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."