Health risks, public and private

Today's front page at USA Today carries a story about the elevated risk of dying of a heart problem during a triathlon vs. a marathon (but not, oddly enough, in comparison to walking on city streets).

A study found the casualty rate is about 15 per 1 million participants, way higher than marathons (4 to 8 per million). The raw numbers are similar to the rate - 13 dead swimmers out of 922,810 (and one dead biker!) over a roughly 2.5-year period.

The story goes into detail, which is cool, and offers some sound advice for people thinking about doing a triathlon (get the OK from the doctor, do some open water swims, wear a wetsuit if the water's too cold and make sure race staff are prepared for emergencies).

But although it acknowledges the rising popularity of triathlons, the story is silent on the health benefits enjoyed by the 921,996 people who weren't killed in competition. And it says nothing about the 4,749 pedestrians killed in 2003 alone, a number the federal government provided me within about 30 seconds of my doing a Google search. If that number held up, you'd be looking at, what? Ten thousand dead pedestrians in the same period as 14 dead triathletes?

Granted, the study is new, so its news. But still.

Good cover!

I think I might have mentioned I fancy good covers. Here's one:

Lasagna shells

So you want a lasagna, the really yummy, homemade kind, but you're a little low on time/patience. Try lasagna shells. You're going to have to forgive me the oddball instructions. I cook this one without a recipe, pretty much, and vary its size on which casseroles are clean and unspoken for.

I'll try to give a 9x13 recipe, but it may be a couple of 6x9s.

Sauce:
Four strips bacon, chopped
An onion, diced
Six cloves of garlic, minced
Two medium carrots, chopped
A big stalk of celery, chopped
A pound of ground (but hot Italian sausage is better!)
A cup of dry white wine
1 big can (28 ounce) crushed tomatoes in puree
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
1 8-ounce can tomato sauce
As much basil as you've got, within reason, chopped or pureed.

Cook bacon on low heat in a big sauce pan or high-walled skillet (it needs to hold all this stuff). Raise the heat to medium.
When the bacon's pretty much cooked and the fat's rendered out, dump in the onion and garlic. Cook about 5 minutes, then dump in carrots and celery. Cook another five minutes, then dump in sausage. Brown the sausage, pour off fat if you're crazy or on a diet, then add the wine. Cook off alcohol for a few minutes, then add tomato products. At this point, you have about 15 minutes of simmering to go. The tomato paste is the key to that. If you don't add tomato paste, you cheap short-cutter, you're in for a 45-minute simmer to achieve the same effect.
When you're on short final, add the basil. I preserve basil by pureeing it with olive oil and a little garlic, then freezing it. For this sauce, I use maybe a third of a cup of frozen puree and just drop the frozen chunk in when there's 15 minutes to go.

As soon as you hit this point, you can cook the shells, but only to the what the box says is al dente. Don't go farther or they'll become fragile and wussy.

Also at this point, mix a 1-pound tub cottage cheese (yeah, yeah. Ricotta. OK, buddy, what do you think "ricotta" means?), a quarter-cup or more freshly grated Parmiggiano-Reggiano and a few sprigs freshly chopped parsley. If you're big on cheese, slice up some fresh mozzarella, too, small enough to fit in a shell.

Now it's hammer time. Strain the noodles and rinse with cold water to arrest cooking. Spread some sauce in the bottom of your casserole(s).

Fill the noodles with a portion of the cottage cheese mixture and top, if you have mozz., slap a slice on each shell as you put it into the casserole(s).

When all the noodles are in the dish, cover with as much of the sauce that's left as you like (I always have leftovers, which I always freeze). Unless you're out of Parm, grate some more on top, and...

Bake at 350 degrees until bubbly, then wait a while and eat!

Wish I'd been at these "shows"

Lisa Hannigan gets a big fat gold star from me for hiding out in broom closets and back rooms to perform. Wish I'd been there!

here, too.

and here, too!

Man, don't we all wish

If this was really the End of Shite, wouldn't we all be better off?

A thought on the DJIA

My coworkers are understandably unsettled these days: We work at a newspaper, and if you've read a newspaper lately, you know we're... let's see, I'm trying to come up with a nice way of saying this that won't raise the eyebrows of my non-swearing readers... nope, no way around it, right now, our industry is fucked.

The optimists think that when the "economy" turns around, so will the picture for our industry, not to mention the current employer, which is still in the black, but not without some painful moves to stay that way.

So, how will we know when the economy, whatever that is supposed to mean, is OK again? When our revenue shoots through the roof and I get a fat raise? That would be a good measure, except I think it is maybe a little foolish to assume those two go hand in hand.

I'm told that a good indicator of the health of our economy is the Dow Jones Industrial Average. I've yet to hear a convincing argument to back up that proposition, however. Why should I think the best barometer for the vitality of the U.S. is the "behavior" of a market run by the people who got us into this mess?

Seriously. Stocks rise and fall based on expectations of earnings and growth, usually measured by the quarter. So if you aren't seen as likely to make a certain amount of dough in the next three months, your paper value goes in the tank. Is that really a sustainable way to run a country, quarter-to-quarter?

I mean, even the fundamentals of this supposed system are obviously flawed from a logical standpoint, let alone, you know, the empirical reality. Permanent sustained growth? How's that supposed to work?

I know there's a dissertation in here. But I also know the situation is hopeless in the absence of a mathematically capable populace (oh, and business writers. Another problem, eh?)

So in place of a solution, I'd just like to go a week without having to hear about the god damn stock market. *That* would be news worth sharing.

Thursday tunes

I'm not sure if this is my favorite Springsteen song, but it is near the top of the list. At least in the top 10!

I guess the rest of the list is:
Ghost of Tom Joad
My Hometown
Atlantic City
Highway Patrolman
Youngstown
My City of Ruins
Radio Nowhere
I'm on Fire
American Skin
That's not in order, because the order changes by the day. And it is probably incomplete. Damn lists.

When the walls start crumblin' down

I get questions now and again about what my plans are for when newspapers - and mine in particular - shit the bed.

It's a good question, but it is tied up in an expectation that I, the supposed curer of cancer who chose the wrong career path, will somehow also have an answer, the answer, that will save the profession. That's pretty ridiculous: Those test scores don't give me any better idea than the next newsie of how to "monetize" online news.

I like the question sans expectations, partly because it is a chance to talk about what I like about the business I'm in.

The best part is simple: You get to help people. It's kind of like being on the A-Team. When some unlucky soul has tried everyone else and has nowhere else to turn, they call us. I get UFO calls, psychological emergencies, cooking advice queries (How many melons do I need for my party? Seriously), drunks and druggies, you name it.

I relish the customer service part of my job. If a reader is mad as hell, I want them calling me.

Now, I can count a few times a caller has been an unacceptable asshole: The criminal mastermind whose scumbag daughters showed up on the blotter, the Freedom Forum dickhead who called me "one of the Nazis" and the guy who called an opinion piece I wrote "one of the most one-sided, biased stories I've ever read." No shit, Sherlock.

On the flip side, I can't count the times I've picked up the phone to someone who had driven past their wit's end and been able to get them back on the road to somewhere. That's tied for the most rewarding part of the job, really.

It beats the awards, though they reap the praise from above. It beats the substandard pay, although that comes in more handy for paying bills. It doesn't beat sticking it to the man, however. Nothing can come close to holding someone in power accountable when he's (or she's) screwed the least among us.

But let's get back to that question: What are you going to do when the bell tolls? I've got backup plans, of course. Who doesn't? But it isn't that easy to find something that has the same day-to-day make-a-difference aspect. Except for one option, which a perceptive reader might intuit from reading this blog, or at least checking out the frequency of my tags.

To the gallows

A probable/possible/who knows? execution this Friday of the killer Cal Coburn Brown reminded me to take a listen to Ellis Unit One. I thought I'd listen to Dead Man Walking, too, but found this one on the way to the Boss's song:

Here's a good rendition of Ellis Unit One, too.

The Bird of Fighter

I caught this guy surreptitiously (he's texting, not sleeping, as far as I could tell) on the train from Nagano to the Jigokudani Onsen area.

His hat reads "The Bird of Fighter," and although you can't tell, he's wearing, like, five gold rings. I think the three pairs of sunglasses makes the outfit, though. That and the leather shirt.

I know he'd stick out here, but trust me, he's way weirder of a sight in Japan.

Influential albums - a list

Carlos tagged me on this challenge - Fifteen albums that changed your life. I'm not sure how to qualify some of these: I'm sure several albums helped form my world view. I mean, I'd say Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Cisco Houston and those kinds of people, but they're where I started. I guess that rules out Springsteen, who's in that set.

In a lot of ways, my musical experience has been one of blundering from my sheltered past into unknown universes. Cool, but also a little embarrassing when I arrive somewhere everybody's already been.

I'll shoot for albums that changed my outlook. These are pretty much in chronological order. I put in some samples, too.

1. Bad Religion - Suffer. I grew up listening to classical music, Dust Bowl folk and country & western. I rarely listened to rock 'n' roll until high school. I mean, I knew about Ratt, Styx, Foreigner, all that in middle school, but that wasn't what I usually listened to. When I heard this (with my best friend, Chris, over at Jay Dunlap's house), it blew me away.
   
2. Jimi Hendrix - Some compilation or another. I was unaware of the existence of classic rock that was other than what you might hear in Back to the Future.
   
3. Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers - My introduction to reggae. Chris bought that one.
   
4. Pink Floyd - The Wall. Weird-ass movie but a ton of great music.
   
5. N.W.A. - Straight Outta Compton. My exposure to rap was pretty limited until college (first roomie was an Army brat, a black guy from Oceanside, not a jazz guy). "Fuck the Police" was a revelation.
6. The Geto Boys - The Geto Boys. Pretty much the most outrageous and funny gangsta rap ever made.
   
   
7. Richard Thompson - Rumor and Sigh. Opened my eyes to the folk scene of the early 1990s.
8. Tori Amos - Crucify. My favorite from the angry woman movement. Alerted me to the existence of a completely unexpected scene.
9. The Butterfly Lady - Her musical taste is similar to mine, but she searches for new music in completely different circles, so I get a lot of exposure to music I probably wouldn't find on my own, like Ali Farka Toure, Outlandish, Mister Gang...
   
   that one is aka:
   
   
10. The White Stripes - The White Stripes. Opened my eyes to garage rock. I think I listened to this album about 50 times in a row.
11. Townes Van Zandt - Live at the Old Quarter. I obviously had heard his songs before, but not performed by him. This is a fantastic album. Minimal production is a big plus. This album got me to check out a lot of folk/country from the 1970s.
    
    
12. Joe Purdy - Julie Blue. Uh, yeah, there's a pattern here. I didn't know there was an L.A. folk scene until I blundered into Joe Purdy, who incidentally kicks ass live. Here is a song from his supposedly upcoming album, Last Clock on the Wall:
    
    
13. Mitch Hedberg - Mitch Altogether. Not music, right? Yeah, but he changed how I tell jokes and how I look at run-of-the-mill stuff, which was his bread and butter.
14. 9 Songs. OK, that's a movie. But it tuned my in to music of the hipster scene. What they were listening to in that five minutes, anyway.
    
    

Notes from the meltdown

I got a letter the other day from the good people at Capital One, whose usual (weekly) correspondence consists of offers to transfer a balance to my Capital One credit card (now canceled after the letter, which was a change in terms for the worse) or to "upgrade" a loan I took out with them in 2007.

That loan came at a fortuitous time: We had an assortment of debts, from the now-paid off CRV to the costs and fees associated with being homeowners. OK, there might have been some frivolous stuff in there, too.

The loan terms were pretty good. They handed over a stack of loot eerily similar to what I needed with three years to pay, for about $1,900 in interest (7 percent, so you math whizzes can figure out how much I borrowed). I figure $50-odd a month is an OK price for peace of mind. I pay about that for Internet service, after all.

After about a year of payments, last June or so, I started getting the dear-valued-customer letters offering me the "increased flexibility" of a much larger loan. The most recent offer I got was to lend me $30,000, a portion of which would be used to pay off my current loan and the rest handed over with a minimum payoff plan of four years at 8 percent. To keep payments similar to what they are now, I'd have to opt for the 7-year payoff plan at 9 percent.

Seven years? Ouch. We're very fortunate to be out of woods with debt (unless, you know, you count the next 15 months of loan payments and the 2012 end point for the butterfly lady's student loans and the house), but I would like to remind anyone who thinks me overly smug that I work at a newspaper, which means that being out of debt is pretty god damn urgent.

Observation from Obama's speech

Just something I noticed: When President Obama was talking Tuesday night, he made a point to Democrats and Republicans and I spotted something of interest.

When he said "Democrats," he clenched his fist - not hard, like fighting, but an actual clench. I notice politicians usually feign fist clenching when it would be appropriate in normal conversation. I assume this is to look less kooky. Usually, I observe them closing their hand as if around a baton (like the ones runners pass in relays), but Obama's fist clench was the real McCoy, maybe a sign of "we are strong, we are together."

He followed "Democrats" immediately with the words "and Republicans," which he accompanied with a slightly wagged index finger, like "you bums better get on board."

Pretty cool.

You can watch - yegods - the whole thing below.

Disappearing clip re-found

I really like this poem Jesse Jackson performed on Sesame Street.

I'll post more about other stuff soon - just busy with home improvement, etc.

Almost done, photos to follow

The flooring project, which I squared the bulk of away Sunday afternoon and Monday, is nearing a close, though I'm still fooling with the woodwork that is the transition from the living room to the dining room, as well as from the laminate floor of the child's room to its carpeted closet.

Anyway, the re-org has left my aging computer untethered from the Internet, which puts a damper on blog posts, especially ones with photos.

So, trust me: It looks good, but it'll look better when you can see it!

Home improvement

This post will take a while to get to the point, depending on what you're looking for in it, so just stick with me.

So, I usually forget to take "before" and "during" photos, so it should be no surprise that the befores are missing. But here are a couple of during photos of the now-in-progress project to install new flooring in the living room and the soon-to-be-former office. Those last five words are foreshadowing, for all you literary types.
Oh yeah, the living room is getting overhauled, too. Trust me, you're glad you can't see too much detail on the carpets.
OK, here's the roundabout part:

Our office has had several names over the years.

When we lived in this city in the 1990s, we called the office "Monny's room" because that was who lived there before he moved out and the computer and all our extra crap moved in.

In our dinky apartment in New Hampshire, we still called the second bedroom "Monny's room," though we occasionally also called it the office, among other words. It was small.

Here, we've pretty much called the office "the office" from day one, but in late July or early August, Allah willing, it should have a new name. Like, maybe, "Aurelia's room" or "Ridley's room" or "Gabriel's room" or something like that.

Whatever it is called, it will not have carpet. I am not a fan of carpet. I think it might be fairer to say I despise carpet. Read into that if you like... Also, if you were looking for the big excitement, go back a paragraph.

Anyway, being as we have two leviathans hanging around - and I'm alarmingly klutzy sometimes - tile is out, as is cork, as is most kinds of wood. I'm not sold on bamboo, either, not for flooring anyway. Too many questions about the adhesives for my taste. So our friends at DuPont, who make low-emission and generally responsible flooring now have this stack, plus another behind it, ready to be installed. On Monday!
And because every big job demands the acquisition of a nice tool, the butterfly lady kindly bought me this handy dandy late birthday present.
Stay tuned. If the job goes as planned, the next "during" photos all will be a blur. But the "afters" should be good. They damn well better be, anyway.

Oh, and someone likes the same music I do:

A penny saved

At the grocery store Sunday afternoon, I spotted an acquaintance, Chalese, who wound up in line behind me at the checkout. She had her little one with her and a cart with maybe a dozen items, including two Sunday Oregonians (that's a Portland, Ore., newspaper, in case you're unfamiliar).

The checker rang them up ($2.50 each!) and was about to bag them when Chalese said, "Oh, no, I'm done with those. You can toss them." The checker looked askance, as I'm sure I did, and she said, "I already got the coupons out of them."

I needled her about sacrilege and stuff and we wound up chitchatting about coupons and such. She said she doesn't take the paper I work at - not enough coupons - nor a larger one down the road - also not enough coupons. She's pretty organized, too, a strategic shopper who uses coupons when the items she wants are already on discount at the store.

Chalese is the perfect person to have as a reader: She's smart, articulate, a mom, young and professional (she's a cop). How could you lose? By not having good enough coupons, obviously.

So I took her gospel to work with me this week and had some decent results. We're working on a project to help people get through these troubled economic times and Chalese or someone(s) like her are likely to be source(s) for a coupon-clipping story. The ad director was interested, as was the online guy. So, we'll see where things take us. And just today, I was passed an e-mail from another reader who wishes we had better coupons.

I'm sure there's irony in here somewhere. The best part of the whole deal was when we were bidding adieu at the store. I'd just asked if she'd be up for being a source if we did a story and she said, "Sure. You know how to get in touch with me." I said, "Yeah, dial 911."

Alfalfa sprouts? Nope.

One day at work, I was telling this joke to a coworker. When I got to just before the alfalfa sprouts part, another coworker who was walking through the room said that line and I said, "Well you're not in the fucking club." Everyone was like, "oh my god, you're so mean!" Except of course the other Mitch Hedberg fan.

Snazzy fountain at Miyako Westin

If you're in the underground maze near the Kyoto train station, you should try to find your way to this fountain, which runs intermittently and is near one of the entrances to the swanky Miyako Westin.

Our hanging around and shooting seemed to snag a few onlookers, but most people just hurried by.

Birds of note

While in Kyoto last week with my father and the butterfly lady, we visited the Gold Pavilion (Kinkakuji), which is notable for its, um, pavilion clad in gold and - now, to me - for its pond, which when we were there had about a half-dozen Baikal teals swimming around. Here's what they look like (someone else's video, alas):

What a treat! Not a bird I ever expected to see, for sure.

Yesterday, I caught wind of another oddball bird, a great gray owl, that is hanging around the local Corps of Engineers flood-control project, and I met up with a couple of in-the-know bird people who showed me its haunt. A half-hour of snooping around in the cold river bottom and presto! Here's a for instance, so you can see how cool it was:

Work - where you to rest up after vacation

I'm still a little fuzzy from the time difference between Kyoto and Walla Walla, but I suppose all will be smooth soon. It is jarring to be in a place where I can understand virtually all of the conversations around me and read everything I can see.

Is that a good thing? I don't know. It's handy at the grocery store when you're trying to read labels, but not so handy when you have to listen to every cotton-picking thing everyone says.

I don't think I've used cotton-picking in a conversation, ever, by the way.

Out of left field

So Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice are in the Hall of Fame. Henderson's one of those no-brainers, but Rice seemed destined to have the same fate as Andre Dawson or Tommy John or Bert Blyleven - exceptional players who didn't quite reach the top of the heap (at least in the minds of the baseball writers who do the voting).

Rice had good numbers, great numbers even, but he's always going to be one of those guys who, outside the Boston area, is a marginal choice. The real stat wizards name as his comparables some scary hitters, but only four of the top 10 named by baseball-reference.com are in the Hall of Fame, and I think you have to be an aficionado to know who they (Orlando Cepeda, Duke Snider, Billy Williams and Willie Stargell) are.

On the flip side, numbers aren't everything, right? Maybe, maybe not. That's one thing you can say for baseball: Numbers are king. I guess that makes Jim Rice a viscount or a minor duke.

A ringing endorsement for Pepsi

I vacillate 'twixt Pepsi and Coke. I don't consume much of either (diet root beer and 7up for me, please), and I don't mind an RC, either. Anyway, this spam e-mail seems like a good reason, if you needed one, to consider the advantages of Pepsi.

Where are we?

I was reading a USA Today article this morning about how some last-minute rules enacted by that guy in Washington's administration include accumulating more information about a variety of things it is hard to picture giving a shit about, such as details about "foreigners flying to the U.S."

Now, obviously if you're not from here, you don't enjoy the rights we citizens do, so it's not like this is some big infringement, but it does remind me of the rigamarole involved in traveling to the former East Germany, where ordinary travelers got they hairy eyeball from hokey security types who I think had pretty much zero chance of intercepting a serious mischief maker. I mean, they were pretty much just about petty nosiness and schoolyard intimidation.

If you're nervous about your name and address or scared of men with guns, they've got you. Otherwise... which brings us back home. What exactly are we preparing for? Another 9/11? Remember all those people saying dipshit stuff like, "If we cancel the World Series, the terrorists have truly won," or "If I don't eat this Boston creme doughnut, the terrorists have truly won."

Maybe it isn't so, but it kinda seems like if we turn America into an impregnable fort, the terrorists might have gained the upper hand.

Candy Cane Children

While making the rounds to see who has a new album out and who does not, I bumbled into my first time hearing this song (only on the first visit from this IP address, methinks, to the White Stripes site):

Movies: An abbreviated list

Disclaimers first: We watched some movies in the theater, and we rented some from a local shop. Ergo, this isn't an all-encompassing observation, just 10 keepers and 10 throw-'em-backs of the 91 Netflix flicks seen in 2008, in reverse order of date seen (i.e. most recent at top of list) with a short note. Yeah, yeah, your favorite movie's on the wrong list. Whatever.

Play it again, Sam!

1. Lust, Caution (tense!)
2. PU-239 (touching)
3. The Tunnel (tense *and* touching)
4. King of California (engrossing)
5. Shortbus (uncommon people have common problems)
6. Enchanted (way cuter than I would have thought)
7. Reign Over Me (way deeper than I would have thought)
8. My Life as a Dog (fuggedaboutit - awesome movie)
9. The Brave One (predictable, but really good)
10. Cashback (unpredictable, and really, really good)

Can I get those hours of my life back?

1. Cassandra's Dream (as boring as Broken Flowers)
2. Making Of (nope, the fake documentary parts do not work after all)
3. Amores Perros (gratuitous dog fighting)
4. Year of the Dog (too preachy, and not even close to comedy)
5. Lions for Lambs (if they'd stuck with the guys in Afghanistan and skipped the rest of the movie, it would have been good. They didn't. Oh yeah, and too preachy.)
6. Vantage Point (boring. boring. boring. from several different perspectives!)
   
7. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (too fucking long, just like the title)
   
8. The Omega Man (I can see how this would have been good when it came out, but it did not age well)
9. Gone Baby Gone (just couldn't give a crap)
10. Lucky You (it would have been lucky to skip this one. I tried, really, but it is still just typical poker crap)

So, that was 2008?

The year seems to have slipped by pretty quickly, though I didn't perceive the days to be shorter and I don't think the time was wasted!

I guess that means it is time yet again to conjure on resolutions. I like to make at least a couple each year, and I find I tend to follow through. But I'm not sure what to put on the list.

Learn more Arabic? Bake a cake? Learn to play guitar? Beats me. I'm having the same problem at work, because I have to concoct five or so goals to accomplish as part of our bonus program. Hey, I like a bonus, but I'd rather earn one by kicking ass rather than ticking off a list of stuff that may not be relevant by year's end. Ugh.

Do they bark, too?

Headline from BBC News: Mumbai attack hotels greet guests

Trust me, I get it: Writing headlines can be a challenge. Or should I say: Headlines spell word challenge

New scarves

At last, I've gotten a listing up for one of the rather large number of new scarves I have made. You can see it in my Etsy mini in the sidebar of my blog. I really need a model, but I'm short of cooperative or geographically available redheads.

I think I need to fix that, but it might be a while. I know of an ideal candidate, but it isn't straightforward to hit someone up without seeming like a stalker. Alas. Anyway, the new listing is pretty low key in comparison to some of the others, so stay tuned!

Coming soon to an interchange near here.

A roundabout! A traffic circle! A rotary! Whatever you want to call it, we're getting a few, and the first opens Friday.

One of the reporters on my staff called it "The Whirlpool of Death." Given this area's tendency to have a lot of crappy drivers, he might be right. Plus, it looks like snow out there. Fun!

A/V, especially V

Here's another Blitzen Trapper tune, but although I like the song, I think the slide show is probably cooler.

New to me

I'm sure lots of people have known about Blitzen Trapper, like, forever. But I hadn't heard of them until this song was on "Chuck" last night.

Freedom and anonymity

The European Court of Human Rights on Thursday said "no" to a UK system of storing DNA samples and fingerprints of people without criminal records. I wouldn't have thought such an absurd system would even have been in place, but there it was.

Needless to say, the ruling - which can't be appealed - was met with whining by British law enforcement types, but that's not a big shock. Inevitably, today's story included quotes about how many times the information's been used to scoop up badguys, but isn't that beside the point?

I know some people on the political fringes here complain about our lack of fundamental rights, or what they perceive as widespread violations of those enumerated by the Constitution, but this - to me - puts those complaints in perspective.

Under ordinary circumstances, at this point I would say, "Europe sucks!" but I like to visit, so I guess I'll just say some UK laws suck, so I wouldn't want to live there.

Doesn't have the same ring to it, though.

The kiddos on Page A1

I guess this is a handy part of my job, getting to decide where Katy and Yuki go in the paper...

and they're both above the fold! I guess I am, too, though. Note the upswept tail on the youngster in the bottom picture.

Cover me

I really like covers, and I really like Tori Amos, so you will not be surprised to find out I like the combo a lot, too. I've probably already mentioned that...
Let it Be

I'm on Fire

Whole Lotta Love

Can't Get You Outta My Head

No tag? I'm it anyway

Lulu has this meme going, so I am aboard.

1. Five names you go by:
Alasdair, Alax, Al (see a trend here?), Stew, Scraps

2. Three things you are wearing right now:
Dr. Martens
A diamond earring (the butterfly lady rules!)
A thin layer of dried-up chlorinated water

3. Two things you want very badly at the moment:
No more staph nose!
Another cup of coffee

4. Three people who will probably fill this out:
Wellll: The butterfly lady, better than your average idiot, um, I'm with Lulu. TBA.

5. Two things you did last night:
Made lasagna (super awesome, as always, with lots of basil)
Slept the whole night through with no dogs having to go out (three times in five months!).

6. Two things you ate today:
Tunisian stew (beef, honey, almonds, fennel, caraway, cumin, coriander) and rice
Mint chocolate M&Ms

7. Two people you last talked to on the phone:
My mom
The owner of Fritzi the dog

8. Two things you are going to do tomorrow:
Weave a scarf
Swim a couple miles

9. Two longest car rides:
Walla Walla, Wash., to Newmarket, N.H. (off to grad school for the lady!) - 1999
Newmarket to Salem, Ore. (all done!) - 2004

10. Two of your favorite beverages:
Espresso - in the mini mug with a Demerara sugar cube and lemon zest
Single-malt Islay Scotch whisky

Time for a depression?

Several years ago, I suggested a long run of high gas prices might be helpful, primarily because it would encourage car buyers to ask for vehicles more efficient than the ones on the market. That's happened, obviously, and although gas prices are on the downward slide now, I think enough car makers are committed to the new production lines that it won't be easy to switch back to huge fleets of gas guzzlers.

Besides, who's going to trust the cost of fuel to stay low?

Now, of course, there are much more interesting bits of economic news to chew on. Bank bailouts, automaker bailouts, home foreclosures, car loan delinquencies (nearly $23 billion at risk!), etcetera.

I've tried to be circumspect about all this, but why don't we at least entertain the idea that a good long recession, perhaps amounting to a depression, might actually be a good thing?

In the short run, obviously, the answer would be: No, that would be a Very Bad Thing for most people. But maybe in the long run, a depression would be the harbinger of a time of great opportunity, innovation, wealth and positive social change.

Would that be too much to hope for? I'd like to hear the well-reasoned, dispassionate argument to the contrary...

New scarves

I've finally gotten some bamboo scarves woven, about two years after I planned (hey, biz was good without it, so I guess that's good). Here are a few of the new ones:
The bamboo is pretty, for sure, but where it really shines is in how it feels - super soft and slinky like silk - and drapes. Wow!

For fun at the end of the warp, I tried (in the righthand scarf) a fairly straightforward overshot pattern (that's just weaverese for cloth that has a simple fundamental structure overlaid with fancy patterns):
I say "fairly straightforward" because even though I'm good at this, I erred once, as you can probably see. Maybe the error in the pattern is actually a design plus. I'm sure it is for people who believe symmetry must be disrupted to avoid the appearance of evil spirits.

Where's my slice

Colleges want a piece of next stimulus bill.

That's the lead story at The Chronicle of Higher Education today. I can't say I blame colleges for wanting a piece of the pie, but am I alone in thinking that something is severely weird here?

The federal government's big ATM with the "Easy credit? Apply below!" billboard isn't new, of course, but the blatancy of today's handouts is out of whack with my sense of business as usual.

Maybe this is actually better, that people/companies/entities feel comfortable begging a handout from good ol' U.S. taxpayer. At least this way, it is easy to spot who owes you results.

Signs, signs

Some signs are easier to puzzle out than others.

Give the kid the ball!

You know, when you go to the ballpark, you'll occasionally see some bully snatch a foul ball from a kid, or more often just shove the kid out of the way to make the catch himself.

When that happens, you almost always get the chance to hear 45,000 people (or 1,200 if you were at a Tampa Bay Rays game any year before this one) yelling, "Give the kid the ball!"

Now I see Sarah Palin's having to go through her wardrobe to figure out what's hers and what belongs the Republican National Committee. I say: Give the kid the clothes.

I'm not saying Sarah Palin is my secret lover or even just a pal, but I'm pretty sure she earned every damn donated-by-Republicans cent of that wardrobe being raked over the coals the past few weeks. And, pray tell, what the fuck is the RNC going to do with her clothes? Sell them as memorabilia to raise money for the next campaign? That could be effective, even if it would also be creepy. Sarah Palin's camisole for Norm Coleman's war chest!

On a side note, I see she wore a pentagram for her official portrait as governor of Alaska. Maybe she's actually Wiccan or Bahá'í? Or worships Venus? Yeah, that's the one.

Our front page today

This was a tough balance, between reporting History and also hitting what local people are most interested in (this is not a blue county), especially at a p.m. paper. We've just hit the street in the past couple of hours. It is hard to believe, but this morning we got several calls from people who wanted to know who won.

Anyway, I think this page does the trick. It wasn't easy to come up with an original headline, so I swiped one from the Butterfly Lady.

In a way, all the hard work was Tuesday night. You can see the fruits of our labor here.

A great effort by the staff, in my humble opinion. What a night!

We only work when we need the money

Every month, payroll passes out a little sheet for managers so they can see who has taken how much vacation, and how much each person needs to take by the end of the year. The latter is on account of our company's policy that half your earned time off is "use or lose," presumably to prevent workaholics from cashing out six months of pay after taking no time off in their time at the paper.

The way I figure it, you need a couple of weeks off, minimum, if you're going to go anywhere of consequence. But time off is accrued starting Jan. 1, so people who plan to take longer vacations almost always need to wait until late spring or early summer to hit the road.

You will be astonished, I am sure, to hear that every year, lots of people go on vacation later in the year rather than earlier. And every year, around Jan. 2, managers say, "OK, make sure you sign up for vacation early so we don't wind up with everyone wanting to take time off at the same time at the end of the year."

Is it possible that a competing system might result in a different pattern? I can think of two that don't involve cracking down on when people take time off:

• Reorganize the year so that summer and fall's good traveling weather is not followed by holidays everyone wants to go home for.

or

• Change the accrual calendar to July 1-June 30.

My bet is the first of those two options is more likely to happen than the second.

This play takes some time to develop

But just hang with it. And make sure you listen to the play-by-play. Unreal.

At the gym

On the way into the locker room, there's a plastic frame that usually holds some kind of inspirational rubbish (we are defined not by the times we fall but how we pick ourselves up, that kind of thing).

But recently, someone switched the sign for this:
Needless to say, this has been a big improvement! You can see more of these kinds of things here.

Pardon my sensitivity

Hate crimes are a curious item: I'm not sure exactly how they're figured. I'm pretty sure road rage should be one, for example, but really the people who speak in these terms mean "bigot crimes" or "racist crimes" or maybe, if you want to be mealy-mouthed, "bias crimes."

There are apparently not very many: The FBI only counted about 1,600 such crimes based on religion in 2007. Sure, I know, that's one every 5 hours! Or 6! depending on how you count, I suppose.

But it is also only 80 by state each year, so...

On the flip side, USA Today reports 68 percent of those crimes were against Jews. I'm not sure what to say about that, but that's not the kind of thing that makes you feel like this country welcomes with open arms.

Besides the whole control-of-the-media thing, what's so scary about Jews?

Thinking of Townes Van Zandt

I've had a bunch of TVZ songs going through my head, which made me think of this one:

Malaysia sucks, too

Or at least Malaysia's National Fatwa Council does: The council has "banned" tomboys.

You can read about the idiocy here.

Yet another place I'm happy to avoid, though it is obviously unfair to judge by such things. Nobody would come to the good ol' U.S. of A. if they knew how much some of us hate one thing or another.

What will the National Fatfuck Council ban next? It'd have to be something I like, right? Redheads?

Cool animation with candles

This animation shows up as a related video to my own. This one is cooler, though, which makes me think I should make another during our upcoming vacation.

Mine's at the bottom of this page, by the way.

Put him in the scuppers!

Love this song!

That's an order.

Do what you must...

My job means I am not at liberty to talk politics with anyone except family, a few friends and a woman sworn to secrecy. I think it is allowed for me to say I'm in favor of civil rights, by which I mean those granted pretty explicitly by the Constitution. I mean, duh, obviously, it is OK to say I think the First Amendment is a good idea. I favor the others, too.

But beyond that, I can't say a whole lot. Abortion? Drilling for oil? Presidential politics? Local politics? Let's just say I own some T-shirts I can only wear in the living room.

I did actually see one I own in this video, though:

Cash money dollar (coins) y'all

I'm a coin guy, always have been. Worst shit perpetrated on me by my dear sister and mother was their absurd and bullying insistence I trade a dollar in coins to her for a dollar bill. Why they insisted is beyond me, but it is one of the four grudges I still hold.

• State quarters? Got all but Hawaii.
• New nickels: Check (even if my dear neighbor's brother, the mayor of Seattle and namesake of this coin, disagrees with me on an important issue).
• Silver dollar with Ike? Yup.
• Bicentennial silver dollar with Ike? Yup again.
• SBA? Sacagawea? Yep, yep.
• Snazzy 1940s quarter made of actual silver? You betcha.
• Freakin' awesome Ben Franklin half dollar of same metal? Mm-hmm.
• Unsquelchable desire to see dollar bill go up in smoke and dollar coins (and twos, and fives, for that matter) take over? Yeppers.

But come on: If you leave the pissant $1 bill in circulation, you'll never be able to get out from under it. It is time for los federales to grow a pair, so to speak, and make the dollar the coin of the realm.

New back yard

Winter is approaching, and with it - maybe - some rain. For us and our Newfies, that means mud season in our abysmal back yard. But now there are Eight Paws of the Newfpocalypse, so we decided to install a lawn (and underground sprinklers).

Here's pretty much what the yard looked like before:
That darker patch in the middle used to be a planter bed, which was super successful last year but not so much so this year. Yuki's puppyhood took a toll. Anyway, I used a Ridgid digging fork for the demo (about $30, bought to replace a crappy Craftsman fork I finally got my money back on. The Craftsman was the second free replacement after the original conked out). Here's how much fun hand turning soil is:
It is good exercise, though, and the rental rototillers were heavy and our CRV lacks a trailer hitch. I think the whole demolition/grading (with a rake, mostly) took about six hours for 450 square feet. Hey, small yard. But small yard full of junkola. I found a bunch of former paving in part of the yard:
and smaller odds and ends, too. This place would have been a good archaeology lab, though it is too rich in artifacts to be realistic.
Anyway, here's a view of the prepped yard, and the big stack of sod (About $95, including sales tax and a $5 deposit on the pallet):
At this point, I hadn't laid in the sprinkler, but I squared that away in about an hour using flexible PVC, a couple of sprinkler heads (our side yard is too small to irrigate without watering the porch and/or driveway). The pipe, sprinkler heads, joints, timer and such cost about $130, so besides time, this project was pretty inexpensive. The labor was laborious, though:
You lay sod just like flooring, really:
And here's mostly finished:
I misunderestimated on the square footage, so I ran out just as I finished the yard. As in, I ran out of sod at the same time as I ran out of places I needed to put it. Now all we need to do is see if it takes, and holds up to the canines, and the winter, and...

On the road, in the pool

Still trucking along in both places. I haven't pushed beyond about three miles running because I'd really like to not wear anything ligament-like out again. But it is going pretty well and we live near a big park (1.1 miles in circumference), so I think that might be helping. Swimming is still a pain in the shoulder sometimes, but I'm doing about 3,000 yards a workout three or four times a week.

Yep, that's all I have to report. How about some more Springsteen?

Music at work

Besides everything else, I mean. I was caught unawares that Lisa Hannigan had an album out, but she does, so it's been in heavy rotation at work, where unlike the last factory I worked at, we're allowed to work in something other than silence.

Here's a track:

I never really understood the reasoning behind the ban on music (through headphones, for crying out loud) at the other place, but I think it might have been related to upper management's feeling that what worked best for them is what works best for everyone.

There are a lot of things wrong with typical management practices, but I'd rank that attitude up near the top.

In the past, I tried to explain that while someone else may not work well amidst distractions, I work best when there is more than one thing going on. The usual response I got was something like, " That's what you think, but actually, people work better without distractions. You can't actually do two things at once, so you can't listen to music and edit."

So why is music somehow way worse than listening to you fuckers typing? Or eating? Or whining about the Dow Jones Industrial Average?

I never got a good answer, but as the good reverend would say, the question is moot.

Must be getting older

I'm sure it isn't just my imagination: While strolling out of the pool Monday afternoon, I held the door for a young woman who fell into step with me on the sidewalk.

"So, are you a professor?" asketh she, smiling brightly. Seriously, first question.

"No, are you?" says I.

"Hell no!"

Well, yeah. At least she thought I looked professorial.

Like a band of gypsies

I don't hit the road as often as I used to, but while I was on The Information Superhighway (how's that for a dated term?), I saw a friend had posted a map of which states she's been in, so here's mine:
Red's where I'm from, green's where I've been, and although I'll probably hit a few more of these, I'm guessing I won't make it to 50 without some kind of intervention by work.

It's not 9/11

Although my colleagues at other papers appear to disagree, Monday's news from Wall Street isn't Pearl Harbor or 9/11 or Kennedy's assassination. But you wouldn't know it from the bleating A1 at The Oregonian:
That type 777.68 is larger than what we used for TERROR at the last paper I worked at for the Sept. 12, 2001, edition. I'm not saying 9/11 is the single greatest defining moment in the history of the world, but it is certainly bigger than the stock market falling 7 percent. Especially when the market recovers almost 60 percent of that loss the next day.

To give The O credit, it refrained from copying the not-to-scale zigzaggy line a bunch of other papers used:
Um, yeah, where's zero? This is yet another depressing example of wack, sucker-MC style page design and headline writing that runs amok when big news breaks.

I've borrowed these particularly egregious examples from the super-awesome daily gallery at The World's Most Interactive Museum. You can check out daily A1s from all over - but not, alas, Walla Walla, here. Another link at that page will show you archived pages, so you can relive such events as Hurricane Ike, Eliot Spitzer's resignation, the end of the line for John Paul II, 9/11 (where the archive starts) and such. It isn't all bad news (unless you are a Cardinals fan). The Red Sox World Series win is in there, too.

Bonded for life

The butterfly lady and I covered a reunion last weekend for a small group of Marine Corps tank crew veterans of the invasion of Iwo Jima, and the story is in today's paper (and online). My audio, her video and photos by our colleague Jeff Horner were rolled into this multimedia piece by another of our colleagues, Carlos Virgen:

Now in stores

The shop my work can be found in soon will have more than my weaving, which is cool. I started knitting when I was between looms last year, and the lady who runs the shop took a liking to the better ones I've done. Here's a for-instance:
And here's one being worn by the guy who made it. Man, that was a snowstorm!
Anyway, I think I'm getting the hang of hats. I hope several somebodies agree and buy them!

By land and sea

So, I started running again (maximum distance so far, a whopping two miles), and I'm still swimming, though I'm mixing the two to try to fend off injuries. Now I'm wondering if I should consider maybe doing a triathlon, one of the short ones. I'm ambivalent. I haven't really enjoyed riding a bike since I was edged off the road by a careless driver and crashed.

That wasn't a great moment, but it was a long time ago and it is ridiculous to live in the past. But with our place in New Hampshire being super bike-unfriendly and life being pretty busy here, I just haven't bothered to pick up the habit, which I enjoyed very much before.

Well, who knows? But it might be fun to take a shot at a triathlon. I think there's one in town with reasonable distances (500-yard swim, 5-kilometer run, 20-mile bike ride).

A good walk ruined

I am a man of many mothers. Maybe that will make a good post someday... but for now, here's a video one of my moms turned me on to, a Robin Williams bit on a game invented in The Greatest Country in the World:

Things I wish I knew how to do

I'm not sure when I'd learn, exactly, because my to-do list is always longer than the days have hours. But here are a few things I'd like to know how to do. When I say "know how to do" I mean "know how to do well."

• Play guitar (or piano, or banjo or harmonica, for that matter). I know, I know, this is a skill that white people commonly have. But I don't.
• Make a decent batch of sembei (Japanese rice crackers). I'm working on this one. The last batch (the labor of my Labor Day) were pretty bad, but not as bad as the previous try.
• Make furniture/cabinetry. Especially cabinetry.
• Swim twice as fast, run twice as far. Um, yeah. Eventually.
• Write dialogue in fiction that isn't clunky.
• Build a sailboat. Or a pirate ship. And sail it.
• Distill whisky.

Of course, that's the realistic list. I left off "teleport," "conjure tornadoes" and "learn telekinesis," even though I think those would all be wicked handy skills.

A typical day's work

Like no other city editors I know, I also get to lay out a lot of pages (seven of the eight A-section pages tonight, but usually more like three to five on a weekday). This means I'm always busy, but I'm usually happier when I'm busy. This A1 has a rarity for Walla Walla, a homicide to report.Most papers take the attitude that the number of stories that jump (continue to a page inside, that is) is nothing to be concerned about. At such places, you'll regularly see four or five stories on A1, all of which jump. We don't roll that way at my workplace. Our goal is to average less than 33 percent jumps on covers (A1, the sports cover, etcetera). I have an attitude, of course, so I'm just under 7 percent for the year. I don't know how much readers care, but it makes a fun challenge.

Top of the heap!

I don't know how long this will last:

But I'll take it!

Shoes

When I started running track and cross country in the mid-1980s, a good pair of shoes was a pretty spendy item. I think I spent about $85 a pair back then, usually for Nikes, Asics or New Balance. Using westegg's inflation calculator, I found that translates to about $160 today.

I bought a pair of mid-level Saucony running shoes at Big 5 the other day for about $45, which is usually how much that kind of shoe is at that store. The shoes are at least in the top two of best shoes I've run in, so it isn't that my taste has run to the cheap and shoddy.

Maybe running shoes have replaced gasoline and food in the Consumer Price Index. That'd help explain the phony baloney inflation news we keep hearing.

An unexpected gift

A short time after college graduation, one of my best friends - a guy I roomed with on the road in cross country and track, someone whose secrets I knew and who knew mine - underwent a major life change, one that ended our friendship.

I hold no grudge: He wasn't the same man anymore, and I was. I didn't resent his change to who he became, but if he had committed suicide, the act would have been no less momentous.

Our friendship dissipated quickly. My breaking point was maybe not the most obvious: He adopted a new, dehumanizing attitude toward gay people that I could not abide. I drew the line and that was that. But it was depressing, because I'd lost one of my best friends.

That was 15 years ago. On Friday, I called up a different friend, one I hadn't talked to in a couple of years (I had to leave a message, though). She and I were much closer than my former teammate and I ever were, but we hadn't talked in a while. Over the years, her values and personality had seemed to shift away from who she'd been (one of my best friends ever, the type you'd hide in your basement or attic while the secret police searched for her), and we just drifted apart.

I assumed she'd just found new priorities (husband, kids, lifestyle), so I didn't bring it up directly. I think I was overly circumspect. She called up Saturday afternoon. I asked what was new and she said, "Wellll, I'm getting a divorce from my husband because I'm gay."

That's cool, says I, and we talked for an hour or so. She said she thought she'd sold herself out and swore that wasn't going to happen again. Hooray! I hope now she's herself again - and herself, rocks, for the record - there'll be room at the table for an old pal who was out of touch awhile.

Inspired writing

Today's example comes from Steven Pearlstein of The Washington Post:

WASHINGTON — Hurricane Hank swept through nation’s capital Sunday with gale force regulatory winds and a tidal surge of federal cash, upending two of Washington’s biggest enterprises and permanently changing the landscape of housing finance in America.

Brilliant!

Weekend fun

As usual, the weekend was too short. I need more hours in the day, especially when I should be sleeping. But alas, that's not how things work.

While winding on a new warp (gorgeous red, photos to come if I remember!), I re-listened to "Nebraska" a bunch of times, especially this song:

Well, that and Highway Patrolman. It is easy to work with the Boss.

Beautiful duet

You have to wait to pick up the backup lady on this one, but I love it.

This one, too.

Politics

What a deal: Two weeks of Olympics followed by a couple more of convention fun. I'm not sure what's on after the RNC, but if the TV people want people like me to watch, now's the time to put on something good.

An observation:

It seems to me that politics reporters sometimes miss out on good follow-up questions. To wit: Gov. Sarah Palin's wealth or paucity of foreign policy experience was the topic du jour on, I think, MSNBC. Or maybe that was CNN. Anyway, the anchor lady asked some guy who used to be famous about this and our pal from the city said Palin's foreign policy experience trumped that of Sen. Barack Obama. The cat's argument was something like: Well, if you're governor, you're in an executive position, so that means you actually make the decision, etc.

Yeah, but doesn't that mean Palin has more foreign policy experience than John McCain?

But that question went unanswered, and it certainly went unasked.

Just like the failure to dig into Obama's religious views. So he used to belong to that one church, where the pastor ran his trap about 9/11, right? How often did he go to church? Once a year? Once a day? Did he attend any other churches during the same period? These questions have discrete answers, unlike the usual piffle (why didn't he quit sooner? does he condemn that message now?)

This isn't hard. If there's a car wreck and you show up on the scene, you go talk to the sergeant (unless you're the first one there, I suppose). Do you just listen to his speech and leave without asking if anyone else was in the car? What caused the wreck? How many beer cans were in the road?

What I'm taking away from these political rallies is that if I had the misfortune of becoming a TV politics personality - what my father would rightly call a contrafactual proposition - I would try to make my name by just turning off the mike of people who won't give a straight answer.

Q: Why did Obama wait to disavow that jackass preacher?

A: Well, the senator has never believed that the U.S. is to blame for 9/11. In fact, he's worked hand in hand with his colleagues across the aisle on tax relief for firefighters suffering from irony. In fact, his opponent once attended a church whose pastor was caught wearing a dress and lipstick during an S&M festival. Plus, he eats live baby chickens during his Sunday devil worship!

I'd get to about "Well, the senator has never believed" and flip the switch.

That'd be a damn sight easier than trying to talk over the spokeswanker. And you could have a lot of fun with a flashing, weasel-talk light and telling the beleagured guest "blink once if you're going to give me a straight answer and I'll turn your mike back on." That sort of thing.

Maybe that'd be the Straight Talk show?