Words of Danny O'Bigbelly My idea of a good time

Is there anyone among us who hasn’t dreamed, at one time or another, of forming a musical group or other flavor of performing troupe?

When I was a boy, the boy next door received a drum kit from Santa for Christmas. Immediately, he, I, and two other denizens of the neighborhood laid intricate plans for a long and wildly successful career as the most popular rock band of our time. All we needed was a really good name. After several days of bickering, bargaining, and general bitching about it, we settled on the name “JEWL”, which was a combination of the letters from our names. (We combed the surrounding tract housing in desperate search for someone in our cohort whose name started with a second E, but failed.) And then the singer quit in disgust, leaving us with “JEW”, which probably wouldn’t have opened many doors for us. The band never really got off the ground, and it was over before I actually owned any instrument.

But I know it could have been different. If we’d just picked the right name, I wouldn’t be typing this right now. One of my groupies would be typing it, while I dozed peacefully on a mattress stuffed with thousand-dollar bills. After breakfast and snorkeling around the reefs of my private archipelago (formerly known as the British Virgin Islands), with as many supermodels as comfortably fit in my private jet, I would settle down to the task of finding an adequate repacement warm-up act for my yearly world tour–filling Michael Jackson’s shoes wouldn’t be easy. Maybe the Rolling Stones again, Aerosmith or Tom Petty? They all worked out pretty well in the past. Definitely not U2 or Madonna again.

Yes, this is exactly the way eleven-year-old boys think. Exactly.

So, what’s the name of your supergroup?

Mark Trost coined the name “Concept of the Virtual Fist” (it’s that little kudo-awarding icon at the end of every discussion post on TBD–soon to be lost forever, I’m afraid), and bequeathed it to me for this purpose in case I ever need it.

It’s better than anything I have laying around.

What about you?

I suppose it’s a sign that life has been pretty good to me when I mention that one lingering disappointment I have is that that Donald Fagen hasn’t written and recorded a lot more music.

A second disappointment is that because of some combination of zealous lawyers and lack of appeal to the MTV generation, it’s difficult to find much of his work on youtube or any of the other places one can go to watch small, grainy, lo-fi videos of their favorite artists.

Fortunately, I found one elsewhere:

http://www.clevver.com/music/video/138545/donald-fagen-new-frontier.html

It’s not the one I was hoping for–I wanted to find “Trans-Island Skyway”, but I wasn’t able to find a good recording online. Perhaps you’ll be able; please post a link…

“Trans-Island Skyway” starts with a naked but surprisingly subtle riff and builds slowly to full orchestration; a perfect layering of several rhythms and harmonies. Like a fine mechanical watch, the exquisite complexity of the interrelationships of all the parts is implicit and all that one sees is the resulting piece of jewelry. The lyrics provide a human vision of the future, but the song ends abruptly without resolution.

“New Frontier”, in contrast, begins in full flight–in the video, as you will see, the music begins when someone turns on the radio–as if the music had already been playing, somewhere, for some time already. Instead of the future, it reviews one of the great struggles of our time: on one side, nuclear war, MAD, stifling conformity, stereotypes; while on the other side, progressivism, Kennedy, Brubeck, Picasso, Tuesday Weld… The fear that we would all die together as a race if we could not learn to live with and accept our differences, balanced against the optimism and idealism of the New Frontier.

“New Frontier” ends the way “Trans-Island Skyway” begins, but in reverse. There is a gradual peeling away of the layers until fewer and fewer remain. When you listen to the last minute of the song, you’ll hear what I mean. Finally, there is only one instrument, which, as if it suddenly realizes that it is alone, begins playing a new melody.

And this is pop music?

Who is your favorite undiscovered or unheralded genius?

What song sings to you?

PETAs recent position that the concept of purebred dogs is equivalent to racism is completely insane, of course, as most people have come to expect of PETAs positions.

But, like many crazy things, it has a kernel of quasi-truth to it. People are completely comfortable talking about the characteristics of different breeds of dogs (this breed is good with kids, that breed is a good watchdog, this other breed is pretty but stupid, that other breed does nothing but bark all day, and so on). You can look this stuff up. You can buy books that tell you what breed you should get, depending on your own personality and situation. Nobody, except PETA, thinks anything of this. There are no protests.

But it’s a small step from thinking that you can judge the character of a dog from its appearance to thinking that you can judge the character of a person from his or her appearance. And that, dear reader, is racism.

Of course, it’s a wrong step. People are not bred to have a particular appearance or character, while dogs are and have been selectively bred to reinforce certain characteristics for many hundreds of generations. Breedism is not racism.  Breeding is engineering.

In my own case, I can state categorically that red hair is not a by-product of a breeding program to create hyper-intelligence, nor is deep yellow skin a side effect of a breeding program to create the ultimate lover, just as bulging eyes and strong prescription glasses are not a side effect of the sarcasm gene. These are mere coincidences.

Every once in a while, someone comes along who not only excels at some sport (or art, profession, etc), but does so in a way that not only raises but redefines the game.

I was reminded recently of Bobby Orr, who redefined the game of ice hockey.

Orr’s early career sounds almost like the stuff of legend, but it’s all true. Spotted at the equivalent of a pee-wee hockey game by a talent scout who was at the rink to watch a later game of high-schoolers, Orr was first brought to the attention of the Boston Bruins coaches when he was eleven. By the time he was twelve, he had a contract to play professional hockey for the Bruins — as soon as he was old enough. At age fourteen, the Bruins arranged to have him play for a junior league team (18-20-year-olds) where, despite being the smallest player on the ice, he quickly made a name for himself. There was so much anticipation as Orr grew from a scraggly teenager into an adult that Orr was a superstar in the world of professional hockey before he played his first game as a Bruin, at the tender age of 18.

There was much skepticism that he couldn’t possibly live up to the hype. Stepping out onto the ice with legs that “felt like rubber”, Orr was terrified by the huge crowd before the game began. Nevertheless, he quickly found his rhythm and scored two goals and one assist in the first period. The skeptics were never heard from again. Despite a career shortened by injury, he went on to lead the Bruins (which had before been a lackluster team, to put it mildly) to two Stanley cups, and along the way he picked up nearly every major award in professional hockey, including leading the league in scoring for two years.

But I haven’t told you the game-changing part. Orr lead the league in scoring while he was playing defense.  In fact, his specialty was killing penalties, one of the most difficult assignments in hockey–and he would often change the apparent disadvantage into a scoring opportunity, as shown in what is considered to be one of the greatest goals in hockey: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE9s_FaOFPM

The scoring records in hockey are all held by offense-oriented stars like the astonishing Wayne Gretzsky.  But true hockey fans understand the importance of the plus/minus statistic: the number of goals scored while a player is on the ice by the team of the player (plus) and the opposing team (minus).  It may seem impressive to score five goals in a game, but it’s less impressive if your opponent scores six.  On the other hand, it may seem lackluster to score only one goal in a game, but if your opponent scores none, you’ve still won.  Bobby Orr’s plus/minus per game is unparalleled.  When you consider this combined with the handicap of killing power plays, it’s even more impressive.  Bobby Orr’s best season plus/minus was 124 goals, the highest ever recorded, and he has three season plus/minus records in the all-time top ten.  No other player appears more than once in the top ten, and Wayne Gretzsky’s highest season plus/minus is 98, Mario Lemieux’s best season just edges out Orr’s rookie season at 55, and Gordie Howe never did better than 45.

Prior to Orr, defensemen were expected to play defense and forwards were responsible for scoring goals. Sure, a defenseman might score an opportunistic goal now and then, but their primary responsibility is protecting their own goal, not putting pucks into the other. Orr could do it all — kill power plays, defend his own goal, and score. Hockey has never be played the same way since.

And, of course, there’s the designers of the Porsche 917K, who forced racing officials to rewrite the rule book in order to permit any other car to be remotely competitive, but that’s another story…

Who is your game-changing legend?

My mother used to tell me that “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”

Her reasoning, if I remember it correctly, is that if you curse the darkness, you might sound big, scary and dangerous, but if you light a candle, all the monsters will immediately know exactly where you are and that you’re nothing but a small, terrified and potentially tasty child left alone in the dark. Might as well get it over with quickly.

What words of wisdom did your parents impart to you?

And how did you interpret them?

Winter got started early in the Northeast this year, giving us a white Christmas with plenty of surplus. It’s usually fairly dry in November and December, and with a lingering warmth despite the frost, so having a white Christmas, much less the remnants of several snow storms on the ground at Christmas, is a bit unusual.

And the winter has continued at the same pace, bringing snow at regular intervals, sometimes only enough to dust the lawn and require scraping off the cars, but sometimes, like this past Monday, adding a fresh thick blanket of more than a foot. I don’t think the yard has been clear of snow more than twice since mid-December, and the place where I heap the snow from the back steps, which is in nearly perpetual shadow, has never completely melted.

Looking on the weather map, there are several warmer days ahead, but it’s uncertain whether these will be enough to melt the accumulation from the last several days. It may be weeks yet before the snow is completely gone.

Although it has been snowy, it hasn’t been a very harsh winter–we’ve had relatively few days of wind and bitter cold, and I’m sure that folks from colder environments are laughing at the idea of seeing their lawns until Easter, but then again, they don’t live in the Northeast, and aren’t waiting with growing impatience for the advent of the glory of a New England (or even a New Jersey) Spring.

It’s only the beginning of March, but I am restless already. I am waiting for Spring, with plans of plantings and gardening and thoughts of adding a new trellis or two.

Why are you looking forward to Spring, and how are you preparing?

You might think that after thirty years of shaving, I would have learned how to avoid nicking that little spot under my nose, the spot where most of the blood in my body apparently congregates when it has nothing better to do.

It would be reasonable to think that. Nobody would fault your mind for harboring such a thought.

But you would be wrong.

Several years ago, when my wife and I were visiting China, doing some touristy stuff, and traveling to one of the more out-of-the-way cities, we were lounging in our hotel room when we were unexpectedly roused from our groggy jet-lagged daze by a soft knock on the door. I opened the door, and a young woman I’d never seen before and whose name I was never able to learn gently handed me an infant girl and a small envelope of papers. And then, before we could fully grasp what was happening, she was gone. I don’t think we ever saw her again.

The infant was dressed in several layers of clothing–all her worldly possessions, it turned out. She was perspiring from wearing so many clothes and appeared unhappy and confused. There was no question that she was somewhat ill. There was also no question that we were a little bit unprepared for this.

But not completely unprepared. We’d been waiting for this day for a very long time. All the paperwork had been done and all the forms had been filed. We had diapers, wipes, formula, new clothing, an assortment of toys, medicines, remedies, and gadgets. We’d read the books. We had a lot of facts. But this was reality. It tastes and smells a lot different.

The day the baby is given to his or her “forever family” is called “Gotcha Day.” I’m not sure who is the subject and who is the object of that gotcha. There are convincing arguments for several different interpretations.

How did having children change things for you?

If you don’t have any children, perhaps you know people who do, or remember stories from your parents about how you changed their lives.

They had been orbiting above the wreckage for fifteen minutes but had seen no sign of life. They had watched as Broderick Weltswell, crippled with wing problems, had attempted an unpowered emergency landing on the short ribbon of thin flat road below, only to be hit twice more as he glided in. They had watched helplessly as the uniformed enemy cautiously but inexorably approached the wreckage.

Reginald Thipset, flight leader, didn’t believe that Broderick was still alive. Three thoughts flitted through his mind: he would never see Broderick again; he was going to have to write very painful letter upon return to base; and that the return to base was becoming more perilous by the moment.

The sky flared red in the west, but gloom was gathering in the east, the direction home. The night sky was not safe. “Just once,” thought Reginald, “I’d like to be able to enjoy a sunset instead of turning away and fleeing.”

His revere was broken by a sudden squack over the flight channel from his wingman. “Sir, there’s nothing we can do here. The sun is setting. We need to leave now.”

Reginald considered his dwindling options and made a difficult choice. There was no time to take the approved route. “Form up and follow me. We’re going down on the deck. We’re taking a shortcut through the hills.”

There was no protest. His flight trusted him. Good.

The flight followed Reginald through the hills, following the terrain, so low they were often flying between the trees. Reginald saw the startled faces of children playing in a yard of a small house turn and follow him as flew past. It was a reminder that they were flying within easy small arms range of hundreds of the enemy, but he knew that they had little to fear. Flying this low, through the wooded hills, meant that the chance of anyone even getting off a shot was negligible. Reginald had never heard of it happening. Not here. But they’d be over the flats soon.

Reginald didn’t flinch as his threat detector screamed a warning. They were passing over an old “Big Eye” site. It always made the threat detector go off, but Reginald and his flight knew that it just a beacon, left behind like a scarecrow, to frighten anyone flying overhead. Whoever was operating the site had never sent anything up after them, but being watched so intently, even by impotent eyes, still sent a chill down Reginald’s back. But at the same time it comforted Reginald to pass it by, because it was a landmark on the way home.

Then they were over the flats, an immense alluvial plane that had been cleared of nearly all trees by generations of farmers. Flat and featureless, with no vegetation taller than a stalk of rice, it was the last barrier. Flying low through the hills had kept them safe, but flying low here was dangerous. They were exposed here, horizon to horizon. There were stories about entire flights decimated in the blink of an eye over the flats.

“Feet wet in forty seconds,” announced Reginald to the flight, trying to sound reassuring. Over the water they’d be safe. The seconds ticked by. Reginald realized he was holding his breath. He could see the shore, and then it was behind them.

The sky behind them was fading to ochre and the water looked black beneath them. They were over the water. Reginald relaxed. In a few moments, they set down, rejoining the rest of the flock paddling around Fresh Pond in Cambridge. It was just another day in the life of a Canadian Goose.

What do you think animals think about?

Back when I used to watch TV with any regularity (back before children, etc) one of my favorite shows was the morning financial report (I think that’s what it was called) on CNN with Deborah Marchini and Stuart Varney. I think it stopped airing at least ten years ago, but I still miss it.

One of the reasons that I used to enjoy it because I thought that Deborah was hot. Not so much her looks (which were just fine) but her voice and her playful inflection. I was pretty sure that female viewers would feel the same way about Stuart. And maybe there was a little something going on between them? They seemed to be having an awfully good time.

I also really enjoy listening to Laura Carlo on WCRB (Boston’s classical musical station, now also serving Cape Cod and the Islands on …) and Bob Pleasants on WUMB (folk music radio) because their voices have such amazing character.

I suspect that Laura Carlo could seduce me in thirty seconds over the phone. It’s like an acoustic pheromone or some such phenomenon. There’s never anything overtly sexy or flirty in her voice — it’s purely professional — but I know that if she ever ended her introduction of a piece with something like “This is really long one, and it gets so lonely here in the station… first man here can have me for thirty minutes” there would be a thousand men reaching for their car keys before the conductor raised his baton.

And there’s something so calming and peaceful about Bob Pleasants voice that I’m amazed it’s available without a prescription.

I made the terrible mistake of going to their stations web sites to make sure that I’d spelled their names correctly and now I know what they actually look like (or their press kit photos, anyway). I’d always imagined Laura to look more like Deborah Marchini, but with darker hair. And Bob Pleasants I imagined like Stuart Varney, but with a pony tail and three-days growth of beard. I was wrong. Dang.

So, who are your favorite on-air personalities, and what do you imagine about them?

Anyone who appears in People Magazine or other similar publications is ineligible; you already “know” too much about them. This is about what’s going on in your head, not about what you read in Tiger Beat or Vogue

Every once in a while, I’ll come across something so notable on the internet that I feel I have to bookmark it so that I can come back and look at it again later or share it.

Let’s start with something mundane, from several years ago:

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/276/2499/1600/freshsalad.jpg

This may be my first exposure to the genre of a photo with something circled and/or arrowed with a “wtf?” inscription. It certainly wasn’t the last.

And there was a link to different crazy vending machines, which is now dead, but I found something like it via google:

http://www.photomann.com/japan/machines/index.htm

I find it somewhat disturbing that alongside the vending machines for kerosene and pr0n, the author lists an honor-system vegetable stand as a crazy idea. Huh? Is there any other way to buy fresh vegetables? Whoever this guy is, he’s clearly never been to farm country.

And here’s a link from much more recently: a David Byrne video that involves a bunch of people getting naked and dancing around in the nude. But fear not–no naughty bits are shown! Your innocence will not be corrupted by watching this video. It’s all censored. Without the censorship, this video would have no purpose. Explaining any more will spoil the surprise. Watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyJR7QlRhM4

If you didn’t smile at that, we need to talk.

I don’t have any memory of how I found this–probably someone sent me a link:

http://www.zenbydesign.com/newchair/tantra.html

Has anyone seen one of these in the real world? How many do you think they’ve sold? But don’t you want one now? Be honest. Aren’t you already thinking of how you’re going to explain this contraption when Aunt Millie comes over for tea? It’s not the kind of thing you can hide in your nightstand.

Personally, I think this looks like it could be fun, except for the fact that I’m married to a woman who can’t look at it without giggling. Plus the kids would probably use it as a jungle gym.

In case you ever need some avant-garde Tees, these guys will fix you up:

http://www.threadless.com/

Lovely stuff.

I’ll always have a bookmark or two for this, just in case:

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/whitenerdy

Most of the links in by bookmarks are dead. Oh, well.

So, what about you? What forgotten treasures or eclectic crap do you have bookmarked? What seemed worth a second look?

If this seems familiar, it’s because I’ve cut and pasted it from another site where I used to post stuff like this…

When I was a small lad, growing up in rural nowhere, the meadow next to the house had an enormous blackberry patch at one end. At least half an acre of twisted vines.

If you have never picked blackberries, you can try to imagine their vines as the bastard offspring of roses, wild grapes, and poison ivy. Twisted, intertwined, thorny, six feet tall, and nasty. But covered with sweet, sweet berries.

After the berries around the perimeter have been harvested, the only way to access the interior is by carefully unbraiding the vines and then holding them apart and then entering the core. This can be done by a six-year-old child wearing nothing but shorts and flip-flops — the flip-flops being necessary to shield ones feet from the runners on the ground, and to hold down some of the branches. It’s slow work, but since it takes a while to pick a branch clean, not too tedious.

On a bright June day, dressed in nothing but the aforementioned shorts and flip-flops, bucket in one hand, I entered the patch and began to work my way inside, filling my bucket. As I released the vines, they closed behind me. After 30 minutes or so, I could no longer see my friends who had come picking with me, and I had somewhat lost my bearings. But no worries. I couldn’t be more than two hundred yards away from my house, and if I got stuck, I could call for help and someone would find me. It had happened before.

It was a beautiful day, and blackberries were filling my bucket and my stomach, and I was seeing the inner core of the field for the first time. Strange things lived here — things I didn’t know lived so close, but were kept safe from predators by the nearly impenetrable thicket of thorny bramble. I startled pheasants — and they startled me, bursting up from the ground, their wings whistling. I found rabbit burrows and other burrows — woodchucks? badgers? I’ll never know.

This was all wonderful. I started to sketch out plans for a secret hideout for me and my friends, a clubhouse safe forever from the frightening and cootie-infested girls across the street.

That’s when I stepped on the beehive. But I didn’t realize it right away.

First one bee started pestering me. Not unusual — bees tend to think that redheads are some sort of exotic flower, so I get confused bees pestering me all the time. But then it was two bees, and then it was four, and then it was five billion bees.

This was unwelcome news. We had Africanized bees in the neighborhood — or so we all believed. We knew they’d been killing our cats, anyway. I don’t really care much about the ethnic origins of bees; I just care whether they have an established pattern of stinging things to death.

I weighed my options and made a difficult decision. I made it very quickly. I don’t know what happened next — I have no memory of the thirty seconds it must have taken to retrace my steps. My next memory is running, blood streaming behind me, empty handed and bare footed, up to the kitchen screen door, and slamming it shut behind me, having outrun the main host of bees.

I remember my mother looking somewhat annoyed that I was bleeding all over the linoleum, but then thinking better of sending me back outside. Then I remember her calling the neighbors and asking them to send over as much first aid cream as they had, and call around for more.

My bucket and flip-flops were never found.

Surprisingly, my wounds were superficial and I didn’t get that many stings — maybe a dozen. Perhaps something was looking out for me that day. My injuries weren’t nearly as bad as the time I met a strange cat and somehow decided that it really wanted to be picked up and petted — but that’s another story.

What do you know you have forgotten?

• The name of the kid who sat next to you in fourth grade?
• The phone number you had in college?
• Which aunt gave you which crystal vase as a wedding present?

I know I knew the answers to those inquiries, but I know I don’t know the answers now nor shall anon. With each passing year, I seem to remember remembering things more than I remember things.

For example, I know I saw the movie Xanadu when it came out. And I know at least seven other people saw it–I counted. But now, other than the fact that it involved roller skating, disco, Gene Kelly, Olivia Newton-John, ELO, and the Tubes (how could it not have been memorable?) I can’t really remember much about it, and neither can anyone else I’ve asked.

But it wasn’t until I saw this clip that I realized how much I’d forgotten: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m1UWSD-FaA

Weird Al dancing on a tightrope? A troupe of dancing mimes? Electric blue pirate shirts? Olivia dressed as Ming the Merciless? How could this not have been memorable?

It’s enough to make me think seriously about holing up in a cork-lined room for a few years to jot down what I still do remember, before the rest of it is gone for good.

What about you? What do you remember remembering, and remember no more? And do you miss it?

I’ve tried so many times to tell you all, but at the last minute, I’ve always chickened out. But here it is: I like jerboas. I think they’re pretty neat. They’re my favorite burrowing animal.

I realize that in popular culture, there are many rumors and mistruths out there about what jerboas are and what they do. Perhaps an honest and frank discussion will help you to understand jerboas, and learn to live and work side-by-side with the jerboaphiles in your community. (Someone you know–perhaps someone you love–likes jerboas. There are more of us than most people guess.)

Jerboas are small burrowing animals that appear, at first glance, like a sort of mashup of a mouse and a kangaroo. There is a similar creature, the “kangaroo rat”, that shares many of its characteristics. Some people consider these names synonymous, but I do not believe this to be accurate.

Jerboas also have long hind legs, large ears, big eyes, and a very long, and frequently tufted tail. They look like a mammalian grasshopper, or something out of japanime. The long tail is particularly important because it helps the creature keep its balance and stability during flight.

You read that correctly. I wrote flight. We’ll circle back to that in a moment.

Most species of jerboas live in the desert. One of the most important issues facing diminutive desert denizens today is the prospect of becoming dinner for one of the less diminuative denizens. In the desert, this problem is exacerbated by the relative ease with which a predator can simply follow tracks and/or scent back to your burrow and then nom nom nom its way through you and your loved ones. If you cannot inspire fear and terror in your enemies, like the hamsters of yore, then you must find another way to survive. And several jerboa species have found a way.

Instead of walking up to the front doorstep of their burrows, leaving behind a trail any snack-seeking snack could follow, they pick spots several yards away to serve as their doorsteps. From these spots, using their enormous and powerful legs, they launch themselves into the air and, as gracefully as Guo Jingjing, follow a ballistic path that ends several inches inside their burrows (which are angled vertically in order to make this possible).

I have seen them doing this, and it’s nothing but net every time.

Of course, predators are not entirely dimwitted, and are perfectly capable of following a back trail, so the jerboas exit their burrows in exactly the same manner, often in rapid sequence. The burrow reminds one of a mouse-shooting submachine gun. During certain times of the day, when jerboas are both coming and going, the sky seems to be filled with them.

I was unable to find any clips on youtube of the creatures actually jumping. I’m not sure there would be much to see, anyway. They’re so small and so fast that they just sort of seem to dematerialize in one place and rematerialize a few yards away. But I did find some clips of this fellow, who some of you may find compelling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hyApZROWWQ

So, what’s your favorite creature?

When I was in grade school, someone in the high school published an “underground” paper (a few mimeographed sheets of typewritten jokes, stories, and badly-drawn cartoons). It was far and away the funniest thing that I had seen up until that point in my life. The name of this paper, of which there was only one issue ever, was “La Mole”. And there was a little mole-like mascot drawn on the letterhead. It was wearing a stetson hat pulled low, and carrying a submachine gun.

I’ve always wanted to create my own underground newspaper to lampoon the surface world, but, well, you know. I don’t think I could ever equal La Mole. Safer not to try.

Early in my professional career, I met a researcher from MIT who told me the story of how the first hamsters were captured and “domesticated” for use as lab animals. Apparently, hamsters were known to be susceptible to a particular disease that humans get but other contemporary lab animals did not, thus making them an important weapon in the war against this disease — a testing vehicle for vaccines and the like, I suppose.

Now, you’d think that acquiring hamsters would just be a matter of going down to the local Hamster Hut and coming back with a few wriggling bags of merchandise, but this was back before the first hamsters had been captured. There were no pet hamsters. Only wild hamsters. And they were very, very wild. Pound for pound, more feared than badgers and more wily than rats. You can’t just dig a hamster out of its burrow. The burrows are too extensive, and hamsters can dig faster than you can. And they’re crafty. The only way to capture them was, apparently, to:

1. locate a field rumored to contain hamsters
2. dig a deep ditch around the field
3. fill the ditch with traps or hamster-grabbing helpers
4. excavate the rest of the field
5. wait for the hamsters to make a run for it
6. wearing huge gloves and gauntlets, scoop up the slowest ones

She gave me a copy of a paper describing the capture of the first hamsters, and I mean every word when I say that it would have made an excellent Indiana Jones movie. If moles are the Kim Philbys of the animal kingdom, hamsters are the Jason Bournes.

So, I have a special place in my heart for moles and hamsters. I also confess a small infatuation with voles, because the name is so fun to say. And, of course, rats, which make excellent pets and which my daughters adore.

What’s your favorite burrowing animal?

Go ahead; don’t be embarrassed if it’s a burrowing owl. We’re all friends here.

You know the old joke: a bunch of junior mathematicians set out to discover the least interesting number. They work for a long time and eventually conclude that a certain number (whose name I won’t mention here — her name has been dragged through the mud too many times already) is the least interesting number in existence. Proud of their discovery, they take the result to their department chair. Without even looking up from his computer screen, where he’s been surfing on TBD all morning, he says: “Least interesting number, eh? Well, that’s a very interesting property.”

So even though it was many years ago yesterday (on January 14th) that singer David Jones made a pivotal career decision and changed his name to “David Bowie” in order to prevent further confusion between himself and Davy Jones, superstar member of the then insanely popular group “The Monkees”, I’m sure that there will be something equally droll and nearly newsworthy that happened on this day in history, unless it truly is the least interesting day of all, but I don’t know what that nugget of interestingness is yet–although I’m sure whatever you can dig up will be more interesting than what I have.

The frightening thing is that that isn’t even one of my longer sentences.

Snickerdoodles are not hard to make, but there are some details that do not translate well into the modern era. I will do my best. Please forgive the detail in this recipe; when in doubt I will assume that you don’t know anything about baking.

Step 1: Mix together 1 cup soft shortening (at least half butter), 1.5 cups sugar, and two eggs. Soft shortening is any kind of shortening you have around, but in these days, that probably means butter. Crisco is a bit passe. Soft means that you’ve left it out on the counter until it reaches room temperature. If you microwave it, you are disqualified. Melted butter is not the same as softened butter. And don’t let thoughts of margarine cross your mind. Butter. Room temperature.

If the butter is not soft, it will take a little work to mix. Use a three-tined fork instead of spoon. In a few moments you will have a goopy substance. Resist the temptation to just eat it now. It will be tasty, but it will not be snickerdoodles.

Step 2: In a second bowl, sift together and mix 2.75 cups of flour, two teaspoons cream of tartar, one teaspoon baking soda, and 0.5 teaspoons of salt. If you don’t have a sifter (then you should get one if you’re serious about this), just mix them gently but completely for thirty seconds. Gently, or you will raise a cloud of flour. A fork works well for this, too. But not the same fork as before. That fork is gooey.

I always forget which is baking soda and which is baking powder (one comes in a box, usually, and the other in a can) so be careful. But maybe that’s just me.

Step 3: Gently pour the contents of the second bowl into the first bowl, and mix completely. Again, a fork is the right implement.

Step 4: You’ll notice I never told you to preheat the oven. I didn’t forget. It’s just not time yet. Snickerdoodles are refrigerator cookies. No kidding. You have to chill the dough before cooking.

Cover the bowl with something airtight or transfer it to a smaller container to minimize the amount of air in with the dough. Stick it in the fridge. Now wait several hours.

While you are waiting, mix into a shallow dish two tablespoons of granulated sugar and two teaspoons of cinnamon. You will need this later.

A small digression… The amount of flour necessary isn’t really 2.75 cups. That’s just an average. The precise amount depends on luck. The dough should be tacky, but not sticky. This is impossible to describe in words. It is part of the art. So back in part three, when you were mixing, you could add more flour if the mixture was too sticky. You can learn this only through practice.

Step 5: Several hours have passed. Preheat the oven to 400 F. Retrieve the dough from the fridge.

Using a spoon, dislodge a chunk of the dough about the size of a walnut (including shell). Roll in your hands (you washed them, right?) until it is round. Although the dough will be hard, it will soften in your hands. Then place the nascent cookie in the dish of sugar and cinnamon, rolling it around slightly so that one half of the cookie is encrusted with the mix. Then place on the cookie sheet, sugar side up. Cookies should be 2-3″ inches apart and the from the edge because they will spread quite a bit. Repeat until the sheet is filled.

An alternative is just to eat them raw. They are delicious this way.

Bake the cookies at 400 for 8-10 minutes. They will spread out and then start to get a sort of crinkly appearance on top. When they start to brown just *slightly* they are ready. (it is hard to tell when they begin to brown, because of the cinnamon, so an old trick is to leave one cookie, known as the canary, devoid of the sugar/cinnamon coating)

Do not overcook. Undercooking is better. As mentioned before, cooking them at all is entirely optional (if you’re OK with eating raw eggs).

Step 6: Remove from the oven. Pour a tall glass of milk. Patience, patience. The cookies will burn your mouth if you eat them too soon.

With a blunt spatula, try to remove the canary. If it smooshes up, it’s not ready. The cookies need to set (harden) slightly, which happens when they cool. If the top of your stove gets hot when the oven is on, place them somewhere else. The point is to let them cool. When they come off the sheet with just a bit of give, they’re ready. Maybe five minutes.

Step 7: Enjoy with cold milk. Repeat as necessary.

With the temperature in much of the country hovering at just slightly above nothing, it might be a good time to reflect on one of the most important social issues of our generation. But first, I need to tell you something about myself…

Although I was raised in a traditional ice-cream household, as I’ve grown older I’ve learned to tolerate different points of view, or at least accept them with civility. I think it’s fine if people eat frozen yogurt, if that’s what makes them happy. It took me a long time to overcome my deep-seated feelings about gelato and sherbet, but when I found out that my daughter likes gelato, my heart melted. There’s nothing wrong with her.

I admit that I’m still not sure how I feel about shaved ice. It makes me squirm to think about it, and I have no desire to let any of it ever touch my lips, but I really can’t see any justifiable reason why people who like shaved ice shouldn’t be permitted to marry or serve in the military. They’re really not all that different from you and me, when you get right down to it. Not in any way that matters, anyway.

Frappes, shakes, awful-awfuls, and things of that ilk — they never really bothered me. I don’t have any tendencies, at least none that I know of, for such things, but given their constant mention in the popular media, they must appeal to someone. And their relationship to ice cream is obvious.

I will admit that I do have, well, slightly unusual desires of a different nature, however. I enjoy pumpkin ice cream, and blueberry ice cream is another one of my favorites, and I’ll admit I tried almost every flavor I could get my mouth around back in college. Usually I’m just a regular chocolate-chip-cookie-dough kind of guy, but in the early summer and autumn, I like something a little more exotic. And sometimes me and the missus have a sundae or a banana split, after the kids are asleep.

What about you? What kind of ice cream do you like, and how do you like it?

All the sales in the world aren’t going to change the fact that I don’t know what to get folks for Christmas yet. My wife hasn’t given me The List(tm) yet, for one thing.

Here’s how The List(tm) works. My wife makes a sort of “dear santa” list of all the things she wants. Then I go out and buy everything on the list, wrap it up, and give it to her.

This works because she’s reasonable about it. It’s not all that exorbitant — she knows where the money is really coming from — and I’m spared any sort of decision-making, which is all a man can ask.

My kids, who only have the most vague notion of money, have already prepared multi-paged single-spaced letters to santa. They started in May and have made several drafts. Last week, they were finally put in the mail. This is where I mention that the “American Girl” Doll Company is more evil that Halliburton, BlackWater, and Exxon put together.

I, unfortunately for all who love me, never make a Christmas list until the last possible moment, and then it mostly involves random post-its in the Eddie Bauer catalog. So, I invariably get a bunch of stuff I didn’t really want, because nobody knows what I want.

Well, everyone does know what I want, but having my way with Guo Jingjing on a water bed, on the beach, surrounded by plates of nachos while serenaded by a personal concert performed by The Faces isn’t terribly practical, so I don’t hold out much hope I’ll find that under the tree.

So, why don’t I get what I want? Perhaps it’s some sort of mild watered-down anhedonia mixed with the usual guy-philosophy of “If I want something, I’ll just buy it, rather than wait for someone else to buy it for me.”

So, what about you–do you have your lists ready? Do you know what you want, and do you know what to get everyone else?

Go ahead, twist the dagger. Tell me you’ve got it all figured out.

Thanksgiving is a holiday best suited for large families.

Usually the O family spends our Thanksgiving at my in-laws. Due to the disproportionate number of ministers in my family, we also tend to celebrate Christmas at Thanksgiving as well, and sometimes even my birthday gets thrown into the mix.

This year was unusual. My mother-in-law is battling an illness and didn’t feel up to hosting the festivities, and by the time this situation developed, it was too late to really plan much of anything else. So, it was just the four of us.

Four is a dangerously small number.

First, cooking TD for four takes only slightly less work than cooking TD for forty (which we have done–I know what I’m talking about). So my wife will probably be sleeping in until noon. Maybe noon today, maybe noon tomorrow. Probably around the time I finish cleaning all the pots and pans.

Second, due to the local ordinances that mandate a certain diversity among desserts, there were times yesterday when pies outnumbered humans in the household. We managed to level the playing field last night, and I inflicted heavy casualties on them this morning during a daring pre-dawn raid. (I slipped into their encampment, armed with only a dessert fork, while they were nestled in their aluminum foil beds. Some of them never even woke up.)

The turkey is no longer a threat to anyone. It has been reduced to broth. However, if the pies and the tubers (there are still mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes unaccounted for) form an alliance, it could be a long day.

Third, if there’s only four people at dinner, and two of them are tots, and the third doesn’t like red wine, but the fourth one opens a bottle anyway (the last of the 2007 Beaujolais Nouveau–the perfect wine for turkey!) then there will be bad jokes and silly things posted to blogs later.

Anyway, I hope you all have wonderful stories to tell, when you get back from stimulating the economy or whatever it is you’re doing this morning.

OK, everyone has been chiming in about what they’re thankful about, etc, on a dozen threads here there and everywhere. I don’t feel like I have anything to add to the solid work done in this area by my peers who have already established threads on those topics (in some cases, jumping the gun by several weeks).

If you want to be thankful, go right ahead–we’re here for you.

And if you’re in a situation where you don’t feel that you have much of anything to be thankful about, we’re even more here for you. Seriously.

But if you’ve already been thankful elsewhere, no need to repeat yourself.

But I would like to reflect on something else, at least for a moment. I believe that this year is the inflection point of our culture. This is the year when millions of Americans saw the world in a new way. This is the year when the internet finally proved its worth.

This is the year when lolcats achieved ubiquity.

So, which lolcat is your favorite?

References:

• http://roflcats.com/
• http://lolcats.com/
• http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118798557326508182.html
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jDfSqtG2E4

If you’re like me — and I don’t mean that as an insult — you’ve probably got two or three long-running daydreams or fantasies that you spend at least a little bit of time maintaining every day.

For example, I have a daydream about being a leader in my field of endeavor. I have a big office with a window and nice furniture and lighting, and spend my time developing clever strategies for developing more business and inventing clever solutions to long-standing problems. Because this is a daydream, issues of budgeting, staffing, and contract disputes never come up.

I also have a daydream about quiting my job and becoming a writer, and finally finishing my 1,400-page novel about life in second-century China. Then the novel is well-reviewed, people line up to buy book, and I am inspired to write more books, and become rich, famous, and respected. There might even be movies. Because this is a daydream, issues of advance money, budgeting, writers block, and contract disputes never come up.

And then there’s the most intricate and elaborate fantasy, which is the world described in the penultimate fantasy. The characters have taken on a life of their own, in some sense. I need to check in with them every so often, or they tend to wander off-script.

All this daydreaming takes time. Nothing is static. For example, when I’m rich and famous, what kind of cool car should I drive? There are always new cars, so the answer changes.

In one of my favorite books, Gravity’s Rainbow, there is a character, Pirate Prentice (no relation to Spuff, AFAIK) who has the unique gift of being able to take over and have other people’s daydreams. This is very handy in times of crisis — if you need the undivided attention of some cabinet member, for example, you can call in Pirate Prentice, and he’ll take care of maintaining his or her fantasy worlds for as long as necessary.

It’s an intriguing gift.

Anyone out there have any daydreams they’d like to outsource because they take up too much time? Let’s hear them. Maybe we all have the same dreams. Maybe we can amortize the work of maintaining them? Or at least we can steal each others good ideas…