Getting It Down, Cold

Hello. I am writing this at 4:25 a.m., in a room that is 67 degrees Fahrenheit because I have set the AC to achieve that temperature. Directly above, a ceiling fan set at “high” is bellowing down on me, adding a substantial wind chill factor, which, by my calculation, reduces the perceived temperature to 58. I am stark naked. My only allowed nutrients are cold drinks, and they must be in ice. Fortunately, there are no mirrors in the room.

I am not yet shivering and my teeth are not yet chattering but I am extremely uncomfortable. It is by design. I am following the advice of Tom the Butcher, my longtime editor, who heard me whine that I could think of nothing to write today and suggested I follow the example set by the French novelist Victor Hugo, one of the most prolific authors who ever lived. When he felt threatened by writer’s block, M. Hugo had his manservant lock him in his cold, dank basement, naked, with only a fountain pen and paper, so he had nothing to do, in his suffering, but write. (This might explain Les Miserables.)

Anyway, upon doing this, my first thought was to note that Abraham Lincoln probably never chose to write the nude, because it turns out that in those circumstances, sturdy wooden chairs are inimical to manparts. My second thought was that this exercise is not helping with anything but sputtering anger.

For an hour I thought of nothing creative except for unusual punishments for Tom; then, however, for reasons now unclear to me, I decided to re-watch The Debate, the one between Harris and Trump. And because of how demonically physical discomfort crystallizes your thinking, I began to focus entirely not so much on what they said, but on how they said it. And that is when I discovered my story. So far, to my knowledge it has not yet been told.

Kamala Harris never says “uh” or “um.” Statistically, at least, her numbers approach zero. She is a machine at that. I have not witnessed this before in a politician, though I admit I have never counted “ums” before, naked, cold, focused, and spitting mad. During the interminable 90 minutes of the debate — during which Ms. Harris, in a highly tense and utterly unscripted atmosphere — uttered (by my estimate) 4,780 words; of these, she said absolutely no “uhs“ and only two “ums,” one of which was deliberate and strategic, to express bemused contempt, the way people might say, “um, okaaay…” Responding to Donald Trumps imbalanced, racist rant about immigrants eating dogs, she said: “Talk about extreme! (laughing) Um, I think this is one of the reasons why in this election I actually have the endorsement of 200 Republicans …. “

Harris had fewer unforced uhs and uhms than did the moderators, professional onscreen interlocutors who spoke at the debate almost not at all, by comparison. Harris has learned to replace moments spent gathering thoughts with arm gestures, nods and such. She begins several answers with an innocuous “So…” no doubt to gain a millisecond or so to collect her thoughts. But she is virtually devoid of nonsense syllables.

To be fair, though Trump’s language during the debate was bizarrely disjointed and comically ridiculous and unhinged, he is not a particularly bad “um” and “uh” recidivist. By my count, Donald had eight uhs, which is not awful. But it is not nearly in Kamala’s league.

I don’t entirely know how to analyze this. One of the most intelligent and articulate presidents of our lifetimes, Barack Obama, was an uh factory. Check out this bizarre Letterman clip.

In a related linguistic topic: Both Trump and Harris have adopted the weird habit of pronouncing the article “a” as though it was a hard a — a capital A — all the time. I have noticed this with other pols, including Obama and W. Bush. Someone has convinced these folks that the hard A sounds more grave or dignified, and not, you know, what it really is: pretentious as all get-out. (Harris: “I have A plan…”) Both she and Trump do it constantly. It is their default. And their fault.

Finally, there came the huge moment where, naked in my cold dining room, my arm hairs standing at attention, I discovered Trump’s gigantic, horrific, campaign-assassinating error of indecency and hypocrisy that would forever lose him all the women’s votes all over the country, and apparently only I had found it. It was kind of easy to miss because of the herky-jerky, topic veering delivery with jarring asides.

At one point, he said the following, verbatim, in answering a question about his wacko theory that Harris has been coy about her blackness: “All I can say is I read where she was not black, that she puts out — and, I’ll say that — and then I read that she was black, and that’s okay…”

WHAT? SHE “PUTS OUT”???

For city-dwelling teenage males of my and Trump’s generation, “she puts out” was a sleazy and demeaning description of certain girls and young women. It means she is sexually loose.

There in my dining room, I got all excited! Trump’s worst error! I began jumping around in joy, my scrotum flapping in the downdraft from the ceiling fan!

Alas, after I had some sleep, and a couple of cups of hot coffee, I re-listened. The reason no one had noticed it, or made a big deal of it if they had noticed it, is it’s pretty clear Trump was not consciously implying a stain on Ms. Harris’s “virtue.” With characteristic ineptitude, he was trying to give voice to the lie that she had initially “put out” the story that she was not black. At least I think so. He’s adolescent enough, but not smart or verbally skillful enough, to have subliminally suggested that thing.

So.

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Tonight, of course, is the vice-presidential debate, to which I am very much looking forward, for reasons we all know. In light of that, I want to tell you a story. Literally, it is a short story. This is an unusual Gene Pool offering, so I have to preface it in detail.

I read a remarkable short story at least 30 years ago. I believe (but am not sure) it was in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. I loved it and never forgot the plot. What I have forgotten is the name of the author, the title of the story, the names of the characters, and some of the super-fine details. For these reasons, with an assist from my online incompetence, I have been unable to find it anywhere. Like me, EQMM is now an ancient, doddering enterprise, and it warns readers that it might take them six months to respond to emailed inquiries.

And so, I am going to do something odd, but at least I will make it transparently odd: I am going to summarize the story as best I remember it; in the interests of clarity and readability, I am going make up some small details I don’t recall — names, places, precise dialog, etc. I believe I have nailed the plot exactly. (I fully expect that a more tech-savvy reader will find the original story within 48 hours. If so, I will link to it, in a subsequent Gene Pool, and you can all judge both my memory and the earnestness of my efforts at fidelity.)

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The story is about a guy named Chester MacPherson. It takes place in roughly 1990 or so, though the precise time period is irrelevant. Chester is something of a homely old fuddy-duddy, a salt-of-the-earth Midwesterner with an amiable if corny demeanor. He is not dumb; he can tell a joke and has a comforting heartland presence about him. He is a middle-of-the-road consensus-seeking U.S. senator who has just been elected vice president of the United States, having been chosen as a running mate by the new president purely for political reasons: During the election cycle, the presidential candidate was perceived as a young, good looking, charismatic, eloquent, knowledgeable, preposterously oversexed, personally reckless roue, and his advisers persuaded him to choose for his running mate a person as stolid and solid and boring as he was not.

Just months after the inauguration, the new president fulfills his Kennedyesque destiny and, recklessly flying solo in his one-engine Piper Cub, accidentally encounters the side of a mountain. To the silent relief of a substantial portion of the population, the solid old reliable good-natured boring non-pilot MacPherson becomes president.

Not long afterwards, there is trouble in The Far East, caused by China, which has chosen as its president a young, brash charismatic, megalomaniacal madman. We’ll call him General Xiang. Xiang is determined to achieve global domination. As the impulsive, hot-headed leader of a nuclear power, he represents one of the gravest threats to peace that the world has known.

One of Xiang’s most melodramatic bluster-stunts is that from time to time he publicly challenges foreign leaders to duels to the death, challenges that are always ignored but which are regarded as bold masterstrokes to the Chinese people. And one day he does this to Chester MacPherson, president of the United States.

That night, Chester is in the White House living quarters, stewing over his customary half-glass of Bud Lite and macaroon. Mildred walks in. Mildred is the first lady. She, too, is salt-of-the-earth and of the heartland, and boring.

“What’s the matter, honey?” she asks.

Chester doesn’t answer, just stares at the beer and then across the room at his generous collection of Precious Moments porcelain figurines.

Silence descends.

“You’re not, she says. It is more of a plea than a question.

“I am,” he says. “I am going to accept the challenge.”

Customarily, in duels, the person being dared to defend his honor is entitled to specify the circumstances: How the confrontation will be carried out, with what weapons, etc. Pistols at 25 paces, turn and shoot on the count of three, or whatever.

Mildred knew her husband better than anyone else in the world did. She knew it would be pointless to argue.

“How are you going to do it?”

“The way my great-uncle Merle fought the cattle rustlers.”

Silence.

“I was afraid of that,” Mildred said. A tear sneaked from her eye. It was the only tear she would shed during the whole, ensuing drama. Mildred was stolid, too.

—

The duel was accepted. Date and place and terms of engagement were set. At that point Gen. Xiang knew he had no choice but to accept, lest he seem a coward.

And so, on the day of the duel, the two men met in a neutral country where dueling was allowed, in a room with a cheap card table in the middle, and two chairs, facing each other. Each dueler was given a double-barreled shotgun, to be pointed at the other’s head. They sat four feet apart.

The countdown would begins at “ten.” At zero, each man would fire. Each man had his “second,” another man, standing to the side. Each second had a shotgun pointed at the opposing dueler. MacPherson’s second was Kayvon Jones, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, an Army guy. Should either of the two duelists fire early, the victim’s second would kill the transgressor. Those were the rules. All legal.

The two men took their seats and aimed their weapons. The seconds were standing, shotguns raised and pointed. The countdown began. At “five” MacPherson stared into Xiang’s eyes, and knew that Xiang would lose.

At “two,” Xiang put his weapon down, stood up, and began pontificating for the news cameras, and to the world, about how this had been a nonsense challenge, how insane and reckless the imperialistic Americans were, and so forth. On the American side, Kayvon Jones walked up to his boss, pounded his chest in triumph, and then wept on his shoulder.

MacPherson had explained his thinking only to Mildred — in America, he was easily replaced, probably by someone more deserving and competent than himself. Xiang was one of a kind, a terrible kind, and could not be replaced by anyone with similar recklessness.

The predictable occurred: Xiang lost face within the entire Eastern world. He was summarily deposed, and the geopolitical crisis was averted.

—

I think you know why I told you that story. I think that when push comes to shove, Tim Walz might just prove to be a Chester MacPherson.

==

Finally, Today’s Gene Poll: Which of these five would be the coolest question tonight for JD Vance:

1. Divan, loveseat, or sectional?

2. The FUCK is wrong with you?

3. Do they not have donuts on your home planet, where life forms have to choose among them?

4. Now that your wife has pumped out your kids, why do you keep her around?

5. Should votes by childless women count only 3/5ths of other people’s votes?

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We have now reached the Real-Time segment of the Gene Pool, where I will respond to your real-time questions and observations. Some of the Q’s and O’s that have arrived so far are in response to my call in the Weekend Gene Pool for ways in which you are a one-off — the one and only person in a category. They would involve something about you, such as something you may have done or witnessed. Too many of you reported that your uniqueness was your name (mine, too, as I reported) but that distinction quickly grew threadbare as I was reviewing the many, many dozens of entries.

Keep sending in questions and observations during the chat, about that or today’s posts, above, or anything at all. I’ll get to as many of them as I can, in real time. Send them here:

And finally, you have reached that coveted point in the proceedings where I beg you for money. I usually try to creatively tart this up with different funny, ironic self-deprecating gags, but today, for the first time, I am going to use the deadly bland verbiage that Substack provides all its hosts, no doubt certified effective by focus groups and such. Most of the hosts use it. Let’s see how that works. Brace yourself. Here it comes.

Okay, here we go.

Q: I am, as far as I know, the only person to have slept on an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island in the sea. Seeing those triple-recursive islands on Glover Island in Grand Lake on Newfoundland on a map, I made my way there by bus, train, ferry, hitchhiking, hiking, and inflatable boat, and spent days at the inner lake, camped on one of the islands. (Glover Island itself is an island on an island, and larger than Washington DC; I was the only human on the island.) 

I follow such geographies pretty closely, and have heard of no one else camping on any other such islands, which are all pretty out of the way.  This is the place.  – Josh Calder.

A: Absolutely awesome. You win the one-off prize, which is this internationally coveted top mention in the Gene Pool.

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Q: I can twiddle my thumbs in opposite directions. Everyone else just twirls them the same way. Based on anecdotal conversations and observations, I'm the one. –Geoff  

A: I tried and cannot even get them started in different directions. I am impressed, sort of.

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This is Gene.  Have you seen this spectacular story about Derrick Anderson, Republican candidate for congress in Virginia?   He is unmarried, but posed for several campaign photos with his friend’s pretty wife and their adorable children! 

This indelibly reminds me of this wonderful song, “My Girlfriend Who Lives In Canada” from the saucy puppet stage play Avenue Q.   It’s only a minute long. Listen to it.

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TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this on an email: Just click on the headline in the email and it will deliver you to the full column online. Keep refreshing the screen to see the new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post.

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Q: Last week Gene W wondered whether I have a soul.  As an agnostic, I can say that I wonder too.  I'm pretty sure that one way of putting the answer is this:  I have a soul if and only if Gene has a soul.

Assuming we both have souls, I will say that my reasoning for considering the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics as being even worse than the 2024 Chicago White Sox is a soulful baseball reason.  Gene says that a loss is a loss (true), and the 2024 White Sox had more than anyone since 1900 (also true), and I respect that.

My standard, however is the Little Kid standard.  Imagine 2 little kids, each going with friends and/or family to their first baseball game, randomly selected from either the 2024 White Sox season or the 1916 As season. The kid taken to the White Sox game had about a 75% chance of coming home disappointed because their team lost (.251 or so win percentage).  The kid taken to the As game had a 76.5% chance of coming home disappointed (,235 win percentage).

To me (who remembers going for the first time to a Senators game about 1957 and watching them lose), that is why a person with a soul can go with the percentages. –Ken Gallant

A: That was a gallant response, Ken.  I concede you have a soul.   The point here is that the media, which decides these things, had set “number of losses in a season” as the line of demarcation for badness.  I honored that.   Two months after I had first done it, but with greater skill and depth than I showed, The Athletic, a subsidiary of the NYT, ran an excellent article using the same standard. 

I would add that although the challenge involved teams playing in the “modern era,” which dates from 1900 up, a more fitting delineation might have been “the long-ball era,” which began in roughly 1920, with the arrival of Babe Ruth.   The game before that was very different – in a way, incomparable.  For example, in 1916, the year of the Terrible Athletics, the MLB home run champion, the King of Clout, had all of TWELVE homers (Wally Pipp).    Two players batted .370 or higher, something that hasn’t happened, I believe, since 1939.

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Q: A friend of mine was ADAMANT that Trump slutshamed Kamala Harris during the debate and I was like, wait, what did I miss?? She pointed out that he said "that she put out" and I was fairly adamant in my response - in fact I couldn't believe I was actually defending Donald Trump against accusations of slutshaming, because the likelihood of him doing it is decidedly nonzero - but no, I agree with you, Gene, I really don't think that's what he meant. He meant, "She was black, [which she said in statements] that she put out." He's inarticulate and gross, but no, logically and rhetorically, he was not accusing her of sleeping around. Again - not that he wouldn't, even during a Presidential debate - but that's not what he was saying. -Sarah Walsh

A: Yeah, sigh, I know. He’s just an inarticulate arsehole.

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Q: In the Weekend Gene Pool, you told the story of going to a brothel and leaving a $20 bag inside a zipped-up bag that you left with the “concierge.” Did he steal the $20?

A: He did not.   Here is the anecdote: 

During the Democratic National Convention at Madison Square Garden, I dropped by the dirtiest, sleaziest midtown brothel I could find. It was for a story in which I tried (but failed) to get New Yorkers to act stereotypically by fleecing a naive out-of-towner in various ways. (I was wearing a campaign button suggesting I was a delegate from Iowa.)

At the house of ill repute, I asked the vaseline-haired gent at the front desk if I could “check my bag” with him while I went up to see the lady. He said sure. The bag had a $20 bill in there, visible right at the top if you unzipped it. Upstairs, I merely talked to the lady for 15 minutes, which clearly befuddled her; she kept urging me to at least accept a Boebert, though she didn’t call it that at the time.

It was one of several ways I tried to get New Yorkers to fleece me, and for almost all of my trip, none succeeded.  I also left a $20 bill under the bed of my hotel room, partially visible but, by appearances, apparently unnoticed by me.  The maid did not take it.   She did push it a little deeper under the bed, but that’s not stealing, exactly.   It all was working perfectly for the story – the unexpected is always the best story – until the very end, when I took a cab to the airport.  

I gave the cabbie a slip of paper, with “La Guardia airport” written on it in a foreign-looking hand.  I gave him a $50 bill and asked, in a heavy eastern European accent “Is enough?”    The cabbie, who assumed I knew nothing about New York, drove me up into the Bronx, back down to Brooklyn, and finally to LaGuardia.   It should have been a $10 cab fare, but he just pocketed the $50 and smiled, said that covered it, and wished me a good flight home. 

That was also good for the story: An unexpected, ironic gift at the end.  This story got me my next, bigger job, at The Detroit Free Press. 

-

Q: Regarding your anecdote about prostitutes: 

In a different way, prosecutors often see prostitutes and talk to them because they commonly constitute the bribe given to politicians.A fellow in my office, prosecuting a high government official who received bribes, including a prostitute, had to go to the Netherlands to retrieve the prostitute to testify at trial. Her name was Miss Van Cleanput. (Really, although I am unsure of the spelling.)

She agreed to travel to the U.S., provided that she would fly first class each way and stay in a luxury hotel. My friend was disappointed that he flew in coach while she was in the first class section.

She was in the U.S. for a few weeks, staying in or near Capitol Hill. When it came time for her to return, she insisted on staying (which was not possible). She said that she could earn more money on Capitol Hill in one night that she earned in a month in the Netherlands. 

– Barry Blyveis 

A: Excellent.  

Q: There is one other person in the United States with the same first, middle, and last name as mine---and he’s a registered sex offender .So my claim to one-ness? I’m the only person with my full name in the country who is NOT a registered sex offender.

A: Thank you.  Perfect.

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Q: A recent Google search I found a news story from 2022 where a woman named Lori Petterson whipped out a gun in during a parking lot dispute. So although I can say I have been in parking lot altercations (usually screaming at people stealing the spot I have been waiting for), I am the only Lori Petterson I can find on Google search who hasn't been arrested for threatening people with a gun in a store parking lot. 

A: Good for you!

—

Q: “Put out” likely not a planned way to send a message, but what Freud would have called a slip. Trump hardly knows what he is saying, but most of us have parts of our brain that generates our speech and is close to being automatic. — G4B

A: Is this unconscious brain that nimble? I doubt it.

—

Q: I have a one-off.   I delivered our daughter in the backseat of our car while our family doctor babysat our two year old son. Our family doctor lived next door in Bryn Mawr. My wife’s water broke just as “ 60 Minutes” was beginning ( tick tick tick). As pre-arranged, I ran our boy next door to Dr. Bob’s then we took off for the small birthing center about a mile away, having alerted the mid-wives  call center that we were on our way.

We got to the birthing center parking lot first, our daughter arrived next and the midwives arrived third. All this occurred before Andy Rooney’s commentary aired.

A: So you left a genuine qualified licensed medical expert, in order to do the delivery yourself!  Excellent.

—

This is Gene.   I really want this to be true. 

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Q: I am not unique. I am an amalgam of many things, some mundane as dirt, others not so common. The particular permutation of human characteristics that comprise me may be rare, but I am not aware of any one individual fact which makes me singular. Some might find this a depressing revelation, but personally I think it just means the pressure’s off. — Sam Mertens

A: Noted, Sam. But you might be selling yourself, and your uniqueness, short. For example, you may well be the only person ever to have written: “The particular permutation of human characteristics that comprise me may be rare, but…”\

—

Q: This is Michael from Germany again: Sorry, Geoff is not the only "opposite direction" thumb twiddler. I figured out how to do it when I was a kid/teenager, and can still recreate the motion today. It's not nearly as "elegant" as "normal" twiddling, but anyone who spends an iota of time on something like this clearly has no vested interest in being "normal".

A: Thank you, MFG. Let’s not tell Geoff.

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Q: In 2002, I worked at a DC organization that advocated for large shareholders, and corporate CEOs would occasionally drop by to kiss the ring of our director. Michael Eisner, then-CEO of Disney, arrived one morning, stacks of Disney DVDs in hand. Rather than introducing me to him, our famously weird director said, “Deborah, do the witch.” Of course I knew what she meant: a part-time actor, I was known to regale friends with “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too,” accompanied by a surprisingly loud and scary cackle. Well, she was my boss, so I did it. And I became what I believe to be the only person ever to strike Michael Eisner, an affable, loquacious man,  a very powerful man, completely mute. I actually felt sorry for the guy. — Deborah Davidson

A: Thank you.

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Q:  I'd like to think that I'm the only person to have performed surgery on their own scrotum to remove a tick head that had embedded itself there.  I wrote of this episode in an earlier Gene Pool, stating that my only regret was that I hadn't videotaped it.   – Jeff Shirley

A:  Alas, you are not, I was surprised to learn.   The Web is full of such stories, including this one from Men’s Health Magazine, which google retrieves under the title  How to Remove a Tick From Your Balls

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This is Gene. I am calling us down about two minutes early so you can read this, one of the finest newspaper stories you will read. It’s what newspapers are for.

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See you on Thursday, and please keep sending in comments and Questions/Obs.

The Q’s and O’s, which I need, go here: