What a bunch of dopes

For the past few years baseball fans have been forced to wonder whether some of their favorite players have been using performance enhancing substances. It's become something of a guessing game, trying to figure out which popular major-leaguers owe their success to illicit substances.
Barry Bonds' pursuit of Hank Aaron's all-time home run record has been tainted by suspicion he used steroids. Bonds, of course, denies doing anything inappropriate other than being kind of a pain in the rear end.
I, for one, believe Bonds. There are plenty of logical explanations for the change in his appearance over the years. I attribute his freakishly enlarged head, for example, to a little-known but relatively easy plastic surgery procedure commonly referred to as "the Charlie Brown." Everyone knows Charles' Schultz's adorable cartoon characters inspire some pretty loyal fans.
Fans of professional cycling have been playing a similar game for more than a decade now. Until last year, though, when American Floyd Landis had his Tour de France win challenged on the basis of a test that showed elevated levels of testosterone, very few Americans got in on the action. It's hard to blame them. Identifying cyclists who use performance enhancing drugs is way too easy.
Here's how it works. Find the rosters of the teams competing in this month's Tour de France. Point at a rider. That's pretty much it.
Maybe that's cynical. It's possible there are some of those tiny, emaciated-to-the-point-of-being-translucent men who haul themselves over thousands of miles of mountainous terrain without the benefit of blood doping or steroids or testosterone patches on their naughty parts. It's just getting harder and harder to believe that.
Just this week, pre-race favorite Alexandre Vinokourov, who required more than 60 stitches after a crash early in the race and has since been more erratic than Britney Spears in Vegas, tested positive for receiving an illegal blood transfusion. Surprise race leader Michael Rasmussen has aroused suspicion by failing to appear for drug tests and neglecting to tell Danish cycling officials where they could find him if they wanted to spring a test on him. There have been allegations he asked a friend to carry a shoebox filled with synthetic blood for him. Less commonly reported are suggestions he has replaced his entire skeleton with a lighter one made mostly of styrofoam and baling wire.
The cycling world seems to be nearly equally divided among riders who vehemently deny they would ever do anything illegal, riders who are defending themselves from positive tests and/or mounting suspicions and former riders who pop up to say, "Hey, you guys remember when I won all those races a few years ago? Yeah, I was filled with pigs' blood and horse uppers. But I really feel bad about it now."
It's a shame, really, because cycling can be a lot of fun to watch. I spent much of my morning last Sunday watching these skeletal men push themselves to their limit to ride up mountains nearly as big as Barry Bonds' ego. I, meanwhile, lounged on the couch and ate Cinnabons. It was awesome.
Fortunately, the riders are only part of the appeal. Races like the Tour de France are a spectacle unlike anything else in sports. Oakland Raiders fans get a lot of attention for showing up eight times a year dressed in black leather and spikes but there's one cycling fan who has become famous for showing up at just about every stage of the month-long Tour de France dressed as a devil and running alongside the riders. There are thousands of these fans, and for the most part there is nothing between them and the riders. As cyclists peak mountains they ride through a sea of screaming spectators who only clear the road for them at the last second. Fans pour water on riders or pat them on their spandex-covered rear ends. They run alongside wearing giant antlers or chicken costumes or, in one particularly disturbing instance, only a thong. In fairness, that's probably a good way to get riders to go faster.
Now that I think about it, as long as the fans stay off steroids, we should be OK.

Career counseling

I didn't grow up wanting to be a newspaper editor. I didn't study journalism in college. I never worked on a school newspaper in high school or college. I got into this business, I used to say, because I enjoy writing and because I was looking for a job where I didn't have to wear a tie to work.
Taking that kind of path into newspapers makes me wonder once in a while if I made the right choice. If I'm on the right career path.
Mostly I wonder after we've written something someone disagrees with and people call and yell at me.
Whatever the cause, though, it's nice in those moments of uncertainty to know there are jobs out there for which I am even less well suited than I am for this one.
Those kinds of reminders don't come with any kind of regularity, and when I come across them it is often in the course of doing my job.
Several years ago, for example, the publicity crew from the Red Barron pizza company was in the area and invited me to go for a ride with a member of their biplane stunt-flying team. I accepted, expecting to have a chance to take some great aerial photos of the Farmington area. I never got the photos, but the experience taught me I would never have made it as a World War I-era fighter pilot. It's not that I'm afraid to fly. I just think it would have been hard to dogfight and throw up all over myself at the same time.
At any rate, it was one potential career path off the list.
Around the same time, I explored the possibility of becoming a professional bicycle racer by sending letters to the heads of the United States Cycling Federation and the United States Olympic Committee. I asked them if I could ride for the USA in the Athens Olympics. I even promised to bring my own bike, one of those old fashioned deals with the big wheel in the front. In the spirit of the Athens games I offered to ride in a toga.
No deal. All I got for my effort was a hat and a couple of pins. On the bright side, I can use those to convince people I actually did ride in Athens. In a way, that's even better. I get all the glory without having to do any of the actual work. It's as close as I'll ever get to knowing what life is like for Paris Hilton.
I haven't officially ruled out the possibility of becoming a world famous male model, but so far responses from potential agents have not been promising. I assume this is because the bike-shorts-and-toga look I've used in my promotional photos is simply too far ahead of its time.
The latest item on my this-career-is-not-for-you checklist is actually a return to the world of antiquated air combat. Over the weekend three World War II-era bombers visited Holman Field in St. Paul. Because my grandfather flew one of the models on display during the war several members of my family went to visit. My grandfather came dressed in his old flight suit, which earned him free admission. I'm not sure if it was a matter of respecting a veteran or of humoring a guy who was actually willing to walk around in public wearing a World War II flight suit.
Whatever the case, I had an opportunity to make my way through two of the three planes on display. And the planes, while presumably a good size by World War II standards, clearly were not built with ideas of accommodating someone who stands somewhere in the area of six foot six. Ceilings were low. Walkways were roughly the width of Twizzlers. Making my way from one end of a plane to the other required acts of contortion that would tax a contortionist (another career path off the list!). Were I required to move around one of those planes in any kind of hurry there is a very good chance I would either fall out a window or wedge myself so securely into a crawlspace I would still be there today.
I'm not too disappointed, though. I'm not sure I'd want to be a World War II-era bomber crewmember anyway. I'm not even sure what you'd have to major in to get into something like that.

Lessons learned

You can learn a lot when you take a few days to do something as simple as drive halfway across the country. For example, you can learn there is a whole lot of space between the Twin Cities and the West Coast, and not a lot of stuff to put on it.
Much of that empty space is contained in North Dakota and Montana, two states that exist primarily as a place for the United States to keep prairieland it has no use for now but feels it might need later. Crossing Montana alone takes long enough that a good typist has time to conceive, write and edit a novel, three short stories and a typical Michael Bay movie.
I learned that while the average Montana city has fewer residents than a good-sized high school each city seems to have enough casinos to serve all of Las Vegas and then some. There are casinos on every corner, although each is roughly the size of a convenience store and offers little more exciting than keno and video poker. They have names that make them sound like they belong in the Old West (Lucky Lil's) or in James Bond movies (Casino Royale) and lighted signs on their walls that tempt would-be gamblers with payouts as big as $800. As jackpots go, Montana casinos rank somewhere between a good day at the track and a decent meat raffle.
Thanks to a billboard along the highway near Helena — it featured a photo of a child pointing a firearm at me and the message along the lines of, "If he doesn't trust God, does he trust you?" — I learned that if I do not teach my children about God they are likely to shoot me in the face. It's the most terrified by a roadside display since I was driving through Mississippi on the way home from my first year of college and saw three handmade crosses along the road along with a sign that read, "Prepare to meet thy God!"
I learned that in Miles City, Mont. — population 9,000 people and 700 casinos — it is possible to buy a home for $15,000. I also learned I have no actual interest in living in Miles City, Mont. Despite what the city's web site touts as its famous annual bucking horse sale. Although I know where I'm going next time I need a horse with a bad attitude.
I learned that sneaking stuff into Canada is probably a whole lot easier than sneaking anything back. The border guard who checked our IDs as we crossed the border going north couldn't have seemed less interested in the questions she was asking. I suspect I could have told her I had a trunk full of nerve gas and she would have shrugged it off and waved me through.
Coming back into the U.S. was a different story. By the time I got over the border headed south I was half convinced I was up to something.
I learned that Vancouver, B.C. is a nuclear weapons free zone. There was a sign that said so. That might actually explain the lax attitude of the border guard, now that I think about it. There's no need to search anyone for weapons when the city has an ordinance to take care of things.
I learned that life would be a lot easier if Canada would stop using that silly metric system. I can't tell you how much trouble I almost got in after we crossed the border and the speed limits went up to 120. Stupid kilometers. And can you imagine what a letdown it was when I realized gas prices were by the liter rather than by the gallon?
You could hear my cries of frustration for meters.
I learned it's good to have a responsive insurance agent. While I was vacationing in Whistler, B.C., I learned someone had thrown a large rock through the rear window of my car, which was parked in front of my home nearly 2,000 miles away (roughly 70,000 kilometers, I think). It was frustrating to be so far away, but one call to my insurance agent got everything taken care of except the vacuuming up of the broken glass.

And no leaving your blinker on!

Last week the Vatican's office for migrants and immigrant people issued what has become widely known as the Ten Commandments for drivers, a kind of Biblical appendix designed to make the world's roads safer and happier for everyone who uses them. Among other things, the decree issues warnings against drinking and driving and advises drivers to help others in the case of accidents.
According to the Vatican's web page, the June 19 announcement also covered pastoral ministry for the liberation of street women, the pastoral care of street children and the pastoral care of the homeless. That's right. Street children, prostitutes and road rage. The office for migrants and immigrant people has a lot on its plate.
At the top of the list for drivers is a Commandment that should look familiar to anyone with a working knowledge of either the Bible or old Charlton Heston movies: "You Shall Not Kill." The double-dipping seems unnecessary — and I can only assume bumped a much-needed prohibition against fuzzy dice and "Calvin peeing" stickers out of the top 10 — but apparently, the Vatican wanted to make sure everyone realized God doesn't look any more favorably on vehicular homicide than He does on other forms of murder.
Second on the list is, "The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm." Honestly, this seems a little redundant after the first Commandment. I suspect the Vatican was padding its list here. To be fair, The Nine Commandments doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
My personal favorite Commandment, though, is number five, which reads, "Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin." Apparently even God thinks Hummers are stupid.
I can only hope this Commandment also covers vanity license plates. At least the ones like the "5-7HEMI" plate — a reference, so far as I could tell, to the size of the driver's ... engine — that I saw Sunday on the back of a Jeep. I'm not sure if I was more annoyed that the plate was so boastful, that it was boastful about something so stupid or that the driver was going so slowly in front of me. I was seriously in danger of abandoning the courtesy, uprightness and prudence that Commandment three claims will help me "deal with unforeseen events."
Even more remarkable than the list itself, though, is the way it was delivered to the public. There were no stone tablets. Nobody had to climb Mount Sinai. The Vatican Information Service just issued a press release and news organizations spread the word around the world. Imagine how much hassle Moses could have avoided if he could have posted "Dude, God says not to look at your neighbor's wife that way" on his blog.
Some might think reading the Catholic church's new rules online lacks some of the drama of the old way of doing things, but I think this opens up a lot of doors for getting God's message out.
I'm looking forward to the day I can get the word of God sent to my phone as a text message. Cell phone etiquette seems like a natural first topic. You know, things like, "You shall trn off yr phone in movee thtrs." Or, "OMG! Dnt covet yr nghbrs ringtone! LOL!!!!"
Amen.

The messy reality of weight loss

People are willing to put themselves through a lot in the name of losing weight. They'll exercise until they're sweaty and red in the face. They'll try fad diets of all kinds — No bread! Cabbage soup! All pimiento! — as long as someone was persuasive enough to convince a publisher to put out a book about it. They'll even give up having full control of their toilet habits.
I'm basing this last claim on the introduction of something called alli, an over-the-counter diet drug recently given a big thumbs up by the federal Food and Drug Administration. Need proof that it works? That "a" in its name used to be an upper case letter.
According to the drug's web site (www.myalli.com, which, strangely, doesn't come up anywhere on the first page of a Google search), alli works by preventing your body from absorbing about a quarter of the fat you eat. That's the good news. The bad news, also according to the web site, is that using alli has a tendency to hinder a person's ability to control his or her bowels. Among the side effects listed: loose stools and "more frequent stools that may be hard to control" and gas with "oily spotting"
Oily spotting? So, I'll lose weight but my undershorts could end up looking like the paper towel you blot the bacon with?
Clearly this drug works. I'm losing weight just reading about it.
The drug's web site is full of useful instructions. For example: "You may not usually get gassy, but it's a possibility when you take alli. The bathroom is really the best place to go when that happens."
In other words, get somewhere nobody can see, hear or smell you, and fast.
The site also warns: "Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it's probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work."
I don't know about you, but when a drug makers make suggestions about wardrobe I start to get nervous.
Also, eww!
On the bright side, alli sounds perfect for anyone interested in reliving those diaper-wearing days of their childhood.
According to Fox News the FDA has dismissed claims from a group called the Public Citizens' Health Research Group that alli causes colon cancer. Honestly, though, I'm starting to feel like cancer is alli's most pleasant possible side effect.
The alli diet isn't just about popping pills and soiling yourself, though. Like any good diet these days there's a book that goes with it. According to promotional material, the book — called The alli Diet Plan — is a "doctor-designed plan to make the most of this blockbuster product's extraordinary potential." Presumably it includes helpful advice like, "Eat less fat and there's less chance you'll mess yourself when you least expect it." Or maybe, "Sure, dark pants are a good idea. But might I also recommend rubber shorts? They're hot and they bunch but they're totally worth it!"
Reports from users of the drug seem mixed. The web site Medical News Today shared a sampling of e-mails from its readers. Some were positive: "It is the only thing that has worked for my very obese patients who did not want surgery" or "If you stick to a low fat diet it works really well." Some were more neutral: "It cannot replace exercise and a good diet."
And others? Well, they were ... um ... discouraging? Unsettling? Queasifying? I don't know. You pick the adjective: "The drug forced me to avoid fatty foods if I wanted to keep my underwear clean. I lost a lot of weight." Or, "I had to give up as my underwear was soiled all the time."
The bottom line? alli might be great for the size of that bottom, not so much for the clothing you use to cover it.

Just call me Mr. Fixit

I am not what any reasonably observant person would call handy. Never have been. In junior high, my shop class bird house was so unappealing birds chose to go homeless, sleeping under tiny bird newspapers outside the school. The scale model wall frame I built might actually have been condemned. I don't remember.
For the most part, tools and I have an agreement. I don't try to use them to build or fix anything and they don't horribly maim me or anyone else unfortunate enough to be nearby when I attempt a tricky home maintenance task like installing a doorknob or replacing a light bulb.
I know this about myself and I'm generally OK with it. I have rarely had much urge to build anything. All of which makes a recent decision to tinker with an old bike especially puzzling.
I've had this particular bike, a Cannondale, since shortly after I graduated from college 10 years ago. It served me well for a few years, but I didn't care for it well and eventually, as I started to get more serious about biking I replaced it with something newer and lighter and all-around spiffier. The chain rusted. The gears rusted. It started refusing to shift in weather colder than about 80. So, I decided to strip those troublesome gears off, strip off everything related to shifting and rebuild the bike with a single gear.
The logic seemed sound at the time. If the project failed, I'd only have lost a bike I didn't ride anyway. If it worked, the bike would have new life as something on which I could cruise around town.
Plus, I'm pretty sure chicks dig guys on singlespeed bikes. Right?
Caught up in the excitement of the moment, I didn't give any consideration to my significant and well demonstrated lack of mechanical ability. I didn't care about little things like whether I'd be able to put everything back together again. I just wanted to start pulling things off the bike.
In fairness to me, the pulling-parts-off part of the job went pretty smoothly. Then again, I've never had a problem breaking things.
In retrospect, I probably didn't plan quite as well as I should have. None of the parts I ordered right off the bat seemed to work together. The chainring, that big gear wheel in the front of the bike that looks kind of like the disc weapons Xena, Warrior Princess used, was the wrong size for my pedals. New pedals were cheap on e-bay, but they didn't come with the right bolts to hold them to the bike. And nobody I knew seemed to have the right tools to either take everything apart or put it back together.
I never gave up, though. And after multiple online bidding wars, several trips to the bike shop for new tools and slightly less cash than it would have cost me to just by a new bike I had everything put back together.
Still, the completed project didn't exactly inspire confidence in the people around me. My brother said he wanted to be there the first time I rode the reconstructed bike. Not, I suspect, to share in my moment of triumph so much as in anticipation of the whole thing falling apart and me hitting the street face first the first time I tried to turn the pedals.
I chose not to invite him to the bike's maiden trip around the block. He would have been disappointed, anyway. Much to everyone's surprise, the bike held together. To my even greater surprise it has continued to hold up under the few short trips I've taken on it since.
The bike isn't fast. If my bike that replaced it is a greyhound then the newly be-singlespeeded Cannondale is, I don't know, a three-toed sloth. Only a lot heavier. It's like a cross between a three-toed sloth and a particularly lethargic moose.
That's OK, though. I built it. It stayed together. If only those snooty birds could see me now.

Much ado about nothing

I know way too much about people I don't know anything about.
Know what I mean?
OK, maybe that's not as clear as it seemed in my head. So, an example.
Take Anna Nicole Smith. I have never in my life made even the smallest effort to know more about Anna Nicole Smith. And yet I know she married some rich old dude. I know she died of a drug overdose and I know roughly a third of the world's male population claimed to have fathered her child. I don't know why I know this. I don't want to know this. And yet there all that information is, taking up space in my brain that could otherwise be occupied with things like the best way to grill a hamburger or an idea for a movie script that will make me millions. If the knowledge has to be Anna Nicole-related, couldn't it at least be something like the date when she first appeared in Playboy? That's information I could use.
Or, take Paris Hilton. I'm still not even clear why anyone knows who she is (something to do with a home movie?) and yet I know she went back to jail recently, and I know she was crying when she went. I know this at least in part because Newsweek dedicated most of a page to telling me about it.
I know Lindsay Lohan held a knife to a friend's throat. I know Nicole Richie is so thin it looks like someone wrapped a blanket around a coat rack. And I know Britney Spears has as much chance of getting through rehab successfully as I have getting Britney Spears' phone number. Fortunately, I also know enough about Britney Spears and her decline from the days when men around the world were having criminally lustful thoughts about her that I probably wouldn't want her phone number anyway.
Everyone wins, I guess.
These days, thanks the increasing options for sharing information with the world, it's not just the inexplicably famous I know way too much about. I also know far more than I care to about the explicably non-famous.
I realize that as a person who dedicates 600-some words each week to telling people whatever inane thought is on my mind (how I know too much about people, for example) I'm on shaky footing when I come out against blogs, but I'm doing it anyway. I know people I have blogs, or web logs. I read one regularly to keep track of a former co-worker who has since moved out of the state. But that's it. I don't need to know what some dude in Milwaukee thinks about the latest episode of American Idol, or about what some lonely blogger's cats did that was really cute.
Full disclosure: I made a page on MySpace, a social networking site where teenage girls and aspiring musicians share intimate details of their lives. I did it because I wanted to see if I could locate any long lost friends. I abandoned it almost immediately because I don't need the world to know my favorite color (It's blue!) or favorite band (At the moment it's the Hold Steady!) or my favorite kind of soup (I don't eat soup much!).
By the way, if you want to check any of this later, you can read this column on the Town Pages blog, areavoices.com/townpages. Oh, the irony.
Blogs are just the beginning, though. A new program called Twitter lets people provide instant updates via cell phone to tell people exactly where they are at any given moment. Sites like flickr let people share their photos with the world.
A recent study by five psychologists, led by San Diego State professor Jean Twenge, found that college students today are more self-centered than at any time since 1982. Twenge suggests that is due at least in part to the growth of technology like MySpace and YouTube. Young people assume that the fact they can share the intimate details of their life — or at least videos of them getting hit in the crotch — means other people are actually interested in those details.
We're not, of course. Unless knowing some random college student in Portland is a terrible dancer and has no shame can help me forget Paris Hilton has a dog named Tinkerbell. Then it might be worth it.

Words of wisdom

This being the graduation season there is no shortage of people willing to offer advice to the young men and women of America as they prepare to receive their diplomas. As commencement day nears for Minnesota high school students graduation speakers and newspaper columnists who never get asked to speak ,even though they would be totally awesome at it, prepare to share their wisdom, such as it is, with one more group of students about to head off to the real world. Or at least to college which, let's be honest, is only slightly more like the real world than that show on MTV where people spend all their time drinking and yelling at each other.
Live life to the fullest, graduates will be told. Aim high, speakers will advise. Always wear clean underwear and remember to call home, parents will admonish.
Words of wisdom come from all kinds of places this time of year. Places like the editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries, who recently released a list of 100 words they believe every high school graduate should know.
Some of the words on the list make sense. Nano-technology, for example. The science of really small things is an increasingly important part of everyday life, so it seems fair to expect high school graduates to at least know what it is. Plagiarize is a good one, too. It's important for college students to do their own work, so I guess students should understand what plagiarism is all about. Deciduous? Photosynthesis? Everyone knows discussions about trees and their ability to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen happen all the time in the hallways of college dorms.
It's a little harder to figure out why some of the other words made the list.
Take abjure, the first word on the list. It means to solemnly renounce, as in a belief. And while I realize college students change their views on any number of subjects, I don't see why they'd have to be so snooty about it.
Then there's expurgate, which the dictionary on my computer says means to remove material thought to be objectionable. This actually sounds like part of what I do in my job, but I think people would look at me funny if I started calling myself an expurgator. They might also start expecting me to pull this column out of the paper if they knew my job was to remove objectionable material.
I don't like the fact xenophobe is on the list, but that might just be because it's such a foreign-sounding word.
American Heritage Dictionary senior editor Steven Kleinedler calls the words on the list a benchmark against which students can measure themselves.
"If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a superior command of the language," he said.
That may be, but use them too often or in the wrong company and you are likely to have a superior wedgie, too.
With that in mind, I'd like to offer my own list of words and phrases every soon-to-be college student should know.
Ramen: A staple of any college student's diet. True story: A college friend of mine actually started yelling at a complete stranger after hearing him tell a friend he had no idea what ramen was. You don’t want to take that chance. Also acceptable: Easy Mac.
Nothing before 10: This phrase should be considered above all else when planning a schedule.
Snooze button: Understanding its proper use is important for any college student. It can be your best friend or your worst enemy.
Send money: Ramen and Easy Mac are cheap. Not free.
Priorities: There are a lot of distractions in college. Stay focused on what's important.
My computer crashed: Great for those nights when you're supposed to be writing a paper but Ferris Bueller's Day Off is showing on campus.
Good luck, graduates.

Crank up the tacky factor

Last May my father, my brother and I took a week and biked something like 430 miles from Hayward, Wis. to Mackinac Island, Mich.
In case you're not familiar, Mackinac Island, located in Lake Michigan, is best known for its lack of motorized vehicles — everyone gets around either on bicycles or in horse-drawn wagons — and for fudge, which is available in roughly every other shop on the island. The buildings all look like they could be made of gingerbread, the businesses are staffed primarily by people who move to the island for the summer and its economy is based primarily on the sale of candy, tacky t-shirts and any number of other things nobody actually needs.
It's a tourist trap, but in a vaguely classy, oldey timey kind of way.
This year, we decided to take things to a new level.
Last Friday morning the three of us drove to Red Wing and set off by bicycle to LaCrosse, Wis. and from there to Wisconsin Dells. The trip itself was scenic and pleasant. With the exception some of the worst navigation since Columbus tried to find a new route to Asia -- what was supposed to be two 100-mile days in the saddle turned into 110 miles on Friday and 123 on Saturday -- it was uneventful. The trip's end, though was anything but.
Mackinac Island is quaint in its tourist trappiness. Wisconsin Dells, on the other hands, is about as gaudy and in-your-face as a city of 1,200 people can be. It's like the Midwest's answer to Las Vegas, only instead of gangsters it appears to have been built by harried parents looking for ways to keep their kids occupied for a week every summer. It may be the only city in the world with more mini golf holes than permanent residents.
In recent years Las Vegas has tried to lure people with the addition of high-end shopping malls. My mom remembers the Dells primarily — and fondly — because it once had a store called Chenille world.
In Las Vegas they build giant theaters for dubious stars like Celine Dion. In the Dells they built a theater for magician Rick Wilcox.
Vegas has gambling and is a prime destination for a certain kind of bachelor party. The Dells has go-karts and would probably be a sweet place to have birthday party if you were, like, 8.
It's hard to know quite what to make of the Dells. Back before I hit puberty and had the patience to wait 10 minutes in line for a two-second waterslide ride I'm sure I thought it was really cool. Now that I'm too big to fit comfortably in a go-kart (seriously, I've got a bruise on my knee now) some of the shine is gone. I still enjoyed my three go kart races and my 18 holes of "adventure golf," but I was also happy to go back and read my book. I could have wandered through the shops downtown, I suppose, but a person really only needs so many "Female Body Inspector" shirts.
I think it's great a place like Wisconsin Dells exists — people all over the Midwest need a place they can drive with their kids for a summer vacation — I'm just not sure I need to go back there anytime soon.
It's hard to know how we’ll top this with our next trip. Although people have already started talking about Vegas. I suppose it's the natural next step.

Local news, now with less local

We live in a world where every job currently done by an American worker can be outsourced to someone in another country willing to do it for less money.
I didn't used to believe that. I mean, I always knew there were a lot of jobs that could be shipped overseas in the name of saving a couple of bucks. Some guy in Bangalore, India can help me troubleshoot my computer or activate my credit card just as easily as Carl in San Jose. It might be a bad deal for American tech workers, but at least they have more time now to play World of Warcraft.
So, yes. I knew there were plenty of jobs being farmed out to foreigners. But all jobs? That seemed unlikely. My job? No way, Jose. No way some guy telecommuting from another continent can provide the kind of local coverage readers of small-town newspapers want. No way someone sitting at a computer in the Far East can know as much about what's going on in Rosemount as someone who sits in the meetings and walks on the streets and talks face to face with the people who live here.
I mean, right?
Apparent ly not. And a web site in Pasadena is proving it.
Accord-ing to the Los Angeles Times, a web site called Pasadena now.com recently hired two beat reporters to cover Pasadena city government. Both will work from home, which for them is in India. They'll watch live webcasts of city council meetings and conduct interviews via e-mail. And the best part for the web site? Together the two reporters, one of whom reportedly has a degree from the University of California at Berkley, will be paid about $21,000.
The web site's publisher, James Macpherson, told the Times the new reporters would be, "a significant way to increase the quality of journalism on the local level without the expense that is a major problem for local publications."
I suppose when you consider most of Pasadenanow's previous city government coverage until came from press releases he might be right. But I imagine the thing he's most concerned with increasing is the size of his bank account. And when there's money to be saved who cares if the guy writing the stories has ever met the subject of his interview face to face? What's the big deal if he's never been to Leprechaun Days or sifted through the letters written about downtown redevelopment or had people call and tell him he doesn't know what he's doing? With a 13 1/2-hour time difference from India to Pasadena — not to mention the long distance charges involved — that seems unlikely.
What are a few culture-based misunderstandings when you're saving big bucks?
Then again, maybe I'm just being defensive. I bet the guys at the Visa call center never thought a bunch of foreigners could do their jobs, either. And when you think about it, with the growing popularity of satellite TV why couldn't some guy in Shanghai make just as many lame jokes as I do about stupid shows on TV?
So, there you go. Newspapers aren't just going out of style. They're going overseas. And if someone can cover a city without ever setting foot inside its borders why should we believe any job is safe from outsourcing? I'm sure this is just the beginning.
Why do we need so many local police officers, for example? Can't we just install a bunch of security cameras and have some kids from a Chinese sweatshop watch for trouble on their breaks? Maybe we can have a couple of local cops on duty in case of emergencies, but if we could rig squad cars up to remote control systems it would be just like playing video games for the kids.
Lawyers? I'm not convinced they actually serve a purpose as it is, but if you really need one why not just hook up a video conferencing system and patch in some guy from Hong Kong. He doesn't get paid until you get paid, and even then it's like 75 cents.
Why spend big money on famous actors for our movies and television shows? I bet there are all kinds of talented Croatians who are willing to do the same work for a fraction of the price. And do you really think the quality of a movie like Delta Farce would suffer?

I wasn't using my gums, anyway

A couple of large, padded envelopes showed up on my desk one day last week. That's not unusual. Operating two newspapers out of the same office, we often get press releases and other materials in duplicate. What was in the envelopes? Well, that's where things get interesting.
As I write this column, I have sitting on the desk in front of me two packages of something the manufacturer has decided to describe as "dissolvable tobacco" — wintergreen flavor! — and two packages of something called hard snuff — "Spit Free," the box announces in red letters.
That's right. Mr. Postman brought me a veritable jackpot of addictive, cancer-causing substances. Outside of the thin mints the Girl Scouts send each year to announce the start of cookie sales it's the most potentially habit-forming press release I've ever been sent.
I realize the tobacco industry doesn't have the best reputation when it comes to the methods it uses to get people hooked on its products. Still, sending out samples through the mail seems sketchy even for people who chose pitch their products with a phallus-faced cartoon camel.
I don't know quite what to make of these particular products. According to the press release that accompanied my gum disease-causing gift, smokeless tobacco like Ariva and Stonewall — the names of these particular products — is "between 10 and 1,000 times less hazardous than smoking depending on the product." That's nice, I guess. But isn't that a little like saying my chances of ever getting a date with Charlize Theron are between 1,000 and 1,000,000 to one, depending on how much she's had to drink? Star Scientific, the company behind what I've decided to identify as suckable tobacco, recently added 40 new distribution centers, which the release claims are "capable of making the products available to approximately 50,000 retail outlets." Just like I'm "capable" of treating Charlize to a lovely dinner. You know, assuming she doesn't mind ordering from the dollar menu.
The packaging for both Ariva and Stonewall looks like a hybrid of a cigarette pack, a box of cold medicine and a package of chiclets. The individual pieces of Ariva, which come 20 to a pack, are sealed in plastic blisters like Sudafed. The football-shaped Ariva pieces are about the size of a pea. The similarly shaped Stonewall is roughly twice as big. I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to use them to ease a nicotine craving or clear up sinus pressure.
I'd like to tell you what these things taste like, but I've never used a tobacco product in my life. And as dedicated as I am to my readers I'm not going to start with something that looks vaguely like it should be sold on a street corner somewhere.
The back of each package has instructions, which seems like a bad sign when the only major step is putting something in your mouth. Still, the box strongly recommends against chewing the piece or swallowing it whole. Nothing ominous about that. Or about the warning on the bottom of the box that either product might cause gum disease and tooth loss. Or the warning that oral tobacco products can cause dizziness, heartburn, hiccups or nausea. No wonder they're giving this stuff away.
I imagine products like Ariva and Stonewall will become more popular as legislators continue to ferret out every last place a Minnesotan might try to light up a cigarette. This might explain Star Scientific's new marketing campaign for the products: "Better than Cigarettes® — Find out Why." Granted, when you're sucking on a lozenge of tobacco there's no secondhand smoke to worry about. And we've already covered the spitting issue. All we'll really have to worry about is a bunch of dizzy, queasy tobacco-suckers with no teeth and rotting gums.
Apparently, the convenience store industry is sold, though. An article in the April 2007 issue of Convenience Store Decisions calls Ariva and Stonewall "the future of tobacco use in the 21st century." I'm not sure how many other options there are for our future tobacco use, but I imagine people wadding tobacco leaves up and sticking them in their ears.
Me? I'm waiting until cookie time rolls around again.

Were we having fun yet?

Last weekend I spent a healthy chunk of an otherwise lovely Sunday causing myself considerable discomfort.
I wasn't alone. By one estimate something like 5,000 people were out there with me, forsaking yard work and family time and other more productive activities like, I don't know, watching the NFL draft or cleaning the lint trap in their driers, to pedal their bicycles in big circles.
These people and I participated in the Ironman bike ride, which started and ended at Lakeville North High School. At least, it ended at LHS for people who didn't collapse somewhere along the way and require professional assistance just to relieve pressure from their super-stretchy shorts. I imagine there were more than a few of those.
Most of these people will tell you they enjoyed their ride Sunday. And they won't be lying. At least not entirely. So far as I can tell, there are three truly enjoyable periods in any long bike ride. The first is on the way to the ride, as you eat a banana and talk confidently about how fast you're going to go. The second is any stretch of road when you've got a strong wind at your back. There's something immensely enjoyable about speeding along at 25 miles an hour with hardly any effort. The third and most important period is long after the ride is done, as you convince yourself, you actually did have fun doing the activity to which you just dedicated five-plus hours.
This last period is vital, because it serves to convince people they should A) try the ride again next year and B) talk their friends into trying it with them. This is how rides like the Ironman, which more often than not takes place on cold, windy and otherwise miserable days, continue to grow year after year.
What I'm saying is a good distance bike ride is kind of like a really efficient virus. It causes discomfort in its host/rider but it never does enough damage that it can't sustain itself. And don't let anyone tell you riders in the Ironman don't suffer. Last year I rode 100 miles in 40-degree rain. A long bike ride doesn't typically cause as much coughing or vomiting as a nasty flu bug, but after 90 miles sitting on a seat roughly the size of that banana you ate earlier in the day, well, let's just say you're ready for a nice, cushy chair.
And no matter how much fun those with-the-wind segments are, you can never forget you're riding in a big circle. Eventually you'll have to turn around and go the other way. In the Ironman, this typically means around mile 85, as you hit Northfield and turn north up Cedar Avenue, you prepare yourself to spend the last 15 miles or so biking uphill and into a wind I estimate is typically just short of gale force. The next time someone tells you this is a good time I encourage you to laugh in that person's face. Or possibly to give them a solid smack.
Still, there's a lot to love about a ride like the Ironman. It gives a person a glimpse at just how diverse the bike community is. As I rode Sunday I saw bikes that probably cost as much as my car and bikes that probably cost as much as my shoes. One year I swear I saw a guy riding the 100-mile route on a bike he appeared to have built himself.
I saw riders Sunday who looked like they were fit and ready for any endurance test and others who made me start humming that High Hopes song about the ant and the rubber tree plant. These were riders who put the sag in sag wagon and, unfortunately, the big fat rear end in tight spandex shorts.
There were riders in full Lance Armstrong costume, with Discovery Channel jerseys and Trek bikes, and there was one guy whose outfit included way-too-short biking shorts, clip-in bike shoes and a Hawaiian shirt over a big gut.
Bikers are an eclectic group alright.
Sure the Ironman is a struggle. That last hill up to the high school is a killer every year. But there's also a whole lot to love about it. I suppose I'll go back next April.
Wanna come?

She can forget a Mother's Day card

There is an unwritten Guy Code that spells out certain things any real man really should do for himself. Shaving is one. So is hooking up new electronic equipment. Sending hate mail to a former elementary school classmate you haven't seen in more than a decade? That's definitely on the list.
That last one should probably be self-explanatory, but some people have to learn the hard way.
Anthony Perone did. According to a March 16 story in the Hartford Courant, the 20-year-old Faribault resident wrote two letters to a girl he'd gone to school with in third and fourth grade. He wrote things like, "Your gonna learn about suffering and having nothing. Pain you will feel. Fear, Being alive," and filled the letters with drawings of tombstones and rifles and hearts with chunks bitten out of them. He signed them "Love, Death Stalker."
Then, he left the letters for his mom to mail.
This is where is plan starts to fall apart. Because Perone's mom, presumably thinking she was being helpful, put her son's name and return address on the envelopes and put them in the mail.
This might have been the easiest stalking case Connecticut police have ever solved.
Clearly mothers are nothing but trouble. Sometimes they put return addresses on letters that threaten death to people who are practically strangers. Sometimes they give their son's phone number to strange women they meet in book stores, just because the woman says she likes biking.
Not that I know any mothers who would do anything like that.
Imagine how much easier it would be to solve crimes, though, if every criminal was so dependent on his mother. The Unabomber would have been caught within days, although I imagine it would have taken some time to track down a return address for "crazy person's shack in the woods."
The anthrax scares that happened after 9/11 probably would have been over before they started because the mailer's mom would have been just certain her boy would never have meant to send such messy packages. And shouldn't he come out of that lab for just a little while? At least go sit in the yard. It's such a nice day.
Obviously Peron has some problems. Aside from bad grammar and a pushy mother, I mean. Police found an assault rifle and ammunition in his bedroom, along with a machete and evidence he planned to travel to Connecticut. He'd been obsessing over a girl who he'd last seen when both were in elementary school. And he wanted to go to Connecticut.
Still, there's no excuse for this kind of mistake. Does Peron ask his mother to soap him up when he showers? Does she clip his toenails? I'm guessing she doesn't. And he really shouldn't ask her to mail his anonymous, venom-filled letters. Hate mail is a very personal thing, after all.
According to the Courant, Peron has pleaded guilty to two counts against him and could face up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to $500,000 when he is sentenced June 5.
It is not clear whether he would write his mom from jail.

Keep on truckin'

It seems like every third commercial on TV these days involves one automaker or another telling everyone how big and powerful their pick-up trucks are.
This isn't an entirely new thing. Americans have been infatuated with larger-than-necessary trucks ever since we as a culture decided we didn't give a darn how much gas cost — or how often news anchors told us prices were increasing — because we needed to drive around town in something larger than many people's first apartments.
Still, things seem to be getting out of hand. These commercials are everywhere. I see them a lot during sporting events, which makes a certain amount of sense. Manly Men watch sports, and Manly Men need big trucks so they can pull up stumps or haul construction debris or drag Rhode Island over to the West Coast just for the heck of it. Probably while wearing flannel shirts and steel-toed work boots. These are things Manly Men do.
But I also see a lot of commercials for these trucks during The Office. Do Manly Men like quiet, observational comedies shot in a documentary style? Do Manly Men care whether Jim and Pam end up together? Do they wipe away tears with flannel hankies? Maybe Manly Men are more diverse than I give them credit for.
I'm learning things watching these commercials. A few weeks ago I had no idea what a leaf spring was. Now two manufacturers are telling me their massive springs — "honkin'" is the term one of them uses — are the reason their trucks are strong enough to hold all of the rocks or manure or small office buildings you want to load them down with. Frankly, I would have thought a part so vital to making our trucks super-tough would have a more rugged-sounding name. Something less plant related. Like, biceps spring, maybe. Or tough-guy spring.
I've seen trucks pulling trains. I've seen trucks driven at breakneck speeds to the edges of cliffs. Manly Men have very little respect for the well-being of their trucks. Then again, their trucks are tough. Their trucks can take it. Their trucks want it that way, because they are Manly Trucks.
I'm sure there are people who need trucks like these. These are people whose job involves activities more strenuous than sitting at a desk and typing all day. Although, to be fair, I'm at serious risk of carpal tunnel. I take that risk every week because I want to entertain you, my readers. I don't consider myself a hero for that, but it's OK if you do.
Still, I'm not sure the market is so large I need to spend every commercial break learning about fully-boxed frames or supersized tow hitches or brakes the size of manhole covers apparently designed specifically to stop speeding trucks at the edges of cliffs.
Then again, maybe these automakers know something I don't. Maybe our environment is worse than we realize and we'll all soon need trucks so large they have their own gravitational pull just to survive. Or maybe our obesity epidemic is spiraling out of control and we'll need super-sized trucks just to haul our super-sized butts around.
Better beef up those tough-guy springs.

You wouldn't like me when I'm angry

Can we please cool it with the rage?
Earlier this month the St. Paul Pioneer Press printed a Columbia News Service story about the growing incidences of what the story calls Sidewalk Rage, which it apparently defines as any incident in which one person gets really ticked off at another person where both of the people involved are on a sidewalk at the time. Apparently the term was considered more concise than "getting really ticked off at other people in public rights of way."
I guess I get that.
I don't know if Road Rage was the first commonly recognized form of situational rage, but it's was the first to enter my consciousness. This was back around the time we started seeing all kinds of stories about drivers in California who had started opening fire on the Interstate, having deciding a raised middle finger was no longer an appropriate response to the jerk who cut you off.
At the time, it seemed like an appropriate turn of phrase. Drivers were getting honked off at the idiots on the road all around them and were flying off the handle. They were on the road. They were in a rage. Simple as that.
Now, rage is everywhere. It's moved from the road to the sidewalk and there's no stopping it. Consider these terms that turned up at least one recorded incident in the first five responses from a Google search:
Travel Rage: A blanket term that includes Air Rage (getting miffed at altitude when), Hotel Rage (wanting to ring the bell of the clerk who lost your reservation) and Train Rage (like Air Rage, presumably, but on rails and generally at a lower fare and with more stops).
Restaurant Rage: Now getting irate at the waiter who takes an hour to bring your soup or the jerk at the next table who won't get off his cell phone gets its own diagnosis.
Cable Rage: The Urban Dictionary describes this as getting extremely frustrated at a particularly nasty tangle of cables. I'll admit, it sounds a lot better than, "Becoming upset at the realization your sloppy cable-routing habits have created a disgusting mess behind your home entertainment system."
Parking Rage: Pretty much what it sounds like. Someone takes the parking spot you wanted, you flip out. Someone parks too close to your car, forcing you to contort your body like Plastic Man just to get out of the mall parking lot, you key their door. Someone's car alarm won't stop going off, you smash a trash can through their windshield. Simple.
Snow Rage: This might be a particular concern this week. According to the Chicago Tribune a 73-year-old man was charged with assault in March of this year after he reportedly slashed his neighbor with a knife because he didn't like the fact the neighbor was blowing snow into his yard.
"I'm very upset about what happened," the man reportedly said after he was released on bail. "We're good friends, good neighbors. I just want this to blow over."
Apparently this assumes it doesn't blow into his yard.
Sports Rage: This one's easy. Parents go nuts at a sporting event. Parents attack ref. Parents attack opposing coach. Parents attack their own child's coach. Take your pick, really.
To be fair, there were several terms that don't yet turn up claims of rage syndromes. So far as I can tell, nobody has yet coined the term Soup Rage. There was nothing for Slacker Rage, although that one seems pretty self-explanatory. A search for Salamander Rage turned up a review for the Sega Genesis game Streets of Rage 2 (which was awesome, by the way) but no incidents of people getting angry over newts. There were no valid responses for Television Rage, which seems really surprising. Seriously, nobody's blood boils when they watch Two and a Half Men?
A search for Marshmallow Rage turned up a story about Fluffernutter wars raging in Massachusetts. That doesn't really fit this discussion but it suggests that despite playing a key role in the American Revolution Massachusetts now has the lamest wars ever.
I'm sure these types of rage and more are on the horizon, though. It's just a matter of time. And when I see them I'm going to get really mad.
Call it Rage Rage.

Tubby, Tubby, Tubby

We're nearing the end of March, and you know what that means: Every person in the world is currently losing in their NCAA tournament pools.
This is the time of year when anybody with the remotest interest in sports — and even many without any interest at all — fills out a tournament bracket. It's also the time of year when newspaper columnists and late night talk show hosts write or talk about how poorly they're doing with those brackets. And since nobody ever talks about winning their tournament pools, I can only assume nobody ever wins.
It's simple statistics, folks. You can't argue with it.
For the record, I actually still have a chance to win one of my pools. If I've done the math right, never a certainty, Ohio State beating UCLA in the championship means I win. That could mean some decent money. You know, if I was in favor of betting on things like this.
Kids, don't gamble.
I don't want to talk about any of that, though. I don't want to talk about this basketball season. This basketball season is dead to me. It went on life support the day the Gopher men's team lost to Marist, and it started coughing up vital organs around the time the team started stumbling its way through the Big 10 season. You know how you can tell things are bad? When you start to wonder if the players know they're only supposed to throw the ball to players whose uniforms match theirs.
I've been going to Gopher games since before I was old enough to really understand what was going on. There were times this season when I still wasn't sure, but I blame the team for some of that. In all those years, this is the first time I actually felt relieved when the season ended. I haven't been to the dentist in years, but getting teeth drilled couldn't be as bad as this year's team. At least at the dentist you get Novocain.
How bad was this year's Gopher team? If I'd had any college eligibility left, I might have had a chance to walk on. I'm not saying we'd do better if I was on the floor (we almost certainly wouldn't) but we couldn't have done much worse. And I'd have had the chance to wear a tank top, which likely would have either made people laugh or made them a little queasy. Either way, though, it might distract them from the game.
But like I said, this season is over. The Dan Monson Era is over in Gopher Basketball and the Tubby Smith era has begun. It's fitting this happened in spring, because there couldn't be anything more refreshing.
I don't know a lot about Tubby Smith. I know his real first name is Orlando, and that his parents had something like 632 children. I know he was an assistant coach at Kentucky before moving on to Tulsa and Georgia, where he ran successful programs. I know he won 22 games this season, just three fewer than the Gophers won in the last two years combined, and still had people calling for the school to fire him. And I know people in Kentucky really, really need something besides college basketball and bourbon to keep them occupied.
There are certainly concerns with the hire. Some of those people calling for Tubby to be fired questioned his ability to recruit. And if Tubby can't recruit at Kentucky, one of the great programs in the history of college basketball, how can we expect him to recruit to a school with players who at times this season seemed unclear on the underlying concepts of the game? Maybe we could offer to have someone write the players' term papers for them.
Mostly, though, I'm excited. Because beyond the questions, beyond the doubts, beyond the idea that, hey, $1.8 million is an awful lot to pay a guy to coach a basketball team, there is one important fact. That fact is this: In the next few years we're going to have a lot more opportunities to use the word "Tubby." And that can only be a good thing.

Break out the fish pudding!

They say everyone's Irish on St. Patrick's Day. I can only assume that in this particular instance "They" are "People who are looking for an excuse to justify drinking until they can't see straight."
As I headed out for a bike ride early Saturday afternoon (on a green bike, no less) I saw lots of people being Irish. By 1 p.m. they were already heading into bars or into tents set up specially for the occasion. Presumably they'd set aside a lot of time that afternoon for exploring their Irish heritage. Hopefully they'd arranged rides home with a somewhat less Irish friend.
When I attended college in New Orleans we had weeks at a time when everyone was Irish. They were called "Mardi Gras." Or sometimes "Thursday."
I don't think I've ever been Irish on St. Patrick's Day, though. Most years on March 17 I'm the same thing I am every other day of the year: Norwegian enough to know how to eat lefse the right way, but with enough other nationalities mixed in I've never thought to myself, "You know what I'd like? A nice piece of whitefish soaked in lye sure would hit the spot. Get me some lutefisk!"
I realize there are plenty of people who enjoy lutefisk now and again but I also suspect these people are the reason there are Ole and Lena jokes. And not even the funny Ole and Lena jokes.
(I'm kidding, of course. There are no funny Ole and Lena jokes.)
Norway is the only country where I've actually met distant relatives. This was during my junior year of high school, when I spent 10 months living in Sweden. My aunt, the genealogist in the family, came to visit and we went to find our kin in northern Norway. We met some relatives I'd never seen before and will probably never see again. And we got a tour of an old family homestead from some people who were in no way related to us. They picked us up from the library where my aunt was doing research (the librarian had called them) and fed us lefse and some kind of soup that was pretty much just milk and macaroni (I have no idea why people think Norwegians eat bland food). They would have let us spend the night, I think, if we didn't already have a hotel room.
In other parts of the country this story might have ended with my aunt and me chopped up in somebody's basment, but I think our biggest danger was that they might make us put Saint Lucia candle-wreaths on our heads.
I like being Norwegian. In Minnesota, it's practially a requirement. The only problem is, we don't get enough respect. When people think Norway they don't think famous people. They think fjords and white food and possibly Haggar the Horrible.
There are a lot of noteworthy Norwegians, though. There are explorers like Roald Amundson, the first person to reach the South Pole. Vilhelm Bjerknes, the father of modern meterology, is Norwegian. At least, there's a 75 percent chance he is. Norway has famous cyclists like Thor Hushovd and ski jumpers like Espen Bredesen. There are even famous Norwegian beach volleyball players. Which brings up the surprising realization there are beaches in Norway.
Norway has lots of famous entertainers, although two of the 20 people in the Film and Comedy category on Wikipedia's list of famous Norwegians are porn stars. That's 20 percent! Apparently the Norwegian film industry is really trashy.
Norway also boasts the band Mayhem, which so far as I can tell is like a cross between Kiss and the creepiest person you've ever met. They feature songs with names like Voice of a Tortured Skull and Necrolust. Those long winter nights can really mess with a person.
I think it's clear we Norwegians have a lot to offer. There's more to us than cross country skiing and fjords. Keep that in mind a couple of months from now. Because they say everyone's Norwegian on Syttende Mai.

The pain of a great loss

Dear Diary:
Anna Nicole Smith is gone and I'm not sure what I'll do. Our world has lost an icon. A stylemaker. A role model for people everywhere. At least, for people who aren't all that bright but want to remain in the public eye despite having no readily identifiable talent. Where in Hollywood will we ever find anyone like that again?
I realize I'm late in writing about this, Diary. Frankly, it was too much to process right away. All I wanted to do was pretend it hadn't happened but there was nowhere I could turn. At the gym on the night she died I had to watch endless Fox News coverage while I ran on the treadmill. CNN is said to have gone 90 minutes commercial-free with nothing but Anna Nicole news. I don't blame them. What, after all, could be more important than the tragic death of a woman who brought joy to so many. Who brought news of TrimSpa to the masses and who, let's be honest, made us all feel just a little bit better about ourselves.
Even now, weeks after she left us, Anna Nicole's death is still very much a topic of conversation. Just recently a judge wept as he ruled on the fate of Anna Nicole's daughter. People made fun of him for that, but not me. He knew. Anna Nicole was gone and she was never coming back. How could any baby be better off with a mother like Anna Nicole out of the picture?
Just last week, Stephen King wrote about Anna Nicole in a column for Entertainment Weekly. He called her life a fairy tale, and that seems about right. She rose from poverty to prominence is just like Cinderella. You know, assuming that after she married the prince Cinderella got hooked on drugs, flashed her hooters in some bad movies and let a film crew follow her around for a few months while she made a fool of herself. Which I think she totally did. Just read between the lines in the original text. Also, I imagine marrying a wrinkly old rich dude is probably a lot like kissing a frog.
Frankly, Diary, I'm not sure what we'll do next. Who will we turn to for our regular doses of celebrity inanity? Who else out there can so consistently put herself in the public eye despite contributing nothing of any real substance to society. Britney Spears is trying, Diary, bless her heart. But she is just one woman and frankly I'm not sure how much longer she can keep up this pace.
Paris Hilton? Tara Reid? Jessica Simpson? It's a start, Diary, but somehow it's not the same.
Lindsay Lohan? Actually, I kind of liked Mean Girls.
It's hard right now, Diary, but I know it will pass. I know we'll move on. As hard as it will be, I know society will find someone to fill the void. We need to. It's part of what Wired magazine this month describes as our Snack Culture. In a world of YouTube clips and pop songs shrunk down to cell phone ringtones we don't want celebrities we have to think about. We want someone we can know all about even if all we read about them is the blurbs on the cover of Us Weekly. We don't want thoughtful, artistic films. We want Internet clips of cute puppies and guys getting hit in the junk.
I know all of this, Diary. I know life will return to normal just as it did after Barbaro left us. But that's for the future, Diary. For now it just hurts.

Up next: a Golden Girls marathon

TiVo doesn’t know me.
Oh, it thinks it does. Just hours after I plugged in my new digital video recorder it was making suggestions. It was recording things it thought I should be watching. While I slept it recorded episodes of Sanford and Son and the Cosby Show. When I woke up the next morning it was in the middle of an episode The Beverly Hillbillies.
It was way off. I watched my share of Beverly Hillbillies episodes during the summers of my junior high school years, but I like to think I’ve outgrown jokes about cement ponds.
In theory, the machine is supposed to get smarter as it learns about me. It’s supposed to identify my interests and record accordingly. So far, though, it seems to be getting worse. In the weeks since I set the device up it has remained inexplicably devoted to the idea I like reruns of old sitcoms. It has recorded episodes of Full House, the treacly Friday-night fixture best known for introducing us to the Olsen Twins. It has saved copies of Family Ties and of Boy Meets World.
I realize the 80s were my formative years, but that doesn’t mean I want to relive them.
TiVo also appears to be under the impression I’m a middle school-aged girl. For several straight days it recorded shows from Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel. It recorded something called Hannah Montana, which I gather is about a fictional pre-teen singer. It might be a great show, but considering it’s major characters are all played by 13-year-olds I’m not sure I could watch it without feeling like I needed to call the police and get signed up for a electronic ankle bracelet.
Lately, TiVo’s been all over the map. On Sunday night its list of suggestions for the week ahead included the O’Reilly Factor and Chris Matthews’ Hardball. It had Tucker Carlson and Maury Povich. Jerry Springer and Charlie Rose.
TiVo thinks I might want to catch an upcoming showing of Die Hard 2, which might not be a bad idea, but it also wants to make sure I don’t miss Desperate Housewives. Honestly, I think Wisteria Lane is the next place John McLean should be set loose.
If I listened to TiVo I would find myself a double feature of Brit Hume and Tyra Banks.
I can’t fix my car to save my life, but TiVo thinks I might like something called Automotive Vision.
The closest I get to farming is driving through what’s left of local fields on my way to work, but TiVo is ready and willing to record this week’s airing of Ag Day.
TiVo recommended seven separate Spanish-language shows on Univision despite I haven’t taken Spanish since I was in second grade.
The recommendations aren’t all bad. TiVo suggested Alias, which I own on DVD. It also alerted me to an upcoming airing of Ferris Bueller’s Day off. Once, in college, I put off writing a paper that was due the next day so I could watch that movie in our campus bar. Then again, I probably put off papers in college so I could wash my socks. It wasn’t a high bar to clear.
Mostly, though, the recommendations are confusing. It thinks I might like Little House on the Prairie and Gunsmoke. It wants me to watch the A-Team and Crossing Jordan.
I realize I’m coming late to the whole TiVo sensation. And I can see why people have gotten so excited about a magic box that can set itself to record an entire season of a television show with just a few button presses. I’m sure it will change my life once I get used to it. I just have to feel a little suspicious of any electronic device that tries to sell me on watching women’s golf.

TV: it’s a right, not a privilege

I love television. That's no secret. I probably watch more than is good for me, and since I bought a new TV month ago I probably watch even more than I did before. Even According to Jim is halfway decent when you're watching it on a 42-inch plasma screen.
If you'd asked me two weeks ago, I might have claimed TiVo was the greatest television-related invention since the cathode ray tube (or at least since the remote control) but now I'm not so sure. Because now I've discovered high-definition.
I don't have access to a lot of HDTV at the moment. I don't have the digital cable subscription I'd need to get the full range of channels with that kind of crystal clarity. But with a simple $20 antenna I can at least get local networks in all their high-resolution glory. In the past two weeks I've discovered the joys of seeing every gory detail as Jack Bauer interrogates terrorists on 24. I never imagined I'd get so excited about being able to pick out individual beads of sweat on Kevin Garnett's forehead. Then again, when the Timberwolves are choking away one game after another you have to have something to keep you interested.
Even Antiques Roadshow is better in HD.
HDTV is the future for all television. In February of 2009 all over-the-air television will be broadcast digitally. The idea — aside from giving everyone the opportunity to see in vivid detail each wrinkle and age spot on Andy Rooney's face — is to free up the bandwidth currently used by television broadcasts for use by emergency workers. As a consequence, all Americans who don't already have a high-definition TV — or at least a box to convert digital signal to the analog signals most TVs use today — will have to make some changes.
Don't worry, though. The government will be there to help. Starting next January, the government will start handing out $40 coupons to help Americans cover the cost of digital-to-analog converter boxes. The National Telecommunications and Information Association has set aside $990 million for the program, with the possibility of spending another $510 million if there's enough demand. The coupons will only be available to people who do not subscribe to cable or satellite services.
Some people might think this is silly. They might argue there are bigger problems — homelessness, maybe, or funding for education — than making sure every American has uninterrupted access to Deal or No Deal.
I disagree. Frankly, I don't think they're going far enough.
Sure, the government is making sure we will continue to have access to television, but what are they doing to make sure we're watching? It's a terrible thought, but I know there are hours of television that go tragically unwatched. There are millions of Americans who each week neglect their patriotic duty to vote for our next American Idol. Look, America, this is your Idol. If you don't vote, you don't get to complain when whoever wins releases some terrible CD later this year. I've already ordered my "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Lakisha" bumper stickers.
We need TV to watch the news, too. If I didn't have access to local news broadcasts I wouldn't know important things like how Ricky Schroeder feels about joining the cast of 24, or what the latest theory is on the death of Anna Nicole. An uninformed populace is a scary thing.
The converter box coupons are a good start, but there's room to do so much more. If the government could spring for a new flat screen for everyone, I'm sure there'd be more interest in watching TV.
TiVo has got to go, too. As much as I love it, if people can skip through commercials willy-nilly they'll never know what products are out there that they just have to own.
What if we required modifications to TVs that kept them on all the time? That might help. And maybe one of those chairs like they have in A Clockwork Orange, so viewers can never look away. Is that going to far? I don't think so. This is the culture war, people, and extreme times call for extreme measures.
I think it's time the government gave up on this idea of fighting the growing obesity problem in the country and started trying to convince every man, woman and child in America to plop down in front of the tube with a bag of chips. At least it's a fight we know we can win.