Dear Coleman camping kit ads:

You didn't invent camping.

You didn't really invent "social networking" either. Camping can be social, but it's the exact opposite of a network. If there were a trail in the woods where I would randomly run into people from my past, who would then shout what they were doing every so often, believe me when I say: I would not hike that trail.

You did invent or improve some pretty nifty gear for camping, though. But is there really so much competition in the field that you need to run TV ads at all, much less ones with so much braggadocio?

Cat having a hairball: Not exactly awesome.

Cat having a hairball right on unsolicited evangelical fundamentalist pamphlet: Pretty awesome.

Way to go, Dr. Hamsteak!

To say that the reactions to the Iranian elections may lead to "reform" for Iran is excessively hopeful, at least in this writer's opinion. In the ideal circusmtances, the outcomes may clear the way for some modest changes that build enough consensus for wider reforms.

But to say that the election fallout has anything to do with "freedom" for Iran is just ridiculous. If you know even the least bit about their government hierarchy, or last fifty years of Iranian history, it would abolish the f-word from any discussion about Iran in July, 2009.

It really cheapens the undeniable bravery and defiance of the protestors in the streets of Iran when well-fed and far-away critics attempt to tell them what they're fighting for.

I think people who raise their cats and dogs vegan have officially thrown a rod mentally. It's an affront to nature.

However, Pippy the Cat would make a great vegetarian. Here are some things she likes to eat (list compiled by spacemanlove):

• Baked beans
  
• Squash
  
• Yogurt
  
• Yams
  
• Soy bacon
  
• Applesauce
  
• Tofu
  
• Toast
  
• Cereal with soymilk
  
• Grape stems
  
• Strawberries
  
• Bananas
  
• Canteloupe
  
• Plums
  
• Corn on the cob
  
• Tofu 'cream cheese' (but NOT dairy cream cheese)
  
• And of course, [nontoxic] houseplants and catgrass
  

There's no explaining it. We didn't try to feed her people food; she just smells what's cooking and bullies her way onto the table/into our hearts until she gets a taste. None of it is harmful to her (we check carefully) but it's all unusual. And it isn't as though she doesn't like the 'usual' cat favorites: she'll eat her dry food, and she can't be stopped when there's chicken on my plate. Pippy's just a crazy omnivore.

Dr. Hamsteak, by comparison, only likes cat food, meat, and the occasional bit of egg yolk. Of course, she has to keep up appearances... she's a doctor.

You know how the state occasionally issues limited hunting permits, to thin out overpopulated species? Here's suggesting jaywalkers as the next species for that program in Connecticut.

Look, I'm a pedestrian for... 80% or more of my transit. I am profoundly sympathetic to people who have to walk in places with unsafe or nonexistent paths and crossing patterns. Downtown New Haven is not one of those places. It's built around a sprawling, busy pedestrian business (Yale), and has traffic controls that are generously pro-walker: turn-on-red prohibitions, frequent all-way stops, short limit lines, and an ever-baffling network of one-way streets and turn-only lanes. The short story: if you are a pedestrian capable of A. looking at a light and B. seeing a car, you're in business.

Not in business: the stroller-pushing mother sending her two toddlers running out ahead of her to "throw a block" against the three lanes of oncoming, green-lit traffic. Fortunately, drivers here expect this kind of tomfoolery, so a potential Battleship Potemkin was merely a brake-screeching French Connection. Less reprehensible, but equally dumb was the mopheaded summer student pulling the classic "Start running for two steps and then stroll leisurely."

Hey, jaywalking is fine if you cross when nobody's coming. It's entirely possible to know better than the timers in the lights. My ire is resevred for the ones who believe they know better than an oncoming car. I'm not saying they should die... I'm just saying that evolution doesn't want them to live.

Back from a teriffic (but tiring) road trip to Florida! Given today's short attention spans, I will attempt to sum up each step of the trip in one sentence or fragment thereof.

New Haven, 4 am: Very quiet; surprisingly cold.

New Jersey, I-78: They don't let you pump your own gas.

Rural Pennsylvania: Whoever buys billboards is totes into Jesus.

Western Maryland and West Virginia: Can be driven through very, very quickly.

Blue Ridge Mountains: Gorgeous.

Google Maps: A fucking liar.

The people of Greenville, NC: Cannot give directions to save their lives.

Tobacco country, NC: Where that 2007 25% presidential approval rating came from.

Carolina Beach: Wonderfully unconcerned with good taste in everything but fresh seafood.

Northern Florida: Still the South, especially at the Waffle House.

Florida, I-75: A long, long road.

Naples, FL: All sun and swimming and gin and tonic: what vacations should be.

Our hostesses: The mostesses.

Return leg to Southern VA: The longest nonstop drive I have ever hazarded.

The Cracker Barrel: One of the largest breakfasts I have ever hazarded.

Virginia: The state with the highway that never ends.

Chambersburg, PA: Pilgrimage to Boswell's Pipes; bought a pipe.

Gettysburg, PA: Moving, educational, predicatably crowded given the date.

George Washington Bridge: Ironically named for a man famous for crossing a river with no delays nor difficulties.

People who drive in an exit-only or breakdown lane trying to jump in ahead of a slow traffic pattern in the actual lane: Should have their cars confiscated; can go fuck themselves.

Home, New Haven, CT: The cats are glad we're back.

I'm late to the game on Lost, but am slowly catching up. For want of better words, the show does an excellent job "training" its audience: if we suspend disbelief, jump at the scary parts, sigh at the sad parts, we'll be rewarded with a chance to "get it" before everyone else. And in that respect, we actually build a great deal of empathy with characters who want the same. It's a remarkably efficient device--it worked for Twin Peaks, and long before TV it worked for mystery-cult religions.

In that respect, I can see the appeal of watching it as a weekly serial (most religions are weekly serials, after all), but I must say that the rewards of marathon watching Lost are great. All those years of ignoring everyone else's Lost chatter have paid off; it's new to me and a great deal of fun. Plus, I blame the Smoke Monster for pretty much everything now. ("Hey, have you seen my glasses?" "Smoke Monster took 'em.")

That said, waiting until December for the full season five compilations? I'm a little annoyed; spacemanlove is bouncing off the walls. Hulu has them three episodes at a time in rotation, so we can just wait until they come back around to Ep. 5.1, but why hold back commercial-sponsored reruns? I realize that digital rights and residuals were a big part of the Writers' Strike, and there's probably a serious contractual reason... but I still blame the Smoke Monster.

News flash: The NYS Senate has always been a joke of minority rule. The fact that people can now see the sausage being made is a new wrinkle.

To be fair, the effective minority rule is something bound to happen in cycles in any non-proportional government body, especially with New York's odd population distribution. The House represents population and the Senate represents geography; the latter is "unfair" if you consider disproportion unfair per se. Even with a partisan supermajority, people in New York's urban counties are screwed over, numerically speaking.

Of course, a "coup" consisting of a procedural vote, possibly post-adjournment, facilitated by two Senators under legal investigation, with no Lt. Governor to adjudicate, really does write large the message for the folks who haven't been paying much attention.

Actual news items in today's Times:

1. The economy's toll on parent-dependent hipsters in Williamsburg.
2. Op-Ed: The EU's latest injustice: redefining rosé wine.
3. Where will arch-pro-lifers protest with Dr. Tiller's office closed?

If I were a day-trader, I'd go bullish on whatever company makes the World's Smallest Violin.

I've been away from all computing for 28 hours or so. Big, self-imposed mistake. Went to the city to see some readings, didn't want the weight or to have my latop caught in the downpour. I respect those who can appreciate their time away from technology, as they almost-certainly have richer lives than I; I just felt naked, ignorant, and bored.

(The readings were very good, incidentally. Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer are a mighty force. Their combined fanbase, though, is scary.)

If I missed anything crucial, wonderful, or serious, let me know in comments. In any case, namasté: I salute the best in you.

A fellow on the pipe-hobbyist message board I frequent is from Taiwan. His written English is essentially classroom-fluent: some unconventional syntax, not much idiomatic phrasing, but otherwise flawless spelling, grammar, and usage... with one exception. When writing "you," he consistently substitutes "u."

At first I thought of this as a blame-the-Internets affectation, but it seems strange that there'd be one and only one such instance. His capitalization, for example, is correct and standard. After considering this conundrum for a while, I cooked up a theory: the gentleman has learned a character-based language all his life, and in such there is a tendency to simplify as long as clarity is maintained. SMS and Internet shorthand have trained the world to read 'u' as the second-person pronoun, whether or not we write it longhand, so as character logic goes, it's on limits: not a substitute, but the same word.

All of which is to say: the utopians and/or cynics who think we're moving towards a character-based language may be onto something. It just might be that our characters evolve from letters rather than pictograms. In 200 years, will we be reading and writing something that looks like a cross between Shavian and L33T?

I want to give a big shoutout to my girl Death, for taking me long before I ever have to see that possibility realized.

I'm back, suckers!

Yesterday, we minimoved down two flights of stairs, from the attic to the first floor apartment. And for the most part, vive la différence.

PLUSES
Higher (i.e., normal) ceilings. No more ducking/concussions.
Larger kitchen area. Still oddly layed-out, but there's a proper pantry and a gas range.
Windows everywhere! And therefore, natural light and ventilation everywhere.
Wood and tile floors. Not just a personal preference, but also a huge boon for a multicat household.

MINUSES
Same building, same building-wide problems. In particular, the super-tall front steps, and the coin-op dryer that just hates me for some reason. We haven months yet to see whether the heating is as wonky.
First floor agita. I've lived in a first-floor apartment for most of the past nine years, so I'm somewhat immune to the noise, but the doors are old and loud and our neighbors must use the stairs, QED. And for whatever reason, people on the street don't believe in the doorbell, favoring "lean on the horn until your friend comes outside." Clear sightlines to the backyard also mean clear sightlines to neighborhood stray cats. Uh-oh.
About that gas range. I walked in the kitchen and smelt mercaptan. Call to the gas company confirmed that both the connector and the emergency shutoff valve were leaking. So... we're sans oven/hot water until the plumber clears it up. (Worse still, we think the tech from the gas company tracked dog poop into the hall... someone did. Not an apartment-specific problem, but yuck. I mopped the common area rather than put up with it.)

All told, not too shabby. We go some great hand-me-down swag from the many Elis moving. The Fullbright Scholars who formerly occupied our new digs left a perfectly workable office chair and an awesome memory-foam mattress (promptly claimed by Dr. Hamsteak.) Another friend gave us a PS2, a neat chair, and many classy cigar boxes. And we caved in (read: spacemanlove loves me very much) and got proper cable. Housewarming... soon?

Dear real world,

I would be lying if I said I missed you.

Let's just make it clear that I'm taking you back, not the other way 'round. You're on notice, Mister. Watch it.

Believe me,

docmanhattan

Happy birthday, lawgeekgurl!

I'm a Master of Fine Arts now!

And I got to shake Rahm Emmanuel's hand.

More details to follow.

It's probably bad that I spent a good twenty minutes figuring out the most likely place the two characters from "Don't Stop Believin'" would meet, right?

If you're curious: It's Chicago. There's a strong case it's a major city, with its bustling "boulevard," "street lights," and bars with live entertainment open late. One can further conjecture that a "midnight train" from a "small town" would likely be headed towards a large city. Detroit is the second stop on its only rail branch, so for the City Boy to take a train "going anywhere," he'd have to be heading towards Chicago. (He couldn't meet the girl were he headed north to Pontiac--their trains would pass one another with no stops in between.) Furthermore, there are plenty of plausible small towns on other lines around the Chicago hub for the female protagonist to board.

Best word problem ever, QED.

I'm finally coming around on this whole "graduation" thing. I didn't really buy in for my college graduation; I didn't march at all for my teaching degree at Columbia. High school I was officially onboard, as I was the Class Speaker, but being an insider really stripped the process of any joy or wonder.

Institutions and ceremony typically make me very suspicious, but the truth is my opportunities to be skeptical dropped precipitously when I accepted (and dropped a little further each time I wrote a tuition check.) I got to study art for two years, with people I love and respect, at a place that fit my life nicely. A little ceremony--the eponymous pomp and circumstance--feels right as its coda.

Also: it's fun to dress up. We had our "hooding ceremony" yesterday, receiving our Masters' hoods. (Mine is brown for Arts & Letters.) The event itself was held together by twine and duct tape--none of the program heads knew which was was right-side-out on the hoods--but the spirit of the thing was jolly good.

It's nice to have people make a fuss over you, and see all your friends, and to eat and drink free food and wine. Dancing and karaoke* are always called for. Rahm Emmanuel should be a hoot to hear. I think I like graduation because I badly want to keep the party going.

*But what self-respecting karaoke DJ doen't have "Don't Stop Believin'"? Are we in Communist Russia or what?

Look out, Traditional America! That gathering storm of gayness is coming to your neighborhood, and now it's confusing children!

Pretty soon, our kids are going to think that everything allowed by law is legal--madness!* And even worse, they'll start to think that fictional stories could be told a different way! That's not just bad news for Jesus-fearing Americans... it'll also ruin all those Jews who make TV shows and romantic comedies out in Hollywood. Isn't this something we can all come together to hate?

*Unless it's the legality of totally necessary torture of brown folks who might know about a bomb or something, in which case: carry on.

Happy birthday, fairymelusine!

A great NYC tableau on the subway this evening:

A handful people board the car at Wall Street. The first is a businessman of Chinese heritage. By the quality of his shoes, brand of his briefcase, and cut of his suit, a rather successful businessman. He is carrying a little red book in Chinese under one arm--in fact, it is the Little Red Book, The Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong. The edition is as fine as the rest of his kit: hardbound, heavy paper, a stylish red star embossed on the cover. He sits down, opens it, and reads intently.

As if the universe abhors simple irony, the passenger who settles beside him is a tall Latino man, wearing a Yankees cap and a well-worn Che Guevara T-shirt. I notice him leaning over to steal peeks of the Quotations. It's certainly possible that he could read Chinese characters, but his expression seemed to indicate a deeper sense that something profoundly meta was going on.