Beef on Weck Blog: A Bodacious Bit of Blarney

About Face: A Real Head-Scratcher

2006-02-07T10:41:00.000-05:00

In the age of the internet you get to learn all kinds of weird things you didn't want to know, such as how people actually lived in the 1500s. (Remember "peas porridge in the pot, nine days old?" It is more than a cute nursery rhyme.) For me it is the basis of ALL KINDS of exciting medical discoveries, a depressing one of which I am about to share with you. You know how when you get old your skin gets all wrinkly and saggy? (I'm sure none of you is old enough to know this personally, but you've SEEN pictures of really old people, right?) Well in the good old days we were told this is because you got old. Then later conventional wisdom took over, and it became more a matter of too much sun, a smoking habit, not eating the right omega three vitamins and general "hard living." (All living is hard. Whom do the Conventionally Wise think they're kidding?) Now we generally understand that as we age, our skin loses its elasticity, and, due to a variety of factors such as gravity and too much frowning, your face has no choice but to sag as close to the earth as it can get. While wrinkling in the process. So far so good! Turns out, that is not the full explanation. The full explanation is MUCH WEIRDER. In my opinion. It's as weird as cats and dogs living on thatched roof cottages and losing their footing during a bad rainstorm. Thus it "rains" cats and dogs. No, the true explanation for why your facial skin sags and wrinkles is that YOUR SKELETON IS DISINTEGRATING! True. I read this on reputable website with medical links. How it works is, your body slowly loses skeletal mass, and as it does, the skin no longer has enough structure to hold it up. So it sags into the cavities. (Note to the woman who had a face transplant: I hope you ordered one size too small!) I'm sure you never suspected this, since skeletons are supposed to last not only your entire lifetime, but, theoretically, they are supposed to remain in decent shape until the Resurrection of the Dead! Plus, if skeletons actually deteriorated, how could they be finding missing links such as Piltdown Man? (Oh, wait. He was a hoax. Make that Polyurethane Man.) Makes me wonder if early humanoid-type varieties of ape-persons weren't as small as they appeared to be. Maybe they just disintegrated a few sizes! Perhaps Neanderthal Man originally had the physique of Hulk Hogan or Jerome Bettis. I have to admit I'm kind of grossed out. It's bad enough that our bodies are "80 percent water" to begin with. (Which makes us the equivalent of sentient water balloons, going through life hoping to not get punctured.) I am not one of those people that likes to contemplate how many quarts of blood I'm made up of, or what makes it rush around in my body to feed all the cells, or how many miles of capillaries exist in my arms. I'd rather not think about it! So now this idea that our skeletons are dissolving as we go about our day is just not a comfortable one for me. It makes me want to tread lightly before I lose more bone mass and collapse into Silly Putty. Maybe it's one of those things like those montrous-looking but tiny creatures that exist everywhere around us, even on our skin, but are too small to gross us out. (The Dust Mite is pictured at the top of this article to the left.) Figure, if MY skeleton is slowly dissolving, so is everyone else's! So I'm not going to worry about this any more than I worry about mad cow disease. I figure the vegans are well-qualified to run the earth after I'm reduced to a blithering pile of shrinking bones. That reminds me of my kids' jokes. Now they are four and six, so they don't tell really good jokes. They mostly say nonsense things that I'm supposed to laugh at. Such as, "What do you call a bird on the lawn with X's on its eyes?" (What?) "An X-O Bird!" (hahahahahahahaha!) The 6-year-old is actually joke-savvy enough to know this is NOT a joke, and he tries to explain this to the 4-year-old, who pays no attention whatsover and launches into 20 more equally incomprensible jokes. But here are two jokes from my kids that actually made sense! 6-year-old: "What's black and white and black and white and green?" (What?) "Two skunks fighting over a pickle!" From the 4-year-old: "What do you call bones that fly?" (No idea.) "A hot air skeleton!" Haha! I DID laugh for that one! Have no idea how he could make that up! In fact, he doesn't think it's any funnier than the rest of them. I hope the Hot Air Skeleton doesn't dissolve before it runs out of air.

Might As Well Face It, We're Addicted To Oil

2006-02-04T14:50:00.000-05:00

I wish I could tell you I saw the State of the Union address, but at that hour Hubby and I are completely absorbed in a routine that involves brushing teeth, donning PJs and reading bedtime stories. On top of all that, we have kids, too! So my impression of the president’s State of the Union speech is based purely on hearsay. If I've misunderstood anything I blame it entirely on the CEO of the Sago mine, who was supposed to be transmitting the information to me via tin cans and a string. But the main point came through loud and clear. We Americans are a bunch of staggering, out-of-control oil addicts! The president didn’t mention the part about assaulting other nations to ensure we could continue getting our fix. That’s no doubt due to our “democracy addiction.” In the State of the Union Address the president informed us we are ADDICTED to oil. Thank you, touchy-feely speechwriters, for not just saying we need the stuff to run our cars. I have not heard, at this point, if the president expects us as a nation to quit cold turkey, attempt a 12-step program, or if we're about to be tossed into the earthly gutter to beg foreign countries for euros "to buy a cup of coffee" (while we sneak to the local gas station to fill up our SUVs). The thing is, in order to solve our problem, don't we need to hit "rock bottom?" Or could we get by with an intervention of some kind? Personally I don't care to call it an addiction. I prefer to think of it as a gas guzzling problem. Sure, we like to gas up, but I can switch to my bike anytime! Let's take a look at the main warning signs of addiction and see how we U.S. motorists stack up. I am taking the liberty of answering for the majority of Americans because I didn’t have time to call or poll. I feel I am no more than one or two standard deviations away from being “average” so this is perfectly acceptable. 1) Does it take more gas to make you feel “full” than it used to? Answer: Yes. Especially after we bought our full-sized van. 2) Do you ever use more gas than you intended to? Answer: Definitely! Every time I get stuck in traffic, accelerate to pass Sunday drivers so fast that their wigs blow off, or have to go back to the store yet again for that one critical item such as my son needs Saltines for some classroom topography project. 3) Do you have “blackouts,” or “lose time” after using a lot of gas? Answer: Not sure about the blackouts, unless you’re referring to the time we left the door open all night and then couldn’t start the van the next day. We spend a third of our lives sleeping, and another 25 percent driving. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for watching State of the Union speeches or buying solar panels for the roof. 4) Do you ever use gas in the morning to reduce anxiety? Answer: Let’s put it this way, if I didn’t use gas in the morning, I’d be CREATING a lot of anxiety! We’ve got to get everybody to work and school, and it’s just too far to walk unless I’m planning to start a family farm on the front lawn. 5) Do you ever find yourself wishing you could gas up in order to calm yourself? Answer: Whenever that needle slips below a quarter tank I start to worry. Then I tell myself to relax, I can afford to pass the three stations with the expensive brand name gas. Then there’s an unexpected detour and suddenly I’m in full panic mode. 6) Do you ever gas up when taking prescription medications? Answer: Yes. I figure what’s more dangerous, me driving under the influence of penicillin, or me hitch-hiking after taking prescription meds? 7) Have you ever gone to work or school smelling of gasoline? Answer: I’m not 100 percent sure, due to the intoxicating effects of inhaled gasoline, but most likely yes. 8) Do you have a history of relationships with other gasoline users? Answer: There was that boy in ninth grade whose mother drove us everywhere. Beyond that it was bikes. But once I hit the real dating scene it was gas users all the way. 9) Do you find yourself using gasoline to help you sleep? Answer: My sister-in-law swears by the “Driving the Baby Around the Block” method of getting cranky babies to sleep. 10) Do you fill up your gas tank more than the recommended amount? Answer: Only to the nearest dollar. Lately it’s been to the nearest nickel because it’s just too expensive to let any spill over. 11) Do you try to conceal your use, or “edit” stories about using gas? Answer: We DO keep the van in the garage at night, so that would technically be concealment. Also if I ever run out of gas on the highway (especially after passing up a few “expensive stations”) I hope to be able to conceal this from my husband. 12) Do you ever use gasoline alone? Answer: After dropping off the kids, yes. But then I rationalize, saying well you never know, I MAY be pregnant. 13) Do you ever say things you regret while using gasoline? Answer: Sometimes I lose my temper. But never in front of the kids, and I don’t do rude hand gestures. 14) Have you ever slept in your car? Answer: Yes, but I was at the U.B campus where there was NO WAY to get a parking space after 8 a.m. So I’d get there an hour before my class started and yes, sometimes I napped. 15) Is your life increasingly chaotic and turbulent? Answer: On a personal level, no. But every time I read the news I get the feeling the world as a whole is trying to pull a “Thelma and Louise” off the nearest cliff. The other area of the State of the Union speech I wanted to address is our president’s call for a ban on human/animal hybrids. Wouldn’t this be the perfect time to meld human DNA with horse DNA? A new race of Centaurs that could gallop to work would surely solve this oil addiction we’re so worried about. Well, it’s hay for thought.

Steel or Feathers? Superbowl XL

2006-01-31T01:32:00.000-05:00

Pity the poor Detroit Lions. This Sunday's Superbowl extravaganza at the Pontiac Silverdome is as close as the city is likely to get to that hallowed game. I think the team's been jinxed ever since George Plimpton donned the Lions uniform to provide research for his book "Paper Lion." Since then the Lions have played with all the determination of a paper team competing in a scissors league. They play like journalists in pads. But never mind the poorly scripted reality show that is the Detroit Lions. ("I'm a Detroit Draft Pick, Get Me Out of Here!" or "The Amazing Waste") We want to focus on the big game itself, now less than a week away. In spite of the Motor City's recent malaise as former powerhouse automakers GM and Ford tighten their belts to the point they look like Lindsay Lohan during Lent, Detroit is determined to put on a super show as the Superbowl enters middle age. Turning 40 this year, Detroit doesn't want Super Bowl XL having a midlife crisis. True, it's 40 years later and the original British Invasion seems complete. The Rolling Stones are performing at halftime. They're as American as shepherd's pie, yet here they are facing (let's be honest, early Geezerhood) and they're performing at our quintessential U.S. sporting event. I guess they are tamer than poor, maligned Janet Jackson. That's the other buzz on this event, that it could be the site of a spectacular Al Qaeda-fueled terror attack. With three threatening videotapes in the past month alone, you have to start wondering if they're going to start issuing press kits. Maybe Osama and the guy with the glasses will show up with the teams during media week? All I can say is if there are any surprises at the Super Bowl I'd rather see nipples than nukes! Word has it there has been a lot of terrorist "chatter" about Detroit and the date February 5th. Well, duh, it's the Superbowl. They're probably betting on the game. Somebody wiretap the bookies! I do have my preferences on this. The Steelers represent a traditional blue collar town, and an industry that is a shadow of its former self. As tough as the Seahawks team seems, they reside in an area famous for latte-sipping, tofu-eating hippies. How can we root for a city whose people might not care if their team wins? Also the Steelers still wear the same team uniform with its solid black and gold color scheme. The Seahawks abandoned their blue and gray for a hue that can best be described as "algae." Yes, it might be necessary for oceans to thrive, but it's still slime. Seahawks Coach Mike Holmgren has already won a Superbowl with the Packers. Steelers Coach Bill Cowher has been laboring for the Steelers for 14 long years (that's two consecutive Biblical famine periods) with no ring to show for it. What better going away present for retiring running back Jerome Bettis? Even though I'd prefer to see a Steelers victory, my number one goal here is to see a GAME. That's something I didn't see during the Conference Championship weekend, when the Steelers and Seahawks basically blew out their opponents by a comfortable margin. Also I am including in my nightly prayers, "Lord, please don't let this game be decided, or ruined, by ZEBRAS!" (Honestly, as Noah was closing up the ark I think I would've left the whole referee species behind.) The Steelers ARE at a bit of a disadvantage, playing in a dome. This is a team that is accustomed to battling the elements, along with the other team. And we all know Mother Nature can be a formidable opponent! In the controlled atmosphere of Ford Field they may feel like a pigskin science experiment rather than an athletic contest. It may distract them! But as long as the Steelers players keep their Terrible Towels firmly affixed to their bodies during any commercials with one or more Desperate Housewives, I think we can keep the FCC at bay. So my prediction: Big Ben Roethlisberger shakes off the thumb injury and takes it to the Hawks. If the two teams produce an exciting game, and we get through it without a hint of terrorism, then I will consider us all winners.

Terrorocracy Triumphs in Palestine

2006-01-29T11:08:00.000-05:00

The Palestinians held their big election, and by American standards the turnout was stupendous. An estimated 80 percent of the eligible voters went to the polls. (U.S. turnout is typically less than half) What a great day for democracy! Perhaps the winds of freedom and civil discourse will soon be sweeping over the entire Middle East! Except the developed world is not so happy at the news. You see, the winner of the Palestinian election was not some moderate. Not a pro-western leader. Not a party anyone can consider talking sense to. The winner in these elections was Hamas. Yes THAT Hamas. The radical organization that advocates the destruction of Israel. (Admittedly it takes more than desiring the destruction of Israel to be labeled "radical." It's a fairly common sentiment.) The thing is, this group is utterly devoted to terror as a way of life. They are now the officially elected and sanctioned Terrorocracy in the Middle East! Technically, the term HAMAS stands for: "Holy Armageddon! Mullahs Aiming Scuds!" So you can see why the normal nations are upset. I think we've already announced we can't consider negotiating with a duly elected terrorist organization. It would be like if we elected one of the Crips mayor of Los Angeles. John Gotti governor of New York State. Perhaps Tim McVeigh (before he was executed) and David Koresh (before he was incinerated) winning the presidency and vice presidency on the America First ticket! However, now that we've admitted WMDs were no longer the real reason for invading Iraq (at best they were a "consensus reason"), we've settled upon this "bringing democracy to the people of the Middle East" canard. It is certainly a duck of a story that is laying an egg as we speak. ("Canard" is french for "duck" if you'd like to secretly enjoy that statement a little more, perhaps with a nice irony glaze.) Now that we have Terrorocracy, we know darn well that Iraq is going to end up being a Theocracy the moment our "political advisors" skeddadle when the danger of kidnapping or an IED (Improvised Exposive Device, ie. "roadside bomb" or "shrapnel sandwich") gets too great. I have long felt we will not exit Iraq due to political pressure, overseas or domestic. We will exit when we run out of money to fund the operation. One more Katrina-style natural disaster should do it: L.A. earthquake, Northwest volcano, NYC hurricane, whatever it is. Really, do we want to keep wasting money and lives just so the ruling religious party over there can have their Theocracy? Even if it's democratically elected? Ah, for the good old days of puppet dictators! Whatever happened to benign rulers? Wise kings? People whose sole goal wasn't to trample the earth and the people on it? Well regardless, Hamas has announced it doesn't have any immediate terror attacks planned. However it has warned that Israel needs to "change its flag." Gee that's kinda personal! It's one thing to trespass on my lawn, but another to criticize my wardrobe. People in the south are still touchy about the rebel flag. Apparently Hamas wants two of the blue stripes removed because to the Palestinians it represents an alleged Israeli belief that the country's dominion extends from the Nile River (in Egypt) to the Euphrates River (Iraq). As if they didn't already have enough to fight about over there. I suspect it's no coincidence that geopolitics is converging with religion in a region commonly known as the Holy Land. It was the site of the original Eden, and the site of the future Armageddon. Let's just hope it doesn't occur in the "near" future!

Oprah Does The Right Thing

2006-01-26T19:48:00.000-05:00

I have to give Oprah Winfrey credit. She went on her show to say, loudly, Mea Culpa! That is something author James Frey* (his real name and unfortunately also the name of another author who does NOT lie for a living. I hope they sort it out via middle initials.) pointedly did NOT do on the Larry King show as he defended his version of the truth. Oprah obviously read my blog and had a change of heart! Okay, she probably read a smattering of the invective being hurled by some very fine writers in newspaper columns all over the country. But my point is, her media empire is vast enough, and audience entrenched enough, that she doesn't have to apologize to anyone. The fact that she'd bother to do so says she cares about her credibility. She even admitted to being embarrasssed at this whole thing. That is just so rarely heard from a celebrity of any kind, much less one of her stature. I'm a little bit amazed that Mr. Lying Author appeared on the show again soley for the purpose of being browbeaten by Oprah, columnist Richard Cohen, and others. He said he had "made mistakes," and when Oprah pressed him on it, even admitted to making mistakes AND lying. Granted, this second Oprah appearance will guarantee even MORE book sales. But honestly, the book was doing so well, fueled first by the book club selection, and now by the controversy, that the second show wasn't really necessary. I'm wondering if his publisher, Doubleday's Nan Talese, threatened to apply a very hot poker to his private parts. They are in major damage control mode. Now that financial success is guaranteed, apparently Nan would STILL like to maintain a shred of credibility. Hard to do when your own husband, Gay Talese, is doing the rounds on national TV basically disagreeing with you. Some have even suggested that the publisher may have subtly nudged Mr. Frey along the duplicitous path he ultimately took. Who knows! Wouldn't surprise me. I would really like the publisher to add a note at the end of the book. "Based on a true story." My brother called me this afternoon to ask if I knew anything about this "Frey guy" and why Oprah was interviewing him, and why he looked so uncomfortable. I said, "Read my blog!" But it also gave me a chance to flick on CBS and catch part of Oprah's show. Yes, it was fun watching Frey agree with everyone that he was, in fact, a big fat liar. I mean really, a root canal with no novocaine? I don't know too many non-Nazi dentists who would do that. So Oprah, from me to you, I'm sorry for calling you the country's most prominent enabler. I am heartened to see you stand up for Truth, Justice AND the American Way. Just like Superman would. As to Mr. Frey's book, well, heating oil prices are high. I hear a lot of people are buying wood-burning stoves. Let's put his book to good use!

Why Good Things Happen To Bad Authors: Lies & The Lying Liars Who Sell Them

2006-01-25T18:39:00.000-05:00

When it comes to book sales, there's nothing as good as a famous person to wave a magic wand and turn your pumpkin of a tome into a glittering coach. So when the Princess of Hype, Oprah Winfrey, selected James Lie's* (not his real name) memoir for her TV book club last fall, it was little wonder that it propelled him out of the pumpkin patch to the top of the New York Times bestseller list for non-fiction. He has reigned there for the past couple of months. Problem is, some super-sleuths at the TheSmokingGun.com suspected something was amiss with "A Million Little Pieces," Mr. Lie's* (not the name on his birth certificate) cindery tale of how he wrecked, then redeemed his life after years of drug and alcohol addiction. (Well, people have been calling it "gritty," but I wanted to stick with my Cinderella theme. So I decided "cindery" meant the same thing. Besides, the man's reputation is now in ashes.) They weren't the only ones to get a whiff of the ocean as they read the tale. Janet Maslin of the New York Times also wrinkled her nose at some of the book's scenes. But the truth crusaders at the Smoking Gun had the gumption to investigate some of Mr. Lie's* (not the name that on his police record) claims. What they discovered is that a Frey* Fact is not the same as a True Fact. For you grammar sticklers who thought "true fact" was redundant, well, no longer! A Frey Fact "may" be 95 percent true, or it may not be true at all. It may be something he thought was true, wished were true, or simply pretended was true. Take the several months he spent in jail. Turns out, it was a few hours. He didn't even have to change his underwear! His "street cred" is not even as good as Martha Stewart's. Now I KNOW it can seem like months when you're in a boring place with no good reading material. But it doesn't justify portraying yourself as a seasoned jailbird. (Martha, on the other hand, knows when to use her turmeric, and that cayenne spice is a weapon.) So Mr. Lie's* (not the name on his book jacket) reputation is in a Million Little Tatters, at least with the literary community, by which I'm referring to people who actually write, edit or review sentences for a living. In the book sales universe, the marketing people are probably in ecstasy. The more notoriety he gets, the better his book does! Oprah was not outraged about this. Instead of standing up for truth and justice, she settled for the American Way. Which is to say, it didn't matter. Yes! She has succeeded in becoming this country's most prominent enabler ever. Larry King invited Mr. Lie* (not the name used on his glossy bio sheet) onto his CNN talk show shortly after the scandal broke. Was he there to apologize? Hahahahahahaha. Surely I jest. He was there to RATIONALIZE. Now, most human beings are natural amateur rationalizers from the time they hit school age. (My 4-year-old: "I didn't mean to hit him. My BRAIN told me to!") However addicts are professional rationalizers -- they do it for a living. So Mr. Lie* (not his original nickname) told us that memoirs are a literary form that aren't about "facts" but rather about one's perception of the facts. Which I could buy if he were referring to his subjective experiences. It is one thing if Christina Crawford tells us her mother Joan was mean to her. It's another if she says her mother died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. How much time you spent in jail is not just a matter of perception, it's a matter of public record. Oprah said that the truth didn't matter as much as the emotional experience people had while reading the story of Mr. Lie's* (not his real nom de plume) "truth." Forgive me for stating the obvious, but when it comes to non-fiction, some stories resonate simply because THEY ARE TRUE. Would the Diary of Anne Frank be a classic if we learned she was hiding in the attic due to agoraphobia, and went on to die of old age in a Belgian nursing home? Mr. Lie's* (not what kids called him on the playground) story failed to sell to publishers as fiction, so he punched up some of the scenes, painted himself as the key figure in some girl's death in a train wreck, and repackaged it as a memoir. Why not, there's room in DaVinci's Last Supper painting, too. Didn't Judas have an accomplice? But Mr. Lie* (not the name he uses on his IRS forms) had the nerve to say the book is "95 percent true," so overall the reader is being served a lot more fact than fiction. It would be helpful if the publisher would use a different color ink in order to differentiate the faux prose -- perhaps yellow? With respect to Oprah's contention of the "experience" being true for the reader, I just plea bargain to differ. Suppose a man or woman goes on a date and has an absolutely stunning time. The date of his or her life. Then, before the next date occurs, learns that the other person is in fact already married. Not quite the same date, is it? Sure, a good time was had. Enjoyed every moment of it, maybe. But the experience as a whole has soured because it was based on a lie. A restaurant meal that's only five percent arsenic? Well, I think I'd want the arsenic as an optional side dish, not baked into my entree. So James Frey (his real, sullied name) is going to profit nicely from his jitterbug with the devil. Can't wait to see the eventual movie: "Bogus Memoir and the Brotherhood of the Flaming Pants."

George Bush Made Me Do It

2006-01-20T08:38:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure if the devil has been demoted, or our president has been promoted, but George W. Bush is catching a lot of blame these days. Some of it well-deserved, no doubt. (Harriet Miers! Poor thing.) But some things simply aren't his fault. Like people hitting their kids. I caught part of a radio talk show last night as I was driving the 6-year-old home from swimming lessons. (He calls them Stroke Lessons because "I already know HOW to swim.") So it was a show I don't normally listen to, but I had it on because these days you never know when the next terrorist attack is coming to a sporting event near you. Some guy calling himself "Larry the Angry Liberal" was on. He was not the host, but rather the guest, and if I understood correctly, he IS a host of his own syndicated show, with about 40 stations carrying him. But he was guesting on someone else's show. Well Larry was having a bad day. A very bad day. Seems due to his position as angry liberal talk show host, someone had confronted him in public (not on his show) and said something to the effect: "If you're against a war for OIL, how come you're still driving a CAR?" And then walked away from him and jumped in his own car with his buddies. This incident angered Larry the Angry Liberal. (Not hard to do, I guess.) It angered him to the point where his blood temperature shot up from 98.6 to 212 degrees. He was extremely angry that this person had asked this question which was designed to stifle debate. Not only that, he had the nerve to walk away and not wait for an answer! Which left poor Larry feeling like a Big Dumb Angry Liberal Talk Show Host. Now as he was relating this story on yesterday evening's talk show, the host asked what his answer would have been if the guy had waited for an answer. "Well I don't really have one," Larry said. But still, he hated the question, and the superior manner in which the man delivered it. He stewed about this so much that he went home and hit his 15-year-old autistic son. Backhanded him across the face. As he later added detail, he said it was dinnertime and the son had banged his spoon on the table (which is not atypical for autistic kids, apparently). Larry had told him to "Shut up," then elbowed him AND struck him. That's a lot of anger. Now, let me say first of all there is probably no person on the planet who hasn't done some awful thing to their kid that they regret immediately upon doing it. Whether it's raising your voice, saying something sarcastic, spanking, propelling, or breaking a toy. (My two kids were fighting over a flag on a wooden stick once. My words had absolutely no effect on them, no matter how I configured them or what tone I delivered them in. So I grabbed the flag and broke it in half right in front of them. Their faces were so devastated that I taped it back together, apologized for losing my temper, and then delivered a lecture on "we must not fight over toys." Which they sort of listened to.) So we're all guilty of this. If you're not, you're a saint, and please put in a good word for me at the Heavenly Happy Hour. And in Larry's defense, he sounded terribly remorseful, almost to the point of tears. Perhaps telling the story on a radio show had a confessional/repentance aspect to it. And I have absolutely no doubt he loves his son and hates the fact that he hit him. But here's where we part philosophical company. He went on to explain that it was not HIS fault that he hit his son. It was George Bush's. Yes! George Bush's "War for Oil" made him do it. That's how bad this war is. And how indifferent George Bush is to what happens to angry liberals' kids. He actually said this as a serious justification. It was not a radio parody or a goof. The host said"How is your son doing now?" and Larry mumbled something about that they would patch things up and everything would be fine and so forth. The host didn't really go after him, just sort of commented, "so you think this is George Bush's fault..." in a kind of incredulous tone. Then he took a caller. The caller was a lady who said it was NOT George Bush's fault, it was HIS fault he had hit his son. Whereupon Larry accused her of being a Bush supporter. (she said she was not) He then asked her what she thought of this War for Oil vs Driving A Car argument. She said she did not CARE about that issue, she was concerned about the guy's son, and his way of dealing with anger. Larry was much more interested in getting to the bottom of the oil vs cars conundrum, whereas this lady was extremely interested in his parenting skills. Believe me, I was rooting for the lady! Go Common Sense Woman, Go! This was irritating Larry, who then explained it this way. HE was like a bunch of dry weeds, and George Bush threw a match at him. It was not HIS fault he grew into a brush fire! The lady then said, "That's a bad anaolgy...weeds don't have BRAINS!" She was probably wondering if Larry had one. He then asked her if she was an educator. (No. Probably just a parent.) But let's put it this way, if Larry really does think he's like "weeds" he'd better think about what people like to do with weeds. Exterminate them! Not that I am suggesting anyone exterminate Larry. I'm just suggesting that his metaphors have managed to make him look like an even worse parent than his original story did. How is this any different than hitting your kid because your football team lost? Because your boss yelled at you? Because you misplaced your car keys? I totally agree with that lady. This was an anger issue, not a "George Bush made me hit my kid" issue. If you can use that as an excuse, you can use anything. It really made me want to tell Larry to shut up. And then elbow him and backhand him across the face. But I didn't. And I didn't do it to anyone else, either. How would Larry feel if "I" hit his kid because of "George Bush's War For Oil?" Gee, do you think he'd press charges or sue? Larry, whoever he is, is really sorry. But he needs to understand that nobody can make you hit your kid but you.

The United Flavors of America

2006-01-18T23:41:00.000-05:00

Has something gotten into America's ice cream? People are saying all kinds of weird stuff lately. Yes, there was Pat Robertson doing the voiceover as God commented on Ariel Sharon's medical chart. Then there was Hillary Clinton telling us it takes a Plantation to Raise a Slave Child -- she did this in a mock urban African-American accent. Not that she was mocking. Just method acting, maybe! If you know what I mean. Wink, wink, nudge nudge, breakdance, breakdance. There was Senator Ted Kennedy lecturing Judge Samuel Alito on being a member of an exclusive club that wanted to keep women out of Princeton back in the 60s or 70s. Meanwhile Kennedy continues to maintain membership in Harvard's Owl Club. ("Who? Me? WHOOOOO!") The Owls don't allow women, apparently, but Ted thinks that paying dues is not the same as being a member. Hey, I'd be satisfied if he'd simply rescue women from inconvenient car accidents! Now there's New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. And yes, being Mayor of New Orleans these days is sort of like being Mayor of Pompeii, or Alderman of Atlantis. Everyone knows what you're talking about, but the constituency is a little dormant. Anyway, you remember him. He's the one who told everyone to evacuate the city before Hurricane Katrina even though a majority of the inner city population didn't have transportation. Buses were allowed to sit unused while everyone was directed to go to the Superdome with their sleeping bags. (Well it wasn't HIS fault. The bus drivers all wisely took cabs out of the city.) He also encouraged everyone to RETURN to New Orleans just before Hurricane Rita struck. Causing quite a traffic jam between anyone trying to leave, and those trying to perform hurried U-turns in their rental cars. Now he's saying he wants New Orleans to be a "chocolate city." I had to call Hillary Clinton's office for the translation on this, and her staffers assured me he is referring to "people descended from those who used to work on plantations." Okay then! He's calling for an all-black New Orleans. Or a mostly-black New Orleans. Or a primarily black New Orleans. Or at least a mighty sweet New Orleans. I've heard the price of chocolate is set to skyrocket, so maybe it IS a good time to invest in the city. So I have decided that I LIKE Mayor Ray Nagin's idea for re-naming America's people based on foods. Here is a short list I have compiled: African-Americans are now CHOCOLATE Americans. White folks are now ANGELFOOD Americans. Native Americans can be called PEMMICAN Americans. Asian Americans become SAFFRON Americans. Hispanic Americans will be FRIJOLE Americans. The Martians, when they land, will be designated AVOCADO Americans. This will be a lot more fun for those college applications and for the U.S. census forms. And there's no reason we can't commingle food groups for people who are of mixed race! Even though New Orleans is not a city at the moment, I vote that we keep Mayor Nagin in office just for the entertainment value. He says stuff no normal person could get away with! He just needs a place to put his office that isn't six feet below sea level. Is there room, perhaps, in Yellowstone National Park? I keep hearing that volcanic region is going to blow its top. I can hear him now: "Please do NOT touch the hot lava. It is not safe to play in or around a molten area..."

West Virginia Mining Disaster 2006

2006-01-13T01:44:00.000-05:00

My title is a nod to the Bee Gees and their mournful tune "New York Mining Disaster 1941" (which, according to them, was written in the dark, and actually was based on a mine disaster in Wales that killed more than 200 children.) It is hard to know what to say about the tragedy at Sago Mine that hasn't already been said by the families of the fallen miners. The mining industry is about as foreign to me as drilling for oil or creating clones. So I generally wouldn't take an interest in what's going on unless we run out of oil, start using coal to heat my house or I meet a copy of myself socially. So far none of that has happened. While loading web pages on the subject I was assaulted by ridiculous sponsored internet ads like "Miners Needed! Work From Home!" Let me guess, you send a check for $500 to some post office box and they mail you a plastic shovel and instructions on how you can earn thousands by starting your very own mine in the backyard. Won't the homeowners' association be pleased! But the news from Sago was serious. Whether the miners had been found dead or alive, it would've all been a part of a week's work for the "always on" cable news media. Even so, the word "Sago" may not have entered the general public's Proper Noun Vocabulary but for one small aspect of the story. They got it wrong. As wrong as it is possible to be wrong. Big, bad wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Everyone got scooped by a mother with two kids who rushed out of the local church when Truth crystallized and hope shattered, punctuated by helplessly flailing fists. "There's but one alive," she said. She had hurried to the church with her kids when the bells first pealed the happy news that the men were alive. She wanted to celebrate with the families who expected to embrace their missing men that morning. Instead they were cold-cocked by circumstances that flowed from a tangled skein of communications. Stunned townspeople gasped their grief to CNN's Anderson Cooper, the only cable news reporter still on the scene in these desperate morning hours. Even he seemed disbelieving at first. Then the truth settled like the blackest of coal dust. Twelve dead. Only one alive. I was struck by the religious symbolism that seemed to permeate the story. Local businesses put up signs exhorting everyone to pray for the trapped men. People placing the fate of their loved ones in God's hands. Pleas for a miracle. The strains of the song "Amazing Grace" wafting from the church as waiting families struggled to keep despair at bay. At long last, the bells chiming the thrilling, but ultimately mistaken news. Then the Sago Mine's CEO had no choice but to bludgeon the ecstatic crowd with the facts. He had gone from Angel of Light to Messenger of Death with the phrase, "There's been a miscommunication." The stampede of emotions that followed was as inevitable as it was frightening. "God took away our miracle," said one family member. Several days later Anderson Cooper re-interviewed the woman who initially broke the story for (let's be honest here) the ENTIRE U.S. news media. She had taken two photographs inside the church. Not of the pandemonium that later occurred, but of the governor of West Virginia and Sago Mine CEO Ben Hatfield as they were about to deliver the stunning news. CNN showed both photos, which seemed unremarkable at first. (and I wish I could show you the photo but I can't find it online.) As I was staring at the shot of Hatfield I noticed in the background behind him a GIANT picture of the Last Supper. It was so big it almost seemed like a mural on the wall, the apostles looming over Hatield's shoulders. "Twelve alive, one dead." Is God trying to tell us something? If so, what? Maybe that our settled, comfortable way of life is about to be upended. That we're in for a reversal of fortune intended to pry us away from our material way of living and thinking, and toward our Creator. Crazy, I know. But no crazier that a big, fat picture of the Last Supper as a mute backdrop to that horrific announcement. No crazier than believing there is a meaning to everything that happens, and that God's healing power remains, all appearances to the contrary. No crazier than regarding this life as the briefest of rest stops, and realizing we'll all be moving on soon. I can only hope the hugely talented Canadian balladeer Gordon Lightfoot is composing a musical ode that will memorialize this tragedy as indelibly as his song about a sunken Great Lakes freighter, "The Edmund Fitzgerald."

The Late Great Andy Rooney

2006-01-10T01:27:00.000-05:00

(Lakeland, FL) The world is a less curmudgeonly place today after the untimely death of Andy Rooney, 86, beloved syndicated columnist, CBS 60 Minutes commentator and former reporter for the Stars & Stripes. He died in his sleep while in the midst of an interview on Larry King Live. (Source: AP, i.e. "Argumentative Patti") At this time there are unconfirmed reports that Mr. King was also deceased at the time of the interview. Okay! Let me first be honest and point out that Andy Rooney the New York Giants fan is still alive, and grumbling about what a pain it is to get to the games. (Although they may have had to defibrillate him after his team failed to score in its playoff loss to the Carolina Panthers Sunday.) It is Andy Rooney the WRITER who has apparently hit the rim and bounced into the great Round File in the Sky. The yellow sticky note attached to his gravestone reads: Be right back, as soon as I think of something interesting to say!" Mr. Rooney has a terrific eye for minutia and a no-nonsense writing style. Problem is, the worse his trifocal prescription gets, the closer to his body his writing seems to gravitate. That is why we are now reading about: The piles on his desk! The contents of his pockets! The stubble on his face! I don't object to a writer taking on a small subject. A good one can make it anything but mundane. But for heaven's sake, if you're going to write about what's in your pockets or your junk drawer, at least make sure there's something interesting in there. I don't want to read about the color of your lint! More evidence that Mr. Rooney has passed away: Larry King was kind enough to mention one of Mr. Rooney's books, "Common Nonsense," and encouraged the public to buy it. Mr. Rooney let out a big guffaw and told us it was selling terribly. Whereupon I'm 100 percent certain his book publicist choked on her coffee. (Medical suggestion to the PublicAffairs Books marketing staff: Mr. Rooney could probably benefit from a coffee enema.) If some publisher wants to take on one of my books I promise if I get on national TV I will tell everyone it's a wonderful book and they should all buy it immediately. I may even have a portion of the profits donated to the Andy Rooney Memorial Fund for Giants Fans With Bad Seats. (Note to Larry King: I'm just wisecracking. Please don't hold that against me when scheduling for your show!) I also admit my attempt to have Mr. Rooney gossiped about in the past tense is a transparent ploy to grab the undivided attention of all four bystanders who have chanced by here. I am using Mr. Rooney's well-known name and magnificent Q-Score to promote my wholly obscure name and meaningless Z-Score. (Q-Score relates to celebrity popularity; Z-Score is an indicator I made up rating the likelihood of inducing sleep. As in, cranking Zzzzzzzs.) But I figure Mr. Rooney has annoyed me on at least three different levels: 1) His opinion on Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ." I think it's a spiritual masterpiece, whereas the very idea of it seems to bother him. He then picked a few of the looniest letters and emails of criticism to showcase in his column, when I'm sure he got plenty of cogent well-written ones, too. 2) His opinion that women should not be sideline football reporters. This from a man who admits he knows NOTHING about baseball. And who is old enough to have watched Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig play. I was irritated enough by this to mention it in my novel, "Buffalo Winged." 3) He hates St. Patrick's Day. What kind of pint-sized leprechaun of a grinch would say that? He's the scrooge of the Guinness world! Any person of Irish descent who is not fond of St. Patrick's Day should keep his pie-hole shut instead of sharing his grumpiness with the rest of the parade-loving, sodabread-baking, green facepaint-wearing public. Maybe he doesn't like it because it's an inclusive holiday that encourages everyone to be Irish on that day! In one column this year he claimed that he'd never met anyone with some of the most popular boys' and girls' names of today. That's because his grandchildren are probably senior citizens by now, for Ezekial's sake! Of course he doesn't bump into anyone of the school-age set. There are a lot of things I like about Mr. Rooney. I think he's a good citizen, patriotic American, loyal family man and Giants fan, frugal consumer, honorable human being, honest commentator and, yes, excellent writer. His style isn't flashy, but it's highly readable and addictive. There are days when I skim through most of the paper, but I read his columns from start to finish. Even if it's just to see how he's described the head of a pin he's been staring at too long. That's why he's a syndicated columnist, and a good one. Long live Andy Rooney! Patricia Reilly Panara is the author of "Buffalo Winged" and "Nobody Move!" and regular columnist for WNY Media Network and her tiny population of blog readers. Contact: 863-838-2117 Beefonweck.com and Beefonweck.blogspot.com

Going Postal

2006-01-08T10:29:00.000-05:00

Since I'm sure we've all made New Year's Resolutions involving not only physical health, but also FISCAL health, I thought I'd contribute to your financial well-being with this great idea I had for saving money. Aside: when I was in college I was in charge of the newsletter for our living group, which happened to be a chapter of the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority. Even then my writing style was snarky. Anyway one of our goals was to save money, namely because any "saved money" on mundane things such as electricity could then be used for wonderful things like parties! So each week I would publish what I called a Pseudo-Energy Saving Tip, or PEST, that would help us cut down on the electric bills. Such as, wash your hair, then visit someone in the dorms and use her blow dryer! Well you get the idea. So it is in the spirit of my PEST tips that this great idea came to me. With first-class postage jumping two pennies to 39 cents today, I was thinking we as USA citizens should try to beat the increase. I will readily admit that publishing this suggestion TODAY makes my idea not only a day late, but the equivalent of an unsolicited opinion (two cents) short. But I wanted to share anyway, because I'm so enamored with my idea. Here goes: We push as much of our 2006 mailing into the first week as we can, in order to retain the 37-cent rate. Simple! But it will require ingenuity to make it work. First, obviously you don't pay your BILLS early. There is nothing money-saving about that, unless you are prone to late fees. It's the correspondence that can really reap you some big savings. So drag out that address book or event calendar and count up all those birthdays, anniversaries and weddings that might be coming up. Buy the number of cards you will need for the birthdays and start firing them out! The people born in February will marvel at your incredible efficiency. The people born in March through July may consider you a tad eccentric. Those born from August through October may wonder if you're on some funkily-interacting medications. And anyone born in November or December will assume this is a BELATED card from 2005. So be sure to mark very clearly on the card that you previously sent your 2005 card, and that THIS card is to be counted toward your 2006 obligation. This should give some of your recipients added joy, as they realize they are NOT already (fill in dreaded advanced age here), but still have a number of months to enjoy being only (fill in too-old-to-be-believed-but-heck-it's-younger-than-anything-you'll-be-turning-in-the-future). The next obvious money-saver will be getting your entire holiday card list taken care of 11 months early. No one can argue with getting a head start on Christmas. I'm sure you know people who are buying half-price holiday decorations for next year, or are stocking up on wrapping paper and cards. There is no law that says you cannot use these items in January for the express purpose of beating a postal rate increase. Now for those of you who have kids, there is the problem of how to photograph them now so they look a year older. For teen boys, try adding a little peach fuzz using those washable magic markers. For toddlers you way want to stand them on a box or cut their hair differently. And of course an outfit change is absolutely a must! The newsletter is a little more problematic. It requires you to call on all your psychic abilities and PREDICT what is going to happen to your family in the coming year! Well I suggest not trying to be too dogmatic about this. Rather than visiting fortune tellers, buying a dozen magic eight-balls, or reading up on Nostradamus, I think you should acknowledge that your Christmas newsletter is based on SPECULATION, or perhaps what you would LIKE to happen. You will need a very large footnote on the bottom that says something like: "* not responsible for the accuracy of events contained herein. Everything subject to Murphy's Law." Or somesuch. You can also have fun with it, maybe including multiple choice options on things like your vacation plans, so your friends and relatives can vote on where they want you to go. (Note: "hell" is not funny.) Also, as you include those upcoming graduation announcements as if they already occurred, you may even start getting money and congratulations in the mail. (A little added pressure, yes, but worth it!) This would also be an ideal time to insert some unrealistic parental expectations, such as "Phinneaus graduated summa cum laude! We're so proud!" (This is a nod to Julia Roberts' son, who may be the only person in the U.S. under the age of eighty who is named Phinneaus. Caveat: The Amish MAY trip me up here. Wouldn't it be cool if Julia Roberts' son grew up to be Amish?) Based on some horrific natural disaster in 2005, I suggest throwing a few of these in your newsletter just to give an added air of realism. Try something like, "of course we were horrified to lose all our relatives on the West Coast due to that awful earthquake/volcano/tsunami, but we donated Hazel's allowance to some Red Cross profiteers who are now using the proceeds for a gambling binge at the Floating French Quarter." You might also want to say something like, "And isn't it just AWFUL about Africa?" without specifying anything further. This is guaranteed to be 100 percent accurate no matter what happens in 2006. I have to ask, though, is there some reason the stupid post office (and I mean "stupid" in the nicest possible way there) can't come up with an even-numbered postage stamp? Don't they realize that if they have to raise the stupid rates (and I mean "stupid" in a snarling kind of way there) that we would just as soon pay an EXTRA cent so we can calculate what we owe more easily? And thus avoid another postal increase for an extra six months to a year while we enjoy the round number? Sigh. The Golden Era of easy postal calculation dates back to the oh-so-hot summer of 1988, when first class stamps were a quarter. Since that time they've been annoying us with stupid (and I mean that in an aggressively psychotic way) rates such as 29 cents, 33 cents, 34 cents (what, those idiots couldn't just make it 35 and stop torturing us? I mean "idiot" in the old-fashioned sense of "person with least amount of common sense in the whole neighborhood"), of course 37 cents, and now 39 cents. Just make it 40! Forty, I tell you! We'll pay it! Gladly! Thirty-nine is STUPID. (I mean that in the sense that obviously you are in no danger of being fired from your job ever, or you wouldn't come up with such a stupid number.) For the record, "drop letters" would be delivered for only a penny back in good old 1855. I know that it sounds cheap, but since you could buy your average cow for a penny, it was really a luxury item to send a "how-dee-doo" card to your aunt back then. (Don't believe me. For all I know cows cost as much as BMWs.) Also they charged MORE if you sent the mail more than 3,000 miles. (But figure, domestically, now much further could you send it? We didn't own Alaska or Hawaii at the time!) By 1932 the rate had risen to 3 cents, and this was in the Middle of the Great Depression! You have to realize, though, that people didn't "send resumes" back then. They just showed up in person, hat in hand, asking if you could spare a dime. (A dime! See, they were asking for a lot!) By the time JFK was assasinated in 1963 you had to spend a full nickel for a first class letter. But by then we had stopped sending polite correspondence and were glued to our TVs in case the Beatles showed up on Ed Sullivan or we tried to send a man to the moon. No wonder Vietnam was so far along before anyone decided to protest it. The Watergate years had first class postage at a dime. Figures! We were having an energy crisis, why not a postal crisis to go along with it? So we got rid if the president but kept the postal rate increase. The disco era saw a jump to 15 cents, but this was the domain of Jimmy Carter, who told us to lower our expectations even as prices were rising. It was a nice even 20 cents in 1981 -- who all got shot that year -- President Reagan? Pope John Paul II? John Lennon? J.R. Ewing? Well, you can decide who's important and who isn't. That zings us past the Unabomer Years to the modern era when you have to pay extra for anthrax-free mail. It is nice to know, though, that the NSA is probably using some extremely high-tech devices to spy on my Christmas newsletters. I hope they enjoy them!

Pat Robertson Moons Ariel Sharon

2006-01-06T22:44:00.000-05:00

This is a story I'm also publishing on the WNYMedia.net site. At the moment I can't get the feed from that site to this one (hence the "blankness" below my Panara's Bodacious Blarney header), so I'm reprinting it here. I've gotten a couple of comments on the story over there, one person was chuckling over it, another accused me of not believing that God intervenes in the world. Hahahahaha. Anyone who knows me knows I believe God routinely intervenes in the world. I just don't happen to think Pat Robertson has any more insight into God than your average toddler. To quote my 4-year-old, "The letter T is JUST LIKE a cross, only it doesn't have God on it!" Anyway, here is my Pat Robertson piece, with bonus commentary on the status of mooning in our society: With Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon clinging to life after suffering a serious stroke, his supporters must be relieved to learn that his demise has been Divinely Ordained. So says televangelist Pat Robertson, self-appointed SpokesProphet of God. Apparently God was ticked over Sharon’s plan to give some land to the Palestinians, so he ordered up a severe medical problem that would (ahem) “take him out.” Far be it from me to argue with God or his Prophet! But even though mooning is strictly legal in the U.S., I’m not sure everyone is appreciating Pat’s attempt to metaphorically drop his trousers and point his heinie in the direction of Israel. It wasn’t enough for Pugnacious Pat to wish death on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez last summer. Which he later amended to say he was only suggesting that some lucky gal “take him out” to dinner. Turns out Pat supports this Women’s Lib stuff after all! Now Pat is honoring the deathwatch over Ariel Sharon by claiming the 77-year-old Israeli Prime Minister’s recent strokes were God’s retribution for his plan to “divide” Israel and cede some of its land to the Palestinians. Would it be too rude to point out that the Palestinians are, in fact, “Native Peoples” to the area? It’s enough to make me want to rename the Washington Redskins. How about the D.C. Palestinians? That would certainly project an image of a team never willing to give up no matter how long the odds, or how awful the draft picks. And won’t the cheerleaders look tough in those bulky vests? But I digress, which is easy to do when discussing the Middle East. Since Pat is busy channeling God, would it be okay for me to channel the late Emily Post and ask if this is good etiquette? Shouldn’t major Christian leaders at least wait a seemly amount of time, say, until after the guy dies, before suggesting his death was evidence of God’s wrath, or, in any case, God’s official political opinion? If Sharon dies as the result of God’s displeasure over the country’s boundaries, does the CEO of the Rand-McNally mapmakers have something to worry about? Is he going to get bonked on the head by one of his own oversized globes? Do you think it’s remotely possible that Sharon is suffering health problems because 1) He is old, as in PAST the average age of death for chain-smoking white men, 2) He’s extremely overweight, even morbidly obese. Anyone want to venture a guess as to what the “morbid” part of morbidly obese represents? 3) He’s in a high-stress job. Oh, sure, everyone loves him, but he still has to worry about someone nuking his country or assassinating him personally. All part of a day’s work for the Israeli prime minister! If Polite Pat is so sure he knows what God thinks, would he mind asking if this Iran thing is going to explode into World War III? I, for one, would appreciate a little advance notice so I can put my head between my knees and locate my TV’s remote control. Obnoxious aside: If World War III actually DID break out, would the cable channels bother to break into their regular programming to tell us? Or would we have millions of teenagers who would never hear the news at all because MTV would be blithely continuing with its regular schedule? Anyway, Pat’s claim that God has come to earth and taken the form of a blood clot in Ariel Sharon’s brain is outrageous, but he is only “mooning” Mr. Sharon in a metaphorical sense. We’ve learned recently that baring one’s buttocks is a form of free speech that is “protected” in the U.S., and, most specifically, Maryland. Since “mooning” is a colloquial expression having nothing to do with illegal liquor stills or NASA, I feel I should at least define it as being “a form of expression that leaves the communicator at risk of sunburn and insect bites.” Actually if it hadn’t been for this recent court ruling I wouldn’t have guessed that anyone thought there was a law against it. I believe it may even be legal to moon motorists while standing in the median of a divided highway, thus tying up traffic for untold hours. I think we only have laws against exposing body parts that are involved in reproduction and lactation. Elimination and constipation are apparently protected by the U.S. Constitution. Personally, I think the accuracy of Mr. Robertson’s retribution statement is probably best symbolized by a steaming pile of you-know-what. So Pat is not so much “making pronouncements” as he is “eliminating thoughts” from his overtaxed brain. And we’re all getting to see the lovely results in our neatly manicured media outlets. A late holiday present from me to all of you: the official Pat Robertson Metaphorical Pooper Scooper. For collecting his pearls of wisdom and depositing them where they belong. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!

Back to the Future For Buffalo News Carrier

2005-12-28T21:52:00.000-05:00

An 81-year-old Grand Island woman has her newspaper carrier to thank for potentially saving her life by noticing her paper hadn't been picked up. Joseph Rains, a seventh grader in the Buffalo suburb of Grand Island (yes, technically, an island, and also, technically owned by Native Americans) was delivering a special Monday holiday edition of the News when he noticed a previous paper had been untouched. Then he heard some mysterious banging coming from inside the house. Concerned, he consulted his chaffeur (technically, "mom") who was was driving him around on his route that morning. She contacted the local authorities, who responded and found that Audrey Yehle had fallen inside her house and (yes, technically "couldn't get up" -- just like that doddering commercial for emergency alert services always warned us could happen!) Instead of fancy technology, she had utilized an ordinary household broomstick to attract her paperboy's attention. (Thank you Glenda, the good witch, for that idea.) The woman just happened to live on "Love Road," leading us to wonder if the late Beatle John Lennon himself was playing guardian angel for the woman, tapping the 12-year-old paperboy on the shoulder. This was such a heart-warming item that it was reported tonight on Keith Olberman's Countdown Show on MSNBC. In his version, the newspaper boy noticed the woman's "Buffalo Courier-Express" hadn't been picked up. So I conclude, technically, that the woman had NOT been lying helpless for a couple days, as reported, but rather must have been there for a couple DECADES. The Courier, you see, has been out of business since 1982. Thanks, Keith, for sending me Back to the Future! Now if only I could score an invite to the Bass Pro Under the Sea Dance.

Christmas Wish List: Happy Kids!

2005-12-27T03:36:00.000-05:00

I don't know any parent whose wish list is substantially different from that. All we want for Christmas is happy children. Well, yes, we also want world peace (as long as we don't have to personally see to it), financial stability and health for all concerned. But if the kids are happy that's pretty much all we ask. Someone pointed out recently that Christmas just doesn't have the same magic that it did when we were kids. You never get anything that really thrills you, unless you have incredibly rich spouse who leaves a luxury car topped with a bow in your driveway. In which case you probably already have everything you could want or need, anyway. Well shoot, everything is supposed to be more fun for kids! Whether it's playing little league, losing your tooth, going to an amusement park, learning to ride a bike, anticipating your birthday...why should Christmas be any different? From a worldly perspective, of course. Spiritually Christmas ought to add meaning with every passing year. I will have to say that for kids of the age of mine (4 and 6), no matter how hard we try to emphasize the "Jesus' Birthday" thing, it is really not much more than a technicality to them. Jesus is one lucky kid, who gets to have his birthday on Christmas Day. So he can get presents! I had to actually explain that Jesus came first, followed by Santa. Sort of like the chicken and the egg, never mind Happy Meals or the frying pan. I don't really worry that the Santa Concept will undermine their future religious faith. Some claim that once they learn that "Santa is a lie" or at best, a parental exaggeration on par with "you'll never grow if you don't eat your vegetables," then they will conclude every fantastic-sounding thing we've ever told them is false. Such as the existence of God and a heavenly afterlife. My plan is to retire all the fictional characters at the same time. The moment Santa is unmasked is the day we eliminate the Elves, cage the Tooth Fairy, shoot the Easter Bunny, bury the Groundhog and smash the Great Pumpkin. I may even reveal there is no all-seeing cop who will cart us off to jail instantly if he EVER SEES ANYONE WITH AN UNBUCKLED SEAT BELT. My 4- and 6-year-old are really worried about having to eat jail food, and they often discuss what would be served there and what it might taste like. Personally I believed in Santa 'til I was maybe eight, and it never caused me to have any religious doubts. That's for later when you realize bad things happen to good people! The Book of Job in case anyone forgot. What's more perplexing is why "good" things happen to bad people! Who the heck made Herod king? Anyway, Hubby and I got our wish this year, as each kid was thrilled with the whole Christmas experience, and they were even on good behavior at Mass. (The 4-year-old fell asleep, which is about as good as it gets.) Some of our more successful endeavors were as follows: making a deliberate effort to see some great local light displays. They had a listing in the paper of some spectacularly ostentatious ones, complete with lighted figures on rooftops, gyrating animations, colors everywhere. So I mapped out a route which took us to half a dozen or so great sights, along with a very large mobile home park where about 90 percent of the residents decked out in a major way, attended by Santa and Mrs. Claus giving out candy at the exit. It took about half an hour to get all the way through, and I'm certain the location is visible to astronauts orbiting the earth. The 4-year-old was sputtering his praise, "This was good! This was beautiful! This was wonderful! This was generous!" (He's sort of like an automated synonym-finder at this age.) We also took advantage of an early Thanksgiving by decorating the weekend BEFORE. This allowed us to schedule two holiday parties, one the weekend after Thanksgiving (for friends) and another a couple weeks later (for work people who are also friends). We always invite people with their kids so no one has to worry about sitters, and our kids are thrilled to have the company. However they always enjoy the children so much that they want them to come right back the next day! Hubby's outrageous display of Santas, nutcrackers and funky villages is the visual centerpiece of all this. Naturally I am more concerned about having enough food, including something kids will eat. (chocolate santas! pretzels!) The week before Christmas my mother sent us some seeds for grass for the kids to grow for the Baby Jesus. The idea is that we're growing it so we have fresh hay for his manger when he arrives. The kids really like this in a horticultural sense, watering it with great glee each morning. It grew quite tall in only a week! This was another way to keep them focused on the "Jesus coming" aspect of the holiday. I want to thank my friend Katrena for alerting us to Northpole.com, a fabulous site that has anything a kid (or parent) could want to make your holiday preparations complete! This site allowed us to email Santa, which both kids did. They anxiously checked their email box (available right on the site) every couple hours. It took him more than a day to reply, but they were thrilled! They were able to read and personalize stories, play Christmasy (and educational) games, print out coloring sheets and puzzles, find out deep background information on Santa. We visite Mrs. Claus' kitchen and picked out a cookie recipe for us to all make together. There was a huge selection, but we settled on "angel crisps" because my 6-year-old studied them all and decided this one didn't have any ingredients he objected to. Hubby then had the brilliant idea of purchasing two "calls from Santa" on Ebay. Yes, I suppose you could have a relative do it, but it's hard to disguise your voice for five minutes. And this "Santa" (from Nevada) was great! He had a real Santa voice, and you could call him up and get his answering machine and leave messages. Hubby and I had to fill out a questionnaire about the kids. When he called the caller ID read "Santa: North Pole." I have to say the kids' jaws both dropped when they realized they were talking to Santa. Santa chitchatted knowledgeably about their lives, asking about their teachers, my 6-year-old's lost teeth (even claiming he sent an elf to help the tooth fairy find the tooth he lost on the playground!), complimented them on doing their chores and flossing. We put Santa on speakerphone so I taped the whole thing. Well worth the ten bucks per call, in my opinion. Santa did a fantastic job! On Christmas Eve we tracked Santa's progress around the globe on the site's NORAD satellite Santa Tracker. It was cool! You could see on the map where he was. You want to start early in the day when he's still in Japan and keep checking back every so often as he hits various countries. There are live reports and on location sightings as he flies past local landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower. When he got to Brazil I warned the kids we'd better get them to sleep! We sprinkled the reindeer food on the front lawn before ushering them to their beds. Hubby pretty much bought and arranged all of their toys this year. (He was better about not getting things that come with 3oo PIECES.) I made the hot cocoa that we sent out for Santa, along with a plate of angel crisps. I'm also in charge of the stocking stuffers. In addition to chocolate Santas they each get Christmas pencils, two toothbrushes, floss, chapstick, math flashcards and dice. I don't know why the dice. Maybe because we were always losing the dice to board games when I was a kid, so I'm compensating. So for any adults who feel like they have lost the magic of Christmas, you really need to spend it in the presence of children. Jesus is the reason for the season, yes, but children are the reason for the toys. Without Santa we'd have no toys. Without Jesus we'd have no love. Someday the children will realize which aspect is expendable and which is not, and when they do, they will never lose the magic of this Holy Day.

Merry Christ's Birth 2005

2005-12-26T01:33:00.000-05:00

We all know Christmas is about much MORE than the birth of Jesus Christ on earth approximately 2,000 years ago, give or take a solstice. As if it needed to be! Primarily it seems to be about retailers achieving their year-end sales goals. Since one of my previous professional incarnations was advertising for a retail chain, I can attest to the economic worship of what is reverently known as "The Fourth Quarter." But Christmas is also an opportunity for the socially aggressive to insist that their form of Christmas greeting is preferred to any other kind. That is, "Merry Christmas" is superior to "Happy Holidays," and we'll boycott your butt if you ban the former in favor of the latter. For the religiously inclined, why not skip gift-buying altogether and just focus on the true meaning of Christmas? Then you don't have to worry about which stores to avoid! It isn't really necessary, though. If you want to annoy people you can just pronounce it "Happy HOLY-Days." That's where the word came from, after all. Another option is to shout gleefully, "Mary, Queen of Scots!" in a British accent. This will definitely make people wonder what is wrong with you. At our house, along with getting ready for the Birth of Christ, we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Believe it or not, that special actually MENTIONS the birth of Christ and quotes Scripture! Today that seems wildly subversive. It's also worth noting that Christmas was already completely commercialized at that point. I think we need to complain about much more than the commercialization of Christmas. That's a retailing fact of life, but far from the only feature making Christmas something other than perhaps it was originally intended. How about the Electrification of Christmas? It's apparent from a cursory trip in residential areas that the Worship of the Watt goes on unabated, with glowing bulbs, icicles, snow globes, reindeer, angels, manger scenes, disco balls, cartoon characters ad infinitum. (Personal note: And I love looking at it! Give me more!) Or, the Hallmarkification of Christmas. (Guilty here, too.) Between packages and cards it's possible to spend more of your Christmas season in the post office than in Church! But I love getting the photo cards and newsletters that update us on people we don't see nearly often enough. All the friends and family get them except my one friend who "hates newsletters" because they are so impersonal. Well I always write a personal note on the card in addtion to sending the newsletter. I actually used to send out a page or two long-hand letter until carpal tunnel set in. So after that I decided the newsletter was the only way to go. I just try to make it interesting enough that if it's the only thing you had to read in the car you wouldn't be totally bored. How about the Calorification of Christmas? This isn't hard to do in any case, but when you've acquired an Italian mother-in-law, as I did seven years ago, things get REALLY out of hand! Pasta...fish...meatballs....side dishes....COOKIES. Forget those stupid tips on how not to pack on the pounds over the holidays. It's impossible. And realistically, why should we turn any of this fantastic food down? Can we talk about the Jingleization of Christmas? Those stores and radio stations that start playing tunes with bells as soon as the Thanksgiving wishbone is parted? Think about this. Six weeks of Christmas music. In a 52-week year, that is more than 10 percent of the total year spent listening to Bruce Springsteen giggle "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." It is more than a month of Jose Feliciano crooning "Feliz Navidad." It is like listening to "The Little Drummer Boy" as a penance for the duration of Lent. On the other hand, there isn't much about modern music that I like, so I guess I'm not really complaining. Just pointing it out! What should we call the things we watch during this season? The BoobTubopoly of Christmas? Since we have a 4- and 6-year-old naturally we are revisiting the traditional kids' specials such as Charlie Brown, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Mickey's Christmas, Frosty the Snowman and the Little Drummer Boy. And adult fare such as A Christmas Carol, It's a Wonderful Life, Home Alone (okay, a movie, but for kids), Miracle on 34th St., Holiday Inn, and (my personal favorite) The Homecoming, which introduced us to Earl Hamner's Walton family. It is amazing with all these "izations" (beyond just commercialization) that we have time to notice Jesus at all! I do try, and it comes more to the fore when you have to constantly remind your kids WHY we are doing all this stuff. Because Jesus wants us to! On a commercial note, I really don't need anything except socks. I KNOW the Christmas season is about more than me keeping my feet warm. It is about the presence of Jesus in our lives. I wonder if the emphasis on that in December somehow gives us a pass on realizing it every other month of the year. That is going to be my project for 2006. Getting the Jingle out of Jesus so he can show up at the breakfast table every morning, supervise my driving throughout the day, and help us wrap things up at night. Welcome, Jesus, into our lives and our hearts!

Reindeer Food is Nutritious

2005-12-22T08:00:00.000-05:00

I was a Christmas Party Volunteer at for my son's first grade class. Several of us got there early to prepare the room while the children were having recess out on the playground. Even though I am a "food person" by nature, I did not get assigned to pizza preparations or cookie placement. For some reason I am always tortured by crafts. Right to the craft table I go! We will be creating reindeer puppets out of a brown paper lunch bag, construction paper body parts, and of course glue. And even though I am (psychologically) allergic to glitter, that of course was mixed into the equation in the form of "Reindeer Food" that we would be putting into little plastic Ziploc bags. Reindeer Food is made up of standard rolled oats plus the glitter. My son's first grade teacher said the children could scoop the oats into the bag, but she wanted us parents to handle the glitter. This was due to an incident involving one of her own personal children a number of years ago. They had to visit an emergency room in order to extract glitter from her child's eye. As I have mentioned before, I am very Craft-Unfriendly. Nothing turns out better due to my participation in it. My very presence causes glue to harden, construction paper to curl up, yarn to develop split ends, sequins to scatter, glitter to clump up. I was becoming concerned that "I" would get glitter in my eye and have to be transported to the emergency room, still clutching my adult scissors. So the children filed back in to start their Christmas party activities. I did one useful thing, which was to go around the class with the hand sanitizer and make everyone wash up. Then they scattered to various tables to play Christmas Bingo, frost Christmas cookies and of course to construct their reindeer puppet and assemble the reindeer food. Eight or so first graders gathered around my table, smiling expectantly. I was sitting in a first grade chair, so my knees were approximately at my ears. I moved one knee out of the way and said, "Welcome to the reindeer table!" That brought an immediate chorus of "Where's mine Give me the scissors I don't have one Hey he took the glue You're too close to me I can't find my other antler...etc." Fortunately the pieces they had to glue onto their bag were already inside the bag. They all dumped out these pieces onto the table, which caused them all to start elbowing each other in case someone else was reaching for "their" pieces. Never mind the fact that they were all the same, and no one was likely to steal "your" reindeer eyeball to give "their" reindeer a third eye. One girl said to me, "What is the glitter for?" "It's part of the reindeer food," I said to her. "It helps the reindeer fly." "So they eat the glitter?" she said skeptically. "How do they fly before they get there?" I frowned. "They already know how to fly because they're magic reindeer." "I don't believe in magic food," she said. I shifted to a more technical explanation. "The glitter helps the reindeer find the food on the lawn. It's an optical enhancement," I tried to say with finality. Now if I were that girl's parents I would be tempted to borrow a neighbor's dog poop, sprinkle some glitter on it, and throw it on the front lawn for added reindeer realism. But that's just me. After the children finished glueing all the pieces to their paper bags they were supposed to put their name on their own reindeer. One child added, "Made in China." I guess he pays attention to labels in the stores! When we finished our reindeer they all gathered in front of the teacher for the wrapped book exchange. One thing I notice about first graders is that they allow each other practically NO personal space. While sitting on the floor they jam right up against each other like they're on a pilgrimmage to Mecca. The teacher kept saying, "Spread out! No one will be able to walk up to get their present unless you spread out!" Another thing about the first grade class it that at first glance it sort of looks like a hockey player awards dinner. They all smile broadly and no one has any teeth! I wonder if the teacher gets used to that look. As each child's name was called, he or she was supposed to go to the pile of wrapped presents and choose one. They spent a lot of time on the choosing, even though these were all books and you had no idea what book was inside. So they were choosing based on the style of wrapping paper and contours of the package. Which were all either square or rectangular. Book-shaped, for heaven's sake! Why was this taking so long? The tag said who the gift was "from" so each recipient was supposed to say something thankful and give a holiday greeting to the giver. But you have to admit a "book exchange" is a good idea for first graders. Even though everyone wanted to trade once they opened their book. Finally I was released from duty. No glitter in my eye. No stab wounds with scissors. No glue in inappropriate places (best as I could tell). Only one girl whose tenuous hold on the reality of Santa may have been threatened by my reindeer food explanation. Next I will be working on the physics of how the sleigh stays up there. "Magic" has become seriously undermined as a working explanation.

Improve Your Memory In 14 Days: A Quiz

2005-12-21T15:39:00.000-05:00

Haven't I seen this quiz before? Say in the past couple of weeks? Any memory test that doesn't include my grocery list is just playing games. Here's a quiz for you: 1) How much time, in your average week, do you spend staring into your refrigerator, slowly chilling your forearms, because you refuse to close the door until you remember what it is you were supposed to be getting? 2) How many rebate coupons that you are eligible for do you successfully redeem in any given year? (More than half or Less than half) 3) How many perfectly pleasant phone conversations do you have with family members each day without getting to the real point of your phone call? So you have to call back. 4) What percentage of your birthday and anniversary cards that you send out are, technically, "belated?" (whether the card uses that word or not) a) Less than half? b) More than half? c)Practically all? d) I've stopped sending cards because I can't remember to whom I'm related anymore. 5) How many important documents could you physically locate in five minutes? Circle all that apply: driver's license, birth certificate, car registration, social security card, marriage license, passport, title to car, mortgage papers, warranty card for anything costing more than $500 bucks. 6) What is the phone number for your childhood home? (first home that you had to learn a phone number for) 7) What is the oldest condiment in your refrigerator? How long ago did it expire? 8) Where were you and what were you doing when Andy Gibb died? (you may omit this question if you don't know who Andy Gibb is. If old substitute JFK. If young substitute JFK, Jr..) 9) Recite the Whopper Ingredients. 10) Say "Toy Boat" four times fast. 11) If you are still reading this quiz you probably can't remember why you started taking it.

And Time's the Person of the Year Is...

2005-12-18T15:50:00.000-05:00

Time's Person of the Year, eagerly awaited by those of us who like to ingest news along with our carbohydrates, is none other than...a triumverate. Yes! Three persons in one. A trinity, if you will. A new trend that I already don't like, starting with the replacement of Nightline's Ted Koppel with three people who taken together aren't nearly as good. So who are these three all-important persons, bellwethers of Life As We Knew It in 2005? Was it this year's Weather Supremes: Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma? (No.) Was it our govermental stooges, FEMA's Michael Brown, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco? (Uh-uh.) How about Republicans in Trouble, such as Scooter "G. Gordon" Libby, Bill "Me First" Frist, and "Smiling" Tom DeLay? (Nope.) Or Democrats Saying Dumb Things, such as Harry "Concentration Camps" Reid, John "the Army's Broke" Murtha, or Howard "The Scream" Dean? (Not hardly.) No. None of those. Singers perhaps? Ones we are sick of reading about, such as Britney & Kevin, Jessica and Whats-His-Name, J. Lo and anybody? Nah. Terrorists? We've got Bombings in Bali, Terror on Trains in Britain and Insurgents in Iraq. Eh, it's almost background noise now. Well then! How about people who DISTRACTED us from real news? The Runaway Bride in Albuquerque, Natalee Holloway in Aruba, Cindy Sheehan in Crawford? Big People Who Left Us Worse Off For Leaving? Pope John Paul II, Rosa Parks and Johnny Carson come to mind. How about those most responsible for reminding us that the news media is a wretched profession whose duty is to serve someone, but that the "someone" isn't the general public? I crown Queen Judy "Miss Run Amok" Miller (formerly of the New York Times), Court Jester Armstrong "Pay Me" Williams (ex-syndicated columnist), Pageboy Dan "Faked Evidence" Rather (retired from CBS News). Ooh. My suggestions above seem practically PLAUSIBLE. So which did Time Magazine choose? (Dramatic Rock and Roll Drum Roll gives way to clackclackclacking of a computer keyboard) The "Persons of the Year" are none other than U2 lead singer "Bono" and that husband and wife team of Bill and Melinda Gates. 'Cuz they're trying to make the world a better place! I have to admit I should really applaud Time's effort to name them. So what if it resonates with practically no one? Does it matter that it sounds like a bunch of high school teachers voted them "Most Admired Celebrities" in a dreamworld? Maybe the world is so depressing today that Time just had to look for someone doing good in the world and celebrate it no matter what. Time's writers are probably extremely tired of writing about hurricane debris. I should really agree wholeheartedly. It just seems so, so lame. Yes, the world is falling apart before our very eyes, but some very rich and famous people are throwing a lot of money at the world's problems! Also, after viewing the cover photo, I wish Bill and Bono had traded glasses. That would have offered an interesting visual effect. How is it that Mother Nature did not win hands down? (or bodies Facedown?) You've got a Tsunami in southeast Asia (the magnitude of which has never been seen in our lifetimes, and occurred too late to make the list last year). An earthquake in Pakistan that was large enough to make Pakistan and India set aside their nuclear threats for a few moments, and of course Hurricane Alley on the Gulf Coast, which waterlogged an American City to the point where it Ain't Coming Back. (Repeat: Ain't. Coming. Back.) I suppose I should give Time credit for looking at the bright side. They've lit a candle instead of cursing the darkness! Okay, Time. Maybe the world WILL be a better place in 2006. We can only pray that it is. If I had to pick one person of the year it would've been Terri Schiavo, victim soul for this poor, deluded humanity that resides on earth. May God bless us all, every one.

Loose Tooth T

2005-12-11T09:47:00.000-05:00

Our 6-year-old has been discussing his loose tooth since the summer when it first began to wiggle in its socket. Would he be able to eat food when it fell out, he wondered, or was there a risk of starving? "Has the first grade lost any students to starvation?" I asked him. "Not yet," he admitted. "Well you probably won't be the first." As Thanksgiving bore down on us the dental drama heightened. The tooth was dangerously loose. There was a very real risk it could pop out and vanish into Grandma Carm's famous Thanksgiving Day pork sausage stuffing. But no. The tooth held on. It went from loose, to very loose, to hanging by a thread, to hanging by an invisible thread. Now it appeared to be held in place by nothing more than a force field. Uncle Rob offered to tie his tooth to a doorknob. Or he would get his tools from his toolbox. Our 6-year-old declined, aghast at the suggestions. It wasn't until the following day that he burst into our room and said, "Guess what?!" He opened his jaws wide to show off the new gaping hole in his gums. We cheered! He did a victory dance! Then came a howl. The 4-year-old began hitting himself in the head. "It's gone!" he cried. "He lost his TOOTH!" In all the excitement of "losing" the tooth I guess we had failed to explain what came next. "It won't be gone forever," I told him. "He'll get a new grown-up tooth." We carefully secured the tooth in a plastic sandwich bag, and placed the bag under his pillow. The next morning he had a shiny silver dollar in its place. To show you the state of first graders' education these days, the 6-year-old informed me that because they were active at night and could see in the dark, tooth fairies are "nocturnal." Less than a week later he announced at breakfast that his other bottom tooth was very loose. He hoped to lose it at school. Apparently a lost tooth at school is accompanied by fanfare and a visit from the assistant principal. There is a special container for the precious tooth, and who knows, maybe a crown. As he was wiggling the tooth with his finger I suggested he stop eating his second piece of toast and get ready for school. "Just brush the top teeth," I advised him. Five minutes later I heard a moan from the other side of the house. He emerged from his bedroom, crestfallen. It had come out when he tripped over his brother. (I'm probably lucky I still have all of my teeth considering how many times I have tripped over the 4-year-old.) I placed Tooth Two in another sandwich bag and stuck it in our refrigerator. At dinnertime Hubby heard the good news and bad news. A lost tooth, but no glory at school. "Where's the tooth?" Hubby inquired. I went to the refrigerator. Where the heck was it? I had it in a plastic bag, for Mike Tyson's sake. It had to be in there. I searched every shelf, each drawer, the butter compartment. The freezer. The. Tooth. Was. Gone. How could this be? The search was narrowed down to a single major appliance. As the condiment bottles multiplied on our countertop, Hubby looked concerned. "Why don't I look?" he suggested. I gave the boys dessert, trying to ignore the sinking feeling that I had perhaps tossed it out with old onions that had outlived their pungentness. That had gone over to the Dark Side of the Fridge. I don't remember doing this, but then, I don't remember half of what is on my grocery list these days. Or could I have intended to put it in the refrigerator and never did? And why the heck was I refrigerating an expired tooth, anyway? I wasn't a dentist or taxidermist. Five minutes later Hubby triumphantly produced a plastic bag with its little white contents. Relief flooded through me like a dose of nitrous oxide. The 6-year-old resumed his state of Dental Ecstasy. Later I remarked to Hubby, "Good thing you have good eyes." He replied pointedly, "Good thing I'm RESOURCEFUL." "You mean you..." He held up a piece of white platic with a small edge sawed off it. "So I had YOU fooled, too?" E-Novacained-Gads! We were pulling a fast one on the 6-year-oldm, not to mention the Tooth Fairy. She obviously took it at face value, because she left the coin as expected. Tooth Number Three came out just the other day during an especially violent game of kickball during recess at school. To my son's chagrin, the tooth became lost in the playing field. Fortunately his teacher explained that a well-written note to the Tooth Fairy instructing her to "check the playground" would probably result in the traditional prize. The next morning, it did.

Pet Peeves for Cranky Women

2005-12-01T10:04:00.000-05:00

These are the top-ranking pet peeves for women, as compiled by a bunch of people who are totally guessing. Agree or disagree? 1) When someone says something negative about obese people. Yes! It makes my cellulite start jiggling with anger. Since more than half of America is overweight, you're making fun of the majority! Does that sound smart? We women are more sensitive about our weight than men, so when men say something snarky we take it as an assault on our gender. 2) When someone says "A woman should never be president." What, like the men have done such a great job? Plus, wasn't Woodrow Wilson's wife running the country at one point? Maybe I haven't been listening closely enough, though, because I honestly have never heard anyone say that. 3) When a man says having affairs is just part of the male biology. Along with saying stupid things, I presume. Well pooping in the woods is part of our biology, too. Civilized people don't do it. I just read a statistic that half of all married women have had an affair, so maybe it's part of women's biology, too. Put that in your pipe and worry about it! 4) When your boyfriend says he never wants to get married. Huh? Boyfriends NEVER say that. It would ruin everything, especially for HIM. What they say is, "I need more time," or "I'm not ready yet," or "Why do we need to get married when what we have is so great?" or "I've been hurt before, so I can't trust anyone else yet," or "you only need to be married if you're ready for kids, and I'm not ready for kids," or, "Pass me the remote." Anyway, I never understood why women are anxious to marry men who aren't anxious to marry them. Doesn't anyone feel the need for enthusiasm before a date is set? 5) When the line is longer for the women's restroom than for the men's. I have taken creative action. Look for restrooms on other floors! See if you can find an employee restroom! Put your hair under a baseball cap, scrunch it over your eyes, throw on hubby or boyfriend's jacket, and slouch into the men's room! (I have done this with a full shopping cart in the grocery store.) If no other options exist, avoid liquids! 6) Men who get paid more than women for the same job. These days, don't they at least have to call it something else? When it's time to ask for a raise, you'll know how much to ask for. "The same amount that Bubba's getting." 7) Male bosses who make sexual jokes. Tape recorder? Lawsuit? Camcorder in your desk, whip it out and say you wanted to capture some of his best material for replay at the office Christmas party? Ask him to repeat the joke slowly so you can type it into an email you're sending to your lawyer? Say, "That's your wife's joke, right? Does she have any more?" Ask if his kids are as funny as he is. Gift him with the Ex-lax brownies. 8) Guys who can't take the hint that we're not interested. Listen, that isn't their fault. They're programmed to keep trying. Is it so hard to say, "I'm not interested," or "You're not my type?" 9) Co-workers who wear sexy outfits to the office. That isn't annoying. It's entertainment! Every office needs one of these. Maybe two, so they can try to outdo each other! It is always interesting to see what they'll flounce into the office wearing during the season's first blizzard. 10) Relatives who ask "When are you getting married?" Possible responses:

(Ashen look on your face.) "Did he set a DATE and not TELL me? What have you heard?"
"As soon as he divorces his wife."
"Hopefully before I succumb to my fatal illness."
"As soon as possible."
"We already are. Did we forget to invite you?"
"We're waiting for a few elderly relatives to die off so we can shorten the guest list."
"Whenever you want us to, if you'll pay for it."
"I can't. I'm gay, and he's my cover."

11) Relatives who inquire, "When are you going to have a baby" (Why, are you available to babysit?)

12) When your mother says something mean about your lifestyle. Why be negative. Just say, "yeah, isn't it great?" Unless it's about your closets. Just go clean them!

13) When someone asks how far along you are when you're not pregnant. Most people realize this is about as popular as asking someone how much they weigh, but I suppose it still happens. Just tell them you're due in 10 years. How about the reverse, not realizing a heavy person IS pregnant when they are? That's sort of insulting, too.

14) Men who stare at your chest. Well I suppose you could just tell him his fly is open so he knows where you've been staring.

15) Men who whistle when you're walking down the street. What, that isn't a compliment? As long as they aren't making lewd propositions, who cares?

16) When your boyfriend or husband forgets to ask how your big day at work went. Just TELL him! Then he won't have to ask.

17) When your husband/boyfriend buys you clothes in the wrong size. YOUR fault for not handing him the Sizing Memo before holidays or special occasions.

18) When your mother-in-law makes snippy comments. How about, "Thanks, I'm working hard on that." No sarcasm in tone allowed. You will go to heaven faster.

19) When your hairdresser screws up your 'do. Unless your an Academy Award nominee, you'll live. It might be an excuse to experiment, which most of us don't do often enough. Take pictures and let the kids have a laugh!

20) When someone obviously re-gifts. Be sure to give it back to them in the next go-around!

21) Pet peeve lists that go on longer than twenty items.

Things I Am Thankful For

2005-11-29T14:15:00.000-05:00

This list is NOT all-inclusive.

Garbage Pickup.
Being able to do a complete mental body scan and being able to say, "Nothing hurts!"
My family, immediate and extended. My Family: Born Weird! His Family: They think they're normal! Our Family: "How about HAPPY?!"
Faith. I didn't realize having faith was gonna take so much FAITH. If I'd known, I might have settled for Faith Lite. Meanwhile, I'm working on my Persecution Complex.
All that nice weather between hurricanes.
Permanent Press. Although I think I would ignore wrinkles either way. Is Botox the facial version of Permanent Press? Because you have to get your face-freezing botulism spores re-injected every so often, I guess it would at best be a Temporary Press.
Not having to worry about where my next meal is coming from, or where our plumbing waste is going to. That when I turn on the tap something comes out, and it's clean.
The roof is still attached to my house, and it isn't BLUE.
My mother-in-law is a fantastic cook, and she did the Thanksgiving Dinner.
The reinvigoration of every known holiday and special occasion by virtue of my children. The Easter Bunny has spring in his (her?) step! Santa Claus is Jesus' Chief Procurement Officer! Martin Luther King Jr. is our best buddy! The presidents sure know how to plan a fun weekend! St. Patrick is the best green dude this side of Gumby! Easter is the reason for a really long church service and a fabulous egg hunt! The Fourth of July is a great time to store explosives in the garage! Labor Day is all play and no work! The Halloween Anticipation Season kicks off on September first! We don't like Pilgrim Outfits but it doesn't matter if we get the bigger half of the turkey wishbone on Thanksgiving! Birthdays last a minimum of a week, and with luck can be extended to last an entire month! And so forth.
High-speed internet. Without it, I'm just another hearts player.
Recipe sites on the internet. Now you only need to buy cookbooks for the pictures.
The Triple A. This year we were on a first-name basis.
Air conditioning. Without it Florida is not habitable by anything but rain forest critters.
Catalogs. I dislike crowds. I dislike shopping crowds even more. I hate waiting in long lines with shopping crowds the most.
That every time I clean my closet I find at least 20 bucks or a dinner gift certificate to make it worth my while.
Caller I.D. We can now interrupt ourselves only for friends and family.
Drive-through anything. With kids and carseats, any transaction you can complete through a car window is a blessing.
The football season. It takes my mind off the bird flu.
Floss.

Wisdom of Four

2005-11-22T08:05:00.000-05:00

It seems like business leaders, politicians and educators are constantly convening meetings so they can solve problems and generate wisdom. But as any parent knows, all the wisdom of the earth is contained in the fresh thoughts of your average 4-year-old. Their experience with the world is limited, and their ability to comment about it is recent, almost newly-acquired. So they are able to think outside the box better than anyone! Here are a few things MY 4-year-old has had to say lately.

Who IS This Masked Oracle? "I have to go potty. I want you to come in to watch my privacy." "You made me MAD! I'm going to give myself a timeout." (Don't ask me how he concluded this was a great way to punish us. We won't inform him otherwise until he gradautes high school.) Him: "I'm going to play the computer game WITHOUT the disk." Me: "How are you going to play it without the disk?" Him: "Greatly." "I'm going to tell you the rules about ME." "Don't say those words." Him (to his father): "Why are you putting these toys here?" (in a cardboard box) Hubby: "Those are going into the garbage." Him: (incredulous) TOYS are GARBAGE? You're ashamed of yourself! Hubby: "The toys are broken." Him: "You ruined my LIFE!" "Don't call them classmates. They're my friends." "I only like Pilgrims a little bit." Him (to me): "I'm the boss. Everyone in this family has to do what I say." Me: "I'm the Queen. The boss works for the Queen." Him: "I don't like the Castle People. They can't stay here." "I'm allergic to aliens." Me: (to both kids) "Don't you think it would be nice if we could buy some extra presents and wrap them up and give them to poor children who don't get presents?" Him (lip quivering): "But, but...I'M poor children!" "How old will you be when I'm 100?" "I want a twin sister. She has to be the same age." (After fighting with his brother, then appealing to me.) "Let me tell you what the tease was." "I'm going to put you outside with the alligators and the mosquitoes and the spiders. And you'll have to SLEEP there." "I'm going to CRUSH you into CRACKERS."

"That's IT! I'll give you TEN more chances. If you lose your chances, then you get CONSEQUENCES!." (His "consequences" to me are either that my newspaper gets taken away, or I can't have my morning coffee.) "I love you a million times."

Eureka! Worst Jobs in Science

2005-11-18T08:43:00.000-05:00

So you thought trash collectors have it bad? You told your parents you were going to be a baseball player or actress, and they insisted you went into "science?" Well scientists sometimes don't have the greatest jobs, either. Thanks to Popular Science Magazine we can examine and hypothesize about this year's top ten worst jobs in science: 1) Orangutan Urine Collector: People in white lab coats go running around in rain forests, trying to figure out the exact moment Dr. Zaius is going to take a leak. ("Dr. Zaius" was one of the Orangutan leaders in Planet of the Apes) They operate using big plastic sheets, which they try to throw down on the rain forest floor at key moments, or the more daring among them use a plastic bag on a pole. Recommended accessory: goggles and deodorizer. They couldn't just stick a catheter in some sick zoo oragutan for this? Guess not, they're trying to determine something about the "levels" in free-ranging rain forest critters. 2) Space Ballerina: The NASA guys want to show off to the public a new robot they've invented that has a sensitive "skin" that can detect the presence of astronauts and get out of the way before any embarrassing space collisions occur. Who better to promenade with in public than a Ballerina For Hire? Sure, the lifts may be clumsy, but the thing is NOT supposed to step on her foot. And no one's going out for drinks after the performance. 3) Expeditioner for Earthwatch: These are volunteer positions that people take during their vacation time to help out with particular scientific causes. So, for example, instead of sunning yourself in Hawaii, you could be analyzing dirt! Or watching frost melt! Or trying to exterminate mosquitoes before they give you malaria! One volunteer had his eyes swollen shut when he got bitten by something they were studying. He is still not sure what it was. You can't count on getting a tan, but you MAY be able to get a t-shirt. 4) Semen Washer: Like today's sanitation engineers they insist on being called by their technical name, cryobiologists. (No sense crying over spilled specimen bottles!) These specialists work at the "sperm bank." Hopefully with nice 9-5 hours and days off for all the federal holidays including Columbus Day! (Do they issue a receipt after you make your deposit? Insist on identification to make sure you're depositing to the right account? Offer prizes for people opening new accounts? Is there a drive through for sperm donors in a hurry? How about an ATM for privacy?) Semen washers use centrifuges and preservatives so that deposits are "insured" for up to 20 years in the freezer. 5) Volcanologist: Or in the venacular, Occasional Human Sacrifices. See, it's no good studying volcanoes from afar. You have to get right up close to them and peer inside. And sometimes, like those projectile vomiting infants, these volcanoes "spit up," hitting the poor volcanologists with molten lava. These guys and gals are "on call," meaning the minute a volcano looks like it's going to spew ash and bury a town, they are supposed to come running to get some great recordings on their instruments from the slope of the volcano. No wonder these people so often get turned into lava statues. 6) Nuclear Weapons Scientist: If you work for a rogue country, somebody may be trying to kill you to keep you from allowing that country to join the "nuclear club." Even if you work for a non-rogue country, it just isn't that prestigious telling people your job is to develop weapons for the purpose of wiping out humanity. And if you decide to give up your job at the lab, it's tough to go over to academia. The reason? All that work you did in the lab is "classified." You can't prove you did it, and you certainly can't publish anything about it! Then there was this nasty eye-burning laser incident... 7) Extremophile Hunter: As much as this sounds like chasing kids with skateboards, bungee jumpers and people who ski out of helicopters, the truth is a lot more nauseating. Apparently it involves going to some of the most remote, stinkiest places on earth to see if any living things are inhabiting the area. (Aside from the dumb scientists "looking for them," of course.) Apparently there is a Extremophile Microbe that has been discovered living in arsenic-saturated mud that gives off enough gas to smell like a herd of elephants after a baked bean barbecue. Only not as pleasant. It is also laced with a combination of smells representing rotten eggs, natural gas and dead fish. So breathe out of your mouth, I say! 8) Biology Teacher in Kansas: Because of the ongoing debate over evolution vs intelligent design, Kansas' biology teachers are stuck worrying about if they are going to be sued, ridiculed, fired, or adversely publicized on any given day. What to do? Go with the Big Bang Theory. We all just exploded onto the scene intact. Or try both theories. God exists! Things change! What more do you need to know? 9) Manure Inspector: Ha! Well at least they don't have to inspect the manure of that Extremophile Microbe. How bad can this be if you're allowed to wear a gas mask and wash your hands before lunch? Isn't every farmer on the planet somewhat of a manure inspector? Well the scientists who specialize in this are trying to make sure the manure samples are not contaminated with E. Coli bacteria, because the farmers don't want that stuff getting onto the vegetables. Experts in the field assure us that even if you wear gloves while getting your samples, the smell somehow gets embedded into your skin. 10) Guinea Pig: Yes, they need humans in the lab. Real live ones. The pesticide companies need to know what happens to the human body when exposed to a variety of compounds. (That glow-in-the-dark skin? It's great for exercising at night.) When even mosquitoes reject you, then you know your onto something toxic! Somehow that career as a singer/songwriter is starting to look better after all!

Wal-Mart Is NOT Part of the Axis of Evil...

2005-11-14T14:49:00.000-05:00

...although you could probably find plenty of people, from economists and small retailers to union organizers and wholesalers who might argue the point. Wal-Mart's resemblance to Iraq, North Korea and Syria have more to do with its simmering potential for violence. I hate to say this, folks, but we may have to send in a battalion of troops or weary National Guardsmen to quell a wave of retailing combat that seems to have overtaken America's most obesely successful retailer. It would be best to secure the perimeter before allowing citizens to shop there. The first incident occurred this summer. Allegedly several zealous Wal-mart employees pursued a suspected shoplifter out of the store and into the parking lot. They wrestled the poor fellow to the asphalt. Which probably irritated hordes of circling Wal-mart shoppers seeking a great parking space. After subduing the suspect, the employees apparently "sat" on him until the authorities got there. We wouldn't want anyone escaping the premises with an armful of cheap plastic crap! I guess just getting the guy's license plate number or retrieving the goods was not satisfying enough for the Dukes of Wal-mart. By the time the police arrived to take over from this "citizen's arrest," (or, Enthusiastic Employee Kapture, a.k.a. "EEK!"), the guy wasn't looking so hot. In fact, he was, to use a technical term right out of the employee handbook, "deceased." Turns out the reason the guy would not remain "subdued" on the parking lot pavement is that he had no shirt on, and the pavement was 110 degrees, give or take a third degree burn. So not only was this ex-shopper "dead," he was also "toast," as in "overdone on one side." All from applying excess pressure to this fellow's lung regions. No matter how else you look at it, Wal-mart just lost a customer! But in this war of Retailer vs Consumer, the customers weren't about to let Wal-mart gain the upper hand through intimidation tactics. No! They followed up by opening fire at a completely different Wal-mart, killing two workers. Flak jackets are not currently part of the Wal-mart employee uniform, but perhaps that will change once the full extent of the Customer Insurgency is known. Likely the gunman was just making an aggressive commentary on the store's customer service. I think we can all agree, though, that exercising your second amendment right to bear arms is a clumsy way to exercise your first amendment right to free speech. So what can we do about these customer insurgents, who, we suspect, are being trained and funded by disgruntled retailers such as K-mart, Sears and the Store Formerly Known as Eckerd's? One solution is better armor for those peaceful customers who frequent Wal-mart. The Hummer would be the recommended vehicle for your Saturday morning shopping. Second, I'm thinking we need to dim the lights in the stores. That would provide a more soothing atmosphere, not to mention making it more difficult for sharpshooters to take aim. Third, we need to make the shoplifting experience less lethal. Instead of A) Shooting to kill, or B) Suffocating the suspect between the pavement and the store employees' buttocks, instead we should go for a kinder, gentler approach of perhaps slashing their tires before they escape, or just maybe shocking them into submission with taser technology. They'll thank us later! This raises the issue of the Shoplifting Enigma at Wal-mart. Who, exactly, is harmed by this? Let's start out by examining who is NOT harmed: 1) Founder Sam Walton. He's dead, and therefore beyond economic repercussions. 2) Wal-mart employees. There is no regulation in the employee handbook that says killing the customer is preferable to letting them escape with unpaid-for merchandise. 3) Chinese workers. The will continue churing out the goods no matter what American consumers do or do not purchase. In fact, they may churn out even more if they have to replace shoplifted items. They will still receive their 9 cents per day paycheck. 4) Wal-mart shoppers. What? You're saying we may have to pay MORE for our cheap plastic crap to make up for the pilfered goods? Well, we'll just buy less of it, then. Thus freeing up closet and cupboard space across America. Or we'll buy the stuff at our locally-owned and operated store! Thus creating millions of jobs for Americans. Note: I am not advocating breaking the law. Shoplifting is still morally wrong. I'm just pointing out that it is a victimless crime unless someone gets inadvertently squashed on the pavement. Even more so if they get squashed in a handicapped parking space. I'm thinking, though, that they have a double standard on Matters of Shoplifting. If you'll recall, Runaway Bride Jennifer Wilbanks allegedly is an ex-Walmart shoplifter. She only got fined and had to do community service. No one sat on her! (Although, arguably, she may have outrun them, or simply "vanished" when they tried to apprehend her.) So obviously they have more than one way to deal with cases of suspected shoplifting. I think the next time they have a case like this they should release some kind of chloroform throughout the store. Then as customers pass out they can have their bags inspected by Wal-mart employees wearing masks or chemical weapons gear. See? Didn't you think all along that Wal-mart was hiding Saddam's WMDs?

Robertson vs Chavez: Smite-Down 2005

2005-11-09T11:13:00.000-05:00

I meant to comment on this topic a couple months ago, when we first got the word that Smite Makes Right. You know things are careening out of control in world affairs when Pat Robertson issues a fatwa. Yes, we all heard that correctly. One of the USA's most famed Christian evangelists this summer declared a Death Edict in honor of Hugo Chavez. Why, Chavez is such a huge troublemaker that I didn't even know who he was prior to Robertson's proclamation. Quiz: Who is Hugo Chavez? 1) Peruvian author of Campesino Literature. 2) Modern day migrant labor leader. 3) One of the survivors of the Andean plane crash where the soccer players had to eat each other to stay alive. 4) Former member of Menudo. 5) Shortstop for the Washington Nationals. 6) President of the largest oil-producing nation in the Western Hemisphere. Answer: Follow the oil! Which leads us to Robertson's suggestion that "someone" assassinate Mr. Chavez, who is president of Venezuela. (Maybe Pat can dispatch whichever of the angelic spirits on his shoulders that he was listening to when this idea first came up.) There has been a lot of hue and cry over the fact that calling for anyone's untimely demise, particularly someone you've never met, does not approach the heights of Christian charity. But the fact remains that who lives and who dies is an area that DOES fall undr God's domain. The question becomes: is Pat Robertson now God's earthly webmaster? Is he the Worldly Justice Arm of God's heavenly legions? If he personally assassinates Chavez, or gets someone else to do so, can he honestly say, "I was just following orders?" Isn't that what .44 Caliber Killer David Berkowitz claimed back in the 1970s? Let's bring back Crossfire and have Pat debate the "Son of Sam" over who has more moral authority! Later Mr. Robertson said his words were taken out of context (hopefully by someone using rubber gloves or a 10-foot pole). He was simply misunderstood! Little did we know he was daydreaming aloud, channeling strictly personal Rambo-esque fantasies that have nothing to do with his stature as the head of the Christian Broadcasting Corp. Well shouldn't he have warned us before the interview that he was planning to get all charistmatic on us? That he would start speaking in tongues that everyone would find confusing? He went on to say that "taking him out" COULD mean a lot of things besides killing. It could mean kidnapping! (No commandment broken there. Thou Shalt Not Kidnap is in the Misdemeanor Section.) It could mean getting two tickets for a Broadway Show and reservations for a nice dinner! It was perhaps a suggestion that Condi Rice, Hillary Clinton or Tammy Faye Bakker-(Whatever Her New Name Is Now) make the social sacrifice for the good of our nation! Well I think Pat should take matters into his own hands. I'll tell you what I would pay to see -- "Punching" Pat and "Hurricane" Hugo in the ring together. It will be one of those epic battles like the kind that Captain Kirk had, mano a mano, against various aliens, complete with a cheesy Faux Dramatic musical background. (Kirk's opponents were all strangely human except they had reflective skin, weird-colored eyes, ugly outfits or a little extra facial cartilage.) Better yet! We'll get them together in a Predators vs the Christians scenario, where they have to work TOGETHER in order to defeat (choose two): a lion and an alligator, a tiger and a Florida python, a panther and an angry moose, a charging elephant and a rabid fox, or bigfoot and a mosquito carrying West Nile Virus. They would each be bare-chested and wearing loincloths, so the mosquito would have a definite advantage. Let's see if Pat could forget all about assassination attempts and work with his Christian brother Chavez to survive! I am thinking this would be hugely popular in a pay-per-view setting, and I'd be willing to personally publicize it. When Christian leaders start calling for targeted assassinations (or even general ones, frankly) then their stature as both Christians and leaders must be questioned. I'll give Robertson the benefit of the doubt that he's laboring on God's behalf. Certainly the CBC network and associated ministries do a lot of good, and the people who support them are generally well-meaning Christians. But when their leaders start sounding like Osama Bin Loudmouth, then it's time for Preacher Pat to revisit God's statements on where his Kingdom is located.

Did You Know? STONED EDITION

2005-11-06T23:19:00.000-05:00

I have always loved little interesting factoids that don't (generally) provide useful knowledge but are fun to contemplate. So of course the era of the internet has been a treasure trove of these weird items. They are great if you want to bore people while waiting in line to check out, or if you are trapped on public transportation somewhere. Although it's embarrassing to realize the Poster Child for people like us is Cliff Claven from Cheers! Here is a list I came across recently that made me wonder if the compilers were under illegal influences. Did you know.... 1) It is impossible to lick your elbow. I think we all discovered this when we were approximately eight years old. We merely forgot in the interim. Anyway it isn't necessary to lick your elbow if you have a dog and something tasty you can stick your elbow into. 2) A crocodile can't stick its tongue out. I suppose they expect us to go around peering into crocociles to see for sure. Not to mention wondering if this means that alligators CAN stick their tongues out. And who really wants to know what's past a dangerous carnivore's teeth? I would just as soon not find out. 3) A shrimp's heart is in its head. Which means they can make decisions about dating using both organs! I am not sure, though, that this is useful on the Shrimp Social Scene, which I expect is normally pretty serene. Another question: Are appetizers supposed to have organs? 4) In a study of 200,000 ostriches over eight decades, there was not a single reported case of an ostrich burying its head in the sand. Way to ruin a commonly understood image! So who is the 95-year-old person in charge of the study? I can't imagine 200,000 ostriches on the planet. I thought there were like, ten of them, and they got passed around from zoo to zoo with an occasional foray onto a movie set or nature documentary. I wouldn't be surprised if they are actually extinct, and what we see is just some animatronic thing created by Disney. Anyway, all it takes is ONE ostrich burying its head in the sand to cement the image for the entire species, courtesty the folks at Loony Toons. 5) It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky. Unless they're on their backs? Or standing upright? Will this be a new metaphor to supplant the one about Pigs Flying? (Meaning, "fat chance.") Sure, I'll cut up all my credit cards, when WILBUR GOES STAR-GAZING. Is there anything up there that pigs need to see? Maybe they just don't care! Like, it is physically impossible for me to go to a NASCAR event. People who have been studying me closely for the past 80 years (give or take four decades) have NEVER seen me at one! 6) A pregnant goldfish is called a twit. Who decided that, the British? Maybe I will start referring to annoying people by saying, "Goldie has a bun in the oven!" or "My fishy friend is in the family way," or "Get back to me in nine months or you run out of fish food, whichever comes first." Maybe I will become so annoying with these obscure references that people with think I am a twit. 7) More than 50 percent of the planet's population has never made or received a phone call. Sorta makes you want to send quarters to Ethiopia, doesn't it? Just more proof that we live in an insulated, high-tech cocoon that is indifferent to how the rest of the world lives. (Gee, and we thought the PHONELESS people were out of touch!) Probably they get a lot more done during their day, since they aren't interrupted with pointless calls. Nor do they have to get caller ID to avoid the telemarketers. The telemarketers are forced to go door-to-door. I guess drums and smoke signals are not as obsolete as we imagined. 8) Horses can't vomit. So what do they do when they get drunk? Does this mean we should be DOUBLY suspicious of a horse's back end, especially if he or she is not feeling well? 9) "The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is supposed to be the toughest tongue twister in the English langauge. Yeah, well they loaded that one. Try saying, "Toy boat" four times fast and you get more bang for your buck, syllable for syllable. 10) Immutable Laws of Sneezing: If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die. And, if you keep your eyes open by force, they can pop out. Pardon me if I think this is more Folk Legend than something out of the New England Journal of Medicine. I believe the fracturing a rib part. I think the blood vessel that ruptures during a withheld sneeze was probably ready to go anyway. And as far as eyeballs popping out...if this were possible, don't you think we'd already have seen it on 20/20 or Jerry Springer? With six billion people on the planet, there are bound to be DOZENS of eyeballs popping out each day, if this were true. You'd see them rolling up the streets of Manhattan as people show off for the Today Show. I think it's about as likely as a dog staring up at the sky and seeing a pig licking a horse's elbow. 11) Rats are so prolific that in 18 months two rats could have a million descendents. Assuming, of course, that they live on a Rat Planet that is devoid of predators and rat poison. I guess that's what gave the Pied Piper tale its resonance. We don't know for certain that flea-bitten rats were the cause of the Bubonic Plague, but hey, their PR team is worse than the one retained by the ostriches!

12) Wearing headphones for an hour will multiply the amount of bacteria in your ears 700 times. Basically they are enjoying your ear canal as their own personal sauna as they endeavor to create more descendents than their buddies The Rats. I am wondering, though, if the bacteria will go deaf, or start becoming anti-social if exposed to too much rap, hip-hop or heavy metal music.

So that's it for this edition of "Did You Know?" Perhaps follow-up editions will answer the questions, "Do I care?" and "When will you stop?"

The Saints vs the Druids: All Hallow's Peeve

2005-11-03T14:13:00.000-05:00

There is no escaping Halloween. I believe it is now the second most festive American holiday, trailing only Christmas in its Bulb-to-Populace Ratio. You can’t even walk into a drugstore in October without some plastic contraption springing to life and shrieking at you. The market for fake webbing has to rival the “sweet spot” that candy companies count on each fall. I’m not suggesting that anyone ignore Halloween. No one with kids has that option. As soon as September 1 rolled around, both my 4-year-old and 6-year-old cried gleefully, “It’s ALMOST Halloween!” U.S. retailers couldn’t agree more. I’ve been battling ghosts, werewolves, vampires and spiders for two solid months. (To be fair, spiders are a year-round squeal opportunity in Florida.) But that’s TWO months out of the twelve we are allotted each year. That seems excessive for a holiday that, technically, gives us ZERO days off from school or work. Maybe getting an evening off from reality is supposed to be enough. As a parent you need to find a happy medium (or medium well, anyway) between the Ode to Satan Faction and the Pretend It Doesn’t Exist Crowd. As a general rule I’m opposed to witchcraft (black, white or plaid), blood sacrifices, worship of nature, and costumes that make you itch or sweat. On the other hand, I don’t feel we need to concede the holiday to Beelzebub just because a few pagans are demanding federal tax exemptions for their fright wigs and black nail polish. I heard on the radio that South Floridians (who recently endured the Wrath of Hurricane Wilma) were being advised to NOT send the children trick-or-treating after dark in areas that have not yet had power restored. Hopefully they got the message on their battery-operated radios? It’s interesting to imagine just what South Florida’s trick-or-treaters would be getting in their loot bags as they go door to door. Stale bread! Curdled milk! Defrosted peas! Miscellaneous debris that hitchhiked from Cancun! There was another urgent announcement to watch out for predatory child molesters. I guess it is illegal for them to dress up in enticing costumes such as the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus or FEMA workers. But apparently it is okay for them to pretend to be mummies, zombies, Darth Vader or IRS agents! For me the solution is simple. As long as the kids are trick-or-treating, Hubby or I will be going around with them. If they don’t mind going door-to-door with mom and dad at age 15, well, so be it! This year marked a big step forward for them. They finally graduated to having their own costumes. Previously I had just bought them various cartoon or superhero character pajamas, claimed it was a “costume,” and then neatly folded it into the laundry cycle once Halloween was over. Now, unfortunately, they can tell the difference between pajamas and a genuine costume. So this year we had to spring for one Power Ranger outfit and one Ninja Turtle costume. Of course with kids this age you hit the street fairly early, before 6 pm, in order to maximize your use of daylight hours. While the kids were trick-or-treating for candies, the mosquitoes were trick-or-treating on my skin. In spite of me emptying half a bottle of bug spray on each of the kids, plus myself and my brother Rob who was visiting. The 6-year-old looked like he had been training for this event all year. He raced from door to door with frightening speed, slowing down only when I insisted he wait for his brother. Fortunately we were going around with friends up the street, one of whom kept up with my son, and the other of whom lagged behind with the 4-year-old. They were dressed up as Spiderman I and Spiderman II. They're not twins, just Brotherly Arachnids. At one point my 6-year-old, in the process of hurtling door-to-door, managed to trip over an extension cord. He maintained his balance, but we could all see this large inflated Spooky Something rapidly losing air. It was deflating with the speed of the U.S. economy! Fortunately that problem got fixed by Jennifer Campbell, who was one of our entourage along with her two kids. It seemed the older kids were acquiring candy at speeds high enough to cause their costumes to become a blur. By the end of the evening I was dragging. I vowed next year I would rent a 6-person golf cart and tour the neighborhood in style. Then we could pack all the right accessories such as DEET Deep Woods Off brand bug spray, child molester spray, exploding python spray, speeding vehicle spray, cranky neighbor spray and any other sprays I may not have thought of. Plus flashlights, reflective vests, lightsticks and giant, spinning strobes. That way cars will see us, and aliens will fear us. And for the record, on the following day the 6-year-old dressed up as St. Francis as he and his first grade class were star participants in the All Saints Day Mass. St. Francis was a Power Ranger in his own right, and calling on a Power infinitely stronger than anything running around on the Druid’s Night Out.

Valerie PLUME: Legal Mushroom Cloud Over D.C.

2005-10-28T19:40:00.000-04:00

I must confess I'm going to comment on the topic everyone else is talking about. At least everyone else who is remotely connected to politics and has access to a microphone, whether it's plugged in or not. That subject is former Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev banging his shoe on the table at the U.N. Haha! Kidding. That hasn't been a hot topic of conversation since the era when men wore hats. No, I'm referring to The Leak. It seems our government has sprung a significant one, and it needs to be plugged before the Ship of State threatens to sink. But before we start taking on too much water with sinking metaphors, I should mention the leak involves the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. Revered, Pulitzer-prizewinning, First Amendment Award-accepting star New York Times reporter Judith "Aluminum Tubes" Miller did not actually write a story on this topic, but if she had it surely would have been incendiary. Simply because (according to her Mysteriously Missing Notes, which had gone on hiatus for about a year) she understood the agent's name to be Valerie FLAME, rather than Plame. Another scorching typo I've seen on her name is Valerie PLUME. There's a bonfire of a metaphor! So there's no doubt we have plenty of vivid imagery from which to choose, ranging from all wet to highly inflammable. However, my job is to provide a unique insight on the story no matter how many people comment on this subject. All 280-plus million Americans could weigh in on Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's indictment of VP chief of staff Scooter "G. Gordon" Libby today, and I feel reasonably confident I'm the ONLY person to have this thought. But before I get to that I want to present a special award to MSNBC political commentator and Hardball host Chris Matthews. Chris has been on a lot this past week as everyone (or Democrats, at least) has been waiting with bated breath for the indictment announcement. I can certainly appreciate this, since Mr. Matthews is one of MSNBC's most articulate, informed, interesting and dynamic analysts. So of course he was on as early as Don Imus' program, and spent most of the morning providing commentary prior to the noontime announcement. Then, naturally, he talked through most of the afternoon. Finally at 4 pm he said he would be "returning at five" for more commentary. (All in addition to his regular 7 pm show) At last, MSNBC executives allowed poor Chris Matthews catch a bathroom break! So if the Society for Professional "Journalists" (sic: DUPES) can give Judith "Aluminum Tubes" Miller a worse-than-meaningless First Amendment Award, then I'm perfectly qualified to give an award of my own. On Chris Matthews' behalf I'll call it the Swimming Eyeballs Award, or S.E.A., for the host who appears to have gone the longest without a a trip to the bathroom. (Look! Another water metaphor!) The award is a special recognition for analysts whose commentary is so critical that their presence is in constant demand. Kudos, Chris! Considering that his show is called Hardball, I'd characterize his performance today as going well into extra innings. Anyway, as Pat Fitzgerald was giving his terse explanation of the indictments, I found myself closing my eyes and just listening. It is the first time I had ever heard him speak. Know what I heard? Comedian DAN AYKROYD!. Yep, the Saturday Night Live veteran famous for playing everything from a Buzzing Bee and Daddy Conehead to a Wild and Crazy Guy and former President Jimmy Carter. Pat Fitzgerald's Chicago accent is pure Blues Brothers! I know Fitzgerald is not a Chicago native, but I can definitely hear the flattened Chicagoland vowels in his speech. So his time spent there must have rubbed off. And of course the movie's Blues Brothers are Chicagoans. And it is not just the accent, it is the actual sound quality of his voice that recalls Mr. Aykroyd for me. Interestingly, Aykroyd, a Canadian, is a police buff whose father was a Mountie. And of course he starred in (dramatic pause for sound effects) DRAGNET. So tell me, is there any other person on the planet or in the solar system who thinks the Special Prosecutor is channeling Elwood Blues? I think not! I will say Mr. Fitzgerald appeared to be every bit the honest, non-partisan straight shooter he's been rumored to be. In spite of the serious subject matter, his sense of humor also shone through. So unless the guy is a world class thespian, I think he's just doing his job to the best of his ability. We'll see what comes of all this, but I think the only people with something to fear are the guilty.

Wilma Gives Florida Whiplash

2005-10-27T13:50:00.000-04:00

Hurricane Wilma roared through Florida Monday with the speed of a shoplifter exiting your local mall. To everyone's surprise, she left as much damage on the east coast of the state as she did on the west. At the height of the storm, six million Floridians were without power. (That's almost a third of the state) Even today many are waiting in long lines for food, water, gas and ice. Forget earth, wind, fire and water. The stuff of life down here is FOOD, WATER, GAS and ICE. Did everyone forget to stock up on these items prior to the hurricane? Or were we mesmerized by news coverage that told us that Naples and Fort Meyers might be in big trouble, but barely mentioned Miami-Dade and Broward Counties? Heck, the hurricane wasn't even supposed to hit central Florida, and WE stocked up. You don't want to leave everything to the whims of a hurricane and the efficiency of FEMA, I say. I even have this cool item that provides makeshift toilet facilities....but I won't go on and on about that for fear you'll think I'm a nut. I may be a nut, but I do NOT like to pee in the bushes. Anyway, with prayers and best wishes for those who are still suffering the effects, I have to say Hurricane Wilma was a great experience for us, for a number of reasons: 1) Wilma body slammed South Florida, but barely air kissed Central Florida. 2) We had a day off from school and work consisting entirely of board games, eating and watching weather updates on TV. 3) We never lost power. 4) We were blessed with a visit from good friends seeking shelter from the hurricane. Friends from Buffalo have a winter place in Lee County near Ft. Meyers. Joe and Irene Lynch have known my parents for over half a century. Last week I got a call from Irene wondering if I could recommend a central Florida hotel. Her daughter Maureen (married to Brian Krause) and their four kids ranging in age from six months to eight years old, were visiting. They did not feel it would be safe to stay in their mobile home (a nice one in a nice community) with a major hurricane scheduled to hit. That's for sure! Even a Category I hurricane sounds like a helicopter hovering over your house. No, I would not subject kids to a Category II or greater. However I pointed out I would be insulted if their family drove RIGHT BY our house in order to get to a hotel in the Orlando area. Sheesh! We are the Buffalo Embassy to Florida! Just bring your New York driver's license and Erie County tax bill and we'll book you in a room right upstairs! I told my 4-year-old and 6-year-old about the impending arrival of four children to play with. (Although, technically, the 6-month-old is more of a decorative creature for playing purposes.) They immediately started "getting the toys ready." By Friday, with gas stations on Florida's east coast starting to run out of fuel, the Lynch gang (and for reasons of humor we also refer to them as The Lynch Mob) decided they'd better hit the road to our place before running into weekend traffic problems. The. Kids. Were. Thrilled. THRILLED! A whole gang of little ones their age to stay for an entire weekend and do nothing but swim and play games. On top of that, we did an impromptu trip to the Magic Kingdom on Saturday. Hey, no sense sitting around waiting for a hurricane when you can be visiting theme parks. It was a terrific excuse for us to get up to Orlando for a kid-oriented outing. We were sort of amazed, though, looking around at the crowd, at just how many people seemed completely uninterested in the fact that a Category II or III hurricane was swirling its way toward the state. Was this the equivalent of fiddling while Rome was burning? I hope not. And we hoped it wasn't a Last Hurrah Before Chaos, either. By Sunday the hurricane was too close to risk any more jaunts. Instead we watched the Buffalo Bills lose while we swam in our pool. (thanks to satellite TV) If you're gonna wait for a hurricane, that isn't a bad way to do it. By nightfall we're watching women with breast implants partying in Ft. Meyers and the Keys, telling TV reporters they're going to be riding out the storm on their boats. BOATS! I was picturing a direct hurricane hit, followed by thousands of loose implants bobbing around in the Gulf. However they turned out to be luckier that the people in South Florida who are now without many essentials, and a potential of waiting days or WEEKS before power is restored. I guess Florida's grapefruit and tomato crops got smashed, too. Which is good for anyone who still HAS a grapefruit or tomato crop. Now as Tropical Storm Beta is slated to morph into Hurricane Beta, I'm wondering who's going to step up and start pelting Mother Nature with rotten fruit. We had a windy and rainy morning, I think things only gusted to about 60 mph at the max, though, and with only one tornado spotted. No damage. Big sigh of relief. Thank You to the Lynches: Irene & Joe, along with the Krause Family: Maureen & Brian, plus kids Michael, 8, Andrew, 6, Emily, 3, and Kevin, 0, (as my 4-year-old describes all babies under the age of one) for being such great company to us and our kids. If you have to endure a hurricane, you want to do it in the company of friends. This time, at least, our wish was granted!

Saddam in the Bouncy Seat

2005-10-20T18:47:00.000-04:00

The news media was utterly fascinated this week with the start of Saddam Hussein's trial. They could barely tear themselves away to give us an update on Hurricane Wilma's historically low barometric pressure reading. I was not nearly so fascinated. Isn't this guy old news? I even found it a bit boring. Except for the visuals! This is the first time since childhood I have ever seen someone interrogated in a playpen. Yes, for some reason Saddam and his fellow henchersons were seated in contraptions that looked no different than a crib, playpen or port-a-crib from a couple decades ago. (And since the crimes they were being tried for were a couple decades old, also, I guess that seems appropriate!) It recalled the era of cloth diapers, plastic pants (which were more commonly called "rubber pants") and big, fat diaper pins. I can imagine there are plenty of people who might like to jab Saddam in a very sensitive area with a very sharp pin. Well be my guest! You can probably poke him right through the bars of his playpen. I feel certain we can get the fledgling justice system in Iraq to agree to a group bathroom break while we change Baby Saddam. Apparently he even had several toddler-style temper tantrums, refusing to acknowledge that the court existed, and holding his hands over his ears going, "nah nah nah nah." It's always fun to make such declarations, and for the record I'd like to suggest that gravity, taxes and calories don't exist. So if you see me tethered to my van (floating in a relaxed manner), munching doughnuts and thumbing my nose at the IRS, you'll know why. Saddam also insisted he is still the rightful leader of Iraq. Now that we've looked under every mosque, camel and couch cushion for WMDs without finding any, maybe we should concede him the point. Let's set him up back in his palace, fully armed with perhaps water pistols. Then let HIM deal with the "insurgency." We could save money and lives! It's like spending an obscene amount of money to draft a dud rookie quarterback, or to get an expensive free agent. You keep playing the dud because if you don't, then it seems like you've wasted a lot of money. Well this war in Iraq is taking on some dud-like characteristics, in my opinion. The quarterback efficiency rating is just terrible! So let's get rid of the dud and save all the money we would've spent to stay there battling an endless supply of insurgents. True, we would look ridiculous as a nation, but no more ridiculous than we did after Hurricane Katrina. Maybe we can blame the war in Iraq on former FEMA director Michael Brown. Let's pay him a couple million to accept responsibility! A bargain, if you ask me.

Wilma Planning Florida Vacation

2005-10-19T01:20:00.000-04:00

I've been trying to ignore the tropical depression, make that tropical storm, okay now it's HURRICANE Wilma for days. But now that the Weather Sadists have predicted it to "go major" and become at least a Category Three, I have to acknowledge it could prove to be more than a walk in the park on a windy day. In fact it is forecast to zip past Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, sideswipe Cuba, and then guess what falls into the Cone of Inevitability? Florida! Yes, Hurricane Wilma is threatening to hurl the Sunshine State back to the Stone Age if she hits as a Category Three or Four. I know what you're thinking. It's "Florida's Turn." Leave the poor Texans, Louisianans and Mississipians alone! Well I beg to differ. First off we already had Hurricane Dennis disco through the Panhandle earlier this year. And last year's four horsemen and women: Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne, were WAY in excess of Florida's quota. So we really don't want to adopt Wilma for our own. But I have some TERRIFIC news on the hurricane score. For the U.S. this is the LAST hurricane of 2005! Yup, I heard it on the news. Wilma is the last scheduled named storm. After that we are OUT of letters for named storms. So any hurricanes that form after Wilma will be named after letters of the Greek Alphabet, and, accordingly, will be rerouted to Greece. Isn't that terrific? Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda, Mu, Nu, Xi, Omicron, Pi, Rho, Sigma, Tau, Upsilon, Phi, Chi, Psi, Omega. See, that sorority training came in handy for more than just crossward puzzles, finally. For some oddball reason the Hurricane Naming Committee does not use the letters Q, U, X, Y, or Z. I have no idea why -- all those letters have valid names associated with them. How about Hurricanes Queenie and Quentin? Uma and Ulysses? Xena and Xavier? Yvonne and Yogi? Zora and Zachary? I don't see why these letters have to be ignored just because they're less common. It's just Typographic Discrimination! It was back in May or June that I reported that most people living on the Gulf Coast were woefully unprepared for a major hurricane to strike, both physically and mentally. Most of them had never lived through one, and had almost a fictional sense of what it would be like to "ride one out." (Hint: NOT a party.) In fact I described these people (some of whom felt you only needed, ahem, 30-60 MINUTES to evacuate in case of a hurricane) as standing on their front porches with a flashlight and a bagel, yelling at the sky, "Bring it on!" Well, someone did, whether you want to blame Mother Nature (abusive!), God (overstepping His authority!), Sin (outrageous!), Global Warming (It's the government's fault no matter how much gas I use!), Hurricane Cycles (don't worry, this one will be over by the time we're dead!) or just plain old Bad Luck (my favorite!). It's dangerous to make fun of a hurricane before it decides whether it wants to strike your house. So it is with utmost seriousness I say to Wilma we're not home and won't be taking any visitors for the next week, so there will be no reason to leave your calling card. But I'd like to end with a quote from the famous Wilma Flinstone: "I work hard all day, too, and what do I get? A lot of YAK from you!" She's gonna hear a lot more yak from our cable news forecasters in the coming days. The name Wilma, technically, means "fierce." Haha! Okay, you don't have to convince me. I'll let you slide by on reputation alone. Let's hope if Wilma does take aim at Central Florida, that she sprints past with the speed of Wilma Rudolph.

The Whole Tooth and Nothing But The Tooth

2005-10-14T14:05:00.000-04:00

There is a large event that is evolving at home. We can see it coming. We anticipate it. We really can't do anything about it. Just wait until it arrives. No, no one's pregnant in this household! Well, there are three males and I that reside here, so I feel fairly confident in saying that. No, what is coming is more on the order of watching smoke billow out of Mt. Vesuvius, or the eye of Hurricane Wilma swirl closer to Florida, or Sherman's Army marching on Georgia. Except it is not a terrible event we're awaiting! It's just that we've been given fair notice. (And hey, there's no "Wilma" yet as far as I know. But that doesn't mean Fred won't be yelling for her any minute now.) It developed suddenly, like a tropical disturbance off the coast of Florida, and blew up into a Big Deal. Our 6-year-old is having Category Five Euphoria over it. He got out of school the other day, his skinny body vibrating with glee. "I have a loose TOOTH!" E-Chomping-Gads! Once they achieve school age, this is the first event that kids universally worship as a significant "growing up" milestone. For the first grade set, this is the equivalent of getting the keys to your own car! (Note to parents: Enjoy this moment. Tooth Fairy rates are a BARGAIN compared with car insurance.) In Florida the cut-off date for school enrollment is September, so with a late July birthday my son is one of the youngest in his class. I think he is the only one who has not lost a tooth. He turned six this past summer, commemorated with a baseball-themed party and a magician that captivated the 6-and-under crowd by making small objects vanish and reappear at will. Throughout the performance our 4-year-old was bellowing, "WHERE'S the CHICKEN?" (I guess he had promised a chicken. What ever happened to rabbits?) End of birthday party digression. Interestingly, cultures worldwide agree to payoffs for baby teeth. It's part of our collective consciousness. And in places where they don't use pillows, they have the kids throw the tooth on the roof! Which makes me wonder what rolls off those roofs on rainy days. Probably not cats and dogs. Maybe little white hard things, floss and dental appliances. I'm so glad our tradition is confined to the Great Indoors. So apparently to Tooth Fairy is not a Christian Entity like the Easter Bunny. Even atheists can summon the tooth fairy! The 6-year-old has been eating an inordinate amount of apples in an attempt to facilitate the Tooth Mining Process. Because if you don't already know it, Six ushers in the Golden Age for children. It's when they discover their mouth is filled with the equivalent of cold, hard (albeit moist) cash! In the form of baby teeth, lined up and glittering like enamel-covered Kiddie Mutual Funds ready to pay a mouthful of dividends. The discussion of "baby teeth" confused the 4-year-old, who said the 6-year-old couldn't possibly have those. He insisted they must be "Brother Teeth." Only the 4-year-old could have baby teeth, and then only when he wasn't in a Little Kid mood. Hubby and I have Dada and Mama Teeth, respectively. The 6-year-old is eagerly awaiting this first nibble at manhood. As a first grade status symbol, it is impossible to hide! Either you are missing a tooth or two, or you're not. There's no way to fake this important milestone short of donning Dracula Teeth. We have not told him any Suburban Legends about string and door handles. We don't want to cause nightmares. So I can see the Handwriting on the Dental Chart. I made a special trip to the bank for silver dollars. Back in ancient, pre-tooth whitening days, we kids were awarded a quarter for each newly excavated tooth. In that era a quarter was worth about $200. You could practically fill your gas tank on one! Quarters are passe these days, barely worth the metal they're stamped on. The first grade rumor mill has ground out the tale that "some" local Tooth Fairies (probably the ones with Designer Wands) are slipping a crisp five dollar bill under the kids' pillows. Let me repeat that so we can all shudder at the inflationary horror of it all. FIVE DOLLAR BILLS. Per tooth! Hubby and I are not part of the landed gentry, nor are we related to Bill Gates. We are not members of the lobbying class, and we don't drive fancy foreign cars. So needless to say "our" Tooth Fairy is not going to be doling out fives to anyone in our household. She has been instructed to limit herself to money that "clinks" when jangled together. Hence my trip to the bank. Which turned out to be a big hit amongst the tellers. They never get to do stuff this interesting! Once I made my request for "five of the shiniest dollar coins you've got" and explained why I needed them, they all joined in, searching through their drawers for the coins with the most sparkle. They were even giving me tips on how I could shine them up better. ("Ketchup" one confided to me. "That works even better than silver polish.") It is a tiny bit possible that the person behind me was getting annoyed at all the attention my frivolous request was getting, but who's to say my son's potential nest egg was any less important than her employee payroll deposit? (Kidding! They have a special commercial line for those customers!) So the coins are tucked away in the Fairy Vault while we await the magical event that will socially, dentally, and financially change my son's life. And for the record, the 4-year-old says he's planning to lose a few teeth any moment now, also. As soon as he decides which ones he can spare.

Chicken Little Says: "Ah-CHOO!"

2005-10-11T10:28:00.000-04:00

The "Bird Flu" problem has bubbled to the top of the national consciousness, finally, like a cheap champagne uncorked two months after New Year's Eve. If we watch enough of the breathless coverage it is sure to give us a collective hangover. Scientists and medical people have been trying to inject this issue into public discourse since 2004, but so far no one has given a hoot, except possibly the Chik-Fil-A spokecows. ("Click, Clack, Moo. We may be in trouble here.") After virtually ignoring the story for most of the year, the news media has apparently declared October National Bird Flu Coverage Month. In the past week every medical person from Dr. Doolittle to Dr. Dre has weighed in on the bird flu's implications for humanity. Tom Cruise allegedly thinks it is all in the heads of over-reacting Asians. The Last Samurai is suggesting they buck up and take a Scientology class! Kidding. He actually thinks it's all in the head of an overly dramatic Brooke Shields. After taking samples and analyzing the voluminous amount of medical hot air expended on the subject, I've come to a couple rock solid conclusios: 1) There is nothing to worry about, and 2) We're all DOOMED. Now that we have that cleared up, let's take a closer look at H5N1 (a.k.a. High Five No One). An "expert" on one of the cable news shows said the term "bird flu" is really a misnomer because ALL influenzas orginate with birds. So it's like calling the sniffles an "upper respiratory infection cold," or referring to a "multi-car traffic jam" or even a "dead cadaver." (As distinguished from life-of-the-party cadavers such as Bernie from Weekend at Bernie's.) Of course with my extensive non-medical background I was able to meander through the mists of my memories and conjure the question: "What about the SWINE flu?" That was the global health disaster we narrowly averted in the early 1980s (I think) after millions of Americans got inoculated against a virus that, uh, decided to call in sick. Apparently it preferred its swine hosts to any human ones. How do the bird flu experts explain THAT? I think I know the answer, and it probably has something to do with pigs flying over a frozen hell. You're probably wondering what Joe Average Person is supposed to do once bird flu becomes a public health issue in the U.S. Actually, it would be up to Jane Average to do something, since Joe will resolutely use up every box of tissues in the house while insisting he isn't sick, and wouldn't dream of consulting a medical professional just because he had blurred vision and a temp of 105. Anyway, Jor-El Q. Public (so named in honor of Superman's biological father, and actor Nicolas Cage's to-be-pitied infant son) is supposed to do one of the following: 1) Demand from your doctor a prescription for Tamiflu, the virus-fighting medication, or 2) Nothing According to experts (which we seem to have a surplus of), both of those treatment methods are equally effective. At this point those medical people in the "alarmist" camp are suggesting that the population of the earth is, proverbially speaking, up a creek without a needle. We face a global pandemic on the order of the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed an estimated 40-50 million people worldwide. What, you're wondering, is the difference between your garden variety "epidemic," and the worrisome possibility of a "pandemic?" As any self-respecting etymologist will tell you, "epi" means BAD, and "pan" means WORSE. "Demic" is simply a suffix that means "for you-all." Right now all the overseas vaccine companies are working round-the-clock to ensure we will have a big enough supply to meet the expected demand once people start dropping dead at work, in grocery stores, and in line while waiting to gas up. The vaccine companies are all overseas because the local drug companies got tired of having their pants sued off them and gave up on the vaccine market after being ticketed for Indecent Exposure by the FDA. (liability risk is also considered "exposure" so that really works on two levels!) What is the likelihood of you being able to get this life-saving vaccine? According to "experts" your odds are: 1) Slim, to 2) None Yes, more bad news. But not totally! Because on a different channel I heard an "expert" who assured viewers that the vaccine was NOT going to work, anyway, so people would be developing sore arms for nothing. Plus they will be 50 percent more likely to let commuters cough in their faces, mistakenly thinking the vaccine offers "protection." I would share more of my extensive knowledge of the upcoming Global PanEpidemic, but I have a feeling this story is going to have "legs," and I will get to write about the social implications of everyone having to wear those masks everywhere they go. And what this will mean for our terrorism profiling pastime. We all got some good practice with SARS a couple years ago, so we should definitely be ready for this one now that we know FEMA is going to be in charge of the federal response to Hurricane Bird Flu.

Wally Gator and Kaa Do Lunch. Rush and Rosie Take Precautions.

2005-10-08T01:50:00.000-04:00

I suppose by now you have heard about Florida's exploding python problem. Actually, I don't consider it that big of a problem as long as it isn't occurring on public transportation in the seat next to me. For one thing, I would MUCH rather see a python "go off" than have a chance to sneak up on me. It isn't the sort of thing that you would be sad to have smashed with the grille of your vehicle, like, say, a butterfly, or your family room wall. It sounds more like a detective case set in the deepest Amazon. Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Python Exploding in the Night-Time. "Quick, Watson, the game's afoot!" Watson peers suspiciously at the jungle floor. "My dear Holmes, the game appears to have detonated." The python in question had swallowed much more than a can of baked beans. The snake was less than six feet long at the start of the incident. It had its eye on dinner, which in Florida tends to be mostly a chain restuarant meal. But in the wild, I suppose, anything moving might look edible to a python, so it apparently seized an adult-sized alligator. One that was closer to 10 feet in length than six. Unfortunately there is no videotaped footage of the struggle or subsequent explosion. There is only the remains of the python skin with the alligator's hindquarters protruding from its snake belly. But isn't it creepy to think a python can open its jaws THAT WIDE to begin with? If the AARP hasn't already sent out a senior citizen alert on this, it ought to issue one tomorrow. Let's face it, any species that thinks alligators are edible is not to be trifled with. Most of me did NOT want to know that the Everglades contains pythons. Another of my growing list of reasons to encounter nature solely on film or in theme park costumes. But even though alligators are as prevalent as mosquitoes, I don't have any objections to the python population trying to consume them. I don't care who wins! The reason there are pythons in the Everglades is that stupid python owners get tired of feeding them and drop them off in the swamp. Once they are no longer housed in your bathtub they can grow to virtually ANY length. (Source: My Overactive Imagination) It is only a matter of time before they start growing to 30 feet long and start swallowing NASCAR vehicles and tourist buses. There have been four other documented cases of alligator/python battles, with more sure to come. I imagine "exploding pythons" has the potential to evolve into a tourist attraction, ranking right up there with "storm surge" and "shark encounter." Apparently scientists were aware of the danger all along, and were secretly hoping that the local alligators would tame the python population and keep it from growing. Yep, looks like everything is under control! Like the time my toddler told me he had "cleaned" the bathroom with the baby powder. With each momma snake producing up to 100 hatchlings, it looks like the problem isn't going away anytime soon. As if this weren't bad enough news on the Ability To Take A Relaxing Walk In the Park front, we're now hearing about the burgeoning population of Nile Monitor Lizards in the Southwest coast of Florida. This is a species that has been imported from Africa by the Stupid Boob species of American Pet Collector. These things are cute with their bulging eyes and darting tongues. Then they get too big to hide from the landlord and once again are turned loose in the wilds of Florida to feed on small pets. Nile Monitor Experts suggest small gators may be at risk from these things too. Think "velociraptor" only not as cute. (Mr. Nile Monitor, meet Mr. Python.) Wouldn't it be nice if we could detonate these reptiles just by feeding them rice, like in that old wives' tale about birds that attend weddings? With both Rush Limbaugh and Rosie O'Donnell residing in South Florida, I suppose there is the risk that the Burmese Pythons and Nile Monitor Lizards could be at risk of taking on an entertainment giant that is too big to handle. Now THAT would be tabloid fodder.

Does the Planet Need to Chill Out?

2005-10-05T13:43:00.000-04:00

I have some good news and some bad news. Knowing that Americans prefer the bad news first so they have ample time to ignore it as they merrily carry on with their busy lives, I will lead off with the bad news. In a snug nutshell, we’ve got too many people and not enough earth. The situation promises to grow exponentially worse each year, to the point where we may soon be tempted to hitch-hike out of the solar system. (And you thought the Mission to Mars was for “research purposes?” The Automobile Club is developing an emergency triptik as we speak.) Yes, I KNOW you could shoehorn the entire population of the planet into the state of Texas with room leftover for hurricane refugees. Everyone would fit comfortably in houses designed for families of four with a driveway, modest yard, HDTV and high speed internet service. Wyoming would retain its two senate seats even if no one is technically living there, a situation we pretty much have currently. I am fully aware that we have the natural resources to sustain a lot more people than we already have. The Chicken Littles warning of a ticking population timebomb have been proven wrong time and again. BUT! That’s assuming we’re all content to eat mostly green, leafy vegetables, walk to work, and read books for entertainment. Certainly a viable lifestyle, one which was even common a century ago. Modern lifestyles in industrialized nations are nowhere near as economical, and are inadvertently wreaking havoc on our environment, and straining our natural resources to the snapping point. Motorists have their Road Rage. The earth may have its Tectonic Rage. The oceans, Surf Rage. The climate, Atmospheric Rage. And so forth. As we continue gobbling resources unabated, will the earth wreak its revenge against us for causing gastric distress to the planet? Perhaps in a cranky, volcanic way? Why, I sound like a member of Greenpeace! Does it matter that Americans consume 25 percent of the world’s energy output each year as long as we can afford it? Would we object to any other spendthrift country doing that? I’m not nearly an environmental activist. Environments are notoriously ungrateful. You spend all this time making the world safe for algae, and the next thing you know a hurricane levels your expensive coastal home. I look upon the earth as a consumer good, there for our use and not for its own sake. Still, I’m aware that if we don’t protect our little orbiting playground we will soon be drowning in our own foam, plastic and chemical-based debris. I’m fond of fresh drinking water and the ability to take hot, uncontaminated showers whenever I want them. Here are some things that should concern us: Countries more densely populated than ours have millions of people living in misery and squalor. I would venture to bet Misery and Squalor conditions worldwide are more common than lower middle class, working poor, or even welfare lifestyles in this country. And a lot less comfortable. We seem to have no problems growing food. America is, after all, a world-renowned Carbohydrate Producer. In spite of this, 8-10 million people around the globe starve to death each year. These, of course, are the very populations that have high birth rates. Can’t we send some Nobel prizewinners to work on this problem? Lock them in a room with nothing to eat but green, leafy vegetables until they solve it? So many people are undernourished I’m not sure which bogus agency to send my charity dollars to. So I send it, but it doesn’t assuage the guilt that I’m eating my third doughnut and have no way to assure every kid on the planet gets a decent breakfast. (which would probably include a fruit, and definitely would not include doughnuts.) Water is another big problem, even in this country. Third world nations don’t have enough to grow their crops. What they do have is usually contaminated enough to be the number one cause of childhood deaths from waterborne illnesses. Even the difficulties in the U.S. are becoming more obvious. Massive illegal immigration. Endless, choking traffic jams in major metropolitan areas. Inner city blight. Gas prices rising like a runaway hot air balloon. Vanishing forests and wetlands. A hazy layer of grime and air pollution. Farmland and citrus groves giving way to sprawling neighborhoods and more asphalt. Acid rain. Increasingly inaccessible health care. In a mere 60 years the U.S. population could double to around 600 million. (extrapolating based on current growth rates of 5 million annually) That is becoming claustrophobic. Okay, so by now you have to be wondering, WHY ARE YOU TELLING US THIS WHEN: 1) There is very little we can do about it, and 2) We’ll be all be dead in 60 years, so what difference does it make? (I am assuming for research purposes that 10-year-olds do not read my blog) Well, partly because these problems aren’t going to show up en masse six decades from now. They’re going to start (checking watch) a couple weeks ago! Surely you’ve noticed the prices at the pump. The rest of the stuff is going to reach a crescendo, too, especially if our economy goes south. (However this may ease up those pesky traffic problems.) But it is legitimate for you to ask at this point, “WHERE IS OUR GOOD NEWS? YOU PROMISED US SOME GOOD NEWS!” And so I did! I saved the best part for last. The good news is that this Bird Flu thingie has the potential to wipe out a quarter of the citizens on the planet, without regard to whether or not you’re a celebrity or have ever appeared on a reality show. That should ease a lot of the pressure on resources right there! Then our shortages will probably be limited to caskets. See, I TOLD you there was a silver lining!

Open Letter to the Buffalo News Grammar Czars

2005-10-04T14:29:00.000-04:00

I'm going to reprint here a letter I faxed to the Buffalo News grammar czars. I assume they have them, even though no one ever wins an award for overseeing mistake-free copy. It's like everything in life, people only notice if you get something wrong. Well I noticed in the Sunday Buffalo News that one of their syndicated columnists had mangled a common colloquial phrase. So I had to write to the News about it, although I went on at such length that they really couldn't print the letter since it would use up all the valuable space needed for people to complain about high taxes, lack of services and the new design of the Skyway. And because such a letter complaining about errors practically DEMANDS that the author make a mistake, I've managed to include one in my letter. I've left it intact, see if you can find it! See, I don't use a spellchecker myself since my teachers pounded one into my brain so I carry it with me wherever I go. And a spellchecker wouldn't have caught it anyway. But I think this means someone needs to award me a syndicated column! Dear Buffalo News Grammar Czars: I brush up against typos each day as I bustle through various newspapers. I see “grammos,” too, which are worse, because that usually means the brain has made a mistake rather than the fingers. Worst of all are the colloquial phrases waltzing around the paper dressed by careless writers who didn’t first browse through the grammar closet to see if anything matched. In Sunday’s paper Lisa Earle McLeod’s column features the phrase “shoe-in,” which appears in the same sentence as “gifted and talented.” Hmmm. There are two phrases which should never go on a date in public. The writer wasn’t referring to horses in a barn, and no blacksmith was summoned. Nor were hordes of bridesmaids descending on a bridal shop demanding to get their shoes dyed to match. So it appears the writer was reaching for the term “shoo-in” and came away with something in the wrong size. Now the theme of Ms. McLeod’s columns is that “nobody’s perfect” so it seems almost useless to kvetch about this. On the other hand, writing a column about imperfections does not give her license to commit identity theft on a perfectly respectable phrase. I’m not perfect, either, but if I butchered a phase into a rump roast when it was supposed to be a sirloin tip, I think my very next column would be about civil rights for homophones. I realize pointing this out puts me in the ranks of being a Crank. But someone has to fill our rapidly-depleting Grammar Crank Ranks, and after a hotly contested primary I nominated myself. I see it every day in newspapers and on those crawls on the cable news stations. “Jury-rigged” when the writer clearly meant “jerry-rigged!” “Bold-faced lie” when they meant “bald-faced lie.” “Grizzly murders” committed by non-bears! I could go on, but I’m about to “blow a casket.” So I beg you to set free your copy editors. Allow them to indulge their inner grammarian! Let them read ALL the copy, even the syndicated stuff, and when they spot those errors, either fix them, or toss me a big SIC so I don’t drown in despair. Otherwise I’m left wondering if anyone else at the paper reads these articles and notices these things. True, it will not affect gas prices or end social security as we know it, but if the newspaper is perfectly willing to let these things appear in its pages, it helps solidify the faux phrases as being correct. We will all soon be eating “shoe-fly pie,” hold the laces! Hopefully I will have made a spelling or grammar mistake myself, thus completely negating my point. Wait, there it is! “Hopefully” was not my mood as I started that sentence. Oh, wait, yes it was. I guess, then, it’s okay even if that isn’t what I meant. Cheers! Patricia Reilly Panara Homophonic Grammar Crank

Charismatic Dictator of the Short People

2005-10-02T08:00:00.000-04:00

In the past year the 4-year-old has evolved from a baby to a full Personality. It turns out he is Dictator of the World, starting with his own personal universe. He knows what's best for all of us, and that greater good just happens to coincide with his wishes. One of the great things about babies is you can dress them any way you want. Even if you bought something that was a weird color, oddball design, or just left sitting on the rack marked down to 79 cents because no one else wanted it, it doesn't matter. The baby WILL wear it. He may protest certain colors by immediately upchucking on them, but he or she will still wear it long enough for you to feel like you got some use out of it. Not so 4-year-olds. They, inconveniently, have OPINIONS. And who knows where these opinions came from! From TV? From other toddlers? From the Weird Gene that must belong to your spouse's side of the family? I'm not sure where he gets the opinions from because up to now (preschool) I've been with him approximately 30 hours a day, up to and including when I have to go to the bathroom, so I've seen no opportunities for unapproved opinions to develop. Perhaps they're like hurricanes, developing out of a couple of clouds sitting lazily off the coast of Florida. Speaking of the bathroom, obviously I don't want him in there with me all the time. When he was younger I'd hand him off to Hubby so I could use the bathroom. Well now, naturally, he has an OPINION on the subject. He asks me "why" I would want to be in there by myself. I tell him, "sometimes I need some privacy." So now when he trails me into the bathroom he announces, "I want to WATCH your privacy." (Me to Hubby: "Couldn't you just teach him how to chew tobacco, or something, so I can use the bathroom?") The other day we were on the purple playground during the 6-year-old's tee ball game. The 4-year-old was dressed in sweat pants and a Buffalo Bills sweatshirt. The temperature was in the low nineties with a heat index higher than that. I could feel the late afternoon sun singeing the back of my neck. The 4-year-old had rejected the nice cool short and t-shirt outfit I had offered him. It was fall! He wanted sweats! And was, now, appropriately sweating. (I should also point out that his favorite mode of dress in the house, where it is consistently air conditioned, is "nude.") But he found a cute toddler girl in the vicinity of the purple dinosaur stairs leading up to the slide. (No, this was not a Barney-themed playground. I think all children's dinosaurs tend to be purple to make them look like giant gummy candies.) The girl toddler was dressed in pink polka-dot pants, white shirt with a design, and pink plastic sandals. She was blonde and carefree, except for a mother lurking several feet away. My 4-year-old approached her. "Hi, I'm four. How old are you?" (This is the toddler equivalent of "What's your major?") She smiled at him. Then her brow furrowed in concentration. "I'm (pause) S-s-s-seven." Okay, she was maybe three or so, certainly no older than he was. And she's already playing the Experienced Older Woman Card! Probably thinks she's going to get to ride the more aggressive theme park rides with her fake I.D. My 4-year-old was taken aback, I could tell. He hadn't expected her to be that old. He tried to recover. "Well, I'm almost five." "When's your birfff-day?" she asked him. "After my brother's," he said. "He's SIX!" Then he spelled his name for her. Probably so she could start text messaging him as soon as she gets a phone! I made a mental note to not let him start dating until he's 30 or I'm dead, whichever comes first. I was in his preschool classroom for Rodeo Day last week. When the kids came in from the outdoor activities (riding stick ponies, milking faux cows, cavorting in hay) it was snack time. Everyone formed a line and washed their hands while the teacher and helping parents put out paper plates filled with "trail mix" snacks of crackers, candies, pretzels etc. The kids were anxious to dig into their trail mix when they arrived at their seats. "No, wait!" the teacher said. "We're going to pray first." They all clasped their hands in a solemn attitude. The teacher began the prayer. I could see my 4-year-old's eyes darting surreptitiously to the teacher, then back to his table. I noticed his folded hands getting closer and closer to his head. Then I saw him secretly trickling TRAIL MIX into his mouth during the prayer. E-genuflecting-Gads! I'm sure, though, he thought he was multi-tasking. Praying and eating at the same time! And clever enough to conceal such a distracting sight from the teacher. He introduced me to one of his buddies. He told me his buddy's name. Then he said, "This is Mama. (Pause) Her name is Patti." Hmmm. We hadn't ever actually taught him formal introductions. Not bad for winging it. When we're in the van my two sons will often argue about theoretical things. Like the 4-year-old will make a solemn pronouncement such as "Zebras live on the North Pole." The 6-year-old will engage him in a five minute argument as to why they couldn't possibly live there. Then he will appeal to me, "Is that true?" Before I can respond the 4-year-old says, "EVERYTHING I SAY is true." "THAT'S not true," the 6-year-old insists. "Yes it is." They argue about that for several more minutes. "Mama, he's saying everything he says is true!" the 6-year-old complained. "Does that sound true?" I asked him. "No, but he's SAYING it!" "Well just ignore him." Then of course they fight about that. The 4-year-old also issues a lot of threats. To me. Hubby. The 6-year-old. Various relatives. So far though I haven't heard of any difficulties in school, where apparently he is either angelic, or very good at faking it. Some of his favorite threats: "I'm going to turn you into SKELETONS!" "You're going to sleep outside the house with the BUGS and the ALLIGATORS!" "I'm going to CRUSH you into CRUMBS!" But my favorite, which he utters anytime I make him especially unhappy, is angry pouty face, followed by, "Mama, you are NOT a genius!" How true that is.

Please Email This Article To 10,000 of Your Closest Soulmates Immediately And Bill Gates Will Give New Orleans A Trillion Bucks. Or Else You'll DIE.

2005-09-29T23:59:00.000-04:00

Now that the news media is more or less done pumping up their ratings via extensive reporting of rumors, innuendo, exaggerations, falsehoods and histrionic hyperbole, they are now ready to set the record straight. It was all a bunch of hysteria-inducing lies! Profitable and titillating, but untrue. So now they have been devoting an exciting amount of airtime and column inches to detailing just how WRONG they were. To be fair, it is hard to get a story straight when your anchors are all wet and screaming at each other, and they have to rely on delusional, half-starved looters for information. So I'm here to retell the story of Hurricane Katrina. Only this time there will be no embellishments. Just the genuine poop straight from the sewers of New Orleans! It all began when a tropical "wave" high-fived Cuba and then developed into a "depression." It immediately headed for the Florida Keys in the hope of scoring some mood-altering substances. The tropical storm hip-checked South Florida as a mere Category I hurricane. Katrina then swirled into the Gulf of Mexico for 4o days and 40 nights while weather forecasters begged the Governor of Louisiana (Ellen DeGeneres), and the Mayor of New Orleans (Fats Domino) to call for mandatory evacuations of the city and coastline. The governor, channeling her forgetful Dory the Fish character from Finding Nemo, could not recall what the evacuation plan consisted of, nor what state she was supposed to be governing. She promptly legalized same-sex unions and applied for drought relief. Meanwhile Mayor Domino arranged a jam session of local musicians so the city could go under in style a la The Titanic. He belatedly issued an order for a "suggested evacuation" that included the poor, the elderly and the hospitalized to use U.S.S. Enterprise-style transponders to beam themselves to higher ground. Those who did not have fresh batteries for their transponders were advised to buy tickets to that weekend's New Orleans Saints game so they could "ride out the storm" in the comfort of the Superdome, with cheerleaders providing entertainment during the eye of the hurricane. Those who did not have the money to eat from the stadium's exorbitant snack menu were told to report to the Superdome with a six-pack and a roll of toilet paper. Meanwhile, the hurricane made landfall, causing a badly needed makeover of the coastline, re-shaping it into its original pristine people-free condition. Sandhill cranes celebrated their victory over mankind while armed killer dolphins roamed the bayous, plotting to finish off any human stragglers. News anchors cheered that the storm had veered at the last second and spared New Orleans from the anticipated destruction. Then a CIA-trained diving team consisting of Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and David Duke surreptitiously blew holes in several levees, flooding the city so that poor people would feel encouraged to abandon their homes and begin the process of gentrification in other urban areas, or possibly other urban continents. Pure freshwater from Lake Pontchartrain washed over the city, sweeping it of street grime, poor people and nursing home residents in one cleansing rush. Those city residents who did not have tickets for the football game chose not to evacuate due to a Mardi Gras in August Party scheduled at the New Orleans Convention Center. There was an elaborate buffet, and outsiders were clamoring to move to the city. The chamber of commerce was elated. By mid-week Mayor Fats Domino and Governor Ellen DeGeneres both woke up in bathtubs full of ice, and with painful, clumsily performed stitches in their noggins. A note scrawled on their respective bathroom mirrors (his in shrimp cocktail sauce, hers in lipstick) advised ominously, "Call FEMA!" The federal government rushed to their aid. The surgeon general soon examined the mayor and governor. They were both stunned to learn that some evil person, maybe even Martha Stewart, had secretly performed lobotomies on them, and had probably sold their brains on the black market. Or transferred them to that Imclone Company! Eventually the happy campers at the Superdome and Convention Center were transported out of New Orleans by means of: The Magic Schoolbus, The Polar Express, Jay Jay the Jetplane, and Herbie the Love Bug. They were assisted by the Superfriends, Booh-Bahs and Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Inc. gang. Everyone is extremely excited about the prospect of re-building New Orleans. It can all be done with the help of generous donations from philanthropists such as Oprah Winfrey (who is giving all evacuees "a NEW car!"), Bill Clinton (personally donating a dozen roses to each displaced family), and Michael Jackson (just a bunch of old magazines, actually, but you have to read something while your house is being rebuilt.) There was so much praise and back-slapping going on politicians were developing bruises between their shoulder blades. FEMA director Michael Brown did such an outstanding job he was granted an early retirement and gold watch from a grateful president. Those evacuees who fled to other sports arenas are welcomed by their host communities because they are helping improve attendance at the local games. They would like to stay, but the prospect of returning to a newly-rebuilt New Orleans is too tempting to resist. The new city is going to be glassed in like a snow globe so future hurricanes will just bounce off and hit, ahem, Texas. The Texans don't mind...they too would like their coastlines cleansed! Hurricane Katrina will be remembered for how she brought us all together as one big happy nation. The levee-front condos in New Orleans should be finished any time now.

Rita and Weep

2005-09-25T02:39:00.000-04:00

If you are stuck with a second major hurricane swirling in the Gulf of Mexico within a month of the first, would you be better off having that hurricane strike a new area, or have it strike where it did before? That is a question some were debating as Hurricane Rita rotated ominously for several days after striking a glancing blow to the Florida Keys. Well it's not as though we're given a choice in these things. Hurricanes can't be steered like a herd of cattle. (Although I have to believe a hurricane is the waterborn equivalent of a stampede.) But it's an interesting question. The problem is, Hurricane Rita is so morbidly obese that she has more or less succeeded in hitting Houston, the Texas/Louisiana oil rigs AND re-flooding New Orleans, all at the same time! Rita is what you would call a multi-tasking storm, busily sending threatening text messages to worried meteorologists as she decides where she wants to do the most damage. Was she going to smack Galveston with her waterlogged briefcase? Or was she going to fire New Orleans as a major American city, sending it a pink slip just when it thought it was up for a promotion? Meanwhile the meeting she called to discuss the subject took DAYS, as everyone in their right mind evacuated. Watching the evacuation gave me many sincere feelings, the predominant one being that if we as a population ever needed to get someplace quickly, say, in 24 hours, WE'RE DOOMED. That much is obvious. And in case of emergency you sure don't want to be a senior citizen. After watching a couple dozen nursing home residents burn up in a bus you have to wonder what other option these people had. If you stay, you drown. If you flee, burn to death. Great choices! Americans are no doubt looking at that situation and saying they clearly would NEVER want to be a nursing home resident. That's no way to live. So, Terri Schiavo-like, it must be time to cut off the food supplies to nursing homes. Would YOU want to live that way? And wouldn't you want your loved ones deciding when you're going to die rather than the inept governor of a state? I suspect terrorists are watching this whole charade and thinking, gee, it doesn't take much to flood New Orleans, does it? But their next weapon of mass destruction is likely to be buses filled with senior citizens on oxygen. That bus explosion turned out to be the worst casualty of Hurricane Rita. Is this hurricane season trying to tell us something? Maybe that the coasts are no longer a viable place to live? Is it reasonable to expect the country to foot the bill for rebuilding New Orleans in a location that won't be any safer next year than it is today? These questions don't have to be answered right away. We can wait maybe until the next hurricane. That may answer them for us. The president has said he cannot imagine this country without New Orleans. Well I say get creative! We couldn't have imagined it underwater, either. Voila! There are many available locations to evacuate "New Olreans" to. Maybe some nice, dry territory in Wyoming. If we keep insisting we're going to rebuild New Orleans Six Feet Under, er, below sea level, maybe the hurricanes will keep insisting it's a bad idea. You can't win an argument with Mother Nature. And as dad is sure to point out, we shouldn't even be giving her any lip.

Stressed Side Story: Hurricane Rita

2005-09-22T09:07:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately for us, Hurricane Rita likes the shores of America. Which really suggests a tribute to multi-talented star of the 1950s and 1960s Rita Moreno, who starred in the movie West Side Story in 1961. I will go ahead with my regular story, but, musical style, will occasionally break into song to amplify my remarks. (Just picture members of FEMA performing an elaborately choreographed dance sequence in the background.) I feel windy Oh so windy I feel windy and stormy tonight And I pity Any citizen in the way of my might Last night as I was watching the eyewall to eyewall coverage of Hurricane Rita, I was startled to see the cable news channels break away to coverage of SOMETHING ELSE. (How dare they!) I guess the only thing more interesting than a Category 5 hurricane in the gulf would be a passenger jet buzzing Los Angeles because its landing gear is stuck at an awkward 90 degree angle. The prospect of a spectacular crash was too much for the news channels to resist! Fortunately the plane was able to land with all its passengers intact, but not before creating a most alarming "spark" when it hit the tarmac. I'm sure that plane's passengers found it a life-altering experience, as they had three hours (while the plane dumped fuel) to reflect on their collective near death experience. Because it was a JetBlue flight they all got to watch the footage of their plane landing on their personal passenger TV screens! ("Honey, would you rather watch our fiery deaths on TV, or experience it live in the cabin?") I feel alarming So alarming It's amazing how alarming I've grown And so windy That I can destroy everything you own As soon as the plane issue was over we returned to Rita, which local and federal government officials are responding to in a remarkably attentive way! I guess they didn't want to get caught with their landing gear in the "down" position for two consecutive massive public hurricanes. But now we see what the problem is when the evacuation operates correctly: EVERYONE is on the road! Making the journey extremely slow. To the point where we wonder if these same people will still be on the road two days later. Will they arrive at a safe destination before they run out of gas? And if everyone starts running out of gas, is someone from FEMA assigned to go from car to car with the official federal gas can? Would AAA even THINK about responding in this situation? One woman called the news via cell phone to report she had traveled 8 miles in 6 and a half hours. At that rate she'll be in the eye of the hurricane in approximately 38 hours! See the windy storm in the radar Who can that monster 'cane be? Such a windy eye Such a windy surge Such a windy day Such a windy me! This does slightly call into question the government's pledge to rebuild New Orleans, and to do it with tons of federal money (couple hundred billion?) and make it better than it was before. Is it wise to rebuild ANY city that is, technically, below sea level? Can't we just have a New Orleans pavilion at Disney's Epcot Center and be done with it? I questioned the wisdom of this when it was announced. (Me: What, are they NUTS?) But now that Hurricane Rita is threatening to take out Galveston, Houston, and parts of western Louisiana, I'm thinking that even the nation's safety deposit bottles will not be enough to pay for rebuilding. After all, we'll also have to rebuild the oil rigs, the insurance companies and the housing bubble. Think we can still afford to be spending hundreds of billions annually to bring democracy to Iraq? I have long said it would not be a political crisis that would end our involvement in Iraq. We would simply run out of money to sustain the operation. Well the hurricanes may be ratcheting up the timetable on that one. Can't we let the CHINESE take care of the Iraq problem? Who cares if they're communist as long as they turn the utilities back on and start pumping oil? It doesn't seem like they want democracy -- let's see how they like Karl Marx! I am running And I'm gunning For the coast of the state of Texas And I'm going To drive up the price of your gas Just as an aside, (and it is an interesting aside because it may encompass the whole of our futures), but a huge hit on the rest of our oil-producing capacity is a huge hit on EVERYTHING. Not just gassing up our cars, although that's bad enough, but on everything we buy, everything we take for granted, our entire way of life. Multiple personal cars per family? Silly. Abandoning our cities for long suburban commutes? Ridiculous. Shipping our jobs and major industries overseas so we can have a "service economy" and import cheap junk from China and Taiwan? Suicidal. Unheard of 75 years ago. And (I'm predicting) unheard of 10 years from now. I didn't expect to have to say that prior to the big California earthquake, a major Mississippi flood or a really weird volcano, but here it is. Only two back to back hurricanes and suddenly we're realizing that our economic assumptions of the past 50 years no longer apply. So stock up on whatever you thinnk you're definitely going to need for the next 10 years...I'm thinking underwear, deodorant and toothpaste are all important. Oh yes, and floss. West Side Story said it best: "Comfort is Yours in America!" Thank you, Stephen Sondheim, for the memories.

Simple Simon Says: Come To New Orleans. Wait. No, DON'T!

2005-09-19T19:14:00.000-04:00

I have to say that his whole hurricane evacuation/rescue/relief/recover/return/rebuild scenario in Louisiana is beginning to take on the aura of an elaborate game of Simon Says only on a statewide scale. Simple Mayor Ray Nagin says: "Evacuate!" (unless you're a hospital. We feel those people can definitely weather a Cat 4 storm because, well, aren't those tube thingies battery-operated?). Late last week, Simple Nagin shouted, "Everyone come back! Let's start the rebuilding on Monday!" Now that it's Monday we just got some alarming news. Hard to believe, but IT'S STILL HURRICANE SEASON! Simple Nagin says, "The return is halted! We're evacuating again!" This was bolstered by a statement from Simple Kathleen Blanco, the alleged governor, who warned that coastal residents (not just New Orleans residents) should "prepare" to evacuate. But to not actually evacuate until, say, it's too late. Par for the course! Weather forecasters are once again screaming "Fore!" and local politicians have lapsed into Dithering Mode, which seems to be standard operating procedure in the face of impending catastrophe. Why, they couldn't even agree on whether or when the residents should be allowed to return to the city. Nagin: Yes! Local FEMA guy: No! Gov. Blanco: What's my state, again? President Bush: I'm forseeing a breach in the levees! Homeland Security Chief Chertoff: We're letting people back into New Orleans? I thought we wrote off the city! That was MY intention, anyway. The Red Cross: Should we just set up the trucks now? New FEMA guy: Just wrap your house with duct tape and hope it sticks to the earth. It seems slightly unfair that the tropical storm eyeing Key West (RITA) could very well sweep into the Gulf, strengthen, and then take aim at, ahem THE HOUSTON ASTRODOME, where many Katrina evacuees are receiving their mail. It does seem like a government plot to keep SOMEONE from receiving their Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes Grand Prize, doesn't it? All these conflicting orders/suggestions/directives/edicts/recommendations/pleas by government officials have to be giving back pain to anyone trying to follow them, unless they happen to be extremely limber. It is difficult to cut through all the verbiage and discern if what we're hearing is a Simon Says statement (you ought to do it) or just a "statement" (something you should take with a carton of salt). Let's just say even the news people are growing confused. There's also the matter of long-term plans for the area. Some (namely the president) say it will be rebuilt in even grander style than before. Every house will look like Trent Lott's! We will pay for this with money collected from all those deposit bottles that floated into the Gulf during the storm. (Note: Any that wash up on Florida's west coast will be confiscated by Floridians because we have our own hurricane rebuilding difficulties.) Others say there are significant obstacles to the rebuilding effort. These include: 1) Money. There may not be enough deposit bottles on THE WHOLE PLANET to rebuild New Orleans. (Idea: Maybe there are weapons of mass destruction buried in New Orleans that no one knows about. Along the lines of that biological defense lab where they supposedly "destroyed" the deadly samples. Let's declare war on Mayor Nagin and instead of bombing those insurgent evacuees, we'll just give them what we would've spent on the bombing to help bring democracy to New Orleans!) 2) Germs. The EPA has tested the air and yes, it's safe to take a deep breath in the Big Stinky! But the EPA has NOT yet given the okay on the water. True, you can drink bottled water. But are you going to SHOWER with bottled water? Wash your dishes with bottled water? Your clothes? Methinks New Orleans is going to need a very long hose, say one that stretches to lake Michigan, before the water problem is solved. 3) Levees. The levees are temporarily holding. But if a tropical storm should happen by, fergeddabouddit! We will see the re-flooding of the city. Hopefully by now everyone knows that if you evacuate to your attic you need to bring bottled water and a sharp ax with you. And maybe some flares if you want to eventually be seen by MSNBC. I have a word of advice for the rest of the country. Don't plan next year's convention for the New Orleans convention center. And don't buy a used car with a rusty interior. The Kingdome and the Silverdome? Get ready for customers!

Katrina and The Waves of Remorse

2005-09-16T13:39:00.000-04:00

Nothing can be quite as bad as watching a major American city crumble like a cookie soaked in a Hot Toxic Superfund Stew, but after enduring the horrors of the New Orleans deluge something comes close. And that would be watching all the government officials in their digitproof vests as they stab fingers in each other's direction trying to pin the blame on someone else's soiled lapel. Of course they all gave lip service to the idea that we should be "responding, not blaming" but honestly, I believe they were all lip synching when they said that. It was the ultimate governmental Ashlee Simpson moment. Which is why everyone is rapidly making embarrassed hoe down moves in response to the public outrage. The president has already dos-i-doed to the region four times in an effort to portray that he cares, and is on top of the situation. The governor is desperately marshalling a belated response (and I'm sure relatives of the deceased residents of various nursing homes will kick in for a collective thank you card), and trying to convince everyone that YES, she was INDEED aware that Louisiana was "her" state. It is so easy to get that confused on election night when so many other governors' races are being decided. It is entirely possible she thought she got elected governor of Illinois and is in fact dealing with a severe drought as we speak. More recently our top government officials seem to have realized that their effort to shift blame has only inflamed public opinion further, to the point where we have started looting positive approval points out of the polls. So instead of shifting blame (which, let's face it, they never accepted to begin with, since it was obviously the National Geographic's fault for not sending every American citizen a copy of their prescient article on the potentially catastrophic flooding) they are now, (hold your breath in anticipation here, or, if you're in New Orleans, because you can't stand the smell in the streets) ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY. They are ALL doing it! It is the trend of the moment. Once you've pointed out that you did everything you could do under the circumstances, and, anyway, had no way of knowing that New Orleans could EVER flood on a rainy day, then it's time to turn the page and regally "accept responsibility." As long as it means you get to keep your job and people stop saying nasty things about you, of course. So far between the president of the U.S., the governor of Louisiana, the Mayor of New Orleans, the chief of Homeland Security, and the head of FEMA (who has graciously agreed to accept responsibility from his recreation room at his home), they have collectively accepted responsibility for: substandard housing in Louisiana's sports arenas, WWI, the JFK assassination, the Great Depression, Watergate, Hiroshima, the Energy Crisis, WWII, Vietnam, Iran-Contra, the Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia, the Gulf War, West Nile Virus and a plethora of bad photo opportunities emanating from the Gulf Coast region. They are accepting so much responsibility for bad things that I'm beginning to think they are al Qaeda spokespeople minus the angry eyebrows. Exhausted from all the accepting of responsibility, I am sure they need people to spell them. I am here to offer my services, since I routinely accept the blame for things on Thursdays. True, today is Friday, so that gives me a week to rest up and start my blame shouldering the following Thursday. As water levels receded in downtown New Orleans, some interesting facts that were submerged in all the news overload are now coming to light and drying out a bit. The Associated Press has sorted through these facts, and here are a few I'd like to share. First is that the levees that were breached were not exactly the ones waiting for more funding. It was the ALREADY REINFORCED levees that gave way, so no amount of federal money would have stoppered those leaks. In fact, the flooding likely would have occurred even if every levee improvement project had been completed, simply because no one planned to build them to withstand a Category Four-plus hurricane. It is also obvious that everyone "could have" expected the breach of the levees, contrary to the president's assertion. (Although it's possible he was referring to the fact that no levees broke during the storm proper, and news people were already celebrating the bullet dodged by the city the following morning.) There were plenty of academic papers, newspaper articles and magazine pieces discussing precisely such a scenario. Dire warnings were issued by TV weather forecasters as Katrina bore down on the city. The only way you could not have known of the catastrophic potential was if you were singing loudly to yourself in the shower for three straight days. (Come to think of it, everyone's skin IS looking a bit more wrinkly lately.) Need proof? Last year Homeland Security and FEMA jointly conducted an exercise dubbed "Hurricane Pam" to study a proper response to a fictional Category Three hurricane that would hit New Orleans. (Aside: I like the teflonesque qualities implied by Hurricane Pam, as if it were as non-stick as a baking spray.) That study suggested flooding would top the levees and potentially cause mass casualties on the heels of a mass evacuation. It projected upwards of 60,000 deaths, injuries and illnesses in the hundreds of thousands, leaving the area barren for more than 12 months. Now that sort of projection, undertaken just last year by the very agencies in charge of federal emergency response, has to leave us wondering why they were sitting on their duffs when a monster hurricane, larger AND more powerful than the Faux Pam, was taking aim at New Orleans. FEMA director Michael Brown got sacked for the perceived tardiness of governmental response, even though best as I can tell Homeland Security Chief Chertoff did not transfer the authority and responsibility to him until 36 hours after the storm passed. Well, you can't drop a baton until the runner ahead passes it along. In the hot glare of press inquiry Brown's resume problem floated to the surface. It seems he padded that resume to D-cup size when his accomplishments merited "barely an A" status. He did not actually DIRECT any emergency management organizations. He previously worked as an intern for one. Yes, it would be like Monica Lewinsky running the State Department! (Which, frankly, we can't be certain she didn't, at times.) So his job and reputation were an early administrative casualty of Katrina's wrath, and it's hard to feel sorry for him when there are so many others who have lost so much more. Political spinners really ought to give it a rest, though, because if you want to boil the dollars down to a Democrat vs Republican water balloon fight, it turns out the federal government spent $195 million on the New Orleans levee project during the last five years of Clinton's terms, compared with the $276 million spent in the first five years of Bush's terms in office. That might be like comparing Al Gore's "Gentleman's C" grades with those of both John Kerry and G.W. Bush, but at least money was spent. Probaby not wisely or well, but it was spent. On top of that, New Orleans is far from the only area of the country that was in desperate need of infrastructure triage. I'll get into that in a future blog. We should all be afraid. Very afraid!

Not EXACTLY The Wild Kingdom

2005-09-13T10:09:00.000-04:00

Florida is absolutely beautiful in its natural state. The beaches! The wetlands! The tropical jungle-looking stuff! Being the naturalist outdoorsy types that Hubby and I are, we enjoy viewing all this fabulous natural scenery in pictures. We even don't mind viewing it from, say, the tinted windows of our speeding van, or the safety of a tourist tram, or especially from the hermetically sealed windows of our plane as we are flying over! What we DON'T want is to encounter any of it in an up close and personal way, such as the kind that would result in bug bites, rashes or any type of alligator incident that would make the local section of our paper. What we want to do is confront nature on OUR terms, which is basically to pretend it doesn't exist except perhaps in stories, photographs or tour guide monologues. What we like is FAKE nature that looks beautiful but doesn't smell like anything unless you spray it with one of those outdoorsy car deodorizers. Which is why we LOVE our trips to Cypress Gardens Adenture Park in Winter Haven, Florida. We actually used to live a stone's throw from the park (assuming the stone is the size of a baseball and the thrower is Randy Johnson.) Really only a 5-minute drive depending on whether we had to wait at the signal. Now that we live in Lakeland the park is about a half hour ride, but still well worth getting the sesason's pass. The park got re-made in the past year and added all kinds of great rides plus a water park, making it perfect for our 4- and and 6-year-old! It used to be primarily botanical gardens, an animal section, plus a water ski show and some dusty exhibits. Now it's like Disney without the lines! Like Six Flags without the defillibrator! Like the zoo but without any significant odors! Really, you get a lot of bang for your buck at the New Cypress Gardens Adventure Park. And no one is paying me to say that! (Yet. I have hopes! This space available!) When we went earlier in the summer only two sections of the water park were open. It is called Splash Island, which sounds more kid-oriented than parent-friendly. But in reality it is both! Especially in Florida's 95-plus degrees summer heat. The two open sections were Paradise River, which is where you get on your own personal inner tube raft and float lazily in this meandering "river" that is only about three feet deep. And you can make a flotilla out of your whole family so you don't have to worry about losing the kids! There are lifeguards stationed everywhere along the way so they don't have to worry about losing any paying customers. This is a fabulous ride if you just want to cool off and don't want to have to use any muscles or even open your eyes! In other words, MY kinda ride! (Parental disclaimer: I did glance at the kids every so often.) The other open section was "Polynesian Adventure." It is an elaborate structure placed in shallow water. It is swarming with kids of all sizes and bursting with water from every possible direction. Don't stare too closely up at that Polynesian god or his face will tip, dumping buckets of water onto unsuspecting onlookers. Exotic birds will spit water at you! Water sprays up at you on the stairs causing senations best not described on a G-rated blog! I'm not sure why I wear my glasses to these things, except for the fact that I can't see without them. (Note to self: Maybe a swimmer's mask or diving helmet next time?) Then there are these twisting slides which the kids insist we go down with them. (Special note: the green slide is the most aggressive and will result in water up your nose.) Now if your goal is to "not get your hair wet" you will not enjoy the Polynesian Adenture. But if you're more concerned with keeping your body temperature from soaring into fever range, this is the perfect way to do it. Yesterday's adventure added a whole new wrinkle, the Wave Pool. First let me tell you what this pool did NOT have: stingrays, sharks, sharp stones, stones of any kind, jellyfish, dead fish, toxic waste, seaweed, litter, members of FEMA or cable news reporters. In other words, it was like paradise. TRUE, there was technically no sand, either, but that's nothing you couldn't fix by adding a sandbox to your backyard if you really wanted the sensation of sand between your toes. And the concrete at the edge of the wading pool was sand-colored, in contrast to the blue concrete in the wave area. So the visuals were harmonically blended. So I sat in about a foot of water and just let the waves roll over me while I made sure the 4- and 6-year-old did not go "out too deep." (The Deep End was an impressive 6 feet.) I'm not certain what exactly generated these waves. It was definitely not the ocean, and I'm pretty sure God was not directly involved either. Right now my suspicion is lingering on some kind of 'Wave Machine" that may have been invented in Hollywood around the time of the first Poseideon Adventure. This was the perfect clinically sterile experience I was looking for. Better than real waves because they come in faster and you don't have to worry about getting the flesh-eating disease. (Thank you Mr. Pool Chemical Guy) Meanwhile, I noticed Hubby in a beach chair in the "sandy" area. He was talking to some young fellow I didn't recognize. Perhaps someone he knew in connection with work? Later he told me the guy was a total stranger, but appeared "stoned," and was complaining that the waves weren't big enough for his surfboard. How's THAT for realism? Our very own stoned surfer kvetching about the quality of the waves! Public Safety Note: There is NO SMOKING at the Cypress Gardens Adventure Park, no matter what the substance. So we don't know how he got in that condition. The kids also got to do some Kidsapalooza activities involving: Thumbprint Art (the 4-year-old wiped his thumbs on me), a Graffiti Wall (the 6-year-old somehow turns the first letter of his name into a waterslide, with the vowel sliding down into a pool. It's much more artistic than anything I have ever conceived.), Animal Tracks (we had plenty of room on our sheet until we got to the baby elephant stamp), Sand Art, Create Your Own Magnet, and Boomerang Decoration (0uch.) If you have a kid under the age of 10, this is the park for you! If you like to enjoy the water without enjoying shark attacks, riptides and waterborne funguses, this is the park for you! If you don't want to fight the crowds at Disney but still feel like you got your money's worth, this is the park for you! Plus at the end we got to stroll through the botanical gardens part, with funky new age music playing out of strategically placed speakers. Enjoying nature without having to touch it! They pay others to keep everything trimmed and make sure there are no spiders. Ah, Natural Florida. Can't beat it!

National Struggle Against Atmospheric Extremism

2005-09-09T01:35:00.000-04:00

It is apparent to me that the number of deaths associated with Hurricane Katrina will exceed the number of people who died in the 9/11 terror attacks on American soil. This was obvious to me even as the hurricane was on its way in, as I reported around 2 a.m. on Aug. 29th, before the hurricane had even struck in "Katrina: Mother of All Hurricanes." News reports now say we are spending $1 billion a day on the Katrina relief effort. Perhaps that figure would be unchanged even if things had gone differently. However this was not a totally unexpected disaster, as the 9/11 attacks were. This was not some sucker punch thrown by Mother Nature that we couldn't have guessed it was coming. We've known for decades it could come. At least since hurricanes Betsy and Camille in the 1960s. Development in the low-lying New Olreans area continued unabated. (and calling New Orleans "low-lying" is a little like calling Katrina "a large windbag.") A researcher from LSU described what would happen almost verbatim, and this was in 2002. LSU Guy Foresees New Olreans Tragedy. What WAS abated was money slated for levee improvements. Money allocated by the federal government and then apparently spent by the state of Louisiana for other things such as refurbishing some Mardi Gras statues and expensive improvements for the state supreme court. There were even some federal matching funds that went unclaimed because the state spent its largesse so unwisely. The feds also slashed levee monies in recent years, so it's apparent EVERYONE was counting on the generosity of Mother Nature in not walloping New Orleans with a right hook. But wasn't a hurricane in New Orleans more LIKELY than any given terrorist attack? You can never be sure where a terrorist will strike, but you can be certain New Orleans remains a hurricane target with each new season that comes. But we have a whole structure set up, Homeland Security, just to deal with things like terrorist attacks. And, to a lesser extent, natural disasters. Even though it must be obvious by now that natural disasters are a bigger threat to national (and local) security than anyone with a boxcutter. So far there hasn't been any terrorist attack that has emptied almost an entire city, the way Katrina did to New Orleans. It's still an open question whether the city will be rebuilt in any meaningful way. Yes they are giving lip service to it, surely no one is missing all the giant flapping lips that seem to be the hallmark of this disaster. But I suspect they will keep making progress until the "obstacles" get too expensive, whether it be shoring up the levees, detoxifying the city or suddenly realizing that every building in the flooded areas has a serious mold problem that will be extremely expensive to eradicate. My latest idea on New Orleans: Let's glass it in like a snow globe! Then people can visit using those cute little tourist submarines like they have in Hawaii. The next hurricane will wash right over the city with no visible effect. It will be our first fully-functional underwater community! Anyway, if we are going to respond to 9/11 with a War on Terror, then the thousands of Katrina deaths ought to precipitate a War Against Natural Disasters, or W.A.N.D., as in we should start waving one, along with scattering our pixie dust. Maybe we could lable it the National Struggle Against Atmospheric Extremism. Yes, I know we want to blame the policians for not building higher levees, or a dike the size of Rhode Island. But I have to ask: what are you gonna do about California? I forget how much of our national economy it makes up, but it's a lot. CA has one of the largest economies in the WORLD. California is sitting precariously on a fault between two really cranky tectonic plates. The Big One (an earthquake greater than magnitude 8, maybe closer to 9) has been overdue now for at least two decades. When THAT happens you aren't going to be able to bus the bottled water in, or bus the people out. You won't even get the courtesty of 48 hours notice as we did with Katrina. It will just be WHAMMO, and suddenly the whole state will be refugees (excuse me "evacuees," only of course they won't be going anywhere unless there is a helicopter pilot in the family.) Roads will be impassible, buildings will be on fire, people will be trapped, the U.S. economy will be ruined. So my suggestion is a simple one. We need to evacaute California starting TODAY. Maybe we can begin with everyone along the San Andreas fault, and then move, fault by fault, until we've cleansed the entire area of future evacuees! Let's face it, California is only as viable as Pompeii. A nice place to be born, but you wouldn't want to be crushed there. And a note to you in other parts of the world: that Asian tsunami thing was probably just a warm-up! The next earthquake/tidal wave event will likely extend as far as Australia and the east coast of Africa. You can't actually shift the earth off its axis and then not expect a follow-up. So everyone move at least ten feet inland (or ten miles if you can manage it) because we all know now Mother Nature's version of Disney's Blizzard Beach is no fun at all.

Future Map of North America

2005-09-05T13:20:00.000-04:00

The Inundation of New Orleans is making people nervous, in an End Times kinda way. Although I like Hubby's idea of leaving the Big Easy underwater, and recreating a tourist attraction on a giant bobbing barge that could be called The Floating French Quarter. I've been mentally reviewing the list of things which must be done in order to revive New Orleans. It is not a happy list. They need to: find, recover and bury the remaining dead bodies (including searches of every house still standing), temporarily rebuild the levees so they can pump out the water, raze damaged structures, detoxify everything, mobilize an army of insurance adjustors and building inspectors to assess damage, clean up the mold, rebuild the infrastructure...then and only then can they think about rebuilding. I think it's several years out, if it can be done at all. I think it will prove far too expensive to rebuild New Orleans where it was. I don't blame people for having an emotional attachment to What Once Was (WOW!), but that New Orleans is a memory. It may not be acceptable to declare the city dead (ask Dennis Hastert) but what they likely will do is pretend they plan to rebuild the city and then inform the public as each new obstacle is reached. It will eventually become conventional wisdom that it just can't be done. That's also assuming no more hurricanes will come along in the meantime, which is not a certaintly either. I hope every other city is working on its disaster plan, whether it's Miami's hurricane plan, LA's earthquake plan, Seattle's volcano plan, New York's terrorism plan or Philadelphia's tsunami plan. We now know a certain percentage cannot evacuate without help, and another percentage will not evacuate without coercion. Let's work on that now before it's too late.

Rescue Heroes Save Humanity

2005-09-04T18:55:00.000-04:00

After watching a week's worth of disaster in the City Formerly Known as New Orleans, I want to focus on a rescue of a happier nature. One in which none of the victims die, the rescuers are all heroes, and everything returns to normal at the end of the day. These rescues took place at our house. Hubby got to play God, setting in motion a number of Faux Disasters that the 4- and 6-year-old were commissioned to deal with. They love the Rescue Heroes action figures, with names like ROCKY CANYON, MOE ZAMBIQUE, WENDY WATERS, GIL GRIPPER and KENNY RIDE. They want to be just like them, rescuing people from various dangers that pop up around our house. (However not from REAL dangers, such as we lost the car keys, forgot to turn the toaster oven off and it's smoking, a spider the size a frisbee is in the house, Girl Scouts are insisting we bought 12 boxes of cookies all the same variety, or no one can find the remote again and it's the TV whose manual button is broke so it won't shut off EVER, etc.) So anyway, God, er, I mean Hubby, is forced to come up with a variety of exciting "rescues" that can be staged inside the house without a) endangering our children, b) hurting the resale value of the house, or c) causing a social service agency to investigage us. It is quite a task, but Hubby has a side of him that is firmly stuck in childhood, so I think he just channeled that personality! The first rescue was called "Avalanche!" Upstairs he created a disaster involving comforters, couch cushions, and every pillow in our house. We probably own 30-40 pillows for no good reason. We were probably both pillow deprived as children. I only recall ever owning one, and it was VERY flat. We've obviously overcompensated. So our boys, the Rescue Heroes, were charged with the mission of getting to the upstairs "disaster area" and finding all 15 or so victims. They had to bring these victims to the rescue area. "No one gets LEFT BEHIND!" Hubby shouted as them as they bolted upstairs, scrambling on the stairs over strategically placed comforters and pillows. "We're ON it!" they assured him. (They like using offical Rescue Heroe Lingo, which includes a bevy of "rogers," "overs," and "can-you-read-me's?") Like extremely cute mountain goats they made it past the obstruction, and squealed with delight as they were able to rescue some of their victims, stuck in drawers, hanging from chandeliers, trapped behind couch cushions. I had to pretend to be Network News Lady, following them with the video camera to get great footage of the rescue. It was not easy. Hubby imagined that as they scaled the stairs they would throw the pillows behind them. Wrong! They dexterously clambered OVER them, leaving Hubby and me to fight our way awkwardly through what looked like a White Sale Gone Very Wrong. They had rescued half the victims by the time I made it to the second floor. Winnie the Pooh! Mickey Mouse! Minnie! Stuffed Animals of Every Description! Bob the Builder (who kept running his saw and spouting dialogue any time anyone touched him.) The kids were outfitted with walkie talkies. Each time one of the boys uncovered a victim, he would seize the person/animal/creature by one limb (or worse, the head) and fling he/she/it into the pile of already rescued victims. Sometimes at great speed! With no regards to the status of anyone's back. Let's just say if these victims weren't hurt by the avalanche itself, the rough rescue probably did them in. The boys were just counting rescued bodies. Injuries sustained during the rescue were completely incidental. "STAY SAFE!" They would shout at each other periodically. Their faces were flushed with triumph by the time they rescued the last victim. This was better than playing Hide and Seek in Mom & Dad's room with the neighborhood kids and a bag of chips! Greater fun than re-doing the kitchen in a Play-Doh motif! More fascinating than dousing the entire master bath in a dense fog of white baby powder! But the fun did not stop there. No! Next was "Lanai Forest Fire." Hubby taped red paper flames to the plastic patio chairs scattered around our screened-in patio and pool area. The boys proceeded to douse the flames with water ballons. Little bits of water balloon littered the lanai. The tile looked like it had contracted Psychedelic Measles. Then we went on the "Mine Explosion and Poisonous Gas Adventure." The boys donned surgical masks, safety goggles and rubber gloves as they rescued their stuffed victims from the poisonous gases seeping throughout the upstairs after the mine explosion. It was harder to see through the safety goggles, but eventually they found all the fuzzy victims and hurled them to safety! Hubby was getting very creative with the next adventure. It was a "Rock Slide Into Our Bedroom." He carefully blocked the entrance to the master bedroom top to bottom with a variety of soft objects such as pillows, cushions and backrests. He wedged it all in there tightly. He had scattered the poor victims (which by now had to be getting tired of being rescued from so many disasters) all over our room. Then he told the boys they needed to get through the rockslide which had "trapped" the victims in our room, and get them out ASAP so we could attend to their injuries. Well the boys took a running start and burst through the pillow blockage jamming the doorway such that they both went tumbling into the room in a giggling heap with pillows flying every which way. Then of course they raced to trample the victims and sling them out of the room. More success! The final adventure was breathtaking. We had to wait until after dinner, when night fell, for the "Electrical Wind And Rain Storm." (However we had already decided beforehand we did NOT want anything resembling a flood in the house.) Once it got dark, Hubby scattered the bruised and tattered victims on the boys' side of the house, strewn between two bedrooms and a hall. We turned off every light in the house, and sent them searching with flashlights and glow sticks. Then I blew the battery-operated fan at them (wind!) and Hubby squirted them with his spray bottle of water (rain!) as they scrambled around looking for victims. A huge success! The boys were so weary and thrilled by the end of all this they couldn't wait until we did MORE rescues the next day. Perhaps something involving boats, they suggested. Or a tornado! And could we get some dangerous animals into the house to participate? (NO.) As the 4-year-old said to us, "This is FAMILY FUN!" I give Hubby all the credit for coming up with such a bizarre and successful childhood memory for them. Especially because we will probably have to come up with new adventures each week, or somehow get the entire neighborhood involved. The best part of all is that there is no danger. It is all just Make Believe.

The Lost City of New Orleans

2005-09-02T01:22:00.000-04:00

Perhaps someday people will think of New Orleans as a mythical city like Atlantis, long buried in a watery grave. That is what I suspect, even though the talking heads have been prattling about "the rebuilding schedule." It'll be DAYS before New Orleans is back on line (they assured us Monday), perhaps WEEKS before the lights go back on (they breathlessly informed us on Tuesday), even MONTHS before the city reopens for business (they prognosticated on Wednesday), mmm, likely YEARS before life gets back to normal (they suggested Thursday.) By early Friday morning, for the first time, I heard someone mention "a decade." Okay. Let me save you all the trouble. It might not come back. Ever. And even if it could, perhaps it should not. Not where it is. Not in the absurd configuration of a City in a Bowl. Not the way it was. You can't duplicate that kind of history without making it into a Disney-esque hyperbole of what people remembered it to be. Accept it. New Orleans is a city that once was. It is not to be again. I'm getting a little fatigued watching and reading the news reports. It is not Compassion Fatigue. The stories still move me, the pictures still wound me, the misery still astounds me. Each night I go to bed and thank God for my comfortable bed, my safe house, my fresh water, my plentiful food, my uninterrupted electricity, my functioning plumbing, my access to incredibly expensive gasoline. Because no matter how much it costs, we HAVE it. The people in New Orleans have nothing. Nothing worth having. What they have is suffering. There's plenty of that to go around, and it is growing by the hour. I watch in horror as people trapped on rooftops for days are afraid to come down because of the roving armed gangs of looters. Families waiting on interstates for buses that take forever. Children with quivering lips, living the nightmare parents always assured them could never happen. The elderly in their wheelchairs, waiting patiently for help that never comes. Patients dying for lack of food, medicine, fresh water, oxygen, shelter from a blistering sun. It is an apocalyptic scene, and it scares me to think such suffering is going on all over the vast city, in hidden corners away from the cameras that are attempting to document it all. Government leaders seem to spout nonsense, assuring us that help is on the way, that the people are "resilient," that the situation will soon be under control. What kind of poorly thought out disaster plan didn't account for an impoverished population that had no means to flee an unfolding catastrophe, and no place to flee to? An imminent Category 5 did not trigger free buses? There was no agreement with other communities on setting up temporary refuges for the tens of thousands who had no money for a hotel? The shelter of choice for the sickest and most infirm was the SUPERDOME? Did planners actually sit around a coffee urn and discuss any of these details, or did they find the scenario too depressing to even address? I want to scoop up all these suffering people and deposit them somewhere, anywhere, that can help them. I wonder why it is taking so LONG to deliver even the most basic of supplies. I worry about the children, praying that their parents can keep them safe until help arrives. Word has just gone out that the Astrodome is closed to new refugees. They are at capacity. Where next? The Kingdome in Seattle? The Silverdome in Detroit? The Kingdom of Heaven, perhaps, if someone doesn't do something soon? The devastation is unprecedented, the losses incalculable, the suffering unimaginable. And the suffering is not limited to New Orleans. There are refugees all over parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. People without electricity everywhere, and gas in short supply. Will people get their back their homes, their jobs, their lives? For many the answer is no. It has been said Mardi Gras has been canceled for next year. However Lent, the 6-week season of penance that follows it, will surely go on as scheduled. Come to think of it, Lent began on Sunday. And we have no earthly idea when it will end.

The Looting of New Orleans: HO HO HO and a Bottle of Dumb

2005-08-31T23:54:00.000-04:00

I'm watching the Looting of New Orleans lately. First Mother Nature barrelled in uninvited, looting the city of her infrastructure. Now the survivors of Hurricane Katrina are relieving stores, shops, homes of any remaining valuables. It is making me laugh. It is making me cry. It is making me pray. In the first category is the Young Hoodlum crowd running away with TVs, appliances, sneakers and plastic stuff from Walmart. Are we going to find a nice usable outlet to plug your new entertainment systems into, hmmm? Or are you going to sell the items to refugees with no food and no money? Perhaps set up shop on Ebay as soon as someone restores internet service to your soon-to-be condemned house? Or are you just going to try to take it all the the Houston Astrodome with you when you get evacuated? hahahaha. All these normally "stealable" items are now worthless crap! Except those of you who got away with diamond jewelry. Well good luck setting up the new life, anyway! The other categories are the people I see in the food stores. For some reason a lot of the news anchors are also referring to THESE people as looters. Give me a break! Can't you new experts distinguish between lawlessness and survival? I'm watching men grabbing loaves of bread and bottled water. Women making off with formula and baby diapers. Do you think these people are taking the Huggies to sell on the black market? For Katrina's sake, let's understand that there is NO RUNNING WATER AND NO FRESH FOOD COMING. Do you honestly believe the store owners are going to show up next month and try to sell the bread and canned goods remaining on the shelves. I'm sorry, but that's not looting if you are only taking what you need to survive. I have suggested that this event is going to be bigger in impact than the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It looks like it has already reached that dimension. The whole country is going to feel the impact of this. They are talking about a million plus refugees. How many citizens does the U.S. have? Isn't that 1 out of every 320 people in the country? Initial reports suggested Katrina would NOT be as expensive, damage-wise, as Hurricane Andrew. Hahahahaha. I knew right away that estimate was off. Hurricane Andrew's damage was limited to a small area of South Florida, and was mostly wind damage. Water damage is extremely insidious and costly to clean up. And New Orleans is just a huge metropolitan area by comparison. Add to that the tremendous devastation in Alabama and Mississippi. At this point I'd say $100 billion in damage is conservative. And that's not even counting the economic loss of all the businesses not operating for months. (Andrew was about a $25 billion event.) Personally I would've evacuated in the face of an oncoming Category Five hurricane. But one of the main reasons for that is that we had three hurricanes fly over the house last year, all of which were Category I or less by the time they passed over. It was still scary sitting there wondering if it could get any louder, and hoping the roof wouldn't blow off. I've watched and read stories of people who barely survived Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and Ivan last year. The stories are sobering. If more people knew of those stories, fewer might have stayed behind to try to "ride out" Katrina. It is weird watching the reporting from the Superdome. It felt like ABC's top football analyst Al Michaels ought to be giving us the play-by-play. Especially now that all those refugees are going to be bused to the Houston Astrodome. (Macabre aside: what happens if a hurricane takes aim at Houston? On to Seattle's King Dome!) Now it's time to send money to the Red Cross. To give blood. To pray. And to pack up our most valuable memories and put them in a safe place in case we are ever called upon to evacuate due to a natural disaster. They are still talking of rebuilding New Orleans. I don't know if they say that because they don't know what else to say, or if they really believe it is possible. Is there any other place in the U.S. where we are looking for real estate 6-12 feet below water where we can build a city for 1.3 million people? Even so, New Orleans probably STILL wouldn't be the best place to build it. I know it is a city full of charm and history. It is also now drenched in debris and a toxic witch's brew of water. Perhaps it is best preserved as a fable, like Atlantis, as a memory, like the World Trade Center, or as a piece of history, like Pompeii. New Orleans can never be the same. Why pretend otherwise?

Katrina: Mother of All Hurricanes

2005-08-29T01:57:00.000-04:00

Hurricane Katrina caught our attention early in Central Florida, certainly before she blew her way into the rest of the nation's consciousness. Although even for us she was a bit of a Stealth Storm, seemingly nothing more than an atmospheric postnatal depression until she decided to go all threatening on us. Her approach was confusing for the 5- and 6-year old sons of my friend Katrena, who lives down the street. (She spells her name with an 'e' as distinct from the Hurricane Spelling.) Her sons kept saying, "Mom, how come everyone's talking about Katrena coming when you're right here?" So she had to explain they were all worried about a hurricane, not her. I was thinking maybe they should just start calling the storm Hurricane Mom. Well, little did we know this thing would explode into a Category 5 storm after it passed through South Florida last week. We watched its progress closely, even canceling a neighborhood party for Saturday evening in case Katrina made a Charley-like right hook, as that storm did last year, in a path across Central Florida. In fact, one of the TV forecasts showed us all the "projected paths" of Katrina. Well I have to point out that this forecast model looked like a gigantic tangled ball of string! HELLO. I can forecast "anytime, anywhere, any speed, any direction" quite capably on my own. Katrina was "only" a Category I as it swept over South Florida, hitting south of Fort Lauderdale with 80 mph winds, raking the Miami area and leaving up to 12 inches of rain. Nine people died, and at the height of the storm about 2.5 million were without power. Many are still living electricity-free lives, and may be for weeks. Damage estimates range from one to four billion. DOLLARS. So trying to extrapolate that information to a city the size of New Orleans (1.3 million in the immediate vicinity), and a storm with Category 5 winds (155+ mph) is almost impossible. All day Sunday I heard cable news anchors talk about "catastrophic" damage. It's probably appropriate that many of them seemed at a loss to calculate exactly what that might mean, in terms of lives, dollars or the future of a city that may never be the same. I feel confident no damage estimates were given because they have NO IDEA how expensive this thing can be. The mind starts shutting down after a figure like ten billion is reached. There are only so many zeroes I can contemplate in the face of a monster storm that threatens to take possibly more lives than were lost on 9/11. Is this looming event as big as that? Quite possibly. Economically the effect could very well be larger than the 9/11 terrorist strikes. I can imagine insurance companies going under. Who can afford to re-build a city like New Orleans if, as many fear, it is not only leveled, but then flooded with water that cannot get pumped out for weeks, if not months? What will happen to our oil drilling and shipping capacities in the region? Nobody knows. The coverage on Sunday was interesting, to say the least. One tourist from New York City was interviewed. He looked like he had stepped right off one of the subway trains after seeing a Yankee game in the Bronx. Cap on. New Yawk accent. Gold chain. Gold tooth. Eerily big smile. No one should be smiling from the French Quarter with a Category 5 hurricane scheduled to visit. Anyway, they asked this guy why he didn't leave downtown New Orleans. He said, "I just GOT here!" And anyway, he'd come by bus. He didn't have a ride back. But he seemed strangely cheerful in the face of possibilities including discomfort, injury, even death. They asked if he was afraid. "Naw," he said, still smiling. "They had the Titanic here in 1969. People survived that, so they can survive this!" Eh. Well I can appreciate the comparison with the Titanic. Probably they should have a really great jazz band playing some upbeat tunes as this thing roars into the French Quarter. But it was Hurricane Camille that grazed the area in 1969 with Category 5 winds. And don't forget that Bubonic Plague outbreak from 1985! Oh, that wasn't the U.S. Wrong century too. But people survived! Somehow I think this fellow was impervious to facts, so it's probably just as well that he seemed blissfully unaware of them. Another guy said he was not evacuating because it would be difficult to transport his ill mother-in-law, so he, his wife and his wife's mother were going to take shelter in a downtown hotel "at least three floors up." That was to avoid the flooding, but don't forget the higher you go, the windier it gets! Almost certainly everyone will be without power after the storm, so I can't imagine how comfortable it will be in that hotel with no electricity, water or food. And cable. You might not even know if help is coming or when it's expected. This fellow had left his house keys with a neighbor whose house is only one story, figuring if "for some reason there was flooding, she could go to our two-story house." For some reason? I think we've got a good handle on the reason. Then I saw THOUSANDS of people lined up to spend the night in the Superdome, home of the New Orleans Saints. I'm thinking boy, I REALLY wouldn't want to ride out a hurricane there. Are they sure the roof will hold up? Supposedly it's been tested in 130 mph winds, but Katrena's got a pair of scalpers tickets and will likely hit at windspeeds higher than that. What a way to test the roof. They're saying tens of thousands of people will take shelter there. And it was taking HOURS to process them because they had to go through every bag looking for contraband like weapons or alcohol, People were lugging coolers, suitcases, giant green trash bags, even dragging their stuff in laundry baskets. Many of the people were poor, and "for some reason didn't choose to evacuate," according to one anchor. Would that reason be lack of transportation, or a shortage of money for a hotel? I'm thinking YES! I feel sorry for everyone who could not evacuate. Particularly kids, who are going to be frightened when they hear this freight train-like storm rattling outside. I hope everyone is in a solid structure, because the wooden ones may not hold up. They're speculating it may take months, if not years, for life to get back to normal in New Orleans. No. Kidding. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they surveyed the devastation and decided to start over, rebuilding New Orleans on higher ground. The ultimate impact on the oil industry and economy is unknown. All I can tell you is we gassed up our cars this weekend. This can't be good for gas prices. The storm is only hours from hitting the Louisiana coast with Category 5 winds. As I've described these things in previous posts, "bearing down on the area like a fully-dilated pregnant woman." You know it's coming. You know it's going to be painful. You hope you're going to survive it. There's no way you're getting out of this experience. Truly, this is the Mother of All Hurricanes.

Death Wish 2005: Prices At The Pump

2005-08-27T04:06:00.000-04:00

I've been noticing a few things at the gas pump lately. No, not the prices! Specifically NOT the price of gas. I am studiously avoiding that little monstrosity. I am noticing everything else in an attempt to take my mind off the LED digits that are blinking so rapidly I feel like I'm in one of those sci-fi movie moments before the gas-guzzling white van, the 4-year-old and myself are hurled back in time, specifically to 1998 when gas was 89 cents a gallon. In that year we did not yet own the van, nor the 4-year-old, come to think of it. (Okay, proceed to disappear. It's just me, the gas, my credit card and Michael J. Fox in the DeLorean.) Anyway, one of the things I noticed in my fume-induced reverie is that there is a name on the gas pumps. Well there's the one for the inspector wno makes sure the pumps are "honest." Honestly, do we care how "honest" they are when we have to consider taking out a home equity loan to afford to gas up for the rest of the year? It's Highway Robbery when it costs more to gas up your car than to buy a couple cartons of smokes! People may have to start kicking the cigarette habit just to keep their cars running. Which will have a negative impact on social security with all these cranky ex-smokers living longer, but that's news for another blog. The OTHER name that appears on gas pumps throughout the state of Florida is that of Charles Bronson. He is the commissioner of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. I am not quite sure why his name is on the pump. After all, who would want to be associated with the outrageous price of gas these days? Apparently there is a reason for his Official Presence, name-wise, on every single legal gas pump in the state of Florida. For one, he is the Florida Czar of Price-Gouging, sending out stern memos and press releases every time a hurricane blows through the state, resulting in an influx of Out-Of-State Price Gougers, who flock to join the Experienced In-State Price Gougers, and the Young Price-Gouging Apprentices. Price-gouging is sort of a profession here in Florida, and apparently Mr. Bronson is the state official who is in charge of regulating it so it doesn't get out of hand. If you look at the prices of food items that are sold from the snack carts of Florida's theme parks, you must realize that state disapproval of price gouging is, ahem, on a par of our disapproval of hurricanes. We can grimace at them, issue memoranda, complain to the media and threaten to get our navels pierced (all several billion of them), but neither hurricanes nor price gougers are going away any time soon. We'll be lucky if they don't linger long enough to leave us homeless AND broke. The original Death Wish was a 1974 movie starring Charles Bronson (the actor). Ironically debuting smack in the middle of our FIRST energy crisis. It was about a middle aged architect who becomes a vigilante after his wife is murdered. Jeff Goldblum (The Big Chill, The Fly, Jurassic Park) is also in it, playing Freak #1! I've never seen the movie, but I assume that means Jeff's character does not survive to the credits. Now that the latest news has a gas station owner being run over by a fleeing motorist who was trying to escape paying 50 bucks for gas, it's only a matter of time before the local gas station with attached convenience store becomes like a scene from the Wild West, complete with armed and dangerous grandmas trying to make sure their Caddys get the premium gas! And if we could get "our" Charles Bronson to slap on a badge and start patrolling the pumps, I, for one, would feel the teensiest bit safer! I paid a record price filling up my van today. The total was $64.90. The only reason the total was THAT low was that I filled up before the quarter tank mark. I might as well just steam up there with my rolling ocean liner for how much it is costing me to pollute the atmosphere like every good American! If prices keep going up we might start looking into alternatives that will start the dangerous trend of reversing global warming. Thus causing climates worldwide to start catching a cold in the confusion of not knowing whether to wear a sweater or not. (Follow mom's advice. WEAR the sweater!) People are starting to get chatty at the pump, too, like we're all getting ready to have major surgery together. They make little comments like, "Well, I guess we won't be EATING this week." (Uncertain chuckle.) "I'm thinking of trading this in for a BIKE!" (Pregnant pause.) "I might give up driving ALTOGETHER." (Click click click as the pump keeps whirring.) "Didja ever think we might be paying three bucks a gallon for GAS?" (Ambulance noises as guy's heart seizes up.) I'm not suggesting hybrid electric cars are the answer. I think walking is the answer, but you see we'd have to completely retool every aspect of American life in order to do that. It seems a lot easier to just pay high gas prices until we die, and then not worry about it anymore. However the next generation might want to think about putting together some planned communities that don't involve commuting fifty miles each way to work. I don't believe in rationing, either. (Imagine us wasting tankfuls of gas idling at the pump as we await our turns!) I think they should just charge what the market will bear and let the drips fall where they may. Europeans ALREADY pay the record-setting prices that we're complaining about, and have been for years. That's why they all drive soup cans with wheels and park on the sidewalks. Personally I'd be okay driving a 6-person golf cart with really great side view mirrors. Maybe the golf cart makers can become this century's new General Motors. Golf Motors! Hopefully Motorist Rage will not spill over into other areas of society. We should really not take out our gas rage on gas station attendants and convenience store clerks, no matter how snippy they are. We can blame ourselves for buying gas guzzlers and building suburbs so far out into the wilderness that the mountain lions eat the family pets. I heard there was a survey recently with an interesting premise. As reported on the radio, it was along the lines of, "Are you spending less money on other things because you're playing more for gas?" Heh. THINK about that for a moment. Well the vast majority of the people surveyed answered "yes" to that question. But you do want to ask the followup head-slappingly obvious question, "how could you NOT?" I'm anticipating the answers to that one too. Here are the ways we can avoid spending less on other things each time the price inches up a few pennies at the pump: 1) Interview for and obtain a new job that pays more. 2) Take a second job. Then a third, fourth, fifth and so forth, as needed. 3) Shoplift what you used to buy. (not quite right. Then you'd still be SPENDING less.) 4) Beg on streetcorners. ("Will accelerate for food.") 5) Demand that vendors REDUCE prices for non-gas items. Works best at farmers' markets after 5 p.m. with vegetables rotting under a hot sun. 6) Cash in IRAs and Savings Bonds. 7) Max out credit cards. There are other ways to cope with the pain at the pump, or GAStrointestinal distress. You could approach it strategically, as a baseball manager would. One option, of course, is the PUMP AND RUN. You do this only if you have a fast car with good acceleration, or a revoked driver's license that cannot get any more revoked than it already is. Second would be the SACRIFICE HUNT, where you drive around vainly from gas station to gas station, using up half a tank in the effort to find the cheapest price in the county. Next is the SUICIDE SQUEEZE, also known as carpooling. The DOUBLE STEAL requires three cars and a siphoning hose. If things are fairly close by you can utilize the INTENTIONAL WALK. If you are young, carefree, reasonably good-looking and don't value your life too much, you may consider throwing the HITCH-OUT, which involves use of the thumb. But in the meantime I'm calling on Mr. Bronson to do his civic duty and start monitoring the price gouging in the oil industry. Perhaps send the Saudi princes a note telling them Americans are developing increasingly ugly attitudes about their weekly fill-ups. As some internet pundit has said, "If the war in Iraq is about oil, imagine the price if we DIDN'T go to war over it." Some other wag has suggested it would've been cheaper to buy the oil reserves than wage the war. Funny idea, but not true. We can't AFFORD all the oil that lies under Iraq. We're barely affording the gas we're pumping now. We can only hope that engineers and scientists are busy inventing a car that runs on something else, hopefully a renewable resource such as wind, sun, water or used lotto tickets. Meanwhile, I'm practicing spending less on other things. I might start with Happy Meals.

Beef on WHAT?

2005-08-25T01:28:00.000-04:00

I was a hunter/gatherer today, foraging for familiar foodstuffs. My natural habitat is Buffalo, New York. Buffalonians have unparalleled access to great restaurants, sprawling mega-grocerys, local delicacies, celestial quality pizza and the ubiquitous Friday Night fish fry. Fantastic foods are so readily available in Western New York that natives take them for granted, never realizing our hometown offers a veritable Smorgasbord of Eden when it comes to culinary choices. It isn't until we're elsewhere that the true nature of the situation reveals itself. By then it's usually too late to pack a cooler or rent a refrigerated truck. Our daily pleasures become occasional treats. Sure, we sample the local cuisine in the hope that we can suppress that midnight craving for Buffalo-style pizza and wings. Food is not the only thing missed by ex-patriate Buffalonians but it's one of the biggest. This weekend I had a big hunk of tender beef left over from a roast I'd cooked. It was ready for slicing, requiring only a familiar roll to transform it into that quintessential WNY delicacy preferred by coupon-clipping carnivores everywhere: The Beef on Weck! (For which this blog is named.) It's a hearty mouth-watering sandwich associated almost exclusively with the Buffalo area. Although the name "kimmelweck" (representing the "weck") is clearly of German origin, I have no idea if they do Beef on Weck in Germany, or simply call it something else. The problem is that the craving struck me while I was here in Florida, not in Buffalo where there'd be ready access to Eckl's Restaurant or Tops Bakery. Note: Typically kimmelweck rolls are made using the large kaiser buns. As an alumnus of the Tops Bakery Department I can assure you they are happy to take special orders for kimmelweck rolls in smaller sizes such as the vienna rolls, for those who don't like to open their jaws VERY WIDE in order to consume the sandwich. Turns out there is ONE grocery store in Lakeland that carries kimmelweck rolls! It is the Lake Miriam Publix on South Florida Avenue. I don't know how they know about them, or what prompts Publix to make them. They are produced sporadically, with no particular pattern as to day of week, time of day or how many will be available. (I am lobbying the local paper for a "kimmelweck forecast" to no avail.) It's almost as though the kimmelweck rolls appear in the bakery case as an Act of God! So I was pleased, nay, THRILLED, when I got to the store and saw they had not one, but THREE kimmelweck rolls available for purchase. I tried to ask for the rolls. The bakery clerk looked confused, as if I had just asked for the "dimwitted rolls." "You want WHAT?" she said. "Kimmelweck rolls," I said patiently. "I'll take all of them." Her brows furrowed further. "What are those?" "Right here." I tapped on the glass. "Between the onion rolls and the cheddar rolls." She bent over and peered disbelievingly into the case. Obviously they are not selling the things at the behest of the bakery staff. Sure enough! There were three rolls in there that could not be identified as any other common roll! She had to consult another bakery employee about the pricing. My hunting/gathering was a huge success! I had a small amount of residual guilt that the NEXT Buffalonian to stop by the Publix was going to have no luck with the kimmelweck rolls. ("The WHAT?!") They wouldn't even have any sample rolls to point at. But I got mine! Hubby was gratified at my Sandwich Coup. Now if we could only do something about our Pizza Problem.

It's My Baby And I'll Cry If I Want To

2005-08-21T01:15:00.000-04:00

The 3-year-old went off to school for the first time this month. He had spent most of the summer insisting he was going to be "three forever" and that "I'm going to stay home and play with you and never go to school." But the Big Day rolled around. Lunches were packed. Uniforms were donned. We headed to S.C.H.O.O.L. As I drove, he assured me we would be dropping off the 6-year-old at his first grade class, and then we would go home and play games. I did not argue the point. After dropping off the 6-year-old in front of his school, I drove to the opposite side of the parking lot where the Pre-Kindergarten building was located. "Look, there's your teacher!" I said. She was smiling through the van window at him. Pre-K children get personal escorts so they do not escape into the general population while trying to flee their introduction to education. The 3-year-old looked startled, in the way a mouse must before it is eaten by a Great Horned Owl. I unbuckled him from his carseat, and his teacher took his hand as he descended from the van clutching his lunchbox to his chest. He gave me one last unhappy glance before leaving with his teacher, marching straight forward with his head down, as if going off to his own execution. I knew it was not an easy moment for him because it was not easy for me. I wanted to cling to his leg until the teacher peeled me off and told me I'd be all right, I'd be seeing him again in a few hours. I worried about him all morning. Would the teachers be nice to him, recognizing that he is my Precious Angel? Would they realize he might be afraid to use "their potty?" Would he eat his carefully packed lunch, peanutbutter sandwich carved into perfectly symmetrical triangles? Would he get along with the other children and understand they were of the same species as himself? Would he REMEMBER ME when I picked him up? I needn't have worried. He was all smiles when I came to get him. The teacher told me he had a wonderful day and was fitting in nicely with the group. He would be turning 4 soon, the youngest preschooler in his class. After I buckled him and asked about his day, he told me "We did songs. We did activities. We did costumes. BUT NO CRAFTS!" The lack of crafts was to be a recurring theme, as each day the first week he described his day, ending the litany with "BUT NO CRAFTS!" Apparently the only reason he had agreed to be educated at all was for the crafts. So thank heavens by Friday he came home with a personally created turtle made out of a green snack container. He also admitted to me, "I was cranky and sad today, because I thought I lost my Mom." He insisted that I wait for him right in the parking lot until he came out the next day. Of course I promised him I would. In the first week he tried to make it out to be a Temporary Experience. "I'm going until Friday," he explained to me. "I can't go next week." He must have checked his schedule and concluded he was too busy. Of course the 6-year-old cannot listen to such conversations without butting in with The Truth. "NO!" he shouted. "You have to go until MAY!" The next day the 3-year-old said to me, "I'm just going to preschool. I can't go to second grade." "NO!" the 6-year-old shrieked. "You have to go until COLLEGE!" Egads. Did we have to start getting him all upset about graduate school in the first week? But in the second week his reluctant demeanor changed. I sincerely feared he would try to make good his threat to end his education after one week. But Monday he woke up perky! Ate his breakfast in a timely fashion! Picked out his own clothes! Had his teeth brushed, was dressed and armed by the door with his lunchbox before the 6-year-old had even struggled out of his pajamas! He is still missing me. As I miss the both of them. But he is proud of being a preschooler who dresses himself and remembers to bring his lunchbox home. He even reported to me that he had invited his entire preschool class (20 children) to sleep over at our house! Hopefully while Hubby is home and I am overseas. Now if we can only maintain this cheerful outlook until college. Maybe I'll tell him college students do LOTS of arts and crafts. And of course I'll be waiting for him in the parking lot.

Runaway Bride Story Keeps On Mowing

2005-08-18T06:49:00.000-04:00

You've probably all seen pictures of Runaway Bride Jennifer Wilbanks mowing the White House lawn in her orange vest. Whoops! I forgot she has no security clearance to trim the turf at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Make that the Probation Department front yard. Ms. Wilbanks is the bride who in April hopped a bus for a cross-country trip in order to escape her lavish wedding. Reason: We still don't know! After concocting a tale of how she'd been kidnapped (by a hispanic male with bad teeth and Jennifer Hyatte -- whoops! She's ex-nurse prison breakout lady. Here we go again making up whoppers. I'm just the Burger King of Deceit today.) the authorities came down hard on her. They ordered her to pay restitution to the city of Duluth, Georgia, and to mow lawns for the summer. Presumably in the hope that the hot Georgia sun beating down on her head would set her thinking straight. Other exciting details have emerged in these past months of Post Non-Wedding Traumatic Stress that our nation has had to endure. Particularly as we sit around wondering what exactly Ms. Wilbanks SAYS to her allegedly Still-Fiance John Mason. She: How would you feel about eloping? He: Would that be with ME? Or the hispanic guy? She: He had terrible teeth. I can't believe you can be so cruel to keep bringing that up! He: So how many tickets did you want for the honeymoon? She: Shut up. What would you think about the Mediterranean? There's that cruise line that stops in Turkey... He: The one where the groom got murdered? Forget it! I'm not going. She: There the news media goes again jumping to conclusions. Maybe he had personal issues with the food! He: Never mind. Let's rent a video. I'll have it delivered with the pizza. Another thing I'm sure we're all still wondering about is her perpetually wide-eyed expression. Sure, she probably made a face like that when she first realized her "personal issue" had blossomed into a national media frenzy. But still. Why does she have that startled gaze in practically every photo? Well I lurched across a potential answer recently. I won't say where, other than to mention I discovered this fascinating information shortly before I paid for my groceries. Anyway, some alleged "journalists" are alleging that Jennifer Wilbanks' (former?) alleged friends and acquaintances are alleging that she has had a LOT of alleged plastic surgery. To the point where you might suspect that plastic surgery is one of her expensive hobbies. In addition to her alleged breast implants, she allegedly had her eyebrows lifted and they somehow got permanently stuck in that Gee Whiz expression. It is NOT an expression I would pay extra for. Especially if I had to look that way all the time. So I guess there was no thyroid disorder, which was my personal theory. Let's rummage through the Bridal Baggage and see what she's been toting in that extra-heavy suitcase: Possible Addiction to Plastic Surgery, Multiple Shoplifting Attempts, Fear of Large Weddings, Inability to have a Normal Conversation with Fiance, Grandiose Lying to Authorities. Some people say all this suggests mental problems. Well one person's "mental problems" are another person's tics. And I'm here to jump up and down, Tomcruiselike, on my pseudo-psychiatrist's couch, to tell you that Ms. Wilbanks simply has TICS, or Tremendously Imaginative Coping Skills. True, many of us, upon changing our minds about an imminent wedding, would simply communicate that fact to someone. Anyone. Preferably the spouse-to-be, but failing that we'd at least tell the best man, maid of honor or even the FlowerToddler. "Uncle John! Jennnifer says she's gonna stay in the bathroom for FIFTY YEARS until you're dead!" Problem solved. But people with TICS react to stress in unexpected, often newsworthy ways. Michael Jackson dangles babies. Bobby Knight hurls chairs. Bill Clinton entertains friends in the Oval Office. George Bush exports democracy to nations that are allergic to it. Marie Osmond takes a sabbatical from her family. Russell Crowe shot puts phones into interviewers' faces. Ashley Simpson starts square dancing. And so forth. There is one other rumor that surfaced a couple weeks ago that I want to address. Supposedly Ms. Wilbanks' wedding is back on, and she has registered for gifts at Pottery Barn. Because even a horrifically halted wedding doesn't take away someone's Right To Register. I think you have to commit felony class bad taste for that. And because I am (to use personal ad terminology) a MWBB, or Married White Busy-Body, I naturally had to check out this rumor for myself. So I went to the Pottery Barn website and looked up Ms. Wilbanks' name in the Registry Section. Nothing! A dead end. But consider. After getting blistered under the hot glare of publicity, is she really going to register under her own name? Of course not! So I checked for her fiance's name, John Mason. Bingo! He is getting married on August 20th to a "Jennifer Riley." A pseudonym, perhaps? I will provide here a link to the registry so you can check this out for yourselves. I link, YOU DECIDE! Jennifer's Pottery Barn Wish List Okay, I just noticed the link only takes you to the Pottery Barn site. You can do what I did, which is go to the Registry and type in "John Mason." I do hope Ms. Wilbanks scores a lucrative book or movie deal, or both. Mainly because she has one of the most famous faces in America, and probably can't afford a 24-hour bodyguard named "Muscles." Can you imagine going to work every day at a normal job and have everyone wanting to see you due to your Famous Wedding Gaffe? She worked in a medical office -- I'll bet people will start coming in for non-existent ailments just to see her! I guess we'll find out in a couple a days if this is actually the wedding of Ms. Wilbanks and the long-suffering Mr. Mason. They are scheduled for August 20th nuptials. Either that, or a completely DIFFERENT John Mason, and his mortified bride, Jennifer Riley, will have the national press camped out in front of their completely unrelated wedding! If you DO check out the registry, I am thinking of sending the Sausalito Gravy Boat in merlot. Kidding! If I sent anything it would be a pair of sunglasses, since as a permanent celebrity she will probably have to wear them for the rest of her life.

End of an Era: An "Incredible" Wedding

2005-08-11T11:21:00.000-04:00

* Note* I have been advised by mother that although all the events contained in this story are "real," I should NOT use real names because you never know if true details will cause someone to get really strange looks at work. How true! So in the interest of preserving anonymity, I have thinly disguised any real names so that you can only figure out who I'm talking about if you're psychic. Now back to our original programming.... Hubby and I achieved separation from the kids last weekend by jetting out of Florida for a family wedding in Columbus, Ohio. Little did we know this is a favored vacation destination for gun-toting couples fleeing the law. I promised Hubby that three years from now for our tenth anniversary I would shoot him in the leg. It was a significant milestone for us. It was the first time in six years that BOTH of us had been away from the kids. I can't tell you how romantic it is to pack light and avoid the baggage claim! I felt so carefree I almost wanted to get a tattoo. I think toenails are really the best place for tattoos because you can eventually clip them off. Also baby teeth and possibly your appendix. Note to trendwatchers: INTERNAL body art is going to be the next big thing. Start stocking up on antibiotics and malpractice insurance now! However after about two hours of being away from the kids I started missing them terribly, and compensated by reminding Hubby periodically to "go peepee" and insisting he use his "indoor voice" in the airport. He proceeded to strike up a conversation with more normal passengers that he wasn't married to. So instead we contented ourselves with calling the kids every hour at my inlaws' and asking them if they missed us. "I think so," the 6-year-old said. The 3-year-old refused to speak with us. Naturally. He was busy taking over all Aunt Sue's and Uncle Rob's toys. We were attending an Incredible Wedding, which is the Ohio variation of the traditional Reilly Family weddings normally held in Buffalo to great effect. My cousin Jeff Incredible was to exchange vows with his bride of choice Sarah LEE. (Two very talented and creative individuals. He designs the insides of buildings. She works for an ad agency. Let's just say even their "save the date" card was a keeper!) Additional note, "Lee" is not her real name either. Sarah Lee is in fact a pastry. Then there is the tale of how he hid the surprise engagement ring in the chandelier of a restaurant he had just finished designing. I guess he was pretty confident of a "yes" because he had invited the parents of both families to this dinner! Fortunately there was no Phantom of the Opera-like romantic rival, or I'm sure the chandelier detail could've turned tragic. There are few people I know who are more cerebral than my cousin Jeff, so it was fascinating to watch that side of him create a number of special romantic and touching moments for both his bride and his family as the courtship and wedding played out. Which just goes to show if you are confident of who you are, you can pull off just about anything! Meanwhile I had the good fortune of having a good friend from college, Kathy Grauer, (who hopefully will send me an angry email if she doesn't like me using her real name) living precisely six miles from the Marriott where we were staying in Dublin Ohio. (Corporate home of Wendy's Non-Severed Fingertips Chili) Naturally we did lunch and plotted another reunion with our fellow Alpha Gamma Delta sorority sisters from Lehigh University. (Conclusion: We should have one.) As is our tradition whenever Kathy and I get together, we overate. The overeating could be viewed as strategic, however, as at the LAST Incredible Wedding in November, there were logistical problems vis a vis the food and the alcohol. Casualties: One aunt almost face down in her food and carted back to the hotel shortly after the dinner; One cousion upchucked into the decorative foliage in the hotel (other cousins applauded her ingenuity and dexterity); and I myself was guilty of some extemporaneous speaking that was not fully appreciated by the table next to us. And this was only the women! Oh well. I was fairly eloquent considering I couldn't feel my extremeties. I don't get to drink much anymore and I forgot alcohol is toxic when consumed over the course of a day without enough food barriers. There are five stages of G.R.E.E.T. we normally go through at a family wedding. GATHERING STAGE. We arrive at the designated hotel and spot the first familiar face. Our family is large, and we start multiplying at a rapid pace. Soon we are the majority on our assigned floor, so we vote to secede from the hotel. Thus allowing us to skirt regulations concerning open containers, elevator capacity and proper attire for entering the pool from the diving board while armed with alcoholic beverages. REGALING. We hear the latest updates on family progeny, employment, parties or illnesses such as rashes that have lasted longer than six months. EUPHORIA. People have a few drinks. People wonder why we don't do this more often. EVENT. "I do's" are exchanged. Toasts are made. Embarrassing public displays are recorded for posterity. Injuries are tallied. Example: twisted ankles during ill-advised maneuvers; head injuries incurred while dancing; carbon monoxide poisoning for good measure. THANKS. For the memories. Take it easy on the drive home. Great to see you again. Come visit! We mean it! (and we do.) There were several reasons why I wanted Hubby to attend this particular wedding: 1) Jeff is my last unmarried Incredible cousin. Thus, this is the last opportunity to experience an Incredible Wedding in its classic form. 2) I needed someone to offer me sandwiches in case I turned pale. (see previous wedding details) 3) This is why I got married. So I'd have a date! 4) Crazy Neal was to be the Deejay Emeritus Now that the event is over I have to say it lived up to every expectation and then some! And although the food wasn't one of the big things I was focusing on, it was great. Fortunately buffet style, so I was able to grab seconds, which is not normally my habit at weddings. The prime rib melted in your mouth, veggies done to perfection, the pasta so good I wanted to lick the plate! Okay. Crazy Neal. Crazy Neal originally played my cousin Peter Incredible's wedding back in 1985. When we heard Peter's "accounting major friend" was going to be the deejay this did not raise any particularly thrilling expectations with us. Accounting, for Pete's sake! And Kimberly's sake, his bride. Two of the nicest people I know. But was he really going to let his accounting buddy try to entertain a wedding crowd? Heh. I do believe Crazy Neal missed his calling. As far as I know he is still an accountant back in eastern Ohio somewhere. Jeff and Sarah had to import him for their occasion. Fortunately he was able to tear himself away from balance sheets and income statements long enough to dust off his sound system, special trunkful of props, and assistant who looks like a cross between an Amish farmer and the lead singer for ZZ Top. When we arrived at the reception Hubby pointed to a guy with shaggy blonde hair and a big grin. "Is that him?" he asked. "Who, Kato?" I shook my head. "No, he's a friend of the family. He makes sure everyone has too much to drink and that no one ends up in the local news the next day." His name isn't actually Kato, but that's what my uncles call him, and now there's no further need to describe what he looks like. I pointed to the Quentin Tarantino-esque figure clad in black spandex pants, a beret, two black fingerless bowling gloves and a lilac-colored satin smoking jacket. "THAT'S Neal," I said reverentially. "He's just getting warmed up." Indeed, my father was trying to get his attention, and Neil had just blown him a theatrical kiss from across the room. Checks! Balances! Depreciation! Neal! (Just imagining his business card.) As the reception got underway, Neal boomed out the story of Jeff and Sarah's meeting back in "The Year 2K." It took on a baseball trajectory. Strike one. Strike two. Finally they strike up a captivating conversation! Neal likes to entertain the crowd with any particularly mortifying bits of a couple's history that might prove instructive. And the voice! Neal's voice is so distinctive that if you've heard it once, you will never forget it. He could easily do radio. All Accounting, All the Time! Brought to you by Crazy Neal! Maybe as a country we'd start cutting up those credit cards if Neal told us to. I have a particular fondness for Neal's use of language. He doesn't just introduce the bridal party. He UNLEASHES them! Really. Neal is like a Renaissance Deejay. I tried to keep track of Neal's costume changes, but it was impossible. He makes Cher look like the Church Lady. After the beret he sported: An Uncle Sam Getup, a fez, a KISS Gene Simmons outfit, a fright wig, a sombrero, a bandanna, and Egyptian Pharoah headdress...there were more that I can't recall now, but every 10 minutes or so I was poking Hubby saying, "Look at Neal NOW!" Although I had prepared Hubby for the idea of Neal, the reality still stunned him. I wish the kids had been there to see the bubble machine. I should also mention that Joran Van Der Sloot crashed the wedding. And I can hardly blame him, he's getting so much bad publicity in his home island. Yes, he was there in his blue shirt, dancing with many girls (but I noticed the blondes studiously avoided him.) When I pointed Joran out to Hubby, he rolled his eyes at me, but did admit a strong resemblance. "No, I'm sure it's him," I insisted. "The bride and groom are honeymooning in ARUBA. Do you think that's a coincidence?" I started looking around for Beth Holloway Twitty. She couldn't be far behind. Maybe hiding out in the ladies' room until she saw her chance to buttonhole Joran and ask him pointed questions. Well they picked the right wedding to crash! By the end of the evening some of us had adjourned to a patio outside to take a break from the loud music. But we were shortly summoned back in. The younger Incredibles had overtaken the dance floor. Literally. Cousin Dan was on the floor, sliding through brother Pete's legs. And Peter? In his younger days he's been known to doff a few articles of clothing. All the better to Shake It Down, my dear, as the Wolf said to Little Red Riding Guest. But now he's a family man. With a daughter old enough to go to college. His Shaking It Down Days were long past. And anyway, he's an accountant. Whoops. Did I say...ACCOUNTANT? Now Peter is a large man. If you owned a football team you would want him on your offensive line. He is also one of the nicest people I know, certainly one of my favorite cousins of all time. I'm sure there was a side of him that said, "I'm too OLD for this!" I'm also certain there was another side that whispered, "This is THE LAST Classic Incredible Wedding. I have Neil. I have my fans. There are some expectations here!" And thus off came the shirt. On sprang Neil's sombrero. Boogeying commenced. To the delight of his fans. As Uncle Tom remarked, "The suspenders! They're slimming!" Heh. Pete is a gentle giant with a terrific sense of humor. He takes everything in stride and is the first to laugh at himself as all Reillys do. And Incredibles. Because life is a hoot, and then you die. Really, I love these weddings. And all these aunts, uncles and cousins who attend them. And I'm thrilled Hubby got to tag along this time and see just what it was I've been chuckling about to him all these years. I hope these women who marry into the Incredible family understand what they'll be facing in 5-10-20 years. Another Incredible wedding. Of their own kids. It's not too early to book Neal!

Peter Jennings Signs Off

2005-08-08T14:08:00.000-04:00

ABC News anchorman Peter Jennings has been reassigned to the Celestial Bureau, a victim of lung cancer. He was yet another casaulty of 9/11. After kicking a 30-year smoking habit in the 1980s, he resumed his friendship with tobacco due to the pressures of reporting during the 9/11 crisis. News colleagues are praising him as "the best ever." Which probably makes Dan Rather wish he died first. Or at least prior to AirForceNationalGuardGate.

To Bee or Not to Bee

2005-08-05T02:07:00.000-04:00

Since we returned from our family vacation to Buffalo in July, some of you may be awaiting an update on the situation with my parents' deck. For those of you not familiar with THE DECK, it has been declared a tourist hazard by the Buffalo Board of Ridiculous Injuries. I have previously mentioned how its many lurching and protruding layers have cut down friends, relatives and neighbors who were supposedly in their primes before they stepped foot (and torso, collar bone, head, etc.) onto my parents so-called deck. The deck was once a fabulous outdoor addition to my parents' home, but alas, years, the weather, and the shifting of several tectonic plates beneath the house and yard had caused the deck to basically "give up" as the earth pulled it in several directions at once, including, east, south, north and straight up. Yes, it was like a slow motion ride on the Wild Mouse. Of course the people who LIVED in the house got used to it, deftly negotioating the uneven terrain with the surefootedness of sherpa guides. Everyone else, however, was risking a sprained ankle, twisted knee or re-calibrated spine if they were not careful. With this sort of history, naturally my parents like to throw "Deck Parties." After all, what good is a deck if others can't enjoy the crazily careening backyard scenery with you? Why eat your delicious meal in the boring indoors when you can risk losing it on the lawn, having it slither from the plate onto your lap and then through the slats of the deck, or better yet shared with every winged insect on our side of the street? This year was no different. As soon as we committed to our Buffalo trip, my mother immediately began hatching plans for the Family Deck Party. There was a twist this year, though, one none of us was expecting. You see I haven't mentioned this before, but my sister's boyfriend Carl is EXTREMELY HANDY. I would even go so far as to say he is quite talented in a way that those of us who have trouble applying contact paper to anything can't understand. He doesn't run screaming from the sight of tools. He not only knows which tool is which, but also what they are used for. He can somehow force ordinary "objects" to take on the properties of "building materials" and "fix and create things." Really, it's like watching the Miracle of Life. None of us understands how he does it, but we remain in a state of awe. So Carl apparently volunteered to "fix the deck." Haha! Of course you can't just plunge into a job that way at my parents' house. First they must tell you of the zillion and one reasons why It Can't Be Done. Whether it's the shape of the house, the angle of the land, the position of the horizon in the sky relative to their property, the mysterious drain tile, a "crossbeam" that cannot be interfered with or the entire house will collapse into the cellar, there is always a reason why projects cannot be undertaken. But Carl is a patient man, he listened to all these reasons and more, including my parents' vow to simply cut the deck loose from the house to allow it to drift south to Orchard Park. He nodded at all these explanations and declarations. Then he told them he was going to do it anyway. He couldn't be stopped! They would have to get a restraining order against him if they wanted to prevent him from finally correcting the Cat In the Hat quality presented by the deck. My father could either leap on his back and try to wrest the tools from him, or simply get out of the way. There was no middle ground. Fast forward to our vacation. By the time we arrived in Buffalo the deck was finished. When I stepped outside to admire it, I almost twisted my knee. It no longer lurched up in all the wrong places! My body simply wasn't used to walking on a surface that was level and did not play visual tricks with your mind. I staggered around drunkenly, trying to retrain myself. The deck was now firmly attached to both the house and the ground with no hidden gaps. There was no longer a "trick railing" that caused people to fall directly to the lawn if they attempted to lean on it. I can only say that the experience was bizarre. So naturally this made the Deck Party weird for my relatives, too, who were used to having to wear protective gear to my parents' house. The party itself was held on a sunny afternoon during the middle of Buffalo's heatwave. My cousins' children (and there were many many many of them) were scattered all over the lawn playing games and running through sprinklers. There were shrieks of delight. My 6-year-old spent almost the entire time playing wiffle ball with interchangeable groups of cousins. We let them make up their own Yard Rules with no adult interference! I do believe it was the first time my son experienced Pure Childhood of the sort I remembered where kids made the rules and picked the teams, while adults basically ignored them unless someone started bleeding. Still. It was a DECK PARTY. Something had to go wrong. Perhaps some of you remember the story I told about all the neighborhood bees deciding to eat my father's famous shrimp cocktail sauce. Well those bees were just awaiting their party invitation. However due to the kiddie nature of this party, there WAS no shrimp cocktail. The bees were a little disgruntled at that. But still willing to come to the party. When the first ones arrived, my mother frowned at them. My mother had previously covered every available surface of the deck, plus fogged the yard with an extremely potent poison. (Note to cousins with children: This was poisonous to bugs only. Otherwise it can be used as a dessert topping.) She imagined this would be enough to deter the bees, but of course she was wrong. It was only enough to deter my father, who glared at her from inside the house. Don't ask me what happened to last year's Plastic Tower of Death. Perhaps it was too successful and my parents got rid of it. Anyway, I don't recall who made this year's suggestion. It must be one of those weird internet remedies or old wives' tales that sound interesting but have no basis in truth. The solution was DRYER SHEETS. You know, those fragrant squares you get in the laundry aisle and toss into your dryer? Well apparently bees hate them. Enough to avoid your party if there are enough dryer sheets in the vicinity. Does that sound even remotely plausible? I thought not. That's why all the adults in the backyard were seated on the deck with drink in one hand, and dryer sheet in the other. As bees circled overhead, deciding whose plate of food looked most delicious. And I have to be honest about one thing. The dryer sheets were NOT totally useless. You could WAVE at the bees with them, causing the bees to bother the next person rather than you. Everyone was waving their white dryer sheets. We looked like we were on a giant wooden ship and perhaps the neighbors were threatening to fire their backyard cannons at us. So we were trying to surrender en masse. It was a lovely party. Particularly if you were one of the kids gleefully enjoying the games in the backyard. But part of me misses the old deck. When things start appearing too normal I start wondering if I belong in that particular scenery. Carl is slowly transforming all the flaws in my parents' house. Once he finishes you know what will have to happen. FOR SALE.

Shuttle Dee Dee

2005-08-04T13:18:00.000-04:00

NASA officials present a serene front to the media, sort of like celebrity publicists who insist their clients are "still friends" after a bruising divorce battle and angry revisions to flesh art at the pricey tattoo parlor. In spite of some problems so obvious that they can be seen with the naked eye standing out in your backyard, they assure us everything is under control. I don't believe it for a minute. In fact I think all the top guys (and gals) and their geek functionaries are locked in a soundproofed room screaming at each other. Scientist With Bad Haircut: Now all we have to do is send What's-His-Name out on a spacewalk with the soldering iron, and... Guy in Bowtie: You idiot! Why didn't you tell us the "Check Engine" light was blinking? SWBH: There is no danger. We're just undertaking this highly risky spacewalk as a precaution. Man Playing With His Pocket Protector: I TOLD you we shouldn't have lifted off. Now the whole world's gonna find out we think the space program is our own personal video game. Woman With No Makeup And Thick Glasses: Shut up, Roger. As I recall you were conveniently in the bathroom when we were voting on whether to launch. GIB: You're a bunch of BOOBS. (Aside to woman) That wasn't directed at you personally. (Gazing fiercely at men) We burned up the last crew and we're all gonna get fired if we don't get this crew down in one piece. Or nine easy pieces. (to SWBH) How many of them are there, again? SWBH: Now about the coefficients on the heat shield... I don't think they'd have attempted the risky spacewalk thing, much less TWO of them, unless they were really nervous. The first spacewalk took care of some "filler" sticking out from between the tiles like aeronautical cellulite because it may cause problems upon re-entry. "Problems upon re-entry" translates to "may catch fire and incinerate the shuttle," or "may rip off the whole bottom of the ship causing the crew to fall out" or "may go off in a series of explosions to commemorate the end of the space shuttle program." As a person who has watched the movie Apollo 13, I am more than qualified to advise them on how to best fix the various problems. First, send the Pocket Protector Guy to the dollar store with a giant green trash bag and a hundred bucks. Then have him randomly fill the bag as he wanders through the aisles, grabbing everything from pot scrubbers and gift wrap to extension cords and plastic party cups. And of course duct tape. Send all the stuff up there in an "unmanned space drone" and drop it off where the guy performing the next spacewalk can snag it. Then let them assemble a repair kit to be used any way they like! I also heard on TV, directly from the lips of a former shuttle spacewoman (who was also not wearing makeup) that the spacewalker needs to be careful so he doesn't accidentally bump the shuttle with his head, or scrape it with his shoulder, causing an incurable indentation. Ahem. The shuttle is THAT DELICATE? What about that stupid bird that they hit on the way up? Shouldn't someone pluck the beak out of the shuttle's underside? They may as well have made the thing out of fine porcelain, for Neil Armstrong's Sake! The shuttle would not be safe in a roomful of toddlers, who, I'm sure, would leave bite marks right on the expensive foam. If my van were made of delicate foam I would not expect to survive a trip to the mall, much less a flight into outer space. Whose brilliant idea was it to make the space shuttle out of foam? (Probably the Scientist With the Bad Haircut, who started assembling his models that way as a kid and never stopped.) Well I'm just going to offer my sturdy bridge made entirely out of NEWSPAPERS to the city of Tampa, which needs some new bridges because the current ones under constuction are cracking like, well, shuttle tiles! And the Peace Bridge to Canada can be made from old editions of the Toronto Sun and the Buffalo News. It worked for me in eighth grade, I'm sure it'll hold up in traffic. So our astronauts are basically orbiting our earth in a giant foam coffee cup, albeit with a few dents and rips. Sounds safe! Why couldn't they have chosen a more durable substance? Couldn't they have given the project to the people who package ordinary household batteries into plastic that is impervious to EVERYTHING? I once tried to open a package of batteries (with the help of some scissors and car keys) and gouged myself so deeply with the indestructible PLASTIC that I bled all over the car. (Which won't look so good for Hubby if I turn up murdered or missing, but oh well, he'll have to explain about the battery injury.) Now we're also being told that the shuttle had "lightweight fabric covers" on its steering thrusters that were supposed to "float off harmlessly" at liftoff. But one came off late, striking the ship and possibly causing a "bubble protrusion" near the captain's window. The closeup photos sort of make it look like it has the consistency of one of those cheap plastic cups that melt when they're in the dishwasher. On top of all this, some other space program know-it-all pointed out that one of the main reasons we're still blasting people out into space is that the shuttle has to "pick up the garbage from the space station." In other words, they're just a sanitation crew with a really expensive (and difficult to maintain) truck! At this point the astronauts are probably wishing this was simply a Publicity Flight manned by Michael "Moonwalk" Jackson and his chimp Bubbles. I have three words for the space program, once Discovery has returned intact, with crew safe. Grounded For Life.

Don't Trust Anyone Over 70

2005-07-31T07:36:00.000-04:00

If you're old enough you may remember the line from the sixties that was the badge of the youth counterculture movement. "Don't trust anyone over 30!" Because when you're young, you really can't imagine attaining that advanced age, and thus becoming untrustworthy. That was also the premise for the short-lived TV series Logan's Run. In that futuristic sci-fi world, anyone over 30 was excecuted, so no one would have to take medication, endure wrinkles or eat fiber. A few defiant 29-year-olds made the bold decision that instead of the hemlock cocktail (or whatever was the form of execution, I forget. Maybe the younger generation ate them) they would instead make a run for it, hence the title, "Logan's Run." Well I have good news about all that. New research has pushed middle age back much further, so we don't have to worry about being old for many more decades. It's true! What they're basing it on is our longer life expectancies, and general better health during those middle and older years. So if you used to worry about "getting old" when you turned 30, ferggedabouddit! According to researchers, FORTY is the new 30. Now when we turn 40 we can START to wonder if we should move out of the house, attain a significant other and perhaps apply for a mortgage. Oh, yes, and be sure to slap on some sunscreen. At 30 you are still a young sprite with lots of years of youthful clubbing to do. Think about it, when you see people in their twenties with kids, don't you automatically think they must be the babysitter or the nanny? And if you find out they actually GAVE BIRTH to the kids, why, it's like "Babies having Babies!" What person in their twenties is mature enough to change diapers, treat diaper rash and monitor a little human's nutritional intake? I wouldn't trust a person in their twenties to vacuum out my car! And by the way, this wasn't just ANY team of researchers that came to these conclusions. It was an INTERNATIONAL team of researchers, so you know that 20-something slackers exist all over the globe, particularly Italy. (I am just referring to the recent report from that nation that tells us Italian men live at home longer than men from practically any other country because their mothers bribe them with excellent home-cooked meals.) So the new measuring stick is NOT how many years you've lived since birth, but rather how many years you HAVE LEFT until you go to the great Methodological Research Study in the sky. (Be sure to know what cohort you belong to before expiring.) One slight problem with this is we're never quite sure exactly when we're going to leave the planet, with the exception of death row inmates. That makes it more difficult to know if you're in early middle age or late social security bordering on deceased. Personally, some days I feel like Young Parent With A Modicum of Control (never more than a modicum, though) and others I feel like I'm partially embalmed already. But the researchers are saying that nowadays young retirees are as healthy and vigorous as their early middle aged counterparts from a few decades ago. Partly because they have better health habits, and partly because we have better medications and treatments for the disorders that afflict us as we age. Admit it! You are a lot younger-feeling than your parents were at the same age! There is no getting around the fact that previous generations smoked like a New Jersey tire fire, ate fat like it was a food group and thought seatbelts were purely decorative. No one had even heard of the terms cholesterol or triglycerides! Women should make a special note. Your biological clock is NOT going to allow you to wait until you're in your fifties to have kids. So best to be one of those young mothers and at least try to start your family in your thirties. However it's comforting to know I can retain my youth for a few more decades. Remember, the only people around you who are aging at a normal rate are the ones who are smoking. Bad for your skin! Bad for your lungs! Bad for Peter Jennings! So lay off the cigarettes and eat your fruits and vegetables, and you can join the rest of us 90-year-olds as we decide what sport we're going to take up in the active adult retirement community.

Does the Space Shuttle Need AAA?

2005-07-27T20:29:00.000-04:00

Just to update my earlier rant on the Space Shuttle Discovery, it blasted off finally. And guess what, MORE debris "just fell off" the shuttle, causing damage somewhere, perhaps the "heat shield." Hope those astronauts have updated AAA cards! Someone is going to have to show theirs when the Emergency Service shows up for the tow. ALSO! The BBC is suggesting that "it appears the tip of the shuttle's external fuel tank also hit a bird." Ha! This is exactly the sort of mishap I was speculating about in my earlier post. Birds are not smart enough to get out of the way, and of course the engineers forgot to install their "bird shields" along with their heat shields. But not to worry. They've also installed a specialized "robotic arm" that is designed to snake its way to the back of the shuttle and scratch anyone's butt that may be itching. (Do you ever wonder how astronauts do that in their spacesuits?) This robotic arm can also apparently look for damage that may pose problems upon re-entry, of the sort that caused the previous shuttle to self-destruct. I am thinking I need a robotic arm in my van. I could use it for a variety of tasks, such as picking up the kids' toys that fall to the floor at an inopportune moment. (They then proceed to wail about it for the next 30 miles or until I pull over and retrieve the toy.) Also it could serve them their drinks and food when we're doing drive-through McDonald's. And I could turn off those overhead lights that they flick on! Yes, I definitely could benefit from having a robotic arm at my disposal, and possibly a spare astronaut to operate it correctly. I will immediately add it to my birthday wish list, along with an Instant Battery Charger. As you know, a couple weeks ago the Space Shuttle did not take off as scheduled due to a minor fuel gauge problems. Like those astronauts need to know how much fuel is left! Once you're up there, you either have enough to coast home, or you don't. No sense getting anxious about it! If they kept the tank topped off and got the oil changed regularly, they wouldn't need to be so obsessed with the gauges. Anyway, within days of THAT delay, we were all packed up in our own white van, ready to motor to the Orlando Airport with the kids and luggage. Suddenly, our trusty 9-year-old van wouldn't start! Can you imagine? I think it was just perhaps copying the space shuttle's peevishness. So we had to unbuckle the kids, unwedge the luggage, transfer the small change for the tolls, and hurriedly get rid of a mound of paper trash that had accumulated in Hubby's car that sort of made him look like he had a papier mache passenger. (Which might be a good thing in California's commuting lanes, but really does not benefit us here.) So the shuttle and our van are even MORE alike than I had originally suggested. Now, however, the NASA people appear to be fuming about their "foam problem." You know, the fact that it crumbles upon takeoff, sort of like the way those white coffeecups do if you bite down too hard on the rim. And no one wants the astronauts floating around in the cosmic coffee, if you know what I mean. In fact, I previously mentioned that some expert said the shuttle could NOT withstand a hole in the heat shield as big as a standard fingernail. Well I think now they're saying they've got a gouge about one and a half inches big. Don't know about you, but that's bigger than MY fingernail. Is someone sweating over the gauges up there? Maybe, just maybe, it's time to end the space shuttle program and spend the money on kids without health care. I'm sure they enjoy the occasional blastoffs, but unless they start developing vaccines in space or coming up with cures for cancer, I think the whole thing is an expensive entertainment on the order of Evel Knievel. And he was lucky he never crashed and burned.

Where Was I? Oh, Tanning In Buffalo

2005-07-25T20:38:00.001-04:00

I suppose I should've mentioned in advance I was taking a hiatus. It was our annual family vacation to Buffalo. It was certainly a departure from our usual trip there, consisting of sporadic activities scheduled between cloudbursts, waterspouts and strong gusty winds. No, this year was much different. We got off our flight from Orlando and discovered Buffalo's current weather system felt a lot like....FLORIDA! Yes. Hot, humid, with a chance of violent late afternoon thundershowers. All that was missing was a local hurricane trajectory, shark attack update and sex offender sighting. I don't know that I have the meterological vocabulary to describe Buffalo's weather of late. Here are some symptoms of Buffalo's suddenly menopausal hot flash: 1) Sunscreen is no longer sold strictly for its moisturizing qualities! 2) Air conditioning has become more than a quaint technology invented (but rarely seen operating) in Buffalo! It has become downright desirable. Not even necessarily an extravagance. 3) Pools now contain more kids than algae! 4) Local TV weather personnel have been citing the "heat index" with straight faces! As if it mattered! 5) It's been too hot to cross the street in your bare feet! Let me put it this way. If it suddenly decided to snow on August 15th, most Western New Yorkers would probably agree that they'd already received a full summer's worth of heat and sunshine, possibly even two summers' worth. They'd gotten their climatological money's worth. The sizzling heat made up for the past two dreary summers, and maybe even apologized for that aberrant 7-foot snow dump a couple Christmas Eves ago. We spent a whole week enjoying various forms of water-based relief. Drinking it. Swimming in it. Splashing it. Wading in it. Not coming in when it rained. You name it, we reveled in it. Uncle John's pool! (Complete with Giant Realistic Snake Replica embedded in the side yard that scared the slime dogs out of Hubby. He HATES snakes almost as much as Indiana Jones. Brother-in-law claimed it was a rodent-repelling device.) Cousin Peggy's sprinkler! (Barefoot, to boot, as Buffalo's climate is toxic to fire ants.) Grandma and Grandpa's plastic pool! (filled with ice cold hose water) Water pistols! (Uncle Tom shot one through the screen into the house.) Lisa and Karl's pool! (Complete with slide, floats, and every imaginable pool toy.) Fantasy Island's water park! (who knew they had one?) Ice cubes down my back! (Eh, why not?) And finally, recreational showering! Yes, it's a good thing that Western New York is conveniently located next to that giant body of water known as Lake Erie. After all the water that was used last week, it might even be a little low. So did people complain about the heat? (Yes. Although they said it was primarily the "heat index" that was getting them down.) Did they deserve their orneriness. (Yes.) Will it ever be this hot in Buffalo this many days in a row again? (Based on our little climate crisis, I suspect so. Also there is the theory that Hell is venting.) Will everyone sell out and get air conditioning? (Never! We're Buffalonians, after all. It's nothing a sturdy fan and a cross breeze can't handle.) Our visit to Buffalo this year was nothing less than a tropical vacation. I think I have the tan lines to prove it. The heat burned a memory into the minds of young Western New Yorkers that will warm them this winter as they dream of next year. Buffalo is capable of a deliriously enjoyable summer season. This year has been one of them.

Do We Know Space Shuttle's Blue Book Value?

2005-07-14T00:45:00.000-04:00

This past week I was getting the disconcerting feeling that the Space Shuttle Discovery has a lot in common with our Ford E-150 Econoline full-sized van. Granted, our van is a 1996, so merely nine years old, compared with Discovery, which is a 1984 model. Like cars, everyone knows you can get a great deal on last year's models parked at Cape Canaveral's Used Shuttle Lot. The minute you fly one off the launch pad it starts depreciating like crazy. There are a number of eerie similarities between the shuttle and our van. For one thing they are both gleaming white as a protection against the baking Florida sun. Second, neither of the vehicles gets great gas mileage, although Discovery fares a little better once it gets into orbit and you can hit "cruise." Third, and most disturbingly, they both have pieces that fall off at inopportune moments. And just like at our house, it's NEVER anyone's fault! (And how much do you want to bet they have Mystery Stains on their aeronautical upholstery?) Yup, less than 24 hours before launch a protective cover fell from the top of the shuttle and bounced off a heat shield. A NASA spokesperson arrived at the newsconference, and with a straight face, told the nation, "It just fell off." Well that inspires all kinds of confidence considering that Columbia broke up into balls of flame in the atmosphere due to a hole in the heat shield. One space expert said the shuttle could not sustain damage as big as a human thumbnail without jeapordizing the mission. True, there aren't a lot of human fingernails for the shuttle to encounter during liftoff (hopefully most of them are tucked safely inside, clutching an important control or perhaps twiddling), but what about other miscellaneous hazards? Like birds! Birds are stupid enough to bounce off your living room window repeatedly. There is no reason to think they will see the space shuttle and make a mental note to stay out of its path. As an aside, I think the protective cover that "fell off" the shuttle is actuallyPart # USA-BPS, or in layman's terms, Bird Poop Shield. NASA folks hate using potty language on TV. They come up with part numbers and technical terms to avoid this. Another similarity between The Space Shuttle Discovery and The Ford Van Panara is that none of its occupants want to make a fiery re-entrance into the (CIRCLE ONE) a) Garage b) the Atmosphere c) Restroom. Both the shuttle and our van are equipped with sophisticated devices to ensure sanitary disposal of human waste products. The astronauts of course have their state-of-the-art pee bottles. We, on the other hand, have thoroughly tested hygienic wipes, a compact "potty seat," and a virtually limitless supply of plastic grocery bags. (Note: The 3-year-old is fully potty trained -- it happened by magic one evening when we got distracted by the Runaway Bride's shoplifting woes -- but like astronauts you have to be prepared for emergencies.) Discovery has a technologically advanced guidance system. We have several dog-eared maps with rips in the creases. The shuttle has a sophisticated rescue plan. We have Triple A Plus. One notable difference between our vehicles is that the van is made of something heavy. I'm thinking it's probably steel, or maybe even lead. Discovery, for all its size, is composed of some incredibly lightweight materials. That piece that, ahem, we keep wanting to remind ourselves, "just fell off?" It weighed only two pounds! It is important to use light materials so that Discovery can achieve liftoff in spite of its heavy fuel load. So these days they make the shuttles out of styrofoam, plastic wrap, toothpicks and aluminum foil. (Sort of like our old science projects) In the interest of keeping weight to a minimum, the male portion of the crew allegedly voted to get rid of the brainy chick and replace her with Lindsay Lohan. However the brainy chick is the commander, so she commanded them to shut up. We're really overdue to replace our van. Maybe we'll head over to Cape Canaveral one of these days and start kicking some tires.

"Dennis" Discos Through Florida Panhandle

2005-07-12T16:33:00.000-04:00

There were no cheering partygoers as Hurricane Dennis discoed through the Gulf of Mexico and into the Florida Panhandle this week. Any stobe effect was surely the result of the electricity winking out as Dennis shimmied ashore at Pensacola Beach, an area hard hit by Hurricane Ivan last year. By means of comparison it was no contest -- in spite of similar strengths Ivan remained a Terrible Encounter, whereas Dennis' threat dwindled as he speedily left the region to give his watery welcome to inland areas. Hubby and I decided to "ride out" the storm. Mainly because we live in CENTRAL Florida, which pretty much missed the excitement, which was all focused on the Panhandle area. In fact if that area gets a few more big storms like this we may soon be referring to the Florida "Pan," as the Handle may just break right off or disintegrate. Thus we were located to the east of the Cone of Doom that the weather people had been yapping about endlessly. That is the ever-shifting funnel that suggests where this early-season weather monstrosity might actually hurl itself ashore. Last year we rode out three other hurricanes (Charley, Frances and Jeanne) that did pass directly over our house. However there was no place to evacuate to. It was more a matter of deciding whether to ride it out in the kitchen or perhaps all crammed into a closet and risking hanger trauma. The meteorological excitement over Dennis had been building for more than a week, reaching its crescendo Sunday in a Surge of Rainjacketed Reporters. (You can use your color-coded maps to determine the volume of reporters stacked in any given "strike target" location and your probability of traversing the region without being interviewed about your previous hurricane experiences and plans for "riding this one out.") So of course there were many exciting facts reported. Such as, the Department of Transportation announced plans to "suspend" construction on the I-4 between Orlando and Tampa until the hurricane was past central Florida. Well fiddle dee dee! Did they have a choice in the matter? Surely they weren't going to send their flag people out there slowing up traffic if people had to flee the coast. I sincerely hope they brought the orange cones inside, or else glued them securely to the asphalt. Otherwise they may have migrated to Alabama. Consumer experts advised evacuees to "take your hurricane policy with you." As opposed to, say, leaving it out on the kitchen table next to a burning candle as you leave the house. And be sure to enclose it in one of those handy ZipLoc bags! Still, shouldn't your INSURANCE COMPANY also have a copy of this important document? If yours is destroyed will they deny it? Meanwhile NASA announced it was NOT planning to move the Space Shuttle Discovery indoors as a precaution. What was that? A dare? Better to announce plans to protect the shuttle, then quietly cancel them as the storm continued on its path to the Panhandle. Mother Nature has excellent hearing. She will always try to foul up your so-called plans. Meteorologists are coming up with increasingly sophisticated tools to aid their predictions and give the impression this isn't something you couldn't have figured out yourself by opening a window or watching debris from your neighbor's patio party fly past your house. They have so many indices now: Sustained Winds, Maximum Gusts, Storm Surge, Strike Probability, Palm Tree Hunching Ratio, Roof Loss Coefficient, and of course the Probability of a Geraldo Rivera Sighting. The newest measurement tool is called the SLOSH indicator. Which seems to be the amount of rain that ends up in your shoes as you hurry to your car prior to evacuating. Or possibly the amount of alcohol you need to consume in order to fully "enjoy" your hurricane experience. The forecasters pretend it measures the amount of rain the hurricane sprays on your community as it passes by, but which is not accounted for by "storm surge" or "flooding." Another fascinating tool is the predictor for areas at high risk for tornado activity. This is designated by a "box" on your weather map that gets stretched to be a rectangle, or sometimes even a Parallelogram of Danger. However there are no curves or concentric circles, possibly because this could cause confusion with the lines designating the hurricane force winds, which take priority on the map. So tornados are instructed to adhere strictly to the box formation! Or as we call it in Florida, the Box Step. One two three four WHOOPSTHEREGOESTHEGARAGE One two three four...and so on. Fortunately Hurricane Dennis, which was nearly a Category 4 storm when it hit Pensacola Beach, did not do nearly the damage of last year's Hurricane Ivan. Experts attribute this partly to a compact eyewall. Also Dennis made like a bad blind date with his hasty exit. (That's okay. We're playing the field!) I've heard there is already another tropical storm makings its debut in the Atlantic Ocean, the demurely dubbed "Emily." I'm planning to watch for the Animated Whirling Red Ninja Disks of Disaster to mark this potential hurricane's path. Last year's parade of storms shredded parts of central Florida into Tropical Confetti. From a resident's perspective, that's nothing to celebrate.

The Sorrow of London Town

2005-07-09T11:24:00.000-04:00

"Cockney Feet Mark the Beat of History, Every Step Pins A Memory Down. Nothing Ever Can Quite Replace The Pride of London Town." -- song lyrics by Noel Coward Evil commuted into central London this week. Three bombs detontated in the city's underground Tube subway system, and one vaporized the top portion of a doubledecker bus on the street. Upwards of 50 people have already died, 700-plus wounded, and many unaccounted for. Even now rescue teams cannot get to some of the shattered bodies at certain stations deep below the city's surface. Britons' traditional stiff upper lips are quivering with grief, but still they are gamely carrying on, undeterred in their intention to live as they've always done, and fight terrorists wherever they find them. The carnage recalls the horror of the 2004 Madrid train bombings, as well as our own indelible experience on 9/11/2001. The question everyone seems to be asking, helplessly, is "how can we rid the world of terrorism?" We can't, not completely. We can only give it our best effort: fight wars, pass laws, hunt fugitives, check IDs, convict criminals, profile foreigners, interrogate suspects, guard borders, search vehicles, inspect bags, translate chatter, neutralize cells, unlace shoes, monitor airwaves, pursue Osama, freeze funds, gather evidence, and...cry ourselves to sleep when the sorrow grows too deep. Terror has been around a lot longer than, say, the killing of Israeli Olympic athletes by Arab terrorists at the 1972 Olympics. Ironically, one of the earliest identified groups with characteristics of modern terrorism were the Jewish Zealots. They fought against Roman rule of Judea. They were referred to as "dagger men" who would carry out assassinations of both Roman occupying forces and Jewish collaborators with the ruling regime. The Zealots felt that living as Roman subjects would compromise their Jewish beliefs. Zealot terrorism gave way to an open revolution which resulted in the siege of Masada (yes, you can rent the movie!) where many of its followers died. Now, of course, "zealot" has become a noun inextricably linked to fanaticism. In our own American history we have that whole Indians vs the Settlers thing. Native American Indians sometimes rode in, torched settlements, and maybe even carried off a few women and children to be forced to learn native ways. ("Shops-with-Wampum," or "Longs-for-Video-Games.") Can we blame them? Surely we weren't expecting them to pack themselves off to a reservation, join the U.S. Cavalry, or just simply disappear. At the same time, U.S. soldiers and settlers were known to have massacred a tribe or two, offered smallpox-infected blankets or violated a treaty now and again. Surely the Indians weren't expecting us to stay bottled up in Delaware, moored to Plymouth rock, or cloistered on Cape Cod. We weren't going to leave the country unsettled. So Prairie Etiquette and Neighborly Negotiation broke down. Terrorism erupted. It isn't a new thing. Only the variations and means of delivery are new. Terrorists think their cause is more important than the innocent lives they are taking. I guess the struggle for power is more crucial if you think living on this earth is more important than what happens to you after you die. Is your soul worth a worldly political gain? Only if you're planning on running for Mayor of Hell. (Eh, won't speculate on what THAT campaign would look like.) It doesn't matter if you're a ranking member of Al Qaeda or the lone nut Unabomer, who for years sent package bombs to oddly selected targets such as airline executives, scientists and academics. His nemesis was "technology," and you can see how well his campaign to eradicate it worked! Determined individuals can wreak terror even with few resources and a shockingly simple plan. D.C. snipers John Muhammad and Lee Malvo proved that a few years back. They terrorized the entire Washington metropolitan area using only a junky car and a rifle, shooting at residents via a hole in the trunk. If it were not for taunting notes and clues left by Muhammad, they might never have been caught. The could've killed daily, had they wanted to, and had a far higher body count. Good thing bullets aren't cheap! When people talk of "stopping terrorism" they refer to a state of relative calm in which politically-motivated terrorists or personally-motivated crazies refrain from inflicting their violent fantasies on society. They can never be entirely stopped. I'm always amazed at how few of these incidents there are, considering what I believe to be the high number of crazies we currently have running loose in our country. Most of them are "good citizens" most of the time, if you think about it! If they all took to the streets at once I'd have to cower with my family in my laundry room hoping that the high spin cycle drowned out the shooting outside. Terrorist acts are willful ones, and they outrage us because they are unnecessary. But maybe we'd be better off viewing them as unfortunate things that happen, like a tornado leveling your house. You can shake your fist at the sky, but then it's time to contact the insurance company. In that sense terrorist acts are no different than car wrecks, plane crashes and natural disasters of every stripe. The fact that someone planned a terrorist act makes it more horrible, but no more avoidable than a lightning strike. You take your basic precautions and hope for the best. I don't want to die in a terrorist incident, but neither do I want to die in a tsunami or in an appliance malfunction. We all want to die peacefully in our sleep when we're 85. Well it just isn't possible! Some of us have to catch malaria, forget to take an important pill or get hit by the crosstown bus. We should be ready to die at any time. Terrorism is nothing but a reminder that we all need to have our spiritual affairs in order because our final prayers might not be issued from a hospital bed. We may not have time to pray at all.

Me Chinese, Me Play Joke...

2005-07-06T14:19:00.000-04:00

Are China's new Huns wearing three-piece suits and natty tie pins? I keep reading about the potential Chinese takeover of important U.S. companies such as Unocal. At least the media thinks they're important, whereas my first reaction was, "What's Unocal?" Does it sell eyeglasses? Cell phone service? The card game UNO? Could it be the brand name of yet another entry into the crowded field of one-calories colas, perhaps aimed at the hispanic market? Maybe it's like Enron, where it sells nothing at incredibly inflated prices. Turns out, it's an OIL COMPANY. Well that's clever! Instead of picking fights over Persian pipelines or jockeying for the best-disguised military base in the Middle East (slap a drive-through window on it and call it McTabbouleh's), the Chinese have decided to strategically outflank us. And that's not an easy thing to do, because Americans have some of the most massive flanks on earth. Why bother to negotiate, drill for oil or threaten aggression when you can simply purchase a controlling interest in a U.S. oil company? You see, China has lots of U.S. dollars. We have been shipping boatloads of greenbacks overseas for years, probably in foreign-made boats. All in exchange for potholders, toys, futons and whatever else you can grab in Wal-mart's well traveled aisles. All that cash ultimately doesn't do the Chinese much good unless they spend it. Which they now seem increasingly inclined to do. Perhaps because they sense that confidence in the U.S. dollar is based more on our national self esteem than any real value. Two decades ago the Japanese were Kings, er, Emperors of the Hill, exporting Toyotas so fast that we decided to allow them to build manufacturing plants here. Thus convincing ourselves that Japanese autos are somehow as American as Car Key Lime Pie. They proceeded to buy a few movie studios, gave Godzilla a tummy tuck and better special effects, and slapped their names on the deed to the Rockefeller Center. However they did not rename it the SONYCenter. Basically they left Exxon and the New York Yankees alone. (except for Hidecki Matsui, who owns left field.) But this time around the Chinese seem to hold not only all the cards, but all the chips as well. And we aren't going to get very far in a game of Texas Hold 'Em if we don't come to the table with any resources or resolve. What's to stop them from buying anything they want? And what if they suddenly stopped selling us stuff? After twisting my neck into an awkward position and checking the tags on my clothes, I suspect we're only a couple of high spin washer and dryer cycles away from complete National Nudity if the Chinese decide to stop sending us the goods. The shortage of cheap plastic crap would be incalculable. We would soon be reduced to buying well-made expensive things that last a long time. Oh, the indignity! Also, I'm sort of wondering how our companies would fit into their system, being communist and all. Would Unocal and Maytag become instruments of the state? Would Chinese citizens have to wait in long lines to gas up their cars and buy dishwashers? Would we? Do the Chinese even use dishwashers? Even though China is a rapidly industrializing nation, I still picture the China evoked in Pearl S. Buck's novel "The Good Earth," with Wang Lung astride his fields. Then again, I'm always shocked when I see footage of cars in India when the Indelible Portion of my brain insists everyone there has an elephant parked out front. So if China buys up all our real estate and major companies, do Americans still own America? Has one nation ever taken over another buy simply purchasing it outright? And if we suddenly decide we don't want to sell, what happens to the trillions in debt owed by our government? Can the Chinese conquer us just by showing up at the international auction and paying the back taxes? Perhaps this is China's way of informing us that they've gone pee pee in our Coke.

Hurricane Shelters Bar Sex Offenders

2005-07-04T06:45:00.000-04:00

As if we didn't have enough to worry about in Florida with the prospect of hurricanes bearing down on us like a fully dilated pregnant woman. Now comes the news that some hurricane shelters are planning to put out their UNwelcome mats to the local sex offender community. I realize with the recent high profile sex crime cases it probably seems like the sex offenders outnumber the normal people in Florida. Which would technically make the sex offenders "normal," but never mind. And really, I do draw a distinction between younger men who make a bad judgment call with a teen pretending she's older, and the weirdos with the long rap sheets who run around menacing little boys and girls. The thing is, last year's hurricane season was so roof-collapsingly horrific, that Hurricane Safety Plans are no longer theoretical exercises. We actually have to worry about who shows up at the shelters now that we've experienced three major hurricanes in two months. We have also discovered there is a need for shelters for pets, since pet owners don't like leaving them home to starve or to be pureed in the hurricane. There are no Storm Surge statistics on the amount of Florida carpeting ruined by pet urine. And for reasons ranging from allergies to legal liability, pets cannot simply accompany their owners to a shelter. So you can see we are dealing with some serious technical and personal issues as we approach the height of the 2005 hurricane season. Getting back to the sex offender problem, it seems that the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office has adopted a policy prohibiting sex offenders from seeking safety in an official storm shelter. They are even planning to send letters to each and every one of the approximately 1200 registered sex offenders and predators in that county to warn them to make other arrangements. Now don't be thinking I'm about to go soft on sex crimes. But part of me is wondering what this policy could lead to. Do we really think Florida's natural beauty will be enhanced by having pieces of sex offenders blown all over the state, stuck in treetops, hurled into scenic waterways or impaled on your local gas station canopy? I think not! This would make the sex offender problem even more obvious, as teams of forensics experts would try to re-assemble the offenders via matching DNA. After all, sex offenders are no more likely than average citizens to use their common sense and evacuate in the face of an impending hurricane. (And a significant percentage of "average citizens" feels it can evacuate within 30-60 minutes of hurricane landfall!) So maybe we need special shelters set aside just for the sex offender community. Ideally these would be located at the local J-A-I-L. I mean, why not? A lot of them would find it a familiar setting, and there would be no one to molest except other offenders. According to the St. Petersburg Times, Sheriff David Gee has no plans at the moment for alternative shelters to house sex offenders. "They can take care of themselves," he reportedly said. I've come up with a humane idea that would afford protection for the sex offender crowd, and provide a service to the rest of the community. We could designate special shelters for pets, and have the registered sex offenders stay with them! They could be in charge of feeding and entertaining the pets, and walking any dogs outside as the eye of the storm passes over the shelter. Remember the eye is the calm part, so we would not have to worry about dog urine accidentally soiling Georgia or Alabama. Then the only thing we'd need to worry about is any offenders with a predilection for bestiality.

Searching Past the Obvious

2005-07-01T06:53:00.000-04:00

I am going into WAY too many safety rages lately. There are a zillion daffy ways people get injured or killed each year so tragedies are nothing new, whether they involve exotic household pets, enraged household appliances or challenges to nature that should never be issued. But whenever these deaths involve children it attracts both my attention and my unending ire. You've heard the story: three kids, ages 11, 6 and 5, are missing from a Camden, New Jersey neighborhood. It seems to be a working class neighborhood of people who care about their kids and are trying to make ends meet. So when three kids turn up missing, an alert is sounded. Friends, relatives and neighbors mobilize to scour the area. After four hours, the police are summoned. Bloodhounds set upon the scent. Helicopters and boats are pressed into service. The news media join the increasing frenzy. For almost 48 hours the search continues. Until the night of a prayer vigil when one of the boys' uncles goes to retrieve jumper cables. Along with the cables, the man finds: Three. Dead. Boys. They had been there the whole time! Helplessly trapped in a the trunk of an unused vehicle stored in the yard. Perhaps able to hear the searchers calling their names. Unable to attract anyone's attention. A pelting rain may have muffled the boys' cries for help. The 1992 Camry did not have the release feature contained in the trunks of newer model cars. So my Tasmanian Devil style rage flies in a number of directions. First. You've got a crappy old "unable to be driven" car. Why is a relative's house a better place to park this worthless piece of junk than, say, a junkyard? Brimstone soup for the relative who owned the car. Fiery thunderbolts for the parents who permitted it to be parked on their lawn. A lot of neighborhoods won't allow you to park a "not in service" car on your lawn. Or on your front lawn at all, in service or not. It's more than an eyesore. It's a SAFETY HAZARD. (As has been so vividly demonstrated.) Or as my hubby calls it, an "Urban Jungle Gym." If you're going to park a crappy old car on the lawn, you might as well stick your old refrigerator or freezer out there too, along with a big sign that says, "Play in Me!" For good measure you could leave a can of gasoline and some matches out on the lawn too. Next item: They had some high-tech help in this search. Helicopters. Boats. Dogs. And the neighbors said they checked every abandoned house, garbage can, crack and crevice for miles. You mean to tell me no one checked the trunk of a car PARKED ON THE PROPERTY? Supposedly the car itself was "searched." Who searches for kids in a car and doesn't check the one place where they could actually be hidden? Where did they look -- the glove compartment? The cupholders? Under the floormats? I understand a car isn't the first place you'd look if you thought your kids were missing in the neighborhood or possibly even kidnapped. But it ought to at least be in the top five. Or ten. Certainly before the sun goes down. Since the police were involved, I would think checking the trunks of the vehicles on the property would be a no-brainer. However the boys probably died before the police were summoned four hours later. One of the families allegedly is retaining a lawyer, but hopefully that is just a Grief Reaction and not a real intent. The police are not responsible for junky cars you park on your lawn and fail to check yourself. Out-of-service cars do not belong on private property. They should be towed and junked. Because this one wasn't, three families had to attend three funerals for three little boys. It's a crying shame.

Another Florida Swimmer Becomes Fish Food

2005-06-27T03:16:00.000-04:00

What do I have to do to persuade people to stop swimming in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, two of Florida's biggest sources of water tragedies? (I don't feel personally responsible for the Pacific or Indian Oceans. I believe other busybodies have been assigned to worry about those.) There is no question that large bodies of water are beautiful. I love looking at them! And boating upon them. And walking along their shores, admiring the pounding surf. But must we actually wade in and advertise ourselves as Fish Food? Especially when Florida has no shortage of nice clean swimming pools to swim in? The most recent case was the 14-year-old who was "boogie boarding" at a Panhandle Beach. (Boogie Boarding is like "snowboarding" only wetter.) The teen was attacked by an approximately 6-8 foot long shark, who persisted in following her bleeding body 100 yards to the shore as another surfer tried to rescue her. (And he was more than a little concerned for his own limbs as he attempted this heroic maneuver.) I realize you can't "catch a wave" in a pool, but neither will you be bitten by a shark. A local Lakeland woman had her arm gnawed on about a month ago as she was wading near Clearwater Beach. I guess that shark only wanted an appetizer! Sharks aren't the only reason to avoid the ocean or gulf as your footbath. There's also jellyfish! Stingrays! Hurricane debris! Fish poop! Residue from the Exxon Valdez spill! Pollution from cruise lines! I could go on, but I think I'm developing a fungus. I was on a relaxing tour boat in the gulf a few weeks ago. (Note: There was a whole boat between me and the water.) The tour guide mentioned that you have a greater chance of dying from being hit by a falling coconut than from a shark attack. Well pardon me! I think I'd rather go mano a mano with the coconut! At least I could wear a bike helmet if I was really having anxiety about it. A bike helmet would do you absolutely no good in the midst of a shark attack, other than causing the shark indigestion. Of course all the spokespersons are chiming in about how rare shark attacks are, and "this isn't a trend," and the fatality rate is ONLY 2.4 percent if you do get attacked by the shark. Well I'm sure the 14-year-old's family is relieved to know their daughter is not Part of a Trend. And I don't care about the fatality rate -- I STILL don't want stitches anywhere on my body due to non-fatal shark attacks. So I think Florida's oceans and gulfs are there to be enjoyed. From a distance. ** Update** Today's news tells us a teenage boy was bitten and critically wounded in yet another shark attack near the Florida panhandle beaches. This kid was also "boogie boarding" or in shark parlance, "The Human Au Jus Jitterbug." Well my blog is here as a public service. Anyone who values their limbs and other important body parts would do well to stop by and heed my free safety advice. UPDATE of the UPDATE: Most recent reports now say an Austrian tourist was wading in chest-deep water near Ft. Meyers, Florida, and sustained a shark bite on the ankle. It was not life-threatening...doctors think the tendon and ligament damage can be repaired. Buddy, you're lucky the shark didn't bite you in the chest and cause Nipple Damage! Perhaps he can be forgiven since English probably isn't his native tongue. Still, you have to be a bit dazed to miss the daily reports on these attacks, along with the file footage of what Shark Feeding Frenzies look like. (basically like toddlers tearing into a birthday cake at a party. The cakes never survive the attacks, I assure you.) So forget the warnings! If you WANT to be fish food, go ahead, wade right in! Just be sure to sprinkle a little tenderizing sunscreen on yourself before entering the water so the shark doesn't have to floss when he's done with you. This warning has been brought to you by SHarks for the Unpopular Treatment of Us People. (SHUT UP)

Lack of Juice Kills Lakeland Man

2005-06-25T20:53:00.000-04:00

On the front page of my local paper was one of those administrative tragedies. Ultimately "administrative" is a nice way to say "preventable." A man brought his terminally ill father home to live with him so he would not have to spend his remaining time on this earth in a nursing home. (He had recently been transferred from hospice care at home to a nursing home due to his wife's ill health.) The 86-year-old patient had emphysema. But not for long. The very next day the local utility cut off electricity to the house because the owner was behind on his bills. That rendered the man's oxygen machine useless. He soon died, courtesy of the local electric company. Well that's one way to show 'em! I"ll be the man's son ran right out and paid his electric bill as soon as he got off the phone with the undertaker. After all, you can't have people back to the house after a wake if you've got no electricity. The finger foods won't hold up! Now it's true the man was terminally ill, thus wouldn't have lived all that much longer anyway. But at the same time, the action of the electric company seemed, well, abrupt. Wouldn't you rather die at God's discretion rather than the electric company's? I'd sooner take my chances with St. Peter as the bouncer checking identification at the Pearly Gates. I wouldn't want to wait for the electric company to buzz me in. Now I don't want to be too hard on the electric company. (To the point of not naming them publicly even though everyone in town knows who the culprit is.) Namely because they supply MY electricity, and I'd hate for an administrative "whoopsie" to leave me without air conditioning during the hottest part of the summer. The utility company is a monopoly. Sort of like the sun. You can complain about it, but you are also completely dependent on it. So no matter how much moaning we do about the rates or the weather, we still want our energy-producing entity to be there the next day doing its job. Still, I can't help but play Utility Lineman's Advocate in this situation. And for all I know the electric company may have tried all these avenues and cut off the electricity as a last resort. (It was certainly the 86-year-old man's Last Resort, anyway.) Here are some non-fatal ideas on how to handle the billing problem: 1) Send a registered letter. Put in PLAIN ENGLISH (not Bureaucratese) the fact that if a payment is not made, then by such and such a date the electric will be turned off. Offer instructions on how a payment plan may be worked out. Emphasize that making SOME payment may forestall drastic measures. 2) Call up the owner. Explain that workers will be coming out THIS WEEK to turn off the electricity if a payment is not made. Mention the payment plan idea. If you get an answering machine, label the message as being EXTREMELY URGENT. 3) Have the workers knock on the door before turning off the electricity. Explain to the homeowner or door answerer that the electricity is about to be shut off. Tell them the job will begin in half an hour so they may have time to put their food in coolers, or call 911 if they happen to have medical issues. Simple! After three major hurricanes last year, surely no one can claim to be ignorant of the fact that people with plug-in medical devices had to make arrangements in case of a power outage. Isn't this taught in Turning Off the Electricity 101? But sometimes utilities can be impervious to bad publicity, since it isn't like they can be fired, jailed or ostracized. You can badmouth the sun or the electric company all you want, and it doesn't really have an effect. Perhaps they will be sending a sympathy card with their next bill. Who knows, maybe they will even spring for flowers. There's never enough time to knock on the customer's door. But plenty of time to attend a funeral service.

Making the Playroom Safe for Democracy

2005-06-23T07:11:00.000-04:00

Competition has always been a hallmark of my family when I was growing up. It has been said that it isn't a Fun Reilly Vacation unless a winner is declared at the end. So it shouldn't have surprised me that my brother Geeto introduced a competitive element to my sons' lives when he visited recently on a trip to Florida with his brother-in-law Dave Baran. They were dropping off a car at a condo in venice and then would be returning to Chicago. We told the kids they could call Uncle Geeto's brother-in-law "Mr. Dave." (We decided to go with the southern custom of Honorific First Name rather than the northern tradition of Honorific Last Name.) The children didn't take to this name, possibly because they already know "Mr. Dave" from up the street who is their friends' father. So instead the 3-year-old refers to them as "Uncle Geeto and his partner." Haha! Back in the good old days this would've given a connotation of doubles tennis. Now, however, it sounds like they are only a piece of paper away from a Civil Union and a nice blurb in the Society Section. Uncle Geeto was admiring my kids' extensive Rescue Heroe collection. They have chuckleworthy names like Holden Breath, Marshall Artz, Maureen Biologist and Will E. Stop. They are joined by an elite (and growing) band of Ninja Turtles who seem to go by the same four names, but have hundreds of different plastic microscopically-sized accessories. Geeto wanted to know what the kids DID with the heroes and turtles. Basically they posed them, sent them around on rescue missions and used them to defend the household against assorted strangers, invaders and fully-imagined monsters. Well. That wasn't nearly exciting enough for my brother. Worse, it was not competitive. There was no way to tell who was winning! Geeto shook his head with dismay. "Have you guys ever played...WAR?" My 5-year-old mentioned the card game, but Uncle Geeto was having none of that. War is a game played with action figures, inlcuding Rescue Heroes, Ninja Turtles and Biblical Action Warriors we had gotten them for Easter. Uncle Geeto helped the kids stand all the action figures on opposing sides of the playroom, with a carpeted No Man's Land separating them. "Now," Geeto explained triumphantly, "You KILL all the guys!" He handed my five-year-old a rubber ball about the size of a grapefruit, instructing him to knock down as many of the 3-year-old's army as possible. The kids loved this idea. There would be throwing! Killing! Knocking down! Debris flying into adjacent rooms! Having such juicy targets at close range, and so many of them, seemed to affect their aim. The 5-year-old finally succeeded in knocking down multiple warriors with each toss, but the three-year-old somehow bounced the ball between all the guys. Finally in frustration he hurled the ball straight down on his own men. Egads! We redirected him across the No Man's Land. The adults (and I use that term loosely) cheered each kill, so this only increased the bloodlust. They took turns until only the 5-year-old had a man or two left standing. (Maureen Biologist may have been a conscientious objector.) He was declared the winner. Thank you, Uncle Geeto, for introducing competition, war and killing into the household! I have to admit...it's more fun than watching them rescue stuffed animals.

A Note About Your Privacy...

2005-06-21T15:53:00.000-04:00

Oh dear. It seems that hackers have accessed more than 40 million credit card numbers. These numbers are now at risk of being used for crimes ranging from fraudulent transactions, bogus account set-up and outright identity theft. The company involved now admits it was keeping the numbers for research purposes. And in case you were wondering, you, the consumer, cannot call up the card company to ask if yours is one of the stolen numbers. They won’t tell you. And obviously they are not going to take the initiative to inform you if your number was on the list. So you are stuck waiting for some thief to start buying plasma screen TVs, overpriced exercise equipment and male enhancement products in your name. Yup! All those fancy crosscut shredders are doing us no good, as banks, credit information clearinghouses and various government entities are leaking our precious personal information and financial data faster than the Hindenburg lost hydrogen. The economic result could be equally explosive. Let’s see, 40 million cards. That’s about one of every seven Americans. Of course some consumers could have more than one card, so they could have double or triple the fun of trying to track their credit histories and hoping that if anyone is taking a mortgage in their name, that at least it’s beachfront. For years we’ve been advised to shred our receipts and statements before consigning them to the trash. Hold onto those social security numbers for dear life, only yielding them reluctantly when ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, like whey you’re interacting with any of zillions of health care providers, dealing with a utility, registering for school or signing up for tee ball. You don’t want to disclose the number? Fine. Then go downtown to the main office with your driver’s license during abbreviated business hours and wait in a VERY long line so some clerk can roll her eyes at you. I figure thousands of people have seen my social security number. Its confidentiality is based solely on the personal integrity of each and every one of those thousands of people, and any friends or relatives they may have. The people who collect these numbers generally aren’t in the highest level jobs to begin with. It’s usually a person who may very well be in a different job, with a different company or in an entirely unrelated industry by this time next year. So there is little incentive to protect your personal information in the interest of career longevity, or out of company loyalty. It all hinges on whether it's an honest person handling your sensitive information. If that person doesn’t personally know how to get away with identity theft or credit card fraud, well, there’s a black market out there for hot consumer credit and identity information. You can just sell the lists, and no one will be the wiser. Frank Abingdale, Jr., a pioneering identity thief from the 1960s whose life and escapades have been immortalized in the Leonardo DiCaprio movie Catch Me If You Can, is himself afraid of identity theft. He estimates a crook can come up with anyone’s social security number using internet tools in about 20 minutes, including his own. When these crimes occur, why does it seem like the consumers are the ones who are punished, left on their own to repair credit histories, restore reputations, clear up any misunderstandings about criminal wrongdoing, make zillions of phone calls, send zillions of registered letters, and even then not be guaranteed things will be fixed in a few years, if ever? Why should it be easier for someone else to pretend to be you, than for you to get everything straightened out? After all, I carry my fingerprints everywhere I go (at the ends of my hands), and sometimes I can even reproduce my signature on command. Can’t we at least blame the credit card companies for being so free with their credit that a toddler could sign up for a gold card? For being so careless with information that Nigerians are running ponzi schemes and purchasing yellowcake uranium in our names? For charging interest rates so high that anyone who carries a balance basically gives up and decides the only way out of debt is to contract a life-threatening disease? Why should WE have to track down the information thieves and attempt to fix everything? Why can’t businesses be responsible for ascertaining that the person obtaining credit or buying the big-ticket item is absolutely who they say they are? No picture I.D., no transaction. Then make the penalties for using fraudulent IDs so stiff than an offender would rather burn a Koran in Tehran than face the music at home. One news anchor started agitating for "iris scans" right in the middle of a live interview! So I assume this topic has touched a nerve, at least among people who have credit cards. That excludes possibly the Amish and certain categories of great-grandparents. However don't confuse my concern with willingness to have a theft-proof biometric chip inserted anywhere on my person. I'd sooner pay cash, or barter my Pizza Hut coupons. There was a recent accident where we saw live coverage of a downed helicopter in New York City’s East River. The helicopter was filled with credit card company executives! As a humanitarian aside, I am glad everyone survived the crash. But perhaps a bunch of credit card company executives going underwater in the East River is symbolic of where this country is headed with its credit and identity theft problems. Upside down and gasping for breath.

Buffalo's Summer Meltdown

2005-06-17T22:46:00.000-04:00

No, no. I'm not talking about the tax problem. Or the local government problem. Or the budget deficit problem. Anyway those things aren't PROBLEMS. They are just pervasive "issues" kind of like normal back strain, only recently Buffalo and Western New York have been laid out on the couch, not quite sure who is going to fetch nourishment from the fridge. We'll get through this too, maybe with some help if they send some friendly governmental chiropractors from Albany to work us over. No, the meltdown was weather-related. An honest-to-goodness heat wave was generated by Mother Nature, and this after two consecutive summers that resembled Portland on a dreary day. Last week's mid-June weather gave WNY a 5-day period in which the average temperature was 86.5 degrees, with a high of 90, and I'm sure it felt a whole lot hotter than that. Let's face it, there are many summers in which it NEVER reaches that magic 90 degree mark in Buffalo. (And technically it isn't even "summer" yet.) So I'm sure the weather anomaly took Western New Yorkers by surprise. When I was growing up in Buffalo, we awaited heat. Longed for it. Begged for it. Prayed for it. Celebrated it if it arrived, even if for a few hours. The hotter the better. We would wish it would someday top 100 degrees, just to know what that felt like without sticking your face in an oven. (Now that I am in Florida I know what 100 feels like. It's like sticking your face in an oven.) As kids we even had these weird outfits called "sunsuits." These were for girls, not boys. They sort of resembled a bathing suit, but were puffier and had elastic at the legs and oftentimes a tie at the neck. Which you had to be careful not to let boys untie. The purpose, I think, was to develop tan lines without running around in your bathing suit all day. Because if you stayed in your bathing suit too long, mom was sure to snap, "I hope you're not going to RUN AROUND in that bathing suit all day." Like it was the decadent equivalent of Hugh Hefner's bathrobe, or something, with the implication that we would never clean our rooms or set the table ever again. The thing about Buffalo is that its summer weather is pretty fantastic. It doesn't often get hot enough to make you uncomfortable. So no one ever had air conditioning, and heat waves prompted emergency measures. My parents are extremely fond of a geothermal concept called The Crossbreeze. This involves opening every window in the house until you get an effect where the curtains will start waving in the breeze. This means you have generated the coveted "Crossbreeze." A Crossbreeze is a full substitute for air conditioning. You just sit there letting the hot, humid air blow over you, and you will never need emergency services to cart you off for heat stroke. I have no idea if crossbreeze is a Western New York term, a South Buffalo one, or something peculiar to my parents. Probably I should look it up in the dictionary and see if it's even a word. I have caught my parents making a few up. My parents never had a car with air conditioning until they bought a used one that was my uncle's when I was well into my highschool years. Even though the car was older and would stall out if it went through puddles, it was like owning a luxury vehicle! It felt like we were Mr. and Mrs. Howell only they had six kids. I myself never owned a car with air conditioning until I moved to Florida. In fact I had to give up my beloved Saturn for that very reason. It seems odd to me now, but the schools weren't air conditioned either. (I'm not sure if they are now.) So when we'd get some hotter days in May or June, the heavy windows would be opened. For some reason, the windows did NOT have screens. So this usually resulted in students taking surreptitious looks at a winged, stinging insect until it became obvious to the teacher that the six-legged thing was more interesting than the lecture on Iroquois Indians. At which point a shooing or exterminating operation was mounted. I rarely used sunscreen when I lived in Buffalo. Figure, at THAT distance from the sun, would it even make a difference? Note: Buffalo is further south than the French Riviera. So perhaps sunscreen is not a bad idea after all. If we could fix up the waterfront a little, we could maybe capitalize on this Riviera thing. Could we not mount a film festival? In conjunction with some fabulous local foods and a trip to one of the world's natural wonders? Just asking! Another thing I remember about the occasional Buffalo heat wave is melting into the lawn furniture. Whether you had the plastic furniture or the vinyl kind, you inevitably became one with the chair. So when you got up you'd sort of peel off like a bandage from a knee, with an unsticking noise, and then you'd have the design of the chair tattooed onto your body. In Buffalo, hot temps = Body Art! But this is my advice for Buffalonians. Don't be afraid to complain about the heat! One of the joys of extreme weather is experiencing it, analyzing it, putting your own spin on it, and kvetching about it. I know for a fact that many Western New Yorkers are afraid to do this because they'll jinx it! They fear it will make the hot weather go away and never come back. Well this is a ridiculous fear. Think about it. We've been complaining about high taxes for years. Did all that moaning ever make THOSE go away? NO! They're still there. And getting higher. So maybe if we feel uninhibited enough to complain about the rare heat wave, heck, we may get more of THOSE too! Let's try it. There is absolutely nothing to lose. Part of the Hot Weather Package is the license to complain about it. So if you're not utilizing the full package, you have only yourself to blame. I should note, though, that the high yesterday in Buffalo was, ahem, 65 degrees. And my mother wasn't quite done enjoying her Cross Breeze!

"Ms. Round Soapy Things"

2005-06-16T22:35:00.000-04:00

I became angry with a product today. Well not just today. Actually every time I've used this product it's been an annoyance. So at first I wanted to tell the whole world about this product and how everyone should avoid it. Then I thought the better of it. One reason is that I'm a former advertising person myself. And while I may have developed a visceral hatred for a particular product, I know that some person out there is doing their darndest to promote this product. It would be very depressing for that person to learn that a customer wants to single out the product by name and complain to all who will listen. The second reason is that there may be families out there, nay, even whole towns of families, whose livelihoods depend on the sales of this product. And I don't want to be the one to burst their bubble. So in order to avoid that kind of unpleasantness, (or worse, lawsuits) I am simply going to refer to this product by a pseudonym. We shall just refer to it by the fictitious name of "Ms. Round Soapy Things." The product in question is the brand of bubble bath I'm stuck buying for my children. The reason I am stuck buying this brand is that somehow all the other brands have vanished from my local supermarkets and drugstores. Who knows where they went? The clerks don't seem to care. Even when they ask, "Did you find everything!" and I crabbily say, "No!" they still cannot explain the shrinking choices of bubble bath. Most of them aren't AWARE of the bubble bath, and act surprised that the store even carries any. So I checked in other areas, away from kiddie shampoos. I looked in adult hair care. Kiddie accessories. Kiddie laundry products. General soaps. It was no good. So I was stuck with this one brand. Here is the importance of bath bubbles in our life: It is a reward! "If you two are good we can have a BUBBLE BATH tonight." Or a punishment! "If you two don't stop fighting, there will be NO bubble bath!" And of course, a distraction! (Scene: the 3-year-old has seized both of the 5-year-old's ears and is twisting his head in an effort to wrest a ninja turtle from his grasp.) "Hey, anyone in the mood for a BUBBLE bath?" So "bubble bath" is either two magic words, or one compound magic word. But either way the emphasis is on "magic." Well the magic isn't there if the product doesn't do what it's supposed to do. Yes, it makes the bath longer. It also soothes the savage beasts! They come out of the tub much cleaner and happier than they went in. Bubbles are used in a variety of important ways. 1) Alter Appearances. You can create beards, mustaches and crazy hairdos. 2) Camouflage. Who knows what's going on under the bubbles. As long as the water stays in the tub I don't care. If the pirates want to be invisible, I'm willing to pretend they're not there. 3) Decoration. You can create all kinds of designs on the tile, toys, and edges of the tub. Then the mess just disappears down the drain! 4) Stuff. You can pass it around, throw it at each other, stick it on each other's bodies...it's just stuff to play with. Part of the joy is in pouring the bubble bath into the tub in the area where the faucet is gushing its water. The bubbles gurgle up like magic foam. The tub's occupants squeal with delight! Unless, that is, the bubbles are LIMP and LAME. Like they are with this stupid brand "Ms. Soapy Round Things." Tiny weak bubbles that disappear in two minutes are not my idea of a good time. And from the kids' perspective, it is not THEIR idea of a fun bubble bath. At the 2-minute mark they are asking for more bubbles. At the 10-minute mark, after I've emptied half of the bottle into the tub, they are frowning at me, asking where all the bubbles went. Into thin air, obviously! Along with the hard-earned cash spent on them! Let's just be clear on this. When the bubbles start underperforming, then they lose all their magic potency as a reward, punishment or distraction. THUS! No parent is going to continue spending their hard-earned cash on this stupid product. Which I realize must be loved by someone, but definitely not by us. Tonight Hubby had to buy some other products in a special trip to an unnamed supercenter. I reminded him of our bubble problem. The Organization of Bubble Operational Entities (also known to economists as OBOE) clearly was having issues on the supply side of the equation. I instructed him to come home with a bubble producing product, but NOT "Ms. Round Soapy Things." Meanwhile I gave the kids a bath using the last of the "Ms. Round Soapy Things." They were happy for all of 120 seconds. Then wanted to know what happened to their bubbles. I told them that Hubby was getting them new bubbles. Tomorrow, I promised them, they could have a REAL bubble bath. If they were good. Well Hubby returns from the humongous supercenter with his products. He claimed he bought bubbles, but his expression was not a happy one. "Is there a problem with the bubbles?" I asked him. "Well..." he hesitated. "Let's just say the supercenter wasn't the best source of bubbles." "But you DID get them?" I insisted. "Yes." He didn't sound confident. He pulled out a jug. A fairly large jug. The product was indeed called Bubble Bath. But there were no cutesy kiddie pictures on the label. Instead there was a rather adult-style dessert featured on the front. A dish of ice cream and some subtle berries. The bubble bath was called "Blackberry Cream" and was described as being "gently infused with essence of black raspberry and vanilla, to invigorate." Haha. Yes, my kids want a Gently Infused product! Well guess what, I do NOT want to invigorate them at bed-time. I want them to play a few bubble games and then go to bed. And while I don't object to them smelling like black raspberry and vanilla, there is the risk I may try to eat the children. So yes, Hubby had purchased them a product intended for ladies. This, the very same man who objected to them wearing pink pull-ups when he bought them by mistake! On the other hand, I don't want to insult the Blackberry Cream bubble bath. For all I know it may outperform the "Ms. Soapy Round Things!" So I don't want to speak too soon. And I hope I do not have to start buying bubble bath on the internet.

Great Vacation Photos! Not.

2005-06-15T19:19:00.000-04:00

As I read the news each day, the sheer volume of creative atrocities can be mind-numbing. If you can imagine it, somebody's planning it, done it, trying it as we speak, or covering up evidence of it. Maybe even documenting it photographically. I must have a high capacity for outrage, though, because each day I find myself outraged by something, someone, somewhere, somehow. Hubby knows this, and he is wise enough to accommodate my expressions of disbelief by nodding at me in a soothing manner and agreeing that whatever article I'm shaking at him with the newspaper is, indeed, outrageous. I suppose he has to agree, or he risks a million papercuts and smears of newsprint on his forehead. I understand now why my father has spent so much of his life yelling at the TV. That's how he vents his rage at the state of the world. And of course when you're young you just experience the world. You don't get enraged at it unless you're the victim of some terrible injustice. Which probably means I'm older than I care to admit, even though I don't yell at the cable news anchors. I figure they can't hear me, whereas Hubby can. (However my father routinely hurls some of the most creative insults I have ever heard in the direction of the television. The next time I hear one I'll write it down and share so you can get the idea.) Anyway, the story that has gotten my dander up THIS time (and no, I'm not old enough to have the word "dander" in my everyday vocabulary, but I felt the word is underused) is the grandfather who has been charged with taking pornographic pictures of his 2-year-old granddaughter. It is hard to type those words above without wanting to set someone's boxer shorts afire. With owner in them. Grandfathers are supposed to be nice people. They read stories, celebrate birthdays, teach games, talk about the Good Old Days, make certain foods that are "treats," go places with the kids. That is an abbreviated list, but nowhere do I see room for "take pornographic photos of the grandkids." That is something so heinous it is never even discussed. Like what to do if a fire breaks out in the home. THAT you should discuss. What to do when grandpa starts selling pics of the kids on the internet is just something you don't imagine having to deal with. Note: This guy got caught shortly after getting his photos downloaded at a CVS drugstore in Manchester, New Hampshire, so we can't assume he sold them on the internet. Maybe they were only for (YECH!) "personal use." Of course the guy realized he couldn't just get them developed by his regular Photo Guy. So he did them on the "self-serve" photo kiosk. An alert clerk noticed the images, and the police soon put out photos of the kid in the media in the hopes of catching the perpetrator and ensuring the safety of the child. He admitted to taking the sexually explicit photos during a spring visit to the granddaughter in Florida. The father notified police when he saw pictures of his daughter on TV. Which really makes me wonder what Thanksgiving dinner is going to be like at that household this year. I just can't even imagine how a subject like this is discussed by a family. Hopefully the guy will be convicted by then, and unable to violate anyone's Thanksgiving side dishes with his loathesome presence. Maybe they will serve a Holiday Spam in jail! I can only hope so. Because if I hear about this guy going free (I was gonna say getting off on a technicality but thought the better of it), I will have to take up yelling at the TV in addition to rattling my newspapers. I may even start spraying the TV with holy water and cause the TV to smoke. Which would probably do a lot to ease the burdens on my mental health placed on it by the News System as we know it.

Final Stop: Aruba

2005-06-09T11:38:00.000-04:00

We are about 10 days into the coverage of the missing U.S. teen in Aruba. It probably doesn't need to be stated, but I am feeling a terrible sympathy for the parents, and a fervent desire to never be anywhere close to trembling in their shoes. Stories like this set me off into paroxysms of Safety Rage. It was a celebratory trip by an Alabama high school class. On the last night before they were to leave Aruba, 18-year-old honor student Natalee Holloway never returned to her hotel room. Her disapperance prompted an island-wide search and a cavalcade of media coverage. Personal aside: Were these rich kids? Has U.S. society gotten so wealthy that a senior trip to an exotic location like Aruba is now the norm? Just wondering! Because my first trip to Florida came when I was 25. We spent our childhoods vacationing at Letchworth State Park in unheated cabins with no showers or hot water. My senior trip in high school consisted of a short drive to a friend's house in South Buffalo. My senior trip in college was to the Jersey Shore. I'm certainly not laying claim to a deprived childhood, just a normal one. And I am truly thankful that I was deprived of the opportunity to be kidnapped and possibly murdered while on a Caribbean island vacation. It seems breathtakingly horrible that a trip designed to reward four years of hard adademic work and an imminent diploma instead became a tragedy. Natalee Holloway was headed to the University of Alabama on a full scholarship with a major in pre-med. Instead she may be the victim of a premeditated crime. While the media coverage has maintained its laserlike focus on "the suspects," I of course am obsessed with how she got herself into such a dangerous situation in the first place. Somehow in the wee hours of the morning of May 3oth Natalee Holloway's senior class trip may have instead become her Farewell Tour. Five men are being held in connection with her disappearance. Three claimed to have given her a ride home from Carlos 'n Charlie's Bar, in the island nation's capital of Oranjestad. They said they dropped her off at her hotel. LIARS. Holiday Inn hotel cameras don't show any evidence of her returning on the night in question. Two other men, security guards for a nearby hotel undergoing renovation, have had their houses and cars searched by authorities for reasons not yet explained to the public. WHAT was this high school senior doing with a bunch of local men the night before she was to leave Aruba? Would anyone with even a dusting of common sense accept a ride from strange men, much less THREE of them in a foreign country? Unless she was drugged and carried out bodily, it makes no sense to me. There have been a lot of reports from her friends about what a great person she was. Fine! Doesn't being "a great person" qualify you for having at least one friend who won't leave you at a bar by yourself with strange local men? Haven't any of these American kids heard of The Buddy System? The rules for safety don't change just because you've grown up and your playground now includes palm trees and frosty drinks. Apparently there were adult chaperones along on the trip, although the kids flew to Aruba on a commercial airline, and the adults apparently winged it on a private jet. Which begs the question, were they acting as chaperones? Let's just say that at a minimum there was no chaperonage occurring on the flight. Did any of the adults go to the bar just to ensure all the kids made it back safely? Were the adults there for the kids' sake? Why am I asking ridiculous questions when I suspect the answers are No, No and No! Where was the chaperoning occurring -- at the beach? Waiting for someone to choke on lunch? Ensuring no one endangered the plants in the hotel lobby? ATTENTION CHAPERONES! We need you to report to the dangerous bar area. Please. Right now. It seems the final head count for the kids was done the following morning when Natalee Holloway didn't show up for her flight. Timely. You can't protect your kids from every danger. Inevitably some of them will hang from balconies by their toes or sustain life-altering sunburns. But after a couple of decades of horrible stories like this, you'd think parents would at a minimum be telling their kids not to accept rides from strangers. (Stranger: Someone you've known less than a month and know nothing about.) It's like getting into a car with someone wearing a vest packed with explosives. You should be surprised if you exit the vehicle with all your body parts intact. These days you have to regard human strangers as little more than a coterie of exotic animals. You don't know if the person you're sitting next to will turn out to be a toucan, monkey or man-eating tiger. So how do you arm your children to know which animal they may be encountering on any given day? Simple. You assume the man-eating tiger and act accordingly. Would you get in a car with a tiger peering out of the back seat? Apparently Natalee Holloway accepted a ride from three tigers. She didn't stand a chance.

"Put the Penis Away, Please"

2005-06-06T12:58:00.000-04:00

The AAA is the closest I've ever come to having a personal servant. All I have to do is ring Jeeves, er, the Triple A, and usually within half an hour I'm getting a tow, a jump or a ride to the car repair place of my choice. I think they are starting to know my voice. We've had four calls for emergency road service within four weeks. I'm having bad automotive karma lately. I was parked in front of Grace Lutheran Church where the 5-year-old has his piano lessons in the church school. Our van is out of commission with Electrical Reflux Disease, so I had my inlaws' Olds Delta 88. Normally I would wait in the air conditioned church building, but I did not want the 3-year-old to whoop and holler, or shred the sanctuary flowers. While we waited in the car, the 3-year-old jammed his Old MacDonald tape into the vehicle's tape player such that it cannot be extracted. So anyone's future listening pleasure in this car depends entirely on their enjoyment of the E-I-E-I-O refrain. I had the keys in the ignition. When the 5-year-old finished his lesson I buckled them into their car seats. THEN the 5-year-old needs the bathroom. So I unbuckle. Usher kids out. Feel for keys in my pocket. Lock the automatic doors. And...oops. The keys to the car were still in the ignition. The ones in my pocket were the keys to my house and our ailing van. My purse was on the front seat. Sigh. Now we had to catch the music teacher before she left the building. I explained our emergency. Fortunately the classroom had a phone which she said I was welcome to use, but once we left the room the heavy door would automatically lock us out. The 5-year-old was holding his crotch and moaning. But I had to make the calls first! Or we couldn't get back in! Meanwhile the 3-year-old handed me a sticky, half-eaten piece of chocolate. (Where did THAT come from? The KitKat Fairy?) The only lucky part was that I had taken it with my left hand. Of course the room had NO garbage can, no tissues or blank paper of any kind, no place to put the gob of chocolate. Using my right hand only I called Hubby at work. He informed me I had the only set of keys to that car. He offered to call Triple A for me. Two problems: I didn't know the address of this church. I didn't know the phone number I was calling from. And of course I didn't have my Triple A card. "I'll read you our membership number," he offered. "And give you the Triple A's Emergency Road Service number..." "Wait!" I wailed. "I have nothing to write with." With one hand I searched all over some teacher's desk. All her writing implements were apparently vacationing in Cape Cod for the summer. Would I have to smear the number on my chest in chocolate? Finally I located a nub of chalk. I scribbled the numbers onto the chalkboard. The 5-year-old was jumping from foot to foot and pointing at his crotch. "I have to make another call!" I hissed at him. "Or we will NEVER be able to leave." Fumbled through more papers on this woman's desk and located an address of where we were. Told my sad story to the Triple A as hurriedly as possible. To the bathroom at last! Relief for the 5-year-old. I ditched the oozing chocolate. We took up positions near the Olds Delta 88. I scanned the road for a rescue vehicle. The 5-year-old was giggling. The 3-year-old had dropped his shorts and was entertaining traffic with a Penis Display. "Put the penis back, please," I commanded. "It isn't for showing in public." A minute later more giggling. He was now mooning traffic. "Pants up!" I ordered. "If I see any more bare butts or penises someone's going to get a time out." More giggling, but the pants were in place. The 5-year-old and the 3-year-old passed the time singing, "Old MacDonald had a penis...with a butt, butt here and a butt, butt there." Sigh. Finally my AAA savior arrived, using his magic tool to open the door in less than 15 seconds. This did not involve him dropping his pants. We have only two more emergency road service calls allotted to us for the remainder of the year. Then I think we get blacklisted.

911: Policeman "Hand Tossed" by Granny

2005-06-02T00:54:00.000-04:00

Sometimes it's a little too easy to dial 911. That's what dispatchers in Charlotte, North Carolina must think after fielding repeated calls relating to a pizza delivery dispute. Perhaps Charlotte needs it's very own Carbohydrate Ombudsman. An 86-year-old woman recently dialed the emergency service more than 20 times in half an hour. Her complaint? A local pizzeria refused to deliver to her apartment. To add insult to lack of delivery, an employee allegedly called her "a crazy old coot." The woman demanded that 911 dispatchers send someone to make an immediate arrest. Finally, a 911 operator complied with her request. A member of the local police force made his way to the woman's South Charlotte apartment and proceeded to arrest her. But not without a fight! Apparently the increasingly hungry Crazy Old Coot attacked the arresting officer with all the strength contained in her 5-foot tall, 98-pound body. She succeeded in kicking, scratching and biting him. When my toddler does this I hold him upside down -- perhaps a rush of blood to this woman's brain would have improved matters. A rabies shot may not be a bad idea, either. Question: As long as the arresting officer was busy wasting taxpayer money by making a personal visit to this woman's pizza-deprived residence, could he not have swung by the pizzeria and picked up the darned order? Then instead of flesh wounds he might have earned a tip! A little rage goes a long way -- you can hardly blame a pizza aficionado with this much devotion from getting a little testy. Once tempers have cooled I think the pizzeria should hire this woman as a spokesperson in its Crazy Old Coot Campaign. If she wants this joint's pizza badly enough to tie up the 911 system and engage in hand-to-hand combat with a police officer, well, that's the kind of enthusiasm you can't conjure up with any ordinary pizza. "Even 911 Isn't Fast Enough When You're In the Mood for Joe's Pizza!" It's an idea I had to toss out there and see if it stuck to the ceiling.

Please do NOT throw Hula Hoops at the Roof

2005-05-31T10:26:00.000-04:00

Due to ongoing parental troop needs in my son's kindergarten class, and failure to meet recruiting goals, I was called up for duty at the final event of the year. This was something that had to be dreamed up by someone who spent too much time in a bubble bath. It was called (ominously) "Splash Day." Kindergarteners splash by nature. If more than one molecule containing oxygen and two hydrogens band together, you can count on kindergarteners excitedly gathering around the resulting puddle shouting, "Let's jump!" They can create puddles out of anything: tipped over juice boxes, random sponges, diverted water fountains. It doesn't matter. So you can imagine the anticipation Splash Day caused in this shoelace-untied crowd. We parental conscripts were ordered to the grassy area beyond the school. First thing we were told by some parent (who, incidentally, did not look anything like a horticulturist), is that the area "may" be infested by some sort of mystery plant that we would be advised to stay away from. I forget what it was allegedly called: Japanese Stinging Nettles? Blushing Poison Ivy Relative? Subtle Deadly Snake Grass? No one knew what it looked like or what exactly its effects were. I made a mental note to call 911 if any of the children started swelling. Meanwhile we worked on the "stations" at which the children would soon be playing Olympic-style water games. Yes! Water games. And no one had a bathing suit. Although everyone had towels. I was assigned a group of seven kindergarteners, one of whom was my son. Here are some of the games and problems we encountered as we tried to play them: 1) Soggy Tee Ball: I violated the spirit of the whole day by suggesting we keep the cloth balls dry. 2) Bubbles Galore: Using massive wands and buckets of soapy water, we covered the school grounds and parking lot in a resplendent sticky film. Not all the wands were exactly the same size or shape, so naturally they fought over the "best" ones. 3) Water Basketball: The children tossed a giant plastic kickball through two hula hoops into a wading pool. One of my kindergartners shortly kicked the ball onto the roof of the school. He later attempted to retrieve it by throwing hula hoops after it, until I intervened. 4) Sponge Relay: Teams had to race each other to see who could be the first to empty their jar of water by wringing a sponge into the opposite jar. Much sloshing and cheating ensued. 5) Frog Hop: Originally slated for the sidewalk, this event was mercifully relocated to grass when we calculated the odds of children slipping on the wet "lily pads" (placemats). 6) Magnetic Fishing: Complete with magnet-laden fish and poles. Four poles, seven kids. Egads! Those who were impatiently awaiting their turn I entertained with fish stories. Meanwhile two of my kindergarteners got their lines hopelessly tangled. I hoped parents and teachers were not noticing our trail of carange as we left each game worse off than we found it. 7) Ring Toss: My son was the only one who kept score. The rest tried to make the biggest splash in the wading pool. 8) Sand Box: At last! No water was involved. Just hand-to-hand combat over the "best shovel." 9) Cookie Creations: Frost your own cookies and add colored sugar sprinkles! The fire ants were thrilled, to say the least. I am sure if my son remembers anything of his kindergarten career, he will have fond memories of Splash Day. I will NOT have games involving water at any upcoming birthday parties. We never did figure out if the Evil Plants were present, but if a rash appears I will know what to blame.

Unfasten your seatbelts...it's hurricane season

2005-05-24T11:16:00.000-04:00

A lot of coastal residents are apparently standing on their front porches with a battery and a bagel shouting "Bring it on" to the upper atmosphere. The 2005 hurricane season flounced onto news radar screens recently with the following breezy headline: "Many Blow Off Hurricane Safety." More than half the residents of the coastal areas surveyed from Maine to Texas do not feel vulnerable to hurricanes. Aside from the jaw-dropping, palm-uprooting implications of the story, the Proper English portion of my brain was wondering if the general public is familiar with the phrase "blow off." It was not being used in the sense of "my hat blew off," or "I was blowing off some steam after work," or "my roof blew off and landed in the Gulf of Mexico." The headline writer used the slang connotation of the (ahem) verb to blow off, which means to ignore, skip or not care about. More or less. Do older folks (i.e. the majority of the newspaper-reading public) know this? Was the copy writer winking at us with an admittedly clever headline? Or has this term actually slipped into Webster's Pub for Definitions using a fake I.D.? I still wonder if the Grandparent Crowd is scratching its collective cranium on that one. According to the Associated Press article, 47 percent have no disaster plan in place to deal with an impending hurricane. Considering that last year's caravan of tropical monstrosities resulted in more than 100 deaths and billions in damage, U.S. coastal residents seem remarkably blase about preparing. A lot of them simply aren't. Why? The answer to that probably lies deeper in the coastal dweller's psyche that a researcher would want to plunge without rubber gloves. Here are my top Hurricane Indifference TheorieS (HITS): 1) "It didn't hit my house." One in five Florida homes were damaged or destroyed by last year's storms. That's a full eighty percent of people who got to watch the whole thing on TV with nary a breeze to worry about. Them's pretty good odds! 2) "We can always evacuate." According to the poll, 25 percent of residents felt they could flee flood-prone areas within 30 to 60 minutes of a projected hurricane landfall if it happens to swerve as Hurricane Charley did. Hahahahahahaha. That's a great plan if you don't mind "riding out" the storm idling in six lanes of traffic as the eye of the hurricane passes over your car. 3) "It can't possibly be as bad as last year." It's actually projected to be worse, if the National Hurricane Center is to be believed. They expect 12 to 15 named tropical storms this year, 7 to 9 of those likely to become hurricanes. Hurricane activity overall is forecast to be 70 percent above normal. So it probably won't be as bad as last year. It may be worse. 4) "FEMA will bail us out." I'd be loathe to put all my eggs in the FEMA basket, especially if FEMA is attending picnics in more than one affected state. There's no way to tell how many hurricane victims there will be, or how far down the "need help" list you may fall. 5) "If it happens, it happens." On the one hand this philosophy seems nuts. On the other, there are millions of people living on the giant shifting tectonic plate that passes for the state of California. According to earthquake specialists California's "big one" was due a few years ago. I guess it takes a special state of mind to not worry about that fact. So the hard-rocking quintet of Bonnie, Charley, Jeanne, Frances and Ivan caught the attention of the crowd when they were in town, but no one's calling for an encore. And hey, we may need those lighters once our batteries run low. That's one way to toast a bagel.