CALL ME SNAKE

Earlier this week, Michael Brown, the deposed head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), was questioned about an apparent breakdown in “Emergency Management” before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina struck. Brown blamed state and local officials for his managerial lapses, claiming these officials, and their surrogates, were less manageable than Arabian horses. How’s that for a parting shot?

And now for a real parting shot. Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, the MVP candidate of choice, did it again last night. No he didn’t hit a “walkoff” home run–about which much has been said in these pages–but he did the next best thing. He hit a game-tying home run in the 8th inning and a “walkoff” single in the bottom of the ninth to end the game. I feel sorry for pitchers forced to face Ortiz in clutch situations. He’s been nothing short of phenomenal. This I believe. And in that assessment, I’m definitely not alone.

They say a writer’s in trouble when he starts recycling his own material, but I’ve long since stopped worrying about being washed up. Which is why I’m taking an exchange I had a week or so ago with Gatemouth, which had been buried in the comments section, and putting it up front. There’s a word for what I’m doing, and it’s called self-plagiarism. And if that isn’t a word, it ought to be.

But getting back to the exchange I’m rescuing from the “back of the book,” as it were: At the time, Gatemouth and I and others had been discussing Bush’s failures of “leadership” (I use the term advisedly), as evidenced most recently by his response (or lack thereof) to the Katrina disaster. Given all the president’s screwups, lies, deceptions, and general incompetence, someone else speculated, shouldn’t a Democrat have a cakewalk to the White House in 2008? Gatemouth offered a cautionary note, sagely pointing out that, so far, none of the people mentioned as possible candidates have showed any “real gumption”–a problem that plagued the Democratic contenders in the last two presidential elections. I agreed with him by and large, as I generally do, and am still grateful for his role in helping me come to terms with an incipient TV issue before it became an actual problem.

Despite my gratitude, I took issue with part of his statement. Al Gore, I countered, showed a lot of gumption in 2004. In fact, you might say he was the epitome of gumption during that election. The only problem was, he ran for office in 2000.

So far as I can tell, the “low-carb” or “no-carb” craze that gripped the nation a few years ago has abated, and although I’m not an overtly religious man, I say thank god for that. The latest trend I’ve observed, while doing field research at the local supermarket, is a resurgence of whole grain products in the strangest places. Nabisco has gotten on this bandwagon in a big way. Now there are whole wheat Wheat Thins which strikes me as a sensible idea. Whole wheat Fig Newtons is another entry into the field. I haven’t tried them yet but I’m keeping an open mind on it. (Offhand, going with my “gut” feeling, I think the concept just might work.) In addition, we now have Whole Wheat Chips Ahoy.

That’s where I think Nabisco may have stepped over the line. Has anyone in the world’s history ever considered Chips Ahoy healthy? It’s a fine product, although it also happens to be what I consider the epitome of junk food, right up there with Doritos (another of my favorites), Snickers, and the like. Can’t we just enjoy these small indulgences without trying to make them “healthy” too? Or, to put it more redundantly, can’t we at least have some small allotment of pure, unadulterated junk food in our daily diet, to satisfy whatever psychological need that satisfies, rather than trying to load them up with whole grain, fiber, vitamins, and minerals?

I don’t claim to have all the answers on this, but I’m not sure I’m ready for Whole Wheat Chips Ahoy. I suppose I could do a simple test and try them, see what they’re like. That approach, however, is too obvious. Too pat. I’d much rather do my complaining (and speculating) from a position of ignorance.

Can you believe all the so-called “news” coverage concerning the new Geena Davis vehicle, “Commander in Chief”? The Boston Globe, the paper of record, had THREE separate articles yesterday about the show and its significance, including one on the editorial page below a commentary about the inquiry into Bill Frist’s stock deals. I heard a similar story on our NPR affiliate yesterday which, like the others, highlighted the “importance” of having a woman president on TV. The key point, of course, is that the show is entirely fiction, as is “24,” which features (or featured–I don’t know the latest since I don’t watch that program, nor did I see Commander in Chief) a black president. Until we have an actual black president or woman president or vice president, I won’t call it news. I’ll just call it another TV show I don’t watch.

Now for some real news: Don Adams (“Agent 86″), the star of “Get Smart,” died on Sunday at the age of 82. Get Smart, a James Bond spoof that aired in the 1960s (back when I did watch TV), was one of the funniest shows I ever saw. It’s hard for me to believe that Don Adams (who wrote poetry on the side, according to his co-star, Barbara Feldon) was 82, as I always remember him as a relatively young man in his 40s. That’s how he appears in the Get Smart reruns. For me, it’s unsettling to realize that the show debuted 40 years ago, when I was just 10. Adams evidently got older in the intervening decades, and I did too, but I haven’t laughed any harder since his show was cancelled in 1970.

My wife knew one of the local weatherman (call him “Eddie”) as a kid growing up in her neighborhood, where she grew up as well, if that makes any sense. When Eddie made the leap to the big time, from weekend weatherman to the 11:00 news, I watched his forecasts religiously. He’s improved his delivery a lot over the years, avoiding some of the missteps (awkward choreography, blocking the view on the weather charts, for example, and other no-no’s), and overcoming the stiffness that plagued his act in the early days. I feel unfaithful saying this but for the last year or so, I’ve been watching his Channel Five rival, “Harvey,” instead. Not for any good reason. I mean, I can’t remember Eddie blowing a big forecast and, as a result, my big picnic got rained out. But for some reason, again not based on any sound statistical analysis, I have more confidence in Harvey, who’s a bit older (though not OLD), and looks more like a weatherman, whatever that means. I can’t say Harvey’s forecasts are more reliable, and in fact they may be more fallible, but for me, at least, they have the ring of truth. When it comes down to it, he may not know a thing about meteorology but he’s more comfortable on camera–and perhaps more comfortable in his own skin, as they say. So for now I’m sticking with Channel Five.

That said, I’d like to see all the stations reduce their forecasts from the standard five minutes to 30 seconds or less. And we don’t need a weather forecast three times in 30 minutes–a preview forecast followed by the “main” forecast and then the wrapup. Nor do we need our weathermen to be–or feebly attempt to be–standup comedians. Personally, I can do without the patter. Just a forecast, and preferably an accurate one, would be fine.

The more I think about that contract I signed, giving the publisher rights to my work (or I should say works) “throughout the universe,” the more like a sap I feel. But then I think, “Hey wait a minute! Look on the bright side. You’ve always wanted to part of something bigger than yourself. This is your chance.” Welcome to the universe, in other words. It gives me kind of a cozy feeling.

At times when I get annoyed, feeling that the publisher overreached just a bit, I can always take comfort in the notion of a “multiverse”–the idea that our universe is but one in an endless number of universes. I’m not making this up: Multiple universes are an almost standard part of inflationary cosmology, as well as central to ideas related to the string theory “landscape.” (More on that later.) So if the theorists behind the multiverse concept are correct, that publisher only has rights to my work in one universe–one out of an infinite number. Looking at it in that light, they don’t have much. And I’m having the last laugh.

I’ve been wasting a lot of time of late (which should come as no surprise to readers of this blog who don’t know me when I’m not wasting time), filing claims for an $18 million writer’s class action lawsuit. This has involved tearing apart my office, looking up contracts I’ve signed over the past decade or two with various publishers. One I stumbled across in my research even had the audacity to seek the entire copyright “THROUGHOUT THE UNIVERSE (emphasis added), in any and all media and forms of publication.” I guess you’d have to call those terms rather expansive. Being farsighted, the publishers realized that limiting the contract to “throughout the galaxy” wouldn’t have done it, as tens of billions of years from now, the Milky Way is destined to merge with other members of the so-called “Local Group,” rendering that language (“throughout the galaxy”) ambiguous.

Although some mothers embrace the term, I always found the “soccer mom” label somewhat derogatory. I vowed to never go there, which for me should have been easy since I’m not a mom. But guess what happened? I became the next worst thing: a soccer dad. It happened for the first time this morning–my daughter went to her first youth soccer league practice and scrimmage. And I was one of those guys shuffling around on the sidelines, with absolutely nothing to do, for an hour and a half. Couldn’t they get through all of what they do in an hour? Then us parents wouldn’t have to worry about bringing a snack and beverage for all those needy (greedy?) kids. But hey, I’m not going to complain. (That wouldn’t be like me.) I’m glad my girl has discovered soccer at the ripe old age of six, which is quite a few years earlier than her old man (even when he was a boy) did. And despite my recent change of status, I can still look down my nose at the rest of the soccer moms. My daughter and rode our bikes to the field while they all piled into their SUVs.

Sorry if I’m feeling put upon these days, but my homework schedule has become intense of late, on top of all the other things I’m supposed to do and still try to fit in a couple of minutes of sleep each day (doctor’s orders!). I shouldn’t say “my” homework schedule since, technically speaking, it’s the homework of my 6-year-old daughter who started 1st grade three weeks ago. The first week was great but then the homework kicked in–every single day of the week, plus an extra load on Friday, just to make sure you don’t have a moment’s relaxation over the weekend. I never had homework in 1st grade. Why is my daughter, a public school student, getting it every single day?

When I was a kid during that whimsical era dominated by the Cold War, we were in lockstep competition with the Soviets. But there aren’t any Soviets around these days, in case you haven’t noticed. Next there was the “made in Japan” scare. Our kids had to work extra hard in school so that at least one thing was still made in the USA, even if that meant it was actually manufactured in Thailand. But the Japanese have their own problems too, from what I’ve heard.

So that leaves the usual culprit, our “Education President” and his so-called “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) policy. Informed educators (as opposed to the unformed ones) uniformly consider NCLB to be a joke. The only thing it does accomplish is to waste most of our educational effort on largely worthless standardized tests. Which is why my 6-year-old has homework every night. Which is why I don’t have any time to watch television anymore, assuming I was the sort to watch television, which I emphatically am not. But when you throw in the homework time on top of all the other obligations a working parent has to meet, there really isn’t any time to sleep, my pledges to my doctor notwithstanding. So I’d like to register my own small protest against No Child Left Behind (though I won’t be setting up a tent in Crawford), while suggesting a name change that describes the program more accurately: No Parent Left Asleep.

This has been a good week for me, mail-wise, apart from the fact that no checks have arrived while several new bills have been added to the pile that threatens to overrun my office. Earlier this week, I received an advanced copy of one science magazine for which I had the cover story and, to my surprise, it read pretty well. That rarely happens after an untold number of editing rounds.

Today, an advanced copy of another magazine–a fierce rival of the first–arrived with another feature article of mine in it, and it looked great with all the graphics, though I was disappointed it wasn’t the cover story. (All right, I shouldn’t be so greedy.”) I read the article just as soon as it arrived, as I know how things can pile up. To my surprise, this one read pretty well too, except for one problem. Or actually two problems: To save space, the word “that” was removed from two sentences. Afterwards, the sentences read poorly, little snags in an another seamless tapestry. Two minor rough spots in an 8-page article shouldn’t be enough to ruin your day–unless you happen to be a fastidious stickler like me, that is. Or should I say–with the “that” removed to save space–”a fastidious stickler like me is.”

Last year, Julianne Moore starred in a movie called “The Forgotten.” It’s about a woman and man who are told after the disappearance of their children that those children never existed in the first place. “Flightplan,” the new Jodie Foster vehicle I hope not to see, is evidently similar: Foster’s son disappears during a commercial flight (should have gone first class) but no one other than her will admit the boy was ever on the flight. Call me old-fashioned but doesn’t it seem weird that two movies would have such similar plots, especially when the plots themselves are beyond-the-pale ludicrous? How can you tell a mother that her son doesn’t exist and expect her to believe it? Especially when she’s traveling with a bag full of Lego blocks, along with other subtle hints such as all the frequent flier miles her son is racking up for the trip, even while he’s safely tucked away in an overhead storage bin.

The same goes for the Moore story. You may forget your kid momentarily, and pull the occasional “Home Alone”–as in going to Europe and remembering him a few days later when you’re thinking of who to send a postcard to–but you’re not going to actually FORGET your kid, as in permanently blotting out his or her existence. That just won’t wash. Which is why I forgot to see “The Forgotten” and will do my best to avoid “flightplan” as well. And if I do have a lapse and remember, please remind me to forget.

I just withdrew some money from the ATM and wrote it down in the “ledger” when I got home. To my surprise, my balance was off by $500 and the discrepancy (not surprisingly) was in the bank’s favor, meaning I had $500 less in the account than I thought. How could that be? I called the bank and after many frustrating dead ends on the convenient, easy-to-use telephone phone banking line, I finally managed to learn about recent activity on the account, which suggested I had failed to write down withdrawals three or four times in the last month. I’m usually scrupulous about that sort of thing (to the point of being called “anal,” though I personally despise the term), and I couldn’t understand how I’d made so many errors in a single month.

Then it dawned on me: Maybe it’s the Red Sox. They’re stumbling of late (still hanging onto 1st place, but just barely) and making tons of errors in the process. Last night Damon dropped one he should have had, Wells failed to cover first, and the shortstop Renteria (known as “Rent-an-Error” on local sports radio with his major-league-leading 29 errors) booted another–all of which contributed to an 8-7 loss to the Devil Rays on a night when the Yankees won with a “walkoff” (a first by rarely-used reserve Bubba Crosby), pulling to within a half game of the Sox. There’s no doubt about it: The errors are going around these days, and it’s even affected my bookkeeping. I need to talk to Terry Francona soon about shoring up that sagging defense, before I lose the home and end up on the streets–maybe in front of the 7-11 I keep talking about–with a tattered Red Sox hat providing my only shelter.

It’s taken roughly half a century, but TV–a medium I do not watch but nevertheless follow (in the same way I follow hockey, etc.)–has finally confronted the important issue of peeing in the dark. The subject was taken up in the ill-fated Blind Justice, a show cancelled last spring, in which Detective Jim Dunbar (played by Ron Eldard) advised another young blind man about how to pee with pride–standing up, that is. “Go slowly, at first, and when you hit the water, let ‘er rip.” Those weren’t his exact words, but you get the drift.

Larry David took up the same subject–from the perspective of a middle-aged sighted man–during the fourth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, recently out on DVD. (I don’t get a kickback but should.) Larry, you see, has to get up in the middle of the night to pee, which is something that happens to middle-aged men, sighted or not. He doesn’t want to turn the light on, which would wake him up, so he pees sitting down–a shameful posture for men. Except his wife sometimes forgets to put the seat down, and on one occasion he falls in, getting his bottom wet and injuring his back as well.

It was a light treatment of an important subject that had not, to the best of my knowledge, been addressed on primetime before. Now that the ice has been broken, I’m sure we’ll all be hearing more about peeing in the dark–and laughing about it all the way to the bathroom.

Last year, President Bush had a vision: to put a man on the moon. A few days ago, NASA confirmed this vision with a plan for doing just that, putting a man on the moon by 2018. But the moon is, well, doggone far and getting a man (or woman) up there (on there?) is going to be pretty doggone hard, isn’t it? But wait a minute? Wasn’t some fellow named Armstrong messing around up there (on there?) back in 1969, almost 50 YEARS before NASA’s current target? Well, if we could do it once–or actually several times–we should be able to do it again, right? Maybe not. Back in the 1960s, NASA’s space program attracted some of the best minds in the country. The agency has come down more than a few pegs since then. But maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to do what we did 50 years before. The key, the experts at NASA say, will be to use old-fashioned technology. In the meantime, “visionary” projects like this will drain money from scientific space missions that everyone knows yield far greater payoff.

But then again nobody cares about my visions. I say maybe we can get an airplane to fly again at Kitty Hawk. We missed the 100-year anniversary (which would have been 2003) but we can always shoot for 2053. Or at least we can dream…

Well, the President made his P.R. address in the Big Easy yesterday and those NPR commentators (now we know what the “PR” in NPR stands for), who should know better, still keep trying to draw comparisons with his “grab the bullhorn moment” at “Ground Zero” on 9/14. (Does that date, 9/14, ring a bell? I’ll give you a hint: Three days after 9/11, Bush came out of hiding to make his kill the terrorists appeal.) Why don’t these so-called “reporters” stop spreading falsehoods? His 9/14 bullhorn speech was nothing more than a load of bull. The war on terrorism is an abysmal failure based on lies. Who can honestly say that Bush has done anything to reduce the threat terrorists pose to the U.S.?

As for Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, the people there will rebuild, because that’s what they do after natural disasters. It seems to be an indomitable part of human nature. And this will happen despite the poor judgment exercised by our president–by appointing partisan hacks to key emergency management positions, as well as to other key posts, in an attempt to bring down the government he ostensibly is charged with leading. So “w,” will you please quit your transparent efforts to boost your sagging ratings in the polls, go back to your vacations and your lame duck term, and let these people get on with the task of rebuilding their cities and towns?

You never know what the cat will drag in, and that will be the subject of a future post. Speaking of posts, the postman in my neighborhood never seems to ring twice, or at all, but he did leave an interesting package in my mailbox yesterday from one Bobby McGehee, who hails from a retirement community in Arizona–a “lush oasis in the desert.” Inside the package was an autographed copy of the book (self-published through AUTHORHOUSE in Bloomington, Indiana) which lays out McGehee’s “New Universe Theory,” or NUT as he calls it.

NUT, according to McGehee, agrees with the “Laws of Physics,” at least as he defines them, whereas the Big Bang Theory, in his estimation, was never compliant. There was no letter or explanatory note accompanying the book, perhaps because the author believes his book is self-explanatory. I don’t know why he sent it to me, how he got my address, or who else was blessed with such a package. But I can say that those who have been worrying about the fate of the universe might take some comfort in McGehee’s conclusions: “The universe is not expanding to its death: It is continuing to grow with vim, vigor, and vitality.”

A friend of mine, the editor of a science humor magazine I contribute to (his identity will remain secret, given the millions of people who fit that job description), had this to say about the book: “Were it not for the fact that it’s perfect, it would be just awful.”

My “walkoff” series has generated an incredible buzz, and I thought I’d add this brief note to an already burgeoning oeuvre. Last night, David Ortiz (of the Red Sox, in case you’re color blind) hit another “game-winning home run.” The blast was called the longwinded “game-winning home run,” rather than a “walkoff,” because it occurred in the eighth innning, rather than the bottom of the ninth, tenth, or eleventh… Any true sports fans out there will know exactly what I’m talking about. In fact, for them this entire exercise has been a complete waste of time, whereas the rest of you, I’m sure, will have found it most edifying.

P.S. This is my LAST post of the day, I promise. (I can’t help it if my creativity is running rampant.)

Hi everyone: I just want to let you know that the monthly bumper sticker contest will be coming up soon–just as soon as I come up with the winning entry. Stay tuned.

P.S. I now realize some previous posts had been “tagged” with the word, “entreprenurial,” which might seem like a misspelling to some. I prefer to call it an entreprenurial spelling.

Gatemouth often says that in desperate times, one can always resort to jokes about flying squirrels. This is such a time for me, so I’m following Gatemouth’s famous dictum. Just the other day, my editor sent back my flying squirrel article, claiming it needed a major rewrite. “Rewrite?” I said. “What do you mean?” He explained that basically the piece was “flat.” I did well on the expository level, describing the biomechanics of gliding and all that, but I fell short, abysmally so, on the natural history level. “This needs something–I don’t know what–something to bring it alive.”

“Not alive?” I asked, incredulously. “You mean like dead? Well…, here’s an idea. How about an article on flying corpses? Does that work for you?”

Turd Blossom, my trusted advisor, asked whether I’d follow up on my success with cosmic strings (see “A [Long Overdue?] Pat on the Back,” September 14, 2005) by writing a monograph about string cheeses. I told him that I hadn’t yet decided upon a second act but I knew that whatever I did, it had to be big. In that regard, string cheeses surely qualify.

Upon reflection, however, I’ve decided to modify that last statement somewhat. String cheeses, in physical terms, are not as big as cosmic strings–the former are typically measured in inches, whereas the latter, which may span the entire universe, are measured in megaparsecs or billions of light-years. However, string cheeses are still much bigger in a financial sense. Despite the vast potential of cosmic strings, no one has yet figured out how to make any money out of them. There’s got to be a way, and you can be sure that, as we speak, some of the best minds in the world are working on that very problem.

I’ve been told to quit carping. “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all” is the basic message–a line that harkens back to my gradeschool days. Well, that shut me up for awhile, but now I do have something, if not nice, that is at least positive to say. And if you wouldn’t call it exactly “positive,” at least I’m not complaining about it. Quite the contrary. The other day, by pure chance, I stumbled across something very nice on the web (what a wonderful place the web can be, when it is wonderful and not awful): A Harvard physics professor, a string theorist by trade, wrote that a current article of mine offers “the most detailed semi-popular account of cosmic strings and cosmic superstrings that I’ve seen so far.” He went on to say I explained “all important details” regarding the two known cosmic string candidates, as well as explaining the evolution in theory “from the old-fashioned cosmic strings of Kibble and Vilenkin to cosmic superstrings,” which is, I immodestly submit, no mean feat.

That might not sound like much, but for an underpaid freelance writer like me, those words made my whole day. In fact, two days later they still make me feel good, and I suspect the effect may carry over for another day or two. I realize a post in “Call Me Snake” would not be complete without some sort of complaint, but at the moment I’m plumb out of complaints.

All my life I’ve had cheap, dimestore-variety sunglasses. As I kid I remember ad campaigns carrying on about: “Who’s the man behind the Foster Grants?” I always assumed they were expensive glasses, out of reach, but this summer Walgreen’s had a “buy one, get one free sale” so I decided to live out a childhood fantasy. They’re still cheap, dimestore glasses ($15 for the pair, with the sale) but just a bit more fashionable than the plastic ones I’m used to. My wife borrowed one of the pairs and lost them on the very first day. That left one pair of Foster Grants left–one chance to fulfill my dreams. I lost that pair too, before I ever wore them. How that happened, I can’t say. Maybe I should blame it on the cats. (More about them later.) So it seems I’m destined, forever, to live out the rest of my days in cheap plastic sunglasses. And I’ll never be that glamorous man behind the Foster Grants.

I realize, of course, that it is absurd to moan about lost sunglasses when tens to hundreds of thousands of people have lost their homes and all earthly possessions. However, by that standard I wouldn’t have anything to moan about. “Then don’t moan,” you might say. Which is a legitimate point, though it would leave me with little to talk about in this blog. I can’t restrict myself to happy thoughts as I tend to be a brooder, a glass half-empty kind of guy. I like to complain. No matter how well things are going, they could always be better…

So getting back to “loss,” and now I mean real loss, the world evidently lost a great musician a couple of days back–one CLARENCE “GATEMOUTH” BROWN–who died at the age of 81 in Orange, Texas, after having left his home in New Orleans to flee Katrina. Brown was a versatile musician–a guitarist and singer who played many other instruments, excelling in blues, jazz, Cajun music, American standards, and other forms. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m not familiar with his work, as I’m more up on the bluesmen from Chicago, my hometown. From what I’ve read since Brown’s death, I absolutely should be familiar with his work. I’m writing this here, as a tribute of sorts, because of a frequent commenter (and regular bumper sticker contest winner) who goes by the moniker “Gatemouth.” I’ve always been curious where that name came from. I should have known. And now I do.

While many, hopefully, are now focused on rebuilding in New Orleans and elsewhere in the ravaged Gulf Coast, President George Bush and his henchmen are desperately trying to resurrect the myth of “courage under fire.” Our President is tanking in the polls for a number of reasons. First he appointed an equestrian man with no emergency management training–or ANY management experience for that matter–to run FEMA, once again showing contempt for the government agencies he has run into the ground. Then there was that little matter of his vacation and how he stayed at his home away from home in Texas for two days after Katrina pummeled the coast of Louisiana and Mississippi. Then there was his decision to finally visit the devastated region from the comfort of his private jumbo jet, where he casually joked about his youthful partying days in New Orleans. For people who’ve lost everything, and even those just observing such examples of leadership in shock and awe, these are the kind of things that could get you a little steamed.

Now Bush is popping up in New Orleans often as part of a P.R. campaign to salvage his failing presidency. Commentators from NPR and even the Brooklings Institution have noted that he’s retrying to recapture the triumphant moment when he “grabbed the bullhorn” at Ground Zero in New York and vowed retribution against the terrorists responsible for the heinous act.

But let’s look more closely at that so-called triumphant moment, the alleged high point of his tenure. What exactly did he do? He showed up in New York City on September 14, THREE DAYS AFTER the 9/11 attacks, after several days of playing duck and cover. How’s that for inspired leadership? His administration ignored warnings about Al Qaeda before the attacks and have done a miserable job in achieving “homeland security”–the deficiencies of which have become apparent in light of the Katrina response. Then he got us into a deadly and futile war in Iraq for a number of reasons–which changed capriciously from month to month–all of which turned out to be lies. But he now claims we’re there to fight terrorism when any terrorism expert knows he’s only made the problem worse.

Crises, Bush claimed in a 2000 debate with Al Gore (from whom he and his brother and the Supreme Court stole the election), are “the time to test your mettle–a time to test your heart when you see people whose lives have been turned upside down.” How has he done?

Yesterday’s “Walkoff, Texas Ranger” post was so successful, I’ve decided to lead with it here–the point being that after my walkoff and walkon (“The Things That Spilled–An Explanatory Note”), I’m going to take myself another little walkoff. In fact, I’m going to walkoff all the way to Chicago (my kind of town) for a good-ole family get-together. (I won’t say more about that right now, but not to worry–it’s all “good stuff.”). I’ll be online again in a few days, after my walkback. In the meantime, y’all take care, y’hear?

A new reader (and we don’t see many of those around here), who goes by the moniker “Digs,” told me repeatedly that he liked the “Things That Spilled” post, and that I ought to do more. I’ve thought about it and would like to resume that popular feature eventually. But I couldn’t see going ahead with that right now. In light of the major spillage that inundated a broad swath of the Gulf Coast, the milk, lemonade, salsa, smoothies, and tomato sauce that frequently adorn the floors in my household seem less than trivial by comparison. This is a little explanatory note to inform people that “The Things That Spilled” feature has been temporarily suspended. But rest assured it will be back soon, just as soon as Dick Cheney–a man of boundless integrity, charisma, and competence–cleans up the mess in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Sorry I’ve been a little busy lately, not taking care of the bottom line which is this blog, first, last, and always. Keeping up the leitmotif from my last derivative blog (is there any other kind?), here’s another thing I wonder about: They used to call it a game-winning home run when the guy comes up in the bottom of the 9th and ends the game with one swing of the hardwood. Now it’s called a “walkoff home run” or simply a “walkoff.” When did this important change in baseball parlance come about and how come nobody informed me about it?

Not that I’m objecting. I don’t mind walkoff as a figure of speech or as a turn of phrase. There is something sweet and punchy about it, like a grand payday of some sort. But I do wonder how it is that words like walkoff take over, have their run for awhile, and then disappear into the sunset. Or walkoff into the sunset, as the case may be, which is just what I’m going to do right now.

This month’s featured Blog Title of the Month is “Things I Wonder About” (see link on right), which has a simple but effective formula: The author, “OldRoses,” lists in serial fashion the things she wonders about. But there are things I wonder about too, and this one seems particularly timely (and would have been even more timely had I posted it a few minutes earlier, but what the heck. I’m not punching a clock here…) But getting back to the thing I wonder about–or, in fact, one of the many things I wonder about (as I have an inquisitive, or should I say inquiring, mind)–which is this: How come they call it Labor Day when hardly anyone works? I might even ask how come they don’t call it “Goof Off Day,” were it not for the fact that I think I know the answer to that one. (They don’t call me “Bright Boy” for nuthin’.) The answer being: Who’s going to give someone a paid day off from work for “Goof Off Day” or “Screw Around Day” or “Screw Around Month” for that matter, unless, of course, you have one of those no-show jobs like President of the United States?

I DON’T WATCH TV BUT… the Larry David show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, is pretty darn funny. Jeff Garlin, who plays the manager, is note perfect. David, himself, is always amusing and the one guy in Hollywood I have to worry about as my wife likes him too much. (All that money ain’t bad either, she admits.)

I DON’T WATCH TV BUT… the first season of Lost, which I’m now watching in reruns (since I never saw the original as I don’t watch TV), is not half bad. I never would have checked it out were it not for the recommendation of a friend who never watches TV.

I DON’T WATCH TV BUT… James Spader and William Shatner can, at times, be brilliant together in Boston Legal. Who knew that the ertswhile Kirk was a virtual comic genius?

I DON’T WATCH TV BUT… Steve Carrell is hilarious and, on his own, almost makes The Office worth watching. I never saw the original British version, which is supposed to be even better, because (you guessed it) I don’t watch TV.

I DON’T WATCH TV BUT… Puppets Who Kill is supposed to be an offbeat, original comedy. I have this on the highest authority from another friend who never watches TV. But I have yet to see the show for two reasons: One, the name kind of spooks me. (I used to have nightmares about puppets who kill when I was a kid.) Two, I don’t watch TV.

I DON’T WATCH TV BUT… justice was indeed blind when network officials at ABC decided to can the short-lived series, “Blind Justice.” What will become of the German shepherd who showed such promise in his role as Hank? Blind Justice was the only police show I liked last year, as well as the only police show I ever watched, because (as you know) I don’t watch TV.

I won’t start complaining about cell phones again because, frankly, everyone has them now and the last time I made similar remarks I took a lot of flak. (“It’s hard, it’s hard…”) So instead I’m going to talk about cell phone ringers or, more specifically, cell phone music selections. I was at my daughter’s swimming class a couple of weeks ago and a mother sat on a bench nearby, wearing a pretty low-cut outfit. When her cell phone rang, it was the music for “Sex and the City.” What was the message there? I’m a slut? (Pardon my French.) One guy had the “Sopranos” theme music on his phone. OK, I get it. “Don’t fu..ug with me.” No problem, “fuh-get-aboud-dit…”

One day, I suppose, I’ll succumb and get my own cell phone. Hasn’t happened yet, but I do have a VCR and answering machine, things I held off on for years, and eventually a cell phone will follow. What music should I pick? That’s a tough one but, for now, I’m leaning toward the “Get Smart” theme song, for those of you who are old enough to remember: “Duh-di-dah-dah, duh–di-dah-dah…” And I’m walking along feeling great, until the door gets me right in the nose…

One of our readers, a creditable blogger in his own right, confessed to having Googled me yesterday. He said I should feel free to Google him as well and that I shouldn’t worry, he’s not the “Christian ventriloquist” (sounds intriguing). That got me curious: What would someone (like him, for example) see if he or she were to Google me. First off, I was suprised to learn that I got more than 4,600 results under my name including a few variants with or without my middle initial, etc. This was up more than 2,000 from the total in March, though why it is up surprises me. There is no good reason and if there is no good reason, there is probably a bad reason. Though I can’t for the life of me imagine what it was. (I have no secrets; my life is an open book, save for a few padlocked doors, safe deposit boxes, and the occasional vault.)

Like many people, I suspect, I can’t resist checking out some of the odd listings that come up under my name. I don’t mind, for example, when a University of Arizona professor puts an article I wrote (“Poetry for Chemists”) on his syllabus for English 102, especially when my name appears alongside Walt Whitman, E.E. Cummings, and Vladimir Nabakov. (All I can say to that professor is: What on Earth were you thinking?)

For me, the biggest shocker in my latest act of self-Google (a short step, I might add, from self abuse) came when another article I wrote, “Cosmic Speed Trap,” which concerns plans for catching ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays, ended up in the Grade 10 Reading Section of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, right after an essay by Russell Baker. I’m not a big fan of standardized tests, though I’m flattered Russell Baker and I were the only ones to make the cut, and I’d hate to see the academic dreams of some kids dashed because I failed to adequately explain what happens when an energetic proton, traveling at virtually the speed of light, slams into our atmosphere. To any readers who fall into this hapless category, please accept my heartfelt apologies. I’m sorry there’s no much I can do about it. In fact, I never would have known about any of this had not the aforementioned reader contacted me and set me wandering down that Vanity Road otherwise known as Google.

Who says George Bush does not care about the common man (and woman)? That is so unfair. When New York City suffered a terrorist attack four years ago, he went to that city himself, within a week, which is impressive given his aversion to “big city livin’.” And this week, the President cut short his celebrated vacation in Crawford, Texas and got right in the trenches, as it were, flying over the ravaged Gulf Coast in Air Force One, where he got an aerial view of people clinging to their lives on rooftops. Fortunately, if that view became too tiresome, the president could always seek refuge in the aircraft’s gym and entertainment center.