Category: Uncategorized

Yep, I’m back after a week of enforced silence, caused by server shenanigans at my web host. Basically, they deleted a week’s worth of posts and comments and wrecked my installation of Movable Type, making posting impossible without screwing things up even more. (If you’re interested in wonky details, try here, here, here, and here [my solution to the mess]).
Anyway, I’m back, after recoding by hand 10 entries and 30+ comments. Depending on the speediness of your ISP, crabwalk.com should point back at this site within the next day or two. Regular posting to resume after I get some sleep.
Until then, here’s my largely uninteresting story on tomorrow’s front page. And here’s a much better story on tomorrow’s front.

Hey, you! You, in the corner with the keyboard! Why didn’t you tell me Heather Havrilesky has a blog? (You may know her better as Polly Esther at the late and truly lamented Suck.)
As time passes, people may forget what a stroke of genius Suck was. (Well, not all of Suck. But it had a higher batting average than most mags, and if you stripped away the hipster social crit, there was a real, beating heart of intelligence behind it all.)
And this is probably deeply retrograde, but her writing always gave me the impression that she’s the sexiest creature on earth. (Well, her and Dahlia Lithwick.) There’s just something about overeducated, lovably cynical female webzine writers that just gets my motor running. Rowr.
I leave for my college reunion tomorrow morning, so the posting stream may slow to a trickle through the weekend. You’re always my top priority, Dear Reader, but this weekend you fall to third behind Wooster Square cannolis and everyone’s favorite party game, Let’s See Who Got Fat.

Klan rally 70 percent undercover reporters. “Over the course of the two-hour rally, no journalists were ferreted out by the Klansmen. To the trained eye, however, some differences could be detected. Several times, reporters were seen disrupting the marching formation as they stooped to scribble notes, take photos with digital cameras, or answer cell phones. In addition, a number of lavaliere microphones could be seen poking out of robes.
“The undercover journalists were also distinguishable by their footwear. While the real KKK members tended to wear heavy work boots, the journalists were divided between sensible leather oxfords and beat-up sneakers.”

Remember my post a few days ago about my next-door neighbor, the one who just moved out? “Dumb as a box of rocks, annoying, deeply uninteresting at every level. (Mystery Of Life #3,267: He’s unattractive, stupid, unemployed, completely without charm — but has the hottest damned girlfriend in the building.)”
I just realized I forgot to post that I was awakened Sunday morning at 4:30 by a bang on the door. Three Dallas policemen told me they were investigating the disappearance of the aforementioned girlfriend. (Who, by the way, is apparently 19. He’s in his early 30s.) I told them about all the times I heard him screaming at her. I told them I had no idea if he was ever violent. After about 10 minutes of questions, they thanked me and went on their way. On my way back to bed, I cursed myself for not remembering his name, preventing me from checking up on him.

Correction of the day: “In Friday’s column I wrote of Osama: ‘He may be nuttier than an orgy at Mr. Peanut’s poop party but, again, that is often a requirement for villains.’ I meant to say ‘pool party.’ Not ‘poop party.’ Indeed, if you look on your keyboard

Had lunch today with a teacher from my old high school. (He’s been teaching in Dallas for about 10 years now.) It was odd to talk to someone who last remembers me at age 14.
Although he was a legendary teacher, scheduling quirks meant I never had him in a class. So his only real dealing with me came as the school’s discipline czar.
I had a 45-minute bus ride every morning, along with six or eight other kids who went to my school or its feeder. I was in seventh grade.
It was exam week, so I and the other older kids were using the long bus ride to study for the tests we had that day. Unfortunately, this little twerp 2nd grader named John decided to use the bus ride to prove, incontrovertibly, that he knew the names of all 41 presidents of these United States.
And could recite them in order. In song. Loudly. Over and over again.
Needless to say, we older kids wanted to throttle him. We kept telling him to shut up — first gently, then with increasing vigor. We appealed to our bus driver, the cool but ineffectual Tim, but he did nothing. Finally, when he progressed from singing the president’s names to screaming them — I believe it was Chester A. Arthur who set me off — I reached over and punched John in the jaw.
He looked at me, stunned. And he shut up for the rest of the bus ride.
Being the little twerp he was — his twerpdom would be more conclusively proven in five more years of bus rides — he tattled to mommy. Mommy called my school, and I got called to the discipline czar’s office.
I was a good kid, too geeky to ever get in trouble. The czar was a little unsure what to do.
“I hear you punched this second grader on the bus.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I hear he’s really, really annoying.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, the next time he’s really, really annoying, try really, really hard not to punch him.”
“Yes, sir.”
That was that.

Oh, boy. (More here and here.)

Q: How do you know the guy you’re interviewing on the phone is going on waaay too long about issues of absolutely no interest to you?
A: When you start blogging in the middle of your conversation.

If you’re interested in Pitcairn Island (the remote rock in the South Pacific where the descendants of the mutiny on the Bounty reside), be at the Arlington Convention Center at 2 p.m. Friday. Tom Christian (3rd from left), the island’s elder statesman, is in Dallas and will be talking about Pitcairn life to a group of ham radio buffs.
Regular readers may remember me blogging about Pitcairn before; I spent a week there in 1999. I wrote a few articles about it for my old employer.
I’ll be out of town for Tom’s talk, but I’m going to interview him sometime this week. Should be interesting, given all the stunning controversy going on there.

My very favorite book of all time appears to finally be coming to the screen. I’m not sure if I’m looking forward to it or not — in the right hands, it could be great, but the stakes are awfully high. The risk of my pyloric valve slamming shut at the sight of it is significant.
(To give you an idea how deep my devotion runs to A Confederacy of Dunces: the two partitions of my hard drive are named Ignatius and Gonzalez, my external hard drive is named Mancuso, and my laptop is named Miss Trixie, all characters in the novel. For a geek like me, that’s love.)