40 years ago: Reflections on a no-hitter

I hate these reminders of how old I really am, especially when I'm still trying to convince myself I'm still 22.

But some random Internet surfing reminded me that July 3 was the 40th anniversary of the greatest baseball game I've ever seen, when Angels pitcher Clyde Wright threw a no-hitter at the Oakland A's.

I was 12 then, and I grew up in a family of incurable Angels fans. We went to a few games every year, and we were at Anaheim Stadium, third base side in the terrace level on that July evening. My family accounted for four of the 12,131 butts in the seats that night.

OK, as I get older my memory tends to fire more at random, but it seems we were at the ballpark a lot when historic things happened. My grandmother (who was even more incurable than the rest of us) took my brother and me to an afternoon doubleheader the previous year (again the Angels were playing the A's), and when the announcement came that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin safely landed on the Moon, play stopped on the field and we got all misty. But I digress.

The left-handed Wright came off a miserable 1969 (one win, eight losses. But he was pitching like a monster in 1970. Won 22 games that year; only Nolan Ryan was able to match him four years later. Made the All-Star team, during the time the American League was always getting slaughtered -- Wright was the losing pitcher in that midsummer game.

And that no-no. It was right around the sixth inning when I noticed those zeroes on the board. And of course, there's this old superstition that no one on the bench talks about a no-hitter when it's in progress. Out of respect, neither did we.

After his great season, Wright wasn't quite the same. It turned out he had some problems, something about a well-fought bottle. It was years later when I saw a film clip of him finishing his no-hitter, and it was used as a lead-in to a commercial for an alcohol-and-drug rehab hospital. But after his career in the bigs was over, he spent some time in Japan. From Baseball Reference:

In the sixth inning of a 1-1 game early in his first season in Japan, Wright was removed after the first two batters reached. Manager Shigeo Nagashima yanked Wright, who refused to give over the baseball, then charged off the mound and fired the ball into the dugout. After leaving the field, Wright tore off his uniform and threw it into the bathtub and kicked over a garbage can. Wright was nicknamed "Crazy Righto", a name that stuck throughout his time in Japan. Fans and sportswriters called for Wright's release but Nagashima stood by his pitcher ...

1970 was a strange year for no-hitters. Less than a month before Wright's, Dock Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates threw one at the San Diego Padres. His control was way off; he walked eight batters that day. He later said he was in mid-LSD trip during that game (which probably explains why his fastball had a tail).

Wright's boy, Jaret, was a pitching phenom for the Cleveland Indians in 1997, coming out of nowhere to win a bunch of games for them. He started Game 7 of the World Series that year, as a 21-year-old rookie. Arm trouble, though, curtailed his career.

The Angels' leadoff hitter in Clyde's no-hitter was Sandy Alomar, who himself had two sons in the bigs (Sandy Jr. and Roberto). The Angels had some real characters in the lineup that day: Alex Johnson, who had a good bat and serious issues. Jim Fregosi, who later managed the Angels. And noted prankster Jay Johnstone, the man our household referred to as "Ol' DM" for "dirty-mouth." Seems one of us noticed Johnstone had trouble getting through a sentence without uttering a profanity. Being earthy folks, we thought it was funny.

I might as well forget about claiming I had a deprived childhood. How many kids got to see a no-hitter?

###

Links:

The box score, from retrosheet.org

What's Wright doing now?

For all you fathers, including mine ...

Horace Silver's "Song For My Father."

It's your day, Dad. Enjoy it.

###

If it's on the Internet, it must be true: Photoshop or not

Don't you love this Photoshop thing?

Pictures can't be considered real evidence anymore. Now, photos can be doctored so you can't tell what's real and what isn't. And about a zillion people can doctor photos right there on their computer and release them on the Internet.

And you know how it works from there. It's on the Internet so you know it's true, right? If you believe that, I know a Nigerian princess who is willing to share her vast fortune with you.

I knew where photo technology was headed in the early 1990s when I was working for the Mohave County (Arizona) Standard. Matt Wanner, the publisher there, had a brand new camera he was dying to show me.

It looked like one of those cameras you used to get for free when you renewed your subscription to Sports Illustrated, but there was a port on the side where you could plug it into your computer. I was looking at my first digital camera. The camera cost a short stack of hundred-dollar bills back then; such is the way with brand new technology.

"Watch this," Matt said as he took my picture. A minute later, my image showed up on the screen. Then he proceeded to alter that photo, using a new program called Photoshop.

"Wow," I said as I watched my nose grow on the screen. OK, there are times I may dump a whole load of Bravo Sierra in your lap, but I thought the nose-growing thing only happened with Gepetto's creation.

On screen, Matt proceeded to give me a haircut. I know there was some psychodrama involved there; back then a lot of my employers were after me to get my hair cut. I'd usually come back with two estimates, but that's another story.

"That's a pretty amazing thing," I said, although inside I had this chilly feeling. Nothing is safe anymore. The practice of journalism was history as of that day.

"You mean I can take part of one photo, part of another photo, and call it real?" I asked.

True, Matt said.

"You mean I can take a picture of the President and put him in bed with Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and create my own sex scandal?" Hey, I'm a journalist. You know that thought has crossed my mind at least once.

There's a joke there, by the way. The president then was Bill Clinton, the original "pants on the ground" guy when that expression meant something entirely different from what it does now. And Jeanne Kirkpatrick, former ambassador to the United Nations, was probably the only woman in history who could make Nancy Pelosi look hot. Not even Photoshop could help either one of them.

It's not just Photoshop. There are a few other graphics editors that can doctor your photos just as well. My computer has GIMP, which is pretty close and a whole lot cheaper (try free). But you don't GIMP a photo, but you can sure Photoshop it. That program is now part of the language.

OK. I promised. Some Photoshopped works:

This is PrezBo in the wake of the ever-growing BP oil spill.

And you mustn't forget George Bush, checking out the scene of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Suffice it to say, BP may become Obama's Katrina. But you already figured that.

Oh yeah. Here's me, playing the last set of a two-day bluegrass festival. I was in four different bands and each of those bands played at least one gig at the festival -- plus a Saturday night show elsewhere that ran into overtime.

If I can't get my coffee in the morning, there's always Photoshop. I might even look human.

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The people have spoken, and they said 'Bite Me'

This has to be the biggest "Bite Me!" message served up from the voters in a long time. 

I mean, Rand Paul? Ron Paul's boy? You know Ron Paul, don't you? Many liberals -- and mainstream voters -- frequently accuse Ron (and Rand) of talking through their tinfoil hats. Ahh, now does all this ring a bell? 

Here's what the Huffington Post has to say about this:

Robert Reich: The 'Mad-As-Hell' Party Scores as the Anxious Class Stews: "

Kentucky Tea Party hero Rand Paul scores a knockout victory over Republican Trey Grayson. Before that, Utah Senator Robert Bennett loses to a Tea Party-fueled Republican insurgent. Is the lesson here the rise once again of the Republican right?

Not so fast. Arkansas Democrat Blanche Lincoln is also in a tough fight -- threatened from the left by Lt. Governor Bill Halter. In Pennsylvania, newly-minted Democrat Arlen Specter is in a heated battle with an opponent on his left. Meanwhile, thirteen-term Democratic representative Paul Kanjorski is challenged by 36-year-old Corey O'Brien -- who's waged a spirited campaign from his RV, accusing Kanjorski of being too tied to Wall Street ... okay, so maybe all this signals increasing strength on both political extremes? ... Not really. To the extent these races represent anything at all (and it's easy to read too much into early races), it's a swing against the establishment ...

Admittedly, that's part of it. It's also a slap at overgrown government, against a political regime that took a wrong turn somewhere along the line, a few more wrong turns here and there, and we now wake up to PrezBo, Pelosi, and Reid. 

Tim Kaine, head of the Democratic National Committee, has this to say, as quoted in CNN's Political Ticker:

“Jack Conway will be a strong Democratic candidate who represents the best of Kentucky leadership and values. While the Republican nominee will focus on extreme ideas like abolishing the Department Education and disbanding the Federal Reserve, Jack Conway will work to create good jobs for Kentuckians, improve educational opportunities for young people, fight the special interests in Washington and help families and small businesses prosper. He is a dedicated public servant who will fight for the needs of Kentucky’s working families, and I look forward to working with him to achieve a Democratic victory over Republican Rand Paul this fall.”

OK, so where are the extreme ideas? Oh ... the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve. Both have been ineffective for years, and both are more interested in their own growth and their own turf battles than in getting a job done. Just sayin'.

Again from HuffPo:

It's the economy, stupid. American politics is turning anti-establishment because so many Americans feel screwed by the economy and they blame the establishment. If there's a trend here, it's not left-wing Democrats versus right-wing Republicans. It's the 'Mad-As-Hell' Party against both ... unemployment continues to haunt the middle class -- the anxious class of America. There are still more than five jobless workers for every job opening ... but it's also low wages. The much-vaulted first quarter of this year produced zilch in terms of wage growth. Private-sector hourly earnings rose at a .4 annual rate while prices climbed at about a 1 percent -- leaving most workers with less purchasing power than they had when the quarter began. The only reason weekly earnings showed any growth at all is because some workers put in more hours ...

Voters may be slow and dumb sometimes, but take their bread out of their mouths and see how quickly they can move. 

Here's Rand, in his victory speech:

It's going to be an interesting time in ol' Kentucky this year. And watch some of the other primaries around the country, will you? I guarantee you're going to see more "Bite Me" messages.

###

15 years later, Oklahoma City terror attack recalled

I don't rightly remember what I was doing when I heard about the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. I was probably on my way to work. But the bombing, which for the next six years was called "the worst terrorist attack on American soil," became part of my life over the next few weeks. Now, 15 years after the attack, memories come back in a flood.

It's one of those things that you can't forget unless you're lobotomized. Nor is it something that should be forgotten. Maybe if we Americans had a lot more memory and a lot less wishful thinking, we'd be much better off as a nation. But I digress.

I do remember a rather strange incident a few weeks earlier. A bomb went off in a vacant lot near where I worked, and being the dutiful reporter I went to check it out. As far as the cops were concerned, evidence was pretty thin. It didn't merit a lot of attention at the time, and the story didn't get more than a paragraph or two. I could have ended the story with that horrendous news cliche, "the investigation is continuing, police said," and I wouldn't have been far off.

Oh. A little footnote about work. I was editor/reporter/photographer/layout man for The Mohave County Standard, based in Kingman, Arizona.

As news of the Oklahoma City bombing became public and a suspect was named, I knew I was going to live with this story for a while. The prime suspect, Timothy McVeagh, lived in Kingman.

There was more. He worked at a hardware store in town with another Kingman resident named Michael Fortier. He kept a mailbox at a local mail-drop business. He rented his movies at a local video store. He was all over Kingman, and soon the FBI was also all over Kingman. For a while the FBI worked with the theory that the vacant-lot explosion was a test run; if I remember straight, evidence suggested fuel oil and fertilizer was the explosive agent -- same stuff that was used to destroy the Alfred Murrah Federal Building.

I don't know if Mac McCarty is still around. Mac was in his early 70s at the time, and I knew him quite well. Mac was the one who reminded me it is grammatically incorrect to refer to someone as an ex-Marine. Mac always carried a gun -- in Arizona you could carry one openly back then -- and he was upset that he had to check his weapon in at the door whenever he went into the county courthouse. He'd staged one-man protests defending his Second Amendment rights in front of the courthouse, with a sign in his hands and his weapon on his hip.

Mac had a little side business when Arizona revamped its weapon-carry laws. To legally carry a concealed weapon, you needed to take a class in handgun safety, and Mac was accredited as a teacher. For a time, he had two students in one of his classes -- Timothy McVeagh and Michael Fortier.

Mac wasn't sure why these two were in his class. They both knew their way around a firearm, he told me. The closest he could figure was that maybe they were involved in militia activity and they were looking for interested people. Mac said he would have been interested in hanging out with the two if that was the case.

While the FBI staked out Kingman, the national and international media also swarmed my town. And many of the foreign reporters -- from the Sydney Herald in Australia, and the L.A. Times in California -- thought the town was a real hoot. Militia types everywhere, they reported. Strong anti-government sentiment all around. Most people lived in mobile home parks, flush toilets had just arrived, and FAX machines had yet to be installed. Or something.

It's true the folks in northern Arizona are a little different from the rest of the country. We Southwesterners (and I freely use "we" because I lived out there for a long time and these roots still show) don't usually recognize foreign powers, and Washington, DC is about as foreign as it gets. We tend to take matters in our own hands and go to the government later, if we think
about it.

But in the weeks and months after that bombing that killed 168 people -- many of them children at a day-care center -- my memories come out in chunks:

• Spending an evening on a press stakeout in front of Michael Fortier's house while the FBI executed a search warrant. His was easy to pick out; it had the Gadsden flag ("Don't Tread On Me") flying proudly in the front yard. I talked my way into his next-door neighbor's living room for a chat; she was in her 80s and rather thrilled at all this drama in her neighborhood. The FBI sprung for about a dozen large pizzas for the press, so they got on my good side for at least a few minutes.
  

• Stopping in at a military surplus place, Archie's Bunker, to pick up a gas mask bag -- which is great for carrying cameras and film. The place was across the street from the National Guard Armory, which served as the FBI staging area. I know they were monitoring the doors of Archie's Bunker; I'm probably on some federal film archive somewhere.
  
  
• Talking to a man who was bicycling from Kingman to Oklahoma City. He wanted to raise funds and awareness, and to let the people in Oklahoma City know we're not all bad in Arizona.
  
  
• Meeting a delegation of visitors from Somalia. I'm not sure why they visited Kingman, but they sure had some preconceived notions about the place. In broken English, one told me he'd heard about "these people who did bad things and now they're ..." That's when, searching for the right word, he held his wrists together in that international gesture. In handcuffs.
  
  
• Hearing from a magazine called Media Bypass, an alternative publication that was self-described as somewhere to the right of Attila The Hun. They were particularly interested in my editorials, where I suggested the bombing took a lot more financing and organization than what two clowns making minimum wage at a hardware store could muster. 
  
  

I'm no conspiracy nut, but I still think McVeagh took a lot of secrets with him when he was executed; secrets that the federal government wanted to stay hidden. But then, I don't recognize foreign powers.

###

Making a living in ObamaNation

Like it or not, Obamacare is the law of the land. The chances of having it declared unconstitutional are only enough to hang a prayer on, and the chances of it being repealed are nonexistent.

OK. I wasn't planning to debate that piece of legislation again; y'all should know by now what I think of it. But Obamacare ushers in a whole different world, and it's especially noticeable if you like to eat, and if you work to keep beans on the table.

Not long ago I was drawing unemployment, and looking for work. I was thinking, anything that moved was subject to my attention, and if it didn't move I'd kick it a few times and make it move. But the job market is, well, pretty slim.

Enter Obamacare. Now, people who hire others are taking a long hard look at whether they can afford to do that. It's bad enough with a tanked economy, but now that the federal government is requiring health care besides? That just kicked any possibility of recovery right between the eyes.

It's a real bad time to look for work.

A few weeks ago I said that one is foolish to depend on one source of income, what with the uncertain economy. Let's amend that. Now, anyone who works for another person in a typical employer-employee relationship faces a bigger disadvantage than ever before.

Welcome to the new world. The independent contactor is king. Instead of punching a clock, getting paid by the hour and banking on those cool benefits, the jobs scenario has people getting paid by the job and seeing to his own benefits.

I'm no stranger to this. For years I worked as a taxi driver and as a freelance journalist. Although the taxi company often played it fast and loose with independent contractor law, it was a pretty good way to work. Call my own hours. If I'm not making money it's my own issue. If I have a problem with the boss, then it's time for some serious therapy.

Now, I'm doing it again. I pretty much gave up on finding actual work for someone else, but am throwing my resources into working for myself. A bit of a high-wire act, admittedly, but it's starting to pay off. I have a couple of income sources for writing Web content, and am making moves toward hire-out writing and editing.

It's a tough go. My biggest hurdle is personal. While it's true that a person with ADHD always has several things in the pot (I'm making no admissions here), focus is my biggest issue. I'm working on that, and making small gains. Except for that, there is really nothing standing in the way.

Meanwhile, I'm making a little hay:

• Got my high-speed Internet up. This in itself is huge. I don't have to run out with laptop and capture a wireless signal; I can work from home.

• Getting my routine together. A few hours in the morning writing and editing today's copy, a bicycle ride in the afternoon (I wrote this column while riding back home from the bank), digging up a little more work, and things like that.

• Working, as I mentioned, on focus. I checked out the "Pomodoro technique," which is nothing but a fancy name for setting a kitchen timer while you work and taking regular breaks. I do my best work in short bursts, living in a bubble of kick-butt for a half-hour at a time.

Meanwhile, I have a to-do list for the next few weeks:

• Continue getting my groove on, fine-tune the routine.

• Get a wireless router. Currently my desktop computer is hooked up to my high-speed Internet, and I do most of my writing on my netbook, outdoors. I move files back and forth with a thumb drive, an inelegant solution. I've priced routers, and I should have one within two or three weeks.

• Start looking at upgrading equipment. My desktop computer is the bottleneck in the system. It's probably 10 years old, and it hesitates a lot when I'm doing high-speed online stuff. I've gutted the operating system and am running one that's little more than a browser and text editor, but it's still the thing that slows me down.

• Dedicate part of my work day to what lawyers call "rainmaking," hitting the wires hot and heavy to drum up some more work.

It's coming together. It's a whole new workaday world out there, and I'm ready for it.

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Speaking your piece: Blogging whys and hows

[First of a short series on public discourse]

They used to say about newspaper publishers that you never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel and paper by the ton.

But that was a couple of decades ago. Now the guy who buys all this ink and paper has no real credibility. He's in the tank. Newspapers are dying. Network TV news is dying.

But the need for a free, independent press remains, and probably now more than ever. This brouhaha over the ObamaLosi health care plan is instructive. If it wasn't for public discourse via the press and Internet, how would you know some senators -- maybe even yours -- sold their votes for a bit of pork or a few judges? How else would you know what is in that health care plan, and how much it would cost to future generations? How would you know about that gigantic proctoscope coming your way, unless someone tells you about it?

I've written plenty about the stuff going on in Washington, and I've hardly scratched the surface. But I'm not unique. Plenty of bloggers do the same thing, and some do it as well, or better, than me. But that's OK too.

More people get their news via the Internet these days. And with today's tools (Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook) it's easier than ever to share news. Shoot, even with my modest 540 Twitter followers, you can see the potential. Assuming my average Twitter follower has 2,500 unique followers of their own (and I'm clearly shooting wild with the numbers here), you can see how word of something can get out on the Internet:

• First generation, my followers: 540.
• Second generation, my follower's followers: 1,350,000.
• Third generation, my followers' followers' followers: Forget it. Smoke is pouring out of my calculator.
• All of this takes place within a few seconds.

OK, that's some real fuzzy math, but you get the idea. Now you know how a news story or video can go "viral."

Years ago, thinker Marshall McLuhan named the printing press as one of the great extensions of man, arguing that it made the common person into a reader. He later amended it with the copying machine; everyone's a publisher. Ol' Marshall's no longer around; if he'd lived to see blogging and Twitter, he'd say everyone now has a newspaper.

But you get the drift. The media is no longer top-down, i.e. a publisher and a gang of reporters telling you what's news. It's now bottom-up, with the common man setting news policy.

Now, that sea change is for better or worse. The Internet has a horrendous signal-to-noise ratio. For each solid, meaty piece of reportage there are about a million pieces of fluff about Britney Spears or Tiger Woods. Sometimes this bottom-up news policy does make me long for some good old-fashioned elitism.

Still with me? Cool.

Setting up a blog is easy. Just about anyone who can turn a computer on and point a mouse at the Web browser icon can do it.

I'm using Blogger, which is a platform owned by Google. What's beautiful about it is that it's free, it's easy, and initial setup takes almost no effort at all.

Before you do anything else, decide what you want to blog about. If you want to write a bunch of crap about how many beers you puked up, or who you hooked up with last night, do me a favor: Please ignore everything I say here. We've got plenty of the likes of you on the Internet, and you're probably looking at the wrong web site anyway.

But if you're interested in the world you live in, if you are able to string together a few coherent and independent thoughts, if you're not a Kool-Aid drinker, then let's talk about blogging.

• Go to blogger.com to set up.

• Give yourself a sign-in name and password. If you have a Google account (such as gmail), use that.

• Come up with a name for your blog. You will soon be known for that, so choose carefully.

• Pick a template. There are plenty, and some are butt-ugly. But pick one. Don't worry about all the cool widgets and things just yet; you're just writing now. Got it?

• Pull up NEW POST, then write a headline.

• Lock and load. Get your thoughts down.

• Read it over. If it looks like it's what you want to say, click on PUBLISH POST. See how easy that was?

• Don't worry that no one is reading it. Keep writing. If your stuff is good, the readers will come. Tell folks what you're doing. Put it on your Facebook page, or whatever social media you're using.

• Stick with it, and learn the nuances of blogging as you go. There's a whole new science about it. For now, though, just write.

• If you don't write worth a flip, just use your computer webcam and talk to your readers. Start a YouTube channel, save your videos and talking messages there, and post them to your blog. Just make sure you're, well, wearing something -- PLEASE? -- when you make your video.

That's the basic stuff.

OK, so why am I giving up all this information?

Because I can, and because we need more voices out there on the Internet. We need more, well, I said it. Independent thinkers. Folks who don't give a rip what the mainstream is saying. Folks who, like that guy in David Baldacci's Camel Club, "want the truth."

Something smelling funny in Washington, or in your state capital? Don't just sit around whining about it. Blog about it.

(Props to commentator Michael Berry of Houston for putting this idea in my head.)

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[In a future Column, I'll continue this thought ... I'll discuss ways of keeping up with all these Internet headlines. Think RSS here.]

Unemployment and Bunning's TS card: More than the money

Talk that the federal government may not afford paying out more unemployment benefits may leave me in a financial pickle, but more importantly it leaves me with one of those thorny moral dilemmas.

Sen. Jim Bunning (R, KY) is staging a one-man blockade to shut down any expansion of unemployment benefits. Later, Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) joined him on this, saying the federal government needs to figure out a way to pay for additional benefits first.

"Congress just passed the so-called pay-go legislation which is supposed to require that we find offsets or other savings if we are going to spend money," Kyl said. "So what's the first thing we do? We exempt this bill from it."

Bunning, the baseball Hall Of Famer, laid what older military veterans may call a "T.S. card" on a $10 billion Senate plan to extend unemployment benefits. (Those who didn't hear Bunning's actual comments will probably still get the drift without a lot of explanation.)

While the Senate bill stalls, there's the spectre that benefits may terminate this month for more than 1.1 million former workers. At least, that's what the Democrats are saying, and most of those cats in the halls of Congress are real good at dealing out the exaggerated numbers and scare tactics.

Meanwhile, I will find out fairly quickly what happens next. I get inside information on this kind of news in my mailbox every week. See, with the exception of whatever writing income I scratch out, I've been living on unemployment. And hating it.

While some folks can carve a whole lifestyle out of waiting for that gummint check, I'm not one of those. It goes against everything I believe, everything that's important to me. Plus, it doesn't mesh with my personal style. I'm an action type, and not having a regular job leaves me all jacked up and no place to go. In short, it turns me into Beelzebub.

To be honest, I'm not sure where this unemployment compensation comes from. Well, I kind of do. It's funny money, surgically removed from working people and business owners or, failing that, printed up as needed by the federal government.

OK, here's the moral dilemma. Those who know me through this space have probably figured by now that I'm not big on government assistance. Shoot, I'm not big on government anything. I'd rather have a battery acid enema than deal with all these civil service types. A friend suggested I might consider trying for food stamps. I politely told her no, and the politeness was only because she's such a dear friend. But I'm not hurting. I can do great things with beans, rice, and hamburger. Even with my most expensive grocery item (premium coffee) my food bill is practically zip.

But you see what's going on. I'm writing about these conservative/libertarian principles, and I try to live in a manner that's at least somewhat consistent with what I write. My views have not changed, and don't expect me to start pounding a share-the-wealth message any time soon. I don't roll that way.

See the dilemma here? While some may suggest I just get what I can, shut up, and hang my convictions, I'm just not that type of person.

Strategy time, from my personal notes: I'm still looking for work, but have widened my options. Part time would be wonderful; in fact that's the best scenario I can think of. It was less than two months ago that I started freelance writing in earnest, so I'm just scratching the surface there. Right now, as long as it's legal I don't really care what the part time job is; it's not like I'm going to be married to it or anything. I have three (or four, depending on how you count them) paid writing gigs going on right now, and already at this early stage they amount to half a paycheck. A part-time gig, paying about what I'm making now in unemployment, would be gravy.

Entrepreneurs and high-level economists are smart enough to know that you don't put all your eggs in one basket. But with this economy being what it is, that truth has filtered down to the average folks, those who punch a clock every day. The economy is so uncertain that if you're depending on just one income source for your daily bread, you're inviting trouble.

While some do quite nicely for themselves while waiting for that gummint cheese, I don't see how they do it.

###

Snow brings back old memories, lessons

I don't do winter. I hate the cold, and the older I get the less I like it. I've never really been used to winter, and I don't plan to start getting used to it now.

That's one of the reasons I call the South Carolina Lowcountry home. But in my nearly 15 years here, I'm seeing a first. As I write this, snow blankets the ground.

Insane.

Again, I hear all of y'all Up North laughing. Accumulation in my front yard is probably about two inches; in most of the country that's nothing.

I define my life into three main periods, all set apart by geographical location. I spent my first 30 years in southern California, and in all that time I saw this kind of snow twice. If I wanted to see snow, all I had to do was look out my window at the San Bernardino Mountains, where there was plenty to be had. I spent five years in Arizona, and now here.

I did spend a couple of years in Indiana, a couple of years in Tennessee, and a year in the North Carolina hills, so yeah, I know all I need to know about winter. Cold. Uncomfortable. Terrible to drive in.

But pretty, and kind of fun.

I had dinner with a few friends last night, and we hung out inside while the snow fell. I went outside for a couple of minutes and promptly skidded, almost on my butt. I forgot that snow gets slippery. Barbara and her daughter, Elizabeth, both made snow angels while Derek (another expatriate Californian) and I shook our heads at the weirdness of it all.

At home, the front yard is covered. My third-world trailer park never looked better; it's like looking at a black-and-white photograph. My 15-year-old dog is as wonderstruck as I, and for a couple of minutes the arthritic old girl was a puppy again. Snow, she figured, is edible as long as it's not yellow.

A few snow things came back fairly quickly:

• The going-back-indoors two-step, where you stomp each foot, then bang your feet together twice. Especially important when your shoes have a deep tread (such as my Timberland boots). Snow belongs outside, not inside.

• It's not so much the sound of snow crunching underfoot, but the feel. There's nothing quite like it.

• Driving is rough. I bummed a ride home with Derek, and we swapped wisdom on the subject. Where you put your wheels is really kind of important; even more so than "high-siding" your tires on mountain roads. I remembered my first forays driving in snow (at age 37), when I learned that a Camaro with automatic transmission doesn't handle well under such conditions.

• Memories of my first snowman, sculpted on Mount Charleston, a few miles from Las Vegas. It was anatomically correct.

• Snow isn't for adults. Like Santa Claus or Trix cereal, it's something that was invented especially for kids. That's OK. For the night I became a 50-ish kid.

###

Where can I find some good coffee around here?

No wonder our civilization is in the toilet -- it's because the coffee around here sucks.

This isn't personal opinion talking; I'm getting this straight from Consumer Reports. The publication, which has helped comparison shoppers for about a million years, says there are no excellent brands of coffee around this year.

From Reuters:

... after tasting 37 different blended coffees, Consumer Reports couldn't find one that measured up to its "excellent" or "very good" ratings, the publication said Tuesday ... ranking at the top of the list of 14 caffeinated blends -- earning a rating of "good" -- are the Starbucks House Blend, calculated at 26 cents per cup, and Green Mountain Signature Nantucket Blend Medium Roast, at 23 cents per cup.

It turns out arabica beans are in short supply this year, and that's the good stuff. So we're having to make do with second-rate coffee.

See, I kind of had that hunch all along. Understand, I'm one who appreciates a morning cup o'joe -- and some in the afternoon and some more in the evening -- so my tastes for the brew are pretty well developed.

For me the perfect cup is black as old crankcase oil, hot, and full-bodied. In short, I like the coffee that tastes like someone left a cigar butt in the pot.

Now hear this:

The West wasn't won on a cup of that insipid watery stuff many folks swear is coffee. I mean, you can read through it. The stuff isn't even strong enough to defend itself.

And though I occasionally like a cappuccino as a treat, let's take a look at culture. The places where the people prefer cappuccino to regular coffee are those very same nations that need the Americans to haul their chestnuts out of the fire every 50 years or so.

I'm ready for a refill. The real stuff, and pour it like you don't own it.

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Sarah Palin: Talk to the hand

I was amused to hear the latest political scandal, the one about Sarah Palin giving a speech using crib notes written on her hand.

It's a blast from the past. Many of us can recall writing cheat notes on our hands and wrists back in our school days. I know I did, and it was worth an extra five or 10 points on many tests. I never really gave up the habit after my school days were over, either. I'm quite a notetaker, and I swear by the wonderful low-tech "Hipster PDA" (little more than a bundle of index cards) for my very survival. If I don't have that or a note pad handy, I'm not above using my hand.

Barack Obama takes a lot of ribbing about his love affair with the TelePrompter (I'm still checking on rumors that he has one in the Lincoln Bedroom with a selection of sweet nothings for Michelle loaded in), but that's little more than a high-priced version of the palm-of-the-hand note.

Now, I like Palin. I know she doesn't have a chance of being elected; she's probably the most polarizing figure since Hillary Clinton. I can't think of anyone who is neutral about her. And she takes a lot of crap from the media. Shoot, there are a lot more conservative folks out there, and many politicians tote a lot more baggage than her any old day. There are many more viable targets than her. But she's a threat to the mainstream partly because of the attention she normally gets, but also -- don't discount this -- she seems to be a genuinely happy person. But this bit about using crib notes -- will someone please tell me the significance of that?

Understand, if you're in politics you're going to give a lot of speeches. And if you're a big-name person like an Obama or Palin, chances are you didn't write the speech yourself. High-level politicians hire speechwriters, and sometimes it's a crapshoot because every word loaded into the TelePrompter is a surprise.

Unless you're giving the same basic speech over and over again, it's pointless to try to memorize all this stuff. And forget about speaking off the cuff; the political graveyard is littered with the bodies of those who said the wrong thing just because it sounded good at the time.

I've given talks over the years, mostly back in California. I was a member of Toastmasters then (and am looking to get back on board there), so I'm no stranger to the other side of the lectern. I spoke from fairly skeletal notes, usually no more than an outline and a few key words. Still, I was working from an advantage over your favorite politician because I wrote my own stuff.

One time at Toastmasters I gave a talk, and my notes were written on half-sized index cards, something I could conceal in my hand. I liked that idea because I could then step out from behind the lectern, move around, and still have my notes -- my crutch -- with me.

It worked well enough, or at least I thought so.

My speech evaluator thought differently, but he was the type of guy who, if he noticed you nervously jingling loose change in your pockets, he'd place a bet on how much money you had there. He was just a totally evil person. Anyway, he pointed out that I had my fist clenched through the speech, and he was worried I'd go over and beat someone up.

Man, I know I should have written those notes on my hand.

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(Above: Sarah Palin gets caught with her notes during Tea Party Convention in Nashville. Below: Palin's answer, after the ordure hit the rotary cooling device. Hi, Mom!)

Who Dat: Saints win wasn't just on the field

I'm not a big football fan, and I really don't have a team to pull for.

In baseball I have the Los Angeles Angels (a love affair that started in the mid-1960s) and Arizona Diamondbacks. In basketball I have the Lakers (dating back from their Jerry West/Elgin Baylor days) and Phoenix Suns.

The Rams were my hometown team growing up, but that's when Carroll Rosenbloom owned them and they called L.A. home. In Arizona we had the Cardinals, but it was pretty hard to feel good about a team that just pulled in from St. Louis and brought a bunch of lousy players with them. In my Arizona years, the director of the Cardinals offense was quarterback Tom (Pick Six) Tupa, who got his nickname from tossing six interceptions in one game. Pick Six was also a game in the Arizona State Lottery, only you had better odds buying one of those tickets than you did betting on the local team. A sorry lot, those Cardinals back then.

But I spent Super Sunday with my laptop open, banging out some work, with the game playing on the radio. And I nearly screamed my lungs out as the New Orleans Saints shocked everyone and beat the Colts to win the NFL title.

The Saints? Who dat? Who dey? What were they doing in the Super Bowl?

Back when the Rams were still in L.A., the Saints were horrible. They were about the only team those Cardinals could beat. The Aints.

But this year's Super Bowl was the biggest feelgood sports story you're going to hear for a long time. Less than five years ago, their city was torn apart by Hurricane Katrina. The city's population was cut in half from all the deaths, evacuations, and totally unlivable conditions. And in The Superdome, the Saints' home stadium, you got to see all the carnage close up.

Like everyone else then, I practically lived in front of the TV watching the Katrina footage. I saw the footage of riverboat casinos blown across parking lots in nearby Biloxi, and remembered a few friends of mine who worked there. Via the Weather Channel and news programs I saw the flooded streets of New Orleans, the destroyed houses marked with the number of dead people found inside, the looters breaking into stores. And the human devastation inside the Superdome.

I remember thinking that, after Katrina, it would be nearly impossible to get anyone to enter the Superdome again.

People died in that building.

Forget about football; a boy's game was the farthest thing from anyone's mind.

Survival was what it was all about, and the greatest gift anyone could give was a bottle of water.

Like many a good journalist, I'm a sucker for an underdog story. A story of redemption. And sometimes it's a sticky wicket. In the 2001 World Series I even considered pulling for those Yankees just because of 9/11. This is important to consider, because I'd rather eat a live bug than cheer for the folks in pinstripes. Fortunately, sanity -- and the Arizona Diamondbacks -- prevailed, and for the 35th year in a row I was rooting for the Yankees to get smoked.

This year's Super Bowl was a great story, five years in the making. Most of the story didn't happen on the gridiron.

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Senator makes 'racist' statements -- so?

OK, so Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made statements about then-candidate Barack Obama's blackness. Big deal.

His comments found their way into "Game Change," a new book from Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, that is being released this week.

It appears this book dealt out equal amounts of gall and bitterness to a number of candidates, from both sides of the political spectrum -- folks as diverse as John and Elizabeth Edwards and Sarah Palin got their doses.

But it's Reid who's getting all the attention these days, probably because a) he's still in office, and b) he is such a central player in the government's efforts to take over our health care. Without his and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's efforts, the whole package probably would have been stuck in the talking stages rather than making it as far as it has.

Reid supposedly said that Obama was electable because he was light-skinned and didn't use "the Negro dialect" unless he meant to. In other words, black enough but not too black. Shoot, let's cut to the chase here -- his alleged statements painted Obama as someone that blacks a couple of generations ago might call an "Uncle Tom."

Again, who gives a rip? This is just a sideshow, which has little or nothing to do with any real issues.

Now, the Republicans are jumping on this one. They're calling for him to resign from his leadership position, or even from the Senate. This brings shades of 2002, when Trent Lott praised Strom Thurmond's segregationist past during the South Carolina senator's 100th birthday party.

It's funny how party affiliation means so much in politics. During that campaign Joe Biden, who was born with both feet in his mouth, made similar statements about Obama. Remember? A black man who is "articulate ... and clean." Biden may have tanked his presidential aspirations then and there -- as if they really existed anyway -- but he's now vice president to that articulate and clean black man. See how it works?

So far, I don't hear the usual gang of racist-shouters going after Reid like they did after South Carolina Congressman Joe (You Lie) Wilson or a handful of others, which shows how truly hypocritical these people are. If Reid was Republican, a conservative, or against the health care takeover, it would be a whole different story, but that's not the point I wish to make here.

Although the Republicans are asking the Democrats (and the racist-shouters) to rise up against Reid, it's not going to happen. The Democrats need every single vote they can muster to pass the national health care plan. After that, they can feel free to gut the senator -- if the Nevada voters don't do it first. Of course, the Republicans would love to see Reid get thrown out on his can sooner rather than later.

I see this whole thing as an obvious attempt to derail the health care bill, and yes, it does need derailing. Government-run health care may be an even bigger threat to our way of life than even the USA PATRIOT Act, but to shut it down by taking out the proponents represents politics at its slimiest.

Keep in mind, I'm not known for defending liberals. But Reid was elected by the voters in his state, and made his way into leadership positions by going through the usual channels that rule in DC. He's been a known quantity for a lot of years. If he doesn't represent the interests of his state, it's up to the electorate to decide that matter.

And so a few folks may be offended by the comments of a Reid -- or a Biden, or years ago, a Lott? OK, that's what that ballot box is for. But a smarter voter is likely to overlook the odd comment from deep left field and take more important things like his track record and political agenda into consideration.

Efforts to homogenize the leadership will ultimately backfire. Better to have living, breathing elected officials with minds and opinions of their own, even if a little offensiveness comes with it. There are enough drones walking around in our society, people who react instead of think, people who are afraid to voice their own opinions and maybe stir the puddin' a little bit. Must we elect these drones, too?

There are lots of reasons to vote against someone like Reid, and the occasional quasi-offensive statement isn't one of them.

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(OK, let's go to the horse's ... mouth!)

Nigerian bomber exposes Homeland Security incompetence

Nice to know that our Homeland Security system works. At least that's what department head Janet Napolitano says.

Never mind the fact that some 23 year-old guy named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab got busted on a transcontinental flight trying to light up some powder in his underdrawers, powder that turned out to be a high explosive. Never mind the fact the guy was a Muslim from Nigeria with probable al-Quaeda ties, and was on the antiterrorism watch list. And was waved onto the flight without showing his passport.It seems that, as the plane approached Detroit, Abdulmutallab went to the aircraft's bathroom for approximately 20 minutes. When he returned to his seat, he said he had an upset stomach and pulled a blanket over himself. And waited until it was time to set things off.

The passengers on Northwest Flight 253 did a better job of flight security than the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) ever could. They caught up with Abdulmutallab -- he was easy to pick out because of the flames shooting out of his pants -- and proceeded to knock the fool out of him.One of the most glaring problems with Homeland Security is that it's reactive in scope. Every time something happens, there's a new rule. After Richard Reid was busted trying to light up his shoes, the TSA started having airline passengers take off their shoes as part of the check-in drill. More prohibitions started as more threats developed, and the whole process has succeeded in turning air travel into something you mentally prepare for, like a colonoscopy (why did I use that analogy?)

Much as I like to travel, flying is not on my list of fun things to do. It's rough enough for me, being something of a control freak, knowing that I'm not the one that's driving. But getting inspected before even boarding? You've got to be kidding.

Last time I flew was in 2006, five years after 9/11. I watched as one TSA inspector daubed the contents of my one checked-in bag before pitching it onto the conveyor. I stood in line, took off my boots, took everything metal out of my pockets, dumped all of that into my hat, and answered questions about my carry-on bag. The return trip was worse; I got the wand and the secondary inspection pit while my brother and his family were cracking up (I remember telling them to don't just stand there; take some pictures). A woman in her late 70s was in the other secondary inspection pit where TSA inspectors were going over her wheel chair.

Part of this is that the inspectors are trying to be all politically correct. Rather than profile the person, they're trying to profile the object -- shoes, metal objects, shampoo, bottled water, and now blankets and laptops. On the same flight, another Nigerian created another in-flight security scare because he spent too much time in the head, so you can expect that will be more closely watched. And so it goes, especially when Homeland Security is so badly behind the curve.

Again, rather than profiling the item, what's wrong with profiling the person instead? This bombing suspect paid cash for a one-way ticket. He didn't have his passport, or even luggage. He was Muslim. A Nigerian. His daddy, who is the former economics minister of Nigeria, said his son had been radicalized and warned authorities of this six months ago. Though he wasn't on the federal no-fly list, he was on a "terrorist identities" list of 550,000 names maintained by US authorities. What with those high explosives riding so close to his private parts, he had to have been more than a little nervous, maybe sweating something awful.

OK, right from the jump, isn't that enough red flags for you? But he made it through screening at two airports.

In light of Abdulmutallab's background and Homeland Security's capabilities, Dr. Magnus Ranstorp of the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defence College doesn't understand how the bombing attempt could have taken place.

"On the one hand, it seems he's been on the terror watch list but not on the no-fly list," Ranstorp said. "That doesn't square because the American Department for Homeland Security has pretty stringent data-mining capability. I don't understand how he had a valid visa if he was known on the terror watch list.

One thing that can be guaranteed from this incident: Despite Homeland Security's obvious failure here, it's a lead pipe cinch the federal government will use this incident to give that department even more power over our lives. Which should put frost in the heart of every thinking American. Really, the only saving grace with that scenario is that Homeland Security is so incompetent -- or maybe that's not such a saving grace after all.

Here's a happy thought: After Reid, passengers were asked to remove their shoes. Now that Abdulmutallab was caught with exploding underdrawers, is the TSA going to ask passengers to remove their ... never mind.

But I feel better knowing the system works. Janet Napolitano said so.

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Vicar's shoplifting advice a symptom of the times

A Church of England vicar said earlier this week that if you're down and out, shoplifting may be the answer.

Father Tim Jones, the parish priest of St Lawrence and St Hilda in York across the pond, raised eyebrows worldwide when he suggested this course of action.

"My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift," he said. "I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither."

It's better, he said, to steal from a large company that can better absorb the loss than a mom-and-pop operation, and to only take what you need.

The Venerable Richard Seed, Archdeacon of York, says the church does not endorse Fr. Jones' suggestion. "The Church of England does not advise anyone to shoplift, or break the law in any way," he said. "Father Tim Jones is raising important issues about the difficulties people face when benefits are not forthcoming, but shoplifting is not the way to overcome these difficulties."

There's a name for this mindset Fr. Jones seems to subscribe to. It's called "situational ethics," and if there's anything that explains why our society is on a fast train to nowhere, that's it.

With situational ethics, a person is constantly looking for a justification for his wrong actions, covering his butt with slick semantics, or couching his choices in lawyer-proof language. It could be someone saying he steals because he's poor, a politician who sells his vote for pork and calls it "compromise," or an adulterous president quibbling over the definition of "is," but it's all the same. Situational ethics puts us on the slippery slope to no ethics at all.

Hate to sound all intellectual and stuff, but some things are meant to be in black and white. Either something's right or it's not. Either something's true or it's not.

Now what's so difficult about that?

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