I Couldn't Do Any Worse

Now that the upfronts* are finished and the major networks have announced their fall schedules, we can see that Newton Minow was right and TV is indeed a vast wasteland. Still. It's pretty much the same shit, different year. Don't get me wrong, all I really care about is that Glee is back - for real - and that they haven't cancelled COPS. I love COPS. I want to be on COPS. Shirtless, of course. Possibly bleeding. And they need to chase me on foot.
   Anyhoo... as I was reading the list of shows I saw cop shows, procedurals (think CSI, Law and Order, NCIS), lots of reality shows, lots and lots of supernatural shows most of which are also cop shows or procedurals. It's like the network execs of all the networks got to use the same five flashcards to try to create a show. 'You got card 2 and card 4. That's 'cop show' and 'talks to dead people.'' It's getting really, really thin creatively out there.
   Which got me thinkin'. Seeing as how the networks aren't really trying at all, I could put a minimum of effort into it and come up with much better shows. But I can't be totally off-the-wall creative about it, that would give me an unfair advantage. TV is bound by advertising dollars, after all, they have to pander while pretending not to. So I limited myself to the following premises: misfits, cops, supernatural, exotic places, wacky singles, boring married couples, procedurals, 1960's, singing, alternate universes. Here goes:

Faerie Dust A narcotics detective comes across evidence that the worst new drug on the street doesn't come from some chemist's lab, it's coming from The Otherworld. (S)He combats the prejudices of the entire police department while trying to prove those suspicions correct. (cops, procedural, supernatural)

Ebony and Ivory A pair mismatched, good-for-nothing small time con-men go on the run for their lives in the Rat Pack's Vegas. They discover a talent for singing and performing and decide to live life hiding in plain sight as headlining Vegas performers. (misfits, wacky singles, singing, 1960's)

Goon Squad Unknown to most of the rest of us, there are police officers whose job is to respond to the problems of demons, vampires, ghouls, and werewolves living among us as regular citizens. When the Munsters and Addams Family can't get along as neighbors, they call the Good Squad. (COPS, supernatural, procedural)

Criss Cross A staid married man has an accident and discovers that he can switch places with himself in another universe. On the other side he leads a crazy, dangerous, thrill-a-minute existence as a high-tech spy/assassin. He thinks he's keeping a secret until he sees his wife - his real wife - on the other side as well, living out her fantasies in her own double's life. But what's happening back in their real lives while they're in this one? (boring married couples, alternate universes, exotic places)

See? About ten minutes worth of typing and I have log lines that are just as awful as actual shows that have taken years to develop into the steaming piles of TV they are. Come on, somebody give me a challenge, I dare you.



* that's a term of art for the TV industry, when smarmy ad men try to buy the cheapest ad time they can from greedy TV execs. It's a love-fest.

Tales From My Past - I Voted For Gary

Back in 2003 I had been living in California for a little over a year, just settling in. In November of 2002 I voted in my first big California general election in which Gray Davis was re-elected Governor. Then in February 2003 someone started a recall effort. Some states allow the recall of elected officials, kind of a check and balance to the power wielded by those representatives.
   But, remember, we'd just had an election in November, three months before. Just. Had. An. Election. The recall was sour grapes maneuvering by Gray Davis's high-ranking political opponents, not a grass-roots effort by concerned citizens, which is what a recall is for. These bastards were getting a recall because they lost the election, not because of any particular reason (though they came up with many). A total abuse of the recall/referendum process.
   And they got their recall.
   Since it was in California the entire thing became a circus, and I mean that literally. Clowns came out of the shadows and trapeze artists amazed the crowd and the ringmaster orchestrated everything. I'm positive there was a calliope somewhere to accompany all the zany action.
   I was astounded, astonished, and dismayed. All this crass maneuvering and media manipulation shouldn't have surprised me but it did. Caught me with my pants down, metaphorically speaking. And then when the stripper girl and Ariana Huffington and Gary Coleman actually filed papers to get on the ballot, that's when I knew we'd officially gone too far.
   The recall election rolled around in November, far too late for my tastes but they didn't ask my opinion. In order to save money - too late - the recall and special election were on the same ballot. You first voted for or against the recall, then, in the event the recall measure passed, you voted for your candidate of choice. Yeah, crazy, but that's the way they do it in Cali.
   I figured that since they were making a complete joke of the electoral process I might as well do my part to make it a good one. So I voted against the recall - sour grapes doesn't mean you get to void the results of a legal election - and then I voted for Gary Coleman for Governor. He got about 10,000 votes too, not too shabby.
   I actually wanted Sir Gary to be in the Governor's mansion, it would have been a real-life version of Diff'rent Strokes. And even though he was more than a little wacky, I don't think he could have done that much worse a job than the Governator ended up doing.
   And, oddly enough, I can't think of any other semi-celebrity I would rather have had in public office. 'What 'choo talkin' 'bout, State Assembly?'

This Ain't No Disco

I've been back in Texas for two months now, and I'm getting back into the groove. People drive too slowly here and seem unconcerned with getting the hell out of my way, and I lose my truck in the vast acreage of the grocery store parking lot, and I still haven't won the Texas Lotto even though I was certain my luck would turn the moment I crossed the State line. But it's getting better.
   Except for one thing. Convenience stores.
   Now, keep in mind that back in Pasadena I used to buy cigarettes for a homeless man at my regular convenience store, so it's not like the places were spotless models of propriety and decency. But, jeez, compared to the convenience stores around my house my old Chevron was a sultan's palace. Just a sampling of what I've seen lately:

   No shirt and dirty. You would expect no shirt and clean, like the guy had just gotten out of the pool and raced to the store to buy beef stew and diapers. But swim trunks, flip-flops, and a grimy yet painfully-sunburned torso? Couple that with a three-day beard and red, rheumy eyes and I'm thinking a drunk who just came to after passing out in a dry creek bed.
   Completely unflattering low-rise jeans. Or blue denim sausage casings, I'm not sure what to call them. Really, ladies, if the pants are too small for your eight-year-old daughter to wear comfortably, what chance does your 5'3" 170 pound ass have? I don't want to see plumber crack and I don't want to see yours either. Muffin top? Try fallen souffle.
   Toothless people. Maybe I need to frequent a different set of stores, but I've seen waaaay too many jack-o-lantern smiles.
   Posers driving trucks too big for them to handle. Okay, I drive a Tahoe myself, but I haul stuff in it all the time and I can parallel park it on a downtown LA street, so I got nothing to be ashamed of. I'm talking about the pudgy office worker driving an F-250 - designed to pull horse trailers - which he can't maneuver around the gas pumps, let alone park effectively. And then the douchebag leaves his behemoth idling at an angle blocking people in while he dashes in to buy an 18-pack of Miller Lite. Gotta have something to keep you company while you masturbate to 'So You Think You Can Dance,' I suppose.
   Buyers of convenience store hot dogs. I had never seen anyone buy a convenience store hot dog, either in Texas or California before April of this year. But now, two months back and I've seen at least ten people eagerly grabbing a greasy weenie from the rollers. The problem is not that you don't know where the Valero hot dog has been, the problem is you know EXACTLY where it's been. And don't get me started on the free cheese and chili...
   People actually using the Red Box. In this era of Netflix, both delivery and streaming, why do people bother going anywhere to rent a DVD? More to the point, why do they line up outside a convenience store to use a DVD vending machine? Blockbuster is still open, you know. You could rent a video while in air conditioned comfort.
   Much, much older workers behind the register than I'm comfortable with. Time was, back when the world was young and the Internet was mostly dial-up, convenience store workers were younger than me. For the most part. And I was none too old myself. Now, however, it's like an AARP convention behind the counter. I know the reason why, even retired people are going to need jobs in the future, given the way the Baby Boomers have completely screwed up the economy, but that doesn't mean I'm comfortable with the trend. Gray old men should be shaking a fist and telling me to get off their lawns, not asking me if I want a bag for my purchases.
   Torn American flags. You're proud to be a citizen, I get it, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. But if you're going to fly the flag 24/7 - which you absolutely should never do in the first place - at least make sure it's not tattered and torn. The Shell station is not Fort McHenry, no matter how much you wish it were.

Which Way Is 'Go'?

I've been pondering imponderables again. Bear with me.
   I've heard or read a few things in the past day that forced me to think about the very, very large and the very, very small. I have some questions about this, and maybe if I were a particle physicist I'd already know the answer, but I'm not so here goes.

Electrons are round.
   Scientists have deduced that electrons are not only round, they're really, really round. The analogy I heard was that if you blow up an electron to be the diameter of the solar system (Neptune's orbit, I presume, since Pluto is no longer a planet) they measured the roundness of the electron to within the width of a human hair. On that scale. Quite an accomplishment. Unless...
   I learned in high school physics that if you measure electrons one way they behave as particles, if you measure them another way they behave as waves. Which means, if you think about that for a moment, an electron is neither a wave nor a particle but a third thing besides. The electon conforms to the expectations and assumptions of the experiment you perform on it.
   So if you measure the electron looking for how round it is, and you find that it's way, way, way rounder than you could ever have imagined, shouldn't you re-examine your assumptions? Some paranoid mental patients are 100% positive the CIA is following them, you can't convince them otherwise, because that's what they're looking for. Everything they see just reaffirms their assumption that men in black are after them. I'm thinking it's the same for this round-electron experiment. Like a no-money-down mortgage, if it seems too good to be true then it probably is.

Next topic: the most distant object in the universe
   Scientists (different ones) also discovered a gamma-ray burst that is about 13 billion light years distant. If the universe is 13.7 billion years old - which scientists say it is - then that makes this the most distant object yet observed.
   But what does that mean?
   If we're looking far into space we're also looking back into time. And yet, we see the same distance no matter which way we look. We're 13 billion light years from stuff as we look North, and the same 13 billion light years from stuff as we look South. Does that mean those two things are 26 billion light years apart? Expansion of spacetime itself is not limited to Einstein's limit on the speed of light, since it's not light that's going so fast, it's the fabric of the universe itself, no law against that. But it does leave us with a perplexing conundrum.
   Where's the center?
   If there was a Big Bang, and I have no doubt there was, it had to have started somewhere specific. And don't cop out by telling me the Big Bang created spacetime, I get that, but spacetime expansion has to be coming from somewhere once it exists. An air bubble I blow underwater in a swimming pool didn't exist before I opened my mouth, but it exists after and has to go somewhere and do something in relation to me. Same thing with the universe.
   And you don't get another cop out by resorting to infinity. The problem with infinity is that it's infinite, and if our universe is infinite then that sort of precludes a Big Bang, doesn't it?

... all right, that's it for now. Thanks for your patience.

Deconstruction

So it didn't happen. No earthquakes, no disasters, no one assumed bodily into Heaven. No Rapture, other than Blondie's 1981 hit featuring Fab Five Freddy* and white-girl-awkward rapping.
   The media phenomenon is over, and I fully expect the story to fade into nothingness except on NPR. The chances anyone is going to re-interview those hoping to be taken away are very small. Follow-up is woefully lacking in American media these days.
   But I think there are some really big questions that remain. And I don't mean 'how hard should we laugh at these poor, misguided fools.' The answer to that is 'very hard indeed.' Can't let 'em get away with it, not for a minute.
   I'm wondering what is missing or malfunctioning in our society that a sizable minority of people would be so disaffected and lonely that they would not only expect to be taken into Heaven, but that they would long for it?
   To quote Willy Loman** 'attention must be paid.'
   I've had crappy jobs, crappy co-workers, crappy bosses, been laid off, fired, lost a parent, lost love, and generally lived life less fortunate than a few but far more fortunate that most. I've never once had things so bad that I prayed for God to spirit me away. That seems one step removed from suicide to me.
   So why have so many people been so adamant for so long that yesterday was the day they were going to leave the rest of us behind? What is it about their lives here and now that is so lacking they want to abandon everything in such a dramatic yet unlikely way?
   Yes, they're crackpots. Yes, they're weak-willed and gullible. They're also the tail of the bell curve of common opinion, the thought leaders, if you want to label them with corporate-speak. They may be nuts, but nuts are often the leading indicators of public sentiment. Take John Brown, the 19th Century abolitionist. By all accounts a true radical and undeniably tetched, he led an armed rebellion in 1959 intending to do away with slavery once and for all. Yes, he was nuts, but he was also a good two years ahead of the rest of the country. If he had just waited twenty-four months or so for the Civil War to have started, he would today be remembered as a Northern patriot instead of as a possible traitor.
   Same thing with these nutso Rapture people. We don't have to listen to their message, but we really need to listen to their mood. They're done with dead-end jobs and corporate greed and incompetent government and everything that's tainted life at the beginning of the 21st Century, but they're not the only ones. They're far from alone. There's a disaffected tide rising in America, and it's only a matter of time before it rolls into a tsunami of revolt. Don't think it can't happen, because it's happened often in America and it will absolutely happen again, sooner rather than later. And all it would take to ease the tension is for those in charge to stop, collaborate and listen for once.
   Attention must be paid.



* remember him? You should, you culture-less heathens. He's not the guy in the white tux either.

** how 'bout him? Remember him? 'Death of a Salesman' by Arthur Miller? And, no, Arthur Miller is not Tennessee Williams. For one thing, Arthur Miller had an affair with Marilyn Monroe, while Tennessee Williams would likely have traded corseting tips with her, if you know what I mean...

I Feel Fine...

It's the end of the world as we know it. Evidently. Tomorrow, the 21st of May, 2011, is the last day on Earth for some faithful, while the rest of us will have to endure months of disasters and agony before the real end in October. Or Rocktober as I've been insisting people call it for years now. For some reason people have latched onto this 'last days' scenario and the media has gotten in on the act, giving far too much consideration and air time to crackpots who would otherwise be roundly ignored.
   So what are the crackpots going to do on Sunday?
   I mean, if these poor, misguided souls turn out to be right and they are assumed into Heaven, then I guess the rest of us have some thinkin' to do. But let's assume those who insist they'll be taken up to eat pork ribs with Jesus do what we all know they're going to and stay right where they are. What then?
   I'm pretty sure they haven't planned for anything on the 22nd - why would they? - so how are they going to face all the people they've been taunting for weeks now. Like, say, the paperboy (are there still paperboys?), who is going to want to finally be paid. Or the guy at the gas station who sells them Lotto tickets. Or their pastor, who led them to this conclusion. Or the media who absolutely must close the loop on this and take these people to task for not being raptured when they said they would.
   What exactly do you say when your apocalyptic predictions don't pan out?
   'Sorry' doesn't seem to cut it, and doing something stupid like those Heaven's Gate weirdos* is far too extreme. There has to be something halfway between a mumbled apology and mass suicide for these people to try to redeem themselves.
   I'm thinking they need to cook us all a nice apology ham. That would go a long way towards easing any hard feelings I might have regarding their smug, misguided superiority. I could go for some brownies too, I like 'em more cakey than fudgy. My truck could use a wash, I'd settle for that. But when Sunday rolls around and these people are still here with the rest of us unwashed heathens we can't let them skate by doing nothing, because they'll just start up all over again next time. Wither them with sarcasm and stern judgement so they'll think twice when they hear someone give an exact date for the end of the world. Losers.


* true story, the crazy leader of that cult graduated from my college alma mater. I waited to see if he would be in the 'deaths' section of the alumni magazine but he never made it.

The Kwisatz Haderach?*

You ever have one of those deja-vu circumstances where you're in a situation and you realize you dreamed precisely that moment? The dream could have been the day before, it could have been years before, but you forgot it completely until just then, when it all came flooding back.
   I used to have those all the time. And I do mean all the time, twice a week, almost every day sometimes. I'd hear something or see something or even smell something and I'd realize that I dreamed what was happening, saw it in my mind's eye just like it played out in front of me. And then I got older and the deja vu moments came less and less. For a while there, a couple of years I suppose, I don't recall having one of those moments. I even wondered why they stopped, like maybe I got too old or lost my innocence or got my third eye poked out or something.
   Well, no worries, they've started again. I'm going back to my old schedule, once or twice a week now. I haven't taken the waters of life*, nor undergone the spice agony*, nor even organized an army of deadly desert nomads*, but I'm fairly certain I could if I wanted to.
   The analytical side of me says I'm not remembering a dream, that my mind is putting together familiar input and recalling something similar that actually happened before, but when the deja-vu involves people I only met that day it's really difficult for me to reason my way out of it not being a remembered dream. I just know it's like having an old friend around after he's been away for a while.
   I wish this was something I could control, it would be good to discover the winning lotto numbers the day before, but I'll take what I can get I suppose. See you in my dreams.


* it's a Dune reference, look it up. The good Dune by Frank Herbert, not the embarrassing abominations perpetrated by his hack son Brian

Sugar

I love sugar.
   And I TOTALLY mean in the 'I love it so much I want to marry it' kind of way. I want to go to sleep beside sugar, I want to wake up next to sugar, I want to have sugar peck my cheek when I leave for the day and give me a hug and a soda bottle full of itself when I get home from work. I want to dive into sugar like Scrooge McDuck dives into his money bin. I want to become my own country so I can issue 'sugar certificates' like when US currency was backed by gold certificates. I want to grow sugar cane and sugar beets in my back yard so I can have something to gnaw on when I cut the grass.
   I think you get the idea.
   But sugar doesn't love me. Rather, high-fructose corn syrup doesn't love me. If it's something you need to cut with a scissors in chemistry lab* then it's not really something you need to be putting in your body. Nothing good will ever come of high fructose corn syrup because nothing good has so far. It's alarmingly common to see a line of kids who all look like Augustus Gloop, adults are dropping from diabetes, and there's corn syrup in everything that isn't pulled straight out of the ground and put on your plate. Seriously.
   And aspartame isn't any better.
   Those who've known me for longer than... say... three months know I'm constantly falling off the sugar/soda wagon. Give it up, go right back, give it up, go right back. I have a friend who's been 'quitting' smoking for twelve years and I give him crap about it all the time, but I'm no better. I'm like a heroin addict but without all the neato and unhygienic hardware. We do both have spoons, I suppose.
   So I need to commit, I need to find some reason to give it up for good. The only way food producers are going to stop feeding us poison is if we stop buying poison. And I can't wait for others to take the first step for me.
   Here goes nothing...


* that's how they do it in college, ooze out a length of high fructose corn syrup and cut a nubbin free

Smarty-pants Phone

I moved. I got an iPhone. I discovered that I got crappy reception at my house. I used my phone sparingly and only when it was connected to my in-house network. My smart phone sat idle for the better part of five weeks.
   Then I got a job. A job that takes me out of the house.
   I now have reception. And 3G connection. And I can do stuff with my iPhone. Like text effectively, action which my sister is all over. Me, not so much. I can download apps from the App Store. Wheee! If I use the compass I can tell which way I'm facing, which was always a question for me before I got this phone. Now I can tell the hobos who approach me which way North is. I can calculate a tip using the calculator, or just use my brain like I did when I was a waiter. I did use GarageBand to create a few ring tones, but there are tons of other things my iPhone can do that I'm completely ignorant of. And, perhaps, willfully so.
   Except...
   I discovered that I can take notes on my iPhone. Type things into a notepad and preserve them forever. So when I'm sitting in a restaurant observing the local fauna it seems like I'm texting, but I'm really jotting a few quick observations to myself. It's like when I use my digital recorder to preserve my pearls of wisdom, except not quite so 'douche-y' as a friend of mine put it. Although I can't say I think obliviously texting in a restaurant is any less douchebaggery than talking into a digital recorder.*

So here are a few notes I've taken in the last few days since I discovered this feature.

From Jim's - a chain of diners in San Antonio:
   'Cooked fish smells almost as bad as raw fish.'
   '300 lb. man makes a dramatic point of ordering wheat toast with his chicken-fried steak breakfast. It's not going to help.'
   'Hefty waitress constantly snacking. Wonder if she helped herself to some of my hash browns?'

From the gas station:
   'Why do bald guys with tattoos always look like they're going in to rob the place?'
   'Who rents videos from a Red Box outside a Valero? People who wear terrycloth shorts in public.'
   'Terrycloth shorts should never be worn in public.'

From the Wal-Mart parking lot:
   'Terrycloth shorts should never be worn in public.'
   'Is everyone here morbidly obese?'
   'Is anyone else looking at me and asking 'is everyone here morbidly obese?''
   'Have they stopped making toilet paper? Everyone has a twenty-four pack.'
   'What percentage of Wal-Mart workers smoke versus the average population?'

And so it goes...


* or iPhone, since it will also do digial voice recording. Steve Jobs' gnomes are nothing if not thorough.

Danger Mouse

I know it's cliche, but little boys and little girls are so different.
   My nephew, who is going to be three, is all boy and proud of it. The other day when I went to my sister's house he was watching a movie and engrossed in it. I said hello and he couldn't be bothered to respond. After some coaxing from his father he came over and gave me a hug. So I picked him up and pushed him towards the ceiling fan, telling him I was going to bonk him on the head.
   Now, at this point the game would have been over with my nieces, his sisters. At his age they like being picked up and cuddled and tickled, but rough housing was right out. My nephew loves it. He tossed his head back and looked up into the fan, even as I got close. He laughed.
   Ten minutes later he came back to me and said 'put me into the fan again.' So I did. And he laughed all over again. He likes to jump and roll over and be hung upside-down by his ankles, and he loves sword fighting, even with things that aren't foam swords.
   He's a little danger mouse, and I've told my sister that he's going to be the youngest of her children to break a bone. I'm not trying to jinx him, I'm just trying to prepare my sister for the inevitable. The Girls didn't need as much monitoring to make sure they didn't kill themselves, and it's not that they had more common sense than The Boy does. He has just as much common sense as they do, it's just that he ignores it.
   I think he's going to be a James-Bond type spy when he grows up. Or an Evel-Knievel type daredevil. Maybe both.

Buzzards

Okay, technically turkey vultures, but we called them buzzards growing up. They'd circle the thermals out in the country, waiting for something to die. Since they're vultures they're carrion birds which means they eat dead animals, but you knew that. In the mornings in West Texas, where they have to roost on the ground, you can see them standing on fence posts with their wings outstretched to dry so they can begin the day's scavenging. They're big too, like two or three feet tall. And stink... whoo boy. They're all over the countryside around Texas.
   And now, evidently, they're operating well within the San Antonio city limits.
   Time was you knew you were in the country when you started seeing buzzards. Last week I saw two of them perched on a lamp post near my house, and just today I saw two perched on a lamp post near my mother's house. Two different sets of buzzards, lurking in suburban neighborhoods.
   Unless they were the same two buzzards both times, stalking me as they wait for me to keel over from the heat...
   Ignoring my paranoid conspiracies, I don't think having turkey vultures in town is a good thing. Aside from them being terribly ugly and not at all in keeping with the non-Gothic architecture, vultures are country birds, they don't belong on lamp posts. And yet, there they are, like Beaky Buzzard* in Death Valley.
   Why?
   What has changed to bring turkey vultures into the city? And I don't mean on the fringes, I mean smack dab in the middle, with miles to go in any direction before they find what used to be their natural habitat.
   Kind of scary, if you think about it. I don't mean in my paranoid 'are the buzzards following me?' kind of way, I mean in the 'why did a species of wild animal change its habits so drastically?' way.
   Besides, they creep me out, hanging around like my street is some kind of Old West Boot Hill. They need to go find a dead armadillo or something and leave me the hell alone.


*reference courtesy of the Warner Bros Archive of Cartoons Kids Don't Watch Nowadays

Can't Help Myself

Hi, uh, is this the...
   We're all friends. Have a seat.
No, I'm just wondering if this is where the people who... uh...
   You're in the right place. It's safe here. You can say anything, no one will judge you.
Really? Because I got a problem. A big problem.
   We all do. The same problem. Go ahead, you know how this works.
Okay. Um... hi. My name is Don. And I read spam e-mail.
   Hi, Don.
I don't know how it started for you guys, but I go through my spam e-mail folders, just to make sure there's nothing in there I want to keep or there's anything that got in there by mistake.
   That's usually how it starts. A necessary activity taken a bit too far.
Yeah. So one day I decided to open one called 'I ned help.' I mean, seriously, 'ned' help? How could you not?
   Nigerian prince?
Even better, German royalty fallen on hard times. I had a laugh, deleted it and moved on with my day. But the next day...
   Two e-mails?
I always wanted to see what was in the Viagra e-mails. I always used to ignore them. But there are so many, and it seems like the spammers go to so much effort...
   Stockholm syndrome so soon? You really do need us.
Home loan refis, sell your gold, all kinds of pharmaceuticals, gas cards, photography schools, horoscopes... oh, God, I'm so ashamed...
   It's okay, really.
It's gotten out of hand. I opened one that said I'd won a $1000 Walmart gift card. I know it's fake, but the chance that I might get a thousand bucks, even at Walmart... I just couldn't resist.
   Like the lottery.
Hey, the lottery is REAL.
   Don't get all riled up. What made you decide to come today?
This is so embarrassing... I read a cruise line one. And then, right after that, an Olive Garden one. I used to work at the Olive Garden, I don't even like driving by one any more, but there I was, clicking on the email so see if I'd gotten dinner for two...
   There, there, it's okay.
I'm sorry for my family. What are they going to think of me when they find out? How am I going to make up for the anguish of being related to a spam e-mail reader? Maybe I could forward them a hot penny stock tip this guy e-mailed me about just this morning...

I Met Miss Texas

Pageants are big in Texas. I mean, they're big all over the country, but they're really big in Texas, like everything else. I've known ladies who've been pageant aspirants, but I never met anyone big-time. Until a few weeks ago.
   It was during Fiesta, a week-long party here in San Antonio, and Miss Texas USA, Ana Rodriguez, was the Grand Marshal of the Flambeau parade. I have family connections - plus my sister was out of town - so I got to go to the Flambeau VIP Reception. Where Miss Texas was. As the Grand Marshal she was obligated to go to these functions, to meet and greet and pose for pictures, that kind of thing. So when the moment presented itself I stood in line for a snapshot with her. She was very nice, asked my name, shook my hand, made eye contact, very professional. I got two pictures with my new iPhone and that was that.
   Miss Texas stayed to take a few more pictures, said a few words as Grand Marshal, and then I didn't see her. I figured her bodyguard (she has more than one) whisked her off so she could sleep, or do her hair or whatever it is beauty pageant winners do when they're not smiling and shaking hands.
   I was so, so wrong.
   About an hour later - really - the reception was winding down and we left. Only to find Miss Texas in the lobby outside the hall, signing autographs and posing for pictures. She'd been doing that before I got in line, and she'd been doing it since I got my snapshot and moved on. From the looks of things in the lobby she was going to be there for another hour, maybe longer.
   Smile, sign, wave, pose. Smile, sign, wave, pose. Over and over and over and over and over again. And I gotta say, she did not look fatigued or annoyed or anything other than picture-perfect.
   But I did feel sorry for her. I mean, she'd been on the pageant circuit for 5 years, working towards this goal, and eventually towards being Miss USA. Then when she lands the gig, it turns out to be both a whole lot more and a whole lot less than what she imagined. She got the crown and she got everything else that goes along with it. I'm guessing she buys big tubs of hand sanitizer, and chomps vitamin C every hour. All that contact with the general public can't be good for your immune system. And - on top of all that - she has to deal with Donald Trump. I don't envy her one bit.
   Be careful what you wish for, I suppose.

Don't Touch The Cheese

I'm not a particularly squeamish person - the five-second rule in my house is usually extended a few seconds for something particuarly tasty - but I'm growing very wary of free samples in grocery stores.
   The ones you get in Costco are okay, at least when the table is monitored by one of the employees who didn't look away from the manager when they asked for volunteers. When you have someone watching the merchandise then it's okay by me. As long as the person doing the monitoring isn't a hulking tattooed serial killer or a sinister giggling Nazi scientist. If you see either of those guys behind the sausage sample table I'd give it a pass.
   But when I see those samples just sitting out in the open? With no one nearby, and they've been sitting there for who knows how long? The old prep cook I used to be wants to grab the whole plate or bowl or whatever and run for the nearest trash can.
   Whole Foods is the worst, ironically enough. They want to be healthy and wholesome and safe, and yet they leave sliced samples of almost anything sitting out in the store, with flimsy little useless tongs jabbed into the food as if that makes any difference. You see them everywhere, from the cheese aisle to the fruit section and all points in between. People cough on that stuff, they run their god-knows-where-they've-been fingers across every piece... just a flu epidemic waiting to happen. Or salmonella poisoning. Or measles. Or any number of African flesh-eating disorders. Not worth the risk.
   I was in HEB today and I saw some guy touching every cube of cheese in a sample tray as he tried to choose the best one. Really. Like he was counting a deck of cards. Alone. In the privacy of his own home instead of in a large grocery store with other people watching in horror. I did not partake of the Gruyere bounty presented to me.
   Please, from me to you, just pretend that those unattended samples aren't even in the store at all. You'll be much better off. And you'll let me sleep easier at night.

Huh... How About That...

They got him. Seal Team Six got Osama bin Laden. In Pakistan, natch; anybody who thought he was hiding anywhere else was either ignorant or foolish.
   It's a moral victory, sure, getting the guy who claimed credit for killing thousands of New Yorkers and four planes full of innocents. Like when the Italian women finally got pissed off enough to string up Mussolini. The world is rid of one of the faces of evil and intolerance, at least as far as we in the West are concerned. The fact that for years bin Laden had been a marginal influence in Al Qaeda's daily operations is beside the point. He was the face of terror and we got him. Finally.
   And yet...
   You have to ask what made this man the way he was? He was from a very wealthy family in a very, very wealthy nation. He had it good. Real good. Better than 99.999% of the rest of the world. But he felt the need to give up his family ties - and eventually his Saudi citizenship was revoked - in order to fight what he saw as the evils of American hegemony. The bin Laden family remains huge in construction in the Middle East, their name is all over big buildings and public works projects. That Osama would give up the bin Laden empire for his fanatical beliefs is like Donald Trump deciding that he was all turned around on his self-aggrandizement and money-grubbing and that it would be better to work for the overthrow of the French government or something.
   Why? What drove this man to become the international pariah that he died as? Why did he so completely hate the United States that he felt becoming a terrorist financier was the only option left to him? Osama bin Laden's evil didn't just appear out of nowhere, it was fostered, his hatred was nurtured and constructed and built into the sinister corruption that it became. Al Qaeda's agenda was purely destructive, they weren't about bringing democracy to the people or giving a voice to the voiceless. Al Qaeda was all about destroying the West and everything it stood for, or at least what Osama bin Laden thought it stood for. I'm pretty sure we Westerners had at least a small part in helping form his negative agenda.
   We need to figure that part out, our responsibility - however small or large - in making that terrorist the horrible person he was. And we have to fix anything that's wrong, otherwise there are a couple of million really smart guys like him just waiting to take his place.