Is Lou Dobbs a Parody?

Continuing from this recent bit of oddness, just now Lou Dobbs opened his program with a special report on The War on the Middle Class --

-- this time focusing on how the increase in gas prices is one of the fronts in this war.

The segment opens with a reporter (Louise Schiavone, see towards the top of this transcript) in the field interviewing an average American casualty of this war on the middle class. This guy was in the process of receiving his Purple Heart at a gas station, where the price per gallon was about $3 --

-- which meant he had to pay $47 to fill the tank on his awfully new looking Cadillac.

I'm serious. The producers actually chose a 30-something looking guy paying $47 to fill up what was at most a 2-year-old Cadillac as their example of the cost of this war.

They even included a snazzy graphic telling the viewers that the guy spent $47. Honestly, The Colbert Report could just run that clip straight.

One might suspect that a segment focusing on a guy who, due to the roughly 10% gas price increase, has to sacrifice an extra $20 to $40 out of his $8,000+ monthly salary, was actually produced by OPEC.

Too Foo-Foo

In this article a woman called Paige Ferrari criticizes Gwyneth Paltrow for being too foo-foo.

No. I'm afraid that if you had the misfortune to be named Paige Ferrari by your parents and didn't change it, or somehow managed to get the judge to stop laughing long enough to choose the name for yourself, you don't have the right to criticize anyone or anything. Ever.

An Ugly Road to Mideast Peace?

It looks like Iran is going to end up with a nuclear arsenal. Certainly, if they wanted one, within the next three years is the time to do it. My guess is that, if this were likely to happen, Israel would start advertising its nuclear arsenal as a fait accompli as well--then proceed to build up the kind of ridiculously large stockpile of weapons that these things seem to accompany.

The odd side effect of this is that it might be the only thing that succeeds at stabilizing the area. We don't have much of a track record from which to collect evidence in this regard, but the emerging situation between India and Pakistan at least indicates that the Cold War wasn't an anomaly, and was instead a natural result of nuclear stand-offs.

These two texts, Fearful Symmetry and The Spread of Nuclear Weapons argue toward that, but, man, I wouldn't want to live downwind of these places.

Writing Novels

A friend from grad school, Sarah, is currently going through the trials of getting her novels published, and she's discussing how that's working out in her blog.

It occurred to me that some people visiting here might be trying out fiction writing, or considering doing so in the future. If so, I think you'll find reading her blog informative since she's discussing the process as she goes along.

Sarah's near the epicenter of U.S. publishing in New York, so she blogs often about literary agents, editors, and the needs of book publishers, as well as writing seminars and genre writers' conventions -- all very informative if you're looking to take a stab at novel writing.

She recently bemoaned the rule of no simultaneous submissions to editors -- which always annoyed the bejeezus out of me. Though, given the quality of my first novel, that rule probably shielded me from receiving a mass of embarassingly vehement rejection letters.

Anyway, she also points out that, in general, the no simulataneous submissions rule does not apply to literary agents -- very useful to remember!

Ten Verbs

Richard at Scriptweaver tagged me with Brett's First Ten Verbs meme and I figured I'd get this posted fast and tag the others before I've got no-one left to tag.

MEME: YOUR FIRST TEN VERBS:
What are the first ten verbs in whatever project you are now or were most recently writing?

Also, I'm not horribly embarassed by my list. I'd like to point out that this whole using-verbs-in-sentences thing is as optional as the clothing at our house. Sometimes I'll go 4 or 5 lines before I've got a subject or verb going there.

This is from my most recent one, TUMOROUS:

1. belches
2. slicks
3. strews
4. press
5. smoke
6. winds
7. marches
8. hums
9. pass
10. glints

As you might guess, it starts in New Jersey (sorry folks back east!). But hey, at least New Jersey inspires active voice and employs a wider spectrum of language.

I'll tag Konrad, Dave, and reward Scott for posting here for the first time, assuming there's a website where he posts and won't feel too goofy answering the meme.

The Renegade Province

Jaru (my wife) got her permanent resident card just a couple weeks back. That's a long, annoying process, but finally done!

She's from Taiwan, aka the Renegade Province, official name: Republic of China

-- not People's Republic of China.

These distinctions can lead to many headaches down at the post office.

Anyway, her green card comes and everything looks great, then we see her country of birth: China, People's Republic of

Some sighing ensues -- mostly at the prospect of yet again dealing with the Department of Motor Vehicles-esque efficiency and charm of the Department of Homeland Security. But first Jaru will call and figure out how to handle this --

-- and then discovers that there's nothing to handle. The helpful voice on the other end of the line says that her card is correct. She was born in the People's Republic.

If you get my drift...

EDIT: Update -- Apparently the answer to all this is a little more mundane, but perhaps equally depressing.

Don't Rent DVDs From My Video Store

You know how you rent DVDs and they almost always have odd little smears and smudges on them, like the previous renter used them to spread peanut butter on their sandwich?

Well, this DVD I rented had a few minor smudges, so I decided to wipe it off -- but we're a clothing optional house here with the option typically being "no" so I didn't have a handy shirt to wipe it off with.

I did, however, purchase some sparkly white brand new underwear on Sunday, and since I was wearing them...

Special Interests

Earlier today I watched Lou Dobbs rant about the "special interests" in a report worthy of Nancy Grace. Since Kung-Fu Monkey just posted on something similar, I figure I'd add to the ranting.

According to Dobbs, the special interests pushing the "amnesty agenda" include big business, organized labor, the Catholic church, and the media.

It sounds like both the capitalists and the proletariat are in favor, so who's left?

Isn't there some point when you've got enough people together that they stop being special interests and start being, I don't know, a large portion of America with a valid, albeit open to debate, point of view?

But, in the massive growth-industry realm of shoddy reporting we don't believe in things like intellectual honesty or taking a careful look at difficult issues.


One of the worries, and perhaps the group that's getting hit hardest, is the working poor -- those not in organized labor. The influx of immigrants willing to work for less can drive down wages.

I'm not sure about the real statistics on this. I have seen numbers indicating average wages are gonig down, but if those include the wages of the immigrants that doesn't necessarily mean that current worker's wages are going down since they could remain the same, but the overall average be pushed down by all these new, lower paying jobs.

Moreover, whenever people work they create secondary jobs as well, since they need to buy stuff -- and if there are more jobs available that can give workers the option to quit and go to a better work-place.

Regardless, the issue deserves a better discussion than it's getting from CNN.

Age is a Lens

Those who've eaten with me a couple times might remember that I don't like my different kinds of food touching each other on the plate. There are few things more repulsive than a fried chicken leg sodden with mashed potatoes (and yet, look at what I write).

Moreover, I eat food in order: vegetables first, to get them out of the way, then maybe the baked potato or steak, order doesn't matter but once one commits... For breakfast it's usually:

1. bacon
2. eggs
3. french toast

This quirk has evolved.

Tonight I had a craving for Kentucky Fried Chicken, and there was one right there across the street from the store I had gone to! However -

- it wasn't merely a KFC, it was one of those KFC/Taco Bell abominations. I looked at it and all I could think about was enchiritos with honey-barbecue wings stuffed in them and extra-crispy fried chicken slathered with refried beans.

I like KFC on its own and Taco Bell on its own, but I couldn't get those images out of my mind. So I kept driving, figuring there must be an unmolested KFC somewhere.

About 45 minutes later I pulled into the drive-thru of a Popeye's.

Even worse, I know it's horribly inconsistent of me. I have no problem going to Denny's for french toast at one time, spaghetti at some other time, and banana splits after midnight.

But there was this one true sin against God and nature in New Jersey that scarred itself into my brain forever. It combined a Togos, Dunkin Donuts, Baskin Robbins, and I think a Pizza Hut.

That's what age does to you -- transforms your quirks into neuroses, then full blown psychoses.

Praying Does Not Count as Planning

This will be a tad ranty...

See that image there off to the left -- that is, I believe, what counts as a two-lane road. It's actually a remarkably spacious one compared to others I've seen in Texas -- one side actually has more than 6 inches separating the lane from the concrete DEATH WALL.

I think this pic is from a car chase where the bad guy decided that driving the wrong way up an off ramp would be a clever escape technique -- probably learned that from the movies. Oddly enough, when freeways where everyone drives 75 MPH have concrete death walls locking them in on both sides, accidents like that in the picture happen. The freeway planners can feel morally comfortable too, because it's not the fault of their crappy planning, but the fault of a hardened and dastardly criminal.

San Antonio is growing so fast that all the freeways constantly have some major construction going on somewhere. In order to slow San Antonio's growth, during this construction they'll often put concrete death walls 4 to 6 inches from the left and right lanes on three lane freeways -- this means that the only lane where you don't need to drive in constant panic of a brief twitch sending you, your family, and the people in the cars behind you to a fiery, spark trailing doom, is the middle lane.

In the middle lane you just need to worry about the two tractor trailers walling you in on either side. Here's a nice example photo:

But picture it filled with SUVs, Hummers, and big rigs. The image is from the Texas Freeways page -- the above is route 410, but the I-10 is actually a bit worse right now.

It's so bad that Jaru and I essentially don't use the freeways in the northwest quadrant of San Antonio unless we're hit by devastating cases of suicidal depression.

And here's my thesis:

It's as if the Texas Highway Planning Commission thought that this will all work just perfectly -- as long as absolutely nothing ever goes wrong.

And this is endemic. About 25% of the drivers on the freeway figure one to two car lengths is a reasonable following distance when hammering along the interstate at 75+ MPH. This is known as the quarter-second rule.

And this on freeways you might see a Batman villain come up with, like those above, or out in the wilds where you'll see corpses of deer alongside the road about every ten miles. What do they think's going to happen if a deer jumps out in front of that car .25 seconds ahead of them?

A few months back Jaru and I drove up to Dallas on the one big road that leads from here to there, interstate 35. You can barrel along that road, it's awfully straight, and there's almost no major interchanges along it's path. Other than deer, there's almost no threats on that road -

- except other drivers.

On the way up and back we passed 3 (THREE!) blood-on-the-pavement car accidents. People pinned under cars kind of accidents. This is Texas -- there's no rain, no fog, bright daylight, no twists in the road, rare off-ramps and no one using them anyway, just a bunch of people driving the same direction.

You should be able to put your car on autopilot. But not if you like tailgating and/or weaving in and out of traffic. My suspicion is that the German heritage might have something to do with it. Everyone's quite polite, but get on the freeway and it's the autobahn.

Anyway, given the freeways' lack of emergency lanes, in case, you know, there's an emergency, and the prevalence of drivers whose strategy involves hoping really fervently that the driver ahead of them doesn't encounter:

• a deer jumping out of the brush
• a retread flying off a big rig's tire
• junk falling out of the back of a pickup truck
• a bee flying in the window
• spilling something on his lap
• a tire blow-out
• ...

I can't help but have a deeper understanding of President Bush's methodology.

In the Future Even the Commercials Will Have Commercials

And the future is now --

If you go to UGO to watch the Ultraviolet trailer you'll first have to sit through a commercial for the History channel.

The Future is Now

Control machines with the raw power of your brain!

-- another reason why New Scientist is the coolest science magazine.