A Friend Needs Your Help: My friend Darcy is coming to the end of a stint doing some basic live-in training of a Paws with a Cause dog -- namely Helix, a daffy but loveable black lab. Helix will be moving on to the next phase of training, so as a going away present we need to have Helix named as Pet of the Month at Petendipty.com.

So here's what you do. Click this link. Select Helix (down at the very bottom of the photos). And click submit.

You must do this. If you don't, Helix will be sad. And being responsible for a black lab crying is about a low as you can go in this world. Do it.

Don't Let School Stop You: A very interesting article about how pop culture is not necessarily the reason kids struggle in school. The case in point here is something called fan fiction. Fan fiction generally coalesces around popular sci-fi or fantasy storylines such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Buffy, etc. From the base characters and universe of the show, fans write their own stories or episodes or even entire novels and publish them on web sites to share with other fans. To wit:

When she was 13, Heather Lawver read a book that changed her life: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Inspired by reports that J. K. Rowling's novel was getting kids to read, she wanted to do her part to promote literacy. Less than a year later, she launched The Daily Prophet, a Web-based "school newspaper" for the fictional Hogwarts. Today, the publication has a staff of 102 children from all over the world.

Lawver, still in her teens, is its managing editor. She hires columnists who cover their own beats on a weekly basis -- everything from the latest Quiddich matches to Muggle cuisine -- and edits each story. She encourages her staff to closely compare their original submissions with the edited versions and consults with them on issues of style and grammar as needed.

Or this one:

Consider, for example, the girl known online as Flourish. She started reading X-Files fan fiction when she was 10, wrote her first Harry Potter stories at 12, and published her first online novel at 14. She quickly became a mentor for other emerging fan writers, including many who were twice her age or more. Most people assumed she was probably a college student. Interacting online allowed her to keep her age to herself until she had become so central to the fandom that nobody much cared that she was in middle school.

All the English Composition classes in the world probably could not generate the desire to sit down and write like that. Which is exactly the point of the article:

We often act as if schools had a monopoly on teaching, yet smart kids have long known not to let schooling get in the way of their education.

Dead on. Personal aside: I think HRH Miss Anna would be a natural for this.

We Like The Moon: Have you seen those disturbingly wacked-out animations in the Quizno's Sandwich Shop commercials. Here's the source. Brilliantly bizarre and fantastically freaky.

Damn Site: I just realized there is horrible bug in Internet Explorer 6. Technically speaking, you cannot select text in what is called an absolutely positioned "div". It so happens that the text you are reading now is contained in such a thing. The sidebar is OK, but in structuring the page I had to use an absolutely positioned div to get the content on this part of the page to position correctly. If you are using earlier version of IE you are probably OK. If you are using something other than IE you are probably OK.

You can select a word by double clicking it, but if you try to select a sentence, it will highlight pretty much all the text up to the top of the section.

Stupid web browser.

The reason this is important is that very soon I am going to ask you all for a favor. And it will involve cutting and pasting a word from this page. And so, when the time comes, I am going to have to tell you to be sure to select the word by double clicking on it, rather than just tell you to select the word by any means you choose. Just another complication to pester me.

Oh, and your eyes are not deceiving you, I did change to text over to a serif font (specifically Georgia, and if you don't have Georgia, Times New Roman). I just think it's a bit more readable that way.

Lots more to come soon, possibly including an excerpt from my third, and yet to be completed, novel, tentatively titled Misspent Youth. Maybe possibly.

For now, some links to amuse, fascinate and inform you.

• Dogs are the weak cousins of the noble wolf, dependent on man for nearly everything. But with the wolf outnumber 300 to 1, who is the real evolutionary success?


• Looking for retro or obscure sports logo clothing? Look here. My new object of desire is a Michigan Panthers hoodie (remember them?). I still can't find an EMU Hurons sweatshirt.


• Ten technologies that refuse to die. And some that did.


• The theory and practice of beating your wife.


• When is trailer not a trailer? Park me one of these by the beach and I'll gladly while away my retirement complaining about the government and driving really slow.


• Blog awards. Check 'em out. Once again, I am heartlessly overlooked.


• There are some things I don't want to think about.


• And some places I don't want to go. But if you're on vacation in North Korea, there's an easy way to get around.


• Paging Simon from American Idol! Why do people have to fight? by Herve Villchaize. Warning! This has audio and video in Quicktime format so you'll need a high speed connection and it'll work best with a Mac, but if you can play it, it is comedy gold.


• Speaking of music, such as it is, this is wrong in so many ways...

Meet Me: I have two book signings scheduled in the near future, both in the area of Flint, MI. The first is on Saturday, February 28th from 2-4 PM at B. Dalton in the Courtland Mall in Burton, MI (map), the second is Saturday March 20th from 1-3PM, also at B. Dalton in the Genesee Valley Mall in Flint (map). Both stores either have, or will shortly have, Business As Usual in stock.

Stop by to get a signed copy. Or stop by to say Hi. Or stop by just to point at me and laugh. Whatever you do, stop by.

Noise Annoys: I hate politics. Really hate it. And that is going to make the next 10 months a living hell. For me, politics is like having a rusty sewing needle stuck in your eye. As such, I do not find anything funny about political humor. Having a rusty sewing needles stuck in your eye does not encourage lighthearted jocularity. Oh, I know that given enough time everything is a target for humor, even eyeballs pierced by rusty sewing needles, but the problem is the rusty sewing needle doesn't get removed. It doesn't even heal in place. It keeps getting twisted around every time some heavily coiffed talking head on CNN or Fox asks some weasely politician a question and the weasely politician responds with a weighty-sounding, carefully-rehearsed response that is so devoid of substance it borders on non-sequitor, which is in turn followed by a panel of interchangeable motor-mouths speculating on what it all means.

DIE IN A FIRE. TAKE THE GAS PIPE. I DON'T CARE.

I can isolate myself from this inanity for the most part, except when someone has turned the TV in the gym locker room to one of the 24 hours news stations or when I am with friends who don't share my distaste and covering my ears and screaming "lalalalalalala" would be rude. Not only that, this is the time when otherwise apolitical activities are suddenly imbued with editorialization.

You see, politics is really the only topic that is considered Serious. If you don't harbor strident and righteous political opinions, you are deemed shallow. Actors, musicians, scientists, doctors, professors, athletes, you name it -- whenever they feel as though the work they do is not Significant enough, they decide proselytizing about politics is the way to show they are Deep and Important. So they throw their celebrity and/or credentials behind some poorly thought out, small-minded political stances in an attempt to transcend the perceived superficiality of their lives.

Meanwhile, otherwise sane people (including many bloggers) go nuts and start accusing everyone of being a Nazi. Or claiming righteous victimhood because they were called a Nazi. Or calling people Nazis because they called you a Nazi. I am glad the youth of today will never equate Nazis with murderous villains who slaughtered millions, but with easy targets in First Person Shooters. Maybe there will come a time when Nazi isn't the most popular political description anymore.

I understand the unfortunate necessity of politics. What I despise is the way it is treated as the source and purpose of all life by many people. You know the type. They classify you personally by asking you if you are Republican or Democrat or Conservative or Liberal and then proceed to color every interaction with you by their political prejudices. (Living in Ann Arbor, I've known plenty such people. Hell, I've dated such people.)

Understand this: None of this does anything except add more noise to the world. There is no topic in our culture that gets more mileage with less substance than politics. Any substantial political question can be reduced to a debate about core assumptions in about ten minutes tops, so why do we have to go through all this? It's just noise. Stop talking about it. Do something else. Go for a walk. Wash your car. Cook some pasta. Anything else, for cryin' out loud. It will make the world a better place. And that's Important.

I have made a point of keeping a dam site politics free and will be extra vigilant in the upcoming months. Visit here to escape.

Before I Get Old: One thing about getting old. It's not so much that you can't learn new things; it's that you really don't want to anymore. You have a lifetime of pointless information in your head so learning a new skill means trying to free up some space in there to remember stuff, which means you probably have to take the opportunity to throw something out, which means you lose some of that hard-earned prowess in trivial pursuit and you risk accidentally disposing of something important, like the fact that underwear goes on the inside. It's fraught with difficulty.

Take, for example, a digital camera. Miss Kate and HRH Miss Anna bought me a Kodak digital camera and mini-printer for Christmas. An excellent gift. I think I could really enjoy photography once I figure out how to take more than just a snapshot, or maybe I could have some fun Photoshopping. In the past I would have just picked up the camera and started blasting away until I figured out how to do everything. (This was Anna's chosen method when she unceremoniously wrenched it from my hand to play with before I could even say thank you.) Now I find myself over-thinking it, trying to grasp the functionality like some senior citizen confronted with a new-fangled remote control.

Look: I know what offside is in hockey. I prepare and file my own taxes. I can tell you how to price stock options. Hell, I once learned the basics of Unix, for Pete's sake (that was the first thing to go once the noggin filled up). I can pretty much figure anything out.

That doofy guy struggling with a simple camera -- that's not me. That's me thirty or forty years from now when I've got my pants hiked up around my armpits.

I am not old. I WILL learn to use this camera and take reasonable photographs. And if it kills me, at least I'll leave a good looking corpse.

(Don't worry; I will not inflict my pictures on you. At least not yet.)

You've Got To Be A Football Hero: The Miami Herald is running a series of articles following a heavily recruited high-school football prospect, one Willie Williams, as he goes from college to college (FSU, Auburn, Miami) and gets the VIP treatment. It's obnoxious that some kid gets treated like a king for playing football while everyone else is filling financial aid forms, but this is worth the read -- believe me. This kid is like a young, naive Mike Tyson. Everything he says pegs the unintentional comedy meter.

He eats a lot at FSU:

"...defensive line coach Odell Haggins was there to greet him. "When he picked me up, he had a box of chicken wings for me," Williams said. "I was starving, but there was only like two wings. I told him 'Coach, we're still going to dinner right?'"

"Dinner was tight," Williams said. "We had our own section in the restaurant, but the only thing that bugged me was that I sat all the way in the back -- so I was the last one to get my food.

"Coach Haggins told us to order as much as we wanted. I ordered a steak and a lobster tail. The lobster tail was like $49.99. I couldn't believe something so little could cost so much. The steak didn't even have a price. The menu said something about market value. I was kind of embarrassed so I didn't order a lot.

"But then I saw what the other guys were ordering, I was like, 'Forget this.' I called the waiter back and told him to bring me four lobster tails, two steaks and a Shrimp Scampi. It was good. I took two boxes back with me to the hotel."

[snip]

After the tour, Williams said the players were treated to lunch at Doak Campbell Stadium. But it wasn't the type of meal the players had been treated to the night before. Just sandwiches.

[snip]

"I asked Coach Odell, 'Where we eating tonight?" Williams said. "He was like, 'The stadium' I thought he was playing. Then we ended up eating at the stadium again. I guess we spent all their money the night before."
What the recruits didn't know at the time was that they were in for a treat -- a trip to Bobby Bowden's home for his wife's homemade deserts.

"Coach Bowden was cool, but Ms. Bowden was the bomb," Williams said. "I swear, she must be related to Betty Crocker or something. When we walked into that house, it was like walking into a Publix Bakery -- banana pudding, chocolate cake, cheese cake. I had one of everything. I didn't want to leave."

The eatin' binge continues at Auburn:

Before heading out to dinner, the recruits waited for the Auburn coaches in the hotel lobby, where a spread of shrimp, cheeses, cold cuts and fruits awaited.

"They told me they heard about my trip to FSU and how I love to eat," Williams said. "They were like, 'Willie, Why don't you have a few snacks before we go to dinner.' So, I served myself like six little plates of everything."

Following the "snack," Williams and the recruits headed for a restaurant called Old Charlie's. After experiencing a long wait for his food on his trip to FSU, Williams made sure to sit at the front of the table near the waiter to order first.

"I really wanted to go to Red Lobster for some more lobster and steak, but they told me the wait was two hours. So I got me some babyback ribs, buffalo wings and shrimp," Williams said.

But even Williams has his limit. And he wasn't about fall for the trap those country bumpkins at Auburn laid for him:

During the wait, several of the female hosts, nicknamed the "Tigerettes", offered him some of their spinach dip.

"You know how it is, those girls are supposed to be there to cheer you up," Williams said. "But I told them, 'I ain't no animal, and I ain't going to eat no plant.'

"But they kept pushing it toward me. It was disgusting. I told them, 'I'm from Miami. I don't eat that. You farm people are used to it, but not me."

[snip]

Later that night, the recruits were invited to a party on campus with their hosts.

"The girls at the party were much better than the farmer girls we'd see all day around campus," Williams said. "I was kind of worried all Auburn had to offer was those farmer girls that talked funny. But the girls at the party weren't farmer girls at all. I thought they must have bused them in from Miami."

The farmer girls talked funny. Poor Willie must have been buggin'. Oh, the irony. Meanwhile at Miami, Willie is ven more impressed:

Williams was surprised when Coker picked him up.

"Coach [Coker] looks like an old guy in his 50s or 60s, but he's real cool," Williams said. "When he talks, he sounds like he's 18 or 20.

"And when I saw he was driving the Escalade, I was like, 'Dang, coach got some taste.'"

Yes, an Escalade is the height of style and grace. Coach also reads the papers:

Following the stadium, the recruits were bused to Monty's restaurant on Miami Beach.

"As soon as I got off that bus, it was like a cartoon," Williams said. 'The smell hit me right away. Coach was like, 'Willie, you've got an eating disorder.'"

After the recruits were greeted with nachos and crab claws, the main course quickly followed -- along with the arrival of UM players, including D.J. Williams and cornerback Antrel Rolle.

"Coach Coker must be related to Cleo or something," Williams said of the famed TV psychic. "The man knew what I wanted and had it already ordered. I didn't need a menu. I told him, 'Coach, how did you know what I like?'

"He was like, 'Willie, I've been reading up on you.'"

Then of course, they finally get to the real purpose of college: video games and girls.

Dinner was followed by a trip back to Rolle's apartment for a few hours of video games. Then it was off for a night out on South Beach.

"They took us to this place called 'The Bed.' Warren Sapp, Clinton Portis, Jevon Kearse and a whole bunch of really hot girls were all there."

Yep, this guy is definitely college material. You may be tempted to make fun of WIllie, but never forget: He ain't no animal. He ain't going to eat no plant.

I will be watching his career with interest. For the quotes.

LA Out: You can finally read about my LA trip. I hope it doesn't dissapoint. Also, I realized that the link to my previous travel article Babylon on the Make actually tok you to my first florida article of some years back. Stupid Dobby! Bad Dobby! IT's fixed now so you may want to check that one out too, since it may be new to you.

Copies in the Wild: Well, the good news is that Business As Usual is starting to appear in some stores. I know for a fact you can walk into the Community Newscenter in the Frandor Shopping Plaza in Lansing, MI and buy it off the shelves. There may be others. None of the big boys (Border's, Barnes & Noble, etc.) yet, but it's still early in the game. Of course, you can walk into just about any bookstore and order it.

The best way to purchase remains ordering it on-line. It's currently 30% off at Amazon and even cheaper at Buy.com.

If your are a blogger or anyone else interested in reviewing Business As Usual, please contact me about a review copy.

And, as always, you can visit the official website for info and the first eight chapters on-line -- no ads, no tricks.

Si Quaeris Weblogam Amoenam Circumspice: I've recently stumbled on a few excellent Michigan blogs that you should visit. First off, The Land of Anne. Blogmistress Anne is from Mt. Pleasant where she is a punk rocker and librarian. Presumably she spends her nights playing guitar in deafing clubs and her days telling people to be quiet. A confusing life. Srah is a fellow Ann Arborite, specifically a grad student at the School of Information specializing in Human-Computer Interaction. Presumably that means she has to spend a lot of time with angry people who smash keyboards. More coincidental is StarryEyes a blog by Karen Correll (it appears to be down at the moment), an author and journalist out in the Detroit 'burbs who recently published her first book, Saturday Nights at the God Café through the former publisher of Apple Pie (she has my sympathy).

I offer a virtual nod of kinship to all of them.

Things Not To Do: I'm sure I'm guilty of these, but hopefully not egregiously so. Ten Mistakes writers don’t see. Sound advice.

You're Making That Up: A fun way to waste...uh, I mean spend a few minutes is at The Museum of Hoaxes. I remember quite a few of these. Turns out that almost as soon as photography was invented, people started doctoring them as a scam.

Get Thee Moving: A follow up to the article I linked previously about why exercise may have no affect weight for most people, explaining why you should exercise anyway. Absolutely on target.

You Didn’t Hear It From Me: Notice how I didn’t mention my LA essay. That's right, I didn't.

Lame Excuses: My LA story is not done yet, so quit asking. It will be ready when it's ready. What are you, my editor or something?

I have been working on promotion of Business As Usual; trying to get some more reviewers lined up and hoping to get bookstores to stock it. (I hate marketing, so I'm a bit pissy these days.) And, of course, it's tax time – I generally get a big refund so sooner is better than later for me. Plus, I have a little thing we like to call a day job that pretty much wipes out a third of my life. And what with sleep and all, well, there's just not all that much time left. Plus, tonight is the season premiere of Monk.

For now, I present some links for your dining and dancing pleasure.

• More of the Worst Album Covers Ever. They speak for themselves.


• Wabbit season! James Bond has retired to Belgium and is in the habit of poaching bunnies.


• Drugs are bad, mkay? Drop acid and draw a middle aged man with glasses. Fun times.


• I have no interest in seeing the movie, Torque; I just want to point out that Roger Ebert knows how to write a movie review. Description and opinion, yes, but it's the context that makes the difference.


• File under W for Wicked Cool: Visual Thesaurus.


• You may remember my pointless and annoying trip to the Detroit Auto Show last year. Well, thankfully, "Car and Driver'' has relieved me of the need to do that this year (not that I would have). All the new and notable cars.

Say Hey: The latest on the kid who was suspended for saying "HEY!". He has a web site where he gives his account of the story. Check this out:

Dr. Santiago is the assistant principal at my school. I went to his office, and he talked to me about what I did. There was a North Richland Hills police officer in Dr. Santiago's office. I told Dr. Santiago I didn't mean to send the message to the entire school. He said it didn't matter that I didn't mean to send it to everyone.
[snip]
Dr. Santiago pulled out a book of crimes and punishments for the school, but they couldn't find anything like what I did. But he started listing off punishments I could get. He said, "Punishment by officer" and the officer was smiling and nodding his head while he pointed to himself.

Dr. Santiago is, simply put, a dickhead. The kid's Mom is brought into the foray:

When I went to the school, I tried to explain that NET SEND wasn't a big deal. Mr. Rollins told me that I had to respect his position. He knew Carl was a good kid, and if it weren't for that he would have taken Carl out and put him in an alternative school.... which is a school for kids that get caught with drugs and are real criminals.
[snip]
I tried to explain to him that there was a simple way to keep NET SEND from working on his network if he didn't want it to be used, but he had no interest in that. Later I called the school and asked if I could get a job as a network administrator. I told them that they must need someone who actually knew what they were doing. They didn't seem interested in interviewing me, though. I don't know why.

At least they have a sense of humor about it. Judging from the business site of the kid's parents, they are a bit on the gothy side. (It's odd for goth-types to have a sense of humor, though.) Goths are characterized by an abysmal sense of style, a generally sour and mopey disposition, and, since Columbine, a penchant for firearms and mass murder – at least in the eyes of the shallow and ignorant, which aptly describes the administrators of Richland Middle School.

I have a vision of these wanky, cowering school admins assuring themselves that they probably just stopped another Columbine because, Lord knows, the only thing that can stop a goth from going psycho is petty persecution.

Merely Human: We've long passed the point in sports where any top level competition that requires purely physical action (as opposed to learned skills) will be won by someone who is genetically predisposed to do well. Lance Armstrong's lungs can process oxygen more than twice as efficiently as the average human; An NFL lineman must be 300 plus pounds and run a sub 5 second forty yard dash; And basketball players, well, you can't learn height. Now there's the ultimate ultra-marthoner with the perfectly neutral stride who wants to run untold hundreds of miles. Freaks, I tell you; the lot of 'em. My only hope is technology (we can rebuild him -- faster, stronger, better).

Cannot Duplicate: There will come a time in the not too distant future when I can photocopy myself, have my copy get to everything I don’t have time for, then simply re-integrate all the experiences of the copy into myself and recycle the copy for the precious bodily fluids. However, barring some pretty amazing scientific breakthroughs along those lines, it will probably be another week until I get my LA essay done. Until then, here are some goodies.

Zero Intelligence: You may be aware of the latest "zero tolerance" situation involving the high school kid who, upon discovering an antiquated command line program for sending instant messages across his school's computer network, sent the one word message "Hey!" to about eighty people. Since the so-called adults at the school didn’t understand how he did it, he was promptly suspended for three days amidst dire warnings about the seriousness of his transgression.

At first, Principal Tommy Rollins didn't think much of it. "I saw it," he said. "It didn't say who it came from. I just deleted it."

Beverly Sweeney, a computer teacher and campus computer liaison with the district, entered Carl's computer class and quickly figured out where the message originated and who sent it.

According to Carl, Sweeney asked him, "Did you do this?"

"Yes," he replied.

"Do you know that this is serious?" she asked him, according to Carl.

"No," he replied.

Then she asked how he did it, and he showed her.

There's a hacker mastermind at work.

This kind of idiocy goes on regularly now, and there have been a lot worse cases of zero tolerance including expulsions and lawsuits. But the big difference is that in most cases, when confronted with how incredibly stupid their actions are, the school administrators rarely try to justify them, they simply shrug and say it's all a matter of policy and there's nothing they can do. Not in this case. The "teacher" involved here, Beverly Sweeney, actually believes the action was justified and explains thusly:

Having been a computer teacher in the real world of public education for many years, let me say that suspension of students who are guilty of such tampering sends a message to all students that is beneficial and necessary.

Students should not be of the opinion that it is acceptable to abuse the privileges that are afforded them by the taxpayers. If they are allowed to experiment and do things on the computers that the teachers have not specifically given them permission to do, we would never get any computer education accomplished.

I'm pretty sure this woman is a big admirer of Dean Wormer.

If this woman has so little understanding and perspective that she cannot see how harmless and clever the student was being, I seriously doubt anything resembling computer education is actually going on at that school. The fact of the matter is that as long as she is in charge the taxpayers will probably get more for their money if the kids do just experiment at will.

Looking deeper, we get a fair understanding of why. This is Beverly Sweeney's web site. If she is instructing unsuspecting high-schoolers in making sites such as that, she should be hung. And I think we an all agree that her taste in music brings her mental health into question.

Note her educational background: "BA in Sociology, a BA in Anthropology and an MA in Sociology." She also has a teaching certificate and claims she has "certification" in some computer fields like "digital graphics" and "multimedia." I have no idea what it means to be certified in "multimedia," but it appears her only expertise with actual computers involves learning some Microsoft applications like Power Point and Front Page. No wonder she was so threatened by a student who knew all sorts of "hacker" tricks, like using the command line. Lucky she didn’t call Homeland Security.

Judging from the little animation on her site, Sweeney has some hostility issues. She obviously works them out by bludgeoning her students with her ignorance.

Nano-Nano: The top ten nanotech products of the year, from Forbes.com. Wrinkle slaying clothes and wicked cool shades. Two of my lifestyle necessities.

Lose Weight by Sitting Still: An excellent article on why exercise is not the thing to do to lose weight. In many (most?) circumstances, it just doesn't matter. Just sit still and don’t eat so much. Exercise is for the sake of health and longevity. If you exercise to lose weight, you will probably fail and get discouraged and then not get the health benefits.

Flight Attendant Stand Up: This came to me via The legendary KK who received it via email, with the comment that it is a "true story". We both doubt it's a true story but it's a hoot nonetheless.

I was flying to San Francisco from Seattle this weekend on Air Alaska, and the flight attendant reading the flight safety information had the whole plane looking at each other like "what the heck?"  (Getting Seattle people to look at each other is an accomplishment.)  So once we got airborne, I took out my laptop and typed up what she said so I wouldn't forget.  I've left out a few parts, I'm sure, but this is most of it."

Before takeoff...  "Hello and welcome to Alaska Flight 438 to San Francisco.

If you're going to San Francisco, you're in the right place.  If you're not going to San Francisco, you're about to have a really long evening. We'd like to tell you now about some important safety features of this aircraft.

The most important safety feature we have aboard this plane is... The Flight Attendants.  Please look at one now.

There are 5 exits aboard this plane: 2 at the front, 2 over the wings, and one out the plane's rear end.  If you're seated in one of the exit rows, please do not store your bags by your feet.  That would be a really bad idea.  Please take a moment and look around and find the nearest exit. Count the rows of seats between you and the exit.  In the event that the need arises to find one, trust me, you'll be glad you did.  We have pretty blinking lights on the floor that will blink in the direction of the exits. White ones along the normal rows, and pretty red ones at the exit rows.

In the event of a loss of cabin pressure these baggy things will drop down over your head. You stick it over your nose and mouth like the flight attendant is doing now.  The bag won't inflate, but there's oxygen there, I promise.  If you are sitting next to a small child, or someone who is acting like a small child, please do us all a favor and put on your mask first. If you are traveling with two or more children, please take a moment now to decide which one is your favorite.  Help that one-first, and then work your way down.

In the seat pocket in front of you is a pamphlet about the safety features of this plane.  I usually use it as a fan when I'm having my own personal summer.  It makes a very good fan.  It also has pretty pictures.  Please take it out and play with it now.

Please take a moment now to make sure your seat belts are fastened low and tight about your waist.  To fasten the belt, insert the metal tab into the buckle.  To release, it's a pulley thing -- not a pushy thing like your car because you're in an airplane -- HELLO!!

There is no smoking in the cabin on this flight.  There is also no smoking in the lavatories.  If we see smoke coming from the lavatories, we will assume you are on fire and put you out.  This is a free service we provide.
>
There are two smoking sections on this flight, one outside each wing exit. We do have a movie in the smoking sections tonight ... hold on, let me check what it is .. Oh here it is; the movie tonight is Gone with the Wind.

In a moment, we will be turning off the cabin lights, and it's going to get really dark, really fast.  If you're afraid of the dark, now would be a good time to reach up and press the yellow button.  The yellow button turns on your reading light.  Please don't press the orange button unless you absolutely have to.  The orange button is your seat ejection button.

We're glad to have you with us on board this flight.  Thank you for choosing Alaska Air, and giving us your business and your money.  If there's anything we can do to make you more comfortable, please don't hesitate to ask.

If you all weren't strapped down you would have given me a standing ovation, wouldn't you?"

After landing... " Welcome to the San Francisco International Airport. Sorry about the bumpy landing.  It's not the captain's fault.  It's not the co-pilot's fault. It's the Asphalt.

Please remain seated until the plane is parked at the gate. At no time in history has a passenger beaten a plane to the gate.  So please don't even try.

Please be careful opening the overhead bins because shift happens."

Between Meal Snack: I have to get my Los Angeles essay done, and then I'm thinking about an article on how to fix the airlines, or how not to. In the mean time here're some time passers.

• Two more folks responded to my plea for Business as Usual reviews on bookstore sites (Why don't you?); this time at Barnes & Noble. And I don’t know how Apple Pie got selected under Religion & Spirituality at this site, but I'll take it.


• Great and insightful lecture from Michael Crichton (author of Jurassic Park, et. al.) on the casual misunderstanding and outright abuse of science and the scientific process. I'm glad he was brave enough to point out what a snake-oil salesman Carl Sagan was.


• Speaking of misinterpreted science: Mad Cow Disease is primed to be the new SARS. Before you turn vegan, try to keep it in perspective. More.


• Ads you will not see in the US. We had some fun with the Rube Goldberg-like Honda ad earlier in the year, but frankly, I'm happy to miss some of these. To wit the one with "an overweight, useless parent who uses a sausage and a beer glass to illustrate the facts of life."


• "Welcome to Die screaming with sharp things in your head, our collection of impaled garden gnomes." Words fail me.


• Some good surfing courtesy of Yahoo. And you can now do a blog search courtesy of Blogarama.


• After seeing this I have decided my next book will be titled An Idiot's Guide to For Dummies books.

Welcome Back Me: I have spent pretty much of the last week in not-so-sunny, pretty-damn-chilly, Southern California -- specifically, El Lay. High temperatures all week hovered around 58. High temperature when I got back to Ann Arbor today: 58. A full accounting of my trip will be forthcoming, but let me just say that the Rose Bowl, while quite a spectacle, was a bloody disaster for the Wolverines.

I can only assume that the offensive line adopted the strategy of the Radiers in last year's Super Bowl, considering Navarre was too busy hitting the turf to hit his receivers. And Suzy Kolber demonstrated a better pass defense when she was opposing Joe Namath. Ah well -- it was all very traditional: The historically most frequent Big 10 champ loses to the historically most frequent Pac 10 champ. All we needed was Bo Schembechler and some throwback jerseys to take us right back to 1980.

More importantly, I have clearly done something to offend the travel gods. I don’t think I have ever experienced more delays, cancellations, and general frustrations than during my journeys there and back. I think I wrote nearly a thousand words solely on the first leg from Grand Rapids, MI to Milwaukee, WI.

But like I said, that and more will be coming soon. For now, jet lag is my steadfast companion. Once I lose him, you’ll see me again.

See You Next Year: Barring some extraordinarily compelling occurrence, this will probably be my last post of this year. The remainder of '03 will be devoted to chillin' and writin' and a little horsin' 'round. (One of the cool things about being a writer without an editor is you can do really fun stuff like put five apostrophes in a sentence.) Hope you all get lots of cool toys and have a righteous hoot time for New Year's Eve and I will catch you on the flip-flop good buddy. (Another cool thing: using godawful '70s CB-radio slang. I do make my own fun.)

freakmagnet10983@yahoo.com: Zach Everson, master of the curiously named zacheverson.com, dropped a line the other day. Unlike someone who shall remain nameless but whose initials are d.a.m., Zach seems to update fairly frequently including a couple of gems from his fearless interactions with the carnival sideshow we call Yahoo -- resulting from a poorly thought through profile update and a fellow who liked his site so much he "bookmarked the bitch". Stop by and have a look, but go easy on the propositions.

Dumb and Dumber: Read this. It is an attempt by someone to get a measure of revenge on an ex-friend for basically scamming him out of 30 large after pretending to be his friend. This fellow so trusted his friend that he made him an authorized signer on two of his credit cards. So his friend promptly maxed them out, promising to repay them from a big trust fund. Turns out the guy was a diagnosed pathological liar and had no trust fund and basically his entire persona was false. He goes on to list all of the lies he was told by his friend. Here are a choice few.

• Was in a Levi's jeans commercial


• Had Saddam Hussein in his sights during the gulf war as a Navy SEAL but didn't get the order to shoot.


• Told his Ex-Girlfriend that he had cancer and needed chemotherapy


• Dated Heather Kosar (before she posed in playboy magazine)


• Went on two dates with Alyssa Millano (told ex-girlfriend that he met Alyssa during a Baywatch tryout. He was selected but his C/O in the Navy wouldn't let him participate. Oh also stated that David Hasselhoff was a jerk)


• Played in the March Madness Final Four -- Cincinnati


• Been to Area 51 -- saw some incredible stuff. Told me about a plane / whatever that could hover and then shoot to another point miles away almost instantly.


• Had a story published in Readers Digest


• Won the local tough man competition in Pittsburg


• Fought in the Gulf War, came back and his wife was pregnant with someone else's kid.

This guy Todd is a crook, plain and simple, and should probably do time for this (if it's not a hoax). But after hearing that litany of obvious nonsense, to authorize this loser on your credit cards almost certainly makes you the most profound cement-head ever to punch a keyboard. The fact of the matter is you may not have a legal leg to stand on since it is patently obvious that if this asshat didn't steal your money, someone else would have -- maybe Miss Cleo, or some desperate Nigerian diplomat.

The only thing stupider would be me buying into this if it's a hoax. But I have been so desensitized to stupidity from years of dealing with idiots at large that it sounds completely plausible. What's your excuse?

Looking Bad: Al Gore's legacy. Can't you just picture him at Harvard, doing beer bongs and throwing up chili cheese fries all over the carpet? The only thing better would have been if he was wearing this shirt.

Go Joe Willy: Much has been made of the Joe Namath debacle. For those of you who don't know, Joe was being interviewed by sideline reporter Suzy Kolber during the Jets-Patriots game. He was completely hammered -- practically drooling. Calling his enunciation haphazard would be like calling Saddam Hussein slightly unkempt. Then he proceeds to put the moves on her and tell her how he wants to kiss her. On the air. It is a riot. If you haven't heard it here is the audio (about 900k).

Let me just say that when I am like 150 years old, half crippled from having my knees ripped to shreds, and completely butt-faced from pounding hard liquor, I can only hope I will still have the stones to make complete idiot of myself in front of millions of people in the pursuit of the nearest convenient chick. I hereby vow to buy a Namath throwback jersey.

More, More, More: Not a lot to post, but a couple of new things over at blogcritics.

First, a review of the over-hyped HBO special event Angels in America. I panned it and I may get a strong reaction since most everyone else has adopted it as a sacred cow. Just for the record, I didn't particularly enjoy writing this review. Contrary to what most of you think, I don't get a big kick out of slamming movies, especially if they have produced in a good faith effort to tell a story and not just to generate money-making trash. Also, I am loath to sully myself with politics in any way and Angels is primarily about political ideology (even though many don't see it) so I had to slog through it. Oh well, all done in the interest of trying to generate timely reviews when most of the stuff I read or watch is years old.

Second, I did a quick recap of the books I've read this year in my Book of the Year Award, this one was fun to write.

Now back to promotion of Business As Usual for a while. Joy.

Hang Up and Play: This has to have been one of the most dreary football seasons in history. The games have been fairly dull, by which I mean no team I am interested in has a shot at anything. And I'm beginning to get jaded about the whole notion of parity.

Aside: A magnificently dry analysis of the Lions last game from TMQ: "Detroit held Kansas City to 521 yards of offense."

More importantly, the season has been dominated by idiots, beginning with the Neanderthal Romanowski in pre-season and the latest being the clown who hid a cell phone under the goal post and called his Mom when he scored a touchdown. To the league's credit, they fined this dimwit 30 large. They fined his accomplice 5 large. And they fined a guy who held up a sign asking them not to fine him anymore 10 large.

If this player behavior keeps up, football is in for a serious falling out with its fan base, meaning me.

Another aside: It's interesting to contrast the culture of football, which requires constant misbehavior, trash talk, and fines, but rarely do things come to fisticuffs, to the culture of hockey you are supposed to be polite, modest, and reticent -- except when you're throwing punches, which is fairly common. An odd dichotomy.

The bottom line on this football season has been the fact that nothing in the entire season is anywhere near as compelling as all the off-season moves the Red Sox and Yankees have made. Boston and New York are lining up for a titanic battle next season and, for the most part, baseball has supplanted football as the top dog sport again.

Good Night Nurse: This is not the kind of thing I usually follow but that nasty business of the nurse who murdered dozens of patients is really perverse. It turns out this guy was under deep suspicion before at his previous jobs but everyone's hands were tied by policy designed to protect the killers rights.

Mr. Cullen, who prosecutors now say has admitted killing 30 to 40 patients during a 14-year career, walked away from his job at St. Luke's rather than answer questions, officials said, and investigators, despite dozens of deaths worthy of investigation and few concrete answers, could not prove he had done anything wrong. Word of their suspicions went no further than the State Nursing Board, which said that under the circumstances, it could not tell anyone that questions had ever been raised about him.

Mr. Cullen went to work at two other hospitals in the next few months without word of his past accompanying him.

The most sustained look at Mr. Cullen, when his suspected murder spree might have been stopped, was in the middle of last year. Yet the hospitals and public agencies that looked into him then, like those that encountered him throughout his career, say they were defeated by a system that lacks a way to spread the word about medical professionals suspected of misdeeds, and by hospitals and government agencies that are unwilling to do so.

If you're looking a concrete example of how lawsuit abuse has caused real damage and actually killed people look no further. I have experienced this first hand in a minor way; the company I work for strictly forbids me to make any sort of recommendation for my employees should they leave -- positive or negative. Call for a background check on someone who claims to have worked for us and you will get dates of employment, that's it. If someone left under certain investigation of say, embezzlement for example, I couldn't tell anybody. In my case, that hurts you if you call me because I can't tell you if the guy you are about to hire is a crook or not. I also can't tell you about the wonderful qualities of an employee who, say, had to relocate for family reasons. The only benefit from this nonsense is that my company is insulated from insane lawsuits. Well, now the insane lawsuits have blatantly come home to roost. It would be perfect irony if one of his victims was an ambulance chasing lawyer. I think the families of the victims should initiate a class action lawsuit against the American Bar Association.

But wait there's this:

A nurse who claims he killed up to 40 of his patients and was charged with administering a fatal dose of a drug to a Roman Catholic priest has voluntarily surrendered his New Jersey nurse's license, authorities said Wednesday.

...

"If Mr. Cullen had not agreed to surrender his license, the Board of Nursing was prepared to act on its own," said Reni Erdos, director of the Division of Community Affairs, which oversees the licensing of nurses.

Bet he was just quaking with fear about that.

Coming Up For Air: I have not forsaken thee. I spent nearly a full week in Columbia, SC; captial of SC and home of the Univeristy of South Carolina Fighting Gamecocks. Their cheer is a short, simple, "Go Cocks!" (The Chippendales always enjoy performing here.) A decent city, although a little heavy on the pawn shops and wig stores. I'm sure if it was sunny and warm it would've been lots of fun, but it was cold and rainy -- uncharacteristically so, according to locals.

Had a weird cab ride from the airport, the guy didn't drive below 70mph the whole way (on side streets), and he drops me off at what must have been the service entrance to the hotel, after he drove off I discovered it was locked and I had to walk around the other side of the building carrying my bags.

Better yet, the charge was $12.50 so I offer him a twenty and I tell him to just give me five back. He says, "I don't have any change." Oh, then exactly what the hell are you doing driving a cab? No idea if he thought I was going to let him just keep the twenty if he said that, but if he did he was hosed. I gave him a ten, three ones, and all the change in my pocket. Loser.

I spent another week catching up, Christmas shopping (just kill me now), and actually writing actual fiction. Not enough fiction, but it never is. And I managed to get a brief article up over at blogcritics entitled Dark Carnivale, my review of the HBO series Carnivale that finished it's season recently. I have violated my habit of waiting to do HBO reviews until immedaitely after the Sopranos season, but Eric Olsen, who runs blogcritics, made an impassioned plea for more timely material so it was my duty.

More soon.

By the way, I can't decide who looks worse, Saddam or Glen Campbell.

Over and Out: It may be a bit longer than usual before my next update. (I know, I haven’t been all that prolific lately so what's the difference?) Lots going on, and I absolutely NEED to write some fiction. Make no mistake, you are not rid of me by a long shot.

It's Not Unusual: There are a lot of ways to amuse yourself for a couple of hours. Some people rent movies, some people play video games, I surf the web. Sometimes I Google subjects of interest, other times I just follow links to see where a hypertext path takes me. Sometimes I get paid off with wonderfully absurd stuff like this. It seems George Bush's brother Neil got in some hot water during his divorce proceedings. Please take a moment to appreciate this exchange:

The Bush divorce, completed in April, was prompted in part by Bush's relationship with another woman.

He admitted in the deposition that he previously had sex with several other women while on trips to Thailand and Hong Kong at least five years ago.

The women, he said, simply knocked on the door of his hotel room, entered and engaged in sex with him.

He said he did not know if they were prostitutes because they never asked for money and he did not pay them.

"Mr. Bush, you have to admit it's a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her," Brown said.

"It was very unusual," Bush said.

In not knowing they were prostitutes, we see the fabled Bush acumen at work. But then, why look a gift quickie in the mouth. Don’t ya love the arid response, "It was very unusual"? You have to appreciate the ability to stay utterly restrained in the face laughable absurdity.

Excuse me while I check Expedia for flights to Bangkok.

You Have Our Gwatitude: I noticed a couple of stellar individuals responded to my plea for reader reviews over at Amazon. Also, you should know you can search Google’s Froogle service for the best price.

Oddly, Amazon has Apple Pie on sale again for 9.98. Since I have recovered the rights from the publisher I can only assume that they had some in stock they are trying to rid themselves of. Whatever the case, if you want to buy you should do it now, it’s the best price I’ve seen.

They Ruint Everything: I’m still riding my recent favorite hobby horse -- how high tech is misused in the auto industry -- so I want to draw your attention to a recent comparison of luxury cars (70k +) over at Car and Driver. Apparently the most extreme case in point is the top of the line BMW. Here’s a quote from the summary:

…the latest luxo crop has become screen dependent, to the point of ruination in the 7-series BMW.

"It wouldn't be that bad if they changed a few things." That's from the staff's most ardent 745i defender. The majority of us think iDrive, as BMW calls its computer interface, needs a clean-sheet redesign.

BMW tried to take over control of HVAC, audio, chassis settings, trip info, navigation, etc., with a screen. You make your choices with a single knob that turns, toggles, and clicks; it's a mouse substitute. Worse yet, the company forced ordinary controls into some contortion of the knob thing; for example, you must select the part of the seat you want to adjust by pressing a button, then twist or toggle a knob to make it move. Okay, but what was wrong with the old way?

In fact, the 745i has buttons and rockers scattered about the dash that let you adjust HVAC and do very basic radio/CD changes without using iDrive. But they're so haphazard in their logic that they only add to the annoyance.

We've given iDrive 18 months to persuade us. It failed. Now the F is in ink. Fearless prediction: The 745i will take a beating on resale.

Here’s the entire article. Lucky I found this considering I was about to pick up one of those 7-series Beemers in charcoal grey. [This is where you do a spit take.]

Good Stories: I have been reading Pattern Recognition by William Gibson; an entry in a literary genre called cyber-punk -- wickedly fast paced prose with lots of internet culture/technical references. It’s a rather compelling mystery, a certain insightfulness, and lots of references to the world of the web that I suspect most people wouldn’t identify with, but I do since I spend an unwarranted amount of time in that world (that means I am either way cooler or way more geeky than you -- your call). I may review it in the fullness of time. For now let me recommend a trio of articles that I have found interesting.

First, from Wired, we have a well done story about savants, the Rain Man types who are horrible maladjusted but have ungodly skills in certain areas, usually math or music. They are also remarkably useful to neuroscientists.

Speaking of neuroscience, I happened on this old (1996-ish) Tom Wolfe article about the philosophical implications of neuroscience and the fatalistic world it seems portend. Wolfe puts it all in a thoughtful historical context that makes it more than a little scary, but still ultimately positive, I think.

Lastly, a beautiful article about a monumental 6-man football game in rural Montana. 6-man is played out in the smallest and remotest of high schools where the population doesn’t support full-sized teams. The story interlinks the football game with life in the dying, small farming community. Written with exceptional sensitivity – should get a sports writing award of some kind.

Following Up: A couple of follow ups to previous posts.

First, it's clear the folks at USA Today are loyal readers of a dam site as evidenced by this article verifying my comments about the inanity of the check engine light and subsequent discoveries, and my general disapprobation of auto industry for its obsession with high tech gadgetry:

Thanks to the latest electronics, cars can tell you the pressure in each tire, display stock quotes or give directions to the nearest Italian restaurant. But the complex computer systems required to do all that have broken down on hundreds, perhaps thousands, of luxury vehicles, wreaking havoc on the lives of their owners.

And most tellingly:

"Engine lights come on so easily, and many times they can only be reset by a dealer even if there is nothing wrong," says Dave Hurt, president of Certified Car Care, a company that sells extended warranties. "Diagnosis of problems is a lot more complicated these days because of the amount of electronics in a car."

[snip]

Emission control systems that have been setting off "check engine" dashboard lights since the 1996 model year now have about 700 possible trouble codes. A problem as simple as a loose gas cap can prompt a warning light.

A dead battery can wipe out the trouble codes, making it impossible to perform state-ordered emissions testing on a car. The owner may have to drive the car for a few days to replenish the codes, then return for the test.

The principle lesson here (not worth pursuing at the moment) is that mechanical design skills and technological design skills are two completely different animals and high tech is not synonymous with design quality.

Second, from the realm of the surreal, last time out I linked to a story about a panic in Khartoum over fears of foreigners who could shrivel a fellow's manlihood (the previous linkapalooza, second from the end). Well it turns out – and this is the surreal part -- there is a syndrome for that. It's called Genital Retraction Syndrome (colloquially: shrinkage). I am anxiously awaiting on a 20/20 expose and a cautionary thriller from Michael Crichton. Select quotes:

The individual afflicted with genital retraction syndrome believes that his or her genitals (or in the case of women, breasts and/or genitals) are retracting into the body. Such a belief would be frightening enough, but local tradition adds the warning that such an occurrence is usually fatal. The majority of persons with GRS are male; cases are reported to occur in women, at least in the Malaysian version, but are much more rare. A typical episode will occur when a man goes to urinate in the cold or while emotionally upset (often due to guilt over masturbation or frequenting prostitutes, while concerned about his sexual performance, or after a fight with his wife) and observes that his penis is becoming smaller, a condition known medically as hyperinvolution. Remembering the dangers of a shrinking penis, the man grabs his genitals before they can retract into his body, and calls for help. If no one is around to help hold onto his penis, the individual may use mechanical devices to keep the penis from retracting, including cords, chopsticks, clamps, or small weights. Episodes of GRS may strike the same indvidual repeatedly, and epidemics of GRS have been noted, most famously the great koro epidemic in Singapore in 1967.

Who can forget the great koro epidemic of '67? The mind reels. Here's the full monty, such as it is. Fear not, there are no pictures.

Tyler Eight Seven One Oh Oh: It wasn't easy growing up in Southfield Michigan. Hard times were everywhere, and keeping food on the table was a struggle. When there was no meat, we ate fowl. When there was no fowl, we ate crawdad. And when there was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand. (As always, bonus points for naming the movie.) But anyone who grew up in the Detroit area 30 years ago will appreciate Detroit Memories. Note: to anyone else this will be pretty meaningless. The mention of Bob-Lo and The Ghoul elicits a smile, but apart from a momentary nostalgia, this is a chronicle of days past in a pretty dreary place.

Linkapalooza: As promised, a whole lotta links, cleverly designed to undermine your productivity.

• This measure was actually on the ballot in a city called Bolinas in Marin county (where else?). Reading it made me wax Seinfeldian, "What does that mean!? Can somebody tell me what that means!?" Please be aware that this measure is "advisory only". That's a relief.


• Check out some of the Worst Album Covers Ever. I guess the secret is out about my alter ego Devastatin' Dave, the Turntable Slave.


• According to CNN, a study of 3600+ blogs revealed 2/3 had not been updated for two months and 25% never had more than 1 entry. That makes me feel a lot better about my somewhat haphazard posting performance.


• Do I seem particularly manly? Gender Genie analyzes your writing and attempts to determine your gender. Samples from Apple Pie and Business As Usual were judged male by factors of 1.04 to 1 and 1.12 to 1 respectively. This weblog, on the other hand, was judged to be male by a testosterone laden 2.71 to 1. Mmmmm...red meat.


• I found this typical. A literary agency posted the sort of material they are looking for. Not surprisingly, male-oriented comic satire is not on their need-it list. Note what they think they can sell: Chick-lit (deliver us from Bridget Jones) and Romances (more sex, please) of various flavors. I could –- and one day may -– go on for many paragraphs about this, but instead, I'll just resign myself to obscurity and do some serious whining.


• A very courageous article in Outside magazine following a man who went on a regime of chemical enhancements including everything from Human Growth Hormone to steroids for the sake of the story. Courageous in that it doesn't follow the convenient "drugs-are-bad-mmmkay" line. I can see the attraction for athletes; there is apparently a very real effect, and a very real let down once you stop. The anonymous doctor involved points out that there is not that much danger in mild doses, but the problem is that everyone goes overboard in the desire for more. This stuff has no attraction to me, with the exception of the HGH. I wouldn’t hesitate to go on a mild regime of that if it wasn't so expensive.


• "Are you any relation to your brother Marv?" The dumbest sports quotes speak for themselves.


• There are people I know –- who go by the name of The Pixie -- that harbor the mistaken belief that bears in the wild are just big ole friendly critters that want nothing more than to wander around stealing pic-i-nic baskets in Jellystone Park. Tell it to the hikers who encountered this monster. Oh wait, you can't; they've been EATEN. Somebody call Mr. Ranger, sir.


• How can you not be fascinated by a true story that starts, "During September 2003, mass hysteria spread through Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, which was ultimately quelled by police intervention and statements made by the health minister. The panic was caused by rumors of foreigners roaming the city and shaking men's hands, making their penises disappear. The rumors were spread rapidly by text messages on cellular phones..." Would that my novels started so audaciously. The amazing thing is the juxtaposition of bizarre mystical superstition with the civilized modern logic of cell phone text messaging. What a world.


• The Best Ebay Auction Ever! This was so good I actually saved a copy of the page for when it disappears from Ebay's database. This guy tried to sell his ex-wife's collection of beanie babies. He naively points out that he has no idea if they are real or not, but some folks just can’t let it go at that. You have to read this; put down that chick-lit romance and take five minutes. You will laugh out loud.

Bad Influence: I've published a new article over blogcritics about the Most Influential Movies Ever. Take a look. I've also got plenty of interesting links to throw at you but it'll take me until later in the week to get them in some semblance of order. I remain unreasonably busy. So sorry.

Engine Checked: So I contact Toyota about my check engine light being on and the first thing out of the woman's mouth was, "Is your gas cap on tight? The check engine light will come on when the gas cap is loose."

Toyota employs tens of thousands of people, many of whom have vast experience in the auto industry, but apparently not a single one of them grasps the obvious fact that the gas cap is NOT PART OF THE ENGINE!

The gas cap wasn't the problem for me, but to make things even more irrational, the light went off just a randomly as it went on. Throw me a bone, people.

A New Theory of Laundry: I have, in the past, been subject to no small amount of ridicule for my method of doing laundry. People tend to get all freaky if you don't separate whites from colors. Well, in reality, whenever I have seen people do this I have been confused. It's not actually pure whites they are separating from colors. The definition of "white" can vary to include white-ish, really-light-colors, and mostly-white-but-with-colorful-patterns. This, to me, exposes the arbitrary nature of laundry segregation and, frankly, puts the entire theory under suspicion.

We are told that whites, by whatever definition, must be washed in hot water, separately, or they will come out "dingy". I don't really understand why that is the case; I expect the chemistry behind it is debatable. But the fact of the matter is, the only clothes I have that are truly white are my underwear. Let me state for the record that the day I become concerned about the albedo of my underwear is the day you have my permission to call the Cuckoo's Nest and set me up next door to Jack Nicholson.

And let's not even start on fabric softener. The purpose of fabric softener is to remove static cling. Exactly what does that have to do with softness? Besides, fabric softener does this by covering your clothes with an extremely thin chemical film. If you think the greedy chemical companies aren't in bed with the military-industrial complex and using this thin chemical film to perform bio-weapon experiments on the unsuspecting population, then you haven't been reading the web closely enough.

No, my friends, as usual I am not bound by traditional thinking and conventional wisdom. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. I cannot blindly accept the standard precepts of laundry dogma. I must question. I must contradict. I must agitate (so to speak).

Here's what you do. First, wash everything in cold water. Any self-respecting laundry detergent is valid to use in any temperature of water (they all say "all-temperature" on the box, and cold is a temperature) so it makes no sense waste energy and money heating the water. You will be grateful the first time you decide to shower while the washing machine is going.

Second, separate clothes not by color, but by weight and texture. Jeans, corduroys, thick towels, etc. go in one load; shirts, shorts, socks, unmentionables in another. The reason for this is two-fold. 1) These two groups tend to have very different drying times. By grouping them together you don't have to constantly get up, open the dryer, and remove the dry stuff from the stuff that is still damp, thereby allowing you to remain slouched on the couch for that much longer. 2) I cannot imagine it is good for your thin cotton t-shirts to be commingled with you heavy denim pants. The constant tumbling of the light shirt against the coarse denim has got to be like rubbing it with sandpaper. This means your clothes will last longer. (For you guys, that means your girlfriend will have to let up on you about wearing torn and beat-up clothes all the time and stop trying to drag you to the Gap. You can thank me later.)

So there you have it; a soundly reasoned and flawlessly logical approach to laundry. I am not close-minded, though. I am willing to entertain conflicting theories, but they must be well thought out and argued on the basis of something other than what "everybody knows".

And no fair pointing out that I am a bachelor and therefore incapable of understanding.

Here's to the Winners: I spent the weekend in DC scurrying about the city with HRH Miss Anna trying to keep up with Miss Kate (Anna's mom) and Aunt Molly (Anna's aunt) who were also scurrying about the city, but with a purpose. They were competing with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training in the Marine Corps Marathon.

There is a point in running a marathon where it ceases to be an athletic challenge. It becomes a question of enduring the pain from the constant impact on the feet, the stress on the joints, the searing blisters. Of the estimated 18,000 runners who started the 26.2 mile race a little less than 16,000 finished, among them Kate and Molly, both of whom had the fortitude for a sprint to the finish.

Their race was rife with symbolism -- the impetus for undertaking the marathon to begin with was a show of support for their brother Brian, a marathoner and Lymphoma survivor, and the finish line was in Arlington cemetery under the memorial to the Marines who fought on Iwo Jima, one of whom was Anna's grandfather. The marathoners voluntarily accepted the pain and struggle of the race to honor those who suffered before them.

The race was followed by celebrations and radio interviews and a decadent dinner. The following day, would be when the pain and injury revealed themselves. But those will pass. The achievement, the admiration and the memory will endure. Now, others must live up to them.

Road Rant: I have a question. What, in the name of all that is Holy, is the purpose of the check engine light on your dashboard? If you are 600 miles away from home and it goes off, what are you supposed to do? As instructed, I opened the hood and checked the engine. Sure enough, it was still there.

I don’t mind a warning light when the car detects some suspicious goings-on under the hood, but the technology designer in me says -- out loud, waving my hands, terrifying other drivers -- "How STUPID is this?"

There are two classes of things that can go wrong with your car. One is something that can be quickly addressed with some routine maintenance, like low fluid levels. The other is something that must be dealt with by a mechanic. So which is "check engine"? You don’t know. All you know is that something undiscoverable is wrong with your car. Or maybe not, people I know who have had the check engine light come on have told me it comes on for no apparent reason sometimes and the dealer just turns it off. So actually, all you know is that something undiscoverable may or may not be wrong with your car. To quote Bill Murray, "I want to thank you. You could have helped me, but you've done so much more." (Bonus points if you can name the movie.)

Sorry to get all tech-designy on you, but let's think this through for a moment. Inside your car there is a little chip that gets signals from sensors at various positions in your engine. When one of these sensors detects a problem is sends a signal to the chip informing it that is has detected a problem. Rather than report the location the problem was detected - fuel injectors, coolant system, blown fuse, whatever -- the chip just triggers a "check engine" light, effectively narrowing the problem down to the front half of your car.

Auto Industry, pay attention here. Instead of "check engine" why not tell me what problem was detected or at least where in the car it was detected and how dangerous it would be to try to drive the 600 miles from DC to Ann Arbor before getting it fixed. Here's the design in a nutshell. An unobtrusive two digit LED instead of a "check engine" light. The two digit numbers correspond to a list that is in driver's manual indicating what the actual problem is. You can't tell me that technology doesn’t exist. Frankly, I would prefer that to such things voice response. What kind of loser wants to talk to his car?

And while we are on the issue of stupid car tricks, let me just say that I am disturbed by the trend toward auto-nannying of late. The last car I rented was a Buick. I could not -- as far as I could tell -- control the headlights. They went on at off at the car's whim. I found that truly annoying. Popping open the trunk from the driver's seat was not controlled by a little lever next to the seat, like it is in virtually every other car; you had to remove the key from the ignition and insert it into a keyhole on the door. Presumably that was some sort of safety measure, but it was a pain when I pulled up to a hotel and had to pop the trunk to get my bags before letting the valet take the car. We also have the phenomena of windshield wipers that go on automatically. And you've seen the commercials where the guy asks his dashboard for directions to a Chinese restaurant. Stop doing that kind of stuff and give me better 'check engine' diagnostics.

And another thing. If you want to do something really useful, how about giving me some warning when my tire is about to blow-out? I had the wonderful experience of having a blow-out on the Ohio turnpike. Not just a flat tire, a full-on, tire-shredding blow-out that left me riding the rim at freeway speeds until I could pull on to the shoulder where I had to change the tire with triple trailer semis flying by about four feet from my nose. Lucky for me my check engine light was on.

And speaking of the turnpike, I hereby declare the Pennsylvania turnpike to be the most irritating road in America. First off, I loathe toll roads. Maybe this is because I live in Michigan where there are no toll roads so I believe free access to highways is a God-given right. Second, there are long stretches where the speed limit is 55. You are led to believe this is because of construction, but there is no evidence of construction -- workers, no equipment, no orange cones. Seriously, has anyone except a hamster like Jimmy Carter ever really believed the speed limit should be 55? I am convinced the 55 speed limit is an attempt to manipulate you, which PA has a policy of doing. To wit, and thirdly, they have a policy of posting strange statements on big orange signs get you to slow down. According to the PA DOT:

The Safe Driver Advisory sign sequence delivers six messages to passing motorists:
AGGRESSIVE DRIVER HIGH CRASH AREA
SLOW DOWN, SAVE A LIFE
DON'T TAILGATE
BUCKLE UP NEXT MILLION MILES
TARGETED ENFORCEMENT AREA
DUI: YOU CAN'T AFFORD IT

A couple of those are really strange. "Aggressive driver in high crash area" for instance. That could be an accusation that you are an aggressive driver in a high crash area, but I am not an aggressive driver and it seems they put these things just about anywhere they feel like it which undercuts the notion that you are in a warning that you are in some sort of high crash area. So that's just confusing. The fifth one, TARGETED ENFORCEMENT AREA, is insulting. Assuming that means "speed trap", then exactly how chuckleheaded would I have to be to believe that they were not only going to have a defined, permanent speed trap, but they were also going to warn you about it? Well, I'm not that chuckleheaded, but the PA DOT may be.

And then, there's this whole business of having two separate tolls. It used to be that as you entered or exited through the western border of PA, you stopped at a toll booth and got a ticket which stood you for the duration of your trip. That, apparently, wasn't annoying enough. So they moved the ticketing booth 10 or 15 miles east and added a tollbooth on the border where you have to pay $1 cash on the spot. Now, instead of getting a ticket when you enter PA and paying when you exit the turnpike, you stop at one tollbooth and pay a dollar cash, then you stop at another tollbooth some miles up the turnpike and get a ticket that carries you the rest of the way. What is the possible advantage of having an extra cash stop instead of adjusting the ticket fees so an exit in at the right place would cost a dollar? This is the slippery slope of irrationality that starts with toll roads and Targeted Enforcement Areas.

And what about Breezewood? Anyone who has had to get to DC via road from any point northwest of approximately Pittsburgh (including Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago…) is familiar with Breezewood, a city of hotels. When you exit the PA turnpike and head south towards DC, you don’t just exit on to another freeway like in a state with a relatively sane DOT. You exit the turnpike and are squeezed and hustled through Breezewood for, oh, maybe a mile, including a stoplight or two, then you get on a different freeway for the journey south. If you do this on off times it's not so bad. If you hit an inopportune time of day/week/month/year correctly you will find traffic backed up a couple of miles back on the turnpike to get through this bottleneck.

It has been this way since before I was born and PA has never gotten around to building a freeway-to-freeway exit to bypass Breezewood. It's a particularly ugly stretch of road –- fast food, truck stops, motels – yet everybody gets hustled through it. It's just the price you pay for driving to DC.

OK. I'm done now. I'm back home in Michigan where the roads are free, and the speed traps are hidden.

Football Blues: I'm having trouble getting into football season. Part of the reason that I got caught up in the utterly engrossing baseball League Championship Series. Even without the Red Sox or Cubs, the World series was pretty good. Another reason is all the football news this year has been essentially political.

The biggest story so far has been Rush Limbaugh, on ESPN Game Day, claiming that Donovan McNabb is overrated and is essentially graded on a curve because he is black. Donovan McNabb is almost certainly overrated (he is about as good a quarterback as Brad Johnson of the Buccaneers, who is in the top five on nobody's list). On the other hand Titans quarterback, Steve McNair, who is black, is almost certainly underrated (should probably be on the top of everyone's list). That would suggest race is not a key in ratings, but what Limbaugh said was not implausible. Everyone went wacky over it and accusations of racism were proffered which were generally based on Limbaugh's track record. I wouldn’t know as I've never listened to Limbaugh, but examined on their face, the reaction to his comments was grossly overheated. He resigns from, or possibly is sacked by ESPN, which originally hired him to add an edge to their show. Gutsy.

Next came Warren Sapp behaving like a boor –- taunting opposing players during warm-ups, intimidating referees, etc. Sapp is an ass, for which he is rewarded through the standard mechanisms of celebrity, but the NFL is brutally strict about everything from violent behavior to dress codes, and so hit Sapp with a hefty 50K fine (nothing that would disrupt his lifestyle, but still...). Sapp responded by comparing life in the NFL to slavery – obviously he meant that odd form of slavery that involves fame, fortune, and glory beyond most people's dreams. OK, Warren – whatever. But naturally, we had to have a big to-do about his comment which dominated sports news for much longer than it should have.

The worst came when my favorite football columnist, Gregg Easterbrook aka Tuesday Morning Quarterback, got fired from ESPN. Easterbrook writes on innumerable topics besides football and has published a number of books on everything from religion to technology. In one of his non-sporting venues, specifically the New Republic magazine, Easterbrook published a review of the new Tarantino movie Kill Bill which he trashed as ultra-violent in these terms:

Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, is Jewish; the chief of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, is Jewish. Yes, there are plenty of Christian and other Hollywood executives who worship money above all else, promoting for profit the adulation of violence. Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else, by promoting for profit the adulation of violence? Recent European history alone ought to cause Jewish executives to experience second thoughts about glorifying the killing of the helpless as a fun lifestyle choice. But history is hardly the only concern. Films made in Hollywood are now shown all over the world, to audiences that may not understand the dialogue or even look at the subtitles, but can't possibly miss the message--now Disney's message--that hearing the screams of the innocent is a really fun way to express yourself.

A heartfelt apology followed almost instantly but this quickly swept the world as a horrible piece of anti-Semitism – the old money-grubbing Jews stereotype. Frankly, I don’t see it. He's criticising in the producers of Kill Bill for being insensitive to violence and that, as Jews, they should know better. That's silly, of course, they shouldn’t know better any more than anyone else and Easterbrook is certainly employing a stereotype (what might be considered a politically correct stereotype) but it's hardly a virulent piece of Jew-baiting. But one person behind Kill Bill is Michael Eisner, who happens to be behind Disney, which happens to be behind ESPN, which is where Easterbrook published Tuesday Morning Quarterback. Bottom line: ESPN drops TMQ and, like a revisionist historian, wipes out all evidence that it ever existed from its archives and I am left with one less minor escape every Tuesday afternoon. Here's a third-party summary of the situation. Whatever happened to handling things gently, outside the spotlight, or just taking a deep breath and counting to ten before you do anything stupid?

This one, at least, may have a happy ending. The delightful site I just found called Football Outsiders, where they try to track football as statistically as has been done since forever in baseball, decided to run a temporary TMQ contest to see who could write the best fake Tuesday Morning Quarterback column. In a letter from Easterbrook, we see that he is actually preparing an entry himself and plans to find a new venue for TMQ. Mazel Tov!

If we can get back to football now, I may get interested again.

Cheaters Never Prosper: ESPN recently ran a competition to see what sports uniforms were the best looking. They picked 64 unis from various sports and ran an NCAA like elimination tournament based on reader voting. Here are the brackets and the final four. At the end it was down to the Denver Broncos vs. the Michigan Wolverines (football). According to the final report:

Trailing badly in the final round last Thursday, Denver received 20,000 consecutive overnight votes and 42,500 of the final 50,000 e-ballots cast… [snip] When the polls finally closed, the Broncos had rallied to post 137,257 votes, easily outdistancing Michigan's 88,743. However, ESPN.com has discovered that 71,465 of those votes came from one IP address.

So those clever guys at ESPN sought out an expert to find out what was going on -- specifically a guy named Chris Nandor, who is infamous for fixing on-line baseball all-star balloting. His expert opinion:

"My guess (is) someone from Denver."

Insightful. Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to just place a call to Captain Obvious? Anyway, in the end, they threw out the bad votes and we can all safely Hail the Victors. ESPN goes on to wax eloquent about the Denver uniforms:

In retrospect, Denver's mere presence in the championship round should have been a tip-off. First, the Broncos barely made it to the finals, beating the Atlanta Falcons by a mere 0.3 percent in Round 1 and never earning more than 53 percent of the vote in a single contest.

Second, the club's monochromatic unis give them the look of human popsicles. Or perhaps Regis Philbin, in his blue shirt, blue tie, Van Heusen endorsin' heyday.

"Be careful with the thick burnt-orange accent on the trouble-spot buttocks and thighs," added Victoria, one of Page 2's fashion experts. "You don't want to call attention to an unsightly entity. Spandex is a privilege, not a right."

Chortle. If I ever get back to doing football picks I shall only refer to that team from Denver as the Popsicles.

Making a Splash: The story of the guy who went over Niagara Falls and emerged unscathed amazes me. Of the 15 daredevils that went over the falls with some form of protection, 1/3 of them died. With one exception -- a child who accidentally went over with a life vest on -- every other person who just jumped in is classified as a successful suicide attempt (although, oddly the province of Ontario won't release numbers). Despite all that, this guy not only survives but he comes out pretty much unscathed, as if it were a big water slide. Here's the scoop; turns out this guy lived just east of Ann Arbor.

Frankly I hope this guy gets a lot of fame and notoriety. He's earned it. There's talk of fining him (10 grand -- yikes!) but he's claiming he was suffering from depression. I'm guessing that claim is just to get him out of the fine. What he's actually done is invent a new extreme sport - Fallsdiving or Watercrashing or something. Turn the Horseshoe Falls into the world's biggest water park -- that would be too cool. Somebody call Disney.

Read All About It: The first review of Business As Usual is up, courtesy of the good dogs over at blogcritics. I hope everyone feels that way. By the way, if you have read Business As Usual and would like to write up a quick paragraph of two, both Amazon and Barnes and Noble are accepting reviews. You have our gwatitude.

Low Lying Fruit: It easy pickins in this link harvest.

• What web surfing would be like if you were drunk. I am not speaking from personal experience. Really.


• As you may have heard, using implants, monkeys can move robot arms with their thoughts. I betting the first practical application of this is a TV remote.


• I have stopped paying attention to the patron saint of lard-asses, Michael Moore. But luckily, for the sake of truth, justice and the American way, others haven't.


• This site is called Awful Plastic Surgery. That's pretty self-explanatory. Track your favorite celebrity.


• If one were to translate a certain song into Latin and then back to proper English, one would find oneself saying Large buttocks are pleasing to me, nor am I able to lie concerning this matter.


• I would love to have this clock on my desktop. Very cool.


• Some call it pop, some call it soda. People who call it soda are wrong, but I can accept their innocuous ignorance. I simply cannot abide people who call all pop coke. What kind of lunacy is that. Do they not see the absurdity of calling Pepsi coke? Here is your guide to where people are right, wrong, or insane.


• It's hard for me to imagine a job more grinding than sitting in a tollbooth making change. No wonder they occasionally wig out.


• Crayola is pointlessly messing with crayon colors. In what circumstances would you describe something as inchworm colored? "The seasonal rains transform the straw brown plains of the Serengeti to a vibrant inchworm." Um, no.


• How not to run an eBay scam. Roberts…sent his customers a cut-out picture of the high-definition plasma TV that he sold in eBay's electronics section… We have a new candidate for Stupidest Person Ever.


• These are a crack-up. They sat some kids in front of old school games like Pong and Donkey Kong and recorded their comments. Regarding playing Pong: I'd sooner jump up and down on one foot. You tell 'em, dude.