The Girl with the Bad Books

I have read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, recommended by everyone, and hated it. I am bored with the predictability of the off the shelf 1970’s proto-feminism.

There are five female characters in the book, 4 of whom have been raped or abused by a parent or spouse, the search for one of them is the main plot, and the fifth has a husband who is understanding in sharing her with her long term lover. A secondary and bizarrely unconnected plot revolves around the financial misdeeds of the evil Wennerstrom. 

For those unable to grasp the subtleties each part of the novel contains a helpful hint. For example: 

Forty-six percent of the women in Sweden have been subjected to violence by a man.                          

2001’s Lies and Damned Statistics by Joel Best tries to deal with the simple falsity of these statistics, trying unsuccessfully to track down any statistical source for the often repeated “1/3 of female college students are raped”. It is what passes for known fact, without support, without any known source and repeated and regularly believed. It is simply a lie.

The heroine is way cool. Impatient with police she sets herself up to be raped, tasers the assailant into submission and then tortures and mutilates him. You go, girl. I prefer Clint Eastwood’s, “Make my day” or Humphrey Bogart’s “Don’t do it” to Major Strasser – give him the option not to get shot, and then at least shoot him dead in self defense without the sadism.

The heroine is also omniscient and therefore omnipotent – God can hack any computer in the world. As to Wennerstrom she hacks him into financial ruin and then leaves him alone in hiding. Until, that is, she finds that he made inappropriate advances to his office staff, so she has him offed by a contract killer.

My goodness. The shallowness is only made worse by several obvious translation errors from the Swedish. I need to learn not to read best sellers.

In Their Own Words

Middle East discussions seem to me to be mostly trying to make something complicated which is actually simple. Difficult, perhaps, but not complicated. The President believes that he can apply good will to arrange a real estate transaction in which all will live happily. I doubt it, and last week rockets flew from Gaza into Ashkelon, from Sinai into or over Eilat and 1 Israeli was killed by shots fired across the border from Lebanon.

I think it is actually much simpler than the President believes. I think the Muslims hate the Jews and do not want them there. On his side the President has goodwill and a healthy “can-do” spirit. On my side I have the words of the Muslims in a series of newspaper clips I have accumulated on my desk over the years.

In their own words:
November 25, 1999 – Yasser Arafat’s deputy Othman Abu Arbiah said, “The …Palestinian state is a stage after which there will be another stage and that is the democratic state in all of Palestine”.

April 14, 2000 – Abdullah Al-Hourani, chairman of the Palestinian National Council Polical Committee said, “As to the struggle, it will continue. It may pause at times, but in the final analysis Palestine is ours from the Sea to the River.”

October 27, 2005 – President Ahmadinejad of Iran says “Israel must be wiped off the map.”

April 14, 2008 – Abaas Zaki, Palestinian Authority ambassador to Lebanon says, “…after we take Jerusalem, Israel’s ideology will collapse altogether then then we will proceed with our own ideology, …and we will throw them out all all of Palestine”.

May 17, 2010 – Palestinian Television urges that the Jews go to “your original homeland” listing Ukraine, Poland and Germany.

July 13, 2010 – The Times report on Gaza quotes Ramzi, a public school teacher “…in a widely expressed sentiment. ‘All the land is ours. We should turn the Jews into refugees and then let the international community take care of them’.”

Those are just samples of what is on my desk. I cannot imagine a reason to believe that they do not mean what they say.

Ballparks

        The Daughter and I are just returned from Kansas City and Minneapolis, completing a 20 year family quest to visit all the major league baseball parks.  Somehow it all makes perfect sense to me.

        It began innocently enough in 1991 with a family visit to Yankee Stadium where #2 Son was just too little to stay beyond the 5th inning. When we had to go to Buffalo the next year it seemed no big thing to visit Toronto, and off we were.

      We have been in various combinations of Trophy Wife and children, but I have now done them all.  Previously the daughter and I have been to Baltimore in 2005 and St. Louis in 2006 (see "Bardstown").

       Each trip has its memories.  The children and I did an empty Comiskey Park in Chicago one Thursday, got standing room only at Wrigley Field the next day and the next day drove to Milwaukee where a good deal of beer was sold.

        I remember 2 hot trips with #1 Son to Florida (Tampa and Marlins) and Texas (Houston and Dallas), but Cincinnati and Detroit with the Boys was probably the hottest, and all those trips had long drives in the middle.  I remember the coldest game, the whole family on July 5, 1994 in San Francisco, and I remember the train up Pike's Peak with #2 Son in Colorado.  The most peculiar nght was Oakland which I visited in 2003 with Trophy Wife who graciously entertained my high school girlfriend.

        The nicest stadium was Pittsburgh, and the worst was Montreal.  The newer ones are nicer than the older ones, and the stadiums woven into downtowns have a much better feel than the out of town fields.

        I have devoted some time over 20 years to creating memories, both for our little group and for each of us individually.  I understand that something can be silly, pointless, expensive and well worth it.