Entry 257: Frankenstein's Monster

Happy Halloween 2014, everybody!  And happy 40th to my sister, who was born on October 31, 1974.  The fact that she was born on Halloween used to come up from time to time as kids.  In particular, I remember sometimes she would try to fool my brother and I into believing that she was a witch, and her birthday was part of the evidence.  She would also turn this crazy Japanese robe that my dad had inside out, so that it was solid black, and wear it like a witch's gown.  She would put on a witch's hat from an old Halloween costume and hold a broom for effect.  Sometimes she would even put tape on her finger nails so that they looked long.  I never really believed that she was actually a witch, but I didn't completely disbelieve it either.  That's one thing about being a kid: There's always like 10% of you that will fall for a trick that 90% of you knows can't be possibly true.

I actually dated a girl for a while who was also born on Halloween.  This might seem like a big coincidence but it's not.  If you take just 30 people, the odds are very much (about 70%) in favor of two of them having the same birthday.  As a little experiment, go on Facebook and look at the first 30 people on your Friends list, and I bet two of them will have the same birthday.  Or you can just take my word for it.

Anyway, we took Lil' S to a block party this evening in our neighborhood.  It was pretty cool.  They had a bouncy castle that he went in immediately and probably would have stayed in the entire time had I not dragged him out so that the "big kids" could take their turns.  There was also this tunnel maze thing made out of cardboard boxes that he really enjoyed.  He would disappear into it and then reemerge at the opposite end five minutes later.  There were tons of kids in it going every which way, crawling over each other, doing who-knows-what.  It was little kid wild wild west.  Of course, Lil' S was the smallest one playing in the maze because he's only two (the average age was probably six), and he's even a bit undersized by two-year old standards.  But he can hold his own -- mostly.  Sometimes an older kid will do something to upset him, and he'll breakdown and start crying for his "amma".  There were plenty of houses around for trick-or-treating, as well, but he wasn't that interested in it.  I think he only ate two pieces of candy, which is good.  I on the other hand ate no candy.  I'm a diet -- strictly pizza and beer for me tonight.

Lil' S's costume was Frankenstein -- or Frankenstein's monster if you want to be snobby about it.  As most people know, in the original Mary Shelley novel, Frankenstein was the scientist who created the monster, not the monster itself.  The monster didn't have a name.  But people soon erroneously began calling the monster Frankenstein, and if enough people make the same language error enough times, at some point it becomes not an error.  And with Frankenstein we are way past that point.  Frankenstein is now the monster -- unless you are buying cereal, in which case it's Frankenberry.

I was trying to come up with some other words like Frankenstein that started out as misnomers and became "correct" because enough people misused them over a long enough period of time.  Here's what I came up with:

• Literally.  It now means "virtually" -- basically it's exact opposite -- because so many people say things like, "In DC, the primary is the only important election because literally everybody is a Democrat," which is something I overheard the other day.
• Irregardless.  It means regardless.
• Poser.  When talking about a phony, it should be poseur.  But in many dictionaries poseur is given as a definition for poser, because so many people misused it.  By the way, remember when calling somebody a poser was an insult of highest order?  I feel like a large part of my youth was spent making sure I wasn't wearing the wrong clothing brand (e.g., Vision Street Wear), so that I wouldn't get called a poser.
• The Terminator.  This one doesn't really fit and it requires some explanation.  A few years ago on the NFL training camp show Hard Knocks, the New York Jets had a fullback in camp named John Conner.  Because of his name and the fact he could hit really hard, his nickname became "The Terminator".  But, of course, in the movies, John Connor was a human not a Terminator.  So John Conner's nickname should have been "man" or "Edward Furlong" or something like that -- "The Terminator" doesn't actually work.

• Paper.  The paper is actually the thing you write on, not the implements that you use to write with...  Okay, this one is only for Lil' S.  When he wants to draw or color (i.e., scribble), he'll point to a pen or his crayons and say, "paper ... paper ... paper".  But he calls paper paper too.  I think he just thinks everything related to drawing is called paper.  Whatever the case, it's pretty darn cute -- except when he starts drawing all over the couch with his paper.  We can only flip the cushions once. 

OK, that's all I got for tonight.  Oh wait, one more thing.  My friend from college Barb Honchak is defending her Invicta 125-pound championship belt tomorrow.  I'm going to see if I can stream the fight without buying the entire UFC Fight Pass -- maybe I can just get a free trial or something.

Anyway, until next time ...

Entry 256: Power of Two, Let's Not Argue, and Boo at the Zoo

Welcome to Entry 256!  As any math nerd worth his or her salt can tell you, 256 is a special number: It's a power of two.  Powers of two are especially prominent in computer science because at the lowest level computers are binary.  A "switch" is either on or off; that is, there are two choices.  If you add another switch then there are four (2^2) choices -- on-on, on-off, off-on, off-off.  If you add yet another switch then there are eight (2^3) choices.  I'm not going to list them all, but you can do it if you want.  I remember in high school computer programming class (my favorite and most influential class ever, by the way) one of the first things we learned to do was convert numbers from decimal to other bases of powers of two like binary and hexadecimal (16).  I don't know if I've ever applied this knowledge directly, but it did allow me to understand two "great" math jokes:

• There are 10 types of people in this world.  Those who understand binary and those who don't.
• There are 16 types of people in this world.  Those who understand hexadecimal ... and f the rest.

Speaking of math jokes, they (very indirectly) caused a small argument between S and I.  I've said before that S and I have the same two or three arguments over and over in different forms, well, here's a classic example of our "I think I say something completely inoffensive; S hears something condescending" argument.  It's also called the "tone" argument, for short.

The other day S comes home with some books from the library -- mostly they're kids' books for Lil' S, but there are a few for her too.  One of them is called What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe.  I recognize the name of the author because he's the guy who does xkcd -- a math-y, science-y, nerdy (and very funny) comic strip.  It surprises me that S would pick out a book of this genre, so we have a little conversation about it.  I don't think anything of it.

Then later I'm flipping through the book, thinking I might read it, so I ask S if she's going to read it soon, and she says, "You can read it now if you want ... Since apparently I'm not smart enough to understand it."  She said it half-jokingly, but only half.  That's what she took away from our conversation earlier.  I thought I was making an innocuous, offhand comment about personal preferences.  She thought I was disparaging her analytical skills.  Sigh ...

[My favorite xkcd joke.]

By the way, I'm not going to read the book.  It looks too heavy on the physics.  Despite being really into math, I've never found physics all that interesting.  My sister says I have a little bit of Sheldon Cooper in me.  But I always point out that I'm not into theoretical physics.  Also, I don't like comic books, and given the opportunity, I'd totally get it on with Blossom.  (I'd just have to make sure to steer away from the topic of vaccines during the pillow-talk.)

Anyway, since I'm on the topic of arguments, I'll give you an example of another big one between S and I -- the "can't let it go" argument.  This one is mainly on me, I will admit.  When I hear or see something that isn't right or that doesn't make sense, I am virtually incapable of just letting it go.  When it comes to debugging complex computer code (a large part what I do at work) this serves me very well; when it comes to dealing with my with my wife, not so much.  In general, to be successful in marriage I think you have to be a lot like Queen Elsa in Frozen.

[What?  Lil' S is really into this movie right now.] 

Here's the example.  We eat a lot of hard-boiled eggs in our house -- all three of us eat them.  As a result we (meaning I) have to boil a lot of eggs, which is fine, but I'd prefer to do it as infrequently as possible.  So one thing I ask S is to give Lil' S only half an egg at each meal and save the other half because otherwise he takes two bites and we waste most the egg -- which over the course of weeks adds up to a lot of wasted eggs.  Apart from the additional boiling, I just hate wasting food.  It's a big pet peeve of mine.

So the other day she's giving him lunch, and I see a bunch of egg that he's obviously not going to eat sitting on a plate.  And then S (perhaps in a preemptive strike) says, "He ate an entire egg today!"  Now at this point, I should just say "cool", and move on.  (Let it go, let it go...)  But I see a pile of ovum detritus sitting there, and I can't help myself:

"It doesn't look like it," I say motioning toward the remaining egg.
"Sorry," S says in an a sarcastic tone, "he ate three-fourths of an egg today."
"There's not three-fourths missing from that egg."
S holds up a sliver of egg white, "Babe, this is all that's left."
"What about all that yolk?"  I say pointing to what looks to be close to the entire yolk.
"He didn't want the yo- ... whatever ... just ... whatever."

And that pretty much sums it up.  Arguing over the proportion remaining of an egg that is about to go into the trash disposal anyway.

[Dueling banjos at "Boo at the Zoo"]

After telling these stories, now I feel like I have to say something positive about S and my relationship, so I'll say this: We make a pretty good team with Lil' S.  This teamwork was in full effect last night at "Boo at the Zoo" -- a Halloween event at the National Zoo, where sponsors set up booths and kids go around trick-or-treating at them.  Some of the animal exhibits are open as well.  We went with a friend who brought her two girls, so the ratio was one parent per one child, and it was barely adequate.  Keeping up with Lil' S in an open space is getting to be a serious challenge.  Actually, in an open space it's not too bad; it's where there are railings and ropes and poles and nooks and stuff that's it's difficult.  And a bagful of readily accessible sugar certainly doesn't help the situation.  Lil' S was constantly climbing something he shouldn't be climbing ("Hey, stay off the railing to the alligator pit.") or just bombing forward full-steam ahead, zigzagging through peoples legs, while I'm trying not to flatten the throngs of other kids in pursuit.  There were several times he got far enough ahead that he couldn't see us (but I could see him).  So he'd stop and get scared and start crying, "mommy! mommy!", and then all the other parents would look around and wonder if he was lost and if they should do something before I could reach him and scoop him up.

But it was a lot fun.  It's a good event.  I'm not sure if Lil' S can do "real" trick-or-treating yet, and if we will even try to take him out next Friday or not, so maybe this will be it for our Halloween celebration.

And this is it for this entry as well...

Actually one more thing.  What do you think of the adult who wears a genuinely creepy Halloween costume?  Not like a fun, cartoonish creepy, but something that would actually scare the shit out of you if you were six years old?  There was a guy at the zoo last night who went as Bane from Batman, and with that weird mouth mask on, he looked legitimately scary.  I mean, it's fun to spook the kids and all, but the goal isn't to traumatize them, right?

Anyway, until next time ...

Entry 255: Blogger's Block?

I guess a long entry is not in the cards this weekend.  I tried, I really did, but I just couldn't get anything going.  I started this entry three times, on three different topics, but each time after a few paragraphs, I read what I had written and thought, "This is crap.  I can't post this.  I don't even understand what I'm trying to say, and I just wrote it three minutes ago."  Given what passes for an "entry" on this thing sometimes, you can believe me when I say it was bad.

So instead I'm just going to list 12 completely banal things going on in my life right now, bullet point fashion.  It's all I can muster.

1. Lil' S has learned how to open doors -- well, a door anyway, the one to his room.  I now wake up in the morning to him knocking on my bedroom door.  It's strange that he knocks, as our door doesn't latch properly, and he can just push it open, which he does at any other time except the morning.  He's strangely shy then for some reason.
   
2. S and I have been bickering about when to wean him off pacifiers.  I want to do it now, and go cold turkey.  She wants to do it slowly over the next month or so.  She will probably win because I don't really care that much.  Apathy -- that's how she gets me.
   
3. Every other month I have to present something to my entire company.  It's just a five minute rundown on what I've been doing.  But each time I try really hard to make it good -- informative and on the funny side.  It's my only regular outlet for "performance", so I take it way too seriously.  Last one I gave three people independently told me they really liked it -- so, success!
   
4. I have three crossword puzzles set to appear in the New York Times.  But I'm currently on a losing streak of like five "near miss" rejections.  Bummer.
   
5. I've eaten chicken sauteed in chili powder with mixed vegetables, cashews, and plain yogurt for dinner pretty much every night for a month.  It's damn good.
   
6. The Seahawks just traded Percy Harvin to the Jets.  It's a weird move -- certainly not one I saw coming.
   
7. I've been listening to the podcast Serial.  It's really good, but the distribution is annoying: Put out more than one half-hour episode a week!
   
8. In my spare time, I've been writing a book about baseball and words (a strange mix I know).  I even tried to pitch it to some agents, to no avail, which is expected.  It's intended for a very niche audience.  My honest pitch would have been, "Hey, help me publish this book.  I don't expect to sell many, if any, copies, but I still think it would be cool to bed published!"  My goal is to self-publish before the start of the next baseball season.  If 50 people read and legitimately enjoy this book, I'll be happy -- 100 and I'll be ecstatic.
   
9. I've been reading how some congresspeople -- Republicans, of course -- are proposing travel bans between West Africa and the U.S.  How stupid can you get?  "Hey, if people are going to bring Ebola into this country, they should at least have to fly through Canada!"  That will fix things.
   
10. Started watching Homeland again, after bailing halfway through season three, because everybody said this season was good.  Everybody is right!  And it goes to show that they really should have killed off Brody at the end of season two.  (I'd say "Spoiler Alert", but if you're over a season behind, all bets are off.)
    
11. We recently got our furnace serviced, and the maintenance company had to come out twice.  Each time I took a massive dump in our downstairs bathroom, and then a service guy had to go in there to check the vent.  It was a bit awkward.
    
12. One of the workers had tats all over his body (he had F-I-S-T on his knuckles) and those earrings that allow you to see through one's earlobes.  I think this is just the new normal.
    
13. Bonus bullet: S just informed me she put Lil' S to bed without a pacifier.  Nice!

Ok, I'm out.

Until next time ...

Entry 254: On Health

It's time everybody.  The moment you've all been waiting for: health update!  If I've learned anything in my 37 years on this Earth, it's that there is nothing people like more than hearing others gripe about their minor ailments.  With that said, it seems as if I can never get completely healthy.  As soon as one issue goes away, another one crops up.  I finally got my back feeling normal again, so of course my hand pain has returned.  It's like it was waiting in the lurch for the right moment to strike.  On top of that, I woke up yesterday with a crick in my neck (presumably from sleeping on it weird), and it still hasn't gone away.  It's strange; it's not really my neck.  It's above my neck just behind my left ear.  It feels like I pulled muscle in my skull, which, although I'm no doctor, I imagine isn't even possible -- but that's what it feels like.  I guess I'm just getting old.

In other malady news, Lil' S has come down with a cough.  I wouldn't even mention it, but we got a notice from his daycare saying that two kids at his school were diagnosed with something called the EV-D68 enterovirus.  This sounds a lot scarier than it actually is.  This virus, I came to learn, is basically just a common cold, but in some cases, particularly for kids with asthma or other respiratory problems, it can require hospitalization.  The recommended way to handle it is to let it run its course, unless your kid is having difficulty breathing, and then you should take him or her to urgent care or the emergency room.  So ... basically treat it like you would any other illness.  I know the daycare is just doing their due (and perhaps legal) diligence, but this is a case in which the information does more harm than good.  Nothing is really gained from knowing it -- if my kid is sick and having trouble breathing I'm taking him to the doctor regardless (as is pretty much every other parent).  Effectively it only serves to worry.

[A Hall-of-Fame offensive lineman 50 years ago]

Speaking of health, I read some interesting articles about two subjects near and dear to me: football and liberalism.  It all started with Jonathan Chait's In Defense of Male Aggression: What Liberals Get Wrong About Football (FYI, this is long and rambling; the subject is interesting, but it's not one of Chait's better written pieces), and then went to Dan Diamond's rebuttal, and then went back to Chait for the rebuttal of the rebuttal.  Despite the title of the first article, liberalism actually has little to do with anything.  It's mainly about football and safety.  And this is something that interests me: 1) Because I love football (go 'Hawks!), 2) Because I have a son who might want to play football someday, and I (along with my wife, of course) might have to decided whether or not to let him.

Chait's basic thesis is that football (excluding college and professional, which most people never play) is not that much more dangerous than other sports, and that its benefits -- namely character building, and a structured release for male aggression -- outweigh its risks.  He further suggests that many anti-football-ites simply don't like the sport, and so they overstate its danger.  He has a bunch of data to support his assertion, and then Diamond says he's mischaracterizing this data, and then Chait says it's actually Diamond who is being misleading.  And you can read the entire exchange if you like.

[Typical offensive linemen today.  Notice anything different from the pic above?]

Personally, I side mostly with Chait, which is probably not a huge surprise for people who know me.  But I will say, it's not a slam dunk.  Although I love football, I also love objective thinking, and sometimes this puts my heart and my brain at odds.  In the case of the professional football (and college, although I'm not a huge college football fan, anymore), it's getting harder and harder to support an NFL team each year with a clear conscious.  Aside from the ethical question of whether or not it is okay to follow a sport in which a relatively high percentage of its participants will end up cripples or vegetables before the age of 60, there is the other ethical question of whether or not it is okay to follow a league that punishes somebody who smokes weed more severely than somebody who punches out his wife in an elevator and then drags her unconscious body around instead of seeking help.  Right now the NFL is still king of the sports landscape (which is why commissioner Roger Goodell still has a job despite being completely and obviously inept), but things could be very different a few decades from now.  The only people I believe about what the NFL will look like in thirty years are the people who say they have no idea what the NFL will look like in thirty years.

High school and peewee football are a completely different story because there is no Roger Goodell and the health risks are not nearly as great.  The chance of injury is greater than in other sports, but some sports has to be the riskiest; football shouldn't be disparaged just for that.  Everything is a risk, so it's all about tradeoffs.  Do the net benefits outweigh the net risks?  And that depends largely on what you think about football.  Personally, I wanted to play football as a kid, and my parents let me (with a little trepidation, I think), once I got to junior high.  But I didn't really enjoy it, so I quit my sophomore year.  My main reason for quitting was pretty silly: I never found a helmet that fit my head right.  I went through like ten different helmets, but they all pressed down on my head in an uncomfortable way and started to hurt throughout practice, even when I wasn't doing any contact drills.  I'd go home every night with a terrible headache.  Actually, when I put it this way, it's not so silly at all.  It's actually a pretty good reason.

As for Lil' S, if football is still around and its risks haven't gone up drastically, I would probably let him play if he really wanted to.  But I wouldn't push him.  All the benefits Chait gives of playing football -- the character building, the release of aggression, the teamwork, the camaraderie -- they're all legitimate.  Playing football is meaningful and important to a lot of boys (as corny and jock-ish as that might seem to some people), and I wouldn't want to deny it to my son, if it's something he really wanted to do.

[Who says football is violent?]

Plus, I was thinking about how we assess risk and decide what's acceptable and what isn't, and how it can be weird sometimes.  Consider the following hypothetical: Suppose you had a son who didn't want to play football but instead wanted to learn figure skating.  Suppose that the rink was very far away, an hour drive, and practices were in the morning, requiring you or your spouse to wake up early to drive him.  Nobody would bat an eye about allowing their son to ice skate in this scenario for safety reasons.  And yet cars can be dangerous, especially when the driver is tired.  Nobody would say, "I can't believe you're exposing your son to all that extra road time in less than ideal driving conditions.  Aren't you are worried about him?  Didn't you hear about that high school kid who died in a car crash?"  This wouldn't even cross people's minds.  And yet if you had a son who wanted to play football, many people would be more than willing to give you the dangers and tell you an anecdote about a kid who was paralyzed during a high school game.  Why is that?  Like I said, it's weird.

Anyway, since Chait included an anecdote about the power of high school sports in his essay.  I'm going to do so in this blog post.  Bear with me.

In high school I was a pretty good wrestler -- varsity all three years (at my high school ninth grade was still junior high) and a record well north of .500.  My senior year I was really good.  I went something like 20-1 during the regular season, and then, in my crowning wrestling achievement, I won my league tournament.  The victory qualified me for the regional tournament, and if I finished in the top four of eight participants there, I would go on to wrestle at the state championship in the Tacoma Dome -- the Big One.

The problem is that I was starting to fade.  I wrestled at 168 pounds, but I naturally weighed about 185, and the weight cutting was starting to seriously enervate me.  I just wanted to eat again.  And the practices everyday after school were getting to me to as well; I wanted to goof off with my friends and be a normal teenager.  Mentally, I just didn't have it anymore.  My thought process going into regionals was, either I would go on to state or the season would be over, and both seemed equally good.  I won my first match at regionals easily, but then I lost my next two, dropping my from a qualifying spot.  Then in the final match of my high school career I wrestled the same guy I had crushed earlier in the tournament for the "first alternate" spot at state.  He beat me in overtime, as I had all but given up.  My wrestling days were done.

As chance would have it, somebody got hurt in my weight class and couldn't wrestle at state.  The guy who beat me in my final match got to take his place.  Had I just sucked it for one more match (let alone one more tournament) and bore down against somebody I was much better than, I would have gone to state.  But I didn't.  And it still haunts me -- well, haunts is the wrong word -- it still bothers me to this day.  Why didn't I just put in a marginal amount of additional effort to achieve a big goal?  As pathetic as it might sound, I would rank this as one of the biggest -- if not the very biggest -- regrets of my life.

And after wrestling there was a small, but important void in my life that I figured I would fill with other things, but I never really did.  As an adult, there is just nothing you can really do to replenish that thrill of contest.  No competition I can do at this point will feel as meaningful as my high school wrestling did.

This is why I would let my son play football if he wants to.  But I would push for wrestling first.

Until next time...

Entry 253: Checklist Charlie

Time to hit a bunch of random topics from my blog checklist -- Checklist Charlie, as I like to call it.

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I realized today how physically dependent I am on my morning cup o' joe.  Lil' S had a doctor's appointment at nine this morning, and I was rushing to get out of the house and didn't have time for any coffee.  During his examination I started to get groggy and irritable from caffeine withdrawal.  Once I got some coffee in me, I was totally fine (i.e., just normal tired -- caffeine doesn't make my two-year old go away).  Over the past year or so I've basically cut in half the amount of coffee I drink a day, from four cups to two cups -- and those are actual measuring cupfuls, not giant mugfuls.  Two cups is about one medium-sized mugful, which seems reasonable.  I would give up coffee altogether, except for one fact: coffee is awesome and I love drinking it.

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I was walking the other day, and as will frequently happen while walking in DC, in the span of a few minutes I went from a relatively poor neighborhood to a relatively affluent one.  Two contrasting things jumped out at me: 1)  Poor neighborhoods have way more trash on the ground, 2) In poor neighborhoods people often don't use crosswalks, even when accompanying children on busy streets; in affluent neighborhoods, they usually do.  I'm not sure why this is.  I understand some things in poor neighborhoods obviously won't be as "nice" because of lack of resources, and because, by and large, we treat the poor like shit in this country (hey, if they weren't so lazy, they wouldn't be poor!).  But it doesn't cost anything to put trash in a trashcan or to use a crosswalk.  Plus, it's not like you're sticking it to the man by doing these things.  You have to live in your own filthy neighborhood, and you're the one who is going to get run over if a driver gets a text at the wrong time.

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Speaking of doing things that will only hurt yourself, my wife and I have an on-going "struggle" over her taking simple suggestions as personal attacks (my view) or me being a condescending know-it-all (her view).  Since I'm me, and this is my blog, I shall give an example supporting my side of things.  Today she said that she was going to go to the post office, and we had the following exchange:

Me:  The post office on a Saturday?  Yikes!  I wouldn't do that.  It's going to be a zoo.
Her [getting irritated]: I have to mail something, when else should I go?
Me: I'd go during the week, during normal working hours.
Her [irritated]: I can't do that, I have to work.
Me: You can't take a twenty-minute break on Monday?  There must be a post office within walking distance of your office.
Her [very irritated]: That's really hard for me!  Plus I just want to get it done today!
Me: Why are you getting so upset and defensive?  I'm just trying to help.  You're the one who is going to be stuck at the post office, not me.

To her credit, she apologized ... this time.  I have plenty of other examples of this type of thing.  But if I relay too many of them on a public blog, then she really will have a legitimate reason to be upset.

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I've nearly perfected the art of boiling an egg.  Here's what you do: bring water to a vigorous boil; put in the egg and leave it on high for four minutes; turn off the burner, cover the pot, and let the egg stew for 21 more minutes; if you are planning on eating the egg immediately, submerse it in an ice bath for at least ten minutes, otherwise put it in the refrigerator.  With these instructions, you will get a perfect hard-boiled egg: firm and easy to peel, with a fully cooked but still golden yolk.  The only thing worse than a gooey yolk is a chalky, overdone, gray yolk.  By following my instructions you can ensure you get neither.

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If somebody was to look through my Internet search history, they would be utterly confused.  Half the things I look up aren't actual things; they are random strings of characters that I'm hoping are things (but they probably aren't) so I can use them in a crossword puzzle.  For example, in making a puzzle I might find myself in a spot where everything would work out if DAGE is an acceptable entry.  The first thing I do is check the puzzle databases to see if it has ever been used in a puzzle before.  If it hasn't, then I do a Goggle search to see if it's something "crossworthy".  It almost never is -- my search usually turns up a bunch of random mumbo-jumbo.  But every now and then I get lucky, and it is something I can use.  For instance, once I looked up BUHL for a puzzle and was happy to learn that Buhl, Idaho is the "Trout Capital of the World".  It's not a great entry, but it would work in a pinch.

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The title of this entry is an allusion to Checkpoint Charlie.  It is one of those things from my childhood that everybody of my generation remembers, but people born just a decade or so later probably have no idea what it is.  Here are a few other things like that:

• Mikhail Gorbachev's birthmark.  Sadly, I think few people under the age of 30 would get the opening of The Naked Gun.
• Jimmy "The Greek".  As discussed in my previous entry.
• Hulkamania.  It ran wild on you in the late '80s.
• Time capsules.  Google is effectively a time capsule if you want it to be.  There really is no reason to bury a canister in the dirt.
• The USFL and MISL.  Two defunct sports leagues from my childhood that at the time I thought were every bit as big as the NFL, MLB, and NBA.
• Chinese food.  Of course people still eat Chinese food, but back in the day it was the Asian cuisine.  You never saw a Thai or Indian restaurant.  I think my generation is the last to remember Chinese food as something somewhat exotic.
• Toupees. It was always a joke that so-and-so wore a toupee.  Back in the day being bald made you really old or really weird.  Nobody shaved their head as a fashion statement.  In Wrestlemania III, Rowdy Roddy Piper wrestled Adorable Adrian Adonis in a match in which the loser got his head shaved.  This gimmick worked because having a completely shaved head made you look like a freak.  It's really strange to think about it now since half the guys I know have shaved heads.  It's a very common strategy to deal with a receding hair line.  It's like quitting a job before you can get fired.  I really don't care for the shaved-head look -- it feels like a big cop out to me -- which is a shame because I'm probably going to have to adopt it pretty soon.  My hair is quickly thinning up top, and I'm too lazy to try Rogaine.  Well, I guess there is always the Jean-Luc Picard horseshoe look.  It it has to be that way, then make it so.

Until next time ...