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Today’s A.Word.A.Day was no doubt inspired by this very site:
crabwise (KRAB-wyz), adjective. 1. Sideways. 2. In a cautious or roundabout manner. [From the sideways movement of crabs.] “John Smith is still moving crabwise towards modernity.” John Major’s Last Year?, The Economist (London), May 15, 1993.
I must say it was not my intention when naming this site to promote caution or roundaboutedness (?). (If you don’t know where the name comes from, you obviously haven’t fully explored the site.) My vision of crabwalking was more connected to the elementary school P.E. version of the term. But as the site mentions, “If we were to look up the term `humanwise’ in a crab’s dictionary, chances are it would mean ‘sideways.'” (Thanks, Karen!)

This site was down for a while last night during a system upgrade; all should be well now, but if you run into any odd problems, please email me.

Remember that Berkeley city council anti-war resolution? Well, some folks have begun an economic boycott of the city as a result.
(Link ripped from Glenn Reynolds at the very useful InstaPundit. He’s also links to Drudge reporting that U.S. officials are planning to remove women from the front lines of combat, not long after some Clinton policies put them there. He points out, probably wisely, that it’s a bad idea, and not only for gender-bias reasons: can you imagine how the Taliban would react if they realized they were getting beaten by a bunch of girls? It might be the kind of humiliation Islamic fundamentalism could never recover from. “I think we should be saturating the Mideast with television footage of female soldiers and pilots,” Glenn writes.)

I found a bouncy rubber ball on the football field yesterday. I am now a very dangerous man. (Not that I wasn’t before.) My day has been divided into four basic parts: bounce-off-the-wall, bounce-off-the-ceiling, bounce-off-the-floor, and (most thrillingly) bounce-off-the-point-where-two-walls-meet-to-try-to-get-it-to-bounce back-directly-at-me. If I had a pet, it’d be injured by now.
Congrats to Erica on her new look. (Both the new look of her blog and, if one can believe this photo, the haircut she got sometime after age 17 — a nice improvement. 🙂 )
(Has there ever been an official declaration of proper parenthesis use when a clause ends in a smilie? Is that “:) )” double usage correct? Where’s the W3C when you need them?)
I start Spanish class Tuesday night. Today, I went to the SMU bookstore to buy the textbook and had to ask someone with a straight face, “Excuse me, but do you have ‘Spanish Is Fun’?” I felt like a second grader.

Congratulations to whoever’s behind the keyboard at 216.192.91.26, a.k.a. as.wcom.net. At 8:32 p.m. last night, he or she became the 1,000th unique visitor to crabwalk.com. And to think, only about 873 of those are me hitting reload.
Football today wasn’t pretty at all. Just one lonely TD (although another one, off a pickoff, did get called back on a crappy call). A few nice defensive plays, including a key fourth-down goal line-stand deflection, but nothing to write home about. Not the way I wanted to enter my three-week Japanese layoff from the sport.
Saw Mulholland Drive last night with my friend Natacha — odd movie. (Somehow, I’d never seen a David Lynch film before, so I’m happy to have that gap in my cultural resume filled.) If anyone has any theories about what it all meant — in particular the cowboy and the inch-tall old people — please forward them along. My favorite scene, early on in the movie, featured the truly great Dan Hedaya, the former Nick Tortelli of Cheers fame.
Finally, I had another story in today’s paper.

More music news: the Dismemberment Plan, one of my very favorite bands, is coming out with a new album, Change, on Tuesday. And the band is streaming the album via RealAudio. They’re also coming to Rubber Gloves on Dec. 1 and I sadly will be in Boston that weekend. But party on without me — I saw them there earlier this year and it was a great show.

It appears our anthrax scare was just crushed aspirin in an envelope, sent by someone who thought it would be amusing to drive a workplace into panic. Dear whoever sent it: Thanks for screwing up our day! Really, we appreciate it. Jackass.

Well, that was exactly what I didn’t want to see on my way out the door to lunch: three firemen, in full protective regalia, wearing gas masks. I tried holding my breath all the way down from the third floor; I nearly made it, but ended up taking a few breaths near the front door.
I just got back and thought everything was clear, but I just noticed the entire business department’s been evacuated and cordoned off with “hazardous materials” police tape. (Could that have been the phantom brownie smell from this morning? Anybody know if anthrax smells like brownies?) Evidently we got a letter with a white powdery substance. Lucky us! I’m sure it’s just another hoax, but I’ll be taking shallow breaths just in case. (If you don’t remember, my employer has been the subject of protests in the past over its reporting on local Muslim groups and their alleged connections to terrorist activity.)

Two thoughts, before I crank out a lot of work today (and thus have little time to blog): I have to walk through the business department every morning to get to work. About halfway through, for the last week, there has been the unmistakable smell of brownies — really gooey, fudgy brownies. But when I look around, no brownies. It seems like a cruel joke. Is it the legacy smell of brownies past? There’s nothing worse than phantom brownies.
Finally, this Halloween decorations story in today’s DMN is promoted on the front page with this sentence: “Build a cave in your living room for an unforgettable party setting.” Am I the only one who immediately thought: Wow, I can’t believe the paper is promoting an Osama-themed Halloween!

It’s interesting to see what exactly the leaflets we’re dropping on Afghanistan say:
“Attention Taliban! You are condemned. Did you know that? The instant the terrorists you support took over our planes, you sentenced yourselves to death. The Armed Forces of the United States are here to seek justice for our dead. Highly trained soldiers are coming to shut down once and for all Usama bin Laden’s ring of terrorism, and the Taliban that supports them and their actions.
“Our forces are armed with state of the art military equipment. What are you using, obsolete and ineffective weaponry? Our helicopters will rain fire down upon your camps before you detect them on your radar. Our bombs are so accurate we can drop them right through your windows. Our infantry is trained for any climate and terrain on earth. United States soldiers fire with superior marksmanship and are armed with superior weapons.
“You have only one choice … Surrender now and we will give you a second chance. We will let you live. If you surrender no harm will come to you. When you decide to surrender, approach United States forces with your hands in the air. Sling your weapon across your back muzzle towards the ground. Remove your magazine and expel any rounds. Doing this is your only chance of survival.”
Is this refreshingly blunt, or does it sound like outtakes from some bad John Carpenter movie? Gotta love the mocking tone: “What are you using, obsolete and ineffective weaponry?” My car’s so much nicer than your car. My daddy’s so much richer than your daddy. My jeans are so much cooler than yours.