The Bergsten Belly & the Newton Butt

My older sister, Kathy, was the first to complain.  In our common lineage are the Bergstens, late of Sweden with some stray Norwegianism in the mix.  Martin begat Elsie, who begat Arline, who begat Kathy and the rest of us.  Martin, though I barely recall the old gent, apparently carried the dominant pot-belly gene  I understand there is a genealogy extant in Sweden which traces the Bergsten Belly back to the Vikings.  We all have it, except perhaps Steve, who we think was conceived of a donor mother.

No matter how you try to suppress it, the Bergsten Belly piggles and jiggles just below the waistline, spoiling the profile and making us - OK, some of us - look like old Uncle George, who was also begat by Martin and who was afflicted by the family problem even more grievously than was Elsie.

Of course, it takes two to tango, which brings us to the Newton Butt.  It's called that because it came upon us through the Newton side of the family, but it ought really be called the Sears Butt, since Nana Newton, its most prominent - if you will - victim, was a Sears.  So Miles began Otis, who begat Violet (that's Nana N), who begat Everett, who along with Arline of Bergsten begat the rest of us, again with the possible exception of Steve. The Newton Butt in its most pristine form protrudes rearward from the hips like a permanently hitched U-Haul trailer.  You could store all your junk handily in the trunk.

Kathy, of course, complains of having the deadly combination of both Bergsten Belly and Newton Butt.  Donna, on the other hand, hasn't raised the issue, and the rest of us see no profit in inquiring.  She dresses well, so who knows what goes on there.  As for Kathy, I take her at her word and shut up (until - God help me - now).  Steve, the apparent spawn of a different gene pool, is built like a stick, and the rest of us secretly hate him.

The point of this anatomical exploration is the tragic imbalance that arises if, like your humble reporter, you lack the Newton Butt but instead have two Bergsten Bellies.  Keep in mind the function of Bergsten-Newton syndrome is to provide a couple of cushy hooks to hang your belt on, thereby reliably holding your pants up. As I age and my personal condition approaches perigee, I find that the Bergsten Belly functions admirably to support the front of my jeans.  The deficient butt, however, doesn't hold up its end - if you will - of the bargain.  That's right - the Bergsten Belly, in the absence of the Newton Butt, causes posterior droopy drawer syndrome, which in its final stages begets Plumber's Crack.

Maybe I'll get me some of those swell padded skivvies I see advertised in the back of certain magazines.  Or implants - yeah, that's the ticket.

Newt

PS: That bit at the beginning about Kathy being my "older sister" should not be confused with a claim that she is older than I, because she may not be.  Our relative ages are of no significance.  What matters is that, of my two sisters, Kathy is my older sister.

N

The Weather Is Fine Today

I moved to Florida for the weather.  There were other reasons, but I forget what they were. In case I forget to mention it, it's sunny, 68F and balmy here in the Tampa Bay area on this Monday after Christmas.

For the first few months after I left Connecticut - I left in mid-October 2008 - I began most phone calls back north with the weather report.  "Hi, it's 78 and sunny here."  The first few times I did that, I garnered the desired expressions of envy, tempered with shared joy at my sweet circumstance.  Of course, that soon changed.  I have learned that short-term pleasure at the good fortunes of others rarely survives serious snow.  Eventually, the bloom falls off the rose, and people start to snarl.  I started getting responses like, "Shut your pie-hole. My car is in a snow bank."

Being the sort of guy who is sensitive to the plight of the less fortunate, I eased back on the weather routine.  "Hi," I'd say, "How's Fido?"

And my Northern Correspondent would reply, "Fine.  I suppose the weather is great where you are?"

Not wanting to lie too blatantly, I replied, "Um, it's nice, I suppose."

Silence descended.  I could sense the battle raging in my NC's soul.  Eventually, perhaps inevitably, unable to stifle the fatal question, my NC would crumble and ask, "How nice?" 

"74 and breezy."

"Shut your goober-trap.  Fido froze his thing to the fire hydrant last night and we needed the fire department to free him."

"Gracious!" I would exclaim, as sympathetically as I could.  "I hope he's OK?'

"Well, he'll never be a father again."

Eventually, I learned to temper the truth for the benefit of the bereft.  "Oh, it's cold and grey down here," I'd say.

"How cold?"

"58."

"Shut it.  My nose hair iced up while I was jump-starting the car this morning."

There really is no adequate response to that.

To help my northerners heal, I called often last summer to report the weather.  "94 and humid as hell," I'd say.  My NC invariably felt comforted that it was only 85 in Hartford.  I always neglected to mention that I was at the pool with a pina colada and that everything here is air conditioned to a fare-thee-well.  "Just miserable here," I'd say. "Be glad you're up north."

So here it is December again.  Life is so sweet.  But don't tell that to my NCs.

Newt

When Blogging Infects the Ego

Sitting at a computer blogging about whatever I happen to be thinking this morning is undeniably an exercise of ego, an electronic form of mental masturbation -- fun to do but not much fun to watch.  Personally, I like it.  Blogging, I mean.  I have decided to do it more, even if I go blind.

Each opening day of a certain law school class in Connecticut, a learned professor  began with the question: "How many of you intend to pursue a career in professional writing?"  Thirty fresh faces, as yet unscarred by the horror of what they were proposing to do for the rest of their lives, routinely came up blank.  The still-human folks behind the faces no doubt wondered whether they had signed up for the wrong course. Silence begets fear of grade deflation, so the wise professor sat silent, waiting.  Tick-tock.

After enough tick-tocks, one student, reliably and timorously, always raised a hand.  About shoulder high.  Emboldened, others followed, until the whole class finally tumbled to the idea that all of them were in fact planning a career in professional writing.  Lawyers write.  They get paid to write.  Some think before they write; others do not.  Some write well, others do not.  The ones who do not write well beget lawyer jokes and deservedly so.

So, yes, I'm a lawyer (DISCLAIMER ALERT - whoop, whoop, whoop!) but not here in Florida.  I practice law in Connecticut.  Ask me for legal advice here in the sunshine state and plan on being politely brushed off.  The local bar casts interloper lawyers into dungeons and chains.  So I don't interlope.  Even my Connecticut practice is becoming an occasional thing, ever since I came to my senses and bagged it for this sunnier clime.

But I arrived with a lifetime of writing prejudices and nowhere to park them.  Well, technically, it's not a lifetime yet.  Just a little hyperbole there; so sue me.  Anyway, I used to teach baby lawyers how to write like professionals.  Short, simple declarative sentences, strong verbs, active voice, that sort of thing.  Some got it; others will write about the party of the first part, being subrogated to the rights of the party of the second part, for the rest of their regrettable lives.  These issues are no longer my concern.

But I come here with a few firmly held beliefs:

• "Legal writing" is a euphemism for "crappy, unintelligible writing."   My friend Mark Dubois, who still teaches baby lawyers in Connecticut, will steal this line for his next class.  I hope.

• Good writing is universal.  It is sufficient to writing about the law, about what I did on my summer vacation, about an old man and the sea.

What I have been doing here in Eye of Newt has mostly fallen into the "summer vacation" essay genus.  Somewhere in another venue, I am writing about old men and the sea.  And Lord knows I have written enough about the law, although, like Vicodin, that last is hard to put down entirely.  Still there remains, what to do with the teaching gene that has so disrupted my life.

Enter Shaking the Writing Tree.  Yup, another blog tossed upon the blog-o-heap.  SWT differs from my earlier teaching experiences in that it does not seek to tell others what to do.  I admit to a little regret in this regard.  Teaching law students was sweet in that, if students failed to do what I told them, I flunked their asses and ruined their pathetic little lives.  My readers - if I ever develop any - will be made of tougher stuff.  I hope.

Instead, SWT discusses why I do what I do.  The subjects will range from "Arrant Pedantry Up With Which I Do Not Put" to "Why Adverbs Stink."  Responsible opposing viewpoints will be encouraged.  I hope you enjoy it.  There are links to Shaking the Writing Tree elsewhere in this blog, and here's another one:  www.shakingthewritingtree.blogspot.com

Newt

Santa Visits Kuwait

Santa isn't just for those of us who I hope are at peace. I received this from my son, Erik, who is with an army helicopter maintenance unit in the Great Sandy (See Army of One, August 2009).

Merry Christmas to all

Newt

I'm Staying Here

I met with Susie and Bill today to learn how to make my blog work for me. Susie has the advantage of being much younger than I, so she naturally understands blogs and twits better than I. Actually, I understand twits all too well; it's tweets that leave me puzzled and forlorn. Bill, on the other hand, is nearly as old as I, so understands virtually nothing about this crap. I find that endearing. It's not hard to tell who's who: see Susie's blog at http://harleymay.livejournal.com/ See Bill's at http://www.badadvicecolumn.com . Susie, of course, is also considerably better-looking. (Don't ask me why one website is linked to this post and one is not. I have no freaking idea. Neither does Bill.)

Now, in violation of the peculiar sensibilities of the on-line community, of which I am now a de facto member -- I say "de facto" so my old lawyer friends will see that I can still talk the talk -- anyway, I've probably outed Susie by mentioning her name in the same sentence as her Harley May blog address, so let's pretend I just made up the name "Susie" for this post. You with me, Bill?

I came home from our meeting fired up by my observation that webpress.com makes it much easier for readers to post comments and subscribe to its blogs than does blogspot, which is where you are reading at the moment. If you try to comment on this site, I'm afraid, you will face the Medusa that calls itself Google. Only by leaping through bewildering hoops -- much like my SSA hoops in the preceding post -- can you actually leave a complaint about the various inanities you find here. Now that I think about it, that's probably a good thing.

I set up a proto-website at webpress and immediately sank so deep in the geek-mire that I couldn't reach my beer. I am humbled. Well, I'm further humbled, I suppose, since I have been humbled so often before. In any event, you won't soon find me on webpress. In fact, I can't find the site myself. It may or may not still exist.

Once this is posted, I'm going to go sign up for a twitter thingamabob. God help us all.

Newt