I sat down at my computer this morning pondering what I would use for this week's column. Back when I first revived Inspection on the net in the late 90s; after a few years post the last hard copy, I thought I'd start writing like mad in case I ran out of ideas.

    Silly me. Now I keep stumbling over the never animated corpses of unused Inspection columns everywhere: in my bookkeeping books for my business, my creative journals where I work on concepts, on napkins, back of book covers and deep within my computer guarded by gremlins. They seem to delight in messing up; or losing, what I know I had nailed to some great rhetorical wall when I last pressed "save."

    It's magic.

    Magic relates to politics, religion, philosophy and anything we do as humans: especially how we relate to each other.
Read on -- There is more

    For instance; we all know that the magician uses trap doors, secret compartments, sleight of hand, intentional distraction... anything to make his audience go, "Wow!" He, or she, is also a storyteller: and that is far more important than whatever device or method used.

    Yet we too often focus in on "how" rather than "why."

    Jesus performed "miracles." Does it really matter if he knew where the rocks were, or if he had many fish and loaves in some unseen trap door? Many theists would say, "Yes." That makes me cringe because they are like some of the more childish members of my audience I have had to slip, slide and leap over with on the spot alterations of my own script. And it makes me sad because on a rare occasion the "child" is an adult who should know not behave in that manner.

    I often say to my clients that I rarely have a problem with children. It's adults who can be a big pain in their too tightly tied babushkas. Some days I wonder how their brains don't squeeze out of their ears.

    Let's stray away from magic for a moment to make my point. On a rare occasion; when I bring out one of my puppet friends, there's some boy; rarely a girl, who before the puppet says anything starts yelling out, "That's just a puppet, that's just a puppet..."

    In my magic segment the same kind of character will yell out how they think I did it. 99.9% of the time they are wrong. And teachers will usually talk to them. The times they don't make me wonder why those kinds of teachers don't just quit and go make chocolate covered ants for a living, because they don't seem to care for, or want to pay attention to, what they're supposed to be doing.

    I wonder. Would these same children when they watch TV yell out, "That's not an image, it's just a bunch of dots!" They must be real fun at a movie. But I suspect they suspend disbelief in both cases.

    So why does a live performance incur this behavior?

    Easy. Just like adults who don't get it, they think that all this is about is simply an intent to deceive others. They're missing the point: entertainment... and the lesson being taught; the story being told.

    If we passed this attitude on to life we would be deceived less. For instance when I moved South in the late 70s my wife and I stayed in a motel room in Kentucky: just south of Cinci. I woke up early; as I often do, and turned on the tube. There was one of these healing preachers working a deaf person over on stage. Facing her he said...

"I will heeeeeeaaaaallll you. Repeat after me: 'praise the Lord.'"

(She looked puzzled.")

"Praise the Lord."

(Still puzzled... so he spoke slowly: accentuating each lip movement with care.)

"Praise... the... Lord."

With a glimmer of understanding she asked, "Praise the Lord?"

He turned away from her so she couldn't see his lips and said to his flock...

"Praise the Lord, she's hhheeeaaallleed!!!"

She was rushed off stage by stagehands.

    Now an idiot could see what happened here, but as a performer I was angered by just how bad he was.

    Back away.

    Reconsider.

    If we all admitted that what we are watching is a performance and stopped screaming out, "That's just_____," maybe we wouldn't be fooled as much, and fleeced less? Just enjoy. This guy was really, really bad: an unintended comedian. They can be more funny than a barrel of Robin Williams'. And, oh, how his message suffered. But remember; if the performance is good that doesn't necessarily mean the message is. Here's why we should view such things mostly on a performance level...

    Adolph Hitler was a great performance artist, for those who like that over the top: pure histrionics, style. I don't. But the actual content of his message was pure horror. Appreciating talent doesn't mean we totally dismantle our critical faculties. We just don't let them spoil the show either.

    And if we remembered "it's a performance," maybe there would be less comet followers...

   ...less Kool Aid drinkers...

   ...less foam at the mouth, goosestepping, potential pilots for planes headed towards buildings...

    What is the difference between magic and miracles? Believers assume magic is a trick, and miracles are real: from God. Of course, as my faith healer example proves, the difference may not be much of a difference at all.

    If Jesus knew where the rocks were, would that make the parables less important; the lessons he taught null and void? If he knew that Lazarus was simply sleeping but he had been treated as if he had died, would using that knowledge to save him from inevitable death from starvation make raising Lazarus less of a good deed?

    Content should never be treated as a third or fourth thought to method or means. It certainly shouldn't be treated as if it doesn't exist.

    But why am I not surprised in these days of deus ex machina-based entertainment where bigger and more bangs are too often treated as content, that actual content is tossed in the corporate wood-word chipper like an unwanted child? That even our children are yelling out...

"That's just a puppet! That's just a puppet! That's just a puppet! That's just..."

And why aren't these children also yelling at the latest Bruce Willis-like bigger bang movie...

"That's just a model! That's been faked! That's just a blue screen!"

From my perspective, none of this is any more real than...

"You're hheeeaaaaallled!"

Why are our children acting like this?

    Probably because we're not providing enough good examples for them to follow.

It's Magic

by Dave Allen, Tim Bays (as performed by PP&M)

He cut her in half
With a shiny steel saw
He put her all back together
And I was in awe

As rabbits and doves and bandanas appeared
And he pulled a quarter right out of my ear
I turned to my dad, I said, 'How'd he do it?'
And dad, he just smiled, he said, 'There's nothing to it."

It's magic and you don't want to know
Just how it's done, it would ruin the show
You've just got to believe
'Cause believing is what makes it happen
Oh it's nothing but magic

Now I fell in love the first time in 8th grade
And I started shaving the very next day
Just walking her home made me light on my feet
And I promised her things you just wouldn't believe
And when I asked my dad why girls had that effect
He said, 'Go ask your mom, I ain't figured it yet'

It's magic and you don't want to know
Just how it's done, it would ruin the show
You've just got to believe
'Cause believing is what makes it happen
Oh it's nothing but magic

Well the years have been hard, the years have been kind
These last years have taken both parents of mine
Some things you can't change with a wave of your hand
So many things I still don't understand
But, in a hospital gown, standing next to my wife
I'm watching this miracle come into life

It's magic and you don't want to know
Just how it's done, it would ruin the show
You've just got to believe
'Cause believing is what makes it happen
Oh it's nothing but magic and you don't want to know
Just how it's done, it would ruin the show
You've just got to believe
'Cause believing is what makes it happen

                                                               -30-

   Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.

© Copyright 2009
Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
All Rights Reserved

    But now there's change. It's arrived upon our doorsteps. We can read about it in our papers, see it in the depressed looks upon FOX no-news anchors who look like they really want to suck upon a shotgun, hear it in the whine of the radio talk show host. The end is near! The end is near! If we treat Gitmo detainees with a modicum of due process they're going to suitcase nuke our bathrooms! ...have sex with our baby gerbils! And turn America into (gasp!) the United States Socialist Republic.

    Though lessening, we can still see and hear from a few bloggers; the pens and mouths of some of the Left; post election... look there! The sun is coming up! Tweety and Sylvester are buds. Boris and Natasha are planning on sending Valentine flowers to Moose n' Squirrel. Jack on 24 is about to change tactics and hug his various suspected villains into submission.

    Tis a new day.

    Or is all this mostly just balderdash?

    Maybe...

    The inspiration for this column slapped me like wet fish instead of rain falling from the sky as I considered many equally nonsensical events. The pinnacle event: the source of my inspiration; though small and insignificant in itself, was in a Super Dollar General Store. If you don't have one locally it's kind of like a smaller version of Super Wally-mart, only cheaper. I was wasting minutes because for the first time in my life I had ordered Ethiopian food to go. By the time I finish editing this edition of Inspection I'll tell you how good or how bad it was; and how it fit into the day.

    There... up on a shelf. No. Not even those who designed the Edsel or came up with the Dominos Noid had an idea this bad. What idiot decided to design a coffee maker combined with a toaster? OK, I understand, the somewhat annoying hosts at Mythbusters have "proven" it's damn hard to kill yourself by dropping a toaster into a tub. But what moron decided it was a good idea to put two devices that for very good reasons should be kept apart in one single unit? Maybe this is why it's at Dollar General?

    Baffling.

    That morning I had spent my early AM; oh, so "special,""I can't sleep" hours, responding to a reader who decided he didn't like the blurb at the end of Inspection because his Pro-Writing Prof didn't like passive sentences. It's a general description of the column. It's not even the column. But since it describes the column and its origins; what the purpose and intent is, it's best written in a passive voice. And if you happen to be reading this, if you are so bloody concerned, get your own damn friggin column.

    The reader wasn't satisfied with commenting once, he decided to comment over and over again on various editions; never commenting on content... just the blurb. OK, the reader and I disagree. But to just continue to leave personal insults about our disagreement?

    Some days I feel like I'm being pursued by a gaggle of noisy, baffling, immature puppies who are purveyors of balderdash. I wrote back that perhaps he could find a site run by Don Rickles where that behavior is more appropriate. Wonder if he even knows whom I was referring to?

    Why would any one reader decide he had to go only some personal jihad regarding such an insignificant item?

    Baffling.

   That very same morning I was commenting on a debate site I love to visit about a legal case regarding a father paying child support. Apparently a mother was pushing for even more child support and less visitation due to her decision to move far away. She probably would have had child support, uncontested, for as long as it was required, but the father enraged by her new demands, by her insensitivity and his own long held suspicions; demanded a DNA test. All this time: not his child. Still the judge granted her request. I said; unless there's further information we don't know, that's outrageous and...

    ...balderdash.

    It's always interesting when in life you so quickly observe the flip of the coin; the opposite situation.

    I spent a few hours later baffled by a certain hardship case my wife and I have been helping, because he's related. Ah, the things we do for relatives that we would never do for others. If anyone else even asked we'd leave the room giggling in their face and raising an appropriate finger.

    For years he found jobs; quickly lost jobs... moved around, and didn't contact child support about his new jobs or his moves. Avoided child support is the operative term. But, as they will, child support kept catching up with him. He'd mark letters return to send or "no one here by that name." He'd toss them in the trash. He refuses to fill out their forms.

    I'm sure even the ghost of my father who cared a lot for him is shaking his head right now and asking, "Why bother, Ken?"

    Well, after many years and many attempts in a digital world to disappear; be invisible... the money was extracted slowly; more painfully than it would have been in a responsible person's case... his ex-wife "says" she's been paid all the support she needs and was promised, and his boy is now a man: past the age for child support. Of course; since he spent so much time trying to avoid paying, New York State has sanctioned him again and again; many, many years.

    Now: up front... this is all out of his mouth. I do wonder if I asked the other side: whom I have never met, what I would learn. I suspect a lot, because I told him; just before I wrote this, that the reason they keep pulling money out of his check is probably because he's been sanctioned so many damn times and those sanctions: those fines, have built up.

    I tried to explain this when he asked why this keeps happening and he said...

   "I understand that. But who do I owe this money to?"

     I repeated what I just said, simply adding, "You owe it to New York State."

   "I understand that. I've been sanction and that's 'all well and good.' But who do I owe this money to?"

     Slowly back away from a conversation I cannot possibly win.

     Has this guy never gotten a ticket or had to pay a fine? If he were to be stopped for going through a stop sign and fined, would he also say, "Who do I owe this money to?"

    Just how many fathers; and some mothers too I suspect, still don't get that there are consequences for their actions and what they don't do? How many believe their own balderdash? How can they?

    I'm baffled. They are too; but for no good reason. It's like asking why your nose twitches when a big old horsefly is on it, and you invited him to land there.

    That brings us to President Obama's recent decision regarding Gitmo, and those screaming morons who think Osama is going to encourage giant, evil, mosquitoes to fly into buildings killing our loved ones with splattered anthrax-laced bug juice... if we don't torture or if we offer a modicum of due process. If you lock up what could be innocent people without due process and torment some there are going to be consequences. So these consequences mean we should continue the behavior that got us to this point?

    Obvious balderdash.

    Gitmo is painted as holding the worst of the worst. If we're so damn sure of that we should be able to prove it and lock them away for a very long time, or even execute them. If not, we've gone from baffling policy to balderdash of the worst kind.

    I understand what Barack is facing when it comes to arguing with those whose logic is baffling. But I also understand that Obama; like a rhetorical and policy filled baloney sandwich, isn't totally baffle or balderdash free.

    So we leave Ken's balderdash day having found out that "change" in part means that plans are afoot to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan and bomb our way into lessening terrorism. We launched a drone bomb to prove our intent. The Pakistanis were furious.

    Oh, and that Ethiopian food; much like balderdash and things that baffle me, left my stomach more than a little queasy. Plus, why would anyone eat this bland, tasteless, stuff? Why did they give us what we didn't order in one case? And why would I even bother going back when the end result of "tasteless;" like some relatives, turned vile and came back up for a few return visits at 2 in the morning?

    If only the previous day could have been expelled as well. Maybe I could have observed the more odd parts and make some damn sense of it all.

    Instead I'm left baffled and pondering what might be balderdash.

    That was my day.

    How was yours?

                                               -30-

   Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.