Entry 188: Leaving on a Jet Plane... at a Very Ealy Hour

We're leaving on a two-week vacation to the west coast tomorrow morning.  Our flight is scheduled to depart at 7:50 a.m.; which means we need to be at the airport at 6*; which means we need to leave at 5; which means we need to wake up at, like, 4:15.  4:15... I might as well just stay up all night!

Not looking forward to the travel, but I am looking forward to the actual hanging out with family and friends.  It's so much different having a baby though -- you can't just zip around from place to place.  Trying to make plans is daunting.  I'm having fantasies of just staying at one place the entire time and telling everybody, "Hey, I'm here, stop by if you can, if not, catch you on the flip side."  But that probably wouldn't be very much fun -- it'd be relaxing, but I think I've implicitly given up on relaxing for the next 18 years or so.

Alright, gotta make sure everything is in order and then hit the hay.  Perhaps no entries for a few weeks; S and I are going laptop-less this vacation.  Yep, that's right, we're going to have to rough it with just an iPad, two iPhones, and an Amazon Kindle**.  We'll survive somehow.  Until next time...

*Normally, an hour, maybe an hour-fifteen, is what I give for a domestic flight, but we have to park in long term parking and take a shuttle, and we have a baby, so.. jeez, hopefully an hour-fifty is enough. 

**One thing I love doing on a vacation is just digging into a pure enjoyment book.  To this end, I downloaded Doc: A Memoir by Dwight "Doc" Gooden and Ellis Henican.  I might have to start it tonight I'm so excited.

Entry 187: The Overhang

Woke up feeling pretty awful this morning -- like a horse kicked me in the head and then took a dump in my mouth.  I'm not quite sure what did it, but it might have been the numerous alcoholic beverages I consumed while staying at the bar until 3 a.m. last night.  I haven't done that in a while, and this morning I was reminded that that's a good thing.

Well, the evening began at the gentleman's club, where we were discussing Wittgenstein over a game of backgammon...  OK, I was eating prime rib and drinking beer at a steakhouse with my friend RB.  Later we met up with my friends RT and GP who I hadn't seen for nearly a year.  We had a few drinks at their usual spot in Adams Morgan before RB and GP bowed out for the night.  If I were a sensible man I would've followed their lead, but I was thinking, "Eh... Wife and kid are away.  I rarely see RT anymore.  Screw it."  So that's what I did, knowing full well the price would be paid today (and last night, actually, drinks are getting damn expensive in DC).  Now I'm paying it.



I had a good time though, and it was a wonderful night to be out and about.  The weather was perfect, and the moon was at its largest. (RT regaled me with all sorts of facts about the phases of the moon.  That dude has weird Rain Man-like knowledge in the most random area.)  I took a picture, but my cellphone camera didn't come close to doing it justice.  RT and I went to this roof deck place whose name I can't remember, but it's really cool because it's one of those you-don't-even-know-it's-there, speakeasy-esque deals, where you have to go up an unmarked staircase and through a different (closed) bar to get to it.  They had these specialty cocktails that I didn't really enjoy, come to think of it -- too gingery.  Who decided ginger is a flavor we need in beverages?  It's got that weird menthol-y aftertaste that's only nice if you're congested.  Otherwise it's the exact opposite of refreshment.

[It looks cloudy in the picture for some reason.  In actuality it was perfectly clear.]

RT and I closed down the bar, and then I started walking home, because I knew trying to take a cab would be hopeless.  The bars-just-closed scene is a massive shitshow of drunkards* trying to get greasy food and cabs.  If you want either you have to join the fray.  I generally try to avoid the fray, so I started walking the two miles back to my neighborhood.  Luckily a bus came by about halfway through my trek, and I was far enough away from the shitshow that I could actually board (usually buses don't even stop near the bars immediately after they close because they don't have enough room for everybody).  I don't know exactly when I went to bed, but I woke up at 10 a.m. feeling like I hadn't slept a wink.  Tonight is the last babyless night I have, and you better believe I'm going to use it wisely.  It's an early bedtime for Bonzo tonight.

On the topic of wife and kid, they are coming home tomorrow, and I can hardly wait.  A week and a half is just too long away, especially with a 10-month old baby.  He's changing so much, so fast, I feel like I'm missing out on watching his development.  I've been doing Facetime regularly, but it's just not the same.  Plus he never wants to stay on camera (usually he tries to eat the camera), and I have to coordinate everything with S's parents, which is doubly difficult because they're old people using new technology, and English isn't their first language, so there is often some sort of communication difficulty.  Yesterday Lil' S was crawling around, and I said, "Wow! He's getting so fast!"  And S's dad thought I said, "He's getting so fat."  Which would be a weird thing to say given that he's super light for his age.  Then when I tried to explain I said "fast" not "fat", he just gave me a quick, "yep", not an "oh, I thought you said 'fat'.  Yeah, he is getting fast."  So I'm not quite sure if he understood my clarification, but I decided to drop it and just move on.  There's a lot of "just moving on" when I talk to S's parents on the phone.  


Speaking of moving on...

I was at the gym the other day, and it's as if nobody even read my blog entry on gym etiquette.  People were annoying me left and right.  For starters, some guy was working out in jeans.  I don't mean knocking out some quick curls, I mean he was running on the treadmill in jeans.  Seriously, I took a picture of it.  That actually didn't annoy me.  It just befuddled me.  What did annoy me is when this other guy used the locker next to my locker when the entire rest of the locker room was open.  Granted, it's not a huge locker room, but if you have your choice of ten identical lockers, why in God's good name do you pick the one next to the only one with a lock on it?  Can't you foresee the possibility that you and the person whose stuff is in this locked locker might both be leaving at the same time, and then you'll have to rub elbows with a guy in his underpants to get to your stuff?  You know, like exactly what happened.

 [Wayne's World.  Party time.  Excellent.]

Then there was some other guy doing Pilates or something for like 30 minutes at the ab station, which is only big enough for one person at a time.  If you're at the gym you should only be using a station for a few minutes at a time, and you should be letting others work in.  You shouldn't be monopolizing one thing for your entire workout.  I mean, if you just want to lay on a mat and stretch for a half hour take a yoga class or something.  Like I said -- annoying.       

Alright, I guess I'm done here.  Until next time...

*By the way, this is the best argument for not having a last-call law.  Isn't a slow trickle of sots throughout the night preferable to a 3 a.m. tsunami?

Entry 186: Home Alone

It's weird that the movie Home Alone was such a huge success.  It's not any better than any other stupid movie from that time.  It just caught fire for some reason.  I know there are hundreds of examples of things like this -- fads that just inexplicably go crazy for a little while, playing way over their heads, becoming way more popular than they should ("Oppa Gangnam Style") -- but I still find it strange.  You know what a classic example of this is that randomly popped into my head the other day?  E.T. -- cute movie, absolutely nothing special, certainly not the 25th greatest movie of all-time.  The best description ever of E.T. was given by my Korean friend JP from high school who summed it up (in his slight accent) as being about "a dumbshit with a finger".  Brilliantly stated.

Anyway, the title of this post comes from the fact that I am in fact home alone for the next week and a half.  S is doing some work abroad, and she took the little guy down to her parents' house in South Carolina.  They've been really wanting him to come down for an extended visit, so this is a good time.  I definitely wouldn't have minded caring for him myself, but I think it's good for him to spend some time with S's parents -- especially since they're going to be the main ones to pass on his Indian traditions -- so it all works out.  I would've preferred something a little shorter, a week, at most, but I'll manage.  I'm sleeping through the night for the first time in forever, and it feels pretty damn good physically, but it's empty emotionally.  I miss my little guy annoying me at six in the morning.  Actually, I've noticed that "miss" isn't the most powerful emotion I've been experiencing.  That would be "worry".  I'm constantly thinking something bad is going to happen.  I know he's in good loving hands, but still...

Anyway...

Last night was the first weekend night I've had to myself in a while, and I wasted it in proper fashion.  I downloaded the complete baseball database (huge, huge, huge props to Sean Lahman who makes this publicly available (for free!), I'm donating $20 to his cause as soon as I finish this post), then I wrote some computer code to access it to determine which player in baseball history has the highest-scoring Scrabble name.  The answer: Javier Vazquez.  His completely name is worth 53 points.  Although, there's a catch that any Scrabble aficionado will spot immediately.  "Vazquez" has two zees, but there is only one z-tile in a Scrabble set.  Thus his name could only be played using a blank which is worth no points.  If we apply this discount then the Scrabbliest player of all-time is some dude named Jim Czajkowski (51 points) who pitched exactly 8.2* innings with the 1994 Colorado Rockies.  Yes, this is honestly what I did last night.

[I love this card, because it simultaneously breaks the hearts of two fan bases.  Cubs fans look at Wood and Prior and shake their heads about what could have been.  Expos fans say to them, "Hey assholes, at least you still have a damn team!"]

I do have some "real" things to do while S and Lil' S are away.  The big one is to baby-proof the house.  We're woefully behind on this.  He's already way too mobile for the few safeguards we have in place.  He's climbing the stairs at his grandparents which means our steps (which are a little higher) are not far behind.  I need to put up some baby gates.  The problem is that our main staircase is not a standard staircase; I'm doubtful that a typical baby gate is going to fit properly.  This means I'm going to have to modify it in someway or ad-lib or figure something else out, which is a problem because I can't do shit when it comes to home improvement projects.  The only thing I do well is follow instructions, if I have to improvise, I'm lost.  Oh well, I guess I'll give it a shot anyway.  I mean, at some point a man has to stand up and be a man.  And when that fails he has to pay somebody to be a man for him.

OK, that's all for now.  Gotta run... literally, I'm going for a jog.  Until next time...

*By the way, I've always hated this way of denoting innings pitched.  The .2 in 8.2 isn't actually .2, it's two-thirds.  For some reason we switch to trinary to represent the fractional part of innings pitched.  We use .0, .1, and .2, for no-thirds, one-third, and two-thirds, respectively.  Why not, .0, .3, and .7, instead?  It makes a lot more sense to me.      

Entry 185: Frauds and Fire

I read two good articles in The New Yorker recently, both about fraud.  The first details the exploits of a man named Michael Tammaro, a manic photographer who used to hobnob with the stars before falling on hard times.  His "plan" for getting back on his feet financially was to sublet his prime Manhattan apartment to multiple people at the same time without these people knowing about the each other.  This probably doesn't sound like a good "long con" to you -- I mean, as soon as somebody tries to move in and somebody else is there, the jig is up, right? -- but he was able to keep it going for quite a while and swindle quite a few people for quite a bit of cash.  The second story is a Talented Mr. Ripley type of thing -- a guy pretending to be somebody (somebodies) he's not.  There's an added element of intrigue to the narrative in that the writer experienced the con firsthand.

This got me thinking: Would I ever fall for such things?  I've never been conned in a major way before (that I know of, obviously, we all could've been conned without knowing it).  Well, actually, once I paid a guy $30 to "fix" a wobbly tire.  He pulled up next to me at a red light and told me that my tire was in danger of falling off.  Then when we just so happened to end up in the same parking lot a few minutes later (he didn't directly follow me, but he could pretty easily see where I was headed), he told me he'd fix it for $50.  I only had $30.  He looked like a legit handyman -- he had a bunch of tools -- but maybe that was part of the scam, or maybe he was a legit handyman who moonlighted as a low-rent hustler.  Whatever the case, I gave him the money, he wrench on a few things under the car (he had me get in and crank the wheel a few times while he was doing it), told me it was good, and that was that.  I immediately felt stupid for doing it.  The thing is, I suspected it was a scam the entire time, but I agreed to it anyway.  I don't really know why.  It was some sort of social pressure I can't verbalize.  I tried to placate myself after the fact by thinking -- "Hey, I don't know anything about cars.  Maybe my tire really was about to fall off." -- but I'm not good at lying to myself (yet another reason I'm not religious).  So the best I could do is chalk it up to a learning experience -- which it was... kinda.

That story isn't so much about me being conned as it is about me being put in an uncomfortable situation and not sticking up for myself (which might be worse).*  As far as actually being full-on tricked -- nothing that I know of.  I definitely don't think I would've fallen for the apartment scam.  I'm pretty wary of that type of thing.  In fact, last year I alerted an apartment-hunting friend that a place he was looking at sounded really fishy -- a possibility he confirmed as true after a few minutes on Google (while we were at a baseball game, no less... technology!).  As for Mr. Ripley, I dunno.  I probably could've been taken in by him if the circumstances were right.  I mean, when you meet somebody, and they tell you their name, you believe it.  Then when they tell you a little bit more about themselves you believe that too.  If they're good at avoiding major inconsistencies, and you don't see any direct benefit -- particularly financial benefit --  in them lying to you, why wouldn't you fall for it?

Anyway, in other news.  There was a big fire here in D.C. at a 93-year old hardware store named Frager's.  It doesn't sound like anybody was hurt, and the linked article doesn't say what started it.  (By the way, all stories about fires should start out announcing how many people were hurt and what started it.  If you don't know, then you have to say this upfront.)  I was down on the National Mall playing softball** when it happened.  I saw the smoke and thought to myself, "Huh... This doesn't look good."  Other people started to notice, but it wasn't until after the game we found out it was Frager's.  I never went to there, but apparently it was something of a neighborhood icon.  Pretty sad, but I did get a cool picture out it.

Well, that'll do 'er.  Until next time...


*I take some solace in the belief that this frequently happens to other people, and you just never hear about it because nobody wants to admit it to others (or themselves).  As an example, my friend in college once bought $100 worth of magazine subscriptions he didn't want from a shady dude he knew was shady the entire time.  He did admit it to his friends, however, which is good, because we convinced him to cancel his check, so he didn't lose any money... just some pride.     

**We won, FYI.  We had an 8-6 lead going into the final inning, and then we blew up and won 21-7.  I went 3-4 with a triple (a legit, over-the-left-fielder's-head triple, not a pop-fly-to-the-dude-in-right-field-who-can't-catch triple -- in my pre-pulled hammy days it would've been a home run).  Also I made several smooth defensive plays at third base (actually, I was playing a hybrid shortstop-third and our shortstop was playing a short outfield as they were hitting a lot of little bloopers).  I also had a crucial call on a ball down the right field line that I called fair.  (We don't have umpires, so the base coaches for the hitting team make all the calls.)  They had an annoying shortstop who tried to argue with me, but a) it was fair, b) he called a girl safe on their team earlier in the game when she looked clearly out to me, c) quit yer bitchin', it's beer league softball.  Once they fell behind big, he didn't even stick around for the final half-inning or the post-game high fives.  Now, it could be he had somewhere to go, but more likely he's a sore loser and a petty, petty man.

Entry 184: Taxes and Such

Paul Krugman put up a few videos of interest on his blog.  One is a debate with Newt Gingrich on taxes, another is a panel discussion on the effects of wealth inequality.  (I only watched the second video, and only 45 minutes of it.  Considering I have a 9-month who doesn't really let me sleep, I think that's pretty good.)  Krugman's view on taxes -- which goes hand-in-hand with his view on inequality -- is that taxes on the super-rich should go up, way up.  He doesn't give a hard and fast number, but the literature, he claims, shows that if society's goal is strictly to maximize revenue then taxes on extreme wealth should be something around 70%.  Can you imagine how bonkers Republicans would go just at the thought of this?  If I were a congressperson, I'd draft legislation along these lines just to watch the GOP and the right-wing media freak the fuck out.  Even if it went nowhere, it'd be worth it.

Personally, I'm divided on "soaking" the super-rich with taxes -- ideologically I think one way, practically I think a different way.  More and more I'm finding this dichotomy extends beyond taxes to other areas like welfare and unions.  Philosophically I'm "conservative", pragmatically I'm "liberal".  So, this pretty much makes me just liberal as I don't put much stock in ideology.  The reason I'm not Republican (or religious) is because I do let facts get in the way.  I'm not liberal at heart; I'm a liberal at brain.*

On taxes, in a better world everybody would just pay the same rate, end of.  But in a better world there wouldn't be deductions or loopholes, we'd crack down on offshore evasion, there would be no corporate taxes, because corporations wouldn't be "people", at all, and big business would feel a social imperative to behave responsibly and pay their workers a decent share of revenue instead of hoarding it all at the top.  Given that we don't live in this better world, drastically raising taxes on people with super high incomes makes some sense.  If you don't like it, start working on those other things I just mentioned.



On welfare, I don't like the idea of giving somebody something for nothing,** especially if the person you're giving it to needs it because they have a bunch of kids they can't take care of.  I'm not an "it takes a village" type of guy.  To quote MC Rob Base, it takes two.  However, if the two are a 23-year old high school dropout on her fifth kid with her fourth dude and a nonexistent dad, then yes, a village is preferable.  But how about we take some measures to prevent these five-kids, absent-dad situations from happening instead of subsidizing them after the fact?  So I get the anti-welfare argument.  But when welfare is cut in practice it doesn't create a society of people who are forced to become self-sufficient, get a job (especially when there are scant jobs to be had), and contribute to society.  It creates a lot suffering, in particular a lot of suffering by kids whose only sin was to come from irresponsible parents.  There's evidence that welfare works.

[I applauded the effort, Mayor Bloomberg.]

Plus, one thing mentioned in the discussion on inequality linked to above is that the American Dream -- the rags-to-riches story -- isn't really American.  Canada and many European countries actually have more upward mobility than we do, in part because a stronger safety net incentivizes greater risk***, in part because things like universal access to decent healthcare and decent public schools level the playing field for kids in their formative years.  So, we can philosophize all we want about weaning the slackers off the narcotic of government aid, but when it comes down to it, I'd rather just do what works.

OK, enough of that...

So when I started this post I had the intention of just touching on politics and moving on to other topics, but like usual I went long and ran out of steam, so I'm crying "uncle" for the night.  But I will leave with the most bizarre nursery rhyme I've ever come across.  It's a single verse repeated over and over, and that verse is about a little girl meeting an old man all cloaked in leather.  Uh... is pedophilia an appropriate topic for a kid's song?

[How do you do?  And, how do you do?  And, how do you do, again?]

Until next time... 

*By the way, the notion that liberals are the bleeding-heart, head-in-the-clouds idealists, and conservatives are the grounded realists who have to make the tough, but necessary decisions is one of the biggest bits of horseshit ever.  It's almost the exact opposite.  If I were a Democratic strategist I'd already be thinking of ways to hammer the 2016 GOP presidential candidate on this, especially if it's somebody like Paul Ryan whose policies were literally shaped by fantasy.  I'd compare his ideology to communism, like his ideology is to the right what communism is to the left -- so far away from the center that it's completely unrealistic.  "Right-wing communist" as a catchphrase?  I could see it going viral. 

**By the way, instead of welfare, couldn't we have "work fare", where you have to do something to get government aid, like pick up trash on the street or pull weeds at public parks or wash away graffiti, something.  Did Clinton try this?  I seem to recall something along these lines, but I'm too lazy to look it up right now.  

***A few years ago Malcolm Gladwell wrote a good piece debunking our romantic beliefs about great American risk-taking industrialists, in general.