The following was supposed to be an introduction to a series of posts on Ordinary Times about the American version of House of Cards. It never came to fruition, so I thought I would share it here:

I want to start the discussion of House of Cards out by talking about the basic plot that spanned the first two seasons. It’s not exactly novel to say that it’s very unrealistic. The only question is whether or not it was made better or worse by its fantastical elements.

In the British version, the question is basically asked “What if you had a Whip who was extremely intelligent as well as a ruthless psychopath?” Accepting those premises, it’s not hard to imagine events unfolding as they do in the story. On the other hand, the original version took four episodes to get where the American series took 26. Due to the logistics of American government, a longer road to the White House was a necessity, though another way of looking at it is that the number of episodes necessitated the long plot twists and turns.

The criticism I have here is that there were so many twists and turns that it became too unwieldy to account for in a plan that Frank could announce to his wife in the first episode. Anything above and beyond “I’m going to unseat the Vice President and then hope I take his place and then take down the President. The assumption that he would, in fact, be Matthews’ successor in the Vice Presidency was not a controllable circumstance no matter how smart you are. The mechanism by which he was able to receive advocacy within the Walker Administration (helping the Chief of Staff’s daughter get into Stanford) was unknown to him at the time.

On the other hand, unlike in Britain, we do not have a clean path from legislator to chief executive unless there is a vice presidential appointment involved, or the president and vice president were incapacitated or removed without sufficient time for a new vice president to be appointed. It is curious that they went the former route instead of the more direct path from Whip to Speaker to President. While not controllable, it is nonetheless more controllable than counting on a vice presidential appointment.

If it isn’t obvious by now, I found that the more fantastical elements of the plot hindered my enjoyment. I would have preferred a plot more specifically geared towards Underwood becoming Speaker of the House and based on some grudge involving the sitting Speaker. From that standpoint, you could have had a tigher plan and a tighter plot.

I have long since discovered that what I believe would be ideal and what the viewing public wants are two different things. We live in the age of the president, there is no doubt, and it might have been harder to garner interest if “all” that’s at stake is speakership. That might have flown when the speaker was a household name in the Gingrich years, but might be a harder sell today. On the other hand, it’s not hard to devise some sort of plot for taking the speakership in Season One and then working to eject the president and vice president (presumably in a unitary scandal in season two.

My own creative ruminations aside, however, I enjoyed the show in much the same guilty-pleasure sort of way that I enjoy Scandal. As ridiculous as it was at points, I did enjoy it from start to finish and will most assuredly watch Season Three.

On one last plot-related point, I was relieved that the president was not ejected by reason of the anti-depressant medications. I was afraid that’s where they were going to go with it and that might have been the final straw for me. We may have impeached a president for an extramarital affair, but that was only made possible by having him virtually dead to rights on having committed an underlying crime. Fundraising, though, is about the integrity of the office and while I don’t believe for a moment that events would have unfolded how they did in the program, it at least had an air of credibility. And a certain parallel with the Clinton impeachment as a focus on something frivolous turned into the revelation of something that (arguably) wasn’t.

Alabama: Apple CEO Tim Cook is apparently a native of the Yellowhammer State, and says his life was changed there.

Alaska: Researchers plan to give away pregnancy tests in Alaska bars.

Arizona: Scott Fistler a Republican running for Arizona District 7 congressional seat. Cesar Chavez a Democrat running for the Arizona District 7 congressional seat. They’re the same guy.

Arkansas: Little Rock VA patients wait two months, on average, to establish care.

California: The experiment in San Francisco with peak price parking is, according to supporters, working very well

Colorado: The Centennial State has become something of a hub for space business.

Connecticut: A hoarder in Connecticut was killed when her floor collapsed.

Delaware: Delaware celebrates not being Pennsylvania.

Florida: In Tampa, a family ate a steak that was laced with LSD and while at the hospital had a baby who was not a hallucination.

Georgia: An Atlanta father and son reeled in an 880 pound fish.

Hawaii: NASA planned to test out a flying saucer over the islands, but alas it didn’t quite pan out.

Idaho: It was an exciting day, with a Moose on the loose.

Illinois: Meet the ten most boring places in Illinois.

Indiana: Minor League baseball team Gary Southshore Railcats have decided to theme their uniforms for Michael Jackson.

Iowa: Due to having one of their offerings getting the distinction of “Worst restaurant meal in America”, eight Long John Silver’s Iowa locations are closing.

Kansas: There were tales of a water slide so powerful that it sent its riders airborne. Turns out, that isn’t true. Still looks like a badarse ride, though.

Kentucky: To protect its servers, a restaurant in Newport became a no tipping establishment.

Louisiana: National ethanol policy is threatening Louisiana’s shrimp season.

Maine: Local quilters are joining astronauts in completing a space quilt.

Michigan: A man in West Michigan needs your help to remove his nearly 100 pound scrotum.

Minnesota: The Minnesota Vikings want an MLS soccer team.

Mississippi: According to some reports KFC ejected a girl whose face was disfigured by a pit-bull attack was asked to leave a KFC for ‘disrupting the customers’ with her presence. Except that KFC says that didn’t actually happen and the Facebook page for it has disappeared, but KFC says it will be paying for girl’s medical bills anyway.

Missouri: A pair of Kansas City twins were born 39 days apart.

Montana: Hannibal Anderson and Lisa Grace want Montana’s urban and rural areas to get along better.

Nebraska: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is scaling back the assigned risk to the state’s nuclear power plants.

Nevada: There is a controversy in the Miss USA pageant: Miss Nevada may not actually be a Nevadan.

New Hampshire: The drunkest state in the union? The least drunk is, of course, Utah.

New Jersey: The Garden State is apparently the home of a sixteen foot great white shark.

New Mexico: A bachelor party finds a rare mastadon fossil.

New York: Nobody seems to want to and/or be able to live there, but Lloyd Alter says Buffalo is da bomb.

North Carolina: The horrifying story of a daycare center used as a pornography outfit.

North Dakota: The oil boom is a bonanza for archaeologists.

Ohio: A surgeon in Ohio makes $2,800,000 a year.

Oklahoma: A dog stolen in Houston was discovered two years later in the Sooner State.

Oregon: In addition to being one of two states that won’t let you pump your own gas, Oregon is one of four states that has outlawed bail bonds and bounty hunters.

Pennsylvania: An eighth grader dropped out of the honor society because she was tired of taking drug tests.

Rhode Island: The Ocean State probably has the worst economy in the country.

South Carolina: In the Carolina waters, it’s difficult to know if you’re in North Carolina or South Carolina, which is important as far as fishing laws go.

South Dakota: Ever wonder what it looks/sounds like to be in the middle of a South Dakota tornado? Here you go.

Tennessee: A woman in Memphis was banned after trying to climb the fence and give cookies to lions.

Texas: A house in San Antonio dangles over a lake cliff, while a sonar reveals that Houston’s bayous house over 100 vehicles.

Utah: Residents are having to bail out their local-utility attempt to provide fiber broadband.

Vermont: Environtmentalists in the Green Mountain State are leading the fight against wind turbines.

Virginia: A prom king in Norfolk was, fortunately, able to make the ceremony after getting bailed out of jail for his involvement in a drive-by shooting.

Washington: A four year old girl solved the mystery of a break-in.

West Virginia: Verizon turned its landline business over to a competitor, and complaints dropped by two-thirds

Wisconsin: The Badger State not only has beaches, but has a nude beach. Unfortunately, the state’s beaches as a whole ranked 23rd out of 30 in terms of water quality.

Wyoming: Residents of Wyoming are getting antsy as the resource boom encroaches on their cities.

New research suggests that when it comes to bullying, mostly-popular and semi-popular kids have it worse than the rejects. Among the interesting findings:

• Except for those at the very top, the higher you go the more (figurative) hits you will take.
• Even among isolated kids, the higher-status kids report depression, anxiety, and anger.
• Most forms of “instrumental targeting” are not physical in nature. The gender split here is exactly what you would expect it to be.
• An interesting buffer against same-gender targeting is having opposite-gender friends.

I’ve commented on that last part before. Cross-gender friendships seemed to something that occurred with more frequency the higher up the hierarchy you went. Unpopular kids had few, if any, opposite-gender friendships. Popular kids had many. As my own social prospects improved, I started to gain opposite-gender friends.

There are probably numerous reasons for this, but it does support an unfortunate cycle. Guys who spend less time with girls do not learn how to act with girls, which hurts not only their ability to get girlfriends but also their ability to make friends with girls. And on, and on. It’s my experience that a factor feeding into this is fear, on the part of girls, of potential romantic interest on his part. Certain guy types will point to this as proof of female fear of loss of cultural status by virtue of interest from the wrong guy, but I’d point out in response to that having someone unidirectionally interested in you can be stressful. Especially when he never actually gives you the opportunity to shoot him down, which in my experience happens quite a bit with undesirable guys.

I’m less certain why less popular lady types have difficulty making male friends since I have never been a less popular lady type. I would assume it is mostly related to unattractive women often simply being invisible to guys. Background furniture, as one friend put it. Further, in both directions, less popular people are disinclined to reach out in ways that make them uncomfortable, which going across gender lines often does.

Yet, as interesting as I find all of this, the study suggests a more complicated picture than the one I see. People up and down the hierarchy, apparently, have issues with a dearth of opposite-gender friends, and this leads to problems. Why? I would guess status markers here matter, but also because of the effect on dating prospects. Maligning another guy who has female friends means potentially alienating any friends he has from the dating pool, and maybe even friends of those friends. That supercedes intragender rivalries.

That would only work, however, if they don’t find the opposite-gender friend to be equally or more worthy of contempt. I remember in 10th grade theater class getting picked on precisely because of the female friends I had in that class. Female friends who were utterly outside the interest of the guys giving me a hard time. It’s honestly among the few times I remember being so targeted in my relatively bearable high school years.

That guys and gals higher up feel the assault more keenly is not actually terribly surprising. They have further to fall and all that. It’s also my experience that by the time you get to high school you can fade into the background if you so wish. At least, if you went to a big high school like I did. Thus making people of higher and thus more conspicuous social standing a more frequent target.

So tomorrow we fly back home for July Fourth with the wife’s extended family and my more limited one. My folks will be joining us at the Corrigan Compound with the in-laws. They are curiously more open to such things now that there is a grandchild involved.

Anyhow, connectivity at the Corrigan Compound is relatively limited. There’ll be a new post up almost every day, but don’t expect rapid responses (which I have been trying to be better about in recent weeks).

Hadley Freeman is worried that the fashions of the 90’s are making a comeback. I’ll take the 90’s over the 80’s any day.

The phenomenon of tattoos endlessly baffles me. Mostly because things change, and they’re so hard to get rid of. Getting rid of them, though, is booming business.

Even if you’re not really all that desirable, the romantic marketplace may have a shelf for you. if you’re unique. As Forrest Gump says,g “If you can’t sing good, sing loud.”

Everyone remembers when Tom Cruise was jumping on that sofa and being all freaky on the Oprah Winfrey show. The thing is, how we remember it didn’t happen. Amy Nicholson explains why this is important to our national popular culture.

Ugh. Kids today. They’re so… well-behaved.

Germany hasn’t kicked its coal habit, which is coming at a cost. On the other hand, they’ve reportedly set a record for renewable power generation (though, according to Patrick Cahalan, they sort of gamed the statistics.

Russ George wants feverishly to stop global warming, and scientists and environmentalists want to stop him.

According to Wendell Cox, the vast majority of metro growth between 1990 and 2010 was in the suburbs. In 1990, 82% of metro areas were suburban, and in 2010 it’s 86%.

Introducing a $22,000 home. Not exactly child-friendly, but pretty neat all the same.

I’ve found myself wondering about North Dakota scenarios in the event that something happens to Clancy, and specifically what I’d do about housing. It’s surprising how much room they can put into mobile homes, these days. It makes me think of how poorly-managed our regular houses often are.

Clancy has become interested, lately, in those “build your own home” things. I have a thing about pre-fab homes.

All reigns must come to an end, and so may it be with Moore’s Law.

Statistics can be a great tool of self-deceptions.