9/11 images bother some; city begins looking into a policy for art in public places
Now, a replacement for one of these icons has stirred discussion among downtowners and galvanized Knoxville city officials to work on a policy regulating art in public places...
Read the rest here:As always, you should pick up a hard copy of the Voice, so you can read all the other stuff in the paper. If you check the column out in the pulp version, don't be thrown by the "drive-in" in the title; it's "driveway.
If you read this space often, you know I don't usually promote my own stuff beyond posting it here. But this is one of the better pieces I've done in a while. I've had a lot of positive reaction to it. So, I recommend reading it. :)
Saturdays in the Driveway with Dana
…you learn things
by Scott McNutt
They’re odd, the snatches of conversation you overhear on Saturday evening when you’re sitting in an emergency room cubicle with the curtain drawn after they’ve taken your wife to the X-ray room. I suppose I expected to hear dramatic discourse on patients’ traumas, but I learned otherwise. The first dialogue I overheard went like this:
Male voice: "I want yours. It’s so-oooo good!"
Female, slight giggle: "It is, isn’t it?"
Male: "Yeah, I remember how good it was last time."
At this point, I was certain they were talking about an illicit affair, but the conversers quickly shattered that illusion.
Female: "It’s because of the little almond bits they put on it."
Male: "Is that what it was…?"
Upon reflection, I realize it’s possible they were talking about sex, but I’d rather not speculate in that direction.
Right after that, an apparently elderly lady with a lilting voice, apparently being pushed through the corridor in a wheelchair, was reciting, almost as a mantra, "An’ they’s beatin’s, an’ they’s whuppin’s, an’ they’s fightin’, an’ they’s falls, an’ they’s breaks, an’ they’s all kinds of things cane hap’en. Is’t gawn t’be a lively weekend for you’ns?…" Her voice trailed away as the rhythmic clatter of her transport faded.
I heard others exchanges, about paperwork and home life, but nothing medical. Then there was quiet, just the little mechanistic hums and thrums you hear in a hospital. Then Dana, my wife, came back, and we waited to learn if she had broken her left wrist when she fell in the middle of our driveway.
Here’s something else I learned from this experience: If you see your wife prone in the driveway, don’t assume she intends to be that way. I was crossing the field opposite our house when I looked up and saw Dana lying there. At first I thought she was trying to look up under our back porch, because carpenter bees had been eating holes in it a few days before. It actually took me a couple of seconds to realize that she probably didn’t mean to be lying in the driveway.
The problem, too, is that I’m half-deaf. Dana told me later she was yelling for me, but I never heard her, not even when I was closing the distance between us at a fast run. (She’s at least half-deaf, too, so conversations in our household are generally only partially understood, always incompletely heard and often comical. A recurring exchange sounds something like this:
"mmmfl to the flllmeruhl, hrrrun smsmsmmms, ssslllll you?"
"What?"
"I said, ‘mmmfl to the flllmeruhl, hrrrun smsmsmmms, ssslllll you?’"
"WHAT???"
Screaming, "I SAID, ‘MMMFL TO THE FLLLMERUHL, HRRRUN SMSMSMMMS, SSSLLLLLL YOU?’"
Screaming back, "ARE YOU SAYING, ‘MMMFL TO THE FLLLMERUHL, HRRRUN SMSMSMMMS, SSSLLLLLL YOU?’"
"….Never mind.")
In the ER, the attendant came and told us that the ligaments were badly sprained and the hand deeply bruised and offered Dana a prescription for some good painkillers, for which Dana was extremely grateful. My wife’s life has been such that she knows the value of good painkillers. If someone offers her means whereby she can significantly reduce the "pain" part of a painful experience, Dana is genuinely appreciative.
Another attendant came and wound an Ace bandage around her left wrist and hand, teaching us another important lesson as he did so. "Begin the wrap at the point on the body farthest from the heart and wind toward it, to avoid cutting off circulation," he said. Dana approved the bandage, because it looked professionally done, plus, it was inconspicuous.
Avoiding cutting off circulation in Dana’s hand seemed like sound medical advice, so we avoided doing that each time we changed the bandage. The result, however, was a looser, sloppier-looking bandage. We could never make it look as professional as the attendant did. Happily, in a few days, Dana’s hand felt better, so she stopped wearing the sloppy bandage. She visited an orthopedist, who confirmed that there was no bone damage, but she rejected the orthopedic wrist brace he gave her on the grounds that it was clunky, ugly and conspicuous.
So Dana’s recovering, but some may wonder: Why did she fall down? The answer is, shedoesn’t know. Her right ankle gave out, which it has done on previous occasions, but this time when it did she pitched violently forward. Consequently, Dana says, even as she was falling, the thought went through her mind, "If any of the neighbors are watching, they’re thinking, ‘There’s that crazy woman, throwing herself on the driveway again.’"
Not that she’s fallen in our driveway before. It’s just that she used to fall a lot. Her balance has been better in recent years, a fact she attributed to having half a bad thyroid removed, but which I attributed to her marrying me. A good man in her life, I thought, would give her balance.
But now, I worry. I worry that I can’t claim credit for her improved balance. No, seriously, I worry that she might have to have the rest of her thyroid removed. Possibly, if removing half the thyroid improved her balance, removing the remaining half would perfect it. But what if removing the rest of it just makes her prone all the time?
We’ll have to consult an expert about that. And that’s another lesson from this experience: Get expert input. Dana didn’t want to go to the ER at all, but our friend Amy, a physician assistant, graciously agreed to come over, poke Dana’s hand and give her the look that said, "Oh yeah, you’ve got to go to the ER."
So we went. And I waited in the ER cubicle while Dana got X-rayed. And that brings us to the last lesson learned that day: If, some Saturday evening you find yourself in the ER, order the thing with the little almond bits on it. It’s so-oooo good! Or so I’ve heard.
The new Knoxville Voice is out, and I understand I have a new column in it. It probably won't make it onto their Web site, since that doesn't seem to get updated frequently or completely, so you should pick up the hard copy. In the meantime, though, here's my column.
Re-formed Tortes
In our legal system, stupid suits are a pressing issue
by Scott McNutt
How many insurance company CEOs does it take to change a light bulb? All one hundred and fifty of them: Fifty-eight to raise the necessary capital, eighty-five to serve on the search committee, and seven to form the committee to hire the lobbyist who will actually get congress to pass legislation in favor of a change in light bulbs.
And did you hear the one about Joe Consumer and the insurance company CEO? The CEO takes Joe Consumer to dinner at an expensive restaurant and tells him he can order anything on the menu, paying only $1 a month for the meal for the rest of his life. If, when Joe Consumer dies, he still owes on the dinner, the CEO will pick up the rest of the tab.
It isn’t the greatest deal Joe Consumer’s ever had, but he agrees and orders some items that are more expensive and some that are less, depending on his lifestyle and tastes. But when it comes time for dessert, the CEO insists that Joe Consumer try the pricey Re-formed Torte. "It’s delicious. You’ll love it. Trust me," he says.
"Well," Joe Consumer thinks, "I don’t really like him, but this guy hasn’t done anything to screw me over, so I’ll give it a chance." So he orders the Re-formed Torte. When it arrives, he takes a bite and immediately spits it out, exclaiming, "That’s awful!"
"Yes," agrees the CEO pleasantly. "It’s the cheapest possible ingredients half-baked in a particularly nasty recipe."
"But," protests Joe Consumer, "Who would make such a thing? And who would want to eat it?"
The CEO smiles. "My lobbyist made it," he says. "And as for who would want to eat it, I don’t know. But, I got you to take a bite, didn’t I?"
OK, the jokes are lame, and serious issues are not this column’s focus, but "tort reform" is a nasty dish several states have already been lured into taking a bite of. As of this writing, Tennessee is considering it. Tort reform limits the amount of money a plaintiff can get in damages from a lawsuit. It’s touted as a means to control insurance and legal costs, but in reality it’s just a way tomake it harder for the poor, the elderly, the unemployed and the ill to find redress for injuries done to them. And that’s bad. So I’m against it.
But you’ll have to look into it yourself and make up your own mind. I just had to point it out because the rest of this column will mock bad, stupid lawsuits, and I don’t want to give the impression that because I mock bad, stupid lawsuits that I’m for so-called tort reform because I’m not. I hope that’s clear. On to the mocking.
Of course there are bad lawsuits. Many are so bad they never should be brought. The most notorious local bad suit example is probably the case of the infamous McDonald’s Defective Pickle of Flaming Death, in which the renegade relish, that is, the pickle, leapt out of a McDonald’s hamburger and onto a wife’s chin, depriving her husband of the wife’s "services and consortium." (Seriously: www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=HOTPICKLESUIT-11-22-00&cat=AN)
What’s consortium, you ask? I checked the Internet, and found an authoritative statement on it. "The term ‘consortium’ is not susceptible of precise or complete definition," it states, "But, broadly speaking, consortium constitutes love, affection, comfort, sexual intercourse – in short, consortium is nookie."
So the guy was injured because his wife wasn’t servicing him with her consortium, that is, she wasn’t giving any blowjobs. The nookieless couple sued for $125,000, and McDonald’s eventually reached an undisclosed settlement with them, which probably included the understanding that the husband would have the "services and consortium" of any McDonald’s pickle he wanted for the rest of his unnatural life.
After Janet Jackson booby-trapped the 2004 Superbowl halftime show, another Knoxvillian, Terri Carlin, filed suit against Jackson, Justin Timberlake, MTV, CBS, Viacom, and probably the Venus de Milo for good measure, saying they violated a contract with the viewers to not subject them to wrinkly little nips. Jackson’s "sexually explicit conduct" caused Carlin outrage and "serious injury," which was probably the hernia she got from laughing uncontrollably at Jackson’s droopy booby. Apparently, Carlin recovered, because she withdrew the suit a few weeks later. Thank god. No doubt, it would have damaged her irreparably when Jackson’s tit was introduced into evidence at the trial.
Thus we see that people, or at least Knoxvillans, will sue over the slightest and most trivial of supposed injuries. As another example, let me present the suit my wife and I almost had to file. My wife recently bought a package of black hose in which brown hose had mistakenly been placed. Fortunately, we noticed the error. Because if my wife had lost professional standing when her superiors noticed her mismatched clothes and refused to promote her because they got the impression that she didn’t know how to dress herself, she’d have been forced to file suit against the hose manufacturer for causing her lost wages. I’d have been forced to file suit too, because I’d have lost her services and consortium, preferring her in black hose as I do.
And, you know, if that suit failed, we’d have had no choice but to sue the makers of the light bulbs in our walk-in closet because they’re too dim, and she couldn’t see the brown-for-black mix-up, and then of course, we’d need to sue the builders of our house for not installing more light fixtures to better light the dim walk-in, and finally we’d need to sue the sun for not rising at a better angle to provide more natural light in the closet in the mornings.
In short, if we were determined, we’d find somebody to successfully sue for our own incompetence. Not that my wife and I would actually do any of that. Unless, that is, we thought we could get a settlement out of it.
Anyway, that’s the thing: There are always going to be bad, stupid lawsuits because there are always going to be bad, stupid people. But the solution to a few bad lawsuits is not to limit the damages in all lawsuits. Rather, the solution is to ban stupid lawsuits and introduce significant punishments for the stupid people who try to bring them. (If we could just figure out a way to legally ban stupidity entirely, we could legislate George W. Bush and the Knox County Commission right out of existence. Sadly, that’s beyond the scope of this discussion.)
For instance, if your suit is adjudged stupid, you would have to face some penalty, such as receiving an electric jolt to your genitals for each dollar you sued for. Such penalties would not limit the amount of money you could seek in damages, but it would ensure that lawsuits were only brought by the serious. (Well, and the shock-proof. And the well-insulated. And the castratos.) If we agree that introducing such punishments will, in fact, limit the number of stupid suits brought, then all that’s left is devising a means for determining which lawsuits are stupid.
Clearly, the jury system can’t be used for these decisions, because juries have often awarded ridiculous sums in obviously stupid suits. In stupid lawsuits, a "jury of your peers" favors the stupid. So we need an alternative. To whom can we possibly turn?
I recommend my friend Ian. He’s smart, well-balanced, even-tempered and possessed of uncommonly common sense. Plus, if he take bribes, I’m sure he’d cut me in on the take. I think he’d be great as the decider who decides which lawsuits are stupid. So if I hear no objections, we’ll call that settled. Just remember, if you insist on taking your suit before the Honorable Stupid Suit Decider Ian, at least make sure it’s pressed.
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