‘It’z’ only natural to turn over new leaf for ‘03

The new year is a good time for getting rid of stuff that’s worn out or used up, or that we’re just plain tired of.

In that spirit, I’m offering my personal Top 10 list of words and phrases that are prime candidates for the Dumpster as we enter 2003. Some of these have been around a while and others are of recent coinage, but all of them have outlived their usefulness – if they had any to begin with.

No. 10: “Upscale.” Once a somewhat serviceable, though ugly, word, “upscale” has been overused until it’s threadbare. Everything is, or aspires to be, “upscale” these days, from gated communities (see more about “community” below) of million-dollar houses to taco stands.

Time to send “upscale” down the garbage disposal.

No. 9: “Natural.” “Natural” is a word that appears nowadays on the label of virtually every food – e.g., “Mama Marinucci’s All-Natural Old-Fashioned Cajun-Style Spicy Pepperoni Stix.”

Mama’s concoction no doubt is “natural” in the sense that it is manufactured from chemicals that are found in the natural world, but aside from that, the word is meaningless. To the recycling bin with it.

No. 8: “Community.” This word once meant a group of people living in the same geographical area and having certain interests in common. Nowadays it’s the real estate industry’s term for “housing development.”

We have instant “communities” now. Some builder throws up 100 tiny tract houses made of cardboard and Popsicle sticks, and it’s a “new home community.” On the “upscale” end, we have “exclusive golf communities.” (And what’s a “golf community” anyway? Do you have to have a five handicap or better to get in?)

Whatever. Time to send “community” to the landfill.

No. 7: “The post-9/11 world.” In the wake of the terrible events of Sept. 11, 2001, a new world supposedly emerged – “the post-9/11 world.” In the post-9/11 world, everything is utterly different.

That’s the way the pundits and politicians describe it, anyway. For the great majority of us, though, the post-9/11 world seems pretty much the same as the pre-9/11 world.

“The post-9/11 world” is a handy rationalization for politicians who want to start wars, stifle dissent, shred the Constitution and shovel hundreds of billions into pork-barrel defense projects. The rest of us can do just fine without it. Trash it.

No. 6: “Closure.” This word was silly when it first came into vogue several years ago, and it’s downright ridiculous now. “Closure” is what people supposedly want if they’re victims of some crime or injustice – anything from mass murder to slipping on a piece of orange peel in the supermarket.

It’s unclear exactly how “closure” is achieved, except that in most cases, it seems to require the award of a vast sum of money to those desiring it.

In any case, “closure” is a nonsensical word. Toss it.

No. 5: Using “@” for “at.” Once upon a time, the @ symbol was seen only in bills of sale and other business documents – “10 gross Mama Marinucci’s pepperoni stix @ $12.25 per gross = $122.50.” But thanks to the Internet and e-mail it has crept into general usage: “See you @ the pub @ 5,” “Call me @ the office @ 10,” etc.

I guess there’s nothing exactly WRONG with this, but it looks dumb, and “@” is harder to write than “at.” For me, anyway, and this is my list. So there.

No. 4: Using “z” instead of “s” at the end of words. This atrocity got its start in the world of hip-hop music and has spread into the world of kiddy toys and candy. There’s already a swarm of products out there with names like Bratz dolls, Dinky Digz, Rescue Rigz and Chips Ahoy Cookie Barz. I guess putting the “z” on the end is supposed to convey instant “coolness” on otherwise ordinary products.

The big danger is that this practice will infect adult discourse and pretty soon we’ll all be driving carz and drinking in barz and watching movie starz. (In fact, right here in Bend we already have an “adult dance club” called Starz and a downtown restaurant called Marz.)

For God’z sake, stop thiz madnezz before it’z too late!

No. 3: “Weapons of mass destruction.” This is another bit of post-9/11 silliness. “Weapons of mass destruction” are what eeee-veeel nations use to terrorize their neighbors. We are about to go to war with Iraq because it has “weapons of mass destruction,” even though we can’t seem to find any. (Of course our allies have lots of WMDs and we have more WMDs than anybody, but that’s okay because we’re the good guys.)

The problem with this phrase is that it’s essentially meaningless. Like, exactly what IS a “weapon of mass destruction”? Aren’t all weapons “weapons of mass destruction,” once you get beyond the sword-and-spear stage?

I move that “weapons of mass destruction” be scrapped in favor of a more precise description, such as “weapons owned by countries that aren’t nice.”

No. 2: “The (Something) at (Someplace).” I don’t know where or how this trend started, but it passed the point of absurdity years ago. Right here in Oregon we have (among many other examples) The Inn at Spanish Head, The Resort at the Mountain, The Grill at Widgi Creek, The Shops at the Old Mill District and The Bathroom at My House.

Okay, I made the last one up. But seriously: Are these names simply the result of slavish imitation, or are the people who come up with them totally witless? I mean, how hard is it to think of a name for a bunch of shops that’s cleverer than “The Shops”?

Get a thesaurus, guys. This shtick is getting oooooolllllld.

Finally, No. 1: “At the end of the day.” Yet another catchphrase spawned in the wake of 9/11, this means “when all is said and done” or “when it’s all over,” as in: “At the end of the day, what matters is that Saddam gets rid of his weapons of mass destruction.”

We hear “at the end of the day” throughout the day from countless reporters, analysts and pundits, and at the end of the day, we are bloody well sick of it. The end of the year is a great time to get rid of it.

Here’s hoping that your year ended with good cheer and your new year is even better.

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Hand off the ‘joy’ of decorating Christmas tree? Never!

Are you too hassled to handle the holidays? Are you working overtime at the office, logging long hours on the old laptop, growing calluses from holding your cell phone, burning out your Palm Pilot?

Well, for a reasonable fee, there are people who will take a big part of the work out of the season. They’ll get your Christmas tree, put it up and completely decorate it for you.

I swear I am not making this up; I read about it in the papers.

For several years, there have been people who will do your Christmas shopping for you, so I guess this was the next logical step.

In another year or two you’ll probably be able to hire somebody to pick out and buy the presents, wrap them, decorate your tree, decorate your house, choose and address and send your Christmas cards, tuck the kids into bed and read them “The Night Before Christmas” on Christmas Eve and pass out the presents on Christmas morning.

You’ll be able to let the whole season go by without ever lifting your nose out of your spreadsheets.

This is the modern way, folks: Knock yourself out to make enough money to pay somebody else to do the things you could enjoy doing yourself if you weren’t so busy knocking yourself out to make enough money to pay somebody else to do them.

Yup, it’s the modern way.

There’s another phrase for it: It’s nuts.

I mean, kind readers, putting up and decorating the tree is THE WHOLE POINT. It’s the fun part of the process.

I’ve been participating in the putting up and decorating of Christmas trees, man and boy, for more than half a century. During those decades certain hallowed traditions have been passed down through my family from generation to generation.

First, the tree must be real. Artificial Christmas trees are to real Christmas trees as karaoke is to the Metropolitan Opera.

Second, the tree must be as big as possible.

Every year, my father would struggle for hours to get our enormous tree into its stand – not one of those modern high-tech tilt-proof self-adjusting marvels, mind you, but the old-fashioned flimsy, tippy kind where the tree was held in place (in theory) by three skinny bolts.

After the ordeal, wiping the sweat from his brow, he’d announce: “That’s it – next year we’re getting one of those little table-top trees. About two feet high.”

“Um-hum,” my mother would say. She knew better.

Third, the tree must be turned to show its “best side.” In my family this requires the senior male member of the tree-erecting team to lie face-down on the floor, grasping the tree stand and rotating it, while the senior female member of the team observes and directs the turning process.

(NOTE: It is essential that the tree stand be filled with water BEFORE the turning begins; otherwise, the appropriate amount of water will not be spilled on the carpet.)

Normally, the tree goes through seven or eight revolutions before everyone concludes it doesn’t HAVE any “best side” and leaves it in the original position.

Fourth, the angel must go on top of the tree LAST, after all the lights and ornaments. This enables the person placing the angel (traditionally a male) to lean over the decorated tree, teetering like one of the Flying Wallendas on a step ladder, kitchen chair or shaky stool and sending ornaments crashing to the floor in a steady shower of shattering glass.

Inevitably, the top of the tree is deformed, and some minor “adjustments” with pruning shears are required to make the angel stand on it securely.

One memorable Christmas season, while flailing around with the pruning shears, I inadvertently sliced through one of the light strings, causing a shower of sparks, popping a circuit breaker and plunging half the house into darkness.

“DADDY KILLED CHRISTMAS!” our daughter wailed disconsolately. (Our daughter was 24 years old at the time, but that’s a long story.)

Fifth, when the tree is standing in full Christmassy splendor, with the trunk listing 40 degrees to port, the angel listing 49 degrees to starboard, a gallon of water soaking the carpet and half the lights not functioning because of reckless pruning behavior, the entire team must pour a cup of eggnog, stand around the tree and solemnly proclaim: “It’s the best tree ever.”

Here’s hoping your tree, and your Christmas, is the best one ever.

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‘Saddam I Am’: Timely rhyme tells tale of denial

[Note: Last weekend, Iraq delivered to the United Nations a 12,000-page report denying it had weapons of mass destruction. Knowing President Bush does not have the attention span to read 12,000 pages, the Iraqis also provided an executive summary written in the style of the president’s favorite author, Dr. Seuss. I have obtained a copy of this document from an anonymous source deep inside Vice President Dick Cheney’s secret hideout. The complete text follows.]

I am Saddam.
Saddam I am.

I am the ruler of Iraq,
The country that you would attack.

You are Bush.
Bush you are.
The fame of you has spread afar.

You do not like me, Bush, I know.
You would not like me in a show.
You would not like me in the snow.
You simply wish that I would go.

You say I am an evil-doer.
You say I should live in a sewer.

You say I used to slaughter Kurds.
You say that I use naughty words.

You say I have an evil stash
Of weapons of destruction (mass),
Of bombs and missiles, germs and gas.

You say I tried to kill your Pop.
Oh, how I wish that you would stop!

I promise you I have no stash
Of weapons of destruction (mass).

I do not have them near or far.
I did not hide them in my car.
I did not hide them in a bar.

I did not hide them in a hole.
I did not hide them up a pole.

I did not hide them in a grave.
I did not hide them in a cave.

I did not hide them in a dish.
I did not hide them in a knish.

I did not hide them in my coat.
I did not hide them in a goat.

I did not hide them in a trunk.
I did not hide them in my bunk.

I did not hide them anywhere.
In short, they simply are not there.

The inspectors came and looked,
And looked, and looked, and looked, and looked.

They looked high and they looked low,
Every place that they could go.

They looked in every hole and crack,
Each drawer and closet, bag and sack.

They found nothing in a trunk or
Even in my private bunker.

They did not find a single stash
Of weapons of destruction (mass) …
And STILL you won’t get off my a**!

I’ve done all that I can do.
The rest, dear Bush, is up to you.

Please don’t be angry, don’t be sore.
We don’t need to have a war.

Let’s go back to the good old days
When your dad and Reagan sang my praise.

I was your faithful ally then.
Why can’t we be friends again?

I say, let’s let this whole thing drop.
(My best regards to your dear Pop.)

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Before COCC newspaper gets hit Broadside, let’s find dough

The slow-motion train wreck derisively known as the Oregon state budget process has claimed many victims and will claim many more – some of them big and obvious, others small and obscure.

In the second category, put The Broadside, the student newspaper of Central Oregon Community College.

The Broadside hasn’t actually fallen victim yet, but the axe is poised to drop. If the state’s voters don’t approve a temporary income tax increase in January and/or the state’s budget deficit gets worse, COCC will need to cut $3 million from its $22 million annual operating budget. The college already has announced that The Broadside is a prime candidate for the chopping block, along with theater arts.

My knowledge of theater arts extends only about as far as renting DVDs from Blockbuster, so I don’t feel qualified to comment about the merits of that program.

But I do know a little about journalism, and about The Broadside in particular. And I think killing off this almost-50-year-old campus institution would be a damn shame.

Founded in 1953, The Broadside has had a colorful past, to put it mildly. It’s had its ups and downs, good years and bad, and its share of controversy. Back during the Gulf War (the one fought by Poppy Bush), an anti-military cartoon almost sparked a lynch mob.

After that episode the paper went through a turbulent period in which it had a series of advisers, including, for several years, me. (Let me hasten to add that I have no connection with the paper now and do not intend to have any in the future.)

These days, though, the paper seems to have gotten its act together. Under the leadership of adviser Jan Volz, it’s become an attractively laid-out, colorful, competently written tabloid of a dozen pages or so. The masthead lists a student staff of about 20 (roughly 10 times as many as the paper had during my era).

Obviously, the paper means a lot to these people. But a good college newspaper – any good college newspaper – means a lot to the whole college community.

It’s a sounding board for opinions, a source of information about events and policies the off-campus media don’t cover, and a watchdog on the administration.

Maybe more important than all of that, it’s a source of identity for the college. At a college like COCC, where only a handful of students live on-campus and there are no intercollegiate sports, it may well be the ONLY source of identity – the only thing the students, faculty and staff really have in common.

Ron Paradis, COCC’s director of public information, explained that the college itself pays only the Broadside adviser’s salary and benefits, totaling $22,500. (Operating expenses are paid out of the student activity fund, funded with student fees.)

The math is so simple, George W. Bush could do it, probably even without a calculator: $22,500 is roughly one-tenth of 1 percent of COCC’s $22 million budget. And it’s only about seven-tenths of 1 percent of the $3 million COCC says it needs to cut.

Surely the cunning budget-tweakers at COCC should be able to sharpen their pencils and find enough other cuttable expenses – some new software here, some new office furniture there – to make up the $22,500.

Maybe that will actually happen. Paradis said a panel is reviewing the proposed cuts and will come out with a report in a couple of weeks. Maybe it will find a way to save The Broadside.

If not, here’s a thought: There are about 16 news outlets in Central Oregon, counting The Bugle, The Bulletin, the Source, Cascade Business News, KTVZ, the radio stations and the weekly newspapers in outlying Central Oregon communities. What if each of them chipped in a little to pay the adviser and keep The Broadside going?

If the shares were divided equally, we’d be talking about a contribution of exactly $1,406.25 from each news outlet. (Yeah, I had to use a calculator for that one.) I don’t think that’d be enough to drive any of them into bankruptcy court.

And if the media management wasn’t willing to pick up the whole tab, how about if the professional journalists in Central Oregon also kicked in as individuals? There must be at least a couple hundred of us; a contribution of 50 bucks each would raise almost half the needed amount.

Okay, it’s an unorthodox idea – weird, even. But these are weird times we’re living in. With our team in Salem striking out so consistently, the rest of us just might have to step up to the plate.

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Bend’s new flying, flaming artwork has at least one fan

Okay, call me insane, call me an artistic ignoramus, call me a traitor, but I like the Big Red Bird.

The Big Red Bird is “Phoenix Rising,” the sculpture by Frank Boyden that’s been erected in the new traffic roundabout at Galveston and 14th St. in Bend.

For those who haven’t seen it (and it’s well-nigh impossible to miss if you’re anywhere near it) Boyden’s sculpture is a bright-red, stylized rendition of a big bird attached to the top of a shiny metal pole that looks to be about 12 feet high.

The sculpture is supposed to represent the Phoenix, an immortal mythical Egyptian bird that supposedly lived in the desert for 500 years, then consumed itself in fire, and then rose again out of the ashes.

Boyden’s Phoenix is the latest, and most controversial, in a series of artworks that have been appearing in the roundabouts that are sprouting all over Bend. They’re being commissioned and paid for by Art in Public Places, a private, non-profit group.

Over the years, Art in Public Places has placed a lot of art in public places around Bend, some of it controversial and much of it not.

The non-controversial sculptures tend to be realistic – they look more or less literally like what they’re supposed to look like. These include the sculpture of what appears to be two copulating salmon in front of the Bend Public Library, the famous Man and Ducks on Park Bench at the corner of Wall and Franklin streets downtown, and the gaggle of bronze geese in the little park overlooking the Deschutes near Colorado Avenue.

The controversial sculptures tend to be the non-representational ones – those that don’t look like anything in particular, including the Big Shiny Aluminum Boxes at Kenwood School and the Giant Rusty Arches overlooking the Bend Parkway.

The roundabout sculptures follow the same pattern. I haven’t heard any complaints about the realistic grizzly bear near Bend High School or the realistic group of deer in another roundabout.

But the Giant Totem Pole (“Sunrise Spirit Column”) on Mount Washington Drive, the Giant Shiny Letters (“Mount Bachelor Compass”) on Century Drive and – especially – the Big Red Bird have drawn a barrage of flak.

One local letter-to-the-editor writer said the Phoenix sculpture looked like “a chicken with its butt on fire.”

Another described it as a “gargantuan hunting decoy for some extinct variety of giant pink flamingo.”

Angry neighbors of the Big Red Bird besieged the Bend City Council at a recent session, one of them describing the procedure for selecting and placing public art as “Machiavellian.”

The neighbors want to have some sort of say in approving the pieces of art that are placed in their neighborhoods. The city council is mulling over the proposal.

In theory, this looks like a good idea. In practice, it would be a disaster.

It’s been said that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. One hesitates to imagine what art designed by a committee would look like.

The only kind of art that would stand a chance of winning broad neighborhood consensus would be the blandest sort of realistic sculpture. Do we really want Bend’s public places filled with nothing but bronze deer, ducks, salmon, bears and beavers?

Besides, neighborhoods aren’t static; their populations change constantly. Who’s to say that 10 or 20 years from now, the new residents won’t think the sculpture picked by the former residents is an intolerable horror?

By and large, the Art in Public Places folks have done a good job of selecting art for the city, and I think they should be allowed to go on doing it without a lot of meddling by fuss-budget neighbors or politicians.

Meanwhile, why are people getting their panties in a wad over this issue? I mean, it’s not as if any of the art being put in the roundabouts is obscene or anything.

I don’t like all of the sculptures that are going into the roundabouts. For instance, I don’t care very much for the giant totem pole or the big metal compass letters. But, what the heck, that’s just my personal taste. I’m not going to storm City Hall over it.

As for the Big Red Bird, as I said at the beginning, I actually like it. And after they get over the initial shock, my hunch is that most of the neighbors will too. It’s kind of like putting a large new piece of furniture in your living room – it always looks strange at first.

I do think somebody ought to paint that shiny pole some dark color, though.

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Color-coded terror alerts shift with political whims

Yellow alerts. Orange alerts. Blue alerts. FBI warnings being issued. The danger being played up. The danger being played down.

No wonder Americans are jittery these days.

In an effort to clear up some of the confusion and assuage some of the anxiety, this column today will answer some FAQs (that’s “Frequently Asked Questions” for the non-Internet-savvy) about the current state of the WOT (War on Terror) and the whereabouts of OBL (Osama bin Laden) and his cohort of evildoers.

Q: What’s with these color-coded alerts?

A: By presidential directive, George W. Bush established a system of five levels of alerts, each with its own designated color. Green means a “low” level of alert; blue means “guarded”; yellow means “elevated”; orange means “high” and red means “severe.”

Q: How were these colors selected?
A: President Bush picked them out of his Crayola box.

Q: Who is in charge of determining what the alert level is?
A: The attorney general of the United States, John Ashcroft.

Q: Isn’t that the guy who’s afraid of calico cats and covered up the bare boobs on the big aluminum statue of Justice in Washington?
A: That’s him.

Q: The other day the country went to a yellow or “elevated” alert status. Why did that happen?
A: The FBI said it had information that OBL and his thugs were planning a “spectacular,” though unspecified, terrorist attack at some indefinite place and time. Also, a calico cat crossed John Ashcroft’s path on his way to the office that morning.

Q: Speaking of OBL, where is he?
A: Nobody knows, although recently an audiotape appeared which, according to the experts, contains the voice of OBL.

Q: Didn’t he used to be dead?
A: There was much speculation that he was buried under a pile of rubble in the caves of Tora Bora or had been reduced to a cinder by a cruise missile or had died of kidney failure, or perhaps all three, but apparently the reports of his death were greatly exaggerated.

Q: Now that it looks like OBL is alive again, is the Bush administration going to go after him?
A: At the moment the administration is focusing on a different primary objective in the WOT – specifically, getting rid of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Q: But didn’t President Bush say a year ago that capturing OBL was “our number one priority” and that we were going to “bring him back dead or alive”?
A: Yes. But six months later, President Bush said: “I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.”

Q: How do you explain that shift?
A: Presidential priorities are like Central Oregon weather – always changing and totally unpredictable. Next question.

Q: Okay, let’s go back to those color-coded alerts. What are we supposed to do when there’s a yellow alert?
A: We are supposed to be vigilant. We must be on our guard. We must keep our eyes peeled. We must be on the lookout for any suspicious activities or individuals. But we must continue to go about our daily business as usual. Especially shopping.

Q: But if we have no idea where or when the attack is coming or what form it’s going to take, what are we supposed to be on the lookout for?
A: Swarthy men with beards and turbans, calico cats and bare aluminum boobs. Also, if you spot Saddam Hussein in a local coffee shop you should immediately call 911.

Q: You bet I will! So in general terms, what should I do to keep my family and myself safe in these perilous times?
A: Look inside your closets and poke a long stick under your bed before retiring at night to flush out any lurking terrorists. Make sure your doors and windows are closed and locked at all times. Leave the front porch light on. Don’t pick up hitchhikers. Don’t walk down deserted alleys alone in the dark. Brush after every meal and floss daily. Look both ways before crossing. Never draw to an inside straight.

And above all: DON’T PANIC!

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Dismayed Democrats shouldn’t miss hopeful signals

A strange thing happened in Bend a few weeks ago. More than 700 people came out on a Saturday night to hear a writer talk.

The writer wasn’t a household name like Tom Clancy or Stephen King. She was Barbara Ehrenreich, a freelancer who frequently contributes to Harper’s magazine and other slightly left-of-center publications.

Ehrenreich’s latest book is “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.” To research it, she spent a year working a variety of low-paying jobs. The idea was to find out whether it’s possible to live on what a typical working-class person in America earns. (Short answer: No.)

The Bend audience was enthusiastic, laughing and applauding Ehrenreich’s jabs at the Bush administration and America’s CEOcracy and giving her a loud standing ovation at the close.

The turnout for Ehrenreich was surprising; in this town, it’s tough to pull a crowd of 700 for anything short of the county fair or a high school graduation.

Another surprising thing happened in Bend on the same day: A rally against the threatened war in Iraq drew a crowd of about 250. (A counter-rally supporting the war attracted two – count `em, two – demonstrators.)

To put these happenings in context, remember that Bend is not exactly Berkeley. Or even Eugene.

As Democrats in Oregon and elsewhere contemplate the clobbering the GOP gave them Nov. 5, they might want to give some thought to these events in Bend, and to other events that tend to fly under the radar of the pollsters and political pros.

The evidence is far from conclusive, but the pattern suggests a possible turning of the political tide.

Item: Millions of Americans buying Ehrenreich’s best-selling book, and thousands turning out to hear her speak in big cities and small ones.

Item: Millions more buying populist gadfly Michael Moore’s recent best-seller, “Stupid White Men.”

Item: Hundreds of thousands taking part in anti-war rallies in cities from New York to Bend.

If all these folks are wild-eyed radicals, there are a heck of a lot more radicals out there than the pollsters are telling us.

Another piece of driftwood on the tide: Oregon voters approving a hike in the state’s minimum wage. The margin was razor-thin, but the marvel is that the thing passed at all, with its opponents enjoying a 2-to-1 spending edge.

And another piece of driftwood (actually this one looks more like an aircraft carrier): Green candidate Ralph Nader picking up nearly three million votes in the 2000 presidential election.

As Democrats ponder their future, they’ll be torn by conflicting advice. The Clinton-Tom Daschle-Terry McAuliffe-DLC wing of the party (motto: “We’re Really Republicans Too”) will argue that the only hope for salvation lies in pushing the party even farther to the right.

(Some right-wing pundits and politicians, curiously, are giving the same advice. Hello? Since when did the likes of Trent Lott and Rush Limbaugh start worrying about the welfare of the Democratic Party?)

On the other side are those who say the party needs to rediscover its soul. It needs to remember it is the party of FDR and Harry Truman and JFK. And it must do more than invoke their names; it must embrace their principles.

If a progressive tide is rising in America and the Democrats can catch it, they can ride it to success in 2004 and far beyond.

If they don’t, they’ll more than likely stay right where they are – stranded on the political mudflats.

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Benefits of global warming only starting to heat up

On the issue of global warming, right-wingers have executed more twists, flips and spins than Kristi Yamaguchi performing the long program in the Olympics.

The original spin – remember? – was that global warming didn’t exist. It was just a silly fantasy concocted by envirowackos who wanted to wreck the economy. (Exactly why the envirowackos wanted to wreck the economy and thereby destroy their own jobs, investments and so on was never made particularly clear. But let that pass.)

After a while, as the evidence of global warming kept piling up, the right-wingers did a nifty double-toe loop and announced that, while global warming apparently was happening, there was no evidence to prove it was caused by burning fossil fuels, so we shouldn’t worry about driving our 10-miles-per-gallon SUV two blocks to the 7-11 to pick up a pack of chewing gum.

Finally, facing overwhelming proof that – just as the envirowackos had always said – global warming WAS real and it WAS caused by our fossil fuel addiction, the right-wingers pulled off a dazzling quadruple Axel.

The official line now (as articulated by the Bush administration and others) is: “Okay, global warming is real, it’s caused by human activity, but we’re not gonna do a damn thing about it – so GET USED TO IT, suckers!”

This in-your-face attitude was most recently acknowledged at an international conference on climate change held in New Delhi. The conference concluded that instead of trying to stop or reduce the warming, we’d be better off focusing our attention on ways to adapt to it.

“By building capabilities to deal with climate change, we’ll be much better off than by just paying attention to global warming,” said one Myron Ebell, an official of an anti-environment group.

Before giving in to abject despair, let’s look on the bright side of this.

Sure, we’re going to see productive farmlands and forests turn into deserts. Sure, we’re going to see oceans rise and coastal areas inundated. Sure, we’re going to see the coral reefs die and the polar ice caps melt and hundreds of species of animals and plants go extinct. Sure, we’re going to have a lot more droughts and floods and hurricanes and typhoons and tornadoes.

But instead of fixating on these minor inconveniences, let’s consider the splendid opportunities – especially for Central Oregon. For instance:

June 17, 2010: With the Capitol building entirely under water except for the gilded pioneer statue, the Oregon Legislature voted today to relocate the state capital to Redmond.

Just before being evacuated by helicopter, the lawmakers also voted to replace the beaver with the scorpion as the state animal, and the Douglas fir with the Saguaro cactus as the state tree.

Aug. 15, 2012: Mount Bachelor Inc. today announced plans to spray the entire mountain with a thick white coating of Teflon.

“In the absence of natural snow, which we unfortunately have not seen in eight years, this will give skiers and snowboarders the opportunity to enjoy the mountain year-round,” resort officials announced in a press release. “And as an extra benefit, all runs on the mountain will now be rated as triple diamonds.”

Oct. 6, 2013: Hoping to capitalize on the inundation of Baja California, the city council of Madras voted today to rename the city “Cabo San Madras.”

“Vacationers who miss the sunshine, sandy beaches and warm waters of the old Cabo can enjoy the same things at our resorts on the Gulfo de Chinooko (formerly Lake Billy Chinook),” Madras Mayor Dan Ahern told reporters.

The mayor said an ambitious renovation program, planned to coincide with the name change, would replace existing downtown buildings with quaint adobe structures and remove the paved streets and sidewalks in favor of a “natural” dust surface.

“So come on down to Cabo San Madras, everybody,” the mayor concluded. “The hospitality is warm and the cerveza is cold!”

Nov. 5, 2014: A consortium of developers today announced plans to create “a totally new concept in golf communities” in the desert between Bend and Sisters.

The new gated community of 28 homes will be built around a Jack Nicklaus-designed 18-hole golf course that will be uniquely challenging, according to the developers, Tarantula Properties LLC.

“To our knowledge, this will be the first course in America that’s all sand traps,” spokesman Randy P. Spittel said. “The tees and greens will be little patches of Astroturf about 10 feet square, with nothing between them but sand. No grass, no trees, no nothing. Just sand.”

Spittel said advance sales of lots in the new “Desert Oasis” development have been brisk, despite the fact that the site has no water supply and residents will have to bring in their own water by mule train.

“We’ve had a great deal of interest from former residents of the Dead Zone (California), who see this as their last opportunity to own a little piece of paradise,” said Spittel.

“The next idea on the drawing board,” he added, “is a floating golf course near Eugene that will be all water hazards.”

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