I guess this one works best for lawyers, but everyone else can pretend.

Here’s the test: You hear your spouse on the phone advising someone to not talk to the cops. How many friends or relatives do you think there’s a substantial likelihood of being on the other end of the line?

Two points for every first degree relative you think of; one point each for others. Sheila’s score: Three points.

Now that we’re settled in, I’m moving closer to moving on getting a dog or dogs. I had a pretty strong idea of what I wanted and a high-perfect opportunity practically fell in my lap. The Dent County Humane Society has a litter of a whopping ten pups that will be ready in two or three weeks. They’re likely to be about the right size (though a tad larger than I would prefer, only a tad) and apparently their mother is really even-tempered. Going there and talking to the folks there changed my perspective somewhat, though, and having faced this great opportunity I am actually considering other options.

The two that jumped out at me are a couple of Borgis (Border Collie/Corgis). They’re both about one year old and partially housetrained. Border collies are smart and somewhat fastidious with their waste by nature (at least as far as dogs go), which is good. They’re also hard-headed, though, and can be temperamental. This is a mutt, however, and so various crossbreeding helps mitigate some of these traits. Further, I met them yesterday and they seem, while hyper, manageably so. One was much more friendly and attention-seeking. The other kind of held back but is already trying to hone his herding skills, which could be problematic. Both are very friendly. Also, while shorter lets than a lot of dogs, they don’t have the weird corgi legs that some love but I am not particularly fond of.

There was another one, a Heeler/Corgi mix, about eight months old. They couldn’t say enough about how good-tempered she was. They didn’t say that about all of the dogs. Unlike the Borgis, she is completely housetrained and is leash-ready (the Borgis took less than ten seconds to wrap themselves in a knot). An even better size than the previous two, but has no obvious partner. Her father is also there and I thought about maybe the two of them (after doing some research on how father and daughter dogs interact), but the father was one of the ones not particularly endorsed by the folks there. Most of the other puppies around this one’s age are much larger than I would prefer, much smaller, or in need of a job.

They also introduced me to another border collie mixed that was older. About six or seven. Extremely well-tempered and trained, they said, and looked it (though I didn’t interact). And really, an older dog could prove to be ideal. One of the things up in the air is where we live when/if our landlords kick us out. During the intense negotiations with the owners of this place, the thing that freaked them out much more than “dog(s)” was “puppy(ies).” It could have saved us a lot of time and effort if I’d simply resigned myself to an older (and house-trained) dog at the outset. Also, by virtue of the fact that the dog is older, if worse comes to absolute worse and I can’t keep her long-term, it won’t be one of those cases where I had her during her most marketable time (when she was a puppy and people want puppies) and turned her back in at a time when it would have been much more difficult for her to find a home. It would break my heart to have to do so, but it would be due to circumstances beyond my control and if they’re beyond my control better to do it to an older dog than a pup.

The thought also occurs to me that two of the main reasons I was looking at two dogs instead of one is that two puppies burn one another’s energy and to keep one another company when I’m not around. Well, being that I’m unemployed and that’s not likely to change any time soon, that’s not really an issue. In fact, I could take one with me to more places and so it would get left alone a lot less. Plus, while 7 is hardly old, there is generally less energy to burn. On the other hand, thinking back to the Borgis, one advantage to them is that they would require me to do a lot more outdoors stuff and that wouldn’t be negative. There are some lookouts and whatnot nearby that it would do my body good to tread. The 1-year-old pups would be great for that sort of thing. Not sure about the older dog.

There were also three or so Schnauzer dogs that were between 3 and 6 months old. They didn’t try very hard to push those, though, and I never met them. When I told them I was interested in a couple of dogs that preferably knew one another, they were enthusiastic about the Borgis. When I mentioned an older dog (specifically a 10 year old Border Collie X), they were much more enthusiastic about the aforementioned 7 year old.

Right now I think I am actually leaning towards the single, older dog. I’ve always wanted to get an older dog for mostly altruistic reasons. The main concerns I had were training, socialization, and so on. What I hadn’t fully appreciated, though, is that with an older dog you already have a good idea of how well socialized they are, how good they are with children, and how obedient they are. The shelter seems pretty straight-up in their description. Since they’re not really making a profit and have to take the dog back if there is a mismatch, they have every incentive to make sure that people are going to get the right dog. It’s also the case that if I do start being “out” a lot, I could get a companion for her at that point.

While thinking through all this, one of the interesting things is the different criteria I apparently have for a dog to be brought home and a dog to visit and play with. I love hyper and playful dogs, but they’re a lot more fun when they aren’t yours. I kept dialing down my preferred energy and attention-seeking levels until I realized what I was actually asking for was a cat. Realizing that I don’t want a cat, I then brought expectations more into line with reality. But still far less than I would have guessed.

It’s entirely possible that I will go back to my original preference for a little puppy, particularly since they have so many available and that’s what I’ve been most preparing for and reading up on. It’s all up in the air now. I will probably start moving moving on the matter in another week or so. In the meantime, I have to get the downstairs of this house in decent shape. That’s quite a mission in and of itself, though it’s going by faster than I had expected.

I just heard the worst advertisement ever from the station coming out of Redstone. It was a woman talking about this tract of land that used to have a lake where people would boat. She also talked about the houses that were being built there and how it was a nice neighborhood. They tore it down to build a golf course. This was an ad for the golf course. Talk about making potential consumers feel guilty about taking advantage of your product.

Clancy and I have been pondering getting satellite radio for some time now. We figured it was something that we would do when we relocated to rural America. We figured that there would not be many radio stations available and we were right. There are three from Callie proper and there seem to be a couple more piped in from elsewhere (or maybe the signal just carries that far). The thing is, by virtue of the fact that we live in a small town, it doesn’t take long to drive anywhere so we don’t spend much time in our cars and so the ROI for satellite radio is minimal. But back when I was driving around a lot, I had time to listen to my favorite CDs and audiobooks and therefore didn’t have a whole lot of need for the radio. So as intrigued as I am about the concept of satellite radio, I am having difficulty coming up with scenarios in which I would use it.

We keep talking about getting a new (or used) car, but we keep kicking the can down the road. We were going to get it in the month of August, because that’s supposed to be a good month to buy a car, but I’ll be danged if my Escort has not been running unusually well lately. We’re supposed to be getting Clancy’s sign-on bonus soon and so we’ll have the money, but even if we have the money we seem so reluctant to spend it. Of course, if we’re not careful we’re going to set ourselves up for having to get a car because the Escort breaks down. We don’t want to do that, either, because we want the flexibility to seek out the best deal. But inertia is really getting the better of us.

Somebody linked to the Trumanverse map from Facebook. Unfortunately, I can’t find out who or where because the referring URL is a blasted warning page.

I liked the the Wackodoodle Flight Attendant story better when the rude passenger was the villain. Stupid truth. Always getting in the way of a better story. Oddly enough, next Linkluster is going to have a post about JetBlue flight attendants. I plucked the link prior to this whole incident.

The weather in Callie has been particularly moody as of late. It can’t decide whether it wants to shine or rain and switches back and forth. I’ll take the clouds, though.

I may have commented on this before, but has anyone else noticed how hold novels seem to stand the test of time better than old movies do? Not that classic movies aren’t often really good. There are things I like about them better than I like current movies. But it feels like when I am watching Casablanca or some other old film that while I can appreciate the artistry and understand why it’s become a classic, it feels like I am grading it on a curve of some sort. Meanwhile, I’ve read (or listened to) a few old classic novels (Raymond Chandler, to be precise, and I don’t feel like I am grading it on any kind of curve when I say that I like it.

“My wife is a doctor” in response to being asked what my wife does for a living should not be construed as an invitation to hear everything you believe is wrong with the American health care system.

Brushing your teeth early to prevent yourself from eating later really backfires when you start to get really hungry.

I can’t remember the last time I got out of bed in the morning and was able to wake up gradually rather than make a beeline to the restroom.

For those of you that have tired of country music…

Counting Crows’ Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby. Those of you that are CC fans will have heard it and maybe some others. But if you like some of what you’ve heard, you should give it a listen. It’s one of their best, in my opinion. More quotable lines per verse than any song I can think of.

The song was actually written with regard to actress Monica Potter, whom leadman Adam Duritz is suggested to have become infatuated with when he saw her in a movie. I wish the video could have actually featured Potter, but I suspect Mr. Potter would have objected. Potter divorced, but has remarried (in the process leaving the TV show Boston Legal, which is really the only thing I know her from). So Duritz missed his chance.

I am typing this from my laptop at a regional chain in Redstone, Arapaho. The fact that I am typing from this computer is a miracle.

Redstone is not a particularly attractive city. It’s a former mining town that’s past its prime. Its population hit its peak almost a century ago. Jobs are scarce, high-tech jobs non-existence, and its reputation is as the armpit of Arapaho.

But despite all of this, one thing it does have going for it is a relatively low crime rate. Lower than any city I have ever lived in, in fact, including Deseret. And not by a small margin. Its crime rate is lower than that of the state as a whole. I knew these statistics, but it just doesn’t feel it when you’re walking around town. And today, when my laptop went missing, and I determined that I had left it on a bench in a questionable part of town, there was no doubt in my mind that some Redstonian had hit the paydirt. But when I arrived… it was still sitting there. This is good news not just because I didn’t lose a $500 laptop, but today of all days the laptop bag had in it my passport and a checkbook. These are not things that I ordinarily carry with me, but today of all days I did.

Despite all I mention above about it being a town past its prime, I am actually partial to the place. I can’t really explain why. The next nearest city, Alexandria, is much more well-regarded. Though it’s twice the distance away, people will often go to Alexandria to do their shopping and whatnot. But perhaps because time has passed it by, Redstone has a uniqueness about it. Sure, there’s a Walmart (one of the reasons I come here), but on any given day you drive by decommissioned mining rigs, a huge statue of the Virgin Mary, and mountains, mountains, mountains (even the mined ones are interesting, if a tad unsightly.

It reminds me of all I liked about Fort Beck, where I lived in Deseret, in comparison to Mocum, where I worked. Mocum had the whole “Mormon town” thing that was problematic to a Gentile like me, but in addition to that and despite the better amenities, the better economy, the more educated population, and a number of other factors I never warmed to it the same way I warmed to the usually disdained Fort Beck.

Of course, I say all this and if I had to decide on where to live between Redstone and Alexandria, there’s a pretty good chance I would live in Alexandria simply because of the increased opportunities, increased education, and better amenities. But even if Alexandria were not further away, I think I would still take my bi-weekly escape from Callie to Redstone.

But right now I am typing this on the laptop that has declared Redstone the greatest city on earth.

UPDATE: Some stats: Redstone has 2 violent crimes per 1,000 residents per year and 35 property crimes. The towns where I lived and worked in Deseret had almost 3 and over 40. The city where I lived in Estacado had over 5 and over 60. In Cascadia where I lived it was over 10 and over 80. For reference sake, Detroit is 16.7 and 60.2 and Memphis 15.5 and 84.5. Notably, unemployment is higher and median family income is lower in Redstone than where I lived in Deseret, Estacado, or Cascadia.

What’s a little funny about this is that these low crime stats are decidedly inconvenient for me. One of the things I decided about Redstone is that it would make an ideal setting for a series of crime novels that I have been thinking up for the past few years. Unfortunately, the idea requires a location with a significant crime problem. I only looked up Redstone’s stats in the first place to confirm what I had suspected, that they did have a crime problem relative to other towns in the region, only to discover that it’s actually the safest place I have ever lived. Actually, I guess I can’t say that because I don’t live in Redstone but rather in a nearby town. However, Redstone actually has better crime stats than Callie, so I guess it’s safer than any place I have lived. How bloody inconvenient is that?!

Remember Cash-4-Clunkers? The federal government program aimed at assisting people in buying new cars if they get rid of older, fuel-inefficient old ones? Frankly, I’m not a fan of it. I’m not a fan of taking anything functional and just destroying it. I have a room full of old, useless, but functional computers to prove it. However, when the argument was made that C4C was pricing entry-level car buyers out of the market, I disagreed.

And now I am afraid that the C4C-is-making-cars-more-expensive argument has reared its little head again and once again I must resist. This time it relates to an Edmunds.com analysis that used car prices have gone up significantly. It’s no surprise that some people would look for the most convenient government policy to blame. And there is an interesting corellation. The vehicles in which used car prices have jumped the most are mid-sized SUV’s and minivans. Unlike “college cars” (as I perceive them, though Web disagreed), these are the kinds of cars that C4C took off the road. And back in my original post I actually conceded that there could be some adverse effects here.

However, we have to recognize that there are other factors at play here. Indeed, according to Edmunds (who the previous article is citing), the price jump for late-model used cars (3 years old) is actually double that of used cars as a whole. This is important because C4C took old cars off the road. So C4C simply cannot be the culprit for the spike in three year old cars. If it were driven (no pun intended) by the initiative, ten you would see the largest increase on not only the models C4C targeted, but the age range as well. We’re not seeing that.

So what is happening? A couple of things that I believe swamp the effect of inventory reduction through Cash for Clunkers, most of which involves changes in behavior related to the general state of the economy. Obviously, the new cars of today are not magically more valuable than they were last year (I mean, they cost little more to build). So it has to be a supply and demand issue, which makes the tendency to target a government program that reduced supply attractive. Edmunds suggests as a reason a desire on the part of consumers to save money, which makes sense to me. The current economy lends itself to a degree of thriftiness. This has an affect on both supply and demand as the supply goes down as people put off buying a new car and demand as people choose to buy lightly used cars rather than new ones. Cash for Clunkers took 700,000 cars off the market. Last year alone (despite C4C) five million fewer new cars were sold. Fewer new cars, more people buying used cars and others not selling the used car they have.

The fact that it’s three year old cars in particular that strikes me as being particularly significant. There is a (wrongheaded) theory that some people have that it is sensible to buy new cars and replace them every three years. Whether one prefers new cars or used cars, it is virtually impossible for me to comprehend how this possibly “makes sense” unless you have either a lot of money or zero patience for car repairs. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! But it’s definitely a luxury. And it’s something easy to cut when the market starts heading south. I suspect a lot of three-year-and-out people are thinking that fourth and fifth year might not be a bad idea.

I point this out not so much to defend that awful initiative. I can really barely express how stupid I thought the idea was and I actually find it emblematic of the worst sort of opportunistic chicken-in-every pot politics. Rather, I point these possibilities out as a point of optimism. One of the things that has gotten this country in so much trouble is (whether looking at household budgets or the ones coming out of congress) overspending on non-necessities in relation to our income. And if our collective income takes a dive or seems uncertain, the buying and selling of three year old cars seems like an outstanding place to start.

There is no question that many parents are far, far too accommodating of their children when it is probably for the better that kids learn to just suck it up and accept that the world is not here to accommodate them. Any visit to a place where there are lots of kids provides substantial anecdata. So I’m sympathetic to parents who want to push back against this trend (if it’s a trend, seems that at least some parents have been bending backwards since I was a kid). But I also feel a twinge of uncertainty when I read posts like this:

Or, you can put veggies in front of the spoiled little wretches every morning, noon, and night until they get so hungry that they’re thankful for what they’ve been given. They won’t come to love vegetables, but they’ll sure come to love a full belly over an empty one.

He is responding to an article suggesting that multimedia can help kids learn to like vegetables. Why, he asks, get them to like vegetables when you can simply force them to eat the stuff?

The answer to me is quite clear. While parents will not always be there to accommodate spoiled children, neither will they always be there to force kids to do what they want them to do. More often than not, I think the end-product of forcing kids to eat vegetables they clearly don’t like is that once they leave the house they will never, ever eat vegetables again. Vegetables, by that point, have become an adversary. Something to only do when forced.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t push kids to do what they don’t want to do. On the subject of education, for example, I don’t buy completely into the notion that if you force-feed them knowledge they will come to resent learning. I mean, I think it’s true to some extent, but I don’t think you can afford to wait until kids want to sit down and read science books for them to learn science. Sometimes it has to be forced. However, the analog to what Woodlief is saying in the above is that it is an unreasonable accommodation to try to present science in a way that kids might enjoy and that you should lock them in a room with their book and be done with it.

In both veggies and science, if you can find a way to make it pleasant, that’s unquestionably better than just forcing them to do it because you can.

I not-so-affectionately refer to vegetables as “earth’s vomit,” though I make a point to try them periodically and find out what I like. Had my parents force-fed me vegetables I clearly detested, I don’t know that I would make the effort. Perhaps a good example is rice. Now, rice is a grain and not a vegetable, but it is something I HATED growing up. But in recent years I have come around on it. I don’t usually eat it straight unless it’s puffy Mexican rice, but I’ll eat it as an ingredient or mix it up with beans and eat it then. Trust me when I tell you that this is serious progress for me. And I think that I kept an open mind about rice because I never had an adversarial relationship with it. When Mom discovered I didn’t like rice, she let me eat potatoes or Mac’n'Cheese instead.

I also find that among the vegetables I do eat, they’re vegetables that Mom made taste good when I was younger. Instead of saying “eat your spinach or else” she put cheese on it and instead of saying “eat your asparagus or else, she put hollandaise sauce on it. Now, cheese and hollandaise sauce are fatty and not particularly healthy, but they provided a gateway of sorts for me. Now I can eat spinach without cheese and asparagus without hollandaise sauce. I can guarantee you that I wouldn’t if I’d spent my younger years having to down the stuff just cause my parents were going to make me go hungry otherwise.

As a practical matter, there are limitations to which parents can run a short-order kitchen so that no kid need eat what he doesn’t want to eat. And some kids, if always given an opt-out will opt out of anything that isn’t sugary or fatty. But I think that you have to find a middle ground. If the kid is happy to eat some veggies but not others, it’s kind of obvious that he or she is acting in good faith. If it’s not too much trouble to make extra lima beans on Tuesday so the little skipper can have them in lieu of corn on Wednesday (as Mom did for me), then I don’t think it’s a betrayal of parenthood to do so. Maybe someday he will grow up to like corn… as I did.

I suppose it’s not impossible that kids will learn to like something if force-fed it enough. I have my doubts, obviously. I suppose you could learn to like it the same way that I learned to like beer despite initially having a dreadful distaste for it when I was younger. But I think I taught myself to like beer because I wanted to. I could force myself, but I don’t think I could have been forced by someone else.

My family grew up closely with another family named Charles. The Charles kids were kept on a pretty strict regimen growing up. They were never allowed soft drinks or snacks or fast food. I was not exposed much to soft drinks and fast food was kept to a minimum, but I also wasn’t kept on any sort of strict diet. The Charles kids were all (but the second-oldest, who like his father was just built stocky) thin… right up until they went to college. Freshman twenty-to-forty. My brothers and I, meanwhile, either did not gain weight or actually lost it when we went to college. Their weight did come off eventually, though, for all but the youngest, so I suppose not all was lost.

When it came to health and such, my parents were pretty far from perfect. There’s a lot that I would do differently with my children. But trying to meet them halfway if they have a distaste for vegetables is not one of them. Clancy’s mother made Clancy and her sisters always eat a little bit of whatever vegetable was being offered at each meal, but wouldn’t make them clean their plates. That strikes me as a reasonable compromise. As does putting something fatty on it as a gateway to get them to appreciate it in its own rights (or at least not view it adversarial). Substitutions, as long as they are not too imposing, is another reasonable option.

Our news outlets should totally do stuff like this. I would watch a lot more TV news!

One on Sarah Palin. Man, I’d love to get an English translation on this one:

My favorite, perhaps because it’s translated, involves the most recent British election:

Another translated one involving British politics:

The whole JetBlue thing, which brought these folks to my attention:

-{Via James Fallows and Transplanted Lawyer}-

Over at Slate, there’s an interview with a founder of the Innocence Project, which goes into great detail on what Peter Neufeld feels is wrong with the justice system.

I’ve mentioned before that I have a few quibbles with the Innocence Project. I am not convinced that what Neufeld talks about is systemic, as a whole, to the justice system. One reason is their deliberate hiding of a relevant statistic - they boast of having secured 258 releases of innocent people, an average of 14 per year since they began, but what they leave out is the number of people who were shown to be rightly convicted after the evidence was reviewed. In other words, they are so deathly afraid that the percentage of those wrongfully convicted is so small (based on numbers that only they know) showing that the system itself isn’t truly broken, that they refuse to be honest about the statistic. This is even more worrisome when they readily admit that they are selective about the cases they go after, which ought to give them a better chance of showing a high false-positive rate.

At the same time, the shoddy state of coercive plea-bargain threats, in which defense attorneys are forced to tell innocent people that their best bet is to plead guilty anyways, doesn’t help my view of the court system. The description of the system, by Detective George Bruch - a man who has every reason to claim otherwise, who has been a policeman, but who says anyways that the interrogation system is set up to prove your guilt even if you are innocent, by hook or by crook, and in which something you are fed through “overhearing” while being led down the precinct hallway can come back to bite you in the ass at trial - that doesn’t help either.

And then we get into the realm of the known problems of witness identification and memory being much more dynamic than most people give it credit for being, as well as police and prosecutors reinforcing the victim’s story - or perhaps, the story they want told - over and over again.

On the flipside, via a couple links that spread over email from friends in real-world proximity to the situation, I find myself still agreeing that there are subhuman beings who society is best off without, and whose guilt is, in fact, provable beyond a shadow of a doubt. And likewise, whatever you feel about the death penalty or the criminal justice system, that this is just a horrible thing to do.

There is a perception among some men and some women that men are first and primarily interested in looks. Some provide evo-bio-psych reasoning for this or attribute it to social conditioning. Though there may be something to the notion that looks are broadly more important to men than to women, I think that this effect is greatly exaggerated when it comes to men pursuing anything beyond a cheap and easy lay.

I personally learned the limits of beauty the most straightforward way: I briefly dated a conventionally beautiful woman several steps above me in terms of popular perception and found the whole thing far less fulfilling than advertised. Yes, it’s neat to be seen with a woman that is your better. It’s neat to be able to show her picture to your friends and have them be impressed.

But… relationships are work. The person you are in a relationship with is a partner in an endeavor. You don’t have to be particularly deep to recognize that this is a person that you want to be able to get along with. Now, for a limited time you can get along with anyone. For actual staying power, though, you need more.

Though I may have been confronted with it in a particularly straightforward manner, I don’t think I am at all unusual when push comes to shove. I have seen, time and time again, guys leave women for conventionally less attractive ones. And it’s not a matter of the latter being more up their alley (physically speaking). I’ve known guys that have said that they could never date a fat girl end up foregoing more attractive options for a girl that’s overweight.

I admit, though, that sometimes I do forget these things. I’ve been watching Grey’s Anatomy lately. Earlier in the show, everyman George O’Malley manages to hook up with the super-hot Izzy Stephens (Katherine Heigl’s character). As the relationship dissolves, by mutual consent, I am sitting there saying “Dude! You’re never going to do better than her!” And as far as the beauty criterion is concerned, he never does. But… if you’re not happy, you’re not happy. The difference between being with someone that you’re genuinely good with and being with someone that you’re mutually attracted to is significant.

Stephens later contracts cancer and is bed-ridden. Yeah, that’s soap opera kind of stuff, but variations of it are always occurring. The superficial attraction runs dry when the hot girl comes home, day after day, tired and angry at work. Or relies too much on you. Most of the time, there is a reason that the girl is dating down, and when you discover that reason, and the luster fades when you discover it.

I fought to save the not-really-a-relationship mentioned above until the bitter end. And then when it was over, I was relieved.

More broadly, one of the things I’ve discovered is that people that have never been in a position to achieve X, which they’ve always wanted, vastly overestimate what they would be willing to put up for it. And this is true when it comes to securing an attractive woman. You may think you can put up with obnoxious behavior, or regular emotional breakdowns, or any number of other things for the sake of their beauty… but more often than you think, you’re not. Or if you try to stick it out, like I did, it doesn’t make you happy like you think it will.

One of the things that I have come to notice is that relationships generally work better between relatively equally-yoked people. People in the same general level of attractiveness, same league of intelligence, same economic background, and same general age bracket (though what that bracket is varies with age). That’s not to say that relationships outside these things can’t work. They often do. But they often tend to be the product of people with a general lack of options. That’s not to say that their affections are insincere. People with a lack of options can (though do not always) have a better appreciation for the options they do have. But it’s generally the resort of people that have specific relationship needs, have some key drawback, live in a place where options are limited, and so on. And sometimes things that are less likely to work do actually work.

Opposites may attract in some contexts, but I think on the basics when it comes to things that can generally be sorted into “more desirable” and “less desirable” categories, it leads to more problems than it does complimentarianism. The complimentarianism part comes in the intangibles and the neutral. Being laid back and being particular are relatively neutral traits, for example. Being gregarious and being reserved are also more along those lines (though as a reserved person, it sometimes doesn’t feel that way). Generally, for those that seek to rise above their station (be it in terms of looks or money) pay a price for it and those that go low wonder what kind of better they might have done.

Perhaps I am merely universalizing from my own limited experiences and preferences far too much. But as, over time, I have moved further and further away from being surrounded by people that have limited relationship options that drive them to cast a wider net or fuel insecurities that they believe can be solved if they can just get that one hot girl, the more hollow that sounds. Somewhere along the lines I became a romantic optimist. Not only because I found someone, but because so many of my friends have. And there seems to be a lot more in the way of similarities of background and station than differences. And I think a lot of the “thinking outside the box” was really “wasting a lot of time.”

I happened to hear this song as a cover many years ago and immediately went home to track it down. The best angry son-to-father song I have ever heard.

The video is taken from a show. Not very good quality, I’m afraid, but the sound recording on it is surprisingly good.

I’m not sure what it says about me in terms of my online/offline life that I find myself using trumwill as my username on commerce sites where my normal username should apply.

The days are getting shorter. Sweet!

I’ve been prepping an old smartphone to give to my father when we meet up in Kingsland for my brother’s wedding. It’s odd to try to put myself in his shows and figure out what, if anything, he would want to use on it. {written before my trip to Kingsland}

My computer monitor has been dying. I was cursing the manufacturer for these defects, Hansol, until I realized that I bought the thing in 2001. It’s been packed up and moved a dozen or so times and half of those times across the country. Every time we’ve moved I’ve partially hoped that it wouldn’t survive. So thank you, Hansol, for ten years of service. And thank you for giving me a monitor that did die eventually. Now, if only my television set would take the hint…

We can put a man on the moon, as they say, and yet… we can’t make an airplane with solid enough electrical equipment that we can listen to our mp3 players during take-off and landing?

I finished reading Scott Turow’s Innocent, a follow-up to his first novel, Presumed Innocence. If you’ve read the first, I really recommend the second. If you haven’t read the first, I recommend you read the first and then read the second.

There’s nothing that makes me miss a commute like being on the 8th CD of a 10-CD audiobook.

I discovered that many of the radio stations available in Callie are not really local. Nor are they the nameless national stations I sometimes ran across in Deseret (that wouldn’t say they were national, but it was impersonal enough that you knew it was being piped in from somewhere else). Rather, they’re simply relays from other local cities. Not even the most local. The first hint was when there was an ad for Petsmart and I thought to myself that the nearest Petsmart had to be in Alexandria (over a couple hours away). Sure enough, they shortly thereafter established themselves to be an Alexandria station. {Update: At least one of the stations is coming from Redstone}

I’ve been breaking out in hives lately and I have no idea why. Always on the same place (the interior of my right arm).

Former Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) died. Stevens was never particularly popular on the right or the left due to his aggressive pursuit of earmarks and alleged corruption. As it turns out, I’ve met Stevens. Sort of. If you really stretch the definition of “meet.” When I was working at Wildcat, we were working on an Alaska-based project. It wasn’t our project, but we were building a key component of it. Our portion of it was $6m. Anyway, it was a big enough deal that Stevens wanted to see it when he was in Colosse for some reason or another. I was at my desk working on something (likely billing for the project). He passed by my office and asked my boss Calvin if I was an engineer. My boss, the president of the company, replied that no, I was the computer guy. Stevens lost interest and asked where the engineers were.

Say what you will about Stevens, but the man apparently had an appreciation for engineers.

Not computer guys, though.

Over at Half Sigma, a discussion on two different types of poverty.

Apparently, if you live in Europe or the US/Canada, being poor makes you fat and malnourished.
But if you live in India, or Africa, or South America, or so on, being poor makes you thin and malnourished.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and state that in the “developed” countries of the world, much of the problem is simply with the fact that individual people no longer - to the large extent - know how to cook and, further, have the desire to do so. I’ll admit I am as guilty of this as the next guy; I tend to eat prepackaged meals (canned soup, canned noodle dishes, frozen pizzas) more times during the week than I make my own meals. Making my own meals is reserved for occasions when I have a female guest (they seem to love finding out that yes, guys can cook and cook well) or during the weekends when I’m not reaching home tired and wanting to relax.

The reality is, of course, that some of the prepackaged foods I eat are clearly not as good for me as if I made something vaguely equivalent from scratch. Just about everything is likely to be higher in sodium than it needs to be, though being a borderline supertaster, I tend to want more salt to counteract the bitterness in certain foods that other people miss, unless I’m in a mood for something bitter.

At the same time, however, the “western” diet has changed over the past few decades. At one time, “pure meat” - that is to say, a chicken leg, or steak, or burger - was something people had 2-3 times per week. Lunch counter food looking back 4 decades or more was much fresher and less unhealthy as well. To what degree HFCS causes troubles, or the overabundance of Gluten as cheap filler, I can’t say, except that HFCS was barely noticed back then, and didn’t even get to “GRAS” (”generally recognized as safe”) status by the US FDA until 1976.

At the same time, poor neighborhoods tend to lack healthy options. Comparing “poor” and “middle class” neighborhood grocer’s produce aisle, for instance, will give one a remarkable perspective: there are two versions of one particular chain that I tend to go by on a regular basis. The first, in the midst of the “poor zone” surrounding one side of Southern Tech, devotes less than 1/20 of the store’s floor space to produce, and what they do have tends to be wilted or otherwise unappetizing. On the other hand, the “flagship” version, a few miles south of my house, devotes approximately 1/8 of their floor space to produce and tends to have very fresh, clean and appetizing produce for purchase. Given that produce is listed for the same price at each store, I find myself wondering how much of the difference is because the poor around Southern Tech don’t buy it (and so it sits around and wilts), and how much of it came off the truck half-wilted as the “last pick” from the delivery truck.

It’s also true that the number of fast-food restaurants and crappy little corner stores increases with poor neighborhoods. So by the same token, the neighborhood grocery’s produce is unappealing, the Popeye’s Chicken just outside the tenement door smells really good, and why walk the four blocks to the neighborhood grocery when you can buy (for a suitable markup) the same can of Chef Boyardee Overstuffed Ravioli at the corner store on your own block?

As well as that, neighbor-on-neighbor crime is up in those neighborhoods. Why try to go somewhere, even a local little park or a walk along the canal, when you’re likely to have someone try to mug you just for being outdoors?

The impact of mostly-sedentary jobs (when the poor are actually working) isn’t to be underestimated, either. In western nations, the poor are likely to be working “minimum wage” jobs. For a little exercise, perhaps stocking shelves, but they may equally be working in the neighborhood fast-food restaurants, or sitting the counter at the corner store/gas station, or any number of “sit in your butt and watch this” type of jobs. By contrast, the poor in developed nations are walking more to get where they go, and tending to do more physical types of jobs.

Circling back around - when I was in school, there was a requirement that students “choose” between either “home economics”, or a couple other optional courses. Because the other optional courses didn’t interest me, I wound up as one of the 4 boys taking home ec that semester (they wouldn’t let us do wood shop until 8th grade, which I did take when I could). Even looking at the course back then, it was rather a joke; there were 4 weeks of sewing that wound up creating one plush football, 4 weeks of “this is how you make a budget” (which most of the kids failed at), and four weeks of “meal planning” out of which 80% of the class wrote up exactly the same weekly plan based on the very few things they’d been taught to make. Since the home ec room had stoves but we weren’t allowed to turn the gas on to use them, “cooking” was rather pointless, and the most appetizing thing the class ever created were peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. As I was given to understand, by the time my brother and sister went through that school, home ec was shut down entirely.

By comparison, looking back a few decades, it was expected that most households - and most individuals - knew how to cook, at least enough to survive. The basics of making a soup, making a sandwich, grilling, baking, broiling… as far as the middle and poor classes were concerned, at least, they were necessary life skills. In an age when one can stock up the freezer with “hungry man” dinners (or even “lean cuisine”, which are anything but), why would one bother to learn to really cook? The phenomenon of the stay-at-home wife also offers at least some option for a leaner, healthier diet inasmuch as having someone who (a) has the time to be at home preparing a meal and (b) handles food preparation and meal planning regularly, definitely was going to do wonders for keeping some of the nastier stuff out of a waistline.

My wife bought me this shirt for my birthday or Christmas a while back. Those of you who remember Oregon Trail will immediately catch the reference. The text is (by design) not the easiest to read. I caught a clerk at a convenience store trying to read it. She apparently too was a former Oregon Trailblazer and burst out into laughter. That’s one of the great things about shirts like that. It can be almost an instant connection with someone you barely know. In this case, a common experience. Sometimes a common interest. The shirt I am wearing now was recommended to me by my former boss Willard. It’s a gag involving a guy that’s obviously meant to be Hal Jordan creating green dummy people to use the HOV lane. Most people won’t get it, but the guy who does is an instant friend.

After reading the appellate opinion in the Adolf Hitler Campbell case (available here, courtesy of the Volokh Conspiracy), I’m convinced that nothing happened to these parents that doesn’t happen to thousands of parents who don’t name their kids after Nazis.

The Campbell family’s story is not a commentary on racism in America. Nor is it instructive about free speech rights. It is interesting because it provides a rare window for the general public into the child removal process. Court proceedings are private, and appellate opinions only contain the parties’ initials. Here, we actually know the people involved. We can google videos of them.

Understand that the Campbells weren’t accused of beating or starving their children. Contrary to what many in the general public think, those aren’t the usual reasons that children get removed. There was no charge that the Campbells directly mistreated their children. Rather, it happened because of domestic violence and mental/emotional problems.

But the Campbells have many characteristics often found in parents whose children are removed:

— They subsist on public aid (apparently state disability payments due to their mental problems).

— The father cannot read.

— The mother cannot drive.

— The mother dropped out of high school in the 10th grade.

— The father has a criminal history of domestic violence against another partner.

— The father has other children whom he does not see or support.

— Police records show multiple calls to their home for loud arguments.

Every story about this family has commenters snarking about what kind of reetard would name a kid Hitler. Maybe it’s not so funny when you realize the parents are, if not actually mentally retarded, at least borderline. They have mental disabilities. I wonder what this dad even really knows about Hitler and the Third Reich. It’s not like he was impressed by “Mein Kampf” — the man can’t read. The parents couldn’t even spell “Himmler” right when they tried to name their third child, Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, after him.

Their case got started in a very typical way: A neighbor called in a referral to the child abuse hotline. Now who knows, maybe that neighbor didn’t like them because of their kids’ names. But it really, really didn’t help that the mother had written a desperate letter to this neighbor saying that she feared for her life from the father:

If anything may happened to me please do an altops on me b/c My husband has done something to me. If there is drugs in my system then him or some of his friends put them there b/c I don’t do drugs. Hes thrend to have me killed or kill me himself hes alread tried it a few times. Im scare to leave b/c I will be killed. Im afread that he might hurt my children if they are keeped in his care. I know that one day he willkill me and Im scared to death that he will. Im very afread of him. Im scared for my life when he’s around. Hes always putting his hands on me. He’s already stabed me with a screwdriver in the hand. Im afread for my life. Please do an investagtion on my death b/c I would be murdered by my husband or his friends. He teaches my son how to kill someone at the age of 3. Thank you[.]

Here are some very unusual factors about the case:

— The parents had private attorneys, rather than court-appointed ones. Clearly these attorneys must have donated their services, perhaps because they felt there were First Amendment issues to be litigated.

— The trial took six months. That’s huge for a dependency proceeding. Everything about the system is designed to get things over with fast so that kids can go home. Apparently experts were even testifying — on a domestic violence case. Never happens.

Keep in mind, these three children were removed from their parents in January 2009. Three children under the age of 4 have been gone for a year and a half of their lives while the parents fight, essentially, over whether they should have to take domestic violence counseling and a parenting class. The sad part is that they’ve apparently not done anything to hedge their bets in the meantime. Normally, parents who litigate over jurisdiction still get into their counseling, parenting classes, whatever else the department is arguing they need. That way, if they get ordered to do it anyway — which they usually do — they’re already done or close. Now, after a year and a half, the Campbells still haven’t even started a process that’s designed to get kids home in six months.

The parents will probably still be entitled to at least six months to do their programs. We’ll see what happens. I have my doubts that these parents can make it through. Some parents just can’t stand up to any scrutiny, and once they’re on authorities’ radar it just gets worse and worse. And some parents would rather lose their kids than deal with people telling them what to do.

It was a really nice wedding, in all. Much to my surprise, Mal was holding back tears during the ceremony. He’s come a really long way since his days as a mischievous troublemaker and drug addict. His father, not his brother, was best man. I found that curious.

The families (WASPy on one side and ethnic Catholic) on the other seem to get a long despite not having much in common. I don’t foresee a whole lot of bonding in the future, though.

The more I found out about Malcolm’s work situation, the more I am convinced that his job is the real thing. So I guess I owe him an internal apology for thinking it was essentially a gift from his father. I suspect he is still receiving assistance, though. He lives in the toniest borough in the nation’s largest city… and has a guest room. But at least he’s working a real job.

Estimates are that the wedding cost somewhere north of $50k despite most of the festivities taking place on land that they already own and not including the housing costs, which I determined were actually a (huge) gift from one of their friends that basically owns the town.

I am struck by how attractive my Limley cousins (children of my Aunt Carroll) are. One of the female cousins would be at home on a Hollywood set and two of the three guys are up there, too. Even the least attractive male cousin and female cousin are still average and both married in their early twenties.

One of the compliments Clancy’s and my parents still get from various family friends is that we had a “fun” wedding. I didn’t know what that really meant until I went to the Humphrey weddings. The toasts roll on for ours and everybody seems to recount some story or another with Mal or Greg (at each of their wedding). I imagine the closer you are to the bride and groom the more interesting and amusing these stories are. The people that are most complimentary are people that I didn’t really know well (the ones on what I call “Mom’s List”… the people invited to the wedding that I might or might not recognize on the street).

I forgot to bring my bathing suit and the Humphrey beach house has a swimming pool. I took a pass the first couple days, but about the time I was ready th weather turned kind of cold. It was a welcome development overall, but kind of scotched my swimming plans. Fortunately, the last night we were moved into a new cottage that had a hot tub.

The movie on the flight back is some documentary on sealife. Seriously? I mean, I have gotten used to skipping what they show because they’re usually family movies that I am less than entirely interested in, but it’s like they’re not even trying anymore.

A while back there was a to-do about a character on Law & Order, Serena Southerlyn, came out as a lesbian on her way out of the show. I finally caught the episode in question and… boy is it bizarre. I already knew what to expect, but it was still just really weird to watch it unfold in such an awkward manner. The episode involved a budding rap star accused of killing his mentor. The bit about Southerlyn’s sexual orientation didn’t come forth until the end of the episode. Throughout, Southerlyn (Elisabeth Rohm) was butting heads with DA Arthur Branch (played by Senator Fred Thompson) and Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) and expressing frustration that her perspective was not being taken seriously. Branch calls her into his office and explains that her passion is admirable and she makes a superb advocate, but that while passion is great in an advocate an enforcer needs to be cold-blooded. In short, she wasn’t a good fit for her position. After Branch gives this speech, she asks, “Is this because I am a lesbian?” Branch is exasperated by the question, assuring her that it had absolutely nothing to do with that. She says “Good” and the curtain closes.

Even knowing what was coming (having read about the episode before), I was almost as exasperated as Branch was at the question. I had sort of expected it to come after an episode having something to do with homosexuality or something like that. When she was in his office at the end of the episode and I knew what was coming, I was like “Wait… on this episode?”

I can’t for the life of me figure out what the point of this exercise was. Some might say that it was to further the homosexual agenda or something, but if that was the goal it did an absolutely miserable job of it. Sourtherlyn was never a particularly compelling (or likeable) character. It’s not like “that somewhat obnoxious blond was gay, so I guess being gay is okay!” We never got to know her all that well, so it’s not even like gay characters that pop up on other shows where you get to know them as normal and then it’s revealed that their gay once you have already decided you like them “A-ha! You didn’t think you liked gay people. But you liked Character X and Character X is gay! So there!”). The next possibility is that it was a pump for publicity. On that it was successful, I suppose, but in the same sense that having a big-eyed, blue-skinned alien appear in court would have spurred conversation.

The most charitable explanation I can come up with for it is that the character was always intended to be gay but they never got around to exploring it. Then, with the character leaving the show, they decided that they needed to shoe-horn it in there somewhere. The problem with this theory is that even subtle indications weren’t there. She mentioned having had a boyfriend in college in one episode and then in another episode gave a line or two about why women would find a particular defendant attractive. Neither of these are dispositive, but both provided a great opportunity to come out with her lesbianism in passing.

So I guess we’re back to the publicity angle. They should have gone with the alien. That would have been cooler.

I’ve commented in the past about my former coworker Pat McClaren and her dysfunctional sister, Anne. To recap, she had three children. The first two ended up in the care of the McClaren Sisters’ mother. She was young and when she and the father (henceforth Mark I) split was simply in no position to take care of them. So Mother and Father McClaren stepped in. Anne went on to have a third child by a different man (henceforth Mark II). For Anne it represented a chance at a new start. Unfortunately, though older she was still not in a position to take care of the kid. Though her new son did not live with Mother and Father McClaren, they lived on the other side of town with rent paid for by the children’s grandparents. As far as I know, welfare and food stamps were not involved (though Medicare probably was).

About the time I was leaving Estacado, some bad things were happening around Anne McClaren. She was dating this one fellow (Mark III) of such profound intellect that he quit his job as an auto mechanic because he determined that he could make more money stealing copper. He told everybody about his brilliant plan. Then he stole copper from someone that he had told. Meanwhile, the third kid’s father had gotten out of jail on some drug charge and Anne had decided that, while she she was staying with Mark III, she would let Mark II move in with her. Him being the father of her son and all. Oh, boy, Pat and I thought, how could this possibly go wrong? Pat commented that figuring out how things could go wrong was not Anne’s strongsuit. It went wrong precisely the way you would expect it to with Mark III not liking this arrangement one little bit and Mark II and Mark III getting into a fight.

To make matters worse, Anne had garnered the attention of the CPS when they discovered that Mark III had smoked pot in the presence of the youngest kid. It didn’t take them long to discover that the father had a restraining order against him and assault charges pending (Mark II won the fight, Mark III was in the hospital). So neither Mark II nor Mark III were allowed near the kid, which Anne was not planning to honor (in regards to Mark III, anyway, whenever he got over his assault injuries and an apparent brain-bleeding problem). Mother McClaren (Father McClaren had died by this point) stepped in and took Little McClaren before the CPS took him away from the family entirely.

It’s difficult not to be sympathetic to both the McClaren children and the McClaren grandparents. The kids didn’t ask to be put in this situation and, by Pat’s account, they range from decent to good kids. The most impressive is the daughter, who is really smart and is primarily limited by her small-town upbringing and not knowing what possibilities there would be out there for her. The most problematic is unsurprisingly Little McClaren, who was raised in that chaotic environment. And of course it’s impossible not to be a lot sympathetic to Mother and Father McClaren, with every time they thought they were done raising kids would end up with a new one. Anne’s older children moved in when their son was moving out. When the older children were both ready to move out, she had to take on Little McClaren. With Father McClaren having died, they never got to live in retirement together without the chaos if children.

But I also found myself surprisingly a little sympathetic to Anne. Only a little, but more than I ever would have expected. What must it be like to have lost your chance at being a parent. Little McClaren was her last, great hope. She’d muffed up the first two, but there was always him. And she at least took parenting longer with Little, but in the end she screwed that one up, too.

Well, no need to be sympathetic anymore. At 43, she’s pregnant again. She gets yet another chance to get it right and Mark III is going to be a daddy.

Glorious day.

We arrived at the beachhouse today off Cape King. Sometimes for a wedding the family or families will put you up in a hotel. My uncle’s family got beachhouses for everyone. They essentially rented out the whole town resort town. I knew they were well-off, but dang.

The only complaint I have with the accommodations is the complete lack of Internet. This post was typed on my phone.

The crab cakes out here really are to die for. The breading was minimal. After two crab cakes I was sick of crab. So of course crab is the first meal they serve. I got a chuckle from my aunt’s exasperation at having to tear apart crawfish at our rehearsel dinner crawfish boil years ago. It was so anti-her (I love my aunt though she seems to view us as somewhat uncultured). Anyhow, the crab were shelled and you have to tear them apart, too. But I guess since you use a hammer it’s more civilized.

My cousin Mal has turned into an interesting young man. He has become more grounded over the years. Seems to be taking his job more seriously,
managing rental properties in prime city real estate in the largest city in the country. I’m tempted to be bitter that it’s a gig his father set up for him, but I am glad he’s making the most of it.

I am also getting to know the cousins on my poor aunt’s side of things better. My favorite cousin, Molly, is someone I met briefly fifteen years ago and immediately decided was my favorite cousin because of her Dariaesque manner. Having met her for real, my opinion has not changed much. I am completely unsurprised that she married a computer nerd that I get along with really well.

My newest cousin(-in-law) is of Puerto Rican descent. She is herself very pale, but obviously a pale shade of brown rather that peach or pink. The only comment anyone has really made about it, though, is about how she should get more sun.

Our first night in Kingsland was spent with some family friends halfway between Queen City and here. Mr. Rockford is a former Air Force hero with all kinds of war metals on the wall. I remember his son (my age) fondly as one of the few athletes who was really nice to everyone and hated bullying of any sort. I hope to meet up with him again next time I am in the nation’s capitol. Mrs Rockford said privately to me that we need to talk Mom out of her smoking habit. Very nice woman - didn’t have the heart to tell her about my affliction.

I was born in Kingsland and because of that - despite never having lived in Kingsland - I considered myself a Kingslander growing up. I even had a K’land bumper sticker on my first car. I’m not sure at what point that changed, but I had an “Oh yeah, I’m a native Kingslander” moment when I was inspecting my passport.

It’s beautiful country out here. Hills and water. What more can you ask for? Except perhaps for a little less deathly heat.