Month: September 2001

Just got off the phone with Dr. David Lesch, professor of Middle East history at Trinity University in San Antonio. He wrote 1979: The Year that Shaped the Modern Middle East, a book about, among other things, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Certainly, the Soviet example is not particularly encouraging, even though our goals (grabbing Bin Laden) are less difficult to achieve than the Soviets’ (propping up a puppet regime, control of the countryside, etc.) But his explanation of the myriad coalitions, connections, and confusions among the region’s countries did make it clear that any involvement in the region will be neither brief or without risk of rapid escalation. (Look for a story in Sunday’s DMN. Until then, David Plotz’s piece at Slate does a good job of outlining the regional issues.)

In other news, the storm outside is looking mighty threatening: the sky’s all bruise-purple and the lightning’s spiking down quick. A couple of weeks ago, the word “apocalyptic” might have been appropriate; less so now.

After yesterday’s item, I’ve gotten thousands — nay, millions — of emails requesting what follows, a brief history of my lifelong love-hate relationship with change:
Very young age: Enjoyed putting pennies in my mouth; tasted good.
Junior high: Was allotted four quarters daily by my loving grandmother; kept them in a little rubbery football-shaped container that had the LSU football schedule on it; still a slight jingle when I walked.
High school: No relationship with change whatsoever, except for occasional mocking comments about the failed Susan B. Anthony dollar.
College: A near-clinical obsession with quarters, which I determined to have an actual worth of 32.4 cents because of their utility in campus laundry machines. (There must have been a New England-wide quarter shortage in the mid-1990s; that’s the only way I can explain my alarming lack of clothes laundering in those days.)
First job after college: Anal qualities begin to show. One large cup holds all my useless pennies. Another, smaller, squarer cup holds nickels and dimes, useful for the vending machine on the ninth floor of my building. An Altoids tin holds the quarters necessary for laundry, which must be done more in the professional world than in the collegiate one, evidently. In many ways, a perfect system.
(Its one flaw: Leo, owner of Leo’s, the newsstand/porn shop I frequented on my block [for magazines, not porn, silly]. Leo is an older fellow, and for what ever reason, he decided long ago that giving someone a half-dollar coin as change would make his or her day. He was wrong, of course — getting a half-dollar would only make me scowl. What use is it? Not good for laundry, not good for candy bars, not good for anything. By default, the half-dollars ended up in the dime-and-nickel container, but trust me when I say I wasn’t happy about it.)
Today: My apartment building here in Dallas has laundry machines operated by credit cards, not coins. There’s something oddly Dallas-y about that. But quarters, while still desired, have much less of an impact on my life than before. I’d say I miss them, but that’s hard to do when you have 173 quarters all neatly stacked on your desk in front of you.

Oh, right: $65.55, not counting the pennies. (Even I have standards on how I’ll waste my time.) It’s kind of odd to think I’ve had $100+ sitting in my car for several years now.

As long as I’ve had my car — four years now — I’ve been throwing change into the armrest container between the two front seats. I stopped carrying around change a while back, annoyed by the jingle and the sheer size of any significant amount of coinage. (I could have told the U.S. Mint long ago that the Sacagawea coin would be a flop — who needs coins of significant value, anyway?)
Anyway, I have a lot of work to do: three stories to write this week, a major freelance assignment hovering over my head, some web work. So what do I do this evening? I decide that now is the time to count all the change in my car. (Or at least the roughly 50% of it I could carry into my apartment in an old Wendy’s bag.) The result: an hour gone, and hands with that sweet, metallic smell that can’t be washed off. I’m pathetic.

I am happy to report that, like the NFL, our newsroom football game will return this weekend. Of course, our season wasn’t interrupted — we’re just now getting back from our lengthy off-season. (This is Dallas, after all: heat makes the playable football season here slightly different from the equivalent in, say, Green Bay.) If anyone’s interested in joining the fun, email me.

I suppose not enough people decided buying one share of Cisco was an obligatory patriotic act today.
FYI, had another story in today’s paper.

Best links of the day: NYT Mag, The Morning News, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, and the eternally excellent World New York.

Alas, for those of us in the news business, “getting back to normal” isn’t much of an option: I’m off to work to write about the attacks again in a few minutes.

So I’ve been listening to some pretty somber music today — Red House Painters, Scud Mountain Boys, Tindersticks. But I decided to put on something a little peppier and threw on R.E.M.’s Eponymous. Fine, until track 12 hits:
That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes and aeroplane…world serves its own needs, dummy serve your own needs…wire in a fire representing seven games…a government for hire and a combat site…
With the furies breathing down your neck…team by team, reporters baffled, trumped, tethered, cropped…save yourself, serve yourself, world serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed…you vitriolic patriotic slam fight bright light feeling pretty psyched…
Six o’clock TV hour, don’t get caught in foreign towers…slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn…locking in uniform, book-burning, blood-letting, every motive escalate, automotive incinerate…light a candle, light a votive…uh oh, this means no fear…A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies…offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline…The other night I dreamt of knives…You symbiotic patriotic slam…
It’s the end of the world as we know it — and I feel fine.
Strange — it never sounded quite so menacing on previous listens. Maybe Stipe is the real Nostradamus?