CALL ME SNAKE

George Bush is busy packing because he'll be flying later today from our nation's capitol, in Crawford, Texas, to his vacation home on Pennsylvania Avenue. Fortunately, he's got many able-bodied Secret Service agents to pack GORP (a "W" favorite, right up there with s'mores) and other heathful snacks, since you never know what you'll get with airline food, even if you're flying Air Force One. And don't worry, they'll be sure to bring the mountain bike.

I'm currently studying dark energy. You may have heard of it--the stuff that supposedly fills all space, constituting 70 to 80 percent of the matter and energy in the universe. One problem with dark energy is that nobody knows what it is. To learn more about its properties, astronomers are trying to determine the "equation of state parameter," abbreviated as "w," which describes how the energy density changes as the universe expands.

A cosmologist I know at MIT hates the focus on w and never uses the term. What's more, he strongly encourages others to find alternative ways of saying it, apart from the longwinded "equation of state parameter." I finally asked him why he dislikes the expression so much. "It reminds me of the president," he said.

I caught a few seconds of an interview with Dick Cheney the other day. (To my friend, "CheneyLover," this is your cue to chime in.) He said something to the effect that he took the VP job to be more than just a pretty face. And he wanted some responsibilities, he wanted to do more than just wait around as a stand-in in case something ever happened to the Commander-in-Chief. Well, how does running the country sound? Is that enough responsibility? If not, perhaps running the world would suit him better.

I'm just thinking out loud here, as usual. Please don't read anything into it.

Call Me Snake took a break. We were shut down over the weekend for mysterious reasons. "Bandwidth Exceeded" was the message people got when they went to the site. (I know for a fact that at least one person, apart from myself, actually went to the site.) That made for boring reading and I'm sure my "hit count" dropped off over that two-to-three-day period. MarkoPolo suggested that I had pissed off the wrong people who had sabotaged my site, perhaps relating to the series of stories I recently deleted or maybe even antagonized someone in the government (sorry, did I say "torture?"). The explanation turned out to be far more mundane: I had, until now, a free subscription with blog.com and they decided the free ride was over; they wouldn't activate my site until I coughed up some dough. "Bandwidth exceeded," I guess means that I was getting too long-winded for a freebie member. I don't normally give in to extortion (nor do I, as a general rule, negotiate with terrorists), but I decided to pay off, at least for now.

I had wondered whether I should use this interruption as a chance to get out from this blogging thing, but then I concluded I should make the decision myself, rather than have others make it for me. So I'm back in business. And now that I've paid the man, I can be as long-winded as I want. Expect some wordy posts for awhile, until I regain my award-winning gutter journalism stride.

I got an email today from the notorious MarkoPolo trying to figure out what's up with Call Me Snake, as he tried to access the site to write a brilliant comment and instead got the message "bandwidth exceeded." I tried too and was similarly blocked. Marko wonders whether I pissed off some people (related to a recent "case," perhaps?) who decided to shut me down. Did somebody "fry your server," he asked, or "set up a loop?" (whatever that means).

Or maybe, he surmised, I couldn't take the heat so I got out of the kitchen. The following is submitted as a test during this dark period. Did I shut myself down without knowing it or have others stepped in to block Call Me Snake? If you can read this, we can be assured that freedom of speech still prevails (at least to some extent) on these shores, in which case more verbiage will follow.

In a recent comment, regarding the matter of certain improprieties allegedly committed at various libraries in this country, I was called a "member in good standing" of the "gutter press." That stung a little though not too bad, and after awhile I came to like it. At least I'd finally reached some destination after nine months of blogging. (Some might point out that in nine months, people have been known to accomplish much more--giving birth to a sweet, innocent child, for instance. That is surely not the case here.)

Months ago, I was also called "liberal pantywaste (sic)," courtesy of the Comments section of this blog, but that one I kind of liked. It was novel and I'd never seen the expression used, or misused, in that particular way before. The thing that bothered me most in the recent attacks on my prose, and even my personhood itself, was when the critic referred to my "smarmy little posts." My posts may be"little" at times, I agree, but to call them "smarmy" betrays a fundamental lack of understanding. Nor did I appreciate the word "sniggering" applied in this context. The definition of "snigger," according to my dictionary (Oxford American), means to "snicker"--to emit a "sly giggle." But I'm not a giggler, in any way, shape, or form, so this is clearly a case of mistaken identity. The defense rests.

There's been a lot of spillage in our house of late and, accordingly, I'd like to announce a new feature at Call Me Snake called "The Things That Spilled." This item will appear occasionally on this blog and, if demand is as high as I think it will be, it could become a daily feature. Yesterday was a "banner day," as they say, so I'd like to start there since we're not too far into Tuesday yet and I'm sure there's a lot of good spillage yet to come.

Things That Spilled (August 22, 2005)

1. One trash bag filled with cat feces and kitty litter on the landing to our main (and only) entrance.

2. One small bottle of lemonade on the landing to our main (and only) entrance.

3. One glass of lemonade on the floor of our main (and only) kitchen.

4. One glass of milk on the floor of our main (and only) kitchen.

5. One glass of milk on the floor of our main (and only) kitchen.

6. One cup of water on the floor of our main (and only) kitchen.

7. One cup of lemonade on the floor of our main (and only) kitchen.

8. One cup of water on the floor of our upstairs bathroom.

9. One cup of water on the floor of the hallway leading to our upstairs bathroom.

10. One cup of water on the carpeted floor of our three-year-old's bedroom.

Nothing else spilled until the next morning, thankfully.

As some might notice, though most will not, I have done something I've never done before at Call Me Snake: I've deleted a post. Not just one post, but seven--all of which were peripherally related to an individual who is now facing criminal charges. I never meant to "drag this person through the mud," as I was charged with, or to add to his legal difficulties. It all started innocently enough--I was simply intrigued by a name. An idle post about that led to some comments from people in the know, which in turn led to inquiries from reporters at the New Yorker and other newspapers trying to find leads for their own investigations. Things kind of took off from there; I played along for fun, not thinking that for some people this was no joking matter.

I'm sure those who reacted most strongly to my posts have no idea what this blog is about and, in fact, I could not explain it in 200 words or less. But the point I'd like to make, in closing, is that I never meant to defame someone who, evidently, is widely loved and has done many good things in his community. If I unintentionally did so, I apologize. Rest assured that no harm was intended.

Our president interrupted his record-breaking vacation to defend the war in Iraq to the toughest audience he ever faced--15,000 VFW members in Salt Lake City, many of whom were so old they had no idea Bush had ever left his ranch in Crawford, Texas. El Presidente could have saved himself the trip and made the same case to Cindy Sheehan, who has camped outside his ranch for weeks, but he probably knew the argument would never fly, especially to a mother whose son had died fighting Bush's war. Better to save the platitudes for a sympathetic, if doddering, crowd that had no idea what he was saying but could still clap on command. Which he did. A smart move for a guy whose mental acuity is constantly being challenged.

I blew it again last night, in my dream. There I was behind enemy lines--the enemy being the Nazis, who were always the bad guys when I was a kid, long before we knew about Al Quaeda--trying to do in those evildoers. A group of us needed to climb down a mountain and I forgot how to tie a bowline. I asked a friend who, disgusted by my ineptitude, just took off down the rocky face, leaving me standing there, alone and ineffectual, without harming the Nazi cause in the slightest. I woke up feeling worthless, though grateful that my father's generation had taken care of a job I apparently was not up to.