CALL ME SNAKE

I already mentioned (boasted about) the fact that our house was “featured” in yesterday’s Boston Globe. However, I did not realize that I personally was mentioned in the article, in addition to the photo of our house. The article said that “neighbors wanted an urban greenery that would appeal to adults and children…” And by “neighbors,” I’m pretty sure they meant me.

I also had an Op-Ed piece in yesterday’s paper about our governor, Deval Patrick, who has just lined up a fat book deal. While I didn’t actually write the piece (the named author is Joan Vennochi), she said everything I wanted to say on the subject so that I feel my opinion was well represented. More on that subject later, which is worthy of a post on its own. Well, I think that’s enough bragging for now. By my reckoning, by 30 or 45 seconds of fame is just about running out.

We got a call this morning telling us our house was in the newspaper. That made no sense because our house, though it is so “very, very fine,” would never make it into the Real Estate section of the Sunday paper. I figured it had to be the park across the street and, sure enough, I was right. The shot was taken from the back end of the park and somehow our diminutive house made it into the frame. I think I was overstating things when I referred to 15 seconds of fame. One second is more like it.

Our daughter had her first sleepover last night. My wife mentioned that to a friend whose daughter used to have sleepovers often but now does it rarely. “I don’t mind the sleepover part–the dinner, the movie, the wrestling them to bed,” her friend said. “I just don’t want to see those kids again in the morning. For me it’s like one of those bad one-night stands you just want to be over with.”

Around this time of year of the NCAA basketball championships, Friday turns out to be a big day for–who guessed it?–vasectomies. The idea, according to a surgeon at the Oregon Urology Institute, is that after the procedure men are supposed to laze around for a couple of days taking it easy. So why not get it done on Friday and then have two to three days to watch basketball–this time with a perfectly legitimate excuse to watch TV and do nothing else. That’s why on Fridays during March Madness, urology departments are such busy places to be. In case you’ve been wondering…

A year and a half ago, I wrote an article about why woodpeckers don’t get headaches. I can’t remember the details but it has something to do with the cushioning inside the cranium and the musculature on the head and neck. Now the chickens have come home to roost, so to speak. For the past week, a woodpecker has been going steadily at the tree in my backyard–right near my bedroom and office windows. I’m not going to complain, because it’s part of nature and that woodpecker is probably doing something good for the tree and for the environment and for, or against, global warming (I should know after my article though the details presently escape me). Still, I have to say, maybe that woodpecker is not getting a headache from all his (her?) nonstop activity, but I certainly am.

Yesterday I heard an interesting interview of the authors (David Brock and Paul Waldman) of a book critical of John McCain. The media, they claim, has given McCain a free pass. In one month, they found that he was referred to as a “maverick” 1200 times–not by his staff but by so-called journalists who are not paid to do PR for the candidate. Has McCain earned that moniker? Not according to the authors who say that McCain has voted with his party 85% of the time, which puts him squarely in the middle of the pack. By that standard if he’s a maverick so are most of the people in Congress, and we know that’s not true.

Yesterday TV & radio were all abuzz about a new recording that had been recovered from someone high in Al Qaeda’s leadership and guess what? They still want to kill us. Every time someone in Al Qaeda reminds us of that fact, it seems to make front-page news. Maybe we should just take that–their deep-seated desire to kill us–as a fact of life and stop giving all these malcontents so much publicity.

Something odd happened yesterday morning. I was bicycling down Mass. Ave. (that’s not the “odd” part, as I do it many times a day), and a guy whom I’d never seen before called me an “ASSHOLE!” from nearly a block away. Makes you believe in those “action at a distance” ideas from physics commonly ascribed to Einstein. I’m not saying the guy was wrong to call me that, but I do think he was a bit hasty in his judgment.

My youngest daughter was recently invited to a Purim party hosted by an Israeli family at her school. Here’s how the mother who threw the party explained Jewish holidays to the gentiles in the crowd. They’re all kind of similar, she noted. “Wicked people tried to kill all the Jews. But somehow, miraculously, the Jews managed to survive. Now let’s eat!”

I got a call from the other day and, as I was at my desk, I grabbed the phone on the first ring. “The first ring?” a friend said at the other end of the line. “My aren’t we overanxious today.” I was reminded of a scene in the movie “Swingers” in which a guy  asked how long, after getting a girl’s phone number, he had to wait before calling her. I can’t remember the advice he got but he was told that the “industry standard” was something on the order of a week. Which brings up the question at hand: What about telephone rings? If one shows signs of desperation and five will land you in voicemail, what establishes the right tone for the rest of the conversation: two, three, or four? What I’m getting after here, I guess, is this: What’s the “industry standard” for telephone rings?

Glad to hear that the folks at the University of Michigan Health System are earning their keep, as is abundantly evident from the press release they issued earlier this month (March 3, 2008): “Virtual Gaming No Replacement for Real Exercise.” A brief summary of that press release follows: “Video games like Wii Sports and Dance Dance Revolution can play an important role in getting kids off the couch and involved in physical activity. But U-M fitness experts say they are not a replacement for traditional exercise…”

Does that mean we actually have to do some exercise to gain true fitness benefits? Does that mean I can’t burn calories while lying on the couch, stuffing my face with junk food? Bummer!

Those of you who have a pet hissing cockroach–evidently a popular item in Madagascar due to the combination of “gentle nature, large size, odd sounds, and low maintenance”–may find the following news out of Ohio State University sobering: The cockroaches’ “hard bodies and feces are home to many mold species that could be triggering allergies in the kids and adults who handle the bugs.” So how about a goldfish instead? At least that’s the line I’m taking with my own kids.

A couple of months ago I spoke over the phone with a friend who seemed to be in a terrible funk. He apparently wasn’t doing much of anything and was as down, listless, uninspired, as I’d ever heard him. The conversation was upsetting to me because this guy was normally a dynamic individual, pursuing ambitious programs all over the world as well as having the kind of adventures few of us ever experience. We hadn’t talked since until last night, and this time my friend was back to his usual self, describing his recent travels in South America and plans for follow-up expeditions. I don’t know what happened before that put him in his funk nor what transpired in recent months to pull him out of it, but I was grateful to see (hear, learn) that my friend was back in the saddle again.

Last night we paid our respects to our next door neighbor, who died a few days ago at the age of 96, having lived in Cambridge all his life. He lived through World War I, fought in World War II, and lived through the wars that came since. A great neighbor, he kept his great spirits up until the end. Although we were neighbors and friends for nearly 15 years, and spent time playing poker and watching sports on TV, I heard many stories about him last night that I knew nothing about. It’s amazing to consider all the secrets stored up within a life, a few of which–if you’re lucky–eventually come to light.

I had a dream last night in which I told Barack Obama that he ought to open a coffee house in Cambridge at a can’t-miss location on Broadway that I had already checked out. He told me he was a little busy running for president. “You can run for president any year,” I  told him. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Guess what? Barack did open the coffee house. At least in my dream. As to what it means (if anything) I haven’t a clue.

Today we’re introducing a NEW FEATURE!!! here at Call Me Snake called “Slip O’ the Tongue.” I’m sure you’ll have as much fun reading it as I’ve had writing it. And now for our first installment: I spoke with a mathematician last week (a geometer) via email, trying to arrange a time for a telephone interview. Here’s what he said:

“We could talk some time on Thursday I think. I have to check when _____ [his wife] made an appointment with our tax accountant. I shall get back to you on this monetarily.”

(Editor’s note: I’m still waiting for that check.)

It’s somewhat ironic that I’m writing this, as I use the term “chief” regularly. My kids are often asking, “Who’s chief?” And my friends’ kids often ask me: “Why do you call my dad chief?” That said, I was slightly put off after finishing some rounds of editing on an article when the editor said, via email, “thanks chief.” Though he seems like a nice enough guy, I wasn’t sure we’d established enough of a relationship–enough familiarity–to make that turn of phrase appropriate. But maybe I’m overanalyzing, which I’m wont to do. In fact some might consider this entire blog a case of overanalyzing. And underthinking.

Movies about dysfunctional families have long since become a cliche. But every now and then one comes along that truly breaks the mold. The latest to do that is “Margot at the Wedding,” a literary tour-de-force set on film. The writing in this movie crackles like that of a good novel. The scenes in the film ring true and real, though despite the humor (“laughs that draw blood”) it depicts a reality of the grimmest sort.

When I informed my dad of my discovery of ThePigSite and its discussion of the National Animal Disease Information Service (NADIS), he said: “I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”

“Find out what?” I asked.

“That our family name was cribbed from ThePigSite. I tried to keep it from you. But, as they say, the truth will out.”

Now there’s a new book coming out by former Cheney henchman, Douglas Feith, an architect of the Iraq War, who blames everyone else for the problems in Iraq. From what I gather about the book, Feith suggests the plan was perfect but that everybody other than the Pentagon–the Army, Department, intelligence community–just couldn’t implement his brilliant scheme. Who on earth would want to publish such garbage? And, more importantly, who on earth would want to read it?

Here’s what a basketball player had to say about my game–or my other game. “Handball?” he asked. “Is that the game where you take a ball and hit it against the wall with your hand?” Yeah, that’s the one. Yet his statement does make me wonder how I’ve been able to blather on for pages about something that can be summed up in a single compact (non-complex) sentence.

Not to boast but… With all that’s been happening of late, too much to recount here, these truly are “heady times,” as my wise friend once remarked. To top it off–although maybe this isn’t the top, maybe we’re still on the upward part of the trajectory–my last name was featured in the February 8, 2008 entry of ThePigSite, aka, “All the Swine News That’s Fit to Print.” (And for that bit of information, we have to thank Call Me Snake’s roving correspondent in the UK, a man we shall refer to henceforth as “Chief.”) The entry in question featured on ThePigSite last month concerned the National Animal Disease Information Service. I guess you can figure out the rest for yourself. Heady times, indeed.

Not to boast but… That strikes me as a good way to start most posts, especially after yesterday’s bragfest. And now another. I received a note from an old college classmate and friend who commented on my recent coup in our college’s alumni magazine. He noticed that not only did I write a paragraph for the alumni notes section (an accomplishment in its own right), I was also mentioned by another writer and former alumnus in the alumni notes section as well. “That’s a first, I think, your name in two notes,” my friend commented. “Heady times.” To that phrase, I’d just add a word: heady times indeed.

Not to brag but (well maybe a little) I earned brief mention in yesterday’s Guardian (the British publication) for my efforts to track down the holy grail of astronomy. I don’t even mind that they called me a “U.S. physicist,” though some real U.S. physicists may contest that characterization. All I can say is that the correspondence course I took in physics, which I heard about from the back of a wrestling magazine, must have really paid off. You might call it the best $100 I ever spent..

As you can tell, I don’t get out much. But tonight I’m going to meet a friend at a bar and watch the last part of the Celtics-Pistons game. We were figuring out what time to meet and my friend said: “Everyone knows the game doesn’t start until the end of the fourth quarter.” I hadn’t heard that, but as I said: I don’t get out much. If you’d have asked me, I would have said that’s when the game ends. It shows how little I know.

People I know were recently talking about a friend of ours, worried about her lifestyle because they thought she spent the entire weekend at a nearby pub drinking. “That’s not true,” I said, rallying to her defense. “She doesn’t spend the WHOLE weekend drinking. She spends half the time standing outside smoking.”

I was given a technical paper, “Instability of flat space at finite temperature,” and told to check out page 25 where I might find some quotes of use. But I flipped open the paper & luckily ended up on page 25 and didn’t find anything remotely quotable. But then I realized that, as a result of some kind of printing foulup, all the pages (25 in all) were numbered 25. Needless to say I never did find the quote. But if I do end up citing that paper, at least I won’t have to look up the page number.

We all thought blogging was good clean fun until a Chicago ad exec went and killed himself last week, possibly because of insulting blogs written about him. That was a wakeup call to me to try not to malign anyone unfairly. And I’ve tried to follow that rule but have made a few notable exceptions: the President, Vice President, former Secretary of Defense, and Massachusett’s previous governor. And in those cases I don’t think my maligning was exactly unfair. Still, I’m going to think twice in the future before I shoot by mouth off–or shoot my typing fingers off, as the case may be, though not literally…

My wife was checking the email invitation list for a party she’s thinking of going to, trying to see who she would know there.”What about ___?” I asked. “Was she invited?” No, my wife replied, ___ (the host) doesn’t like her.

“What a shame,” I said. “They shouldn’t let a small thing like that stand in the way of their friendship.”

I’ve hit a dead end, a brick wall, a temporary impasse. I’ve spent several hours lately speaking with mathematicians at Stanford and Harvard about using tools of nonlinear analysis (minimal surfaces in geometry) to solve classic problems in general relativity. It sounds pretty straightforward but I cannot quite understand it. And until I do understand, I cannot go forward (though perhaps I can go sideways; good idea, maybe I’ll try that!) That doesn’t happen so often. Sure everyone needs some help understanding things sometimes. So you talk to somebody, ask a few questions, and figure it out. If you’re really stuck, you talk to a second person or a third, hoping that with another perspective or two, it will all fall into place. And I’ve tried all that. But this time it is not falling into place. The trouble now is that I’m not sure how many more “perspectives” are out there. And whether it will help. And whether I will be permanently stuck. Which would make my problem the opposite of Billy Pilgrim’s who was permanently unstuck.

Forgive me for being a bit groggy this morning. I was up late last night reading an article in the paper about the fact that 50 to 70 million Americans suffer from chronic sleep loss, thereby jeodardizing their physical and mental health. Evidently, instead of going to bed, these people are staying up late writing on their blogs, doing sukoku puzzles, or watching TV shows–even when they claim to not watch TV. Shame on them. And, if you’re one of them, shame on you.