Ireland 2017; Day 4

Day 4, March 26^th, 2017

I wake up, pained and angry, to the smell of sausages cooking. I glance at my phone to get the time. Why the hell is she cooking breakfast an hour early? I try to go back to sleep, but somewhere in the lizard part of my brain, the only one that is working at all (the higher functions being ruined from alcohol and getting to bed at 4:45am), reminds me we went through European Daylight Savings time last night so I’m actually late for breakfast. I cuss for the full amount of time it gets me to get up and get dressed.

I try to put a good face on things down at breakfast, but it’s clear to Margaret, as well as the other guests, that I’m in a bad way. They quickly depart the dining room.  I eat, angry, and mostly skip the coffee in hopes that I can perhaps go back to sleep for a couple hours before I must check out.

But there’s too much to do.  I clean up the catastrophe of a room and pack up.  I get in touch with my friends, who had said they were heading to Galway today in their rental car and they’d be glad to give me a ride.

Unions can go to hell.  I’m a Southerner, so that position is no great surprise.  I doubly hate unions whilst traveling.  Years ago, the damn Italian museum workers struck while I was there.  I didn’t go to Italy for the gelato, dammit.

Two days ago, the damn Irish bus union struck.  My entire plan of not driving and figuring out movement was based on having access to all public transportation.  Still, if Rob and Kristina can get me to Galway, I can get myself to Shannon.  I had already looked to get an idea and even if I had to uber/rideshare the entire way from Westport, it would be 128 Euro.  That’s far worse than the 27 euro the buses cost, but so be it.

I arrive at their B&B and they are in a worse way.  Not that they drank more nor went to bed later. They’re reasonable people who don’t have experience with that level of next-morning misery.  I basically know the moment I lay eyes on them that they aren’t going anywhere.  I start looking up train information.

Sure enough, they can’t go to Galway in their condition. I unceremoniously leave them and start walking for the train station.  There’s no train direct from Westport to Shannon.  When I plugged it in the Irish Rail website, I go from Westport to Dublin to Carrick on Shannon. So, to go two hours south, I have to head three hours east and then three hours southwest.  The train alone to Dublin is 43 Euro.  Fine.

I try to nap in the station.  I finally get on board at 1pm.  This entire journey is supposed to take until 9pm.  This is going to be a long, unpleasant day.

I’d been told 100 school children were going to be in cars D and E, so I go to A.  I avoid the 100 school children but get the 30 month old boy in a porkpie hat whose parents allow him to scream and run up and down the aisle for several hours.  Had I any ability whatsoever, I may have committed infanticide.

At Dublin, I have to take the local tram to another train station to get to Carrick on Shannon.  I am irked that the Irish can’t just get on board with one damn name for things.  Everything’s labeled in English and Gaelga (Irish Gaelic).  I type in Shannon on the Irish Rail website and Carrick on Shannon comes up. Why can’t they just stick with the obvious one? No one flies into Carrick on Shannon airport. It’s Shannon. Sheesh.

I have a couple hour wait at the other station so, after I buy a 37 euro ticket to CoS, I go in the station pub and browse the internet and drink a couple of beers.  I have about an hour to go when I have a horrible realization.

I look up Carrick on Shannon, just to be sure.  In my beleaguered state, I accepted that it was the same thing as Shannon. Nope. Completely different part of the country.  The rail doesn’t go direct to Shannon, so the website filled in the closest thing to what I was searching for.  I’m now on the other side of the country from where I need to be.

I’d love to tell you I got mad or upset. I’ve been doing this a long time though, so being stupid isn’t a novel experience.  I resign myself and engage the new plan.  I go to refund the train ticket (we’ll see if they approve my request) and hop on the airport “express” (which stopped every forty feet in Dublin).  When I arrive, I head to Budget Car Rental. I pay for the extra insurance and then I’m hungover, exhausted, and driving a wrong-sided car in the dying light of day in damnable Ireland.

The buses from Westport to Shannon were 27 euro.  Taking an uber, which would have been ridiculous, would have been 128 euro The trains, tram, airport shuttle, car rental (with a 90 euro refundable fuel reserve fee), and then fuel top-off is about 250 euro.  You have to pay for real experiences.

Having destroyed any semblance of a budget, when I arrive at 10:30pm, I say hell with it and pay 85 euro to stay at the hotel across from the airport.   I don’t have an adapter and all my electronics die right before I go to sleep, blessed sleep.

Ireland 2017; Day 3

Day 3; March 25^th, 2017

I’m writing this from the future. In this future, it’s after the wedding and I’m going to die. This isn’t a hangover. It’s a trauma. It’s a medical concern. A catastrophe, really.  I feel all the miles of my veins and arteries and capillaries. This is how I end; I know it.

But Day 3 was lovely. Probably too much so. Definitely too much so. 

We were taken to the venue, a hotel overlooking the inlet and it was spectacular. 

And then there was Rob and Breege’s wedding, and it was as it should be.

 I’ve been to dozens of weddings at this point and I remain impressed. There are literally millions of them a year, if not hundreds of millions of them, and they’re still miracles.

My parents had each been married twice by my age.

The longest I’ve dated a girl has been two months.

Seven billion people. How on earth do you find the one you’re going to get along with and want to marry? It’s a miracle, I tell you.

The speeches were lovely and heartfelt and not overdone.

And then there was food.

And then there was dancing.

Obviously, by fact I’m going to die while typing this, there was drinking.

We were not shuttled home until past four in the morning. I can’t do this anymore, I told myself. It will kill me.

I was right. 

When we left, the father of the bride was still on the dance floor, crushing it.

And daylight savings time, Ireland version, hit us, so I get/got to lose an hour sleep and that’s not helping my dying either.

That was a perfect Irish wedding.

May I never see another.

May I live to see another.

Ireland 2017; Day 2

Day 2, March 24^th, 2017:

Margaret, the B&B wife, is preparing breakfast.  I come down to the dining room from my bedroom and she asks me if I want a traditional Irish breakfast. I’m tempted to tell her it’s too early to drink whiskey, but instead I say, “Sure. What’s Irish breakfast?”

Out comes ham, sausages, fried cherry tomatoes, and an egg on top of a potato waffle. Hmm. Okay. Also, I have wheatabix for the first time in thirty years. So that’s something.  Then we chat as I drink coffee and she gets around to asking me about Trump.

Then we get talking about refugees and whatnot and whothehellknows and howdidIgetropedintotalkingaboutthis?  It’s chilly but sunny and she tells me that there’s a nice greenway walk that will take me down to the harbor.  Perfect, I say.

My friends are getting into town roundabout three and the greenway is a short walk so I take my time being lazy in the morning. Then I head to the greenway. 

It is fully paved the entire way, though, yes, there’s plenty of green all around and the 2^nd half of the mile and a half walk is next to meadows and reeks of sheep and cow poop, which, unexpectedly, is perfect. 

At a little playground built along the path, a mother is feeding her toddler and I am unaware until that exact moment that an Irish child, with that sing-songy little lilt, saying “banana” is somehow the cutest thing that’s ever been said out loud.  But I look a vagabond so I say nothing and smile to myself and keep on my way.

I’m deposited at the harbor and I understand now when Margaret finds my question earlier, about the port being open still, as strange.  The tide is so low that I’d be concerned with running a skiff through there.  But it’s very scenic, the water with hills and an honest-to-goodness mountain around it.  

I find a beer garden next to the water, and though it’s  53 degrees, in the sun it’s warm, so I order a beer or two and drink in the sunshine and life is not so bad sometimes.

It’s time to get back into town finally, so I take a different route back and discover that every other building in the area is a B&B.  Westport has about 5000 people. If the tourists stop coming, this place will implode. The buildings that aren’t B&Bs are mostly bars.  The very few places that aren’t B&Bs or bars are weird hybrid shops, like the taxi and mortuary service shop and the grocer and ironmonger.  

I look into the supermarché and their cheese area is called “cheesemonger.” I believe there have been points in my life when I could be described as one of those.

I have a light lunch and meet up with my friends back on the greenway, because they were told that’s a nice thing to do. So I repeat my day. Down the greenway, sheep-poop in the air, beer in the sun, past all the B&Bs and bars and taxi/mortuary and grocery ironmonger and then it’s dinner time.

And we go to an Indian restaurant inside a desanctified former church and the waitress is insane and sassy, so I match her and she’s perplexed and my friends are shaking their heads.

Waitress: For here or takeaway?
Friend: Here.
Waitress (smiling): You want a table, you gotta pay for it.

Me (smiling): I have a knife.

Waitress: In that case, no charge. Follow me, please.

Friends: Um.

And then we’re to meet other friends so we head to Matt Molloy’s again because, apparently, I’m in some sort of cycle where I do what I’ve done again and we wait to meet up and the other friends say they have to eat so they say they’re going to find food but will be back and we wait for them and drink beer and recite poems at each other and locals ask to take pictures wearing my poncho and hat and buy me a beer because I’m such a great guy for letting them take photos with my poncho and hat and then our friends who were supposed to meet up have been waiting at a different bar to get food for over two hours and I’m tired and I don’t feel like being out all night if we’re going to be at a 12 hour wedding celebration the next day so I wander back to the B&B  and sleep, blessed sleep.

Ireland 2017; Day 1ish

Day 1(ish) March 22nd/23rd, 2017:

Do you know what’s awesome about international travel at age 37?

Nothing. It’s expensive and uncomfortable.

I got flagged for an explosives search at the Charleston airport on my way out.  The bag I’m taking is one I got in Afghanistan.  I’ve flown with it with no problem before, but I can’t say for certain there isn’t explosives residue on it.

I should mention here at the start, that I purposely look like a vagabond.  Beat-to-hell boat shoes, cargo pants, a Peruvian poncho, and an Australian-model cowboy hat.  I also haven’t touched up the facial hair in a week.

Of course I got flagged for an explosives check. 

No, officer. I don’t have anything sharp or weapon-like in the bag (as I do the mental check to make sure that I didn’t leave a pair of scissors in my dop-kit). I have a compass in there.

Turns out the machine didn’t like my lonely planet guidebook. Officer says it shows up as excessive “organic material” in the machine.

And I’m off.

What is there to say about a flight from Charleston, SC to New York?  Nothing. It’s uncomfortable. I told you.

I’m 6’2”(ish; probably shrinking after a lifetime of mashing on knee cartilage).  I got put in a window seat. I’m squished.

I get to JFK and discover that the gate I exited is the gate I’ll enter in 7 hours.  I lug my stuff over to a charging station they have set up that includes free iPads to use.  Then I discover that I can have food and beer delivered to me at the charging station.  I get a beer and a burger and with the delivery fee and tip, it costs $34.  For NYC, I consider that a steal. Plus, I didn’t have to move.  Once that’s done with, I have four hours to go.

Eventually, I realize the concession stand next to me isn’t just slinging soft-drinks.  Up starts the tab and by the time I’m fairly well toasted, they’re seating for my flight to Ireland and I’ve just bought 4 large beers for $60 (and then a tip on top of that).  I pour myself into the plane and my window seat. There’s a lovely Irish housewife seated next to me (by which I mean she’s a nice person, not sexy one).

The back-of-the-seat entertainment panel has movies. I turn on Fight Club, wondering how they’ll edit it since movies that have plane crashes in them get replacement scenes shot so that airlines will buy them.  Not Fight Club. I watch Edward Norton fantasize about being ripped from his seat and flung out into the great beyond.

What is there to say about a flight from New York to Shannon, Ireland? Nothing. I’m uncomfortable. I sleep maybe an hour, but I’m awake to watch a deep orange sunrise just before we land.  It’s three in the morning US time and it’s 4 hours ahead in Ireland.

Customs is a joke.

Me (worried): “They didn’t give me a landing card.”

Customs lady: “No worries. We Irish are the modern-day masters of white terrorism. We’d smell you a mile away.”

Okay, she didn’t say that. She just smiles at me, glances at my passport, asks how long I’m here for, and then says “have fun.” 

I’m here for friends’ wedding in Mulranney, just outside of Westport. To get to Westport, I could drive, but hell no.  When I came to Ireland in ’03, driving was so terrifying I said I’d never do it again.  It’s not the wrong side of the road thing; it’s the small back roads that were barely big enough for two cars to pass by each other, let alone the massive tour buses that came roaring along.  And many of those back roads are effectively in ditches, so when you try to get as far over as you can, your side mirror scrapes grass on the slope of the ditch. 

So my plan is buses or trains.  I say “plan”, but there is no plan. I haven’t researched squat.  I don’t believe in it. The stress of planning is more than the stress of trusting that I’ll figure things out. I used to plan. Now I don’t. My method is only effective because I’m traveling solo and can handle if things don’t go well.  

But everything goes well, other than the fact that I’ve been awake twenty hours and sobered back up and I’m exhausted. 

What is there to say about a bus ride from Shannon Airport to Galway? Quite a bit, actually.

A bus that will take me to Galway comes very quickly.  I’m quite pleased with my figuring things out.  The bus has power for charging computers and phones and free wifi. I’m pleased as punch.

Then we head off.

This is when I realize I have made a crucial error.

It was scary when I drove in Ireland 14 years ago.  It’s scarier when the Irish bus driver drives. 

I should have known when I got on board. What the hell kind of bus has seatbelts?

Then it’s all: OMIGOD! HE’S LITERALLY CUTTING CORNERS AND TAKING TURNS 5-10MPH FASTER THAN HE SHOULD! THE BUS IS LEANING!

I’m having to put my hand on a grip whenever we turn to keep from being slung out of my seat.  The driver is disinterested in his mayhem.  He’s wearing sunglasses on an overcast morning and mostly seems annoyed he’s having to drive folks anywhere.  He spends his time fidgeting with his headphones and whatever’s in the bag next to him. What’s happening on the road seems incidental. We swerve all over our lane and the bus’ automated system beeps at him constantly to warn him he’s too close to the edge of the road; he looks up from his bag and jerks the wheel to get us back straight.

The only thing worse than being on this bus is if I happened to be a car in the other lane with this damn thing careening towards me. 

On their version of the interstate, even though there’s an unbroken median wall that’s gone on for miles, I see a sign on the other side of the wall telling drivers they’re on the wrong side of the road.  I can’t decide if that sign is for confused Europeans and Americans or for drunken Irishmen.

I escape the bus in Galway and have a layover for a few hours. I try to sleep and do, in fits and starts, but it’s not great, sleeping whilst sitting.  It’s cold; under forty degrees. A pigeon has found his way into the waiting room and has placed him/herself next to the radiator. 

I don’t try to shoo him/her out.  Eventually, a very annoyed employee comes in and does it for me.

What is there to say about a bus ride from Galway to Westport? Nothing, thankfully.

I arrive and my plan has been that wifi is everywhere so I’ll just use my phone or computer when needed. I use the tablet at the local corner store to call the B&B owners (Google Voice is massively useful. Cost me $0.02/minute.).  The husband arrives and gets me all set up. 

I facebook chat my friends who are elsewhere in Ireland to figure out when they’re coming in town and get their advice that I should, as I feared, power through and not take a nap.  The B&B husband (no idea his name since he never introduced himself even when I introduced myself) tells me which pub to head to so off I go.

What is there to say about an Irish pub? It’s lovely. Quaint. Perfect, really. Matt Molloy’s pub. 

I drink beer. My plan is to write. I’m hoping I can make serious headway on a novel while I’m traveling. It’s to be a nasty, mean-spirited thing. I have Thus Spake Zarathustra with me.  

I’m reading the introduction and sipping a Guinness when an Irishman walks by me with a book in his wool-coat pocket.

I ask him about the book and it turns out he’s not Irish at all. He’s a twenty-five-year-old from Buffalo who is pleased as punch that I mistook him for a native.  He’s a self-admitted lazy drunk on vacation with his family. I tell him that’s not so bad.  We chat. It turns out, while he’s impressively astute with his self-analysis, he’s not very bright. I fear most of my words are large and scare him.  Still, he seems to enjoy being confused and it’s warm in here and there’s beer after all, so why not keep chatting?

Eventually, he wanders off to find his family, and then, an hour later, his sisters and mother and brother-in-law arrive and shake their heads when I say he’d been in here for hours and went to look for them. The mom says he’s pretty much a lazy drunk but that he usually can fend for himself, so, oh well, she hopes they find him before they leave tomorrow. I confuse the family for a bit and then I’ve had my fun and I’m exhausted and I’m ready to go to bed. It’s still daylight, but barely.

But instead of walking straight back, I’m in Ireland, dammit. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to walk down a street full of pubs and only go into the one I was recommended to. So I wander in one and there’s a poor bartender who’s an Irishman who’s just returned from 25 years in NYC and can’t handle the lack of stimulus. Westport is too small. He moved back because his wife wanted the kids to have an Irish childhood. He’s miserable yet resigned.

If I wanted to think about being miserable and resigned, I’d ponder my own life. No one tells you, but your thirties are a bridge between the no-responsibility of your twenties and the eventual success and financial stability (hopefully) of your forties. In between is a blech time of having to put your nose to the grindstone and crank it out and pay off debt.  Sorry, kids. That’s just how it is. Unless you inherit early, of course.

So I wander to a different pub and have a fun time insulting American beer with an older bartender.  So far, every pub has had Budweiser on tap. Two of the three have had Coors Light. Must we Americans infect everything?

By the time I get back to the B&B it’s 9pm and I’ve only had a couple hours of sporadic sitting-up sleep and I’m into my cups and I’m warm and sleep, blessed sleep.

The Reason I Don't Talk Politics Is

Walking in, I spent years reading about and studying the Crusades,  the abuses of the medieval Church, both the reformation and counter-reformation, the Thirty Years War, the Treaty of Westphalia and its effects, the rise of the modern nation-state and then colonial empires, the revolutionary period, industrialism, the Franco-Prussian War, the Treaty of Versailles, the Weimar Republic, the Marshall Plan, the Cold War, the reintegration/post-partition, 9/11, and the rise of postmodern nationalist populism.

Why I Am a Skeptic

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.”

--Charles Duell, US Patent Office Commissioner (1899)

“Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.”

--Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of the US Department of Defense (2002)

“Nobody knows much of anything and we’re all going to die.”

--Me

            I find it somehow both fascinating and boring that we live in what is currently being described as a “post-truth” world.  Indeed, “post-truth” was selected by the Oxford dictionary as the 2016 word of the year.  I am fascinated because people seem to finally be clueing in to how much of the world is swimming in, for lack of a better term, bullshit. But I am bored because even the slightest scratching beneath the surface of those that are referencing post-truth shows that they are still bullshitters themselves, stuck in the endless chamber of “Your tribe is the worst! My tribe is the best!”

            Humans do not handle uncertainty. Humans want control.  This extends to ideas and knowledge.  In my life, I have seen that the most difficult thing for otherwise intelligent people to say is “I don’t know.”  I’ve never heard a one say “I can’t know.”

            It’s not that I don’t have strong feelings, opinions, or beliefs. No one who’s spent a few moments talking to me would say that.  It’s just that behind every single one of them, other than my religious ones, is “except if it turns out I’m 100% wrong, I won’t be that surprised.”  I’d say I have, at best, 95% conviction about the things I’m certain about.   

            What I particularly am fascinated yet bored with is people’s religious worship of “science”, particularly the non-religious who mock faith.  97% of scientists agree on climate change!

            Hold on. I’m not going to do the climate thing. Not yet, anyways.

           

You should listen to your doctor. You absolutely should. I’m not saying otherwise. He or she is doing the absolute best based on the information he/she has at the time to do what’s best for your health, as he/she understands it.  I’m just saying that you need to understand that he/she might very well not really know what he/she is talking about. And it’s not his/her fault. It’s reality.

We live in 2017. This is not the Neolithic or even Medieval times. We know complicated things. Of course we know the simple things.  Of course we do.

Did you know that in 2013, a completely new ligament was found in the knee? (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/13/a-surprising-discovery-a-new-knee-ligament/?_r=0 ) Galen didn’t discover that in 200A.D. Leonardo didn’t in the 1400s.  2013.

Did you know they found (or rediscovered) an entire freaking organ within the past few weeks?  Yeah. The Mesentery. http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/04/health/new-organ-mesentery/

Did you know until less than a year ago, the brain did not really connect to the lymphatic system?  Well, of course it did, but we didn’t know about it:

 (https://news.virginia.edu/illimitable/discovery/theyll-have-rewrite-textbooks)

And then, did you know that your immune system affects your social interactions and perhaps even controls them, because it was only a few months after that brain-lymphatic connection that UVA researchers discovered that as well:

(https://news.virginia.edu/content/shocking-new-role-found-immune-system-controlling-social-interactions)

Except, guess what? You can find a study to support nearly everything.  UVA posits the brain lymphatic system, but until it’s replicated and confirmed, who knows?  I certainly don’t. Neither do you. And that’s the issue.

            Nearly every day you can find a study that will say something shocking (you will definitely find boring ones) that supports or upends your beliefs. And guess what?? Who cares?! A study isn’t science. Confirmation and consensus is science.  But that’s boring and takes forever. Headlines grab attention.

            In 2011, articles popped up stating that CERN scientists had discovered neutrinos that broke the speed of light.  Which isn’t actually what happened at all.  Their data indicated that, but they were investigating because anything faster than the speed of light upends physics.  But that was long and decidedly non-sensational, so the articles didn’t state that.  And the articles didn’t do much when it was discovered later that there was a fiber-optic cable issue that accounted for the timing of the neutrinos.  The scientists, following scientific protocol, found that of their own investigation, which is to their credit. (http://nautil.us/issue/24/error/the-data-that-threatened-to-break-physics)

           

            And sometimes, there’s consensus and confirmation, except it turns out there is consensus and everyone assumed confirmation but no one actually confirmed, which is, apparently, what happened when it turned out that daily flossing your teeth has no real scientific basis. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/health/flossing-teeth-cavities.html  Of course, that doesn’t say flossing doesn’t protect your teeth, either. Just that the studies don’t specifically show it. So floss. Or don’t.

            Everyone likes to have firm opinions on big things, so from time to time, I get someone who will lean in conspiratorially to confirm that I, of course, agree with them that vaccines are/are not effective.  And I make both camps equally furious when I say, “I don’t know.” Because I don’t. And they don’t either.

            I tend to assume that vaccines work.  I know that polio wasn’t a fear for me the way it was for my parents, and, without looking into it, I figure that’s from vaccines.  But I have no idea. Because I haven’t done any research whatsoever.  And then, if I ever do, I will have to figure out if the information I’m looking at is legitimate. Because most of it’s not.

            I do have 4/5ths of an anthrax vaccine I was forced to receive as an adult when I was in the army.  I wasn’t willing to risk court martial refusing it, so here I am.  Was that vaccine good? Was it fraudulent? I have no idea. It appears there isn’t, nor ever was agreement.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthrax_Vaccine_Immunization_Program)

            Anyways, I don’t have kids, but when I do, I’ll look into it. My medical friends have looked at me like I’m a blithering dolt when I didn’t jump to agree with them that of course vaccines are effective, but then I think about new knee ligaments and new organs and I smile and nod until they get it out of their systems.

            Okay. Climate Change. Global Warming.

I dunno. 

I know that I’ve been to Thermopylae. And when I looked out on the famous “Hot Gates” which were so narrow that 300 Spartans (and thousands of allies) could hold back the Persian Hordes, I saw that if you replicated the battle today, the Spartans would be annihilated quickly, because the water is way, way away from where it was 2500 years ago.  Troy/Ilium/Hisarlik is miles away from the waters of the Aegean whence it was 3500 years ago.

            At the South Carolina Aquarium here in Charleston, there’s a map that shows the coastline was 70 miles farther out 17,000 years ago, and if you do the math on that (70 miles = 70*5280 feet= 369,000 feet, which you then divide by the 17,000 years) you end up with about 21 feet of rise per year, on average, since then.  As sea level hasn’t risen by even half a foot in my lifetime, I dunno.

            But 97% of scientists agree that climate change is real!

Let’s make sure we’re talking about the same thing when we talk about that 97%.  Because that’s not all scientists, it’s climate scientists, which makes sense, because what the hell does a biologist or chemist really know about climate trends?  But it turns out that 97% isn’t simply all climate scientists. It’s either from a “random” poll of climate scientists who belonged to two meteorological societies (which one could argue is akin to asking the National Republican Party or National Democrat Party for the consensus opinion of the American people), or it’s from a cursory review of abstracts of papers submitted on climate change or global warming (11,944 such papers), but only those that endorsed a position (97.1% of 4,014 of them). An overwhelming number of the abstracts that discussed global warming or climate change did not endorse a position (the remaining 7,930 of 11,944).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

            However, of course, just like Big Tobacco being responsible for all those ads and studies over the years where scientists and doctors said that smoking was fine or perhaps even good for you, Big Oil and Coal and who-have-you can very much be throwing false science into the mix to create a false argument. Of course. 

            However, climate science is big business unto itself.  I got stuck in an argument with a big climate change supporter and when I asked him about the University of East Anglia scandal, he scoffed and said he didn’t know about any “Community College of East Bum(screw)” but “anyone with a brain” knows that climate change is real.  Which was pretty much the moment I realized we were having a discussion where he heard himself talk.

            If you don’t know, the small (to Americans) university in Norwich has what is probably the world’s foremost climatology department, known as the Climatic Research Unit

(http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/about-cru).  So influential is the CRU that it has been involved heavily with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change, “probably more than anywhere else relative to the size of an institution” according to the CRU itself.

  (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/about-cru/history)

            Except, there was Climategate

 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy)

            Wherein someone hacked the email servers of the CRU and published them and seemed to show that there was a concerted effort to manufacture data to support their positions. Climate Science is a multi-billion dollar “industry” where tax dollars and donations evaporate if it’s proven that man doesn’t affect the environment, mind you. 

            Here’s an outraged article reaming against the scandal:

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6679082/Climate-change-this-is-the-worst-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation.html)

            Here are two articles saying that there is no scandal and the outrage was hokum spun up by climate deniers:

            https://www.skepticalscience.com/Climategate-CRU-emails-hacked.htm

            http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/fight-misinformation/debunking-misinformation-stolen-emails-climategate.html#.WHaIAfkrJOQ

            You know what I know?        

            I know that both the climate change believers and deniers can’t even agree on the known knowns.  They refuse to acknowledge known unknowns, let alone the possibility of unknown unknowns.

            So at the end of this, what’s my position?

I don’t have one.

I don’t know.

I know there is bias in all kinds of media.  I definitely don’t trust nearly anyone who prattles on about it; that’s for sure.

Is it easy to have to question and look at everything? Of course not. But if you're going through life using the easiest route, you're probably doing it wrong.  It is 100% okay to stay quiet and observe; there is tremendous value to not adding noise to the echo chamber.

You know why I love that Patent Commissioner’s quote I put at the start of all this?  Duell never really said that.  According to this website (http://patentlyo.com/patent/2011/01/tracing-the-quote-everything-that-can-be-invented-has-been-invented.html), it was a misattribution from a comedy magazine.  Of course, I haven’t looked into the nuts and bolts myself, so, as ever, all I can tell you, with any certainty whatsoever, is that nobody knows much of anything and we’re all going to die.

The Kim Kardashian Interview

I can make these fuckers dance. Words, I mean. I've been awarded, you know. And now I'm here to sell you Kim fucking Kardashian.

You understand this is an insult to everyone involved, right? But her team, and her, really, thinks (and at this point let's credit them and say "knows") there can't be bad publicity, so here we are. A self-involved literaturist and Kim K. Internally, I howl in disdain, veering on hatred. Externally, I have resting bitch face. Or whatever that is on a man.

And yet, do you have any idea what they're paying me for this? $34,000 for an interview-centered thinkpiece. They have to be hoping it's a hit job. That's the only thing that makes sense. Some snob bashes Ms. Talentless and it rallies her hordes of failures, the ones who watch her show, and buy magazines featuring her, and play her phone game where I-don't-know-and-refuse-to-look-up-anything-about-it-on-principle. Kim Kardashian is a pet rock come to life. But then it just kept sitting there, being a pet rock, but breathing.

And yet. And Yet. AND YET. Who am I? Because her whole "deal" is offensive to me and people like me because it doesn't just feel like a repudiation, it *is* the repudiation of our entire self-value. Intelligence and accomplishment? Meh.

Can I be honest? Like savagely chauvinistically honest? Fuck it, I’m doing it.

She’s some weird gestalt. She’s her ass. She’s her tits. She’s her face. She’s her flawless complexion. She’s her hair. She’s her uptilted voice. She’s her goddamned family. So she’s her sister, and her other sister (you know, the tall one), and her half-sister and the other half-sister and now her brother and her brother’s pregnant Blac Chyna.

I swear that when I wrote the words Blac Chyna, one of my awards disintegrated on the mantelpiece.

But, anyway, she’s all of those things, plus, somethingorother, plus kanye goddamned west.

Oh, Jesus Christ, I just remembered Kris Humphries.

What important in my mind got pushed out so I could hold on to Kris Humphries?

That’s probably why I hate Kim Kardashian: her insipid bullshit has stolen valuable brain real-estate.

But who is she? And who cares? I mean, who really cares?

I have a bazillion-ty IQ. I’ve been published in Harper’s Weekly and the New Yorker. My great-great-grandfather is the Rhodes from the Rhodes Scholarship (let’s gloss over his racism, svp). I got kicked out of prestigious boarding schools and went and did drugs and joined the Marines and wrote that hard-hitting book (you know the one) that made the intelligentsia swoon (I didn’t use punctuation! On purpose!) and then I wrote that play that bombed and tried my hand at screenwriting and then my second novel had punctuation and sold dick and then I was a columnist and then my third novel was fine, but only fine, and then…and then…and now.

So I’m here and I’m me and I’m waiting for Kim Kardashian to appear and I don’t like her because of course I don’t like her. Do we really have to do this?

There are only so many ways that this can even go:
1.     She shows up and is boring and of course
2.     I’m flabbergasted that she’s an astute and clever businesswoman, the depths to her cleaving me to my core
3.     I hit on her to make her uncomfortable because all of this triggers some dormant ape-dominance gene and I want to assert that I have value and who the hell does she think she is?
4.     Words come out of her mouth and does it matter? Does anything matter at this point? Did it ever? Why, God? Why.
5.     We talk about whatever it is she wants to sell because that’s why I’m here and I am a sarcastic asshole because I really want to do this one please.
6.     We talk about whatever it is she wants to sell because that’s why I’m here and I steal the $34,000 by recording what she says and later typing it, verbatim, with no commentary, and I pray the intelligentsia thinks, again, that a gimmick is brilliant.
7.     We tear each other’s clothes off and have furious, vengeful, disappointing sex. I acknowledge the disappointing part is my fault.  I’m a balding, out-of-shape, middle-aged writer. What?

Why did I have to bring sex up? “Have to”. I had to. Seriously. Ray J. Silver paint. Playboy. Break the Internet. Selfies. Had to. 

What’s she going to do when her sexual currency dries up? Will it?

Why in the hell is she popular?

That’s the question. At least, for folks like me. For the others, it’s not a question; it’s nonsensical. She’s popular because she’s popular. It’s the Law of Inertia. Objects in motion stay in motion. Duh.

She’s a mother and a person and why for any and all of this? WHY?

What’s the point?

Could she disappear, even if she wanted to? Why wouldn’t she want to? She can’t want to, right?

I say I’d take the multi-millions (she has to be over 100 million by now and acknowledging that makes me want to stab things) and slink off, but I’ve made considerably less than that, but still good money (and inherited a decent amount; thanks, Cecil), and I’ve refused to slink off myself. Hell, I’m a remora at this point, aren’t I?

And now I’ve been flown to Paris for this. I’ve literally had to pay for my own gas to drive to Des Moines to sign books at a Barnes and Noble, and that goddamned book (the fine third one) took years of my life and a piece of my soul and now Hearst Magazines paid for me to fucking fly to fucking Paris for this. And they paid for the hotel and gave me a reasonable per diem.

Buy Cosmo.

More.

Can you believe I’ve made it this far and I haven’t mentioned Paris Hilton yet?

Or Orenthal James?

But I’m in this room. It’s a hotel room. Why a hotel room for these things?  There are other private places that don’t have a bed. 

I’m a real sexist bastard for the sex thing to keep popping in my head, right?

:/ (Shrugs)

Oh, Christ. She makes money off emojis or some such, doesn’t she?

I’m not looking anything up for this interview; they can go to hell. Who can go to hell? They all can. All of them.

What are we going to talk about? Maybe that’s my opener: “So, Miss Kardashian…or Mrs. West…or Kim…or what the hell do I call you because I don’t actually know you, even though me and everyone else has taken possession of you because you’re everywhere and a part of our lives even though some of us don’t want you to be, have I mentioned I hate you, and, oh wait, what are we going to talk about?”

I brought a notepad for this. Because I’m a professional. But I’m using it to write this out, now aren’t I?

But I’m sitting here in this Parisian hotel room (of course it’s overlooking the Champs) and I’m writing this and I’m waiting on Bruce/Caitlyn’s (former) stepdaughter and I hate this and I hate myself for being here, but you bastards didn’t buy those last two books, so I hate you too. My play wasn’t that bad. Fuck.

Do I get to meet Kris Jenner? I want to meet her. Just for a second. Just to brush up against pure evil. She has to be, right? The multimedia mogul matriarch. Do I have to explain this? She had money. So none of this is for that. Why push her daughter into the limelight? Y’all have heard the “theory” that she sold the sex-tape to Vivid through an intermediary for plausible deniability to drum up publicity for the upcoming show Keeping Up with the Kardashians, right? Because…well, because…  And then she’s pushing the young ones into the limelight. I think. How the hell would I know?

Will I be able to smell the fear of death on her? It has to reek. Like a widow’s perfume (Kris is a widow, after all). That’s what I assume. For that much chutzpah, that much brazen insecurity, well, she has to be terrified of aging and death. Has to be. She’ll look plasticine in real life, won’t she?  Whatever.

I’ll keep it to Kimberley Noel Kardashian. Kimberley Humphries. Kimberley West.

I did it. I just used my phone and looked up something for this and now I know she was married to a guy named Thomas from 2000-2004. So, Kimberley Thomas. Oh, and that Ray J sex tape was from 2003, so legally, that’s adultery, huh?

Can I hate her? Can I please hate her? I don’t know why I feel like I truly need approval for this, but I do.

When she walks in, am I going to notice her butt because it’s noticeable or because it’s the thing I’m supposed to notice?

Oh! The door’s opening. I have to set this down.

Okay, back. To meet the contractual requirements, this has to be a 1500-word piece about Kim Kardashian and it must include dialogue from our interview. 

She walked in the room and said “Hello” and then other things.