Entry 232: Did You Know there's a Second Verse to "Jack and Jill"

Did you know "Jack and Jill" has a second verse?  I had no idea.  We got a book of nursery rhymes for Lil' S from the library, and "Jack & Jill" is one of them.  It goes:

Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.

That part I knew, and I thought that was it.  But there's more.

Jack got up, and home did trot,
As fast as he could caper;
To old Dame Dob who patched his nob,
With vinegar and brown paper.

Why is this last part usually omitted?  It's terrific.  Old Dame Dob?  His nob?  Vinegar and brown paper?  Genius.

[I want it to be known that I was done with Adam Sandler in like 1999, WAY before it was cool.]

Anyway ...

The "experiment" I mentioned in my last entry in which S goes to Africa for work for three weeks and leaves Lil' S with her mom and I is not off to great start.  It's manageable, but it's hard.  He's much moodier than usual; he's constantly throwing tantrums over nothing; and he's waking up in the middle of the night inconsolably crying for his "amma".  It sucks.  I feel for him, but I'm much more a "cry it out" type of person than S's mom.  She can't really stomach that.  So what happens is she wants to get him, but he's still not completely comfortable with her, so he cries more, and then I have to get him, not only to placate him but to placate her, as well.  The flip side is that she gets him in the morning when he wakes up so I can sleep in -- by which I mean I can wake up at 7:30 instead of 6:00.  Overall, I'm very grateful that S's mom is here; she's been a HUGE help.

In other news, a bird built a nest on our hanging porch light.  It was absurd.  She (I'm assuming this bird is a female.  Do males build nests?) couldn't have picked a worse place to build -- right in front of our main door -- and she must have put that sucker up fast.  Yesterday morning the nest was just there -- seemingly appearing from thin air.  Thankfully, she hadn't laid eggs, so, according to the internet, I could destroy it legally and with a clear conscience -- which I did.  (She came back and was looking around like WTF?)  But then she built another one!  I looked out my window late last night and three-fourths of a new one was there.  So I had to destroy that as well.  And since it was night and nests skeeve me out, in general, I kept having visions of this bird flying out of the darkness and attacking me.  Luckily that didn't happen.  The internet told me to hang something shiny at the nesting site to keep the bird from coming back yet again.  So I tied an old CD to the light fixture -- so far so good!  It's a bit like the scene from the Simpson's below, but whatever.

Homer: Not a bear in sight.  The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm. 
Lisa: That's spacious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
[Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money.]
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
    

In other other news: racism!  Wow, there's been a lot of it in the news recently, hasn't there?  First was Cliven Bundy that insane "libertarian" rancher who thinks that using the federal government's resources and not paying for them is "patriotic".  (This is actually a reasonable interpretation of the word patriotic when you consider he also thinks it's patriotic to not recognize the federal government of the United States ... the very country of which he's claiming to be a patriot.  At least the first interpretation of patriotism isn't an inherent self-contradiction.)  Ol' Cliven was a rallying point for Rand Paul conservatives because they don't really believe in the federal government either (they'd prefer we be governed by the invisible hand of capitalism -- because, if the last ten years have taught us anything, it's that the free market is pretty much infallible).  But everybody has had to back away from him now because in an interview he mused that black people -- or "the Negro", as he calls them -- were perhaps better off as slaves.  He also said, “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton."  Well, okay, then.

The best response to the this whole foofaraw was by Jonathan Chait who in this article avers that it's no surprise that Bundy turns out to be a gigantic racist because “America’s unique brand of ideological anti-statism is historically inseparable … from the legacy of slavery.”  To further Chait's point, I'm no expert on this type of history, but wasn't the Emancipation Proclamation the ultimate act of Big Government?  Anyway, the last paragraph in the article -- with the last line being a reference to an Onion article -- is brilliant.

Amazingly, Cliven Bundy was eclipsed in the racism department earlier this week; he has the Notorious B.I.G.O.T., Donald Sterling, to "thank" for that.  I'm sure you know the story (how could you not?) so I won't rehash it.  But I will direct you to this article by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who nails it like he nailed those two foul shots in Game 6 of the 1988 NBA Finals.  I'm totally with Kareem on this one.  I'm glad Donald Sterling was banned and is being compelled to sell the Clippers.  (Seattle SuperSonics 2.0?  One can dream.)  But I find the fact that it is what he said and not what he did that ultimately ruined him to be very disconcerting.  Why is Sterling saying racist things to his girlfriend in a private (so he thought) conversation worthy of a lifetime ban, but systematically discriminating against minorities -- as he has a long documented history of doing -- isn't?  One creates hurt feelings and embarrassment, the other, prevents black people from having access to the same housing opportunities as white people (among other injustices).  Which is worse?

It's something that Ralph Nader observed many years ago: The collective outrage we exhibit over what people say compared to what they do is way, way, way out of whack.  If Politician A votes repeatedly in favor of legislation that hurts a certain group of people, but doesn't talk about it, the outcry is a murmur at best (even from that group).  If Politician B votes against this legislation, but is caught on TMZ using a slur against this group, he or she is ruined.  It's very weird to me.

Something else on the Sterling fiasco that I haven't heard anybody else broach: It's another example of why private ownership of a public good can be extremely problematic.  Sports teams are quasi-public goods.  They're public goods when it behooves the powers-that-be for them to be so, like, say, when they want the taxpayer to foot the bill for a new stadium, or when they want to market their product ("now batting for your Washington Nationals...")  But when it comes time to collect the money, they're strictly private.  So you have this asymmetrical situation where basically one person (almost always an old white dude) almost completely controls this irreplaceable thing that is meant to be enjoyed by the entire community.  It works out OK if that one person is a good steward of this public good (say, Mark Cuban, from what I can tell).  It doesn't work out so well if this one person is a racist sleaze bag who bought a basketball team because it's the closest thing he can get to a slave plantation in modern society.*

[Donald Sterling]

The way things would be if I was in charge is that the municipalities in which the teams play would own them.  That way a public good would actually be public.  But I'm not in charge.  And this will never happen for the same reason many good ideas will never happen: rich and powerful people make money off them not happening.  Joan Kroc, Ray Kroc's widow, tried to donate the Padres to the city of San Diego after her husband died, and Major League Baseball forbade it.  Rudy Giuliani once described the notion of a publicly-owned franchise as "a great idea for Communist Cuba".** (Meanwhile he's a staunch advocate of taxpayer-funded stadiums; that is, public investment for private profit.  What's that analogous to?  Some corrupt banana republic?)  So sports teams are going to stay privately run, and fans like me will continue to be conflicted about investing so much time into such an one-sided relationship.  

Being an ardent sports fan is like dating a selfish, manipulative narcissist who's dynamite between the sheets.  You get ignored and embarrassed a lot, and you constantly feel like a huge chump.  But every so often you get your world rocked like you wouldn't believe (Seahawks!  Super Bowl champs!), and you think to yourself, "Totally worth it."     

Until next time... 

*Yes, NBA players are freemen who are extremely well compensated -- hardly comparable to slaves in this regard.  But that doesn't change the fact that Donald Sterling apparently got off on imaging himself as the white overseer of a group of physically powerful young black men.  (It's as creepy as it sounds.)  His girlfriend being part black fits perfectly into this twisted fantasy.

**I can't source this quote online, and I'm not even sure it was Giuliani who said it, so I could be way off the mark.  If I am, Rudy, feel free to sue me for libel.