Cobbloviate

It always pains the Ol' Bloviator to learn of discord in his beloved ancestral stomping grounds of Hart County, Georgia, and the current brouhaha du jour is no exception, especially since it comes down to nothing more or less than a matter of chicken s___.  With apologies for his apparent crudity, the O. B. ain't speaking metaphorically here. The good folks of Hart County are smiting each other hip and thigh over the question of how chicken manure can be most productively and/or least harmfully used. Poultry production is big in North Georgia, as you can tell if you ever find yourself downwind of one of the hundreds of large-scale, multi-house operations that dot the landscape. You may also suffer a similar assault on your olfactory system if you are nearby when the litter from these houses is being spread across the fields and pastures of the area.

            Now, however, comes an outfit called Fibrowatt,which originated in the U.K. but has facilities in Minnesota and is looking to break out elsewhere, including North Georgia. Fibrowatt's thing is to burn chicken poop (or actually the litter from chicken houses, which also includes wood shavings) to convert water into steam, which, in turn, will spin the turbines that will generate electricity. There you are, poop to power, sold by the kilowatt hour. The ash residue of the incinerated chicken droppings, sez Fibrowatt, at least, can then be sold back to farmers as fertilizer. This all sounds pretty green, you have to admit, and in then there's the 45 full-time jobs created directly by the facility at a projected annual wage of $45,000, a figure well above the Hart County average

            Not so fast, say the opponents, who include a good number of  just plain NIMBYs (Not in My Back Yard)  and some apparently earnest tree-huggers who object not only to the Fibrowatt facility's anticipated 300-foot smokestack but to what will be coming out of it.  According to them, that will include dangerously high concentrations of (Yikes!) arsenic, not to mention sulfur dioxide, which is a major component of acid rain. Overall, they claim, the particulate count from such a facility would exceed that of the typically environmentally unfriendly coal-fired electric power plant. For their part, some farmers claim that the voracious Fibrowatt facility, which reportedly will be trucking in the chicken droppings 24/7 ( 100 or so potential trucking jobs here, but a lot of potential traffic jams as well) will gobble up so much of the area's chicken poop so that there'll be none left to spread over their fields. This is a serious matter since the rising petroleum costs have driven commercial fertilizer prices through the roof.

            What these farmers and the environmentalist opponents of Fibrowatt don't say much about is the likely impact of all that chicken dooky they've been dumping all over the landscape for some time now.  From the economic standpoint, chicken manure is cheaper as a fertilizer than dirt is as dirt, but the real kick that  it gives to pastures and fields comes from its nitrogen content, which by the way, critics say is too low in the ash residue generated by Fibrowatt  to make it adequate as fertilizer.  Unfortunately, the nitrogen in chicken-squeezins' comes in a package laden with phosphorous and other nutrients in much heavier concentrations than is desirable. This is something that the O.B. thinks he actually knows a little bit about, as he indicates in this little slice from his forthcoming book:

In addition to the threats posed by commercial fertilizers, the more than a million tons of manure generated annually in Georgia's chicken houses contained not only nitrogen but more phosphorous than the sewage that might normally be produced by 40 million people in a year. Environmentalists warned that when chicken manure was spread on pastures and fields the nutrient-overrich runoff could stimulate excessive algae growth in streams and lakes, leading ultimately to oxygen deprivation sufficient to kill fish. Some scientists also linked the excess nutrients and algae resulting from poultry litter runoff to the toxic microbe pfiesteria piscicida, which is capable of triggering not only massive fish kills but confusion, memory loss, acute skin irritation, and other forms of distress in humans.

When the O.B. was an otherwise carefree country lad, his concerns about chicken droppings amounted to nothing more than avoiding the signature deposits left indiscriminately behind by our flock of "free-range" poultry. (Not only were we organic way before it was cool, we were organic when it was considered positively "uncool"). Needless to say, this was a matter of special concern during the barefoot days of summer, which, of course, ran from May to late September.

            Things are a lot more complicated these days, and so my fellow Hart Countians find themselves in a sticky--and potentially stinky--situation that reveals just how complicated and uncertain are all matters where economic interests and environmental concerns become entangled. Still, the best suggestion I can give them is the exceedingly simple reminder bestowed on me daily by my precious Mother so many summers ago: "Watch your step."

PS:  Some of the amateur shrinks in the rapidly thinning ranks of  Cobbloviate-heads may recall a recent post about coffee made from beans found in civet poop, and think the Ol' Bloviator is manifesting an unhealthy fascination with all things scatological these days.  To this, the O.B simply retorts, "Horse Hockey!"  While we are still on the subject, however, he wishes to clear up what may have become a concern for those gourmets among the flock who might have encountered high- end restaurants not only serving civet-poop java, but featuring an entrée called "turducken." Turns out, it's just a chicken stuffed into a duck that is then stuffed into a turkey, although if the O.B. ever sees it on a menu, odds are he'll just opt for "the special," regardless of what it is.

Normally, news that  a celeb or semi-celeb  has been arrested for drunk driving with the red panties of a female companion who was not his wife adorning his lap would set the Ol' Bloviator to salivating at the prospect of launching yet another salvo of sarcasm, ridicule, innuendo and double entendre, all delivered in the poorest of taste, of course.  Maybe he's just jaded because such accounts have become so commonplace, but the case of Damon Evans, the former (as in name gone from the door, website, etc. in a nanosecond and now known as "Damon Who?") athletic director at the University of Georgia just makes the OB sad.  This, he hastens to add, has nothing to do with his well-known allegiance to UGA sports.   The OB has taken pains to point on more than one occasion to the disparity between the high, wide and handsome lifestyle of UGA's athletic department and the starvation-alert status of academics on the UGA campus.  For example, prior to his costly indiscretion, Damon Evans was set to receive a $110k raise after his faculty and staff colleagues had just endured an effective 3% pay cut, courtesy of six unpaid furlough days.  This show of "bad judgment" by Mr. Evans (You could have fooled me.  I thought it was just a routine indulgence in drunkenness and lust) also came as he was overseeing a  $40 million  upgrade to athletic facilities on a campus where academic departments are operating on budgets tighter than  spandex  shorts on Roseanne Barr's butt.   

 Evans's demise is all the more embarrassing to UGA because his was the voice and face on the video that ran in the fourth quarter of each home game warning fans not to drink and drive.   It's a good bet that we won't be seeing that this season, although using Photoshop to impose a set of bars in front of him as he delivers his sermonette, might actually be the most effective way to go.  The Ol' Bloviator is in no position to jump all  high and mighty on the matter of Evans's inebriation.  He's on his own on the panties, however.  What the OB finds so sad here is the pattern of anointing athletic figures with such high and mighty status that they can--and so often do--presume themselves beyond the standards of accountability confronting the rest of us.  The arrest report indicates that both Evans and his commando-styling female companion intimated to the officer that he shouldn't be arrested because he was the athletic director at UGA. (Smart move, guys) That either of them, even in a state of tipsiness, could even think in such terms tells us all we need to know about how out-of-whack our social priorities have become.

 As if we needed further affirmation here comes the story out of Knoxville of a brutal assault allegedly involving several University of Tennessee players both on a bar patron and then an on off-duty policeman in the wee hours of Friday morning.  The following  is the account of bar owner and eyewitness Sandy Morton:

"Basically, it was a normal Thursday night -- Thursday's our big night," Morton said. "We had all the UT football players come in. They're on a first-name basis with my husband (and co-owner), and they get VIP status, which means they pay no cover at the door.

 We've never had a problem with them in the past, but tonight, apparently they had a falling out with another gentleman. I don't know why. I don't know what happened, but several of the guys started beating up the other customer. I want to guess there was seven to 10 guys beating up this one gentleman.

"All the security then rushed in and were trying to break it up. My husband saw them picking up bar stools and starting to swing them. We got them out the door with security. There happened to be a friend of ours who was an off-duty police officer outside. He tried to help, and he ended up getting knocked out in the street and proceeded to be kicked while he was down on the ground in the middle of Cumberland [Avenue].

"That's basically the gist of it."

This version does not include the alleged slugging of one of the police officers who arrived to break up the incident, but it does mention that one of the players apparently involved in the incident had already been arrested less than three months ago on charges of public intoxication, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

The alleged offenses committed by these young men may seem very different in character from the alleged (and apparent) offenses of Damon Evans, but, the OB believes the connection between them is remarkably clear.   Some of the UT athletes were recently arrived freshmen whose announcements about where they were going to play had been major media events, not just on the local or regional but even the national scene. Imagine the recent LaBron-athon in a high school cafeteria and you'll get the picture.  These lads were clearly accustomed to deference and elevated status even before they got to Knoxville, where that status became exponentially more exalted still.  What need had they for concern about the rules and constraints restricting the lesser persons who largely regarded them as members of a hero-elite?   Damon Evans is a forty year old man, whose career as a UGA football player had been solid but unspectacular.  He had shown competence and potential as a subaltern administrator in the athletic department at Georgia, however, and when his boss and mentor Vince Dooley was forced out as athletic director in 2003, Evans, at 34, became one of the youngest athletic directors in the country and the only black AD in the Southeastern Conference.  (By the way, there were only twenty-two black athletic directors at Division 1 schools throughout the country in 2009.)  Being AD at Georgia is not like being a Heisman Trophy candidate, but it's definitely a celebrity-level gig, with a car, expense account and what would have been for Evans, a $500k plus salary for the coming year.  There's also guaranteed social entrée and a predictable coterie of hangers-on eager to win your favor.  Any way you slice it, Damon Evans had all this and even the prospect of something bigger, and he blew it.  His race has nothing to do with why he behaved as he did any more than Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger's whiteness explains his arrogant boorishness.  What the two share, however unequally, is an apparent inability to handle the instant and easy celebrity that comes with a high profile position in the athletic world. Neither man has anyone other than himself to blame for his actions, of course, but we sports-fanatics might have at least some culpability here as enablers.  Regrettably, where Roethlisberger's offenses convey no negative racial connotations, Evans's fall from grace still does.  Waiting in an airport last week, I overheard several young black professional types discussing the Evans affair.  Upon getting all the details, one of them shook his head, observing, "This is bad for us."  The opportunity afforded Damon Evans suggests we've come a long way, but when it comes to separating the content of a person's character, good or otherwise,  from the color of his or her skin, we still have a ways to go.

American academics are notorious, sometimes slavish, Europhiles,  who sometimes act as if anything that originates across the pond is automatically  way superior to anything we can come up with over here.  Now don't get the Ol' Bloviator wrong.  He's got a lot of friends over there, not the least of them being Tony Badger, who is not only the Master of Clare College, Cambridge, but the world's biggest --and possibly most knowledgeable--Braves fan.  Tony's a big soccer fan, too, of course, but though I've tried to join him in that camp more than once, I just can't get there.   I swore that I was going to immerse myself in this year's World Cup doings out of self-defense mostly, since I and the missus are about to shove off on our annual trek to the French West Indies.   I dare not be more specific here, lest one of those pesky paparazzi pop out from behind a palm tree and snap a shot or two of me in my leopard-skin Speedo.  I've heard that such a pic would fetch a premium among those desperately seeking a sure-fire cure for nymphomania. (Note: Probable side effects include irreversible frigidity.)  At any rate, the last time we visited this little corner of paradise during a World Cup season, there were TV's in places where there normally weren't, and none of them exactly went begging for viewers.  As French subjects, the islanders were moderately, but certainly not overwhelmingly, disposed to support the Mama country's lads, but I doubt if there was much mourning anywhere in the Francophone world at the early departure of this year's team, which not only managed to reinforce every negative French stereotype out there, but may have engendered a few new ones.   Admittedly, they had to contend with a wacko coach who reportedly decided who was playing when and where based on a player's astrological sign. What gives?  Channeling Nancy Reagan maybe?   Still, this bunch of cheaters , who used an undetected  illegal hand pass to beat Ireland and get into the competition in the first place, (I bet Irish players were really pissed after they sobered up and heard what happened)  never passed on a chance to appear arrogant ,selfish, petty and thoroughly unsportsmanlike.  When Coach Wacko dismissed a player who had cussed him out at halftime of their first match, a sleep-walking loss to Mexico,  this bunch of incorrigibiles fell back on a national tradition second only to waving the white flag , by going on strike and refusing to practice.   When, to the surprise of no one and doubtless to the dismay of only a few, the Frenchies lost to South Africa, their coach refused to shake hands with his opposing counterpart.  Now I read that the anti-immigrant French ultra-nationalists are blaming their team's abysmal conduct and performance on the lack of "patriotism" among squad members who emigrated from Africa.   I'm afraid you'll have to do better than that, Francois.  Regardless of the accents or pigmentation of some team members, this crew's problems stemmed from acting too much in accord with what is expected of your people, rather than too little.  If you're looking for a world-class athlete whose behavior is out of line with your perceived national character, check out Nicolas Mahut, who like American John Isner, did himself, his nation and the sport of tennis proud in their historic marathon fifth set at Wimbledon on Wednesday and Thursday, and ..... (At this writing, Friday doesn't seem out of the question.)

That the French soccer team should conduct itself in a manner so reminiscent of a surly, indifferent waiter at an overpriced Paris restaurant is unfortunate. Stereotypes can be dangerous and hurtful, though they frequently derive from some kernel of truth or experience. When we spent a month in Italy during World Cup play in 2002, the Italians supported their team with all the exuberant enthusiasm that we had encountered so frequently in our day-to-day dealings with them. (Although, I confess that as the prospect of an Italian-U.S.A. face-off loomed, I began to wonder if our reception might cool off a little). Likewise, as the excitable Italians and Spanish struggle, the stolid Germans simply crunch relentlessly, almost mechanically ahead.  It hasn't looked good for the English so far, but just as they did in World Rumble # 2, they survived the first round.  Their fan base isn't particularly pleased with what they have seen so far, but I'll bet Mr. Churchill would see it a bit differently.  Then there were the Americans who got lucky against the Brits and screwed against the Slovenians and were on track to become the most notorious bunch of sister-kissers in soccer history, only to be saved by last-minute heroics in an ending Hollywood couldn't have conjured up.

 I just spent thirty minutes trying to figure out how the U.S. emerges a group winner when it has the same record as England, and I can't help noting that both these outfits are moving into the next round after managing but a total of 5 points each over three games.  I know these guys are marvelous and superbly conditioned athletes, but I just don't think I could ever get all that excited about yucking it up with with my mates about  all the times that our side almost scored.              

One thing's for sure, regardless of who winds up in the finals, they're bound to be deaf as posts. Those damn "vulvalators" or whatever the hell they are have already cost me two or three db in my hearing, and that's with the TV on mute most of the time.   Trying to tune them out is like trying to savor Mozart on your ipod while driving a Formula One car at about 18k rpm. By the same token, the folks who keep tooting' nonstop on these things are going to have some of the floppiest, Botoxified-looking lips this side of Goldie Hawn.   Frankly, the whole atmosphere seems a bit too uncivilized for my tastes.  Thank goodness in scarcely two months' time I'll be back in my familiar, more sophisticated milieu, rubbing shoulders with folks who paint their faces red and black and bark at their opponents don Razorback-shaped hard hats and scream "S-O-O-O-O-E-E!" at the top of their lungs.

            I don't know about you, but I don't think I can handle another shot of a pitiful, petrol-encapsulated pelican. This is not because the Ol' Bloviator has become desensitized  to the still-unfolding tragedy of the BP disaster, but rather that he just gets  sick at heart and stomach to see an uncomprehending creature suffer such a fate.  I see no relief from these images, however, until somebody's kid shows up coated in Valvoline from head to toe:, resulting in the following oceanside exchange:

            "Marvin! What's that all over little Curtis? Has he been helping you change your oil again? Why would you want to do that at the beach?"

            "Aw, calm down, Becky Sue. I just lost track of him for a little bit while I was fumbling around in the cooler for a beer. A little oil ain't never hurt nobody. Besides, we're down a quart or two in the Taurus, and we should be able to scrape enough off him to at least get us back to Notasulga, so Buster can take a look at it."

            Resist it if you must, but such a conversation is by no means unthinkable, especially with the old slickeroo  bearing down on the "Redneck Riviera," stretching along the Alabama-Florida Gulf Coast, from Gulf Shores to Panama City.  They've been scooping up tar balls and such for a few days at some points there already, although bon vivants around the globe will be immensely relieved to learn that the conditions remains el primo at the historic Flora-Bama Lounge and Package Store, which sits on the Alabama-Florida line at Perdido Key.  The Flora-Bama is best known, of course, for hosting the annual Interstate Mullet Toss, the Redneck Riviera's signature, self-defining event, wherein typically blind-drunk contestants, who may or may not be sporting mullet coiffure, vie to see who can heave a mullet of the piscine variety farthest across the state line.  Well, truth is, there may have been a few tar balls here and there near the F-B, but the good news is that so far the seaweed is glopping all of them up, and not to worry, if there gets to be more oil than seaweed, the establishment's management has procured a nice stash of hay, which, given its constituency, was probably not hard to come by.   

The OB obviously doesn't mean to make light of the oil spill, which is not only a deadly serious matter in the literal sense, but a phenomenon that actually reveals the complicated connections and contradictory attitudes that define contemporary life in these United States. There's hardly need here to get into what this whole thing says about our need to cut way back on our dependence on oil. Although the currently estimated flow of forty  thousand barrels of oil  into the Gulf of Mexico each day is massive enough to produce incalculable environmental damage at least as far away as the coast of North Carolina, it represents less than 2/10 of  1 percent of the twenty-one million barrels we polish off every day. We may "tut-tut" and "tch-tch" all we please about the environmental indifference of development-mad countries like China, but what has happened here is that a company focused way too much of its energy and resources on extracting as much of a valuable resource as quickly and profitably as possible, with far too little attention either to the possible consequences of a flub-up in the extraction process or to any means of avoiding said flub up. This is purely and simply a classic human behavior pattern. Left to our own devices, we are all but certain to concentrate on doing that which will reward us most handsomely in the here and now and hope like hell that our actions don't cause problems later on.  After hearing ad nauseum since the Reagan era about how wicked government is and how great it would be to rid ourselves of its meddlesome regulations, we saw the oil-drunk Bushies simply entrust oversight of the oil industry to representatives of the oil industry. So much for self-regulation. If you're gonna leave the foxes in charge of the hen house, don't get your heart set on chicken 'n dumplings for dinner. I note also in passing that the same folks who've been yelling loudest about keeping government weak and uninvolved are now demanding in equally full cry that Washington step in and fix this thing immediately, before the pristine beach in front of their exclusive vacation homes starts to look like drain floor at a Jiffy-Lube.

Anyone who thinks that the lesson of the BP disaster will be learned and taken to heart voluntarily need simply note the speedy comeback of derivatives in the investment sector. No one can say for sure that an authentic government regulatory presence of some sort would have prevented this mess, but every oil-encased pelican they force us to gaze upon is a testament to what happened without one.

I just pray that ten months from now we aren't subjected to a still sorrier spectacle when frustrated, beer-soaked Flora-Bama patrons discover they can't even get a grip on their oil-soaked mullets, much less throw 'em into the next state.  Let's face it, fish ain't really engineered for flingin' anyhow, and a thick coat of Castrol doesn't promise to make it any easier.

It had taken him nearly a decade, but the Ol' Bloviator had finally just about gotten the memory of that molten moment at the 2000 Democratic convention, when Al and Tipper Gore engaged in a protracted lip lock, and (watch out folks with queasy stomachs!) I swear it looked to me like ol'Al even had a little of that tongue thing going on. If such a kiss were occurring today, I suppose Tipper could respond with that great country song, "Get your tongue out of my mouth, I'm kissing you goodbye!" News of the Gores' split has shocked a lot of people, since the two were high school sweethearts who'd been together for forty-plus years and even co-authored Joined at the Heart, a book about the American family.

            Although I truly hate it for both of them, I'm not all that shocked. According to experts, the sixty-something demographic is the only one where the divorce rate is rising. Explanations for this are purely conjectural, but all rolled into a little ball, they come down to Boomers don't do boredom well. When you've exhausted most of the "new" options available to you (kids, houses, cars, diets, clubs, coffeemakers, flat panel TV's, etc.), the spousal unit is suddenly in play. For all his good intentions, with the possible exception of Larry King, Al Gore has got to be one of the most boring bastards on the planet that he seems to be so intent on saving, preferably, it seems, all by himself. Friends described the Gores as a "tight family unit." If the titular head of that family unit is any indication, truer words were never spoken. Let's just say if BP could persuade Mr. Environmentalist himself to use his sphincter to pinch their pipe, our oil leak worries would be over. Frankly, although she doesn't exactly come across as good-time Gertie herself, I don't see how ol' Tipper has held on as long as she has. As I once wrote right here on this site, if I were forced to sit by Ozone Al on a transoceanic flight, my mind would quickly be pondering the odds of becoming the first person ever to jump from an airplane at 30,000 feet and survive.

            Boredom isn't the only possible cause for later-in-life treks to Splitsville, of course. Analysts say that by age sixty women especially feel as though they have sacrificed or compromised their happiness or fulfillment in order to play the supportive wifey and supermom for forty years or more and it's time, by God, that they had their shot at filling in their own "Bucket Lists" while they're still healthy and fit enough to git'r done. All I can say is that while Ms. OB has every reason in the world to feel this way, I pray to God she'll at least let me hang around while she's scratching every fulfillment itch she's got.  This week she and I will be celebrating forty-one years of wedded bliss (OK, maybe there was a minute or two here and there when bliss was not exactly the operative word, but I honestly don't remember very many, and I'm hoping like hell she doesn't either.)

As most of you know, despite his gruff, macho demeanor, the OB is just an ol' softy at heart, and that heart came near to melting when he heard the report that hours before his death on Friday, legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden asked that he be shaved because he was about to be reunited with "Nellie" Wooden, the only girl he ever dated, to whom he was married in 1932 and to whom he remained just as married after her death in 1985, reportedly writing her a letter every month for the past twenty-five years.

            John Wooden was not just a giant in his profession, but a giant of a human being. I can't prove it, of course, but I'd be willing to bet that he found far more fulfillment in his unfaltering devotion to the departed Nellie than most of today's spouse-dumping Boomers will ever know. As to my own appearance upon departure, when the missus and I meet in the great hereafter, I'm sure she'll be looking for someone unkempt and disheveled. Maybe I should make that if we meet. In fact, given the current Vegas odds on my eternal prospects, regardless of my other attire, I'd be a fool not to hedge my bets with a set of asbestos underdrawers.

I know it's been a long time since the last bloviation, but  there'll be no apologies this time. Nosiree! The Ol' Bloviator has been thoroughly involved in the serious--and ultimately joyful, of course--business of bringing  his grandson, Barrett Callaway Cobb,  into this world. (Ok, I admit that I didn't do it entirely by my lonesome. Barrett's  mom, who proved herself a real trooper, was actually  a big help at several points in the process.) We had actually been looking for the little dude since Cinco de Mayo.   I certainly understand why he'd be reluctant to come out and risk getting tequila or Tecate sloshed all over him.  However, he played hard to get for another ten days before finally deciding to join those of us who were damn nigh exhausted with anticipation.  I'll guarantee you one thing, he was a sight for the OB's famously bloodshot eyes when he showed up on May 16, all six pounds, fifteen ounces and twenty-one inches of him.  Maybe it was his extended stay on the inside, but for whatever reason, the little fellow showed up with some complications, that, while not life-threatening, were worrisome enough to land him in ICU for a little while.  What makes newborns so precious, I think, is their complete innocence and lack of control over or responsibility for anything that happens to them. Whether it's my grandbaby or someone else's, to me there's just no more heart-wrenching sight than a fragile , defenseless infant all wired and tubed up on account of something that it couldn't have caused and obviously can't begin to comprehend. Some of Barrett's little sidekicks in ICU were in truly critical condition, and from the looks of some of their parents, if the poor little things knew what might be in store for them at home, they might not care much whether they ever managed to leave the hospital.    It seems too great an injustice for God to tolerate that so many newcomers to this world right now have to face such terrible odds from day one.  I respect the moral argument against abortion, but I can't respect the morality of an argument against anything that might prevent unwanted and unwise pregnancies from happening in the first place.

Enough of the bombast and gloomspeak! I'm delighted to tell you that young Barrett himself seems well out of the woods and looks for all the world like a healthy, happy--and hungry--baby.  In sum, he's in good shape for all the invaluable mentoring that his grandpa is going to lay on him.  Naturally, since I've been a grandparent for about ten days, I've got the whole thing figured out.  Obviously, it doesn't exactly take a genius to see that the grands  go ape over a new arrival because they get to re-live parenthood's upside while leaving the downside to the kids who ran them ragged when they were coming along.  It's also natural that grandparents seize on the opportunity to correct what they did wrong the first time around.  In truth, most of us probably did our greatest disservices to our kids by saying "yes" when "no" was the more appropriate response.  Our most painful memories of parenthood, though, are of those times when we punished when we might have forgiven or scolded when we might have hugged, so grandparental overindulgence of the little ones is simply a given.

As the proudest grandpa ever, I naturally ache to share a few dozen pics of the best looking grandson ever, but his parents worry about overexposure, especially given the likelihood that Hollywood will come calling any day now.  Also, it would be thoughtless of me to crush the spirits of all of those other grandparents out there who doubtless think their little tyke is the cutest baby around.  Suffice it to say, Barrett is the real deal, and he clearly thinks his grandpa is too.  In fact, I felt sorry for all the others competing for his affection, because he so obviously preferred me.  I don't mind telling you folks that heading back to Georgia from Texas, I found my right arm involuntarily moving into cradling position and my mind composing little sermonettes and life-tips for the little warm bundle that should have been resting there. (Ok, so I got a few strange stares in the airport. So what?)  It really hurt to know that he'd be missing me just as badly, of course, and our first visit via Skype yesterday put me in the best mood I've been in since we got back.   Still, there's just so much critical information and advice that needs imparting.  For example, much as his grandpa is wont to do when he is in private, or at least THINKS he is, ol' Barrett likes to pass gas with gusto and flair, regardless of where he is or who's around.  Obviously, it's good to have this confirmation of the" chip off the old block" thing, but Podner, if you keep telegraphing your move by  locking your arms over your head, scroonching  your face up into a corkscrew and pulling your legs up against your belly, you can't really expect that anybody's  ever going to believe the dog did it.

So here we go again. The Ol' Bloviator must once more preface his remarks with one of his by now familiar apologies for neglecting his long-suffering followers. Once again he pleads for forgiveness, pointing to a spate of speechifying. (It would be helpful at this point if those few of you who have not yet been cornered and forced to listen to an OB oration would simply come in and register. Perhaps we can arrange a mass indoctrination that would save us all a little time, though, in your case, not much suffering.) There have also been humongous dissertations to read and a steady procession of grad students to examine. (Note: These exams  typically do not require rubber gloves, although the examinees might well think they should.)

                At any rate, ever since he stole a few minutes to read a few pages of the New York Times a while back, the OB has been keen to comment on the way totally bizarre and frequently disgusting things can become delicacies or actually made to convey a certain status or identity on those who consume them. Growing up on a farm, where we raised our own meat, from his tiniest tykehood, the OB loved nothing better than "hog killing" day, which typically coincided with the first day likely to remain cold enough to keep the meat from spoiling while it was being "worked up." Being frugal people of austere means, we country folk were loath to waste any part of the hog, and that included the small intestines, known formally  as "chitterlings," although "chitlin's" suited us just fine. Since the intestines do, after all, have a rather dirty job to do while ol' Porky is alive and rootin' around, preparing them for cooking was a pretty dirty job itself, requiring that they be cut into strips before the, ahem, contents were flushed by repeatedly pouring hot water through them.

Suffice it to say, this was not a particularly coveted task, but you definitely hoped that the person responsible did a good, thorough job. Otherwise, it was E. coli city for those who would soon be feasting on them.

I am often--make that occasionally--asked how chitlins' taste. I have never felt happy with any reply I could muster beyond "better than they smell," especially when they're cooking.  I remember when my poor mama began boiling or stewing chitlin's, every fly in the house found something really critical to do outside. I never ate chitlin's any other way than battered, fried, and swimming in ketchup with a dash of Tabasco. For me the purpose of the condiments was not to counteract the taste of chitlin's so much as to compensate for the lack thereof. Still, one thing was certain: If cooking chitlin's was women's work, eating  them was entirely up to the men. Big "chitlin' suppers" were essentially a masculine ritual, sometimes supplemented by a game of Rook, with or without a sip or two of corn squeezin's.

In some ways, I guess chitlins' filled the same ritualistic role in southern cuisine as "Rocky Mountain oysters" played in the West. What could be more masculine after all than wolfing down the testicles of bull calves, excised (Ouch!), pounded flat (Ouch, again!), battered, and fried (We're well beyond "Ouch!" at this point.) This particular delicacy has eluded me thus far, but I do notice that every time I see a plate of R.M.O.s, there's always plenty of ketchup on hand.

                You may not find the idea of consuming chitlin's or Rocky Mountain oysters very appealing, but the thing is, eating either one is supposed to signify that you are one rough and ready dude. That's why I was plumb near white-eyed by this story in the New York Times about the effete, elevated-pinky types who fancy coffee brewed from beans that have already--the Ol' Bloviator ain't kiddin' now--been eaten, partially digested, and pooped out by some trashy cat-looking-thing called a civet.

 Civets, it seems, prowl around in Southeast Asia looking for "the tastiest, ripest coffee cherries" to ingest and then later divest as coffee beans said to yield a brew  that is  "smooth, chocolaty, and devoid of any bitter aftertaste." (Yeah! Right!) Get this now, self-styled "connoisseurs" who can't get enough of this "preprocessed" coffee have put such a premium on civet poop that the woods are full of folks stalking the ugly creatures until they get a call from nature, so to speak and Voila!

Others have decided to give nature a helping hand by separating the beans from the cherries and mixing them into a "banana mash," which is then fed to the civets.  In the case of one owner, this technique has jacked the poop payoff from his hyper caffeinated civets up from roughly 5 ounces to 6.6 pounds per day. As is so common when first-world stupidity meets third-world poverty, there is now a flourishing trade in phony civet plop consisting of regular old coffee beans "glued to unidentified dung." There is also a heated debate over whether the "stress" on force-fed civets actually degrades the flavor of the beans compared to those ingested by "free-range" civets who, left to their own devices,  supposedly opt only for the choicest of the coffee cherries. Scoffing at this notion, big-time civet owner Mega Kurniawan insisted there was no distinction between the beans yielded by civets in captivity and those found deposited in the wild, suggesting that the world's coffee snobs may prefer the latter, harder-to-come-by beans simply because of "the prestige."

Prestige is perhaps the ultimate commodity, and it seldom comes cheap. In this case, the price tag--hold on to your decaf, skinny latte with a shot of pomegranate liqueur, folks--is $227 per pound. Understandably, all this is fairly puzzling to locals who formerly prized civets primarily because they supposedly tasted mighty fine after their meat was dried and "prepared adobo-style." (After getting a look at one of these ugly little boogers, I think I'll pass on this "delicacy" too,  along with anything brewed from something that has passed through their guts. Thanks very much, though.) But then, as Lambert Pat-og, the son of a local school principal pointed out, "We are ignorant."  If so, you're my kind of ignorant, Lambert, old buddy, but in this case, as in many others, we are probably missing a bet. It's only a matter of time before someone offers a new line of civet-sized "Depends," for example, and I'm told the people at Goldman Sachs are already marketing civet-poop futures "on the down low."

Whatever else the Ol' Bloviator's multitude of detractors can truthfully say about him--and there's a'plenty, he admits--he has never been much of one to toot his own horn. In fact, on this site and elsewhere, he has gone in precisely the opposite direction by making himself the butt of all manner of jokes, and any number of his more or less truthful accounts wind up positioning him as the object of laughter or even ridicule. (Witness the last post, from which, by the way, his latest driver's license photo has been expunged, after reports of several women going into labor prematurely after viewing it, not to mention several coeds who (OMG!), like, took their Face Book pages down lest the hideous image should, like, pop up there sometimes. OMG!)  Seeing himself as an unlikely candidate for admiration, O.B. was naturally shocked, though immensely pleased,  to learn that his employer (and alma mammy) has seen fit to honor him for his modest accomplishments as a researcher.

            Research universities typically don't do nearly enough to stress the importance of . . . well, research. Instead, when it's time to play politics with higher education and the legislative machete squad gets all lathered up, it's the research component of the University's mission that is all too frequently left to fend for itself. Active, effective researchers are readily presumed to be indifferent teachers because they do so much research when, as the O.B. has complained here before, the researchers are the only people who come to class with something new and original to say. This makes the O.B. doubly proud to be part of an effort to give researchers their due at this hallowed institution. In his case, as you can surmise by mashing right here,  they gave the O.B. way more than his due to the point of rendering him damn near unrecognizable to himself much less those who know him personally.

            Then there's the video.  Although the O.B. confesses he is a little disappointed that they cut the part where he was telling 'em about all the great advice he's given Bill Gates or revealing for the first time that he regularly rode shot gun with  Richard Petty and really taught him how to make that old Plymouth stand up and go. Ditto Nolan Ryan and the fastball and Herschel and the toss sweep. It's also a little bit of a bummer that they couldn't find room for my explanation of why magenta is my favorite color and my deeply self-revelatory discourse on why it's boxers over briefs for this information-gathering beast on  those long, hot days in the archives. Still, I give 'em due credit. For nearly two minutes, they managed to make me seem almost credible professionally and not nearly so loathsome personally as most would have you believe. Not bad for just six days worth of interviewing.

Even though he thinks the video spinmeisters did an incredible job (given what they had to work with) in making him look at least functional, the ol' Bloviator knows that, at heart, these things are relative. Therefore, it never hurts to juxtapose your performance with that of someone who comes across as a total fool. Normally, 

            Dumb as he looked and sounded, Johnson's insistence that he was simply trying to make a joke rings true to me. However, that explanation did bring immediately to mind the old story about the visitor to a prison who was puzzled to hear inmates singing out "2" or "4" and eliciting successive gales of laughter of laughter in response. This continued until finally a slightly squeaky voice gave out with "9" only to be met with deafening silence. Intrigued, the visitor asked what was going on only to have a grizzled old lifer explain that the crew had told each other the same jokes so much that in order to save time they had simply assigned a number to each tale. Why, then, the visitor wanted to know, had nobody laughed at "9"? "Well," said the inmate, "some folks just don't know how to tell a joke." Hankster, they were talking about you, son. If they ever catch you with your hand in the till and ship you off to Graybarville, in addition to the soap, I'd keep a tight grip on that wacky sense of humor as well.

            By way of a personal update and a thoroughly contrived segue into this post, let me say that the Ol' Bloviator's general condition has improved in the seven weeks since he was struck down by a mysterious hit-and-run driver--or actually hit-apologize-then-run driver. It came as no surprise, I'm sure, that, even in the way he gets himself run over, the O.B. is a trend-setter. Note this report from over there in suburban Hotlanta about Carol Floyd, a lady in his age bracket who was knocked down in a crosswalk, which in Georgia is seen as similar to a "free-fire" zone, by a woman who, like O.B.'s assailant, stopped to apologize and gave evidence of intending to hang around, only to think better of it and shag ass. Floyd was reportedly "angry" that the woman who hit her had "fled the scene." Carol, I've been there, honey. Just try not to let your anger eat at you from the inside.

There's a related story here as well that may well explain this spate of vehicular assaults on honest, hard-working oldsters like Carol and me. It seems a Florida lady recently caused a two-vehicle accident while trying to shave behind the wheel. (Warning:  Some may think that the Ol' Bloviator  briefly succumbs to insensitivity and bad taste in the paragraph that follows.  Those who wish to continue to hold him up as a role model might be wise to skip down just a bit.)

I'll grant you that this good sister doesn't exactly come across as a former Miss America or even Miss Sylacauga, for that matter, but you can see that she ain't sporting so much as a five-o'clock shadow. The fact is she wasn't shaving her face or nose or ears or even her armpits and legs. She was doing a little trim job in what the reporter euphemistically called her "bikini area." The hell of it is that her ex-husband was in the car with her, but apparently only riding shotgun, although the two of them tried to switch places after the accident. I don't know anything about why that ol' boy would be in the car with her on such an occasion, especially since she explained later that she was on her way to meet her boyfriend and was just trying to tidy up a little bit down there in order to be "ready for the visit." I will say to the ex that he, of all people, should have known better. If there could be anything worse than seeing his former wife in a bikini, it surely must be seeing her landscaping the terrain that a bikini is supposed to conceal. It wouldn't do, I guess, to get into what "look" she might have been working toward--the "airstrip" (Think 747, I'm guessing), the "Hitler" (She does have something of the neo-Nazi look, I'd say) or (God help us!) the "Yul Brynner." The latter, of course, is not recommended for inexperienced drivers or trimmers or trips shorter than 100 miles, and this entire activity is especially discouraged in Alabama, where the pothole problem is just plain out of hand. It's small wonder that, so I'm told, the more natural "Willie Nelson" look is popular over that way. I have no proof, of course, that the woman who ran down Carol or me was trying to coif herself down there at the time, but you have to admit that someone who was doing something like that while driving would surely have extra incentive not to hang around and spill her guts about it to a cop.

We're being totally unfair, of course, to read so much into anyone's mug shot, which, let's face it, was not likely taken at a time when a person was at his or her best. Ain't that right, Nick?

 I don't reckon "the Godfather" felt much like belting out "I feel good!" when his photo was snapped either.

Some folks manage though to come through mostly as they are even in this most trying of circumstances. Here's Larry King, for example, who was probably hauled in for inflicting mass boredom on the City of Miami in 1971.

There are others, like poor ol' Hank Williams, here, whose jailhouse snapshots tell us instantly of a promising life gone tragically to hell.

Though it's not quite the same, most of us have been victimized at one time or other by the dreaded driver's license photo.

This guy, for example, looks as though either "Wanted Dead or Alive" or more appropriately, "Is He Dead or Alive?" should be scrolling right beneath his chin. If you can identify this poor soul or know of his whereabouts, please contact the Humane Society right away so that he can be euthanized quickly and be put out of his misery--and everybody else's, too.

"Read my tusks. No new Taxes!"

As our fabled football broadcaster Larry Munson might say, "Alright, get the picture." It's 3:30 p.m. on March 2, 2010, and the University of Georgia has been closed since 2 p.m. on account of the snow, but there are still a number of faculty types around ye olde History Department, seeing students and working in their offices. There's a 5 p.m. final defense scheduled for a first-rate dissertation. It involves four faculty members who have read and critiqued this dissertation, some more than once, even though they will receive not a cent of additional monetary compensation for what is effectively a wholly voluntary expenditure of their time and energies on their part.     (This, mind you,  is  a group that has not only had no raises in two years but will also have absorbed at least a 3 percent cut in their pay due to state-mandated furlough days by the end of the academic year.)  In addition to time not spent with their families, the hours of off-the-books consulting with graduate students and reading their work outside class also cuts into the research and publication efforts they are expected to maintain in order to advance in salary and rank at an institution like the University of Georgia.  

                Is this group of faculty unusual? Hardly.  This is the way universities are run.  They are not factories where the employees simply show up to teach their assigned classes and collect their checks.   There are no time cards here.   If there were, the outlays for overtime would bankrupt the institution in a heartbeat.   Don't bother telling that, however, to the contingent of  swinish louts in the legislature who have been whipped into a  grunting, gurgling frenzy by the prospect of anointing their porcine snouts with some still-warm left-wing professor blood and can't wait to proceed with a thoroughly orgiastic disembowelment of higher education in Georgia. By that I mean they want to rip an additional $300 million out of the University System budget. Here at UGA, that means $60 million more on top of the $100 million that has already been hacked away over the last two years.

Remarkably, we've been able to maintain an admittedly tenuous verticality up to now, but if these cuts or anything like them stick, we're going horizontal, Honey Child, and we'll be that way for a long time.  Forget the national rankings; our new concern will be accreditation. Although few may realize it as of yet, this is a truly critical point not only for the future of this institution but for the future of the state it was created to serve. We're going to find out in the next few weeks whether over two generations' worth of pompous assertions that our state's accomplishments and vision set us apart from our Deep South neighbors were anything more than rhetorical masturbation.

 As they should, if  the cuts are going to happen as projected, they are going to hurt a lot of people, many  well beyond those who currently fill the 1,400-plus positions here at UGA that are said to be on the line or the 1,500 or so students who will be denied admission (either as freshmen or transfers) next year. For starters, with apologies to Red Foxx, "Look out local businesses,  this could be the Big One!"In addition to its traditional instructional mission, the University of Georgia's storied land-grant tradition will suddenly sink beneath the kudzu if all the 4-H Clubs and half the County Agricultural Extension offices are shut down. Then, we can say goodbye to  the many other things that, by God, make a good healthy public university a state's greatest asset. One of the most prestigious university presses in the country will be utterly destroyed, and The Georgia Review, one of the nation's finest literary journals, will be knee-capped. Ditto our terrific Performing Arts Center and the Georgia Museum of Art, and they'll even have to close the damn State Botanical Gardens, for God's sake! In relative terms, the University of Georgia may well have weathered the Great Depression better than it stands to fare at the hands of the mouth-breathing Philistines now massed at our gates. There is much breast-beating over in Hotlanta about the virtues of making higher education leaner and more efficient (Like a business, ahem!), but the fat was gone long ago. Make no mistake, the next excision--although we should think backhoe, not scalpel--will be pure muscle mass and vital organs.

 All the legislative handwringing over a revenue shortfall would seem a mite more convincing if it came from a body that isn't exposed annually as a haven for tax cheats in its own right. The real problem, though, is that the tax structure for the State of Georgia is inadequate even in relatively good times and utterly pathetic in the face of what we're seeing now. Loathe to raise levies  even a teensy bit, many of the Republicans in the legislature currently insist, probably correctly, that their main man Sonny Perdue's revenue projections for next year are too high. This is no surprise. In fact it's SOP in Georgia to inflate revenue predictions in order to spare the "Guvnuh" the awkwardness of having to suggest a tax increase. In this case, his Sonnyness has actually gone so far as to float proposals like a hike in cigarette taxes and a hospital use tax, but our dimwitted, tight-fisted solons ain't having none of it. Word from the office of our esteemed Lt. Guvnuh  is that the best way to get the state's economy "humming again" is to reject tax increases and pass "a balanced budget that creates the right environment for business to grow." Ah, there it is, the old "favorable business climate" ploy that says increased (or even continued) support for education is actually bad for the state's economic development because it probably means higher taxes.  Never you mind that this argument  isn't much help in explaining why the two hottest growth spots for high-tech industry in the whole country, North Carolina's Raleigh-Durham Research Triangle and the Austin, Texas, metro area, are also home to three of the South's finest universities.

Like many low-tax, practically no-union southern states, ours typically fares pretty well in annual business climate rankings, particularly on certain tax issues. A recent survey showed Georgia with the nation's eighth most favorable corporate tax climate.  And why not?  At a mere 5.6 percent of total state revenue collections, our reliance on corporate income tax as a source of funds is barely three-fourths as heavy as the average state's. On the other hand, at 34.4 percent, our dependence on the intensely regressive and notoriously unstable sales tax for revenue is nearly 10 percent above the national norm.

As a historian, I concluded some time back that most bad people make it into public office not because they are so slick at fooling the people, but because so many of those people simply want to be fooled in the first place. For example, they truly want to hear that any direct and tangible benefit they receive is entirely legit while everything the state offers to anyone else is totally bogus. Hence, in a manner of speaking, more often than not, voters get just about the kind of government they deserve. On the other hand, having spent so much of my career at universities operating on something just a butterbean or two better than a starvation diet, I believe that these schools have consistently given the people of their states far richer opportunities for higher learning than they have had any real reason to expect.  However, if Georgians wish to cheer or even simply stand quietly by while a bunch of  their self-serving legislative porkers fatten themselves politically by devouring higher education in this state, they're finally going to get precisely the public universities they deserve.  I'd like to think the vaunted affection that the people of Georgia are supposed to hold for their state university will ultimately prove to be its salvation (and maybe ultimately theirs as well), but I have to say I'd feel a lot more confident if the Doomsday scenario that UGA officials have presented to the galoots in Atlanta included a provision that cutting courses like "Fundamentals of Hopscotch" and "Philosophy of Badminton" would quickly pose a grave threat to the football program. How long do you reckon our "financial exigency" would last after that?