The jury has made its decision.

It likes the Google.

The Times opines about the case that was declared a mistrial and all of the jurors were dismissed because every one of them had Googled facts about the case they were on.

Wow, what a surprise.

I few years ago I served on a jury. It was a murder trial chock full of details that make headlines: A gay man was lured to his killer with promises of sex and drugs. There was a possibility of the murderer being in a gang. Of the three who killed the gullible young man, one was only 16 at the time. This was our defendant, a kid who looked almost angelic in court, but had knowlingly taken part in a brutal assault on a poor bastard who was just looking to get a smoke and a cuddle. What he got instead was a beating, a shot to the head, one in the ear, and a toss into the river where he drowned.

During voir dire the prosecutor noted my occupation and asked what I wrote. I told her, "Books."

"The kind of books where people get killed?"

"Yes, Ma'am, those are exactly the kind of books I write."

I had said on the form that my family had been the victim of a crime. She asked who was the victim. I said, "My wife's sister. She was murdered."

"And what did you think of that?"

"I didn't make me think highly of my brother-in-law."

Surprisingly, they kept me on.

As a writer who loves research, I wanted to read the newspaper reports about the crime on line, and was even mildly curious as to what reporters were saying about the trial itself. My computer beckoned, offering up all ity had for one quick Google. What could it hurt?

But I didn't. I waited until after the trial. But I was tempted.

Have you ever served on a jury? And would you ever, on the sly, sneak a peek at news stories even if you were told not to? You can tell us. It'll be our little secret.

Fail.

Scout Fail: This used to be my favorite hat.



Home Improvement Fail: After 6 weeks, 4 trips to Lowe's and a few hundred dollars, I still cannot get lights over our sink. Oh, I have them up all right, and they look pretty good. But they don't light, which is pretty much the basic function of a light, right?



Basketball Fail: Against my better judgement, I entered the office pool last week. I filled out the brackets, having no idea what I was doing, and after a brief taste of victory, West Virginia fucked me just like it did during my undergrad years.



My mistake was trusting a school that has a statue outside of the student union that looks suspiciously like Jerry West in buckskin.

Thanks to the Mountaineers Fail, I am now ranked 50th in our pool. I could make a cruel remark about that matching WV's literacy ranking, but I won't.

That would be a Discretion Fail.

What a dick.

No, I'm not going to post about the NCAA basketball tournament, even though it's considered a holy time of bracket-filled workday-shirking excitement here in North Carolina.

No, I want to talk about nick names. Especially nick names worn proudly by middle-aged asshats who think it makes them cool.

It doesn't.

The bobblehead is of Dick Vitale, a man I know only by his grating TV voice and lame catch phrase, "Awesome, Baby." I didn't know this until a few days ago when my wife, a woman who gags at just the mention of this douchbag, read something aloud about "Dickie V."

"Who?"

"Dickie V. That's what people call Dick Vitale."

Dickie Fucking V. Really? People call him that to his face and he hasn't bought a gun? Really? Which leads me to conclude that Dickie gave himself that nick name, maybe copping the swing of it from dead coach Jim Valvano, known as Jimmy V to his fans.

I can hear Dickie now saying, "Hey, Jim's dead, and nobody else is picking up on that sweet E-V rhyme, so I'll just start calling myself Dickie V.

Dickie Fucking V.

A good nick name is like herpes. You can't give it to yourself.

You earn a nickname like Jewels or Pounder. Sometimes the name will reflect your character or looks or origins, and sometimes it doesn't reflect anything except the giver's timing.

But giving yourself a nick name, especially past the age of 20, is sadly pathetic.

It's one of the many things I think reveal Rush Limbaugh to be a weak little man trapped inside a blimp-sized body. The guy's a known jock-sniffer and, never having done anything in the field of Testosterone-Based Events (TBEs) himself, he stuffs a bit of drugstore machismo down his pants and calls himself El Rushbo, or Maharushi, names that would get him pummeled in any self-respecting middle school.

Which, I'm willing to bet, happened a lot to the fat Cape Girardeau kid trying to be cool.

No, you earn a nickname by playing sports or serving in the military. Man stuff. Not watching other men play a game or fight your battles.

Unless you're shooting for a name like Sally.

Let's check in with Miss Scout.

Scout, our most recent addition to the Terrenoire household is thriving. Spring-loaded, she leaps about the house, barely touching the floor, snatching at loose clothing, fingers, ceiling fans, clouds, passing planes and satellites.

On Sunday we couldn't locate the remote. We found it. That's it up there.

At least she didn't gnaw on the business end.

Scout seems damn happy to be living with us, and why wouldn't she? Better than dodging traffic, an orphan on the Interstate.

And these little mishaps aside, we're pretty happy to have her with us. We're not rested, but happy.

ADOBE UPDATE: The power has arrived.

Hey buddy, want to buy a credit default swap?

You might have read about AIG, the insurance giant who bet big on credit default swaps and lost. It seems like the guys who bet your rent money on a losing nag now want you to cover their bar tab, too, and these guys insist on nothing but top shelf.

Now, you may be asking
1. "What the fuck is a credit default swap and what does it have to do with me?"
2. "When do we get set up Dr. Guillotine's famous blade in Time Square?"

Let's take question number 1. Credit Default Swaps are these miraculous things invented by financial whiz kids that always make money. Except when they don't.

Think of it this way. I'm A Big Motherfucking Corporation (ABMC, Inc.) and I issue bonds to raise money. My bonds have always paid off because I'm ABMC, Inc. and I've never defaulted on a bond in my corporate life.

So you are A Big Motherfucking Bank (ABMB, Member FDIC) and you buy my bonds, expecting a solid 5% return, no risk. But just in case, you want some insurance because hey, you never know.

AIG says, we'll insure that bond. It's a hell of a lot better way to make money than insuring lives or homes or cars because we pay zero money out and get premiums all day long. Besides, the chances of ABMC going toes up are next to zero.

Other people see AIG raking in all this easy money and decide they too want in on the action too. It's a hell of a lot easier than actually working, or making shit. You just buy and sell CDSs and roll around like Scrooge McDuck in all that lovely dough.

By the end of 2007, Credit Default Swaps are doing roughly $60 trillion in business around the world. Unfortunately, a lot of those bonds being insured were big old balls of sliced and diced subprime mortgages. Shiny on the outside, rated triple-A by the ratings brains, but on the inside they were, of course, big slimy wads of crap.

Things start to go south. Mortgages are revealed to be built on very shaky foundations and, because I have invested in other people's bonds, suddenly, I don't feel too good. For the first time, my corporate corpus is looking more like a corporate corpse and I can't pay on my bonds, the ones that you, Mr. ABMB, bought from me.

But no worries, you just ask AIG to pony up on their insurance policy. In fact, all your banker friends are asking AIG to fork it over and the whiz kids at AIG respond from their summer homes in the Hamptons with "Pay? What is the meaning of this word pay?"

AIG looks into its capital coffers and finds it has no way to pay. The dominos start to tumble and AIG, who holds so many of these CDSs from all over the world starts to bring everything crashing down, inlcuding the bank where you have your savings, the stocks where you have your investments, and your company where you have your job.

The government steps in and pays the giant AIG a lot of money so it doesn't collapse and crush all the little people scrambling to get out of the way. AIG says thanks and gives a chunk of that money - your money - to pay bonuses to the same fucks who dreamed up complex financial shell games like CDSs and subprime lending in their MBA-induced, easy-money fevers.

This is like your brother Lenny losing his mortgage money at the track, you give him your mortgage money to help him out, he loses that money too, you lose your house and the next time you see Lenny he's driving around in a brand new Porsche. Fucker.

Which leads me to question 2. Sorry, I don't have an answer for that.

Flash update, part 2

This is fun.

Jenny looked at this and suggested I do one naked. Whether she was talking about me or the cartoon, I'm not sure.

But I'm willing to try either.

Flash update

As regular readers know, thanks to the generosity of my neice, I will soon have more software power at my command (control on the PC) than any untutored mortal should possess. As I await the package from the fine folks at Adobe, I have downloaded a trial version of Flash and taken a few lesson from lynda.com.

This, my friends, is my second-ever Flash animation.

Crude, you say? Hell, you ain't seen nothing yet.

We'll be back after a few words from our sponsors.

I've been working hard, too hard to take the time to post anything worthwhile, so instead of putting up something even lamer than usual, I'm taking a few days off.

Check back on Monday. We'll talk.

Is that a Bible in your pocket?

This morning, Jenny was watching CNN while I shuffled around, preparing for work. I've been borderline sick for over a week and this morning was particularly rough, so I was only half listening.

When they covered the story of yesterday's church shooting, I looked up long enough to see this headline:

Bible Stops Bullet.

Huh. OK, one of the crazy man's shots did hit the pastor's Bible, but as the Good Book didn't, you know, actually save the man, isn't this a little weird to run as a headline? I mean, if the Bible had come through and saved the guy, great, but it didn't.

What was the editor thinking when he wrote this?

Here you have a minister murdered in front of his congregation by a man reportedly made crazy by Lyme's Disease, who then stabbed himself in the neck as he was wrestled to the ground by several brave congregants.

So, what's the lede? What is the most important part of this story? It's been a long time since I flirted with a journalism career, but I know it's not Bible Stops Bullet.


Weird. America loves its Bible-stopping-bullet stories. There were over 2 million Google responses to my search.

One guy even tested whether a Bible carried in a breast pocket could really stop a slug. He shoots a lot of bullets at a lot of books. I wish I'd thought of that.

Which leads me to a story Woody Allen told back when he was funny:

Years ago, my mother gave me a bullet...a bullet, and I put it in my breast pocket. Two years after that, I was walking down the street, when a berserk evangelist heaved a Gideon bible out a hotel room window, hitting me in the chest. Bible would have gone through my heart if it wasn't for the bullet.

So far, my Monday sucks pretty hard. Maybe the time change screwed up my internal clock. I don't know. But I hope your day is better.

It's been one of those weeks.

But it's Friday, and even though we lose an hour this weekend, I'm looking forward to 70 degrees and sunshine.

Oh yeah.

Have a good weekend, my friends, and we'll see you Monday.

News of the Weak.

I haven't said anything about two more Republicans groveling in public apology before a drug-addicted, draft-dodging, sexual predator because I weighed in on that earlier.

A few more Republican leaders revealing themselves to be craven cowards is hardly news, is it.

But still, I'm happy that the great Tom Toles is around to pick up the slack.

Talk about bad advice.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

This is great. I particularly like the hard-hitting CNBC business questions. Is it fun to be a billionaire?

And for anyone who wants to get their head around this financial crisis, here are two great places to start:

This American Life's episode The Giant Pool of Money and Factcheck.org. Factcheck's story is a little dated, saying that Bank of America is doing OK, which it isn't, but on the whole, pretty fair and even-handed assessment of how we screwed the pooch.

Update: Here's another thoughtful piece on the financial meltdown. And one more.

In general, I would encourage anyone who wants to know more to read more. There's plenty out there. But if what you're reading blames one party, one policy, or one group of people for this mess, that's most likely bullshit written by someone with a political axe to grind. Don't believe them.

If this man gives you advice, do the opposite.

This is a rare picture of David Brooks without his head in his ass. He's been called, here and elsewhere, the wrongest man in America, and given how many people have been wrong over the past 8 years, that's a heaping hunk of raw wrongitude. David Brooks is the King of Wrongistan. If you look up wrong in the dictionary, it will refer you to Brooks, David.

David Brooks writes for the New York Times. Yesterday, he wrote a column that reminded me of those Waffen SS officers who, once they lost the war, quickly shed their uniforms and tried to pass themselves off as helpless, war-weary German civilians.

"Hitler? Never heard of the guy."

In his column, with the oxymoronic title A Moderate Manifesto, Brooks tries to rebrand himself as a moderate and reveals just how far this pampered rich asshole is removed from the troubles that a generation of his brand of conservatism has inflicted on his fellow citizens.

Just listen to this:

But the Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs. There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor — caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once.

No, it's just that you and the other Bush apologists gutted the treasury and left vitally important work to thieves like Halliburton. Now, the country has a whole bagful of problems that can no longer be put off.

So programs are piled on top of each other and we wind up with a gargantuan $3.6 trillion budget. We end up with deficits that, when considered realistically, are $1 trillion a year and stretch as far as the eye can see.

Yes, thanks for driving us into this ditch, you and the other Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman worshippers who foisted on us a monetarist policy based on servicing the debt. Now quit bitching, get the fuck out and help us push.

The U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment. Yet the Obama budget is predicated on a class divide. The president issued a read-my-lips pledge that no new burdens will fall on 95 percent of the American people. All the costs will be borne by the rich and all benefits redistributed downward.

Apparently, Mr. Brooks thinks the only suffering during this crisis will be borne by people making over $250K whose tax rate will go up 4%! OMG, David, the misery you and your fellow patricians must endure, it's appalling.

Never mind the unemployed. Never mind those who will lose their homes. Never mind those who will lose their health insurance and get sick. Those people don't suffer. Hell, they don't know the meaning of the word suffering. David Brooks knows suffering.

I have a simple rule. Whenever I hear someone whine about being treated unfairly, I ask myself if I would switch places with them. If the answer is yes, I tell them to STFU and I reserve my sympathy for more deserving people.

The U.S. has always had vibrant neighborhood associations. But in its very first budget, the Obama administration raises the cost of charitable giving. It punishes civic activism and expands state intervention.

Yes, and according to poeple who actually think about this stuff rather than just spew bullshit, the taxes will cost charities 4 billion dollars out of the 300 billion given annually. Will it hurt? Yes. Does it"punish civic activism?" Fuck no.

The U.S. has traditionally had a relatively limited central government. But federal spending as a share of G.D.P. is zooming from its modern norm of 20 percent to an unacknowledged level somewhere far beyond.

Again, according to people who actually think about this shit, the level is estimated at around 60%, still lower than many wealthy European countries. And on a related note, every time I hear one of these conservatives bleat about spending too much I want to throw up. It was you neocon cocksuckers who got us into a 3 trillion dollar war, telling us that it wouldn't cost us a dime. Fuck you. Fuck you all.

As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.”

Here's another thing. Conservatives like Brooks, and don't let him fool you with that moderate uniform he's suddenly sporting, were the ones who chuckled when their tax guru Grover Norquist said "Bipartisanship is date rape." Now that their economic policies have mortgaged our asses to China, they're surprised no one wants to consult them on finances any more. Let me tell you, Mr. Brooks, taking economic advice from guys like you is like taking weight loss advice from Rush Limbaugh. Fuck you. And fuck Rush, too.


Those of us in the moderate tradition — the Hamiltonian tradition that believes in limited but energetic government — thus find ourselves facing a void. We moderates are going to have to assert ourselves. We’re going to have to take a centrist tendency that has been politically feckless and intellectually vapid and turn it into an influential force.

And David Brooks knows intellectually vapid.

But beyond that, moderates will have to sketch out an alternative vision. This is a vision of a nation in which we’re all in it together — in which burdens are shared broadly, rather than simply inflicted upon a small minority. This is a vision of a nation that does not try to build prosperity on a foundation of debt. This is a vision that puts competitiveness and growth first, not redistribution first.

Again, burdens inflicted upon a small minority. Take your patrician head out of your patrician ass, David, get out of the fucking limo and take a look around. The burdens are not being shared broadly and they haven't for quite some time. They're being shared by military families, the unemployed, the poor and all the workers who fear the next round of layoffs. Spare me the hand-wringing victimhood because your taxes will go up.

Moderates are going to have to try to tamp down the polarizing warfare that is sure to flow from Obama’s über-partisan budget.

Polarizing warfare? Fuck you. I remember during Reagan's term when the head of the RNC said I wasn't a "real American" because I wasn't a conservative. I remember when New Gingrich, your speaker, said that Susan Smith's murder of her two sons was a direct outgrowth of liberalism - until he found out she'd been molested by her right-wing Christian father. I remember the $77 million conservatives wasted trying to bring down Clinton. Fuck you and your polarizing warfare.

David Brooks, the Wrongest Man in America now appears to be one of the most dishonest.

Fuck him. And fuck the New York Times for giving him credibility.

Product of the day.

This morning, as we talked about our weekend, I mentioned the 80 pounds of dog hair I had to pull out of our vacuum's innards yesterday.

Eric, a helpful co-worker, recommended The Furminator. I thought he was joking, but Bonnie quickly seconded the suggestion and she doesn't even own a dog. She said something about her husband, Vito, and his back hair, but we quickly moved on.

The Furminator. That's what I need.

If I had a loom I could knit every one of my readers a sweater and mittens. Wouldn't that be nice?

It's so easy, anyone can do it.

Write fiction, that is.

As I was looking for a visual to puncutate this post, I ran across this book cover. There's just so much wrong with this, from the warped notion that a complete idiot should be encouraged to write anything, to the blurb with the cheesy, self-promoting pun by Jerry B. Jenkins.

And Christian fiction? Isn't that the New Testament?

Sorry. That was gratuitous. But as Sam Goldwyn said, if you want to send a message, call Western Union.

Today, everyone wants to write a book. And yet, few people know how hard it is to write something really good.

Every celebrity wants to be known as a serious author, and if you have a famous name, then your book doesn't even have to be good. You can just pull something out of your ass. For instance, here's the noted novelist, Ivana Trump:

"Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything."

Yes, you can. And it helps if someone writes the book for you. I've ghosted a couple novels and neither of the guys whose names appeared on the covers had a bit of trouble with the second act. But if they did, there are lots of places they could have turned to for advice.


Character quirks. Here's a whole catalog of behaviors you can slap on your character and make him seem almost human. Call me crazy, or quirky, but I believe character quirks grow out of the, you know, character. They're not something you put on your protagonist like a fucking hat.

And to really understand your character, you have to have a strong sense of empathy. Like Mariah Carey, for example:

"Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean, I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff."

That is one quirky broad.
Now here's a novel idea. I can see the pitch now.

"But Charlie," says his agent, "there are a million books out there about writing fiction. Hell, there's even a Complete Idiot's Guide to writing Christian Fiction, for fuck sake. How is your book going to be different? What's your hook?"

Charlie leans in and whispers, "I'm writing this one for profit."

"Brilliant," says the agent. "Why didn't we think of that sooner?"

And all the while, the otherwise smart Matthew Yglesias is telling his readers that everything out there is shit anyway, so why even bother.

"Meanwhile, contemporary fiction is pretty sharply divided between crappy genre fiction and literary fiction that often seems very artsy-fartsy. For a well-crafted, but basically straight-forward story of people doing things and interacting with each other in a moderately realistic way, you need to turn to narrative non-fiction."

And fuck you, too, Matt.

Why do we bother? I mean, it takes me years to write one book, and then there's no guarantee it'll get published, and if it gets published, the chances are slim it'll sell enough copies to make anyone happy. But every night I go home and try to clock another 500 words on this piece, without ever resorting to a book that will tell me how to add quirks to my characters or how to make money.

Christ, I must be a complete idiot.

Hey, that gives me a great idea.

It's Mardi Gras! Let the Good Times Roll!

Hey! Where is everybody?

What?

When?

Yesterday?

You mean today isn't Tuesday?

You mean I missed it again?

What the hell am I going to do with all these goddam beads?

A rare post about sports.

OK, maybe not so much about sports as it is about the HBO documentary called The Battle for Tobacco Road: Duke vs. Carolina.

I love living in North Carolina, and even though I'm not a sports fan, I love the passion of this rivalry. My wife, an employee of Duke, is a Carolina alum and bleeds Tar Heel blue. She watches every game and spends hours on line reading about the players and the program.

A few months ago we were eating in a great pizza joint on West Franklin. My back was to the door. I heard someone come in and I saw Jenny's eyes go wide. "It's Tyler Hansbrough," she whispered, in the same awe-struck voice I'd use if Martin Scorsese walked in. All I saw was a really big guy. She saw a star.

I don't have any allegiance to Carolina, except marital. And I don't have anything against Duke. I like the positive influence it has on my home town. I've done research in Perkins Library, open to the public, thank you. I've been to the Nasher Museum of Art, free to those who live in the city. I've taken visitors to Duke Chapel, a truly amazing place. I met my wife doing Duke Summer Theater. And I've been probed in places all over Duke Hospital.

Duke is part of my life and a great part of Durham. Thank you, Duke.

But this rivalry? Well, it's part of the three B's of NC. The holy trinity of basketball, barbecue and the Baptist Church. And even the Baptists cuss when you mention Krzyzewski.

Before I tell you what I thought about the documentary, here's a quote from the director/producer, George Roy.

“Hopefully ... we will have completed a film that not only chronicles the great rivalry ... but give folks the idea of the psyche and culture and passion that exists around the importance of what this game means to people in your neck of the woods, which is pretty unique.”

After watching the doc last night in my "neck of the woods," I had two reactions:


1. It leaned heavily in favor of Carolina, the way Fox News leans heavily in favor of the GOP. The only difference is, Carolina isn't the nexus of evil.


2. George Roy is a condescending ass who thinks all roads below the Mason Dixon are draped in Spanish moss and the air is thick with plaintive fiddle music. The music, in particular, got under my skin. It was that pseudo folksy cornpone crap that strangers think is the Sound of the South.


Bullshit.


At one point, the narrator talked about the 8-miles between Durham and Chapel Hill and the film showed a two lane country road (with requisite Spanish moss) with nary a pickup or tractor or barefoot boy with bamboo pole plying the sunstruck asphalt. In reality, the main artery between Chapel Hill and Durham looks more like this.

So, watch the movie if you care about this basketball rivalry, especially if you're a Carolina fan, but don't think we all live in shacks, wear bib overalls and play the fucking banjo.

And if you are a Carolina fan, I suggest you pick up this book by Will Blythe. "To Hate Like This Is To Be Happy Forever." The title is perfect.

But, as has become an obsession of late, I had to read the 1-star Amazon review. Jesus, people are stupid. OK, look at the title again. Got that? Here is Blythe's opening, there on the Amazon page for everyone to see:

"I am a sick, sick man. Not only am I consumed by hatred, I am delighted by it. I have done some checking into the matter and have discovered that the world's great religions and wisdom traditions tend to frown upon this."

Now read this 1-star review:

"Too much of the book is just Blythe taking an opportunity to spew vitriol about Duke--not just the team, but everything from its campus to its students. His attempt to look at the rivalry with detachment falls short, and the overall effect is that he's simply immature."

Did you get that? This knucklehead read the title and then picked up this book expecting a "...look at the rivalry with detachment..." Do they let these people out where others can point at them and laugh? Because that would just be cruel.

The only thing I can think is, the guy must have gone to Dook.

Go Carolina.

Wreck This Monday.

My friend, Emily, gave me this journal last year. Inside, each page has some prompt to do something anarchical to the book. I admit, it took me some time to get over my natural reverence for a book, but I'm easing into it, doing some things and not doing others and still treating it like a notebook where I jot down ideas for how this novel should play out.

I've also been doing a lot of drawing in it. I chewed a page. I crumpled a page. I tore out a page and threw it away. But nothing I've done can match what some of the Amazon readers have done. So I can see I have to step up.

Here are a few pages submitted by others:

This makes my attempt look positively constipated.


I'm OCD-ish about making a mess, so I've stayed away from putting food and other gunk in the book, but obviously this person had no such qualms. I can see I need to lose some inhibitions here.


Nice circles.


I have not burned my page, but that's just because they don't let me play near open flames.

The author, if Ms. Smith can be described as such, has a web site for this project. I hesitated reading any of it because I suspected she would take this whole fun thing a bit too seriously. When I did scan the opening page, I sadly discovered that I was right to be suspicious. Here's a line from her site:

That we will all come up against some kinds of blocks or impasses (some pages are harder for us than others), based on our own personal relationship with destruction and our own perfectionistic tendencies.

Blah blah blah. Thank you Dr. Freud.

If you go to Amazon, read some of the reviews. Most people have the right attitude. But, of course, there's always one person who just doesn't get it. Here's marie antoinette (I'm guessing that's not her real name) doing a bad impersonation of a tight-assed e e cummings:

"i thought this was an actual journal, but it is more of a crafting project, a bad crafting project at that. i would have given it 0 stars, but that was not an option."

Uh, marie, you know the pages are mostly blank, right? And there are no journal police out there who can force you to chew on a page, right? And you can use those blank pages for anything you want, including as an actual journal? You get that, right?

Apparently not.

So, in the spirit of this journal, and in an effort to bring a little light to your Monday, I'm inviting all my readers to wreck this blog. Throw it out the window. Cover it in tomato sauce. Set it on fire. Press your backside against the screen.

You'll feel better once you've shed those pesky "perfectionist tendencies." I promise.

My brain is asking WTF? Isn't it nap time?

Thanks to the generosity of my friend Jenn (who married a lucky guy known here as The Nephew), I will soon be in possession of the latest Creative Suite from Adobe. This means I'll have Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop, Fireworks, Dreamweaver and other toys to play with.

Now I just have to learn how to use them.

I've worked in Photoshop and Dreamweaver before but the others are strangers of mine. So I'm taking online classes. So far, the hardest one is Illustrator, with Flash coming in a close second.

Why am I doing this?

Hell, why not?

This is on top of my daily Italian, which is slow going, time on the guitar, this novel (also slow going) and work, which eats up an unreasonable amount of time.

All of this frantic learning stuff reminds me of Gulliver's Travels. In one of his adventures he hears about a race of people who live forever. What a joy, he thinks. He would spend one lifetime learning music, one art, one devoted to science, etc. Then he finds out that the people indeed live forever, but they never stop aging, eventually becoming wrinkled lumps of barely sentient flesh living their eternity in jars. That Swift had one wicked sense of humor.

So, as I approach my 59th birthday, I'm trying to cram in as much information as I can before my brain activity is reduced to complaints about my health; the senior discount at Denny's; and buying one banana at the grocery store, with an expired coupon, counting out exact change while the line stacks up behind me.

They say learning new stuff is a way to stay young. If I keep going at this pace, I'll go through puberty again. And believe me, no one wants that.

If you could learn something new, what would it be? And what is it that's stopping you?

Scout - an update

You might remember Scout, the orphan girl who came to live with us a few weeks ago. Here's how she's doing.

Scout has energy. When she sleeps, which is rare, you can hear the spring winding. She knows she's not supposed to jump up on someone she likes, and she likes everyone, but she gets so excited she can't help herself.

These pictures were taken after I'd told her to sit and stay.

We have work to do.

Duncan, the old boy, resisted her charms for the first few days, but now seems to like wrestling and playing tug of war. But he wears out sooner. Hell, everyone wears out sooner.

They like to race around the yard, knocking over patio furniture and the grill. It's like having two five-year-old boys living in oour house.

Scout's quirks have surfaced. She's terrified of traffic. While walking her last week, a car approached, she tore the leash out of my hand and raced all the way home, going so fast that when the leash's handle wedged under a car tire, she snapped the line.

Yesterday we found out that she hates rain. I can't wait to see how she does with thunder.

But, all in all, these are minor problems. Aside from chewing the cord off the mouse, pulling everything out of the recycle bin, waking us up at five, eating charcoal and then throwing it up on the bed, she's been great.

She likes to nip at my fingers with a clomp clomp. That's earned her the name Gator Girl. I think she likes it.

And we like her. When she's sweet, she's sugar sweet.

I'm taking care of a sick Jenny today and Scout follows me around the house, happy that I'm home on a weekday.

Texting while stupid.

In Wisconsin comes the news that there's a new class of criminal threatening the peace and stability of America's heartland. It's the incorrigible texter, polluting polite society with her thumb-typed OMGs! and LOLs!

Of course, this reprobate did deserve a good slap upside the head. But arresting her? Wow. Back in the stone age, when I was a kid, this type of Teen Girl Revolt (sounds like a great movie title) was dealt with in-house by an assistant principal who trained for the job by keeping cons straight on the Rock. Later, the eye-roller would face parents who would administer some appropriate punishment, like no sitting by the cave's fire for a week.

Today, they call the cops. Book 'em, Danno.

Here's the facts, just the facts:

The 14-year-old was texting in class. The teacher told her to stop. The teen continued. The teacher dropped a dime. The cop demanded the cell phone and "the teen hid it down her pants and denied having a cell phone."

Nice. She was busted for disorderly conduct, disrupting the class and giving her male classmates instant wood. When a reporter spoke to the teen's father, the poor bastard, already broken by life with a teenage girl said, "They were more than fair. They gave her a few chances, but for some reason she didn't abide by that." Of course, Dad had to pony up $300 for bail. The teen was suspended for a week.

Again, her father, contemplating a stiff drink, a sharp blade and a warm bath said, "It's very disturbing and upsetting..."

And after she was suspended, the girl was caught sneaking back into school. Twice. She was ticketed for trespassing, costing her father more money and several more years off his already bleak, futile and pointless life.

George Bush is NOT the worst president ever.

He's the SIXTH worst president ever, according to a bunch of historians who rated all the US presidents on stupid stuff like honesty and competence.

I was curious as to who could have possibly fucked things up worse than George Bush, so I took a stroll through the biggest boneheads in presidential history.

Coming in FIFTH is Warren G. Harding. He's best known for having one of the most scandal-ridden administrations in US history and was saved from impeachment by having the good fortune to die in office.

FOURTH in the worst presidential pile-up is William Harrison whose main distinction was serving between two terms of Grover Cleveland, making him the meat of a Cleveland Sandwich, not to be confused with the slightly less appealing Cleveland Steamer.

Number THREE in our cavalcade of less than stellar executive lights is Franklin Pierce, who is best remembered for his hair.

Holding down the NUMBER TWO SLOT in CINC stinkeroos is Andrew Johnson, a guy who came to the office after Lincoln was shot. Lincoln is, admittedly, a tough act to follow. But Johnson is best known for letting crazy Republicans (we had them then, too) toss out Lincoln's appeal to our better natures. Instead, they passed the repressive Reconstruction act on the Southern states, pissing off a lot of people and building up a heap of resentment that, ironically, feeds the Republican base today.

Johnson was the only president to be impeached without the benefit of a BJ.

And FIRST of the worst, the one that all the historians love to hate, is James Buchanan. He came right before Lincoln, which made Lincoln's job of looking capable easier, no doubt, but he also handed the incoming Abe a long-standing squabble that blew up into the Civil War. You might have heard of it. It was in all the papers.

Not all historians agree with this list, of course. Some rank President Bush much higher. They say he's not the SIXTH worst president. He's the SEVENTH, right after Millard Fillmore.

Millard Fillmore is another guy who stank up the oval office just before Lincoln. But he is not to be confused with Mallard Fillmore, easily the worst political cartoon ever. And I don't think we need any historians to weigh in on that.

So I apologize for ever suggesting Bush was the worst president ever. He's just the worst of the last 80 years.

Something to argue over on a cold, gray, rainy Wednesday in February.

The Angry Right.

Republicans are angry. This past Sunday you could flip around the bobble-heads and hear GOPers fuming about the stimulus bill and how the House Democrats wouldn't play with them and the Senate Democrats didn't pass a bill they liked, never asking themselves why anyone would listen to the economic advice from the party responsible for running up ten trillion dollars worth of debt.

That's like taking advice on marriage from Rush Limbaugh.

Come to think of it, that's like taking any advice on anything from Rush Limbaugh. As he's a darling of the right and, according to that giant Georgia pussy, Phil Gingrey, the voice of conservatism, let's look at Rush's record.

Back in '92, Rush swore that if Congress passed Bill Clinton's budget, including "the largest tax increases in history" (they weren't), that it would be an economic disaster. The budget passed, the economy boomed, and by the end of Clinton's second term we were in surplus.

When California was suffering their summer of brownouts and power failure, Rush blamed it all on the dirty hippies forcing their environmental extremism on the power industry. Then we learned how Enron caused the power shortages, gamed the system, extorted money from Grandma Millie and laughed about it all the way to bankruptcy.

Rush claimed that GIs who favored getting out of Iraq were "phony soldiers." This from a guy who dodged the draft with a cyst on his ass. "Phony soldiers." Wrong again.

Rush was all for a balanced budget amendment until he wasn't.

Rush swears that climate change is a myth. He's wrong. Again.

Rush always points out that the rabid segregationists of the past were Democrats, and while, technically, he's right, what he doesn't say is that those Democrats turned Republican after Johnson passed the Civil Rights act. You remember, heroes of the right like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond.

But enough about Rush.

Let's look at those angry Republicans in the heartland, those who listen to Rush and claim he's always right, even when he's wrong. Alexandra Pelosi, the speaker's daughter who came to fame by documenting W's cowboy charm in 2000, has a new film for HBO, following hard on the heels of her sympathetic doc about the deeply closeted crystal Methodist Ted Haggard. This new film is "Right America: Feeling Wronged."



I'll watch this, just as I've watched Pelosi's other docs, but I expect I'll come away just as mystified as I am now. Why are these people so angry? Why, after being in charge for the better part of the past 30 years, why do they feel that liberals like me are somehow cheating them? Even Pelosi echoes some of their bullshit.

"Well, more than 58 million people voted for John McCain, and I know that everyone on the coasts is on an Obama honeymoon right now, and they seem to forget that more than 58 million people did not want Barack Obama to be their president. And when I was traveling over the summer and I would go to rallies and 20,000 people would be there ... They had huge crowds, and I felt they were really underrepresented in the media. I didn’t feel like I saw these people on TV."

Is it just me or was that line about "people on the coasts" a tad dismissive? I live in North Carolina, home to Jesse Helms, and hardly a bastion of effete liberal thinking.

And she thinks these red state Americans were underrepresented in the media? Really? Can you say Joe the Fucking Plumber? Can you say hockey mom? Can you say Fox News? Underrepresented? Jesus, Alexandra, get your nose of the that elephant's ass for a moment and take a look at how many red states, with real people, turned blue this past November. Don't we count as real people, or are we just people who, as you describe your friends, "drank the Kool Aid."



It's this kind of attitude the feeds the Right's anger. They feel like we stole something from them. They don't look at their party and see how their leaders failed them. They play the victim. It's all about those people "on the coasts" who don't have any real values. It's all about men and women who serve in the military, unless you disagree with the GOP and then you're a "phony soldier." It's all about fear and lies like Obama's a socialist, and Obama's a muslim, and it's all fed to them daily by people like Rush.

I'll watch Pelosi's movie, but I doubt if it will get us any closer to the truth about why so many people have let themselves be manipulated and lied to for so long, just for the enrichment of a small number of people who think they're "sheep and should be treated as such."

That's a line from Richard Nixon, by the way. A Republican.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

There's a story in the Times about smokers snuffing their vile habit out of concern for the health of their pets. It made me think about cigarettes and how much I liked smoking.

I was a smoker. Kools for a long time, then Camels, then Marlboros. I always owned a Zippo made, as all Zippos are, in Bradford, Pennsylvania in the factory with the giant neon flame on the roof. Some of my lighters were engraved. The one I had in the Army, the one decorated with my unit patch, I lost somewhere in Guatemala, I think. Or maybe it was Honduras.

I loved the click of the lid, the rasp of the wheel, even the smell of the lighter fluid catching fire. In high school, I used to put a few drops of English leather, the manly scent of the day, in my lighter, hoping to make the flame more fragrant. It never did.

There was nothing I didn't like about the whole ritual of smoking cigarettes. Tamping the pack, sharing a light, tapping the ash, all of it.

Until I didn't. Then I quit. It was some time around '94 or '95, and I haven't wanted a cigarette since. I still dream about smoking and when I do I think, "Damn, now I have to quit all over again." I'm always relieved when I wake up.

Now I realize just how unpleasant cigarettes are to people who don't smoke. Because I play music in smoky bars, I've learned to live with it until I get home and find I stink like an ashtray, but the music makes it all worthwhile. This morning I walked past a guy smoking a cigarette and the smell instantly put me in a bar, drinking vodka and playing blues. I could even taste the tonic on my tongue.

Just as deisel fumes put me back in the jungle, downwind of a generator, cigarettes have become the smell of a distinct place.

As I write this 1941 novel, I have to keep in mind that everyone smoked. Everyone. Everywhere. Looking back from our proscripted times, it's amazing to think of lighting up in a movie theater or post office.

I worked on a few RJR accounts in the early 90's, back in the heyday of Joe Camel, and when you went to the RJR headquarters in Winston-Salem, you could snag a free pack in the lobby. The meetings were always held in a haze of tobacco smoke, and God help you if you were packing anything other than an RJR cigarette.

So, I don't smoke any more, although I often find myself hanging out with the smokers at a party. They're almost always more entertaining than the nonsmokers inside.

What's my point? I don't know, just rambling on a Monday morning. Maybe it's this: If you smoke, smoke downwind of your non-smoking friends. And if you don't smoke, STFU about it.

Support the Troops.

That fun bunch up there are people who willingly identify themselves as Freepers, which is a lot like announcing to the world that you're mentally ill and proud of it.

Freepers, for those of you who have a life, are people who inhabit a blog known as the Free Republic, a site that, of all the wingnut sites, is the nuttiest. It's a place where people can gather and gain some comfort in sharing anger and snide remarks aimed at liberals, communists, RINOs, mud people and the list goes on and on.

The tone of the Freepers range from smug certainty that they do indeed have a clue, and a misplaced sense of victimhood. It's the kind of place where you're likely to meet someone who says, "I've never made more than $40K in my life because society has it in for straight white males!"

The one value, besides anger, that holds this group together, is rabid-weasel patriotism. You can tell because they put magnet ribbons on their SUVs. Hoo-uh. And no one supports the troops like the Freepers, no sir.

Except when the troops are fucking losers, like those pussies who come back from Iraq with PTSD.

Tommy T over at First Draft dips a ladle into the slime of the Free Republic every week and lays out excerpts so the rest of us don't have to have our heads explode. The comments in Freepland are almost universally whacked, but this thread in particular was despicable beyond even my imagining. They usually start with a news story like this:

The Army is investigating a stunning number of suicides in January - a count that could surpass all combat deaths on America's two warfronts last month. According to figures obtained by The Associated Press, there were 24 suspected suicides in January, compared to five in January of 2008, six in January of 2007 and 10 in January of 2006. Yearly suicides have been rising steadily since 2004 amid increasing stress on the force from long and repeated tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And then the fun begins. Here's the Freeper response to soldiers commiting suicide after their combat tours.

January? Couldn’t have anything to do with the new Commander in Chief, could
it? JennysCool

Probably because they realize their new CIC is going to throw them under the
bus. caver

And when one of their own tries to bitch slap some humanity into the thread, watch what happens.

Please don’t trivialise other people’s tragedy by appropriating it for
political spin. Romulus

To: Romulus
Who made you the posting police?

I usually provide a link to other sites, but I'm going to spare you one to the Free Republic. Trust me, it's not a place you want to visit if you have a weak stomach.

America, land of the free.

America isn't anything like Cuba. For one thing, Cuba has universal health care.

Cuba is also a regime that bans anything that contradicts its repressive ideology. Which, it turns out, is also the practice in South Florida. I figure they caught the censorship bug through geographic proximity, like catching crabs.

See that book up there? According to the news, it's a travelogue written for little kids about Cuba's climate and culture. But the kids won't get to read about Cuba's culture because the schools of Miami-Dade have to throw away their copies (burning is optional) because it's bad. And it's bad because it's good.

In his opinion, Judge Ed Carnes of the 11th Circuit suggests that it's the lack of disturbing content that makes this such a dangerous book.

"There is a difference between not including graphic detail about adult subjects on the one hand and falsely representing that everything is hunky dory on the other," Judge Ed Carnes wrote.

Did you get that? It almost sounds like he wants "graphic detail about adult subjects." Instead, the book presents a sunny picture of happy Cuban children. Too happy for the judge. If you write about Cuba, you have to show sad people in abject misery. It's now the law in South Florida.

In case you were wondering, Judge Ed is one of the fine jurists appointed to the federal bench by the first Bush cartel.

The little book has been snatched from school libraries because one parent complained. His name's Juan Amador and he has an understandable grudge against Castro. He was a political prisoner. That would kick the joie out of anyone's vivre.

In his written complaint, Mr. Amador said that the book did not give a complete picture of Castro's Cuba. He said he "was outraged that the book made no mention of ... political indoctrination of school children..."

Yes, I edited, but did not change, Mr. Amador's complaint for maximum irony.

The Supreme Court may look at this case because of that whole whacky Constitutional thingy. What they decide is, sadly, anyone's guess.

Too much crap.

I've wanted to blog, at length, about the bankers who can't fathom how they'll squeak by on $500K a year, the holy smokes reaction to Michael Phelps taking a bong hit for Jesus, the annual celebration of musical manure that is the Grammys and, on a positive note, how I dreamed the solution to a vexing problem with the novel.

But lo, there is no time.

Because right now my life is full of crap. Crap by the bucket. Crap by the truckload. Crap by the steaming ton.

If you had a job that was a Mardi Gras of Craparama, you might describe it this way, as a blogger we know recently did:

...the weirdness, the electric angst, the illogic and madness, the paranoia, the group fistfuck meetings, the shifting alliances, the Sisyphean chores day after stinking day, the synapse sizzling WTF moments when a job comes back the 13th and then a 14th and then a 15th time, the misdirection, redirection and no direction, the fragile egos compensating for the swirlies they endured in high school and the complete, mind-blowing, monkey fuck ass-pucker...

Don't get me wrong. I'm grateful to be employed. No one wants a 58-year-old writer out there sucking up unemployment, least of all me. And when work is good, it's very good. But when it's bad?

Well, you know.

Lately I haven't had the time to give you my take on events large and small. For that I apologize and promise to try harder.

Look out! We're getting reckless.

Americans live recklessly, poll finds.

I saw this headline in this morning's N&O and thought, "Cool." Americans are finally tossing away those dorky bicycle helmets and eating butter again. They're thankfully letting their kids go outside to participate in that unscheduled, unsupervised activity known as play. Have we, I wondered, finally shed this bubble-wrapped fantasy that life should be without risk?

Then I read the story.

Jesus wept. What a bunch of wusses we've become. Want to know what the N&O calls living recklessly? It means eating raw cookie dough, putting cotton swabs in your ears and having a beer while using a cordless screwdriver.

Is this the country that carved a railroad through the Rockies? Are we the same people who built the Panama Canal, explored the oceans and went to the moon? No, we're the people who think showering without a rubber mat is on par with leaping over Snake River on a motorcycle.

Reckless? Buddy, you don't know reckless. Reckless is discovering you have no brakes and still riding around the city for an hour, timing the traffic just right before you hit an intersection.

Reckless is seeing your brand new business partner is carrying a gun and still going up to the hotel room.

Reckless is sleeping with your wife's bipolar best friend.

I suddenly have the urge to go outside without sunscreen. Later I may just run with scissors.

If you're so inclined, tell us about the most reckless thing you've ever done. But if you'd rather keep that to yourself, we'll understand. There's a fine line between truly reckless and just plain stupid.

Meet Miss Scout

Yesterday, Scout came to live with us. This is Scout with Duncan. She tormented him, as little sisters will, all day yesterday. This morning she stalked our cat around the house, unaware that Zoe is a cold-blooded killer, armed and dangerous. I expect she'll learn.

She'll never win a beauty contest. She's got a long, hound dog tail that whips about and she's a little wall-eyed. An all-American brown mutt, part shepherd, part hound, part mystery and all heart. She's smart, wants to please, and listens when you speak.

She's got enough energy to light the house if we could figure out how to plug her in. When we first met Scout, she liked to jump up, but she's gotten better about that in just one day. She learned not to jump on the couch, at least while we're home. We'll see. Her foster mom says she likes to move shoes around the house. She doesn't chew them, just rearranges things for some reason only Scout knows.

She was a stray for a long time and then taken in by a family who starved and abused her. In spite of that, Scout is remarkably free of the hesitation and suspicion you might expect in a dog who has known hard times.

We walked her this morning and she did well on the leash. Jenny's wondering what we got ourselves into, but I suspect that Scout will work her way into the family in no time.

Now, if we can get her to let old Duncan nap in peace, this should work out fine.