Occasional Jots and Tittles

I spent the evening at a live taping of “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me”, the public radio news quiz show, in New Orleans tonight. I came away with a great appreciation for what they do to get the show on the air.

The total recording time ran close to two hours, which means that almost half of what transpired will end up on the cutting room floor. That’s not surprising, considering some of what was said (and what I’m sure would make a fantastic outakes/blooper tape for the show). Some observations and thoughts:

1. Amy Dickinson (“Ask Amy”) has a potty mouth. Who would have thought such a mild-mannered, nice advice columnist could come up with some of what she had to say about Eric Massa? Some of it will probably make it onto Saturday’s broadcast (3/13/2010), but the rest? Well, as she said, “What’s said in the room, stays in the room”.

2. All three panelists (Roy Blount, Jr., Amy Dickinson, and Mo Rocka) are quick on the draw with their comebacks and one-liners. Much of the show was clearly unscripted and they have great chemistry as a group.

3. Carl Kassel is amazingly spry for a man of his age and he’s no slouch with the one-liners either. On the air, as scorekeeper and judge he doesn’t get to say much, but they cut out a lot of ad libs from him that are great zingers.

4. The entire cast kept going on about what a wonderful place New Orleans was and how great an audience we were compared to many of the places they go. It could have been the usual BS from visiting artists but they really did seem to be having a great time. In fact, the three panelists mentioned they should get a time-share and come live down here part of the year. They sounded believable to me.

All in all, there’s a LOT they’ll have to cut from tonight’s recordings to go on the air. My original fear, when we sat down, was that they’d have too much material and not know what to sacrifice to fit the time limit. After listening to the Massa bit (a good 6 minutes worth) and a few other riffs that really got out of hand, I realized the opposite was a more likely problem: if you cut out all the stuff not suitable for NPR, you may not have an hour’s broadcast to work with.

All in all, it was a blast – it’ll be interesting to hear the final version of the show in 2 days.

Remember how, on I Love Lucy, no matter how simple a task the girls set out to accomplish, it always turned into a huge production that (usually) ended badly?

That’s how I feel about things around my house. Jonathan and I both enjoy projects, and we’re actually getting a lot better about tackling one at a time and finishing them, but still, each one grows and grows until it’s spiraled out of control.

The latest is our back yard and garden, which took a major hit in the freezes of January. Now, I know it got a lot colder in a lot more places, and some of you were buried under feet of snow, but it’s a relative thing. Down here in Baton Rouge, we seldom go below freezing for more than a few hours on one or two nights at the peak of winter. As a result, while plants like banana trees will freeze back and drop their leaves, quite a few of our tropical plants will thrive through the winter. It’s a big help particularly for our wintering hummingbirds, but beyond that, the walls of greenery helped to shield our sitting area in the back yard from the alley behind us, where we park and where neighbors stroll all the time.

Not this year; three nights in a row below 20 degrees and barely going to 32 during the day was enough to freeze back nearly every tropical shrub we had, leaving a mass of black and brown mush drying out and offering no privacy (not that we need much, in the winter, since we’re not outside often). A good many of the plants will come back, but not for a few months. But in a way, that’s good.

Because we’d already lost a huge hackberry tree during Hurricane Gustav in September of 2008, and in the subsequent winter our cherry tree died. We still had one tattered Chinese Tallow tree left, but that tree should never have been planted, and we really wanted it gone, too. So… a month or so ago, we had a tree service take down the dead cherry and the live Tallow. Coupled with the die-off in the beds surrounding them, it gave us a rare opportunity to re-evaluate the layout of the plants. Many of the tropicals had just been shoved into the ground wherever there was a space, with no idea how big some of them would get.

And we wanted some new trees to replace the dead ones, so all in all, it seemed a good time to just rework the plants.

But then… in doing so, we realized it would also be a lot smarter to move the old, original watering system from its “snake through the bed” location and re-route the trunk line along one side of the bed, so that we could easily find it for repairs (and miss it when we dug holes for new plants). Likewise with the low-voltage electrical lines for the outdoor lights, the main line for which also snaked through the beds kind of wherever there was a spot.

And then… looking it over, we realized that we’d only put the pool sand filter and pump for the koi pond where it was because it was the only spot we could fit it around some existing banana trees. It wasn’t the ideal spot – it wasn’t even a good spot – but it was what we had to work with. Finding a better site for the filter and pump now, while everything was dug up made a lot more sense than leaving it where it was.

You can see where this is going. At this point, there’s now hundreds of dollars worth of PVC pipe and fittings, low voltage electrical line (with new fixtures to follow, I’m sure), and even more hundreds of dollars of plants to put in, while the beds are being cleared back to the bare dirt except where established plants may come back. We’re facing at least a couple of LONG weekends busting butt to get the watering system back in, to get the pond filter back online, to get the lights back in place. Not to mention that we so overfilled the two 96 gallon garbage carts provided by the city that the truck wouldn’t take them; we’ll have to remove some of the excess before Tuesday in the hope that it will be deemed “acceptable”. Meanwhile, we’ve got another couple of cartloads (at least) just of branches leaves, and other yard waste – on top of the normal household garbage. And no place to put any of it until the garbage folks take the other loads away.

Still, I have to say when it’s all over, it ought to be worth it. The pump will be completely hidden, we’ll have more room for plants than ever, and perhaps by summer 2011 everything will have grown back big enough to really screen the yard.

It’s two days before Christmas, and this is usually the time of year, rather than Thanksgiving or New Year’s, that I take stock of the year and life. Thanksgiving is really a Yankee holiday, anyway, and New Year’s always has seemed too busy with other things – in recent years, getting ready for the Christmas Bird Count, but even before that, it seemed like something was always going on. But nobody does much in the days leading up to Christmas, anyway (except last minute shopping) so it’s a good time for reflection.

As much as most people I know and I like to complain about this, that, or the other, we are all incredibly lucky and have so much to be grateful for. By a chance of fate, we were all born in the (loosely defined) West, where (compared with where about 75% or so of the world lives) we have unparalleled freedom. Even in a country where several million of us are denied the right to legally marry our partners, we at least don’t have to worry about being taken away in the middle of the night for protesting injustice. Though most of us don’t have every single thing we want, most of do have the things we need – food, clean safe water, shelter, clothing… Some of us may lose our jobs temporarily, but the chances are, in the long haul, we’ll all be fine; millions around the world will never have a job doing more than providing subsistence for themselves and their families.

I grumble sometimes about the quirks Jonathan has, but at the same time I can’t imagine what my life would now be like without him. For every little problem that comes up from a quirk, there are at least a dozen moments of joy that more than compensate.

I have a good circle of friends who enjoy my company and whose company I enjoy as well. Whenever I gripe that I haven’t gotten to see people lately, I need to remember that at the same time there’s nobody (that I know of, at least) who really detests me and I don’t have to watch my back around others.

I have only minor health complaints, none of which seems that serious, and the same is true of everyone in my immediate family – including parents, sisters, brothers-in-law, nieces, and nephews. Having lost a first cousin (just three years older than me) a year ago to a heart condition and an aunt to complications of renal failure, cancer, diabetes, and too many other problems to list, that’s no small feat.

And it’s not that I live a charmed life. As I noted above, most everyone I know has plenty to be grateful for. Christmas is supposed to be about the arrival of hope, but that’s something I have in abundance; it’s still a good time to be reminded of that hope, and all that’s good in our lives, not the petty stuff that we can’t control anyway and usually isn’t worth getting worked up about.

For all my friends out there – not that many of you will find this message, since my blog readership is relatively small – I hope you have as joyous a Christmas holiday as I hope to.

I hate being snarky. OK, I obviously don’t completely hate it, since I do it often enough, but I don’t really like myself as much when I am. Still, every once in a while I have to vent and I guess it’s better to do it here than at the object of my, well, snarkiness.

One of the good things about the Internet and all the profusion of socializing (a broadly applicable term) sites is that it enables people who can be shy in public to open up a bit and talk with strangers, something they might never do in person. Still, online or off, I think certain customs should be observed. Most sites allow a user to bookmark certain profiles of people you find hot interesting, which is fine. Many sites also allow you to tag “friends”, which is a reciprocal action; if I tag you as a friend, and you accept that tag, then each of us is listed as the other’s friend. If it’s not accepted, then… it doesn’t show on either profile.

So I keep the lists separately. The people on my “friends” list are people I’m friends with – usually offline, though for long-term online friendships I’ve certainly made exceptions. My bookmark/hot list, on sites that allow such, are separate. As they should be. And I make it clear in my profiles, on sites with “friend” type lists, that if you don’t know me already, and you’ve never even said hello online, and I get a “friend” request from you… it’s likely to be ignored or returned with a “Who the hell are you?” note. And yet I get them, over and over. Obviously, it’s people who’ve looked at part of my profile (my pictures? surely not) and didn’t bother to read most of it.

I swear, the next one that does that, I’m going to go off on.

Still, it pales in comparison to the cheekiness I had yesterday. One such “social” site allows you to sign a member’s “guestbook” with one of several pre-selected comments (I like you, you’re hot, you’re handsome, etc.). It’s a nice way to halfway introduce yourself to someone, and if the person you tag wishes, he can either sign your guestbook in return, or initiate a real conversation (or just say thank you). This one said (first words, I swear): “I’m a competitive bodybuilder, looking for sponsors. Interested?”

Leaving aside the vaguely whore-like aspects of asking people who think you’re hot to pay you money, since when did the expense of his hobbies become my concern? I know taking all those steriods supplements gets expensive, but then, whose hobbies don’t? I’m a birder; a good pair of Swarovski binoculars would set me back about $1,700. A nice Leica Televid spotting scope is another $4,000. A decent, lightweight but solid tripod and head? Add in $600 or so. And like Mr. Muscleboy, birding involves travel, so add in all those travel expenses too.

I don’t go around asking for contributions to the optics fund, and honestly I’m appalled at the gall he had in asking… but then, I guess, there are people with gall out there and some of them get what they’re looking for. I guess that’s what separates the whores from the rest of us.

I’m done.

Not with the blog, mind you; just with my annual 3 months of grueling work when I actually have to be in the office every day, all day (and well into the evening or night). This year’s legislative session went well enough for us, with few major glitches (a few here and there, but nothing too serious), and a lot of prospects for future growth. Can’t ask for much more than that.

Additionally, my parents’ 50th anniversary has come and gone. My sisters and I started planning a party for them a year ago, and were able to get a good many of our living relatives into town for it. Sadly, four of my father’s six siblings are now deceased, as are all three of my mother’s, so there were few people of their age bracket left. But my dad’s brother and sister (and their spouses) made it, along with a great many nieces, nephews, and cousins.

Given that for several years now, most family gatherings of any size have all been for funerals, it was really nice for this one to be for a happy event. The food was good, the company was fun, everyone liked Jonathan (many of them had never met him before), and my folks really liked the gifts we got them.

The best part for me was that with the session on until two days before the party, I could avoid any major work requirements (other than idea-contributing) until the morning of the event. During which time I pulled off carving a watermelon basket for fruit, making three pasta salads, picking up the main dish chicken, sculpting and decorating a cheese ball, and a handful of other details. It’s great to have a queer in the family when it comes to parties.

Unfortunately for me, this doesn’t mean I can now relax for the next six months. I’ve got to capitalize on those contacts made during session, and I’ve also taken on another software development project that threatens to swallow all my free time for the next month. Can’t complain too much, though, since this one may help Jonathan’s career along a good bit too.

Remember the scam that record clubs used to be?

As I recall, several of the major labels had them, but over the years they got consolidated into separate entities serving all the labels. They’d offer you some great deal–10 albums for $4.99, or something like that–as long as you agreed to buy, say, two more albums at regular prices during the next year. The “regular price” was always a few dollars more than you could get the album anywhere else, and you had to pay shipping and handling, but… you’d still come out ahead if you got your music, bought your requirements, and got out.

The gimmick was the monthly mailing – you’d get this nice slick catalog each month with hundreds of records listed, from all sorts of music types – and usually, most of them were marked down from the “regular” price. So while you were looking for your “regular price” albums, you’d see a lot more you wanted… and since the mark-downed ones didn’t count for your requirements, you figured you’d get an extra here or there. And in that monthly mailing was a card – listing the “Selection of the Month” – some album you almost certainly didn’t want, but which the company was going to mail you, automatically (and charge you full price for, plus shipping) unless you mailed the card back to them by a certain date.

Naturally, you’d forget to mail the card eventually. You might go two, three, six months sending it in as soon as it came in, but eventually, it would slip past you. Or you’d mail it six days before it was due, and the company would claim they didn’t get it on time, so the junk album was sent. And the bill.

Consumers wised up, and record clubs (and their later derivatives, CD clubs, VHS clubs, and DVD clubs) were in rapid decline until the Internet revived them. Suddenly, they didn’t have to print a new catalog every month – major savings. The “card” could be sent by email, and responded to via the web – again, major savings. And by promising you that you could reply on the spot, the fear of forgetting to send in the card eased. And because credit and debit cards are much more common now, people are more comfortable paying for their initial purchases that way – so the club can bill your card immediately for shipments.

And if you shop wisely, it’s possible to get some really decent deals. Last year, I got all five seasons of Babylon 5, plus all of the TV movies, for less than $200, including shipping from Columbia House. And being anal-retentive, the first thing I do each month when I get the email about the Director’s Selection is to decline it. Then, if I see something I want, either the Director’s Selection or its alternates, I buy it.

Until this past month, when Columbia House insisted I didn’t decline their selection (Law and Order SVU, Season 8), and shipped it to me. Their rules are clear: If you didn’t order something, you can call and ask for a return label, prepaid, to ship it back. (Technically, since you didn’t order it, you can keep it free, but they have your card number, so they’ve already charged you for it, and good luck getting your money back if you don’t return the item.) But I don’t keep confirmation emails for weeks on end, so of course I had deleted the confirmation that I declined the order. If you don’t open the box, you can write “Refused-Return to Shipper” and get the entire thing back, too – but I had to open the outer package to find out what it was and confirm I hadn’t ordered it. So I could only return it – and if you’re just returning something, you have to pay return shipping and when they get the product, they only return your purchase price, not the original shipping and handling ($7.99 in this case).

I emailed Customer Service and asked if they would be willing to a deal: I would pay to return the DVD’s I didn’t order, if they would agree to credit me the original shipping along with my purchase price. It seemed fair, since I knew I’d declined the order. I didn’t necessarily expect them to go along, but I figured it was worth a try. I even mentioned that there were several other TV series sets I was interested in buying.

So, email response comes back, with nothing but cut-and-paste responses from the program rules. They tell me I can return it unopened at their expense – but of course, I’d already told them I opened the box to find out what it was. They then helpfully told me they would be glad to take my order for the additional series sets I wanted via their website.

So, I wrote back, including the previous correspondence, and noting that they had not specifically addressed my question about splitting the shipping costs. I stressed that I understood the program rules, and that I was asking for an exception, given the circumstances.

Response #2 comes in: more cut-and-paste from the rules, telling me I can return the DVD’s at my own expense, and that when they arrive at Columbia House, “appropriate credit” will be issued to my bank card. Which translates to, I’m sure, once we have the merchandise back, then we’ll leave you stuck with both shipping charges. I don’t even mind that as much as I mind the fact that these goobers will simply NOT say “Yes” or “No” to the simple question – will you refund the original shipping fees if I return this? I could cope with “Sorry, we have to be firm and apply policies uniformly”. I could even handle “Sorry, but you screwed up, and it’s not our problem.” It’s the evasive, non-answer answers that have driven me up the wall.

So I’m returning the disks, cancelling the account, and spending the $500 or so on DVD’s that I would have spent there at Barnes and Noble. or Amazon. Hell, even at Wal-mart. Life is too short to deal with people who refuse to answer questions.

Is it rude to say “Sorry, but there’s NO FUCKING WAY I would ever approve a friend request from you” to someone on Facebook?

In some respects, I suppose I had a miserable time in high school. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time. I wasn’t happy; I knew I was gay, I’d already started going out and meeting other gay people, and in 1979, in the deep south, that wasn’t an easy task, nor were future prospects particularly bright and cheery. Nevertheless, things should have been better. I was a smart student; I was in a pretty good high school (a magnet school with a broadcast public radio station and five or six foreign languages, including Latin, Greek, and Russian). I think we were the only public high school in the state at the time to offer physics, and there were so many students taking calculus when the state required only two years of math that it was embarrassing.

We even had a gymnastics team (although no football, basketball or baseball), and for a gay boy that was a major plus. As it turned out, my best friend in high school was team captain, and most of his teammates became friends of mine as well. But in terms of actually having friends, the kind you hang out with after school, well, that just didn’t happen. We lived in one corner of the parish (county), the magnet school was maybe 10-15 miles away, and kids were bused there from all over the place, so there weren’t any other kids nearby that I went to school with. My best friend, in fact, lived about as far from me as was possible and still attend the same magnet school.

And let me add–if you think not having football and cheerleaders would eliminate the cliques of “in” people that pervade high school didn’t know teenagers. True, there were folks who were both orchestra people and radio nerds, or fencers and Math geeks, but the cliques were still real. And you were either “in” or not – and I was a not.
I guess that’s why I finally “got happy” when I got to LSU and entered the Honors program. It attracted a quirky bunch of students who shared classes and who (mostly) hung out together before, between, and after classes in the Honors facilities. For the first time, I had an actual circle of friends, instead of just a couple of people who let me into part their lives. I belonged.

You belong to your family, of course, but that’s kind of mandatory. Unless they disown you, but by default you’re in. Belonging with people who have to choose to let you join is something else. It can be a life-changing experience. It was for me.

And that’s one reason I never looked back at most of my high school friends. (Another is that probably 2/3 or more of them went out of state for college – something a magnet school education made possible – and many more moved away after the economic turmoil in Louisiana in the 1980’s.) I haven’t been to a reunion yet, not even the big 25th. There were maybe two or three classmates I would see occasionally, but otherwise I lost contact with my entire high school class. Including, unfortunately, my best friend.

I rectified that part last summer, 27 years after graduation, by obsessively googling his name until I found him. I was surprised to find out he’s a psychiatrist – the real medical doctor/MD kind of headshrinker – and living in Alaska. This past week, my youngest sister (who went to the same school, six years behind) sent me a message about a classmate of mine who died suddenly last week. The message had been sent to a Facebook group for graduates of our high school. and mostly out of curiosity, I signed up.

Since then, I’ve gotten six “friend” requests from the group – a couple from people I had to look up in the yearbook to remember, a couple from folks I really wouldn’t have minded staying in contact with. One girl was a good friend of my cousin Mary, and she asked about her in her request. And one came from a former teacher, which stopped me in my tracks.

This man took over as my newspaper teacher halfway through my senior year. The class was designed to teach us journalism through producing the campus paper. It wasn’t a huge thing – tabloid size, I think eight pages each month. Maybe twelve. It’s hard to recall. But I do remember several things clearly. First, when he came in mid-year, he decided to institute a bunch of regular assignments, outside of publishing the paper, as a key part of our grades. Second, he made absolutely no effort to see that the student editors actually did anything towards producing the paper. Third, there were perhaps four of us in the class who understood that perhaps the key component in newspaper journalism is actually publishing a paper, and we did the work that the rest of the class of 30 or so should have been doing. Fourth, because of that, we often didn’t have as much class time to work on some of the added assignments. And Fifth, I remember getting a “C” in the class on my final report card – lowering my GPA just enough to knock me out of the running for some awards. As did the other students who, like me, had actually produced the fucking paper each month – writing the stories, typing them for the printer, writing headlines, doing the layout, choosing the pictures, writing the cutlines, even packaging up the entire mess to send to the printer by deadline.

When we confronted him about the grades, he prissily told us that he’d informed the class that the additional assignments would affect our grades. What he hadn’t mentioned is that failure to do anything at all on the newspaper – as was the case for over half the class – didn’t merit any grade reduction at all. If you turned in all your miscellaneous assignments and they were satisfactory, you got an A, even if that was the only thing you’d done all year.

Fine – it’s his class, he can set the rules, and I learned a valuable lesson: some people only care about process, not results, and as long as you sit quietly at your desk moving paper from the in box to the out box and you put the right color stamp on each, they think you’re wonderful. Those are the kind of people to avoid. Some people realize that while process is important, results matter too, usually more. Those are the people to learn from.

I haven’t responded to his friend request yet. I’ll have to think on it. I’m almost certainly not going to approve it, but I’m torn as to how much, if anything, I should tell him when I deny it.

There was a time when very little got past me.

I’m not sure when that time was, any more, but the change got past me, and a lot more since (apparently). My best guess is that as we hit our 30’s and 40’s, our brains just stop accumulating a lot of the smaller detail that fills our memories when we’re younger. For one thing, I guess there’s less room for it – or at least, adding too much more makes the brain’s index just too cumbersome to navigate the memories.

And interests change. So whereas 20 years ago, I’d still would know maybe 3 out of 4 of the top 40 pop artists, today I probably couldn’t recognize the names of 3 out of 4. Of the rest, I might have heard the name but wouldn’t recognize a picture. Or a song title. I’ve almost certainly never heard the songs.

Heck, at one time I could tell you if there was anyone new who’d shown up this week at the gay dance club in town. Today, not having been in at least five years, probably closer to 8 or 9, I probably couldn’t identify ten people there. I barely notice when someone new moves in on my block, and if the move happens in my busy season at work, I probably won’t know it for months.

You’d think, though, that I could keep track of who connects to my blog. Only a couple of friends are regular commenters (thank you, Mick and Brett) but I know that there are at least a few others who read it, based on the logs for the webserver–after filtering out the indexers and so forth. Apparently, there are gadgets you can install in Wordpress which will show you where the traffic to your blog comes from, and even (if you want) display that as part of your website.

I noticed this on Tony’s “West of Mayberry” blog recently–the most recent ten “hits” to his blog are listed, along with the (approximate) location of the viewer — in my case, my “hit” shows correctly as “Baton Rouge, Louisiana”. More interestingly, I noticed that it shows I arrived at his page from my own blog (because I use my blog’s links as a way to catch up on the others I read most often). Cool feature – I may have to include that somehow on mine.

But what really bowled me over is that I hadn’t noticed Tony’s updated blogroll. On his previous blog, he’d listed the blogs he reads most often on his “Large List”, and a longer list below of others he looked at as “Rolling Along”… neither of which included mine. Which I understood, because lord knows, I’m not that diligent about posts. I didn’t comment much on his old blog, either, at least not in comparison with his recent, revised edition.

Now, however, on the Mayberry blog, there I am: right on the list under Brettcajun (which, if anyone knows the history between Brett and me, is totally appropriate). I’m flattered that he noticed the posts I’ve made there, enough to come at least check out what little I have to say here. It makes me glad I still notice some things.

(with apologies to Norma Desmond)

Christmas, and the post-Christmas weeks, were incredibly busy this year, so apologies to my hordes of fans (all three or four of you) for the lack of updates recently.

Jonathan outdid himself again this year with the Christmas lights.

We spent most of the Christmas week driving back and forth to my sister’s and my parents’ houses, for one event after another. Between the driving and the overflow of children (whom I love, but really….), and the time demands, we’ve already decided to cut back on family events for next year.

In the midst of all that, I did two Christmas Bird Counts this year. I’m the compiler for the count in Baton Rouge, which is usually a well-attended but not particularly exciting count. However, this year, I found an Ash-throated Flycatcher, which was only the second of this species ever recorded on our count (another party had the third, in another section of our circle). Unfortunately, no pictures of this bird yet.

Jonathan is now off at MAL, assisting good friends at their vendor booth this year. I’m sitting here freezing, as Baton Rouge has finally had a couple of sub-freezing nights, which have largely frozen back most of the hummingbird plants. However, that’s driven what may be a new hummingbird to the feeders; I say “may” because she (a female Rufous Hummingbird) appears to be banded, and there’s a chance that she’s the bird I’ve had since Election Day, but having lost her color mark. Or she could be a returnee from some other point in the past. We won’t know unless we recapture her to check her band number.

Once I realized the new theme looked kind of wintery, I decided it would be better served by being used after Christmas – so some slight changes to things for the holidays here.