CALL ME SNAKE

CALL ME SNAKE will be taking a little siesta, a little hiatus, during which time we will be recharging our creative batteries, reconnecting with long-last family members, and formulating our resolutions for the New Year. We will be back in 2009 to say “Howdy, y’all.”

A few days ago, ABC’s NIGHTLINE continued its slide into irrelevance with a segment that showed how three high school girls were doing their Christmas shopping in the midst of an ailing economy. Two questions come to mind: What did they learn that the  rest of us can benefit from? And can that show sink any lower? Ted Koppel would be rolling over in his grave were he not alive today.

Sure my retirement funds have taken a big hit, the economy is in the toilet, but there’s still one simple thing you can do to feel better heading into the new year. At least it’s made me feel better. I’ve got a big stockpile of toilet paper, and so long as I can keep up with the payments on my water bill, we should be set until well into 2009.

I’m a sensitive Cambridge Guy and will not turn my back on a movie simply because it’s a “chick flick.” But you have to draw the line somewhere. And for me that line seems to be the “Mamma Mia” video. Will I stick to my guns and be a real man? Or will I wimp out and watch it?

It was crowded the other day crowded at my Cambridge barbershop. You might think it’s because Christmas or Hanukkah are coming up. But that’s not it. It’s all because of that Illinois governor with that ridiculous head of hair has given the rest of us mopheads serious pause. I know that’s why I was there–to cut things off before I went the way of the pompadour. And it appeared that several other men waiting for their haircuts were in a similar boat. The pompadour look may be on the way out, but that’s welcome news for barbers who–for the time being, at least–are raking it in.

I’m starting to think that cashier at Trader Joe’s in Cambridge who told me to “stay focused” was some sort of guardian angel. For I went home after that to face the big writing project I had ahead of me. Checking my watch at 11:30, I remembered I was supposed to call a UCLA mathematician at 12:30. So I’d write for another hour before stopping to call him. But I kept going and finished a draft of a project that had consumed me for the better part of two years. When I checked my watch again it was 4:00 p.m.  I called the UCLA guy and apologized for being so late. Evidently, he must have “stayed focused” too, as he’d been working all the time and had forgotten all about our appointment too.

I’m hoping to achieve a big milestone in a project I’ve been working on, off and on, for about two years. I purchased a few items this morning at Trader Joe’s and the cashier said to me, as I was about to leave, “Stay focused,” which struck me as particularly good advice for the day. Indeed that’s why I was food shopping rather than working on my project. And that’s why I’m writing this post now, rather than doing the other thing.

I now realize what was obvious to everyone else–that my supposedly humorous posts about the dearth of Holiday cards in our household was really just a transparent and pathetic attempt to drum up Holiday-style greetings on the web. Sorry, that was a new low for this blog, and I shall endeavor forthwith to raise the bar–or at least try to get it close to ground level.

We made it through mid-December without a real “Season’s Greetings” card, not counting the aforementioned card from Rooter Man. Today we got a thank you card from the mailman for his holiday gift, but that’s not the same in my book as a holiday card. But then the parents of a friend of mine, who live about a thousand miles of here and see us once every five years, somehow got the idea to send us a card. So the perfect record, which had held up so well is now blown. Still it was a good run while it lasted.

My neighborhood is the noisiest in Cambridge, based on statistics presented in the Cambridge Chronicle. Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. For I happen to know that one of my neighbor’s is extremely insensitive and intolerant about noise and she, singlehandedly, may have called the police every single one of those 500+ complaints in 2007. So maybe our neighborhood is the noisiest. If not, it is certainly the most noise intolerant.

“I saw the coolest thing yesterday,” a bike mechanic told his fellow workers. “This guy has set up a pulley system he can operate on his computers that takes the garbage from the back of his house to the front.”

First Bush apologized for the lack of intelligence regarding Iraq and now Condi’s doing the same. They’re right but not in the way they mean.  It’s not that the “intelligence community” failed them and fed them incorrect data, because we all know it was rigged from the start. If anything it’s that their own intelligence failed them. In addition, the intelligence of the American people (which, I’m told, can never be underestimated) failed us all when our country voted this guy into office not once but twice.

I am shocked and dismayed to learn that the Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, would try to “sell” Barack Obama’s Senate seat for his own personal gain. That’s an outrage, especially for someone like me who hails from the “Land of Lincoln.” It is not Blagojevich’s seat to sell. It’s Obama’s.

With a month and a half left in the “Bush era,” Nightline gets the bright idea we’re dying to see a segment in which Bush shares his views on “Faith and the Presidency.” I don’t know about you, but for me watching that sounds like torture. Not that we’d ever use a word like that with respect to this administration.

I was on the web the other day when I saw a box on the side that said, “Nadis at Amazon: Millions of titles, new and used.” But when I clicked on the link, there were not a million titles. There were a mere 7,482 results, and so far as I could tell, not a single one of them was authored by an actual Nadis. “Did you mean: nazis? Amazon asked.

So far, I’ve received only one holiday card this year, and it just arrived today. It was an unsigned note from Rooter-Man [B.N.V Enterprises, Inc.] wishing me “happiness through this holiday season and throughout the coming year.” As well as many plugged toilets and clogged drains.

I watched a movie from 1993 with a friend tonight who commented afterward, “That’s a tough age.” I wasn’t sure what he meant, so he explained. “It’s not old enough that you’re going to get nostalgic about it. I mean, who wants to see their car from 15 years ago?”

I’m writing about string theory which is why I needed to check out the competition, THE COMPLETE IDIOT’S GUIDE TO STRING THEORY–a book I checked out of the library today. (And yes, the librarian had to shout out as I stood at the front desk: “Hey, have you seen that Idiot’s Guide?”) As for the book, it’s not a bad effort at all and succeeds in making this stuff accessible which is anything but easy. For what it’s aiming to do, I’d call it a great success.

On the other hand, I was relieved to see that it is quite different from the thing I’m doing and the overlap between the two is miniscule. This should not be taken as a putdown of the other book (which, as I said is a creditable effort), but I like to think I’m aiming a little higher here. And asking a bit more out of my (hypothetical) readership.

The last time we spoke my collaborator was doing his business while we talked on the phone. This time he was washing dishes during our half-hour phone conversation, creating an incredible racket during most of it. Is that considered a step up or a step down for me on the respect (or no respect) scale?

I’m not good at decoding so when I got this email the other day I was at a loss:

    Subject:     Re: the subject of CY
    Date:     November 30, 2008 10:26:19 PM EST
    What does he say about the nae F the manifold?

Later I found out that my correspondent had just been careless. His question, in corrected form, is: “What does he say about the name of the manifold?” Now that’s more like it. That’s a question I can really sink my teeth into.