reluctant NW blogging

Oh, Lordamercy I don't want to read Newsweek. I am jonesing for my New Yorker, which did not make it into my mailbox by Saturday, making it excruciatingly late. I know there is an article on building perfume in it, and because I like to smell everything and have fantasized about having a career at IFF (International Food and Fragrances, a taste/smell firm that makes "flavor" and "smell profiles" for anything processed under the sun), I have been eagerly awaiting this issue.

But, to Newsweek, I must do the hating.

Nice cover photo. Do all the lebanese gals look like that? Salma Hayek is of lebanese descent. Males, to Lebanon. The babes are hot there. They know how to eyeline. Also, the weather looks nice. I'm not sure what the local customs are for getting the babes, but since this one is unburka'd (in jeans!) and on a dude's shoulders, they're probably considerably looser than the mores of neighboring, oh, Saudi Arabia. Maybe even Jordan. Hee. That's a tourism slogan, "loosest ladies in the fertile crescent."

All the dudes, however, look like refugees from "A Night at the Roxbury." Baby don't hurt me, no more. Rinse the gel from your hair.

Have you read "Blink," or Malcolm Gladwell's article in the New Yorker about face-reading? Do yourself a favor and read it. There's a part where a facial reading expert (or whatever) mentions that Bill Clinton looks like he wants to be caught with his hand in the cookie jar and loved anyway. Well, that's what Whitaker's talking about the Martha Kerfuffle last week looks like to me.

"We ... thought the combination of exaggerated imagery and and cover line ... would make clear that it was playful visual commentary," he says. What exaggerated imagery? It's Martha ostensibly holding open a curtain! She does that all the time in real life! Half her job is window treatment touching (the other half is matching paint chips to her champion breed chickens' eggs)! If you want exaggerated imagery, start with Heironymous Bosch. I can see Martha, on a stage, laughing through curtains at the media vultures, faux Martha ripoff artists who would take her place, prissy NW writers, uptight white collared bizmen who got away with far worse than she ever did, FBI tricksters, elephant tamers ... I'm losing my train of thought. Anyway, my point is, minimalism is rarely a starting point for "exaggerated imagery." Punk.

Hey, "Periscope," it's gross to have "loved the sex scenes" in a Judith Regan roman a clef if the seducer man is 73-y-o Tom Perkins *and* you put a picture up of him. I mean, aren't you a little creeped out? Also, you got the rules wrong for "I Never" or you didn't realize the game that you're schilling for got them wrong. You drink if you *have* done the action in question. At least, that's the way I remember playing it. Honestly, "Periscope" is the right word for this page. Except it never extends past the sphincter (up which the head of NW is lodged. Get it?).

I'm really curious not only what the green, orange and yellow keys assigned to "Blog Watch" mean, but if they're randomly selected. Likewise the icons. They kind of make sense, but they don't seem to have an overarching theme from week to week.

Fareed Zakaria again beats his own damn drum — "The theory did not originate with Bush's administration. Others had made this case: scholars like Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, the Arab intellectuals who wrote the U.N.'s now famous 'Arab Human Development Report' and even this writer. (Three weeks after 9/11 I wrote and essay titles "Why Do They Hate Us?" that made this case.)" You're not going to convince me you're so clever if you're going to reference Thomas Friedman, who's kind of a dipwad.

Why are you pimping yourself, FZ? Are you not content to sit back and be clevah?

Here's his dreadful last sentence: "As Jumblatt is quick to say, Arabs are sick of living in occupied countries, whether the occupiers are Syrian or Israeli or, for that matter, even the well-intentioned United States of America."

Number one, why don't you quote yourself if you're so smart?

Number two: I'm sure Syria and Israel think they're well-intentioned. The world is looking askance at the U.S.'s intentions. Are you sure we're that well-intentioned?

NW asks "Can stagecraft save Bush on Social Security?" and, instead of breaking down what's going on with the big SS, they break down the politics around Bush's promotion of his "plan." It's about more than the cult of personality, you know.

DLS: "In a debate shaped by Congress and outside pressure groups, it is becoming harder for the president to control the script once he steps off the stage."

Another classic: "But she doesn't know if she'll ever be able to walk into her house again."

"This time, he joked grimly, he'd be coming back in one piece." (this story, about soldiers who have had amputations and are going back to the war zone, is pretty disturbing in its concept)

"Now they get to see their gardens grow."

Big big synergy piece on "Robots," which is supposed to be pretty bad. I'm sorry, but flashy animation has ceased to be worthy of articles until there is a quantum leap style advance. Also, until a good spate of non-family movies come out that are animated — that will show that the technology has truly arrived.

"Anyone who sees 'Robot' can only hope he's wrong." NW means they hope there is more of what this man describes as "epic silliness." I am too cynical to believe there is such a virtue in a family movie that cost as much as "Robot."

"We don't know what to say, either, except that in Hollywood progress is a work in progress."

"Six hours may seem like an investment, but the emotional payback is beyond price." Barf.

"M. Ward for president? Forget it. He's too good at his day job." Barf.

"... it's a good thing the Bandwagon is such a commodious vehicle, because a lot more listeners will want to jump on board." Barf.

"With Sheen's investment history, he better hope Social Security doesn't change over to private accounts." Weird, to drop a political comment like that in the "Newsmakers" page on an item about Charlie Sheen and Denise Richardson's impending divorce. If those two crazy kids ...

George Will just sounds like a raving lunatic. His whole last paragraph would merit blogging for its depth of stupidity, profound lack of professional objectivity, profound lack of charity to the readers and its exceptionally patronizing tone to everyone. Mr. Will, it's called "Metamucil." It can help your attitude.

Oh, finally. I blogged NW. Now I need to learn whatever it is in Lebanon that they speak and start a reality show: "What Not to Wear in Lebanon: Hot men in acid wash jeans edition." Maybe I can get some eyeliner tips.

Where's the rain?

Here it is!

Wow. Totally wack. January and February are unseasonably dry and sunny up here, and in Death Valley it's been storm central. There are even lakes filled with rainwater! Well, for the next couple of days, at least.

There's a drought emergency in Washington State, BTW. Farmers out on the eastern half won't have enough for as much planting as they'd like to do. As for the western part, well, we're being told to not wash our cars and "brush every other tooth" (Thanks, Gov. Gregoire. That makes a lot of sense.) No problem with the first part of that. Probably ought to step up the dental hygeine, though (smacks fuzzy, latte-d tongue against roof of mouth).

I'm most interested to see what will happen with the formerly tiny and still completely insane town of Bonney Lake, however.

Bonney Lake perpetually runs low in its water reservoir over the summer. The area has just developed exponentially over the past decade. It went from nothing to the state's fastest-growing community with a rate hovering above 50 percent for the past couple years in less than a decade. Its infrastructure is in straits — dire ones — when it is overburdened with the California transplant yuppies that work in the tech industry in Seattle and Bellevue to the North.

Well, Bonney Lake has to decide how to keep up with demand in the summer. In 2003, that meant tapping a well that had manganese and iron deposits in it. The water was sludgy and brown, smelled funny and tasted terrible. Residents had to bathe in it and they didn't come out clean. Worse, some residents said their water heaters were ruined by all the sludge gunking them up.

So Bonney Lake didn't want to go through that again. Best ask the city of Tacoma for some emergency supplies for 2004, right?

Or not so right. Because some wackos that are still fighting the anti-fluoride crusade live out in Bonney Lake and they stormed the city council. I know, I'm a journalist, I'm supposed to be objective, but for Christ's sake, we're talking fluoridation here. Where are the mind-controlled Soviet zombies you nutcases promised us back in the 1950s? Fluoridation works, knuckleheads. Deal with it. And while you're at it, quit driving whitetrash redneck 80s-model Crown Victorias, Bible yuppie unconcerned with passing a camel through the eye of a needle SUVs, enormous jacked-up trashy pickups and other smog makers, which are actually producing carcinogenic pollution, you fathead hypocrites. Get the government out of your water AND your right to pollute the heck out of the air? Get with the program, homunculi.

So the cro magnons demanded the city not use Tacoma water (from the fresh banks of the Green River, after which the serial killer was named) which is fluoridated but rather the stinky water with manganese and iron and gawd-knows-what in it. Because nutso psycho John Birchers haven't bothered to study the effects of what may happen to their thyroid should massive doses of other kinds of metals whop it.

There was some internal debate. I forget how it all came out; mostly I was shocked that this blue state would have pockets in the western, true-blue part about fluoride, of all things.

So I'm curious to see what will happen.

Heck, the Green River's snowpack is low. Tacoma might not extend the courtesy at all.

Ah, what a summer we have to look forward to.

Does this post make me sound like a 70-year-old man or what????

Epic struggle of wills

My paper lady and I are locked in an epic struggle of wills. I think, without ever having seen each other, we totally hate each others' guts.

I know why she hates me. When I started my service I went through the paper's website to sign up and then told my HR person afterwords so as to get the employee discount ($3/week, comes straight out of the check) and that just muffed up the whole payment system and (!!!) took away the avenue that Lani, the paper lady, would get tipped through. She had to leave me nasty notes to get me to get the payment thing caught up to date.

Well, the next reason she hates me is because somehow I was not getting a paper for several days and I complained to the paper and she got docked a dollar. Which is just wrong on the part of the paper. Maybe she didn't leave it at my place because the payment thing hadn't been straightened out, I have no clue. But that dollar left her in a pissy little mood and she left me a note about how she would love to hear from me if I have a problem so I don't call the newspaper delivery HQ and have her docked a lousy buck that I'm pretty sure they can afford and that ain't even how much a single copy of a paper is worth.

So I'm fine with that, but I start to hate her when I see her little pissy handwritten addenda where she underlines that she has been delivering papers *everyday* (sic) to my doorstep and maybe one of my neighbors covets my paper.

Oh, please. Nobody covets the Tacoma News Tribune unless it's Sunday and it has the coupons. Even then most people are ambivalent.

Thus I began to hate her.

I also noticed that Lani was pitching them at my door at 5 a.m. so that they'd make that loud slapping noise and resonate in the hallway. This was marginally better than when I lived in the Oakwhatever apts. in Little Rock and my bedroom window was right by the paperbox and the stocker would let that metal door slam shut at 5 a.m. Oh, I hated that paperbox. But it gets on my last nerve that instead of letting it fall on the hallway carpet or just dropping it off softly (which would require walking about two feet from the staircase), Lani had to make a big honking deal.

So she's all passive aggressive, I figure what's good for the goose is good for the paper delivery wiseacre.

As it turned out, I had an appointment to housesit for Hugh and Janice coming up, and I thought, well, let her see how much people want the stupid paper. I don't call in that I'm going on vacation and I want my paper paused. I just let it all build up in front of my door. How ya like me now, punk???

I end up doing this every couple of months. I never call in to say that I'm on vacation or whatever, just let that paper pile up. She can't stand this. Actually, I can't so much either because I have to pick up the papers and take them out to the curb regardless.

So one time she actually quits delivering papers (I think I was visiting Arkansas — I told some neighbors if they wanted the paper to take it, but I guess they didn't care, just like nobody else cared!!!!) and I have to call the newspaper delivery HQ to get service restarted. Then a big ole plastic vacation bag shows up. I don't want that!!! So, touche, Lani. Well played.

Now that I have the internet, I've found it about three million times as interesting to check out news electronically instead of on paper. So I've been ignoring the papers outside. Again. For no reason.

Lani has just quit delivering the paper. I have NO idea what that is about.

I told my HR person I wanted to quit the paper, she said I'd have to call circulation to cancel. I have not yet called them. Lani, where are my damn papers??? Am I messing with your mind, little one???

To confuse the matter further, there is no neighbor next door to me (moved out a week ago, the maintenance guys have been working on the apt. to clean it up) and there are papers piling up in front of that door. I'm thinking about jacking the Sunday paper for the coupons.

I wonder if I'm causing Lani any grief by not getting the payment/cancellation issue resolved. I hope so. That would be worth $3 a week.

Clearly, we are locked in a completely petty and ridiculous struggle of wills of epic proportions.

George Lucas, deciever

So Mr. Skywalker Ranch thinks he can just go around popping off that the upcoming Star Wars flick is probably going to have to be rated PG-13 and little kiddies shouldn't go and it's real dark and think all is forgiven?

I'm sorry, but since your last two movies were the worst exercises in Hollywood flash-em n smash-em, I'm not buying.

Look, you can't build a cannon on sooper dooper special effects to the point where said effects become a way of cynically expressing the actual point of the movie (making the big buckarooskis). Dialogue and acting was such an afterthought you switched around people's faces and reactions from different takes with a little Photoshop magic. That's just weird.

The problem is, we all knew there would be darkness in the telling of the making of Vader. I mean, duh, we already knew he'd destroyed the "old republic," left his pregnant wife, killed his Jedi masters, etc. etc. We just expected the story, as a whole, to be better told. I mean, you had all the money in the world and actors who wanted a better vantage point to extol their talent were willing to give their left arms to be a part of the movie. You had the advantage of what, 20 years, since the last movie had been done to cogitate. You had an army of superior writers and directors at your beck and call.

Don't go out there trying to tell me "Revenge of the Sith" is going to be all dark and try to raise my expectations or my level of excitement. I'm betting it's going to be as ham-handled, as choppy, as confusing and as unnecessarily pagentrientric as the other two. Your last two SW films have all been a bunch of meaningless and feckless signifying. Why should "Sith" be any diff?

Even Al-Qaeda reads US Weekly

Boy, I figured destroying the World Trade Center would be a pretty tough act to follow for Al-Qaeda, but in my weird, paranoid imaginings I never figured the next logical step would be kidnapping Russell Crowe.

All that money spent on Homeland Security in Wyoming and all along the threat was to ... an Australian actor. What the heck was that cell meeting like? Oh to have been a fly on the wall. A fly who speaks Arabic.

There's an irony here. With the 9/11 attacks, the terrorists set themselves up as people who actually knew where to hit for a number of strategic reasons: the Pentagon, center of the military, the WTC, a financial hub with massive nearby media for the quickest dispersion of the most horrifying images, allegedly the White House or the Capitol, with its seat of political power.

With the announcement that they were ever after a freaking celebrity, it's like the America-rejecting terrorists have become us, trapped into thinking kidnapping a star would actually terrorize regular people. I mean, I'd feel bad for Crowe if something happened to him, but if Al-Qaeda were kidnapping celebs, I wouldn't really worry about it affecting my life too much. What, are they going to kidnap me? Kill my legislators? Ruin my sense of security? Not so much.

Of course, there are people in this country who identify far too much with celebrities (confession, last night I had a dream I was hanging out with Oprah; she was really nice and encouraging, I'm trying not to read too much into it) and maybe this would shatter their sense of self. But for the terrorists to intuit that, they had to be awfully Americanized.

I'm just saying.

Housesitting blogging

I really like housesitting at Hugh and Janice's place. Waterviews, great dogs, a kitchen stocked with All-Clad cookware, books all over the place including every spy novel ever published in English under the sun. What is there not to love?

Also, Janice is the coolest. She left a tupperware container with the label "homemade marshmallows" on it, and I'll be darned if they aren't really amazing. I've only ever heard of one other person to make her own marshmallows, and she recently was let out of a certain federal facility where she spent time for lying about insider trading.

I wonder if Miss Martha will have all kinds of new recipes for making prison hooch and more. I actually looked at a forum site for prison food but it didn't seem at all like the kind of stuff you could whip up on the inside. Cake, chili, that sort of stuff. Also homemade Kahlua. Who is letting these prison people online to talk about baking and making chi chi liquors? Why is it okay to have a name like "hotlatinaMILF4U" on a prison-oriented online community? This is so weird. I'm sorry I ever went to google for a silly pruno link.

"What's the Matter With Kansas"

Wow. Hard to say enough good things about this book. This is no dry political book, no, this has a character in it who has been elected pope by his relatives and supporters (about a dozen) in Kansas City, which apparently is a hotbed of religious wackiness. Plus, a suburb of KC is allegedly the site of the Garden of Eden and Jesus' eventual return, according to Mormons, if this book is right. Great details.

Also, thank you, Thomas Frank, for explaining to me how Vietnam Vets, of all people, have become right wingers. They were given the ultimate betrayal when they were sent or volunteered for a fruitless, pointless war, and yet most of the vets from that war I've met are radicalized to the right. They love to be tough guys; at the beginning of this current action in Iraq I was in a house with a vet and he was all over kicking the "towel heads'" butts. And, yes, that was his word for Iraqis. His display of macho bravado was incredibly off-putting, to the point where I wanted to ask him what pleasure he derived from the murder of a bunch of civilians and defeat of under-armed, under-equipped and under-organized Iraqi forces. I kind of said, "I thought war was hell?" and he was all, "yeah, for them!"

There was an implicitness, I guess, to the fact that when it was his turn, he'd been on the losing team. The one that was under-organized, whose goals were under-understood.

I just figured he'd have reserved a little human compassion for the folks who were on that other side this go round. Even if they aren't our buddies. Of course, as you'll see below, he wasn't exactly showing human compassion to the person who I would have thought was most on "his side."

Also, he got on my nerves because he was so gleeful and his woman, whose son might have been in one of those choppers on the screens, was fighting in Iraq at that moment and she was terrified. Tears streamed down her face and she was breaking down every few minutes. I mean, for God's sake, if ever there was a moment not to act triumphalist this was it, you macho jerk. I wonder if they're still together. I think the display of bloodlust by one's partner, when one's kith and kin have their lives put on the line during the scene that is prompting said bloodlust, is a definite sign that the partner is in desparate need of being dumped.

Lest I make this one guy out to be a raver, he isn't the only one. He's just the one who had Fox news on while the war was going on and I was around to witness this crazy, red-state style drama.

Anyway, thank you, Frank, I really needed that.

"Florence of Arabia"

By Christopher Buckley. Read it. It is pretty dang funny. Kind of like if Kinky Freidman and Carl Hiassen decided to have an earnest protagonist and set a novel in the diplomatic jungle of the Middle East instead of Texas or Florida, two places that are maybe marginally less packed with crazies than that region.

Am now on "Den of Thieves," about the S&L and insider trading scandals of the 80s. Man, these guys think they're so smart, but the only way they made any money is by cheating the system. So you're not that smart, jerkos.

The book goes into really, way too much, almost pornographic, detail about the particular trades that Milken and Boesky were undertaking — along with Levine, Siegel, and all the rest of the bunch. Aye. So far there hasn't been a lot of discussion about the fallout that the sort of high-stakes, winner-take-all banking wreaked. I mean, there has to be a reason beyond the impropriety of it all that insider trading is illegal; companies were destroyed and broken apart and spun off and people lost their jobs and competition was diminished across literally hundreds of industries in the 80s. What it meant to be a company changed in the 80s because suddenly, you weren't just a maker of cookies, you had a publishing wing, a cigarette wing, a series of interests in weapons manufacturing and a string of home furnishing labels. It can't be called a vertical or horizontal trust because it is almost too random and across too many industries.

Although mergers and acquisitions was a way to make big money in the 80s if you were a financial biz, the way Boesky and Milken made their money was by buying positions on margin when they heard about mergers in the works. However, they gamed the markets and actually made it so companies were pressured to make leveraged buyouts! It's crazy!

Anyway, with all that gaming going on there have to be real losers. Regular joes like me, seniors with pensions invested in these companies and junk bonds that Milken would buy and sell at prices so favorable to himself he could easily make $10 million come and go in a wash of paper. I just think there's a big, complicated story out there that can mark the ripples that these greedy bastards caused to wash over the rest of us.

Also, James B. Stewart, nicely played with the New Testament reference for your title. Not only were they moneychangers, these captains of crookedness, but, as we find out, they were all of semitic extraction (like the dudes in the temple) minus a couple of minor players. To me, the biggest sense of indignation I got was at how the big players apparently were feeling like outsiders as non-WASPs, I mean, please, don't write this off on their heritage when clearly the only God they worship is Mammon! Or am I being too touchy there?

Tacoma, I love you

One time when I was out on the town with some wild and crazy people we ended up at this seedy bar that I'll call Barb's and can be found on North Pearl and 26th St.

It was such a den of redneckiness that one of the men in our crew got propositioned in the bathroom by a trucker. This does not happen at finer establishments anywhere, even gay discos, because there are protocols for looking, I imagine, at the least for a private room. There were these old skanks and their golf-clothes wearing sugardaddies and the lot of them were swingers and they danced (to karaoke music, mind you) in a big conga line of inappropriate touching.

At that moment, one of the women in the party and myself cried out "I love Tacoma!" It is our ironic rallying cry.

Here are some "I love Tacoma" people I saw in a single trip to the Ruston waterfront:

A big black dude with his SUV doors and trunk popped open. The stereo was blasting Bob Marley and the Wailers' "Stir It Up," and the dude was in the driver seat, going to town with it on a flute in improvisational jazz mode.

A little old white dude was sitting at a table with his old white friends and, by his side, was a big long carved stick with a snake carved as though it were twining blockily around the staff. There was a kind of flint arrowhead or spike stuck in the top and a tufted ring of ermine fur sat on the top of the staff. A bypassing gal told a friend of hers he was going to cast some spells and they giggled. I had to restrain myself from asking if he was planning to do battle.

In previous trips to the waterfront, I have seen a guy with a pet raccoon (not his first! Apparently they get to be about 40 pounds and *mean* and you have to let them loose in the woods) and virtually every time I go there I see Roller man, who has this elaborate setup of poles and sweatbands and a boombox and these rollerskates you can push off your foot and pick up later in the dance routine he does but never completes because he inevitably knocks over a pole and has to pick it up instead of just finishing the routine.

Roller man, just finish the routine someday. We are all rooting for you to finish your roller dance.

Also, where did you get all those sweatbands?

Trick #1

Apparently rabbis are trying to horn in on the priest's reputation for lecherosity! (See comment below) And no, that makes little sense.

The tricks I am referring to aren't *that* kind, people. They're family friendly!

So, here goes: Ladies and gentlemen, for your entertainment, I will now perform a feat so dangerous, so death-defying you may be compelled to look away! But don't, for if you do, you shall miss out on an act of unparalelled boldness!

(I am balancing a toilet plunger in my right palm! So gross! So germy! Will it fall? Will I touch the germ end? (Ooohs and aaaaahs)

No! The filthy toilet plunger does not drop on the ground! The dirty end does not touch her hand! She is still germ-free and loving it!
Ta da!

"Blink"

Malcolm Gladwell is a compelling storyteller. I just wish sometimes that he had a little more to say about the stories he tells.

I highly recommend "Blink" because it is really entertaining and well-woven together. However, here's the lesson: Snap judgements are good if you're an expert on what you're snap judging. But the way he gets around to this is the part that's really worth digging into.

Also, he wrote the book because of his hair, which made people stereotype him. Funny, every once in a while while I was reading I thought about his hair, but I hadn't gotten to the acknowledgements yet! I was thinking it was lucky for him that the David Remnick was able to look past his Q-tip head and into his clever little brain. Now, having read that he is judged by his hair, I find myself wondering, well, you know it looks a little uneven and shaggy AND it makes cops stop you on the highway, why not cut it?

Malcolm, you talented little thing you, are you kind of an iconoclast under all that cleverness?

"Persepolis"

Good graphic novel. Nice fast read. Cool use of black and white graphics and style of drawing. Interesting perspective on the Iranian revolution. Worth taking a couple hours out of your day for.

I'm now about halfway through "Blink," and I have once again proved I am a thuperbrain. By misunderstanding instructions, naturally. There was a test and I totally didn't pay attention on how to take it (explaining, perhaps, my academic career) and I thought to myself, "what's all this old-people stuff about? Bingo? Florida? What the heck?" and it turned out the subtle cues of agedness in the test (to those who take it correctly) make them walk slower on turning the test in.

This is not the first time I've foiled the discipline of psychology. Once I was taking a test (this was part of a research project) that was about unscrambling words and I was on fire, then I got back a "results sheet" that said I had scored in the bottom 10 percent of people who had been unscrambling words and would I please continue with unscrambling these other words?

Well, I was pretty taken aback for about thirty seconds before, duh, it dawned on me that there was no way they could have scored all the kids in class that fast. So I wrote a nanny-nanny boo boo type note on the test and declared I was too smart to fool, then felt kind of bad that I bunged their experiment. So I erased the note and tried to do the unscrambling but I had wasted too much time and didn't do nearly as good, so I probably completely validated the point they were trying to make.

I'm kind of a sucker, aren't I?

Newsweek, processed

Like sausage, it is.

Noted: Newsweek has written not only an article about fmr. Time managing editor Henry Grunwald, he gets a mention in "The Editor's Desk," since the editor knew through his daughter at school and Grunwald is recalled by another Newsweek writer who worked for him, I get the overwhelming feeling of media inbreeding.

Noted: Newsweek calls it an "exclusive" to report that the Pope has no living will. Well, while I can see this meriting some space, in the sense that an article about Catholic doctrine and the reality of modern medicine for, at the least, the Western world's most comfortable and how they grate against each other so bad that even the pope can't figure out what sort of living will he should have. But, in the sense of the pope not having a living will, well, duh. Kind of what I'd expect, actually.

Noted: the U.S. gov't is going to open a 1,700 person embassy in Baghdad. They are teaching these ambassadors about different weapons.

Also noted: The CIA's gulfstream jets used to shuttle terrorist suspects out of the country (extraoridanry rendition anyone?) have been having their comings and goings documented by "plane spotters," who record the comings and goings of various planes at various airports across the world. How insanley nuts are these people? Yet they are shockingly contributing to the organization of today's data glut for a higher purpose.

But, onto the raisin deter — last crappy sentences.

"Gentlemen, does that start your engines?"

"For Iraq's independent-minded women, hemmed in between Sunni terrorists and Shia hardliners, the struggle for Iraq's soul could last generations." (get it? HEMMED?? Plus, not only is there a pun, there's a struggle for a soul!)

"Now that's a Manhattan project for the 21st Century."

"Ensuring a peaceful future will take a special kind of power: brainpower."

"It might just be his last chance to persuade his soulmate in the Kremlin to come in from the cold."

"And if the Bush administration wants to fight a war that is increasingly becoming a legal morass, it may have to think up some new ideas."

"And only when they laugh will Martha get the last laugh." Plus this sidebar closer: "Then again, it's not surprising that controversy will be part of Martha's legacy." Masters of the obvious much?

Here's the last question Newsweek asks Keri Russell in their mini-Q&A feature: "Keri, that's called being a lesbian." I can't decide if it comes off as too literal or what.

That is all the NW I can deal with at the moment.

"Prep"

Reading this book was something of a chore. I just wanted to smack the protagonist around a bit in places. On the other hand, it also sent me into dark, chilled place because the boarding school had a lot of similar features to Germantown Friends School, where I spent Junior High. The whole thing with money and how you don't talk about it, the conformity, the structure of the cliques. It was creepy.

It also put into relief, for me, the difference between East Coast private schools and anything more than 100 miles west of the Atlantic. Here, in the West Coast, the moneyed sort want their kids to participate in sports and music and art. On the East Coast, you suck it in and act like everyone's equal while you prepare to take over duddy's investment firm. On the West Coast, you learn to perform perform perform for everybody's benefit!!! The East Coast has layers and protocols. The West Coast just has a certain unbridled enthusiasm — all over the place, for the performers and the watchers alike. You! Must! Love! Everything! You! See!

I'm not sure which is ultimately more annoying, but I know which coast's style screwed me up psychologically.

Dear Alabama

Hi there,

I am a great admirer of what Judge Roy Moore has done with your courthouse. Two tons of granite? Loving it! How classy a monument to our first laws and our Judeo-Christian heritage can you get?

The statue of the Ten Commandments inspires us to reverence for political life. And, I bet, keeps those crazy local teens off the drugs and premarital you-know-what. I understand it has inspired some actual pilgrimages. But I bet it doesn't meet all the needs of your citizens, which is why I have a modest proposal.

Let me erect a statue next to the Ten Commandments. I would love to submit to you an artist's rendering of it: imagine, a bronze statue of a young bull, covered in a lovely, shiny gold foil.

This statue would represent so much that is part of our Republic's daily life and heritage; it would show how our ancestors had to till the earth using oxen. It would represent our country's early days — so brash were we as a young democracy! So much power yet to come! It would hearken to our glorious fiscal heritage of so-called "bull-markets."

Most of all, it would connect to our Judeo-Christian heritage of ancient times, extolling the values that practically pre-date Judeo, much less Christian.

Also, the damn liberals can't do nothing about it because it could be Hindu. But it's not!

Yes, when I think about the problems of the world, I don't see how they can't be solved with a couple of statues — the Ten Commandments and a golden calf.

Fitness Blogging day whatever

Finally I'm able to complete a Tuff E Nuff class without feeling like dying. I am so excited. I was all dying and sore and not wanting to go but I made myself and now I feel all jazzed.

Nice killer workout. There was the obligatory opening aerobic portion followed by a circuit consisting of running a lap around the track, then completing two sets (12 each) of two weight bearing exercises (say, squats, military press and repeat).

Speaking of cool killer workouts, I'm thinking about mixing it up with some weightlifting and I found a sooper dooper site run by a tuff lady weightlifter with a PhD. Anyway, here it is. There are some pretty inspirational pics of middle-age gals who, after years of spreading waists and inactivity, have become weightlifting champs and all-around hardbodies. So I figure I can do this stuff too.

Now, all I need to figure out is how much weight to start with.

What America gets right

America may not have the best sacred architecture, but I'll be damned if we don't have the best, most passionate sacred music in the new and old world.

I was driving and the Dixie Hummingbirds' "Christian Automobile" came on and, if you want to do yourself a favor, you'll listen to it.

It's amazing that out of the most plain and humble churches in the world — and Lord have mercy there are some terrible looking churches out there — some of the best music comes out.

Also snake handling.

"Blue Blood," "Cain n Abel"

So I'm mostly done with "Blue Blood" and I'm done. Man, this started out with the best Chapter One. Very good book. I made it most of the way through. It should have been two books, Mr. Conlon. If you like disgusting true tales from the NYPD front line, with a little family history of a multi-generation law enforcement legacy, plus a little bit about how police work goes down, you will like "Blue Blood."

Also breezed through biz book "Cain and Abel in the Workplace" and basically, it says there are goldfish and there are sharks and one will not only always be out to eat the other but it will be the only way they operate because *they are too incompetant to do their jobs* and hence they will get caught if the goldfish are smart.

This is directly counter to my experience as someone who lives in a world of complexity and ever-shifting alliances. However, it did have some good advice in that being neutral and keeping your ears open, instead of your mouth, can keep you from being a victim. Live like you're paranoid but be supremely levelheaded, in other words, sums up the biz advice.

I just saved you from having to read the book!

Some strange license plates I've seen

There's a bright taxi yellow Nissan Xterra in Gig Harbor that has "MSBITCHY" as its plate. That's real!

Today at the Y I saw an SUV with "MAJDICK" on the back. I didn't see it in action, but maybe that is meant to be an explanation for how the driver, you know, drives.

I also noticed an oldiemobile with a regular plate with its three letters (here in Washington state, generally the plates are three numbers and three letters) being SHT. I would have asked to have a different plate if it had been me at the DOL (here in Washington state we don't have a Department of Moving Vehicles, no, we have a Department Of (note the capital'd of) Licensing) I would have asked for a different plate.

Also I saw an SUV with "MOM PHD" on the back. Got labels? Got a need to tell people something? If you do truly "have it all" why are you driving a Mazda, knucklehead.

Here's some fun reading from the Smoking Gun. Notice the first license complaint is about GLFBTCH, which is a lot less graphic than MSBITCHY.

Newsweek, you disgust me

So this week's Newsweek, which eventually I shall have to dignify with a blog entry detailing its faults, has a picture of a, dare I say, glowing Martha Stewart.

Did I mention there's a catch?

This is a flagrant violation of journalistic ethics and it's offensive.

As a side note, O.J. was made darker, Martha was made thinner. Guess we know what adjective needs to be emphasized when the press wants to stress what makes a woman a ball-busting, castrating, power-hungry b-word.

BTW, Newsweek editors and art department, Martha could eat you for lunch. And you'd be served with a lovely sauce aurore in a milk glass dish .