The 18-Year-Old Niece: Fifty percent of my friends say I should break up with him before I start college, and 50% say to keep him.

Me: You gonna marry him?

Her: NO!

Me: I think you already have your mind made up.

Now that seems to me like a Socratic exchange–asking questions for her to find the answers. The 14-year old disagreed.

The 14-year old: OF COURSE she said she wasn’t going to marry him. What else would she say?

Me: I don’t care about the answer. I just wanted to pose the question. I wasn’t trying to be directive, but Socratic.

The 14-year old: You THINK your being Socratic, but you’re more like a dictator. (quickly adding) Sometimes.

Hunh. So I think that I am being open and am instead pointing a finger decidedly in one direction. That isn’t what I am intending–at least not always. I need to think about how I am playing Socrates.

Who says Condi isn’t running for something? She is showing more of her hip, just a regular-kinda-gal side, every day.

CNN, FOX, Time and others reported that Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was rooting for Taylor Hicks–a fellow homeboy from Birmingham, Ala. AND, it turns out that she is a big Cream fan. Not the kind you put on a diplomatic desert, but the Ginger Baker, Eric Clapton, Sunshine of Your Love kind of Cream. Or at least that’s what she told Bono. Also among her favs is everyone’s top wedding song, Celebration by Kool and the Gang. Rounding out her list are pieces from Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, and Mussorgsky–selections that we would expect from Rice the classically trained pianist.

This begs the question, why has Condi gone all pop music on us? Why are we supposed to believe–as put out by the State Department–that she watches TV just like the rest of us shmoes? Why does she want us to like her? Are there strains of Hail to The Chief floating around her head?

When asked about his favorite American Idol, Defense Chief Donald Rumsfeld growled, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

I don’t think the CIA killed JFK. I don’t think that the Pentagon flew a jet into the Pentagon on 9-11. And, I don’t bother with the Catholic Church keeping ancient secrets stuff.

I do, however, think that there is something very fishy regarding the American Idol results on Wednesday.

No, nothing about Chris “The Rocker” being robbed (enough provocation when NY Times columnist John Tierney joins in the mourning). And nothing that would actually cause a different set of finalists. But it does have to do with the results.

Last week, when there were four contestants, the results of the voting looked kind of like this:

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See, there was a HUGE lead for Taylor. So how does it happen that the following week, there is a virtual 3-way tie for votes, when Taylor had his best night ever?

Everyone knows that when the SuperBowl is a romp, folks don’t watch. So if it looks like Taylor is a shoe-in, where is the suspense? Fox needs a horserace in order to keep up it’s ratings.

I bet that it was more like Taylor–the clear leader–had 60-70% of the votes and it was close between Katherine and Elliot.* Many fewer people would watch if they knew that Taylor’s lead was insurmountable. It’s not reality-TV. It’s business.

* Full disclosure, Elliot was my fav, I won’t say that he really won, though.

Disturbing. That’s the only word that comes to mind when I think about the controversy surrounding The Da Vinci Code. (Both Book and the anticipated Movie.)

Okay, I was late to read the book. Frankly, it’s not my genre, but the 14-year-old said that I HAD to read it. He reads books I recommend, so that’s fair. Sorry for the meander.

Disturbing. After reading the book (thank God for the last 30 or so pages otherwise I would have been pissed. Tom Hanks has it easy since the character from the book that he will play had absolutely no character. He is primarily the novel’s conduit for a flurry of facts and theory. Oh, and likely “nice.” What does he desire? What makes him happy? Sad? Mad? Tics? Flaws? Who knows. Again, I got off-track.)…

Where was I? Oh yes. The “Church” is getting ready with a series of sermons or talking points–or whatever–to establish the wrongness of the novel.

Wait. Did I type “novel“? That would be a “fictional prose narrative of considerable length, typically having a plot that is unfolded by the actions, speech, and thoughts of the characters.”

And fictional would be: “An imaginative creation or a pretense that does not represent actuality but has been invented“?

Back to disturbing. So, folks are getting their knickers in a knot because there is some fictional story that may be damning to the Christian–especially Catholic–church? Here is some news for the folks with the knotted knickers:

• This is not the first novel–even popular–that has called tenets of the CHurCH into question.
• This book is very kind–if you get to the end–to the characters with strong spiritual beliefs.
• This book is a work of FICTION. No matter how “well-researched.”

It’s a mystery that overlaps with the current world. (Dan Brown references a Tom Cruise movie, like that is meaningful??) Yet, it is fiction. Be entertained, or not, but don’t make fiction into truth.*

* sorry, couldn’t find a good link for “TRUTH”

We were eating Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Jelly Beans–an odd concept in the odd magical world of the Harry Potter series. (Professor Dumbledore famously had an earwax flavored jelly bean in the story.)

Without abandon, the 14-year-old and I were experimenting through the box of the foul jelly beans. In addition to grape jelly and cinnamon, we had dirt and sardine flavored “jelly beans.”

The candies are made by the Jelly Belly company, who despite having a God-awful web site, make incredibly tasty jelly beans. You eat the buttered popcorn candy and it tastes of butter. The blueberry is a really sweet blueberry, not a generic “berry.” So it is no surprise when they make a vomit flavored candy it tastes like uh, vomit.

Now when they make a grass or earthworm flavored candy, most people can’t say if it really tastes right. But we have all puked, and all have a point of reference.

The candy started out with a hint of licorice and then promptly–and quite authentically–went downhill from there. Needless to say, we didn’t finish the “candy” but spit it out (and then furiously pawed through the remaining beans to find the glorious cinnamon to replace the yuck).

Here’s the question. Who are their taste testers? Imagine the lab. How do they refine the taste of the barf flavor. I gotta leave it at that.

Really, what is it about the President railing against high prices at the pump? And saying he wants to do something about it?

The last time the President talked about conservation was during his State of the Union address in January (06) when he called for a 12-step program to end our oil addiction. Remember the next day the Chief Pusher, D-Chainey, said that the President was exaggerating.

Don’t worry oil friends, they won’t really do anything. Maybe a study. But that takes a long time. It seems like the big success of this administration was the energy policy that D-Chainey hooked up with his Oil Pimpin’ crewe. Shhhh!

I hope that the White House doesn’t think that we can’t connect the dots at $3.05/gallon.

The 11-year-old, in a VERY good mood, triumphantly burst into the living room where I was sleeping on the couch. I pretended to be awake.

HIM: Well, my room is que bar.
ME: Hunh? (sitting up now)
HIM: Q baaar
ME: I’m sorry, what does Q baaarr mean?
HIM: It’s C-U-B-A-R
ME: Like FUBAR?
HIM: Yeah, but not. It means “cleaned up beyond all recognition.”
ME: Oh! CUBAR.

I looked, and it is. Nice.

Yes, we have been watching American Idol. [Say what you will, but remember that the first step is admitting that you have a problem!]

Anyway, here is what I just don’t get. The contestants are supposed to be the next pop music star. Videos, record sales, awards. [okay, never mind that there has really only been one commercially successful “find” so far.] Rules are you have to be under 30 (before it was like under 24 but they ran out of talented yungins. I guess). I digress again. FOCUS!

Okay, so the contestants are young, talented, and attractive to the appropriate demographic of other young people. People who might actually vote for them. So they drag out these ghosts and corpses and nipped and tucked versions of formerly famous entertainers to help give advice. Remember

♠ Barry Manilow?
♥ Kenny Rogers?
♦ Music by the band QUEEN? (right out of a bad movie)
♣ Rod Stewart? (doing his best tony bennet)

Its a wonder half of them are still alive, and pathetic that they are trotted out as icons to the people who were not even born when they had a hit on the radio.

Even dumber, this week they made them all sing Queen songs. Note to Idol producers: Queen isn’t POP music. There isn’t actually 8 songs with a signable melody.

Gawd!

The yungins had independently been learning about ancient Greece and Rome and the idea of polis. And then I would say, “like Indiana-polis. The city in Indiana in which your aunt and uncle and cousins reside.” (Actually they live in suburban Indianapolis, but that’s quibbling.)

Now I don’t think it is a “city” anymore.

They were flying back home after spring break in Florida. They were connecting in Newark for a 4 p.m. flight back to Indiana. They were delayed in the air for I forget what and missed their connection by 2 minutes. They were at the gate as the plane pulled away. [conspiratorial aside: why didn’t they hold the frickin’ plane? Did those seats go to some mob bosses on their way to nowhere?]

Here is the really crazy part. They missed a 4 p.m. flight and were told that they would not be able to get them back to Indianapolis for–get this–TWO DAYS. Not that evening. Not in the morning, but TWO DAYS. This is from Newark. I am stuck just not believing this, except it is true. There were five of them, but they couldn’t even get them out if they split up. Where were they flying? How out of the way?

Where the heck is Indianapolis if you can’t get there? No offense relatives in Indian-no-place. Geesh, makes me think that I am glad I don’t live there.

Epilogue: They flew into Dayton, OH and drove home.

April is National Poetry Month. The 11-year-old is working on Haiku.

His first flip attempt

I love lobster claws
In them I cannot find flaws
They chop like big saws

I told him haiku wasn’t a rhyming verse. Somehow poetry and rhyming are the same for some. Then

Honey-nut Bunches
Taste good when you crunch them hard
It’s breakfast de-lite

Haiku was always my favorite. The simplicity of three lines; the first with five syllables, the second with seven syllables, and the last with five syllables have provided me (and some comrades) with hours of pleasure. My favorites always ended in questions.

A rainy spring day
Oatmeal with dates and apples
Catholic or crunk?*

Try it, it’s fun.

*unresolved controversy, just how many syllables are in Catholic? “Kath-lic” or “Cath-o-lic”? Everyone says three but me. I went with the majority (and it worked for my poem).