Rambling Rhodes

Picture This

As managing editor, I get the dubious honor of having my mug splashed on the inside of the magazine for the Editor's Letter. The picture below is what awaits the readers of the Sept./Oct. issue of eServer Magazine - Mainframe Edition. I can actually hear the number of magazine subscribers plummeting. It's not a terrible picture of me, I guess, but I still hate having my picture taken.

Hello. I'm Nick Coleman. Columnist Extraordinaire!

I'll admit it. I don't even have the energy to fisk Nick Coleman. Hell, it's past midnight, after all. So, I'll let Nick Coleman fisk himself, which sounds kinda dirty.

Aug. 18 marks the 143rd anniversary of the start of the Dakota Conflict, the Indian war that raged across Minnesota in 1862 and touched off three decades of war between the United States and the great Sioux Nation -- a war that didn't end until the massacre at Wounded Knee.

God dammit I love Google! I was just sitting here, totally oblivious to pretty much everything even remotely related to the Dakota Conflict, but with Google, I can practically convince all my non-Internet readers that I'm some sort of encyclopedia or some shit. I can convince people that I know stuff when, in truth, just this morning I thought Wounded Knee was what happened when I got up too fast from the toilet.

Too bad it's so hard to find out much about it these days.

Except for Google, of course.

In the epidemic of stupidity now stalking the land, the Lower Sioux History Center -- the only museum anywhere dedicated to telling the important story of the Dakota Conflict and exploring its causes and its outcomes -- remains closed for a second summer.

I can't believe how brilliant I am! Only I, the journalist activist, could conjure the amazing phrase "epidemic of stupidity now stalking the land." Why the hell am I continually passed over for Pulitzers? Wouldn't "Dakota Conflict" be a great name for an automobile? Whoops. Wait. There I go again, losing focus. I better make sure that doesn't happen again during this column. Focus, Nick Man, FOCUS.

Happily, there is news that it might be open again next year. More on that later. But first, let's turn to the Indian news that has many Americans hopping mad.

Aw, hell! Looks like I'm going to go off the rails anyway. Oh well, might as well go with it, I suppose.

It isn't the closing of a history museum, that's for sure. An Indian museum just tells the story of the original people of the land and how their cultures were devastated by the people who stole this country. Bit of a bummer, really. Best to avoid. Don't want to know too much. Makes your head hurt.

And it makes me, Nick Coleman, feel personally guilty for the nice house I live in on what was probably some pretty important Indian land. Not that I'd ever give it up if a downtrodden Sioux warrior down on his luck were to come by and ask for it. That would be silly! But, thankfully, because I'm a journalist activist, I can write tut-tutting columns like this that allow me to radiate all sorts of faux-outrage for the plight of the Native Americans.

But don't dare mess with Indian mascots.

Oh, that's right, I was going to lose my focus. Here we go.

If we want to tap into real anger about Indian stuff, all we have to do is bring up the recent decision by the NCAA ordering college teams with offensive Indian nicknames and mascots not to use them in postseason playoffs.

Did I just write "Indian stuff?" Holy crap, I did. There goes that Pulitzer. Again. And, by the way, where the hell am I going with this column now? Damn you, Adult ADD! Damnnnn YOUUUUUUUU!!

President Bush's little brother, Jeb, the governor of Florida, was outraged by the NCAA decision, which will prevent legions of war-paint-streaked frat boys from doing the "Seminole chop" at postseason Florida State University football games for years to come.

You know, it occurs to me that, if enough of those frat boys decide to do the Seminole chop despite the ban, not much is going to happen to them. Oh well, I'll keep the sentence in the column anyway, because it reads cool, in that "Old Angry Fart" style that I've perfected.

Predictably, the school's trustees have voted to appeal the ban, which is a waste of time. The NCAA could have been harsher and banned all Indian nicknames outright.

And while they're at it, they should do away with that "Fighting Irish" mascot, because that's just demeaning to the Irish.

Instead, they settled for a kind of Goober Law:

I'm back in Pulitzer contention, BABY!

"Dear Goober: You and all your fellow Goobers may call your teams whatever you want when you are at home, but if you get to the playoffs, decency requires you to clean up your act for respectable folks."

Hotchacha! I'm on fire now! Don't get in the way of my wit-filled pen, or you'll end up witting your pants! Granted, I'm eight million miles away from anything even remotely resembling a point, but I'm firing out the nonsense like nobody's business.

It makes sense to me, but then, I'm old-fashioned.

Boy howdy, am I ever! I'm the Grandpa Simpson of the newspaper biz, dadgummit.

I think this newspaper was reaching in the same direction two years ago when it abandoned a nine-year practice of not using offensive or derogatory nicknames, such as the Washington Redskins. Now, we use them when we have to, but pretty much wish they would stay out of our arena.

Uh oh, I feel one of my patented nonsensical political rants coming on. I'm getting the vapors! Must. Resist. Self-Righteous. Political. Gibberish. . . ARGH!

The issue may never go away. Not as long as we have the Washington Redskins, a team patronized by powerful politicians and lobbyists who claims its nickname is a tribute to American Indians. Well, two can play at the tribute game.

NOOOOOOOOOO! I can't stop myself! I must make a complete fool of myself from my mighty newspaper pulpit! Sure, it didn't play well in my former radio gig, but I can get away with ANYTHING here! I could call Gov. Pawlenty a "big old doody head," and they'd print the nonsense. Which gives me an idea. . .

That's why I have started calling Redskins' owner Daniel Snyder "The Vandal." Snyder, a gazillionaire, pressured the National Park Service (and offered them money) so he could cut down 130 trees on park property (violating the law) that blocked his view of the Potomac River.

So I call him "The Vandal," as a sort of tribute. "The Creep" would work, too.

I can't believe people read me and take me seriously! I'm absolutely stunned that I've held this job for as long as have! They PAY ME to do this! Thank GOD for the "epidemic of stupidity now stalking the land" or, more appropriately, stalking the Star-Tribune editorial board. I couldn't get a job at a small town weekly writing this garbage, but the Star-Tribune gives me my own personal megaphone without oversight. You know, I'm betting I can even throw out a Hitler and Nazi reference in this long-winded piece of dipshittery I'm writing, and the editors won't bat an eye. I'm gonna try it. . .

And don't get me started about the North Dakota Fighting Sioux. Despite the near-unanimous objection of North Dakota's Indian tribes, the Fighting Sioux logo has been chiseled on every stationary object in Grand Forks, largely due to a $100 million gift from a late Las Vegas casino owner who had a thing for Nazi memorabilia, Hitler portraits and the Fighting Sioux hockey team. Little known fact: UND's teams were the Flickertails until the 1930s, when fierce racial myths came into popularity.

See? SEE?! I can get away with ANYTHING! The power! The sheer, absolute power!

Put me down as one fan of the lowly Golden Gopher who is glad the good name of the Sioux will no longer be insulted by hockey players from Canada in future postseason college tournaments.

I suppose it's about time for me to try and wind this horrendous piece of crap back to some sort of original point.

Now back to the Lower Sioux History Center near Morton, Minn. It closed in June of last year after the Legislature cut the budget for the state Historical Society. A clearer example of how draconian budget cuts lead to a general dumbing-down of a place would be hard to find. Just seven years shy of the 150th anniversary of a terrible series of events that had a profound effect on the shape of Minnesota, the museum remains closed.

That's the great thing about this newspaper job. I can make it sound like the Lower Sioux History Center is a sprawling complex packed to the ceiling with every manner of Sioux artifact, rather than the sole Google whack that it is. But, the readers don't have to know that.

That's an outrage. A real one.

And I'm all about the outrage. But, you know, it occurs to me that I haven't included a "person on the street" quote yet. I need one of those. Preferably a moping, victimized Indian. Let me just quick consult my moping victim rolodex. . .

"Same old, same old," says Vernell Wabasha, an elder on the Lower Sioux reservation whose husband, Ernest, is a hereditary Dakota chief. "People seem to be more upset about losing some dumb nicknames than they are about losing the history. It seems like Indian people always have to have our guard up. We're always being attacked."

Well, that about does it. All of my trademark Nick Coleman laziness and old crank outrage has been incorporated. I suppose it's about time I wrap this up somehow.

The good news is that earlier this year, the Legislature restored some of the Historical Society's cuts so that the Lower Sioux museum (as well as several other sites that closed last year) can reopen. The museum is expected to be back in business next summer.

In other words, I spent this entire column basically pissing and moaning about pretty much nothing. But, hey, that's what I do!

It's about time.

Who knows? Some day, we may care more about a people who were -- and are -- major players in the story of Minnesota than we care about a football team's nickname.

Well, that's done. Man, I can't believe I get paid for this. Un-fucking-believable.

Wow, I really Am going to hell.

Sooo, I was just looking back on my April 2002 archives, thanks to my previous post, and I came upon this post, which just shocked me because A) holy crap it's funny and B) it's just so politically incorrect. To think I almost submitted that entry as a newspaper column. Holy cow. I'm gonna burn, man. I'm gonna burn.

"Middle East Madness" c. Ryan Rhodes, April 10, 2002

Crazy Hassan: If you follow news the way I do, you know that the Palestinian and Israeli situation is unlikely to be resolved any time soon. The Israelis attack with helicopters and tanks, and we Palestinians retaliate by blowing ourselves up in large crowds. It’s madness, I tell you, madness; and wherever madness goes, I, Crazy Hassan, follow.

Failed Suicide Bomber: Three years ago, I tried to detonate myself with a clumsy contraption hidden in a duffel bag outside of a busy Israeli office building. Instead of blowing up and making me a martyr, the duffel bag erupted into flame, singeing my hair and landing me here in prison. If only I had a more reliable explosive. If only.

Crazy Hassan: Are your suicide detonations as effective as you would like? At Crazy Hassan's, we've drastically improved the efficiency of our bombs. Now, the last moments of your life need not be wasted worrying whether you can bring down an entire shopping center. At Crazy Hassan’s, our explosions are INSANE!

Satisfied Customer #1: Before Crazy Hassan, there was no way I would ever consider blowing myself up, unless I was guaranteed to take at least 15 Israelis with me. Now, thanks to Crazy Hassan, I'm poised to kill scores of innocent civilians aboard this very bus. Thanks Crazy Hassan!!

*BOOM*

Crazy Hassan: Thank you, brainwashed fundamentalist!! Not only are our bombs designed to instantly atomize your body just before your journey to Allah, they also annihilate anything within a 30 foot radius. So, you can rest easy before you rest forever.

Yasser Arafat: There was a time when we had to work with time-consuming and often unfulfilling peace negotiations. Now, thanks to Crazy Hassan, we can make our point by wantonly snuffing out the lives of men, women and children who previously thought it was safe to perform simple tasks like grocery or clothes shopping. Thank you Crazy Hassan!!

Crazy Hassan: Thank you, Yasser Arafat!! Peace negotiations? What are those? Is that what U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is talking about? Well, remember, you can’t spell Powell without POW! And you’re guaranteed plenty of POW with Crazy Hassan’s new line of C4 suicide belts. These stylish, yet concealed, self-detonation devices can slip by even the strictest security. And you can accomplish all this at Crazy Hassan’s blow out prices!

Satisfied Customer #2: I always wanted to be a martyr for the Palestinian cause, and the promise of having 23 wives in Allah's realm has been greatly alluring since I was a child, but I've never been able to afford it until Crazy Hassan. Now, here I am, strapped with 25 pounds of high explosives, waiting for this Israeli school to release students for the day, and it only cost me pennies per ounce of C4. Thanks Crazy Hassan!!

*BOOM*

Crazy Hassan: Thank you, brainwashed fundamentalist!! And let’s not forget the women out there. Although I, Crazy Hassan, am wary of giving women too many freedoms, I open my arms and doors to those women who want to further the Palestinian cause by violently ending their existence. Crazy Hassan’s offers a wide array of suicide belts for the female figure, including sensual nitroglycerin negligees. Truly, in our bid to liberate the Holy Land, anything goes.

Ariel Sharon: There was a time when I thought the Hebrew Biblical claim on Israel would easily be enforced through a technological military and omnipresent army. It just makes sense. But these suicide bombers just don’t make any sense. They blow up here and they blow up there. They blow up everywhere. I may despise suicide bombers, but hats off to you Crazy Hassan.

Crazy Hassan: Huh? Was someone talking to me? You must forgive me, but I’m rather deaf to any voice other than that of the Palestinian cause, particularly if it’s the voice of Israeli infidels. You've seen the utter devastation you can achieve using my bombs, and now you can be part of the new craze sweeping the militant Palestinian branches. Don't settle for peace when you can settle in pieces. Visit Crazy Hassan's today!!

Soon I'll Take Over The World!

For those of you who watch Site Meter stats like a dog with a milk bone on its nose, which is probably only me, you'll notice that I'm coming tantalizingly close to the 200,000 visitor mark.

When I started this blog in 2002, getting a maximum of 18 visitors a day (with most, if not all, of those being me), this milestone seemed an impossibility, like emptying Lake Superior with a straw.

But, thanks to you, my valued readers, and nearly countless Google searches looking for "exposed thongs," "blue whale ejaculation," "Tara Reid's breast" and some unspeakably funny fetish searches, I could very well exceed 200,000 visitors in the next couple of days.

Who'da thunk it?

Incriminati

Kind of reminds me of my college days.

Except for the sailor suit. And the coke smears. And the pot. Nailed me on the porn though.

Good-Bye, Atkins!

Now that the industry that sprang up around the Atkins diet is experiencing its own version of the dot.com bubble pop, I feel it's only appropriate that I express a certain amount of glee. So, here goes:

HA HA! See ya later, Atkins! Make room for the next fad diet that sounds too good to be true and probably is but people will flock to it anyways, because people are gullible and stupid and don't want to exercise because they think they're above such nonsense as physical exertion so they cling desperately to any idea that promotes their sedentary lifestyle!

Man, after that record-breaking run-on sentence, I need a low-carb milkshake or something.

And, yes, I realize that the Atkins diet "worked" for some people, keeping in mind that my definition of "work" here means that they may have shed a few pounds, at the expense of about fifteen or so hopelessly clogged arteries.

The thing about Atkins, and really any fad diet, is that it ran counter to one of the fundamental rules of human existence. Namely, you can't tell humans what they can and cannot eat because, eventually, they'll end up craving exactly what it is you tell them they cannot eat.

Consider Atkins. The appeal of Atkins was that it told a diet-weary world that it could eat all the taboo items forbidden by every other diet. You want steak? Have at it! You want burgers? Eat away! You want to stalk a buffalo, cut it down, and eat its still-warm liver? Here's a spear!

But, you can't eat bread. Bread is bad. Bread is poison, the dietary equivalent of eating lead-based paint chips. And no noodles. Noodles are bad. Noodles are evil, the dietary equivalent of playing high stakes poker with Satan in a Las Vegas brothel.

And, for awhile, the world rejoiced in this revolutionary dietary thinking. After all, the world had been gorging itself on bread and noodles for so long, the world figured "I'll never miss bread and noodles." The world is stupid like that.

Inevitably, eventually, someone, somewhere, while eating their 832nd hamburger without a bun, suddenly realized that they kind of missed that handy bun. And then, somebody else suddenly realized that a sandwich just isn't a sandwich, without the tangy zip of. . . FREAKIN' BREAD! And then, somebody else, probably in Italy, realized that spaghetti and meatballs, without spaghetti noodles, is just meatballs.

In other words, the world woke up one day and realized it was sick and tired of eating meat without a dinner roll. It was sick and tired of eating pizza without the crust. It was sick and tired of watching Garfield waste away to nothing thanks to a lack of noodles in his beloved lasagna.

Yes, the world remembered that bread and noodles, in addition to being useful dinner components, are also incredibly tasty.

The Atkins diet industry, realizing the world was waking up from its protein-induced slumber and demanding a return of bread and noodles, started churning out. . . wait for it. . . low carb bread and noodles!

And it was at that point that the world did a collective cocker-spaniel-like quizzical head tilt. Weren't bread and noodles off limits? Aren't they a cornerstone taboo of the whole idea of Atkins? Isn't the Atkins Diet now kind of like, you know, eating normally? How is this a diet, exactly?

Besides all that, the world asked "aren't low carb bread and noodles outrageously expensive compared to traditional bread and noodles?"

Which brings me to another fundamental rules of human existence: people will not pay outrageous prices for freakin' bread and noodles, because bread and noodles are, well. . . BREAD AND NOODLES!

So, today, you have a world reverting back to its traditional feedbag ways, happily eating carb-packed bread and noodles once again, eagerly awaiting the next fad diet that touts the pound-shedding wonders of crack cocaine and pure caffeine, or something equally unrealistic.

Personally, I'll continue to eat pretty much whatever I want to eat, while working off those extra calories through weekly exercise.

It's a crazy concept, I know.

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Hm, Wow.

Read the comments, then tell me political discussion is worthwhile on blogs.

Don't get me wrong, I love blogging; but the zealots, on both sides. People, take a pill.

Intelligent Design. . . Again

Last week, there was some lively discussion in the comments to this post about Evolution and Creationism and Intelligent Design.

As with most posts and comments I make during the day on my blog, I'm often distracted by actual work at the same time, so my mental meanderings don't always get my points across as well as I'd like.

Which is where James Lileks comes in.