The Mighty Hunters

I live in a Georgetown townhouse with a few roommates, one of whom is my youngest brother, the Genius. He likes to do Sudoku puzzles in pen, is a math major studying cryptography, and is amazingly good at Wheel of Fortune.

Last night, he opened our back door to get the trash and put it out for collection. A moment later, he opened the nearby door to the basement, where my room is. From where I was on the bed, I could only see his shoes, which were shuffling nervously. "Hey," I said, "come on down."

"Uh," he replied, "I just let an animal in."

A few things about the Genius. He has Asberger's Syndrome, which is basically high functioning autism. As with all autistic kids, he has trouble picking up on certain social clues - part of which is difficulty in interpreting facial expressions.

A related difficulty is that he can't readily identify types of animals. Just as he can't necessarily recognize a combination of knit eye-brows, pursed lips, and clenched jaws as being indicative of frustration, he can't differentiate a combination of fur, legs, and coloring as being, say, a moose from a horse. He's managed to figure out dogs and cats, but he'd never be able to tell you what breed they were.

So when he said he let an animal in, he was being as specific as possible. It was as likely to be a raccoon as a moose. Nevertheless, I called up to him, "What is it?" "I don't know," he said. I should have known.

I hopped off the bed and ran upstairs. En route, I weighed the possibilities. This being DC, I narrowed the potential invaders down to a raccoon (less likely) or a rat (more likely).

I got to the kitchen, and the Genius agitatedly pointed toward the dining room and living room. "He's in there." Sure enough, through the dining room I could see into the living room, where a large gray rat was pacing around, it's naked rat tail erect and proud.

There are only two animals I fear. One is sharks, and with good reason. They're apex predators, and can eat you. The other is rats. I don't know why they give me the wooglies, except that they're creepy and gross. One of the most terrifying things that happened to me in Iraq was when a rat landed on my cot, stood on my chest, and breathed its rat breath on my face. Gross gross gross gross gross.

So I was more than a little weirded out to see this rat wandering my living room. I considered my options. I could just leave the back door open and hope it would leave. But that might let more rats in. I could open the front door off the living room and try and shush it out. Or I could just let it stay. The front door it was.

"Ok," I told the Genius, "you stay here in the kitchen and keep an eye on the rat." "Ok," he said, and took up position in the doorway. I considered the weaponry at hand. There was a golf club by the front door, but I didn't want to run around the living room clubbing furniture. I opted for the broom in the pantry.

Holding the broom in front of me, I hustled into the living room, and promptly hopped onto the sofa. The rat had skittered to the far side of the living room, where it paced along the wall by the front windows. I hopped to the other couch, adjacent to the front door. "Can you see it?" I called to the Genius, since from my vantage point I could no longer see the little bugger (I mean the rat, not the Genius). "Yeah, it's by the window." Good.

From the couch, I stretched broom handle out and flicked on the rest of the lights. Then I examined the empty stretch of floor between my perch and the front door. I really didn't want to hop down and have the rat scamper across my little toesies, because I'd probably shriek and possibly faint. Still, there was nothing else to do, so I jumped down in front of the door and threw the dead bolt. I jerked the door open and, brandishing my broom, made for the rat.

I couldn't see it. Had it gone under the couch? I hit the couch with the broom. Nothing. I stood back as far as I could and extended a toe to push the couch out of the way. I pushed it a foot, and the rat shot out. "Eep," I cried, then chased it.

But it didn't go out the door. It bolted for the living room. "Ah! It's in here!" called the Genius, showing more emotion than he usually ever does. So much for my plan. In the kitchen I found the Genius pressed up against the kitchen counter, half on it, half on the floor, conflicted between his fear and my charge to keep an eye on the rat.

"Where is it?" I asked. "Over there," he said, waggling a finger at the corner between the fridge and the basement door. Again wielding my plastic broom, I reached under and behind the fridge. As I swept toward the front, something flew out from the bottom. The Genius and I yelped and jumped back at the sudden motion. But it wasn't the rat, it was just the detached lower guard that had been lying loose under the front of the fridge. Recovering my composure somewhat, I continued to hit the fridge with the broom, hoping to scare the rat back into the open. No effect.

I looked at the basement door. There was about a 2-inch gap between the door and the floor. More than enough room for the rat to fit under. "Did you see where it went?" I asked the Genius.
"No."
"Did it go behind the refrigerator?"
"I dunno. Maybe. It could have gone in the basement."

Groan. I live in the basement. I can't sleep down there with a rat. And I certainly wasn't going to be able to chase it back up the stairs. The best I could do was keep it in the basement. So once again, I took my trusty broom and went downstairs, banging in front of me to announce my presence. I got to the foot of the stairs, took one step and hopped on my bed. There, I gathered necessaries for sleeping elsewhere - some blankets, my laptop, me cellphone. My survival gear in one hand, the broom in the other, I backed up he stairs, a wary eye scanning for ratty activity. I dropped one blanket at the base of the door, hoping to block the gap leading into the kitchen. Then I threw my other stuff on the living room couch-cum-temporary-bed, and called the exterminator.

He'll be here this afternoon. My savior, Julio from Terminix. The end.*

*ADDENDUM: I've named our rodent housemate Karl Rove. Since Rove was subpoenaed yesterday, it makes sense that he'd be hiding in my basement.


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Obama Spoofs! Hilarious

Hi kids. Check this out:



Here's the original, which makes the spoof that much better:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mVEGfH4s5g



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The Clothes Make the Woman

My old boss Stumpy loved mandatory fun. Most of you have had mandatory fun in your careers - required work-related social events held in the name of teambuilding or some such managerial piffle. Most people I know hate mandatory fun because we already have co-worker friends and hang out with them. We don't like being compelled to socialize with co-workers we're not friends with - they're not our friends.

But that is precisely the reason Stumpy enjoyed mandatory fun so much. He didn't have any friends - he used to go on vacations by himself - so he frequently ordered us to hang out with him during work hours. This being the Army, he could do that. So one afternoon, he made me and the other 8 lieutenants in our artillery battery go bowling. Here is that story:

We couldn't just go bowling locally. That wouldn't be "fun enough." We had to drive 80 miles up to Denver to go to a Dave & Buster's-like place. It was like Chuckee Cheese for grownups - video games, bumper cars, and a full bar. It also had a bowling alley, which was our destination.

One of the new lieutenants, Turtle (so named because he was slow of speech and of foot, and also much older than the rest of us) asked in his ponderous tones if he could bring his new fiancee. This surprised us. We weren't surprised that he wanted to bring her, but that he had a fiancee in the first place. He had been single when he arrived a month prior, but had already met someone and gotten engaged. Interesting.

"Sure you can bring her," someone said. So Turtle took off to pick up his fiancee, and the rest of us set off on the hour-plus schlep to Denver.

We arrived at the place and went upstairs to the bowling alley. We exchanged our combat boots for bowling shoes - they really complement the camouflage fatigues - and got down to the business of mandatory fun.

Half an hour or so later, Turtle showed up, his lady in tow. "Hi everyone, this is my fiancee, Candace Kaine," he said. She smiled at us and said, "You can call me Candy."

Wait, Candy? Candy Kaine? I swear I'm not making this up, her name was really Candy Kaine. The rest of us looked at each other just to make sure no one was laughing.

It was hard not to laugh. It wasn't that she was middle-aged - so was Turtle. Her name, of course, was hilarious. What really made it hard not to giggle was her clothes. More precisely, it was her single article of clothing. She was wearing a full-body denim jumpsuit. Clothes say a lot about a woman, and an ankle-to-wrist denim jumpsuit says quite a bit.

First, it told us that she shopped somewhere that sells denim jumpsuits. I don't know where that might be, but Ann Taylor or Banana Republic it's not. Second, when she saw the jumpsuit hanging under those big-box store lights, she thought to herself, 'Oh, that'd look good on me.' She probably tried it on, looked in the mirror, smiled, and couldn't wait to get it home. Third, when Turtle called to say she was going to meet her fiancee's boss and co-workers, she went to her closet and looked inside. I imagine the inner monologue went like this: 'Jeans and a blouse? No. Slacks and a turtleneck? No. Skirt and a sweater? No. Ah, there it is - the denim jumpsuit. That'll impress Turtle's friends. They won't know what hit them.'

So there was Candy Kaine, white-trash-fabulous in her new denim jumpsuit and bowling shoes, ready to hit the lanes. I was fascinated, and invited them to join my lane.

"So, Candy, how'd you meet Turtle," I asked. "Oh, I was waitressing and he sat at one of my tables," Candy said. "I thought he was just the cutest thing in his uniform, so I gave him my number." An idea was forming in my head. "And I hear you're engaged," I said. "Yes. Isn't it great," she beamed. "Turtle is just so great with my kids, I couldn't let this one get away," she said, hugging him to her.

That explained it. Classic Army situation. We call these Instant Families - Just Add Dad. You can find women like Candy living near every military installation. They find new and lonely soldiers, hustle them up the aisle, and get a piece of that government paycheck. They make a baby or two, then, when Dad transfers to another duty station in three years, they file for divorce. They collect alimony until new Dad shows up, then repeat the process. Turtle had been snared in the Instant Family trap - Candy had spotted him at the restaurant, alone and in uniform, and dollar signs flashed in her eyes.

A sad story, really. We deployed to Iraq two months later, by which time Candy Kaine had become Candy Turtle. She collected Turtle's paycheck for the year he was gone, and apparently spent most of it. Then she dropped divorce papers on him the week he got home. She'd met someone else, it seemed - an Air Force officer working at NORAD. I guess he couldn't resist the denim jumpsuit. The end.
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A Recruit for the NSA

Standing in line at the post office today, I noticed a college student getting her passport photo taken. It's a small lobby, and I was able to overhear her conversation: she was spending the summer studying in Italy, and needed her passport by the end of May.

That reminded me that I needed to renew my passport. It expired a year ago, and besides, the picture was from my freshman year of college. I was barely 18 in the photo and now, 12 years later, I look quite a bit different. Even if the passport wasn't expired, I should get a new one just so I look like my photo.

Finished with my business at the post office, I at the nearby convenience store for a copy of the Washington Post. This is the same convenience store where I used to get my morning coffee and donut before Thursday ROTC class. As it turns out, the same ladies are working behind the counter as 10 years ago, when I was a regular.

I stepped up the register, and as I set my paper on the counter, the cashier looked at me and said, "Hey, did you used to come in here a long time ago."

"Sure, a long time ago," I said. "Yeah," she replied, "You were one of the ROTC kids, right?"

Wow, good eyes. Last time she saw me, I was a nameless but regular customer buying coffee. I was also 10 years younger, 30 pounds lighter, wearing Army fatigues, and clean shaven with a high-and-tight haircut. This morning, on the other hand, I was in standard-issue khakis and button down, baseball hat, glasses, full beard, and displaying all the trials, tribulations, and pounds of the intervening decade.

Nevertheless, she spotted me. It was remarkable, really. More than just seeing in me the youngster I used to be, the cashier was able to pick me out of the nearly 12,000 new students she's seen in the interim.

That's genius-level facial recognition. That's why I'm calling General Jim Jones (the President-Elect's NSA Adviser, as well as the former Supreme NATO Commander, and fellow Hoya) as soon as I'm done with this post. We're going to sit the convenience store cashier down with a book of wanted terrorists' pictures. Once she has them firmly planted in her mind, we'll let her to wander the streets of the Middle East and other hot spots, picking terrorists out of the crowded cafes, and markets. "Hey," she'll say, "didn't you used to bomb the U.S.S. Cole?" The suspect will pause, pale, and flee - only to be nabbed by nearby U.S. agents.

And thus will end the War on Terror.
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This Is A Very Bad Idea

There's a company out there called "Flat Daddies." This company specializes in converting photos of servicemen (and women) into life-size cardboard cutouts. Military families use these flat daddies and mommies as stand-ins for the real, albeit deployed, mommies and daddies. They'll sit Flat Daddy at the dinner table, encourage children to talk to the him, kiss him goodnight, etc.

This is all very creepy. I can only imagine the emotional damage it must do to teach two- or three-year-olds to love a piece of cardboard as they would a parent. But it's about to get so much worse. Flat Daddy is going 3-D.

The Department of Defense has put out a call to software developers to create "a highly interactive PC or web-based application to allow family members to verbally interact with virtual renditions of deployed Service Members." DoD wants the application to "produce compelling interactive dialogue between a Service member and their families … using video footage or high-resolution 3-D rendering. The child should be able to have a simulated conversation with a parent about generic, everyday topics. For instance, a child may get a response from saying 'I love you', or 'I miss you', or 'Good night mommy/daddy.'"

Not good, not good at all. A digitized but realistically lifelike avatar of Mommy or Daddy that will actually discourse with you? That will express love for you? That will tell you that it misses you? I understand we want to shield children from the negative emotions associated with missing a parent, but this is like bringing a new parent into the house. Or, worse, putting a new parent on the tv, and the computer, and carrying him around on an iPod or a cell-phone.

Imagine, if you will, that little Susie is squirming and whining in her grocery cart seat. Her Mommy senses an outburst coming, so she pulls her iPhone from her purse and punches up the Daddy App. Daddy's picture appears on the screen, and his voice - his voice - comes out of the phone, saying, "Where's daddy's little girl? Where's my Susie?" Susie's face instantly brightens and Mommy puts the phone in Susie's outstretched hands. As Susie looks at the screen, the facial recognition software kicks in, and Daddy says, "Oh, there she is. How are you, sweetheart?" "Good," Susie says. Mommy pats Susie on the head and tells her, "Now you talk to Daddy and be good for him." Susie starts to babble away to her nonexistent, digital father, while Mommy continues to shop in peace.

Oh, the horror. I don't think little children can dissociate realistic representations of parents from actual parents. Maybe they wouldn't want to dissociate at all, and instead adopt the digital parent as real. Why? Digital Daddy will never get mad, never shout, never scold, never not be there. He will be the perfect parent in the eyes of the child - always loving, always supportive, always ready to chat, always ready for a game. Real Mommy (or Real Daddy, if Mommy is gone) can't compete with that - the non-deployed parent has real-world concerns that don't permit that kind of unremitting devotion. So gradually the digital parent may become the preferred parent.

And one more thing. What happens when Real Daddy dies? Should Mommy delete Digital Daddy from the iPhone? Should she tell Susie she can't have her Digital Daddy anymore? Or should she keep Digital Daddy - a computer-age Frankenstein's Monster that Susie can interact with forever?

I just think this is a terrible, terrible idea. Sometimes parents go away, and every parent will die eventually. Substituting them with a computer program, no matter how lifelike, must be psychologically harmful to young children because it skews their emotional development. Additionally, it is disrespectful to the memory of one's parents - if your mother is dead, you should celebrate her life and memory, not keep a Tamagotchi of her in your pocket.

Maybe I'm being alarmist. I'm sure people said the same thing about television, the electric babysitter, being harmful to children. And I myself believe that children actually can dissociate the simulated reality of video games from actual reality. But this is different. No one ever put me in front of the tv and told me to treat it like my father, or handed me Mommy the Video Game and told me to be good for this digital Mommy.

Bad idea. Bad idea. But I'm sure it will happen anyway, just as I'm sure some families will find such a tool to be marvelously useful. I just wouldn't want to be the Real Daddy that both has to grieve for Real Mommy and kill the Digital Mommy his kids love.
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Holidays Are Over, Back To Work

Dear Loyal Reader/s,

Sorry for the hiatus. I temporarily of ran out of ideas, and was distracted by Ms. Demosthenes' move to California.

Nevertheless, I'm back, and having ingested nearly four-dozen Christmas cookies, I am too bigger to fail than ever before.

I hope your holiday season was splendid. Mine sure was - besides having a white Christmas for the first time in ages, and getting some really swell gifts, I finally got a job. As it turns out, this is something of a trend with me. This is the third straight year I have gotten a job over the holidays. Next year I'm asking Santa for winning lotto tickets instead. For the time being, however, the holidays are over. Back to work. And that reminds me of a story:

In May of 2002, me and my friends Pipes and Boy Kelly took a week-long road trip from Boston to North Jersey. Normally, it doesn't take a week to get from Boston to Jersey, but when you only have about a half-hour of sobriety per day, you don't make such good time on the road.

As I mentioned, we began our journey in Boston. At the time, all three members of our intrepid trio were in the Army, and didn't have much money to throw around on hotel accommodations. Throughout our journey, therefore, we were staying with friends or friends of friends. In Boston, that meant we stayed Saturday night at Pipes' little brother's roommate's family. They were a working class family of 6 living in a tiny apartment in South Boston, but they were happy to let us use their floor as accommodations for Saturday night.

So, Saturday night in downtown Boston. Pipes, Boy Kelly and I donned our finest party pants and shirts, hailed a cab, and headed for Faneuil "Tourist Trap" Hall. The cab pulled up outside the Purple Shamrock, we hopped out and peered into the Shamrock's windows. Inside were a hundred college girls. "Looks good to me," Boy Kelly said, and in we went.

On stage was a cover band. These guys were incredible, and right out of central casting. Sully was on lead vocals, Murph on guitar, and Frankie played drums. I didn't know that people actually talked like they did in "Good Will Hunting," but these guys couldn't pronounce an r to save their lives. Except when they sang, because their covers were dead-on matches to the originals. Happy enough with our selection of venue, the three of us bought drinks, downed them, bought more drinks, downed them, bought more drinks and went out to mingle with the ladies.

The rest of the evening is blurry to me now, except that I distinctly remember the closing song. Sully introduced the last number, saying, "Nahmally, we wouldn't covah a sawng like this, but we think it's pretty wicked awesome. Heah goes," and they launched into a spot-on rendition of Enrique Iglesias' "Can't Escape My Love." I remember this because for the rest of the trip, we could run, we could hide, but we couldn't escape that song - it played everywhere, including the car radio and bars in Boston, Long Island, New York City, New Brunswick, and Hoboken. It was the unofficial anthem of our road trip.

Anyway, the band wrapped up, we waved good-bye to the ladies of Boston University, and caught a cab back to Southie.

I woke the next morning entangled in a massive afghan blanket on the apartment floor. Pipes was already sitting up on the couch watching Sports Center, and Boy Kelly was asleep on the floor in front of the television. I was still wearing my party pants and shirt, and felt a little sore and a lot hungover. Pipes looked at his watch and said, "It's 6:45. We've got to go." We had to be at the Boardy Barn - an outdoor bar on Long Island - by noon for our next rendezvous with East Coast friends, so we did have to get on the road quickly. I stood up, checked to make sure I still had my wallet, and walked over to nudge Boy Kelly with my foot. Our host family was asleep, and our luggage was in the SUV outside, so we folded our blankets and quietly slipped out.

It was very quiet on the street at 6:55 on Sunday morning. The row-houses were still dark, and there was no traffic. We decided to change clothes before getting back on the road, and since there was no one around, we thought we could do it quickly out on the street. I dug a sweatshirt and some jeans out of my bag in the trunk. I pulled the sweatshirt on then slipped my shoes off. No sooner had I removed my pants than a beat-up old Ford came around the corner.

In the front seat was an old man and his wife. Based on the Irish flag hanging from the mirror and the Knights of Columbus sticker, I assume the couple were named Mr. and Mrs. Clem F.X. O'Malley, and they were going to church. Clem glided to a stop next to us. Pipes was in the car, but Boy Kelly was shirtless and standing by the open passenger door. I was wearing socks, underpants, and a sweatshirt, and standing by the trunk.

Clem rolled down the window and leaned his fedora-ed head out toward us. A cigarette between his lips, he took in our state of undress, and said, "Boys, weekend's ovah. Back to wahk." Then he rolled up the window and continued down the street. Good advice. Weekend's over, boys, back to work.

The end.
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The Auto Bailout: A Christmas Carol Edition

It is the best of times (Obama won!) and it is the worst of times (pretty much everything else). It is the age of wisdom (again, go Obama), it is the age of foolishness (sub-prime mortgages, Iraq, the Big 3 automakers, Sarah Palin, etc.). So now, as we enter our winter of despair - month 12 of the recession and counting! - can we look forward to a spring of hope? Yes, yes we can. We just need some creative solutions, and I have one straight out of Dickens.

Obviously, there are a number of problems facing our nation today. With the economy tanking, families are running short on cash and are consequently racking up huge amounts of debt they can't foreseeably pay off. At the same time, America is losing its competitive edge in the world marketplace - due in no small part to the abysmal state of education and the indolence of the nation's youth. So pathetic is the state of education that schools are now resorting to flat-out bribery to increase grades and test scores: DC Public Schools are now offering cash bonuses for better grades; Baylor University is offering scholarship money for matriculated students to retake the SATs.

Thus, as our middle class falls into ever more dire financial straits and our future workforce falls ever further behind its peers, it becomes clear that we must take action. "But what can we do?" you ask.

Repeal child labor laws.

It's perfect. Now, I'm not suggesting that we pull kids out of school and stick them in factories. Rather, just take the underperformers and troublemakers and put them in the factories. Such a policy has a number of clear advantages.

First, it incentivizes academic performance. I don't want my tax dollars going to some little shit-for-brains that has to get paid to get A's. If kids don't want good grades for the sheer merit of having good grades, well, academia just isn't for them. But if they want to get paid for their work, they should produce something worth getting paid for. Like automobiles. Under my plan, no child will be left behind, but a goodly number of them will be working sheet metal presses in Detroit.

That brings me to the second part of my plan - we'll fix the auto industry. No need for an expensive bailout when we can simply slash production costs. Detroit keeps whingeing about the expense of its labor force - the high hourly wages, the cost of health insurance and pension benefits, whine, whine, whine. "It adds $2000 to the price of every car," they complain, and with that kind of overhead, they can't compete with foreign manufacturers. Simple solution - we'll use child labor to build our cars.

Kids don't need health insurance - they'll be covered under Mummy and Daddy's plan. They don't need a high wage because they're just kids - no families to support. And they don't need pension benefits because once we eliminate occupational safety regulations, they won't live that long.

Furthermore, children have extraordinary manual dexterity, what with all that video game playing. Their little fingers can reach into the smallest of places. But rather than replacing Victorian-era bobbins, they'll be installing 21st Century brake lines. Thus, we can replace all those expensive robots that Detroit uses with 5-7 year-olds. This will further slash overhead - no robot maintenance costs, and, heck, they'll barely need electricity. Give each tot a miner's helmet with a light on it, and you don't even need to light the factory floor. That's thousands of dollars a month in energy savings alone.

Finally, this plan will save the environment. With all these kids going to work, parents don't need giant SUVs to shuttle Madison and Adrian to soccer practice and ballet. Mom and Dad can buy smaller, more fuel-efficient cars with lower emissions. They might even get a family discount if they buy from their kids' company.

I don't think such a modest proposal can fail, can it? Merry Christmas, every one! The end.
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