suburbs, where fresh fish are — as who should say — uncommon underfoot, I have some understanding of their doubt.
On the other hand, I have also lived in Kenai, where the tide brings in all kinds of stuff, and if you have to step over a few herring or a waterlogged crate of Nikes to get to your car in the morning, nobody considers it worth mentioning.
My third thought was, cool — here’s my chance to try out www.whatdoesyouromenmean.com. There, between “entrails” and “fruitcake,” I found “flatfish, stepping on (morning)” and learned that either the Greek empire or the Persian empire will fall. No specific dates were given, so I pulled my investments from both, just to be safe.
But gods who leave important messages like that with a copy editor on the other side of the world have their own credibility problems, so I spent some time exploring other hypotheses.
I quickly rejected the idea of a halibut just getting lost. While I do not ask an animal with a brain the size of gummy bear for an opinion on public funding of health care, I’m reasonably sure they understand the difference between the bottom of the ocean and my doorstep.
Did an eagle drop it there? When I was camping near the beach in Ninilchik, I saw an eagle swoop into a stream and fly out with a live halibut. The eagle took its catch to a nearby tree and started eating, but then dropped it a few minutes later out of exasperation with a raven that lighted on the same branch and wouldn’t shut up about some investment opportunity in Baghdad.
It was almost a disappointment to find out later, by a roundabout message, that a friendly neighbor left me the fish. The moral? We need to invent a pen that writes on slime so as to leave explanatory notes on gift fish.
Meanwhile, thanks for the offer, neighbor. I couldn’t refuse.

Kodiak resident Drew Herman’s award-winning column Out of the Loop has readers in more than 40 countries, for all anyone knows.

Maybe the questions are just too crooked

You gotta believe in magic — the way the spring sun makes flowers bloom, falling in love makes all the world sing, and filing to run for public office makes a person’s ability to give a straight answer vanish like George Bush’s budget surplus.
I listened to the ComFish Congressional candidate’s debate last night, and I had to wonder about what happens to people’s psyches under that grilling from voters.
In personal interactions and with few exceptions, politicians are far more charming than us regular folks. They seem more forthright and engaged, able to feel familiar quickly without calling you “sport” or “chief.”
Not that any of them are strangers, in this state. Like every other Alaskan, I have met and talked with most of the candidates before. If I’d lived here a little longer, we would all be on a first-name basis. And if my parents had lived here they would have been to school with half of them, worked with the other half, and probably divorced a few of each.
I have family in Columbus, Ohio, a cow town with the same population as all Alaska. They don’t undersand that for us to know our U.S senator is like them knowing their video store clerk.
The point is, I know our political leaders are all real people. But give them a podium and the risk of losing a vote, and they drone out the same script whether you ask them about fishery policy, oil pipelines or their picks for the sweet sixteen.
In my capacity as a professional reporter I have spoken with Rep. Don Young three times in the course of 15 years. I should disclose that I would vote for a patch of lichen before I would vote for him, but that’s not because he never remembers me. Recognizing a small-town reporter you only have to deal with for five minutes once every five years would require a level of intellectual prowess that would disqualify him from membership in the Republican Party, if not from Congress altogether.
But I do resent The Joke. At each encounter, Young told me the same reporter joke, one that already had gray hair and false teeth when Millard Fillmore trotted it out for Horace Greeley.
Now most people wouldn’t think it wise to begin such encounters by insulting the interviewer’s entire profession, but I guess that’s why Don gets the big bucks. Of course, journalists are trained to be objective and we would never take a sense of personal outrage out on somebody unfairly in print, no matter how many slimy deals in Florida are involved.
Anyway, we are pretty well inured, since journalists rank below lawyers and politicians in polls about public trust. And, I have to admit, Young seemed to genuinely enjoy the joke every time.
The particular joke is too lame to reprint here (if you really want to hear it, all you have to do to trigger the tape is say the word “reporter” to Young), so here’s a trombone joke instead.
I got paid for being a musician long before I ever got paid for being a reporter or an Alaskan. We instrumentalists have our own default goats. Instead of lawyers, blondes and rednecks we have trombonists, violists and accordionists. (I understand singers have tenors, but that’s just sad, like the way Ketchikan makes fun of Petersburg.)
Q: What’s the difference between a dead squirrel by the side of the road and a dead trombonist by the side of the road?
A: The squirrel was on his way to a gig.

Mirror writer Drew Herman would never change the subject.

Do your demographic a favor — hug a pollster

A Republican friend (of course I have some — who ever heard of a liberal junket at Club Med?) recently pointed out that President Bush has done more to unite Americans across party lines than anybody since Washington ran twice unopposed.
As this GOP loyalist explained, if his fellow party members now wish the current president could run for re-election, it’s only so they could vote against him. So now the elephants are stuck with a candidate whose consistently anti-choice (look it up, people), pro-war, tax-cutting agenda is not conservative enough for the stalwarts.
How did the liberal media get away with the sick joke that labels Republican — that is, real American — states like Alaska, the “red” states, anyway? And where did those throngs of Democrats at last week’s Alaska caucuses come from? Did they really all spend the last 35 years tinkering with indoor grow lamps?
Well, if this election has the major parties confused by blurry identity lines, their strategists and pollsters do not lack for lines to play with. But as a flood of statistics tracks the Hispanic vote, the female vote, the black vote, the comb-over vote, the seniors, veterans, Christian evangelists and so on, I have to ask, What about us?
Although now in a shrinking minority, those of us who fit none of these hip categories deserve some attention. That’s why I decided to throw the power of the press behind a group that needs help getting its voice heard.
Pollsters have overlooked the short vote for too long.
Seeing the world from below five and a half feet gives us a keen perspective on the true grassroots. Yet they treat us as safe to ignore, as a voting block from the world of fantasy just like leprechauns or environmentalists.
But we are not fantasy, and in terms of electoral power, it would make more sense to aim campaign ads at us than in certain other directions. Hey, candidates even waste money courting the “youth vote,” which is — as we long suspected and the New Hampshire primary confirmed — the most blatant oxymoron in English next to “Internet security.”
Alas, it’s probably too early to field our own candidate. We vertically efficient Americans have not held the White House since James Madison (5’4” in high heels). Even Michael Dukakis — at 5’8” slightly shorter than Hillary — was at best a token.
Abe “The Stilt” Lincoln set the bar on height qualifications when he told us a man’s legs need only be long enough to reach the ground. It is hardly his fault that a sign now guarding the entrance to the Oval Office features a clown with his hand leveled six feet off the ground and the caption, “You must be this tall to undermine the Constitution, ruin our international credibility and incur record deficits.”
Maybe our time has not arrived just yet, but when Randy Newman’s bones are dust and all you other ethnic, gender and religious groups have blown your chances — look down.
Mirror copy editor Drew Herman would have been a giant in medieval Mongolia.

Candidates shifting focus to shifting focus

With all the talk about how they can make change better than their opponents, I can’t help wondering whether Hillary, Rudy and their other podium pals are running for president of the United States or for night clerk at a 7-Eleven.
Maybe George W. Bush has made a few missteps in the last seven years, but whose fault is that? After all, almost half of us voted for him.
Now the Bush Era is winding down and the president has gone to seek his legacy by bringing the full force of his diplomatic skills to a feud dating back to David and Goliath which none of his predecessors could fix. You go, boy!
No doubt, in the spring of aught-nine, while we all enjoy our wine and cheese while discussing the latest selection from Vice President Winfrey’s book club, we can look back on the days of the “Carl, Dick & George Show” and laugh.
But first, Americans have to get through an election, and decide whether it’s about the economy, the war, the economy, climate change, the economy, immigration, or the economy.
At times like this, it is a huge comfort to be an Alaskan, with our steady, laser-like concentration on the one question that matters: “When do I get my share of ANWR oil profits?”
Meanwhile, as a loyal American, it just gets my goat that the candidates and voters harp on change, obsessing on the way the president’s first response to the terrorist attacks was to tell us to go to Disneyland, or on a few minor hiccups like wiretapping Americans without warrants, invading a country based on false intelligence, firing prosecutors, denying climate change, and mispronouncing “nuclear.”
They seem to have forgotten all the solid accomplishments of the current administration. So here’s an exhaustive list of things the next president should keep the same:
• The stunning china pattern Laura chose for state dinners.
Now that that’s out of the way, it’s time for Conundrum of the Week, another brain-teaser drawn from the headlines of real life.
On Thursday, the only officer to receive any punishment in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal had his wrist publicly unslapped by the Army. Kudos to Lt. Col. Steven Jordan for admitting the investigation had some flaws.
But the original question remains: Why didn’t every officer in the chain of command from second louie to three stars resign of their own accord as soon as the pictures came out?
In the country with a tradition of military heroes from John Paul Jones to Audie Murphy who embody courage and honor, it’s interesting to see that the buck now stops with a lance-corporal.
Copy editor Drew Herman takes full responsibility for the Mirror’s former policy of reporter abuse.

A look back from this point in time

So you survived 2007 — if you are extremely old, somewhat infirm, or even slightly Iraqi, congratulations.

A lot of world-shaking events happened last year in politics, economics and science, but as a mere copy editor, I am no more competent to make pronouncements about how to deal with that stuff than, say, a baseball team owner would be.

However, I am perfectly placed to observe the prosaic perfidy perpetrated by the language-using public, and then foist my opinions on readers of this column.

Competition for worst written or verbal sin of the year came down to a tight race between two grotesque locutions that give us self-appointed grammar police an abiding sense of being needed. But before I name the winner, let’s look back at some previous champions.

The top dishonor for 2006 went to “wellness,” which finally replaced all uses of the perfectly serviceable word “health.” May it rest in peace.

Before that we had a run of wins by time-related phrases, starting with “basis,” as in, “The proposed jail location changes on a monthly basis.” The brain-ray that stopped people from saying simply “monthly” is still at large. Then came “this point in time,” chosen for its oniony layers of redundancy.

In 2003 the pure pointlessness of “located” got the judges’ attention, since any jail “located on Near Island” would also be “on Near Island.” This came from the same faction that thinks prepostions can’t take the load alone, so they invented “in conjunction with.”

But nothing matches the classic that started it all. “Utilize” remains king for having absolutely no context where it could mean anything different from “use,” yet continuing its pompous, ubiquitous career unabated.

The runner-up this time is “adversely affected,” another pompous infection from the officialese lexicon. We pray for a cure to the pandemic that has as its main symptom an inability to use the word “harm.” It probably comes from a virus that spreads because of our feeble wellness practices.

But the surprise top place citation for 2007 goes to the confusion of “ground zero” and “square one.” The first time someone said “This setback takes us back to ground zero,” it got little notice. But then it happened again and again, prompting the grammar panel to issue its directive: Stop saying it unless whatever happened really included a ticket to Hiroshima or the World Trade Center.

Mirror writer Drew Herman still refuses to use “impact” as a verb.