Universal Cowboys

As the developmentally challenged little brother of jazz, rock and roll has always followed its older sibling around trying to emulate its style and posture, if not its substance. That's why there's noise, the rock analog of free jazz. I don't hate the stuff, but I think it's like sex – most fun for the performers. But what about other genres? Why is there no Free Polka? Or Free Country? Of course, if you put a bunch of pickers in a room and told them to play whatever they felt, they'd probably settle on “Your Cheatin' Heart” in C.

Our goal: keeping you informed.

It's hard not to obsess about Horace, Kansas. See, first I was thinking about Horace Greeley and his terrible, terrible neckbeard, which I've already brought to your attention. If you haven't checked out a picture yet, I suggest you do so right now, then come back and read the final 44 words of this week's rant. Ok, then. In spite of that, he has a county in Kansas named after him (Greeley) which contains an incredibly small city named Horace (pop. 70) which recently declined to consolidate with literally every other place in the county. Bet there's a story there.

Hawaii and West Virginia, if you must know

Oh jeez. A new survey, the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, has ranked the 50 states in order of happiness. Out of a possible 100, the happiest state scored 70.2 while the most miserable got a lowly 62.3. Not even an 8 percent spread, four points plus or minus. This may be statistically meaningless, especially since you're actually measuring how the regional culture feels about complaining. North Dakota came in second, telling me that folks in that state will say anything to keep you on the phone. Still, it's a way to fill up airtime and column inches. And rants. Those too.

Back to the grind

Sandstone is a kind of stone that's made up of sand. Hence the term sandstone. The sand, of course, is simply tiny bits of what used to be larger rocks. It's goofy, like matzo balls. Because, why bake crackers of flour and water and crumble them up to make dumplings when you could simply make dumplings from the flour in the first place? It's just the universe keeping itself busy, is all. It would be nice to think that we are the larval stage of something better. I can find no evidence, however, to suggest that this might be true.

When your number's up

I have a cousin who had one of his ears bitten off by a horse. Even if he was the only one-eared man in the world, this would shift the arithmetic mean; the average person worldwide has slightly fewer than two ears. So in at least one sense, the vast majority of us can take pride in being above average. Then there's this: Somebody went to the trouble to figure out that the total weight of the entire human species is well over 400 billion kilograms, roughly one trillion pounds. Of course, a lot of that is fat and gristle.

I'll get back to you with a quote.

Fitzgerald's Law states there are no second acts in American life; that's probably why the parking lot empties out after intermission. But Wolfe's Theorem says you can't go home again, which makes me wonder where everyone goes. Off somewhere making the scene, since the world's a stage and we're all merely players. Then some people say it's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. Which may be true, but the only way to play the game well is to really, truly, desperately want to win. Most philosophy professors refer to this as Lombardi's Paradox.

Also, no Thurber.

I don't know why I bought a subscription to the New Yorker. Maybe the hours spent in dentists' waiting rooms have somehow conditioned me, like an old lag craving prison chow. Also, it was very cheap. But I don't think I'll be renewing. For one thing, being reminded of the world-class events I'm missing every week is making me unhappy. Then there's the house style, with its excessive use of the word “the:” “The guitarist Bill Frisell appears along with the bassist Ron Carter and the drummer Joey Baron.” I like the cartoons. But I can't stand all the articles.