Car Jack City

Tuesday morning I could have prevented a carjacking. Well, maybe. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My bike had been in the shop for over a week and I was eager to go out for a ride. So eager I was willing to take it out in the pre-dawn hours before I had to shower for work. I have a front light, rear reflector light, and reflective vest, so I thought I was pretty well prepared. But the biggest scare of the morning was before I even started the ride.

Normally, I open the garage, set my bike in the driveway and take my water bottle in to be filled. This morning when the garage door opened I saw three people wandering up the street. This was just a little before six in the morning. The looked to be teenagers and were wearing the universal thug uniform of baggy white tee shirts. The high school bus comes around right about seven, so these kids were way early for that. I had no idea if they were local to the neighborhood since I exercise before the bus comes and leave for work long after it has come by.

Instead of putting my bike in the driveway, I closed the garage door and took the water bottle to the kitchen. When I opened the garage door again, the kids were now across the street leaning against my neighbor’s car and looking my why. Remembering that I didn’t have my phone on me, which I usually take with me on rides, I closed the garage door again and went back up to the kitchen to get it.

Since it was still pitch dark outside, I had to turn off the kitchen light to see if the kids were still there. They were. I had my phone in my hands ready to dial 9-1-1 when the wandered off to the next circle. I shook it off and went for my ride. A half hour later (still way early for the bus) one of the kids had been joined by a girl in a black shirt and they were lounging in the grass across from where the bus comes. The other two guys were up the street just loping along.

I told my wife about and told her to stay aware of anything suspicious. She asked if I had taken their picture. I kind of chuckled that off and said that it would have been too dark for that, but that sure was a good idea.

Then when we both left for work, we say sirens and police cars racing up and down the street. In the circle on the other side of the main road, we saw a guy talking to a cop. We went over to see what was happening. The guy was taking his two daughters to school when the kids came up to him and asked him for directions to the mall (which is a good seven miles away). Then they started swearing at him and told him to get out of the car. Fearing for his daughters he did that and they stole his car.

They didn’t get very far. The car was abandoned in the middle of the road one block away. Some other neighbor said they saw some kids run towards the woods. I told the cop at the stolen car that I had seen some suspicious kids early that morning. He told me to call in ANYTHING suspicious. He said he gets called by parents when their kids don’t want to go to school. It seems Howard County residents have a very low threshold for what qualifies as an emergency.

No one got hurt and the car got recovered. My wife assured the guy that this sort of crime is not common in our neighborhood. I’m convinced that had I taken my bike out of the garage with them still around, it would have been stolen or worse. Blog-buddy Claude had his bike stolen out of his garage earlier this summer. Another imaginary friend from the internet had a bicycle stolen from her car. While she was in it. They came up to her car with her and her kid in it and cut the straps of the bike rack and stole the bike.

If I had called the cops when I first saw these thugs loitering threateningly, that guy would not have been carjacked and he would still think Ellicott City was a safe place to raise a family. I try not to be paranoid but now when I see kids hanging out when or where they shouldn't be, I’m going to be far more careful and won’t hesitate to trust my gut instinct about what just isn’t right.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: What would you have done?

Sidewalk Sex Party

When I walk in my neighborhood, I notice lots of things strewn on the grass or in the street. Usually it's normal stuff like broken bottles or empty fast food bags. My dog used to be particularly good at finding out if there were any chicken bones or rolls left over.

Now I live in a nice suburban development. One time there was a dead deer in the road. Another time I found a crack pipe. I assume it belonged to the moving crew that was working that day and not one of the neighbors. Another time, while riding my bike past a local cemetery, there was a bra in the road.

But Sunday morning, I found a pile of things that just baffled me. It just didn't seem like the stuff people would leave between the sidewalk and the curb.



You can click on the picture for a bigger version, but here is the list of what I saw:

A roll of clothesline
The wrapper for a garden hose (hose missing)
Several latex gloves
A roll of clear wrapping tape
Bottle of rubbing alcohol
Length of black nylon strap
DSW Shoe bag (not pictured)
Wooden paint stirrer
Tube of Astroglide
Buttplug (or dog chew toy, but hopefully not both)
Two unopened condoms

I am just at a loss to put these items in any sort of narrative that makes sense to my not-so-sheltered mind. I mean, I know what you can do with these things, but why were they where they were. It had rained the day before and nothing looked weather-soaked. I stumbled past this about 8 am, well into the morning jogging/dog-walking hours, so plenty of other people had already walked right past it. And for the record, none of those items were mine. And they were all gone when I went by later that evening.

Help me out and tell me what I stumbled across. A BDSM lawn party? A roadside gay orgy? A disrupted fraternity hazing? A post-Republican National Convention celebration? What? All suggestions, bizarre or innocuous, are welcome.

Sarah's Book Club

Yet another hoax directed at Sarah Palin is making the rounds. It's been widely reported that she asked about how to get books removed from the public library in Wasilla going so far as firing the local librarian only to have to rehire her after public outrage. That hasn't kept the internets from circulating the list that nobody knows even exists or not. According to Wonkette, it is just the standard list of books that have been banned anywhere anytime.

But that doesn't mean it isn't suitable for a perfectly good meme. Like most reading list memes, the rules are to bold books you have read and italicize books you want to read. If you are really ambitious, give a count at the end. Here goes:

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer (well, all the smutty ones)
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell - one of my childhood favorites
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It’s Okay if You Don’t Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding - I just can't get past where Piggy's glasses get broken.
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women’s Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. - It wouldn't be a banned books list without Kurt.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil’s Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder - Another childhood favorite
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won’t by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth

That puts me at twenty-two which isn't too bad.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: Which of these books would you ban?

A Plethora of Palin Parodies

The announcement of Sarah Palin’s selection as John McCain’s running mate set off a Klondike Gold Rush level stampede to carve out territory in the blogosphere. The spot for the definitive viral YouTube impersonation has been taken by comedian Sara Benincasa and her spot-on take on the Alaskan Governor. The no-“h” Sara is the girlfriend of Francesco Marciuliano, the unseemly object of my long-standing man-crush. When I saw the first video it had been viewed 6000 times. It’s now gone viral with over 100,000 views and been picked up by the mainstream media. I wish these hard-working comedians lots of success. Let them ride that pony until it collapses like Eight Belles. And I also hope that “Bristol, go breastfeed your brother.” becomes the comedy catchphrase of the campaign.


The trouble with parody and satire is that they can be too subtle or people just prefer to be blinded by their own prejudices and preconceptions. As a person that dabbles in the under-recognized art form of putting politicians heads on silly pictures, I’m pretty suspicious of pictures that are too good to be true. The star-spangled bikini picture of Sarah Palin at a pool party just couldn’t be. It was quickly noted as a paste-job by those in the know, but that didn’t prevent it from going viral among the more gullible schadenfreudistas.

With all the self-proclaimed photoshop experts out there all too willing to vouch for its authenticity, it didn’t take much sleuthing with my mad googling skilz to find the original pictures on Flickr. The bikini picture was taken by one Doctor Casino in August of 2006. The picture itself was taken tongue in cheek and the good doctor is mildly amused by the attention and is philosophical about his unwitting role in a viral phenomenon. Here is his take. Be sure to read all the comments on the picture page and the photoshopped version. They are very interesting:

To anyone else reading - I still have misgivings about all this. The tropes being attached to Sarah Palin here - of being unserious and also of being a sexual body rather than a professional intellect - are, not coincidentally, sexist tropes about womanhood generally. The image is funny to the extent that it plays on something specific to Palin: she is a goofball and more specifically a gun nut who makes lipservice to patriotism (a la American Flag Bikini) while harboring dubious views on fundamental American principles ("Can you tell me how to go about banning a book?"). But to the extent that it's a lightweight's first resort against a female political candidate, it's odious. The proliferation of lizard-brain responses to/uses of the image is particularly telling.

When the more conspiratorial minded are confronted with the source picture, they knee-jerk respond that maybe the “first” picture is a photoshopped cover for the REAL picture. That would be plausible if it weren’t for the fact the Palin head cut into the picture is also on Flickr. It was also taken in 2006, at a Fourth of July event. Note that the face has been mirrored to fit the image. There is also a Flickr post of a screen capture by a person alleging to be the original photoshopper. On it he says:

What I choose to do in my free time is no concern of yours. If I want to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon Photoshopping Sarah Palin's mug on a bunch of bikini-clad gunslingers, then so be it.

Who am I to judge indeed? If this guy is the real deal, there was never any intent to pass this picture off as a legitimate photo as so many mailing list forwarders did.

I think what makes this image so compelling is the ‘truthiness’ of the portrayal of Palin as a redneck gun-toting bimbo. Much of the humor directed at Palin plays up the snow-billy aspect of Alaskan culture that makes Wasilla look like Yoknapatawpha County with moose. And the photoshops that aren't nearly as funny rely on just the shock value of Palin's face on a nude or embarrassing picture. These just aren't funny and will lead to a backlash eventually. It takes a certain panache to make a photoshop that hits on an underlying vein of humor. And most don't.



Taking another track is this geek humor site that stretches the conceit that John McCain and Sarah Palin resemble Battlestar Galactica characters Saul Tigh and Laura Roslyn. This one-joke gimmick seems to be doing quite well with regular posts and a discussion forum. Who knew that geekitude and politics could be a hit on the internet.

And of course there are fake Sarah Palin blogs and Twitter accounts of varying humor level. It's all part of being in the public eye. But something tells me Palin will be giving internet humorists a lot of material for a long time.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: What is fair game in parodying politicians?

Checking Out The Motels

One of my favorite places to see musical acts is the Ramshead OnStage in Annapolis (not to be confused with the much bigger Ramshead Live in Baltimore, which I have never been too). Over the years, I’ve seen acts ranging in age from Nellie McKay to Crystal Gayle.

On a whim, my wife got us tickets to The Motels, a two-hit new wave wonder from the 80s. After about a decade of inactivity, lead singer and songwriter Martha Davis has been hitting the studio with a vengeance. In the past year she has put out three albums. One is re-recordings of classic Motels hits and two are new material. Since I have a format to follow, lets hit it.

Band	The Motels
Blurry Overexposed Cell Phone Picture
Synopsis	Martha Davis, a New Wave icon is still touring and rocking.
Opening Act	None. If you make reservations at the restaurant, you get 10% off your bill before the show.
Stage Presence	The 21st century incarnation of this band is basically lead singer Martha Davis and whatever musicians she can find for the evening. I kid, but I’m not far off. While she has a core band of sidemen that are completely different from her band in the 80s, they often have to go out on tour with bigger bands to pay the bills. Nonetheless, the group that formed the Motels that night were talented and knew the tunes.
Stage Show	She got into quite a few conversations with the audience as well as her band members. She came onstage with a wine glass in hand and sipped from it between songs. She teased that if the keyboardist got drunk enough that he would take off his shirt. The audience soon littered the stage with drinks they had sent up. This led into a story about Martha forgetting her purse in his motel room and him answering the door in the nude. The whole show was just a loose raucous hoot as she told stories and cut up with the band.
Amusing Anecdote	She wasn’t wearing her glasses, so between songs she kept squinting and looking at the setlist. Some guy sitting by the stage pointed out that she was skipping around. She checked the list and recoiled in horror saying “I’ve skipped ‘Suddenly Last Summer’, you guys wouldn’t like that would you?" After gasps from the audience, she went into a note-perfect no-dry-eye rendition.
Highlights	After the show Martha Davis came out and signed stuff and chatted with the fans for over an hour. It was a real trip listening to her talk about the old times. She’s fifty-seven years old and quite upfront about it. Her fans were aghast at her suggestion that maybe it was time for some plastic surgery.
Show Length	90 minutes from start to finish.
Audience Demeanor	The best part of the Ramshead experience is that the audience loves the music and is respectful of it. One guy was lip-syncing along to every tune. The lady next to me took meticulous set list notes on a cocktail napkin all night and then went to the bathroom during show closer “Only The Lonely”. Go figure.
Noticeable Omissions	None that I’m aware of, but then my one Motels cassette hasn’t seen daylight in about two decades. The set was a mix of about equal measures original versions of older songs, new arrangements of older songs, and new material. After one of the songs that Martha would announce as a “remix”, a guy in the back loudly yelled “Brilliant, but how about the original version?” Wasn’t going to happen.
Other Reviews	Here's one from a gig in LA earlier this year.
Verdict	It's great to see the rockers of my youth still going strong twenty-five years later. Martha Davis may be older but she still has the haunting pipes that made her such an influence for later female singers.

Fly Like An Eagle

What military aircraft are you? F-15 Eagle You are an F-15. Your record in combat is spotless; you've never been defeated. You possess good looks, but are not flashy about it. You prefer to let your reputation do the talking. You are fast, agile, and loud, but reaching the end of your stardom.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

I would rather have been an F-4 Phantom II since that is what my dad used to fly, but an F-15 is nearly as cool.

Dam Panorama

Not far from my house is Patapsco State Park which is considered to have some of the best mountain biking in the region. On my regular biking route I often see mountain bikers parked on the side of Landing Road as they go into the park. Just about two years ago they extended the trail all the way out to Ilchester Road and put in another swinging bridge across the river. Now there is away for hikers, bicycle riders, and dog walkers to get into the park without going through then entrance and paying a fee. The very small bit of frugalness I inherited from my father likes that.



Within the park is the ruins of an old, old hydroelectric dam called Bloede’s Dam, after the guy that invented it. Floods have torn away some of it, but most of the dam remains. Since Labor Day was a beautiful sunny day, I decided to load my camera onto my bike and take some pictures. I stop on the side of the trail and walk down the water’s edge. And the dam is just too big. I can’t get the whole dam thing into the view finder. So I take a bunch of pictures and photostitch them together. I end up with a pretty dam picture that is 8687 pixels by 2278 pixels which makes it nearly twenty mega pixels in size and over twelve megabytes of disc space. And as hard as I look I can't find the seams between the images. That is one big dam picture.

Since I have unlimited bandwidth on Flickr, I upload it there as well as other pictures from that day, so if you want the big version, here it is. But if you download it make sure you have a dam fast connection.

BooksFirst - August 2008

Books Bought

Soft Touch by John D. MacDonald (Dell First Edition K116)
Cry Hard, Cry Fast by John D. MacDonald ( Popular Giant G271)
Wine of The Dreamers by John D. MacDonald (Fawcett Gold Medal R1994)
If Morning Ever Comes by Anne Tyler
Eight Little Piggies by Stephen Jay Gould
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins

Books Read

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins
The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Comments

You will notice that I put edition numbers on the John D. MacDonald books. I thought they might be first editions but they turned out to be reprints. Still, they are worth having for a completist like me. Vintage paperbacks like these are hard to find, but a stop in Charlottesville, Virginia proved to be a gold mine of old paperbacks. College towns just have the best bookstores.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man has a certain notoriety in the business press. I have heard it touted by John C. Dvorak as a scandalous book full of revelations. John Perkins was an economist employed by a major international consulting firm. Despite having very minor academic credentials, his job was to economically justify large infrastructure projects in developing nations. These reports were optimistic to the point that rosy glasses wouldn’t keep you from being blinded. Perkins claims that this was done to insure that the countries would never be able to afford the massive development loans and would end up beholden to the World Bank and similar groups.

Such accusations are an article of faith among leftist anti-trade groups, so the revelation here is that it is supported by someone on the inside. Perkins claims he was explicitly tutored on why and how to maximize the benefit to banking interests. If it weren’t for the interesting insider revelations, the book would be nearly unreadable. The prose is hyperbolic and self-aggrandizing in the extreme. Perkins has no self-esteem issues and it shows. He over-inflates his role in events and tends to exaggerate incidents that could have far less dramatic interpretations as well.

What is interesting is the way he ties in his personal experiences with other global events, particularly those in the Middle East and South and Central America where the United States has been running roughshod over local leaders for generations. The real value of the book is that it provides a framework for evaluating world events. Like any good conspiracy theory, his assertions are improvable. But they are also tough to refute.

Michael Pollan has become some sort of food guru, having written several books on the topic. The Omnivore’s Dilemma has a very broad scope in that it tries to look at the entire modern industrial food machine as well as its alternatives. The book is subtitled “A Natural History of Four Meals”. The conceit here is a little contrived. He takes four different meals and traces the ingredients that go into them.

He does some stunt journalism as well. Stunt journalism is what I call it when a writer does something solely because it then provides him with something to write about. For example, Pollan buys a feed steer and them traces the steps that go on between its birth and its slaughter. He really didn’t need to buy any cattle to tell that story, but it serves to hang a narrative on. His prose is the exact opposite of Perkins's. Where EHM is direct and blunt, Dilemma is florid to the point of pretentious. No rhetorical trick is beyond the pale. Sometimes it's tough to remember he is just writing about food.

The most famous part of the book is where he details just how dependent the United States food system is on corn and the petrochemical fertilizers they require. His history of the rise of corn is just a bit fervid with snippets of conspiracy theory that John Perkins would be at home with. It is eye-opening and you will question every trip to the grocery store from now on.

Much more interesting to me was the section of the post-organic farm he works on for a week (more stunt journalism) that is on the cutting edge of sustainable (a term so fluid that nobody I know knows what it means) farming. As horrifying as the corn-fed beef chapters are, these are inspiring if just a little utopian. And while I found the wild pig hunting sections overwrought with philosophical noodling, the following chapter on mushroom hunting was pithy and hilarious.

It’s unusual for me to read two non-fiction books like this back-to-back, but both were fascinating in their own ways. They take assumptions that approach conventional wisdom (“The world is run by New York bankers.” and “Processed food is bad for you.”) and run with them by weaving complex histories and theories. Both books have prose that bookend the extremes of the quality spectrum and some of their conclusions need to be taken with a grain of salt. But both provide plenty of food for thought.