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A Really Long Post About Abortion
Whoa! This blog is getting heavy fast. But seriously, the Church’s war on nuns is accelerating, which has caused my blood pressure to spike more than it has since I left the popishly prolix Divine Savior Holy Angels. And it looks like one of the grievances of the bishops is that nuns have not been outspoken enough against abortion and contraception. The Church infantilizes women enough by not letting them receive Holy Orders: this is just a particularly egregious example of its old-boys papal bullshit.
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| If only papal bulls, like San Fermín bulls, were slaughtered at the end of the day. |
I have already repeated ad nauseum to everyone around me that John Rock, a devout Catholic, helped develop the birth control pill. (Margaret Sanger, initially skeptical of his involvement, eventually conceded that “being a good Roman Catholic and as handsome as a god, he can just get away with anything.”) And it’s not like the Pill’s Church approval would have been out of the realm of possibility in the sixties: the majority of bishops on a committee to examine it approved of it. And so do the vast majority of Catholics, as 70-95% use birth control (depending on the poll).
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| John Rock. I’ll be honest, if this is Margaret Sanger’s idea of a “hot god,” I can see why she was a lapsed Catholic. Definitely not Greek god handsome. |
But Catholicism continues to swivel towards an Evangelical-esque embrace of ignorance, stupidity, and chauvinism. So I’m breaking out my old abortion editorials. The first one is what I wrote to get my own views down before swallowing my pride to write something more benign and publishable, as well as ideally more persuasive to the on-the-margin Catholic, were our student newspaper read for any section beyond the “Creatives” (i.e., the Onion-style funnies). I’ve cleaned them up a little and added some parenthetical explanations and fun pictures. Enjoy! But not really. They’re rather angry and dry. Sorry. But at least you’re getting them out of the way now, rather than getting half-baked allusions to them forever!
Hello world!
Welcome to WordPress.com! This is your very first post. Click the Edit link to modify or delete it, or start a new post. If you like, use this post to tell readers why you started this blog and what you plan to do with it.
Happy blogging!
Business Idea #1: Tanning Smoothie
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| Left: Sun-tanned. Middle: Kristen Stewart sickliness. Right: Car-HOT-enoids, clearly. |
Now when I read this article, I immediately thought, “There is quack remedy money in this.” I mean, smidgen of scientific value + eternal youth + Americans’ obsession with health + Americans’ obsession with consuming things. This is a gold mine.
I mean, they’re pretty much saying eating enough tomato and carrot pigments will make you look young. People are currently drinking massive amounts of pomegranate juice and $3.50 Naked Juices out of a dubious claim to antioxidants. The problem, then, lies not in invention but in rebranding. Tomato and carrot juice is currently sold as this:
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| “Et dès que j’eus reconnu le goût du V8 que me donnait ma tante…tout Combray et ses environs, tout cela qui prend forme et solidité, est sorti, ville et jardins, de ma tasse de V8.” |
This doesn’t look like eternal youth in a can. Honestly, I would say 95% of people only drink V8 at the behest of their grandmothers. So clearly, we just need a rebranding. We could snag a huge portion of the market just by slapping these labels on to V8:
And of course we could grab another segment of the population by making more expensive varieties, perhaps entitled “Glow” or “Sol” that have their labels wrapped around Naked Juice or Vitamin Water. And to get the wilder/whorier part of society, “The Tantric Tan-Drink.” (I’m thinking I’ll free-ware Photoshop mockups when the spirit moves me.)
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| And I would not be above negative advertising. |
Anyways, gold mine. I delegate to you to make this happen. Mostly, you know, the work end of this. I’ve got to go shotgun my tan.
A Paean to Milwaukee
It’s the 28th most populous city in America. It’s nearly twice as large as Cleveland and tenfold more awesome. We have, arguably, the most creative and elegant art museum in the country. We started the 20th century with an award for our beautiful park system, and ended it with the opening of an extensive 100 mile greenway for bikers, runners, and nature enthusiasts.
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| The Calatrava’s wings open and close at noon each day, in an artistic “flipping of the bird” to Chicago. |
We became an economic powerhouse while being labor-friendly. We helped win World War II as a manufacturing site for, among other military aims, the Manhattan Project. And any city that drinks as much beer as we do has to be good-natured.
And Milwaukee has always been a global city. We were a preferred destination of exiled European revolutionaries. We’ve had a host of Socialist mayors. We have produced Israeli president Golda Meir, investment entrepreneurs, Nobel prize-winning chemists, and Willy Wonka. The Brew City has been home to as many hopes as hops.
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| Although Chicago used to dump some brown stuff in there. |
Milwaukee suffers, however, from Detroit’s contagious reputation as some post-manufacturing wasteland. This perspective is superficial and false: the decline of manufacturing has led to a re-tooling of Milwaukee’s economic life, not death.
Anyways, just to give a flavor of Milwaukee’s greatness. More to follow, I’m sure.
Renaming Procrastination
Procrastination is a terrible and Latinate word, but it doesn’t seem to have a good Anglo-Saxon analog. It also reminds me of Procrustes: the “robber who forced travelers to lie on a bed and made them fit it by stretching their limbs or cutting off the appropriate length of leg. Theseus killed him in like manner.” (Thanks Mac Dictionary!) So, bad word. (Another fun note: the “problem of Theseus’ ship” refers to how his ship was replaced part by part — is it still the same ship? And if our cells are just constantly regenerating, is the future person we’re screwing over really 100% us?)
Here’s the origin for Procrustes: ORIGIN from Greek prokroustēs, literally ‘stretcher,’ from prokrouein ‘beat out.’ And for procrastination: ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from Latin procrastinat- ‘deferred until tomorrow,’ from the verb procrastinare, from pro- ‘forward’ + crastinus ‘belonging to tomorrow’ (from cras ‘tomorrow’ ). Procrustes thus actually seems to fit the connotation better. So I say we come up with a better word for procrastination and Frindle this shit. To get the ball rolling:
- Reverse Annie (“tomorrow, tomorrow, you’re a whole day away…”)
- future discount steeply
- Belacqua (last name of Lyra in The Golden Compass; also, the guy in Dante’s “sloth” circle of hell)
And some synonyms to aid creative juices:
- Kick the can, Twiddle, Lollygag, Dally
- Mañana
- Defer, postpone, shelve, delay, rain-check, Pass the buck
So…go! Unless you want to figure this one out tomorrow.
Coming soon
Possible future posts:
- Productivity and Charts: My Struggle With Incontinence
- My life as Michael Bluth: My Father’s Arrest
- Whores doing Hills: DSHA Cross-Country
- The Hippie Kindergarten: Milwaukee Montessori
Stream-of-Consciousness Recap
Let’s do a stream-of-consciousness recap here, which is to say I’m going to be like James Joyce in one way (incomprehensible), and be unlike him in every other way (writing poorly).
OK! Baird!
Pros: Very friendly, I don’t have to do any work. Access to FT, Bloomberg Terminal, considerable spreadsheet use.
Cons: To be from an Ivy and not working for a major bank is very, very awkward. It is super embarrassing every time I say I’m from Yale, and in the opposite way of usual.
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| The Bloomberg Terminal. (Wipes salivation away.) Feel like a god, or at least a character from The Matrix or The Right Stuff. VPs have a biometric scanner on the keyboard, which prevents unauthorized trades, but also would make me fear for the continued attachment of my thumbs. |
At my birthday this week, I learned my friend got severe malaria (missed that memo!)
Post-birthday, I went into Baird Investment Management instead of Baird Advisors, everyone in BA assumed I was nursing a hangover. Went to annual shareholder’s convention and reception. Had a tutorial with two interns from fixed income, it turns out they not only have more prestigious positions than me, they’re fucking morons, one of whom has a 3.2 (!) at Marquette for god’s sake. (I am on the email list that got their resumes.)
The people look…very Midwestern. I’m clearly not one to care about personal appearance a lot, but I kind of assumed i-bankers and money managers would not look like people whom I could plausibly see shopping at Wal-Mart. Just saying. Based on some questions at the annual meeting, it seems like they’ve incorporated BMI testing into the health plan. Good call.
Oh, another thing that kind of deeply disturbed me: we had a diversity meeting, and the presenter noted something about not having a Jewish employee when a client requested at least one to be working on his portfolio. To be a bank and to lack a single Jewish employee makes me worried about this firm’s intellectual cachet and possible prejudice. Seriously: no Jews? We share the building with Foley and Lardner, a big law firm, and they have a ton of Jewish partners. When Colleen went to their baseball events, all of the partners cheered for Ryan Braun, the “He-Brewer.” Of course, since Baird seems to recruit almost entirely from Marquette (see “fucking morons” above), they might not be drawing from a particularly Semitic pool. Which, again, kind of concerns me. (Can we note that in Ulysses, where Joyce forged in the smithy of his soul the uncreated conscience of the Irish race, even he managed to have a Jewish protagonist?)
Wow, I sound like an asshole in this post! That was quick. Funnier material to follow, I swear.
Inaugural Post
Welcome to Bln()! (Pronounced “BLAHN,” I’m assuming.) I suppose an inaugural post should cover the why, the what, and my ass should I write something stupid in the future.
The why
I’d like to say because of constant prodding by two great people. But, as well documented, I have difficulty having my actions reflect the virtue I aspire to. So what turned this from yet another example of incontinence to a mere pursuit of short-term self-interest?
Well, for one, I already pretty much impose my rants on others through emails, and this seems like a more consensual way to share my views. (Further, while my writing for papers is often constipated, I suffer from logorrhea in emails.)
Two, blogs and journaling can be like verbal Instagram. They can let you rewrite your day and life narrative, making it sepia-toned or on-crack Technicolorized. I am an eager proponent of any revisionist personal biography that might increase my well-being or productivity. By giving dumb life events the gloss of online publication, I assume that I will develop delusions of grandeur that will cause me to make better decisions and work harder. Possible side effects include becoming an asshole, but I’m willing to take that risk. (Does taking that risk immediately make one an asshole? Possibly!)
Three, and most significantly, my television shows have ended.
The what
Presumably, this will change with time, but given that my favorite topics of conversation are rants about the Catholic church, family history, productivity attempts, and banal events in my life, I’m going to guess they’re going to take up a considerable portion of this blog. So, I guess Bln() will give you the narcissism of personal pages, the banality of tweets, and the vapid navel-gazing and myth-making of a would-be Gilderoy Lockhart. Enjoy!
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| I’m so narcissistic, when I’m writing this I turn down my screen brightness all the way, so I can gaze at my reflected face, Mateo de Harvard style. |
The ass-covering
Of course, the only way I can actually type is to think in terms of “shitty rough draft.” I thus reserve the right to delete and edit any post in the name of better thinking or humor or just not being weird.
bln() 