Month: December 2001

I’m volunteering for the Dallas school district‘s ninth-grade mentoring program, which is run by Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Last week, I had my interview to determine if I was fit to be a mentor. Lots of detailed, embarassing questions: Do you possess any child pornography? Have you, as an adult, ever physically beaten a child? How did your last significant relationship end? Have you ever worshipped Satan? What are your views on the use of illegal drugs? Have you ever been drunk?
The guy two desks away from me at work is volunteering, too, so when I heard he was going to have his interview yesterday, I warned him to get ready for these sorts of questions. After his interview, though, he tells me he didn’t get any of those questions. Which leads me to the inescapable conclusion that, to my interviewer, I just looked like a kiddie-porn-loving, Satan-worshipping, child-abusing drunken druggie. I’m not taking it as a compliment.

Winona Ryder arrested for shoplifting. A thousand male hearts, stunted emotionally the moment they saw Heathers, are now breaking. (Luckily, I’m not one of them — never got the appeal. Bonus fact: her real name is Winona Horowitz.)

Talk about your busy news day! The bin Laden tape. The end of the ABM treaty. Somebody shoots up India’s parliament. Israel formally cuts off Arafat. (And let’s not even talk about the really big story, CSI’s rising ratings.) That’d be a busy news week most times, not just a busy news day.
Reminds me of Dec. 19, 1998, the day when Clinton was impeached, the ascendant Speaker of the House resigned, and the U.S. bombed Iraq. (Speaking of resignation, this site has the resignation letters of a bunch of 20th century politicos. Oh, and Ginger Spice.)

Seen somewhere lately (sorry, whoever linked it originally): Important French phrases for the traveller. Highlights: “Tu as grossi” (“You’ve put on weight”); “Je vous aurais bien aide, mais je ne vous aime pas” (“I’d help you, but I don’t like you”); “Vos enfants sont tr

As if troops if Afghanistan don’t have enough to worry about, now they have to be on the lookout for kamikaze camels.
BBC: “Throughout their occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s the Soviets had to contend with the threat of camels wired to explode being sent towards their positions. The Afghan mujahideen fighters would strap dynamite to a camel and send it towards a Russian base. Then, as the animal wandered near troops or equipment, they would set it off with a remote detonator, to deadly effect.”

There’s been a piece of paper on my to-blog pile at home for a while, and I’d like to throw it away, so here goes. These were some of the menu items at the restaurant I ate dinner at on my last night in Tokyo last month: Fried cartilage. Hormone stew. Liver sashimi (that is, sliced raw liver). And my favorite, whale bacon.

At about 8:20 tonight, I got to see the Olympic torch pass outside work. (Why I was at work is beyond me.) Anyway, as the torchbearer ran by, one of my coworkers yelled out, “Wait! That guy with the torch! Is that Nate Newton?”

Odd dream while in Rochester: I’m in someone’s house, which is hosting a big party — maybe it’s a frat house or something similar. I walk into a back room, and 80s-icons Bauhaus are playing to an audience of two or three people. For some reason, Robert Downey, Jr. is their lead singer.
This is an odd dream for several reasons, not least because I could not name a single Bauhaus song, have never been much of a fan, and have no idea why Robert Downey, Jr. would be associated with them, even subliminally.

Remember the crabwalk.com quiz a few days back? “What two things do these people have in common? Thomas Edison! Grover Cleveland! John Fenwick! Joyce Kilmer! Clara Barton! Vince Lombardi! Walt Whitman.”
Well, props to Kim for knowing one of them: they’re all New Jerseyans famous enough to have service areas on the Jersey Turnpike named for them. (They’re name-checked in Slate this week.) And their names are yelled out, in that order, in the closing seconds of “Big Road” by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, on their excellent 1993 release Extra Width.

Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer is the twin sister of Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips. And Esther’s daughter is named Margo Howard.
Of course, they’re all best known by other names. Esther is best known as Ann Landers. And Pauline’s best known as Dear Abby. That they’re sisters in real life is fairly common knowledge. But the fact that Margo Howard is the writer of Dear Prudence, Slate’s advice column, would seem to indicate that nepotism goes a bit too far in the advice industry. (Particularly since Prudence, well, isn’t all that good.)