FunctionalAmbivalent

Weatherman With Subliminal Appeal

Here.

A Few Things That, If I Were God, I Would Regret

1. Should have named Vlad the Impaler "Vlad the Hugger"
2. Edward G. Robinson in The Ten Commandments
3. Speedos

Book Title of the Day

Your Mouth Drives Me Crazy

Product Description:

Annie Parks came to Hawaii to settle a score, not spend time handcuffed to a sexy stranger's bed - even if said stranger saved her from drowning after she was pitched overboard by some goons. Looking at six feet of hard, Hawaiian muscle and gorgeous cool that's making forgotten parts of her say, 'Aloha!', Annie needs to stay focused. But a side dish of Kane Travers is awfully tempting. Kauai Police Chief Kane Travers is not a holiday kind of guy. So it figures that when Internal Affairs suspended him, he'd end up rescuing a sarcastic, dishonest, extremely hot redhead who is clearly hiding something. Kane's got half a mind to give miss whoever she is something she'll never forget, even if his cop senses tell him she needs his protection. But how can he get her to tell him anything when his mouth won't stop covering hers?

Wanna bet someone's getting leied?

My Life: An Update

I'm sitting in a coffee shop with free wireless access. It's way better than my old office, which was dark and isolated and far, far from any kind of urban life. The downside of this is that I have to pee and I'm afraid to leave my computer for a minute because someone might steal it. That wasn't a worry in my old office, but now, at this particular moment, it's the most pressing issue I have to deal with.

A couple of months ago, as my regular reader knows, I left my old job for...well, for something else. Just what, I didn't know. Since then, I've made a decision, of sorts, and am pursuing a set of goals that will hopefully deliver me to a new and better life. Not that my old life was bad. I like my wife and family; I'm part of several communities that give me sustenance and support; and I have enough money that I can sleep without worrying what the next day's going to bring.

But my work...that's kind of another story. For the last few years, I've worked in an industry I didn't like doing work that was little appreciated for a company that was almost no fun at all to work for. I was in it, frankly, for the money, and the money was good. Sometimes it was really good. And had things worked out I would never have had to worry about money again.

But things didn't work out (explanation here) and when I left I seized the situation not as problem but as an opportunity. After a few weeks of talking things over with smart people who know me, I decided on this course: I would strap together a few consulting gigs, do some writing-for-hire, and spend most of my energy on a book proposal and, hopefully, the resulting book. This plan is an adaptation of blunt advice my sister gave me when I left the old job, which was:

Get a job you don't give a damn about and write The Book.

The Book is an idea I mentioned casually to her a couple of years ago that she really, really liked. Most of the time, when people like ideas I have, I ignore their opinions, because most people are too polite to tell you when they think an idea is stupid. I trust my sister's judgment, on the other hand, for two reasons. First, she's a much more accomplished writer and editor than I am. And second, she'd tell me if she thought an idea I was considering was bad. She'd be polite about it, but she'd leave no ambiguity. She's been on me to write The Book ever since I first mentioned it. When I told her I had left my job, she informed me that it was time to put up or shut up, and then she lined up an agent to look at the proposal when I was done with it.

So, right now, I'm all about balancing the needs of my clients with the work I need to do on the book proposal. Yesterday, I spent almost the whole day on the proposal, reading letters Thomas Jefferson wrote while traveling through southern France. Today, I'm doing paying work in this coffee shop, enjoying the low-key hubbub and the warm sun streaming through the windows, writing for one of my clients. (I took a break mid-day to send an invoice to another. I love sending invoices.) If I get my stuff done today, tomorrow I will reward myself with another trip to the library, to the creative decisions I need to make about how to turn Jefferson's midlife crisis into a compelling Sample Chapter 2 for the proposal. (I wrote Sample chapter 1-B last week after abandoning Sample Chapter 1-A because it was both uninteresting and a structural mess.) I'm hoping the whole proposal will be done by the end of this month, but February is a pretty short month, so we'll see.

I promised I would keep you up to speed on what I'm doing, and now you are. A couple of you have emailed, inquiring as to my situation, and I appreciate that. I'm doing just fine, though I really have to pee.

Am I the Only Person Who Feels Sorry For Roland Burris?

Don't get me wrong: I think he's justifiably a short-timer. I think there was nothing that could reasonably be done to keep him out of the Senate, but that he's so stained by real and imagined associations with Rod Blagojevich that the only solution is to tolerate him for a couple of years and then elect a real Senator.

But still. Burris seems like like a nice, softly eccentric man. It's easy to imagine him running for Student Council president on a colder-milk-in-the-cafeteria platform. If the Senate were a movie, Burris would be the Red Buttons character: goofy, loveable, but with no chance in hell of getting the girl.

He reminds me of a girl I knew in college. She was short, squat, and not particularly attractive, but she dealt with life every day as if she were the belle of the ball, her hair in bouncy curls and a smile on her face. Everyone laughed, but I secretly admired her. To this day I feel like finding her to tell her I thought she was terrific. I hope life has rewarded her good faith.

That's Burris, attacking Washington as if he were a real Senator instead of just a pretend one. He's walking through every day as if he were strutting down Main Street in a white linen suit, but in fact he's covered in Blagojevich crap and everyone but him sees it. All the cool kids are laughing at him, but for me he's just like that girl, or just like Red Buttons.

At the end of all this, Senator Burris will have "Senator Burris" engraved on his personal shrine, and I have no doubt that his friends and family will call him "Senator" until the day he dies. He'll preen as much as an ex-Senator as he's preened being a Senator, and I hope people will let him enjoy his delusion in peace.

UPDATE: Maybe I spoke too soon. I figured Burris was just a schmo Governor Blagojevich pulled out of his hat to assert himself as governor. But it appears that Senator Burris was playing Blago's game long before he was appointed, and lying about it.

U.S. Sen. Roland Burris has acknowledged he sought to raise campaign funds for then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich at the request of the governor's brother at the same time he was making a pitch to be appointed to the Senate seat previously held by President Barack Obama.

Look, politicians raise campaign money for each other; that's just part of our system of campaign finance. But it's not supposed to be in direct exchange for, say, a seat in the U.S. Senate.

When the governor was more-or-less openly soliciting back-door payments in exchange for Barack Obama's Senate seat, everyone with their head screwed on straight nodded politely and then ran as far as fast as they could. Granted, campaign funds were one of the more innocuous things Blagojevich was demanding, but Burris should have had the sense to back away. Instead, he went along.

I retract my comparison of Burris to Red Buttons. Instead, he's Telly Savalas, the slimeball who should have known better, and who died filled with regret.

Adios, Senator Burris. Write if you get work.

Cultural Observation

In the movie Gone With the Wind, Ashely Wilkes -- a male character with a girl's name -- is played by Leslie Howard, a male actor with a girl's name. Do you think that might be more than coincidence? Don't you think that maybe, when they were casting the movie, the director decided, "Well, he's already used to having a girl's name, so he'll be comfortable in this role. Let's hire him." I'm thinking that was part of the conversation.

Economic Indicator

eMail this morning from a wine merchant offering Chateau La Confession, a RP 95 point 2005 garagiste Bordeaux, for $58, marked down from $89. Three months ago there were no '05 Bordeaux bargains, particularly not among Robert Parker-approved newcomers like Chateau La Confession. The sky was the limit!

Now, I get offers like this every day.

The thing is, I'm not buying. I'm unemployed, remember?

I Have Power!

Literally if not metaphorically. Crews from South Carolina invaded the neighborhood and were greeted like heroes as they climbed poles, hacked away at ice-covered trees and drove their trucks across people's lawns. Details to follow, but right now the sexiest look in Louisville is hardhat and rosy cheeks.

All hail power company linemen!

Liveblogging the Ice Storm

I stood on the front porch for ten minutes enjoying the icy beauty of the night. During that time, I heard three large limbs crack and fall to the ground. Then I watched two guys haul a 25 foot limb home, presumably for firewood.

UPDATE: Just past midnight now, and it sounds like the 4th of July out there, with trees cracking like fireworks. I was out on the porch when a 20 foot limb fell in my next door neighbor's front yard. Two houses up from there, the couple is out moving their cars to a clear area up the block. It takes a certain amount of courage just to go out under the big, old trees right now. I don't know if I'd do it, given the fact that my cars are better insured than my skull.

Our house is out of the free fire zone. We had two big trees near the house go down a couple of years ago in windstorms, so there's nothing bigger than an old dogwood in our front yard, and the trees in back are well away from the house. I can walk down to the streets without passing under anything substantial, and a quick glance up and down the block shows at least two big trees down.

Back inside, every few minutes, something cracks and the dogs start barking like complete idiots.

We're due for five more hours of ice buildup, and then snow after that.

It's Always Darkest Before the Dawn

Eighteen days until pitchers and catchers report, and there's four inches of ice and snow to chisel off the windshield of my car. You will note that, as it almost always does, the line between snow and sleet runs almost exactly through my neighborhood. That means preparing my car to move will require that I dig down through crusty snow to get to the thick layer of ice that has attached itself to the glass.

While one can't exactly tell the future, I'm guessing today is the low point of Winter, for me. From here on out, the vector is up.