A couple of things

Hey all.

I'm pleased to welcome three newcomers to Ye Olde Sidebarre: Professor Mondo, the Clue Batting Cage, and Lighthouse Hockey.

The third of these sites may be interesting to future students in Professor Ag²-zuRç-Œz♣ƒo≡♫'s elective on Obscure Blogging in the Terran Early-21st Century, since it's the first time I've been hired by someone else to write stuff.  Pay = zero, but when I die, on my deathbed, I will receive total consciousness.  In the meantime, you all receive blessed freedom from my occasional hockey posts, since they will usually take place over there now.  (You still get to enjoy my split infinitives.)  I'll link those posts here, but the casual visitor will be spared the in-depth demonstration of my niche amusements.

My thanks to Professor M and philmon for their good writing, and for Dominik the Lighthouse Keeper for the opportunity to do more of what I love.  It's a great community of fans over there, the comment threads are friendly and smart, a lot of fun, and it's great to have the chance to be a part of it.  My normal nom de blog was already taken, so you'll find me posting there as "mikb" - you know, because I'm creative like that.

Hah! The Internets says I are geeeenyus righter!

I took the first three paragraphs of an actual finished story that I wrote from beginning to end, all by my own lonesome, and I stuck it in a thingy on the Web that computes the skill of the writing that is contained therein.  And these results were mine:

I write like
Vladimir Nabokov

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Dialogue?  Yeah, I gotta try some dialogue.  The results:

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

You see that? I are teh awsum. Burn thine inferior printed materials and harken unto this blog!

The Nightfly: Algorithm approved since Monday afternoon!

So what if I'm not appreciated? You know who else wasn't appreciated? HERMAN F'K'N MELLVILLE, that's who. And I can do action sequences, too.

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

MUA-Hahahahaa...aa....  ...  Awwwwwwwww.

Via Spleenville.

Snippets and snarks

* Newly-finished: a soundtrack for the Sudden Yurt Commune.  I'll be working on the insert over the next couple of days.  Any of you Yurters want a copy, please email me - nightflymail AT gmail DOT com - with a mailing address.

* Hey, one of the SYC-OST songs is playing on the iPod right now.  Sweet.

* It is currently 92°, with 85% humidity, about to storm.  This is an improvement over last week, when it was 103°, with 174% humidity, and always five minutes away from a huge rainstorm that never came.

* I've played tournaments outdoors, in the bright strong sun; on painted concrete surfaces that baked like parking lots, where you could see heat waves at the far end of the rink; I've played as many as four hour-long games in a night; I've reffed for nine straight hours each day of a weekend tournament... but I have never been as beat as at the end of my one game last week, indoors no less, during the absolute depths of the hideous oppressive weather.  The heat from under my gear felt like an open oven door.  I could feel my pulse in my neck and ears.  It was brutal.  If there had been an overtime I don't think I could have finished it.  I felt like a crayon melting in a closed car.

* I am holding an hour-long press-conference/ego-stroke/circus/charity fundraiser on ESPN tonight at 9 pm Eastern, to announce my decision about what to do with this blog.

* Speaking of which, the Miami Heat announced a free-agent deal with LeBron's former Cleveland teammate, Zydrunas Ilgauskas.  I thought he left Cleveland because they surrounded him with bad teammates?

* Today someone at work brought in donuts for everyone.  This happens about once a month or so, for no particular reason, on no set schedule, just because.  My coworkers are pretty darned cool.

* I have too good a life to be so pissy lately.

* A few months ago I was walking the Official Dog, and an orange tabby decided to trot over, tail high, to make friends.

Since then Catfriend pops around every week or so and he hangs out with the pupperkins.  She wags, he purrs.  Pupperkins must think he's the strangest-smelling dog ever, but they're buddies - unlike the day last week when a lady on a horse walked through the neighborhood.  (We have a sizable park near the house and folks will sometimes ride there.)  The Official Dog was freaked about that a little.  I kept her close to me, across the street, so she wouldn't spook the horse.

* If Ladybug wasn't allergic, I'd consider getting the pupperkins a catfriend of her very own at home.  I have always been a cat lover.  She'll have to make do with her eleven dozen toys, various snacks and treats, mild Internet fame, and the single attention of her two owners.

* There's a four-lane divided highway about a mile from our house; people enjoy making illegal lefts onto and occasionally off of said highway, despite no fewer than five signs forbidding the practice.  You'd think that you couldn't miss such instructions, nor all the helpful people honking incessantly at you, or the friendly pointing to the signs with one finger.  You'd be in error.  It's amazing that there aren't more wrecks at that intersection.

* Last night was baseball's All-Star Game, out in Anaheim.  Both leagues trotted out an assortment of pitchers who threw 95+ mph: Justin Verlander, Josh Johnson, Matt Thornton, Jose Valverde, Brian Wilson, Jonathon Broxton.  Not surprisingly, there was a dearth of scoring.  The AL's only run came off a walk, error, and sac fly.  Dodger pitcher Hong-Chih Kuo (who was dealing in the high-90's himself) helped this immensely by fielding a dibbler in front of the mound, throwing off his back foot, and airmailing it 20 feet above his first baseman's head.  Every New York Giants fan watching immediately said, "Hey - Eli Manning's in the game!"

* The NL won on a late bases-loaded double by Braves catcher Paul McCann.  They wasted a great early opportunity when Verlander struck out Ryan Braun on a pitch down the middle of the opposing batter's box.  This thing would have been wide of a soccer net.  Every New York Mets fan watching immediately said, "Hey, I thought Jeff Francoeur didn't make the All-Star Game this year!"

* Brian Wilson and Corey Hart were NL teammates.  Now THAT would be a weird musical collaboration.

* Paperwork.  Always with the paperwork.  I close my eyes and see these forms floating around, demanding to be properly catalogued and compiled.  My subconscious has turned into a flash drive.

* Mmmmmmmm...... coffee.......

*In three weeks I will have been married three years.  Wild.

* I love fonts.  Thus, I love Blambot.

* The Mother of Unfinishable Stories goes slowly in any font.  I've been writing others.  As they begin to bog down, I think that switching back to the MOUS may help get everything moving again.  I hope so, because I am enjoying the adventures of the characters in the series and would like not to have that stall permanently.

* Love you all.

Wasting away again in Blogaritaville

Lately it's so much simpler to just comment everywhere rather than cook up content on my own steam.  I have no steam right now.  I am steamless, sans steam, free of motive power... all I have is my thesaurus and the blahs.

Now, somebody claims that there's someone else to blame, but I know this is my own fault.  The Hive no longer buzzes as it once did.  I did a little research about it... we've had 1600+ posts now in the nearly six years I started.  In my two solo years I stuck up a respectable 433 posts, gained a happy little readership, and met some friends along the way.  Many more of you I haven't met, of course, but I feel like I know you from all the posting and commenting that I've been involved in.  It's wonderfully rewarding.

Naturally, as I've had a co-blogger my own output has declined.*  (Then I went and married, too, and all that real life cuts into your time for important stuff.)  But I was still surprised to see how far into the minority my posting has gone.  Roughly three out of every five posts you see will be the Spider's, and that's held for a good stretch now.  Not that I complain - far the reverse.  If he hadn't been firing off a dozen at a stretch here and there, this place would have dandelions growing out of the cracks in the template.  Nor is this a backhanded plea for him to pick things up.  Again, the reverse - I feel a little guilty that it falls to him so often.

* I found some amusement during the researching... Spider joined on 9/28/2006... and inside of a week (10/4/2006 to be exact) he was posting, "Charlie Crist thinks I'm an idiot."  Heheheheheheh.  He also called Palin as VP ahead of the fact too.

So, what is this emo whinging, anyway?

I'm not focused enough.  I'm blogging about blogging more than I blog... and when I do find myself with something to say, few people seem interested.  That's my own fault, of course.  Write boring stuff and get well-earned yawns; I should rename this place "White Noise and Muzak."  It frustrates me to be substandard after doing this so long.  Not that I blog to say "I get x number of hits a day, I'm so important and brilliant!" but any writer wants to interest readers, and if I don't do that I am a failed writer.  That annoys me. 

I also like being in conversations.  I can go places and find vibrant conversations and chime in, or sit in the virtual corner and listen, and be a part of something better than myself.  But lately I seem incapable of giving others a welcome forum for the same thing.  Something about the Hive has been putting people off and I want to figure it out and fix it.  On occasion, it's nice to yell along with folks, but you should never feel yelled at.

This requires some thought.

I need tech support

I am unable to copy text on one page and copy it here. It's been a problem for awhile. Is there something I can do about it? Our is this a way for website to protect their copywright?

update from the 'fly -

If you copy-and-paste from another website into the body of a post, you ought to see you a dialogue box like this:

It's a new feature from our friends at Microsoft, so morons don't accidentally cut-and-paste all their bank account info and social security number into "xxxhottybody.ho" or something.  Click "allow access" and your text ought to show up safe and sound - though you will probably have to clean up the formatting, because Blogger really never does a good job with that.

Not so fast

Andrea Harris has a favorite stop of mine in blogworld.  (You can see her off to the side there in the Pantheon.)  This post of hers, about tourists having mental meltdowns when their real trip abroad destroys their romantic notions of the destination, brought brought out a comment that is making me scratch my head a bit:

Pity they didn’t bother to read about Paris (especially material not put out by the travel industry) rather than rely on a medium intended and designed to transmit lies.

I object to this, and I will explain why.  (At length - lucky you!)  Movies are not a medium intended and designed to transmit lies, any more than television, or novels, or plays, or art, or video games. All these are media intended and designed to transmit IDEAS or STORIES. Some of those may well be outright lies; some of those are excellently-crafted. There are also truthful stories, and beautiful ideas, and nobility and kindness and grandeur.

Since images and feelings are more immediate, most art aims for those instead of thoughts. No argument on that point. I do think that to simply call the whole thing "lies" by design is to miss the point, however. One of the earliest moving pictures was in fact used to truthfully answer a question: does a horse pick all four feet off the ground at once while galloping? (Turns out that they do.)

Look - I'm a storyteller by nature, if not by profession.  (And there's a long post brewing about that conflict: stay tuned.)  This is my passion.  I would be willing to go on a limb and say that for most creative community, that passion is a primary motivation.  They have turned that passion into a job.

Once you turn a passion into a means of commerce, things change.  As long as I'm just writing, I can just write.  Once I am also selling, then the writing has to meet the demands of those to whom I wish to sell.  It's a dilution - not much of one, since an audience wants a compelling story above all, and storytellers are nothing if not compelled.  Still, they may have no taste for the story struggling to free itself from my mind.  At that point it's the old familiar choice: give 'em what they want or say what I need to say?

Here's the thing, though: that tension exists in EVERY business.  Some people's passion is food.  They become amazing chefs.  They also have to consider: will people pay money to eat this?  How much?  Again, the dilution is slight.  People want great food, chefs want to cook great food.  But people can scarcely afford $100 meals every night, not in great enough numbers to keep the chefs themselves fed.  So ingredients are swapped, flavors change, and viola - Chili's.  Or Wendy's.

I won't pretend that line cooks at a chain restaurant give two shakes of a rat's patoot about Great Food in the abstract, but they care at least about how the particular food they're actually cooking, that it should be done properly and please the customers.  And the people who develop the menus care much more about that abstract, the ideal of flavors.  Even Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's, cared a great deal about it, even if it was just burgers and fries.  He may not have been a chef on the par of a Gordon Ramsay or Julia Child, but he cared.  He had to.  Ultimately, if you make too many changes for commerce - too much dilution - then one loses both the passion and the commerce.

You will find the same tension in every walk of life: in education, in politics, in construction, in sports.  There is a perfect ideal, that drives everyone with a passion, and then there is the economic reality.  It would cost too much to make every teacher an Ivy League-quality professor (and not every one of them could be, anyway), though the children would benefit.  It costs money to campaign, money to run a government - too much to run unelectable candidates no matter how great they may be at governing.  Should my house get obliterated by meteorites or something, it would cost twice as much to construct the way it was originally built vs. using modern materials like sheetrock.  And the greatest players in the world command a great deal of money, more than any one franchise could pay (even the Yankees or Red Sox); so they make do with affordable players rather than pursue the perfect ideal of 162-0.

Yet those ideals exist.  Those passions are real.  Every teacher wants to teach as well as possible, every politician hopes to govern, every housebuilder (and homeowner!) wants the home to endure, and every team wants to win every game, or at least their league's chamionship.  Without those ideals, that passion, there would be no point in even starting.

That's why I say again that filmmaking is about ideas and stories, not lies.  Based on some of the loopier things that movie-folk say and do, it's easy to believe that Hollywood is full of narcissists who dictate What is Acceptable to the rest of us, when in fact they are full of crap.  There is some justice in the claim, perhaps, in certain examples.  Certainly Tim Robbins and Sean Penn have done more than their share of loopy lefty proselytizing.  But they didn't become actors to be able to dictate What is Acceptable, they did it because their passion is in the stories they tell.  Those who have lost that passion are usually the worst at their profession, and again, this holds across all walks of life.

Not surprisingly, when singers and athletes and kindergarten teachers also lose that passion, they become fairly useless in their fields as well.  That doesn't mean that music, sports, and knowledge itself is intended and designed only to convey lies, does it?

(Funny how this comes up when I'm working on a story that indirectly touches this idea - that of the storyteller as a professional liar.  Reality keeps anticipating me.  Bad reality!  No cookie!)

Scene from a hockey movie

[Shot: EXTERIOR, DAY.  We see a sign that reads "Boston Bruins Team Headquarters, C Julien Commanding."  The "C Julien" is graffiti'd out with cuss words.]

[INTERIOR.  Rows of beds are filled with injured Boston Bruins players while nurses in white move to and fro. In one bed is MICHAEL RYDER, seemingly perfectly healthy, busily painting.  Enter BILL SIMMONS, the Sports Guy.]

SG: Man, what a disaster.  [sees Ryder and wanders over]  You don't look so bad.
MR: Yeah.
SG: What you working on?

[We see Ryder's painting.  Goalie Tuukka Rask is making saves on six pucks at once, with explosions in the background, while fending off Daniel Carcillo with his stick and cradling a baby in his catching glove.]

RYDER: It's just not coming together!
Off-camera voice: Hey, Mike, can I take a break?
RYDER: Oh... sure Tuukka.  Take five.
TUUKKA: Thanks.  [He hands the baby to a confused Daniel Carcillo and stumps off to get some Gatorade.]
RYDER: It's hell, Sports Guy.  We had the whole city.  We were doing great.  Now look at this place.

[The camera pans the room.  DAVID KREJCI has his whole arm in a cast, in traction.  BLAKE WHEELER moans and rolls over.  PATRICE BERGERON sits and rocks numbly.]

SG: [points to a bed with a moaning player] What about that guy?
RYDER: Mark Savard.  Severe concussion.  Poor guy thinks he's Kate Smith.
SAVARD: [tossing away sheets and standing] Godddddd bless A-mer-i-caaaaa!  Lannnd that I loooooove!  [He is surrounded by orderlies, who sedate him]  Staaaannnnd.... beside... herrrrrr......  andguierrrrzzzzzz....
RYDER: Hockey is hell.
SG: Listen... this is awkward.  But we had those plans for the rest of the playoffs.  Soon, when you get out of here, maybe we can go back to how things were.
RYDER: Playoffs?  PLAYOFFS?  We've lost three straight games!  [grabs a cup from the nightstand]
SG: Four.  Blew a 3-0 lead at home last night.  [RYDER spits out the drink]
RYDER [in voice-over] I think that was the point at which I developed my shooting problem.

[RYDER cues up a puck and shoots it at an empty net at the foot of the bed.  He misses by twenty feet and hits Ken Socrates in the head.]

Breaking: Area Man Has Perfect Workday

Westchester, NY - Robert Smith was not expecting to have a good day at the office, and he was right.  Instead, it was perfect.

Smith, 24, became the 20th person to have a perfect day at work, retiring a disgruntled customer on the phone at 4:58 pm and successfully clocking out without a single complaint or error.

"He got into a zone and just wouldn't let up," said his division manager, Leslie Jones.  "Bobby's still young, but we've always believed in him."

Amalgamated Consolidated, Ltd., hired Smith fresh from USC in 2006, during the sixth round of interviews, to replace retiring veteran Steve Winkler.  "I didn't know much about the East Coast," said a jubilant Smith.  "I was expecting people to be jerks out here, but everyone's really been great."

One of his coworkers doused him with a shaving cream pie at that point.

Smith, who was born in Oakland, was involved in a minor controversy a few weeks ago when pro ballplayer Alex Rodriguez cut across his lawn while jogging one Saturday.  Smith was trying to mow it at the time.

"Yeah, I just moved, I haven't hired anyone yet, and here comes this dude just cutting through," said Smith, who owns a corner lot.  "I might have to plant some hedges or put up a fence."

"Who?" A-Rod said when told of Smith's perfect workday.

Smith dodged trouble early when his immediate supervisor, Oscar Ruiz, cancelled a budget meeting just minutes before it was scheduled.  Then Amalgamated scored bagels and coffee off of the Westchester Beverage Service's starting sales rep, Pat Miller, and Smith settled into a groove.  His perfect day was never seriously threatened after that.

Smith retired fourteen clients on emails, nine on phone calls, and only needed four face-to-face consultations.

If you wanted to be scared out of your mind

A horror flick is not the answer.  The real ticket to a night with the lights on and the covers high is the always-excellent Mark Steyn.  Excellent - but disturbing.

Every time I retail the latest indignity imposed upon the “citizen” by some or other Continental apparatchik, I receive e-mails from the heartland pointing out, with much reference to the Second Amendment, that it couldn’t happen here because Americans aren’t Euro-weenies. But nor were Euro-weenies once upon a time. ...

Two-thirds of a century on, almost every item on the list has been abandoned, from “independence and self-reliance” (40 per cent of people receive state handouts) to “a healthy suspicion of power and authority” – the reflex response now to almost any passing inconvenience is to demand the government “do something”, the cost to individual liberty be damned. American exceptionalism would have to be awfully exceptional to suffer a similar expansion of government and not witness, in enough of the populace, the same descent into dependency and fatalism. ...

What’s easier to do if you’re a democratic government that’s made promises it can’t afford? Cut back on nanny-state lollipops? Or shrug off thankless military commitments for which the electorate has minimal appetite? ... On its present course, as Dennis Prager put it, America “will be a large Sweden, and just as influential as the smaller one.”

And that’s the optimistic scenario – because the only reason Sweden can be Sweden and Germany Germany and France France is because America is America. Who will cushion America’s decline as America cushioned Europe’s? ...

Much of the timing of American decline depends on Beijing, which will make the final determination on such matters as when the dollar ceases to be the world’s reserve currency. Given that they hold at least the schedule of our fate in their hands, it would be rather reassuring if they had the capability to assume America’s role as the global order-maker. But they don’t and they never will. The most likely future is not a world under a new order but a world with no order – in which pipsqueak states go nuclear while the planet’s wealthiest nations, from New Zealand to Norway, are unable to defend their own borders and are forced to adjust to the post-American era as they can. Yet, in such a geopolitical scene, the United States will still remain the most inviting target – first, because it’s big, and secondly, because, as Britain knows, the durbar moves on but imperial resentments linger long after imperial grandeur. ...

The first victims of American retreat will be the many corners of the world that have benefitted from a unusually benign hegemon. But the consequences of retreat will come home, too. In a more dangerous world, American decline will be steeper, faster and more devastating than Britain’s – and something far closer to Rome’s.

Please, read the whole thing - preferably in a warm, well-lit room, with a comforting beverage close at hand.

(update - before I hit publish, a tour of the blogs uncovered this bit from the Corner, also by Steyn.  Courtesy of the fine folks at the Swilling.)

That's it, exactly

Quoth Sheila -

And believe me, this is the Internet - if you feel shame about something, there will always be some jagoff who feels it his duty to tell you, "Well, you probably SHOULD feel shame about that! The way you live is indicative of everything that is wrong with America" or whatever the problem is with me.
... Her life is her life, and I love to peek in on it, and my life is my life, and she peeks in on mine as well. It's cool, actually. Because not all lives are the same. Not all stages of life are the same. If I constantly compare where I am at with those who are my age or whatever, I might throw up my hands in despair. This must not happen. I cannot afford to let that mindset into my life. At all anymore.

Fantastic and true. Or, as the Anderson Council put it in "Partridge" -

What is the point in worrying
Seems hardly worth my time
Make yourself sick with wondering
If yours is better than mine

Jump and run around the backyard singing
Dig a tunnel leading up
Words are unimportant, bells are ringing
Stop and you can hear them call

Incredible writing as always, and incredible pictures as well. Knowing what I know of her from her blogging, it seems perfectly like her.

(PS - gosh I hope I got the lyrics right. That's how I remember hearing it.)

You know the old saying...

When in doubt, link Iowahawk.

"The tawny kitten writhes before the white snake." - Mulleti

The journey of five hundred miles begins when you wake up, and you know who you wanna be, and you wanna be the man who wakes up next to her.

For a writer, he seems to have an odd concept of what "authorship" is

Via the Ace of Spades, an interesting theory forwarded by Garrison Keillor... Barack Obama is our "first genuine author-president."

The rest of the article is pretty funny, but that incredible howler - "first GENUINE author-president" - ends the first paragraph. Apparently the following were not genuine authors at all:

John Adams - the Massachusetts Constitution, "Defense of the Constitutions of Governments of the United States of America" (3 volumes!)
Thomas Jefferson - Declaration of Independence
James Madison - some of the Federalist Papers, large hunks of the US Constitution

And really, that would be quite enough, wouldn't it? But heck, we'll throw in Theodore Roosevelt, who wrote an astounding variety of historical and naturalist books and essay collections... twelve of them before he was even president. Other presidents have writtetn scholarly articles and books and other works.

So, yeah, first genuine author-president? Hardly

Incidentally, while I was doing a little quick research for the above, I googled Woodrow Wilson. Hm, I thought, I can look up his Whitehouse.gov page. I had looked up James Polk last week - he had been a favorite of Truman's and when Joe Posnanski had a "Hall of Fame Presidents" poll, I wanted to know more about him. (Wound up voting for him too.)

Well, this is what I found at the old URL:



Of course, the page isn't gone, just moved. (Polk's too.) In its place is an invitation to "read about [the Obama Administration] plan to bring about the change America needs." (Maybe some other time?) The redesign isn't bad; I like the addition of links to all the presidents on the same page, but really don't like the links not being underlined so they stand out from the regular text. I hesitate to click Reagan's or W's.

Seven wierd reading facts

Thank goodness for memes when blogging is tough! Basically, just seven oddities about one's reading habits. Since reading is quite personal, I expect that these will give some people quite the turn; some will possibly prompt "Yeah, me too! I thought I was the only goofball who did stuff like that!"; some will perhaps make you shudder in horror.

1. I used to be a mortal terror to books. At first it was just because I was an idiot and didn't know how to take care of stuff properly. Later it was because I had gotten into bad habits. Now I'm quite twitchy about keeping them in good shape.

2. Because of point one, I became adept at quick repair jobs to books with an exacto knife and clear packing tape. My old old paperbacks of the Lord of the Rings are essentially reassembled in this fashion (I got those in pretty bad shape), and I have fixed many a dust jacket.

3. I usually read more than one book at once, and usually a balance: something light on one hand, something heavy on the other. Then I have the occasional magazine or home-written draft to read and/or revise. Basically, I'm like a book junkie: instead of hiding cigs or weed or booze, I have printed material all over the house to dip into at odd free moments. And more generally, I am a stationary junkie. Whenever we go to a bookstore, office supply shop, or Target, my wife has to gently herd me away from the neato journals, pens and pencils, and etc. I have at least one half-dozen blank ruled books of various styles, completely untouched (in some cases, unopened), that I will eventually write in, along with unusual pens and pencils that I may never open because they aren't made anymore. I will probably die with a closet full of unwritten-in and unwritten-with stuff because I accumulate it faster than I can use it.

4. For some books, I cast actors in the various roles and mentally stage the action. I will also sometimes compile soundtracks... to the point of actually writing down song selections. (I have yet to actually rip a CD but it's only a matter of time.) Point 4-A: if I'm "casting" or "scoring" I will often cast myself in a particularly sweet role, because I'm obviously the great undiscovered middle-aged talent of the early 21st century.

5. In the olden days, my folks used to send me to the corner deli to buy Dad's cigarettes if he was busy. (It was a more innocent time - hey, let's give this ten-year-old two packs of Camels!) But I couldn't actually do this if anyone was in the store, for fear that someone would think I was smoking them myself. To avoid my alleged and untrue crime (which wasn't even one at that time), I'd commit a real crime - I'd loiter, looking to all the world like some wandering urchin trying to five-finger a candy bar. And during that loitering I'd read whatever was around me at the time. One busy Saturday, my Mom actually showed up, fearing that I'd been flattened by cars, snatched, mugged... only to find me hiding from the other patrons, reading potato chip bags, waiting desperately for everyone to clear the building so I could whisper, "Two packs of Camels, please, for me to take home to my Dad and not in any way consume myself."

6. I was a very early reader... I can't remember a time before I knew how to read, so I'm guessing I picked it up when I was about three years old.

7. As per point #5, I will read nearly anything... including reference material as if it was meant to be read cover-to-cover. As a boy I actually looked forward to the encyclopedia's annual volumes.

Thanks to ricki, sheila, and many other reader-y types who have done this. I tried to do mine without reading theirs first, which I guess makes no sense at all but too late, it's over. If you'd like to join in, I shan't tag, but the comments are available to you, as always.

The man knows how to hit the spot

REAGAN, BACK FROM THE DEAD, EATS BIN LADEN AND CRAPS TAX CUT

So quoth Lileks. I'm surprised I missed this at the time (it came out last Monday). There's much more to it than the Onion-worthy headline, however. The stinger is particularly good, but I won't spoil it by quoting it... ya just gotta read the whole thing.

Life notes

Rosalind Russell: "Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point. Seal my lips on aches and pains. They are increasing, and love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by."

Via Sheila, who has done it yet again: a great post. It's a gift to be able to get inside someone else's thinking and "process" - it's a gift of a different order to hold that door open so others can get the glimpse you see. I'm not sure that I've read anyone as good as she is at doing this, on the Internet or anywhere else.

It's been a long month

Or, at least that's what it seems like in Chicago.

The above-referenced story (you're looking for the third of four) is difficult because it provides no attribution at all - no sources cited, something that NJ Lawyer is usually much better about, and a couple of very odd ideas thrown in for the kicks.

First odd idea, courtesy of the City of Chicago: "Four Chicagoans, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Illinois State Rifle Association are all suing Chicago to overturn its gun-control regime, and Chicago's principal defense seems to be that Heller is such a narrow decision that it applies only to the District of Columbia."

Emphasis mine, and boy howdy... I'm no lawyer but it seems quite a stretch to say that the Court is applying the Second Amendment only to DC. It seems like an amazing mental contortion to say that the Bill of Rights to the Constitution of the United States of America has a provision that confines itself specifically to a 68.3 mi² hunk of ground.

There is exactly one provision in all of the US Constitution that applies only to Washington DC: Article 1, Section 8, listing the powers of Congress: "To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States..."* Nope, it says nothing at all about the Supreme Court there.

The city may be correct in that this decision only specifically overturned one law as unconstitutional - but the principle by which that law was overturned is something that applies nationally and that can be used to challenge similar provisions.

And as an aside - "gun-control regime" is a peculiar way to put it. These litigants are suing to overturn a law, not kick out the mayor and aldermen. I find it a little disturbing, actually, to think that people who obsess over the precision of their words could be so slovenly with this description.

Second odd bit comes in near the end. I'm including something from way up near the top to give the context: "Based on past experience, [Chicago's gun buy-back program] had estimated this year's effort would rake in more than 14,000 weapons - but that was before the Heller decision put its laws into question. ... . In this post-Heller world, the gun buy-back this year netted only 6,800 weapons."

"Post-Heller world"? I'm going to sound kook-ish here, but that whole phrase looks wrong to me in this context - as if Heller has been around for five years and we're studying its impact with the benefit of some hindsight and reflection. Heller was decided five weeks ago. And then there's "netted only 6800 weapons this year." The year has five full months to go! OK, they're behind their expected pace, and I agree that Heller is a big reason. It just sounds like they're moving to this overarching conclusion - like nobody is going to turn in another gun for the rest of the year; or that they snuck in some subtle editorializing instead of just saying "in the wake of the Heller decision, the city has bought back only 6800 weapons so far this year." Does it sound off to anyone else or am I a little too touchy?

*Given the area, it's obvious that ten miles square means ten miles on each side. And it turns out that Congress punted on some of the everyday work in 1973, passing a law to give Washington DC a mayor and city council.

(I found this article about the case, written about a month ago. My apologies for the lack of timely bloggage, but I didn't hear about it until the NJL sent me an email alert. And if you really want some fun, read that for all the arguments against and in favor of the restrictions. The summary:

Against ban - "People can defend themselves better."
For ban - "It's scary, it'll be like the Wild West, it's frightening that America loves guns."

That isn't an exaggeration, either.)

Steven Weber shows us his O face

Or, "It was a dark and stormy blog" -

The Sleep of Monsters Produces Reason

The reason of monsters produces sleep, too, as we are about to discover by reading the article.

Change is seeping into our consciousnesses and Hope is entering our lives like amber rays dispelling the murk of a drugged sleep, the one which we endured so helplessly, so long.

This is the secret, kids - the sleep must be drugged in order to produce reason. And don't bogart the special brownies, man.

The movement headed by Obama is becoming an unstoppable juggernaut, fueled not by his leadership alone but by the gathering momentum of those individuals who feel the totality of the movement's righteousness within them. Obama is the face of the movement; the people are the movement.

OK, so they're ex-lax brownies. Should have warned you.

And while we are relishing our Obasm, we must nonetheless be aware of the opposing forces who peer jealously across the widening breach, who are becoming even more embittered, even more determined to prevent this movement from succeeding.

See! There's the O face. (Hey, HE used the word "Obasm," I didn't.)

This is such tremendously bad writing, it should come with a surgeon general's warning. I've changed diapers with smarter stuff than this in them. I'm tempted to oppose "the movement" based solely on this steaming stack o' sump cloggings, but there's the bonus of all the disastrous, marxist, anti-liberty "shut up we know what's best" policy proposals. None of this, you'll notice, is described here in Mr. Weber's leg-thrilling prose. It's all about the afterglow of beholding the Dalai Obama after the horror of the W years. I'm amazed he still has strength to write after the plague of festering boils and the scarabs that gnawed off the fingers of every registered Democrat, but that's just how transforming Obamania is. (Just look at him glow!)

I haven't got around to quoting the part where Bush uses fear the way Saddam Hussein used poison gas on the Kurds. (Yeah, really.) Nor how he forgives Obama for sounding like a clueless stooge, because that's how you have to get elected in America. (With guys like Steve voting, it's actually hard not to agree.) In fact, Obama may actually be a clueless stooge - it's only his vision for America that's "virtually without fault," not him.

At least, it's without fault until someone points out the fault, and he furiously insists that 1. he never noticed that part of it over the last twenty years and 2. such questions are off-limits! And 3. HOPE and CHANGE!

Really, it's like "Vote Quimby" only with a real person. Or the "None Like It Hot" film from Futurama, where the narrator insists that a stopgap done every once in a while, with less benefit each time, is a permanent solution.

But what ab-

I SAID HOPE AND CHANGE! Yes we can!

(My sincerest thanks to Rachel for the story.)

Mote, meet beam

Ricki talks about "winning the Good Person Olympics."

Great stuff - funny and smart. It also reminds me of the "Truck Farming" short from MST3K. The South starves while the North eats healthily. Hail Truck Farmer!

Holly Go Lighten Up

Dawn Eden proves her powers of awesome by writing a fine op-ed while still recovering from surgery.

The ongoing discussion about Sex and the City (sparked by the new movie) has brought out some good points about the competing cultural values. As quoted in Dawn's op-ed, the creators of the show had a pretty clear objective: "As he [producer Darren Star] told Entertainment Weekly, 'I really wanted to do a show that objectified men.' "

Some people see no problem with that, and wonder why we're fussing. I think the best way to demonstrate it is to compare SATC with Breakfast at Tiffany's.

All five women (the four leads of SATC and Holly Golightly) live glitzy, fab lives in the heart of New York City. All of them are "free agents" - with Holly having ditched a kindly older husband (Buddy Ebsen) to get to that point. All indulge themselves in a good many vices. All long for a home, but loathe the idea of being caged. And Carrie and Holly have at least one flawed knight riding into the picture - Mr. Big and Paul Varjak. Why should one be preferred to the other?

I think that there are two big reasons, which go side-by-side in my mind - first, that Breakfast occurs in a moral world, and second, that it is a better-crafted work.

Holly may well be a call girl, but both the character and the film have quite a different attitude to it than Carrie does to her sexual exploits. Holly is matter-of-fact about it (as much as she could be in the days of the Code) but she is equally matter-of-fact about the consequences. The only creature she can bond with is Cat - and even he gets tossed into the street in a fit of self-loathing. And the self-described "wild thing," in the end, realizes that settling for appearance instead of substance is a poor idea. She even says at one point, "I don't want to own anything until I find a place where things and I go together." Paul is much the same, and his own self-loathing at being 2-E's "kept man" is palpable, and he dreams of escape.

Despite their flaws, Holly and Paul are people one can root for - one hopes that they will escape, and find their rainbow's end. This is something I've never seen in any clip of SATC. There, appearances and sensations are the whole point. There's nothing to escape from. Sure, Carrie wants a Prince Charming, but is she willing to change who she is once she finds him, or does she want him on no terms but her own?

That leads right into the dramatic crafting of the show. It's possible of course to do a show about nothing, as Seinfeld was famously described by Larry David - it's also no surprise in the end to find that, as much as the show may have entertained, it didn't actually mean anything. Certainly it's foolish to think of such a show as "boundary-breaking" or whatever the phrase is. Strictly speaking, such a show recognizes no boundaries at all. If men could flap their arms and fly away nobody would have thought that the Wright Brothers accomplished anything; likewise, a show that doesn't adhere to any sort of moral framework isn't really daring anything.

If one doesn't consider promiscuity a serious moral failing, then it's simple to consider Carrie a positive character. It's much trickier to treat promiscuity as wicked (or at least an obstacle to true happiness) and yet have Holly and Paul come out as sympathetic. It takes more skill. What we know of Truman Capote's life is quite sad, but he was at least an honest writer and did not presume that his failings were something the characters in his book ought to aspire to.

The creators of SATC have no such compunction, as we have seen, and the consequence is that people take them as they mean to be taken. The result isn't just that men are objectified, either. By treating their potential Princes as commodities, the women in SATC do great damage to themselves. Simply put, one can't respect one's stuff. One may lose weight to fit into a fabulous dress one simply MUST have - but that's only because the dress flatters one; if it goes out of style, it goes into the trash. There's no question of appealing to the dress, or wondering what the dress wants. How could there be? Stuff exists for one purpose only, and that's to serve the interests of its owner. But a husband or wife is not merely just another accessory like shoes or a handbag or a great dress, and treating them that way kills the human connection that the characters claim to want. In such an atmosphere one can't be an equal, can barely aspire to be even as much as a pet.

Unless Carrie decides to act far above the standards upheld by the show, she is not going to be a good partner for Mr. Big, precisely because she won't be looking for a partner for herself. She will be looking for (begging your pardon) a good sexual accessory, and the character's nickname is certainly a tip-off to how the four friends thought of him at first.

Should there really be so much of a fuss over a TV show (now movie)? That depends. I don't think that the show beams subliminal messages into one's brain to sleep around and buy stuff one can't afford. Neither do I think that unlikeable main characters are a death knell for any book or show. What is, to me, the deal-breaker is that the writers of the show ought to play fair with the audience and demonstrate some sort of grounds rules for the characters, and then hold them to those rules.

Even Seinfeld wound up with its self-absorbed "no learning, no hugging" characters in jail, true to their shallow vanities to the last and justly rewarded for it. The Sopranos ended with a Dante-like twist - Tony forever trapped in a small, mean circle of hell, looking over his shoulder for the next threat; his future represented by his uncle (the former boss of the family) crumbling from Alzheimer's in a jail-like nursing facility, and his son sucked back into apathy. David Chase may as well have chosen "Once in a Lifetime" for the end sequence - same as it ever was, same as it ever was. We never see if Tony is killed because we don't need to.

Of course, SATC is fluff, "just a show" - but it's fluff that presumes a point of view that would prove ruinous to anyone who actually tried to live that way. That doesn't mean that watching will automatically turn us all into harlots with dishy friends and fab clothes; but it's not healthy to hold up that sort of thing as a positive.

Thrill und der Çhåszt

update, 5/28 - at Dawn's blog, commenter "Andy" suggested the blog title "Safety Gdansk." Wish I'd thought of that, darn it.

Ms Dawn Eden continues to conquer the book-publishing world - in fact, she's doing it so well she only needs the one book:


In English, it's called The Thrill of the Chaste. Clicking on the picture will take you to a place to purchase the book in English, and please do so. Clicking the link above will take you to the caption contest that Dawn's running for that cover, which is the Polish translation of her book.

My contribution is as follows:


True story: I have a good hockey buddy who is native to, and currently in, Poland - he's getting married in a couple of weeks. Coincidence?