Guess What's Legal Again?

Absinthe.

Break out your Hemingway short story collection and raise a glass!

Classy

After the Washington Redskins' starting safety, Sean Taylor, was killed by an intruder in his home, his team lined up with only 10 men on the field for their first play against the Buffalo Bills.

They gave up a 22-yard running play, but it was a perfectly classy thing to do.

Another Good Quote

A nice quote from Madeleine L'Engle, who would have been 89 today:

"You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."

The Song on the Radio

Right at the present moment, BBC 6 is playing "Pretty Vacant" by the Sex Pistols.

Somehow it sounds different on the BBC.

Pretty cool.

Don't Make an Analogy You Don't Understand

Good grief. I came across this today and I'm having a hard time imagining how this guy could have any less of an idea what the suicide squeeze is:

For sports fans like George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice, the Annapolis meeting is the diplomatic equivalent of baseball's suicide squeeze bunt play: in the last inning of a nine-inning game, with runners on base and everyone wound up with anticipation, the manager tries a daring move that puts all the runners in motion while the hitter taps a soft bunt that aims to bring in a run and win the game.

The suicide squeeze is one of the most exciting plays in baseball, perhaps in any sports. But it usually fails, because it is based on a combination of desperation and offensive deceit that rarely add up to a winning strategy.

For the record: The squeeze play does not occur only in the 9th inning; it does not involve starting all the runners, and it usually is successful - 86 percent of the time.

I Think I'm in Pittsburgh

Every now and again I check my blog stats through Blogger, just to see if anybody ever visits this silly thing. (Surprisingly, people sometimes do. I get maybe two or three hits a day, and my Technorati rank has soared all the way to 8,911,336.)

For a few weeks I'd been noticing that the blog was getting regular hits from Pittsburgh, which was odd because I don't know anybody in Pittsburgh and I've never even visited there.

Still, I flattered myself that there might actually be somebody in the Steel City who found my blog so interesting as to become a regular visitor. Wow! I have a public!

But yesterday I noticed something else. I've been getting almost no hits from Illinois. Lots of hits from Pittsburgh, no hits from Illinois. Hmm.

There is only one explanation I can think of for this: My Internet connection must have been rerouted, and my mysterious reader in Pittsburgh is ... me.

So I guess that's where I am now. Pittsburgh. If you're every traveling through, stop by and, umm, say hello.

One for The Quote Book

"You don't have to leave my side, but you do have to let me pull my underwear out of my butt."

- Mari-Rose, Nov. 24, 2007

A Little Late For Thanksgiving, But...

On the table at Alice's Restaurant:

Cream of Salt and Pepper Soup

(Yes, it's the Alice and the restaurant.)

Glam Rock Lives!

I'm getting behind the times. Something is happening under our feet, and I didn't even notice.

Apparently that ill-advised G-N-R tattoo you've been trying to hide all these years is becoming a badge of honor:

Call it “hair metal” or “mullet metal,” even “butt rock,” or worse, “cock rock.” But whatever you say it is, and whether you listen to it or not, 1980s-style heavy metal is here again.

Rockers everywhere have embraced the heavy-metal thunder. Again, at last, L.A.’s Sunset Strip looks on any given night like the video for Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls.” You can rest assured that now it’s safe to roll down J Street bumping Whitesnake while belting out the lyrics to “Here I Go Again” with your windows open.

Bands such as Whitesnake, Dokken, Dio, Iron Maiden (with Bruce Dickinson) and Judas Priest (with Rob Halford) have recently reformed (or have come out of hiding) and are either working on new albums or on tour.

What does it all mean? It means what it meant the first time: not much. So how about just enjoying it? Grow out that hair, slip on those cock-rock boots and drop the needle on your favorite metal masterpiece.

For those about to rock, we salute you.

Your Quiz for the Day

Did the following headline appear in a major mainstream newspaper, or in The Onion?

Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything

Answer here.

On Creativity

After the death of Norman Mailer, who was noted for his tendency to swing for the fences and either hit a home run or embarrass himself, Joel Achenbach has blogged a two-part series on creativity, titled "When Genius Bombs."

I'm going to quote it at length because I like it so much. Emphases are mine.

Geniuses mess up too. This is a phenomenon that permeates the creative world.

There is bad Beethoven. There are failed Picassos. There are incorrect theories by Albert Einstein. Duke Ellington would be the first to say that some riffs worked better than others. In the 1940s Orson Welles made both the instant classic "Citizen Kane" and the instant trivia answer "The Lady From Shanghai."

Just because you are a great composer named Wagner doesn't mean that everything you do will be Wagnerian.

(snip)

The problem with "genius" is that it doesn't give the great talents their due for working hard and plodding through difficult problems and taking chances and knowing which ideas to dump and which to deliver. Geniuses create the same way total ding-dongs create. Geniuses still have to put on their paint one stroke at a time.

Picasso would paint something, look at it -- at this point it would fetch a staggering price simply because it was a Picasso -- and then just paint over it, start again, because it wasn't good enough.

W.H. Auden once said, "The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor."

(snip)

George Bernard Shaw talked about the "field theory" of creativity, borrowing a term from physics. Good ideas do not exist alone but in a larger field of imagination. As a young man Shaw wrote five novels. Can you name one? Shaw had to work through his novelist phase before he could arrive, in his late thirties, as a playwright.

Shaw believed in productivity -- just keep writing, was his advice to everyone. Norma Jenckes, a Shaw scholar at the University of Cincinnati, says Shaw's attitude was that "you had to write yourself through all sorts of things, and then something might become your masterpiece."

Herein lies the lesson for everyone, the pros, the amateurs, the dumb-dumbs, anyone who has ever tried to think creatively. Humans are by nature a creative species, but we have to learn to manage our creativity, feed it, weed it, prune it, whack it back if necessary. We have to forgive our mistakes. No one is always brilliant.

Children instinctively know this. It is only as they grow up that society drums into their little noggins the fact that they're without real talent and ought to put down the crayons and the finger paint and learn to watch television like everyone else.

(snip)

The academics who study creativity have concluded that geniuses come up with ideas and analyze situations pretty much like everyone else. "Nobody is a genius simply because of the shape of their head and their brain," says Howard Gardner, a professor of education at Harvard. "People get ideas. Nobody knows where ideas come from. And they try to work them out. And people who are the best artists are very good working out the implications of those ideas. But it's not the case that every idea is a good idea."

(snip)

Within a field such as math, someone can be good at one thing and inept at another. The mathematician Henri Poincare could not add. He wrote, "I must confess I am absolutely incapable of doing an addition sum without a mistake."

(snip)

Mark Rosenthal, a curator at the National Gallery, applies the rule to artists: "The really good ones are trying extremely hard every time out. They're always trying to make a masterpiece, they're always trying to do something wonderful."

He says that being creative is a lonely job. Every artist's studio is the same. There is one chair. The artist paints half the day, and sits in the chair the other half of the day, looking critically at the art. "There's only one chair because artists work alone. And they sit there. I'm sure if we could be transported back to Rembrandt's time, it'd be the same thing. There'd be one chair."

(snip)

Robert Sternberg, a Yale psychologist and co-author of "Defying the Crowd: Cultivating Creativity in a Culture of Conformity," says creativity has three aspects:

1. Synthetic. You have to generate ideas. Geniuses come up with a lot more ideas than everyone else. "In most fields, the people who really are well known are prodigious. They're large-volume producers. But you don't even realize that in their repertoire is a lot of junk. You just don't hear about the junk," says Sternberg.

2. Analytic. You have to know which ideas are the good ones. J. Carter Brown recalls the prayer that the esteemed art critic Bernard Berenson used to say: "Our Father, who art in Heaven, give us this day our daily idea, and forgive us the one we had yesterday."

3. Practical. You need to know how to market the idea. How to pitch it.

(snip)

Leon Botstein, the composer, says you can't plan your breakthroughs. You just have to keep plugging away, and wait, and hope.

"Breakthrough is not when you want it, it's not when you expect it. It's a function of the constant activity. It is only the constant activity that generates the breakthrough."

And what causes the constant activity? It's not money. It's not glory. It's an "inner necessity," he says. Unless you have this inner necessity to create, you'll probably never do anything of brilliance, Botstein believes.

"Without constant, almost irrational, obsessive engagement, you'll never make the breakthrough," he says. "The difference between you and the person you consider great is not raw ability. It's the inner obsessiveness. The inability to stop thinking about it. It's a form of madness."

So this is what separates the great ones from the rest of the world. It is not simply that they are smarter, savvier, more brilliant. They are geniuses because they can't stand to be anything else.

A Good Poem

"I Used to Be But Now I Am" by Ted Berrigan. My favorite lines:

I used to be part of the problem,
But now I am the problem.

Moooooo....

Ye gods:

A cow plunged from a 200-foot cliff onto the hood of a minivan on a highway in central Washington state, according to police.

The car's occupants, Charles and Linda Everson, were not hurt in Sunday's accident, but the cow was euthanized at the scene.

"If the cow had fallen a split second later, the animal would have landed right in their laps," said Jeff Middleton, criminal deputy of the Chelan County Sheriff's Department.

You wonder what the cow was thinking...

In similar news, last night while driving home on Old Route 66, I had to come to a complete stop because three deer were in the road. They were like the three bears: one big, one middle, one small. The little one just stood there in front of my car but eventually it joined its parents, big brother/sister - whatever they were.

Unhealthy

Scary:

Children who are on the path toward obesity have some worrisome cardiovascular disease risk factors as young as age 7, according to researchers tracking early childhood weight fluctuations.

What To Eat?

The answer, as it turns out, is food.

A Real Nice Beer

Crooked Tree IPA by the Dark Horse Brewing Co. of Marshall, Michigan.

Mari-Rose bought me some a week or two ago. Yummy!

Kitty

On my way to work there's this little black and white cat I sometimes see at the edge of town. It seems to be a loose cat - I generally see it around a bar and a car customization shop.

A couple of weeks ago on that stretch of road I saw a smashed animal with black and white fur. It wasn't a skunk; it didn't smell. So I thought kitty had bought the farm.

But this morning I was happy to learn that kitty is safe and sound. I saw her again, walking in the weeds outside the bar.

Just a nice little thing that happened today.

Curious About the News

Here's one thing I've been curious about. You know that news story about Sen. Larry Craig, who was busted in the bathroom for allegedly soliciting another guy?

His excuse was that he has a "wide stance" while using the bathroom, which is why his foot tapped the foot of the other guy in the next stall (an undercover cop, as it turned out).

But something about that excuse has never made a bit of sense to me, and I haven't heard anybody else bring it up: When you're sitting on the pot, you've got your pants and underwear around your ankles. That limits how far you can move your feet, doesn't it? It means your stance can't really be too wide, doesn't it?

Anyway that's my curious thought for the day.

Okay, now I have to go to the bathroom...

Oooooh, This Is a Bad Idea

Homeowners Using Credit Cards to Make Mortgage Payments

Yikes!

John Raises Eyebrow; Says, "Fascinating..."

I read a fascinating, if very long, three part article, that asked and finally answered what seems an exceedingly simple question:

Two photographs were taken on the same day in 1855, during the Crimean War. The two photos are nearly identical, except one of them might have been staged for effect. Was the photo staged for effect?

It's remarkable how much effort it took to learn the answer.

The question isn't interesting. The quest is.

Here's What I Don't Get

I followed one of those links to a dumb, salacious news story today and I learned this:

The so-called "Preppie Killer," who served 15 years in prison for strangling a woman in Central Park, was arrested Monday on charges of selling drugs and resisting arrest.

Robert Chambers was released from prison on Valentine's Day 2003 after serving 15 years for the 1986 strangling of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin during a tryst in Central Park.

The undercover sting began after police received complaints alleging drug sales at Chambers' residence, where he lived with his girlfriend...

His girlfriend? He lived with his girlfriend?

Can somebody explain to me how a guy kills a woman "during a tryst" and then after he gets out of prison, finds a girlfriend to live with him?

Wouldn't you think that doing 15 years for murdering a woman would sort of take you out of the dating pool?

A Good Quote

From today's Writer's Almanac:

"[Writing a novel is] like creeping along on your belly with shells exploding around you. It's only occasionally that there's a ceasefire and you can get up and run."

Look What the Girls Caught

The girls went down to the creek yesterday afternoon with a babysitter, and look what they found.

Pretty impressive. It was about 2-3 inches long. Not huge, but bigger than any crawdad I'd ever caught as a kid.

This is a picture of it crawling back into the water after we let it go.

Cool Art

I didn't know you could do this to a book.

Kind of shame to lose all those words, though.

How to Be a Complete Jerk

From today's Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of the memoirist and novelist Bernard Cooper, born in Los Angeles (1951). His most recent book, The Bill from My Father (2006) is about a bill he received in the mail from his father itemizing every expense he had incurred on his father's bank account since the day he was born. The bill totaled 2 million dollars.

The thing that's hard to believe is that the dad would take the time to compile this list. It had to take hours and hours and hours and hours. And for what?

What a jerk.

A Total Scrum

The baseball season in the National League is coming down to the wire. With only 3 games left, everything is still up in the air. The wildest possibility is a five-team tie that would have to be resolved to determine the winners of the NL East, the NL West, and the Wild Card.

ESPN breaks down how silly this could get:

Among the fun possibilities if five teams in the East and West finish the season with the same record:

The San Diego Padres theoretically could play in Milwaukee on Sunday, in Arizona on Monday, in San Diego on Tuesday, in Philadelphia on Wednesday, back in San Diego on Thursday and then in New York on Friday.

Wow.

A Hard Word to Type

"Ethiopia"

Go ahead ... try it.

Lawn Mower

One of my favorite newspaper writers is Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post. I'm not exactly sure what his beat is - it's sort of science, sort of society, sort of whatever comes to his mind. He's sort of like a thinking man's Dave Barry. Anyway, today he wrote a good blog post about his lawn mower:

Being the recipient of an ego-boosting compliment was not something I anticipated when I took my mower to the hardware store to get the blade sharpened.

The mower didn't mean much to me, other than as an object of mild resentment. I used to have a gas mower that, while nasty and loud, left no doubt of its agenda. It was violent. It was a satisfying machine for whacking the fescue. But it had to be put to sleep earlier this year. That left me with my relatively new backup mower, an electric number given to me by a friend. It is a mild, modest device. As I've noted here before, it's like something a lady would use to shave her legs.

And it was literally dull in every way. Hence the trip to the hardware store.

So I'm waiting around. I can hear the blade being sharpened in the back of the shop. A grating sound, a high frequency industrial whine. Then the guy comes out of the back of the shop, and he's pushing my mower, and he tells me there was a lot of grass jammed underneath, and that the blade had certainly been dull, and then -- out of the blue -- he says, "That's a nice mower."

"Really?" I said.

"Yeah," he said. "That's a nice mower. They don't make those anymore."

And then another guy agrees with him. A nice mower, and you can't find that model anymore.

I'm like: Yo.

I got me a hot mower!

This is like a new identity. I'd needed one. Now I'll be that guy: The dude with the mower.

Mr. Mower Man.

With this new identity comes the responsibility to share the magic. I'm going to have to spend more time letting the people out there, the citizenry, check out my mower. I'll have to take it for a stroll down the sidewalk, maybe through the business district. Strut my stuff. People might wonder why this man is pushing a mower through a pedestrian mall, or the food court at Tyson's, or whatever, but mostly what they will ask themselves is, "How can I get a mower like him?"

Haven't we all felt like that?

Nasty Stuff

"The Most Badass Whiffle Ball Pitching You'll Ever See"

Cool.

Musical Bottom-Feeding

Today I came across this page, reviewing the best finds that a fellow musical bottom-feeder has come across. That album by The Tractors sounds really good...

Only You Can Decide the Fate of This Baseball

The guy who bought the baseball that Barry Bonds hit to break Hank Aaron's record has set up a website where we, the people, get to vote what he will do with the ball. The three options are:

1. Give it to the Baseball Hall of Fame
2. Brand it with an asterisk, then give it to the Hall of Fame
3. Put it on a rocket and shoot it into space

I think the "asterisk" option will win. Shooting it into space seems too...final. And handing it over to the Hall of Fame seems too...ordinary.

Besides, burning an asterisk into the ball would just have to irritate Barry Bonds. That makes it a good option right there.

UPDATE: This is already irritating Barry Bonds!

Bonds said Ecko could have found a better way to spend three-quarters of a million dollars.

"He's stupid. He's an idiot," Bonds said. "He spent $750,000 on the ball and that's what he's doing with it? What he's doing is stupid."

Ecko did not directly respond to Bonds' comments Wednesday, but said in a statement he would make Bonds a custom T-shirt that says, "Marc Ecko paid $752,467 for my ball, and all I got was this 'stupid' T-shirt."'

I think Ecko is very smart. Apparently he's a fashion designer by trade, and in that business your name is your brand. This guy has bought tons of brand recognition by doing this.

We Have An Excuse!

We just can't help it!

Whether we’re looking for someone to date or sizing up a potential rival, our eyes irresistibly lock on to good-looking people, a new study finds.

Participants, all heterosexual men and women, fixated on highly attractive people within the first half-second of seeing them. Single folks ogled the opposite sex, of course. But those in committed relationships more often eyed beautiful people of the same sex.

Jon Maner (University of Florida) based his research on the idea that evolution has primed our brains to subconsciously latch on to signs of physical attractiveness in others, both to find a mate and to guard him or her from potential competitors.

Maner's experiments, which flashed pictures of attractive men and women and average-looking men and women in front of participants and measured the time it took to shift their attention away from the image, surprisingly showed little difference between the sexes.

"Women paid just as much attention to men as men did to women," Maner said.

Hmm ... in my experience I'm equally ignored by men and women. Apparently that means something. :)

Song Title of the Day

"Sick Hipster Nursed by Suicide Girl," by Film School.

Meteorites Make You Sick

Weird story:

Villagers in southern Peru were struck by a mysterious illness after a meteorite made a fiery crash to Earth in their area, regional authorities said Monday.

Around midday Saturday, villagers were startled by an explosion and a fireball that many were convinced was an airplane crashing near their remote village, located in the high Andes department of Puno in the Desaguadero region, near the border with Bolivia.

Residents complained of headaches and vomiting brought on by a "strange odor," local health department official Jorge Lopez told Peruvian radio RPP.

Seven policemen who went to check on the reports also became ill and had to be given oxygen before being hospitalized, Lopez said.

Things I Didn't Know About Ken Kesey

From today's Writer's Almanac:

In 1969, he moved to his family's farm in Oregon and spent much of the rest of his life raising cattle and sheep and growing blueberries. He joined the local school board and coached wrestling and taught a creative writing class.

His last novel was Last Go Round (1994), an old-fashioned Western based on the pulp fiction he'd loved reading when he was a kid. He died in 2001.

Ken Kesey said, "The trouble with super heroes is what to do between phone booths."

That would be pretty cool, having Ken Kesey on your school board.

Album Title of the Day

Calvin Harris, I Created Disco.

Dead Mean People Suck

For instance, Leona Helmsley:

Helmsley left her beloved white Maltese, named Trouble, a $12 million trust fund, according to her will...

No one [in Helmsley's family] made out better than Trouble, who once appeared in ads for the Helmsley Hotels, and lived up to her name by biting a housekeeper.

She also left her chauffeur, Nicholas Celea, $100,000.

Twelve million for the dog, and only 0.83% of that for the chauffeur. Nice...

But at least she did this:

She ordered that cash from sales of the Helmsley's residences and belongings, reported to be worth billions, be sold and that the money be given to the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.

I wonder what sort of charities the trust invests in.

I Shoulda Been an Entrepreneur

I thought of this idea when I was about 13 years old.

Heck, I'd do it. I'm not proud.

For Sale: My Car in Flames

From the "no good deed goes unpunished" file:

We're trying to sell our car, a '96 Mitsubishi Galant. It's a great car - we've had it 5 years and it has run like a top. We're selling it only because the girls don't fit in the backseat anymore.

Anyway, our next door neighbor says he wants to buy it. Great. That's easy.

As I'm putting the paperwork together for him, I realize that the car is due for an oil change. I think to myself, "It would sure be a neighborly gesture if I change the oil for him before we make the deal." So last night after work I take the car to one of those speedy-lube places and they change the oil.

Except there's one problem: They take off the old filter but forget to put on a new one.

I get in the car, start it up and tell them, "That clicking noise wasn't there before." We shut off the car and they quickly spot the problem. Oil has gushed out where the filter is supposed to be - almost all of it. The car is clicking because it's running without oil.

They apologize profusely, put on a filter, refill the car with oil and send me on my way.

A few blocks later I ask myself, "What's that smell?" After another block or so I can see smoke curling out from under the hood.

I zip back to the speedy-lube and when we re-open the hood, smoke pours out as if Cheech and Chong had been in there instead of the engine.

They apologize profusely again, telling me that the smoke is coming from the burning oil that has splattered all over the engine and exhaust. They rinse it off as well as they can and tell me that, while they couldn't get it all off, there's only a small amount left and it'll just burn off as I drive the car. "It'll be gone by tomorrow," the guy assures me.

Okay, fine.

I decide I'll just take the car out on the highway and burn it off. I figure that at highway speeds the oil will burn off fast and the smoke will dissipate quickly.

But before I can get to the highway the car is smoking badly. As I'm sitting anxiously at a stoplight, two women pull up next to me and one of them yells, "Sir, there are flames under your car."

Okay that's it.

I say "Thanks," pull over, call a tow truck and have them tow the car to my regular mechanic. He assures me he can wash off the oil.

So here I am, trying to sell the car - a great, reliable car - and the damn thing is smoking and flaming because the guys at speedy-lube forgot to install a bloody oil filter.

I don't know what to tell my neighbor: "Oh, those flames and smoke? Ignore them - that'll burn off."

Sheesh.

A Story That'll Break Your Heart

And it's about baseball, no less.

Bad Luck = Good Luck

I bought this new CD yesterday, "Sun Drenched" by Justin James. Never heard of the guy before - just a random purchase because it looked like a good summer album. Six songs in, it's pretty good. Reminds me of Jack Johnson - same sort of laid-back singer-songwriter-surfer ethic. (I'm guessing Justin James probably gets that a lot.)

Interesting story in the liner notes, though.

The guy didn't play guitar or write songs until he needed something to stave off boredom during an extended rehabilitation, after he nearly got his foot bitten off by a tiger shark. He came close to dying, apparently.

But if not for sharky, the guy wouldn't have a career in music.

Bad luck = good luck. You never know where it's going to come from.

Check Your Green Beans

Here's your friendly safety advisory for the day. Check those cans of green beans because there's a recall due to a - gulp! - botulism risk:

Consumers should not eat certain brands of French-cut green beans because of concerns they could be tainted with the toxin that causes botulism, U.S. health officials warned on Friday.

The FDA said the affected Lakeside French-cut green beans are sold nationwide under the brands: Albertson's, Happy Harvest [Aldi], Best Choice, Food Club, Bogopa, Valu Time, Hill Country Fare, HEB, Laura Lynn, Kroger, No Name, North Pride, Shop N Save, Shoppers Valu, Schnucks, Cub Foods, Dierbergs, Flavorite, IGA, Best Choice and Thrifty Maid.

The warning applies to cans with the following codes:

EAA5247, EAA5257, EAA5267, EAA5277, EAB5247, EAB5257, ECA5207, ECA5217, ECA5227, ECA5297, ECB5207, ECB5217, ECB5227, ECB5307.

The green bean warning is unrelated to a recall last month of chili sauce, canned meat products and dog food made by Castleberry's Food Co.

Botulism is one of the most lethal toxins known, and only a tiny bit is enough to do you in. It attacks your nervous system, and if you don't get treated soon enough, you don't stand much of a chance. And even if you do survive, it's a long recovery. Very very nasty.

Russkies

So the Russians are claiming that the North Pole belongs to them because they sent a sub down to the seafloor and planted a flag there.

I liked the response of the Canadian Foreign Minister:

"This isn't the 15th century. You can't go around the world and just plant flags and say 'We're claiming this territory'," Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay told CTV television.

I also hope Santa files a lawsuit.

Song Title of the Day

"You! Me! Dancing!" by Los Campesinos!

If I Were a Book, What Book Would I Be?

According to this harmless little quiz, I am Ulysses, by James Joyce. To wit:

"Most people are convinced that you don't make any sense, but compared to what else you could say, what you're saying now makes tons of sense.

What people do understand about you is your vulgarity, which has convinced people that you are at once brilliant and repugnant.

Meanwhile you are content to wander around aimlessly, taking in the sights and sounds of the city. What you see is vast, almost limitless, and brings you additional fame. When no one is looking, you dream of being a Greek folk hero."

That's fair enough, I suppose. Especially the first paragraph. If only people could hear what's going on inside my head, they'd actually think I'm being quite coherent.

I'm not sure about the Greek folk hero thing, though.

Always a Great Show

This year's Perseid meteor shower is the night of Aug. 12-13. Mark your calendars!

Summer Music

Properly, every summer ought to have an album. Something not too serious, to sing along to, with the windows down and nothing else to do.

Something that reminds you of being half your age, instead of the age you are.

So here it is: a nice, breezy album for the lazy days of July and August:

Coconut Records, "Nighttiming"

A Great Moment in Baseball History

Ah, yes. Today is one of the high holidays of baseball.

It is the 28th anniversary of Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

Truly one of the great moments in baseball history.

Thank you, Steve Dahl.

Some Headlines Speak for Themselves

For instance, this one:

China bans toxic syrup in toothpaste

The Best Rock and Roll Band in Business Today

The White Stripes

Just my opinion...

My Celebrity Crush?

I followed one of those ridiculous links today. One that says, "What does your celebrity crush say about you?" Some schmuck at Yahoo outlined what it says about a man if he finds certain actresses attractive.

I'm pretty sure I don't have a celebrity crush, but I played along. There were only a few specific actresses named. Here's the list:

• Angelina Jolie
• Jennifer Aniston
• Paris Hilton/Lindsay Lohan/Britney Spears
• Halle Berry/Scarlett Johansson
• Julianne Moore/Michelle Pfeiffer
• Pam Anderson
• Beyonce/J-Lo/Fergie/Janet
• Any character from Grey's Anatomy (a show I've never seen)

Hmm. I went with Halle Berry. And according to the schmuck this means:

That he has darn good taste. Physically, they (Berry and Johansson) represent classic feminine beauty - their curves, their skin, their heart-stopping faces. That may mean he has very high standards - and seeks relationship perfection.

Oddly enough that's a fair description. I was always been picky about the girls I dated. All of which means absolutely nothing, but there you go.

I Guess When You Have a Billion People ...

you need a 1000-seat bathroom.

They're flush with pride in a southwestern Chinese city where a recently-opened porcelain palace features an Egyptian facade, soothing music and more than 1,000 toilets spread out over 32,290 square feet.

"We are spreading toilet culture. People can listen to gentle music and watch TV," said Lu Xiaoqing, an official with the Yangrenjie, or "Foreigners Street," tourist area where the bathroom is located. "After they use the bathroom they will be very, very happy."

Some urinals are uniquely shaped, including ones inside open crocodile mouths and several that are topped by the bust of a woman resembling the Virgin Mary.

There are also plans to build a supermarket nearby, which will sell toilet-related items, CCTV reported.

"Spreading toilet culture?" Crocodiles? The Virgin Mary? (The jokes, they are too easy!)

But since I don't know if I'll ever be able to use that bathroom myself, I would like to assure Mr. Lu that after I use the bathroom, I am indeed very, very happy.

I Found One of These ...

at the supermarket yesterday.

I picked up a box of grapes - you know those clear plastic things they come in these days. I just happened to notice a spider in there, nestled among the grapes. Almost certainly, it had made its home in the grape arbor, gotten picked, packed and shipped, and ended up right there in the store, waiting for me to pick it up.

I didn't recognize it right away - I just thought, "spider." But I didn't want to buy a box grapes with a free arachnid prize, and I didn't want to just put the box back, giving somebody else the gift of a spider-freak-out. So my first thought was to just go tell a store employee about it. I quickly scanned the store to find an employee, and after I sighted her, I glanced down at the box to make sure the spider was still there.

It was at that point that some little part of my brain started jumping up and down, and I thought, "Hey, that spider looks kind of familiar."

See, this widow wasn't gloss-black like the one in the picture here. My grape spider had red and white markings on its back. But a few months ago I happened to be at the library with the girls, thumbing through a kids' book about spiders, when I saw a picture of a black widow unlike any I'd ever seen. It had red and white markings on its back, along with the telltale red hourglass on its belly. I remembered thinking, "I'll be darned. I never knew a black widow could look like that."

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I assure you: They can look like that. Apparently juveniles are especially prone to extraneous markings.

Anyway, I shifted the grape box in my hands, and thankfully Little Miss Widow complied by turning on her back. And there was the little red hourglass, plain as day. I already knew that widows tend to be very shy, docile spiders, so I wasn't worried about it jumping out and biting me.

I walked over to where the store worker was, but she was helping another customer, so I waited until she finished. I was glad it was an employee I recognized. She always says hi to me and the girls, so it wasn't like she was a complete stranger.

Finally when it was clear I quietly told her about it and showed her the spider. After an initial "No way!" she took the grape box to the back of the store and - we can only assume - disposed of the widow. (She seemed cool about it, so I think she was perfectly capable of carrying out the squishing duties.)

All in all, it was pretty weird. The store employee kept thanking me. She even said that a lot of moms will open those grape boxes right in the store and let their kids eat out of them.

It goes without saying, I was happy to help.

What Happened to the Beans?

Since spring, I've noticed an abundance of corn fields this year - and a dearth of soybean fields. "Where are all the soybeans?" I've been wondering.

About, say, 10 or 15 years ago, Illinois used to have about half corn and half bean fields (at least that's the way it seemed to me). This year, because of increased demand for ethanol, the balance has shifted mightily toward corn. How much? This much:

U.S. farmers are on track to grow their biggest corn crop ever, an astonishing 12.8 billion bushels, a government report said...

In Illinois and Iowa, the two leading corn and soybean states, growers cut soybean plantings by a total of 2.1 million acres from 2006.

I've also seen quite a few wheat fields this year. I hadn't seen a lot of wheat fields since I was a kid.

Cool Weather

Check out the weather today. All those little storms, everywhere from New England to Texas.

Cool.

Just Like Me: 1992-1995

The only difference is, unlike this guy, I wasn't under a court order not to have a girlfriend.

My advice: Buck up, muchacho, it can be done.

Refreshing Idealism

This junior senator we have in Illinois, Mr. Obama, always surprises me with his idealism. He is at it again in a piece he wrote for the Washington Post.

I don't know if it's possible to be both: A) an idealist and B) president, but at the very least it's refreshing to hear somebody saying those sort of things.

"A Drinking Song"

... by W.B. Yeats, courtesy of Writer's Almanac:

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

Nice.

I've Always Wanted To Know

And now Slate answers the eternal question:

"Does a racehorse really pee like a racehorse?"

Short answer: Yes, about 1.5 to 2 gallons a day (about 6-8 times more than an adult man).

My Favorite New Song

"Mistaken for Strangers" by The National.

(I'm not crazy about the video, but I love the song.)

Damn Yankees

Are tied with Tampa for last place:

The Yankees fell 13 1/2 games back of AL East-leading Boston, their biggest deficit since August 1995, and have lost four straight and eight of 11. They dropped a season-high seven games under .500 and are tied with Tampa Bay for last in the AL East at 21-28.

I love it.

I Don't Think This Is a Good Sign

Today, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates defended the Congress and the free press in his address to Naval Academy graduates:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates encouraged the graduating U.S. Naval Academy class of 2007 Friday to "remember the importance of two pillars of our freedom under the Constitution: the Congress and the press."

"Both surely try our patience from time to time, but they are the surest guarantees of the liberty of the American people," Gates told the 1,028 graduates...

Gates said the Founding Fathers wisely understood that the Congress, a free press and a nonpolitical military are needed in a free country.

"The press is not the enemy and to treat it as such is self-defeating," he said.

I'm glad he said this, but I don't think it's a good sign that, on the 220th anniversary of the convening of the Consitutional Convention, that the Secretary of Defense has to remind us that "the press is not the enemy."

Birthday Bob

Bob Dylan is 66 today.

Happy Birthday, Bob!

Very Weighty Thing

I read this short essay about religion and liked it.

The Strangest No-Hitter Ever

The Hardball Times recently featured a story about "flawed no-hitters" which included the no-hit loss that the Yankees' Andy Hawkins suffered July 1, 1990.

I was at this game, which was also the 80th birthday of Comiskey Park:

Pitching for the Yankees during their dire early '90s period Andy Hawkins took the mound in Chicago for a game against the White Sox on July 1.

Through eight innings Hawkins had yet to allow a hit, but his hapless teammates had failed to muster any offense of their own. After getting Ron Karkovice and Scott Fletcher on pop-ups to second baseman Steve Sax, Hawkins had to face a young Sammy Sosa. Sosa reached based after an error by third baseman Mike Blowers. Perhaps rattled by this, Hawkins issued back-to-back walks to Ozzie Guillen and Lance "One Dog" Johnson.

With the bases now loaded, but two outs, Hawkins bore down and got a fly ball to left field out of Robin Ventura. The best laid plans were awry, as Jim Leyritz-—inexplicably stationed in left field by Yankees skipper Stump Merrill-—committed an error of his own, clearing the bases and leaving Ventura standing on second.

Despite this, Hawkins managed to settle down and Ivan Calderonhit a flyball in the direction of right fielder Jesse Barfield. Hawkins must have been feeling better, as Barfield was a real, actual outfielder. In fact, he wasn’t just any real, actual outfielder; he was a two-time Gold Glove winning outfielder. Those Gold Gloves didn’t do him, or Hawkins, any good. Barfield also made an error, allowing the inning’s fourth run to score.

After Hawkins finally recorded the last out, the Yankees couldn’t manage any runs in the ninth, so Hawkins had pitched a no-hitter, allowed four unearned runs and had only a loss to show for his troubles.

I remember the crowd cheering when the scorer gave Blowers an error on Sosa's grounder to third. It was an in-between hop, and Sosa was fast in those days. It could have gone either way, but nobody wanted to see the no-hitter end on a weak two-hopper to third.

Things really got cooking when the bases were loaded. Everyone realized that, hey, the no-hitter is still intact and the White Sox might actually score!

We were sitting down the left-field line and when Ventura hit his routine fly ball, I looked out at Leyritz and immediately realized that he didn't have a bead on it at all. I think he lost it in the sun. He staggered around trying to find it and never really made a competitive play on it.

After that point, the place was rocking. The no-no was still intact, the White Sox had a three-run lead, and Bobby Thigpen was ready to go in the 9th.

So at that point, it was like everybody in the ballpark switched allegiances. Everybody wanted to see the no-hitter.

So when Barfield made his error, the place erupted in groans and boos. And when Hawkins finally - mercifully - escaped with the final out, the place went nuts.

I kept a scorecard of the game, and I took a couple of grainy pictures of Comiskey's scoreboard. It's the strangest line score I've ever seen:

Yankees: 0 4 4
White Sox: 4 0 0

Two Coyotes

I saw two coyotes this morning on the way to work.

One was dead in the middle of the road. The other ran across the road at Funks Grove.

Book Promotion Site

Good stuff: A promotional site for "No One Belongs Here More than You" by Miranda July.

A Sign of the Apocalypse

The Beerbelly:

The Beerbelly, the stealth beverage system that makes it easy to sneak a drink where ever you want!

• It holds 80oz, that’s more than a six pack of your favorite beverage
• Your drink is held in place in an insulated very comfortable sling under your clothes looking just like a real home grown beer belly.

Yes, ballpark beers are expensive, but this is truly pathetic.

Falwell Oddity

Jerry Falwell died today, and the only thing I found interesting was this:

Falwell's father and his grandfather were militant atheists, he wrote in his autobiography.

I guess he was a rebellious kid, to head off in the other direction like that. Though I wonder what distinguishes a militant athiest from a non-militant one.

Pea Brains!

Humans used to have pea brains.

Some still do.

Cool Story on Female Astronauts

Back in the days of the Mercury program, 13 female astronauts prepared alongside Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, et al.

That's quite a story.

Some Days You Just Don't Have Anything to Say

But you write something on your blog anyway.

At least I'm not the only one.

And in fact, there are a lot of us.

Millions of monkeys, y'know.

Type, type, type.

Life on Mars?

With the news that a new rover is going to look for the ingredients of life on Mars, I ask one simple question:

What if it were to find life on Mars?

Would this change the way we view life in the universe? Would it change anything at all?

Something tells me that it would eventually change our perception, but not immediately. People hold on to old ideas too steadfastly.

Does Whatever A Spider Can

The new Spider Man movie is out, and the associated advertising and promotional stuff is everywhere.

Tonight Quinn was playing with the Spider Man that came with her kids meal from Burger King.

She called him "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider Man."

Why I Like David Ortiz

Even though he's a Red Sock and killed the Redbirds in 2004, I really like David Ortiz.

Along with being one of the best hitters in the game, he plays with a kind of rare joy that I wish more ballplayers had.

Last night, while running the bases, he got utterly run down between first and second. He was a dead man, a sure out if ever there was one. But instead of meekly letting himself be tagged out by Mariners' shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt, he took a couple of steps forward and gave Betancourt a big bear hug.

You've got to love a guy like that.

The Famous Narragansett Beer

One thing I like about traveling is the food and drink you can try in places far from home.

Last night I bought a 6-pack of "The Famous Narragansett Beer." Really, it says that on the label. The brewery is one of those old local brands that died in the dark days of beer, but was resurrected in 2005. Wikipedia has the details.

It's a really nice American Lager. If it were sold in central Illinois, I'd buy it.

It's very smooth, with plenty of nice warm malt flavor. Not dry, not hoppy - which makes it sort of odd that I'd like it. My sense is there's a lot of corn in here.

It reminds me a bit of Berghoff or Pabst Blue Ribbon. Good stuff.

Quinn and Sushi

Mari-Rose got take-out sushi for our anniversary dinner a few nights ago - that's because my anniversary gift was a set of sushi dishes (pottery and bronze being the gifts for the 8-year anniversary).

Quinn called the sushi "swooshy."

A Day in Rhode Island

I am on the road. Yesterday evening I kissed the girls and Mari-Rose, stopped off to get a haircut, and hit the road to Indianapolis, from which I was flying this morning.

Last night I called Shane for his birthday and hit the sack at midnight, for a short night - I woke up at 5:00 to fly from Indy to Detroit to Providence.

Providence is not what I expected. I thought it would be this gentile old city, smallish but elegant - like Portland, Maine.

Instead it's rough around the edges. I drove through the city tonight, and most of what I saw was quite run-down. It's a city that has been rode hard. It looks a lot like Decatur.

It appears to be a completely different situation in the downtown area, though. There, and in the area of Brown University, it's upscale. Construction cranes criss-cross the skyline, setting up new skyscrapers.

In short, it's a city of two tales.

A few other observations on the city:

Drivers here are more willing to give up the right-of-way than anywhere I've ever seen. One time I was trying to make a left onto a busy street, and a car on the street stopped for me and let me out. That driver clearly had the right-of-way, but she gave it up to let me out.

A couple of other times, as a pedestrian, I was waiting for traffic to clear when people in their cars stopped and waved me across.

It wasn't like these people were going to stop for any other reason; they just stopped right in the middle of the road, just for me.

I found a beautiful park: Roger Williams Park. So many cities seem to have a park like this. Big, sprawling, with ponds and old trees and wandering walking trails. In Bloomington it's Miller Park. Here it's Roger Williams Park.

Roger Williams said, famously, in 1631 that there should be separation of church and state - which was heresy at the time. So I like him a lot.

In the park there was the biggest sycamore tree I have ever seen. This thing was about 6 feet in diameter at the trunk, with great rambling branches. Seeing that tree made me nervous about the sycamore in our front yard; though I guess I shouldn't worry because it will be about 150 years before our sycamore is as big as the one in the front yard of Betsy Williams' cottage.

There were families out in the park, a whole lot of them fishing. As I walked through the park, I recall thinking, "It's odd that there are no seagulls here," - and then I saw some seagulls.

I'd forgotten how terse, and almost confrontational, the language of New Englanders can be. When I checked in, the hotel clerk was on the phone with the maintenance guy. A guest had reported some kind of problem in her room, and the hotel clerk was telling the maintenance guy.

"What's the specific problem?" he asked.
"The guest didn't say," she replied.
"That's unacceptable. I have to know what the problem is."
"She didn't say."
"That's unacceptable ... I'll call her and ask her what the problem is. What's the room number?"

I love the way the guy went through two rounds of "that's unacceptable" before just calling the guest to inquire about the problem.

In a restaurant later in the afternoon, where I had a broiled haddock sandwich the likes of which we never see in Illinois, a young man and woman entered the restaurant.

"Where do you want to sit?" she asked.
"Where do you want to sit?" he shot back.

The thing was, this wasn't petty or acrimonious. This was just a terse way of saying, as we would in the Midwest, "It doesn't matter to me."

The young couple enjoyed their lunch and seemed very happy with one another.

Dr. Strangerider?

From the Writer's Almanac, I learned that the same guy co-wrote Dr. Strangelove and Easy Rider. I would never have guessed that.

It's the birthday of novelist and screenwriter Terry Southern, born in Alvarado, Texas (1924). He co-wrote the screenplays for the films Dr. Strangelove (1964) and Easy Rider (1969).

Terry Southern said, "The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock—shock is a worn-out word—but astonish."

I really like that quote about writing to astonish.

Einstein and God

Sheesh, is this ever a weighty thing - Einstein's views on God.

I like reading it, though, because I find this kind of view compelling. I'd say the following quote is a fair encapsulation of my own thoughts:

Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.

This Is One Way to Do It

If Ludwig Bemelmans hadn't drawn pictures on his walls, he'd never had written "Madeline."

Anyway, from today's Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of the author of the "Madeline" books, Ludwig Bemelmans, born in Meran, Tyrol, Austria (1898). He was rebellious as a child. He went to many different schools, but he failed out of all them, so his family sent him to work with his uncle, who owned a chain of hotels. When he shot and almost killed a waiter for one of the hotels, his parents gave him the choice of reform school or emigration to America. He chose America and arrived in New York when he was 16 years old.

He worked at a series of hotels and then started his own restaurant, which became very successful. He didn't think about becoming a writer until a friend in the publishing industry happened to see his childlike drawings on the walls of his apartment. His friend suggested that he write and illustrate a children's book.

And so he wrote his famous book Madeline (1939) ...

I wonder if writing on walls gave him the inspiration for the crack on the ceiling that had the habit of sometimes looking like a rabbit.

The Weather Today

There is some really cool weather today - lots of tiny little storm cells everywhere. Sunny in one place, with strong storms just a couple of miles away.

If you look out of four different windows - north, south, east, and west - you'll see four different skies.

White clouds, gray clouds, blue skies, lightning. Everything is out there today.

I like spring. Everything is so uneven.

New Hampshire Okays Civil Unions

Good for them.

Church Justice...

...is to justice what church music is to music.

This guy was the head honcho of the camp I went to when I was about 12 years old:

BELLEVILLE -- More than 14 years after he was removed from active ministry following accusations that he sexually abused boys, Robert J. Vonnahmen, who once directed a Catholic youth camp, has been removed from the priesthood by Pope Benedict XVI.

Vonnahmen, who has denied allegations of sex abuse, was accused by victims of accosting them at Camp Ondessonk, a popular Catholic children's summer camp in Southern Illinois, in the early 1980s.

When I went to camp there, I remember the older kids saying, "Don't go anywhere alone with Father Vonnahmen." It sounds like the pope finally got the same message.

Save Internet Radio!

One of the good things in the world is Internet radio. Stations like WOXY, KCRW, and KEXP play great music you can't hear on commercial radio (at least around here).

But on May 15, Internet broadcasters are going to have to pay much higher royalties, which will put some or most of them out of business. Or in the case of terrestrial stations like KCRW and KEXP, probably end their streaming. For details, see http://savenetradio.org/.

More importantly...

Write your representatives in Congress!

Now There's No Limbo?

The Pope has revised the Catholic Church's teachings about Limbo. As I understand it, the new teaching is that Limbo may - or may not - exist.

Or something.

It's all very confusing, which may be intentional.

"The Nacho Dog Is Born"

This season, it's all you can eat in the right-field bleachers at Dodger Stadium.

Not Cool

If your kids use Agent Cool Blue mouth rinse, they should stop.

Apparently the preservative in the mouthwash doesn't adequately prevent bacteria from growing in the bottle (after your kids backwash into it, of course).

Infidelity to Corporate Sponsorship Is a Very Very Very Serious Matter

As for me, I think it's perfectly reasonable that the Chicago Bears' Brian Urlacher was fined $100,000 for wearing a hat. Without a doubt, this infraction is:

• About three times as serious as spitting in another player's face.
• Four times as serious as kneeing another player in the groin.
• Almost seven times as serious as threatening an official.

It's always nice to calibrate your priorities, just so you're sure you've got them all lined up right. Nice work, NFL.

What Is John Prine Going To Do?

The man who wrote, "Please Don't Bury Me" may not want to choose cremation, either, unless he wants to add 110 pounds of CO2 to the atmosphere.

(And maybe that turning into a diamond thing isn't such a good idea after all.)

So ... our options now seem to be:

• Being buried in a cardboard box under a tree
• Being dumped in the Thames

Powerful People Feel No Empathy

Science proves it.

Anniversary

Today is the 10th anniversary of the day Mari-Rose and I met. What else was going on that day?

• Comet Hale-Bopp was in the sky.
• Blogging was very, very new.
• Tobacco lawsuit blah, blah, blah.
• A prothonary warbler and two caspian terns were spotted at Lake Sangchris (near Springfield)
• The thought du jour was about pornography.
• Cartoonist Ed Barker died at 46.
• It was decided that Jim Jorstad would continue development of the webpage for the University of Wisconsin Educational Media Technology Council.
• Harvard researchers discovered that "mere contact between proteins turns on genes" (ooh la la!)
• Priests with AIDS were eager to talk.
• D. Mark Catlett, Chief Financial Officer of the Veterans Administration, testified before Congress that the VA has "made significant progress toward automating the billing and payment processing of first-party medical receivables..."
• A car dealer provided the site for grandma's bone-marrow drive
• The top grossing movie in theaters was Anaconda. But the best movie was Sling Blade.
• A technology writer bemoaned "the lack of active conversation areas on the Web"
• Not all girls liked Barbie.
• You could consider "going to a friend and asking for a 'Gingrich,' that is, a loan of money from a friend at attractive terms."
• Leah Gotcsik presumably slept better after having bought a futon for $135.
• The St. Louis Cardinals were flying from Miami to Hawaii, to play a series against the San Diego Padres there. (Funny coincidence: Mike Shannon was talking about that very looooong flight during the game broadcast just a couple of days ago.)
• The Internet Public Library debuted Culture Quest!, where children could "join Olivia Owl and Parsifal Penguin as they tour the Web..."
• Massachusetts masons sent supplies to flood victims in Kentucky.

There was more, of course. That's just the first page of Google results!

Not Me Either

It's funny what you can find when you Google your own name.

These John Bowens aren't me, either.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Origami But Were Afraid to Ask

A friend of mine recently sent me a link to a site she created, the Origami Resource Center.

There are some pretty cool photos there, and links to lots of free diagrams. So if you have some paper just begging to be folded, check it out.

Personally, I think I'll try to learn some of the dollar-bill designs. I think it would be kind of cool to leave tips with origami-folded bills.

Anya's Rock

School called this morning. Anya told her music teacher that she had a rock up her nose.

They told her to try to blow it, and sure enough, out came a rock. They're not really sure how it got up there, and Anya wasn't saying.

It's good to be 5.

Retired Numbers

This is a pretty interesting infographic. It's all of major league baseball's retired numbers. It shows some odd little quirks.

For example, I wouldn't have guessed that the most retired number (other than 42, which all MLB teams have retired because: A. Jackie Robinson wore it, and B. It is the answer to life, the universe, and everything) is 4.

Off the top of my head I can only think of one retired 4: Lou Gehrig.

I'm also surprised that there is only one retired 7 (Mickey Mantle). Generally, better baseball players get lower numbers, so you would think that there would be a slew of retired 7s. But nope, it's just Mickey.

I only recognize a few of the other "unique" retired numbers. 17 is Dizzy Dean. 45 is Bob Gibson. 72 is Carlton Fisk. 43 might be Dennis Eckersley, but I'm not sure.

I Love This Idea

Scrap the Internet entirely.

On the Death of Kurt Vonnegut

The only thing that comes to my mind to say is:

Poo-tee-weet?

We Are Now a Family of 19

Yesterday evening I was coming up the stairs when India shouted to me excitedly, "Dad! Come look in Anna's cage!"

I replied, "What, did she have babies or something?"

India squealed, "Yes!"

I went over to look, and sure enough, Anna had 9 pink, wriggling babies stuffed into a corner. So there are now 19 of us:

• 10 hamsters
• 5 humans
• 4 fish

It's like Noah's Ark in here.

PS: In a few weeks we'll have some baby hamsters to give away.

Chutzpa with a Capital CHUTZ

From today's Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of humorist Leo Rosten, born in Lodz, Poland (1908). His masterpiece was The Joys of Yiddish (1968), an unofficial lexicon of Yiddish words, phrases, and rhetorical devices, illustrated with proverbs, quotes, and jokes.

It was Rosten who first set down in print the famous definition of chutzpa as, "That quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan."

My favorite word in that definition is "enshrined."

How Good Albert Pujols Is

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, this tidbit:

With Sunday's two hits, including his first home run of the season, Pujols avoided the ninth hitless series of his seven-year career.

The Astros series was the 310th in which Pujols has appeared. Of his eight hitless series, two occurred in two-game series last season against the Cincinnati Reds and New York Mets.

Seven years ... and he's gone hitless in a series only 8 times. You figure in a 3-game series, a player will get about 12-15 at-bats. Plus you have to take into account the days when he doesn't play, plus the fact that they play more 2-game series than they used do.

And that's just amazing.

Some Things Make No Sense #2

Sometimes you come across a factoid that's a plain-old headscratcher. I read this today in a report on food safety:

USDA has historically outspent FDA in food safety activities despite the fact that it regulates approximately nine times fewer facilities. This imbalance in spending is also noteworthy considering that the food products USDA regulates account for almost four times less consumer spending, and are tied to about two times fewer foodborne illness outbreaks than those for which FDA is responsible.

For the record, USDA regulates meat, poultry and eggs. FDA regulates pretty much everything else. I guess the lesson here is: buy lots of meat, poultry and eggs.

On Easter

Yesterday was Easter. So the Writer's Almanac said:

The word "Easter" comes from an ancient pagan goddess worshipped by Anglo Saxons named Eostre. According to legend, Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became our Easter Bunny.

Eggs were a symbol of fertility in part because they used to be so scarce during the winter. There are records of people giving each other decorated eggs at Easter as far back as the 11th century.

Hmm - I can think of at least one other reason why eggs would be considered a symbol of fertility ...

What To Do With Me When I Die

Turn me into a diamond!

Apparently you can really do it. You just subject someone's ashes to extreme heat and pressure, wait a few months, and voila! You have been turned into a diamond.

A court in Germany didn't let this woman turn her dad into one, but I think it would be awesome. I'm not kidding, either.

Anna

Ladies and gentlemen, we have an accidental hamster.

Yesterday evening, Quinn and I went to the park, where we discovered three hamsters that someone had dumped in the playground.

Rather than leave the poor things there, we made a quick trip to Petco and bought a hamster cage and supplies.

By the time we got back, we could only manage to rustle up one of them. Quinn named her Anna, after one of the stepsisters in the Cinderella story - you know, Anna, Lana, and Banana.

So ... we have a hamster. Anna.

Who Moved Our Car?

Yesterday, April Fools' Day, the strangest thing happened as the girls and I were leaving the library. In the parking lot I did a double-take because I was sure that someone had moved our car. This is our car:

A white '94 Olds Cutlass Ciera, license plate number G24 5403.

A few spots away from ours was this car:

A white '94 Olds Cutlass Ciera, license plate number G24 5043.

How very strange.

I Never Liked This Store Anyway

Circuit City is firing 3,400 of its in-store workers because they make too much money.

Generally speaking, these would be people who have worked for the company a long time and have accumulated raises over the years, like these two guys, who have worked there since the days of blank cassettes and boomboxes.

But don't cry for them - they can apply for their old jobs back, at a lower pay rate, after a waiting period of 10 weeks. I can only presume that the expectations for their job performance will be lower, too.

As for me, I'm not shopping there anymore.

How Not to Get Older

Last night on the Charlie Rose show, a panel of scientists were talking about new basic research on the aging process.

The short of it is, they've discovered certain genes that regulate the aging process. Apparently they're basically the same set of genes in all living things. One scientist at the University of Wisconsin has studied a group of rhesus monkeys since 1989. The study is pretty simple: The control group of monkeys eat a regular diet. The test group of monkeys are fed a diet in which calories are reduced 30 percent.

They've discovered over the years that the monkeys who have had their calories restricted are healthier and are showing fewer signs of aging.

Now, why would that be? The answer is also pretty simple and quite logical:

From an evolutionary standpoint, the idea is that, when food is scarce, animals' bodies (controlled by their genes) go into a kind of protective "standby" mode. They don't age as fast and they conserve all the energy they can. This allows them to stay alive until food is more plentiful and they have enough energy to breed and raise their young.

It makes perfect sense that these kinds of "conservation, anti-aging" genes would be selected in all kinds of creatures, because all animals have to deal with privation from time to time.

So ... controlling what you eat really is the secret to staying young and healthy longer. (Exercise helps too, of course.)

Local School Makes Good

I'm glad to see ISU on a list like this:

Concern over global warming has more U.S. college students looking into careers in alternative energy, leading U.S. universities to add new courses on clean energy technologies and the environment.

U.S. schools targeting green technologies and eco-friendly programs include Middlebury College, Harvard University, Dartmouth College, Williams College, Illinois State University, and the University of California at Davis.

It makes me wish I'd finished my master's degree there.

Icky ...

is the only word that expresses my feelings about this.

Some Things Make No Sense

Today, in my Yahoo e-mail account, I got a message from Yahoo Sports. This is not unexpected, because I have signed up for a fantasy baseball team through Yahoo.

Here's the thing, though. The message got diverted into my spam folder.

So ... apparently, Yahoo thinks that they themselves are guilty of spamming me.

You'd think they'd have the spam filters set better than that.

The Songs, They're Silly

From Mari-Rose, "Songs to Wear Pants to"

I Like This Band

Sloan

Close Call

I'd never heard this before. From today's Writer's Almanac:

On this day in 1989, a mountain-sized a steroid passed within 500,000 miles of Earth. According to NASA, this was a very close call. It would have hit with the strength of 40,000 hydrogen bombs, created a crater the size of the District of Columbia, and destroyed everything within 100 miles in all directions.

I'm glad it didn't. 1989 was a really good year for me.

Voxtrot!

Voxtrot's debut full-length album comes out May 22.

New Willy Mason Album

Willy Mason's new album, "If The Oceans Get Rough" has its domestic release today.

Yay!

12 Million Muggles

Scholastic is going to print a first-run of 12 million copies of the last Harry Potter book.

For comparison, that's the same number as the all-time sales of The Beatles' Abbey Road.

Song Title of the Day: March 14, 2007

"Man I Hate Your Band" by Little Man Tate.

It's a great song, too.

Happy Pi Day

India revealed to me yesterday that today is "Pi Day." It took me a while - I thought she was saying "Pie Day," but after giving it some thought I finally realized that today is:

3.14

Happy Pi Day!

(It's also my mom's birthday.)

Bumper Sticker Oddity

Dropping the girls off at school yesterday morning, I saw one of those bumper stickers on a car that said something like, "Don't laugh at my car. My reward is in Heaven."

The thing is, it was a lot nicer and newer car than anything we have. In fact, I think you could sell all of our vehicles and not end up with enough money to buy that car - used.

My CD Wish List

Updated March 14, 2007:

Okay, here we go. I need to keep this someplace, and here it is. Right now it's on post-it notes, all over the place. Here's the list, in no particular order. CDs I really really want are in bold:

• Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros (not sure of title)
• The Long Winters, "Putting the Days to Bed"
• Michael Franti & Spearhead, "Yell Fire"
• Wilco, "Kicking Television"
• Cold War Kids, "Robbers and Cowards"
• The Walkmen (the newest one, something like 100 years or 100 miles or something)
• Neko Case, "Live in Austin"
• Gomez, "How We Operate"
• Badly Drawn Boy, "One Plus One is One"
• Badly Drawn Boy, "Born in the UK"
• Catfish Haven, "Tell Me"
• Voxtrot, "Raised by Wolves (EP)"
  
• Chin Up Chin Up, "This Harness Can't Ride Anything"
• M. Ward, "Post-War"
• Kathleen Edwards, "Back to Me"
• White Whale (not sure of title)
• Arcade Fire, "Funeral"
• Arcade Fire, "Neon Bible"
  
• The Decemberists, "Castaways and Cutouts"
• The Decemberists, "The Crane Wife"
• Calexico, "Garden Ruin"
• Amos Lee, "Shout Out Loud"
• The Shins, "Wincing the Night Away"
• Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, "Living with the Living"
• Wilco, "Sky Blue Sky"

So...there you go.