Man About Murfreesboro - blog - funny - politics

Today is Rozzy's 5th birthday. Dolls and I got her a Disney Princess TV. The old pawnshop Sony she was using was just about the only thing in her room that wasn't pink. It had to go. We'd been planning on getting it for her for weeks and Dolls has been on the lookout for a sale. But we hadn't actually done it. She called yesterday morning and asked me to find one on the way home. I felt fortunate that my first stop, K-Mart, had one.

It is sickenenly sweet. I did not purchase the matching DVD

player as the reviews on Amazon were almost universally bad. I can buy a regular DVD player at Wal-Mart for half the price and while it won't be pink, it might last longer than six months.

So there I was, a man nearly 40 years old, in K-Mart, by himself, buying a pink TV. Naturally folks assumed I was getting it for my daughter. The counter monkey remarked that "someone was going to be happy." As I walked out the front door a family of red necks were walking in. The matriarch said "Someone's getting a new TV."

Both comments were made in the same inflection one reserves for baby puppies or fuzzy kittens.

As I was not about to wrap that huge box, Dolls and I left it on the kitchen table for her to find when she woke up this morning. She did. Then she woke me up.

I hooked it up this morning before my shower so she could spend a few minutes oo-ing and ah-ing over the features. It's actually kind of cute. The channel display has Cinderella next to the numbers and when you adjust the volume, Ariel swims across the bottom of the screen. The menu is pink with flower bullet points. Those Disney jerks really know how to stick it to you.

As is tradition in our house, the person with the birthday controls the agenda for the weekend – bending the family to his or her will. This weekend Rozzy runs the show. Be very very afraid.

Dollie took cookies to her kindergarden class today and this weekend we've rented part of the Discovery Center for her "Pirates and Princesses" party.

September is full of birthdays. My dad's was on the first. I called him, but got no answer and no machine. He called me on mine, which was nice and I wanted to return the favor, but I let the rest of the day slip by without trying again.

Dollie's is Sept. 11. There is no telling what she has planned for her weekend. I know she wants to go to some art festival on the Greenway. I'm not sure she's made any plans beyond that.

I was talking to Roy about this tradition and he made an observation. "You know, if this was the rule around here, I'd forget about it when my birthday came around," he said. "But I'd probably just want to be allowed to do my own thing."

"I know what you mean," I said. "When it was my birthday weekend. My request was to be allowed to game and watch TV and read my comic books in peace. I didn't care all that much about bending the family to my will."

I don't know if that is a function of my gender or personality or the fact that I have two kids who can't seem to take a poop without alerting me to it ahead of time.

I read last week where Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) has decided to resign at the end of September – a move that gave the GOP some relief as they were let off the hook for having to either defend him or kick him out – neither option very appealing. But today I read where Craig is reconsidering his resignation.

He left this on some random person's cell phone (and they turned it over to the press) about two hours before his announcement. That means that while he said his "intent" was to resign, his intent was nothing of the kind. He lied. Again.

Personally, I hope he doesn't decide to stick it out. Heck, I hope he runs for reelection. The Idaho Family Values Coaltion has already called for a homosexual purge of the GOP. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has called for an ethics investigation into Craig. The Republican Party has asked him to resign.

The Republicans are already on the record as wanting him gone, but wanting Vetter to stay. If Craig decides not to resign, the GOP has to decide if their outrage is conditional, meaning do they only get mad when you plead guilty to (or are convicted of) illicit behavior; or is same-sex relationships okay as long as you don't get caught? Neither of those options speak to the values voters the GOP claim to represent.

What is it that Republicans don't get about voicemail? These are recordings that can come back to bite you. Take the case of Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado. He's a freshman congressman who won a difficult campaign and gearing up to do it again.

Not too long ago, a Colorado couple, Jonathan and Anna Bartha, submitted a letter to the editor taking Lamborn to task for accepting a $1,000 contribution from a gambling PAC. Lamborn left two threatening voicemails on their phone, saying there would be "consequences" if they didn't retract their letter.

The crux was that Lamborn claimed to have returned the contribution without ever cashing the check, but there are no records that confirm that. He said he wanted to make sure the record was corrected and has apologized for the voicmail.

Then there is former congressman Bob Ney who is serving 30 months in federal prison on corruption charges. A former top aide is about to be sentenced and has appealed to the judge for house arrest, rather than jail time because he helped convict Ney and another top aide. During the investigation, Ney left him abusive phone messages because Ney suspected he was helping investigators.

And Roger Stone, a GOP consultant recently let go "following allegations he left an obscene, threatening phone message for the elderly father of Gov. Eliot Spitzer." Stone claims someone got into his apartment and placed the call, impersonating his voice. He said he was at the theatre that night seeing "Nixon/Frost," but New York Magazine reported that the play was closed that night.

Several months ago when Sen. David Vitter's (R-natch) name turned up in the phone book of the D.C. Madam. He admitted to calling her and to some unidentified "sin" in his past. If that "sin" involved "prostitutes" then that "sin" is also a "crime." But the Republicans didn't call for his resignation. In fact, they said it was a personal matter between Vitter and his family.

What's the difference between the two cases? Two things: homosexual activity and the party affiliation of the governors who will be appointing their replacements.

The homophobia has resulted in huge vocal denouncements. Romney called Craig's behavior "disgusting." Craig's press conference seemed to be called just so he could assure everyone that he's not gay – not that he didn't do it. Not that he was going to fight. Not that it was all misconstrued. He wanted to make sure everyone heard him scream that he's not gay.

Plus, if Craig resigns, his replacement will be appointed by a Republican governor. If Vitter resigns, his will be appointed by a Democrat. That difference should illustrate how seriously the Republican politicians and pundits take their so-called values. They can only work up moral outrage if there is no political risk involved.

Max is shooting a commercial about Murfreesboro for a class project. He has chosen three of his favorite places to feature: Kid's Castle, a play structure in Old Fort Park; Discovery Center, a hands-on science museum; and Grand Adventures Comics, the store where we play Heroclix.

He wrote the script and will direct the shots while Dollie works the camera. My job will be postproduction.

Speaking of homosexual hypocrites, Rev. Ted Haggard made the news again. He recently contacted several "supporters" to beg for money to help him and his wife attend college. Thing is, he said people could either send him the money directly, or if they wanted a tax deduction, send it to "Families with a Mission" and note that it's for the Haggard family. Families with a Mission will take a ten percent cut and give the rest to Ted.

But some intrepid investigative reporter has discovered that Families with a Mission is a defunct charity and that the only "agent" is a registered sex offender.

Richard Jewel died yesterday at the age of 44. He was the hero who save so many people at the Atlanta Olympics when the bomb went off. You'll recall the media jumped the gun and named him as a suspect, citing unnamed and anonymous sources. When the FBI cleared him, there was plenty of crow to be passed around.

I tried to find the video, but can't, of his appearance on SNL where he punched Janet Reno (Will Ferrell) in the stomach. "Same time next week?" she asked. Heh.

Dollie started classes yesterday. She's getting her master's degree in public history. She's also serving as a GTA, grading papers in an undergrad history course that has more than 200 students in it. She graded a geography quiz yesterday in which several college students couldn't correctly label the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. One person labeled Alaska as Mexico. Another thought the Indian Ocean was the Great Lakes. At least one student identified the states of North Virginia and South Virginia.

You know, you read about crap so much that's its cliche – kids unable to find their own country on a map. But these are high school graduates seeking a college degree.

She emailed me yesterday a transcript of a dialogue she overheard while on campus. File it under "Missing the point."

I wasn't there for that conversation, but I'll give dollars to donuts that at least one of them was wearing a cock-eyed baseball cap. Duuuuude.

Tuesday night the newscasts of every major network led with the arrest and guilty plea of Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho). I'll admit when the story first broke on Monday afternoon, I experienced a little schadenfreude. How could I not? This is a man who has built a career on family values and gay bashing. Rumors of homosexual affairs have been flying around Idaho and the internet for years and he's always denied them. His colleagues have always defended him as a victim of left-wing hatchet men.

Then he gets arrested for "lewd behavior" in an airport men's room? On top of Bob Allen's arrest in Florida and Vitter's connection to the D.C. Madam? It's too much.

So, I read the arrest report, which outlines what Craig is alleged to have done. The undercover police officer was there because of numerous complaints about sexual activity in the bathroom. That particular john has been listed on various internet sites as a place to hook up for anonymous gay sex.

The cop says that, while he was sitting in the stall, Craig came in and lingered outside the stall, peering into the crack in the doorway. He said Craig entered the stall next to him and put his luggage against the door (allegedly to block any view of the activities within). Then, Craig tapped his foot (allegedly a signal to the person in the next stall that you're looking for some action). When the cop returned the signal, Craig moved his foot closer, eventually touching the officer's foot.

Then, Craig ran his hand along the bottom of the stall divider. That was when the cop showed him a badge and arrested him.

So, best I can tell, Craig was arrested for putting his luggage against a door, tapping his foot and reaching his hand under a stall.

I have no idea how men go about hooking up in airport bathrooms, but I don't think anything he did was actually illegal. I bit smarmy, yes, and if the cop let it go further, we might have a very different story, but I believe he could have gotten the charges dropped if he'd fought it in court.

But he didn't. He pled guilty to a lesser charge in hopes that it would go away. He says he didn't consult a lawyer, didn't tell his family or the senate leadership. He said that the Idaho Statesman, his hometown paper, was investigating these horrible rumors about other incidents in which gay men claimed to have had sex with him in public bathrooms, so he wanted to keep this quiet.

Understandable, I guess. No one wants to trumpet an arrest.

At his press conference yesterday, Craig showed up with his wife and announced that he is not, nor has ever been gay. You know what? I believe him.

I also believe he has engaged in sex with men and was most likely trying to do so again in that airport restroom. Dan Savage, syndicated advice columnist who deals almost exclusively with sexual dysfunction, has written on several occasions about the phenomenon of straight men wanting to engage in homosexual activity. He said it doesn't make them gay. It makes them curious and somewhat kinky, but according to Savage, the world is full of absolutely straight, heterosexual men who, occasionally, want to cross swords (as it were) with the other team.

All that being said, I really don't care if Craig is gay, straight or Australian. His sexual preference isn't the point. His politics, his hypocrisy and his willingness to let people believe he's stupid rather than gay is the point. (As opposed to Bob Allen who would rather be known as racist than gay).

It's the little things about the story that bother me. Craig said his foot touched the cop's because he has a wide stance on the toilet and that he reached his hand down to pick up a piece of paper. But the cop said that there was no paper and Craig didn't pick anything up. He also noted that Craig left the stall without flushing the toilet (at first I thought that was a creepy detail to add to the arrest report, then I realized

The senator goes through that airport twice a week on his way to and from D.C. and Idaho. On one of the subsequent trips through (about a week after the arrest) he went to the airport authority office to complain about his treatment.

	He stopped at the police operations center and told the officer on duty, Adam Snedker, that it had been more than a week since his arrest and that no one had contacted him. According to the police, the senator told the officer that "he was involved in an incident where he was ‘drug down to this office' where he was handcuffed, fingerprinted and interviewed." He wanted information about whom to contact so his lawyer could speak with someone, according to the report. The on-duty officer patched him through to the arresting officer, Sgt. Dave Karsnia, who told Craig the name and phone number of the prosecutor assigned to the case. "It should be noted that contrary to what Craig stated to Officer Snedker, I did not handcuff Craig on the date of the offense, even though he was under arrest," Karsnia wrote in his report. Snedker wrote in his report that "even though I did the best to answer his questions," Craig "appeared agitated and demeaning."

Sen. Craig says he is undecided about whether he will run for reelection next year. When these rumors about Craig started popping up on the Internet during his last election run, the right wingers denounced them and the blogger who broke the story as "irrelevant." Now, not so much. There are howls on the right calling for Craig to resign.

My 39th birthday came and went without much fuss. That's exactly the way I like it. Maybe 40 will be a big deal, but 39 . . . not so much. My mother has been claiming to be 39 for 20 years. I got a card from her congratulating me on finally catching up to her.

Alberto Gonzales is resigning his post as attorney general. In a press conference, a sour, angry Bush said Gonzo's good name was dragged through the mud by Congress. Heh.

We had some trouble with our hi-def DVR and had to get it replaced. DirecTV was actually pretty good about it, once we got through all the preliminary stuff. Essentially, the HDMI port on the DVR went out. I could still watch HDTV through the composite cables, but I couldn't split screen with the Xbox.

This would not stand. They sent a service tech out to verify that the HDMI connection didn't work and the guy told me that he didn't have a replacement DVR and that, you know, sometimes HDMI just doesn't work.

So I wrote a snarky email to DTV, got a nice reply and a super-secret phone number to call where I could talk to a rep without waiting in a cue. He agreed to send me another DVR and just let me hook it up. Which he did.

Then Dollie saw that we were charged $15 for the "free" service call and $20 for shipping the DVR. So, I fired off another snarky email and got the charges removed.

Now the new DVR is up and running, but (and those of you with DVRs can back me up on this) changing out a DVR is a pain because you have to input all your TV shows again. We had 50 series being recorded and I have no idea what they were, really.

Plus, it's late August, which means all the series are either off the air or in reruns, so searches for titles aren't helping much. It's enough to put you off your farina. Then I remember what TV was like when I was Max's age – four channels, maybe five if the weather was favorable. No remote control. No VCR. No 24-hour cartoon network. Certainly no splitting the TV screen so one person can watch cartoons while the other plays Xbox.

Now, when Max and Rozzy visit their grandparents, they're all spoiled and expect everyone to be able to pause the TV while they go to the bathroom.

Saturday evening while the kids were asleep and Dollie was out with her girlfriends, I hooked up her laptop computer to the flat-screen TV, a wireless keyboard and mouse and streamed an English translation of a Japanese cartoon from NetFlix and watched it from the comfort of my couch.

There is a scene in a film I can't remember in which Ned Beatty is demonstrating a ball-point pen that will write in four different colors. "What a great time to be alive," he remarks. I second that.

Went to the grocery store last night with the fam to stock up on some lunch items for the week. As I enjoy a good high-fiber diet, we're always looking for products with a little extra oomph. We make our sandwiches with Nature's Own Double Fiber Wheat bread, for example (we refer to it as "colon blow" bread). Left to my own devices, I'll stand in the bread aisle and stare at content labels for hours looking for that perfect balance of colon-scraping fiber and stuff that doesn't taste like a rice cake stuffed with cardboard and shredded newspaper.

For breakfast, I usually have a Fiber One breakfast bar. These have certain side effects (see also here).

The high fiber content helps alleviate some of the additional caloric intake and the main ingredient is chicory root extract, which is a high inulin soluable fiber. This promotes growth of the healthy bacteria in the colon and not that of the unhealthy bacteria. So, despite the high fructose corn syrup content, these are actually a nice healthy choice that taste good.

This also means that, until your body adjusts, you're going to be peeling the paint from the walls. I've been eating them for weeks and am still waiting.

In China, the government has Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission.

Murfreesboro has two newspapers now. The Daily News Journal and the Murfreesboro Post. The Post was established a short while ago when Gannett bought out the DNJ. Many DNJ staffers migrated to this new newspaper and, as the DNJ becomes more Ganettized, the Post seems more and more like the old home town paper. I read the Post.

I happen to know one of the 18 suspects charged. He has pled guilty to theft and helped the cops catch some more thieves. That was a bit of a shock, really. I mean I've known the guy since we played D&D in college. He's always been the guy ready to push the edge of the envelope as far as the rules, go, but I was surprised to see him cross the line like that.

Maybe I'm the only one. Over the years, I've had several friends and aquaintences get into legal trouble. Some were busted for drugs or DUI, some for much worse, up to and including rape and murder. But nearly every time it comes as a shock to me. I guess I don't expect someone I know to be a scumbag.

The fam and I went to my Uncle Curtis' 60th birthday party. His daughter, my cousin Resa, had requested that everyone send her a story about Uncle Curtis to be included in a booklet. It was neat reading through it and learning some new stories to go along with the one's I'd already heard.

My dad and his cousin Travis both wrote about the same event. It was in 1958 and the three of them were fishing at a pond near my grandparent's house. Uncle Curtis caught the largest fish and was in a hurry to get it home to show off. Both versions of the story point out that Curtis, though he was the youngest, could cuss as well or better than his elder relatives. Both stories also point out that Curtis was warned not to talk like that in front of his mother (my grandmother).

So, the three of them show up in the kitchen and my grandmother has a dirty dishrag in one hand and one of those old lever-action aluminum ice cube trays in the other. Curtis shows her the fish and she comments on how big it is. Curtis yells "It's a damn big one!"

Then my grandmother hits Curtis across the head with the ice cube tray, knocking him to his knees. Then she put the dirty dishrag in his mouth.

My own story was about being a senior in high school and wrestling around with my brothers while my grandparents were gone. Dan got knocked into a corner of the kitchen counter causing a small cut to his scalp. He obviously needed stitches, but I had a date. So, I called on Curtis to take him to the emergency room, which he did. I dropped by on my way to pick up my date, but didn't stay. I'd like to think I would do better now, but I'm not so sure.

I got a cool email from Laurie Perry of Crazy Aunt Purl fame. She's coming to Nashville Oct. 29 to read from her new book at the Barnes & Noble out at Shopryland. She promises to have my hat finished by then and to possibly go out for dinner while she's in town.

I recently purchased a home theatre set up. I'm not sure I'm happy with it. Enthusiasts tell me I'll never be happy with a Home Theater in a Box (HTIB) setup and I should just buy the components, but I'm not an audiophile. The most disappointing thing about it is that I've got yet another remote to fumble with and lose.