May I Borrow a Battery? My Book is Dead

I went on Amazon.com one day recently to check out something or other, and the opening page, instead of giving me the usual recommendations by categories, was almost completely given over to introducing me to a new product called the Amazon.com "Kindle." It's basically the company's version of an electronic book reader, which they say they've been working on for three years to perfect.

Explaining the genesis of his company's new product, Amazon.com CEO and founder Jeff Bezos said, "The booklover in me often has asked the nerd in me, 'Is there a way to get the emotions and experiences I love from books, but combined with the possibilities of advanced technology? Can something as evolved as the book be improved?"

Now, maybe I'm just hopelessly mired in the technological mud, but when I sit down in a nice chair with a good book (the pulpy-paged type), one thing I surely never think about is how to transform the book in my hands into another electronic gizmo, which I must pamper and recharge and repair when it gets broken. I'm quite happy, thank you, to just let The Brothers Karamazov be The Brothers Karamazov, and not lament the fact that any book I flip the pages of can't also get me stock quotes, show YouTube videos or allow me to spend more money with Amazon.com. This ability may represent an "improvement" to Mr. Bezos, but I beg to differ.

I'm glad that books have not really "evolved" since their invention, despite Mr. Bezos's claim. Yes, they're a bit smaller and made of different materials than they were in Gutenberg's day, and we no longer have to fashion them entirely by hand or crank them out one at a time on a crude press, but the essence of a book is still the same -- pages of text between two covers, pages turned one at a time and enjoyed at the leisure and pace of the reader.

I don't know how many times I've seen people come out with these "electronic book" gizmos, announcing (or implying) that the printed book is on its long-overdue deathbed, only to have the gizmo, and not books, soon bite the dust.

Then again, maybe an electronic book is inevitable. Maybe there's so many people these days whose attention spans have been worn down to the nub by a steady dose of TV and DVDs and video games that they won't -- or can't -- read a book without some sort of electronic diversion handy. But then again, I don't think those people are the ones truly longing for a good book to savor. Let's face it, the target audience for any new electronic book is not likely to go out and download Dostoevsky or Dickens or Joyce to read on it.

I am content to get drenched as I leave my finger in the dike. Invent what you will, and while I applaud your technical genius and even let out a "hey, cool!" every now and then, I'm happy to keep my books just as they've always been.

Hail to the Elf

Since the Western White House down in Crawford is just a few miles away from my home, I end up getting invited over there whenever George W. is in town. I'll be sitting at home spending quality time with the wife and kids when the special red phone in our living room begins to blink and blares like an air raid siren. I will pick up the line, where each time I only hear these three words: "He wants you." This is the signal for me to get in the car and drive down to the ranch, where the Secret Service agents just wave me through without a second glance.

When I arrive in the house (where I invariably forget the "no shoes on the carpet" rule), I never know what the President will require of me. Sometimes he wants us to bake Tollhouse cookies, other times we share laughs watching DVDs of old SCTV episodes, and one time I even found myself playing "Risk" into the wee hours with the President and Vladamir Putin (I won,by the way, with my sneaky takeover of Europe). But even I was a bit nonplussed by the request made of me on my last visit to Crawford just a few weeks ago.

When I arrived, the President asked me, his wife Laura and Condoleeza Rice to put on special costumes provided for us and head outside, where a rare Texas snowfall had left the landscape covered in white. As the White House videographer taped away, we were asked to frolic for the camera. To see the result, click here to watch the video, recently declassified for public viewing.

(Note: if you use Safari as your browser, for some reason this probably won't play)

Random Observations and Trivial Events

SO, WAS J.P. MORGAN THE TIN MAN OR TOTO?

I was reading an article in the Nov. 30, 2007, edition of the New York Times, a review of the new SciFi Network miniseries "Tin Man," described as a modern-day "high-tech refashioning" of L. Frank Baum's book The Wizard of Oz. About midway into the article, I ran across this paragraph:

Baum said that he sought simply to produce a modern fairy tale, but his symbolism was hardly subtle. The novel came to be understood as an allegory for debates about turn-of-the-century monetary policy stemming from outrage over the subjugation of agricultural interests to the imperialism of bankers on the East Coast. (In the book, unlike in the 1939 film, Dorothy's shoes are made of silver, not rubies. The notion of silver shoes ambling on a yellow brick road is thought to stand for Baum's advocacy of bimetallism, a shift from the gold standard that would have given farmers access to cheaper money).

At first I though the writer of the piece was joking, but then I realized he was dead serious. Do you mean that L. Frank Baum sat down and dreamed up Dorothy and Toto and tornadoes and munchkins and flying monkeys because his heart was aching to cry out about bimetallism?

Maybe this is true, but it only served to remind me of all those cruel, horrific English literature classes I endured in high school and college where every seemingly straightforward sentence had to be analyzed for its "deeper meaning." The old man in the sea wasn't really after a fish, he was after fame, or youth, or whatever the heck that astronaut in 2001 was looking for. I was asked to believe that authors NEVER wrote simply because they wanted to tell a good story, or wanted to make a pile of money and become famous. They always fashioned some piece of fiction as just a tricky smokescreen to hide their real messages about the alienation of man, the search for significance and their own repressed sexual desires.

Speaking of sex, I once made the mistake of taking an English class in college which combined study of Shakespeare with a study of Freud (I would kill two bards -- I mean birds -- with one stone, I thought). Boy, talk about digging up innuendo and hidden messages. All things in the text that were pointed or straight (like swords, castle towers or trees) were supposedly "male symbols," while all things rounded, or at least not pointed (like pillows, bowls and heads of cabbage) were "female symbols." Everything any character did in any Shakespeare play, according to this professor, had to do in some way with S-E-X. Sheesh, what a load of psychobabbling rubbish. I felt both angry and slimy after each class, and I considered thwacking my professsor on his rounded head with my Bic pen to relieve my frustration, but I was afraid he would interpret this act as some sort of a bisexual assault, or possibly an attempt at conception.

MY DAY RUNNER HAS OUTRUN ME ANOTHER DAY

I think the feeling of being so busy as to be almost overwhelmed is a universal one in today's world. I guess we're just on the same wavelength, or at the same place in our lives, but If I was ever forced to accuse someone of sneaking into my brain and stealing my own thoughts about the issue, it would be Rod Dreher in this spot-on post on his Crunchy Con blog.

Bite Into These Beans

The Harry Potter phenomenon has given birth to any number of products spun off from the original novels by J.K. Rowling, including movies, calendars, mugs, bed linens, pajamas, board games and too many others to list here.

One of the most popular products to come on the market as a Harry Potter tie-in is Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, which of course are one of the treats enjoyed by Harry and his friends in the books. One of the unique things about Bott’s Beans is their unusual flavor palette. When you bite into one of these jellybeans, you might be welcomed by a traditional sweet flavor, such as cherry or licorice, but you also might find (to your horror or pleasure, depending on your bent) that you have bitten into a jellybean featuring flavors such as pickle, sausage, booger, vomit, rotten egg, earwax or dirt.

From what I hear, kids love the “nasty” flavors, even if they say they are disgusted by them. I’m sure that the shock value of biting into earwax and vomit has probably subsided a bit by now, since so many kids have experienced that, so I am proposing some new “gross” flavors that the manufacturers might want to consider.

Proposed New Flavors of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans:

Theater seat gum
Chinese toy factory
Liquid paper
Grout
Bile
Ship channel spume
Lutefisk
Witch hazel
Dog breath
Mohair
Taxi seat
Mucilage
Pustule
Nursing bra
Scabies
Charismatic preacher sweat
Styrofoam
Baby burp
Grandpa’s mustache

If a Blogger Posts in the Forest, and No One Reads Him, Did He Really Have Anything To Say?

Well, it finally happened. Less than a week after I started posting to Muley's World again (after an eight-month hiatus), one of my old blogger friends, for some inexplicable reason, dropped by and discovered my return.

I told her in answering her kind comment that I wasn't sure how long I would be "back" because I wasn't exactly sure why I resumed blogging in the first place. I still am not, so I'm going to try and figure that out by writing this.

I started Muley's World and wrote my first tentative post way back in May 2005. It was done totally on a whim, after a friend who had a Xanga told me how easy it was and I found out that she was correct. It was easy and fun, and didn't require lots of expensive equipment, leave stains on the carpet or lead to social diseases or flatulence.

When I began Muley's World, I knew almost nothing about the blogosphere. The only blog I visited on any sort of regular basis was Dawn Eden's, and I didn't have a good idea of just who made up the blogosphere and why they had signed on.

I got into blogging for what I now see were wrong reasons, at least given the prevailing two-way, social, chatting-over-the-back-fence nature of the blogosphere. I have been a writer since my earliest days, and writing -- whether the result was a story, a column, a poem, a song lyric or a play -- was always an invigorating and challenging activity for me. I wasn't one of those strictly discipined and motivated people who can make themselves write every single day and always keep a significant long-range goal in mind for what they produce. I just like to write. In the same way some people love to work crosswords or fashion a gourmet meal from scratch, I enjoy the challenge of stringing random words together to make something greater than the whole. It's a puzzle I enjoy solving over and over again -- can I take this one absurdly simple idea, or this somewhat humorous picture in my mind, and expand it well enough to make a cogent, readable and (hopefully) humorous piece of prose out of it?

It was in this mindset, then, that I began Muley's World. I saw this blog as a wonderful new toy. Somehow, for absolutely no cost, I had been offered my own newspaper or magazine, to do with whatever I wanted. There were no boundaries at all! I could write essays, short stories, poetry, critiques, autobiographical memoirs -- heck, I could even type out my grocery lists -- and then publish them for an audience that conceivably could include readers in every country in the world. Wow! I was brimming with ideas and couldn't wait to get my words pixelated on the page.

Of course, I hoped that people would somehow find their way to my site and read what I had written. They soon did, thanks in part to a gracious, totally unexpected and wildly ego-stroking promo by Dawn Eden on her blog, and I was most pleased with the way things were working out. In the space of a few short weeks I had gone from being a somewhat frustrated wannabe writer to the owner and editor of an online publication that was attracting notice across the country. (In a small sense, of course -- no need to cue the John WIlliams orchestral score to begin here).

It didn't take me long, however, before I discovered that the blogosphere was a bit different than I'd first imagined it to be. I learned that blogs are expected to be quite communal little creatures. By blogging, you are in effect asking people -- strangers -- not only to read what you write, but to give you feedback on what you write through comments left after each post. If you simply read those comments, but do not return the favor by visiting the blogs written by the commentors and leaving comments of your own, you stand accused of being a (gasp) "lurker," a person who is considered to be as slimy and creepy and downright nasty as that ominous term implies.

In other words, if someone writes a column in a print publication and you read it without immediately mailing off a letter to the editor, you are considered normal. However, if you read that same author's columns online without once leaving a comment, you are considered a lurker who might just as well be peeping into the shutters of adolescent girls' bedrooms around bathtime.

Now, I am as social as the next person (well, almost), but I also have a huge shy, private streak. I didn't get into blogging as the means to a social end -- to meet women (I'm married) or to find a publisher (not actively, at least) or to discover new soulmates or beer buddies. I just wanted to write, and, as a secondary goal, to see if what I wrote might by some wonderful luck be interesting to anyone else. That's all.

I think of myself as a kind, caring and fair person, however, and I could understand why neglecting to even visit the sites of people who regularly visited mine, much less neglecting to read their pieces and leave comments in turn, could be viewed as selfish and unfair. I mean, after all, if I want you to visit my site, shouldn't I return the favor? Isn't that the Monroe Doctrine? Or is that the Geneva Convention?

And so I did visit. Often. As more and more people visited Muley's World, my blogroll got larger and larger, and I began rolling up into the driveway of the sites of my newfound cyberfriends on a regular basis. I learned a lot and laughed a lot, and got to enjoy stopping in for chatty, witty téte-a-tétes.

After a while, though, all of that cyber surfing started to feel less like an enjoyable hobby and more like a job with lots of overtime. Checking my site, reading any comments left, leaving responding comments on my site, then visiting the sites of the commenters, reading their new posts, leaving new comments, checking on my previous day's comments to see if those had been replied to and leaving a set of follow-up comments if necessary -- as that routine grew to encompass more than 20 blogs a day, I started having to steal time from work and family to keep up with it all. And, like it never had before, writing began feeling like a chore, an obligation, something I had to do or else I would let people down.

So I stopped. Cold. Twice.

Now I'm back, wondering why. Am I like an alcoholic who has been sober for months, wanting to test whether he can have a few teensy weensy sips of light wine each day without ending up in the gutter again? I haven't even told my wife or my friends that I've begun posting again at Muley's World -- that's how unsure I still am about all of this.

I do know one thing. I can't get back to that incredibly time-consuming whirl of blog-checking and drive-by commenting that I was on before. I don't think that means I never want to trade thoughts with my wonderfully sharp and funny cyber friends. Why deny myself that pleasure? But I don't think I can let that aspect of blogging guide what I do. To keep writing (and to keep sane) I think I need to adopt the philosophy that I will best serve my friends by hopefully writing things they might read to add a laugh or a provocative thought to their day. Period. Anything that I might be able to do beyond that will be gravy.

[A SHORT INTERMISSION. THE LOBBY REFRESHMENTS COUNTER WILL BE OPEN FOR 10 MINUTES. PLEASE DO NOT BRING SOFT DRINKS BACK INTO THE BLOG.]

I'm reading back over what I've just written and it all sounds so smug, so incredibly selfish. "I am such a writing talent that you should feel honored and lucky just to have the chance to read what I deem you are worthy to read." But I assure you that is not my intention.

You know what this blog is for me? Above all, it's not a vehicle to allow me to attract praise, but a tool that motivates me to get off my butt and do what I know I really want to do down deep inside, which is write.

If I get what I think is a great idea or a funny scenario in my head, and all I do is chuckle to myself about it and then resume my daily drudgery, then it's gone forever, and I've remained a lazy and flabby writer wannabe. If, however, I know that I have a blog that hasn't been updated in a while, I am motivated to take that small idea, chew on it, ruminate on it, let it spur my imagination to flex its muscles, and then let it lead me running to the keyboard to see if I can somehow corral all the wild thoughts flying around my mind into something cohesive and understandable. It's an incredibly fun test of skill that I never get tired of.

Then, after I have completed whatever piece I have written, if I think it's something worth sharing, if I think it's something that might be of value to someone else, then I have this wonderfully convenient thing called Muley's World where I can throw it in and let whomever wishes look at it. They can like it, they can hate it, but either way, it now exists in tangible form and I've had fun creating it.

This, as you see, is not at all the traditional model of most blogs, which seems to be basically "tell me about your day and I'll tell you about mine." Frankly, recounting most of my days would probably bore even your dullest friends and relatives, but maybe I can conjure up enough goofiness in my imagination to make all of you smile.

If there is anyone still reading this (and that is a highly doubtful proposition) I apologize for this very atypical Oprah-like confessional from me. I don't as a rule like to make my navel-gazing public. But more than anything, I wanted to wrestle with the issue of why I am blogging again to try and find the answer in my own mind, and if sharing some of that process with you in print has left you cold (or approaching REM sleep), I apologize.

I am glad to be back -- whatever that may mean. I thank Emma and any other longtime Muley readers who want to stop by, and I look forward to doing my best to return the favor from time to time. Above all, I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to stop talking to myself in public places and once again have a socially approved outlet for my malady.

Turning a Page in Life

Isn’t it entirely possible that each of us harbors some sort of fantasy involving “leaving it all behind,” “it” being the secure job, the 9-to-5 existence, the totally tethered life, and heading out for unknown places as a romantic, risk-taking, free-spirited vagabond?

I think so, and recently I met someone who not only acknowledges those fantasies, but is doing something tangible to make them happen. It was at our public library’s used book sale, where I was working. I was in the “Hold” area, where people who fill bags full of dog-eared books they want to buy can temporarily stash them so that they can go out on the floor again, arms free, to buy even more.

When I got to the Hold area to begin my shift, I noticed about 20 bags full of books marked “T.Baker,” and wondered who this person was. I finally met her when she came to drop off another bag, and over the next few hours (as she dropped off probably 10 more bags) I got to know a bit more about why she was seemingly so book-crazy. She was in her late 20s or early 30s, and had driven in from a city more than three hours away to attend the sale.

When I first spoke to her, I told her I had come up with three possible theories to explain her mounting pile of bags:

1. She was preparing to move to an incredibly remote part of Alaska, where the nearest library, post office or Fedex station was a two-week journey by kayak and dogsled;

2. She was an insatiable reader, a literary nymphomaniac, devouring books like a drug addict pops pills; or

3. She was buying stock for a bookstore.

It turns out that the third scenario was correct, but the woman was not just dutifully buying stock to throw on the shelves of some dusty strip center bookstore. No, she has a full-time day job in a big city at a big corporation (which she despises) and knows that she is scheduled to get laid off in 2008. I’ve never met someone so happy (and eager!) to get canned.

Preparing for unemployment, she has started an online used bookselling business in her spare time, selling books through both eBay and amazon.com. That’s why she was buying all these books (more than a thousand dollar’s worth by the end). When she finally loses her steady job, she intends to sell used books full time, traveling across the country, hitting library used book sales, thrift stores and garage sales to buy new stock. She won’t get rich, she knows, but she says she loves books, and travel, and this is a dream of hers to combine those two. And, in her new career, every Ding Dong or Whopper or convenience store munchie she buys while traveling will be tax deductible.

I have to say, the idea of being able to head out on the road, at your own pace and on your own timetable, and go wherever your heart leads you, is a tempting one for me. Of course, if I tried to imagine the details of her situation at all, the picture gets a bit less rosy – the bad food, the smelly stores and rude people, living lean when sales are down, sleeping in cheap motels or even the back seat of the car to save money, being alone at night in yet another small town – some or all of that might indeed be ahead of her, but she isn’t worried about that now. She’s gloriously happy and excited by life, and it shows.

Given the chance, and even forced to do so by circumstance, wouldn’t we all be willing to leave behind the computer screen and the telephone and day planner and interoffice memos, and just fly away singing? At least on some days I think we just might, and damn the odds.

The World On Ice

I just heard that there is now a version of "High School Musical" on ice. This confirms my belief that, eventually, all forms of entertainment, art and human expression will strap on skates and move onto the rink. Here's just a few shows we should be seeing advertised before we know it:


Citizen Kane On Ice
WWF Smackdown On Ice
Glengarry Glen Ross On Ice
The Christie Brinkley/Chuck Norris Infomercial On Ice
"Don't Tase Me, Bro" On Ice
The Battle of Midway On Ice (reenactment)
Dark Side of the Moon On Ice
The O.J. Simpson Kidnapping Trial, Live, On Ice
The Daytona 500 On Ice
TLC's What Not to Wear On Ice
Ken Burns' The Civil War On Ice

and, in a final ironic twist,

Al Gore's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, On Ice

Dem Bones, Dem Bones

Here is Muley himself on a recent visit to a medical facility in Dallas, posing with someone he met there. Is this new friend of Muley's:

A) Tiffany Torso, the famous runway model, visiting the diet lab;

B) Tooten Myohn Horn, famed Egyptian pharoah whose tomb was recently pilfered; or

C) Bones McPhalanges, veteran Halloween costume model?

You tell me.

Somewhat Germane Quote of the Day:

"When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap."

--Cynthia Heimel

Can They Do "The Scream" Next?

Muley has been walking softly and carrying a big bottle of Zicam, trying to bat away a nasty cold that has already toyed with most of the other members of the Muley family. I've got some decent post ideas backing up in my brain, but just haven't had the energy yet to sit down and do something thoughtful and cogent. So, here's something flippant and superfluous.

It's another story to bolster my belief that lots of computer geeks have way too much time on their hands. According to a story on the BBC website, the aforementioned geeks (from the University of Amsterdam, where they've most likely invented the world's first wooden basketball sneakers) have figured out a way to use a computer to answer the long-debated question, "Just what the heck is the Mona Lisa smiling about, anyway?" While we still don't know who or what caused her sly little crinkle of the lips, the experts have determined that, by analyzing her smile, Mona was "83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry." Personally, I think that the rationale behind that conclusion is 73% silly, 17% misdirected, 8% questionable and %2 somehow causing my big toe to itch.

Quote of the Day:

"My all time favorite similes … come from the hardboiled-detective fiction of the 40s and 50s, and the literary descendants of the dime-dreadful writers. These favorites include … 'I lit a cigarette [that] tasted like a plumber’s handkerchief' ( by Raymond Chandler)."

--Stephen King, in On Writing

It's a Clock. It's Cool.

I found this today on John Gushue's blog. It's called a timeline clock. Moving from right to left, it shows the movement of seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years...you get the idea. I guess you could use this as a screensaver if you wanted to, but I'd probably just sit there staring at it all day, getting nothing done.

Not that that's a bad thing, mind you.

Quote of the Day:

"I'm not going to vacuum 'til Sears makes one you can ride on."

--Rosanne Barr

1927 Blog-a-Thon: I'm In

As the years go by, I become more and more interested in learning about America during the 1920s. It seems that so many things I enjoy, or at least am intrigued by, either started or flowered during that time -- early jazz from artists like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, silent comedies featuring Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, commercial radio broadcasts, Babe Ruth...the list goes on and on.

That's why I was pleased, then, when I was browsing a great new blog I've found called The Sheila Variations and learned about something called the 1927 Blog-a-Thon. It's being hosted by a blog movie critic and old movie afficionado named "Goatdog" at his blog. Here, he explains the simple rules for the Blog-a-Thon:

You're invited to take part in a blogathonic celebration of the year that changed Hollywood: 1927 saw, among other things, the beginning of sync sound, the last great silents, and the birth of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Over the weekend of March 23-25, 2007, post something pertaining to film in 1927: a film released that year, a great performance, something historical—whatever strikes your fancy, as long as you can connect it to both film and 1927. All bloggers or writers are welcome, even if you don't normally write about film. During the blessed weekend, email me a link to your post, and I'll link to all of the entries as they come in.

My mind is already buzzing with possible 1927 film topics that I can research and write about. It should be fun.

Random Observations and Trivial Events

Blue Hawaii

If you think you’ve got it bad paying your rent or writing the mortgage check, it would be worse if you lived in Hawaii. I just read an article in the January 11 Wall Street Journal which says that median rents in Hawaii are the highest in the nation. How high? Well, the going monthly rate for a two-bedroom apartment is about $1,901. That means you’d be paying $22,812 a year for rent on what’s probably a little crackerbox apartment.

Considering that the average wage for Hawaiian workers is just $36,355 a year (before taxes), then you can see why more and more people in Hawaii are becoming homeless, despite the fact that they hold down full-time jobs. The article says that many of them are setting up tents on public beaches and living there, which sort of takes something away from the postcard pretty image of Hawaii most people have.

One big reason rents – and housing prices in general – are so high in Hawaii, of course, is that land is quite scarce, and very rich types from the U.S., Japan and elsewhere have been driving prices up by buying vacation homes, or buying normal apartment complexes and transforming them into super-pricey condos.

To a slightly lesser extent, I’ve heard this same sort of problem exists in high-rent parts of California, where land prices and rents are so dear that regular workers – even people like professors, who don’t make chump change – can’t even live in the cities they work in, and have to drive in many miles each day because they have to go all the way out into Hicksville to be able to find affordable housing.

Thank goodness that housing prices in Central Texas are still a very affordable bargain compared to the rest of the U.S.

Did These Guys Get Hit By a Pitch Too Often?

I wasn’t too surprised this week when the news came out that former St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire was soundly rejected by the baseball writers who voted for the newest inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame. McGwire’s name was included on just 128 of the 545 ballots cast, a 23.5 percent showing that wasn’t even close to the 75 percent needed to get him into the Hall.

I wasn’t surprised McGwire got left out, despite the fact that he broke Roger Maris’s season home run total of 61, because of all the doubts about whether he took steroids. What did surprise me – no, make that what did astound me – was what I read on the chart the papers printed of the baseball players with the all-time highest percentages of approving votes for the Hall of Fame.

What I couldn’t believe was not the names of the players who got the highest percentage of votes. I mean, they’re baseball legends - guys like Nolan Ryan and Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb and Hank Aaron. What is amazing to me is that none of these greats were voted in unanimously.

For example, take Babe Ruth, who arguably was the most famous American baseball player, if not the best player ever. When it came time for Ruth to be considered for the Hall of Fame, he was named on 215 of the 226 ballots, a 95.13 percentage. This means that there were 11 baseball writers (from Mars? Uranus?) who didn’t think Babe Ruth was worthy of being chosen for the Hall of Fame on his first eligibility. What sports writer, might I ask, could have been unconvinced that Babe Ruth deserved the Hall of Fame?

Ruth isn’t the only legend that’s been snubbed this way. Sixteen writers didn’t think Johnny Bench had the stuff for the Hall of Fame. Five writers snubbed Tom Seaver, six vetoed Nolan Ryan, four said no to Ty Cobb. Even Hank Aaron –– still the all-time career home run champion – was deemed unworthy of the Hall of Fame by nine professional sports writers.

I mean, what kind of nutcases are these guys? And what publications did they write for? Mad magazine?

Quote of the Day:

“If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.”

--James Goldsmith

My Checkout Lane Fantasies

I might have mentioned on this blog before that I do most of the grocery shopping for the Muley family. I know this is somewhat unusual for a married guy to admit, but since I like to cook, and I like to experiment with new recipes, and most of the time I really enjoy grocery shopping (or at least don't hate it as much as most guys do), I try to pull my weight and help Mrs Muley with the chores by offering to buy the groceries.

I tell you all this only as an introduction. During my frequent trips to buy groceries, at both a huge "Mart-type" store as well as a huge chain grocery store, I have noticed that all of the checkers ask each customer the same thing at the beginning of the checkout process: "Did you find everything that you need?"

Every single time, even when I have been unable to locate a number of items, either because they don't carry that brand, or are just temporarily out, I invariably smile (and lie) by responding, "Yes." And I have never heard another customer ever do anything else except say "Yes," too, when that question was asked.

I am sure that all of these checkers are not asking this same question by random chance. Undoubtedly, they have been instructed by the management to ask this of every poor sap who wheels his cart up to the line. But lately I have begun to wonder: WHY are these checkers told to ask this? What is the purpose?

I mean, let's say a customer approaches the checkout line, begins unloading groceries, is asked, "Did you find everything that you need?," and answers, "No, in fact, I was looking for the Porky Pie Farms 32-ounce jar of pickled pig's feet, and you're all out"? What would happen next?

My guess is that the sullen 18-year-old checker girl with the tattoos and the lip piercings would then just stare at the customer silently for a few seconds before replying, "Oh...bummer," before resuming dragging the food across the scanner. Or maybe she would ask one of the 18-year-old stockboys with the permanently attached blaring iPod to go look for the missing item, after which he would report back on its absence, followed by the checker replying,"Oh...bummer."

That's probably what would happen, but that's boring. My imagination has come up with some wonderful things that could happen when I said items were missing (if this were a perfect world):

1. A rotating light on the checkstand begins flashing, like the ones on Las Vegas slot machines, and the store manager comes up to me, gives me a crisp $100 bill, and explains it is the company's "Thanks For Telling the Truth" gift. He then takes my name and enters me in a drawing to win a dream home, a Hawaiian vacation and a guest starring role on "CSI."

2. The manager comes up, apologizes profusely for not having the item in stock, then pulls up his shirt and says, "Okay, look, hit me as hard as you want. I deserve it. No, come on, I can take it. Hit me a good one, right in the ol' gut."

3. The store manager comes out, apologizes profusely for not having the item, then offers me psychological counseling free of charge to help me deal with any feelings of distress or loss I might be experiencing. If I agree, I am guided to a small, plush room in back of the management offices, where a smiling psychologist has me lie on a couch while asking me to "share my pain" and "express my anger without fear of communal reprisal." If I seem to tear up a bit, I am offered my choice of day-old bakery items free of charge.

4. When the manager determines what department of the store the missing item is in, the supervisor of that department is quickly summoned to the front, and an announcement is made over the loudspeaker that "a punishment session will take place in five minutes next to the green vegetables." All the customers rush to where a portable stage has quickly been assembled. If this is the supervisor's first or second offense, he or she is let off with a light flogging, issued by a large woman dressed in a leather bustier and face mask, brandishing a thick bullwhip. If this is the department supervisor's third offense, a group of stockboys is issued loaded rifes and the offender is executed by firing squad (after punching out on the time clock, of course).

5. The last one is my ultimate fantasy. When I tell the checker about the item I could not find, she pushes a large red button under her register, and many things happen simultaneously: the doors into and out of the store automatically close tight, sirens begin to wail, primary lighting is shut off, and a voice over the loudspeaker blares, "This is an emergency product lockdown. I repeat, this is an emergency product lockdown. Everyone remain still until further notice."

At the same time, a message goes out to the company's main regional distribution center, listing the store number and the name and UPC product code of the missing item. Within seconds, the computer retrieval system drops the item on a conveyer belt and delivers it to a team of waiting store personnel dressed in emergency flight suits and survival gear. They hop into a helicopter waiting on a nearby helipad, and within minutes they fly to the store and land on the roof.

As I watch, amazed, a skylight opens above the checkout line where I still stand, a rope is dropped, and a man rappels down, landing directly in front of me. He bends down, kisses my feet repeatedly, then gets up and hands me my 32-ounce jar of pig's feet.

Before being pulled back up to his waiting helicopter, he looks me straight in the eyes and asks, "Sir, was there anything else you couldn't find today?"

And I say, "Well, there was this new brand of fat-free yogurt I'd heard about..."

Chicken Cordon Bleu Monday

Another gem from Savage Chickens.

Self-inflicted Book Meme

I imagine that taking the time and trouble to fill out a lengthy meme simply because you came across it yourself on someone else's site (and not because a friend tagged you with it, and you only complete it so that the guilt caused by your contemplation of ignoring it entirely will cease oozing out of your pores like pus) is considered bad form, or possibly a sign of lunacy, such as calling up a telemarketer and begging them (please! please!) to tell you about all the sweet deals they have to offer you.

However, when I was on my "Reacquaint Myself with the Blogosphere" tour today, I came across a book meme on Pages Turned called the Calvino Meme, and it intrigued me so much I decided to fill it out, as if it had been sent to me by a fellow blogger I owed money to.

And, in the same spirit in which I found it, I will not create any more bad karma in the world by tagging any of you with it. If you choose to answer it on your blog, it's your own pus. I mean fault.

Books You’ve Been Planning To Read For Ages

The Divine Comedy by Dante

I want to read it, even though I’ve heard it’s not all that funny.

Bleak House by Dickens

I have made a life commitment to read all the novels of Charles Dickens, but for some anal retentive reason I am sticking to a resolve to read them in order of publication. I figure that if I don’t do this, I’ll never get around to finding the wherewithal to tackle such dull entries as Barnaby Rudge, which I’ve already slogged through. I’ve heard so much about what a great, entrancing masterpiece Bleak House is, but I’m only now reading Martin Chuzzlewit, so I’ve got a ways to go before I can tackle Bleak and not feel somewhat guilty.

The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Van Loon

When I was a young schoolboy, a couple of the other bookish kids I ran around with at Frostwood Elementary in Houston and I had a contest to see who could finish reading this tome, the thickest book we could find in the school library. It's not really all that long by adult standards (especially if you've read Tom Clancy or one of Dickens' doorstops), but for some reason I've never been able to get further than a few chapters into it.

Far from the Madding Crowd by Hardy
Ulysses by Joyce

The Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success

The Proven Way to Lose Weight, Have Great Sex and Make a Fortune By Doing Whatever You Fancy at the Moment, However Self-indulgent and Trivial

I can’t find this magical classic anywhere, no matter how hard I search.

The Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case

The Oxford Unabridged Dictionary

I want the real shelf-sagging McCoy, not the thing on compact disc. I want a dictionary you have to carry in a wheelbarrow.

The Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer

Does this mean that you put them aside because they're so dull you could wait six months to read them without any problem? Or are they so good and juicy that you're "saving" them for leisurely (ha!) vacation reading? I'm not sure, so I can't answer this.

The Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves

I'm collecting the entire All-American Ads series of books by Taschen. They each have hundreds of wonderful, full-color magazine ads from a decade or two of the 20th century, which offer a neat look at what kinds of things ordinary folks spent their time dreaming and partaking of. I own the ones for the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, but they're somewhat pricey, and I haven't bought more yet. I still need the ones for 1900-1919, the 1920s, the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. There's not one yet for the 1990s.

The Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified

Old books of etiquette, such as the ones by Emily Post. It's amazing how things taken entirely for granted today were considered weird or downright scandalous just a few decades ago. For example, in the edition released the year I was born (1960), it says that public airings of buttocks cleavage and multiple facial piercings were not acceptable at a cotillion.

Any kind of pop-up books, the more intricate and innovative the better.

Books Read Long Ago That It’s Now Time to Re-read

All the novels of Jane Austen, especially Pride and Prejudice

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, one of my all-time favorites and one of the few books that made me laugh so hard I hurt.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Many of the novels of Kurt Vonnegut

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Books That If You Had More Than One Life You’d Certainly Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered

The 11-volume, colorful and quite dusty railroad train of books on my top shelf known collectively as The Story of Civilization by the Durants, which I bought cheap at a Barnes and Noble sale many years ago and have yet to crack.

Quote of the Day:

"If sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. And if they will perish, let them perish with our arms around their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for.”

--Charles Spurgeon

Is Book Browsing an Endangered Pastime?

Since re-entering the blogosphere a few days ago after many months away, I’ve been busy checking through the blogs of some people I had read regularly back in the days. It’s been sort of like showing up at a high school reunion after many years – some people are exactly the same, while others have changed.

For one thing, there must be some kind of jammin', fertile electro-emissions coming from the computer screens when someone visits a blog site, because it seems at least half of the women whose sites I used to visit are now pregnant. In fact, most seem to be ready to deliver any day. There’s apparently been some very productive time spent away from the keyboard in the past half year or so. You rascals, you.

And I just about did one of those classic Oliver Hardy big-eyed double takes when I read the incredible news that Jeff was engaged. Man, people are getting together every which way around here! Did my mere absence cause all of this? (By the way, congratulations, Jeff).

My topic of the day, if I must have one, is books. Specifically, old, used, second-hand books, and the reading of them. In visiting my old cyber haunts, I came across this link to an essay by a Canadian, David Warren, lamenting the demise of antiquarian booksellers. An excerpt:

The Internet has been taking over their function -- inefficiently, since the main point of visiting a second-hand store is to discover books, not track them down. But the real cause lies deeper. Today, we have, especially among university graduates, a full generation of people who cannot read a book. This is especially true of graduates in the humanities, who have the additional disability of never having been exposed to one. They have learned only “theory,” from things that are not books. And their money is reserved for other “consumer durables.”

I also can relate to his description of his book acquisition habits, although I’m probably not as successful a winnower:

I once had a large library, of which I was inordinately proud. Thanks to accidents and vagaries of postmodern life, I now have a much smaller library, but one that has through the winnowing of necessity become more truly useful. So many books that I only piously hoped to read, went on to other pious hopers, leaving me only a core to which I cling, as to an identity.

If you’re like me, someone who actually enjoys spending hours wandering around a used bookstore or a large public or university library, just browsing the aisles to see what’s on them, then you’ve probably already gotten the feeling that this is an endangered pastime. More and more libraries are ditching their “physical” books, which take up space and must regularly be cleaned and re-bound, for “electronic” books that can be accessed so cleanly and easily in the four square feet of space it takes to support an Internet portal.

I work as a volunteer for my local public library’s used book sale. It’s our job throughout the year to sort and store all of the used books people donate. I was surprised to learn just how many of those discarded books are from the public library itself. Their only sin is that they’re not new or “hot” books, possibly covering subjects or by authors that are no longer in style, and I guess, therefore, irrelevant to the modern reader. It’s been eye-opening to me to see what librarians these days think isn’t worth saving shelf space for.

At the college where I work, long-range plans are being studied that would make indiscriminate browsing of the type I enjoy almost impossible. They’re thinking of one day going to an “off-site book retrieval system” of some sort. What that means is that they won’t actually get rid of the physical books, they’ll just store them where the public can’t get at them. To do so, we’ll have to fill out a request slip with the title, author and call number, and then some sort of mechanical Rube Goldberg contraption will reach into the bowels of the storage warehouse, put the book on a moving pathway and eventually deliver it to the circulation desk. That way, the library folks can get rid of those big shelves and have lots of extra room for more couches and computer terminals and espresso machines.

The main problem with this system, and with visiting electronic used booksellers on the Internet, is that it eliminates, or at least severely impairs, browsing with no specific end in mind. You pretty much have to know either the title of the book you’re looking for, or its author. There will be no more of, say, wanting to see what types of books the library or bookstore might have on one subject, and then getting completely captivated by books on another entirely different subject that were noticed along the way.

I have found some of my favorite books and authors by sheer indiscriminate browsing. I’ll go into the library looking for one certain book, find it, and then start looking at the books standing nearby on the shelves. If I notice an interesting title, or an attractive or exotic binding, I’ll pull out the book and start flipping through. Many times I’m disappointed, but I cherish those times when I find some author, possibly many years dead and unread for generations, who tickles my fancy.

I mean, how in the world are you supposed to pick out an attractive art book – or a book to read to your child before bedtime – unless you can phsyically pick them up and flip through them? Yes, yes, I know you can conceivably look at any book online, but how much time and trouble does that take? You can take down a book and decide quickly by looking into it if it’s not for you, then pick up the next and repeat the process. Imagine how much more complicated (and how less enjoyable) that task is online.

Of course, I know that you can go into a big chain bookstore like Barnes & Noble or Borders and browse to your heart's content. And if the book you're in the mood for is something recent, or something eternally popular, then you might very well be in luck. But you'll find none of the quirky, old, forgotten books that reside in libraries or used bookshops. And the selection will be a mile wide and an inch deep. Take the works of Charles Dickens. Sure, almost any chain bookstore will stock copies of Great Expectations or David Copperfield or Oliver Twist. But how many will stock every one of Dicken's novels? And will there be all those interesting books about Dickens and his life and times, and the other books analyzing Dickens' works, which a good library will have close at hand? Doubtful.

Oh, well. At least down here in Texas we have the Half Price Books chain, which is where I spend a sizeable amount of my disposable income each year (although I have to drive to either Austin or Dallas to visit one). They seem to be doing a boffo business, so I don’t see them disappearing anytime soon, even if the public libraries here go with one of these soulless retrieval systems.

...As I Was Saying Before I Was So Rudely Interrupted

Well, it was like this, see. We were in the drive-in lane of a Wendy's in Albuquerque, waiting on an order of Frostys and Biggie Fries, when an incredibly bright light filled our car, blinding us all. Next thing I knew, I'm strapped on some sort of table under a lot of blinking lights and whirring machinery. I'm covered in what feels like last week's spaghetti, and some huge creature with a face full of eybealls and tentacles is poking and prodding me and making noises like I'd never heard before.

Of course, at first I thought it was all a bad dream brought on by too little sleep and too many saturated fats and hydrogenated solids. But I soon realized that my worst fear was coming true -- my family and I had been abducted by aliens. Large, rude, flatulent aliens, at that.

It's been an incredible five months, I can tell you. We were poked, probed, examined and forced to do any number of nasty chores by our captors. And believe me, it's never fun to wash underwear, but try doing it for beings with 23 legs! And don't get me started about their fondness for watching bad television. We eventually understood enough of their language to discover that they were supposedly sent here from planet Qrxttblavn to study human behavior, but the only shows they seemed to watch were reruns of "ALF" and episodes of WIlliam Shatner's new game show.

We'd still be there, laundering Swiss cheese undies while hovering miles above the Earth behind an invisibility shield, if it hadn't been for the untimely death of soul singer James Brown on Christmas Day. Our alien captors revealed that the Godfather of Soul was actually their leader, in human disguise, and explained that they were required to return immediately to Qrxttblavn to report the death and prepare for a national year of mourning and daily public singings of "Papa's Got a Brand-New Bag." On their way out of the galaxy, they unceremonially dumped the Muley family in the parking lot of an abandoned K-Mart in Wheeling, West Virginia. After a bit of using our thumbs, we returned to Waco on New Year's Eve, just in time to ring in 2007.

Of course, one of the first things I wanted to do was check in on Muley's World with an account of my experiences. I sure didn't want anyone to think I was some sort of lazy, self-absorbed, disloyal, egg-sucking bum who would simply walk away and neglect his blog for five months or more. No, sirree.

So, I'm glad to be back. I hope all of you had a great Christmas and New Year's Eve. I'll try to check in with everyone and see what's been going on in my absence. Take care.

Yes Virginia, There Is a Santa Fe

The Muley family is heading out tomorrow on the second leg of our World Vacation Tour 2006. This time, we'll be seeing some sights in New Mexico -- Santa Fe, Taos, Albuquerque -- with the Muley grandparents. The crew that all rode together in a van last summer for a week in Branson is back on the road! I'll try to post about our crazy adventures when I return in a week or so. Ya'll take care.

Random Observations and Trivial Events

FAILURE TO PLAN IS PLANNING TO FAIL

Sometimes at work I pass by a room where they do training sessions for employees – you know, those sessions where they teach you things such as how to be more efficient on the job, how to manage your time and how to deal with psychopathic nut case bosses without involving the company health plan.

Maybe I’m just the cynic here, but I don’t think those training videos and teaching sessions really do what they’re supposed to do. Yes, the people who attend them might be fired up and full of new ideas while they’re sitting there missing work under the spell of a good instructor-motivator, but from what I’ve seen, about 99 percent of what they’ve learned never sticks with them for the long haul. Sure, sometimes they pick up a tip here or there that they end up using (“Big yellow sticky notes get seen easier than small ones do. USE THEM LIBERALLY!”) but I think most of the time, the trainees believe the trainers are just blowing smoke. And let’s face it, a person who has spent his lifetime being a messy, unorganized goof-off is not going to turn into an organized, trailblazing captain of industry after watching just one Stephen Covey video. When all the attempts at behavior modification are over, the driven perfectionists go back to nosing the grindstone, and the goof-offs go back to playing Internet poker and downloading photos of Uma Thurman.

CAN ANYONE FIX MY BROKEN BETAMAX? I NEED IT TO CHECK OUT THIS "LAW AND ORDER" SHOW

When sociologists discuss how different people affect or are affected by trends, some are the trendsetters, others are the “early adapters,” and then there are the sad people called something like the “clueless foot-draggers.” I’m in the last group. For example, I have just recently watched the first few episodes of the first season of “Alias” for the first time. I kept hearing how good the show was (like I incessantly keep hearing how good “24” is), so, courtesy of Netflix, I put my toe in the water. Now, I won’t say I’m absolutely hooked on “Alias,” but I think I could easily get there with a little more exposure.

DON'T WORRY, NO BLOG STUFF WAS ON IT

Speaking of how I adapt to technology, here’s how I can get smacked when I try to be too trendy. People here at work had told me I needed to have one of those little USB stick thingies to store my personal data on instead of the big, clunky Zip disks I’d been using. I kept resisting, but finally, I realized that since my PC at home doesn’t have a Zip drive (like my Mac at work does), I would need one of those stick thingies to transfer data back and forth from work to home.

So, I bought one, and loaded it up with all my stuff – my history research, my fiction writing, my essay ideas, my freelance journalism articles, even my haiku, which so far has never seen the light of day. The stick had a neat little hole to allow you to put it on your key ring, which I did. Well, the other day I looked at my key ring and found that the part of the stick that has the USB port and the memory was missing. I looked in a few obvious spaces, but I couldn’t find it.

I’m assuming that it popped of my key ring when I pulled my keys out somewhere to get in the car. So, it most likely was or is lying around some parking lot somewhere. I hope it gets crushed quickly, but if someone actually finds it and accesses the information inside, I have two competing fears. One is that they’ll think the writing inside is terrible, and hit me up for a ransom payment to prevent them from making it public. The other fear is that they’ll turn it over to a literary agent (with their name on it) and make big money as the newest star of the New Yorker. I’m expecting the first scenario, mind you.

I SEE DEAD PEOPLE (AT 30 FRAMES A SECOND)

Have you ever looked at an old movie or at old newsreel footage – maybe from the very early 1900s – and thought that all the people shown on the film, even the children, are almost certainly dead now, and that you’re watching something that doesn’t exist any more? Well, I have. Maybe I’m just morbid, but sometimes I get the idea that I'm watching the equivalent of theatre from beyond the grave.

NOW YOU KNOW...THE REST OF THE STORY

I was watching one of those reality shows on Animal Planet the other night – with a name like “Animal Cops” or something. Most of it was pretty routine stuff – ASPCA officers going after animal abusers or stray kittens caught in drainpipes. But then, the last segment surprised me. A police squad busted an illegal, high-stakes poker game, featuring those differing breed of dogs you see on the paintings everywhere smoking big cigars. Boy, that was exciting TV.

This Is Why Willie and Waylon Sing That Song

Cowboy Muley, about one year old. I hadn't started dipping snuff yet, but I could sure hogtie a mean diaper.

A Smattering of Quotes

I've been sort of an ADHD kinda guy lately when it comes to my reading -- haphazardly looking through all sorts of volumes and pulling out items to make a very disparate gumbo that has probably not enlightened me much, but has left me with a few tasty quotes to share.

--------------------------------

I've seen a lot of references to the French writer-philosopher Jacques Barzun lately in books of conservative thought, and I finally decided to check out a book of his essays, The Culture We Deserve, to see what he's made of. This was a quote from an essay titled "Exeunt the Humanities." It deals with something I see more and more of these days -- people devoting enormous amounts of time becoming almost obsessive experts on narrow little topics and hobbies, while remaining ignorant of a lot of seemingly "big picture" things in the world around them.

"The danger is that we shall become a nation of pedants. I use the word literally and democratically to refer to the millions of people who are moved by a certain kind of passion in their pastimes as well as in their vocations. In both parts of their lives this passion comes out in shoptalk. I have in mind both the bird watchers and nature lovers: the young people who collect records and follow the lives of pop singers and movie stars; I mean the sort of knowledge possessed by "buffs" and "fans" of all species -- the baseball addicts and opera goers, the devotees of railroad trains and the collectors of objects, from first editions to netsuke. They are pedants not just because they know and recite an enormous quantity of facts -- if a school required them to learn as much they would scream against tyranny. It is not the extent of their information that appalls; it is the absence of any reflection upon it, any sense of relation between it and them and the world. Nothing is brought in from outside for contrast or comparison; no perspective is gained from the top of their monstrous factual pile; no generalities emerge to lighten the sameness of their endeavor."

--Jacques Barzun

If I am in danger of becoming one such obsessive pedant, it might be due to buying and collecting far too many old books. Here's another (more positive) way I found to look at my bibliophilia.

"Collecting books is like collecting other people's minds, like having people on the shelves -- only, you can just put them away when you want to."

--John Prizeman

There's probably as many definitions of creativity as there are people who claim to have that elusive gift in spades. Here's one description of what a creative person should look like that I found interesting.

"Creative people: 1, have their energy field accessible; 2, have the ability to tap and release unconscious and preconscious thought; 3, are able to withstand being thought of as abnormal or eccentric; 4, are more sensitive; 5, have a richer fantasy life and greater involvement in daydreaming; 6, are enthusiastic and impulsive; 7, show signs of synaesthesia (e.g., tasting color, seeing sound, hearing smells, etc.); 8, show different brain wave patterns than the less creative, especially during creative activity; 9, when confronted with novelty of design, music, or ideas, they get excitied and involved (less creative people get suspicious and hostile); 10, when given a new solution to a problem, they get enthused, suggest other ideas, overlook details and problems (less creative students analyze the defects rather than explore potentials."

--E. Paul Torrence and Laura K. Hall, Journal of Creative Behavior, 1980.

I must admit that in my focused daily trek to check off my "to do" list, too often I end up walking with my eyes watching my feet, intent on getting from point A to point B, and fail to see the divine light Thomas Merton talks about here.

"Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything -- in people and in things and in nature and in events...we cannot be without Him. It's impossible. The only thing is, we don't see it."

--Thomas Merton, 20th century Catholic monk

Besides not making enough time for God, I find it difficult to make as much time as I'd like to spend enriching my mind. As I plan to cut my overgrown back yard this week, I ponder this quote and wonder if its author managed to sell it to his wife.

"A man who wants time to read and write must let the grass grow long."

--Sloan Wilson

Maybe all I really need to do is listen to this next bit of wisdom.

"I think people don't place a high enough value on how much they are nurtured by doing whatever it is that totally absorbs them."

--Jean Shinoda Bolen

I love the NIV translation of the Bible, but I've recently done a little reading in the English Standard Version (ESV) translation, and have become a fan of some of its simple but eloquent prose. Here's a familiar verse in the ESV that I think sums up a Christian's marching orders quite well.

"Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life."

--Philippians 2:14-16 (ESV)

This is one of the best definitions of faith I've come across.

"Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation."

--Elton Trueblood, Puritan minister

Now for some fun quotes to wrap things up. First, who do you think was the most famous person in this encounter?

"I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph."

--Shirley Temple

Have you read or heard anything about Joe Simpson, the stage father of singer Jessica Simpson? Some people have said Jessica's dad is downright creepy, and this quote from Dad about his famous daughter's...um, assets...might be one reason they think that.

"She just is sexy. If you put her in a T-shirt or you put her in a bustier, she's sexy in both. She's got double D's! You can't cover those suckers up!"

--Joe Simpson, on daughter Jessica

Finally, you might not know that when country singer Willie Nelson was starting his career in the 1950s, he worked for a time as a country DJ at station KCNC in Fort Worth. Here's how Willie opened his radio show back then. I wish I could have heard this live coming over the car speakers at the drive-in.

"This is your ol' cotton pickin', snuff dippin', tobacco chewin', coffee pot dodgin', dumplin' eatin', frog giggin' hillbilly."

No, I'm Not Dead, Or Even Rotting

I've just been away from the computer for awhile -- for a week, due to vacation, then since Monday snowed under with all the stuff you have to do at home and work when you commit the rash act of taking a week off from the rat race. I will try to get a decent post in here soon.

Random Observations and Trivial Events

EVER FORGOTTEN AN ANNIVERSARY?

I guess it's a sign of how little time I've been able to devote to this blog in the last few months, but my one-year blogging anniversary came and went and I didn't even notice it. I knew it was sometime in May (May 10), but by the time I checked for the date in late May it was too late. And here I am waiting until early June to even mention it.

Like most people, I didn't have much idea of what I was getting into when I started blogging. I started hot and heavy, writing at least one post a day for the first two or three months, then slowly began to slack off. Around Christmas 2005 I abruptly quit altogether for awhile, then slowly got back into it on a "when time is available" basis, which is I guess where I still am.

Despite some frustrations, I'm glad I began blogging. I've met some of the nicest, funniest, smartest and most interesting people. I run into a few wackos along the way as well, but that happens just about anywhere these days.

WILL THE TWINKLE LIGHTS BE OUT NEXT WEEK?

It just gets earlier and earlier. I was at Wal-Mart this evening and notice that they are already selling calendars for 2007. Last year it seemed that the new calendars came out around Independence Day, but now they're not even waiting until the present year is half over.

MISFORTUNE COOKIES

We ate lunch at a Chinese restaurant today, and once again, all of the "fortunes" contained in the fortune cookies were lame as could be. They really aren't even fortunes, for one thing -- more like maxims or proverbs. "You'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar," "When opportunity knocks, make sure you're listening," gems like that. They apparently don't have the guts anymore to say things like "You will meet a dark and handsome stranger," or "You will come into a lot of money soon." Besides seeing some honest-to-goodness positive predictions thrown in, I'd really like to see some dramatic "mis"-fortunes thrown in as well, such as:

"You will soon lose bladder control"

"An expensive part on your car will malfunction by the end of the month"

"The meat you just ate was not quite cooked thoroughly"

and

"Your spouse is having an affair. Check their cell phone records"

I WANT MINE VOICED BY THAT GUY WITH THE DEEP, SERIOUS VOICE

I got to thinking the other day how wonderful movie trailers are. They take a two-hour movie, and skillfully condense the parts of most interest, bad and good, tragic and humorous, into a fast-paced 90-second production. A skillful editor can take a terrible, boring movie, pick out the few good parts, and make a trailer that will convince you you want to see the thing.

Why can't everyone on the planet have their own trailer? This would take your life, including your character traits, hobbies, interests and quirks, and do a 90-second overview that would be available for viewing by anyone else on the planet. Anytime you met someone new -- in church, at school, on the dating scene -- you could simply view their trailer soon afterward and get the story of their life in a dramatic, exciting yet condensed form. Next time you met them, you'd be better prepared, see? Anyone interested?

To Everything Turn, Turn, or Do the Hokey Pokey

It's a sad day in the Muley household today. Sad not because of anyone's death or injury, or because of any financial setback or career-related tragedy, but sad because today is the last day that we have a child in elementary school.

We've had two children in elementary school, and it's hard to remember a time when we haven't been there dropping off or picking up, or attending kindergarten graduations, Christmas programs, open houses and parent-teacher conferences. There's lots of memories of making our daughters' day by buying a special lunch and bringing it up to them as we ate with them and their friends at the small little chairs in the cafeteria. I can remember me and Mrs. Muley being room parents, bringing up cookies and drinks for classroom parties, and even one time I was persuaded to sit down in a rocking chair and read a story to the eager group of little first graders gathered around me on the floor.

What's strange is that our 10-year-old daughter is quite sad to be leaving elementary school. Now, when I was a kid, I was always happy on the last day of school, no matter what milestone might have been passed. But both my daughter and her best friend have been somber and even teary-eyed this week when the subject of the impending end of school -- and the farewell to their elementary school days -- came up. A good friend and classmate of theirs is moving to another town in a few days, so that makes it even worse.

Yesterday, Mrs. Muley and I volunteered to take time off of work and be chaperones for the fourth grade end-of-year field trip. All the students went rollerskating at the rink here in Waco and had a blast. I decided that I didn't want to spend two hours just watching kids skate, so I strapped on a battered pair of inline skates and got out onto the floor. I'm sure my daughter was probably a bit embarassed, but she'll get over it.

Looking around at all the fourth graders yesterday, it really hit me how similar, but how different, they are from my classmates when I was in fourth grade in the late 1960s. They are the same in that, well, they act like fourth graders. They boisterous and loud, and overall very happy. That world-weariness and cynicism that starts seeping in somewhere in junior high has not affected them yet. It's possibly the last pure, unadulterated spring of childhood for many of them.

However, how different these kids are from the ones I went to school with. I looked around and saw a rainbow of skin colors and backgrounds. There were black and white students, students from Hispanic, Asian and Indian backgrounds, and even three young Muslim girls who wore head coverings as they skated around the rink joyously. In my elementary school, meanwhile, located in a upper middle class suburb of Houston, we were an almost totally lily white student body. There were no blacks whatsoever, and only a few Hispanic students before anyone ever used the word "Hispanic." Our one example of true multiculturalism was a blond-headed, blue-eyed boy who had moved here from England with his parents. The only place we would have seen a group of young children as diverse as that at my daughter's school in the late 1960s would have been in a Coke commercial.

So, time passes. We'll get used to it, as we always do, but if you don't take the time and notice the changes, even if that involves a little mourning, they're likely to pass you by much too easily and quietly.

FINAL THOUGHTS: If you ever happen to find yourself being with a large group of kids at a skating rink, make sure that when they are all told to take off their skates and return them to the desk that you don't happen to walk through them as they remove said skates. I did this, and the aroma of 120 kids airing their feet after two hours of intense exercise just about brought me down on the psychedelic carpet. A form of this airborne substance is probably among the biological weapons Saddam is suspected of once hiding.

Also, if you men out there want to take on a new and fairly unique physical challenge, try using a men's restroom while wearing a pair of inline skates. I have found that it's a bit of a challenge on a tile floor to navigate a urinal while eight wheels are where your ten toes normally are. You sort of end up just rolling slowly back and forth and hoping your aim is true.

No Pain, No Brain, Again

As I am writing this, rivulets of hard-earned sweat are coursing down my ruddy face. No, I'm not being mugged, and I'm not listening to rap lyrics (sort of the same thing, don't you think?), but I've just completed a nice long jog around campus, and I'm trying to cool off here at the public computer terminals in the Student Center.

I have begun the folly I begin about this time every year. You see, about six or seven years ago, I was someone who managed to lose about 55 pounds through nothing more than eating a sensible diet and running and lifting weights every week. I was thrilled at my success and my theretofore missing self-discipline, and physically I felt better at 39 and 40 than I did at 22.

During the following years, I managed to stay on a maintenance program that kept my metabolism high enough that I could pig out every now and then and not worry about gaining weight. I was never quite as faithful to the regimen as I was at my time of lowest poundage, but every week I managed to run three or four times and lift weights at least once. I mean, I was not in fear of answering my doorbell and seeing Richard Simmons beckoning to me with a forklift.

In the past few years, however, something has happened. That resolve I had seven years ago started gradually to slip away. I ran and lifted weights less and less, and although I still ate fairly healthy, I pigged out like someone with only a higher metabolism should.

The bottom line is, I'm now about 20 pounds above my "maintenance" weight, and about 33 pounds from where I was at my leanest, and where I'd love to get back to if I could. After a spring that saw me gradually exercising less and less, I've told myself (for about the 10th week in a row) that I've got to get back on the fitness schedule. No ifs, ands and butts.

Of course, I always end up doing these exercise comebacks the wrong way. It would be best to start a stepped-up exercise program in the winter, or at least in the early spring. That's when the weather is too cold to do a lot of yardwork (freeing up spare time), and on days when it's not actually freezing, the weather is so cool outside that it's a pleasure to go and run.

But do I take advantage of that, like an intelligent person would? No. In the winter and early spring, I'm indoors all the time, relaxing or working, and a bathing suit hardly ever gets put on. So, those extra pounds aren't as much of an embarrassment. Besides, I can hide out in nice wram sweaters, and no one seems to notice.

But when summer approaches, the sweaters come off, and I realize that in a matter of a few short weeks I will begin escorting my kids to beaches and pools and water parks. I WILL BE SEEN IN PUBLIC LOOKING LIKE LUMPY RUTHERFORD FROM 'LEAVE IT TO BEAVER.' So, I put on my shorts, run out into the humidity and heat of a late Texas spring, and begin huffing and puffing.

I know that I don't have the metabolism I did even a year ago. Then, I could run around this 500+ acre campus, and not have to stop even once. The only time I would stop was if I felt like it, or if I needed to remove a dog's teeth from my leg. Today, I must have stopped a dozen times. Instead of daydreaming and coming up with ideas for blog posts, stories and poems (which is what I used to do), my mind was focused instead on, Okay, I'll keep running to that big tree up there, and then I'll walk for a bit. No. No. I'm not going to make the big tree. Okay, I'll stop at the far side of the driveway. No. No. How about the near side of the driveway?"

But dang, it, I did it. More than 30 minutes, and this is my second day in a row. I feel good, especially since I also lifted weights at lunch. The only thing that is possibly a little troublesome is that the coeds I passed on the jogging trail, who normally are in iPod brain control mode and don't even notice me, seemed yesterday and today to be looking at me with a combination of shock and horror. I imagine they saw this 40-something guy, sucking in air like a broken bellows, and wondered if--eww, gross!--they were going to have to put to use their CPR training on a smelly heart attack victim. Of course, what they might really be thinking behind those horrified glances is

Rapist. Rapist! But thank goodness, an out-of-shape rapist I can easily outrun if it comes to that!

I've cooled off now, in body if not in mind, and it's time to go home. Maybe since I exercised today, I can eat a big dinner and have some of that cheesecake for dessert. Hmm...

A Smattering of Quotes

In lieu of something original, here are some more quotes I've recently collected. Hope you enjoy them.

Since America's favorite pastime has begun again, here's one of my favorite movie quotes about baseball. It's said by an over-the-hill player remembering his short time in the major leagues.

"Yeah, I was in the show. I was in the show for 21 days once -- the 21 greatest days of my life. You know, you never handle your luggage in the show, somebody else carries your bags. It was great. You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels all have room service, and the women all have long legs and brains."

--Crash Davis, the minor league baseball player portrayed by Kevin Costner in "Bull Durham" (1988)

This quote from E.B. White (the author of Charlotte's Web and other classics, was bandied about a lot as an example of eerie prophecy in the days immediately following 9-11:

“A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate millions...Of all targets New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm.”

––from E.B. White’s essay “Here is New York,” 1949

I will now reveal my secret:

"Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted."

--Jules Renard

The rich, they say, are different from you and me. Here's one example why:

"I go to Bloomingdale's, to the fourth floor, and I buy 2,000 of the black bras, 2,000 of the beige, 2,000 of the white. And I ship them around between the homes and the boat and that's the end of it for maybe half a year when I have to do it all over again."

--Ivana Trump

I'm reading more and more Wendell Berry these days, and he's making me think on a number of things.

"We are destroying our country -- I mean our country itself, our land...Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us."

--Wendell Berry

I continue to give away my secrets:

"Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed."

--Elbert Hubbard

Finally, every now and then Hollywood celebrities let down the facade:

"With my sunglasses on, I'm Jack Nicholson. Without them, I'm fat and 60."

--Jack Nicholson

Wild Weather in Waco

Well pardners, last night was a fun one in Waco. We had the usual line of spring thunderstorms head to town, and we went to bed figuring on nothing more than some rain and thunder.

Well, the thunder got very loud and bad, and before long we had the entire Muley family -- two parents, two kids and two dogs -- all in our bedroom for the night. Before we got to sleep, our power went out, like it did for 22,000 other residents of the Waco area. We dug out some candles and called the power company.

I must mention that my youngest daughter, who is nine years old, is terribly afraid of bad weather. It's one of those intense, unreasoning fears where she gets terrified and can't help herself. Logical talk and explanation will not make the fear abate a whit. My wife and I were up many hours comforting her as each wave of thunderstorms rolled in. My daughter slept between us, which is a comfy fit on a queen-size bed.

The storm finally abated over our area of town, and we all managed to fall asleep. When we awoke in the morning, our power was still off. We tried calling around to see how friends and family were doing, and learned that much phone service and power was still out. Anxious to see for ourselves, and not wanting to sit around a dark house, we all got in the car and drove around. That's when we learned that the winds had wreaked havoc over a large part of Waco. There were hundreds of trees down, many in the roadways, as well as signs blown down or destroyed, porta-cans blown in the street, traffic lights out, and even some businesses with roofs blown off. Even Wal-Mart, a place you think would have their own backup generator, was dark and closed.

We drove to the home of my mother-in-law, who unfortunately had her big tree in her front yard blow down on her house:



The good thing was the tree didn't appear to have pierced her roof. The amazing thing was that my mother-in-law somehow managed to sleep through this entire storm, a storm which knocked her power out and blew a big tree on her roof. We are not really surprised by this, however. She also slept through the Texas City explosion of 1947, the Alaskan earthquake of 1964 and the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

Not really.

Anyway, we're fine, and our local weathercasters I'm sure are dubbing off those airchecks to send off to the Emmy Awards people. Tonight we have power, and my belly is full of chicken fajitas. Life is good.

Rejected Romance Novel Titles #7

Oh man, please tell me this one's fake.

Piled Higher and Deeper: The Citations

One of my jobs at the university I work for is to be the managing editor of the university's faculty/staff newsletter. This is a large, 8-12 page publication that contains lots of campus news of special importance to faculty and staff. It also contains a section that lists the recent academic accomplishments of faculty and staff, such as papers or books they've had published, lectures they've delivered or honors they've received.

This section is probably the most-read section of the newsletter. Faculty, who provide the large majority of the entries, apparently like to see their accomplishments in print, and everyone likes to look at what their colleagues are up to.

The hard thing for me is that I have to collect all the e-mails, departmental newsletters and scribbled notes sent to me by faculty and staff, then edit and assemble the information therein into readable form. The resulting entries can get quite dense and boring because, well, the subjects appear dense and boring to the layman. For example, here are some actual entries, altered only to protect the identity of the professors involved:

Dr. Richard Jones, professor of biology, had a co-authored article titled “Periphyton Nutrient Limitation and Nitrogen Fixation Potential Along a Wetland Nutrient-depletion Gradient” published in Wetlands (Vol. 16, pp. 439-448, 2005). Co-authors are Christopher Filstrup and J.Thad Scott, graduate students. He had a co-authored article titled “Recovery and Fractionation of Phosphorus Retained by Lightweight Expanded Shale and Masonry Sand Used as Media in Subsurface Flow Treatment Wetlands” published in Environmental Science and Technology (Vol. 42, pp. 4621-4627, 2005). There are multiple co-authors.

Dr. Frank Killen, professor emeritus of biology, had an article titled “Native Texas Avifauna Altered by Suburban Entrapment and Method for Easily Assessing Natural Avifaunal Value” published in Bulletin of the Texas Ornithological Society (Vol. 39, pp. 35-47, 2005).

Dr. Pamela G. Lawrence, assistant professor of English, had an article titled “The Worthwhile Life Heterodox Spinster: Frances Power Cobbe” published in A/B: Auto/Biography Studies (Vol. 21, pp. 1-18, 2005).

Dr. Brian P. Smith, professor of environmental studies, presented a lecture titled “Growth, Toxicity and Composition of Prymnesium parvum in Relation to Temperature, Light and Salinity” Oct. 15 at the Symposium on Harmful Marine Algae in the United States in Monterey, Calif.

Well, you get the idea.

One day last year, after editing and typing in what seemed like thousands of these entries, my always tenuous sanity broke its tether, and I began writing the kind of entries I would actually love to see in the academic section. Here's the alternate list I came up with. Notice I expanded the list to include the accomplishments of persons who are, shall we say, outside the academy.

Dr. Rusty Blade, hillbilly surgeon, had an article titled “Ooh-Wee! It’s A Biggun!: Memorable Goiters I Have Removed” published in Appalachian Medical Gazette and Seed Catalog (Vol. 14, No. 4, pp.18-23).

Chantay DeMilo, performance artist, presented a one-woman exhibition of underarm hair paintings titled “My Pits as Palette” Aug. 20-Sept. 24 at Barney’s House of Barf, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Rama Lama Ding Dong, newly enlightened master and The Vram and Mehta Rastipnul Chair of Advanced Mysticism and Weird Stuff, channeled the incoherent ravings of Ibin Takin, a 14th century Mongol maintenance worker, Oct. 22 at a Psychic Hotline training session in Altoona, Pa.

Irving Feinberg, retired mucilage tester, presented “Color Photographs of My Recent Hernia and Hemorrhoid Operations” Sept. 4 at the Show and Tell Supper, Days O’ Rest Nursing Home, Boise, Idaho.

Gash, abdominal artist, had a tattoo and body piercing collage titled “The Naked Anna Nicole Smith Tortured by Zulu Warriors” displayed on the stomach of Dank Sellar, homeless person, in Los Angeles, Ca.

Dr. Chauncey Leezay, professor of postmodern art, had an exhibition titled “Klunk: Discarded Auto Mufflers as Found Art” Oct. 13-31 at the Hot Wheels Institute in Matchbox, Tennessee.

Stig McNasty, drummer for the Intestinal Worms, presented “How to Cop A Plea on a Charge of Indecency With a Minor” Sept. 27 to his AA support group in Leeds, England.

Juan D. Tenure, junior lecturer in English, had an article titled “Shakespeare’s Use of the Semicolon” published in Wasted Paper (Vol. 32, No. 8, pp. 6-7).

Whomp, Neanderthal chemist, presented “Rub Powders Together Go BOOM! Burn Hair Stink Bad” at the “Rock on Rock” demolition conference, second cave past the tar pits.

Brother Stuf Jam Yomamma, lead singer for Limp Weasel, had a song titled “Whack The Mutha in the Face Wit’ Yo @&*$*!” released as a single by Profane Records, Hollywood, Ca.

Numerous faculty members from various departments within the University made multiple presentations at the annual mid-winter conference titled “Very Important and Crucial Matters of the Highest Intellectual Import Which Defy Explanation to Untutored Laymen” held Jan. 2-27 at Buzz Tingler’s Nude Resort and Casino, Virgin Islands.

Today's quote:

"Midway on our life's journey I found myself in a dark wood."

--First line of Dante's Inferno

Random Observations and Trivial Events

1. What do you think when you see a place of business sporting a sign that says “under new manage- ment?” Does it inspire a positive response in you? My feeling is that the only businesses that display such a sign are ones that have gained quite a bad reputation, either for bad service, bad products or both. I mean, if a successful business had built up a sterling reputation in the community, the last thing a smart new owner would want to do is to let people know the management had changed, for fear that they would begin to have doubts about whether the quality would continue. Right? In short, the only business owners wanting to advertise a change in management are the ones who sincerely hope those past unpleasant incidents with food poisoning or sexual misconduct or police raids will soon be forgotten.

2. Once a year, the City of Waco graciously holds something called a “Hazardous Waste Day,” where you can haul down all the stuff they deem hazardous – old paint cans, old batteries, unused lighter fluid, motor oil, etc. – and dump it for no charge. My question is, why do they only have these special days once a year? Yes, I imagine they cost the city money, but do they think people wait patiently for an entire year before throwing away things like old paint and oil? Sheesh, no. If there’s not an easy way of disposing of it safely, then we will likely toss it in the weekly garbage, where it will be taken to the landfill, and cost a lot more in the long run in terms of trash, cancer-causing agents and the underground creation of large, radioactive monsters that arise from the dump and wreak havoc on surrounding suburbs.

3. Here on campus I see all these college students looking bleary-eyed lately, and I know they are high on caffeine and going without sleep studying for finals. For all I know, it’s the first time they’ve studied all semester. I remember the stress and fear that came with finals, and I’m tempted to really feel sorry for the students, but then I remember that after a week of taking tests, they’ve got three months to basically sleep in late, party and do nothing they don’t want to do. Let ‘em suffer awhile, I say.

4. I know this probably sounds goofy, but I’ve seen the trailer for the new “Poseidon Adventure” movie (a re-make) that’s opening this month, and I want to see it. The original movie (the one where Shelley Winters constantly got stuck and Ernest Borgnine complained all the way through) was one of my favorites as a kid.

5. I was behind a college student at the convenience store the other day, and I noticed that she bought one item – a large bottled water – and paid for it with a credit card. I thought, this says something about modern society in a nutshell. We’re paying for things like water that we could easily get for free, and to do it, we’re in effect borrowing money from a bank at interest. I’ve done this before, too (with Dr Pepper, of course), so I’m not exempt.

6. I have been unable to finish a book, cover to cover, these last two or three months. Some books I have gotten almost all the way through, some I have gotten to the end of only by skipping big parts in the middle, and some I’ve abandoned after only a few chapters. But there's not one book I have read every word of. A lot of these were great books, classics, ones I was excited about reading, so I can’t blame the material. What is my problem?

7. On second thought, don't answer that.

Today’s quote:

”Do you think we should drive a stake through his heart just in case?”

--Actor Peter Lorre, to Vincent Price at Bela Lugosi’s funeral