Northbound

Well, that worked out so well that I’m going to do it again this month:

Carried over:

• Do the rest of the day care center tours and reach a decision if possible (about halfway done, pushed back to February).
• Stain bookcase that’s sitting in garage (if weather gets warm enough) and haul it upstairs (still too cold).
• Sit on my hands waiting for an agent to tell me if she liked my manuscript or not.  (Almost had a heart attack, got a rejection letter in my e-mail, but thank goodness it was from a different agent.)  (Still pending, but I note that I’m getting Google ads for self-publishing outlets, which is bad.)
• Put the two stacks of books on my desk back in the bookcase (pwned).
• Write book review for “Decoding Love,” by Andrew Trees.
• Write book review for “Agincourt,” by Bernard Cornwell  (online here).
• Go through my big file folder for GWB photos and suchlike.
• Figure out where the Corian switchplate that I ordered in November got to (pwned at long last).
• Get the home theater wiring done.  This involves four new speakers, the box-thingy that powers the speakers and makes them work, somebody to wire this all up, and taking down the TV to thread an HDMI cable over to the next wall (they didn’t have anything good at Circuit City, unfortunately).
• Get the upstairs furnace filter changed.
• Purchase frame for duck picture for bathroom (and choose appropriate duck picture) (pwned).
• Get frames with covers of law review articles posted (pwned, and they look spiffy).

New:

• Childbirth orientation class (endured).
• Make enchiladas for dinner one night (pwned, but made way too much chili gravy).
• Watch at least some of Planet Earth.
• Delete all the duplicate files off iTunes (pwned).
• Spend some of the reward money I have coming to me from drugstore.com (pwned, got a power toothbrush) and Microsoft Live Search (pwned, bought some baby stuff and that should get me to the threshold I need for cashing in).
• Figure out which antique Texas map I want to hang in my office (here, not ordered yet).
• Go to gym at least five times (not going to happen this month).
• Make reservations for dinner at Maggiano’s (pwned despite coupon difficulties).
• Get one short story published online (submitted four or five stories, haven’t heard back yet).
• Get one chapter of next novel at least started (got about half of a page done so far).
• Hang my head humbly when Eagles fans tease me about the sad and sorry state of the Cowboys (pwned) and refrain from teasing them in turn on their loss to the Cardinals (yeah, right).
• Look for an immersion blender to help make soup happen more often (pwned).
• Close down one of my HSX websites due to low traffic and the difficulty of exploiting getting volunteer help (pwned).
• Get measurements done for backsplash tile in kitchen (FAIL, Home Depot Expo Center went out of business, the wretches).
• Unpack and put together new childrens’ dressers from IKEA (pwned).
• Unpack and put together car seats (pwned).
• Unpack and put together stroller (pwned).

NYT:

In this day of bank bailouts and subprime mortgage debacles, some of us might find Robin Hood charm in a Nebraska bank robbery. Some might whisper the lines to the old Woody Guthrie song romanticizing the violent bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd: “Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.”

Some of us might think that bank robbery is still a crime for a good reason. Some of us might think that bank robbers ought to spend serious jail time busting rocks. Some of us might think that Robin Hood didn’t get half the kicking around that he deserved.

I felt really bad when I read this article on local tourism in Barbados:

DENIS KELLMAN, parliamentary representative for St Lucy, has charged that package tours are “destroying” the local tourist industry….

He complained: “Those package tours are actually destroying Barbados because tourists do not get to know Barbadians and they do not get to know Barbados.”

He called for a stop to “this all-inclusive foolishness where you (tourists) move to the same areas every week”.

He declared: “We must get back to the same type of excitement that was created when we had the mini-mokes.

“I am not saying that we get back to the mini-mokes, but at least you must create the freedom to go to other areas.”

I felt bad because we love Barbados; went there for our honeymoon and back again for a (rainy) vacation this fall, and are going to go again just as soon as we find people who will take in two babies for two weeks for nothing.   (Any takers?  No?  Drat.)  And I don’t think we’ve been to St. Lucy.  We could have – the coast road was flooded last time and every maniac cabdriver we had took us by every alternate route there was – we could have gotten to our hotel via Trinidad for all I know.  But I don’t think we’ve been up there on purpose ever.  And I feel bad about that.

Two points though.

1. I had to look up what a “mini-moke” was – turns out it’s a Mini Cooper crossed with a beach buggy.  On behalf of the people of the United States, let me tell you, no way in Hades am I driving a tiny little beach buggy on Barbados roads.  Not.  Going.  To.  Happen.  Every cab ride I’ve ever taken in Barbados has been an adventure of some kind – to the point that the only way that I’ll ever watch NASCAR again is if they fire all the drivers and hire Bajan cabbies.  I am not repeat not ever repeat ever going to drive a car in Barbados as long as they drive on the left and have traffic circles everywhere and everybody drives like they’re Dale Jr. on half a bottle of Mount Gay.  A tiny little car is unthinkable.  You want tourists to drive around the island?  Widen and repair the roads, put in real traffic signals, give everybody on the island a defensive-driving class, and we’ll talk.
2. I don’t know a single thing about what there is to do in St. Lucy.  I can’t find anything online  There seem to be some guest villas.  Maybe a restaurant or two.  The old Navy base, okay.  But I’ve never been there and can’t really tell you what there is to do there or why I should go there.  So tell me already.  Let me know.  St. Lucy’s in a tough spot – it is way far north, and it is competing against Oistins and Bathsheba and every other little town in Barbados.  But here’s the thing.  I know about Oistins; they’ve got great word of mouth.  I know about the St. Lawrence Gap.  I don’t know about St. Lucy.  This is a marketing issue, and right now, if St. Lucy wants to compete for my tourist dollar, it’s going to have to let me know what’s there.

I am pleased that my Texas Rangers didn’t do anything truly hideous with their new uniforms.  Other than that, it’s a blah sandwich with blah dressing and a big kosher blah pickle on the side. 

1. I think Nolan is right to bring back the red but temper it with blue.  I know lots of people (well, me included) would have loved loved loved a return to the 1994 reds, but it was never going to happen.  Red, white and blue – nothing wrong with that.
2. I am especially liking the red and blue piping on the pants, although it seems a little thin – nothing wrong with a bolder stripe.
3. I am so glad to see the stupid vests go away, hopefully forever.  Thbpt.
4. I am vexed to see that the current logo, cap logo, and sleeve patch are being retained.  They should go.  They should all go, and they should have gone a long time ago.  They should go because they’re all completely derivative and blah.  The logo is a steal from the old Expos logo, and look what that did for the Expos.  The cap logo is even more blah.  The Texas flag sleeve patch is just unfathomable (I hate the little fold in the flag, which is completely unneccessary).  It all needs to go away.
5. I am OK with the script “Rangers” going from the home unis, but I would like to see it on the jackets (dunno what they will look like) and would love to see it as part of a new logo – or even better, the revival of an old logo.
6. And I’d love to see the return of the old 70′s hats, too.
7. Having said that, the single worst thing about these uniforms is that they’re not creative – they’re still derivative of the Red Sox/Angels pattern, and the red just makes the similarity more apparent.  (The 80′s unis, of course, were direct Dodgers ripoffs, courtesy of Bobby V.)  The one thing that ought to be done – that needs to be done – is ditching the current font and going with something else that’s distinctive and Texan.  That gets you better lettering on the front (and the back) of the uniforms, a better cap logo, you name it.  Why use the same tired font that two other teams use? 
8. UPDATE:  I hadn’t seen the photo that the DMN blog uses of the rear of the jerseys – with that pointy font on the player name and numbers.  Ye Gods, is that ugly. And it looks way too much like what the Angels have.  You gotta change that font.
9. UPDATE:  I apparently spoke too soon – the batting helmets are truly, truly hideous.
10. ADDITIONAL UPDATE:  The oracle has spoken.
11. ADDITIONAL UPDATE:  The oracle really, really doesn’t like the batting helmet.

I hold no particular brief for Michael Gerson, but I read this passage and said, yup:

Why were the biblical references in Obama’s inaugural speech not considered a coded assault on the Constitution, as George W. Bush’s were sometimes viewed? And I can only imagine the cascades of hilarity and derision that would have come had Bush messed up the inaugural oath, no matter the cause.

The only thing that surprises me anymore is that more people in the press aren’t ashamed by this sort of thing.

In the midst of a completely laughable NYT gush-piece on the Glorious Elevation of the Blessed Redeemer, we find this passage:

Obama’s words were in my ears, ringing a kind of atavistic call to motherhood, to the form of nurturance I knew most dearly in my youth. I was hungry. So was she. Julia was off with a friend.

“Let’s have lunch,” I said. “Just the two of us. Somewhere nice.”

The pizza places were full. So was Così. “Come on,” I said, pointing up the block to the restaurant whose chocolate cake, brought home after business lunches, has become the stuff of family legend.

“We’re going to The Palm.”

Emilie immediately stopped crying.

“You mean,” she gasped, “that you would go to one of the most expensive restaurants … with me?”

She was ushered to a banquette. She settled in delightedly, her little legs hanging down in her snow boots. She ordered chicken parmesan and lemonade.

“What do you think was the main thing in his speech?” she asked then.

“What do you think?” I asked, which is the sort of thing I think mothers are supposed to do.

“I don’t know. I didn’t understand it.”

“I think,” I said, “that the main thing was that we’re entering difficult times and we have to pull together and not be self-indulgent.” I shifted nervously in my seat.

Well might you shift, Judith Warner, well might you shift.  For pity’s sake.  There is, I expect, a place not to tell your child not to be self-indulgent, but that place is not one of the most expensive restaurants in the country, and certainly not with Obama’s words “ringing in your ears”.  Jiminy Christmas.

Three reasons to be happy for the Glorious Elevation of the Blessed Redeemer to the Highest Office In The Land:

1. Barack Obama has already done this country the great service of sparing us four more years of Clintonism.  As much as I am repelled and disgusted by the degree of media fawning over the Blessed Redeemer, if they were giving the same treatment to HRC (you know they would), it would likely make me physically ill.  Obama not only barred the door of the White House to HRC, he also dug her out of the Senate, and that’s change I can believe in.
2. Obama has shown – shall we say – a desire not to be trapped by his own rhetoric, but that may not help him with Afghanistan.  He’s already on record as supporting more troops, and went so far as to mock John McCain for not being willing to go into Pakistan and root Bin Laden out of his cave.  So it is written, so let it be done.  Obama is not going to be able to wimp out on Afghanistan easily, and I for one don’t propose to let him.
3. Once all the you-can’t-make-fun-of-Obama nonsense gets cleared away, he’s going to be eminently mockable – you just can’t have that particular combination of high-minded grandiosity and utter humorlessness in American life without people mocking you up one side and down the other.  It’ll be good for the country, you’ll see.

Three reasons to be depressed about the whole thing:

1. Nationalized healthcare.  Most people missed that the reason HRC was taken out of the Senate was to clear the way for Obama’s health care plan.  Obama’s already on record as saying trillion-dollar deficits are forthcoming, and that doesn’t bode well for seeking savings in any government program, much less health care.  And there doesn’t seem to be any Republican who will stand up to ObamaCare the way that Phil Gramm stood up against HillaryCare.  We’re going to get it, and get it hard.
2. Obama already has a reputation for throwing inconvenient and irritating people under the bus.  My particular concern is that the next target is going to be Israel.  Setting aside Obama’s ridiculous claim that he’s the biggest supporter of Israel that there ever has been, he hasn’t done Thing One in the Gaza crisis that indicated that he had Israel’s back.  His SecState has even less credibility.  And nothing could make European elites and Muslim sheiks happier than Obama abandoning America’s guarantees towards Israel, and Obama is all about that.  Not to mention that bringing “peace” to the Middle East – even peace at any price – is right in line with Obama’s grandiosity. 
3. The next real debate in this country is going to be about energy and transportation, and Obama is deep in the ethanol camp.  Washington’s intervention in Detroit is going to make matters much worse.  Obama could do this country (and the environment) a great service by flipping on the ethanol lobby and using that stimulus money to build nuclear plants and promote electric cars, but it seems unlikely as all get out.

The WaPo says that snark is out:

With the election of Barack Obama, Cynicism and Snark are officially passe.

What?!?  What am I going to do now?  Where am I going to go?  Why wasn’t I consulted?

Translation: Humor and irreverence are out; earnestness and sincerity are in.

David Denby, The New Yorker film critic, has written a book decrying our old bad habits: “Snark: It’s Mean, It’s Personal, and It’s Ruining Our Conversation.” I couldn’t agree more. Snark is cheap and bad for you. But then, so are hot dogs. I still want one now and then.

Cynicism isn’t just unfashionable; it’s downright unpatriotic.

Heretical. With the planet melting (when it isn’t freezing), two wars and a tanking economy, we need spirited optimism, not defeatist cynicism.

Amazing.  Stunning.   Probably not to be taken seriously, but still.  You know there are folks out there who think just this way.  (The same people who have been running around the last eight years saying that dissent is the highest form of patriotism.)

Well, I’m not listening.  As long as I have breath in my body, strength in my fingers, and decent wireless Internet service, I am going to spend the next four years of the Inspired Leadership of the Blessed Redeemer snarking it up as much as I can. 

Snarkity snarkity snark snark snark.  Take that, Kathleen Parker!  Take that.

I believe Peter King when he says that Jersey Joe Flacco didn’t step out of the end zone in Tennessee:

McAulay didn’t see Flacco’s foot hit the back line with 7:35 left in the game, which would have been a safety, obviously. Flacco rolled to his right in the end zone on 3rd-and-10 from his own 1, and he came close to stepping on the end line as he threw an incomplete pass. Jeff Fisher came up screaming that Flacco stepped out of bounds. It’s not a reviewable play, and McAulay said it was his call and his judgment that Flacco didn’t step out. “There was green, or whatever the color was, between the end line and his foot,” McAulay said.

But how is that not reviewable?  If somebody steps out of bounds on a pass play, it’s reviewable.  If a runner steps out of bounds on his way to a touchdown, it’s reviewable.  Why wouldn’t this be?  Explain, please, because otherwise it’s just idiotic.

As the dawning of the glorious era of the Blessed Redeemer (may his name be praised) begins, it’s important to see that some of the visible symptoms of Bush Derangement Syndrome may be failing at last.  Let us go to the BBC, which begins its article so pleasantly:

“Consider the terrible consequences of the ‘anything goes’ Bush Administration, whose irresponsible non-regulation of financial institutions has led to this crisis.”

Those words, from the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, sum up the charge against George W Bush – that in the eight years of his presidency he actively pursued policies of deregulation which caused the biggest financial and economic meltdown since the Great Depression.

It is a grim legacy for President Bush to contemplate as he enters his final days in office – but is it true?

Is it true?  Seriously?  Somebody from the press — the foreign press!  — is questioning the veracity of something Nancy Pelosi says critical of George W. Bush?   What in the name of Cindy Sheehan is going on here?  You can’t all of a sudden start asking whether criticism of GWB is true or not, can you?

In the blame game for this financial crisis, George W Bush comes a close second to greedy and unscrupulous Wall Street bankers.

But there are serious flaws in this argument.

Deregulation started long before President Bush came to power, and it was enthusiastically pursued by both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Wait, wait, wait.  I thought that only Republicans – through their thuggish committment to greed and hoggishness – were the ones supporting deregulation.  (If you remember the debates, this was basically the Obama analysis – GWB caused the crisis by supporting deregulation.)  So Democrats supported deregulation, too.  Interesting.  (The BBC doesn’t sully itself — of course!  — by pointing out specific Democratic action – much less specific Democrats – for criticism, but one step at a time, here, people.)

Many see the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act as a major, direct cause of the current financial crisis.

But it was signed by a Democratic President, Bill Clinton, and supported by many other Democratic politicians, among them the scourge of Bush deregulation Nancy Pelosi.

What is more, President Bush actually increased the burden of regulation on US companies, enacting in 2002 what he called “the most far-reaching reform of American business practices since the time of Franklin D Roosevelt”, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

A response to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals, including the collapse of the energy group Enron, Sarbanes-Oxley significantly increased the reporting requirements and accountability of company boards and management.

So the image of Mr Bush as the arch deregulator and the Democratic Party as the champion of stricter rules for business does not quite tally with the evidence.

Ah, the British sense of understatement.

But this financial crisis has many causes, being – as it is – the product of conflicting human emotions and imperfect markets and organisations.

It is impossible to blame it all on one man.

Well, it’s not impossible; Nancy Pelosi does it.  But it’s not fair to blame the crisis on GWB or any one person.  And even an eensy-beensy amount of fairness towards GWB is welcome in these parts, at least after the last eight years of insults, lies, and calumny.