Happy Independence Day.

I'll be on vacation for a few days. I hope I can trust you all to behave yourselves in my absence.
There's not a person reading this blog that doesn't love America, so may your Fourth of July be filled with pride, fun and joy

Dick Cheney wears many hats...all of them black

Who would have thought that Mrs. Hall, my ninth grade civics teacher, was a complete moron. Here she was, teaching us that the Executive Branch included the vice president. What a fool she was! Dick Cheney certainly showed her with his assertion that he's not really a part of the Executive Branch, what with his role as tie-breaker in the Senate, and thus is exempt from presidential orders pertaining to the Executive Branch.
Well, Mrs. Hall wasn't perfect. It was she, after all, who launched me on my career as a public speaker when she entered me into an American Legion Oratorical Contest. (Let's just say that in 1972, the American Legion didn't really warm up to my 7-minute stemwinder on "Richard Nixon: Enemy of the Bill of the Rights, Scourge of Freedom.")
But Cheney isn't the first guy to tap dance around semantic loopholes. I'm reminded of the Apostle Paul who could play the "I'm a Roman citizen'' card when it could help him and then turn around with the "Hey! I'm a Jewish guy'' trump card.
Of course, Paul was on everybody's hit list.
Cheney is the guy checking the lists to see who's naughty, and nobody's nice.

Getting away from it all

More than 2,000 folks have applied to be guinea pigs in the European Space Agency's 520-day "Mission to Mars'' simulation, according to a recent Associated Press story. There are 12 spots open for people who want to spend a year-and-a-half in cramped quarters with bad food. (And really, how many of us want to go back to the halcyon days of dorm life? Ooh, wait, this "trip'' forbids drinking and smoking, so it's dorm life at Bob Jones University at that.) No word in the story on the situation vis-a-vis sex.
You need a high tolerance for boredom to be welcomed aboard, and this explains why Canadians are welcome to apply. And why Americans aren't. Who wants to be cooped up with a bunch of French and Swedes anyhow?
We'll have our own isolation simulation, and it will be way better, I bet. We know how to make a trip to Mars fun. As long as somebody brings Yahtzee. And a keg or two.

Getting the hang of this blogging thing

There's a lot of "Let's you and him fight'' in this blogging stuff.
I post a little something and then watch people go at each other like Sunnis and Shiites at a potluck supper.
It's a sight to behold. Occasionally, there's a glancing blow to something I've said, but most of the time it's like I'm not even there.
A blog posted lasted week titled "The chicken and egg of faith and politics'' has garnered quite a bit of response (at least as far my blog goes) and my, oh my, has the fur been flying.
I do find some things interesting:
The unbeliever "Ray'' springs to my defense at least when he's not belittling the hard-won faith of others ; "Margaret'' is a voice of reason and then will suddenly suggest that "immorality is a word that Mr. Riley scoffs at, I think... '' as if I'm some sort of melodrama villain who ties young widows to the railroad tracks just to get the deed to the homestead. (That's the government these days - abuse of eminent domain and all that)
Then there's the guy who raises the question of whether I drink alcohol at lunch. (Look, I'm just as much of a "it's five o'clock somewhere'' as the next imbiber but I bet you could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've had a beer at lunch when I have to go back to work. Which is saying something -- I've had editors where a mid-day bump might seem to lesser folks an essential requirement for going back to the office.) He also wonders why I haven't risen to his challenge, but I can't for the life of me figure out what the challenge is. Both liberals and conservatives can point to their faith as undergirding their political positions. That's all I said.
It's interesting that a lot of this comes down to sex, as if the most important thing the sovereign creator of the universe has on his omniscient mind is making sure where everybody's naughty bits are all the livelong day.
There's a lot of sinful sex going on in consecrated marriage beds. When a husband or wife engages in sex with his or her lawfully wedded spouse and reduces the other to an object in pursuit of his or her own pleasure, that's sin. Sin is always more than an act devoid of context.
My personal ethic falls somewhere between the old adage, "You should try everything once, except for incest and clog dancing'' on the one hand and "let's stone the gays, and make women keep their heads covered in church while we're at it'' on the other. What rules are eternally inviolate and which are culture bound?
Ethics is a tough business and anybody who thinks it's easy, even with the Bible open in front of them, just isn't thinking straight.

Sir Paul out of creative gas

Have you seen the video for the debut single from 65-year-old former Beatle and Wings-man Paul McCartney?
It's right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTNXrkBSp_o
Go ahead. Take a gander. I'll wait.
So, is it just me or is Sir Paul auditioning for a position in the Wiggles?
Man, how the mighty have fallen.

Lust gussied up as social science

Sometimes, the commercial promo is all you need to know about a TV show and provides the reason why you will never watch it. NBC is airing a show called "Does Age Matter?'' that seeks to answer the question, "Will a beefcake-type guy go for devastatingly beautiful fortysomethings or devastating beautiful twentysomethings?''
This is being touted as some grand sociological experiment, which I suppose it is, at least among the people who believe that "Star Trek'' was a documentary.
Is there some mystery here? As someone who lives with a fortysomething woman, the answer seems apparent to me. Good looks and wisdom beat good looks alone any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
The real mystery is why guys smack in the middle of a midlife crisis run off with much younger women. God only knows what they insist on listening to on the car radio. What do they talk about with a woman who as recently as, say two years ago, was cramming for a polysci midterm?
I've actually had guys say to me when posed that question, "Who needs to talk?''
Which proves another sociological point: Most guys are idiots.

The odd comfort of reading about folks more weird than me

Charles Webb, the guy that wrote the novel "The Graduate,'' hasn't got two nickels to rub together. This is not a case of a writter frittering away his wealth in the vain pursuit of the frivolous. He didn't drink it away or gamble it away.
He gave it away.
A profile of the writer and his wife "Fred'' (don't ask) appears in the current issue of Radar magazine. It's compelling reading. The author of the piece puts its this way: "...Charles and Fred seem to have been guided by an almost holy sense that it is an artist's duty to struggle in poverty, that it is somehow impure for creative people to get too comfortable.''
Webb always seems one step ahead of an eviction notice, working as caretakers in a nudist colony, fruit pickers, house cleaners or K Mart clerks. He gives away houses and tons of money to maintain this lifestyle.
It is comforting to read about people weirder, however slightly, than myself.
But Webb is making it way too complicated. If a writer wants to skirt with abject poverty, there's just one thing to do: Work for a newspaper.

The chicken and egg of faith and politics

In a response (mostly off-point, but that's life in the big blogosphere) to yesterday's blog posting, someone named "pat'' wrote:
"...what is readily apparent to any regular reader of your column and blog site... Michael Riley is a liberal first and a Christian second. ''
This is, I would imagine, designed to be a particularly devastating criticism.
And yet, I would make the case that it is precisely because I'm a Christian that my politics on social issues tend to skew liberal. The bedrock values of the Gospel seem to me to include mercy, forgiveness, tolerance and unconditional love of even the enemy. As I try, however imperfectly, to make those values part of my worldview, it seems to me that however stupid some liberals are (and there are plenty of 'em), I'd rather take my stand with them than the conservatives I hear on talk radio.
Of course, conservatives could make the same sorts of arguments, so what do we do? This isn't the sort of thing that polling data or a vote could decide.

Sex makes people stupid...especially in Georgia

Sex has the unfortunate side effect of sometimes making people stupid. And not just the people engaged in its myriad permutations, but often the people who legislate it.
Case in point is the Georgia legislature, which, with passionate intensity, crafted a law that has put Genarlow Wilson in the slammer for a decade-long sentence for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl. Wilson, a popular honor student in his senior year of high school, was 17 at the time.
He's been in jail now for a couple of years, even though the draconian law has since been changed to make his offense a misdemeanor, and a judge has said he should be set free.
Based on news reports about the case, it seems to me Georgia is badly hung up about oral sex. Apparently, if Mr. Generlow and his willing partner had had a more traditional missionary position roll in the hay, their act would have fallen under the quaintly named "Romeo and Juliet'' exception to the former law and not had nearly so much trouble.
But get this: In Georgia, less than a decade ago, oral sex between a husband and a wife was illegal, punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Where, in the name of God, does a law like that come from? I'm pretty familiar with the Bible. I don't see word one about married couples not being able to do that.
As someone who spent many years as pastor, I did my share of marital counseling and I can tell you that Georgia has it all backwards: the withholding of oral sex is often used as punishment in many homes.
Let's assume that a dozen years ago the good people of Georgia were outraged by what they perceived as a virtual crime wave of fellatio and cunnilingus sweeping across the state and cracked down on those who were flouting the law (in the privacy of their own bedrooms, with the shades drawn and the doors locked) and started throwing people in jail willy-nilly.
By the time Wilson had his misadventure in 2003, there wouldn't have been enough cops on the streets to arrest him, enough jurors to convict him and enough judges left on the bench to sentence him.
Will somebody let this man go now?

It made his blood run cold

My 22-year-old son, Christopher, is living and working in Portland, Maine, this summer.
He called me today and was obviously shaken. Turned out he had a vision of sorts that sent an icy shiv into his spine. We Rileys are really not the "visions'' type, so I was interested in what he had to say about what could be a genuine paranormal experience, something out of Poe, Lovecraft and Bierce.
This is, nearly verbatim, what he told me: "I was in downtown Portland today. I had an hour to kill between appointments so I went into a number of used book stores and then I went into a comic book store....''
His voice dropped to a spectral whisper, the words coming very slowly now.
"That's when I saw it,'' he said.
"Calm down, boy,'' I fairly shouted. "What is it you saw?''
"There I was, and I saw, oh the horror, I was turning into my old man.''
"Sure, son, I shop used bookstores and everybody knows that Wednesday is new comic book day, and what's wrong with being like your dear old da-- Oh!''
Is there anything more scarier than the realization that the same blood that flows in your veins flows through the veins of the goofy codger who lays claim to your paternity?
Apparently not! The curse of literacy! And may God forgive me for laughing like some minor fiend from the pits of Hades at his discomfort.
"But I was strrong,'' my son said. "I didn't buy a single thing.''
Yes, the apparition of the boy's frugal mother must also have appeared to him.
And the battle for his young soul continues.

"You never see it coming''

WARNING: SOPRANOS FINALE SPOILERS AHEAD
So, the Sopranos ended.
I wasn't looking for Yeats, despite A.J's having stumbled onto that poem with its 'the center will not hold..'' and its "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity'' and its "rough beast, its hour come round at last''
What I thought we'd get is some T.S. Eliot, with the world ending with a "bang'' or a "whimper.''
What David Chase gave us, in a fascinating hour of television, was a look into the world of Tony Soprano, a world that was never going to change: A.J - the screw-up, bailed out and trying one more thing; Carm, the dutiful and willfully blind wife; the law forever hunting him; Janice, the grasping black hole of need; Paulie, the perennial disappointment; murder and murder and murder all around; and the man himself, still rehashing childhood resentments.
The only character who was going to change was Junior and his way into madness and death was etched in his brain.
The last scene took place in some retro diner, with one of those old-fashioned table top juke boxes. And Tony in a shirt straight out of the fifties, playing "Don't Stop Believing'' and waiting for his wife and children to join him. First Carm, then AJ. In some ways, it's the past as it might have been: a simple meal with the people that matter most. The closest he'll get to redemption.
But it's the future Tony sees as his daughter comes running into the diner. Meadow, the apple of his eye, the one who might get free (although her taste in men would suggest otherwise)
There's a moment there where Tony might be happy.
An instant really, before it all goes silent and black.
"You never see it coming, do you?'' Bobby asked earlier this season.
Tony never did.
And neither did we.
Not that way, not from that angle.
Anthony Soprano, RIP

What I'd do for my sons

I'd take a bullet. I'd give any one of them a kidney. I'd donate as much of my liver as he needed. Hell, I'd even offer my heart whole if it meant life for one of my boys.
But, my God, there are limits.
My 10-year-old, Sam, wants me to take him this August to the PNC Bank Arts to see song parodist "Weird'' Al Yankovic in concert. The first thought I had was "Is this guy still around? I thought he and Gallagher were off in some lame comics rest home.''
And the second was, "How does Sam even know about Weird Al?''
It's that damned YouTube is what it is, where people will post archaic stuff like this instead of what YouTube is for: videos of penguins slapping each other.
"Daddy, can we go, please?'' is a compelling sentence.
Now, I'm a loving father and a good man, but even I have to draw the line somewhere, don't I?
I thought about suggesting we go to Ozzfest or Marilyn Manson (anybody but Al!) but then I'd have the wife to deal with.
Hey, I thought to myself -- there's an idea! Why not have Sue and Sam go, a little mother-son bonding might be just the ticket.
Sue said that she thought humor about bodily fluids and noises and such was more a father-son thing.
I've been leaning heavily on just telling him that we can't afford it, but it looks like the tickets are priced to move. What should I do?

Some assembly required

It seems that President Bush's nominee for surgeon general is of the "Tab A fits into Slot B and there ain't any two ways about it'' school of human sexuality.
James W. Holsinger, a cardiologist, wrote a paper in 1991 with the wonderfully loaded title, "Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality” in which he pointed out that males and females are built to fit together in ways that two men aren't, and when you start fitting square pegs into round holes disease and injury can result. And therefore, well therefore I don't know...the four horsemen of the apocalypse come riding in or something.
What a paucity of imagination this guy has! And how few tools for foreplay!
In the first place, there's a whole lot of heterosexual sex that can result in disease and injury. Speaking of heterosexual sexual injury, anybody remember John Wayne Bobbit? And hey, have you ever seen one of those sex swing things? A chiropractor's wet dream those things are.
In the second place, there's plenty of heterosexual activity that doesn't necessarily "Tab A into Slot B.'' Anybody remember Monica Lewinsky?
Doesn't the Surgeon General have enough to worry about without sticking his nose where it most certainly doesn't belong?

English Uber Alles?

Every few years, it seems, there's a hue and cry in the land to make English the official language of this country.
As if we Americans need more laws to make us even more arrogant.
Somebody once said that if you're annoyed talking to somebody with a heavy accent you should remember that he or she is at least bilingual. Americans are almost defiantly monolingual these days.
"Hey,'' some seem to imply, ''if English was good enough for Jesus in the family Bible, it ought to be good enough for these furinners.''
There are at least two senses in which the imprimatur of "official'' in terms of English strike me as wrong-headed:
1) English as the official language in the same sense that McDonald's is the official french fry of the Olympics. What's next? Why not make the New Testament the "official holy book'' of the United States.
Well, that's just silly, of course, but the second sense is deadly serious and has about it the whiff of something ugly.
2) Mandating the official language sounds like desperation, like something that would happen in Germany at the dictates of a bunch of politicians pissed off about the Treaty of Versailles.
Let's face it. This is America, land of Free Speech, even if that speech happens to take place in Spanish or Hindi. It's also home to capitalism and if a businessman figures he can make a few bucks by putting up billboards in Spanish, how is that any skin off your nose?
Obviously, you can get ahead better in this country if you understand the lingua franca. On the other hand, if you're not fluent, you avoid the pain associated with listening to daytime talk shows.
One small comfort if the idea ever becomes law: There are a lot of nativist xenophobes who wouldn't pass whatever spelling or grammar tests were used to see who speaks English.

The road less traveled...NOT!

Did you ever find out that something you learned a long time ago turned out to be not just wrong, but completely wrong -- the exact opposite of what you've always believed?
I was leafing through a book with the rather pompous title "The Intellectual Devotional'' and a cover blurb, which read "365 Daily Lessons From The Seven Fields of Knowledge." (Who knew there were only seven?)
One of those lessons turned out to be an analysis of the Robert Frost poem "The Road Not Taken,'' the one that ends with "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -/I took the road less traveled by/And that has made all the difference.''

This always seemed to be a kind of credo for the individualist, rugged or not, who goes his or her own way, and not with the crowd. All of that may be true, but it is not what Frost was saying.
The authors point out that a close reading of the poem shows the last stanza to be a knowing lie on the poet of that poem's narrator.

In fact, in the first three stanzas, we're told that the two roads are nearly identical, not a dime's worth of difference between them in the well-traveled department, and the choice of which one to take really came down to a mental coin flip.

The last verse is hooey, a fib that the narrator says he'll tell in the years to come to make it seem as if his life turned out the way it did through a series of conscious, courageous decisions. In fact, his life, like all our lives, is determined by random choice and chance.

It really is all in the poem, but I never saw it and was never taught it the right way.
I haven't been this embarassed since I found that Robert Plant was singin "got to get you movin' now'' in that old Led Zeppelin song when for years I thought he scatting: "mon-eh-nom-e-noom-e-nah.''

The deal With Bill and Hillary

Monday morning and I get my news from Good Morning America, which was promising juicy details about the "secret pact'' that Bill and Hillary made back before they were married. And I'm thinking, "Hey! Maybe this is about how Bill sealed the deal to be able to cheat on his spouse with a profligacy and abandon not seen since the days of the Old Testament monarchy. And still stay married.''
Because I think a lot of men, not me, mind you, but other guys, would want in on that kind of action, in a "Nice work if you can get it'' kind of way.
Well, it turned out that this "secret pact'' between the two of them was a 20-year plan to get Bill in the White House.

Listen, a lot of couples have "20-year-plans'' when they are young and in love. Sue and I had one that involved getting rich and spending our days on a tropical island sipping big, cold rum-laced drinks with little umbrellas in them.
Four kids and Baptist repression sort of put the kibosh on that.
Hey, the Clintons accomplished their plan. How many couples can say that?

Another shameless plug

Just a reminder that this Sunday night (June 3) the East Brunswick Library will present "Scars, Tatoos, and the Funny Bone: An Evening With Michael Riley.''
And yes, I'm as surprised as some of you are that people would actually attend such an event. Even my wife Susan isn't all that thrilled about the prospect. Allthough, in truth, I won't be eating Cheetos in my underwear watching TV, which is how a good many evenings with Michael Riley end up.
The shindig is scheduled to go from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. , so we should have you home in time for the penultimate episode of the Sopranos.
I'll be telling some stories and hawking my book, and I at least usually have fun. So maybe I'll see you there. For more info and directions, go to http://www.ebpl.org/