CALL ME SNAKE

For a number of years, Spooky World and me were as likely a combination as Lewis&Martin and Green Eggs&Ham. But last year Spooky World was torn down and its parts sold off to the lowest bidder. Now it's starting to look like another Halloween without Spooky World. (Note: Please don't make a habit of this!) Rumors have circulated on this blog, and in the blogosphere in general, that Spooky World was moving to a new venue. But that is not to be--at least for 2005. Maybe in 2006, they say. But are they right? And, if so, who are "they"?

The way things are shaping up now, it seems that if you need your annual fix of the "House of Fangs," and want to spend some quality time with the Killer Klowns, Disco Ghosts, and the whole horrifying retinue, you'd better stop by my place which is fast becoming a low-rent Spooky World unto itself. But don't come right away. I need some time to mess up the place. Trash it out real good so that it's guaranteed to send any neat freak into a state of total panic. Hang on--I'll have this pit, or perhaps I should say dive, ready in no time. Oh shit--I mean, oh good--I just spilled a vat of fake blood. Now if I can just find my ersatz vomit I'll be all set.

Last month in the Boston Phoenix, media columnist Mark Jurkowitz wrote: “journalists now smell blood in the waters of Bush’s troubled second term.” And this was before the Harriet Miers fiasco, the Scooter Libby embarrassment, and the ongoing investigation into the Valerie Plame leak case. I, too, am smelling blood and (without sounding too violent) would like to see some heads roll, especially the big fat ones belonging to Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. Wouldn’t that be special, to paraphrase the Church Lady.

While it’s true the deceit involved in this case pales in comparison to other lies told by Bush and his surrogates (superiors?), the infractions are indeed major compared to the lies Clinton told about his relationship (and relations) with a former White House intern. I can’t believe this business started and ended with the “Scooter.” But from what I’ve heard, Patrick (“Fearless”) Fitzgerald just might be the man to determine how far, and how high, this thing goes.

"Another one bites the dust," a wise Queen once sang. Harriet Miers, as everyone knows, has stepped down. Apparently, the fact that she went to church religiously--and if not "religiously," at least faithfully, and if not "faithfully," at least regularly, and if not "regularly," at least occasionally--was not enough to convince some folks that she was qualified to hold a seat on the highest court in the land. She clearly appeared to be in over her head, which has been the case with many Bush appointees. The man ostensibly running our government holds government in ill regard and picks people accordingly. It's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I don't know how to react to yesterday's news. I don't for a minute think she deserved to be a Supreme Court justice. I'm still of the opinion (call me old-fashioned) that a bit of knowledge about constitutional law might be helpful for someone in that position. I'm also happy to see Bush dealt another embarrassing setback. On the other hand, I know he can, and just might, pick someone who would be unquestionably worse and perhaps an outright "disaster." So it looks like we'll be rolling the dice, once again. Les jeux sont fait. Or as the French put it: Either way, we're screwed.

My next-door neighbor, who's in his 90s, told me something this weekend that suggests that guys--or at least some guys--never change, even when they're 90. A couple of years ago, I rented my downstairs apartment to a married couple from Sri Lanka. The husband was an MIT graduate student who worked long hours, whereas his wife didn't have that much to do. So she occasionally visited my neighbor to practice her English and give him a little company. What you might call a "win-win."

When I visited him in the hospital the other day, he reflected on that experience--and reflected on some of the other attractive women who had rented the apartment over the years. He then told me something I hadn't heard before. "When an attractive woman comes into your place," he said, "you have to wonder what she has in mind." Knowing that she was married, he decided to "let her make the first move." I was relieved to hear that he was smart enough, and restrained enough, to do that. I was not surprised to hear that she never did make that first move.

I hope my neighbor, who's now facing some serious health problems, recovers soon. But I hope he never loses that drive that has undoubtedly been with him since adolescence--we're talking at least 80 years. Old habits die hard, as they say.

I live in an intellectual burg where even the exterminators are philosophers. Earlier today I spent an hour with one such professional, who failed to find a single bug of consequence in my home but dished out enough philosophy to make the inspection well worth the $125 fee. "Does your wife sleep on this side of the bed?" he asked, while inspecting our room for hidden pests. "Yeah, why do you ask?" I replied. "Men always sleep by the door," he said. "It's been that way since the Stone Age," he added, with women and children sleeping in back of the cave--at least according to this expert--while men guarded the entrance.

Although my girls are still young, he warned me what I'll be in for a decade from now. "All your troubles will have to do with men," he explained. "You'll have three women MEN-struating. Plus your wife dealing with MEN-opause. Then you'll have your own MEN-tal health to deal with. So eventually, all your women problem will actually revolve around men."

I wrote out the check before he left and suggested that perhaps we'd do the next "inspection" while I lay down on the couch. The way I see it, we all could use a good "debugging" every now and then.

Not that I watch TV, but lately there have been nonstop commercials for the new Nicholas Cage vehicle, The Weatherman, showing our hero continuously bombarded continuously with tossed drinks--Slushies, Big Gulps, and the like--all in the name of humor.(Author's aside: What's a matter? Did they run out of pies?) This looks like a movie in trouble. In fact, I think I saw previews for this movie a long time ago and if I'm right about that, then this definitely is a movie in trouble.

But this isn't one of Call Me Snake's Featured Movie Reviews (a popular Feature, I might add), even though I prefer to review my movies sight unseen. No, I'm writing about weathermen here. I've never been mad enough to want to throw a supersized soda at my local weatherman, but I am perturbed by a trend I've noticed of late. Namely, on the 11:00 News here in Boston, the weathermen have taken to giving the last-minute weather update short shrift. They used to quickly run through the four- or five-day forecast, saying in 15 seconds what they said before in five minutes, and I appreciated that brevity, especially since I often miss the earlier, long-winded version. But now they're becoming very cavalier, almost nonchalant. Instead of predicting the weather for the next couple of days, they might say: "Better pack an umbrella" or "hope you have a good book" and then chuckle, as if that were the wittiest one-liner ever uttered. I don't tend to buy sodas--and the weathermen around these parts don't normally walk around with bows and arrows (as Cage does in the ads). But if these highly-paid folks continue to make light of the weather wrapup and turn it into an amateur hour jokefest, I might start loading up on those beverages. And they might need the Robin Hood gear after all. In which case I say, bring it on.

For those of you who are wondering--and I'm sure many must be though they are too shy to admit it--BLOG.COM was out of commission for part of the weekend (and possibly carrying over a bit into Monday as well) for "routine maintenance." My blog has not been the same since. All my precious "LINKS," which you might call my lifeline to the real world, have been severed, leaving "Call Me Snake" isolated and out of touch--a dangerous situation for a person like myself who tends to get carried away. My personal profile is gone, as is my mug shot. My treasured "blog stats" have also vanished, and other features you've come to depend on have changed as well, if not disappeared outright.

Rest assured that we are working on this problem so that Call Me Snake will soon have the same, familiar, cozy feel you've come to depend on. I'll only be a minute. A jiffy really. Won't be long now. Just click your heels and count to whatever it is you're supposed to count to. Any real (non-imaginary) number will do, I expect. And while you're doing that, I'll be taking care of things from my end. And before you know it, things will be back to normal. In fact, better than normal. This is going to be a relaunch, as in: Call Me Snake Fully Loaded. (I'm not really "loaded," in case you're wondering. Maybe I should have said: Call Me Snake Slightly Toasted...)

We're often starting new features here at "Call Me Snake," which is something our readers seem to like. We've rarely cancelled a new feature, but I have taken that extreme measure today in terminating the "'Big Al' Watch" feature. There are several reasons for taking this step: First and foremost, our readers just didn't like it--something I've learned both from perusing the "Comments" section, as well as from several focus groups. Frankly, I'm dumbfounded by this reaction, and disappointed, but I can't make people like something, even if--by any rational measure--they should. Some people said that an ankle injury wasn't serious enough to get that worked up over (a bit callous, if you ask me); others claimed to have not even heard of "Big Al," if you can believe that.

Another reason for cancelling "'Big Al' Watch" is that he seems to have recovered from his ankle injury already, leaving us little to "Watch" on that front. In a pre-season tuneup against the Raptors on Friday, Big Al was the "first player off the bench," scoring 8 points and hauling in 4 rebounds in 18 minutes 22 seconds of action-filled play. Against New Jersey on Saturday, he scored 10 points. All of which points to one ineluctable conclusion: Big Al is back and the injury watch, at least for now, is over. It was a great ride while it lasted.

I've been spammed in what I'd have to call the worst possible way. Yesterday I got a comment on an old entry that was not a comment at all: It was ostensibly a list of links to lesbo porn sites. I don't want that kind of thing on my blog. I'd prefer that the content remains wholesome family fair--the kind of thing I'd be comfortable having my kids read, not that I'd let them anywhere near this place. But the list of items posted on my blog were pretty darn obscene--in some cases referring to things I haven't even heard about, though I confess to being curious--and I don't know how to get rid of them. Worse yet, they are not even real lesbo porn links, despite provocative titles that suggest otherwise. The links take you to some news site written in what I believe is Polish--at least I think it's news, and I think it's Polish, but not reading Polish places me at a disadvantage on both those fronts.

Don't worry, I'm doing my best to get rid of the offensive passages as we speak. Blog.com Technical Support is on the case and it should only be a matter of minutes. Yes sir, the problem is under control. Hullo, uh, Technical Support, are you out there? Is anyone home? Hullo, hullo...?

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I live, you never know what's going to happen next. The most mundane activity imaginable, like food shopping, can become an unpredictable, and sometimes intellectually stimulating, event. Last week, for example, I biked over to Whole Foods just before the 10 p.m. closing time to get some last-minute supplies for the kid's school lunches. (I usually launch into an invective at this point about how expensive--i.e., overpriced--the store is, but I'll refrain this time.) I was near the dairy counter when a neighbor and long-time Cambridge resident asked me: "Is soy milk vegan? A vegan is coming to stay with us and I don't know if they drink soy milk." I hemmed and hawed for a bit, not sure how to answer her, when a man in a black suit who looked like he knew what he was talking about came to my rescue. Soy milk, he maintained, was kind of "risky." To play it safe, he suggested, "you're better off with rice milk." I'm not sure what kind of reasoning he used, but at the time the argument seemed persuasive.

A few minutes later, I ran into a well-known civil liberties lawyer and a well-known "lefty" (I'm not talking about his batting stance) at the checkout counter and asked him whether he still thought John Roberts was a reasonable pick, as he had argued so convincingly in the local "underground" paper. He told me he still felt "pretty comfortable" about Roberts. As for the embattled Miers, he did not know much at the time (nor did anyone else, it seems, save for her penpal W.), but thought she was probably less scary than some of the certifiable nut jobs whose names had been bandied about--'people who would lock folks like you and me up in a second."

After making my daily contribution to my credit card debt, I got back on the bike, griping about the exorbitant prices, but glad--at least on this night--that I lived in Cambridge.