AT LEAST IT WASN'T COL. CLAUS



Oh, well. At least we didn't wait in line for two freaking hours to see Santa this year.

On the bright side, both girls awoke on Christmas morning besides themselves with excitement because they had heard not only Santa's heavy, plodding footsteps the night before, but also the flush of the toilet. (Apparently milk and cookies are a diuretic.) I'm not sure I'll ever have the heart to tell them that instead of Kris Kringle, it was most likely a jet-lagged and slightly inebriated aunt.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, GHANDI!

As I continue my holiday shopping (though using the word "continue" suggests, perhaps incorrectly, that I've actually started), I found this thought-provoking quote in an ad in the Utne Reader (don't ask). Now, you may ask, what were Ghandi's philisophical teachings being used to sell -- world peace, perhaps? Not quite -- try a cuticle pusher.

That's the thing about Ghandi: Whether in the midst of a hunger strike, leading a nonviolent national movement, or just lounging around the house, his fingernails were always immaculate.

No wonder the red staters hate us.

UP TO NUMBER 3,252... WITH A BULLET

The scary reviews don't stop 'til we get to the top. Here's some of the take-no-prisoners style of commentary you won't find in the New York Review of Books (scroll down to the user reviews). You probably won't find these fine products in the New York Review of Books, either, but that's hardly the point.

Readin'

Pickin'

Grinnin'

The full list

Until next time, keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars.

IF YOU'LL EXCUSE ME, I HAVE TO GO CODDLE MY LOZENGE

I've let my medical degree from one of the Carribean's most prestigious correspondence schools lapse, so I can't make heads or tails of this e-mail I just received.

These lozenges are just like typical pills but they are specially explicated to be coddled and dissolvable below the lingua. The lozenges is took up at the oral cavity and goes in the blood instantly instead of progressing through the stomach. This effects in a faster more strong effect which yet up to 39 hours!

Why, you may ask, am I actually reading my pharmaceutical-related spam? Um.. let's just say it has something to do with the size of my lingua, and leave it at that.

THIS JUST IN, PART 2

Who knew that being a journalist didn't automatically exempt you from paying taxes?

Looks like I'll be spending my weekend filling out retroactive 1040 forms...

THIS JUST IN

Since the Post has decided to make a cause out of running shorter stories, I thought I'd help them edit down this front-page story: Spoiled suburban kids like brand-name crap. I mean, who knew?

To be fair, the story has a great, great lead:

Brandon Singleton was 8 when he first saw the movie "Clueless," and it changed his life.

I knew a guy in high school whose life was changed by a movie. Only that movie was "Cocktail," and instead of buying a $450 pair of shiny black pants, he spent far more sizable sums on a degree from the Bartender's Academy (as Seen on TV!) At last report, though, he has yet to shack up with Elizabeth Shue.

THE VICTORS WRITE THE HISTORY BOOKS

Given the calm, rational, even-handed way people have responded to the recent election, I couldn't help but find this funny:

For roughly a decade, a film has been shown to visitors at Washington's Lincoln Memorial, depicting historic events that have taken place there — from civil rights marches to antiwar demonstrations.

Then, one day the Rev. Lou Sheldon saw it. "It showed only those liberal, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual marches," said Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition.

Sheldon would like film of some conservative marches intercut as well, though it is unclear whether any major conservative marches have taken place at the Lincoln Memorial itself, which is the film's focus.

Funny, the only conservative-inspired march on Washington that I can think of is this.

It may be a scary four years, but at least it will be rife with irony.

NOW I'M IN THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT

Forget the Christmas decorations already beginning to pop up across the DC area's more tired-looking shopping centers. If you really want to announce to a Nation Divided(tm) that the holidays, with all their promise of hope and healing, are on their way, try something like this on for size:

I'm not particularly surprised that a coworker ran into something like this at a Cracker Barrel in quasisuburban Maryland (though I'm a bit more surprised that my coworker was inside a Cracker Barrel). What *does* surprise me is how many variations of this image pop up when Googling "confederate Santa," not to mention the specificity of the details. Turns out Mssr. Claus is a Colonel in the CSA, fully entitled to all the privileges and responsibilites that implies. (Who knows, perhaps his North Pole plantation wasn't sizeable enough to rate a General's commission.)

Kris Kringle: Another uniter, not a divider.

READIN' IS TOUGH. TOUGH WORK.

I've joked with friends that one of the underlying, sub rosa themes of this past election is perhaps best exemplified by the tagline from one of Fox's quality reality TV programs, the gist of which apparently involves taking Ivy league MBAs and shooting water balloons at them ("We're sticking it to the smarties!") Happily, my brethren in the news media are finally getting with the program:

In an effort to win new readers, Downie said Post reporters will be required to write shorter stories. The paper's design and copy editors will be given more authority to make room for more photographs and graphics.

I'm going to resist the facile comparison to USA Today. Lest we forget, the much-maligned McPaper has actually started running longer stories. They've also shown a willingness to take risks, something the WP appears to have gotten a bit leery of, most notably during the run-up to Gulf War Deux (by burying stories with cautiously worded headlines like "Excuse Us For Saying This, But Administration WMD Intelligence Might Be A Teensy Bit Off. Or We Could Be Wrong" on page A95). And there are good ways and bad ways of trying to make a publication more engaging. At one point in the early 90s, the picture-to-word pendulum at Time Magazine swung so far away from literacy as to run a cover story headlined "EVIL: Does it exist?" that weighed in at about 1,800 words. Which works out to about a half-word for each year people have been pondering this question.

And the Post, of course, is one of the best newspapers in the country, so I'm sure they'll find an intelligent way of doing this. But the next time they decide to run a story about an all-you-can-eat steak joint on page A1, they'll have to find a way to do it in less than 3,000 words.

HEAL THE WORLD

HEAL THE WORLD

So, even before the election, I tried mightily to bring people together. But now, in this deeply divided country, is there any force strong enough to bring the coastal elites and the heartland value-types together?

I boldly say yes.





Forgive me if I get a bit emotional here.

BOO!

BOO!


Okay, so this maybe this isn't as scary as the previous photo. But imagine these guys up past their bedtime, on a sugar high...

AT LONG LAST, THE OCTOBER SURPRISE



I think I've finally found the author of this letter to the editor. Nice to see she had a change of heart.

(image shamelessly appropriated from Wonkette.)

NEIGHBORHOOD BLUES

I don't live in a blue state. I don't even live in a blue county. However, according to this helpful electoral map the folks at the Washington Post put together, I do live in a tiny island of blue, surrounded by a vertiable ocean of compassionate conservatism, with maybe an archipelago of libertarianism scattered somewhere along the I-95 corridor, but let's not go overboard with the nautical metaphors. (Overboard? Get it?)

But I digress. This would be all fine and good, if I lived in some sort of commune, what with all the attendant perks like free love and readily accessible compost piles. Instead, I wind up having to read real estate ads like this and watch the SWAT team make its appointed rounds.

A MINOR MILESTONE

I once had a coworker who invited as many people as could fit into his car to see the odometer roll over at 100,000 miles. In much the same spirit, I'm happy to report this humble Web site has broken the 10,000 visit mark. Now, if this was 1996 or something, this would be impressive. Or, if a couple of sites of this caliber hadn't cranked up the same kinds of numbers in a matter of weeks, it might even be somewhat inspiring. As it is, I'll just celebrate it as a pathetic little milestone and get back to frenetically clicking the reload button.

KINDRED SPIRITS

One thing Blogger's been doing of late is adding that nifty blue bar at the top of the page, complete with the handy "NEXT BLOG" button. (Yes, I know there's a way of turning it off that totally p3n3z Blogger and everything, but I don't really care. Also, I'm lazy.) And besides, Blogger's parent company, Google, is well-known for its ability to generate contextual links between different sites that not only discuss similar issues, but approach them from the same worldview (like the helpful ad that once ran at the top of this page). So it's all good, as the kids like to say.

So, posted without comment, are two sites from whence some hapless person followed the NEXT BLOG button to this little dead end of the Internet. I'm sure they were thrilled. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to bulk up for my next match. And learn Taiwanese.

LOOKIT! SOMETHING SHINY!

During a whirlwind 8-hour trip to Chicago earlier this week, I was mesmerized by this giant mirrored jellybean in the city's new Millennium Park. I walked around it, gazing dumbfounded at the ever-shifting skyline behind me, and took scads of pictures. It wasn't until I saw my own reflection and started pecking at it that the security guard pulled me away.




(this space semi-intentionally left blank)

MORONS!

Ever ones to be about 36 months behind the times, we got our 6-year-old daughter a scooter for her birthday. See the red warning label affixed to the handlebars? At first, I thought it would include some lawyered-up-but-within-the-realm-of-common-sense cautions along the lines of wearing a helmet or getting involved in a land war in Asia. Silly me. No, here's exactly what it said:

WARNING: This product moves when used.

Imagine that. An object with wheels might move. I guess were the scooter to fall through some sort of vortex back to the time of the cavemen (or at least to the set of the seminal Ringo Starr movie of the same name), this might be helpful, but otherwise, I've got nothing.

If I had the common sense to go to law school like 99.5 percent of my friends, this probably wouldn't have shocked me. Of course, if I had the common sense to go to law school, I'd have better things to do with my time than worry about a warning label on my kid's scooter. Or if not, at least I'd be racking up some sweet billable hours while doing so.

I HANG MY XTREME BANDANA IN SHAME

As someone who, you know, reads the newspapers every now and then, I feel a tiny bit more guilty with every passing day for driving an XTreme SUV (but don't worry -- it's electric). Luckily, there's now an antidote for my self-loathing, and it only costs $93,000:



Knowing the Northern Virginia area, and its abundance of treacherous terrain and road hazzards (i.e., dorks on recumbent bikes and Kerry-lovers clogging the HOV lanes), I'm betting I see the first one of these roughing it in the Tysons Deux parking lot before Thanksgiving.

As I've said before, as a society we've completely blown through the line that separates ostentation and deliberate irritation. There's simply no other way of explaining this. Well, except maybe for having a place to stow your bitchin' ATV.

THAT MUST HAVE BEEN ONE HELL OF A BACHELOR PARTY

People always venture well into the realm of the absurd when they start planning their weddings -- we decided, for some reason, to inconvenience all our family and friends by not only having our wedding out of town and on a Sunday, but out of town and on the Sunday before Christmas. Having said all that, I wish I had some of what this couple was smoking:

BEN LOMOND, Calif. - The marriage of [names withheld], took place June 17, 2004, beneath the redwoods at the Quaker Center in Ben Lomond. Wizard [name withheld], brother of the groom, officiated at the double-tattoo ceremony.

The bride, dressed in her mother's ivory satin wedding gown, was escorted by dancing woodland fairies and other forest beings. The groom, resplendent in white formal attire and derby embellished with kaleidoscopic braid and feathers, was followed by frolicking elves. The couple were attended by a cast of forest deities. Ceremonies concluded in the evening with a burning of the groom's interactive sculpture, The Swirling Cosmic Mystery.

Funny, I tried the whole "swirling cosmic mystery" line back in college, and all it got me was a faceful of mace. Of course, it gets worse. Not because I can picture one of my daughters coming home after their own "double-tattoo ceremony," but because the bride -- wait for it -- is an alum of my alma mater. All of which means I probably should have spent less time at the library and more time working on my interactive sculpting.

CENSORSHIP REARS ITS UGLY HEAD

A while back, I wrote about my thrilling new hobby. And, setting all false modesty aside, I'm proud to report that in just a few short weeks, I've skyrocketed up the reviewer charts to #23,907. Watch out, grillo7 of Kenai, Alaska -- you're GOING DOWN!

Ahem. Of course, it's not all fun and games. For some unexplicable reason, the editors decided to pull my review of this decidedly presidential work. I can't imagine why:

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
A masterpiece of semiotics -- and phonics, August 20, 2004
"My Pet Goat," the story at the physical and spiritual center of this collection of stories for the emerging semiotician, is at once more and less than the sum of its parts. When the narrator talks about the goat's propensity to eat anything in sight -- hats, capes, even Diebold records -- she perfectly embodies the spirit of the proud pet owner, willing to tolerate, even brag, about their pet's foibles. Yet when the goat -- at once both the story's protagonist and antagonist -- successfully wards off a mustachioed car thief considered an imminent threat by the narrator's avuncular, somewhat secretive father figure, one is left to wonder: Do the ends justify the means? Do they ever?

I rarely delve into the realm of the personal in my reviews, but here I must make an exception. I've often found my thoughts returning to this masterwork, only to discover that it had sparked in me a thirst for knowledge that no amount of brush clearing or pretzel consumption could quench. I am a changed person, and hopefully a better one, for having read My Pet Goat.

Damn you, uptight editors, damn you!

MORE LIBERAL MEDIA SHENNANIGANS

Here's more proof I'm a member of the liberal media power elite: Yet another nuanced letter to the editor at a newspaper I used to work for, complete with this fair and balanced headline: A Vote for Kerry is a Vote for Satan.

Here's my favorite part:

John Kerry says he "believes in a higher power". I wonder who that is?

He says his parents have "passed on." I wonder where to?

Wow. When the Styx Ferryboat Veterans for Truth start running commercials, I know where they'll get their talking points.

EVERYONE NEEDS A HOBBY...

And it seems like mine has become having some fun with the user reviews on a certain bookselling site that shall remain nameless. Maybe someday this will land me a high-paying gig at the New York Review of Books, or, more likely, as a minimum-wage adjunct instructor at the Sally Struthers Correspondence School of Comparative Lit (right down the hall from the classes in gun repair.)

Of course, these reviews are purportedly vetted by editors, so there are some limits to what actually gets posted. Consider this well-reasoned, yet unjustly censored, critique of a book that's gotten a little attention of late.

Poor plotting muddles a good war yarn (3 of 5 stars)

Now, I'm as much of a fan of a good war story as the next guy -- I think
I've seen the epic "Heartbreak Ridge" at least 30 times, and I still cheer
every time the troops burst into the medical student's shower stall. But
this muddle of a book has me, quite frankly, a bit disappointed. First, I
thought the protagonists of war stories are supposed to be rugged,
salt-of-the-earth types -- tough but loveable characters like the Duke in
the "Sands of Iwo Jima", or even Ted Dansen's brief yet memorable role as a
lost army lieutennant in "Saving Private Ryan". Yet this book's main
character is portrayed as a self-serving, deceitful elistist who shows
little regard for anyone but himself. For that reason, I find it hard to
feel much empathy when he is wounded, ultimately winning three Purple
Hearts. Whoops, there goes the book's emotional core. Second, where is the
enemy in this book? To "sell" a war story to a large audience, there must be
at least some characterization of the enemy as evildoers, or otherwise
deserving of scorn. Yet the Viet Cong are really only a bit player in this
particular tale, leaving the reader wondering why various members of our own
military are throwing claims and counterclaims at each other. What's their
motivation, really? That's the kind of question that doesn't get asked in
"The Deer Hunter."

A LITTLE LIGHT READING

Here's my most recent example of the writing I actually get paid to do, which, sadly, I manage to crank out even less frequently than this infrequently updated blog. And if you don't feel like reading 4,500 well-chosen yet trenchant words on country schooling, you could always just check out the pictures. Don't cost nothin' (except for, thanks to the free but cumbersome registration on the site, a miniscule sliver of your life you could have otherwise spent here.)

I WAS YOUNG, AND I NEEDED THE MONEY

Something tells me it's time to update my ancient Monster.com search agent, which I think I signed up for two, maybe three, jobs ago, but still kicks me the occasional e-mail.



Either that, or I need to get a sex change operation and start learning Spanish. No, no, just kidding. All I can say is, good thing I'm currently pursuing far more wholesome endeavors in my writing.

MAYBE THEY'LL GREENLIGHT GHOSTBUSTERS 3...

For the first time in a decade, I shaved my beard (it took nearly that long to grow out). Before the tabloids get their hands on them, here are the actual unretouched before and after photos:

       

Mothers, lock up your daughters!

POINT-COUNTERPOINT

During this pivotal time in our nation's history, I'm thankful the Interweb net machine thingy is being used to debate such important topics as this:

Point

Counterpoint

I'll go out on a limb here and try to find some common ground. Neither mentioned the incredible contributions of the fake doctor in Burt Reynolds' fake ambulance. Now that's something we can all agree on.

Heal the world.

SOLIPISM, NOW IN HANDY PICTORAL FORMAT

I realize this where-I've-been website is blogfodder of the lowest-common-denominator variety, but given my love of exotic locales, I just couldn't help myself.



Some day, North Korea, some day!



Looking at this map, I have no earthly idea why I've been almost everywhere in Western Europe but England. On second thought, maybe this explains it.



What can I say? After you've been to Delaware, it's all downhill from there.

WILL THE REAL ESTATE BUBBLE JUST GO AHEAD AND BURST, PLEASE?

At least then, I wouldn't have to read sickening real estate writeups for nearby houses like this one:

Sunday Morning: Enjoying the Post or the NY Times over a leisurely cup of coffee, sitting in the sunroom. The butterflies are enjoying the shade garden outside, and all is right with the world. You have no worries - your all brick house is old enough to have hardwood floors on main and bedroom levels and mature landscaping with big trees, but all the renovations have already been done. Yesterday you played golf on the adjacent golf course, and this evening you're meeting friends at the Reston Town Center for dinner and an outdoor concert under the stars. Isn't this the way you've always wanted to live?

Wow, that sounds great -- never mind that the asking price is roughly one astronomical order of magnitude beyond what we paid for our own abode that's "old enough to have hardwood floors" (not to mention shiny wallpaper). Of course, our own writeup would have a few minor changes. First, instead of "enjoying the Post or the NY Times," we'd mention "the onomatopoetic classic Mr. Brown Can Moo and reruns of Spongebob Squarepants." For "leisurely cup of coffee," subsitute "hurried swig of room-temperature Diet Coke." For "butterflies," substitute "annoyingly metaphorical cicadas," and for "mature landscaping with big trees," add the phrase "which creak in the slightest breeze and lean menacingly towards your roof." Instead of talking about "the adjacent golf course," make some snide comment about our stunning lake view, and for the part about "this evening," add something about meeting friends at a swank Reston eatery for nuggets and an indoor performance by the local SWAT team.

There goes the neighborhood.

WELL, HE IS AN MD...



... so I guess Rex Morgan could legally prescribe himself some Cialis. I know I usually obsess over the not-so-subtle innuendo in another family-friendly cartoon, but honestly, I couldn't come up with any other plausible explanation for this. It's almost as creepy as the infamous Superbowl commercial where Iron Mike throws a football through a tire swing and screams as though he's having a coronary. Another one, I mean.

LITTLE BLOG ON THE PRAIRIE



This is Temple, North Dakota, not far from where I spent a good part of last week on assignment. It's heartbreakingly beautiful country, and this was an entirely abandoned town, complete with a ruined school, general store and church, hard along the railroad tracks that run from Chicago to Seattle.

Anyway, just figured I'd post a blog entry from North Dakota. Someone had to. (I would have done it while I was actually there, but my hotel's "business center" -- note the use of sarcastic quote marks -- was closed for my entire stay.)

WHAT THE CICADAS HAVE TAUGHT ME

In what appears to be its 963rd consecutive daily story about the ongoing cicada invasion here in the DC area, the Washington Post trots out a columnist to opine that the "half-blind bugs" (as my 5-year-old calls them) can teach us all Something Important about life. I couldn't read the whole thing without wanting to gouge my own eyes out, but I think it had something to do with cell phones, magnet schools and ajustable rate mortgage refinancing. Valuable lessons, indeed.

But what can we really learn? First, if you work for a major-metro daily, ask to be moved off the cicada beat before they start talking back to you. For the rest of us, consider this: Cicadas crawl out of the ground and shed their skins. Then they fly around lopsidedly like drunken congressmen, randomly bouncing off trees, walls and other inanimate objects. If you pick one up and toss it in the air, a few moments pass before it occurs to it that it might be a good idea to start flapping its wings. They're edible by just about everything even a notch above them in the food chain (including the French), so their natural defense is to sit out in the open like the delectable morsels they are. They don't bite, don't fly, don't even move much, and are pretty much the most passive sentient beings this side of Codependents Anonymous.

If it wasn't for the fact that they appear by the millions -- too many to all die in gruesome yet comically inept airborne collisions, too many to all be squashed, stepped on or eaten while on the ground -- their continued existence would prove Darwin wrong about that whole survival-of-the-fittest, or at least the survival-of-the-smartest, thing. Then again, the same could be said for the folks who post comments on this site (scroll down to the comments).

BECAUSE EVERY DAY IS NARCISSIST DAY

I'd like to think I'm a fairly enlightened parent, as these things go. So I read this excerpt from an upcoming book of edgy essays by hip, literary fathers, or something like that. I'm still laughing.

If I could be said to contour my life in those days around any image, I think it would be one I grew up with... the one featuring a guy with a raincoat slung over his shoulder, a guy on the verge of needing a haircut, with a quizzical, slightly weary, but (don't be fooled) absolutely thrilled look about him... In the first two or three years after my daughter was born, I went on trying to live that life, with the raincoat thrown over my shoulder and the weary, sexy, thrilled expression. I went on writing plays and seeing them produced and writing that first novel and seeing it published, and on weekends joining the other parents in Riverside Park, pushing my daughter on the swings and enduring the jostling, competitive chatter of the other Upper West Side parents.

Yeah, and I wander around with the same half-asleep, thrilled, and undoubtedly sexy expression as I write the random blog entry every odd week, or month, joining the other parents at the Reston(tm) Burger King, enjoying the jostling, competitive chatter of the SWAT team as it makes its appointed rounds.

But there's more.

One afternoon, after hoisting our daughter's stroller up the stairs of our walkup and entering the dim light of our cramped quarters, I just turned to my wife and said, without knowing I was going to say it, "Let's move."

I say that just about every day. So would life in the suburbs bring a new, marginally less solipisitic outlook? Or at least a haircut? Let's read on:

When my daughter turned 5 and started kindergarten, there was a particular lunchbox she insisted she had to have, and I remember now the intensity of the search for that lunchbox, which was, of course, out of stock everywhere. We drove far afield, in the beautiful late-summer dusk, to Ames and Caldor and Kmart, each of them a tall, beckoning, neon-lit tree on the branches of which the Holy Grail of that phantom lunchbox might be found hanging. Though I felt it intensely, it was still not possible for me to admit consciously that this quest had become more important to me than the quest to complete my troublesome second novel.

"Troublesome" is one word for it, I'm sure. Judging by the particularly purplish hue of his prose, I'd bet that "slush pile" is an even better choice of words.

But then again, what can you expect from a person whose worldview can be summed up by this one sentence:

But it really wasn't until I saw "Kramer vs. Kramer" that it all came together for me.

Funny. For me, it was Army of Darkness.

MORE RIGHT-THINKING IN THE HINTERLANDS

I have just one question about this letter to the editor which ran in one of my previous places of employment: Is it more sexist than racist, or more racist than sexist?

Either way, nice headline.

THE BALCONY IS NOW CLOSED

I know complaining about endless movie trailers and previews is about as perspicacious as, say, whining about those unopenable bags of peanuts on airplanes. So I won't. However, I can say with some authority that after carefully analyzing the more than 25 minutes of previews during my official 2004 outing to the movies, there are no good movies coming out. Ever.

Fortunately, there's always the comforting glow of the television, where I just learned that somehow this brilliant study of the human condition was renewed for yet another season. And for good reason, too, when you read this teaser for next week's episode:

Tuesday, April 27, 9/8c
"The Toilet"
Cheryl promises to take Jim's opinions seriously when she decides to remodel the bathroom, until Jim insists it include a hideous high-tech stainless steel toilet -- that talks.

Good thing there's always books. Or the Internet.

My brain hurts.

I WISH I HAD COME UP WITH THIS 12 YEARS AGO...

What, with it having become ever more selective over the years, I doubt I could get into my alma mater if I had to apply today. That's why a current student, who probably has 150 or so SAT points on me, was able to articulate the school's unique atmosphere in a way I couldn't have at his age:

"Though half of the students are probably depressed, there exists an undeniable spirit of solidarity among them."

In both good ways and bad, that one sentence pretty much sums up my four years of college.

I ALMOST FEEL SORRY FOR W....



When you lose a great thinker like Bil Keane, you've lost the heartland.

The glasses make the tyke on the left a dead ringer for Kim Jong Il, or maybe Hans Blix. But who's the little fella supposed to be? Tony Blair?

I MAY NOT BE HEMMINGWAY...

... but apparently this blog is still pretty damn masculine. Of course, that may have something to do with my recent posts extolling the virtues of paintball rifles, SWAT teams, bad hair-metal nightclubs, and, of course, monkeys.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go run with the bulls. Or maybe the monkeys.

CLIFF'S NOTES

This is disturbing. Not only did some desperate collegiate hack, undoubtedly on Double Secret Probation and hepped up on Mountain Dew, write a term paper on an article I wrote what seems like a zillion years ago, that term paper is now for sale (scroll down).

Called Online Classifieds: A Descriptive & Integrative Analysis, the term paper offers -- what else? -- "a descriptive and integrative analysis of Mark Toner's 'Online Classifieds'. Included are: author background & purpose, methodology, results & conclusions, significance and 'real-world' application." It even has nine -- count 'em, nine! -- footnotes, so you know it's well researched.

With all that, the term paper is a steal at $44.75, which is about $44.75 more than I've seen from the original article.

In the interest of helping the scores upon scores of academics busy analyzing my vast body of professional work, here are equally helpful summaries of some of my other groundbreaking reportage. (It's all free, though if you want footnotes, that'll cost you...)

• Blogs are kind of like memoirs, except when they aren't. But they're online. Which memoirs aren't.
  
• The great thing about comics is that if they're drawn well enough, they don't have to be funny.
  
• Trucks move stuff.
  
• If someone comes to you and asks you to fork over $20 million to mail free computer scanners to people who might not have computers, it's probably not a good idea.
  
• Small newspapers make their reporters write about some really strange things.
  
• People who don't like Microsoft often do like penguins. Also, Paul Revere's heroic ride for freedom and an online grocery delivery van dropping off a carton of Ramen noodles may be compared unironically if it serves a facile metaphor.
  
• Nekkid people are funny.
  

SO MUCH FOR THE NIGHTLIFE

A while back, in mentioning how I'm far too sophisticated to fall for trendy chain bars during my frequent nights out on the town (but not sophisticated enough to avoid aging ex-Monkees), I mentioned that the local Burger King had a bitchin' ball room.

It also has a bitchin' SWAT team.

Let me explain. I was there with the kids on a Saturday night, at the incredibly dangerous hour of 6:30 p.m., when no one but the toughest soccer moms and ballet dads ply the mean streets of Reston(tm) in their nitrous-boosted minivans, playing Boyz N the Hood on their in-seat DVD players. We got our sackfuls of crappy food and sat down in the glassed-off play area, and before you could say "supersize me," about a dozen cops wearing bulletproof vests with STATE POLICE, ANTI-GANG UNIT and SHERIFF’S DEPT in block lettering on their backs started pouring into the store through two or three different doors. This being anal-retentive, homeowner association-obsessed Reston(tm), I immediately wondered if I had painted the trim on my house the wrong shade of battleship gray, but they made a beeline for some other guy and pinned his neck to the side of a crappy plastic booth, then cuffed him and dragged him out. So it was serious. He must have put plastic lawn statuary in his yard.

All joking aside, this would have been frightening, except that like in some bad movie you might see at 2 a.m. on basic cable, the kids had their back to the whole scene of bedlam and were utterly and completely oblivious to what was happening. I watched the whole scene unfold over their shoulders as they scarfed down their chicken nuggets.

So to all my smug, urban friends who mock our simple lives in the outer boroughs, I say this: come hang out with me one night. You might see some stuff go down, and even if you don't, there's a bitchin' Macaroni Grill at the Town Centre(tm).

CREEPY. THE BAD KIND OF CREEPY.

Issues of taste aside, I'm thinking this guy will be getting a visit from the nice folks with the Secret Service sometime soon.

The poetry on the later pages is an especially nice touch. Though, all false modesty aside, it can't touch mine.

A DILEMMA

Here's the thing. I -- I mean, a friend of mine -- was bored one day last year and created a fake blog that was supposedly written by a semi-famous person who was in the news a lot at the time. It got linked to by a couple of hipper-than-thou Web sites, and suddenly it got lots of traffic -- lots more than this, I mean his, site.

Anyway. This particular person's back in the news at the moment, and I'm--I mean, my friend is getting e-mails from news organizations, thinking he's the actual person who's being parodied. It's not like I -- I mean he -- is the master of subtlety, mind you, so it's pretty clear the site is a fake. And if it wasn't clear, the word "parody" in the rail should have dispelled any lingering doubts. But all of the sudden he's getting e-mailed interview requests from the like of Fox News and something that the reporter called "the Newsweek of Brazil." It's only a matter of time before a real news organization drops an e-mail my--I mean, his--way.

My friend -- let's just call him "Earl" -- is kind of bored at the moment, so he's actually tempted to take these folks up on their offer and see how far he can play this prank out. I mean, who's going to know the difference in Brazil, right? Of course, by an incredble coincidence far too bizarre to contemplate, "Earl" is a journalist, too. So doing so would be, as they say in the biz, "bad."

Oh, well. Maybe once "Earl" retires and devotes the bulk of his writing to crotchety letters to the editor, he'll be able to engage in such shennanigans. But for now, this will have to remain the most closely guarded secret since this incredible conspiracy.

A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS

There's been so much written about Mel Gibson's new movie, Freaky Good Friday, that I'm reluctant to say anything myself. While all the usual do-gooder suspects have been complaining about the movie's violence, luckily people see things differently in my old stomping grounds:

But the Rev. Jeffery Schroeder, resident chaplain at the Interdenominational Stuarts Draft Christian Home and Retirement Community, said that Gibson, no stranger to violent films or torture scenes, could have upped the gore for realism's sake.

"It didn't go as far as it could have," Schroeder said.

Funny. The only "torture scene" I remember Mel Gibson being involved in was What Women Want.

NOTE TO SELF: STOP READING NEWS

What a week. Not only do I find out that my own wife is probably a terrorist, but I'm also suddenly overqualified for a career in manufacturing, and a wacky little culture war is breaking out.

Is it November yet?



Oh, wait. Never mind.

BACK TO THE SADDEST CIRCLE OF HELL



I know I often say that The Family Circus is disturbing, but really. The mystery object on Dolly's head aside, the mind reels at just what kinds of images Bil might have hidden on his computer. In some circles, this would be called "a desperate cry for help." To me, it's just desperate.

LET'S PARTY LIKE IT'S... 2000

Okay, I realize I'm probably not the right person to be critiquing the local nightlife scene, given my last night out on the town involved an ex-Monkee and a would-be stalker. But still, this is almost unspeakably sad.

A bar, based on a movie from 2000? And a bad movie from 2000, at that. What's next? A place where the dress code includes leg warmers and headbands? (Oh, that's right -- Jaxx is still in business. Speaking of which, check out their hard-rockin' motto, prominently displayed on their Web site: "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason." Good times!)

Again, demographically speaking, I'm probably the wrong person to be talking about the party scene. Though the neighborhood Burger King does have a pretty bitchin' ball room.

NEXT QUESTION

I've always wondered what it would be like to be in a book club. Of course, I'd actually have to learn to read first, but that's a minor detail.

Anyway. I was flipping through a book my wife was reading the other day, and much to my dismay, it had a set of ready-made questions for book clubs to discuss at the end. Which would be fine, except that many of them were questions that could be answered with a "yes" or "no," or simply had no relation to the book. I can imagine some pretty awkward discussions:

"Did you have a mother figure that wasn't your mother?"
"That's kind of personal, don't you think?"
"The book says to ask this question. Did you have a mother figure that wasn't your mother?"
"Uh.. sure. I guess."
"Who?"
"Lynne Cheney."
"Hmm. Next question."

With that in mind, I've taken the liberty of coming up with some similarly EZ-n-Fun discussion questions for one of my favorite bits of light reading:

• Have you ever worn a hat? Discuss.
  
• The novel is set in Ireland. Do you like U2?
  
• Have you ever exposed yourself on a beach?
  
• In the chapter "Oxen of the Sun," which character reminds you of your favorite doctor on ER? Discuss.
  
• The final chapter is a lengthy internal monologue. Have you ever written a sentence without commas or periods? Was it a grocery list? If not, did anyone else understand it?

I'll have my agent give Oprah's agent a call.

MAYBE I SHOULDN'T TRY TO GET OUT MORE

So I'm at a concert a few nights ago, and some random guy sees a friend's digital camera and asks if he can use it to take a picture. Once he's told sure, he can try to get a picture of himself with the musicians, he shakes his head.

"No," he says, pointing at me. "I want a picture of that guy."

Now, when you're blessed with an Adonislike physique that quite often overshadows your incredible wit, you get used to this sort of request. Still, given the setting, it struck me as kind of odd. After a little questioning, he confessed. Twenty years ago, he told me, his college roommate "used to have your look..."

Hmmm. Unless that sentence ended with "...but then there was that tragic incident with the pack of feral wolves and the overzealous Botox clinician," there's no way that's good news.

Maybe I'm just a little oversensitive. In my pre-beard days, I've been compared to Rick Moranis by small children. Now that I have a beard, I've been compared to Michael Moore by my own children. Quite a complement, I know, but the strange part is that I weigh about 140 pounds.

Lest you think this guy was trying to get a picture for a fake passport or something, he did mention his friend's name, and I did, of course, Google it. While I don't think this guy was his style-challenged roommate, it's yet another flattering comparison.

The moral of this story? Avoid free tickets to concerts headlined by former '60s idols. The things I'll do to get out of the house...

NOT A GOOD WAY TO START A MONDAY MORNING

Now I'm nominally a Democrat, which is why I feel well within my rights to point out how creeped out I was when I flipped through the paper this morning.




Yes, that's John Kerry peering into a house while campaigning in New Hampshire. Which, by the way, is a Class 2 misdemeanor in many states. Of course, it could be worse -- if he was on the other side of the door, the caption would have simply read "You raaaaanng?"

That was on page A1. Flip to the jump, and this is what you'd see:



In a lonely one-bedroom apartment somewhere in LA, a joke writer for Jay Leno just smiled.

And this was on the same page:



Now I like Dean, and they're a sweet couple and all, but this picture's just creepy. As Sally said after flipping through the Post this morning, "Every time I pick up the paper, I feel like I need to take a shower." And not in a good way...

THANKS TO THE NOT-SO-INFINITE NUMBER OF MONKEYS...

...the newest installment in a collaborative (read: bizarre) writing project I'm working on with several friends is now online. All credit goes to Tom, whose wife, CeCe, actually knows a thing or two about using monkeys to get a book published by a reputable house. Sock monkeys, anyway.

MAYBE PAUL KRUGMAN CAN HELP EXPLAIN THIS

It's been a long time since I've mentioned my archnemesis here. But looking at the paper this morning, I was rendered dumbfounded (and we all know how painful that can be):



I know Bil's not exactly the master of the inscrutable, but really -- what in the hell are we supposed to make of this? (The radio waves emitting from his chin aside, I mean.) "Improving finances?" What, did Bil split his $300 tax refund among his ill-mannered brood? Or is this a manifestation of his repressed fears of growing old and penniless, and winding up sleeping in a dumpster? (Given this earlier panel, that's not all that far-fetched a theory.) Or, in some twisted fantasy world, has he made his wife's mother (yes, I know how to tell the Keane grandparents apart), a kept woman?

The mind reels.

UPDATE: Oh, I see. A few days ago, he drew a cartoon of the precocious Keane Kidz(tm) plotting in secret to demand a raise in their allowance. That lends creedence to the "kept woman" theory, which just creeps me out to no end.