Conservatives' Cliches

Hours after I make a post about how I won't probably post about politics much, I read the syndicated op-ed column by Clarence Page in my local paper. In the JG-TC, it is titled "Taking Stock of Conservatives and Their Lists of Cliches," but on website of the Chicago Tribune, it is called "Cliches Conservatives Say."

Page is responding to a book by Jonah Goldberg titled The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas.

I find it interesting that Goldberg thinks that liberals and progressives cheat by using cliches because conservatives and libertarians use them too. We're human after all.

In addition, and I know Jay Heinrichs who wrote Thank You for Arguing and Word Hero would agree with me on this supposition, I would argue that conservatives and the GOP, on the whole, are typically better at rhetorically/linguistically framing issues than Democrats and liberals are.

A good example are the slogans of "pro-life" and "pro-choice." Sure, people like to have their choices, but "pro-life" is difficult linguistic trap to escape.

Damn reality and its "liberal bias."

Random Notes from a Crank

If you like baseball, if you appreciate statistical analysis, and if you value data-driven arguments, the show Clubhouse Confidential on MLB Network is the show for you. Watch it if you're so inclined.

I really dislike it when a major league ballclub builds a brand new stadium, and then a few years later the organization brings in the fences to boost offensive output. They did it with Comerica Park years ago. This season they're doing it to Citi Field. If anything, some parks--such as Coors and Minute Maid--need to push their fences outward if possible. I doubt David Wright approves this post, but as experts suggest, he's getting fooled by breaking balls and missing fastballs more often. It's not the field's fault, Mets executives.

The most common sentence I hear in my life is this one: "Daddy, I'm hungry."

I read a bureaucratic report a while back that used this word as a verb: "incent." If you thought "incentivize" was bad, now the forces of administrative-speak have adopted incent as a verb, as in "You need to incent..."

I was talking to an educator last week, and she used the phrase, "working in the trenches" to describe what she does. Equating teaching to warfare in WWI is a troubling metaphor.

That are a lot of words that aren't used enough in the English language. One of them is hokum. In fact, it's one of my favorite words.

Here's a word that is used way too often in everyday conversation: "like." "Cool" is a close second. I need to eradicate that word from my vocabulary except for when I refer to the temperature of something.

Lately, my synapses don't seem to be firing as quickly as they should be. This could be the sign of a steady decline of something - I forget what - but I hope not.

Since I stayed at a Disney resort last week, they sent me a survey to evaluate their compound. I started to   take the survey because I had some things to say. However, after about ten minutes into it, I was only about 24% done. The number of questions was astounding. Really, couldn't they make a bit more simple? My main complaints were these: the poor selection of food and the horrible ironing board and iron that was in my room (1227 of the Coronado Springs Resort if you ever have to stay there). The ironing board wouldn't stay up, and the iron leaked water. If I'm having to drop a couple of c-notes a day on a room because that's where the conference is located, I want a good iron and ironing board, damn it. What they had in that room was Motel 6 quality. Kneeling to iron one's shirt because the iron board won't stay up is not a good thing. It's aggravating as hell.

I'm looking forward to Todd Snider's new album. It titled Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables. Amanda Shires and Jason Isbell played on it.

Pleased to Meet You, Hope You Stick Around

Okay, so I've co-opted a Rolling Stones song in my title.

But it's only because I went down to the crossroads and made a deal to get some barbeque joints in this town. And now I'm ungraciously mixing metaphors and ideas from separate songs, but what the hell.

While we've had a barbeque joint/resort east of town for a while that I wrote about a two summers ago, now there's a place here in the city limits.

Pop's Barbeque is a little shack-like establishment near uptown that purveys only in pulled pork, ribs, beef brisket, and occasionally rib tips. They also have a few sides. Their baked beans are really good, and that's coming from someone who doesn't really care much for baked beans.

The opening of this carry-out restaurant here in Chucktown has got me waxing nostalgic about barbeque places I've frequented in the past.

When I lived for a short stint in Kansas City, a town I consider the Capitol of Barbeque, there was so many places to choose from for solid barbeque. I lived in the suburb of Gladstone near the Smokehouse restaurant on N. Oak, so I fondly remember driving past that place and having my mouth water from the wonderful smoky smells. And then there's Arthur Bryant's and Gates, which are excellent.

Then when I made it down to Tuscaloosa, that area also has some excellent barbeque. Dreamland is famous for its ribs although I found it overrated. The decor and ambience of the restaurant was more interesting to me at least. And I always liked the barbeque place near me and Mrs. Nasty's first apartment together, the barbeque joint on 15th Street, which I think is called Thomas Rib Shack. That place would perfume our neighborhood with smoky goodness when the wind was blowing from the southwest.

That establishment's ribs were excellent. Now the ones I got the other day from Pop's were okay, not anything stunning but decent. But I think it's hard to find good ribs these days, or maybe my tastes have changed. I seem to gravitate to pulled pork nowadays. Perhaps it's another win for middle age or something.

The first time I went to Pop's, when I told the owner that I was excited to have a barbeque place in town, she informed me that another one was going to start up this summer in the "old Wendy's building."

I look forward to the barbeque wars of Chucktown, and I plan to be a double-secret culinary spy for both sides.