WOW! AN UPDATE!

Well, for the first time in what seems like a zillion years, I've actually updated some things on this site (including fixing a glitch that obscured the last half-dozen posts -- my bad). In case you want to know what I've been doing with my life of late, you could read this. But you're not missing much.

You may also notice some microscopic changes to the layout of these pages (again, you're not missing much), plus the addition of some recent reads, listens and views in the column on your left. You may notice those will change about as often as the aforelinked description of my life; in both cases it's because I don't get out much, folks.

Next up: Maybe, just maybe, some more actual updates, including some more pretentious pics. Who knows, maybe I'll put up the last two holiday newsletters as well, considering my index page still links to the one from 2000 (and that link might still be broken). Hey -- at least I'm within the margin of error of the millenium.

SO LONG, BUNDLE STRAPPERS...

A long time ago, I linked to a column I wrote when I first became editor of TechNews, in the hopes of providing an example to future generations of editors of how not to introduce yourself to your readers.

Well, I'm changing jobs, so here's an example of how not to say goodbye. The good news? I won't be writing a column like this at my new gig, for which the world as a whole should breathe a sigh of relief...

And yes, that is me getting out of Dodge. I didn't ask for this, but somehow it wound up as a miniscule, where's Waldoesque part of the cover of my final issue. Could have been worse --- they could have depicted me riding into the sunset on my trusty steed, with the requisite unspoken caption ("... and the horse you rode in on!")

WHEN YOU CARE ENOUGH...

Some of you may have friends who care enough to send you one of those great Maya Angelou cards from the Hallmark collection ("A river, a rock and a tree/Sorry you caught me with the nanny/On our anniversary"). Me, I get cards like this:

So far, so good. But then there's the inside:



Wow. Actually, after looking at this card's high production values, someone needs to say something else: "Your Photoshop Skills Frighten Me!"

For the record, I received this as a joke -- I think. That day's pretty much a blur. The scary thing? These cards were actually printed by my sincere but somewhat uptight alma mater, in an attempt to discourage binge drinking. (The pretty bridge you can barely see is a famous campus landmark, but that's another story for another day.)

But picture distributing a box of these to your average dorm of college freshmen, and imagine the howls of laughter. It's almost enough to drive a well-meaning college administrator to the bottle.

MY FUTURE BROTHER IN LAW

As some of you may recall, my sister-in-law is currently working with the Peace Corps in Tonga. Here's an article about the man I'm convinced she'll marry while she's there. While the story's worth the click just for the opening sentence, you could also simply opt to hear his sultry voice.

Mothers, lock up your daughters!

HAIRBRUSH NOT INCLUDED

One of the great things about being an editor of a technology
magazine? Making fun of your kids' toys in print.

Along with the earsplitting Kiddie Konga drum and a jive-talking Spongebob Squarepants, perhaps the toy I've most regretted giving my four-year-old daughter was a doll. And not just any doll, but a reporter doll.

Her name is Jessica Journalist, and she's one in a series of dolls that's supposed to dispel the whole Barbie stereotype by providing girls with meaningful role models for their future careers (which, as my 401(k) tanks, means I probably should have sprung for Law School Lucy).

It's a nice thought, and Jessie is certainly decked out with all the modern newsgathering tools: a laptop, cameras--both still and video!--notepads and a tape recorder, among other things. But then there's the oversized hairbrush, plus the stylish leopard-print jacket, things I don't recall my female colleagues bringing to the municipal wastewater authority and library board meetings I used to cover back in the salad days.

But as always, I digress. I didn't mention the entertaining book that came with the doll, which featured Jessica Journalist mentoring an aspiring grade-school journalist by driving her around in a convertible and asking senior citizens some really, really softball questions. And at the end of an interview with her grandfather, the girl gives him a kiss on the cheek.

Now as a serious journalist, that's where I have to say something. That's simply preposterous. I always kissed my sources on the lips.

YOUR CHILDREN ARE NOT SAFE

Just when things couldn't get any weirder in these tense, post-September 11, pre-Gulf War, post-market meltdown times, leave it to a completely unexpected surprise to throw everyone for a loop: a sniper.

It's been a freaky couple of weeks here in the DC suburbs--as was the case with low-flying airplanes after Sept. 11, suddenly all these white trucks and vans that no one ever paid attention to have taken on ominous, frightening portents and seem to be everywhere (which, like the airplanes, they were all along). For a while, though, it still seemed a bit removed, even as I watched and wondered about the box truck idling in the parking lot last week. What exactly is a paper shredding company doing making a delivery in a daycare center parking lot, anyway?

Then came the shooting at the Home Depot that I've been to about a zillion times, and then came this note.

None of your children are safe. It's all too true, but it was true even before this spate of random terror started, right in my own backyard. As I've been telling friends, the only reason that this hadn't happened before was simply because it hadn't.

Strange days, indeed. But you can't spend your entire life afraid, hiding in a basement. Especially not a basement with wallpaper like this.

THE FUTURE IS NOW

To the childless among you, here is a grainy, inkjet-on-fax-paper glimpse of your future. Be warned: It's not a pretty sight.

We have seen our future, and it involves robotic, purportedly musical mice, pizza with the same consistency as wallboard, a palpable atmosphere of youthful euphoria mingled with a tangy dash of grownup despair, and lots and lots of screaming.

Oh yeah, and we went to Chuck-E-Cheese's for the first time, too.

IMAGES

It's funny -- the one image that's stuck to my mind on this sad, strange anniversary is one I never actually saw a year ago.

As this (thankfully inaccurate) crawl flashed on the screen, I was stuck in traffic trying to pick Aimee up from daycare, hearing that and a dozen other equally inaccurate bits of information as I flipped from radio station to radio station. And while the long car drive out to Reston and then home to Arlington wasn't exactly panicked, I couldn't help but look skyward every time I stopped in traffic and wonder what might happen next.

Those are the kinds of things that stick to my mind a year later -- the memory of walking out of a hotel meeting room in Tysons Corner and seeing black smoke billowing up from the horizon as the Pentagon burned. Then walking downstairs and passing by the bar, where at least 50 people were standing there frozen, staring dumbstruck at a TV just beyond my line of sight.

One year later, my one capitulation to Grief Porn, as I called the nonstop coverage in an unguarded moment, was to watch AP's live video feed in a tiny window on my computer. It was mostly static shots looking down at Ground Zero, deserted between morning and evening events. As clouds blew overhead on this blustery day, shadows and sunlight floated across the site, creating a haunting elegy for the cloudless day one year before. At one point, I looked out my office window and saw a tree-planting ceremony in front of a building across the street -- a simple ceremony, a small, almost frail-looking sapling. As was the case a year before, those were the things that left me speechless today--my own memories, my own experiences.

JUST GET MY NAME RIGHT

Hard to believe as it may seem, I'm apparently not just a journalist of some reknown, but a valued font of information, a name in the front of the Rolodex for the movers and shakers of the media elite. Especially the media elite of Akron, Ohio. Check out this legitimate news item from the Associated Press.

Of course, not only did he get the name of my publication wrong (it, of course, should have read "Weekly World News"), the reporter also left out a significant portion of the comment he paraphrased. Guess they're just not ready for the Truth in Akron.

PAGING DR. FREUD!

Based on televised portrayals like The Sopranos and the old Bob Newhart show, it's easy to dismiss psychology as an overly simplistic pseduoscience. We forget that its practitioners spend years in school, learning a science based in fact, in medicine, and in the application of theory in clinical settings.

Then we look at something like this, and we want to gouge our eyes out.

COMMANDER-IN-CASH

With the first anniversary of Sept. 11 right around the corner, it's time to reflect, to remember -- and to buy a bunch of commemorative crap.

Usually home to plexiglass Nascar memorabilia and unweildy Celtic swords, Sunday's Parade magazine featured a stunning two-fer of memorabilia on two successive pages. Just in case you didn't find the resin-based commemorative plate of the WTC framed by an array of bursting fireworks (maybe not the best use of visual imagery) to your liking, you could flip the page and see the sad-eyed, officially licensed Hummel figurine proudly hoisting an American flag (perhaps he immigrated in the '50s to work on our missile program).

Then there's this:

"Every American should have one," reads the breathless copy on the Colonial Mint Web site (official motto: "Money not valid in 51 states").

Note that it's a "Revenge Promisory Note." Note, too, that the denomination would have bought you about five shares of Enron stock back in the heady days of.... well, last year. And above all, note that W. isn't our President, nor our Commander in Chief, but just "Commander Bush."

Let the healing begin.

HEADLINE NEWS

Journalists, as we all know, are the most impartial arbiters of judgement since... well, I was going to make a bad accounting joke here, but I won't in deference to all my college classmates who joined consultancies for, as one of them put it, the fraternity-like atmosphere. Luckily for them, I hear prison's got some of the same ambience.

Har, har. Where was I? Oh, yes -- imparitality. We journalists have it in droves. Sometimes, though, when the hour grows late in the newsroom, in the heated rush to get out the printed product a little morsel -- nay, a soupcon -- of personal opinion manages to sneak into, say, a headline.

It goes without saying that this was not one of those cases.

You gotta love the look on W's face, though -- it's sort of a cross between Speed Racer and Wiley Coyote. GONNA GETCHA, SADDAM!

DEFINING MOMENTS

When I look back at this summer, I think I'll recall a few milestones. Sure, Sara's about to walk and all (and has somehow learned how to escpae from a strapped car seat), but Aimee's made an even bigger leap: at the precocious age of 3 1/2, she's become a consumer.

I'll never forget the first time (of many) that Aimee announced, with a pride belying her few years, "My favorite store is Target, and my favorite restaurant is McDonald's."

Of course, she's no fool, and quickly discovered a potential traitor in her midst. "But Daddy calls Target Tar-geht!" she often continues. "That's not right."

I'm so proud I can barely speak.

HAIRSPRAY

Well, here I am in Orlando, my least favorite city in the world, and I must say that repeated business trips here have not helped the place grow on me. I arrived to a torrential downpour, and my first stop was a grocery store I could get to only by walking through--terror of terrors--Bargain World, this scary chain of souvenir shops. And there's a reason it's called Bargain World and not, say, Mensa--when I walked in, it was pouring, and a giant leak was streaming out of the ceiling right in front of the door. To remedy this situation, some genius decided the perfect fix to collect the water would be--you guessed it--a cardboard box.

And it's all been all downhill since. I returned to my hotel this evening after a long day of work, only to find the hotel lobby and its imaginatively named bar (the Lobby Lounge) full of... hair people.

That's right, Hair People. More accurately, salon workers there to learn more about the quality hair products offered by Redken. I rode up in the elevator with a woman who was obviously not one of the Hair People, and a very drunk male Hair Person ("Hair People," though, seems to be a misnomer, as any reasonable human being who walked into a beauty parlor and saw one of these folks would run out screaming) . The big surprise, and the only pleasant one of the day, was that the HP chose to hit on the woman, not me.

"Come dahn and drink with all of us [expletive] hair people!" he shouted after her before following her off the elevator on some random floor in the concrete-block, vertical slum of a hotel. "There's a thousand of us down there!"

Note to self: Barricade hotel room door and remain holed up inside until the smell of hair gel recedes.

A STUCCOED PIECE OF THE AMERICAN DREAM

Here's a shocker about home ownership -- it took a full three weeks after signing the papers for a buyout program to be announced at work.

Then the local homeowner association's Office of Homeland Security and Stucco(tm) sent us a threatening letter because the back of our courtyard gate, which you can't see because it's always open--and even if it was closed you still couldn't see from anywhere except inside our own house--doesn't match the color of the wood trim on the house proper.

Forgive us, I wanted to say, for we are but simple people from the hills and hollers of Arlington County. We'll rectify the situation as soon as we find a stain that matches our aforementioned chosen paint color of Cracked-n-Peeling Muave(tm).

But that would be wrong.

SO LONG, ----WAY

If it's been a while since I've updated this site, at least I have a good excuse for a change: We moved. And stuff.

Yep, somehow we're now homeowners. There are what a real estate agent would call some nice "features" to the place, though. Here's our lake view. Squint a little, and maybe the water will come into focus (hint: it's browner than the tree branches that obscure it).

This is a sample of the wallpaper in the guest bathroom. If you think it looks bad as a 175x210 JPEG, imagine being completely surrounded by it in a confined space... the walls, the back of the door and even the ceiling. It's pretty much the opposite of a Skinner box -- you sit in the room and feel your brain start to overheat from the extreme stimuli. If I was a soccer hooligan, I would lock myself in here every gameday morning to work myself into a proper rage before heading off to the stadium.

But the saddest part of all, Dear Reader, is that our much-beloved, love-to-hate neighborhood grocery store, the Bizarro ----way, is now in another ZIP Code -- another county, even. Of course, we can always go back to visit (and we will). As John Cusack said in the movie Grosse Point Blank, you can't go home -- but you can shop there.

THE SCARIEST SENTENCE EVER UTTERED

Sometimes, one simple sentence is all it takes to shatter your faith in mankind, to make you question your basic assumptions about human nature.

This is not one of those sentences. But, as uttered by a friend of a friend, it's still pretty frightening (and not for the faint of heart; consider this your Code Orange alert from the John Ashcroft/EdMcMahon dynamic duo):

"Every time I get paid, I buy another sword."

Roll every part of that simple statement around in your mind for a moment. Just don't think about it for too long -- blood will start coming out of your ears.

NOW I’VE SEEN IT ALL

It’s been nearly six months since 9/11, but we can finally relax: all our troubles are over. But don’t thank me. Thank these two Right-Thinking Americans:



Yes, that is Ed McMahon with John Ashcroft. Apparently, calico cats may be the sign of the devil, but enlisting one-half of TV's Wacky Bloopers and Practical Jokes is the surefire way to stop terror dead in its tracks.

But wait, it gets better. The two are announcing that the Neighborhood Watch program is going to shift its energies from stopping burglaries and muggings to -- you guessed it -- fighting terror. Great, you say, but how is that one slightly overinvolved middle-aged guy with the flashlight and the magnetic Neighborhood Watch sign slapped onto the side of his late-model station wagon going to infiltrate a sophisticated cell of operatives trained to blend into society until it’s time to strike?

Simple. There’s a pamphlet, which includes the following useful advice:

Those who should be reported includes anyone "who claims membership in an organization that espouses killing innocent people."

Someone had better warn the Rotary Club.

THE DEATH OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION, CHAPTER 47

While most of the world was watching the Winter Olympics last night, low-rise apartment buildings and RVs everywhere were awash with the comforting glow of another televised sporting event -- the Glutton Bowl, featuring such astounding feats of athleticism as consuming bowls of mayonnaise and whole sticks of butter.

Ah, Fox. Ever since they stopped airing World’s Wackiest Police Chases and Civil Rights Violations on a weekly basis, I was starting to wonder if they had gone soft. I mean, it’s been at least a full calendar year since we’ve been treated to a prime-time animal mauling. But apparently the subtle shift is part of a broadcast strategy that involves devoting TV shows to each of the seven deadly sins. We’ve had lust (Temptation Island), greed (Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionare), sloth (well... just about anything in Fox’s prime-time lineup), and now gluttony. What’s next -- Who Wants to Covet Thy Neighbor’s Mule?

To paraphrase our Right-Thinking president, no wonder I think they’re evil.

But that’s not the scary part -- Fox, after all, will be Fox, and I love them for it. The scary part is that this eating contest is actually sanctioned, by an organization called the International Federation of Competitive Eating, which we can safely assume is kind of like the IOC, only with less biased judges.

Not that figure skating is much more uptown in the grand scheme of things -- remember Right-Thinking athlete and all-around sophisticate Tonya Harding? (Perhaps you’ve seen her mentioned in the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town.) Luckily, NBC opted to wait to air skating until after the Glutton Bowl chugged to its sickening denouement, undoubtedly sparing countless fights over the remote control in trailer parks across the greater Southeast.

FUN WITH FOOD

Living with a three-year-old has its moments. Here's the dinnertime conversation the other night:

"Aimee, try some meat."
"I don't like meat!"
"Aimee, try some vegetables."
"I don't like vegetables!"
"Aimee, try some food."
"I don't like food!"
"Aimee, try some cookies."
A pause. Then, hopefully,
"I like cookies!"
"Just checking to see if you were listening."
"I'm listening."

This followed a trip to the grocery store a week or so back where every item I tossed into the cart was greeted with a "I don't like [insert name of food item here]!" You can almost imagine the running commentary:

"I don't like bananas!"
"I don't like chicken!"
"I don't like Richfood Value Select Bargain Corn Niblets(tm)!"
"I don't like Richfood Value Select Bargain 10-Gallon Trash Bags!(tm)"

And this is also all by way of explaining why we decided to go out to dinner by ourselves for Valentine's Day.

VEERING TO THE RIGHT?

Here's another reason to be on a state of heightened alert. Apparently not even the staple of right-thinking American publishing, Reader's Digest, is free from subversive thinking.

According to an article in the Washington Post, the fun-loving folk at the National Review are blasting the magazine's current editorial team, claiming it lacks the proper conservative credentials. By the way of evidence, they point to a story about an all-girl rescue squad in Alaska as proof of 'low-grade feminism' creeping its way into the magazine.

They also sneak in some silliness about the red state vs. blue state dynamic (based on the states that voted for Bush vs. Gore, respectively), claiming that Reader's Digest, by some massive oversight, somehow let some people from the dreaded blue states start working for them. Personally, I'm more scared about the fact that I live in a red state -- does that mean I have to go to work for the National Review?

But let's ponder the sacrosanct Reader's Digest -- is nothing sacred, not even Life in these United States? Will It Pays to Enrich Your Word Power start including words like 'Naderesque' and 'Clintonian?'"

(UPDATE: This blog goes wide -- well, sort of. I submitted this little rant as an item for Plastic.)

FLY THE PHONY SKIES

We're all incredibly proud, and a little bit sad, because my sister-in-law just left for a two-year Peace Corps stint in, of all places, Tonga. To my credit, when she first told us she was assigned there a month or so back, I actually had a vague idea of where Tonga was (the South Pacific, if you're playing along at home). Of course, since my first question to her was "Wow. Do they have cable?" maybe my understanding of global cultures isn't all that it should be.

But I digress. Thanks to this wonderful pre-goatee Al Gore invention called the Internet, I can learn all about Tonga. Though I wonder -- if a country has access to the Internet and top-flight Web design, do they really need volunteer assistance?

Oh, wait. I see now -- they desperately need help with Photoshop. I'll be on the 4:45 Royal Tongan Airlines "Concorde." Hey, it may not be real, but it couldn't be any worse than Air Dukakis, after all...

FLY THE @$%&!ED UP SKIES

If you want to have a good time, follow me onto an airplane sometime. Over the past couple of years, I've been lucky enough to be seated on flights where fistfights have nearly broken out -- during takeoff, no less -- where surly passengers bumped from first class have made such scenes they've actually pulled the plane back up to the gate to let security officers board, where I've actually seen pilots get out of the airplane, walk under the wing and yank on the flaps, presumably to get them unstuck. And this was all before Sept. 11, when scenes of this ilk were just bizarre, not utterly terrifying.

So it was with some trepidation that I took my first post-Sept. 11 flight a few weeks back. And boy, it did not disappoint! Thank the fine, hardworking folk at a certain airline which I won't mention, but has at least one plane literally slathered with Arizona Cardinals logos -- which probably should have been my first warning to try and cash my ticket in for a Greyhound fare. I mean, the only thing that could possibly have been worse is if they had a silhouette of Michael Dukakis painted on the tail.

[long-winded rant]

Believe it or not, I'm not one to complain about long airport lines and flight delays -- I typically save my vitrol for things that really deserve it, like supposedly wholesome family comics and grocery stores that keep cutouts of beheaded pharmacists standing around for months. But I think you'll agree this was a particularly entertaining experience.

It all started at BWI airport, where I was inexplicably directed to the "international pier," which was neither a pier nor international, since I was flying, not sailing, and to Phoenix, not Poland. But the plane was at the gate when I got there, which is always a Good Sign. Except, of course, when the helpful ground crew gets on the mike and announces that there's something wrong with the plane, so the flight's been canceled, so please walk back to the main ticketing area to be rebooked on another flight and have a nice day.

A lot of grumbling. A long walk. A long line. And one surly employee doing anything and everything but rebooking anyone on any flight anywhere. After about 20 minutes, another employee of what for simplicity's sake I'll just call Dukakis Airlines gets in front of us and says the following highly reassuring sentence: "We think we'll be able to fix the airplane, so grab your stuff and go back to your gate. The flight's still on."

A lot of grumbling. A long walk. A longer line at security, punctuated by the fragrant aroma of shoe inspections. Back at the gate, the plane's still there, and still pitch dark. No one's in it, no one's around it. And the gate crew's still insisting that it's leaving in 20 minutes. That 20 minutes stretches into an hour, maybe even two, and they're still claiming the plane's going to be fixed. Of course, it's still as dark and vacant as a cave in the Tora Bora suburbs. No matter, they claim, you're still set... but could everyone that was connecting on to San Francisco report to the counter?

So that handful of doomed souls wanders off in search of another flight, and still we sit. Meanwhile, at the gate next to us, another Dukakis Airlines flight is boarding -- pay attention here, because this becomes important in a minute. They finish and close the door. And still we wait, staring out the window at a dark plane that's supposedly being fixed.

Then suddenly, they announce that they're boarding the flight to Phoenix -- again, this is an important detail. So they open the door to the gate and lead us down the skyway. I'm maybe the second or third person in line, so I have no idea something's amiss until I see the people in front of me stop and demand, "We're going WHERE?"

Not really wanting to know what the problem was, I wander past them onto the airplane, which I notice happens to be almost completely full, even though I'm the first in our luckless contingent to board. A flight attendant greets me by staring at my outstretched boarding pass as if it were a cute and furry but very dead animal.

"Why are you trying to get on this plane?" she asked, wrinkling her nose.

And it hits me: They tricked us into boarding another flight without telling us. Worse yet, they didn't even bother to tell the crew on the plane they were herding us onto what was going on. And no, I am not kidding.

Long story short, it turns out the flight was heading to Vegas, which give or take 500 miles, is pretty much like Phoenix, only with gambling and hookers. There were whispers that there was a connecting flight to Phoenix there, but the flight crew decided to take the lack of notice out on us by loudly announcing that they wouldn't answer any questions about connections. They even joked about it during the pre-flight announcements, wishing us a "fun-filled 5 hours and 23 minutes to Vegas."

At this point, I'm convinced that it's probably illegal to board people onto a plane without telling them where it's going. But I'm willing to let bygones be bygones. Then as the plane descends into Vegas, the cap'n gets into the fun. "Well, for those of you trying to connect, I have some information for you," he said. "Those of you who were hoping to ultimately get to Los Angeles, there's a flight leaving in 5 minutes. But they've decided not to wait for you, and we're parking on the other side of the airport, so..." As for us doomed souls heading to Phoenix, another flight was leaving in 5 minutes, too, he continued, but the "good" news was that it was boarding right next to our arrival gate, so we'd "probably" make it.

"Probably." Not if the ground crew there had anything to do with it.

Because the aforementioned stew had barked at me to sit down immediately when I boarded the plane, I was right next to the bulkhead and one of the first people off. I sprint through the skyway and see them getting ready to close up the gate for the Phoenix flight, so I race to the gate, only to be stopped by a pimply-faced security guard who might--might!--have been 14. (Since this was Vegas, he presumably was too young for a casino job, so airline security was his last resort.)

"I need to do a random security check, sir. Take off your shoes," he said, voice cracking ever so slightly. As I politely explained that I had just gotten off a connecting flight and had already cleared security -- twice -- that evening, the growing line of Phoenix-bound people from my flight forming behind me start yelling at him. So he abruptly stops waving a wand around my extremities and waves me on, and at this point, I'm wondering what was worse -- that the people behind me were yelling at the prepubescent security guard, or that he actually decided not to search me because people were yelling at him. ("Yes, sir, I realize he was clutching a flight manual and was foaming at the mouth, but people were raising their voices!")

Anyway. I step back into my shoes and am promptly stopped again, this time by an Air Dukakis employee who started calling me "honey" a lot (and even though I'm happily married and have a spouse and two children who presumably love me, trust me -- I'm nobody's honey), and once again, examining my boarding pass as if it were some sort of toxic effluvent.

"What's this?" she asked, wrinkling her nose. After explaining our little journey, she shook her head. "No one in Baltimore told us anything about this, honey. Don't think you can board the plane." As the people behind me in line again began yelling at her, she disappeared with my boarding pass -- again, a seemingly insignificant detail that becomes important in a moment.

As it becomes clear they've got an angry mob on their hands, the ground crew relents. "Okay, if you can find a seat, you can fly to Phoenix!" they announce to the mob, and whoever else might have been walking by at the moment. Or words to that effect.

"What about my boarding pass?" I ask back.

"Your what?"

"You have my boarding pass!" I reply. They shrug and point at the gate, so I go ahead and board yet another airplane with no documentation whatsoever -- and boy, combined with the aborted security sweep, does that ever make me feel safe about flying. And once again, no one had bothered to tell the stews on board what was going on, but it was now well past midnight local time, so they just rolled their eyes and told everyone to find a seat somewhere. Mine was on the wing, I think.

No, no, just kidding. And then, as the plane took off for Phoenix, a final insult to my shattered nerves. The woman in the seat directly behind me starts muttering -- just loud enough for me and nobody else to hear -- "Oh, God. That's a weird noise. The plane's going to crash. Oh, God. That's a weird noise. The plane's going to crash. Oh, God..."

[/long-winded rant]

So that was that. But when I finally got back to Northern Virginia, it was all I could do to keep from sprinting to the Bizarro ----way and kissing the first disinterested employee I saw on the lips.

SO IT'S FINALLY COME TO THIS: HAIKU

So, one of my neighbors and fellow victims of the friendly neighborhood Bizarro ----way surprised me the other day with this unsolicited haiku e-mail:

Pharmacist peers out
Across mounds of slick, brown fruit.
He's got your number!

Imitation being the most sincere form of flattery, I responded in kind:

Brown, black, puce, ochre
Misshapen mounds of produce
Bring your ----way card!

and then, in honor of the beheaded cardboard cutout...

No shoes, no T-shirt?
Then no service, warns the sign.
No head, though, seems fine.

The problem with haikus, of course, is that like crack and reality television, once you start doing them, it's often hard to stop. My friends responded with these gems, including a rare double haiku:

Winged insects swarming
Inside a bag of brown rice
Make crunchy pilaf!

A pumpkin so soft
A toddler inserts a straw
And extracts brown mush.
"Brown ice cream!" she laughs.
"Can we take this pumpkin home?
It would be tasty."

Which led to this round of poesy:

Crunchy, chewy -- yuk!
What's this squirming sensation?
Larvae in my rice.

Choose a banana,
Finger goes right through the peel.
Time for a refund!

Even my wife, who has actually written some actual poetry that doesn't even rhyme, couldn't resist the hypnotic lure of 5-7-5, particularly when considering current events:

Sorry, Mister Prez,
Those ---way special pretzels
Were too much for you.

Speaking of which, I must say that I'd hate to see a major setback in the war against terruh caused by, of all things, a salty lump of dough (though I suspect retaliatory airstrikes against Hanover, Pa., will begin within days and not stop until the evildoers from Utz are smoked from their caves). Imagine what that would look like on a trading card!

THE SPIRIT OF THE SEASON

Sometimes it takes a simple story to convey the spirit of the holiday season, or as I like to call it, the True Meaning of Christmas (tm).

Some tales are timeless, like the non-Jim Carey/Ron Howard Grinch. As part of a preprinted religous tract stuffed into a Christmas card we received this year, we read another touching story about a woman putting up Christmas lights every year of her entire life along the improbably named Highway 69 (an odd touch for a religious story, I thought), even though--and this was the tearjerking surprise at the end--she had been blind since birth. And in these troubled times, I'd like to offer up one more tale of holiday cheer, courtesy of our friendly neighborhood Bizarro S------. So gather the kids around the fireplace and have a box of tissues handy.

Walking up to the grocery store the other night, I was greeted by the timeless holiday sound of a Salvation Army worker ringing his bell. As I got closer, I heard someone yelling at him.

"Stop doing it that way--you're driving me crazy!" the good Samaritan shouted in a voice more closely resembling a drill instructor than one of Santa's helpers. "Swing your arm up higher so it rings more... more steadily!" Seeing how the spirit of the season is timeless, the fact that the bellringer spoke no English probably didn't matter. The warmth and sincerity of the message needed no common language to be shared.

And--get those tissues ready, folks, because here comes the real tearjerker of an ending--do you know who that good Samaritan was? Santa Claus? A homeless person? A random shopper driven to temporary psychosis by the lack of saleable produce inside the store?

No, gentle reader. It was an employee of the aforementioned store, generously spending his 15-minute break on the sidewalk, yelling at a volunteer bellringer.

I hope this story of holiday warmth touched you as much as it touched me. If not, maybe you should try to find the story about the holiday lights on Highway 69. I just wouldn’t do a Google search for it, if you get my drift...

MY 15 SECONDS OF FAME

Okay, it's official. I'm now a celebrity.

No, my brilliant writing didn't suddenly win me a Pulitzer prize or a six-novel contract from Random House. No, I've bypassed such petty mileposts along the road to immortality.

You see, I've had a food item named after me.

No, really. A friend of mine runs a restaurant in the Shenandoah Valley, and after a lot of back-and-forth on the virtues of the local pallete (i.e., chopped steak), he added the item to his menu. With my name attached.

Sure, it's an honor (though I think my friend, who will go unnamed, meant it as a dig). At the same time, though, it's kind of like naming a double-decker cheeseburger with bacon after the Smiths. Not that I'm a vegetarian or anything -- I'm just not a fan of food items that are typically made up of the scraps of meat not even our Bizarro grocery store would try to package and sell.

Though strangely enough, the Mark Toner(R)(tm) is made of sirloin -- a quality meat item, that. And it's the most expensive item on the menu. Which, as another Right-Thinking American knows, is the true meaning of Quality(tm)(R).

So today, it's a sandwich. Tomorrow, you'll see my name on a skyscraper or two. Just smack me if I start hanging out with supermodels, okay?

SUBTLETY, THY NAME IS KEANE

It's been a while since I've commented on this bastion of Right-Thinking humor, but this Thanksgiving depiction of life within the sad little circle really made me stop and think:

Wow. Call me one to read between the lines, but the American flag in the background makes me think he's alluding to... to something. And in these difficult times, this makes me feel as warm inside as the fuse point of a daisy-cutter. The truly scary thing is that I heard a sound bite on the news from my archenemy discussing the challenges of responding to recent events within the "parameters" of his sad, sick little cartoon universe. Which really surprised me -- after a lifetime of reading Mr. Keane's literary output, I wasnt aware that he knew any four-syllable words.

But wait! Am I too quick to mock the subtlety (or lack thereof) of this seemingly simple panel? Look at the seemingly random assortment of blocks scattered across the floor. I see an O, S and an A -- "Osama did it?" A C, an I and an A -- could this be a hint of a coverup? A P, an A and a K -- Pakistan, perhaps a clue to the Evil One(R)(tm)'s true whereabouts?

We're through the looking glass, kids. If I want to stop the blood from coming out of my eardrums, I guess I need to stick to more simple political statements.

WELCOME HOME

"So, let's have a baby today," was how the doctor's appointment began the morning of Nov. 7. "Wanna have a baby right now?"

Just four hours later, our second daughter, Sara Frances, was born, weighing in at 6 pounds 13 ounces and stretching out to just a hair under 20 inches, for those of you that keep track of such things. She's absolutely perfect, though for the life of us we still can't figure out what color her hair's going to be (so long as it's not purple -- at least not for another 14 years or so).

I was going to start writing about what an amazing thing the birth of a child is, about how no matter how many times you hold a newborn in your arms, it's an entirely new experience. But then I remembered where I'm writing these things and decided to share a moronic, vaguely irrelevant anecdote instead.

With recent events, it's a strange, almost bittersweet time to bring a child into the world. But I take strange comfort in the fact that the big news event of the day that got the most coverage on MSNCNNAOLTBSTNNFOXSPICE Nov. 7 was not anthrax, not Afghanistan, not another idiot waved through airport security carrying more cutlery than a Ginsu salesman trying to make quota at the end of the month. No, it was a nationally televised, low-speed, hour-and-a-half car chase featuring a flaming 18-wheeler, complete with helicopters, police cars and a random deputy trying to shoot at the truck with what appeared to be a varmit rifle.

Sadly, we missed all the fun because we were, um, otherwise occupied. But I take this as a good sign -- if a televised car chase isn't a sign that the country's going back to normal, I don't know what is.

COLLECT 'EM ALL!

At long last, I'll have something to place on the mantle next to my Gulf War-era souvenir lighter depicting Bush the Elder dressed as Rambo standing atop the immortal slogan NO SLACK FOR IRAQ. Check out these fun collectors' cards.

Not only do I love the obvious propaganda value ("Kids need to understand that the President--and his team--will keep them safe and that evil-doers will be punished," says the breathless marketing copy), but I think these suckers will be the biggest eBay bait since people started entombing the tags on Beanie Babies in hermetically sealed plastic to preserve their value. I know I'll be going nuts, buying package after package until I get the elusive "FEMA Director Allbaugh Meets With Bush" and "German Police Search for Clues" cards (no, really -- they're on the checklist, along with the shots of cool jet fighters blowing stuff up that you'd expect).

I'm just a Right Thinking-American, mind you, and not a Madison Avenue marketing guru or anything. But what 9-year-old isn't going to scrimp and save his allowance until he can get his own "Transporation Secretary Norman Minetta" card to put between the spokes of his bicycle wheels?

JUST IN TIME FOR... THE EASTER BUNNY?

Okay, I think it's time to revisit the friendly Bizarro S------y down the street. Besides, I just saw the Easter Bunny there.

Yes, I know it's almost Halloween, but remember -- if it wasn't, it wouldn't be Bizarro S-----y now, wouldn't it?

But I digress. The other day, we had to pop in to get one quick thing on the way out of town, so I pulled into the parking lot. My daughter starts getting really excited in the back seat. "Bunny!" she giggles, pointing to something I can't see. I look over at the front of the store and see nothing.

"Did you see a rabbit?" I asked.

"Yeah!"

"Where did it go?"

"Inside!"

At this point, I chalked it up to a toddler's overactive imagination and walked inside. I'm studying something intently on one of the shelves when I hear what could only be described as a commotion behind me.

"I got a visitor for you," a regular patron I fondly refer to as Geriatric Bicycle Man is telling the people behind the glass in the pharmacy. They're busy filling prescriptions (or, more accurately, filling out little slips telling people they only have 2 tablets of their prescription in stock and will owe them the remaining 98, but that's another story for another day), so he has to repeat it a couple of times. And he does: "I said I GOT A VISITOR FOR YOU!"

And then it hits me: Geriatric Bicycle Man (tm) actually is wheeling the aforementioned bicycle through the store. And sure enough, in a milkcrate affixed to the back axle was sitting the most ratty stuffed rabbit I've ever seen, along with a lot of other stuff I'd rather not associate with stuffed rabbits, or Easter, or anything else wholesome or childlike.

That's when I stepped away from GBM and made a quick run for the registers. And to quote one Right-Thinking American, that’s all I got to say about that.

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED

So my daughter just turned three, and boy, was I in for a rude awakening. Not because she's, you know, three or anything, but because I thought I still had a few years left before I had to tackle something like this:

The horror... the horror.

Guess who waited to put this sucker together until 10:30 the night before the big birthday party? At that time of night, I especially appreciated the high-contrast smudged brown ink on dark green newsprint. After staring at my 18-inch Radiation King(tm) monitor at work all day, it was just what I needed to push myself over the threshold of legal blindness.

Yep, this says that this little gadget has 31 screws. "Screwed" pretty much summed it up, too.

GRACE(LESS) UNDER PRESSURE

What, with recent events, I haven’t really felt inspired to write in this spot for the past week or so. Call me crazy, but somehow it’s hard to work up a good head of steam about the rotting groceries at the friendly neighborhood supermarket right now (though, as a messy attempt to pick up a banana on Monday proved, they still are).

But, as always, I digress. I have written some serious stuff about what's happened of late -- living less than 2 miles from the Pentagon, it would be hard not to -- but they’re more along the lines of things I’d want my kids to read someday. Besides, most of it’s pretty similar to what other people have already said time and time again in the half-century into which the past week has seemed to unfold.

However, it’s nice to see other folks have put on their thinking caps, and that in a crisis of this magnitude, some people are called to their, um, personal best. Consider this now-notorious commentary, courtesy of The Washington Post:

Television evangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, two of the most prominent voices of the religious right, said liberal civil liberties groups, feminists, homosexuals and abortion rights supporters bear partial responsibility for Tuesday's terrorist attacks because their actions have turned God's anger against America.

"God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve," said Falwell, appearing yesterday on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club," hosted by Robertson.

"Jerry, that's my feeling," Robertson responded... Falwell said the American Civil Liberties Union has "got to take a lot of blame for this," again winning Robertson's agreement: "Well, yes."

...Falwell added, "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' "

Luckily, they’re not elected officials. This guy is the elected official:

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. John Cooksey, R-Monroe, told a network of Louisiana radio stations Monday that someone "wearing a diaper on his head" should expect to be interrogated in the investigation of terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and New York City.

"If I see someone (who) comes in that’s got a diaper on his head and a fan belt wrapped around the diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over," Cooksey said.

And here’s more cast-iron thinking from the same guy, courtesy of a Louisiana newspaper:

Cooksey acknowledged Tuesday that some people in turbans are American citizens, and not everyone wearing a turban is Arab, Muslim or a follower of Islam.

"No, but bin Laden does," he said.

"The leader of these groups, bin Laden, always wears a turban, and I think a lot of his followers — if they were not based here and trying to blend into our society — would be wearing them, too."

In other words, we should be on the lookout for people not wearing turbans and trying to blend in. That does it -- I’m turning myself in.

The good news? This guy won’t be in the House of Representatives for long. He’s running for the Senate.

READING IS FUNDAMENTAL

You'd think with my new side gig as an art critic, maybe I had forgotten about my longtime fixation with the friendly neighborhood Bizarro ----way. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth, but as much as it shames me to admit it, it's been pretty quiet of late. There's still the odd funk about the place, but it's a quiet funk.

So it's up to me, I guess, to try and stir things up a bit. Fortunately, the store's book drive provided the perfect opportunity. A couple of times a year, they set up a rusty old cart where they encourage the clientele to drop off old books, which other customers then buy for a dollar donation to various charities.

Given my aforementioned description of the store's portal to East Baltimore, you can just imagine the quality of, um, literature that passes through its doors. Picture lots and lots of trashy romance novels (to call them Harlequins would be an insult to the comparatively great works of literature that publishing house has produced), all with 14-point text and a maximum page count of about 80.

So into this mix I threw my own contribution to the greater cause -- an innocuous little book I found while cleaning out our basement called The Cold Warriors: A Policy Making Elite by John C. Donovan (yes, that John C. Donovan). It's jam-packed with fun chapters like "Beyond Pluralism: Elite Activity" and "NSC 68: The Acheson/Nitze Hard Line," but sadly, no pictures. I don't think I ever read it, but I skimmed its pages and as close as I can figure, it's about... um, an elite bunch of policy makers. During the Cold War. And stuff.

But as always, I digress. I lovingly placed the book on the cart next to the next most serious-looking book (The Brother's Wife, which I'm sure is appropriately shlocky but lacks the pictures of shirtless men and taffeta-bedecked women typically found within the genre). Anyone care to place bets on how long it takes The Cold Warriors to find a new home?

Speaking of cold, my guess is about the same time that hell... oh, never mind.

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!

One of the great things about renting a beach house is getting to experience another person’s aesthetic sense (or lack thereof). And the place my inlaws rented for a week this summer was a veritable Louvre of quality art (if by quality art, you mean unironic pink flamingo stained glass in the bathroom and purplish seascapes that looked like they were pained by R. Crumb in the midst of a Prozac binge).

And like in the great museums of the world, proper placement and setting really enhanced our studied consideration of the great works on display. Consider the enigmatic riddle suggested by placing a portrait of Robert E. Lee and a crucifix on the same wall (answer: both the South and Jesus, it seems, will rise again).

Then there are individual works that merit hours, if not days, of careful study. Consider this portrait of a wisened sea captain that hangs in a place of honor over the television (I realize the picture is a tad on the underexposed side, but perhaps that’s because the sheer artistic triumph of this grand oeuvre was just too much for the camera lens to handle).

Give yourself a moment to take it all in. If you close your eyes, you can almost smell the salt in the air, the wisp of his pipe, all tinged with the scent of the artist’s desperation after many an hour studying the legend to the paint-by-numbers kit.

But wait, there’s more. Consider the following details -- I didn’t go to art school or anything, but I still know that details are what make a piece of art a Piece of Art.

Note this will-o-the-wisp thing in the background. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be St. Elmo’s Fire (and if it is, what explanation do we have for the conspicuous absence of Rob Lowe?), but the colors would change subtly as you walked around the room. Spooky.

Again, I’m no artist, but I do know that it’s tough to draw a beard so it looks like a really cheap, fake clip-on beard -- impressive. Also, note the scale of the cap’n’s hands in relation to his pipe and his face. A symbolic message that he’s capable of steering through any storm? Perhaps. A sign he’s afflicted not only by bad weather, but also Marfan Syndrome? Almost certainly -- an artist of this caliber wouldn’t have problems with something as elementary as three-point perspective, after all.

As for the pipe? To quote Freud, sometimes a pipe is... well, just a pipe.

UM, NICE WEATHER WE’RE HAVING

Ever overhear a conversation so awkward you wish you could spontaneously combust to create a distraction?

The other day, I was trapped in an elevator with two people who obviously worked together. With a big toothy grin, one said to the other, “When I saw you in the garage just now and honked my horn, you jumped so high I thought you would hit the ceiling!”

“Well,” the other person replied, “I was hit by a car when I was 18. I was in traction for months.”

“Oh.”

It's never taken so long to ride up five floors.

‘I KNOW KUNG FU’

That’s my favorite line of dialogue (or come to think of it, it may be the only line of dialogue) from the overrated piece of dreck better known as The Matrix (which, as I describe elsewhere, is really just Tron without the day-glo suits).

But I digress. I mention this only because I got an e-mail from my own would-be Neo this evening, and it was so compelling it once again prompted me to lift my self-imposed ban on sharing spam messages:

Do you want the prestige of becoming a Certified Kung Fu Blackbelt??

Can you handle the respect that comes with the rank of Blackbelt??

IF YOU ANSWERED, "YES" TO BOTH OF THESE QUESTIONS, YOU ARE ONLY ONE PHONE CALL AWAY FROM ACHIEVING THE RANK OF KUNG FU BLACKBELT.

Hi, my name is [name withheld], and I am a 3rd degree Blackbelt Sifu Instructor. I have been a martial arts instructor my entire adult life. I am a decorated combat Vietnam Veteran and I received a purple heart for wounds received in combat. I currently own and operate a professional bodyguard agency for wealthy clients outside Orlando, Florida.

After years of study, I have developed a unique, easy to learn home study program. All you need to perform are the following stances:

1. Crane
2. Leopard
3. Praying Mantis
4. Dragon
5. Serpent

After performing the five animal stances and your fees processed, you will be awarded:

1. A FIRST DEGREE BLACKBELT in Kung Fu.
2. An official BLACKBELT CERTIFICATE with authentic seal with my original signature and the original signatures of two other Blackbelts.
3. A notarized certificate of authenticity.
4. A copy of my 3rd Degree BLACKBELT SIFU INSTRUCTOR CERTIFICATE, signed by a World Champion Grand Master, authorizing me, to certify you.

Simply purchase my course, learn five moves, and verify you can perform these stances by emailing me (ON YOUR HONOR) that you have completed the course and I WILL CERTIFY YOU AS FIRST DEGREE BLACKBELT...

To quote the Shakespearian thespian Sir Keanu Reeves, “Whoa.”

Fortunately, I think I’m ready for the respect that comes with the rank of blackbelt -- I mean, look how far it got Elvis. So here, in front of the entire world, I’m prepared to demonstrate my mastery of the five stances:

1. Crane (“Pay...”)
2. Leopard (“To...”)
3. Praying Mantis (“The...”)
4. Dragon (“Order...”)
5. Serpent (“Of...”)

Whoa, indeed.

TODDLER TOYS

The Three Year Old: Friend or Enemy book that Aimee picked out for us a few days back has been one of the biggest sources of unintended comedy we’ve found in some time. Along with the aforementioned clown-burning advice, we’ve now found a helpful list of toys appropriate for 3-year-olds. And it’s as helpful as you might imagine: I never, ever would have figured out for myself that a ball would be an appropriate toy for a three year old. An astrolabe, maybe, but a ball?

Anyhoo, here’s a fun way to test your parenting skills. Some of the items in the list below are from the book, others are not. See if you can pick them out:

• Balls
  
• Blunt scissors
  
• Cards with holes punched in them
  
• Clowns, scary
  
• Felt pens
  
• Glass, shards, multicolored
  
• Housekeeping toys (carpet sweeper, broom, dust mop)
  
• Hookah
  
• Kegs
  
• Kegs, pony
  
• Musical instruments
  
• Medical syringes, used
  
• Nature specimens, such as fish, turtles, salamanders, rabbits, guinea pigs or plants
  
• Nail guns
  
• Small child-size hammer, large nails, soft wood
  

Okay, okay, so maybe I made this too easy. After all, who would give their child a guinea pig?

WHAT A WAY TO GO

Well, no... actually I feel just fine. But apparently, at the Bizarro ----way down the street, I'm a goner.

Let me explain. Like lots of places with pharmacies, the store has a self-service blood pressure tester. A week or so back, I had a few free minutes to kill (and had just put a container of butter into my cart), so I figured why not give it a shot.

The cuff clamed onto my arm--hard. And then it got tighter. As I listened to some canned recording about heart disease, I felt my forearm throb a little, then go completely numb as the cuff kept clamping down. The recording stopped, but the cuff didn’t let go.

That’s when I realized I might actually be trapped inside the cuff, inside the Bizarro ----way. They’d turn off the lights after closing, leaving me to the rats or whatever else lives in the elaborate tunnel system they clandestinely built a few months back.

There are probably worse places to be locked up, I’m sure, but none came to mind while I was standing there.

After another long moment, the cuff released me, leaving me to ponder my blood pressure.

It was 0/0. In other words, no blood pressure at all. I didn’t go to med school or anything, but I’m pretty sure that’s Not Good.

Some grocery stores might accidentally shortchange you at the cashier. Others might leave the milk on the shelves a day or two too long. Mine declares me legally dead.

SEND IN THE CLOWNS

So what does it say about us as parents when our two-year-old daughter brings us copies of parenting books when we go to the library?

No, really -- this actually happened on her last visit there, and Sally brought home the copy of Your Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy that Aimee dumped on her lap before heading off in search of more George and Martha books for herself.

That's not the scary part. Consider this letter from the book. It isn't signed, but it's safe to assume it's from a Mensa Parent of the Year award winner:

Dear Doctors:

I have a problem of fear in a usually fearless boy who is just three. When he was about a year old we gave him a clown that rolls back and forth, with a very realistic face and eyes that roll. At first he seemed a little afraid of it, but soon he seemed happy enough. In fact, for a time he liked it so much that he carried it around.

A few evenings ago we saw a TV program about a circus. There was some violence in the picture. A knife thrower was trying to kill some other man, and although he wasn't dressed as a clown, there were clowns in the play.

I don't know if that caused it, but the next evening, our son said, "The clown is going to hurt me." His daddy told him no, the clown was just like any other dolly. This morning, the first thing he said was something about the clown.

I thought about burning the clown before his eyes, but perhaps that would be too dramatic. We are going to leave soon for a vacation with his grandma. Would it be best to take the clown along or to leave it at home?

Wow.

To the authors' credit, here's the first sentence of their response:

You seem to have made several mistakes.

They go on to point out that a clown "seems a somewhat dubious choice as a play object for a little boy," that perhaps the choice of television program was a bad one, and that -- and I never would have figured this next thing out -- "burning the clown would indeed be too dramatic. It might lead to a fear of fires as well as a fear of clowns."

Not to toot my own parenting horn or anything, but this was Aimee's reaction to seeing a life-size Ronald McDonald sculpture while stuck during an interminable layover at the Dublin airport:

"Creepy man! Aimee wants to see the creepy man!"

I couldn't be more proud.

A SORT OF HOMECOMING

Well, again it's been a while since I've written here, and once again I'm going to claim travel as an excuse. This time it was for pleasure, a great two-week jaunt to Ireland and France, vignettes from which I'll describe in more detail later.

First, I want to relate the wonderful homecoming we received upon our triumphant return (not the least of which was the in-depth, 10 o'clock news story about -- and this shocked and amazed us after being off the media grid for a fortnight -- the dangers of microwave ovens. Apparently they can get things, like water, "very, very hot," in the words of the reporter. That's the kind of pressure cooker, tell-it-like-it-is journalism you don't get in those wimpy European countries).

But as always, I digress. Returning to an empty house, we naturally had to make a trip to the Bizarro ----way down the street. Sally lost the paper-rock-scissors game, so she was treated to the following odd vignette while standing in line at the checkout late on Saturday night (as a rule, the only time when the clientele manages to outweird the store itself).

"Ow! Ouch!" the guy standing in line behind her suddenly said, flailing wildly for no apparent reason.

"Yikes," Sally replied. "Are you going to make it?"

"AAAH! SPASM!" came the reply.

Sniff... God bless America.

XTREME JUNK MAIL

So when I get home from work, there's this strange box waiting from me, with the name of a certain Xtreme sport utility vehicle I may or may not drive (but don't worry, it's electric).

I'm not expecting anything in the mail like, say, another SUV, so I'm immediately suspicious. What could it possibly be? A random piece of car innard, with a note scotch taped to it reading, "Sorry, but Earl and me forgot to put this in your car at the plant in Smyrna. Just stick it between the solenoid and the chrome muffler ball bearings?"

No, it was worse. I open the box to find a decidedly extreme looking square of cloth, emblazoned with the logo of the electric, earth-friendly vehicle in question. Fortunately, there was a tag attached pointing out that it could be used as a bandana "in emergency situations." The helpful marketing survey that came with it then asked if I was a member of an owners club.

Yeah, I go to the local Y every Monday night and swap tales with my fellow rough-and-tumble club members about my xtreme commuting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Beltway. Sometimes I even exaggerate a bit when I tell the story about the time I almost put the truck in 4WD on an off-ramp during a light drizzle. And best of all, now I have something to wear when I bring the SUV into Jiffy Lube for its xtreme oil change.

OCD AT THE GROCERY

Okay, so it's been a while since I've shared any tales about the Bizarro ----way down the street. Believe it or not, since the not-so-massive construction project a while back, things seemed to improve. At least a little, and at least for a while. We even saw some young turk of a manager wandering around, apparently eager to earn his wings, or golden grocery cart, or whatever, by cleaning up the joint.

But, of course, it could only last so long. The produce has started looking questionable again of late. With the onset of hot weather, the air conditioning doesn’t seem to work (though it cuts on with a shriek that could wake the dead all the way back to East Baltimore). And the aforementioned young turk has since disappeared, idealistic dreams of a career in grocery management dashed like so many rotten cantaloupes prematurely ripened by the broken air conditioner.

Still, hope springs eternal, even in the face of such painful metaphors. Plus, I’ve noticed a few bright-eyed new employees that have yet to be crushed by the ----way machine. Of course, at least one of the new guys looks like he’ll fit into the whole milieu quite nicely.

You see, every time he finishes scanning up a customer's purchases, he produces a filthy paper towel from his little store-issue apron and gives the scanner a good wipedown--a really good wipedown. Then he stares at the dirty paper towel for a long, long moment, as though it contains the mysteries to life itself (or maybe it was his resume, to offer up another incredibly painful metaphor) before stuffing it back in his apron and devoting his full attention to the next customer.

Granted, sometimes those scanners need to be wiped down, especially after someone comes through with a leaky jug of milk or seven. But this guy does it every freaking time, even if the only thing the happy patron has is a box of Chiclets. Which happens a lot, since in the infinite wisdom of store management, he works the freaking express lane.

Just remember -- you can’t spell “grocery/deli” without OCD.

OH, PLEASE.

I know the fact that I'm not this cartoon's biggest fan is well documented, but really:

Tell me he's not just phoning them in these days...

NIGHTMARE ON BOURBON STREET

So I haven't written for a while -- writers write, as the old saying goes, but journalists desperately try to put the whole nasty business off.

I've actually been busy, covering a trade show in New Orleans. And if there's one thing that makes me less homesick for my daily newspaper days, it's having to start one up from scratch and run it for three days. I even had to come up with a crossword puzzle (and finding clues for "bundle strapper" is no walk in the park, believe me).

But as always, I digress. It's 1 a.m. one night in New Orleans, and I'm walking down Bourbon Street after a late dinner with some coworkers, enjoying the view of shirtless guys sitting in pools of their own essence and the ambulances cruising up and down the cross streets, in search of people on which to perform drive-by stomach-pumpings. Y'know, ambience 'n stuff.

Anyway, I look up and notice this woman making a beeline for me. She looks kind of familiar, but I don't really remember her. But boy, did she remember me. She grabs me by both lapels of my jacket and shouts, "I KNOW YOU!" Before I could escape, she continued, "YOU WORK FOR... FOR..." and then mentioned the name of a rival publication. As I was stammering something about her being close, I realized that I interviewed her for about five minutes about five years ago -- more than enough to warrant a tearful Bourbon Street reunion. In the meantime, she's yelling, "YOU NEED TO GET THAT JACKET AND F-ING TIE OFF AND SMILE, BECAUSE YOU'RE ON F-ING BOURBON STREET!" The whole time, she's shaking me violently and I'm starting to wonder how I'm going to gracefully escape. Fortunately, just then her boyfriend, or spouse, or whatever, picked her up like a cord of wood and carried her off in the direction of more wholesome French Quarter fun.

So that was New Orleans.