Acknowledging that people die in wars is anti-war, right? So visiting a war memorial is a left-wing, pacifist statement? Don't tell all the veterans at The Wall that their visit there makes them hippies.

Yes, I'm still on about the lack of notice our Iraq dead are getting. I suppose I'm a little obsessed with death lately, though not in the Edgar Allen Poe way my high school English teacher always used to accuse me of.

I can't say anything better about the latest Iraq media flap than this did.

Jewish food spiel #1:
The entire time I lived in Boston, I searched in vain for a good reuben (and/or Kosher pastrami sandwich sans cheese). Nada. I did manage a pretty good one in Greenfield, NY, while being serenaded by a senior citizen dixieland jazz band, but it wasn't quite up to the standards of the Kosher deli near my parents' house. (Be warned: that last link opens up a tacky web page that plays the traditional Jewish party chestnut "Hava Nagila.")

Lo, LA and its many Jews have given me Izzy's.

We wound up at Izzy's at about 2am because it's open 24 hours. It was recommended to me by a blonde from Minnesota, and I ate with people who'd lapsed from various branches of Christianity. The booths were populated by club kids, not old people. It tours itself as "the Deli to the Stars" and is (over)priced accordingly. There are pictures of celebrities on the walls. But I'll be damned if this isn't they didn't get the pastrami reuben exactly right. The pickles were almost up to my high standards, too. And it had lots of pictures of New York City -- you got the feeling most of the ones featuring the World Trade Center had been there much earlier than September 12, 2001.

So it was the food of New Jersey, the late-night college comeraderie/stupidity of O'Rourkes Diner in Connecticut, and the wonderful people-watching after-club munchie vibe of the old Deli Haus (RIP) in Boston, all rolled into one. I felt like I was home, on at least those three levels -- two of which I can never again literally obtain -- and possibly the mystical fourth home level that is southern California.

LA taketh away, but LA giveth.

Jewish food spiel #2:
Must the supermarket insist on carrying Dr. Brown's soda in the "Ethnic" aisle? Yes, I must now go to the ethnic aisle, to purchase the traditional drink of my people! It's got a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge on it, it must be ethnic!

Then again, Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray Soda, like gefilte fish, is apparently one of those things that just don't taste right to you unless you grew up with it. More for me.

Actual ethnic food spiel:
On my first foray into LA's Koreatown, I tried the You & Me Restaurant because it fit all my criteria for eating in Asian neighborhoods (must be cheap, must be full of people of the correct nationality, must not have tablecloths, menu must be predominantly in a foreign language...) The "hot paste cold noodle" cleaned out my sinuses and nearly made me cry. I thought for sure my mouth was bleeding. That's good eatin'. It also came with some evil-smelling Korean mustard and an array of pickled delights I couldn't begin to identify.

Next stop: LA's Thai Town. I haven't had a really great Thai meal for at least a year. Bother!

Things I just can't get bring myself to get too upset over now that I've lived in Europe:
1) Public nudity, including, but not limited to, Janet Jackson's right one.
2) The price of gas. (I complained at first, but now know that a few cents per gallon doesn't make a difference unless you drive a lot of miles per day in a gas guzzling vehicle.)
3) People who may or may not be under 21 being exposed to the idea that alcohol exists.

Breathe, America, breathe.

And she would begin in the way that all Mandinka story-tellers began: "At this certain time, in this certain village, lived this certain person." It was a small boy of about their rains, who walked to the riverbank one day and found a crocodile trapped in a net.

"Help me!" the crocodile cried out.

"You'll kill me!" cried the boy.

"No! Come nearer!" said the crocodile.

So the boy went up to the crocodile--and instantly was seized by the teeth in that long mouth.

"Is this how you repay my goodness--with badness?" cried the boy.

"Of course," said the crocodile out of the corner of his mouth. "That is the way of the world."

The boy refused to believe that, so the crocodile agreed not to swallow him without getting an opinion from the first three witnesses to pass by. First was an old donkey.

When the boy asked his opinion, the donkey said, "Now that I'm old and can no longer work, my master has driven me out for the leopards to get me!"

"See?" said the crocodile. Next to pass by was an old horse, who had the same opinion.

"See?" said the crocodile. Then along came a plump rabbit who said, "Well, I can't give a good opinion without seeing this matter as it happened from the beginning."

Grumbling, the crocodile opened his mouth to tell him--and the boy jumped out to safety on the riverbank.

"Do you like crocodile meat?" asked the rabbit. The boy said yes. "And do your parents?" He said yes again. "Then here is a crocodile ready for the pot."

The boy ran off and returned with the men of the village, who helped him to kill the crocodile. But they brought with them a wuolo dog, which chased and caught and killed the rabbit, too.

"So, the crocodile was right," said Nyo Boto. "It is the way of the world that goodness is often repaid with badness. That is what I have told you as a story."

-- Alex Haley, "Roots"

"Those are people who died, died..."**

Did you know the Pentagon banned the media from showing pictures of war dead way back in 1991? Yep, Bush Senior's regime did it, and Clinton's left it alone, so even I can't blame Dubya for this one.

If we're debating taste and not freedom of the press, there's a case for banning gory pictures of war dead (you know, like the ones of of Hussein's sons the Bush administration wanted to make sure we saw -- yes, they were bastards, but YUCK). However, disallowing pictures of flag-draped coffins? Explain how that's anything but an attempt to convince the denial-happy American public that no one actually dies in wars. The Pentagon claims the ban is out of respect for fallen soldiers' families, but that's hard to swallow as long as our Commander In Chief is using 9/11 images for his own personal gain.

I have to agree with the First Amendment activist who's been publishing coffin photos under the Freedom of Information Act when he says: "I would make the argument that trying to hide the photos of these people who gave everything for their country is actually dishonoring them. They went over there in all of our names and died, and then when they come back home, they're hidden behind a curtain. I think that's wrong."

Though I haven't seen him since high school, and the last time we hung out socially was probably 6th grade, I just learned that someone I (used to) know went to the mat with Bill O'Reilly. His father was killed in 9/11, and he's now an anti-war activist, but regardless of your stance on that issue...Bill O'Reilly was a total dick to him and he seems to have handled it well. Apparently it's become a large-ish emblem of how crazy O'Reilly gets when a guest doesn't buckle (yelling "Shut up!" and instructing the crew to pull the guest's mic). Go Jeremy, it's your birthday...

My feeble attempt to adequately render the surreal firewood story

Background: Rick and I are on our way to the Mojave Desert with our friend C. and his friend A, and we realize that we forgot to buy firewood in the last semi-commercial town on the trip (Barstow. It ain't LA, but it does have an In 'N' Out Burger...).

We consider stopping for wood in Daggett, but A. informs us that Daggett consists solely of two gas stations.

(Amusing tangent: C. realizes that he called one of these gas stations the time he lost his wallet in the desert in college. Long story short, it turns out both the gas stations are owned and operated by the same people. One gas station has restrictive opening hours and cheap gas; the other has good hours and expensive gas. Well, the locals have to gas up somehow...)

A. claims that if we get off at the exit for the Calico Ghost Town, she knows a place we can buy wood. The ghost town is essentially a laid-back Old West theme park, but the actual town of Calico is pretty ghostly, too. We pass a whole lot of nothing, except for junk abandoned on the side of the road, some of which we consider scavenging and burning instead of the wood.

We take a few turns and enter the town of Yermo, host to a creepy looking military base. We try to imagine being stationed out here in the middle of BF Nowhere, and theorize that the local Marines simply go to Vegas for every possible weekend (and help keep rural Nevada's whorehouses in business).

Eventually, we arrive at a house with a sign advertising firewood, worms, and other sundries for sale. Score! We're most of the way to the house when a shirtless aging farmer calls to us from the field adjacent to it.

He has a shirt on by the time he reaches us, which I thought was cute (aw, he's shy...). He tells us that he just sold half a cord of firewood, but that there should be enough left for us. It's $10 a wheelbarrow, he tells us, and starts walking off towards the wood.

"What's a cord?" A. asks.

"A bunch," C. replies with authority.

Right. So Mr. Firewood loads a wheelbarrow with wood, chatting with us about where we're from and all the other usual travelers' questions. He seems bemused and not impatient when we then spread a blanket over half the backseat and throw the wood into it (the trunk was full...) He tries to get us to sample some of the pickled onions he has for sale, but we're all too full of In 'N' Out burgers to contemplate any food.

He also tells us about his worms. They eat garbage and fertilizer, and he always has plenty of both. It turns out a worm can eat its own weight in a day. Local schools take field trips to see the worm farm!

We remember to ask if we can take some sticks for roasting hot dogs, and throw them in the backseat, too. (Amusing tangent #2: I didn't hear this, but apparently the wood man joked to A., "Just don't take any of the oleander!" while we were foraging for sticks. She told this story around the fire later, just as we were about to roast our hot dogs, and we got good and paranoid -- in the desert wilderness, you'd be long dead before any sort of ambulance could find you. But hunger prevailed, and we lived.)

Finally, the worm 'n' wood guy bids us farewell, and we promise to buy wood there every time we go camping in the area. He gives us each a hot pink business card and says we can also stop by for "energy work" -- and that if we see any UFOs in the area, we should come get him.

The business card advertises "Reiki Treatments/Classes" and "Local or Long Distance Attunements."

Ah, California.

We later vow to try the pickled onions next time.

Another age-oriented gripe:"On MTV, the Vines provide all the funny faces, catchy hooks, and vocal gibberish that made me buy the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" cassingle in elementary school..."

Elementary school?!?

First I'm barely out of my teen years (see yesterday's nitpick), now I'm way too old to be a rock critic for the Village Voice. I think I like the second one better.

(Real content coming soon, I just haven't had time to write down the story of the weird old guy from whom we bought firewood in the desert last weekend...)

Nitpick alert: WomensEnews has published a not-exactly-groundbreaking, but not-bad-either article about self-injuring teenagers and the Internet. I'm afraid the most shocking thing in it was this sentence:
"Teens from the ages of 14 to 26, from Colorado to Connecticut, wrote introducing themselves with lines such as 'Hi, my name is Abby. I am 17 and I am a cutter.'"

Back up. "Teens from the ages of 14 to 26?" I know we infantilize young adults in this culture but since when is a 26-year-old a teenager? This might just be a copyediting flub but is irritating nonetheless.

Europeans trying not to laugh at us because we are now not only fat, but short.

Best, most smug part:
"...the Dutch advantage was probably due to providing the 'world's best' pre and post-natal care. In contrast, around 40 million Americans have no health insurance."

Sigh.

I'll be guest blogging for my past employers The Industry Standard this week. Worse yet, I'll probably be enjoying it.

Moderation in all things, including moderation.

The energy you drew on so extravagantly when you were a kid, the energy you thought would never exhaust itself -- that slipped away somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four, to be replaced by something much duller, something as bogus as a coke high: purpose, maybe, or goals, or whatever rah-rah Junior Chamber of Commerce word you wanted to use. It was no big deal; it didn't go all at once, with a bang. And maybe, Richie thought, that's the scary part. How you don't stop being a kid all at once, with a big explosive bang...The kid in you just leaked out, like the air out of a tire. And one day you looked in the mirror and there was a grownup looking back at you. You could go on wearing bluejeans, you could keep going to Springsteen and Seger concerts, you could dye your hair, but that was a grownup's face in the mirror just the same.

-- Stephen King, "It"

One thing I observed about German culture -- and after only 18 months living there, I could be wrong -- is that modern (especially younger) Germans seemed very aware of their Holocaust history and quite eager to avoid anything that smacked of racism. Making anti-Semetic remarks, for instance, is essentially illegal. (I'm not sure I agree with the free speech implications, but we can agree that Germany means well.)

So shame on the state of Baden-Württemberg for banning teachers from wearing Islamic headscarves. Yes, it's a religious symbol on a civil servant, but have they also banned yarmulkes?

This has also been an issue in Italy and France. I love the Italian justification that a teacher wearing such a scarf might frighten the children.

Baden-Württemberg is also one of the few German states to fail to fully embrade gay marriage, which was legalized in Germany in 2001. I wondered when I was there if Bavaria was the Texas of Germany; maybe Baden-Württemberg is the [fill in your least favorite politically conservative state here]. (There are so many to pick on -- why should I choose just one?)