PR PATRIOTS

First they came for the French fries. Then they came for the French toast. But when they came for French's Mustard, it was time for Right-Thinking Americans everywhere to stand their ground. Or at least for a PR agency to earn its hefty retainer fee:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Recently there has been some confusion as to the origin of French's mustard. For the record, French's would like to say, there is nothing more American than French's mustard.

Born in New York by the R. T. French company, French's Cream Salad Mustard made it's [sic] debut in 1904 at the St. Louis World's Fair along with it's [sic] side kick, the hot dog. Both were an instant success! By 1915 the French's pennant became the brand's official logo, symbolizing French's affiliation with baseball and American celebration.

Throughout the years consumers have professed their lifelong love of America's number one mustard. "For many Americans, French's mustard IS Americana. It's all about baseball, hot dogs, family and fun," says Elliot Penner, president of French's mustard.

The silliness goes on from there, including a mention that last year the company introduced a "new dispensing technology" (take that, Saddam!)

So it's time to rummage through your trash cans and pull out all those perfectly good bottles of mustard you threw away after watching Fox News for three days straight. But don't thank me. Thank Ellyn Small of the Bender Hammerling Group: Patriot. PR Pro. Defender of the Mustard. Mangler of the Possessive Pronoun.

SHOCK-N-AWE(tm)

In troubled times such as these, thank goodness for the inter web net screen machine. As war rages halfway around the world, it's allowing Right-Thinking Americans to thoughtfully debate in real time the ramifications of military action. Serious, impassioned debate that, during past wars, could only have served to torture roommates. Consider these messages, all posted within minutes of today's massive bombing campaign:

First confirmed explosions reported!

Lets hope this is the real thing and not just another teaser!

Yeah, those "teasers" have been a real drag. Kind of like seeing the trailers for the new Matrix movie and knowing we'll have to wait months to hear Keanu say "Whoa" again. Bummer.

Of course, war is often about tragedy. Consider this sad tale:

AAARRRRRRGGGGH!!!!!

I have been watching Fox almost non-stop (save for 20-30 minute 'naps') since Wednesday nite! I even took off work yesterday. So this morning I'm on my way into work, and Rush starts reporting that sirens going off in BaghDAD (thanks for the pronunciation, Shep)! I have THE WORST luck ever!

Worst luck ever, except maybe for the night janitor at the Baghdad Presidential Palace. Then there's this:

Too bad my cat passed away recently. She would give them Shock & Paw.

You go, Mr. Whiskers! Then there's my favorite, reprinted here verbatim:

ROCK & ROLL !

Good to see George Will weighing in.

Not that the actual media is doing much better, mind you. Last night, I was watching pixellated videophone images of tanks racing across the desert on CNN and listening in disbelief to the following on-air discussion between the anchor and his military analyst, one of a zillion of the gruff but lovable retired generals they pull out of mothballs for such affairs:

ANCHOR: General, can you imagine this technology? To be able to see this as it happens?

GENERAL: Well, I'm incredibly proud of our military right now. They're doing an incredible jo--

ANCHOR (interrupts): But this technology! Isn't it amazing! We're looking at tanks! In the desert! Live! On TV! EXCLUSIVELY! It's HISTORY IN THE MAKING!

Nice. That's like a WW2-era newspaper running headlines like this: LATEST GUADALCANAL MOVIETONE TO BE IN LIFELIKE TECHNICOLOR.

DEJA VU

When the bombs started falling in Gulf War I, I was heading back to my on-campus apartment with my roommate. Because a couple of our roommates had dropped out over the summer, these two guys we didn't know were assigned to take their places midway through the year. They were truly scary -- let's put it this way: I'd bet my present-day mortgage that both wound up becoming charter Maxim subscribers. Amazingly, they both had girlfriends, and remarkably well-adjusted ones, too, though every time they brought them over, they invariably wound up berating them about being stupid. Most of the time, though, they'd just scurry off to their room, close -- and lock -- the door, and then chuckle to each other as they set things on fire and listened to industrial rock. A few years later, when Beavis and Butthead first came on MTV, I did a double take-- these guys WERE Beavis and Butthead, only with 300 or so more SAT points to share between them.

Anyway. We were driving back from dinner and heard on the radio that the war had started. When we walked into the apartment, there were our roommates, sitting in front of the TV, drinking beer.

"You're just in time," the blond-haired, Beavis-like one said. "We're toasting the kicking of some towelheaded ass."

So last night, after watching the little 48-hour ultimatum countdown clock expire on MSNBC (pathetic in its own right -- I was joking that Dick Clark would host the final hour), we turned the TV off. An hour or so later, my old roommate called.

"You got a beer in your hand?" he asked.

And so the circle goes unbroken.

Oh, and those two roommates? Their names were Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer.

IF YOU LIKE PINA COLADAS....

The last time we visited the in-laws, I picked up a copy of the newspaper I used to work for and noticed they had added a personals section. But not just any personal section--after all, those ads you see in Washington's City Paper for BWJMFSers into, say, "gimp suits and light voter fraud" wouldn't exactly play in the hinterlands. Instead, they run their own, presumably more right-thinking personals geared specifically at Christians. What that means, I don't know. Maybe you have to wear sandals on the first date. It also apparently means you're dealing with a... um, selective pool of prospective mates. Selective like this:



Leaving the question of what exactly's involved with collecting wolves aside, you might wonder if someone with such... ah, unique tastes would ever find that special someone. Luckily, the photographic proof was on the very same page:



Wow. A cowboy wedding. And with three husbands, even! Wonder which one is the wolf collector.

SPONGY SYNERGY

This will only make sense to those of you who know my four-year-old, but this new product frightens me. Of course, I've brought home scarier toys before.

PS. New Get Your War On, once again.

OUR OWN LIL' TOM RIDGE

Over the past few days, my one-year-old daughter Sara has started playing this cute little game we call Homeland Security. She opens our kitchen pantry and, over the course of a half hour or so, takes out every canned item -- and only the canned items -- and stockpiles them on a toddler-sized chair in our den.

Preparedness can be so darned cute! I just don't have the heart to tell her the threat indicator's moved back to Mellow Yellow.

WHITE FLAKES OF DEATH, PT. 96

Much like the movie Groundhog Day, I'm starting to wonder if I'm trapped in a bad 6-o-clock newscast. You see, there's a hardware store across the street from my office, and for the fourth or fifth time in the past month, TV crews have staked the place out to gauge the Mood of the Populace. And apparently, the Populace is interested in only two things these days: snow shovels and duct tape.

When I walked across the street to the shopping center today, I saw a cameraman and his sound guy sprinting backwards, filming a middle-aged woman, snow shovel in hand and leering like an idiot. Never mind that we had just been through a blizzard ONE WEEK AGO and a less major snowstorm ONE DAY AGO. Maybe some people have simply forgotten to look out their windows for the past 10 days and needed the assistance of their friendly local TV stations to remind them that a $12.99 shovel is the only thing separating them from certain death from above.

(Speaking of which, one of the points I've gleaned from my nightly, blurry-eyed re-readings of the full contents of the Ready.org site is that one subtle, easily missed sign of terror-related trouble is things falling from the sky, which might force one to "improvise." That, or get out a snow shovel.)

But as always, I digress. Don't get me wrong -- I don't have the print reporter's automatic disdain for all things televised. Back in my newspaper days, I was friends with some of the guys from the local TV station (the only people we felt we could safely make fun of as we wrote our groundbreaking exposes about baby pageants and the like). One even risked his fledgling broadcast career by showing up in drag to a Halloween party we threw. But still -- the ground has been covered with snow since basically the end of November here, and there's been other pressing news of late. Does this mean when it finally melts, I'll have to watch camera crews film people rushing to hoard flower bulbs and garden shears?

MASS OR CLASS?

Apparently, neither. Here's the ad that Blogger, in its infinite wisdom, saw fit to put on the top of this humble site earlier today:



Yep, they've got my demographic nailed!

WHAT A COUNTRY!

I didn't watch the Grammies last night (didn't the Doobie Brothers get back together or something?), but earlier in the day I watched an interview on CNN with a Russian country band called -- and if I was a Russian country musician, this is exactly what I'd call my band -- Berring Straits, who had apparently been nominated for something somewhere.

Here's how you can tell I spent way too much of the '80s listening to tragically bad standup comedy: As I was watching these perfectly nice Russian musicans field various softballs from the CNN anchor, the only thing I could think of was one sentence: "In Russia, the Grammies watch YOU!"

Okay, okay. Try coming up with your own wacky post-glastnost Soviet country music humor. Attempting to do so drove the greatest Russian thinker of our time, one Mssr. Yakoff Smirnoff, to madness, so clearly I never stood a chance. Though I got an even bigger, and equally unintentional, laugh out of CNN minutes later when the same anchor, over a bed of dramatic War in Iraq Deux(tm) music, somehow managed to blurt out this sentence with a straight face: "We'll look at how the media in other countries are reporting on the Iraq crisis. Are they reporting the news, or just grandstanding their own countries' political positions?"

In Russia, CNN watches--oh, never mind.

LITERATURE MARCHES ON

I took a break from digging out of the snow and wrapping my bottled water and freedom fries in plastic sheeting duct-taped to the AC vents in our safe room to add another installment to this novel-in-progress I'm, um, "writing" with two friends.

Instead of the proverbial infinite numbers of monkeys, there's just three of us, so it's safe to say we ain't coming up with Shakespeare.

It started out innocently enough, what with the idea of having a little fun with the conventions of Important Fiction. Sure enough, the first few installments had sort of a slightly edgy Garrison Keilor feel to them, and even a few elegant, and possibly even gramatically correct, sentences. But it didn't take long for the sensibility to morph into Carl Hiassen, and then, tragically, Quentin Tarrantino, probably with a little Hunter S. Thompson on a peyote binge thrown in for good measure. When they make the movie, through the magic of computer-generated effects, Christopher Walken will play every role.

But I digress. Assuming your book club hasn't already started following along, read for yourself. (Because I'm too lazy to fix it, the most recent installments are at the top of the page, meaning you'll have to scroll to the bottom to begin.) Not that it'll make more sense that way.

ORANGE SNOW

If there's one thing that will take the D.C. area's collective mind off an Orange Alert, it's a really big snowstorm. And that's what we got this long, and soon to be longer, weekend--something like two feet worth.

And the best thing? Thanks to the Orange Alert, everyone had already stocked up on essentials well before the snowstorm, making it easy for us to grab the requsite supplies at the 11th hour. Of course, I'm not exactly sure what you're supposed to do with duct tape in the snow. Make a really secure snowman?

Sad to say, my wife Sally actually did succumb to the Orange Crush and bought some bottled water. Of course, since this was a whole week after the nation went Code Orange, the only bottled water left at the store was Evian, the stuff the primates capitulards et toujours en quete du fromage swig like it's... well, water. I tell you, what's a Right-Thinking American to do?

Luckily, it's no dilemma at all. If you've seen our safe room, no amount of duct tape -- or mineral water -- would convince anyone of sound mind to spend a day or 12 in there.

ORANGE CRUSH

Here's how to tell, in the Washington, D.C., area, the difference between an orange terror alert and a winter storm warning: Instead of TV crews staking out the grocery stores to film people hoarding milk, they're staking out the hardware stores to film people hoarding duct tape.

There's a hardware store across the street from my office, and this afternoon I saw the telltale microwave mast of a live TV crew jutting from the roof of a van in the parking lot. Sure enough, there was the requsite reporter, pacing the sidewalk in front of the store in hopes of finding someone racing out with reams of plastic sheeting and duct tape in time to kick off the 5 o'clock newscast. I almost walked over, in hopes of being interviewed and getting to say, "It's duct tape. I need it... for taping something." Of course, that would be Wrong during these Trying Times.

I shouldn't joke, considering that I work and live in one of the two most likely target cities. And while telling people to stock up on duct tape is disconcertingly akin to the Reagan-era advice about digging a hole and hiding under a piece of wood should the Rooskies decide to go all Strangelove on us, at least they're saying something now. Last week, when we moved up to orange from Mellow Yellow, this was the verbatim quote from Homeland Security Uberlord Tom Ridge about what people should do. Parse it at your own risk:

"There are so many available sources of information that you could refer to that will give you and your family and your businesses and your schools some comfort to know that in the eventuality, with the possibility that something might happen, you have taken some precautionary measures or taken some steps to minimize the damage or perhaps to avoid it altogether."

In other words, do what you need to do to feel like you've done something. Which, come to think of it, is exactly why people mob the Safeway the instant the season's first snowflake falls.

NOW I'M REALLY CONFUSED

I know spam is old hat, even though The New York Times just saw fit to give it notice. Years ago, when the inter web was still shiny and new, I used to keep an archive of all the ludicrous e-mail I got. Maybe the folks at the Newspaper of Record(tm) just happened to stumble across it last week.

But I digress. It takes a lot for me to pay attention to junk mail now -- the last one that caught my eye was the gramatically (and hopefully anatomically) incorrect one with the subject "I have f---ed by elephant!" Then, in the same day, I got these two beauties:

RV - Warning!

Don't Touch that Dirty Hose

The Cleaner Way of Dealing with a Dirty Job! Make Emptying Your RV Holding Tanks Easy!

• The toughest hose available
• Available in 12' and 20' lengths

One touch electric waste evacuation is finally here!

No more reaching into the dark regions under your RV to drain tanks. Installs minutes – keep your hands clean from now on!

Fine. A little out of my demo, but who doesn't like keeping their hands clean? But that didn't prepare me for this:

Hello,

I am offering $50,000 2003 US dollars for the below equipment:

1. The mind warper generation 4 Dimensional Warp Generator # 52 4350a series wrist watch with z60 or better memory adapter. Or if in stock the AMD Dimensional Warp Generator module containing the GRC79 induction motor, two I80200 warp stabilizers, 256GB of SRAM, and two Analog Devices isolinear modules, This unit also has a menu driven GUI accessible on the front panel XID display. Or perhaps you have some reliable all in 1 units available?

2. The special 23200 or Acme 5X24 series time transducing capacitor with built in temporal displacement.

I need this with complete jumper/auxiliary system

3. An age stopping finger ring if available.

VERY IMPORTANT: All equipment must be original in sealed closed casing of it's time. No old imitation electronic parts or materials are accepted. Please send photos of the above items so I can verify you have them available.

I will offer you $50,000 2003 US funds total for everything with the ring if you can teleport to me in the Boston area within the next 48 earth hours to conduct business in person.

Business in person is greatly preferred! If business cannot be conducted in person, I will send you a deposit only after proof you have them available, and then the remaining funds upon delivery of the time pieces.

Too bad I only have the 4340 series Dimensional Warp Generator. Also, I'm not a big fan of teleporting to Boston. You still have to find a cab back to the airport.

PS. New Get Your War On panels. Worth a look if you've never seen them before.

RESTON FREEZES OVER

Reston(tm), if not hell, must be freezing over, considering I've managed to update the main part of my site twice in as many months. Chalk it up to the kids taking long naps this weekend.

If you're so inclined, you could check out my newest pretentious photos, mostly from Ireland and France. "New," of course, being a relative term, since we took that trip more than a year ago. But they're still new to you!

I've also posted the most recent edition of our holiday newsletter (PDF). Ever the narcissists, we sent this sucker to acquaintances of friends of friends of friends, so I'm guessing it isn't new to anyone reading this. For the morbidly curious, though, it does have a lovely series of pictures of the various wallpaper patterns in our house. Be prepared to be underwhelmed.

Speaking of underwhelming, I've also updated my resume. Beats working, right? (Prospective -- and current -- employers, please disregard the previous sentence. In fact, disregard everything you see here...)

WE'RE NUMBER 17!

At long last, I've learned why my heavy-handed, take-no-prisoners style of investigative journalism ("Chalk Dust: Going Up in Smoke?") hasn't exactly ignited my career. It's hard breaking the doors wide open when you work in the country ranked 17th in terms of press freedom.

Interestingly, the U.S.'s relatively poor ranking has nothing to do with the MSNBCNNAOLTIMEWARNERFOXDISNEYVH1-style consolidation of late. It has more to do with the growing number of cranky judges who, upon hearing a journalist refusing to divulge their sources, carefully consider the storied tradition of journalistic impartiality and the constitutional significance of the First Amendement -- and then throw them in jail. This is truly tragic, particularly since it hasn't happened to Geraldo or Ashleigh Banfield -- yet.

Meanwhile, the brutally oppresive regime to our north, Canada, ranked fifth in press freedom, while Finland, of all places, ranked first. Small wonder -- when I was writing about bundle-strappers and newsprint butt rolls at my last gig, I lived in constant fear of being scooped by those pesky Fins. Now I know why.

EVEN MORE SHAMEFUL THAN BRIAN DUNKLEMAN

Do we watch too much intellectually stimulating reality television at our home?

Let's put it this way: Our four-year-old now runs around the house, singing and then shouting, "I'm going to Hollywood? Thanks!"

Forgive us.

HIGHER EDUCATION

Good news. After years of fumbling around the Internet, I've finally received some instruction on how to do it correctly.

My wife the teacher recently took a distance-learning class on using the Internet in the classroom. Granted, that's a good thing, and granted, there are lots of teachers out there who need a little help understanding the technology. But still -- this was just sad. A section in the workbook dealt exclusively with using the browser's "back" button. (And no, the next section wasn't entitled "The Forward Button -- The Back Button's Sneaky Pal." But it could have been.) And then there were the videotapes -- these scary, staged workshops where wide-eyed teachers sit in fear as some California-type drones on about the marvels of Amazon.com.

Did I mention this is a master's-level course?

But as always, I digress. I found the assumption that teachers were all a bunch of ignorant technophobes a bit insulting, and I'm not even a teacher. And though I'm not taking the aforementioned class, I thought I'd write the required summary essay as if I was the person it was obviously intended for:

My Paper

Hey, what's up. Here's my paper. Or report. Or whatever. I sure enjoyed learning about this interweb net screen thing. I saw it on that show with the nerdy kid once, and I thought to myself, "Wow! That Interweb net screen thing can sure do a lot of things. I'll bet my students could use it to write really good term papers on my favorite science project: Spitting in cups."

So, I watched the tapes with my cats, Mr. Whiskers and Fluffums. They (the tapes, not the cats) were good. (It's hairball season.) They (again, the tapes, not the cats) were in color, unlike those crappy TV shows I had to watch growing up. Also, I didn't have to fiddle with the tracking on my 1979 Megtron(tm) Betamax very much. Also, there was a good "rapport" between the instructors and their students, who were--and this part just about made me bust a gut--also teachers. Teachers teaching teachers! I haven't laughed that hard since the last time Billy got himself in hot water in the Family Circus. I don't know, I think I might have had a crush on that one teacher with the scraggly beard and graying hair. He reminded me of someone I met at the militia outing in Idaho last summer. Or maybe I'm thinking of the swarthy, yet somewhat darkly exotic, one I wouldn't want to sit next to on an airplane, no matter what our great, God-fearing president tells us about not hating those folk who will burn in hell. Someday.

Anyway. I learned that the Inter Web screen has lots of interesting things for teachers. Like www.spankthenaughtyschoolboywithahickoryswitch.com. Also, I learned that that "AOL" thing they keep advertising during ER might have something to do with the Inter Web, but I don't know. Maybe I'll learn more when I get my Ph.D. in teaching and small motor repair. Do you have any videotapes for that?

In conclusion, I learned a lot. So Please give me a Master's Degree.

Sincerely,

Edna J. Thrackapple
Edumacator

PS. I forgot to rewind one of the videotapes before sending this in. You aren't going to dock me a letter grade, are you?

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'll just wait for my honorary degree to come in the mail.

AMERICAN MADE

Don't worry, this isn't about to become one of the thousands of blogs with the same links to the same warmed-over stories about politics, etc. But this one is simply too good to pass up. From a Reuters article about a Bush speech in St. Louis:

Bush delivered his message in front of a fake wall of cardboard boxes stamped "Made in U.S.A." The real boxes, set to Bush's side, had their "Made in China" stamps blotted out.

The White House said it did not intend to cover up the markings on the boxes. "It appears it was an overzealous volunteer. We'll take it up with the appropriate channels," White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said.

Our country's new motto? America: Made in China(tm).

THIS JUST IN: IRONY ISN'T DEAD

Just in case the jive-talking kangaroo movie that's currently at the top of the box-office charts isn't exactly your cup of tea, here's an example of some more hearty intellectual fare expected to hit the silver screen soon.

Never mind that the same august playwright -- it seems unfair to sully his artistic vision with the derogatory term "screenwriter" -- once planned a sequel to a well-received series of boxing movies in which he would box the devil himself; now he's planning to fight the terrestial Evil One(tm). But here's the funny part: In the last Rambo movie, didn't Sly fight with the Afghan muhjadeen against the evil Ruskies?

Who knows, maybe the movie will be a construct for a serious exploration of the complex geopolitical challenges of shifting ideologies. Or maybe it'll have a bunch of cool explosions. Either way, it brings new meaning to the dialogue, "Do we get to win this time?"

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...