Month: November 2001

Well, we know that at least two people have something to be thankful for today. Congrats, you crazy kids.
Today, I went to Crowley — which I’d call the nearest town of any significant size, if only it was of any significant size — to pick up my grandpa. He lives in an old folks home there; when I left to pick him up, my grandmother uttered the memorable words: “Make sure he remembers his teeth.” Then we picked up food at Chef Roy’s, Rayne’s finest restaurant. I had the seafood platter — shrimp, oysters, stuffed shrimp, catfish, crab cakes, and (not technically seafood, I suppose) a fried frog leg. (Yep, tastes like chicken.)
Of course I’m thankful for all the usual things: family, friends, health, continued employment, etc. But at the moment I’m particularly thankful for all of you people who read this mess every day (all four of you), and all the great people I’ve met through this page. Happy thanksgiving.

I like the Brits as much as any right-thinking quasi-Frenchman could, but that dry Oxbridge sense of humor can get annoying. (Via kaus. The Economist — inhouse motto: “Simplify, then exaggerate” — is just about the most overrated magazine around. Hell, I’m agreeing with Andrew Sullivan! Shoot me now!)

Want to convince Aunt Jolene that the time-tested two-table Thanksgiving system should be upgraded to three (the adult table, the kiddie table, and the freak table, just for you)? Try putting Colonel Jeffrey Pumpernickel on the CD player during your turducken carving. What an odd compilation of indie rockers obscure (The Minders, Howe Gelb), really obscure (Weird War, Goldcard), and not so obscure (Guided By Voices, Stephen Malkmus). It’s that weariest of old ideas, a concept album. (Although at times it appears the concept is limited to, “Hey guys, let’s all make a concept album.”)
Underwater fire battles, the great animals vs. robots debate, Oedipal complexes, severe allergies: it’s all in there. Spotty, and a bit too odd at times, but always interesting, and in the Ann Magnuson/Dave Rick tune “Dr. Mom,” it might have the oddest song of 2001. (It details, among other things, bedwetting, muhajadeen guides, an encounter with John Entwistle, spawning salmon, and the trouble with playing with baby bears.)
Switching topics, I don’t watch much TV back in Dallas, but I always catch up when I’m in Rayne where, to be brutally frank, there ain’t much else to do. So my first (and likely last) television review of the new season: that Ed show is pretty darned good. Wow, that blonde is pretty damned hot. But the true star (I hope at least, after viewing part of one episode) is Michael Ian Black. I have no idea if he’s any good as Phil, but he was brilliant at the English-challenged Johnny Bluejeans on the late, lamented Viva Variety.

Only a few hours to Thanksgiving, so it might be a little late, but I feel that as a Cajun Activist, I must alert you all to my people’s contribution to Turkey Day: the Cajun deep-fried turkey. (I’ve never actually had it, but I’ve heard rave reviews. Of course, eating it means instant death. And maybe preparing it too: the recipe starts off with these words of warning: “You must cook this turkey outside. You should wear goggles and gloves. Also have a fire extinguisher on hand. Remember – your safety is the first step in this recipe.” Other safety hints mentioned: “You want to wear some old shoes that you can slip out of easily and long pants, just in case you do spill some oil on you…Avoid frying on wood decks, which could catch fire, and concrete, which can be stained by the oil…don

All of you are lucky there are miles of fiberoptics between us, because I need to strangle someone right about now. My company laptop — the same one that’s died and been “fixed” three times before — died again, in exactly the same way it has before. Except this time, it took a 1,500-word story with it, which meant I had to rush over to my uncle’s place to use his 1991-era Compaq to rewrite the damned thing.
(The computer used to be mine back when it was cutting-edge technology, so it was a brief little time warp. All my high school papers. All my college application essays. Letters to girlfriends. All still on the hard drive. I hadn’t typed “dir/w” at a command line in ages. The computer’s in horrible shape. The ctrl key has long been severed from its mother keyboard, which is encrusted in that yellowy dirt layer old computers get. The monitor on/off button is broken, so you have to stick a toothpick (!) into the monitor for it to work. The system boots into Geoworks Ensemble, a bizarre proto-Windows that crashed and burned soon after my computer teacher started evangelizing for it.)
Anyway, I rewrote about half of it at 6:30 a.m. this morning, then that computer too met its maker. I must have the IT equivalent of a black thumb today. So I waited until 8 a.m. for the Rayne library to open. The staff knows me well from my childhood, but now they know me well as the guy who rushes to the library computers in a panic everytime he’s in town because his company laptop has broken and he has to get something done quick. The story’s done and emailed off. I’m off to see if I can track down a laptop for the next few days. And if I can get the old clunker to work again, to look at my old high school essays and laugh at the 16-year-old me.

Since I mentioned it once before, I feel it is my responsibility to keep you up to date on the Peter Buck trial. It seems that, along with damaging British Airways crockery, the R.E.M. guitarist also stands accused of other offenses, including “cover[ing] himself with yogurt” and “mist[aking] a hostess trolley for a CD player,” all while drunkenly crossing the Atlantic. I bet Osama’s linked up in this somehow.

I’d like to apologize for the entry below. I’m almost certain that my Secret Santa gifts in the 1980s did not include a Victor Borge biography. My mention of Mr. Borge, perhaps the greatest of the great Danes, was simply an attempt to get Google to send me some of the thousands of Victor Borge hits it no doubt generates. My apologies, and govern yourself accordingly.

Remember the Htoo brothers, Luther and Johnny? The Burmese preteens who, unlike most of their peers, channelled their feelings of aggression into forming an “Army of God,” not video games? Who toted assault rifles around the jungle, willing followers in their wake, but still found time for naps? Well, they could be coming to a junior high near you. The U.S. is close to giving the Htoos green cards. Now, it’s bad enough when the guy sitting next to you in your MBA class might well be responsible for the genocide of 800,000 people. But can you imagine going to eighth grade with these guys?

The tentative Crabby(TM) for Best Christmas-Related Web Idea goes to Secret Santa. Yep, it’s just like you remember it from grade school, except your gift gets chosen from your Amazon wish list instead of the fevered imagination of a 12-year-old.
I remember my first and only Secret Santa experience, sometime around eighth grade. We had a $10 spending limit, but were supposed to buy three things to give over three days. The guy I had picked was into music, so I hatched a brilliant scheme: buy two really crappy gifts for the first two days, to fool him into thinking he was getting screwed over, then spring a shiny new tape from one of his favorite bands on Day 3. (I remember the tape well: Pink Floyd’s Animals.) So on Days 1 and 2, he got books straight from the 50-cent shelf at a Lafayette, La. bookstore — I think one was on raising goats, maybe the other one was a Victor Borge bio, I don’t remember.
Anyway, so this guy spends two straight days complaining about how crappy his gifts are to everyone within earshot. I felt like explaining: Don’t you get irony? The humor inherent in intentionally bad gifts, soon to be redeemed by a slice of Floyd? By the time Day 3 arrived, I was completely disspirited, and the guy wasn’t all that impressed — he already had a copy of Animals.
So everybody sign up for Secret Santa, on the off chance we might pick each other and I might have a healing experience.

Attention Harry Potter fans: you may not know what evil you have unwittingly been exposed to! The always (unintentionally) amusing fundamentalists at ChildCare Action Project has come out with a scathing report on the new movie. Some of its startling findings (all italics mine):
– Harry Potter is “a colorful display of goth art.”
– “Harry Potter present[s] evil as something to admire and emulate.”
– “[W]hat better time to embrace evil in entertainment than now when we have kicked God out of schools, government and many, many homes and what used to be the family. I guess Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is a logical extension of I Dream of Genie, Bewitched and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, all benevolent on the surface and all since we kicked God out of our schools.”
– “Part of the rivalry is expressed in broom-riding sports much like roller ball with as little concern for the safety of fellow players.”
– “By the way, Harry converses with a snake in this movie. Not a cow, not a dog, not a cat, but a snake. And one of the characters is 665.5 years old.”
The CAP scoring system dings movies for crimes against Christianity; in Harry’s case, these include:
– in the “Wanton Violence” category: “floating evil being drinking blood from an animal’s neck,” “ghost removing his head,” “great falls, repeatedly,” “beating of a child with a club by a giant troll, seeing the club hit the child, repeatedly,” and “crumbling flesh.”
– under “Impudence/Hate”: “brutal sports tactics with audience of children cheering it on,” “encouragement by an adult to a child to break the rules to get even,” “parents submitting to child’s creaming.” (I assume they meant screaming; if there was creaming in the movie, maybe it really should be banned.)
– under “Offense to God”: “magic to grow tail on a boy,” “magic to change flag colors,” “paintings with moving subjects, repeatedly,” “broom riding,” “cat with red eyes,” “Christmas without Jesus.”