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Diogenes may have found his man

Craiglist owner says he won’t sell.

"Who needs money? We don’t care."


- 9/28/2006 8:11:20 PM | link


Rangers U9/U10



1-1 so far. Of course, it’s Rec Plus (training ground for the dreaded Select league), so the teams are a lot harder than the regular Rec teams.

William’s team is 3-0. William has turned into the soccer superstar. He routinely scores 3-4 goals a game and his team has been beating the pants off every team so far.


- 9/25/2006 11:09:42 PM | link


O'Harrible

Don’t go through O’Hare. Especially when you’re in Milwaukee. Also, when someone from an airline tries to put you on a bus anywhere, don’t let them.

Finally, avoid Serbians when you’re drinking.

These are the universal verities.


- 9/24/2006 2:39:17 PM | link


My fallacy is bigger than your fallacy

Fairly comprehensive list of logical fallacies.


- 9/18/2006 9:14:06 PM | link


Homework sux

Can I get an amen?

Seriously. If you have kids in elementary school right now, you’re with me on this, I know it. If not, just you wait. It is TOTALLY FREAKING RIDICULOUS AND OUT OF CONTROL. Last year, Thomas had what amounted to an hour of homework every night. This was in addition to the avalanche of incomprehensible paperwork that gets sent home by the teachers, various school groups, the principal, the PTA, etc, etc, ad nauseum. Just tonight, William broke into tears when he realized he had more homework than he originally thought. This is after spending nearly seven hours in school.

I know this sounds silly, but trust me. Elementary schools must be stopped. This is a movement I can get behind.


- 9/14/2006 9:42:57 PM | link


Denuded of innards

A turn-away-now savaging of De Palma’s Black Dahlia. I was looking forward to him knocking this one out of the ballpark, too. And from a James Ellroy novel no less. Consider that in the following paragraph alone, the reviewer manages to singlehandedly backhand swat four Hollywood favorites in a way that will probably mark them all for life...

And since this is another hopeless attempt by Swank to embody sultry femininity, everything she touches turns to camp. Hartnett isn’t in the same picture anyway; he’s like a kid waking up in the middle of a movie with no idea what’s going on. Johansson was bred for long white gowns and cigarette holders, but her putative Madame Tussauds counterpart could have given this performance. In context, the solidly second-rate Aaron Eckhart looms large. And dwarfing all is Fiona Shaw as Swank’s dipsomaniacal mother—a loopy gargoyle.


- 9/14/2006 9:35:42 PM | link


9/11 five years on

I don’t really have anything I’m going to do differently tomorrow. I’m probably too lazy to even watch that stupid movie that’s getting all the press (which one? you might be asking and I’d have to probably shrug). I’ll get up and take the kids to school and go to work, etc.

I did, however, want to link to this article from two years ago which does a fairly good job of summarizing and reviewing the 9/11 Commission Report (that thing we all talk about, along with the Patriot Act, but probably didn’t read). It’s one of the few non-partisan (at least it seems non-partisan) and honest things I’ve read about the stuff before and after that day.

I’m obviously not really contributing much one way or the other towards fighting terrorism or remembering the dead or even understanding what the hell I’m supposed to feel or think about any of it. I feel like maybe I should do something, but I don’t really know what that would be. I did start this blog shortly after 9/11. I’m not sure I ever even consciously realized that until just now. I’m sure some wise cracker is thinking "And we sure as shit aren’t better off for that." I will say that most of what I hear on the subject of 9/11 (and Bush and Iraq and Islamo-fascism and blah fucking blah blah blah) sounds false or predictable or cheap or used. I’ll also say that I don’t like the way things are going, but I whenever I hear somebody criticizing the way things are going, I don’t think they make much sense either. They sound false and predictable and cheap and used. Or goofy and completely out of it.

Here’s to something other than that. And here’s to us finding it soon.


- 9/10/2006 6:28:54 PM | link


Double nought

Finally, a James Bond film that looks halfway decent with a Bond who is closer to the one in the books.


- 9/10/2006 5:52:54 PM | link


It makes perfect sense if you don't think about it

I was dropping William off for school the other day and he asked me if Steve was a part of the family now. This past week, Shirley and Steve travelled to New Mexico and exchanged vows at Santuario de Chimayo.

“Uh, yes, he’s part of the family now.”

“Are he and grandma married?”

“Yes, err, sort of, well, uhm, yes, it’s just like they are married. They exchanged vows.”

“What’s a vow?”

“It’s like a promise.”

“So I won’t be able to sleep in grandma’s bed anymore?”

This is as he is getting out of the car with the teachers standing on the curb waving me on like the Nazis that they are and the cars behind edging up to my bumper, the drivers with hands hovering over their horns.

“No, I think maybe you’ll need to sleep upstairs now. Or on the air mattress.”

And he slips for a moment, catching himself too late. “Are they grandma and grandpa?”

These are the moments that try me as a parent and remind me of how much I don’t know about what my kids don’t know or, rather, how they apprehend the world. It’s as if things are amazingly simple and incomprehensible.

He shakes off the question before I can answer and exits the car. I roll down the window and shout out to him.

“They’re grandma and Steve!!!” I yell out.

He turns and smiles at me, a smile that I haven’t seen before or haven’t noticed. It’s a smile he shares with Thomas, but he’s fashioned it into his own. I can only describe it as being sympathetic of our shared, human plight. A knowing, shared smile, as if to say both "I know" and "It will be better than OK" at the same time. As I drove off, past the wild gesticulations of the curb monitors and the parents shepharding their kids into the school, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw William bounding up the sidewalk and disappearing behind the black gate, more ready for the day than I perhaps will ever be.


- 9/9/2006 10:50:12 AM | link


This is water

A heartening commencement speech by David Foster Wallace. It’s old in .DOTCOM YEARS, but it reminds me of my love of commencement speeches in general and stirring speeches in particular. Much like sermons, I guess, they tend to rouse the soul from slumber.

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.


- 9/4/2006 6:33:00 PM | link


Crikey

The Crocodile Hunter is dead at age 44. A stingray’s barb punctured a hole in his heart while he was filming a documentary which was going to demystify stingrays.


- 9/4/2006 7:26:12 AM | link




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