The truth is hard to swallow

I guess we'd all like to fancy that we're Han Solo, all Devil-may-care and cool, or Obi-wan, a sage and patient mentor. But somehow I wound up being Luke Skywalker, who is, to be brutally honest, a bit of a wanker.

Which Star Wars Character Are You? Your Result: Luke SkyWalker You are a noble and loyal person who is always looking after the welfare of your friends, even if your hand gets cut off trying to save them. Just stop kissing your sister and everything will be fine.
Princess Leia
Jar Jar Binks
Yoda
Han Solo
Boba Fett
Jabba the Hutt
Darth Vader
Which Star Wars Character Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

The end is nigh

I think it must be some sort of portent of the End Times when I find myself 1) reading Pat Buchanan and 2) nodding along and making agreeing sorts of grunts as I do so. Don't get me wrong, Pat and I would last five minutes in a policy discussion group before we began slapping one another like angry little girls, but still, sometimes it worries me how often lately he seems to make some sort of sense.

An example: Subprime Nation

Have things gotten so bad that the only people making any sense are the crazy ones?

My poor choice in careers

I coulda been a chef. I coulda gone into radio. I coulda gone to law school. But Nooooooooo...





Update: Oh, crud. The video has been removed, presumably by some copyright stormtrooper. So it goes.

The upshot was that it was a clip of a Simpsons episode featuring a candidate's debate and people, including bad-boy Nelson (the "Ha-Ha" kid) were ruthlessly mocking a print reporter on the moderator's panel, saying he was a relic in a dying industry. Principal Skinner then scolds Nelson for being mean, even if what he says is true. Believe me, it was funnier than I make it sound.

We said what?

I love newspaper corrections pages.

I don't dwell or corrections with any sense of epicaricacy, of course. God knows I have made enough mistakes and it's simply courting bad journalism karma to laugh too derisively at any error made by a colleague.

Instead, I find buried in there is a chronicle of human error, bad luck, misunderstanding, and unfortunate timing that make for the whoppers that inevitably appear in print every day (they show up on TV and radio too, perhaps in greater numbers, but they tend to vanish quickly into the electronic ether and broadcasters are notoriously reluctant to remind the audience of errors by issuing a correction). Corrections are also a lovely chronicle of defensiveness, denial, and, occasionally, good humor. Writing a good correction can be an art form in its own right.

The New Yorker used to publish lots of little corrections as filler, but they hardly do that anymore. So I had to look to other sources. Fortunately, there are a few, including the famous Regret the Error. It's well worth checking out.

Regret is out with its annual Best of list for 2007, and some of them are excellent, including the one that caused me to laugh until I cried. From the Hindu Times:

A report “From Bombay to Rajasthan” (“Newscape” page, January 8, 2007) stated that actor Elizabeth Hurley will wear “a 4,000-pound sari by designer Tarun Tahiliani” during her wedding in March. While one reader wondered how she would be able to lift the 1,800 kg sari, another reader said there are possible fears about the bride being reduced to pulp by its weight. It was an error. The word “pound” was used instead of the currency symbol for pound sterling (£).

Or the nearly as funny one from The Guardian in the U.K.:

We wrongly converted a baby’s birth weight of 8lbs 15oz as 51kg. It is 4.1kg (Losing it, page 13, G2, January 1). A 51kg baby is an impossible 112lbs 6oz.

You just can't make this stuff up.

It's the end of the world and we know it....

....and I feel fine.



Not perhaps as clever as Harry Shearer's brilliant mash-up of George W.'s many versions of "It's hard work" being president, but still funny. Unfortunately, I can't find an online copy of the song anymore - Shearer used to have it posted, but seemingly not now. If you're very nice to me, I will play you a copy I just happen to have.

That's gonna leave a mark

Jeez. How did they KNOW?

Viva Fashion

Gosh, if only life was this beautiful...



Discovered and posted last week by the fitfully amusing blog Phillyist. Despite the look and sound, this place is in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I may have to go. And you should too.

Just read this

It is possible, just barely possible, that this is the best article I have ever read. Even if it is not THE best ever, it certainly flirts dangerously with being the best high-concept story idea ever.

The glamor and the glory

Once, long ago, the Washington Times maneuvered me into covering the White House. I was having a perfectly good time covering Congress, but the editors asked me just to head down to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue "temporarily" until they found someone else who wanted to do it. I agreed, albeit extremely reluctantly. But immediately I realized that they had no intention of finding anyone else and everyone was acting as if this was my new beat. So I did what any reasonable person would have done: I screamed and cried like a little girl until they let me go back to Capitol Hill a few weeks later.

Now, many people have suggested I was crazy for this. After all, there is no more prestigious and sought-after beat than the White House. But, of course, I knew that anyone who said this to me had never covered the White House. The dirty secret is that it is boring, frustrating and tedious. Unless you are passionate and creative about the beat (someone like, say, Peter Baker of the Washington Post, who is now in Moscow but was in Washington at the time I was there) or don't give a damn what you do for a living, the White House beat is really a pain in the butt. I loved covering Congress and I had no particular interest in covering the White House on a regular basis, so nearly every minute I spent in the Press Room was agony.

Finally, I have found something to illustrate the banality and pointlessness of most of what passes for news in and around the White House. This is a bit of film by Ken Herman, who is a good reporter, and, judging by my passing acquaintance with him during the 2000 election, a nice guy. And he has accurately captured why the beat drove me away immediately.

The President and The Prime Minister

Update: In looking at the Post website this morning, I see that Peter Baker is back home from Moscow these days. Good. He's a very good White House reporter.


Update 2: I see that I am not the only one who admits this White House thing stinks. Karen Tumulty of Time is interviewed this week in Texas Monthly and here is one of the things she has to say:

"Covering the White House is the most prestigious bad job in journalism. You’re completely at the mercy of whoever deigns to return your phone calls. It’s not like Capitol Hill, where people can’t get away from you. If the Speaker wants to go from his office to the floor of the House, he has to walk past whichever reporters care to plant themselves in his way."

You cannot make this up

Atlanta's alt-weekly, Creative Loafing, has a brilliant cover story this week, listing Atlanta's "Least Influential People." Leaving aside the fact that the mere concept is a withering and hilarious satire of the list-mania sweeping the media these days, some of the individual profiles are masterpieces in themselves. The one that trumps them all, however, is #4, Dawn Williams, the woman who tried starting a support group called the "Atlanta Panic Disorders and Phobia Meetup Group."

There follows a gently hilarious story of unplanned, but not entirely unpredictable, consequences.

Tom for Prez?

Way back in 1998, when I was covering Congress for The Washington Times, a new member came to Capitol Hill and I was instantly fascinated. I sought this guy out in large part because I saw that he had signed a public declaration that he opposed funding for public schools. That, I concluded, was truly hard core. I had to know more.

He was more than a little surprised to find I was interested - in fact, I think I was the only reporter outside of Colorado who knew who he was at that point. I called him off the floor one day for some little issue that I don't even recall: just an excuse to meet him and hear what such a person might have to say (Yes, reporters can send messages to members on the floor and a clerk will personally deliver the message. Sometimes, if you're lucky, the member will come out into the Speaker's Lobby and talk with you. It's pretty cool). Tancredo's first reaction, delivered with genuine incredulity, was "you want to talk to me?" After that, I made a habit of asking his opinion on a wide variety of issues, though I don't think I quoted him often.

And now he's running for president. And doing pretty well for a guy way, way out there on the fringe (he's not doing as well as my other fringe favorite, Ron Paul, who is a story in his own right. Ron Paul, by the way, has signed the same public education statement as Tancredo, a fact I didn't learn until just now. Interesting).

Contrary to what you may glean from this clip and other Tancredo comments, he is actually quite a personable, intelligent guy. And one of the more quietly humorous men in Congress, which sometimes makes me wonder if the following is just a bit of twisted performance art. Probably not, unfortunately.

The best beer you will never have

Unless you are lucky enough to visit, or better yet live in, the Commonwealth of Virginia, you will probably never have this beer. Which is really sad, because it is incredible. It has suddenly vaulted into my top five or so favorite beers.

The brewery, which sits in a little regarded corner of the little regarded county of Nelson, has only been open for a few weeks. It released it's first beer in August and opened the restaurant and tasting room in late October.

It does excellent work on several beers, including the Blue Mountain Lager, which is nearly as good as Victory's Prima Pils and Troegs' Sunshine Pils, both of which are hard to beat.



It does a number of other beers, including a nice wheat beer, a tasty Kolsch, and a rich Imperial Porter. Two other beers are in the works, both Belgians (which are not my favorites, but I am sure they will be great, for those that like that kind of thing).

But the shining star of the line is the Full Nelson Pale Ale, which is rich and smooth, with an warm and enveloping hop aroma and the lovely bite of the Cascade hop, the signature of the seminal Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, on the finish. What's cool is that some of the hops were grown right there on the property.

And the restaurant is cute too. It sits on the edge of the Blue Ridge on a wooded lot. The inside is built like a warm mountain lodge and there is a large outdoor porch where you can sit and enjoy a beer while watching the beauty of the Virgina foothills.

The main downside is that the beer is so good that the restaurant is always packed and the brewmaster can't pump out enough beer to meet demand. His wife tells me they have no plans to distribute beyond Virginia because demand is so huge locally.

So if you're anywhere in spitting distance of Charlottesville anytime soon, and you enjoy a good American beer, make an effort to stop by this place - it's about 20 minutes west of Charlottesville, just at the foot of Afton Mountain, which is where I-64 crosses the first ridge of the Blue Ridge mountains.

The honeymoon is over?

After months of kindness and support, the voices from the Internet have become increasingly cruel and taunting of late. Could it be I am no longer loved as much as I thought? Have I done something to offend? "Evangelene Lejhanec" writes:

hello darling Sean
think the girls will accept your tiny dick? think again buddy


I am shaken, questioning my place in the universe. How can I regain your unconditional love, Evangeline? Please, I must know.


UPDATE:

Even as I was writing this, Myles Gilmore wrote to say

hallo buddy sean
you better make it bigger! weren't those her last words?

I must say, in my current delicate state, those very well might be her last words, Myles. You have no idea.

It's good to be loved

I continue to be touched by the outpouring of love and support I receive from around the world, but my accursed Spam filter keeps intercepting these effusive expressions of affection. I shall have to turn it off, I suppose.

For example, just today, Deena V. Begay wrote to say "We are here for your penis! You'll like it!" I have not yet retrieved this message from my Spam folder, but when I do, I am sure I will like it indeed. Never before has it occurred to me that penises might need a support group, but it is a charming notion, now that I think of it.

And also just today, my Spam filter cruelly blocked a plea from help from a poor soul in China. A certain Jin Faniu writes "Please help me: I am a schizophrenic patients from China, due to the need for long-term use antipsychotic drugs, the family has begun can not afford it, if we do not take drugs so I would crazy, I need your help, you need only to download firefox in my website firefox browser, if you don't install firefox , then you can download firefox in my website, the download url is http://www.sohocer.com/firefox.html, if you install firefox in your computer then you can donate one dollar in my account ， please contact me via email jinfaniu@hotmail.com."

Normally, I would help this person, but unfortunately, I already have a perfectly good copy of Firefox. Perhaps if you'd like to sell me a light bulb, or some cheap Cialis, I might indulge. Better luck next time, Jin.

Lucky Larry

Ok, so this little clip is a little cheesy, but I got a laugh, in a twisted sort of way. This guy was one of my best GOP Senate sources when I was on the Hill. He didn't give me a lot of terribly insider stuff, but I could count on him to give a solid read on the thinking of the Senate leadership at the time. And he was a reliable barometer of the opinions and outlooks of a certain segment of highly conservative, moderately religious, gun-owning Western conservatives. It happens also that he always gives a neat, clear, useful (if sometimes glib) soundbite that fills a hole (so to speak) in a story perfectly.

He also happens to have the sharpest front teeth I have ever seen on a human being - a pair of sharp little pointy canines that he can use to great effect when he peels back his lips in a gleefully malicious smile. It scared the hooey out of me.

I've watched his downfall with a mixture of amusement, horror and sorrow. I had heard that he was gay some years ago, after I left the Hill but before this whole fiasco unfolded. Oddly, I was at once shocked and unsurprised.

Count Me In

Since I got kicked out of Facebook, I am signing up for Enemybook, the most brilliant concept on the Web since Gophers.


Here's how they describe it:

Enemybook is a Facebook app that allows you to manage your enemies as well as your friends. With Enemybook you can add people as facebook enemies, specify why they are your enemies, notify your enemies, see who lists you as an enemy, and even become friends with the enemies of your enemies. Ever wanted to "enemy" somebody instead of friend them? Finally you can. This app remedies the one-sided perspective of Facebook.

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer...

Oh, crap. Now I see that I need to HAVE a Facebook account to make this work. The Universe is so unfair.

Fresh is best

The Great Divide beers I have had before I liked quite a bit - The Hercules Double IPA and the the Titan IPA. The Titan I am most fond of - it's not anything revolutionary, but it is a sturdy, flavorful, balanced, smooth American IPA. I don't buy it often, but I'm never sorry to have it in the fridge.

So when I saw this Fresh Hop Pale Ale big bottle I picked it up. And I like it too. The brewers say that the difference is they use freshly harvested hops, available in the early fall, as opposed to the pressed pellets of hops people use the rest of the year around. I have no idea if this is true, of course, but it makes a good story. And the beer is a little different. I don't have a Titan in the fridge now to compare first hand, but I could tell that Fresh Hop is a little different. I got a distinct herb flavor from this beer that I haven't gotten with a pale ale before. In fact (and this is going to sound strange, but I mean it as a good thing) it tasted of a good, musky parsley (yes, there is such a thing).

Like the Titan, this isn't one I will go mad over, but it is a solid, refreshing and ever so slightly unusual beer. I'm glad to be drinking it at this very moment.

UPDATE: I looked around a little and discovered that this is true, though beer wonks are divided as to whether it is worth using fresh hops versus the dry kind. The fresh stuff is called "Wet hopping," a phrase that sounds faintly unseemly.

Stop the presses

Reporters get a lot of weird press releases - stuff scribbled in crayons, made up of letters clipped from magazines, written in the margins of photocopied articles, and so on. The Internet has made this even more common, though it has taken a lot of the visual fun out of it, since even the craziest press release looks neatly typed now.

I don't know how I got on this guy's email list. He sent this, under the subject line "Bulletin," to about 100 people, mostly at news organizations, universities, and local governments, by the look of the addresses. He pretty much covers the English speaking world too. And by the look of the content, it's a darned good thing he is getting his message out far and wide.

Here is the full and unvarnished truth from user367@alice.it, calling himself "The Society of Fundamental Biology / Laboratory of the Phisiological Model of Behavior"


Suicide bombers are severe maniacs, enemies of medicine, agents of devil,
enemies of Allah, unique and monotheistic god, so also god of medicine,
and not god of insanity. The problem is more and maximally serious:
the problem is medical. I suggest to inform habitants possibly
carriers of the risk.

War is pathological behavior; sane habitants don't make duels and don't
fight each other, respecting exact national and international rules: in any
conflict almost one combatant is mentally insane. This doesn't exclude that
shooting to the bank robbers by the police is a pathological conduct:
it would be more pathological not doing it, or depenalize robbing;
"enemy is mentally insane".

Communists are mentally insane or they are right and their
law is correct; nazists are mentally insane or they are "super doctors
against the enemies of mental hygiene"; Napoleon is mentally insane
or he is right and he act as "perfect doctor".

Phisiologycal behavior means absence of pathological behavior; biological
group self destructive activity is pathological behavior. The scale is
from zero to 1000 of pathologicity, zero means phisiology.
The committer of a pathological conduct or omission, is diseased by
definition. Example for detecting a pathological behavior: if everybody
would pass with red traffic light, there would be more deaths and wounded
people.

The tribunal says that some paedophile is sane and has no mental illness or
disability, this means: physiological behavior, non pathological behavior.
Paedophilia is a clinically insane behavior, the committer has mental
illness in every case. Also crimes against the patrimony or with
economic motive are non physiological conducts.

Theoretical example:
"Egyptians kill homosexuals but children are not born homosexuals: egyptians
corrupt then kill sane children, using illegal and maniacal behaviors".
This is a useful example of something that, if medicine would not operate
well, could happen almost in few cases, matching a "predisposition and
activation" case: a predisposition like my arm has, to be broken by a crash.

Why slapping child isn't a crime and a mania? Which clinical problem,
methods of correction and control want to correct ? Methods of correction,
like slapping, menacing, insulting are initially illegal and maniacal
behaviors. They involve 80-90% of earth's population: there should be a
medical document deposited somewhere, that disposes the violation of the
general rule, for a medical reason. If that would be a problem it should
be involved in the pathogenesis of many morbose states.

Killing animals is a crime and a mania. Why eating animals isn't a
crime and a mania, as generally is ? Is there a medical document
deposited somewhere, that disposes the violation of the general
rule ? In every case it is a parasitic activity.

Siegmund Freud says that children has sexual attraction for parents,
and that mind is partitioned in three parts: ego, superego, es.
Does he lie not knowing to be lying ? Is psychoanalysis a fake ?

I am such a nerd

All these marketing articles a few years ago said that the way to sell wine was to put animals on the label. So now, everything has a bird, a lion, a kangaroo, whatever.

Well, animals don't work for me. At least not so much. What seems to work for me is ... World War II airplanes. I have this thing for World War II airplanes. And my favorite of the bunch, just happens to be the P-40, often known as the Warhawk, though it went by several different similar names depending on the version. I don't know why I love it - it was a great big, slow, overly armored obsolete dinosaur before the war even started. But ever since I was a little kid, I have been fascinated by the P-40. It looks cool. And it has the unusual distinction of being the backbone of the Flying Tigers, who used this out-dated plane time and again to get the better of the Japanese flying the white hot new Zero, which by all rights should have slaughtered the old American planes (the trick, apparently, was to fly very high, wait for the Zeros to appear below, the use the huge weight of the P-40 to come screaming down out of the sky, blasting everything in your path. Then you hope like Hell you've done enough damage to slow the Zeros down, all the while relying on your great slabs of armor to keep you alive).

So what do I see on a beer store shelf this week? Warbird Pale Ale from some place in Indiana. I don't know anything about it. And I am usually not fond of a straight pale ale; I prefer big India Pales Ales. But it has a great big pretty picture of a P-40; the 8-year-old in me wouldn't let me leave without this beer (good thing they didn't card my Inner Child).

And guess what? It's good. Very good, even. Powerful without being overpowering. Flavorful, with a nice hoppy aroma, musky and floral. I might have bought some more sometime even without the really cool airplane picture.

Now, I gotta go to Indiana and check out Warbird Brewing. I might even be tempted to try some Thunderbolt Wheat,even though I don't like wheat beers. And I'd love to try the Mustang Golden Ale. Damn, these guys have my number.


UPDATE

Commenter Cub corrects my romantic, yet historically hazy, vision of the P-40s role in the war over China.

Cub, otherwise known as Dan Ford, writes:

Ah, but the Flying Tigers never met the Zero in combat. For the full story, see
Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941-1942, just published by HarperCollins.

That said, I'll keep an eye out for Warbird ale. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford


Which of course points up the danger of relying on comic books as your source of historical information. But it does nothing to diminish my prepubecent admiration for the sleek likes of the poor old P-40.

Thanks for asking!

I received a lovely personalized note today from a young lady who is either in Canada or the UK, depending on how one reads her email address. Sadly, my Spam filter intercepted her kindly email, but I was touched by her concern anyway and I thought she raised an interested question. Here is what she had to say:

"Hi sean Do women really care about penis size? The answer is yes yaman elker"

So to my new friend Yaman, wherever she may be, I must reply: I don't know. Is my penis size a common topic of discussion where you are? Perhaps there are places where this is the case. I certainly hope the women don't worry about it too much. I don't. But thanks for writing, Yaman. Do keep in touch.