Free-Floating Hostility

Call your bookies

2009-01-17T07:13:00.001-08:00

Here are my picks for conference championship Sunday.

Arizona 34, Philly 24: In the darkest hours, we Lions fans used to content ourselves with not being Cardinals fans, who clearly had it worse. In this of all years, it sort of has to be Arizona, doesn't it?

Pittsburgh 18, Baltimore 12: This one has late interception leading to Pittsburgh's go-ahead touchdown written all over it.

Parker joins Marinelli on the soup lines

2009-01-08T04:26:00.001-08:00

On the way to 0-16, Detroit made a stop at 0-15 with a loss in its home finale to New Orleans. During that game, the Saints were 10-for-10 on third downs. This is the most staggering stat that I've ever seen. Detroit's defensive coordinator Joe Berry, also happened to be head coach Rod Marinelli's son-in-law. After the game Detroit News columnist Rob Parker asked the coach, "Do you wish your daughter would have married a better defensive coordinator?" It's a cruel, horrible, inappropriate, and hilarious question.

Anyway, Parker was pilloried for it. And now he has resigned rather than accept a demotion. I'm sad that this is what brought Parker down. He spent eight years writing for the News and was never any good.

Why Does Steven Pearlstein Hate Capitalism?

2009-01-04T05:13:00.000-08:00

Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post makes the case that pay cuts -- like the ones the Teamsters negotiated with trucking firm YRG Worldwide -- will save the economy.

Economists have long believed that the only reason there is persistent unemployment is because labor is unlike most other "goods" -- its price does not go down when the supply gets out ahead of demand in the early days of an economic recession. Without a reduction in the price of labor that can induce additional demand, it's much harder for the market to "clear" and put supply and demand back in balance, albeit at a lower wage level.

This sounds nice -- all economic theory, and its emphasis on balance, sounds nice -- but it rests upon an assumption that labor is the same as every other good. People make this argument, but I have never been convinced.

The laws of supply and demand didn't apply in during the Bush Expansion that ended in 2007. U.S. unemployment was historically low for an extended period of time, but wages didn't rise. In fact, in real terms, they fell. Now take your Teamster-represented YRG trucker. Between this round of negotiated wage reductions and the pay cut YRG's workers took during the "expansion," the average truck driver at the company is appreciably worse off than he or she was in 2000. This is better than unemployment, which creates a different (and worse) set of problems. At least the Teamsters are going to get a piece of the company for their sacrifices, which is something that non-represented workers won't get.

Flexible wages strike me as a capitalism-eats-itself idea. From an economic point of view, everyone taking a 10% pay cut creates the same rippling demand destruction that layoffs would. From an economic perspective, it's marginally better than laying people off -- people with continuing earning potential won't cut back on their spending quite as severely. But this is a macroeconomic implementation of the notion that you can save your way to prosperity. That doesn't work. I'm skeptical that it can even create recovery. Ultimately, you have to stimulate demand. This seems like a silly way to do that.

In the short run, lowering wages in a recession is deflationary. And if you then allow them to rise as the labor market tightens, it's massively inflationary. If my wage level depends on the guy next to me staying employed too, it's irrational for me not to organize.

In Which I Make One Weak Blog Post Answer for a Widely Held but Benighted Argument

2009-01-02T16:12:00.000-08:00

I've covered a football team during a bye week, so I sympathize with political writers and websites trying to maintain traffic during what is basically a dead period. On Real Clear Politics today, someone named David Paul Kuhn takes his turn at what amounts to the political off-week story, the discussion of Obama's mandate. Kuhn argues that November's win was not a realignment, but rather a function of conventional coalitions coalescing around a slightly unusual candidate. He argues that interpreting Obama's win as a Democratic realignment is triumphalist nonsense. The election was swung by the economic crisis, not by the nation (especially the white working class) waking up last fall and realizing they were suddenly Democrats now. This is a reasonable thesis, following by a long and unintelligible argument hell bent on obscuring whatever good points he does have.

I also totally understand the desire to get ahead of macro trends, but Kuhn's conception of "realignment" is simply tiresome. He dredges up the trope that Obama can't connect with working class whites (Is it April 2008 again, do I have time to get my money out of stocks?) and therefore cannot ~~win~~ build a durable Democratic majority. The problem with this point is not that it's wrong, but that it's silly.

Obama's goal was to win the election, and to do so, he defeated what stood for the Democratic establishment. Also, the notion that winning the election because of the financial crisis is somehow not a real victory is truly ridiculous. There are real differences between the Democrats and Republicans on fiscal policy, and lots of voters opted for the former. That's a win. It's not partly a win or a minor victory. It's an election. They have consequences.

Kuhn apparently wrote a book about white voters. So it's not surprising he puts them at the center of his analysis. According to exit polls, Obama won 41% of the white vote. That's the best total for a Democrat since Carter in 1976. Citing Gallup, Kuhn says that before Lehman Brothers failed on September 15, Obama was polling around 33 percent among white voters, "Mondale Territory." Mondale may be synonymous with loser, but the electorate is a lot less white than in 1984. And it's key to note that except for the 10 days after the Republican Convention -- McCain's bounce days -- Obama led in the tracking polls from May through November.

In the end 41 percent of Whites, Blacks turning out in record numbers, and Hispanics who the Republicans alienated with anti-immigration policy, were enough to build a comfortable victory margin. It may not have been a landslide, but the result made the East Coast papers on the Wednesday after Election Day. Kuhn is not describing the continued power of the white electorate, but rather its weakening influence. Further, Obama's appeal to young voters and the GOP's own actions obviate the need for him to pander to white working class voters. He has proven he can win without them, even if Generic Democrat can't. But Generic Democrat won't be running in 2012. And in 2016 white working class voters will be an even smaller share of the electorate. If Obama can deliver on things like health care and governmental competence, Generic Democrat may have a pretty good record to run on.

Kuhn furthermore peddles a chronology that isn't necessarily matched by contemporary accounts. He points to the failure of Lehman Brothers as the day the election turned. This is conventional wisdom, and it probably does contain a kernel of truth. But I went back to Fivethirtyeight.com, which was my source for polling news. By Sept. 15's poll update Nate Silver suggests that McCain has already topped out and the race had turned back toward Obama. Given that we're talking tracking polls, that would mean September 12 was when the race began to turn. A few things happened on September 11, 2008:

The Republican Convention and McCain's very good speech were less fresh in people's minds
There were the commemorations of the attacks, which meant George W. Bush was in the news a lot.
The candidates appeared together at a forum at Columbia (up top!) to discuss public service. During the debates that followed every time voters viewed McCain and Obama together, Obama came out the winner, and perhaps that started here.
The Charlie Gibson interview with Sarah Palin hit the airwaves, showing that while she could inspire a room using a teleprompter she could not engage with issues when forced off scripts.

Now, I'll give Kuhn that fivethirtyeight switched its projected winner back to Obama on Sept. 18, which fits his narrative. By that time, the tracking polls included only post-Lehman polling. But he can't prove that Sept. 15 didn't amplify and accelerate the already existing trend.

Kuhn isn't the only one peddling this sort of nonsense out there. He's just the person I happened on today.

Looking forward to a one-day Staycation

2008-12-31T05:14:00.000-08:00

Something called Lake Superior State University in Northern Michigan has decided that there are too many words. So it's chosen to banish a few. Some of these are good, "Maverick" is silly, "Green" is meaningless, and the "Wall Street/Main Street" thing is overdone.

But I love "Staycation" as a word. It actually captures a concept that would require multiple words in one. I agree that coupling it with gas prices is silly. But taking time off from work, but staying in town rather than traveling is an idea worth noting. I mean, maybe in 2009 we'll replace it with "The economy," but for now it's a good word.

Maybe Deng Xiaoping was a Trotskyist After All

2008-12-31T04:43:00.000-08:00

This seems to have turned into an economics blog, which was never at all my intent. One of the great mistakes of my college career was choosing to take Principles of Economics for a grade. It's not that I wasn't interested. But my professor was dull and had already been denied tenure, so he had checked out. In the meantime, it was a large lecture that met at 10:30 a.m. when I was spending most nights up until 3 or 4 on the school newspaper. Needless to say, it didn't work out that well. So for me economics is a hobby, and it's a hobby in the way watching the NFL is a hobby for a Detroit Lions fan. It's everywhere and for obvious reasons, I'm pessimistic about the whole enterprise. Unlike football, I only understand econ in crude, broad macroeconomic terms. I can't seem to stop writing about it though.

Tom Friedman is not pessimistic. He loves global capitalism, and not in the holding-his-nose way that he loved the invasion of Iraq. I think he honestly believes it is going to save the world, which is a less nuanced position than he used to have. The funny thing is that most true-believer capitalists don't really say that in public anymore. In fact, I think that link is a pretty good summary of the state of capitalism defense -- argue that markets are actually not free and then say capitalism is clearly not perfect and wasn't designed that way. Those are both reasonable arguments. I like capitalism. I mean you probably can't buy a remote control farting bear in a centrally planned economy. But I do believe that the burden of proof for justifying the success and continued use of an economic system always rests with the most well off. If there is going to be economic inequality built into a system, the richest people ought to find a way to have some real social utility.

Mao Zedong is someone who hated capitalism so much he took over a country to prove how much he hated it. A couple of weeks ago, Friedman argued that one of the guys who followed Mao, Deng Xioping, saved Communist Party in China by opening the country up to free markets. I am unable to truly evaluate this claim -- both the freedom of China's markets and the actual health of the country or the Communist Party. But given that we're in a world recession and the U.S. government is far beyond broke while the Chinese run a surplus, it appears that combining foreign investment with a state-run economy and repression of dissidents has proven to be a massively successful strategy. I mean, for the government. In fact, The Nation reports the following:

China has embraced what amounts to a beggar-thy-neighbor strategy that supports its growth by taking a larger share of a shrinking global pie. And that is what global depressions are made of. [snip] Over the past decade, investment and savings there have grown much faster than consumption. Consequently, China has an unusually high savings rate of nearly 50 percent, while consumption constitutes only 35 percent of the economy. A world economy simply cannot function when the second-largest economy (measured by purchasing-power parity) has such a lopsided imbalance between savings and consumption.

And yet, the article goes on to say, China refuses to do anything about that. It outlines issues Obama should press the Chinese on. I hope he uses his global popularity to broach these topics. But mostly I wonder why on earth would anyone take economic advice from the President of the United States? His government is $11 trillion in debt. Listening to an American (even one I support) tell you how to run your economy is like inviting Matt Millen into your front office to rebuild your football team.

What if China is actually the negation of 50 years of free market theory. One overarching argument for economic freedom is that it leads to political freedom. But it hasn't done that in China. How many political parties are there? How are the Tibetans and the Falun Gong faring? What concessions do Internet companies make to operate in China?

And who would be better at studying the negation of capitalism than a nominally Communist country? Maybe the Chinese government was just slowplaying us all along. After 20 years of picking and choosing its approach to globalization, China's government wealth is largely predicated on the deindustrialization of the U.S., which wiped out large numbers of jobs that paid demand-stimulating wages. Then it bought our debt to continue subsidizing consumption. Now the nation owns massive amounts of U.S. debt. I don't know what that means in practice, but I know the hoops my credit card company and Ford Credit can put me through if I fail to pay my bills, then I'm not particularly excited about the future.

Detroit Shoots the Moon!

2008-12-28T17:12:00.000-08:00

By the end, I was rooting for Detroit to go 0-16. What good is being bad if you can't be historically bad?

Detroit football fans will always carry the 2008 season with us, the way we Tiger fans carry the 2003 team with us. It will be like starting over for the franchise. To fail so publicly is to require everyone within the organization to acknowledge what needs to be done. Lots of teams go 2-14 and 3-13. This is something special and a badge of honor for us fans if the Lions, like the Tigers, figure out a way to turn things around. I'm optimistic. No matter the outcome, next year will almost certainly be infinitely better than this one.

The feeling here is that Detroit should completely ignore its offense this winter and take care of its comically bad defense. The Lions were outscored by more than 15 points per game this season and allowed nearly 5 yards per carry. They need big bodies in the middle to force opposing offenses off schedule. They have three of the first 33 draft picks in April. There are pieces in place, just not many.

One Divides into Two

2008-12-27T10:10:00.000-08:00

There's a great line in Michael Lewis's wonderful and much-cited piece on the End of the Wall Street. As he describes what is happening to Wall Street's investment banks, a hedge fund manager that saw this housing bust coming and bet accordingly explains it this way

"These guys are only beginning to understand how fucked they are. It’s like being a Scholastic, prior to Newton. Newton comes along, and one morning you wake up: ‘Holy shit, I’m wrong!’

I had to look up Scholasticism. But I think the point is true in a broader sense as well. Autoworker turned business writer John Lippert explains that the United States' recent conversion to socialism isn't particularly popular at the University of Chicago. This is a little like saying, a Red Sox banner isn't particularly popular at Yankee Stadium. It's not surprising that people who believe in pure free markets (whatever those are) would decry what amounts to more than $11.5 trillion in loan guarantees and other interventions worldwide over the past few months. Lippert's piece is most interesting when he starts addressing the ways economists are processing the changing landscape. Given the proliferation of "econo-blogs," it will be possible to get a good view at the sort of creative destruction this current crisis brings to the profession.

It's pretty clear that all of these philosophies contain their own internal contradiction. Marx's theoretical "Dictatorship of the proletariat," was, in practice, a dictatorship of the governing cadres. Marxism failed as a governing philosophy. But Marx's analysis of capitalism still holds up pretty well 150 years later. And most people who believe in mixed economies have a pretty realistic view of what can and can't be accomplished through intervention. The Chicagoists have never confronted their own contradictions. In theory, equating free markets with free people sounds good. Some have already made a convincing case that in practice it hasn't quite worked that way.

Ultimately, Marx saw cutthroat capitalism as one cause of economic crises (although in his theory, crisis is endemic to the system). Chicago ultimately sees that same brand of capitalism as the solution to problems. In the marketplace of ideas, Marx (minus the name) seems to be trouncing Chicago in explaining our current economic unpleasantness. It will be interesting to see where this argument goes, especially without Milton Friedman alive to make his own case. Perhaps there are people out there in blogland who would do it on this blog.

Ultimately, my point is this: Chicagoists may claim their beliefs are laws of nature, true and immutable. Frankly, so do the Marxists. What works on paper doesn't work in practicality. What I'm asking is I'm listening. But isn't it just as likely that a philosophy formed as an intellectual response to communism would overcorrect in the other direction?

From the sports desk

2008-12-25T06:33:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! columnist Jason Cole has done the math and figured out 11 is greater than 8. And on the basis of that insight, he's decided that the NFL playoff system is unfair. And he finds that a member of the New England Patriots -- a team could miss out on the postseason at 11-5 while potentially 8-8 San Diego and potentially 8-8 Arizona go as Division Champions -- agrees. This is foolishness. If the Patriots were so worried about going to the postseason, they should have beaten the Jets at home a couple of weeks ago.

The NFL divisional races are as fair as they've ever been, a much better way of awarding playoff spots than anything else. This has the effect of skewing the wildcard races, but that's preferable to the alternative. The NFL regular season is actually eight different competitions with a wildcard thrown in for fun and profit. Cole's math is pretty elementary, and it breaks down very quickly. Here's the more advanced argument: Since going to four divisions, an NFL team plays 13 different opponents. It plays every team in its division twice, every team in another division of its conference once and every team in a division from the other conference once. There are only two non-common opponents. Comparing New England's season to Miami's or the Jets' is a fairly simple proposition, they played the same teams. Comparing the Patriots season to Indianpolis or Baltimore requires more questions. It's ultimately imperfect. Wildcards are good for making up numbers in the postseason. The rules are set down beforehand, with the tiebreakers in place. But of course its not fair. If you can't guarantee yourself a spot then you have to live with the consequences.

And as a service to Jason Cole, here's the actual unfairness argument. The NFC North (Detroit) played the NFC and AFC South this year. And just as in the auto industry, the South's plunder of Detroit has proven incredibly valuable. The NFC South could end up with both wildcard teams. Meanwhile, Indianpolis of the AFC South has clinched a wildcard. It's a structural unfairness, which means winning the division is incredibly valuable.

Yep, I'm Part of the Problem

2008-12-21T08:08:00.000-08:00

So, Robin Van Persie just received a great long pass, broke in on goal, and rifled a shot past Pepe Reina to give Arsenal a 1-0 lead over Liverpool. I am supposed to be angry about this. As you may be aware I'm a Tottenham Hotspur fan. Historically, Arsenal are Tottenham's sworn death enemies. For decades, the teams' home grounds were separated by about four miles in North London and both are pretty storied clubs. I picked up English Soccer after World Cup 2006. I chose to follow Spurs because they seemed to have an inordinate amount of players that I liked in the tournament. Anna can attest that I'm pretty committed to it. And yet, without a historical attachment to the game, I learned my biases the wrong way.

For instance, I like Arsenal. They play a really appealing, fast game and their manager is shrewd in the Billy Beane sense. I also like Manchester United, who are also really fun and whose manager, Sir Alex Ferguson is a big-time Labour supporter. In the meantime I detest Liverpool. They play ugly soccer, their fans annoy me, and they're part-owned by Tom Hicks (who gave A-Rod the $250M contract that wrecked baseball for a while).

Some English fans complain about the increasing globalization of the game. And there's certainly a case to make that the EPL has become a global league that happens to be based in England. Arsenal was the first to embrace globalization, the first to field a line-up without any English players. But in the last few years, the top teams in the Premier League are increasingly filled with foreign players. The International TV rights are massively lucrative and currently recession proof. Foreign owners like Hicks have controversially bought teams as investments and run up large levels of debt. There is a proposal kicking around to add a 39th regular season game to the season and play it abroad. Some of these things are obviously detrimental and I feel as though I should speak out (or at least post lots of things about soccer to drive traffic). And yet, I'm a Spurs fan sitting here in Wisconsin of all places rooting for Arsenal; as our lawyer friends might say, I have no standing to make an argument.

Great, now fucking Robbie Keane (who I loved when he played for Spurs until August) has equalized for fucking Liverpool. Fuck those guys.

Dear Congresswoman Baldwin,

2008-12-19T10:43:00.000-08:00

As part of its continuing efforts to leave the nation in smoldering ruin, the Bush Administration has passed a rule insuring the "right of conscience" for medical service providers. If I'm reading it correctly, it means that your doctor, nurse or pharmacist can deny you treatments they find objectionable. I assume we're talking about abortion and contraception (though I still hold out hope they're talking about penile implants). I expect the Obama Administration to roll this back as quickly as possible.

I'm more interested in a law in South Dakota, which requires doctors to read a state-mandated script to women seeking an abortion. Doctors at the state's one clinic are required to tell women that the procedure "will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being." Further:

Under the law, doctors must say that the woman has "an existing relationship" with the fetus that is protected by the U.S. Constitution and that "her existing constitutional rights with regards to that relationship will be terminated." Also, the doctor is required to say that "abortion increases the risk of suicide ideation and suicide."

Now the last part of that statement is demonstrably false. And the rest seems just unintelligible. Presumably they passed this law because they think women in South Dakota are just too stupid to understand what an abortion is. I mean, given how easy it is to get an abortion in South Dakota -- one Planned Parenthood Clinic in a state of 77,000 square miles -- its easy to see how a woman could just stumble in the door.

I'm stunned that this is constitutional, especially the part requiring doctors to lie their patients. But it raises a question: if a state can force doctors to say things they don't believe in, can they force other citizens to do the same? Can I write to my representative requesting she craft a law requiring people making economic layoffs to read a script explaining, "This company is committing legally protected economic violence to you and your family. Under other economic systems, including socialism and communism, there are fewer economic layoffs. By the way I made >last year and may receive a bonus for cutting your position." Then they'd have the option to sing the Internationale, though that wouldn't be required.

Rick Warren is an asshole, but I can't seem to get angry about it

2008-12-18T21:01:00.000-08:00

Rick Warren is an asshole. There are bigger assholes, especially if you're looking in the realm of evangelical leaders, but none whose microphones carry quite as far. So, no, I don't like that Barack Obama has chosen Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration in January. But, I also don't like that there's an invocation at all. But I've spent the last few hours trying to get worked up over the Warren choice and am finding that I just can't.

We moved to Wisconsin before Prop 8 really heated up, so I can't really speak to his role in its passage. Warren was clearly on the wrong side of that. And he's compared abortion to the Holocaust, which is so offensive to me that I want to kick him. But my understanding of Warren is in totality is a little less cut-and-dry. When it comes to evangelical politics, he's basically the nicest guy in a room full of misanthropes. His politics are exactly what you would expect, but he's at least willing to entertain that notion that abortion isn't the only important issue in the world.

It's strange to be on this side of the argument. I've spent the last eight years feeling oppressed by the White Protestant "majority" that foisted George W. Bush on the country. The election results are different now, but the makeup of the country hasn't changed all that much. And it does behoove Obama to reach out to the people in Warren's orbit. I may find some of Warren's views repellent, but it's not we woke up on November 5 and he was out of the mainstream. He has his supports have to be accounted for. And actually, neutralizing some of the anger over Obama within Warren's extended congregation (20 million copies of The Purpose Drive Life have been sold) is actually something of an indeterminate valuable. This is a very public way to do that.

My fear with Obama is he's being too clever by half on this choice. The transition has generally been masterful over the past six weeks at breaking with the left symbolically without actually agreeing to sell out on anything substantive. It's annoying, because I thought him winning by such a large margin meant we didn't have to do that any more. But Obama never campaigned as a progressive, I was just was projecting. And I think in the Washington world the perception will make it easier to pass things like stimulus and health care. It is wrong to completely disdain symbolism in politics. And this pick feels dirty to me, but, I still can't work up the anger. Warren's positions on gay rights are ultimately doomed. Prop 8's supporters badly outspent a terribly disorganized anti campaign and still only managed 52 percent. They won this encounter, but it only means they are losing more slowly. Rick Warren is still an asshole, but if his presence on stage January 20 makes it easier to address core economic and health care issues, I'm willing to wear it. I certainly understand why other people are not.

How to save the economy

2008-12-17T20:45:00.000-08:00

So the President said today: "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system."

Good to know that he's acknowledging it. I have become really fascinated with the notion of the "Chicago Road to Socialism" in the past couple of weeks, although Google reports that I'm outside the mainstream in that regard.

Hey Mickey: Look at the Economy, and tell me that weak unions are good for anyone

2008-12-16T16:28:00.000-08:00

Mickey Kaus's reflexive anti-UAWism has me pretty riled up these days. And I'll address that in a moment. But first, baseball:

Things are going pretty well for baseball right now. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays (of all teams) played in the World Series this year and the sport is as competitive as it has ever been. I do question whether competitive balance is good for the long-term health of MLB -- baseball doesn't have a national following the way the NFL does, so one wanted to watch Rays-Phillies -- but in the short-term that fact seems to make people happy. This age began following the 2002 labor agreement. And that's telling.

From the advent of free agency in the 1970s, the owners had spent decades trying to re-impose the reserve clause on the players. They colluded to keep salaries low for a while. And then they spent a decade ragging on their own game and complaining that it was lousy because competitive imbalance (even though there were no repeat champs between 1979 and 1992 and the only team to win twice in that span was the small-market Minnesota Twins). Then they even threatened to contract two teams. Shockingly, people believed them about the game being in trouble. After the strike of 1994 wiped out the World Series, it took Cal Ripken (whose streak the owners tried to end with scabs) and steroid-fueled Home Run chase of 1998 to start to bring people back. it was touch and go for a while. MLB nearly sent its business the way of the NHL in order to save it from the evil union.

But a funny thing happened in the 2002 labor deal. They owners stopped doing that. They accepted that the MLBPA probably wasn't going anywhere, and instead of trying to destroy the union, they engaged it. Bud Selig and Don Fehr probably don't have dinner together if they can avoid it, but there is a real working relationship. And while the steroid issue exposed some fissures, and there always will be conflicts (hell, even the weak-ass NFLPA complains about stuff sometimes) between labor and management, things have been peaceful for the better part of a decade. For years the union said it would accept a drag on salary if the owners accepted revenue sharing. The owners nearly destroyed their business to avoid agreeing to that. But in the end, shared sacrifice led to a good outcome for everyone. The MLBPA is arguably the strongest union in the history of organized labor, and baseball is doing fine.

The UAW is a pretty strong union too, and far from perfect. But people like Mickey Kaus, who fanatically blame the UAW for the problems facing the American automakers are simply wrong. Kaus says the adversarial nature of Wagner Act unionism is what has destroyed Detroit. Kaus is wrong. Bad management has pushed GM and Chrysler to brink. See, as fun as it is to blame the big bad union, that's completely disengenuous. In labor relations, management always dictates the terms of the transaction. This is always true, no matter how strong a union is. Management can choose to fight or it can choose to partner. What I believe happened to the Big 3 is what happened to MLB between 1977 and 2002. They were so committed to fighting the union that instead of trying to repair their business when problems arose, they let the issues sit there so they could win arguments at the bargaining table. And that appears to have subsumed everything. I suppose you could argue that's a natural outgrowth of industrial unionism, and Kaus does that. But then you have to explain Ford's ability to cut plant-specific deals and Saturn, in which the UAW agreed to a new model that appeared to be on its way to profitability before GM management ruined it.

The difference between baseball and making cars is that the Japanese competition was never good enough to steal eyeballs. And if you don't think that's a real issue, talk to me about all the Americans who watch the Europeans leagues while ignoring their own (In other words, let's talk about me, Yay!).

Kaus closes by asking "how long will it be before General Motors realizes its interests are sharply different--and parts company with its union co-pleader?" Maybe he's right. After all, GM can go into bankruptcy and do the following

Bail out of its UAW contracts and reorganize in a way that cuts thousands of jobs and slashes the wages and of those workers that stick around.
Scale down, which destroys at least some jobs at the suppliers -- and maybe all of them because the suppliers were selling to GM on credit.
Reorganize its distribution system, shutting down relationships with car dealerships, some of which also close, eliminating jobs (and all the other things that car dealerships support in their communities).

My reading of GM's actions is this: The company doesn't believe it will survive bankruptcy. It will struggle to get credit in this environment, and going into Chapter 11 may put the suppliers out of business. As some have suggested, Congress could pre-package the bankruptcy or guarantee the loans. But given how appealing the scenario above sounds, especially in the middle of a recession, it's hard to see why exactly anyone would endorse that.

If GM can't argue social utility -- autoworker wages essentially invented the American middle class and moved the wage structure upward for the entire nation -- then there's no compelling reason for the company to survive.

About Last Night

2008-11-05T18:36:00.001-08:00

I have a lot of things I want to say about the last 24 hours, and it will come trickling out slowly because of events on the ground here.

Last night was pretty incredible. I have always taken American racism as an article of faith, but to see Obama win like that was just incredible. I came home with a blissful sort of pride that lasted all the way until I woke up and saw that Prop 8 was passing in my former home state. I thought California was better than that.

I spent the hours between 1-8 watching polls in the Southern part of town. My assigned poll was poorly laid out and the heat was up too high. But the poll workers and their commitment to getting everything right was fairly inspiring. This was a 97-percent Democratic ward, the sort of place I thought Obama needed to run up unusually large margins. The demographic assumption would be that the poll workers were Democrats. Perhaps in huge city politics, it would be the sort of place rife with corruption. But what I witnessed was a group of people absolutely committed to making sure the rules were followed. That's about all I'll say. We also saw excellent turnout, 500 people showed up a station that usually sees about 300 in a normal election.

Then we hit two parties, one where we watched the call and another where we watched the speeches. I can't believe this happened. President Obama. It's stunning, really.

Programming Note

2008-11-03T18:44:00.001-08:00

Check out Trixie this Tuesday morning on CNN's American Morning.

She's scheduled to be on between 7 and 8 a.m. ET.

My Prediction, because the Washington Post Makes it Easy

2008-11-01T07:26:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post allows you to make election predictions. So here are mine. I describe it as convincing, though not quite a landslide. And if it looks like this, I'll be over the moon on Tuesday night.

&amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;strong&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;a href='http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2008/pick-your-president/'&amp;amp;gt;2008 Election Contest: Pick Your President&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;/strong&amp;amp;gt; - Predict the winner of the 2008 presidential election.&amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;gt;

In Which FFH Saves Democracy

2008-10-29T21:06:00.000-07:00

"So who do you think the Republican plants were?" the middle-aged white lady asked her friend as they got into our elevator Saturday afternoon. We were leaving a building in Downtown Madison that appeared to house the local offices of every progressive organization in the world. We attended Election Protection training session for volunteer poll watchers in a conference room across from the National Organization for Women's door.

"Maybe it's him," said her friend, another white empty-nester ex-soccer mom, and pointed at me. "He did say he was a recovering journalist."

I just laughed. It's an amusing idea that the Republican Party would have somehow infiltrated a gathering of 15 people in Madison to listen as Stacy, one of those dreaded community organizers, went through a PowerPoint presentation on how to stand in one place for 7-14 hours and write things down. I used to do that full time, although there were usually people bringing food around while I was doing it. I doubt that will be the case on November 4, although we can always hope.

For us, saving democracy involved kosher doughnuts and environmentally friendly coffee cups. The job of an election observer is to observe. We'll stand in a designated area and write down everything that happens in case lawyers need it later. And if we see something exceptionally bad, we can call the lawyers (referred to as "briefcases") straight away. Wisconsin voting law is actually really inclusive and the city of Madison has printed one ballot for every voting-age resident, which is unheard of. In Madison, the fear is that GOP folks will talk students out of voting by convincing them they aren't really residents. In Milwaukee, the concern is more old-fashioned armed intimidation in minority neighborhoods. We're still waiting on our assignments.

The good news is we have an afternoon shift, which should keep me away from the exit polls for a few hours. Rereading my Election ramblings from 2004, that's probably best for everyone involved.

Sweet Merciful Crap

2008-10-25T06:11:00.000-07:00

I'm a day late, but is this the most unlikely Op-Ed byline you have ever seen?

The Ultimate Vindication of the Process Story

2008-10-23T05:11:00.001-07:00

Since everyone reads everything online now, you've probably seen this long NYT Magazine piece about the message confusion within the McCain Campaign. Given what I'm doing between 9 and 5 these days, I found it completely fascinating. I think it's actually a nice illustration of way insidery campaign stuff affects the impressions people get.

The what-if question I walked away from the article with was this, What if these guys had actually picked something and stuck with it? How different would the election be? Maybe McCain would still be in trouble. But I bet we wouldn't be talking about an erratic campaign that was sort of flailing around trying to figure things out. In the October 2004 Times story about the Bush campaign, Karl Rove said this: "We're an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality." This is the idea that just by saying something over and over again, you can make it true. But that's only the case sometimes.

You can say whatever you want, and the people that agree with you will agree with what you have said. It worked for Bush in 2004 because of the GOP turnout machine and his unquestioned strength with evangelicals. But when you're not talking to partisans, there has to be something in the message that jibes with pre-existing information for a message take hold. The 2004 electoral environment didn't exist anymore, but the McCain campaign continued to act as though it did. When you're trying to appeal to independents, you can't keep changing tactic every couple of weeks.

After spending six weeks successfully chipping away at Obama for not being "Ready to Lead," picking Sarah Palin as your Vice Presidential nominee creates cognitive dissonance for people not already in the tank for you or her. Then being unable to figure out what to do about the financial crisis reinforces that idea. Suddenly, you're a 26-year Washington veteran running against a guy who has been on the national stage for exactly just over four years, and he's the one people trust to lead.

World Series Fever is Localized

2008-10-22T04:37:00.000-07:00

From today's Detroit Free Press:

The Rays-Phillies World Series could be the lowest-rated in baseball's 105-year history, betonline.com is projecting. Lower than the Tigers-Cardinals in '34? Actually, betonline.com says the lowest TV ratings ever was the 10.1 drawn by the Tigers-Cardinals in '06. 2006, that is.

Well, the rest of the world can have their big ratings and famous teams. I'm excited for this World Series, and I'm not going to apologize for that. Tampa Bay is in the World Series. I watched the first game in Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays history. It was against Detroit and Justin Thompson started for the Tigers. He was supposed to be our next big thing on the mound. Then, not surprisingly, he wasn't. I remember being impressed at just how much of a shithole that stadium was. I couldn't believe baseball was so desperate for the expansion fees that they would even put a team in that building. Now the World Series is going to be there. How wonderful is that? I love it when things wind up in places they aren't supposed to be. It's like putting the Super Bowl in Jacksonville or Detroit. Or like when we lived in Southeastern New Mexico.

Other things I like about this World Series include

The Rays are favored only for the most deeply cynical reasons
I know a guy who used to work for the Rays organization, who promised me that the team was on the right track. So I really feel as though I was in on the ground floor with them.
Philly fans are sort of like the nuts at John McCain rallies. Give them a chance in the national spotlight and they're bound to do something terrible.
The the networks are so greedy that not only have they already pushed the starts back so late that kids on the West Coast will already be in bed, but they're willing to do it even further so they can pocket another check.
That's it my candidate buying that block of time.
That when it's over, either Tampa or Philadelphia will have won the World Series.

I made some other cases earlier, which are still operative as well.

Little Red Songbook Volume II

2008-10-20T20:03:00.000-07:00

As a sort of extension of birthday privileges, I finally received permission to screen The Pajama Game in our apartment yesterday. For the uninitiated, let me explain that it is a movie musical about unions, which I figure should represent the perfect intersection of Mike's and my interests. He objected to it on several levels, however. Though his eyes boggled, he claims the least of his objections is the lyric "I don't wanna talk small talk/I've got something better for your lips to do/and that takes no talk at all." He feels the problem is that the guy who saves the day in the end is management. I argued that a) the union wins the strike b) it's significant that the guy in question (Sid) has worked his way up off the floor so he's really representing both workers and management and c) this is a movie with Doris Day--were you really expecting that the big finale would be the triumph of socialism? Mike retorted that yes, he was. He then went on to elaborate his plans for a new musical called Karl!, the heart of which seems to be plans for a couplet that rhymes "bourgeois" with "je ne sais quoi." He says we have to watch Newsies now to make up for his disappointment. Since that will obviously not happen, we are soliciting suggestions for other musicals about labor relations.

The Birthday Weekend Celebration

2008-10-20T05:03:00.001-07:00

Trixie's first novel was published 30 years ago, but she had never been invited to give a reading in Madison until now. Saturday, which also happened to be Anna's birthday, she read here as part of the Wisconsin Book Festival. The reading involved her and a local woman with a long name reading from their books about daughters dealing with their mothers' illnesses. I have heard Trixie read before, but between readings I often forget how good she is. It was a great deal of fun and the crowd was wonderful as well. So that was a nice way to spend the Birthday weekend.

The Birthday festivities included two large cooking undertakings on my part, a dinner with the rest of the people in Anna's MSTP program (who don't fall into the category of medical students), and the procurement of curtains that have transformed the look of our townhouse.

Obama 2, McCain 0

2008-10-16T20:16:00.000-07:00

I may be lousy at cold-calling undecided voters, but I'm certainly capable of voting early. Anna and I visited the City Clerk's office today and voted in the general election. Nothing funny happened, which is actually kind of a relief.

Distributing Clues to the Physicians of Tomorrow

2008-10-15T18:52:00.000-07:00

So as long as I'm being incapacitated by the debate, I'll take a few minutes to tell y'all what I've been up to: arguing with medical students. Seriously, this takes up a lot of my time and mental energy. I've been in fight mode for months, ever since we moved to a purple state. Here are some of the, er, talking points I've been, er, talking about.

Childbirth involves pooping. I swear, no medical student with whom I have yet had this conversation knew this, except the one who has already given birth herself.
Once your patient is addicted to painkillers, please do not kid yourself that witholding the scrip he needs is going to get him off pills. It is going to send him out on the street to score. Get him into treatment if you can, but get off your high horse first.
Please be aware that weight loss is a no-win strategy for your obese patients. Even if you don't know that a target of BMI under 25 is both arbitrary and bullshit (which, to be fair, most med students seem to have grasped just fine without benefit of my conversation), under 5% of them will ever be able to maintain a "normal" BMI over any long term. So stop recommending snake oil and start looking into the evidence.
There is no board certification in an "Abortion Doctor" specialty. Primarily gynecologists and family practictioners provide abortions. Except, of course, primarily they don't, because they don't want to be shot.
You cannot be a competent physician and scared of bodies at the same time. Get over it, starting with being wo/man enough to use the communal shower at the gym.
Stop talking about the questions on the exam you just took. I don't know if the answer was glycogen synthase. You sound like you are decompensating.
As a student doctor you are held to a higher standard. Tough noogies. It is your responsibility to correct whatever deficiencies in your education have allowed you to reach this point in your career without realizing the following:

Teenagers have sex.
Teenagers have sexually transmitted diseases.
Teenagers have babies.
Many people have cancer and it's got nothing to do with you.
No one cares how you feel about performing a digital rectal exam.
Dressing up as a stripper pole for Halloween will make many of your colleagues uncomfortable.
While "retarded" is in some contexts an appropriate description for some of your patients' symptoms, it is not an appropriate description of, say, NAFTA.
Iran is not communist.
McCain is not pro-choice, nor is he neutral on abortion.
The following is not a valid critique of diversity: "The great thing about Wisconsin is that even though there aren't a lot of black people in some areas, people aren't mean about it."
The following is not an intelligent critique of the election: "What worries me about Obama is that he's coming to power the same way Hitler did."
Medical students are not better than other people. Some of them are worse.

Feels good to get off my chest how draining it is.

Required Reading for All-White Candidates for Office

2008-10-15T18:29:00.001-07:00

Y'all know I've been busy, so I haven't managed to fit blogging back into my new life. But I'm watching the last debate and am far too agitated to do any kind of work.

Thanks to some of my smart friends, I know about this, a blog post titled "How not to be Insane when Accused of Racism (a Guide for White People)." Wouldn't it be nice if Senator McCain gave this a read? If he copped a clue about his own privilege? Housing-related? Gender-related? Oh, gee, I dunno, whitenesss-related? How an educated man can reach this point in his career and truly believe that being "accused" of racism is equivalent to racism itself, is just, well, farcockt.

Miss y'all.

In Which I Fail as a Political Operative

2008-10-15T15:55:00.001-07:00

I'm not a reporter right now. But I'm not entirely comfortable being a partisan either. So it felt odd walking into the local Obama office and making phone calls today. And, honestly, it didn't go very well. I was OK at the part when I called and asked a question (who are you going to vote for?) But when it was time to try and persuade people, I was halting and found myself being asked questions that weren't on the script. That was frustrating. My overarching reason for supporting Obama is that I believe McCain will be a continuation of Bush's corporatist policies. Obama won't be so much. The problem is that it sounds kind of Communist, which isn't the best way to persuade undecideds in Wisconsin.

Mostly, I had not a lot of no answers. There were a few hang-ups and one long discussion with a guy who was pretty well-informed except he would get one or two key details wrong. And I couldn't shake him. He left the call undecided, waiting for tonight's debate. Also, I was the only person at my table and it seemed kind of lonely and unpleasant. Part of the reason I went was to meet some like-minded people. But maybe going in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday wasn't the best idea. My current plan is to go back at least one more time to try and do my part. Of course, Wisconsin isn't as swingy a state as it looked two weeks ago.

My current plans for Election Day are to act as an ACLU-trained Pollwatcher.

Palin 2012 And The Changing Vice Presidency

2008-10-12T14:30:00.000-07:00

Andrew Sullivan linked to this story from the Times of London, a discussion of internal tensions within the McCain campaign right now. Sarah Palin -- parroting a widely held view in the batshit insane right-wing blogosphere -- wants to keep hitting Obama on his past associations. McCain and his closest aides, meanwhile, perhaps startled by the ugliness they've seen at their rallies in the past couple days now are thinking it might be better to lose with honor rather than go down the slash-and-burn road with no promise of success. That these tensions are appearing in print proves two things

The internal fissures in the McCain Campaign are starting show. Leaks appear in creaky ships.
Sarah Palin is reading the same polls at the rest of us. Instead of playing until the final whistle, she's already beginning her campaign for the 2012 nomination by distancing herself from McCain's flawed gameplan.

It was no secret that the holes in McCain's appeal were always going to make this an uphill battle for him. His three months of sustained character assassination on Obama in July and August were enough to cut Obama's polling lead nationally from 4 to about 1. McCain's only polling lead during the fall election cycle came following his convention. I believe this lead was the normal convention bounce amplified some by the return of the far-right conservatives that loved them some Sarah Palin. And it's clearly not over yet -- the difference in the way the polls look today compared to three weeks ago should tell us that. But Sullivan comes to the conclusion that, if things progress as they appear to be, will be part of the McCain campaign post-mortem. "You can ride this kind of tiger only so long before it eats you as well." Palin may have saved McCain in September, but she's not doing him any favors in October.

The belief here is that the moment she received the credit for fueling McCain's convention bounce, her interests diverged from McCain's. In the space of a week in St. Paul she became the leader of the social conservative wing of the Republican Party. But if McCain won, she would be Vice President. In 2012 or 2016, she wouldn't be able to run against Washington (part of her appeal) and she would be tied to the McCain record for better of for worse. Given the challenges of the next few years and the make-up of Congress, one wonders whether President McCain could really accomplish much worth building a campaign around. Much as Al Gore couldn't run far enough away from Clinton's blow jobs to win in the electoral college, Palin's job would be a lot more difficult. If McCain loses she goes back to Alaska with a national profile, a national base of support and the ability to raise massive sums of money. A couple of months at policy camp to make her more conversant in national issues and poof, she's ready for 2012 or 2016.

In the era of the permanent campaign, the vice presidency is now a lifetime achievement award rather than a mid-career move. First is the question of "Doing no harm to a ticket." Palin's selection started a frenzy of digging into her background. Given the proliferation of media and the ease of publishing one's thoughts (ahem) that's a lot of people asking questions. Her allies may claim that she was subjected to a level of scrutiny not given to Obama. This is bullshit. The problem is diffusion. Obama's scrutiny came over the course of this endless campaign. That's 19 months versus six weeks. Instead of things coming out gradually they came out all at once.

Further, nothing is less exciting than a known pick. If a Presidential candidate is relying on his or her Veep to create energy, he or she has massive problems. Joe Biden had been vetted by the media during his time in Washington and there were no surprises on the campaign trail. He was like Dick Cheney in that (and only that) regard. We had no way of really knowing (or maybe we did) just how crazy Cheney would turn out to be. Further, Cheney didn't want to be President. His entire agenda was predicated on being in power, so he did what he had to do to help Bush win. Incidentally, one could argue that this same reality helped doom the Kerry/Edwards ticket. So perhaps this is the one place where George W's fanatic demand for loyalty helped him. Obama's reasoning is different; I don't believe he's scared of smart people. But Biden will be 73 in 2016, which means he may not be spending the next eight years (knock wood) decorating the Oval Office in his head.

Upon further review

2008-10-11T12:55:00.001-07:00

You know, maybe I'm gave John McCain a little too much credit.

I'm not sure the opposite of "Arab" is "decent man, family man."

The Mother of All Friday Night News Dumps

2008-10-11T07:01:00.000-07:00

Media relations professionals will tell you that Friday is designed to hide bombshells. Most reporters are trying to get out for the weekend and may have gone home, and Saturday news consumption is generally lighter than Sunday. So if you get something out on Friday, it goes in Saturday's paper and then can be referred to as "old news" on Sunday. So here's what we had last night.

John McCain in Not Acting Like a Total Asshole Shock

We found that Sarah Palin may or may not have violated any laws, but did act unethically (which may qualify her even futher to join John "Keating 5" McCain on the ticket)

I'm getting the same cringe when I see McCain that I got when I saw Kerry take three hours of his campaign in October to go hunting in Ohio. That was stupid pandering. This is something else. The video coming out of McCain rallies is generally pretty ugly (although what we're seeing does probably portray some selection bias). I'm happy that McCain undercut a week of really brutal personal attacks. But the fact that he was booed suggests that he's tapped into a really ugly vain of unhappiness that he really can't control. I hope it just stops at brutal language, although that's not necessarily the history we have in this country.

I empathize with those people a little bit. I remember wondering why Kerry and Gore weren't tough enough on Bush, as though if he just said the right thing it would convince everyone to vote the right way. But that's simply not the way it is.

Corporate Synergy Fail

2008-10-09T20:07:00.001-07:00

I'm taking a Kaplan Class now to prepare for the GREs, which is probably worth a blog post at some point in the future. Today we had a Verbal lesson that included this suggestion for building vocabulary:

Get in the habit of reading well-written publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and The New York Times.

No love for corporate parent The Washington Post?

Hopping on the Bandwagon

2008-10-08T17:38:00.000-07:00

With all that went on this summer, I can't say that I paid the sort of attention to baseball season that I usually do. So I don't remember if the Red Sox and Rays had their annual brawl in St. Petersberg. It seems like every August the Red Sox would travel to the Trop for a series that they probably felt was beneath them. Three games against nobody in the middle of the season. And then Pedro or someone would throw at some Rays player and the teams would duke it out on the field. And this happened EVERY year. It made sense on the Rays end. They started April in "play out the string" mode, so why not have a little fun along the way. Apparently, they did have a brawl this year too, although it was in Boston.

I'm rooting for Tampa this year, just for the sheer novelty. This is new for me. Usually I reflexively root against Florida teams. And this is a Florida team against a team I generally like. But the novelty of the Rays in the World Series is just too much not to hope for. That's really poor reasoning, I realize, so I won't try to justify this on those grounds. Instead, I'll make three Greater Good arguments and leave it at that.

We've done well with indoor World Series: Think of 1987 and 1991, which were both classics, decided in the ridiculous atmosphere of Metrodome. And in 1993 there was a Series ending home run by Joe Carter at what was then called Skydome. Probably there would be some ridiculous catwalk moment that would decide a game. It would be unbelieveable.
An All-Swing State Series? It would be fun watching John McCain and Barack Obama tie themselves in knots not taking sides in a Phillies-Rays Series. Also, maybe Pennsylvania's not a swing state anymore. Actually, this might be the ideal World Series generally. The team that best represents historical abject failure vs. the team that best represents near-term abject failure. A World Series sponsored by FailBlog.
How often do you get to see things you've never seen before? I saw Boston win the World Series last year and three years earlier. I know Sox fans feel as though they're making up for lost time, but the same team winning every year is boring. The Rays would be different.

So there you go. I realize it's basically an indefensible position. I'm going to go atone for it.

Update: I'm out of blogging practice and hit Save rather than Publish, hence the posting a day late.

You Forgot Poland

2008-10-05T16:45:00.001-07:00

Remember when George W. Bush said this:

I do. One of the first posts on this blog was about a Website called Lie Girls (NSFW link). The website was a takeoff on the "Coalition of the Willing" from the early days of the Iraq War. The best line in the video is when someone walks into the room and says sexily, "You forgot Poland."

Well, now Poland's out.

How to Fill a Fridge

2008-10-05T15:35:00.000-07:00

When we moved from Davis to Berkeley, one of the things we thought we were giving up was the Saturday Farmers Market. The one in Davis, which was two blocks down C Street from our house, was always a bustling collection of farmers with fresh food, strollers and dogs. It was a local institution and always regarded lovingly. In Berkeley, instead of seeking out Farmers Markets, we had our vegetables delivered. We felt good about contributing to local agriculture.

One of the things we've been pleased to discover in Madison is the thriving Farmers' Market scene here in Madison. There's a massive one out on The Square (which is what they (we, maybe soon) call the area near the Capitol). This was surprising. I always thought of Wisconsin's main contribution to the nation's dinner table to be dairy products. And by the way, they hate California dairy products out here.

Closer to us on the West Side of Madison is a small farmers market in the mall parking lot. It's not big and dogs aren't allowed. But it's interesting how much of an effect it has on quality of life. We're still learning about the dynamics of Farmers Markets in places with a real winter. On Saturday, every booth was suggesting buying veggies and freezing them for the winter. The helpful people at the basil stand suggested we take five or six stalks so we could freeze it and have it during the winter. That suggests to me that they don't know that many people who go through basil the way we do. The outdoor market ends on Nov. 1. I heard there was an indoor market during the winter. I'm curious to see what grows out of frozen ground.

Newsflash: The Blog Lives Maybe

2008-10-04T07:26:00.001-07:00

I finally wore a jacket to work yesterday morning.

After about 10 days of denial, I decided that I couldn't take the 15 yards between our front door and our car without the Google jacket I scored at Jeffy's wedding. It was at once a familiar and unfamiliar sensation. I told people when I interviewed for jobs around town that part of me was really looking forward to winter. I learned to drive in the snow and lived through 21 real winters in the Eastern United States before we set off for points west. Everyone scoffed at me, and I was informed that the farmer's almanac suggests that last year's "worst Wisconsin Winter in a century" was simply a warm-up act for this one. We'll see. I am excited for snow. I haven't woken up to a blanket of snow outside my door since Christmas Eve Day 2002. At least I think it was snow. It could, I suppose, have been an errant drug drop off (This was, after all, New Mexico). So the truth is I'm excited to see just how much of a wimp I have become.

I realize winter in Wisconsin isn't really news, or, for that matter, particularly that interesting. But walking into my office yesterday, I felt the strong urge to write about it. And I have been feeling the need to start writing for myself again for a while now. That's personal news, for which a personal blog is a perfect outlet.

So, this is to let you know that I intend to starting using this blog again. My sense is that the topics won't change much from the previous incarnation of that blog. Maybe more soccer and politics, but that's just judging from how I feel these days. Probably there will be plenty about us figuring out our new town. I don't know if Anna will have the time to blog, school keeps her pretty busy. But my guess is she'll make some appearances.

I kicked around the notion of starting a new site, but decided against that. I like the way this one reflects our life, if only to show that we didn't faithfully do this during the previous year. Plus, now that Twitter has caught on, this medium is sufficiently behind-the-times to feel worthwhile again.

Let's call him Red Bob Kraft

2008-01-03T17:38:00.001-08:00

Interesting post on Deadspin today in honor of the Iowa caucus looking at who in the sports world gave to whom. My reflexive rooting for the Patriots days may be behind me. I mean, McCain I can understand, but Mittens? Seriously?

We Miss you Too

2007-12-08T17:52:00.000-08:00

The blog just...looks so sad. On a night like tonight when I have no plans, feel slightly unwell, and show no signs of addressing my pullulating to-do list, perhaps I shall give you an update on what's up with FFH. This will be in no way systematic.

Soccer. Soccer is definitely up with FFH. Mike has finally accepted that hockey is moribund, and has taken up a new, young sport on the rebound. As US soccer remains a bit pointless, he currently roots for Tottenham Hotspur , which in my opinion beat out the Baltimore Ravens for best literary team name. The Tigers have gotten so good Mike was forced to latch on to a team in difficulty just to keep his sense of self. I myself favor Palermo, primarily because they are geographically located near the ancestral seat in Sciacca, Sicily, and partly because I'll never have trouble identifying a pink and black uniform. As I write I am watching Palermo lead Fiorentina 1-0 because our TV now turns to Fox Soccer Channel as a matter of course without waiting for input from the remote. The ref is very sweaty.
School. School is out. That being said, my PI has been heard referring to me as "Dr. Mirer of the future" or, sometimes, "Drs. Mirer of the future." I did recently purchase a pantsuit, and will be making a series of journeys to the South and Midwest in the coming months. I am deeply nervous and highly excited, but that is all I am currently willing to discuss. In fact, you can have five dollars right now if we can change the subject.
Berkeley. If you haven't heard, we finally moved to Berkeley. We fit in so well here that Mike now owns two corduroy jackets. Do we think the etymology of corduroy could be the King's crown? And would that make any kind of sense? Anyway, we have a little house-ish cabin-ish thing called an in-law off our landlady's house. It's cute. And that means I no longer commute, but as you will have astutely guessed, it means my man does. Whatever, he's a better driver anyway.
Simplicio just scored!!!! And now there is a big pile of men in pink and black grabbing each others faces and kissing on the soccer pitch. This is way better than hockey.
Dogs. We still can't have a dog in our new place. This makes me very sad. Three of our neighbors have dogs. Ozzy is a semi-stray who Mike compares to Boo Radley. I am not convinced this dog would stand between me and Bob Ewell. He mostly strides up and down the block growling and acting like a pitbull with issues--which he is and which he has. The other dog is Champ. I believe him to be a Staffordshire terrier (another fighting breed), but he is Ozzy's negation--friendly, playful, charming, submissive. Champ only appears in the front yard tied up, and I think he is lonely. When I pass him on my way to work he cries because I won't stay and play with him--this, along with global warming, keeps me up at night. Gwendolyn is a ten pound fuzzball who, due to an early stint in the pound, thinks she is hard core. She regularly steps to Ozzy and tries to get in his face. It's hysterical.
Chanukah. This afternoon I went shopping for tomorrow's Chanukah party. At Trader Joe's they are selling gelt under a sign that says "Chocolate Coins of the World. Makes a Great Stocking Stuffer!" This in San Francisco, for the love of Pete. Michael called up my dad today for a refresher course in his roast beef recipe. After hanging up he asked me in perplexity, "Do you think your dad meant cardamom when he told me to coat the meat in rosemary and Coumadin?" I thought yes, though we did agree it would be efficient to clog and then thin your blood all in one meal. It really is less stressful to be vegetarian, y'all.
Weddings. The last time we were at Andy and Jesse's the former observed "straight people are always being invited to weddings." It's hard to argue, with Jeff & Sheryl coming up next month, Sarah & Ryan scheduled for June, and the last of my high school lesbian friends preparing to marry a man (though this last may be more a function of my being 27).

Ok. I'm going to go make some chamomile tea. Forza Palermo! E la squadra del mio cuore. Peace.

I'm Worldwide

2007-07-26T23:36:00.001-07:00

If we keep up this pace of one post a month, we'll have driven away pretty much all of our readers, but I guess that's really our own fault. But this was sort of fun, so I figured I'd post it. I found this photo on the website of Monterrey CF, a soccer team based in Mexico. So, that's pretty cool. I figured I'd share. I have just returned from watching them beat English side Preston North End.

Akil: Now Starrier than Ever

2007-06-30T15:20:00.000-07:00

Even though we don't blog much anymore, every now and then something comes up that makes me want to keep FFH going, even if we only post once in a blue moon. This is one of those occasions. I was lost in thought on an elliptical machine at the UC Berkeley gym the other day when I looked up and saw Akil on TV. He has collaborated with one Kevin Michael on a new video titled "It Don't Make Any Difference to Me," which was playing on MTV U (whatever that is). I started ecstatically screaming, much to the alarm of the surrounding gym patrons. Perhaps my response was out of proportion, but it's worth celebrating when good things happen to good people. A quick search tells me that you can download the song on iTunes, along with Akil's demo album. Check out the video now--I first saw it with sound about a half hour ago and the song is seriously caught in my head.

Rites of Passage

2007-05-04T18:39:00.000-07:00

If we were doing as well as we have done in months gone by of blogging, you would already know that Erez, aka Clafoutis, was Bar Mitzvahed in March. Fortunately, his dad is a writer, so he can catch you up here. Our piece of the story pertains to Bar Mitzvah gifts. We are really bad at giving gifts. I have been attempting to give Debbi a wedding gift since August of 2004; I recently purchased one and had it sent to myself instead of her. Michael cannot remember having given anyone a gift, ever. But Erez is not just anyone, so I was determined that we would come up with a thoughtful gift in a reasonable time frame. This poses the question of what constitutes as thoughtful gift for a thirteen year old on the occasion of his becoming a man. On that point, Michael and I differed.

Michael scoured the Internet and found the gift he would have most desired for his own Bar Mitzvah. In fact, I suspect he's a little disappointed he didn't get one for our wedding. He sent Erez a remote-controlled farting bear. I was pre-informed of his choice, because he inexplicably thought I would consent to having my name on it. I yielded from "over my dead body" to "ask Andy and Jesse." Michael sent an email asking if we would still be welcome in their home after wrecking their son. Jesse declined to vote, and Andy tactfully replied that he thought Erez would love it.

I felt I should send something more appropriate, so I put my mind to what I would most desire if I were a thirteen year old boy. The answer was a boyfriend. Given the reputation as a ladykiller that Erez has held since preschool, I adjusted. I sent him some personal products in the Unforgivable scent made by Sean John, along with a note explaining that this was meant to make up for Michael's gift in the event that the latter rendered Erez permanently incapable of talking to girls. We have received permission to reproduce the contents of Erez' thank you note to me, here:

Dear Anna,

Thank you so much for the deodorant and the hair gel. I used the deodorant this morning for a Bat Mitzvah. At the party, a girl asked me to 'grind' with her and I accepted because I love girls. Maybe the deodorant caused that. I will wait with the hair gel, though, because it may make me look too slick, and have too powerful an effect on the girls.

I'm very glad you were able to make it to my Bar Mitzvah. It was a pleasure seeing you. By the way, what did Michael send me????

With love,

Erez

I emailed the dads to explain that I had actually sent bath and shower gel, and that Slick should be prevented from putting it in his hair, but I was too late. According to Jesse "he smelled like the inside of P. Diddy's limo." The bear arrived shortly after, and within 24 hours Erez had "farted it to death" (Andy wants credit for this phrase, Jesse: "The OED will be so pleased.").

Michael's comments were "I told you so" and "This whole thing makes me so happy, you have no idea." Our work here is done.

WikiCharity

2007-05-01T21:15:00.000-07:00

In filling out my pledge for Berkeley SPH's 2007 class gift, I noticed a space for "This is a gift with my spouse/partner. ______________________(name)." So, fearless readers, I am now accepting nominations for amusing fake spouse/partner names. If you don't suggest anything better, I'm going with Neil B. Formi. Nothing that starts with Haywood, and nothing from The Simpsons, thank you.

Shameless Crowing

2007-04-16T16:27:00.000-07:00

I recognize that it is tacky to brag about one's parents' accomplishments but this is a big one, so, you know, tough rocks.

Check out the list of finalists for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Biography. That's my dad!

Click here to view, or re-view, his imitation of Tarzan.

In which the IRS Strains the Language

2007-04-15T23:00:00.000-07:00

The IRS website features a certain link titled "What's Hot in Forms and Publications." Think that's chutzpah? It leads to this page, titled "What's Hot in Tax Forms, Publications and Other Tax Products." And it's, as Jeffy would say, hawt.

This year, we decided to stop flushing our money down the toilet and also to do our own taxes. As usual, we were able to negotiate an equitable division of labor: I agreed to do our taxes if Mike would locate our W-2's. He, it turned out, had been keeping our W-2s in a stack on my desk, so shortly after we shook on this arrangement, he appeared at my side, saying "Here you go. Vaya con Dios."

That was not really the end of his servitude. For one thing, he couldn't get very far away. My desk was the eye of the tax prep hurricane, and if he wandered outside it he was likely to be swept up in a maelstrom of "What's your social? What's our bank's routing number? Do you think we qualify for a Telephone Excise Tax Credit?" and occasionally "Where do you think you're going?".

We'll see if we get audited, but at the moment, we appear to have come out way ahead. Last year we paid about $100 in taxes, and $217 to get our taxes prepared. This year we got a four-figure refund and paid ten bucks for the privilege of sweating it out ourselves. We decided to voluntarily add a little extra to our state taxes to benefit certain funds for disease research, primarily so that we could round our remaining state tax debt to $34. I am a little nervous about the fact that the service we used misspelled "withdrawal."

Bedside Manner for Boxers

2007-04-15T22:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday April took Quintus to the vet. She was concerned about two bumps that had formed around his hips. The doctor, who April informs me holds a Ph.D. in History from Yale in addition to her D.V.M., examined Quintus and pronounced the bumps benign. "It's nothing serious?" April asked. "No," said the doctor, "I think they're--" she leaned forward and whispered, "Love handles."

Another Hit for Consumer Rights

2007-04-14T18:08:00.000-07:00

Ever since Mr. Ollivander disappeared, bootleg magic wands have been sprouting up like shrooms after a rain. An outfit called Alivan's, if you please, is charging up to $50 for a magic wand. And here's the best part: a 15" Holly wand and an 11" Holly wand are the same price. That eleven-incher better contain one of Fleur de la Coeur's personal poils.

Big Dog, Little Dog

2007-04-10T22:22:00.000-07:00

Dara encouraged me to find out what breed of dog I am, via this online quiz (I think you have to give them your email address so that they can spam you). Anyway, the results told me I was a German Shepherd. I was very excited, and spent at least two minutes trying to think of a way to work that onto my resume. I made Mike take the quiz as soon as I got home, and he took it personally when the quiz classified him as a Scottie. We sometimes refer to being smart as "being a German Shepherd," so now whenever Mike stubs his toe or forgets something he groans "I'm such a Scottie."

Plums, Plums, Twiddling their Thumbs (etc)

2007-04-10T21:00:00.000-07:00

I recently got a new pair of glasses to replace the taped up, bent up pair I'd been, much to my own mortification, wearing for two months. It is not easy to get an appointment at Kaiser, and if you miss one it is no easier to get a second. One afternoon in my boss's office the right earpiece betrayed me once again, slipping out of its sticky binding and falling to the floor. As I "repaired" it, explaining what I loser I am, my boss asked "You don't have the kind that bends every which way?" and took off his own to demonstrate how they can be practically folded in half without breaking. I thanked him for rubbing it in and explained that, no, I did not have that kind. I had cute purple Nautica frames not built to withstand the impact of a full grown woman stepping on them.

This time I was determined to purchase the sturdiest frames in the shop, and the devil with the cost. I communicated my desires to the kind man at the eyewear store, and he handed me something I am pretty sure I wore in the sixth grade. "Something less geeky, please," I requested, then hastily added, "I'm geeky enough all on my own." He responded by handing me a set of orange and wasabi green cat's eye frames. "More geeky, please." I came away with what I was assured were "trendy" specs, I guess cause they're hexagonal and rimmed only on the bottom. I had convinced myself at the time that they were red, but that's only the ears; the part you can see is a sort of bronze that's going to require me to step up my summer tanning as it currently clashes with my face. But the nearsighted among you will understand what I mean--getting a new prescription is nice. The world looks so beautiful and sharp that I go around compulsively touching the edges of things. I can't believe normal people see the world this way all the time.

At this Point in the Season it Could Still go Either Way

2007-04-09T22:34:00.000-07:00

I was talked, against all my judgment, into playing fantasy baseball again this year. At least I had the sense to avoid any league that might involve the Goldman brothers, whose sense of perspective has sometimes been called into question. I had every intention of maintaining fantasy abstinence, until Ryan came calling. It's extremely difficult to say no to Ryan. I distinctly remember one occasion in 1998 when he came by my dorm room to talk me and Erin into a couple of Monday night beers, and, foreseeing our complete powerlessness to refuse him, we hid in the bathroom. Then a couple of alumni came by on a tour and we tumbled out, giving them much to ponder.

Ryan's is a head-to-head league peopled mostly by Harvard scientists. I constructed a dataset and came up with my very own metric of fantasy value. I determined that the peak age for a player's fantasy value is 31. Then I ran my regression models, and determined that last year's fantasy value is a weak predictor of this year's fantasy value, as is performance history of any kind. So I was forced to abandon that strategy, with a hearty cry of "Crap! I know nothing about baseball!"

I played Ryan last week. Yahoo offers a smack-talk feature, which Ryan used to send me the message, "So glad that we play first - I like your team. Thanks for joining the league!" I lost 1-12-2. Damn that kind, supportive reprobate.

No Ponzi Schemes for my Pop

2007-04-09T22:02:00.000-07:00

My father does not share my sympathy for telemarketers.

On a recent morning, he got out of bed to make my mother some coffee, and while he was on the other side of the apartment, Mom thought of something else she wanted. Having earned a rest recently, she decided to call him up (he can't hear across the apartment) and ask him to bring it to her. When he answered, she purred into the phone, "Hello, we're calling you for National Indulge your Wife Day." Before she could get any further however, Dad interrupted.

"I will have you know that I indulge my wife every day of the year," he barked. "Do not call this number and take us off your list."

When the Cat is Sat, Anna will Play

2007-04-09T21:34:00.000-07:00

Last week we house/dog/cat-sat for Dara and David. These are excerpts from the notes they left us:

"Firearms: There are several in the closet. No need to worry, however, as they have all been disassembled."

"Cats: Eh...Dara can tell you about the cats. I hear they need food and water...and Zea will try to sleep on your face." Zea never tried it, but when Nisa wanted us to wake up she would simply stand on our faces.

"Catnip: if you're so inclined, you can give them each a little pinch of catnip on their catpole. Watch for claws thereafter, they get carried away when they're drunk." I drugged them whenever I couldn't figure out what they wanted.

"The vacuum cleaner has a belt issue; I recommend not using it to avoid explosion."

"World of Warcraft: You can play any of my characters or make your own. If you want to make Horde characters, you will need to change realms."

I actually did play forty minutes or so of Nerdcraft on principle. I thought my character should resemble me as much as possible, so I created a pink-skinned, brown-eyed, short-messy-brown-haired rogue gnome with no earrings. I was promptly dropped down into a snowy, woodsy world full of white people. I decided to call it Denmark. At first it was very intimidating, and when some blue dude circled around me looking like he wanted me to do something I panicked and quit. Then Jeff got Sheryl to join me in Denmark, presumably while he practiced self abuse, and the dwarf named TyraB and I played. Well, mostly we jumped up and down, actually, cause I couldn't figure out how to move (remember my trouble with Halo?). But then Jeff fixed it and I was able to pull myself together well enough to kill eight wolves; I no longer recall why I was supposed to kill eight wolves, but I was promised something like nice boots if I came through. My gnome stabbed them and made high pitched noises when she got bitten, while Tyra bludgeoned them with a large wooden mallet. I got my nice boots. Then came the dancing. The "dance" command produced a Michael Flatley type jig in Tyra, but my gnome did a booty dance with hip hop accents.

That, as far as I've been able to tell, is the whole game.

A Belated Shill

2007-04-09T21:30:00.000-07:00

Right, so I meant, many many many months ago, to post a link to my old high school buddy Alexia's new company, Meaningful Travel. If you're diligent, you can probably find in our archives a picture of Alexia flicking somebody off on her wedding day.

Announcement, with Coda

2007-03-22T22:33:00.000-07:00

So the California AP awards are out, and Michael took 1st Place in Sportswriting. The newspaper, not the writer, gets to keep the actual plaque though. This being Michael's fourth AP award, I am feeling increasingly cheated of the opportunity to line them up on our (nonexistent) mantlepiece and boast. Well, one out of two...

Let me just clear my throat first...

Ahem.

To the sportswriters of California, and their spouses*:

Yeeeeeeeeeah bitches, my husband writes better than you and your bitch spouses! It's not just that he makes the job look good--I know he already had you beat in the style department when he bought his second pair of matching shoes. But I'd like to reiterate that he does his job better than you, and now he's number one in the whole state. What's that you say? Your honey got number two? How lovely for the pair of you bitches. I'm sure you'll be very happy with your new award, which isn't as good as his, and which will mightily fail to impress the judge who gets stuck arbitrating your sordid, squalid divorce.

*I would use a more general term than "spouse" but I've literally never met a gay sportswriter.

I (f---ing, f---ing, f---ing hate) Huckabees

2007-03-22T11:03:00.000-07:00

Anna has made her opinion clear on David O. Russell.

Apparently famous Cass Tech graduate Lily Tomlin feels the same way. And, incidentally, David O. Russell also hates Lily Tomlin. Here's a link from defamer to some outtakes from I (Heart) Huckabees. I doubt they'll be online very long, but I'd suggest not listening to them at work unless you can have the sound to yourself. Lots of cursing.

Duke is out

2007-03-16T09:05:00.000-07:00

A lot of people are taking pleasure in Duke's eliminated from the NCAA Tournament. This is not surprising. Back when Coach K was beating the UNLVs of the world, it was a guy that does things right toppling the thuggish. Now that Coach K's public image has turned legitimately insufferable, many people root for Duke to fail spectacularly. I'm not necessarily one of them. I actually got to observe Coach K operate at close range. I went to Durham back in November to cover a basketball tournament. It was interesting to watch him operate. He does sometimes come across as smarmy on television. But in press conferences, he simply speaks with the confidence of someone entirely secure in his position. He's a god on the Duke campus and he knows it. I guess I don't really have a problem with that.

Anyway, here's why I was rooting against Duke this year. After leaving Duke's victory over Georgia Southern, I saw some big dude in a bright red shirt walking ahead of me. As I got closer I indentified the bright red shirt as a Manchester United jersey (Wayne Rooney's jersey, in fact). Then I identified the big dude as Duke center Josh McRoberts, who missed a key free throw late in last night's game. And it made perfect sense. Of course someone from Duke would be wearing a Manchester United jersey. The two institutions occupy basically the same role in their sports. My guess, he probably sleeps in Lakers pajamas on New York Yankees sheets.

In which I Dodge a Potential Social Faux Pas

2007-03-14T21:46:00.000-07:00

There has been some shuffling in the sports information office at the school I cover. A woman they hired has since left. Her replacement is, actually, the man she replaced. One of his sports is softball, and he returned at what proved to be tail end of a winning streak. The team split a doubleheader, dropping the first game.

After the first game the new SID said, "Well, now they're going blame me when the losses start coming."

"So you're like The Cooler," I said.

He had never heard of the movie. The film stars William H. Macy, the suddenly totally-fucking-awesome Alec Baldwin and Maria Bello. Macy plays a guy who works in a casino whose job it is to cool down people when they start making money at the tables. He meets Bello and his luck starts to change. The film also includes some extended nude scenes and fairly upsetting violence. I don't know what his feelings are about those things in movies. Suddenly, I fear that I've sent a person with whom I must maintain a working relationship to see a film that could completely offend him. That would be bad.

"It's a little dark," I added.

Credit for Other People's Work

2007-03-02T21:36:00.000-08:00

In these days during which Jeff is so much on all of our minds, we thought you might like to be reminded of some of his early work .

I especially recommend Rough for Actors II: An Act without Vowels, or Thanks for Nothing.

All my Friends are Cowboys

2007-02-27T22:51:00.000-08:00

I sent Isaac a belated birthday wish last week. This was (most of) his reply:

I am chewing on a German article about Charon of Lampsacus. Of all the early Ionian logographers, he was by far the biggest slut. Everyone says so, Hellanicus, Xanthus, Hecataeus, even Thucydides. The guy would write a local history for any city-state in Asia Minor; it was disgusting.

Hostylefax: SoCal

2007-02-26T16:25:00.000-08:00

I'm just back from spending parts of the last four days in Southern California. My only celebrity sighting, however, came in the Sacramento Airport where I saw Flava Flav sitting by himself two gates over. He had no entourage and was signing a magazine for some guy who had gone through just security ahead of me and had his bag searched because he was packing drumsticks. I was searched also, because the women at the security counter noticed the expiration date on my drivers' license. Incidentally, no one at LAX noticed that I intended to fly with an expired license, so you can take that for what it is. The thing is, though, if I were every going to spot a real movie star in SoCal it should have been this weekend. I mean, they were all in town for the Oscars. Maybe there weren't any staying in Culver City, but there might have been a few with places in O.C., and I spent nights in both areas.

Actually, staying with Detroit Joel is sort of an interesting experience. He knows a lot of people who are "industry people," which means they have some connection to the film companies, however minor. So while Anna and I sat at home (I complained about the totally insane stuff and Anna critqued the dresses), it's funny to think of all the people sitting in L.A. watching the show and trying to calculate if they have become more or less important as the envelopes are opened. Also, my sense is that many people who are "industry people," don't actually make any money in the industry. I have to imagine that job satisfaction in L.A., extremely low in United States anyway, is probably worst there.

The first half of the trip was spent in Irvine, visiting Marisa and Mary, learning about how graduate students live in Southern California. It's similar, from what I could tell, to how they live in Northern California. The campus at UC Irvine is pretty nice, as is the graduate student housing. I spent much of my time there in a huge shopping mall that was clearly designed to absorb disposable income from students. Parking seems to be most contentious issue everywhere. I also sat in on an informatics lecture, which is the program Marisa is in. I can't really explain what that is, so I'll wikipedia do it for me and you can take or leave it.

Then it was up to L.A. where Joel and I ate sloppy burgers and chicken wings in Santa Monica (although we avoided Hooters this time). Saturday I played poker with some industry people, going from short stack to big stack to last person out before the payout slots in the space of about six hands. I won't bore you with the details of my poker hands, though, only wankers do that. Then Sunday it was an early wakeup call and a quick flight home.

Women of the World, Commence your Mourning

2007-02-25T21:30:00.000-08:00

My baby brother called tonight to tell me that he is getting married to his girlfriend Anna Rose in July of 2008. Despite my heartfelt happiness at the news I didn't manage a very big reaction because it was just thoroughly expected. Apparently, David proposed during the first week of their acquaintance. I had an inkling things were trending this way about a month into their relationship, the day David told me he was so in love he had spent the whole morning trying and failing to leave bed and fetch a banana. The two have been trading off weekends to fly back and forth from Michigan to New York in order to spend time together (despite all this, Anna Rose told me that my parents were surprised at the news, which can only be deemed puzzling). I have not yet met Anna Rose in person, but I look forward to the upcoming dowry negotiations.

Ken Auletta, Please Report to the White Courtesy Phone

2007-02-23T11:29:00.000-08:00

We went out to dinner once with a former Spec colleague whose then-current job was to decide what news stories would go on the Yahoo! homepage. My memory of her explanation of the job (spotty, given that it was three years ago) was that she had an eight-hour shift in which she sifted the wire and changed the stories on the front. Actually, what I remember from that night is Anna leaving in a towering temper as the former colleague referred to herself as a "journalist" and expressed an opinion I no longer remember about the Jayson Blair scandal (How long ago does that seem? I actually had to look up the spelling of his name).

But it does seem strange that I've never seen a story about how news and features find their way onto those home pages. I mean there are probably a huge fraction of web users that are savvy enough to open a browser and maneuver around the Internet, but not savvy enough to figure out how to change their homepages. So loads of people are checking out the news offerings they've selected, but there's no real understanding on how those stories are getting up there. And these people are exerting a huge amount of influence over what news many people are seeing. I can't believe the conservatives aren't all over this.

Actually, though, this whole post was an excuse to link to this story, a piece about an elderly tourist in Costa Rica killing a would-be mugger with his bare hands. This was on the AOL homepage just now.

Take it Away, Dave and Sharon

2007-02-19T12:48:00.000-08:00

My husband has baby fever. I do not have baby fever. This makes us, in the language of infectious disease epideimiology, Baby Fever Discordant. We are the sort of couple on whom benevolent non-profits will focus their ad campaigns. I can almost see giant posters on BART featuring a woman looking frankly at the camera while her ethnically ambiguous partner's head lolls resignedly on her shoulder under a caption that reads "I guess I thought if would be easier if we both had it. Now I know that's bullshit." I decided to confront this problem head on.

"You have baby fever," I informed Michael the other day, my tone making it clear that this was an intervention and I was exercising tough love.

"I do not."

"You obviously do."

"No I don't."

The conversation went on in this vein for some time. Finally Michael said, "Alright. I talk about babies a lot. But do you know why?"

"Why?"

"Because baybeezh are cuuu-uuu-uute."

The irony of all this is that Michael has spent almost no time with babies. Or, perhaps that's not so much an irony as a major explanation.

"You know," I broached this information as delicately as possible, "That babies do not smell good. I know they look like they smell good. But actually they spent most of their time drooling, crapping, and puking on your clothes." At this Michael did the imitation he has perfected of a drooling neonate. "Michael," I attempted to restore focus. "You do realize that we're not going to be raising lion cubs, right? They won't have fur and paws and adorable little manes? We can't carry them in our teeth?"

"We can try."

"And that then they'll grow up to be four-year-olds? And then nine-year-olds? And then homicidal, suicidal, crack-experimenting, rude, bulimic teenagers? And then Jehovah's witnesses? And there's nothing you can do to stop them?"

"Whatever, we'll teach them to tell good jokes."

I conjecture that Mike feels injured that I have not indulged his longing for a child when he's been so supportive of my longing for a dog. But apparently he does listen. He sent me this column by Bay Area sportswriter Michael Lewis on his kids' horribleness phase in response to my well-worn theme on how kids can't get to adulthood without going through the phase clinically termed "the asshole years."

I have refused to reenter the baby-having conversation until Mike has spent a serious amount of time around some children. I suggested he find a local children's group with which to volunteer, but he has so far refused on the grounds that people will think he's a pedophile. Queenie has put her oar in, stipulating that she wants no grandkids until we are thirty. And the circle of life spins on.

Adventures in Mystery Meat

2007-02-18T13:46:00.000-08:00

That one summer I spent in Spain when I was twenty has provided me with a quanitity of fond memories disproportionate to the short time I spent there. Those fond memories do not, however, involve Spanish food. I've had lovely food in the home of Spaniards, but the public fare is awful--at least the fare I could afford, even in the innocent days of the peseta. Take Italy, deep fry it, hide shrimp in the pockets, and you've got Spain. That's why when I went out to eat, it was almost always to a Cuban restaurant in the tourist section of Seville. Habanita (Little Havana, if you're illiterate), served fresh vegetables and unblushing mojitos, and that was enough. I usually went there with the other foreign students, especially Sacha, a friend with whom I failed to keep in touch, but whom I remember most fondly.

Now, the trick was the menu. The whole point of our tenure in Seville was to learn Spanish, so we were not about to go asking the waiters to translate. That restricted our choices to dishes we could recognize. One night, Sacha was stuck on the question of whether or not to order something called juevas plus a lot of modifiers. Juevos would have been slightly more informative, but as most of Spanish food involves egg it was really no protection against ordering a haggis tortilla. "You know," I cautioned, "In the States, juevos can be slang for testicles. You might be ordering balls." But in the end, Sacha was non-vegetarian and Dutch, so she decided just to order the juevas and see what came.

What arrived on Sacha's plate was an unclassifiable hemisphere of white animal protein. We all stared at it for a few seconds, then Sacha picked up her fork ate a morsel with a great show of fortitude. "What is it?" we practically screamed. "It's okay," she said musingly. "But, you know, I think it's brains." She finished about a quarter of it.

When I got home that evening I consulted one of the large dictionaries which littered the apartment that the school rented for its foreign students, and discovered that the feminine juevas means fish eggs. I was a little disappointed.

Our New Line of Chipmunks come with Extra Hold and Moisturizers

2007-02-15T19:50:00.000-08:00

I'm convinced that Karina Lombard from The L Word used to be on a pantene commercial. But my attempts to turn up evidence have not been fruitful. Seeing why requires clicking on this picture, Mom.

In Which Anna Relaxes her Ideology

2007-02-14T22:20:00.000-08:00

I have made no secret of my antipathy toward Valentine's Day. This year I spent the holiday at the DMV and the gynecologist's. The DMV trip was nice because it meant Mike and I got to spend about three hours awake in each other's company for the first time in weeks. Mike discovered this morning that his driver's license had expired, contemporaneously with his attempt to rent a car and drive to L.A. to cover a game. We had to make the DMV trip thrice. The first time it was closed, the second time we got an unseasoned DMV employee. She let Mike renew his license but didn't include an interim license in the stack of papers she gave him, forcing the people of Enterprise Rent-a-Car to explain that they couldn't give Mike a car just because he'd given them a form detailing his plans for organ donation.

The gyno visit was fine, too. Being a patient in the Kaiser health system is a little like being a Yugoslavian in the era of Tito, which is a place and time better suited to the retention of dignity and individualism than America on Valentine's Day.

But my busy day still left me a little time for reflection. For instance, my first-year buddy left me SweeTart hearts in my mailbox, and I acknowledge that that was a thoughtful gesture. And Dara showed me the valentine Paola sent her: complimentary descriptions of Dara, turned into a word jumble, which is creative and cute. So basically, I'm prepared to say it's okay to send valentines to your friends. This is not wholly out of keeping with my original position, though I'd still prefer to play first-person shooter games.

More imporantly, I am hereby lifting my blanket condemnation of celebrating the holiday with current or prospective sexual partners. You now have my blessing to celebrate Valentine's Day with your lover if you are any of the following:

1) Gay
2) A Hutu dating a Tutsi
3) Trying to escape an arranged marriage
4) Quadriplegic

Why these exceptions? Because if you've answered yes to any of the four, then that means that the rest of your waking life will not necessarily be one long, hearty congratulation on your choice of sexual partner. So go ahead, take an extra day to celebrate, and good for you for being brave.

The rest of you? Just pull yourselves together and try to get through the day without forcing any single people to get involved with whatever perverts are currently posing as their soul mates. I have my eye on you.

Good Idea, Bad Idea

2007-02-11T19:19:00.000-08:00

I'm a big fan of Canada, so, unlike most Americans, I'm not reflexively against trading in the dollar bill for the dollar coin. I don't remember when Canada scrapped its $1 bill, but for as long as I could remember there were Loonies (because of the Loon on the tails sid) Later they added the Two-nie. I always liked them. So really, I'm open to dollar coin. But don't you think the U.S. Mint could have found a slightly less Satanic looking picture of George Washington?

It's terrifying. Anna suggested he looks like the guy who played Cato on HBO's Rome, which isn't a bad point. But it's no a point in favor of this particular piece of currency. I want my money to look friendly.

Embarrass Yourself Less at Parties

2007-02-03T22:15:00.000-08:00

The Carman 11 Baby

2007-02-03T13:16:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, like many of you, I got a call from Dave. "So, you know how Rich is engaged?" he said.

"No," I answered, bewildered. "I know Jeff is engaged." This is it, I thought to myself.

"Well, everyone knows that," Dave said dismissively, "But you know how Rich announced his engagement on his blog?"

"Um, no," I repeated, cause I am a bad friend. She's so pregos.

"Well, that's crazy, but we're about to blow that out of the water for craziness. Sharon's expecting."

Being an egomaniac in addition to a bad friend, I blurted out "I knew it!" before getting around to the congratulations.

"If you had looked around the table on a Monday night at the West End in 1999, would you have picked me as the first to have a baby?" Dave asked. Well, no, but that's one of the nice things about Sharon.

Later, when I had Sharon on the phone and congratulated her on her fertility, she informed me that was the second-best response, the best being her grandmother who asked, "Was it an accident?" (It's planned).

So, Baby Form is due some time around July, and this is very, very, very , very cool. We realize that, technically, Baby Form is not the Carman 11 baby due to its having been preceded by Baby Medina, but we also think that doesn't really count, and are prepared to exercise our discretion in this matter.

My deepest apologies for being a week late with the posting of this news, which is in no way reflective of my excitement about it.

Hostylefax: Hollywood

2007-01-30T08:01:00.000-08:00

OK, so I didn't set foot in Hollywood proper during last weekend's trip to LA. But I did spend a lot of time driving past the Sony lot. And, I had my route home disrupted by some film crew that had taken over a city block. So that's sort of Hollywood, right? Also, at a Noah's bagels, I was jostled in line by a punk-looking kid with a cell phone earpiece that was picking up an order for "The King of Queens," which is totally Hollywood.

Also I heard this story about an unnamed big-ass movie producer. One day he walks into his office in the foulest of moods, and screams for his assistant to, "Get Scotland Yard on the phone." Well, this guy is so big that he has multiple assistants, and this order is passed down the chain. Finally the person on lowest rung makes the call and sets everything up. After patching the call through, Big-ass producer screams into the phone, "You guys left my gate open today, and the dog got out. What the fuck?" Suddenly, it dawns on everyone that Big-ass producer was actually talking about his cleverly named lawn care company. One can only imagine the baffled police inspector on the other end of the line.

Thank you, Pornographers

2007-01-23T23:36:00.000-08:00

The sight of Dikembe Mutumbo at the State of the Union speech tonight called to mind another of one of the man's other great moments in Washington. The story is recounted here, although I don't suggest clicking on the link. As legend has it, one night Mutumbo walked into a bar and called out, "Who wants to Sex Mutumbo?" There had been a web page devoted to this story, but I clicked through today and it is now a porn site. And while I imagine Mutumbo's life in college was probably something out of He Got Game (and you know what scenes I'm talking about), it is disappointing that the monument to it is gone. Also missing from the Internet is the Is Trent Lott Satan homepage. The URL wasn't memorable, so it's probably not yet a porn site.

I Was Happy for him Until he Opened his Mouth

2007-01-22T11:49:00.000-08:00

I found myself rooting for the Colts in the second half of Sunday's AFC Championship Game. I do like Peyton Manning, because he makes the best commercials. I figured it would be nice to see him in a Super Bowl. Also, I thought I respected Tony Dungy's perserverance in face of continued defeat as a coach. But then I read this story in the Boston Globe, which quotes Dungy four times and uses religious references in three of them. I've pulled them out for you.

"But they've been that way all year. They've fought back and they just give so much effort. They're such a unified group. I just have to thank the Lord. He did it in such a way that nobody would believe it. We got to give the Lord a lot of credit for giving us the strength to do it."
"I think it's great that we're able to show the world not only that African-American coaches can do it, but Christian coaches can do it in a way that we can still win."
"I came here five years ago and this was our goal. This is what [Colts' owner] Jim Irsay and I talked about. He wanted to bring a championship to Indianapolis and for me to be a part of it with the group that we have is special. I think the Lord really tested us a lot from last year."

Irsay, in his postgame speech on the field, also referenced God, which seemed to be in especially bad form. The Patriots are owned by Robert Kraft, who is famous for, among other things, endowing a Center for Jewish Life at Columbia. If I had realized that Pats-Colts was actually a religious war, I certainly would have been rooting the other way.

I'm sort of a loss now for how to go in the Super Bowl. I'm not sure supporting the Bears will be much better, given that the second quotation above is in reference to Lovie Smith, Chicago's coach. I didn't care as much about that game, so can't say for sure if he was equally God-centric in his postgame remarks. By all means be religious, but please stop talking about it in postgame interviews.

The Old Man and the Pharmacy

2007-01-21T11:58:00.000-08:00

Wednesday afternoon at the pharmacy, I found myself in line behind a very old man. He stood stooped over his walker, giving the appearance that he was weighed down by his enormous 60's-style glasses, their lenses as thick as coasters. I thought he must be exceptionally plucky to be making the trip to the pharmacy alone. He was also, as it turned out, exceptionally grumpy.

As one of the pharmacists called out "Next!" the old man shifted his walker forward in preparation for what must surely have been a challenging journey to the counter. Just at that moment, a small plastic ball rolled out in front of him. It proved to belong to a three-year-old girl who had been entertaining herself with it at the counter while her mother was picking up a prescription. The little girl darted out after her ball, and I guess this must have alarmed the old man. "Do you want to do something about your child?" he bellowed at the girl's mother. The mother turned around to apologize, but her daughter was already back at her side, bouncing her ball. "There's a child there!" the old man protested to the pharmacy at large. He made his way to the free pharmacist, continuing to protest, "There's a child there!" in the tone which another customer might have employed to announce "There's a flamingo there!" Finally the little girl seemed to take it personally.

"Mom." she said,
"What is it, honey?"
"I'm not a child, Mom. I'm a kid."

Factchecking Statboy

2007-01-15T18:06:00.000-08:00

It's no secret that I am now a soccer fan, so I'm sort of excited that David Beckham is coming to America. This has been rumored for months, and my only regret is that he's not going to Columbus or Salt Lake City, which simply would have been brilliant. Can you imagine how the Mormons would react to Posh? And goodness, can you imagine what abuse she'd give the girls at the Columbus Nordstroms on a daily basis?

I'm not sure that his presence will get me to watch MLS, but the idea that he's washed up is a little bit premature. He's not fast anymore, but he was never fast. I watched him in the World Cup, and he can still fire in crosses and bend free kicks. Those things are still very important in within the run of play, although not necessarily as sexy as making long runs and finishing spectacularly. The American season does, however, coincide with the English Premier League's close season so maybe I'll watch him once or twice.

So we were watching PTI this afternoon, and they did a Posh Spice story. Posh will be great fodder for Tony and Mike. But today they showed a shot next to one of the other WAGs, who drew Mike Wilbon's eye. Statboy suggested that it was Page 3 girl Keeley Hazell, who he seemed to think once dated Chelsea's Joe Cole. Both of those are false. Cole did once go to a party at Hazell's house, but then had the living shit beaten out of him while he was there, which made it a big deal in the tabloids. And, also, the woman next to Posh was actually Cheryl Tweedy, who is now named Cheryl Cole because she married Ashley Cole (no relation to Joe). And anyway, the point of this post is what was in Cheryl Cole's wikipedia profile at 3 p.m. today (you have to click it).

It's not there now.

And that's one of the things I like about soccer. It's all about excess.

A Karl Malone Story, because Why Not?

2007-01-05T19:59:00.000-08:00

This is not the best Karl Malone story, which you can find here, but it's one that I can tell because I was there.

But back before he was hunting for little Mexican girls, he was the Lakers' locker room searching for a needle and thread. Karl Malone was an extremely superstitious player and one incarnation of that was that he wore the same pair socks -- the ones he received on the first day of training camp -- for every game. Through the course of an NBA season socks tend to obtain holes. So one morning he sat there repairing them and holding court with the reporters present. This being a late season game between two teams already locked into the playoffs, "Karl Malone Sews," was good enough to fill our notebooks.

Malone explained that his mother had taught him how to sew and it was just something he had always done. So he talked about that for awhile.
Someone, who I seem to remember as being LA Times columnist J.A. Adande asked, "Do you knit, too?"
"Nah, man," Malone said, suddenly serious. "There's a difference."

Here's a postscript to that story. The Lakers change from white socks to black in the postseason, which meant that Malone did have to change socks. L.A. lost in the finals to a little team I like to call, the Detroit Pistons. Because that is their name.

Me Hunt Game, no Time for Woman's Chit Chat. You Explain Chit Chat to me.

2007-01-02T23:25:00.000-08:00

I received a cryptic e-mail from Mike today, reading, "Just had a strange exchange with Larry the Associate [job deleted], who told me I was a very attractive man."

This was presumably a comment on Mike's new haircut. I later learned that Mike responded, "Thank you. That means a lot coming from you." Then, I guess, he fired off an email to me.

Being a man must be absolutely exhausting.

Am I Dog Person?

2007-01-01T21:26:00.000-08:00

My eyesight is better than Anna's. So whenever we go for drives or walks, I have taken over the job of pointing out meaty dogs. It could be a black lab on the other side of (I kid you not) Putah Creek in our arboretum. Or it could be someone walking a St. Bernard on the sidewalk as we drive along. Anna's response is, invariably, to coo about the virtues of the dog she has never met. One side effect of this behaviour is that I, somewhere along the way, convinced myself that I was a dog person. After two weeks of tending Nisa, and for a portion of that being the primary caregiver, I can report that I'm wouldn't use that term to describe myself. At least not yet. I liked Nisa and think big dogs in general are cute. But I still don't really trust them or myself around them.

Because mostly, I was nervous around Nisa. She would make a noise or turn up her nose at her food and I would be in contact with Anna immediately. "What does it mean when she sniffs?" I'd ask. Or maybe, "What does it mean that she has four legs?" I liked walking her, but felt utterly frantic at the times she would run in circles and try to get out of her collar. I loved watching PTI with her sitting next to me on the couch, or the way she followed me into the other room and napped next to me when I was borderline sick (which is to say, when, on the first night, I had awoken at every sound in fear it was Nisa barking or the manager tacking an eviction notice to the door). That was really nice. But when she was awake and moving, I was constantly tense. I worried she would eat chocolate, shit on the purple chair or bite a neighbor. Perhaps this is what parenthood is like.

I found as our stint went on, however, that when she did something bad I stopped feeling frightened and instead started to get frustrated. I think, actually, that counts as a progress. I adjusted from feeling out-of-control to believing as though I was just fucking up. Accepting the latter also meant that I believed I could control the situation. And that's something to build on.

I also think it's like parenthood, because most of what we did for two weeks was talk about her. Because she was sweet and smart. I'm told that when people were crying in our apartment, Nisa was right there to lick the tears away. That's an important skill for any family gathering. Also whenever we left, we'd lock her in the kennel with a bone we'd spread peanut butter inside. This is Nisa's favorite treat. But after a particularly busy day in which she had eaten too many peanut-butter bones, Nisa came out of the kennel and refused to give up the bone. She'd carry it with her, and, when I tried to grab it she'd gently pick it up and walk away it. As long as we couldn't give her any peanut-butter bones, she had clearly reasoned, we couldn't leave her alone. I love that story. But I can't imagine you're interested at all.

When I came home from work Saturday, I was relieved that Nisa had gone. What I find today is that I miss having her in the apartment. Actually, we've been walking up to each other at various times today pretending to pin our ears back and sniff inquisitively. Some people get dogs as practice for having kids. But our time with Nisa was practice for getting a dog. Anna told me Friday that she didn't think I was ready. She's probably right, although I have two points about that: 1. Maybe an 80-pound German Shepherd with Post Tramautic Stress Disorder isn't the best starter dog and 2. Who's ever ready to undertake any large responsibility?

The good news is Nisa emerged from our apartment none the worse for wear. I probably set her training back a month or two, though.

Auld Lang Syne, Yeah, Yeah, Blah, Blah

2006-12-31T16:53:00.000-08:00

Call me a Grinch, but if you're already getting laid, what exactly is the point of New Year's Eve?

I am told that the point is partying. Partying on New Year's, as I dimly recall, means braving the cold and dodging drunk drivers and terrorist attacks, in order to turn up at a party stocked with schnapps and poison sausage and make small talk with optimistic meeskeits, or worse, married people. So far, Mike and I have bid adieu to 2006 with a day full of debauchery designed to clean out our fridge in anticipation of the clean living of January. Tonight, we will attend our first New Year's Eve party in many years. Our last party was in 2003-4, when Ryan took us to a Louvre-style mansion in Orange County, where we played Spot the Implants most of the evening. In trying to pin down this datum, we wound up having a New Year's Eve retrospective. It turns out the preponderance of our New Year's Eve celebrations have been festivals of crapulence and ill feeling.

New 2003 was spent in New York, on our first visit back since moving from Hobbs. The first part of that evening was spent quite happily in Scott's old apartment on 110th St, and the second part more drunkenly at a large party in Carroll Gardens. New 2002 was at Sarah's ex-boyfriend's dorm in Watt Hall; the party was staffed by prostitutes from Delta Gamma. We remember mostly that Mike had diarrhea, that certain parties accused me of flirting with their boyfriends which I never do, and that one guest spent the whole night on the phone to his girlfriend who's name was, I swear, Fea. New 2001 was the time we brought Mike's sister (then 17 years old) to a party downtown and she hooked up with our host, for which Mike has absolutely not forgiven said host. New 2000 marked the end of what we have come to call Punishment December. My parents' apartment was covered in canned goods Just in Case, and we had somehow cajoled my mother's friend David into loaning us his apartment so everyone could be together when the world ended. On this particular evening, Mike's sister (who was then 16) wound up on the roof making out with one of our classmates, for which Mike has still not forgiven said classmate. It's also the night on which I introduced myself to Mike's then girlfriend, and got Mike in a lot of trouble. I finished off the evening snogging with someone I had personally helped to vomit earlier that evening, while a third party watched with a bag of Doritos.

Mike observes that we have spent every New Year since 2000 together. He was in Detroit in 1999, probably hanging out with the aforementioned girlfriend and staying away from the windows to avoid celebratory gunfire. He doesn't remember 1998, and almost every New Year prior to that was spent in New York. Usually his parents would go to the same party, and he and Lola would go to a midnight movie with Cool Aunt Ellen. There were a few in Detroit, but Proust he isn't.

I had a stomach virus on New Years of both 1999 and 1998, which was just as well, as it covered up my not having plans. Isaac had left for college by then, and I had come to count on him for New Years plans. He continued to call and leave me countdown voice mails for a few years to make it up to me. He was there in 1997 when we went down to stay with Jess in D.C., and watch The Silence of the Lambs and The Evil Dead II. In 1996 he and I walked down to Times Square from his parents' apartment on 90th and Riverside (the only year I ever did it), though we never made it farther than 53rd, I think, and wound up having milkshakes while waiting for the crowds to disperse. In 1995 I was in Helsinki, and having a tremendous time with Clíona's friends--she was two years older than I and they were two years older than she, so I spent a lot of time pretending to be more 18 than I really was. Possibly due to their proximity to the Arctic Circle, everyone in that town was shitfaced by 10:00 in the morning besides Clíona and me, thus enhancing my air of maturity.

All New Year's Eves before that have disappeared into a haze of no-plans-having-ness, except for 1990 and 1984. In 1990 I was freaking out about the approach of a new decade, and for some reason wanted to make sure I was touching everyone in my family, including the dog, at midnight. In 1984, we were spending the night in Brooklyn, and we went out into the streets to bang on metal pots with wooden spoons. Mike would like to add that he was probably in Brooklyn that night, too. Jeff, obviously, was not.

So basically, I would usually prefer to stay home and watch Sam Raimi movies with my husband, who's cute. But sometimes, I accidentally wind up making friends, or worse, Mike does. And then, there's nothing for it but to go out and party. Ugh.

Love Letter to a German Shepherd

2006-12-30T14:24:00.000-08:00

It's been an emotional few days for me, what with putting our families on a plane, the unignorability of current events, and now, our last few hours with Nisa the Dog. Some people find it difficult to write about, say, executions. They find it easier to write about, say, dogs. I am one of those people.

I think what we'll miss most about Nisa is her moo. Mike identified the noise she makes when she lies down as mooing, and once you think of it that way it's virtually impossible to resist sayin vmkcmmmmm

now see? As I was in the middle of typing the forgoing paragraph, Nisa leaned over from her nap spot between me and Mike on the couch, stretched her head out over the keyboard, and mooed. And my first impulse was not to grunt "No" or "get off my keyboard," but to coo "Aww, cow puppy" as she turned on the caps lock and typed nonsense letters into my blog post.

Nisa is a little like a first-year medical student. Her curiosity about the human body is insatiable (especially if it's stinky), and she is ever eager to examine. If one stretches out on ones back, Nisa is sure to appear seconds later with a reassuring if concerned expression on her face, and begin sniffing around your assorted body parts with Hippocratic empiricism, not to mention auscultating you with an exceptionally large paw.

Also like a first-year medical student, Nisa has an encyclopaedic list of neuroses. Besides abondonment issues (which are actually quite rational in a dog who was abandoned earlier this year) her phobias include cars, bicycles, blenders, smoke alarms, moving furniture, drawers, smaller dogs, larger dogs, dogs on TV, men on TV imitating dogs, neighbors opening their mailboxes, old ladies walking cats on leashes, my father, brooms, swiffers, bridges, sneezes, laughter and the wind.

We, in the meantime, in payment as it were for the riches Nisa has brought into our lives, have yielded up our privacy, sanity, and decorum, and we like it. I am currently at work on two songs, titled "Don't Bite your Harness" and "Nose out of the Fridge." Mike is preoccupied with deciding what country Nisa would play for in the World Cup, if she made the national team. As an American dog, should she play for the U.S.? As a German Shepherd, should she play for Germany? As an Alsatian, should she play for France? Or does the Shepherd's having been bred in England make her belong to England? Or would her father's Cambodian ancestry entitle her to an easy spot on the Cambodian team?

This last question arose when Mike discovered her natural abilities as a goalie. Nisa came to us with a bag full of toys, including a huge ball suitable for playing roll and stop. But Nisa's favorite game is tug of war, to the point that Mike once asked if we could try to teach her Sudoku so she'd know a second game. I have adapted tug of war by putting it to music. I play a good song, and Nisa picks up her toy (so that she can't bite my hands) and then jumps. Depending on whether she lands in my arms or on my legs or back, she then either dances with me or tries to pin me to the floor. The game usually ends when she drops her toy and gives into her urge to give me an affectionate chomp. This last Shepherd trait is why we're proudly sporting tiny red tooth marks all over our anatomies.

Nisa's favorite activities are tug of war, pretending to have to pee, the sniffing of genitals, and hunger strikes. "She is," Mike observed to me one night, "The non-eatin'-est dog I've ever seen." We have to make sure she eats, because otherwise she can't have her anti-inflammatory paw medication, or it gives her what Dara delicately referred to as "intestinal pyrotechnics." So when it's time for Nisa's dinner, we transform into deranged cheerleaders. First, I go through a pantomime designed to convince Nisa I'm putting delicious human food into her dish. Then we put it on the floor and she stares at us as though to say "You want me to eat that shit when you've got Manchego in your cheese drawer?" We usually give into her demands at this point and mix some wet food in, then stand around the bowl, pointing encouragingly and praising every bite as though it might reveal the cure for malaria.

At the end of the day, we drag her dog bed into our bedroom and the three of us lie down for the night. The final chapter of the day is called Nisa Trying to Get into Our Bed. This morning, knowing as I did that it would be her last day with us, I yielded. It was delightful. There is nothing in the world quite like the company of a meaty dog. We know, although Nisa does not, that her Daddy will come to fetch her in a few hours. She is going to be overjoyed, and will probably shoot around the apartment in circles, jumping on furniture and trying to lick David's face down to its tootsie roll center. It will all be worth it to see her so happy. But when she goes, we will be the non-Nisa-havin'-est couple in California. We're going to miss her like hell.

A Holiday Feast

2006-12-28T08:20:00.000-08:00

Our holiday recaps will come in waves. First, and perhaps most importantly, we'll start with the food. Here are the meals we served:

Christmas Eve
White Bean and Olive Soup
Potato Latkes
Roast Beef
Pumpkin (actually squash) Pie

Christmas Night
Baked Brie with currants and almonds
Sausage Stuffed Mushrooms
Spinach Stuffed Mushrooms
Penne Arrabbiata
Caesar Salad
Homemade Chocolate Mousse with Ellen's Blackberry Sauce

A Book this Is?

2006-12-27T22:35:00.000-08:00

My boss sent me this link to Yiddish with Dick and Jane. My boss is cooler than your boss.

Habits of Highly Effective People

2006-12-23T14:27:00.000-08:00

My aunt Maureen has hired a clutter therapist to help her make better use of her work space. The therapist promotes a method known as O.H.I.O., which stands for Only Handle it Once. As Maureen explained it to my mother, it means that you never put a piece of paper down to sort later. As soon as the letter's open it's filed, etc. Mom listened to all this attentively, and then proposed her own method of organization, which she abbreviated as K.E.N.T.U.C.K.Y.--Keep Everything Neat, Then U Can Kill Yourself.

Viva la Burocracia

2006-12-23T13:26:00.000-08:00

Today I began Traffic School, which is part of my punishment for having missed the end of the yellow light in Berkeley by 0.00034 seconds once last June. My $390 penance is apparently not enough, and if I want my name cleared, I have to graduate an online course. I was a reckless driver before--I ran that light cause I thought I was invincible--but once I've finished my reeducation, I'll have a totally different attitude. I'll have respect for the law.

The course starts off on a cheery note:

Imagine California without traffic laws. Road speeds would accelerate dangerously as unskilled and reckless drivers set their own rules, dodging and weaving through traffic like a personal pinball game. Unmarked and uncontrolled intersections would become killing fields.

I don't disagree. However, it would be a little easier to contemplate my automotive mortality if the course didn't also include animated tits:

Hmm...what will happen if I do not take WebTrafficSchool.com course? I don't know, but I sure want to find out.

I'm starting to think that if I dig hard enough I will turn up published research on police officer's sex organs as a deterrent to unsafe driving. The public service ad below is usually shown before movies at the Varsity.

I have to wonder...who exactly is the target demographic for this campaign? The effect doesn't quite come through online, but in the theater this cop's crotch is blown up larger than life for all the world to gaze upon. If it hadn't had the city logo on it I'd have had no trouble placing this as a still from an ad on The Robin Byrd Show. Want to meet cops? Well, that depends. If I get caught speeding will traffic school be taught by that 19-year-old model?

One More Tradition Sabotaged by Mixed Marriages

2006-12-23T10:33:00.000-08:00

Andy M sent us this link to Christmas Time for the Jews.

Holiday Classics

2006-12-22T16:23:00.000-08:00

This holiday season, I hope everyone's remembering to focus on the important things, like steering clear of dodgy roast goose (Laura has food poisoning, poor thing) not macing any relatives who might put you in their wills, and not getting pregnant atop piles of coats unless it's on purpose. Having once again attended the Holiday Party from Hell, I was reminded of this immortal passage from Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Helen Fielding has her detractors, but they are wankers.

Usually, week before Christmas, am hung over and hysterical, furious with self for not escaping to tiny woodman's cottage deep in forest to sit quietly by fire; instead of waking up in huge, throbbing, mountingly hysterical city with population gnawing off entire fists at thought of work/cards/present deadlines, getting trussed up like chickens in order to sit in gridlocked streets, bellowing like bears at newly employed minicab drivers for trying to locate Soho Square using map of central Addis Ababa, then arrive at parties to be greeted by same group of people have seen for last three nights only three times more drunk and hungover, and want to shout "WILL YOU ALL JUST SOD OFF!" and go home....This attitude is both negative and wrong.

Pre-Nuptial Excitement

2006-12-22T12:38:00.000-08:00

Now that 34 is through sitting on its very big piece of news, we can also go public about the engagement of Jeff and Sheryl. I started researching engagement ring designs a few weeks ago just in case this situation came up, but then I made an uncharacteristic decision to butt out and decided not to present Jeff with my findings. FFH is so happy it could cry. Though actually, when the affianced called to tell us the news, we settled for dancing around the apartment for ten minutes in celebration.

This means that rather a lot of our circle are to be wed soon, what with Dara and David, Josh and Maureen, and, implausibly, Scott Rosenberg (to Amanda). Is anyone else engaged? I forget. This suits me very well, not because I actually think so highly of the institution of marriage, but more because, in the words of Cy Coleman, I love to cry at weddings, anybody's weddings, just not mine.

We owe Dara's mother Mrs. Hicks a big thank you not only for supplying us with the following engagement story, but because we invented a truly shameless lie about her having a health crisis when we introduced Nisa to our building manager. I secured Dara's permission to blog the story several weeks ago, but as you may have noticed, I have had a hard time recently finding a chance to blog, and when I did I devoted that time to researching other people's jewelry. Anyway, Dara's David had planned an elaborate setup for his marriage proposal, but then the night before, he simply couldn't contain his excitement and blurted out the question. The ring is quite lovely, and meets the criteria for being described as "a rock." So when the couple called Dara's family in Albuquerque to announce it, Mrs. Hicks was a bit surprised. "You really didn't need to get a big ring for Dara," she told her future son-in-law after congratulating him or some such, "She would have been perfectly happy with a gum wrapper. She's not into a lot of bling."

The Puppy Chronicles

2006-12-20T12:54:00.000-08:00

There is certainly something quite nice about receiving a warm welcome home from a tail-wagging dog. That's true even if she's looking at you as though you've betrayed her by leaving her alone. I'm projecting on the second part of course, but I don't really have any experience in hanging around all day with a dog.

The big news here is that we picked up permission to have her here. The building manager, whom I will call Not-at-all-Nasty Cat, said it was fine that we watch her. That has made me more at ease, in that I'm not concerned that every paw step will bring an eviction notice. In fact, immediately after securing the NAANC's approval, I took a three-hour nap with Nisa sitting on her cushion beside me. And that was nice. It was like napping with an audience, a boon to my ego. The early part of yesterday was a bit difficult. I woke up at 6 a.m., after getting very little sleep, and found Nisa's perferred toilet spots. Then I took her into the office, where she was quite popular. Lots of people came over and petted her, which negated the sleeping-dog-at-my-feet-as-I-work effect I was going for. She would sleep for an hour, then pop up looking to play. I'd take her out then. So that was fun. She barked twice, once at the UPS guys and again at Anna upon her return. But, by that point, my fear-driven stuff had receded.

Today, after a long walk, I left her alone in her kennel for the first time. She seemed to have come through that OK, although she seems to be staying a little bit aloof from me right now. She'll have another stretch by herself tonight, when I leave for work around 6 p.m. But she'll have been on the end of a long walk, so hopefully she'll just sleep her way through it.

Thoughts on the Brawl

2006-12-19T07:49:00.000-08:00

I thougt we had a lot to say two years ago, when the Indiana Pacers took on the drunken dregs of a crowd in suburban Detroit. But mostly I just talked about T.O. That was back when he was just hugging naked white women rather than spitting in people's faces. I liked him better before. I still think those topics go together. I didn't think the fight was a big deal. Sure, it sort of spilled into the stands a little bit, but it wasn't like the players were actually attacking paying customers. Sometimes teams have to fight each other. That's just the way it works.

On a side note, Fritz and Clafoutis attended the game. Clafoutis actually wanted to leave with six minutes to go and the Knicks down by a wide margin. Fritz' response: "If we cared about who won than we wouldn't have come in the first place." Let's go Knicks. As a Pistons fan, I'm of mixed feelings watching Zeke flail away at Madison Square Garden.

And Puppy Makes Three

2006-12-18T18:21:00.000-08:00

Apologies for that last couple of weeks of silence. It all probably makes a really good story, complete with couch surfing (me), term paper writing (Anna), and some total code warrior shit (Anna again). And maybe we'll get around to telling you about it, although I doubt it. Anyway, who really cares about the past. I say, let bygones be bygones. So whatever.

Now, perhaps you remember Nisa the German Shepherd, who belongs to Anna's friend, Dara. For the next 13 days (oh, but who's counting)(well, for now, me), Nisa has taken up residence in our apartment. She's currently passed out asleep in middle of our living room, like a tacky rug. This is not to say that Nisa is tacky, but all rugs that have heads are tacky. Sorry, focus.

So there are a couple of side issues related to this visit. That main one is that dogs are not, strictly speaking, allowed in our complex. There was one once, who was a very sweet mutt named Bear. But that was about seven building managers ago, and the dog lived off in the corner where he didn't get in anyone's way. Everyone was in on everything and no one got hurt. We don't really know our current building manager, who just arrived in November (which is sort of a long time ago, now that I think about it.), or really very many of our neighbors. So we'll see how this goes.

Also, I am actually afraid of dogs. I used to be deathly afraid of dogs, so really I've gotten a lot better. We met Nisa in Berkeley on Friday and walked her and everything went really well. She even seemed to respond to me. Also we ran into Ariel Meyestein, but that's another story. Today, just before we brought her into the apartment, she barked at me. This has set us back. It's been about 50 minutes and I've only now forgiven her. I'm going to be spending most of the next four days with her while Anna's at work. I'm afraid I won't be able to control her and that will get us evicted. So there's that.

Thirdly, both sets of family are coming to visit at the end of the week. Anna's family loves dogs. My parents, not so much.

It does it make it all worth it to see Anna so happy. She's been dog deprived since we left New York. Recently, she's taken to cruising the area outside of the journalism building at Berkeley to hang out with the dogs that wait there. Most journalists have dogs because, as a species, we're disagreeable and the only people that like us are those that rely on us for food. We'll keep you posted on how things go with Nisa.

Journey to the Heart of Darkness

2006-12-03T13:12:00.000-08:00

The Varsity, our local art house, completed its Midnight Movie series Saturday with a showing of The Big Lebowski. I had been looking forward to this for months, and although I am now an old man that struggles to stay up past 12:30 a.m., I really enjoyed seeing the film again. It was Anna's first time seeing it on the big screen, and she reported catching details she has missed watching on DVD (like how the landlord's dance routine includes a blue gym mat). So that was something.

The thing I had not anticipated was the relatively new phenomenon of Lebowski people. We went to Eternal Sunshine a few weeks ago and basically had the theater to ourselves. But I should have expected this would be different. I had seen stories about how pretentious white people have picked up this movie as a self indentifying marker. There are now conventions where people dress as characters from the movie, and similar. What I hadn't realized is just how awful it is to watch a movie with these people. They rival Rocky Horror fans for sheer annoyance.

The preamble to the movie was sort of fun. People were in costume and occaisionally yelling out lines. "This is what you sound like," Anna told me. And I apologized. But the thing about them is that they didn't stop. Not even after the movie began. Then there's the mythology that has grown up around the film. In the opening scene, when The Dude is buying his half-gallon of half-and-half with a check (dated September 11) a guy who attended the movie dressed as The Jesus behind us screamed out, "Look at the date."

Seriously, shut the fuck up.

Obviously, the Coen Brothers were fortelling the World Trade Center attacks. That's exactly what was happening there. But the situation was compounded because The Jesus had a retarded echo in the theater. So The Jesus would yell out a line and the other guy, who happened to be sitting in our row, would call out another one. And it wasn't like he was calling out the next line in the script. He would just call out something random, just to prove he could. As the movie wore on, the rest of the people turned on them and started shushing. Not surprisingly, the Retarded Echo left early. I don't think the people who dress up and tell you how big a Lebowski fan they are really appreciate the film. The movie is multi-layered work of genius. These fans are just bangwagon folks that thinking they're part of the zeitgeist. They just like being in a club. And fuck them, really.

Math Problems

2006-11-27T21:24:00.000-08:00

I woke up Saturday morning knowing the Notre Dame needed to beat USC in order for Michigan to get a second pop at the national championship. And I was OK with that because even though I hate Notre Dame, I like Charlie Weis. But then, while watching Florida-Florida State, I realized it was worth my while to root for the Seminoles. And that's when I stopped. Nothing is going to make me root for Florida State.

Everyone hates the BCS because they'd like to see a playoff. And I'd like to see that. The problem with dissolving the traditional bowl ties in favor of putting together a 1 vs. 2 match-up is that you can't later go back and argue that anything violates the traditional integrity of college football. I don't care anymore if Michigan and Ohio State meet for the national championship. I'm just on the lookout for arguments that actually make sense.

Hostylefax: The Triangle

2006-11-15T13:08:00.000-08:00

If they actually knew how to read, many Penn graduates might be pleased to read that Duke modeled Cameron Indoor Stadium on The Palestra. The buildings are similar from the outside in that they are built to match the campus around them. And there are similarities on the inside in terms of shape and upper deck design. An empty Cameron doesn't look like much to honest, all wood paneling and old-English "D's" But when it's full, well... sometimes my job legitimately wows me. The Cameron Crazies are legendary. But to hear them up close, the pride they take in it, the organization that goes into it, and the sheer number of taunts they have, it's pretty incredible. On TV it looks only like screaming.

Here are some chants I heard during my two days there that I hadn't actually heard anywhere else:
"I'm blind, I'm deaf, I want to be a ref," on a bad call
"Three fouls, no points," repeatedly when a guy picked up his third foul after failing to score.
"You, you, you," done with pointing when an opposing player commits a foul.

But there was also some creativity to it as well. I was there for a four-team tournament that included Columbia. During the first game, a guy in a Columbia shirt was eating pizza and the fans started chanting "Guy with Pizza," and pointing at him. The Columbia fan ignored it, even after being informed of what was happening. When you went to Columbia, I explained to another reporter, you're well conditioned to ignore any yelling directed at you that might be coming from a gym. Any way, two timeouts later, two Duke fans showed up and handed him another box of pizza, to the delight of the gathered students.

Columbia's basketball team also has a chance to be pretty decent this year. The Lions have some pretty reliable guards, decent size on the inside and the ability to fill it up from outside. It might be worth your time.

I don't have much to say about the Triangle in general, other than it's a pretty cool name for a region. People who actually did some touring liked Chapel Hill, but I didn't go. And anything I saw that said Raleigh on it was attached to an ad for Hooters or similar. And Durham's downtown was largely unimpressive. It's mostly tobacco buildings and banks. I did find a decent seafood restaurant for lunch, recommened by Fritz. But if you get a chance, it's totally worth checking out a ball game. And if you're doing it this year, contact me and I'll see if I still have my parking pass, which is good for the entire season.

There's a Little Ditty they're Singin' in the City

2006-11-14T21:16:00.000-08:00

Mike seems to be going through an Anglophilic phase. Its growth is only slightly impeded by his never having been to Britain, excepting a layover at Heathrow in 2001. He doesn't like to share which movie got this phase started, so I'll keep quiet, too. Anyway, the latest microphase of Mike's new phase is a slavish devotion to English football. And the latest nanophase of Mike's new microphase is a curiosity about a British football fan's anthem called, "Who Ate All the Pies?"

Even I have to admit, most things are funnier when left to the English, meat pies included. Maybe that's why all the songs played at American sporting events were written by Queen (did you know Freddie Mercury was Indian?!). Mike had read and heard passing references to "Who Ate All the Pies?" from his British brethren in Sport Journalism, and despite not knowing the song, seemed to have it in his head. So we looked it up, and were not disappointed. According to Wikipedia, the lyrics to the song go:

Who ate all the pies?

You fat bastard,

You ate all the pies!

The entry also informs us of an alternate second line, "The burgers and the fries?" and of a vegetarian group attempting to sell a masculine image for herbivores via the alternate lyrics, "Who ate all the peas?"

And the tune? "Although not prescriptively so, it is usually sung to the tune of 'Knees Up Mother Brown'". Oh.

True or False?

2006-11-10T08:36:00.000-08:00

I was reading The Onion when I logged onto a website and saw this headline:

"Experts try to help deer with head stuck in toy pumpkin"

That would be False.

Anna thinks this is a hoax. And if it were just the Free Press reporting it, I'd be inclined to agree. But this is from the AP.

Brush with Death

2006-11-09T12:39:00.000-08:00

I made my first work appearance at an NBA game last night, and who did I find myself sharing a building with, but FFH favorite Suge Knight? I didn't sit near him or anything, but I was upstairs and that was probably close enough. I seem to have ascribed Chuck Norris-like powers to Suge, which is fun. We (the reporters, not me and Suge) had a long talk in the press room about Knight's history and whether how best to refer to him in print. I was surprised how quickly I recalled the Vanilla Ice incident, although I had an episode of Entourage recently where that had played a role. Supposedly Knight is working on a reality show. I'm glad to see he's finding ways to keep himself busy.

Sanders and Lieberman: Bully for Them

2006-11-08T06:35:00.000-08:00

As we hunker down to devote our attention to Virginia and its effectively tied senatorial race, let me take a moment to speak directly to Democrats.

Get ahold of yourselves and stop kvetching.

No matter what the outcome in the Senate proves, it will be attributable to neither 1) the Green Party of Virginia nor 2) Joe Lieberman. Do you know how pissed a left-leaning voter has to be at Democrats to vote Green in a close election? I say the Green party's strength in any region of the country is a measure of the extent to which Democrats have screwed up there. This is Virginia, folks, not Northern California. Did somebody from DNC pee on Thomas Jefferson's grave or what?

I for one am really excited to have two independent senators. Bernie Sanders was first brought to my attention by my beloved 8th-grade history teacher, Mr. H. How could you not love a guy called Bernie Sanders? And if there's anything cuter than Bernie Sanders' name it's Joe Lieberman's punim. My own positions don't overlap much with the Connecticut senator's, but I'm still glad he won. I think it's preposterous to argue that he should have stepped down so a different Democrat could win. This isn't dodgeball; loyalty is supposed to be reciprocal, and the Democrats stopped supporting him. Lieberman appears to be something like a consensus candidate in his home state, and that's a hell of a lot more important than what the party bosses think. If you don't like how he votes, pony up a better candidate.

I think I could still be down with a two-party system, but I don't really care for the two parties we're stuck with. That's why I sometimes break with Democrats in the voting booth. At my very first election, in 1998, I took great pride in voting for Chuck Schumer on the Marijuana Party ticket. We all know I voted for Nader and that's why my mom stopped speaking to me for a few days in 2000. This year I voted for Peter Camejo of the Green party for governor, but it was purely a "screw you" vote, as the outcome of that race was clear months ago. An aside: in September I was engaged in conversation with two principle investigators at LBL about Schwarzenegger, and none of us could remember his opponent's name. After about three minutes I was able to supply "Phil."

I think anything that breaks our dependence on the party machines we're stuck with is a step in the right direction. I'm just proud of the people of Vermont and Connecticut for keeping their minds open long enough to listen to what someone has to say. Teddy Roosevelt would be proud.

Voting Day

2006-11-07T08:32:00.000-08:00

We were the eighth and ninth voters at our polling place this morning, which means the cranky old guy in charge of the ballot box still had a full roll of "I Voted" stickers. We have a new voting system here, having gone from punch cards to what looks like optical scan. We don't, however, get to feed our own ballots into the scanner. That would make me feel more in control, although clearly that wouldn't be true. I watched HBO's Hacking Democracy on Thursday. It's bone-chilling in that Michael Moore way. You expect the filmmakers are exaggerating a little bit to make a point, but it doesn't change how fucked up the reality of the situation is. I'm usually not one for conspiracy theories, but when there are real stakes (and if you're in the political power and money business, what else is there) why wouldn't you lie and cheat to win? On the other hand, I voted with one of thoese scented markers. Licorice, yum.

The elections here are less than sexy. We know Arnold and Feinstein are going to win. Our Congressman is running against someone who doesn't have a phone. So I wonder how that will turn out. There are some interesting ballot props though, which make it worthwhile to get up early. Statewide there is parental consent for abortion and a new tax on California-produced gas that would pay for research into alternative fuel. The latter is interesting in that it's funded by a guy with reams of money invested in alternative energy research. Mostly, he funded the campaign to pass it. So that's fun. Locally we're voting on whether or to switch power providers, allow a Target to be built in town and consider choice voting (which I don't really understand).

Like everyone else, I'm more interested in what comes tonight, the control of the House, Senate. No one in the media seems to think Lola's Congressional candidate has a chance, but neither has anyone conducted a poll to prove that.

FFH Film Series Continues

2006-11-05T21:28:00.000-08:00

Pursuant to our resolution to watch each other's favorite movies, we recently re-watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Out of Sight.

Eternal Sunshine was one of my picks, and we got to see it on the big screen, since our local independent theater has a midnight movie thing going on (stay tuned for their screening of Lebowski in December). I still really, really love this movie. The first time I saw it I took my dad, who didn't particularly care for it except the part where the character Mary screws up and calls Alexander Pope "Pope Alexander." Dad referred to the movie as science fiction, and the weird thing is that it hadn't occurred to me until then that it technically is. Yes, the film's concept hinges on a process that allows characters to selectively erase memories, but to my mind it doesn't really belong with science fiction because the point isn't utopia or dystopia, it's the everyday. The Mierzwiak method is just a means to exploring something highly realistic, namely the way two lovers come together and apart, and the ways in which we imagine our own regrets. That's the heart of the movie, and that part isn't exaggerated at all. It should also be noted that this film is the only one in which I've felt able to tolerate either Jim Carrey or Kirsten Dunst, but it's so well done that Dunst is passable and Carrey is truly excellent. And I don't know about you all, but I'm at least half in love with Kate Winslet's Clementine, totally against my will.

I also really like Out of Sight, as long as we turn it off before the last scene. Samuel L. Jackson makes a lovely cameo, but the fact is that the rest of the film makes no sense with the happy ending tacked on. I really miss the nineties when I see all of Jennifer Lopez's suits. I also miss her original ass. This movie is now eight years old if you can believe it, and Mike says Detroit has changed a lot since it was made. He says Downtown has more stuff in it.

Both pictures stay on the list.

Long on Vocab, Short on Plot

2006-11-05T14:29:00.000-08:00

My dad finally converted my old bedroom into his study, a move which had been postponed for years because no one felt like tackling the piles I had left there when I moved into Carman. Out of said piles my dad rescued one box's worth of memoribilia, which he recently mailed me. These included a journal in which I discovered the following work of fiction, nearly lost to posterity. Judging by the handwriting, I think I was around ten when I wrote it. I have preserved the original spelling and punctuation, so I will pre-announce one giant "[sic]" for the piece.

My name is Sarah. The day my children got lost was the scariest day of my life. I was napping by the fire with my pups, Margaret, susan Bobby, Daisy, and Toby, one night. We had just had our meal, and everyone was sleepy. Bobby yawned and stood up. He nudged Maggie. "Come on, let's go see if the cat is asleep," he said. The two of them trotted of to find the cat, Agnes. She and I were on fairly good terms for two adversarial species. She was a snob, to be sure, but she minded her p's and q's around me. The puppies loved to chase her kittens, though wich often caused some heated arguments. I would have made them come back if I had known they were leaving, but I was asleep.

When I woke up I was startled to find two puppies missing. Awful thoughts ran through my head. Dog-catchers, automobiles, construction sights. I raced up to my mistress'es bedroom. I barked and howled, and jumped up and down. "Help!," I cried, "Bobby and Margaret are missing! We have to find them." My mistress could not understand, though. "I can't take you out, it's pitch black out there," she said. I could see I would have to find them myself.

I ran down to the living room, "Stay here all of you. Don't move a muscle," I said and ran off again.

Mean while Bobby and Maggie had wandered off and lost their way. They were treking forlornly through the kitchen when Bobby said, "Maggie look! There are our bowls!." And sure enough there were six little bowls with our names on them. " I know how to get to the living room from here," said Maggie. So off they went with renewed energy and before long they were back with the other pups.

I had searched every room in the house and I could not find them. I retraced my footsteps back to the living room. Sobbing I through myself on the floor and whined.

"What's the matter Mama?," said Bobby. "Bobby! It's you!," I cried. I hugged and kissed them and after repremanding them and putting them to bed I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

In which I Hire my own Secret Service

2006-11-04T09:52:00.000-08:00

Halloween has come and gone. I usually forget it's Halloween until I see someone buying antihistamines at the drug store dressed as Prince or something. The Friday night before Halloween, Mike was out of town, and I took the opportunity for a rare night of socializing in Berkeley. My companion was one Ruth, a new friend introduced to me by my mom. We had seen The Science of Sleep, a film for which you should all go purchase tickets directly, and it was nearly midnight when the show got out. I was now faced with a fifteen minute climb over the Berkeley hills in the dark as a prelude to the drive back to Davis (this is why I so rarely socialize in Berkeley in the evenings). Ruth was reluctant to leave me to this walk by myself, but I didn't want to take her with me and drop her back at the BART station because the car has been smelling strange ever since I spilled a gallon of water in the trunk on the way back from the Co-op. So I insisted Ruth go home, and began the climb.

I was mildly interested in the pair walking ahead of me. All I could see from the back was that one of them was wearing a red robe and a giant white sphere on his head. The other was clad in an Irish football jersey with a turban and scimitar. I did notice, however, that everyone who passed them greeted them in admiration. It says something about Berkeley that it did not immediately occur to me that the two were dressed for Halloween. In any case, I approched them. "Scuse me, " I said. "Are you two walking toward Hearst and Euclid? I have to walk to my car in the dark and the way you're dressed I kind of get the feeling no one's going to fuck with you." They agreed to accompany me as far as Hearst and LeConte, and we began to chat.

I could see now that the guy in the robe was dressed as a cardinal from the neck down. From the neck up, he was dressed as the guy from the Jack in the Box commercials (do you have Jack in the Box on the East Coast nowadays?). He explained to me that he was dressed as Cardinal Jack. I pressed, but he said the phrase had no deeper significance. "I keep trying to explain to everyone that there is no concept to my costume," he said. He could see out of a thinned-out space around the mouth of his giant sphere head, but not all that well. His companion was dressed as the Irish Taliban, and proved to be a genuine Southside Dubliner. He was responsible for making sure Cardinal Jack didn't trip on the curbs. They were grad student physicists.

Now that I was walking with them I could also see that every group of two people or more that passed them was shouting "Hey! Jack!" at the Cardinal. He informed me that he'd never had such a popular costume before, which I felt to be a slightly depressing comment on the state of food advertising in our country. Apparently the two of them went as characters from Aqua Teen Hunger Force last year, but no one recognized them. I said I'd heard of it, to which Irish Taliban responded "Then you must be some sort of scientist." "I guess," I said, "Do you count Epidemiology?" "Well, some sort of nerd then." "That I will totally cop to," I said.

They took their leave of me at Hearst and LeConte, as it was obvious that the city was full of Halloween partiers and I had no need of escorts. Cardinal Jack waved goodbye to me and promptly walked off in the wrong direction.

Baby in Hat with Pumpkin

2006-11-04T09:50:00.000-08:00

This is Ruth's niece in a pumpkin patch. Ruth says, "See why she is my crack and I can't get off the pipe?"

Mike is a Local Hero

2006-11-04T09:36:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons FFH has languished a bit since I started school is that Mike is now dividing his blogging time. The Davis Enterprise now has a Sports blog. Though theoretically a project of the Sports Department as a whole, I'm pretty sure Mike's the only sports staffer who actually likes to write, so it's all him. Anyway, it's growing weekly in popularity, so go check it out at www.davisenterprise.com/sports_blog.