Do the Yak

An almost-perfect summer Saturday: Going to the dump (oddly satisfying) Scoring some books at the library, including some classics for Sarah ("Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Misty of Chincoteague"). Grocery shopping -- pleasurable because I had no kids with me, so I got to use the boop-boop scanner thingy MYSELF! Wheeee! A quick swim at the local pond, though the rumble of thunder caused the only imperfection to the day, because it meant everybody had to get out of the water and leave, which was disappointing for the kids but a good timing in terms of having enough time for... Chopping and marinating for that evening's barbecue featuring my former editor Peter, his wife and 7-year-old daughter, who became instant best friends with Becky, which was extra nice because Sarah usually monopolizes "new kids." And finally... eating steak and burgers, drinkin' Buds, talking, listening to music, watching the kids enjoy each other's company. Ther...

Tacky I know, but boy they're dropping like flies. We'd just gotten over the loss of Ed McMahon and David Carridine when yesterday was a twofer QCD (quality celebrity death, for the uninitiated): Farrah Fawcett and of course Michael Jackson, who will go down in history as one of the all-time greatest singer/dancers and also one of the most screwed-up humans ever to walk the earth. The poor guy never had a chance, what with being a mega-star from age 5, no education, surrounded all his life by phonies and users and way too much money... Doesn't excuse the hanky-panky with the boys, of course; at least he had to fork over a $20 million settlement after the kid made a positive ID of Jacko's thingy . No, the two things about Jackson that amaze me most are: #1 his ability to blow through more money per year than most Third World counties do in a decade, and #2 the twisted obsession with plastic surgery, apparently with the goal of becoming a 90-year-old woman toting two tons...

That would be the weather. Apparently we're on track to have this be the gloomiest month of June on record . I don't mind the constant cloud cover (which I actually like in the winter, when the sunlight is a slanting, squint-making mockery). It's this endless drizzle. Ultimatum to weather gods: stop constantly sprinkling on the toilet seat of my life! Wipe it up, zip and get the hell out of my stall! It's supposed to be summer, not Irish spring. Feh. Weather: sucky (see above). Home life: chaotic, more so than usual. Welcome to Zoo Dubrawvsky, which opened on Sunday, packed with laughter and love, joy, tears and extra beer, starring the four of us plus Ben's nephew's family, who are staying with us for a week while the floors are refinished on their new house they bought on Monday two hours after selling their old one. It's actually lots of fun because the girls -- our two, plus their three-year old Maya and their 11-month-old, who mostly sits and stares an...

I had to stop reading this at work because I tried to stifle a major laugh and now my office mate is convinced I'm channeling Charles Nelson Reilly. So have a look, even if you don't have kids. And speaking of great laughs, a moment of silence for another QCD: Ed McMahon , who just popped his clogs. * * * * So if it's a cost problem, it's easy: Get the people in a room who have the most and the most direct impact on cost, and do the deal. Do the deal. It's not that complicated. If it's an access question, people don't have access to health care, then figure out who they are, and give them access! Hello?! Am I missing something here? --RNC Chairman Michael Steele, guest hosting Bill Bennett's radio show , explaining the simplicity of health care reform, as published on Taegen Goddard's Political Wire today. Ben left a comment echoing something an old high school friend and I used to say, no doubt inspired by Monty Python: "World hunger... OK....

On some blog or other, I recently saw a new game where you Google the phrase "unfortunately [your name]" and see what you get. I tried it with both my real first name (the first set below) and then my blog nickname. Pretty funny. This would be a good exercise to give a creative writing class ("Students, construct a coherent and gripping 500-word narrative using six of your resulting phrases from Google. You have 30 minutes. Begin."). Try it! Unfortunately A. was sick for four days with a bug, but we still managed to juggle our days around all the vomiting... Unfortunately, A. cannot respond to requests for help with academic assignments. Unfortunately, A. took offense and refused to cooperate. Their hard work in Monrovia brought them great rewards but unfortunately A. contracted African fever there... Unfortunately, A., who has made a considerable effort to "glamorize" herself for the evening, angrily assumes that the glamorous but empty-headed Rita has sw...

There was a long period of time when Americans were filled with fear and loathing of anything that smacked even faintly of Communism. Writers and artists were blackballed, careers were made and ruined (or both, in McCarthy's case), spies were executed... then the Soviet Union collapsed and we could finally direct our national paranoia to something besides Communism. For a while it was terrorists, but just recently it's socialism, which is also evil, judging by the bullshit making the rounds, such as the Facebook poll asking "Do you think Obama is leading America down the road to Socialism?" The phrasing of the question obviously implies that socialism is a bad and scary thing. My opinion? I don't advocate a totally socialist system for our country. I'm all for preserving property rights (e.g., ownership of land, houses, crops, MP3 files, etc.). The problem is when you consider your money to be your exclusive property, and to what extent you're willing to a...

A few random bits of food for thought. As we know, the old business model of newspapers is no longer workable, but while pundits consider new revenue models, I think you also have to consider what sot of people will go into the field at a time like this. There will always be people who want to write; the question is, what other skills must they now have, and how will they earn a living wage? After all, it's not like the pay was so hot before. 4 steps to newspapers’ survival "The notion that government subsidies may be appropriate for the ailing newspaper industry — à la national health care — surfaced recently among faculty at Boston University’s College of Communications." The article is too brief, but raises an interesting idea about government subsidies as well as the suggestion that only local newspapers will survive as print products, which I think has merit. Will Amazon's Kindle Rescue Newspapers? "It's no secret that [ NYT publisher Arthur] Sulzberger...

Yes, it's been a while. But today... today I have found something so inspirational that I can't help but share it with the world: long-beaked echidnas , beautifully described in The New York Times as "plump, terrier-size creatures abristle with so many competing notes of crane, mole , pig, turtle, tribble, Babar and boot scrubber that if they didn’t exist, nobody would think to Photoshop them." AND! Did you know the males have a four-headed penis? Oo la la. *** Though it's been a while since her death, I must still mark the passing of Bea Arthur, who created the unforgettable character of Maude, a rather underappreciated sitcom, lost in the 70s shuffle of "All in the Family," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "M*A*S*H" et al. One reason the show was so good was the writing, tackling fraught social topics and taboos just as AITF had before it. Here's a tour de force one-woman episode where Maude sees her analyst . *** One of the funnies...