CALL ME SNAKE

(Inspired by the greatest motion picture of all time. No not PATTON. I’m talking about RUDY.) My wife called the other day when I was kind of in the middle of somethin’. “Sorry honey, I’m talking to the NRA right now. Would you like to say hi…? No…? OK, how about if I call you back later, as soon as I’m done kissing some ass here…? Love ya’.”

A friend of mine, a computer programmer, has been, like me, freelancing for a long time. But last week he traded in his freewheeling consultant status for a regular, 9-to-5 desk job. He sent me this, Dilbertesque missive during his first day on the job: “Help! I am back in a cubicle!”

My tiddlywinks post evidently struck a chord. It was so successful, in fact, that it comes up first when you GOOGLE me, which means I no longer have that embarrassing problem to worry about. What’s more, I was able to do that without writing about my affair with Paris Hilton. (Thanks anyways, Gatemouth.) No, I did it the old-fashioned way, by writing about tiddlywinks. Which brings us to today’s CELEBRITY GUEST COMMENT, penned in this case by none other than my COUSIN BOB (see link on right). So without further ado, take it away Cousin–the “conch” is yours, so to speak…

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COUSIN BOB: Surprised you didn’t know this, Cousin Steve. Years before I competed in the World Championships of Rock, Paper Scissors, brother Kenny had his heart broken at the national tiddly wink trials. He was just a wink and a tiddle away from making the national time.

To this day, Kenny blames his loss on one an unscrupulous act by one of MIT’s finest winkers of all times. Kenny doesn’t talk about it much any more– too emotional. However, just after it happed he told me the full story.

According to Kenny, his finest squidger was messed with just before the semi-finals. The squidger looked and felt just as it did before. Kenny knew it was messed with because it was warm and smelled like Old Spice — the telltale sign that it was what they used to call… (TO BE CONTINUED)

Last night, I had about 15 minutes before the weather and sports came on at 11:18. So I sent an email to arguably the world’s most respected string theorist with a question–related to the project I’m working on–that has been gnawing at me for some time. I heard back from him instantly, before the weather came on, and have spent the better part of the day trying to understand his response. Not that he wasn’t clear. No, I’m sure he was perfectly clear in what he said. I just don’t have a clue as to what it means. (Which reminds me of a cartoon I liked as a youth: “Mr. Natural, what does it all mean?” “It don’ mean shit. It don’ mean shit…”)

A friend in Switzerland asked me to write about the annual “Mystery Hunt” at MIT, which is something like the Olympics of puzzle-solving. I spoke with a veteran of that event yesterday who told me something I was not aware of, despite the fact that I have been to MIT literally hundreds of times–for volleyball, a research fellowship, and for journalistic and other work. We all know MIT is famous for science and engineering and is consistently rated one of the top universities in those areas. But the Institute is much more than that, he told me: “MIT has produced some of America’s top tiddly winkers.”

I complained the other day about GOOGLE listing the thing that I least wanted other people to see first. Yet I know that others have it even worse. I’m going to meet with a professor later this week for an article I’m writing. When you GOOGLE him you get several comments from students saying he was the worst teacher they ever had in their lives. By that standard, I’m doing OK. Thank you professor. We haven’t met yet and you’ve already made my day.

A week or so ago I had an ill-advised post for which I took considerable (well-deserved) heat. I was hoping the thing would blow over but my friends at GOOGLE won’t cut me any slack. It’s the first thing that comes up under my name. I’m hoping to move on, put the whole thing behind me, but GOOGLE won’t let me. Come on guys, give me a break, please? As the Rodney once said: “Can’t we all get along?”

I don’t really know. Fortunately I’ve never met any of these people. Yet I think the charismatic, murderous kingpin–such as the character played by Jack Nicholson in The Departed (supposedly modeled after Whitey Bulger)–is a literary conceit. Do guys like that really go around spouting literary allusions and, through their learned discourse, carry on like deranged college professors? Or are they, in more brutish fashion, using intimidation and fear to get others to do their evil bidding? I think the latter but fortunately I don’t really know. I’ve never met any of these people.

We enter our house by means of an exterior stairway and deck, which I painted today while our kids were at school and tenant was at work. My daughter questioned me about it on her way to school this morning. “You’re going to paint the deck today?” she asked. “Don’t you work on Thursdays?” Once again, I’ve been shot down by an eight-year-old.

Last week I spoke momentarily to the secretary of MIT’s Center for Theoretical Physics (CTP), trying to locate a visiting physicist from Stanford. This week, I was back at CTP again, trying to locate another physicist from Stanford. The secretary, who’d only seen me for a total of 10 seconds in her life, acted like I was an all-too-familiar fixture at the center. “He’s upstairs, in the same office his wife was in,” she told me without looking up.

Today, meanwhile, I was at Harvard’s high-energy physics center, talking to a visiting scientist from Princeton. One of Harvard’s string gurus popped into the office in the middle of the interview and shot me a look that said: “Oh, it’s you again.” So it’s clear that I’ve now become an official string theory groupie. That’s not the goal I set for myself when I embarked on a writing career many years ago. Still, that might be one step above being a group theory stringie.

I’m not a runner. Or at least I have not run on a regular basis in more than 20 years. Yet I was asked three times in the last week if I run marathons. I even told an athletic young guy who worked at a food store that I did not run yet he insisted on asking my opinion about the durability and shelf life (or should I say street life) of running shoes. So I’m going to say it right now: I’m not a runner. I don’t do marathons. Still, I have to admit, I’d rather be mistaken for a long-distance runner than for a heroin addict. So if, after all this, you still want to call me a runner, go right ahead. But please don’t sign me up for the Boston Marathon.

Snake took a big hit the other day and perhaps he had it coming to him. One woman skewered him about a sensitive (and possibly insensitive) post he wrote. Hers was a virtuoso riposte worthy of “Celebrity Guest Comment” status were it not so embarrassing for the editor-in-chief of CMS. It also seemed advisable not to bring any more attention to a post that was, from the outset, dubious at best. Later that same day, for different reasons, my wife called me an “ignoramus.” So you might call it a rough outing for the Snakester. On the other hand, looking on the bright side, the last time my wife used that term, she called me an “ignoramus moron.” By that standard, I could claim to have achieved a modest improvement.

I was chilled earlier today when I saw a woman dressed in a burqa, with only a tiny slit around her eyes, get into her car at a grocery store parking lot and drive off onto our city streets. Her field of view was extremely restricted and she had absolutely no peripheral vision. I like to be open-minded about things. People should be able to dress how they want, within reason. However, when those people are driving on public thoroughfares, it’s nice to know they can actually see and that their vision is not severely impaired due to a religious dress code. I say this as a guy who’s often on the side of the road riding his bike, trying to stay alive.

 

A big storm that hit Chicago a couple of weeks ago left a lot of homes flooded, including my parents’ place. Among the losses was a large collection of MAD magazines that my brother and I have held onto since the 1960s. A collector told my mother they were worth $5,000, but she was unable to collect anything for them after the flood and had to throw them out. I’d forgotten all about those magazines and was certainly not counting on money from their sale. Yet when I heard how much they were worth–and all that was washed away in the storm–it hit awfully close to home…

After spending most of my days and nights thinking about string theory–and the mathematics underlying it–I recently had the opportunity to write two articles on global warming and, I have to say, global warming was a welcome diversion. Calling what might be the biggest human-induced natural disaster of all time a “welcome diversion” might be considered callous, so let me try to explain. The thing I like about global warming, at least from a journalistic perspective, is that it’s pretty easy to understand. The thing I find challenging about string theory is that it’s awfully hard to understand, even for the world’s top practitioners, let alone for a floundering scribe in way over his head. That’s why thinking about global warming for a couple of days came as a great relief; for the first time in a long while, I actually felt as if I knew what I was talking about. Of course I didn’t but during that brief hiatus, at least I thought I did.

Earlier this year–as depicted in the new documentary, “Running the Sahara”–three runners ran 4,300 miles through the Sahara Desert, and across the entire African continent, in 111 days, which comes out to nearly 40 miles per day. (You do the math.) I like the beach. And I like playing beach volleyball. But this sounds like too much for me. Let’s call it another sport you won’t catch me doing…

If you ask me, the title of the forthcoming movie, “The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford,” reveals too much. In fact it gives away the whole story. On the other hand, it does not give away the real story. For was Robert Ford the real coward? From what I heard, Jesse James was a murderous coward who has, unfortunately, been romanticized as some sort of outlaw hero. If what I’ve heard is true, what does that make the man who shot this murderous coward?

Bush surrogate, Frances Fragos Townsend, claims that Osama bin-Laden is “virtually impotent”–hiding out in caves where all he can do is make the occasional video. But why is the Bush administration taunting bin-Laden? If Osama wants to make videos, I say fine, more power to him. In fact, he can make all the videos he wants, so far as I’m concerned. I even know some underemployed TV and video producers who could use the work.

What does President Bush want? Does he want bin-Laden to keep hiding and pop up on TV from time to time? Or would he rather that Osama stage another 9/11-style attack on the U.S.? I know what I’d prefer. But then again, who asked me? I’m not “the decider.”

 

 

Some time ago, I wrote about a nifty film I’d just seen called “3:10 to Yuma,” which came out 50 years ago. I don’t normally do that sort of thing but this taut little drama stood out from the crowd.  I must have been onto something because that same movie has been remade and is now a big new picture starring Russell Crowe, Peter Fonda, and Christian Bale. Was it just a coincidence or are the Hollywood producers reading this blog?

The 1970 bestseller, THE GREENING OF AMERICA, spoke of a new kind of consciousness emerging from the 1960’s counterculture. In the decades since, we’ve seen a cheapening of America with politicians and political candidates now routinely pandering on TV talk shows. Fred Thompson’s announcement that he was running for president on the TONIGHT SHOW, a forum for the lamest of conversations, is a continuation of this trend. Since Thompson appeared regularly on the TV show, “Law and Order,” many Americans are likely to consider him the “Law and Order” candidate, given the level of analysis that goes on these days.

I was waiting for the reference librarian at the Cambridge Library to order a hard-to-find math/physics text. Two people were ahead of me. The woman turned to the man behind her and said: “You seem to be in a hurry. Why don’t you go ahead of me?”

“I’m not in a hurry,” he replied. “I’m retired.”

“I’m retired too,” she said.

“Well I’m NOT retired,” I chimed in. “Mind if I go ahead?”

Yesterday President Bush said that Iraq was now “safer,” which makes me think I’d hate to be in a place he considers “dangerous.”

It’s vain to carry on about “blog stats” but something is puzzling me nevertheless. I took a break from blogging in the latter part of August due to a midwest trip and the familiar sudoku backup problem that hit me upon my return. In the past week, I’ve been posting pretty regularly. Yet the average number of readers per day was at about the same level during the my 13-day hiatus as it has been since I’ve been back online. Which makes me wonder: What’s the point of publishing these things if the same number of people visit the blog regardless of whether I write anything new? As they say on those radio call-in shows that NPR is so fond of: I’ll talk my answer offline.

Yesterday my 5-year-old asked: “What’s ___’s wife’s name?” But I couldn’t figure out who she was referring to. After asking her to repeat herself several times, I finally understood the question to be: “What’s God’s wife’s name?” Unfortunately, I have no idea how to answer a question like that.