| Okay, if you saw that, you'd better understand how upset I was. I don't pretend to understand how it happened, though this was the second time I closed a doc while it was saving only to see it vanish completely (that was the last time the G-File disappeared). Anyhow, I announced on Twitter that the G-File was gone (you should follow me for such announcements, btw). A bunch of followers offered suggestions of widely varying degrees of sincerity and helpfulness. I basically gave up after trying all of the usual stuff: "Command-F > File name," rebooting, repairing permissions, repartitioning, etc. I was just about to try blood magic -- which we all know is much more powerful than mere "word magic" -- when one Twitter follower by the name of Erin Estelle heroically talked me through using the Terminal app, which I gather is a gateway to some other dimension. She said the file for the G-File might have been whisked away to this other dimension (or something like that). And if I typed the right incantation the Terminal necromancers could bring it back from the dead. And, it worked! So what follows below is the exact G-File I tried to send into NRHQ last Friday, minus the usual copyediting. I thought about rewriting it to pretend that I'd been clairvoyant about the weekend's events ("I sense a great gathering in Cairo. . . . " "David Gregory shall give an obsequious interview to Wendy Davis. . . . ") but I figured you guys would see right through it. Plus, that would have meant more work for me. So here it is. Warning: Like a rope with many loops tied into it, it's pretty loopy in parts. Dear Reader (including those of you who just come here for the porn), Here's the problem. I'm in Fairbanks hanging out with my wife's large Alaskan family (I am speaking numerically, not about the size of the Alaskans themselves). It's been a great time with ample adventure on land and water. We arrived last Friday, which just happened to be the summer solstice, and the sun has not set since we got here. I wake up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, look out my window, and it's still daylight out. It's freaking me out a bit. My biorhythms are so out of whack I find myself using words like "biorhythm." I never know when to have a cup of coffee and when to have a drink. I've compromised by drinking Irish coffee 24/7. It's okay that I'm not getting any REM sleep because Michael Stipe is walking around with me like that Indian in a diaper in the Doors movie asking me, "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" It's sort of like dreaming, but without the snoring or the blood-curdling screams I'm known for. The best part about that damn burning ball of gas in the sky following me around like the helicopter in Goodfellas is that whenever I challenge the burly dudes with tattoos on their necks at the local bars to a duel, I always add the proviso that we have to fight at dawn. Since there is no dawn, they just wait and wait for me in the Home Depot parking lot and I never show. I always tell them that my name is Godot, which Michael and I think is incredibly funny. Anyway, there's a line in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (scientifically proven to be the seventh greatest book of all time), where one of the characters says "Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?" That's sort of how I feel right now. Planet Earth Speaking of the seventh greatest book of all time, there's a passage somewhere in the beginning of the book where the narrator explains that we have a natural instinct thattells us if someone is from far away or that you are far from home. But distances on earth are so small -- 12,000 miles at most -- it's usually just a minor twinge. But when you meet an alien, even one who looks human, it hits you like a thunderclap. Whenever I come out to Alaska, I'm hit with a similar sense of distance. Okay, it's not really similar, but it's similar enough that I'm reminded of the seventh greatest book of all time. And yes, part of it has to do with the seemingly eternal daylight. Most people who grow up with the whole day-night-day-night pattern roughly divided into twelve-hour increments, take it for granted that this is not only normal, but that it is part of the Way Things Are, like the pull of gravity, the wetness of water, the hotness of fire, the coolness of Fonzie, the gayness of Canadian men's figure skating, and other constants of the human condition. But when you come up here, the patterns are just different. More important, they are normal. They are the Way Things Are here. Sure, the weather is different, but when you go to other hot or cold places, you have a frame of reference for that. If I visit a desert-y place, like Scottsdale, which in August is remarkably similar to the sunny side of Mercury, my reptilian brain just assumes it's summer. When you visit a cold place, it just feels like winter. The distance you've travelled doesn't shake your ability to put it all in context. But when you go someplace where the sun refuses to descend, like a cat that doesn't know how to come down from a tree, it reminds you that you really are on a planet in space. And at the top and bottom of a planet -- I'm talking magnetically, you geometry pedants! -- the rules are just different. Gore with the Wind Speaking of the correct orientation of planets, I'm reminded of one of my favorite Al Gore anecdotes. In 1998, the Washington Post ran a picture of Earth from space. I can't remember why, but I think it was a picture from the international space station. The picture infuriated then-vice president Gore. He called the Post's executive editor to tip him off about the "error." "I decided I just had to call because you've printed a picture of the Earth upside-down." It didn't occur to Gore that, from space, there is no upside down. One Step Beyond Speaking of Gore's extraterrestrial weirdness, this was just one of the small clues your humble correspondent picked up on to tip him off that Al Gore is, in fact, an alien. Another was that Al Gore was "born" just nine months after aliens allegedly landed in Roswell, New Mexico. As I wrote in 2000 (in this classic Goldberg File of yore): The first sign that someone is an alien visitor is if they behave like one, asking a lot of strange questions and looking at the world from an off-worldly perspective. There are few better Gore impersonations than that of Jeff Bridges in Star Man. In the film, Bridges adopts a jerky, deliberate body language that, while a bit more endearing than Gore's, is still eerily similar. The aliens in the recently released Galaxy Quest also have a very Gore-like range of motion. The reason for this probably has to do with their problems getting comfortable in their human suit or accommodating the new sensory input. Anyone who has seen Al Gore high-five someone, or dance, or pump his fist in the air, knows exactly what I'm talking about. Which leads to the fact that sometimes human impersonators let slip certain observations of statements that hint at their real identity. For example, Kirsten Johnson in 3rd Rock from the Sun (a show I hate) is making meatloaf and then suddenly shrieks, "I have dead cow on my hands!" Indeed, extreme literalism -- usually at the expense of everyday expressions -- is a key sign of human impersonation, like when Beldar Conehead says, "Can I have fifty-five words with you?" As I mentioned on Monday, what first tipped me off was when Gore said, "just as having two eyes gives you depth perception" as if we all talk about our eyes that way. Since then, the clues have been flooding in. Gore held a series of conferences on the metaphor at the White House, as if that is something a normal human would want to discuss. His book brims with observations about how our "planet" is dysfunctional. His pet issue is having an Earth Channel which shows the planet from outer space. Perhaps this is the view he grew up with? Rick Brookhiser wrote a piece for NR a while back which had a passage about Gore visiting a school. "When [Gore] smooches small children," Brookhiser writes, "he actually picks them up. (When a kid in New Hampshire started squalling at this close encounter, he murmured reassuringly, 'I'm not too scary.')" "Close encounter"? "I'm not too scary." Maybe children can see through the disguise. Maybe Brookhiser can. Who knows? Carbonation Speaking of Gore, I was up here in Alaska when the president announced his new war on the stuff plants breathe. Gore was so excited he stopped counting all the money he made from Al Jazeera and threw it up in the air, then did figure eights in his private plane. I'm not going to dwell too much on all that here because I may do a regular column on it. But what of course stood out from his remarks was the whole bit about "the flat-earth society." I particularly liked this tweet from the White House: President Obama on climate deniers: "We don't have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society." #ActOnClimate First of all, as I understand it, the Flat Earth Society believes in climate change. That means that this polarizing president has even managed to smear the Flat Earthers. Second, not even the most adamant opponents of anthropogenic-global-warming theory (I'm not one, by the way) don't deny there's a climate. It's almost exactly the reverse. They believe there's a climate and one of the defining characteristics of our climate is that it changes. Or hadn't you noticed the ice age began and ended long before the invention of the internal-combustion engine? We are in some weird NewSpeak when the smart perspective is to believe the climate should be static. And there's a profound anthropological hubris at work when you think all negative changes in the climate are mankind's fault. Look at this tweet from Think Progress (Yes, Think Progress' twitter account is becoming an unhealthy fixation of mine): Rick Perry declares drought disaster in Texas, again. Still denying climate change. Now, I don't know what Rick Perry's actual position on climate change is, but the idea that declaring a drought emergency is somehow hypocritical is kind of hilarious. Because, you know, Texas was a rain-soaked, verdant, water world until the industrial revolution. For what it's worth, I am totally open to the idea that man plays some role in the near-term fluctuations of the climate. And even though the climate scientists can't explain why global warming stopped in 1998 or why we should trust their models to predict what the earth will be like a century from now if they can't explain what's happening right now, what offends me about Obama's position isn't his invincible arrogance about what "science" says about the climate. What offends is the idea that he -- or the scientists he listens to -- necessarily have the best remedy for the situation. I'm not going to prattle on about my "moral equivalent of war" hypothesis again. But what Obama is doing here is trying to use the authority of science to cut through democratic impediments to do things in areas where climate scientists have no special authority or expertise. A mechanic has some standing to tell me I can't drive my car anymore because it's not safe. He has very little standing to tell me what I should do once I dump the junker. I don't care if he thinks I should take the bus, or buy a new car, or ride a grizzly bear like Brick Tamland ("Hey Ron, I'm riding a furry tractor!"). And I really couldn't care less about what his opinion is about how I pay for any of these things. Even if you think the global-warming crowd is exactly right, why on earth should I listen to some guy who studies ocean temperatures or how clouds reflect sunlight about how to tax certain products or organize our industry? The funny thing is I would listen to a climate scientist about how to fix the problem, just as I would listen to my mechanic about how to fix my car. But the climate-science crowd is mostly fine with outsourcing the policy prescriptions to the same Malthusian crowd that thinks economic growth is the problem. The Left has never sufficiently grappled with the fact that they make the same policy prescriptions no matter what the alleged malady is. They hated fossil fuels when global cooling was the big concern and they hated fossil fuels when global warming grabbed the headlines. If your policy prescriptions don't change when the symptoms are completely reversed, don't be shocked when people suspect you have another agenda. The Malthusians are like a mechanic who tells you your car is broken and the best way to deal with it is by driving under 10 mph at all times, not taking more than three right turns a week, and most of all, coasting with the engine off whenever possible. My own preference on climate change is to wait about thirty years before we do anything too drastic. Study the issue. Get the models to work. Wait for countries like India and China to get rich enough to forgo fossil fuels. And then: Fix the problem. In Other News If the old Chinese curse is "may you live in interesting times," my own curse is "may you go on vacation whenever the times get interesting." Or something like that. So yes, I know I've skillfully dodged ("Skillfully?" -- The Couch) dealing with some big news stories this week: Paula Deen, the Zimmerman trial, immigration reform, the Voting Rights Act and gay-marriage decisions. I have strong opinions about most of it, but I'm just not up on the news enough to wade into all that with the spirit of informed jocularity you've come to expect from this "news"letter. Another Nook, Filled That said, while my reaction to the gay-marriage decision was probably a little different from Kathryn's, my reaction to The New Yorker cover is pretty much exactly the same as hers. A lot of opposition to gay marriage isn't driven by animus towards gay people. Yes, of course, many people have strong and deep moral and theological arguments against homosexuality. But others simply don't like the political sexualization -- or sexual politicization -- of vast swaths of life once considered off limits. I don't really care when dudes show affection for each other. I do care about being forced to explain what's going on when my kid sees it. That's not an argument for homosexuals to stay in the closet and live miserable lives. But a little more consideration from gay-rights activists would be nice. The New Yorker cover is precisely the sort of dancing in the end zone that liberals will think is infinitely clever and cute, but will in turn infuriate lots of other Americans. Why sexualize Bert and Ernie? They're supposed to be kids. Their friendship was apparently based on the friendship between Frank Oz and Jim Henson. Do we really want to turn that into a homosexual relationship? Why can't the Left let us have a few safe harbors? It's just sad. The Pornification of the G-File? Speaking of sex creeping into everything, last week I got an unsubscribe request from a reader who says the G-File has gotten too porny for him: Hi,
I've been receiving the G-File for the last several years. And now I'm cutting it off.
The reason is that I'm tired of wading through all the R- and X-rated humor before I get to the interesting stuff. It's too much already, and we shouldn't have to deal with it.
In the old days, the G-File didn't used to be like that. And now it is. While I die a little inside every time one of my Dear Readers no longer wishes to be dear to me, and I respect this reader's point of view, let me say that this "news"letter began as an ur-blog that discussed, among other things, women's prison movies at some length and translated classics of the conservative canon into porn-movie titles ("Rod and Man at Yale," "Erections on the Revolutionaries in France," etc. I believe during the Florida recount, I joked that "Hanging Chad" sounded like the title of a necrophiliac gay-porn movie. So let's be clear, I haven't bait-and-switched anybody. It kind of just depends on when you hop aboard the Street Car Named Goldberg File. I have my serious phases and my goofy phases. Sometimes these phases alternate from paragraph to paragraph. But it's not like in the Simpsons when future-Marge says "You know, FOX turned into a hardcore sex channel so gradually I didn't even notice." Still, I took the e-mail to heart and, at least until now, tried to keep the nudity tasteful and integral to the plot. I even avoided commenting on this horrendous story about a man defiling a couch. Yes, I talk to my couch, but -- and I can't stress this enough -- it's just talk! Some relationships just shouldn't be sexualized. ("Preach it brother!" -- The Couch). Various & Sundry My column today is on the way that liberals treat "women's health" as code for lady parts and sex. I liked it. Quite a few folks don't. In this week's episode of GLoP Culture I talked to Rob Long and John Podhoretz from my brother-in-law's driveway. Big Business and Big Government, partners in freedom? I'm moderating a panel at AEI on July 11. Come on by! Cosmo and I are going to think about this. Whoa. Release the interns! Speaking of interns un-caged, my former intern Kate Bachelder (a John Miller protégé btw) had her debut piece in the Wall Street Journal this week. I believe I was the Lord of her "fantastically rewarding unpaid internship." Earlier this week, a bunch of us went whitewater rafting in Denali. It was a great time. What made it even cooler was that about ten minutes into the trip, our river guide asked me my first name. I said "Jonah." He said, "Jonah? Jonah Goldberg?" I said, nervously, "Yep." And he got all excited. "I just read your last book when I was in Thailand!" We ended up talking politics for a big chunk of the trip. Anyway, if you get a chance, book a trip with Nenana Raft Adventures. Great people. Here's a disturbing image. A dude just got 32 months in jail for aggressively sniffing a ten-year-old boy's arm. That's the guy's thing -- arm sniffing. Thirty-two months might sound a little harsh, or it might not. Regardless, get your brain around what you think the appendage-sniffer looks like. Then click this. Nerd humor! Well, a kind of nerd humor. Shockingly, I heard some of these before ("Yes, we're all 'shocked'" -- the Couch). I particularly like "It's hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they always take things so literally." That's gold, gold I tell ya. Gallery of creepy-ass crackas! The case of the missing American bidet. This 1940s Pistons logo is the bomb. Dogs lead the way, again! Phil Hartman bloopers! How to help sufferers of BRF (Bitchy Resting Face). | 
Megyn Kelly -> Pete Hegseth responds to 2017 rape accusation. 🔥 vol. 3, issue 13 | December 6, 2024 Quick Hits All the news you need in...
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