All's Fair in Love and Taxation

Cash-strapped localities have started exploring the possibility of taxing non-profit entities. This makes a certain amount of sense. Non-profits that own substantial amounts of property could conceivably help cities and states withstand some of the ravages of today's economic crises. And if we're talking, say, about universities with multi-billion dollar endowments, one can understand the cities' impulse to ask these groups to contribute more to the common welfare.

We have some problems with the thought, though, of most non-profit organizations, which, remember, don't make a lot of money--some of them hardly make any profits at all!--having to pay taxes on their facilities. The whole point of offering non-profits tax exemptions is to help them to help us: Your local homeless shelter or after-school program provides services that a community needs. If an NPO didn't do it, the government would probably have to (or at least pay for the consequences of NOT having the service), which means higher tax bills for everyone. The tax break is a theoretically cost-effective way to assist these organizations.

What we really have a problem with, though, is the fact that while some non-profits may be asked to pay property taxes, others won't be. If states are going to start taxing universities and hospitals, shouldn't they also tax the other large property-owning non-profits like, oh, the Catholic Church and other large religious organizations?

Yes, we know, first amendment, blah blah blah. But if other NPOs must do their share, why shouldn't the church? We'll even make a deal: If the churches pay their fair share in taxes, then they can even participate in the political process. That way, for example, they could even encourage their parishioners to vote for certain candidates or, say, discourage their clergy from offering communion to Catholic candidates like John Kerry who support abortion rights, which they didn't do because they're non-profits and not allowed to participate in the political process. Oh, wait.

What's good for the non-profit goose is good for the non-secular gander.

Solipsistography
"Squeezed Cities Ask Nonprofits for More Money"

Young at Heart (But Otherwise Old)

This Class Is Boring. . . and So Short!
A 100-year-old Jewish lady, Bel Kaufman, teaches a course in Jewish humor at Hunter College. She has the credentials: Her grandfather was the great Yiddish humorist Sholem Aleichem. Her class analyzes staples of Jewish humor like this: The Frenchman says, “I am so thirsty; I must have wine!” The German says, “I am so thirsty; I must have beer!” The Jewish man says, “I am so thirsty; I must have diabetes!”

And we all know nothing enhances a joke like analyzing it.

We applaud this centenarian adjunct, and hope she gets tenure in a few years. Still, it’s not as impressive as the 98 year old Greco-Roman wrestling instructor. (There must be one.)

Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer on Her Way Home from the Lady Gaga Concert

While Bel Kauffman takes pride in her age, her generational followers are not as enthusiastic. The newest trend in family dynamics: the “glam-ma.” Glam-mas are grandmothers like Blythe Danner and Goldie Hawn: Proud parents of parents who nonetheless are not quite ready for the retirement home. These GILFs encourage--if not require--their grandkids to call them by their first names or by enigmatic nicknames like Woof or Lalo or , who knows, Wrinkles McGurk--anything but the dreaded appellation “Grandma.”

I Could Have Danced All Night If I Didn’t Have a Big Sales Pitch in the Morning

But when it comes to fending off the ravages of time, few can compete with the 30 (and up)-somethings of Green Bay, Wisconsin, and other cities across the country. Not willing to go gently into that curfew-mandated night, these folks are enjoying a new fad: the adult prom.

(DIGRESSION: Before “Anonymous” pedantically points it out, we hasten to add that we know the actual line is “Go not GENTLE into that good night, . . .” etc. That didn’t work grammatically. EOD)

Adult proms feature all the magic and joy of high-school proms with less of the acne. Alcohol, of course, is available, as is loud(er) music. But since many of the couples are in fact older married couples, there is no need for prom-goers to spend the evening nervously wondering whether they will “get lucky” at the end of the night. They know they won’t.

Solipsistography
"A Second Shot to Have the Best Night of Their Lives"
"At 100, Still a Teacher, and Quite a Character"
"Who Are You Calling Grandma?"

Sowing the Seeds of Destruction

The last ten days have made us seriously question our basic humanity. First, Osama bin Laden gets a well-deserved whacking. Today we read about a neo-Nazi leader, Jeff Hall, who was fatally shot by his ten-year-old son. Now, we do feel bad for the kid. As was the case with Bin Laden, though, we can't help but think Hall got just what he deserved. A leader of the National Socialist Movement, Hall devoted his life to the cause of white supremacy, and even claimed he was willing to die for the cause. He was also busily indoctrinating his son--his eventual killer--in his philosophy of hate.

What's that line about reaping the whirlwind?

We understand that taking a certain satisfaction in the ignominious death of another human being, no matter how loathsome, can at best be understood as scahdenfreude (foreign words always make bad things sound so much classier)--some might go so far as to call us tacky or tasteless. But if death is inevitable--which we've been assured it is--and if we are unavoidably forced to experience the deaths of loved ones and decent people on a semi-regular basis, is it so wrong to find relief in the seemingly karmic excision of human tumors from the body politic?

Solipsistography
"Neo-Nazi Father Is Killed; Son, 10, Steeped in Beliefs, Is Accused"

Perfect Sentences

Student sentence of the day (week? month?):

From an essay discussing reasons why people immigrate to the US:

"When you hear about the US it may be only good things, and that makes you come more."

Well-Begun and All Done: Perdido Street Station

The book: Perdido Street Station by China Mieville

Opening: "Veldt to scrub to fields to farms to these first tumbling houses that rise from the earth."

Ending: "I turn and walk into my home, the city, a man."

Infinite possibilities place a special burden on the writer of fantasy. In fantasy, anything can happen, but that doesn't mean that anything should. Writers must necessarily refrain from some flights of fancy, otherwise they risk ruining or cheapening their work.

Consider Lord of the Rings. It would have been eminently allowable for Tolkien to endow characters with the ability to travel instantaneously through time and space. Of course, that would have made Frodo's journey to Mordor far less arduous and, therefore, interesting. And the book would have been several hundred pages shorter.

At the same time, magical abilities and fantastical conventions must also be appropriately introduced so that, when they become necessary in the course of a narrative, the audience doesn't feel that the author is cheating. We hear that Jedi knights have some quasi-mystical powers before we first meet Obi-Wan Kenobi, so we are not overly bothered when, with a wave of the hand, he convinces a couple of imperial soldiers that those are not the droid's they're looking for.

China Mieville displays a fertile imagination in Perdido Street Station. The novel is set in the city of New Crobuzon, a multicultural metropolis inhabited by humans, intelligent cacti, beetle-headed women, sentient machines, and gigantic birdmen among others. The city faces an existential threat in the form of monstrous insects that drain their victims' psyches. Obviously, in order for the novel to have a plot, defeating these moths must entail more than just klomping them with the world's biggest fly-swatter. And with a theoretically unlimited arsenal of fantastic elements at his disposal, Mieville can come up with an exciting and narratively satisfying way for the heroes to battle the villains.

Mieville succeeds, but, without giving away too much, we can't help but feel that he falls back on something of a "cheat": A possible solution, a literal deus ex machina in fact, presents itself a little too conveniently. The reader feels as though the author has generated a solution to allow himself a way out of the narrative he has created. Which, of course, he has--that's his job. When the reader can see the plotting, though--can sense the man behind the curtain to which he should pay no attention--he feels somehow cheated.

None of which should dissuade anyone from reading this book. The characters are well-drawn, the book is packed with event and incident, and is quite the page-turner--no small feat for something over 700 pages long. And if one's only major complaint with a novel is that one can see the novelist's plotting, this is a small price to pay for a fantastic journey.

Life-Saving Tips

In honor of Mother's Day, a couple of tips about how to stay alive.

First, if you ever find yourself held at gunpoint, the best way to avoid getting shot is to scream the following: "Go ahead! Do it! Do it!!!"

Second, if you're ever in an accident and rushed to the hospital, make sure to have someone follow you with a videocamera. Then, if you flatline, have the cameraperson do a slow close-up on the flatline monitor. After a short but sufficient pause, the monitor will suddenly start beeping again!

Thank you, movies! Where would we be without you!