Really, Please Go Now

We have a loud phone-speaker announcement system in my office. People come on at really irritating moments and ask so-and-so to please go to so-and-so’s office, etc. Sometimes things slide into Jokey Land, which can be funny, or extremely annoying (excess monkey noises while I’m conducting an interview on the phone = annoying). But sometimes the announcements inject a spirit of welcome bizzareness into a perfectly bland day. This announcement recently sparked just such a moment:

“If someone has any basic plumbing experience can they please come to the women’s bathroom?”

Just sharing.

Pachita as she was. 

Pachita as she is. 

I'm Moving to Hans

It seems that Canada and Denmark are arguing over who owns a tiny island called Hans. They have taken their battleground to the Internet, placing competing ads about ownership on Google.

The best quote in the story?

“To my knowledge this is the first time that a squabble has ever broken out between two nations on Google.”

~

Spent the afternoon stalking a neighborhood for a story. It always intrigues me the way people react once they know you are a reporter—they clench up and seem to back away (maybe that part is in my head, but it seems real). Why are people so afraid? Do they think I might misrepresent them somehow, or is it more that they are afraid of stating an opinion on anything?

People just want everything to be “nice” all the time. In suburbia, it’s a crime to start trouble. But when the trouble’s already there, you’d think people would realize that sweeping it under the carpet merely creates a big lump to trip on.

Thursday Is Good So Far

The heat has finally lifted and the air feels fresher than it has ever felt. The gray clouds seem grayer and the green trees, greener. I saw the three-dimensionality of the Empire State Building this morning and knew that this city is as solid as that. I saw a union rat—one of those huge blowup rats meant to signify unfair company practices toward a union—and I knew people were taking care of each other, protecting their own. I saw that the rotating B-A-M sign has been removed (temporarily, one hopes) and construction is heavy at that corner, indicating a refreshing of art, even of just an artful sign in Brooklyn.

The day is new and the world is as steady and ever-changing as always.

Cinder and Smoke

In my ceaseless repetition of the Iron & Wine CD “Our Endless Numbered Days,” I cannot stop listening to a song called “Cinder and Smoke.”

You should really hear the music, but here are the lyrics:


Give me your hand
the dog in the garden row is covered in mud
and dragging your mother’s clothes
cinder and smoke
the snake in the basement
found the juniper shade
the farmhouse is burning down

Give me your hand
and take what you will tonight, I'll give it as fast
and high as the flame will rise
cinder and smoke
some whispers around the trees
the juniper bends
as if you were listening

Give me your hand
your mother is drunk as all the firemen shake
a photo from father’s arms
cinder and smoke
you’ll ask me to pray for rain
with ash in your mouth
you’ll ask it to burn again

Sometimes They Are

I’m with Nick Kristof today, who writes:

“Like many others, I drifted toward journalism partly because it seemed an opportunity to do some good. (O.K., O.K.: it was also a blast, impressed girls and offered the glory of the byline.) But to sustain the idealism in journalism - and to rebut the widespread perception that journalists are just irresponsible gossips - we need to show more interest in the first genocide of the 21st century than in the "runaway bride."”

Sometimes chicks and bylines aren’t enough. See? I told me so.

And One of Two Employees With a Mohawk Shaved It Off

The day is hot, my head is maybe less addled than usual.
With the urge to write, I will try to channel my possibility of doing it into telling the story of women who truly are never heard: immigrants who work under sometimes desperate conditions—this is when I am proud of my work, but only if I tell their stories well. They deserve no less.

(I have no transition.)

Like my thoughts, people are coming and going so quickly these days. Something about the summer’s heat maybe, the cycle of being present and then going, living and dying, seems accelerated. There is nothing constant but this, I am again realizing. It’s relatively sad to know that nothing will stay, but it also offers up…potential.

Do you know a band called “Iron and Wine”?
Beauty.

The Comforting Sound of Tony Blair

I want to reflect publicly for a moment about the effect of Tony Blair’s voice on…me. I’m not sure if I’ve ever written about this before, but it is an effect I first encountered after Sept. 11th. Blair came on the radio—I didn’t have a TV then—and all the anxiety I had been feeling dulled. Like a physical feeling, like a blade dulling, or a baby being cooed to sleep. His voice tumbled onward, quietly, assuredly…I lost a sense of what he was saying…I became lulled by the sound of Tony Blair’s voice.

Again, this morning, I was lulled. It was in my car when Blair came on WNYC to address this morning’s incidents in London. What a comforting voice…

Blog It Out

IM is an evil empire. It is a terrifying conceit that you can type whatever the hell you want and whoever happens to be standing over your shoulder can read whatever the hell you’ve written. These computers, such a morass of immorality.

[Hi KA.]

The Right Honorable Lady McBickle Brings You This Dispatch

Some dude in California who spent 27 years working behind a grocery counter is now next in line to become Earl of Essex through a hereditary tie. William Capell, who would be addressed as “the Right Honorable Lord William Capell” if he becomes earl, is posed in the CNN.com pic in shorts. Here’s what he has to say:

"There's times when I think, I could be sitting in the House of Lords and making decisions that affect the country," he said, adding that he has started reading the Telegraph, a British newspaper, online.

Fine time to start, Willy.

Hamlet Gets Jiggy

The Globe Theatre in London will be performing Shakespeare’s plays in his own dialect, which according to the BBC sounds “somewhere between Australian, Cornish, Irish and Scottish, with a dash of Yorkshire - yet bizarrely, completely intelligible if you happen to come from North Carolina.”

Int-er-esting.

“For example, the word "voice" is pronounced the same as "vice", "reason" as "raisin", "room" as "Rome", "one" as "own" - breathing new life into Shakespeare's rhyming and punning.”

The site also has an audio bit (I haven’t heard it) that plays the “mock Tudor pronunciation.”

Nobody Wants Their Lips Chewed Off

I’ve been a big fan of Emily Yoffee’s essays on her dog, a beagle named Sasha, posted on Slate. (Adapted from her new book, it seems.) Anyway, this new one on dog dancing had me laughing out loud in at least three places, notably here:

“I felt like I was in some dystopian fantasy. I came to do a little cha-cha with my pooch, and the next thing I know I'm regurgitating tuna fish brownies into her mouth. I vowed to resist—both out of prudery and self-preservation. I imagined as soon as Sasha realized my mouth was a source of fish brownies, she would go into a frenzy and chew my lips off.”

[Hello, KO.]

My Day Proceeds Thusly

I have a press release on my desk about triplets who have a disease that gives them “a parallelogram head shape.” (Their words, not mine.)

And I discovered today that one of my sources has the last name “Poo.”

Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold.

So I’m poking around the Internet for that handiest of Web pages I just cannot find when I need—a site where you plug in an address and you get info on all the other nearby addresses—and I come across a Shakespearean insult site. It’s a good way to pass the time. When you get to this site, click on “Insult Me.”

Samukeliso Sithole

Dunno if you’ve heard about this one yet. I listened to a radio piece on NPR this morning that is better than this Reuters story, but here’s the gist:

“HARARE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) -- A Zimbabwean court has jailed a man masquerading as a female athlete, court officials said on Thursday.
Samukeliso Sithole -- a triple jumper and runner who competed as a woman at several international sports events -- was convicted on charges of impersonation and offending the dignity of a woman athlete who undressed in his presence, unaware he was a man.”

Apparently she is a hermaphrodite, although she also is “very troubled” and “confused” according to a sports reporter in Harare (whose name I can’t remember) interviewed on NPR. One could imagine she is troubled and confused in a society where homosexuality is not tolerated and hermaphroditism can’t be much understood. She has also been jailed for theft recently, and was put in a men’s prison. Now she will serve four more years.

You can see a picture of her here.

Novak Sang, As Expected

Howard Kurtz gives a nice rundown of the media hubbub in the Plame/Rove affair (now, that would be newsworthy), which culminated in the reporterly explosion in the White House briefing room the other day. (See transcript a few posts below.) Within his article, he details the work of a freelance investigative reporter named Murray Waas, who has possibly the first report on Novak's role in the whole mess—something I know I’ve been really wondering about:

"Columnist Robert Novak provided detailed accounts to federal prosecutors of his conversations with Bush administration officials who were sources for his controversial July 11, 2003 column identifying Valerie Plame as a clandestine CIA officer, according to attorneys familiar with the matter. . . .

"Novak had claimed to the investigators that the Bush administration officials with whom he spoke did not identify Plame as a covert operative, and that use of the word 'operative' was his formulation and not theirs, according to those familiar with Novak's accounts to the investigators."

Before I sign off, I also want to take issue with this statement from Michael Goodwin in the New York Daily News, as quoted by Kurtz (out of context here):

“With Dems reduced to Howard Dean's rants and Hillary Clinton's juvenile jab that President Bush looks like Mad magazine's Alfred E. Neuman, somebody has to offer a substantive alternative.”

From everything else I’ve read on Hill and these Mad mag comments, she never compared how Bush and Neuman look, just that they both have a “What me worry?” attitude. So get it right before you counter-bash, reportron.

On Cracking the London Bombings

Slate has a fascinating essay up today called Cracking the London Case - Agatha Christie vs. the terrorists by a guy named Tim Naftali, who is apparently the director of the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. Seemingly unconnected to his job, he appears to be a counterterrorism expert. The essay explores all the steps investigators may take when looking into the London bombings, based on how the investigations play out.

(Now back to your regularly scheduled hangover.)

Rove …Not So Much

A semicomplete transcript of today’s White House briefing came across my desk. Here you go:

QUESTION: Scott, can I ask you this: Did Karl Rove commit a crime?

MCCLELLAN: Again, David, this is a question relating to a ongoing investigation, and you have my response related to the investigation. And I don't think you should read anything into it other than: We're going to continue not to comment on it while it's ongoing.

QUESTION: Do you stand by your statement from the fall of 2003, when you were asked specifically about Karl and Elliot Abrams and Scooter Libby, and you said, "I've gone to each of those gentlemen, and they have told me they are not involved in this"?

QUESTION: Do you stand by that statement?

MCCLELLAN: And if you will recall, I said that, as part of helping the investigators move forward on the investigation, we're not going to get into commenting on it. That was something I stated back near that time as well.

QUESTION: Scott, this is ridiculous. The notion that you're going to stand before us, after having commented with that level of detail, and tell people watching this that somehow you've decided not to talk. You've got a public record out there. Do you stand by your remarks from that podium or not?

MCCLELLAN: I'm well aware, like you, of what was previously said. And I will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time. The appropriate time is when the investigation...

QUESTION: (inaudible) when it's appropriate and when it's inappropriate?

MCCLELLAN: If you'll let me finish.

QUESTION: No, you're not finishing. You're not saying anything.
You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke about Joseph Wilson's wife. So don't you owe the American public a fuller explanation. Was he involved or was he not? Because contrary to what you told the American people, he did indeed talk about his wife, didn't he?

MCCLELLAN: There will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the time to talk about it.

QUESTION: Do you think people will accept that, what you're saying today?

MCCLELLAN: Again, I've responded to the question.

QUESTION: You're in a bad spot here, Scott... (LAUGHTER) ... because after the investigation began -- after the criminal investigation was under way -- you said, October 10th, 2003, "I spoke with those individuals, Rove, Abrams and Libby. As I pointed out, those individuals assured me they were not involved in this," from that podium. That's after the criminal investigation began. Now that Rove has essentially been caught red-handed peddling this information, all of a sudden you have respect for the sanctity of the criminal investigation.

MCCLELLAN: No, that's not a correct characterization. And I think you are well aware of that. We know each other very well. And it was after that period that the investigators had requested that we not get into commenting on an ongoing criminal investigation. And we want to be helpful so that they can get to the bottom of this. Because no one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States. I am well aware of what was said previously. I remember well what was said previously. And at some point I look forward to talking about it. But until the investigation is complete, I'm just not going to do that.

QUESTION: So you're now saying that after you cleared Rove and the others from that podium, then the prosecutors asked you not to speak anymore and since then you haven't.

MCCLELLAN: Again, you're continuing to ask questions relating to an ongoing criminal investigation and I'm just not going to respond to them.

QUESTION: When did they ask you to stop commenting on it, Scott? Can you pin down a date?

MCCLELLAN: Back in that time period.

QUESTION: Well, then the president commented on it nine months later. So was he not following the White House plan?

MCCLELLAN: I appreciate your questions. You can keep asking them, but you have my response.

QUESTION: Well, we are going to keep asking them.

When did the president learn that Karl Rove had had a conversation with a news reporter about the involvement of Joseph Wilson's wife in the decision to send him to Africa?

MCCLELLAN: I've responded to the questions.

QUESTION: When did the president learn that Karl Rove had been...

MCCLELLAN: I've responded to your questions.

QUESTION: After the investigation is completed, will you then be consistent with your word and the president's word that anybody who was involved will be let go?

MCCLELLAN: Again, after the investigation is complete, I will be glad to talk about it at that point.

QUESTION: Can you walk us through why, given the fact that Rove's lawyer has spoken publicly about this, it is inconsistent with the investigation, that it compromises the investigation to talk about the involvement of Karl Rove, the deputy chief of staff, here?

MCCLELLAN: Well, those overseeing the investigation expressed a preference to us that we not get into commenting on the investigation while it's ongoing. And that was what they requested of the White House. And so I think in order to be helpful to that investigation, we are following their direction.

QUESTION: Scott, there's a difference between commenting on an investigation and taking an action...

MCCLELLAN: (inaudible)

QUESTION: Can I finish, please?

MCCLELLAN: I'll come back to you in a minute. (...)

QUESTION: Does the president continue to have confidence in Mr. Rove?

MCCLELLAN: Again, these are all questions coming up in the context of an ongoing criminal investigation. And you've heard my response on this.

QUESTION: So you're not going to respond as to whether or not the president has confidence in his deputy chief of staff?

MCCLELLAN: You're asking this question in the context of an ongoing investigation, and I would not read anything into it other then I'm simply going to comment on an ongoing investigation.

QUESTION: Has there been any change, or is there a plan for Mr. Rove's portfolio to be altered in any way?

MCCLELLAN: Again, you have my response to these questions.

Living in La-La-Land (Llllamas)

A posting by the infamous Vex about thinking about "the children" (you know, the metaphorical ones) and not just yourself led me to post part of an e-mail from the Man in Baghdad I got yesterday. He’s describing a particularly old village in Iraq:

“the downside is only 1/2 hour of water a day and almost no electricity. water splurts through this one pipe at some unpredictable time and they all jam taps into it through holes they've punched, and try to fill tanks. it's a community thing. quick mobilization.”

Somehow that made me inexplicably miserable when I first read it yesterday. Only half an hour of water? Horrible. What a terrible life for these people. Today, upon reading it again, I feel somehow ridiculous. I mean, who am I to feel terribly for people who are working their asses off to make their lives better, when all I do these days is lament my own pitiful unhappiness with things other people—say, in tiny villages in Iraq—would feel blessed to have to deal with?

Onward and upward for those who try. It is a sorrowful journey for the self-defeating.

Lllllamas

I’m really taking this slow loss of academia hard in my subconscious. I dreamed last night I had been accepted to Amherst to study lit. It was a deep thrill to imagine myself in the snowy woods, in a softy lit attic office, surrounded by texts. How nice for me. Back to so-called reality. Again.

Reality entails writing today about a man who is doing something quite humanitarian, but would have his efforts be told in Broadway musical style if at all possible. Instead I’m going to tune in to a little Iron & Wine or M.I.A., if I’m feeling sassy.

The weekend was sun-soaked in rural New Jersey, with my dog and my father. The poor girl, she’s hitting 11-year-old Labrador moment, which means her tushy is weak (okay, her back legs) and has a silly gray beard over her black coat. My dad took me to a nearby B & B that has llamas and alpacas out back. We stared at them. They stared at us. They’re funny looking.

In good news, someone on my trip to Mexico has sent me photos of me holding sea lions in a bikini. Imagine. The things we do (when we’re lucky).

Have a good morning and tell me what you did over the weekend or will do today, my silent readers.

Everything Feels Calmer in an Attic

So the world falls to shit as La Ragazza a Roma gets hit by a bus. She’s fine—it was more of a clipping, it appears.

Seriously, though, what kind of shit world is this when one cannot comfort one’s friends with a finely shaken martini with olives?

But back to reality.

Spent the afternoon with a delightful professor with inflections like Glenda, the Good Witch of the North. He teaches English and has a warmly lit attic office. It made me nostalgic for my days in warmly lit attic offices of English professors who were trying to seduce me with critical theory and offerings of free food.

No one gives me free food anymore.

And I thought about, as I wandered the professor’s tree-laden campus, the life I chose not to live—one with more books than computers and a belief that what’s in those books deserves scrutiny. I work now out of a glass box while staring at a glass box. I live for the moments when a story takes me to a warmly lit attic office, where a man with inflections like Glenda, the Good Witch of the North, lulls me with his chatter and my hand tires from writing down his words. It’s a choice I’ve made. And sometimes it seems not a bad one.

Peace and the BQE

Waking up to news of the London bomb attacks makes my heart shudder. We know what that is, to feel utter terror and the surreality of daily life disrupted by smoke and screams. We in New York feel the terror with you. I do, at least. And I send whatever kind of solidarity is possible out into this ether.

I drove the stopped-up BQE this morning in a commuter-traffic haze. Maybe it won’t get better—the fear and the crowds—but at least we are all in it together. Kinda.

Hai-zi

Those of you who know just how close I am lately to losing what’s left of my sanity, I hope you will understand why I resort to the fortune cookie.

Even with Vex AWOL in blogurbia, I dedicate this cracking open to him:

“Meeting adversity well is the source of your strength.”

Now, the irony in this is that if I were meeting adversity well these days, I would not be wanting to poke my own eyes out so damn badly.

On the back, I learn the word for “children:” “Hai-zi.”

There is a message there, I know it. Children. Hai-zi. Adversity. Strength. Source. Children come from a source. They piss me off. So that’s adversity. And I’m stronger than they are.

Um.

I know. The back and the front probably have nothing to do with each other. But why then are they both there? What am I supposed to do with two different cosmic messages? I know. I’ll wait for a third.

Food for Fodder

Who knows why I didn’t know about this site: This Modern World

Fortunately, now I do. And now you do, too.

I was googling for Jack Hitt, one of my favorite writers and radio storytellers (hear him on This American Life), and found out that he blogs on Tom Tomorrow’s space sometimes. Happiness. You can also read his current story in Harper’s. Hitt has a way of talking on the paper and making you laugh through a topic that would be boring in other hands. He shows you the wit in just living. I promise.

J also swears he used to have coffee next to him at a small café in New Haven, and we’re pretty sure we saw him the last time we were there. All Yaley looking in a tweed coat.

Anyway, going to Tomorrow’s site led me to this one, BobHarris.com, which is also a seemingly great read.

All this reminds me to get back into radio. There is nothing as all-consuming (for me) as listening to a solid story. Maybe I’m just an escapist. Maybe I just want to be happy. Like you. Maybe I just want to make you happy.

P.S. Speaking of TAL, Sarah Vowell has a great op-ed piece in the Times today. About her newfound respect for Pat Robertson, of all people.

A Masterpiece

Can we discuss this "sketch" Frank Gehry made of his plans for the arena and surrounding skyscraper in Brooklyn? Since when are star-chitects using napkins for model-building?

(Courtesy NYT. And surely Frank Gehry's office. Thanks a bunch.)

Being Bi

Before I say anything about this new study on being bisexual (or not), here are some highlights from the NYT article:

“The study, by a team of psychologists in Chicago and Toronto, lends support to those who have long been skeptical that bisexuality is a distinct and stable sexual orientation.
People who claim bisexuality, according to these critics, are usually homosexual, but are ambivalent about their homosexuality or simply closeted. "You're either gay, straight or lying," as some gay men have put it.

“In the new study, a team of psychologists directly measured genital arousal patterns in response to images of men and women. The psychologists found that men who identified themselves as bisexual were in fact exclusively aroused by either one sex or the other, usually by other men.

“The study is the largest of several small reports suggesting that the estimated 1.7 percent of men who identify themselves as bisexual show physical attraction patterns that differ substantially from their professed desires.”

[Only 1.7 percent? I’m surprised.]

“But the men in the study who described themselves as bisexual did not have patterns of arousal that were consistent with their stated attraction to men and to women. Instead, about three-quarters of the group had arousal patterns identical to those of gay men; the rest were indistinguishable from heterosexuals.”

[A good explanation follows, secondo me.]

“But other researchers - and some self-identified bisexuals - say that the technique used in the study to measure genital arousal is too crude to capture the richness - erotic sensations, affection, admiration - that constitutes sexual attraction.”

[And on to women.]

“About 1.5 percent of American women identify themselves bisexual. And bisexuality appears easier to demonstrate in the female sex [No explanation of this sentence follows—McB.] A study published last November by the same team of Canadian and American researchers, for example, found that most women who said they were bisexual showed arousal to men and to women.

“Although only a small number of women identify themselves as bisexual, Dr. Bailey said, bisexual arousal may for them in fact be the norm.”

[And back to me. Again, I’m surprised by the small percentage. Maybe everything is relative, living in New York. Mostly, maybe I don’t believe in the ability to measure self-deception and social anxiety, among men and women, straight, bi or gay.]

10.3

I woke up one hour late for work today, but my dream-me was scoring a plus-perfect 10.3 in diving, so whatever. It was a small waste of my subconscious time, I think, if only because after realizing what a talented diver I was, I decided I should really learn how to apply for scholarships to college based on that talent. It got really technical, trying to understand how to maximize the amount of money I could get toward school.

I awoke realizing how late I was for work, knowing I am no great diver and that college was over a long, long time ago.

As I said, waste of my subconscious time.

I could have been figuring out how the hell to get started on McBickle: The Novel. Or, McBickle: The Non-Fiction Book. (That is, The Non-Fiction Book, by McBickle.) But no. Diving. Money. College. Three ideas that entail leaps of faith and varying degrees of return.

Last night I watched the fireworks over Manhattan. What was great about it was that I could see all three East River shows equally from my roof. The central one was the downtown works, then there was the about-34th street works and the by-the-Statue-of-Liberty works. I almost forgot though; there were also the you’re-going-to-blow-up-my-neighborhood local works in nearby streets that would scare the fuck out of me as they blinded all of us rooftop observers trying to figure out how the hell the Macy’s people can make a fireworks cube. I mean, a CUBE. Fire trucks occasionally whizzed past, louder than the bottle rockets, and I hoped nobody was missing an eyeball.

The downtown fireworks left a cloud of smoke where the World Trade Center used to be—not an entirely comfortable sight.