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: