CALL ME SNAKE

It’s bad enough I have to be taken to task for all my lapses and missteps in waking life, I’m also held accountable for the things I do in my wife’s dreams. Like last night she dreamt that we lived in a dump and that I dug my heels in, saying it’s fine. When she woke up this morning, there was hell to pay from my end. And I had nothing to do with that dream. Maybe my only hope is that I’ll do something good in her dreams one day (not too likely) and be unexpectedly rewarded.

In dream saw a famous physicist with whom I’ve talked several times but never met in person. In particular, he’s been very helpful on the book I’m writing, and I need a lot of help on the book I’m writing as the material is way over my head. I asked him in the dream how things were going. “Fine,” he said, “until you sent me six chapters to review and ruined my life.” Oops, sorry about that…

Yesterday I got this note from a friend–the author of a popular children’s action/adventure/fantasy book–who knows of which he speaks: Hi Steve, your book on string theory will be a lot easier if you put all the footnotes and appendices in other dimensions. That way you can say, “See Appendix E for a full explanation of ‘D-branes’” and since Appendix E will be in the sixth or seventh dimension, no one will really know if you provided a full explanation or not.) Just a suggestion. — C.

[Author's note: Thanks C., that's the best advice I've gotten so far. But I think I can take it one step further. Why not say the whole book can be found in another dimension? Just a suggestion.]

School vacation is starting in a few hours and Call Me Snake is going to take a couple of days off. Happy fishin’ folks. You’ve earned it.

The YMCA I go to is the way I thought YMCA’s were supposed to be: urban, gritty, grimy. You get the picture. But yesterday’s Boston Globe had an article about the rise of valet parking and mentioned a suburban Y in Woburn, Mass. that has valet parking. You could not imagine valet parking at the establishment I go to and I’m glad. Valet parking and gyms don’t go together in my mind and should not so far as I’m concerned. Otherwise, maybe we could say: “After you park the car, would you mind working out for me?”

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.

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.”

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.”

As reported in these pages just three days ago, a friend recently told me that he was “happy–that things were really good.” That might not seem so remarkable were it not for the fact that I rarely hear people apply that word to themselves, especially blurting it out without any provocation. And then it happened again yesterday. Another friend, apropos of nothing, told me he was “really happy. I haven’t felt better for years.”

What’s going on, I wondered. And, more to the point, what are they putting in the water these days? For a second, I almost caught the bug too, thinking I’d had a pretty good couple of days: The Patriots won on Sunday and our family had gotten through a three-day weekend without too much strife. Was I happy too? Fortunately I came to my senses before making a fatuous proclamation like that. Still I was shaken up to the point where I am considering it…

I was trying to write earlier tonight and started feeling a bit groggy. So I put the work aside and called a friend who I owed a call.  After talking for 10 or 15 minutes, he started getting tired and needed to turn in. I, on the other hand, felt positively renewed. Somehow I managed to sap his energy over the phone lines and get a fresh burst of energy that has kept me going for awhile now. In the electricity business, that’s called a “parasitic drain.” So if I start calling late at night, and you’re not ready for bed, you’d best not answer the phone. I’ll put your answering machine to sleep instead.

I recently got an email referring to some big question that was being put to important thinkers in the world of science. There was nothing unusual about that; I often get emails of this sort and delete them reflexively. But this one was different; this time I was one of the “thinkers” whose views were being solicited. I stared at the list of luminaries in disbelief and wondered: What was my name doing there? There must be some mistake, I told myself. I have been accused of many things but I’ve never been accused of being a thinker. Still my name was on there and unless it was due to some kind of computer glitch or virus, I’d have to try to rise to the occasion. The question was challenging for me because, as I’ve said before, I’d never thought about it and had no obvious example to draw on. But maybe if I stretched things a little bit I might be able to provide the illusion of answering the question. Which I did. And it seems to have worked. But for how long? As the old sane ghost, you can fuel sum of the peepholes sum of the thyme, but you can’t fuel oil the peepholes oil the thyme. Or words to that effect…

The snow is really coming down right now–our first big storm of the winter. The expression, “Let It Come Down,” keeps popping into my head. But that’s not the image I really want to have in mind here on this beautiful evening, because in the Paul Bowles’ novel of the same name a man in the grip of narcotic-induced psychosis wailed on his hammer, driving a nail through the ear of another man. So I say, as the wondrous white flakes fill the sky, let it come down, though not in the way Paul Bowles wrote it.

The other day someone asked me if I was going to see the movie BEOWULF. But he pronounced it as BEE-uh-wulf and I thought he was referring to “THE BEE MOVIE.”

“That sounds like it might be fun,” I said. “I’m planning to bring my five-year-old to it.”

He looked at me like I was depraved and only later did I figure out why.

Time to pop the champagne bottles. I’ve just written the first four sections of my book–the writing of which is frequently compared to the scaling of Mount Everest. (Sir Edmund, if I’m not mistaken, used to speak of this often.) Four out of 20, that’s not bad right? Except they’re all really short, not full chapters, just ancillary material–kind of like bookends. So it’s really only about 5% of the total word count I’m supposed to supply. Still 5% isn’t so bad right? It just means I have 95% left to go. But wait a minute, 95%? Holy shit, that’s a lot. Umm, never mind. I guess you can put the corks back in for now. Can’t get em back in? Well, sorry, I guess the next one’s on me.

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone, which means another trip to my inlaws in New Hampshire. Every time I make the drive, I count a different number of Mr. Mike’s–gas stations/snack bars/oases–along the way. A year ago I could have sworn I saw three of them between Boston and my destination in the Granite State. Sometimes I’ve seen two. But this time, I only saw one–despite some serious looking, as serious as you can do while driving without ending up wrapped around a tree. The only thing that’s predictable about this thing with Mr. Mike’s is that it’s never predictable: Every time I go I see a different number of them. Are my eyes playing tricks on me? Are these franchises popping in and out of existence like particles in the quantum vacuum? Or is somebody up there (a.k.a. “the Big Guy”) playing games with me? Tune in next Thanksgiving for the continued chronicles of the “Mystery of Mr. Mike’s.”

Fortunately the Italian publishing industry has not been in contact with my plumber, who offered a rather dismal prognosis for my opus-in-progress on string theory. Two publishers there are vying for the Italian language rights to the book, despite the fact that I have yet to write a word of it. Publishers in other languages such as German and French are being much more cautious. They’d prefer to see something in print before making any such commitments. That bothers me since I’ve rarely made “Freedom Fries” jokes and have long since stopped taking potshots at Germans. Still it makes me love the Italians for their sheer recklessness. Now the pressure is on me to actually deliver something. And if I do, my next stop will be the Italian Riviera, baby! Or maybe the Amalfi Coast or Sicily. Somebody’s got to reward this country for its misplaced confidence in me.

My plumber who (this being Cambridge) likes to keep abreast of science let me know that a book about string theory will not sell. Most people have never heard of string theory and if they have, they couldn’t tell you the first thing about it,” he said. “You can forget about ever getting on the New York Times bestseller list.”

“You may be right,” I replied. “In which case, you can forget about ever getting paid by me.”

Today we’re introducing a new feature here at CALL ME SNAKE called FREAKY FRIDAY which I have no doubt will prove to be an instant classic. And without further ado, here’s the first installment of FREAKY FRIDAY. (The fact that the events I describe here transpired on a Saturday take nothing away from the appropriateness of their appearing in a feature called FREAKY FRIDAY, as you shall soon see.)

I was headed to the park with my daughter and her two friends when I got a call from the local Mayor’s reelection campaign seeking my support. I let them know I would not be supporting the Mayor (note: his alleged three-martini-lunch habit has nothing to do with my stance), and there was nothing they could say that would change my mind. Literally one minute later, as I walked around the corner with the girls, I saw the Mayor walking on the sidewalk. THAT WAS QUICK! “All right,” I said. “I’ll vote for you so long as you promise to quit stalking me.”

That brings us to the end of the first installment of FREAKY FRIDAY. We hope you had as much fun reading it as we had writing it. And we’ll be sure to see you here next Friday. Or Saturday.

(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’.”

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?”

Year after year, our kids complain about day camp, so next year we’re going to try something different: terrorist camp.

Just returned from a family-style road trip to the North Conway region of New Hampshire. The best T-shirt I saw (worn by a man) said: “Who are these kids? And why do they keep calling me dad?” The worst T-shirt I saw (on a seemingly innocent kid) read: “Future Republican.”

I caught this handball reference in the badly named movie, “I Wake Up Screaming,” which despite the title was not even remotely a horror picture. In one scene, Victor Mature prepared a friend for what it’s like to be interrogated by the cops: “It’s like playing handball, only you’re the ball.”

This item, found on the wire services, was turned in by Marco Polo and posted by the staff at Call Me Snake:
Cambridge(AP)- A well-admired blogger out of Boston was found dead in his study this morning. ____ ____, of Cambridge, had been experimenting w/ devoting time- normally reserved for sleep- to complete sudoku puzzles published in a new local paper, sources say. But then things turned tragically wrong for this father of 2.
His death comes one day prior to the 40th anniversary of the release of the Beatles’ Sargent Pepper’s Album, though experts aren’t sure if there is a connection. Unfinished sudoku puzzles lined the table where “Snake”,
Mr __ ’s blog-name, was found. Foul play was ruled out though foul odors “are suspected”, explained police Detective Ralph Rufferson.
Visiting hours are from 2-6 AM this MONDAY, as his family will be busy tidying up unfinished paperwork.
The Funeral will be at Janeto’s Undertakers-Are-Us, in Harvard Square- Thursday at 7PM. The ceremony will be a closed-ca ption affair. Comment boxes will be located in the Visiting room. In lieu of flowers, donations will be accepted by local unemployed subway station “monitors”. Jason Smyth- staff writer

And, Snake, if you still ARE alive, please don’t disappoint us by posting a response. But we luv ya anyway!

Yesterday I made four trips to Central Square, the seamy underbelly of Cambridge, in one hour. That might be some kind of record, and not one you’d like to top. First I got some pillow cases at a discount store for sack races for my daughter’s fifth birthday party and some papers for cupcakes. But the cupcake papers had footballs on them (I wasn’t paying attention), and my daughter didn’t care for them. So I went back to the store to exchange the football-decorated papers for the balloon version. When I got home my wife decided we needed two more pillow cases for the sack races, so it was back to Central Square again. As soon as I returned we realized we had run out of bread, which was going to be an important part of our dinner, so that was the fourth trip–all completed in an hour. Mr. Ripley, you can believe it or not.

I thought I moved around fast. On a typical day I might quit work at 5, race to the Y for a quick swim, do some food shopping and still get home by 5:30 when the babysitter leaves. But after seeing the movie, “The Pursuit of Happyness”–apparently based on the true-life story of Chris Gardner (as portrayed by Will Smith)–I move glacially slow. That guy was always sprinting, sometimes getting stuck in subway doors and occasionally getting hit by cars. He would stay up nights in homeless shelters repairing medical diagnostic devices and study for a financial exam in transit station bathrooms. Compared to the pace he set, my life seems positively sedate.

My last sperm bank offering stirred up so much interest, I felt it was important to run an update without delay. So here it is, just a few days late, though I’m sorry to say that there is no news to report. The one thing I can mention is that some PR flak(???) responded to my post, saying that the Cambridge branch of California Cryobank was a “good neighbor” that always paid its rent on time. The implication was clear: I am not a good neighbor (debatable, as we shall see) and I don’t always pay my rent on time (true). As for my neighborliness, it depends on who you ask. If you ask the homeowner to our right, he’d probably say I’m an excellent neighbor. The people on the left, I’m sure, would vote for the sperm bank. So it looks like a toss up. In matters like this, according to an age-old convention, a tie goes to the sperm.

I’ve written a lot about the new Rocky movie and, being a responsible (sometimes) journalist–as in sometimes a journalist and sometimes responsible–I decided it might be worth taking a look at the picture I’ve written so much about. Well I’ve done that and have gotta say: What an inspired piece of filmmaking! I’m so inspired, in fact, that I’ve decided to take over the series from Stallone who says he’s absolutely, positively done playing rope-a-dope.

I’ve already discussed my plans for ROCKY 7 [in a post dated February 23, 2007, as well as with Stallone personally], but I’ve since laid plans for a multi-picture deal. (That’s the breaking news aspect of this late-breaking story.) Here’s the “story arc” I have in mind:

ROCKY 7: An underweight middle-aged man, inspired by the Rocky Balboa story, decides he wants to be the next heavyweight champion of the world. Of course, he gets his ass kicked. Down but not quite out, as they say…

ROCKY 8: That same middle-aged man, now a year older and hopefully wiser, dedoubles his efforts and, miraculously, captures the heavyweight crown. It’s the greatest upset since, well, I’ve run clears out of similes. Or metaphors. Or analogies. Or whatever…

ROCKY 9: Our hero is not getting any younger but he’s definitely getting softer. Since winning the crown, he’s taken to eating expensive French cheese and artichoke dip, developing a bit of a paunch along the way. In his return to the ring, he is completely humiliated by a younger, bigger, stronger opponent. He hangs up the gloves and opens a used book store, where his ass gets kicked once again–only this time by a faltering economy and illiterate public.

So that’s the basic story line. I’ve already started my training and just need a few investors. You wanna a piece o’ me? You want in?

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The original version of this piece, which was posted here sometime last year, was “perfect,” according to a friend who not only happens to be a tough critic, he’s also a writer, editor, and publisher. So with that in mind, the temptation was too great to just leave well enough alone. No, I had to go in and try to muck it up. Herewith are my efforts in that regard:

I live in an intellectual town: Beneath every rock, as the saying goes, you’ll find an aspiring novelist, philosopher, or poet crawling around. When I ask a salesperson about futons, somehow the conversation invariably comes around to Proust. The gardeners I meet tend to be frustrated writers, though none more frustrated than me. Our main contractor is an artist, bumper-sticker maker, and political pamphleter, who just does carpentry on the side. Even my drain-cleaning guy dispenses life lessons as handily as he wields a snake. “We could learn a lot from tree roots,” he tells me as he reams the insides of our drain pipe. “Like John Paul Jones [or Rocky Balboa, for that matter], they never give up. If there’s an opening, or a weak point, they find it. If not, they keep poking around until they create one.”

No one looks forward to having bed bugs. For my money, it’s the best cure for sleep yet devised. Nevertheless, when we came down with this affliction last year, when it was all the rage, I thought that this time I was finally going to get the straight dope–as in firebombing our home with an arsenal of deadly toxins–rather than yet more discourse on the latest epistemological quandary. The first professional I discussed the matter with came straight to the point, asking me where my tenants were from. When I said Peru, which was the case at the time, he said: “Oh boy, have you ever got ‘em! So here’s what we can do for you…” He laid out the full battle plan, starting with his brand of “shock and awe” and proceeding to the occupation and nation-building phases.

“Don’t you want to look first, just to be sure?” I asked.

“What’s the point?” he replied. “These critters are hard to see. And in the end, we’re still going to do the same thing. So why not save some time and money?

Though his argument made perfect sense, I sought a second opinion to be safe. After some digging, I found the “exterminator of the stars”–a man reportedly with “Cambridge ties,” though the way he put it made it sound like “mob ties.” The Harvard School of Public Health may have written the book on bed bugs, but when they have bug infestation problems, who they gonna’ call? This bugbuster, that’s who. I called him too. He promised to “get to the root of my problem.”

A few days later, he arrived at my doorstep with a notebook in hand. On our tour of the premises, he looked under beds, mattresses, pillows, and linen, chuckling to himself as he took notes. Finally we arrived in the master bedroom. After a cursory glance, he asked,

“Does your wife sleep on this side of the bed?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “Why do you ask?”

“Men always sleep by the door,” he said. “It’s been that way since the Stone Age. Women and children slept in back of the cave, while men guarded the entrance.”

“Fine,” I said,” but what does this have to do with bed bugs?”

He looked at me incredulously, as if bed bugs were the farthest thing from his mind. “I have no idea what’s making you itch, but I promise you it’s not bed bugs.” My problems were deeper, he added. Much deeper. Although my girls were still young, he warned me what I’d be facing a decade from now. “The way I see it, all your troubles have to do with men,” he explained. “You’ll have three women, all of them menstruating. Plus your wife will be dealing with menopause. Then you’ll have your own mental health to deal with. So eventually, all your women problems will actually revolve around men, at which point you won’t be worrying about bugs at all.”

And then, 50 minutes after his arrival, our session was over as quickly as it began, with the bug situation apparently solved. I wrote out the check for $125, suggesting that perhaps we’d do the next “inspection” while I lay down on the couch. The way I see it, we all could use a good “debugging” every now and then.

I saw all the equipment and all the cameras lined up in the block before the Y, where a banner proudly read: “The Cambridge Family YMCA welcomes Columbia Pictures!” I parked my bike next to the catering truck figuring that Hollywood had heard about all the drama played out in the YMCA handball courts and they wanted in. But when I went inside, I found out they were just using the upstairs theater as a place for people to change and a place for the extras to hang out. In fact, I spoke briefly with a friend of mine, who was either an extra or an extra extra. I learned that they hadn’t come to film my handball game, after all. Instead, it was just some movie with Kevin Spacey called “Bringing Down the House.” But on the way out, I still stopped off at the catering truck to check out the potato salad that Hollywood is famous for.

I know I’m too old, too stiff, and too light to be the next heavyweight champion of the word. Everyone has told me that already. But now that Stallone says he’s done with Rocky 6, somebody has to step up and make Rocky 7. That somebody is me, and don’t try to talk me out of it. My mother has begged me (“you can’t take the punishment”), my dad has berated me (“you can’t handle the truth”), and my wife has implored me (“think of the children”), but it’s no use. My mind is made up, so now all I gotta’ do is convince my body. While we’re having that conversation (my body and me), I’m going to run up the steps to our deck a few times. Next I’m going to run over the butcher store to check out some slabs. On the way home, I’m going to get some marbles so I can practice talkin’ right. I mean talkin’ good. Then it’s just a matter of writing the script that’s going to get me the heavyweight crown. If I can pull that off, which is going to take an amazing bit of writing, I’ll not only be the champ, I’ll win Best Screenplay too,

Ron Hassner of UC-Berkeley has written a funny article in the current issue of the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR) called “The Travels of the Lorenz Butterfly.” Starting with the 1972 paper by Edward Lorenz, “Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas” (a landmark in chaos theory), Hassner tracked the flight of this butterfly in the published literature where it turns up in Peking, Paris, Switzerland, and other locales. Charting the movement of the butterfly over the years in graphic form, Hassner reproduces a prime example of chaotic behavior known as the “Lorenz attractor.”

When I suggested writing about this to an editor, she said: “It does sound amusing but it doesn’t sound like real research, which is what we need.” I say to her: How can research get more “real” than this?

Call DSS. Lock me up. I’ve gone and done it now: I’ve introduced my impressionable young girls to Jerry Lewis–”Cinderfella,” to be precise. This could warp their minds, I’ve been told. This could ruin them, I’ve been warned. This could lure them toward a life of bad slapstick. But I went and did it anyway, and now there’s hell to pay.

But maybe things won’t turn out so badly after all. I mean we grew up on Jerry Lewis–at least if you are over 40 and/or French you did–and see how far we’ve gone. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll be able to go that far too. Though personally I wouldn’t mind if they make it a bit farther.

No, the above words are not three of my New Year’s resolutions, which I’ve already gone on record as saying I do not abide by. They are the words of my youngish daughter, who volunteered that advice when I told her I’d be spending more than a year working on the book I just started.

I’d like to make an important announcement. And since this is my blog, and I hold the “conch” so to speak, that’s just what I’m going to do: The “Nun Bun”–a pastry bearing a close resemblance to Mother Teresa–is still missing after it was stolen more than a year ago from the Bongo Java coffee shop in Nashville. An anonymous letter with a picture resembling the famed Nun Bun (but possibly a fake) was sent from Philadelphia in May. That was the last tip and otherwise the trail has gone stone cold. “I don’t know who would do this or why,” said the coffee shop’s owner. “We just want her back.” (Editorial confession: I made up that last quote but know the owner personally and am sure he would embrace that statement as if it were his own.)

I’ve never been big on New Year’s resolutions. They’ve always seemed phony to me. And contrived. (Though that may be the same thing.) But I have no problem making resolutions for this blog. In fact, I believe there is not enough of that sort of thing in the blogosphere. What then shall I resolve for Call Me Snake? One thing I’d like to see is more openness. More transparency (which again might be the same thing.) Flubberwinkle complained, for example, that our bumper sticker contests and other competitions seemed to be “rigged.” That was sobering to hear and led to much soul-searching. You can be sure we’re all working very hard to address that issue. To give you an idea, one strategy we’re batting around is to bar any family members of Call Me Snake from winning these contests. (Being a runner’s up or earning honorable mention, however, would still be allowed.) There are any of a number of things I could resolve for Call Me Snake. Rest assured that I am exploring various possibilities as we speak. I should have these policies ready shortly–just in time for 2008.

Last month (11/21/06), here in these very pages, I wrote about the guy in Jamaica Plain (a part of Boston, in case you’re not from around heah) who strung up 250,000 Christmas tree lights on his castle-like abode. Tonight, being Christmas night, I checked it out first hand with my family. I have to admit, it is quite a spectacle. I didn’t count the lights, but there’s one heck of a lot of firepower coming out of that house, like a little bit of Las Vegas in an otherwise quiet residential neighborhood. A friend of mine (a JPite) said it’s probably visible from space. Maybe this will be the tipoff the ET’s need to finally find us (sorry about the split infinitive, but as you can see I am getting carried away).

If you missed the light show this year, don’t worry. The homeowner, Dominic Luberto, is planning to string up 500,000 lights next year. It’s only a matter of time, I figure, before he hits a million points of light, thereby putting the first President George Bush’s measly “thousand points of light” to shame. (The man clearly lacked “the vision thing.”) At that point, we can kiss optical astronomy goodbye, expect, perhaps, on the far side of the moon. which is why the second President George Bush is trying to get us back on the moon–the same moon that John F. Kennedy (a Democrat) got us too first, the same moon whose dark side Pink Floyd sang about so movingly. By then–i.e., the millionth bulb–the ET’s will have surely found us, for better or worse, and we’ll find out what the expression, “To Serve Man,” is all about.

I hope I have not been too digressive here. My main point, in case it got lost in the parentheticals, is this: Keep up the good work, Mr. Luberto. I support everything you’re doing to support global warming, just so long as you don’t stick me with the electric bill. (A friend of mine named Al, who’s made a bundle on global warming, will gladly pay it.)

Last night my wife proudly announced that one of her New Year’s resolutions was to become more involved in our daughter’s elementary school. She had been moved by an email sent yesterday by the principal noting that not enough parents were volunteering for essential tasks. “That’s kind of sad, don’t you think?” she asked.

“It is sad,” I agreed. “I saw that email but didn’t bother to read it.” I’m not ordinarily so callous but I’ve been a bit, shall we say, “overextended” lately.

The exchange reminded me of a conversation I had with my father many years ago when he was attempting to impart a life lesson on a callow youth. Son, he said, do you know the difference between ignorance and apathy? To which I replied: “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

I was listening to the “classics” on WBOS the other night, as the NPR station had a lecture on and I was trying to work. The DJ said it was going to be in the 50s tomorrow, after several days of frigid weather. “There’s always that one guy out there in shorts and a T-shirt and sandals,” he added. I don’t know about his reliability on other matters, but in this instance that DJ was dead-on. In fact, I know just what he means. Because I’m that guy.

George Bush described his interactions with Donald Rumsfeld over the Defense Secretary’s imminent sacking as “a series of thoughtful discussions.” I wonder how that went. How’s this for thoughtful discussion: “YOU’RE FIRED!!!” Of course I’m sure that Bush, being loyal to a fault, did not pull off that line with the aplomb of a Donald Trump, who knows how to let someone go.

More likely, Bush said something different, more along the lines of: “Rummy, I love ya’ but yer killin’ me.” True to form, by “killin’,” Bush would be referring to the political toll Rumsfeld has exacted on him and the Republican Party–not all the American troops who died in Iraq, lacking sufficient equipment or manpower, in accordance with Rumsfeld’s brilliant war plan.

Yesterday a sick child sent me to CVS in Central Square, where I purchased a digital thermometer. I locked my bike next to the T (subway) elevator where a few weeks earlier I’d spotted a VHS copy of “Solaris” (the original, not the tepid remake) that continued to lie there, apparently untouched, for days. This time the video was nowhere to be seen, which makes me think my blog posting–which was later excerpted in the Boston Globe–brought “Solaris” cultists from all over New England to lowly Central Square in hopes of scoring a free copy. Only one lucky person walked away with the coveted videotape, while many others, I’m sure, were left to dream about what might have been…

It’s not every day the Senate calls, although lately it seems to be a daily occurrence. As you may recall, I had to break off my conversation with the esteemed Senator on Tuesday on account of my daughter’s halloween party. Yesterday, I gave his secretary explicit instructions for him to call before 4:45, which is when I leave for my 5:00 handball game. So what did he do? He called at 4:45 sharp. We chatted for a minute or two–going over the usual intelligence stuff (all on “deep background” on a “need-to-know” basis), and then I said, once again, “Sorry ____, I’d love to chat. But I gotta’ run. I’ve got a handball game.”

There’s an intriguing headline today on the front page of Metro, “The world’s largest global newspaper,” that reads: “Man may have cut up father.” To my (admittedly simpleminded) way of thinking, that headline raises more questions than answers. Did the reporter not bother to find out whether the man in question did, in fact, cut up his father? Or did the suspect simply not remember, which is the kind of thing that could easily happen when it comes to dismembering family members: “I might have cut him up. Or maybe not… What day we talkin’ ?” That’s not a direct transcript, of course, but you could see how confusion could arise in a case like this, especially on a busy weekend with lots going on. Stayed tuned. We’ll have more to say on this incisive topic as news reports, and body parts, trickle in.

In an interview earlier this week, Dick Cheney admitted that “for a while there, I was criticized for being the vice president of torture. We don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in.” Perhaps he was responding to a post that appeared in Call Me Snake on October 15, 2005 entitled “Vice President of Torture.” Former CIA director Stansfield Turner called Cheney “vice president for torture” in an interview two days later (October 17, 2005) and a week after that, the Washington Post ran an editorial entitled “Vice President for Torture.” So it appears, in refering to the “vice president OF torture” label (as opposed to the “vice president FOR torture” label), Cheney was responding to, and denying, the most serious charge of all–that leveled against him here at Call Me Snake.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The following transcript was recorded last night–Thursday, October 5th–and reproduced here, thanks to the miracle of the internet (thanks Al!), for your viewing pleasure. A shortened, edited version can be found on Nature.com.) While respectable folks are in Sweden, attending the real thing, I’m here at Harvard for the low-rent alternative, waiting for the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony to begin. It’s the first Thursday in October, which is when the Igs are always held, and historic Sanders Theatre is packed–the anticipation, so thick, it could be cut with a scalpel by those two men in white labcoats, just before they cart you off to the looney bin. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Time for a deep breath.

Looking about the hall, as spitballs and paper airplanes fly through the air, I feel a bit sheepish amidst a crowd of innocents who have no idea what’s in store for them. This is the 16th Ig Nobel ceremony, and I hold the dubious distinction of having witnessed every single one–an attendance record perhaps only matched by the event’s organizer, Marc Abrahams, and his mother. I know it’s nothing to brag about. Maybe someday I’ll get a life. But until I do, I’ll sit back and enjoy the Igs.

7:26 Some people are dancing onstage to Franz Liszt, which is OK with me. But right now, I’ve got pencils to sharpen. This year, there’s no press kit with all the answers. No “cheat sheet.” This year, in other words, I’m going to have to earn it.

7:31 A Harvard official tells us about “new security regulations” regarding paper airplanes. But the crowd pays him no mind. As if to drive the point home, an airplane suddenly dive-bombs into my head.

7:35 Kees Moeliker, a 2003 Ig winner for reporting on the first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck, is at the podium with a woman, evidently his wife, saying he just got married. “And this is our honeymoon!” The crowd eats it up.

7:38-8:05 The Nobel laureates muster their courage and enter the lion’s den. They’re followed by the Ig Nobel laureates, the King and Queen of Swedish meatballs, and various “Ignitaries.” The theme of this year’s show is “Inertia,” which means that “Lawyers For and Against Intertia” will be parading by any minute now.

8:08 Finally, the first Ig Prize is presented in Ornithology for investigations into why woodpeckers don’t get headaches. Ivan Schwab of the University of California, Davis, accepts the prize donning a woodpecker headdress.

8:15 Kuwaiti researchers, Wasmia Al-Houty and Faten Al-Mussalam, receive the Nutrition Prize for showing that dung beetles are finicky eaters, preferring horse dung to the camel and sheep alternative.

8:20 There’s a noisy bunch of students behind me, chanting and heckling nonstop. I join in, shouting “Gerard Depardieu!” It feels liberating.

8:25 In his “24/7” lecture on dark matter and dark energy, Frank Wilczek of MIT sums up the universe in seven words: “What you see isn’t what you get.”

8:35 Daniel Oppenheimer of Princeton earns the Literature Prize for his paper on the needless use of long words. “Conciseness is interpreted as intelligence,” he notes in his acceptance speech. “So, thank you.”

8:42 University of Tennessee scholar Francis Fesmire, the first person to terminate hiccups through digital rectal massage, captures the Medicine Prize. He claims his son consoled him about winning an Ig Nobel Prize rather than a regular Nobel. “It’s like winning a Darwin,” the son told him, “and you don’t have to die.”

8:52 The crowd behind me keeps up the catcalls, shouting “intertia” at every turn. A born follower, I shout too. And when they throw things, I throw too. Sometimes their antics strike me as sophomoric. Then I realize they really are sophomores. So that’s their excuse, but what’s mine?

9:06 I must have dropped off. All the Ig laureates are in the middle of the stage with those other laureates for some kind of lovefest. The photographers go crazy.

9:11 Marc Abrahams calls it a night, setting off a mass exodus. I pack up my pencils and follow the herd.

9:17 Standing outside, as I unlock my bike, I reflect on what I’ve just seen and wonder what next year will bring. Will I be sitting in the peanut gallery once again, with the “Children of Paradise”? Or I will be onstage, front and center, pocketing my first Ig Nobel? I quietly prepare an acceptance speech, just in case.

Some friends of mine–let’s call them Henry & Catherine–are often taking so-called “urban adventures,” hopping on buses to different parts of the Boston area and then getting out and exploring. Yesterday, my family had some urban adventures of our own. And even though they were rather modest, as adventures go, when they happen, unexpectedly, in your own backyard, that makes them even more special. First we took a hike in the nearby Middlesex Fells because of its proximity and the fact that we dawdled for much of the morning and well into the afternoon and didn’t leave time to travel farther. But even though we’d been there many times before, this time we found a trail we hadn’t seen that afforded great views of the city and great rocks for climbing and scrambling. Off the beaten path as we were, we saw snakes, toad, and frogs. For the last stretch mile, we wandered around off the marked trails, bushwhacking through the wilds, and the kids loved it.

On the way home, we stopped off at a new playground in East Cambridge I’d just heard about the day before that had challenging–and almost entirely new–play structures for kids. Having spent thousands of hours in playgrounds over the past several years (and that’s no exaggeration), it was nice for me, and especially for the kids, to find everything new, as if they’d reinvented the wheel at this park. The formula, I’m sure, we’ll be repeated in the next generation of parks, but for now it’s still fresh.

So that’s it for the week’s “urban adventure.” For those of you expecting my usual cynicism and sarcasm, I apologize. But don’t worry, tomorrow is another day. And I can already feel the negativity and rancor starting to bubble up within.

I stayed home from a weekend trip to Maine, despite advice to the contrary from Ray of Car Talk (and subsequent advice from Guttersnake), in the hopes of catching up on some work and catching up on some sleep. Last night, I stayed up late watching a crummy movie on DVD, but with the kids gone I figured I could finally sleep in. No such luck. At 6:59 a.m., I got a call from a well-meaning neighbor who found our cat, Sunshine, wandering the hood, as is her custom (she’s an outdoor cat, for ____’s sake!). This person was hanging on to Sunshine in case she was lost. Which meant I had to dress and retrieve the wayward feline right then and there from a nearby park. And all hopes of sleeping in were dashed, as were any hopes of making inroads on my prodigious sleep deficit. When it comes to sleep, I never get a break. Which probably makes me the biggest sucker in town.

Many of you might think the tooth fairy job is pretty straightforward: You go to the pillow of the boy or girl in question, grab the tooth, and leave behind some financial renumeration ($1 is still the going rate from what I’ve heard). But when people are shifting around from bed to bed, it can get pretty complicated. Which is why my daughter felt the tooth fairy could use some help. The other night she tacked this note onto her bedroom door:

Dear Tooth Fairy — Our friend Jerry from California is sleeping in my bed. I’m sleeping in P__’s bed at the end of the hall. I’ll be the one along the edge of the bed. P__ is along the wall. Please don’t give the money to her.

Armed with this instructive missive, the tooth fairy was able to successfully complete his/her job. And you thought it was all just magic?

I read somewhere that Ben and Jennifer have settled here in Cambridge, at least temporarily, because it’s a place they can live without being stalked by the dreaded paparazzi. I can respect that. But privacy is a two-way street, and Jennifer needs to respect my privacy as well. Last week, before I left on my second trip (or was it my third? I lose count.), I could swear I saw her at my gym and maybe at the pool–swimming beside me in the very next lane, in fact. If it’s just one time, you can call it an accident. But the next day, I saw her again in my favorite Harvard Square chocolate establishment. Once again, I was just minding my own business, trying to get through this complicated routine called life. Two times might still be considered a fluke, albeit it an extremely flukey one. But if it happens again, it’s a clearcut case of stalking. In which case, I might have to take out a restraining order. I don’t like being stalked by anyone, even by a beautiful, statuesque Hollywood starlet temporarily slumming in my hometown (which, by the way, won’t last once winter sets in).

After a brief flurry of activity, Call Me Snake is going back on vacation. Family vacation. You know the drill. We’ll be back again soon with fabulous stories and the latest gossip about Hollywood stars and starlets. Stay tuned.