Spiraglio

Rigged Game

2011-11-04T16:11:00.000-07:00

Posting on today's Huffington Post, former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration and current Berkeley professor of public policy Robert Reich observes that the "disconnect between Washington and the rest of the nation hasn't been this wide since the late 1960s." After his recent visit with Occupy Oakland protestors, Reich came away convinced that the fledgling Occupier movement in the United States "cannot be stopped. Here, as elsewhere, people are outraged at what feels like a rigged game -- an economy that won't respond, a democracy that won't listen, and a financial sector that holds all the cards."

Reich foresees a collision, perhaps as soon as next year, between the "Americans who are losing their jobs or their pay and can't pay their bills" and the "Washington insiders, deficit hawks, regressive Republicans, diffident Democrats, well-coiffed lobbyists, and the lobbyists' wealthy patrons on Wall Street who haven't a clue or couldn't care less."

Spam Inundation

2011-10-21T16:28:00.000-07:00

I returned this week from a relaxing month on the Ligurian Sea coast in Italy. The weather was sunny, the air 70F-80F every day but one, and the cool water and sandy beach ideal for swimming.

When I got home, I opened my e-mail program and found 3,200 messages in the inbox. About 1 percent of these were from friends or related to business. The remaining 3,168 were spam. I've spent many hours the last couple of days clearing out this sewage from the mailbox and server.

Am I the only one receiving this much e-crap? I have a good antivirus program, but that clearly isn't enough to stem this tide. If there's effective antispam software available, please let me know. I'm getting too old for this shit.

The Peace Price

2010-11-16T15:25:00.000-08:00

An item in the Nov. 16 Harper's Weekly Review reports that "Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to push his cabinet to freeze most construction on West Bank settlements for 90 days--in exchange for a $3 billion package from the United States in security incentives and fighter jets--so that peace talks could continue."

Under such conditions, the prospects for peace are as dim as ever.

Bullet Points

2010-08-04T17:32:00.000-07:00

In an eye-opening article published in the August 2010 issue of Harper's magazine, titled "Happiness Is a Worn Gun," writer Dan Baum estimates that there are 250 million firearms owned by private citizens in the United States. And among those gun owners, 6 million have permits to carry a concealed pistol.

Baum, himself a handgun owner and holder of a concealed-carry license, traces what he calls "the gun-carrying revolution" to Florida, whose cocaine-driven murder rate in 1987 ran 40 percent higher than the national average. But instead of restricting access to guns in the face of such slaughter, he writes, the Florida legislature took the view that citizens should be able to defend themselves and ordered police chiefs to issue any adult a carry permit unless there was good reason to deny it. "In the history of gun politics, this was a big moment. The gun-rights movement had won just about every battle it had fought since coalescing in the late 1960s, but these had been defensive battles against new gun-control laws. Reversing the burden of proof on carry permits expanded gun rights. For the first time, the movement was on offense, and the public loved it."

To his credit, Baum is candid about the heightened sense of power carrying a handgun has given him: "There’s no denying that carrying a gun has made my days a lot more dramatic. Suddenly, I’m dangerous. I’m an action figure. I bear a lethal secret into every social encounter." And he has to "remind myself occasionally that my gun is not a prop, a political statement, or a rhetorical device, but an instrument designed to blow a ragged channel through a human being."

Currently in the United States, 37 states have "shall issue" laws, which require law enforcement authorities to issue a concealed-pistol license to an adult citizen unless he or she has a state-mandated reason for disqualification, such as a felony conviction. With 250 million firearms in private hands, guns are here to stay.

Gun ownership and control is a hot-button subject that invariably fans emotional flames no matter what position you take on the issue. Baum deserves credit for having written a balanced, well-researched, and personally revealing article. He has advanced--and elevated--the discussion.

On the Road

2010-04-27T14:31:00.000-07:00

In March 2009, my friend and former chiropractor, Mike Lewis, left Seattle by motorcycle on a 5-year journey to the world’s continents. Leading up to his departure, he sold his house and his business, storing whatever possessions were left.

Now, a year later, Mike has made it to the southern tip of South America. He’s documenting his trip with photographs and movies, which you can see here. You can also follow Mike's journey on his blog.

It takes a lot of courage—and stones—to make a move like this. Buon viaggio, my friend, and buona fortuna.

Short Fiction

2010-03-04T17:10:00.000-08:00

Titled "Almost Over: What's the Word?" this story was written by Lydia Davis, and it appears in The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, published in 2009. Here it is:

He says, "When I first met you, I didn't think you would turn out to be so ... strange."

That's it, end of story.

Addition Problem

2010-02-02T18:10:00.000-08:00

"... and as an added bonus ..." We see this come-on everywhere nowadays, but it makes no sense. After all, a bonus, the dictionary reminds us, is "something in addition [italics mine] to what is expected or strictly due" (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed.). So, an added bonus is something added to something added. "Bonus" is a solid noun, perfectly capable of standing alone. It shouldn't be rendered meaningless by marketing drivel.

The Heart of the Matter

2009-10-27T17:03:00.000-07:00

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," begins the resignation letter submitted last month by U.S. Foreign Service Political Officer Matthew Hoh, who served as Senior Civilian Representative for the U.S. government in Zabul Province. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy," he continues, "but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end." Hoh, by the way, is a former captain in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Why and to what end. Have you heard a single journalist put this question to President Obama at a news conference or during an interview? Neither have I. Yet it's the essential question that must be asked--and answered satisfactorily--before a single extra soldier or Marine is deployed to Afghanistan. In fact, if this question isn't addressed, we should insist that all our forces be withdrawn from the country immediately.

Don't Try This at Home

2009-06-22T17:52:00.000-07:00

As everyone has now learned, the actor David Carradine did not lose his life by suicide, as early reports from Thailand, where he was working on a new film, seemed to suggest. No, it turned out that Carradine, 72 years old, was most likely engaged in an act of autoerotic asphyxiation at the time of his death, an activity that ought to be considered an unsafe sexual practice, according to The Stranger columnist Mistress Matisse, a professional dominatrix whose specialty is, of course, edgy sex play. In her latest column, aptly titled Control Tower, MM reminds us that "self-bondage can be risky in itself, but any time someone's oxygen is restricted, death becomes a possibility." She quotes Jay Wiseman, author of SM 101 and an authority on breath play, who clarifies the risk: "I know of no way whatsoever that suffocation or strangulation can be done that does not intrinsically put the recipient at risk of cardiac arrest."

So there you have it: death by cardiac arrest resulting from an elaborate masturbatory practice involving ropes, suspension, and cut-off breath. What a way to go.

SEALing the Deal

2009-04-18T14:27:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the daring rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips from the Somali pirates who hijacked his merchant ship, the Maersk Alabama, in the Indian Ocean, taking the captain hostage, I suggest a new promotional slogan for the US Navy SEALs, whose snipers' chilling accuracy--in 3-foot swells, no less--brought the episode (and the pirates' lives) to an end.

Here's the slogan: 3 bullets, 3 bodies. US Navy SEALs: We get the job done.

SEALs may be the best-trained Special Operations Forces in the world. Their completion of this mission reminds us to be grateful they're on our side.

Faint Praise

2008-12-29T18:16:00.000-08:00

We often see the term fulsome praise used to indicate abundant approval or admiration. The problem is, fulsome doesn't mean that at all. Rather, the word means "flattering to an excessive degree," according to the Oxford American Dictionary. Thus, fulsome praise "isn't a lavish tribute," explains Bill Bryson in his excellent Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors, "it is unctuous and insincere toadying."

Good Deed, a Short Story

2008-12-29T18:05:00.000-08:00

We were half-way through our third drink when the old guy at the end of the bar toppled off his stool onto the floor. He lay there for several minutes, his face turning gray, and no one tried to help him. So we called 9-1-1. The ambulance arrived quickly, and two EMTs loaded the guy on a stretcher and carted him off. An hour and a half later, he walked back in and said something to the bartender, who pointed at us. He nodded and headed our way. “Probably wants to buy us a drink,” I said to my friend. But I was wrong. “Next time,” the old guy told us, “mind your own fucking business.”

New Yorker Brouhaha

2008-07-15T17:20:00.000-07:00

While the gathering media storm over The New Yorker's cover illustration of the Obamas might fog up Eustace Tilly's monocle, I'm betting Tina Brown, the magazine's gutsy former editor who published many controversial covers during her reign, is pleased. As Bill Maher put it in today's New York Times, "If you can't do irony on the cover of The New Yorker, where can you do it?"

"There's been this question about whether he's [Barack Obama] black enough," Maher continued in the same Times article. "I have this joke: What does he have to do? Dunk? He bowled a 37--to me, that's black enough." Case closed.

Bursting BS Balloons

2008-06-26T14:29:00.000-07:00

Just when the effusive outpouring of claptrap over the death of TV news celebrity Tim Russert threatened to choke us in a cloud of sentimental exhaust, a breath of fresh air arrived on June 23 in a column by Chris Hedges at truthdig.com titled "The Hedonists of Power."

"We were instructed by the high priests on television over the past few days to mourn a Sunday morning talk show host, who made $5 million a year and who gave a platform to the powerful and the famous so they could spin, equivocate and lie to the nation," Hedges writes. "We were repeatedly told by these television courtiers, people like Tom Brokaw and Wolf Blitzer, that this talk show host was one of our nation’s greatest journalists, as if sitting in a studio, putting on makeup and chatting with Dick Cheney or George W. Bush have much to do with journalism."

Quoting the great muckraker I.F. Stone, Hedges reminds us that all governments lie, and it is "the job of the journalist to do the hard, tedious reporting to shine a light on these lies." It is the job of TV courtiers, by contrast, to "feed off the scraps tossed to them by the powerful and never question the system."

These courtiers, Hedges continues, "including the late Tim Russert, never gave a voice to credible critics in the buildup to the war against Iraq. They were too busy playing their roles as red-blooded American patriots. They never fought back in their public forums against the steady erosion of our civil liberties and the trashing of our Constitution."

Letting Go

2008-04-09T10:26:00.000-07:00

Nick Gallo, one of the best friends I've ever had, died in October at the age of 57. He had fallen ill on a flight to Athens, Greece, where he was headed to write an article for a magazine. He died a few days later in an Athens public hospital. Pericarditis and pneumonia were given as the cause of death.

I'm having a hard time letting him go. It's only now that I can write this entry, which already seems hopelessly inadequate. In recent years, we talked several times a week and usually got together at least once a week. Before that, we had offices across the hall from each other for 10 years.

I keep coming across things that Nick would be interested in and I think, "Oh, I've got to tell Nick about ..." or "I'll get this book for Nick."

Time, they say, is the great healer. But I'm not so sure. My life's a little darker now.

Goodbye, Old Friend

2007-09-23T17:02:00.000-07:00

Walt Crowley died Friday evening, September 21. He was 60 years old, three years younger than I am, and he was a friend of mine. The best article about his life appears on the website historylink.org, which he co-founded in 1997. The warmest personal remembrance of Walt was written by Seattle City Council member Jean Godden, a former newspaper reporter and columnist.

I met Walt when he and I worked at the Weekly (now called Seattle Weekly) in the mid-1980s. We had neighboring desks in the open newsroom and soon became friends. I enjoyed his keen intelligence, playful sense of humor, personal integrity, and compassion. He knew a lot of people, some of them movers and shakers, and had a lot of friends.

Walt believed in engagement. He was not one to withdraw into cynical detachment in the face of appalling official injustice and cruelty. He sought to do something about it.

"As we know from any reading of the morning papers, liberty is never at a loss for ambitious enemies," said Lewis Lapham, former and longtime editor of Harper's magazine, in a salute to Molly Ivins last year. "But the survival of the American democracy depends less on the magnificence of its Air Force or the wonder of its fleets than on the willingness of its citizens to stand on the ground of their own thought."

Walt Crowley was more than willing to stand on the ground of his own thought. I'll miss him as a friend, and I'll miss him as a model of what a citizen should be.

Unsafe and Insecure

2007-09-14T17:31:00.000-07:00

With the 2008 presidential race already rolling along, we're hearing a lot of noise from the candidates, Democratic and Republican alike, about "keeping America safe" and "securing our borders." It's all nonsense, of course.

No one can keep you safe from anything. Here are the facts: You are not safe, you are not secure. Life is uncertain. But you do have a choice. You can accept the reality of uncertainty, or you can deny it and convince yourself that this or that presidential candidate will do a better job of making you "safe" and "secure."

In the wake of 9/11, Bush and Cheney established a cabinet-level mega-department, Homeland Security, to protect us from terrorists and evildoers. Now we all know that B & C are tough guys, eager to dispatch the Air Force bombers and Devil Dog Marines. Shock and awe, baby!

Endless and ill-defined "war on terrorism," colossally inept Homeland Security department, disastrous invasion of Iraq ... you tell me, do you feel safe and secure? Well, do you?

The Plane Truth

2007-08-08T16:40:00.000-07:00

An item in the August 4 New York Times titled "Passengers Scowl as Airlines Smile" finally confirms what anyone who's flown in the past few years already knows; namely, that the airlines have been consistently downgrading service to passengers. You know the drill: We get nothing to eat, inadequate seating space, dirty cabins and lavatories, broken equipment (e.g., seat-tilting controls), and, of course, regularly delayed or canceled flights.

Here's the bad news:

"For the first five months of this year, the on-time arrival rate of the big airlines was 73.5 percent, the lowest in seven years. Complaints about service were up 49 percent from May 2006. This summer, flights are booked at average levels of about 90 percent, a historic high. That means that if a flight is delayed, it is much more difficult for a passenger to get a seat on a later flight.

"Airlines make a simple calculation, comparing the loss from flying with an empty seat against the risk of bumping passengers, to whom airlines have to pay $200 or $400, depending on how quickly they can be rebooked."

The Times quotes Serguei Netessine, a professor at Wharton School of Business: "Previously, airlines worried about dissatisfied customers. Now I don't think they worry about it, because the customer service at all airlines is so horrible." [italics mine]

Blowing Smoke

2007-07-25T17:08:00.000-07:00

Despite the proven health risks associated with smoking--e.g., lung cancer, emphysema, congestive heart failure, colorectal cancer, hypertension--many Americans continue to smoke. Here are the latest figures, reported in Time magazine's July 16 issue:

71.5 million Americans use tobacco products.
23.4 percent of men are cigarette smokers.
18.5 percent of women are cigarette smokers.
44.3 percent of young adults 18 to 25 years old use tobacco, the highest of any group.

The article also mentioned that tobacco use is lowest in the West and highest in the Midwest.

Stuff Happens

2007-06-29T17:33:00.000-07:00

Last night, we went to see a production of Stuff Happens, a play written by David Hare, at A Contemporary Theatre (ACT) in Seattle. The play, whose title refers to a comment made by then-US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in response to a reporter's question about looting and pillage in Baghdad, is concerned with the run-up to war in Iraq, and the actors portray the members of the Bush administration who were centrally involved in making the case for war: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, and George W. Bush, along with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. It's a powerful play, and the ACT production was superb, with strong, convincing performances from the entire cast.

Late in Act II, Bush summons his war council to a critical meeting in the Oval Office regarding the Tony Blair problem. Powell, fed up with the vice president's frequent sarcastic asides about Blair, breaks in on Cheney:

Powell: Come on, this is ridiculous. This isn't worthy of you, Dick.
Cheney: Not worthy? You want me to be serious?
Powell: I do.
Cheney: You want me to tell you what I really think?
Powell: Yes.
Cheney: All right. I'll tell you. Tony Blair? I've read his stuff. I've heard him talk. This is a man on a mission. This is a man with a history.
Powell: Sure.
Cheney: He knows what he wants: He wants to build some new world order out of the ruins of the World Trade Center. He wants the right to go into any country anywhere and bring relief from suffering and pain wherever he finds it. And I don't. What I want is to follow this country's legitimate security concerns. And, for me, those come above everything.
Rumsfeld: Me, too.
Cheney: Now: If those interests happen to coincide with some Englishman's fantasy of how he's one day going to introduce some universal penalty system -- three strikes and the UN says you can overthrow any regime you like -- then that's fine. If not, not, and we won't miss him.
Powell: That isn't fair. Blair's loyal. He's been loyal from the start.
Cheney: OK, I admit it, if we want him, Blair's good at the high moral tone. If you want to go into battle with a preacher sitting on top of the tank, that's fine by me. But bear in mind, the preacher's one more to carry. Needs rations, needs a latrine, just like everyone else.
Powell: I like Blair.
Cheney: Maybe you do. But we don't need him. And as of this moment, he's bringing us nothing but trouble. It's a good rule: When the cat shit gets bigger than the cat, get rid of the cat.
Rumsfeld: Nice.
Cheney: This guy is putting himself halfway between American power and international diplomacy. And sorry -- but that's a place where people get mashed.

If you have a chance to see the play, by all means go. It's provocative, it's enraging, it's discouraging, but you won't soon forget it.

Inside Passage

2007-04-27T16:08:00.000-07:00

For many years, I've thought that meditation, the practice of sitting quietly alone in a room with nothing but your breath and your thoughts for company, may be a key to understanding the fundamental mysteries of life. Who am I? Why am I here? What (if anything) is real? True, philosophers have grappled with such questions for centuries, publishing enough scholarly papers and books to fill entire libraries. But what about the rest of us? Is there a chance we might learn something important by going inside ourselves instead of opening a book?

Thinking about the value of meditation is one thing. Creating a practice is another. These things were going through my mind this morning as I was waiting at the chiropractor's office for my appointment. To pass the time, I started paging through the May-June Utne magazine and spotted an article by filmmaker David Lynch titled "Deep Thoughts." Admitting that he originally thought meditation was a waste of time, Lynch eventually decided to try it when anxiety and anger began to subvert his creative powers (and his marriage). As he writes, "Anger and depression and sorrow are beautiful things in a story, but they're like poison to the filmmaker or artist." After he'd been meditating for a couple of weeks, Lynch's wife asked him: "This anger, where did it go?" He hadn't even noticed it had lifted.

Now, Lynch tells us, he hasn't missed a meditation in 33 years. Reading about the lasting benefits of his practice, you can see why.

I meditate once in the morning and again in the afternoon, for about 20 minutes each time. Then I go about the business of my day. And I find that the joy of doing increases. Intuition increases.The pleasure of life grows. And negativity recedes.

Popular Demand

2007-01-31T18:05:00.000-08:00

Yes, friends, Spiraglio has yielded to unrelenting pressure from his readers--all six of you--and reopened for business after a lengthy hiatus. Now, let's see ... where was I?

Oh yes, the Cheney-Bush administration. What are they up to? Well, for one thing, they're busily firing all the competent US Attorneys, and replacing them with legal hacks loyal to themselves. By doing this, they hope to avoid inconvenient federal criminal investigations into such practices as illegal eavesdropping against American citizens. James Bamford wrote about the NSA's four-year unauthorized monitoring of our phone calls and e-mails in a New York Times op-ed piece today, "Bush Is Not Above the Law":

Last August, a federal judge found that the president of the United States broke the law, committed a serious felony and violated the Constitution. Had the president been an ordinary citizen — someone charged with bank robbery or income tax evasion — the wheels of justice would have immediately begun to turn. The F.B.I. would have conducted an investigation, a United States attorney’s office would have impaneled a grand jury and charges would have been brought. But under the Bush Justice Department, no F.B.I. agents were ever dispatched to padlock White House files or knock on doors and no federal prosecutors ever opened a case.
The ruling was the result of a suit, in which I am one of the plaintiffs, brought against the National Security Agency by the American Civil Liberties Union. It was a response to revelations by this newspaper in December 2005 that the agency had been monitoring the phone calls and e-mail messages of Americans for more than four years without first obtaining warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Keep Your Ribbons

2006-10-18T14:04:00.000-07:00

In his recent comprehensive post on TruthDig, Stan Goff, a retired veteran of the US Army Special Forces, discusses the evolution of the Rumsfeld Doctrine and its application in Iraq. Here's one passage that caught my eye:

Every time I see one of those insipid yellow-ribbon magnets now, I think of Charlie Anderson, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. “I just want to ask those people,” says Anderson, referring to those who display the yellow-ribbon magnets, “when is the last time you wrote one of those soldiers? How many of them do you actually know? How many have really asked us, what did you do there? I wanna tell them, we don’t need your fucking ribbons. We need help and jobs.”

The whole essay is well worth reading, and you can do that right here.

Salad Days

2006-10-05T13:07:00.000-07:00

Are you getting tired of waiters coming to your table with a 3-foot-high pepper grinder asking if you'd like "fresh ground pepper" on your salad? Well, so is Nora Ephron, who unloaded last month on the New York Times Op-Ed page, God bless her. Ephron's a much better writer than I am, so I'll let her do the talking:

Many years ago, they used to put salt and pepper on the table in a restaurant, and here's how they did it: there was a salt shaker and there was a pepper shaker. The pepper shaker contained ground black pepper, which was outlawed in the 1960s and replaced by the Permanent Floating Pepper Mill and the Permanent Floating Pepper Mill refrain: "Would you like some fresh ground black pepper on your salad?" I've noticed that almost no one wants some fresh ground black pepper on his salad. Why they even bother asking is a mystery to me.

Ephron tackles some other restaurant annoyances in the column, which you can read here.

Air World

2006-09-03T16:39:00.000-07:00

I hate flying. This wasn't always true, however. Thirty years ago, the airlines weren't going out of their way to insult "economy" travelers. You could get a meal then. Sure it wasn't very good, but still--it was a meal, not just a (small) bag of peanuts. You got a decent amount of room around your seat, not the stingy, impossibly crowded space imposed on air travelers today. You know what I'm talking about: The guy in front of you leans back, jamming your tray table into your rib cage. Your elbows spread out slightly while you're reading and they encroach on your rowmate's space. The carry-on bag you're permitted to bring onboard doesn't really fit under the seat in front of you and leave you room for your feet. I could go on (and may, later).

Why not upgrade, you ask. Well, consider this: A roundtrip economy-class ticket on British Air between Seattle and London costs about $1,000. The "business-class" seat for the same RT ticket costs about $8,000. I don't know about you, but the $7,000 difference is HUGE for me. So, what's a nonwealthy traveler to do? Seriously, what is such a traveler to do?

America the Fat

2006-07-11T11:19:00.000-07:00

Now that obesity has become a major health concern in the United States, some of you may wonder how that happened. Well, we eat too much and we sit on our asses most of the time staring at screens: computers at work, TVs at home. Moreover, what we eat is often unhealthy, high-fat food with limited--if any--nutrients: chips, cookies, soda pop, French fries, ice cream, processed cheese, etc.

Then there's the ballooning portion size of almost everything in our diet. Jane Brody, who writes the weekly "Personal Health" column in the New York Times, weighs in on the subject in the paper's July 11 edition. Her comments make for button-popping reading. Brody reports that an average serving of pasta is now "480 percent greater than the one-cup recommended serving size" and some cookies are 700 percent larger. She goes on: "A New York bagel, now sold nationwide, weighs five or six ounces. That is five or six bread portions, supplying about 500 calories, not counting cream cheese or butter." Soft drinks come in 24-ounce containers or larger, "often with free refills."

What's a country to do? Fad diets have spawned shelves of best-selling books, but they rarely work for the long haul. But there is one tried-and-true method for weight loss: eat less and exercise more. Do both and you will lose weight. Continue to do both and you'll keep the weight off.

So, next time you're tempted by a chocolate chip cookie the size of a salad plate, take a walk instead. Simple as that, piece of cake.

Just Like That

2006-07-05T16:38:00.000-07:00

I found out today that two friends of mine, a young woman and her mother, were involved in a car crash a couple of days ago. Both were hospitalized for injuries, the mother's more serious than her daughter's. The driver of an oncoming vehicle apparently lost control of the wheel, and her car swerved into the opposing traffic's lane, colliding with my friends' car.

There's no moral to this story. It's a reminder that terrible things can happen at any time.

You never know.

Numb and Number

2006-04-06T16:32:00.000-07:00

"6 Weeks to 7 Figures," promises a Men'sHealth article. Seattle Metropolitan magazine heralds its inaugural issue with "65 BEST WAYS TO LOVE OUR CITY" on the cover. "10 MORE REASONS TO LOVE ORLANDO BLOOM," gushes CosmoGIRL! Why all these numbered lists? you may wonder. Because research shows that numbers sell magazines--women's magazines, historically, but, increasingly, men's magazines as well. "It all adds up to an arms race at the newsstand," says Katharine Q. Seelye in her playfully informative article "Lurid Numbers on Glossy Pages! (Magazines Exploit What Sells)," published in the February 10, 2006, New York Times. As Seelye explains, "Numbers jump out from the clutter of type on the newsstand. They draw the eye and quickly convey value and utility, helping monthlies in particular stay afloat in the rising tide of celebrity obsession."

Yes, we can't get enough of celebrities, it seems. US Weekly and People, the best-known star-crazed weeklies, feed us a steady stream of Britney, Gwyneth, and Paris sightings, with the occasional glimpse of George Clooney aboard his boat on Lago di Como. "Today, the biggest force everyone is dealing with is celebrity magazines," Kate White, editor of Cosmopolitan, the best-selling monthly in America, tells Seelye. "You're not competing with other people's numbers, you're competing with Brad and Angelina and babies."

For those of us who'd like to eighty-six the numbers mania, there's zero relief in sight.

On the Ground

2006-03-13T14:46:00.000-08:00

Every so often, something shows up in The New York Times that makes me feel the expensive subscription is worth it. Sure, the "paper of record" has good reporters and very good columnists, especially Bob Herbert, Frank Rich, and Paul Krugman. But I'm not talking about writers who report and comment, however skillfully. I'm talking about someone who is not a professional writer on assignment, but rather a person engaged in activity on the front lines who gives us a glimpse of what life is like in the hot zone. The March 12, 2006, issue of The New York Times Magazine carries just such a firsthand report on the back page. Titled "The Waiting," it's written by Brian Mockenhaupt, who served two tours in Iraq as an infantryman with the 10th Mountain Division. Mockenhaupt's account is not long--about 1,000 words--but he conveys, with clear, powerful language, what it's like to confront death all the time, day in, day out, 24/7. After pointing out that the bomb, the improvised explosive device (IED), is "the main way to die in this war," he tells us why:

Everywhere you look, there's a possibility. The bombs are hidden in dead dogs, dead donkeys, trash piles and fruit stands, parked cars and moving cars. They're stuffed in sewer pipes, hung from overpasses and tucked behind street signs. Any place is a good place to slip, strap or bury a bomb.

A couple of paragraphs later, Mockenhaupt sums up the danger: "This is the problem with looking for bombs: They're hidden well, so you have to be close to find them. And if you do find one, you're probably too close."

A writer's bio at the end of the piece informs us that Mockenhaupt is working on a book about the military. I don't know about you, but I'm buying a copy as soon as it hits the shelves.

One Thing at a Time

2006-02-17T17:34:00.000-08:00

We've heard a lot in recent years about the glories of multitasking, usually from self-described multitaskers. But the time has come to peel off the congratulatory gold star these dynamos have affixed to themselves and see the practice for what it really is. By definition, multitasking means never doing one thing with full attention. To cite one alarmingly widespread--not to mention dangerous, even lethal--example: driving a car while talking on a cell phone. If you're talking on the phone, you're not paying full attention to driving. If you're driving, you're not giving your full attention to the phone conversation. It's that simple. And if you're on the road and not paying full attention to your driving, you're a danger to me. If you're a danger to me, I want you off the road.

Page 123

2006-01-05T11:26:00.000-08:00

Browsing at the Chekhov's Mistress blog, I came across an interesting item headed "Page 123." It's about a meme the blogger had spotted elsewhere and decided to spread at CM. Here's how it works:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around for an impressive title. Just use the book that's actually next to you.

This sounds like fun, so now I'm playing. Here's my sentence:

He was indeed a rogue, and a scoundrel to boot (when he died of acute alcoholic toxemia, in 1966, at the age of forty-four, he was under indictment for just about every variety of prohibited corruption recognized by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts); he was also a decorated veteran of World War II, commissioned on the battlefield in Normandy as a lieutenant, and when I met him for the first and only time, in 1963, he still carried with him shards of shrapnel in his legs that he could cause to grind audibly, to impress a young reporter.

The rules call for not revealing the book or author. But guesses are welcome.

Driving 101

2005-12-20T15:41:00.000-08:00

All right, class, listen up: In light of the epidemic of unbelievably bad driving all around us, we're going to review the basics of safe driving. First, PAY ATTENTION. That means, when you're driving: Don't talk on cellphones; don't eat muffins, sandwiches, roast beef, sushi, or anything else; don't drink coffee, beer, soft drinks, or vodka tonics; don't change music CDs; don't reload your handgun, shotgun, rifle, or AK-47; don't have sex of any kind; don't cut (or paint) your toenails; and, for heaven's sake, don't take a nap.

This Stinks!

2005-12-16T17:35:00.000-08:00

What's with all these scented ads jammed into magazines of all kinds? And not just magazines, either. I once got a bill from Nordstrom with a scented insert. I wrote them that if they did that again, I'd stop shopping at Nordstrom. They stopped sending scented inserts. But would such a direct approach work with, say, Vanity Fair?

Dear Graydon: I enjoy (mostly) your magazine, even though it's almost impossible to find the Table of Contents in the sea of full-page ads. But these disgusting scented ads have got to stop. I didn't ask for them, and I don't want them. If you keep inserting them in VF, I'll be forced to terminate my subscription.

There must be some magazines out there that are still unscented--maybe this one.

My Yacht's Bigger Than Yours

2005-11-14T16:15:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder how those billionaires spend their money? Sure you do. For some, boating's the thing. But these guys aren't interested in just any old 200-foot yacht. No indeed. Megabucks buy megayachts. Take Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft. He cruises the world's waters aboard Octopus (photo above), a 416-foot floating palace complete with two helipads, seven smaller boats of varying sizes, a 10-man submarine, and a crew of 60. Reputed to be the world's third-largest private yacht, Octopus cost about US $200 million to build. Not to be outdone, Larry Ellison, founder and chairman of Oracle, launched his own US $200 million entry in the megayacht sweepstakes, Rising Sun (photo below), a 452-foot vessel with 82 rooms spread over 5 stories and 86,000 square feet of living space. Comparing the Allen and Ellison yachts, CNN/Money's Steve Hargreaves called Octopus "the rugged Land Rover of the high seas," whereas Rising Sun is "more the plush Caddy."

Free Speech

2005-10-27T13:21:00.000-07:00

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff in the U.S. State Department from 2002 to 2005, gave a speech on October 19, 2005, in Washington, DC, at a program sponsored by the New America Foundation. His topic was the Bush administration's national security decision-making process. Excerpts of the speech have been widely quoted in the news media, especially Wilkerson's remarks about having seen a "cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made." During his talk, Wilkerson encouraged the audience to read The Assassins' Gate, by George Packer, which Salon's Gary Kamiya called "the best book yet about the Iraq war." You can find Col. Wilkerson's speech in its entirety right here.

Turn Style

2005-10-20T17:25:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed that no one uses turn signals anymore? It's true. I do a lot of informal surveys when I'm driving--checking the next 10 cars that turn, say--and I have found that most drivers don't signal their turns. Soon new car models won't come with turn signals; they're obsolete. Talking this development over recently with a friend, I wondered why it was happening. He pointed out that using turn signals gives information to the enemy--i.e., other drivers. He may be on to something. People are driving a lot more aggressively these days--especially SUV drivers, who apparently think they're invincible inside those grotesquely oversized gas-guzzlers. Another road hazard, one that's gaining traction by the day, is spontaneous U-turns. These occur when someone misses his turn and is too impatient to drive to the next intersection and find a safe way to turn around. Instead, he abruptly executes a midblock U-turn right in front of you, endangering every other vehicle in the vicinity. But what does he care? He's the only driver on the road, so he can do anything he wants.

Colossal Failure

2005-09-23T18:14:00.000-07:00

Browsing the Harper's magazine Web site, I came across a compelling essay titled "The Uses of Disaster," written by Rebecca Solnit and posted September 9. In her closing paragraphs, Solnit turns to the catastrophic horrors in New Orleans triggered by Hurricane Katrina:

The most hellish image in New Orleans was not the battering waves of Lake Pontchartrain or even the homeless children wandering on raised highways. It was the forgotten thousands crammed into the fetid depths of the Superdome. And what most news outlets failed to report was that those infernos were not designed by the people within, nor did they represent the spontaneous eruption of nature red in tooth and claw. They were created by the authorities. The people within were not allowed to leave. The Convention Center and the Superdome became open prisons. "They won't let them walk out," reported Fox News anchor Shepard Smith, in a radical departure from the script. "They got locked in there. And anyone who walks up out of that city now is turned around. You are not allowed to go to Gretna, Louisiana, from New Orleans, Louisiana. Over there, there's hope. Over there, there's electricity. Over there, there is food and water. But you cannot go from here to there. The government will not allow you to do it. It's a fact." Jesse Jackson compared the Superdome to the hull of a slave ship.

This is the disaster our society has been working to realize for a quarter century, ever since Ronald Reagan rode into town on promises of massive tax cuts. Many of the stories we hear about sudden natural disasters are about the brutally selfish human nature of the survivors, predicated on the notion that survival is, like the marketplace, a matter of competition, not cooperation. And when we look back at Katrina, we may see that the greatest savagery was that of our public officials, who not only failed to provide the infrastructure, social services, and opportunities that would have significantly decreased the vulnerability of pre-hurricane New Orleans, but who also, when disaster did occur, put their ideology before their people.

Business Is Booming

2005-08-31T13:52:00.000-07:00

According to an article in the August 30, 2005, New York Times, worldwide weapons sales in 2004 reached nearly $37 billion, their highest level since 2000. A major factor in this impressive performance was the $9.6 billion in arms delivered to Near East and Asian countries last year by the United States, the world's largest supplier of weapons to developing nations. The Times cited a just-released Congressional Research Service report as its source for these figures. The weapons being sold include tanks, combat aircraft, missiles, and submarines. It's reassuring to learn that Uncle Sam continues to dominate such an important and constructive segment of the global economy.

The Joke's on Us

2005-08-15T18:09:00.000-07:00

Some years ago, Tad Friend wrote a brilliant, hilarious, and infuriating piece for the New Yorker about Aaron Sorkin's heroic efforts to talk ABC out of imposing a laugh track on his then-new TV show Sports Night. Sorkin, God bless him, was persistent and finally won a partial victory. Partial because ABC agreed to withhold some, but not all, "sweeteners," as laugh tracks are called in the industry, from the show. Still, it was an important victory for the talent over the suits, and it earned Sorkin a spot on my Inspirational Americans list a year before he started West Wing. You see, laugh tracks enrage me so much I never watch a TV show that has them. The Seinfeld phenomenon passed me by because the show was laugh-track polluted. Why get so worked up about this? you may wonder. Well, for openers, I don't like to be insulted, and I doubt you do, either. Network executives quoted in Friend's article insisted that people watching television wouldn't know when to laugh without the laugh track. Is that so? Well, I find it pretty easy to laugh when something strikes me as funny, and I can actually break out laughing without prompts of any kind, surprising as that may be to the arrogant morons who control TV sitcoms. Think of it--these clowns think viewers are so fucking stupid that we wouldn't know to laugh unless they told us when we should. Toward the end of the New Yorker article, Friend unveiled a great quote from Sorkin, who said that adding a laugh track to Sports Night "feels like I've put on an Armani tuxedo, tied my tie, snapped on my cuff links, and the last thing I do before I leave the house is spray Cheez Whiz all over myself." Now, that's funny. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

On the Job

2005-08-01T15:15:00.000-07:00

McSweeney's Web site has a fascinating collection of interviews with people who work at "unusual" jobs. Activities director at a retirement home, repo man, certified firewalk instructor, New York City limo driver, and magician's assistant are a few examples. Because the interviewees are not professional writers, candor triumphs over craft. Their answers are often close to the bone and can be quite moving. There's also very funny material here, some of it surely unintended. Here's an excerpt from "On the Night Shift," an interview with a janitor:

The first vacuum I worked with, I called it Maud. She was a good vacuum. You know, life is like vacuuming — you're going along and everything is fine, when suddenly it shuts off and you realize you've run out of cord.

And this is from an interview with a guy who worked at a hot dog restaurant:

Q: What was the name of the place?
A: It was called Yum Yum Better Ice Cream and Hot Dogs.
Q: Was it some kind of hot-dog stand?
A: No, it was a family-run restaurant, run by two brothers who didn't speak to each other. They took turns managing—never at the same time, though.
Q: Did you have to wear a uniform?
A: You had to wear a Yum Yum baseball cap or a paper cap. Also a Yum Yum T-shirt that was just filthy. The people who worked there were not the most ambitious or cleanest people. I remember fighting for the good aprons. The ones that weren't torn or dirty or had strings that were too short.

The Old Man and the Tree

2005-07-21T13:39:00.000-07:00

I am standing in a park a few miles from Tofino, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island's Pacific coast. Katie and I went to this stunningly beautiful part of the world to celebrate my 60th birthday, and I can't deny that I was feeling the weight of six decades. But the great tree I'm leaning against reminds me that there are creatures on the earth far older than I am or ever will be.

What Do You Mean?

2005-07-11T18:24:00.000-07:00

In this marketing-saturated era, we're bombarded with expressions that actually mean the opposite of what they say. Nowhere is this hypocrisy more prevalent than in the responses we get from "Customer Service" departments, sometimes laughably called "Customer Care." For example, the recorded telephone message insisting that "Your call is important to us" clearly means "We don't care what you think, so why don't you stop bothering us." (If our call really was important to them, they wouldn't park us on interminable hold, hoping we'll get discouraged and hang up.) My theory is that the downgrading of customers began when the financial media started referring to them as "consumers." This institutional term--as in Consumer Price Index--replaced the more personal word "customer," with its suggestion of a living, breathing person who goes to the store to buy something and often knows the store owner. Now, our value has been reduced to that of spending units, whose purchases will be tallied electronically and published (or posted) in charts, tables, and graphs to help marketers sell us more crap we don't need.

Aid and Comfort

2005-07-05T15:25:00.000-07:00

A while back, a story made the news about three lions coming to the rescue of a 12-year-old Ethiopian girl, who had been kidnapped by a group of men who wanted to force her into marriage. The lions chased off her abductors and guarded the girl for half a day, until police and her family arrived to take her home. At that point, the lions ended their protective custody and departed. I see no reason not to believe this story. Animals, unlike humans, are not distracted by incessant mental chatter. The lions sensed a helpless creature in trouble and came to her rescue. The next time you're tempted to think of humans as superior to "lesser" animals, ask yourself how you would have responded in this situation.

Drowning in BS

2005-06-30T18:20:00.000-07:00

Harry G. Frankfurt, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University, has written a 67-page book, titled On Bullshit, that has become a New York Times best-seller. Of course, The Times won't publish the actual title, presumably judging it "unfit to print." So we find instead On Bull---- riding the paper's best-seller lists for 26 weeks now. Some interviewer should ask the author whether the Times's prim evisceration of his book's title qualifies as BS. In any case, you can hear Prof. Frankfurt discuss his book by clicking on this.