Doing Almost Everything While Doing Very Little

Forgive me. I do not deserve your loyal readership. I have become a Bad Blogger.

And I write today because I am home, facing the sadness of my stalling car, the Midget, who needs spark plugs and various other sundries totaling about $300.

So I write now, between working from home and alternatively buying new books (collected Nabokov short stories, Schlink’s "The Reader" (thanks, M.), Bragg’s "All Over But the Shouting") and figuring out what sort of new painting I will begin. All my canvases are too small. Big. Something big I am thinking. I am having the urge to shellac right in there all the funny little funicular tickets I have saved from trips—if not all, at least one or two. Right in the middle of the wet oil paint. Need Bigger Canvases.

Then there’s that pesky book proposal that needs working on. How do we do it? How do we ever get anything done with so much to do? You tell me.

(Oh, and a special hello to whoever just peeked at my blog by asking Jeeves: “Choose any two characters on the three doctors the pact and compare and contrast between them.” You deserve a special prize for most unusual way of coming here. Congratulations.)

Secret Invisible Popery

While I was researching some dope on the pope today, I clicked on the Holy See’s website. Once there, you can click on an intriguing link called “Secret Archives.” Here’s all you get, quite appropriately:

Proud to Be a Slime-Mold Beetle

Apparently, two scientists who have named a bunch of newly discovered slime-mold beetles saw it fit to name three after Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.

It was, the scientists said, “intended to pay homage to them.”

Yeah, um. “Homage.”

Lead the Way

Suspected al-Qaida Terrorist Await Trail in Great Britain

reads the Google News hed for a Voice of America story.

But will it be breadcrumbs or yellow brick?

Winning and Losing

Slate had a great article yesterday about typically “black” names and typically “white” ones. What I’ve excerpted here is a longish lead on the story—not about the black or white name thing—but about destiny and naming. I recommend reading the whole article though, if the specifics of race naming interests you. (http://slate.com/id/2116449/)

Here, though, find an amusing story of two boys, clearly christened with the hand of the angel or the devil, depending. You decide:

“In 1958, a New York City father named Robert Lane decided to call his baby son Winner. The Lanes, who lived in a housing project in Harlem, already had several children, each with a fairly typical name. But this boy—well, Robert Lane apparently had a special feeling about him. Winner Lane: How could he fail with a name like that?

“Three years later, the Lanes had another baby boy, their seventh and last child. For reasons that no one can quite pin down today, Robert decided to name this boy Loser. Robert wasn't unhappy about the new baby; he just seemed to get a kick out of the name's bookend effect. First a Winner, now a Loser. But if Winner Lane could hardly be expected to fail, could Loser Lane possibly succeed?

“Loser Lane did in fact succeed. He went to prep school on a scholarship, graduated from Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, and joined the New York Police Department, where he made detective and, eventually, sergeant. Although he never hid his name, many people were uncomfortable using it. To his police colleagues today, he is known as Lou.

“And what of his brother? The most noteworthy achievement of Winner Lane, now in his late 40s, is the sheer length of his criminal record: more than 30 arrests for burglary, domestic violence, trespassing, resisting arrest, and other mayhem.

“These days, Loser and Winner barely speak. The father who named them is no longer alive. Though he got his boys mixed up, did he have the right idea—is naming destiny? What kind of signal does a child's name send to the world?”


All I know is when my parents named me McBickle, I was destined to spend my entire life in this nether-ether, subservient to you, my endlessly fickle readers.

Things That Make You Go, ‘Hm’

The good news seems to be the EPA has pulled its CHEERS study. The bad news is that CHEERS was a study “in which parents were paid to spray pesticides in the rooms occupied by their infant children under age 3.”

Yes. This is the way the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) summed up the study, and Sen. Barbara Boxer concurs: “The CHEERS program was a reprehensible idea that never should have made it out of the boardroom, and I am just happy that it was stopped before any children were put in harm’s way,” Boxer says.

PEER says, “While CHEERS will not go forward with EPA funding, the exact same study can proceed with private sponsors…”

I know nothing really about the study, but, um, sounds dubious, no?

Have a great day.

Semper Ubi Sub Ubi

Just to keep everyone abreast of the religious positions of our fearless leader…

From Al Kamen’s column in the Washington Post:

From Here to Obscurity

Question of the week. During Monday's news briefing, Scott McClellan engaged in some spirited jousting with a reporter over how President Bush squares his espousal of a "culture of life" with his modern-day, record-breaking application of the death penalty in Texas.

Then he called on Baltimore radio personality and former Episcopal priest Lester Kinsolving for a question.

"The New York Times reports a Supreme Court case involving Oregon's assisted suicide law," Kinsolving said, "which the Bush administration wants to prosecute doctors who administer lethal doses of federally controlled drugs. And my first question, is the president, as a devout Christian, aware of early church father Lactantius, the tutor of Emperor Constantine's son, and his justifying suicide for impending torture, or St. Jerome's justifying suicide in defense of chastity, and in 16th century Britain, the use by priestly permission of the holy stone?"

"You lost me at [the beginning], Les," McClellan said amid the laughter. "The president and I have not had that discussion."

"Follow-up?" Kinsolving asked.

"Okay, follow up," McClellan said.

"Is the president aware of the years of acute agony preceding the death of cathedral dean, journalist and 'Gulliver's Travels' author Jonathan Swift?"

"I will take your question," McClellan said, meaning he'd look into it. "If there's more to say on it, I'll get back to you. I don't think we -- we haven't discussed that one, either."


[And while I’m in a semi-liturgical/Latin mood, I could have sworn the other night in a bar, when I asked a guy if I could take his table as he was leaving, he said, “Carpe tavola.” Nice.]

Crossing the Border, Disguised as a Tree

In the sad story of Mexican immigrants trying to cross the border, it seems creativity flourishes. An AP article today tells of the ways in which people are disguising themselves to get into the U.S.

Here’s one of the oddest:

”In Texas, authorities once found a man rolling down a street disguised as a tumbleweed.”

Ookay. Seems altogether bizarre…and unwieldy.

I heard a report on the radio the other day that some idiots in Texas are strapping on their guns and pretending to be border control. I think it’s Human Rights Watch who are down there to make sure these men don’t do anything untoward toward immigrants, but being there in the first place, secondo me, is untoward enough.

It’s a terrible plight for border crossers—the sun, the heat, the animals in the night—I have unending sympathy for those who want a better life, and unending scorn for the assholes who think that only they are Americans, because (probably) unlike their parents or grandparents, they were born on this soil. Assholes.

The World Is Run by Robots

When I opened up this vaguely interesting article about male finger length and aggression, I was pleased to see that Web advertisers are working their rigorously rational magic: next to the article is an ad for nail-fungus medicine. Get it? “Fingers”=ads about fingers and toes. I love that.

Anyway, here are some interesting bits from the story:

“A University of Alberta study finds that measuring a man's index finger length relative to his ring finger length predicts his predisposition to being physically aggressive.”

“In another study, to be published later this year, Hurd found that men with more "feminine" finger ratios tended to be more prone to depression.”