Unless someone wants to pay me for an entry or two, the next update here will be August 1 (at the earliest). Everything's fine, I'm just working hard, playing hard, and sleeping little. Cheers.

Real, or The Onion?

Exhibit A, from Boston: Tech-savvy street gangs stake out turf in cyberspace

Exhibit B, from California: Gov. Criticizes Legislators as 'Girlie Men'

Exhibit C, from Chicago: Report: Scientists Still Seeking Cure for Obesity

Up yours, 30!

Well, I'm officially on crack. I just signed up for the LA Marathon, next March, the day after my 30th birthday. Chances are 99% I'll walk the whole thing, but that's okay. I'd like to do it in 6 hours, which is about a 13 minute mile, which is about as fast as you need to walk before they start shutting down water stations and opening roads before you get there.

Guess I have to start working out again now, huh?

Thought of the day

"It looks like an elementary school threw up in my trunk."

Kids' books, multiplication worksheets, and looseleaf paper *everywhere*, man.

Yes, Rick, I'm cleaning it out in the next 24 hours!

More about Operation Sodomy-For-Freedom

Philosophical Bullshit-O-Meter set to 9, again

I was a a going-away dinner Sunday night when the guest of honor introduced me to someone with the explanation that she too is mourning a close friend and maybe we could talk.

I'll have to admit the first thing that came to mind was, "But the food just came...and I'm hungry..." But I bucked up and briefly told her the Beth story, and she told me her story, which happened a month more recently.

She wanted to know what, if anything, I'd taken/learned from the loss. So, trying to look meaningfully at her instead of longingly at my food, I played Guru On The Mountaintop and gave her the cliche-ridden but sincere litany: appreciate your life, appreciate your relationships, don't assume, do things now instead of later, every day you wake up in the morning is a good day, the glass is already broken, etc.

And it was then that I realized I've really got my shit together these days. Because I know exactly what I've learned from lousy things, rather than stumbling in the dark wondering if there's any good in any of it.

There's a letter in Salon's advice column today, from a man who writes, "I survived my parents dying. I survived being in the Army and having to fight in a conflict I did not believe in. I survived my best friend committing suicide, but I can't seem to heal past this" -- "this" being his long-time girlfriend leaving him. Among other things, Salon's advice maven replies:

"It could be that you never actually beat those past events or rose above them, but simply survived them. So they are still hurting you. Perhaps this breakup is sort of the straw that broke the camel's back. If so, that's not a dangerous thing necessarily. It just means it's really time to come to grips with loss.

"When you can no longer carry every burden like a man, when you can no longer soldier on, when you can no longer absorb every blow, then it's time to begin a new phase of life in which you acknowledge the loss. You stop being a soldier and become a philosopher. Instead of battling, you look for meaning. You look for the connections. With compassion, you examine your wounds to see exactly how they happened, what hit you, and from what direction; where were you standing and why were you there? Were you ordered to be there or had you just wandered into the jungle? Were you on a mission? Was someone trying to kill you or was it an accident?

"This, I think, is the true healing phase. It's not time that's doing it. It's you."

Amen.

I promised myself I wouldn't blog until I did the tech writing I have to do, but I can't help myself on this one.

New York Times: When a questioner in Raleigh noted that Mr. Edwards had been described as charming and a "nimble campaigner" and asked Mr. Bush to compare the one-term senator to Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Bush snapped back: "Dick Cheney can be president. Next?"

I thought Dick Cheney was president?

Obligatory"CanYouRepeatThatWhileCheneyDrinksAGlassOfWater?"

Seriously, if Mr. Too-Dumb-To-Be-Stressed snapped at a reporter, clearly the Republicans That Be are not happy about this choice.

I, too, was worried that Kerry wouldn't be man enough to choose a running mate with more charisma than he has. Granted, it would have been hard to pick someone with less. Perhaps Ben Stein in his role in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

I don't love Edwards. I still don't love Kerry. But for the first time in months, I've got some hope that this Anybody But Bush thing is gonna work out.

The "Was that my out-loud voice?" moment of July 4, 2004

Acquaintance at party: If I was an American citizen, I wouldn't mind voting for George Bush.
Me: Then I'm glad you're Canadian.

Has everyone seen Fahrenheit 911 yet? No? Why not?
* Because you're already going to vote against Bush? It's always good to have more evidence for, you know, inappropriate arguments at parties.
* Because you think Michael Moore is a self-aggrandizing loudmouth? You're right. But he's saying stuff everyone should hear in this movie, and as a bonus, he doesn't have much screen time.
* Because it's propaganda? Sure it is. But if you're smart enough to know when you're being manipulated by advertising, you're smart enough to know when you're being manipulated by the words, editing, and musical choices of a documentarian with an agenda. Filter through it and there's a lot of good, hard reporting left over.
* Waiting for video? Don't. It's worth it in the theater, if only for the audience participation.
* Afraid there'll be a lot of 9/11 footage? There isn't. There's some, but it's well done, and you don't see the towers hit or people jumping out of buildings. Unless you were there or lost someone(s) that day, you can take it.
* Don't want to see it because it's overhyped? This isn't the Atkins diet, this is important. Suck it up and join the masses.

If I've provided you with $10 worth of entertainment over the years, do me a personal favor give that $10 to this movie. Let's get this one to sell better than Passion of the Christ!

John Hockenberry, in his book "Moving Violations" on hailing a cab in a wheelchair, and when the crazy guy who shares your head with you takes over:

I rolled over to his cab and knocked on the window. "Can you take a fare?" The driver was pretending I had just landed there from space, but I was freezing and needed a ride, so I tried not to look disgusted. He nodded with all the enthusiasm of someone with an abscessed tooth. I opened the door and hopped into the backseat. I folded the chair and asked him to open the trunk of his cab.

"Why you want me to do that?" he said.

"Put the chair in the trunk, please." I was half-sitting in the cab, my legs still outside. The door was open and the wheelchair folded next to the cab. "No way, man." he said. "I'm not going to do that. It's too damn cold." I was supposed to understand that I would now simply thank him for his trouble, get back in my wheelchair, and wait for another cab.

"Just put the chair in the trunk right now. It's Christmas Eve, pal, why don't you just pretend to be Santa for five fucking minutes." His smile vanished. I had crossed a line by getting angry. But he also looked relieved, as though now he could refuse me in good conscience. It was all on his face. "You're crazy, man. I don't have to do nothing for you." I looked at him once more and said, "If you make me get back into this chair you are going to be very sorry." It was a moment of visceral anger. There was no turning back now. "Go away, man. It's too cold."

I got back into the chair. I placed my backpack with my wallet in it on the back of my chair for safekeeping. I grabbed his door, and with all my strength pushed it back on its hinges until I heard a loud snap. It was now jammed open. I rolled over to his passenger window, and with two insane jabs of my right fist I shattered it. I rolled around to the front of the cab, and with my fist in my white handball glove took out first one, then the other, headlight. The light I was bathed in from the front of the cab vanished. The face of the driver could now be seen clearly, illuminated from the dashboard's glow.

I could hear myself screaming at him in a voice that sounded far away. I knew the voice, but the person it belonged to was an intruder in this place. He had nothing to do with this particular cabbie and his stupid, callous, insensitivity; rather, he was the overlord to all such incidents that had come before. Whenever the gauntlet was dropped, it was this interior soul, with that screaming voice and those hands, who felt no pain and who surfed down a wave of hatred to settle the score. This soul had done the arithmetic, and chosen the weapons. I would have to live with the consequences.

Trivia break

Quick! Name some famous people, particularly actors, who are thin-to-average 60-ish men with gray hair and moustaches.

We saw someone give an autograph in Santa Monica last night, and we simply cannot figure out who he was.