Flare Path by Rattigan

Last  night we saw an old play by Terence Rattigan, Flare Path.

Rattigan was a tail gunner for the RAF at the start of World War II, and the play is set in that world - not in the planes, but on the ground, at a small hotel with a view of the air station's landing strip.

The play had a successful revival in London in 2011, so I suppose that's why i showed up in Chicago in 2013, courtesy of Griffin Theatre.

I liked it, and the audience liked it too. I was struck by some similarities t Casablanca. It's a drama about an emotional love triangle in the midst of war - and about how the sense of wartime duty affects the fabric of relationships.

As usual with Rattigan, you get a lot of British understatement, but there is a fabulously emotional scene at the core of the play, where a brave fighter confesses to his fear to his wife.

When the fear runs through their brains
and pulses through their veins
like a mad distorting drum,
even heroes
can feel like zeroes,
but they somehow overcome.

Google Cars Will Be Good For Bars

The more the merrier, except... the more drunk drivers the scarier.

Snowball

One of my nieces was in London when it snowed recently - snowed a lot for London apparently. And she showed the locals how to make a snowman. They didn't know about rolling a small ball into a big ball in wet "packing" snow.

It made me reflect on the idiomatic verb, snowball:

Increase rapidly in size, intensity, or importance - the campaign was snowballing

The visual is of a snowball rolling along getting bigger and bigger.

But if you live somewhere warm
and have never seen a giant snowball form...
the metaphor will be lame,
its impact not the same.

On a tangent, the collected Calvin & Hobbes Snowman Strips.

Phones in Overtones

I was reading an old play, Overtones, by Alice Gerstenberg, and I came across a funny detail in the printed text: the word "phone" appeared with an apostrophe in front of it: 'phone

Evidently this was to indicate that the word "phone" was a contraction.

It occurred twice in the printed text, each time with the apostrophe:

HETTY [The telephone rings] There she is now.

[Hetty hurries to 'phone but Harriet regains her supremacy.]

HARRIET [Authoritatively] Wait! I can't let the telephone girl down there hear my real self. It isn't proper. [At the 'phone.] Show Mrs. Caldwell up.

Now, of course, that short word "phone"
very often shows up alone,
feeling, for sure, no need to be
accompanied by an apostrophe.

David Coleman Headley

A Chicago man involved in the Mumbai terrorist attack got 35 years from a judge. His name surprised me:

David Coleman Headley's meticulous scouting missions facilitated the assault by 10 gunmen from a Pakistani-based militant group, which killed 160 people -- including children.

What surprised me was that his name sounded so English. But there's a backstory:

Daood [Sayed] Gilani was born in Washington, D.C., where his father, Sayed Salim Gilani, worked for the Voice of America. His father was also a diplomat who worked in the Pakistani embassy in Washington D.C. for some time. His Maryland-born American mother, (Alice) Serrill Headley (1939–2008), worked as a secretary at the Pakistani embassy in Washington at the time of his birth.

His name change let him slip into India more easily.

Headley's U.S. passport, his new Western and English sounding name, and the fact that the passport and his visa application made no mention of his prior name or his father's nationality, made it easy for him to obtain an Indian visa from the Indian consulate in Chicago. He falsely stated on his visa application that his father's name was William Headley and that his own name at birth was "Headley", a claim that was difficult to refute since the U.S. passport, unlike the Indian one, does not provide the father's name, and does not require endorsements on name changes by the passport holder.

He hid his vile game
behind his new name.

Shovel Unready

We've barely had snow in Chicago this season. Just dustings. A friend is hoping we finally get some. He wants to cross country ski in the local woods.

As for me
I'm not eager to ski.
I'll do just fine
With more sunshine.

Union Trouble

The UK only seemed to be 3/4 of the way into the EU in the first place. By which I mean mostly that they weren't using the the Euro as currency. Which in hindsight, at the moment, looks like genius. But now...

Anti-Europe sentiment in the U.K. is at some of its highest levels since the early 1980s. And, frustrations with the EU are more pronounced among Conservatives, with opinion polls having shown support shifting away from the Tories to the U.K. Independence Party, whose main goal is Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.

So there's talk of having a national referendum - to decide whether to stay in the European Union or not.

I have no idea how that will go.

But I want to relate some anecdotal data. I was talking to an acquaintance, an ex-pat Englishman who lives here, and he was talking about "Americans" and I referred to him as a "European"... and he politely corrected me on the usage.

I suppose it's too late
to talk them into becoming our 51st state.

Ham Sandwich Nation

Glenn Reynolds, law prof and blogger, has a short essay online, under the title: Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime.

The titular sandwich refers to a saying among lawyers: "A good prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich."

It seems to me that doing so would make him a bad prosecutor, actually.

Ham sandwiches are not meant
to be charged with bad intent.

Stop Her Before...

A woman writing in the NY Times wants her right to own a gun taken away. Why? Because she suffers from depression.

You’d look at me and never know that sometimes my fight against the urge to die is so tough the only way I get through it is second by second; I live by the second hand.

Well, there are already laws restricting the gun-buying rights of the mentally ill. Perhaps she doesn't meet the technical criteria of being banned from such purchases.

I guess we could set up a national database where the depression-prone could voluntarily register as a danger to self and others.

But, if what we're trying to prevent is this woman's suicide, I suspect this approach would not help much. There are so many ways to kill yourself. And, thinking about the particular situation of this woman, people of her gender don't tend to favor guns for the job.

The preferred female way of ending up dead
is an overdose of a med.

50 Degrees, 9 Miles

Weather was warmly unseasonable,
making a long run seem reasonable.

Full Use

Ann Althouse:

This is getting strangely close to the argument that used to be made for discriminating against women in law school admissions (or for excluding them altogether): Since women are less likely to fully use their legal education, we shouldn't give what could be a man's seat to a woman.

It seems to be true that women are "less likely to fully use their legal education", at least by some measures of "full use".

You can say it's because "women seek more balance in life". That's an acceptable way of noting a statistical gender difference. Of course, it's not true for all women. Generalizations about humans always come with asterisks about the exceptions.

But... I also don't think men deserve all the seats just because they are more likely to be hard-driving full-time long-career lawyers. I mean, do law schools have to decide who to admit strictly on a "what's good for society" basis? I doubt very much that they are in a position to do so.

Actually, I imagine that, in an open market, law schools would want to admit students who can bring in money and a good reputation for the school. This is going to include women, and lots of them, since right now a lot of smart young women want to be lawyers.

Must it be the responsibility of a college,
when allocating a seat,
to judge by the most complete
use of its faculty's knowledge?

Scanners Vanish

I'm going to miss putting my hands over my head for my glamour shot:

The Transportation Security Administration confirmed Friday that it will pull the plug on "nude" airport scanners that produce a full body image of the traveler, replacing a technology that has sparked national controversy over privacy and safety.

The article doesn't quite say why this plug is being pulled. Well, the TSA sometimes works in mysterious ways.

My main complaint was that they never sent me a copy of my photo.

I also think the whole "consent of the governed" angle was not working in favor of these machines. People were not becoming accustomed to them.

I suspect the agency was getting rated
as "most hated".

Lights Out, Everybody

I went to see Lights Out, Everybody: A Tribute In Horror To Arch Oboler at Dream Theatre. I would highly recommend it as an evening of entertaining theater. Unless, that is, horror stories are just not your cup of tea.

I should admit that, even though he was born here in Chicago, I hadn't really been aware of Arch Oboler, a writer whose career included radio dramas, TV shows, and film work too.

The show at Dream is an adaptation, by Jeremy Menekseoglu, of three Oboler tales: Momma, It Happened In Paris, and Murder Castle.

In the photo, you can see Hasket Morris as the lead character in Murder Castle, which is based on the true story that is also told in The Devil In The White City. Morris is marvelously creepy.

Denise Smolarek shows up in all 3 tales, with a different accent and personality each time - once as a nightmare mother-in-law, once as a subterranean necklace-maker, and once as a rather well-intentioned but ill-fated housekeeper.

The show moves along briskly under Giau Truong's direction. The six actors are all strong, and those with multiple roles create distinct personalities for each.

It's a scary ride
with a slippery slide
or two
into goo.

Tradition

Tonight, on her birthday, we ate grilled cheese,
a ceremony to evoke
basking briefly in memories
of what she liked, of how she spoke.

Maybe It's The Captions

Dogs may be better friends, and may give better licks, but on the World Wide Web, the cats have funnier pics.

Literature Qua Therapy

Researchers find:
reading Dickens
somehow quickens
the sluggish mind.

Thirty Million

Another item for Chicago's city budget:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office is seeking to settle two notorious cases of alleged police misconduct for more than $30 million, according to an agenda prepared for City Council consideration this week.

I'm guessing the city wants to settle because they might have to pay even more if the cases go to trial.

Defeat is often inglorious
when cases are known as notorious.

Part of Buchanan's Legacy

Tyler Cowen, speaking of economist James M. Buchanan, who died the other day:

Along with Harsanyi, he formulated aspects of the “original position” before Rawls did and he was a major influence on Rawls. By the way, I have seen Buchanan numerous times with top professional philosophers, and he has no problem holding his own or better.

Interesting. I had no idea. I haven't really read Buchanan or Rawls much, but I'm always running into this "original position" business among those interested in contemporary political philosophy.

The original position is a thought experiment
which, rather than leading to mirth and merriment,
leads to heated discussions and personal attacks
about whether to choose the min or the max.

[Error fixed - I had "Scott Buchanan" originally. Thank you, Merlin Jetton, for catching that.]

Avis M. Brick

Back in the NBI days of the Objectivist world, there was a writer named Avis M. Brick. She wrote for a little magazine called Persuasion, and also wrote a piece or two for The Objectivist. When NBI imploded, in 1968, she, like many others, departed from the scene.

I never met her. I didn't have any active interest in those ideas until 1969. And I was in Chicago, not New York, the then-center of Rand fandom.

Last night I found out that Avis M. Brick was from Chicago originally, and had quite a story before her involvement in Objectivism.

Originally Avis Melander, she had married Phillip Brick, the owner of a Chicago bookstore. But he turned out to be an escaped German POW, whose real name was Reinhold Pabel. He got caught, but his case turned out to be legally complicated.

Pabel was accused of entering the USA illegally, but in fact he had entered it legally as a POW! The law was on Pabel’s side, but the Feds weren’t willing to let an escaped POW get away with it. They settled on a compromise: Pabel went back to Germany for six months to go through the formality of the waiting period, then was permitted to re-enter the USA legally.

In 1958, Avi published a science fiction short story under the name Avis Pabel.

Anyway, as of 7 years ago, one of her children was trying to find her.

My parents split in the United States way back in February 1960. My mother went to New York, we children (one boy and two girls aged 7,6,5) stayed back in the Chicago vicinity with my father and his bookstore. Years later we moved to Germany and as I grew up I took up searching for our mom, who never had left my mind.

The children would be about my age. Avis must be about 80, assuming she's still alive.

I never heard this story before.
Not even as local Chicago lore.

Of course, I was just a baby in 1953 when "Phillip Brick" got exposed by the FBI.

Maybe if I ask my father about it, he'll remember it. It had to be one of those big human interest stories at the time in Chi-town. And it has enough legal twists that he might have paid it some attention.

Now... how did Avis M. Brick
pull off her vanishing trick?

David Gregory's Long Legal Nightmare Is Over

Thank goodness. David Gregory, famed NBC talking head, will not be prosecuted for possessing a high-capacity ammo clip in Washington, DC. Other people, mind you, have indeed been prosecuted for exactly this crime.

D.C. attorney general confirms that law is for the little people.

It's hard to hold the law
in awe
when VIPs
can do as they please.

New Chicago, Two Chicago

On Facebook a friend linked to an article about New Chicago, California, a town near San Jose that was promoted by real estate developers in the 1890, but never actually built:

The question remains to this day whether there were ever any real plans to build a town or if it was all a big hoax. According to Curtis, "It's impossible to determine."

However, there was also another New Chicago, CA, farther inland, a former mining town, now a ghost town.

New Chicago was a mining camp of the 1850s, built up near the Gover Mine. It had about twenty houses.

"New Chicago Road" still exists, and still intersects with "Chicago Mine Road" in Sutter Creek, CA.

But despite these loads
of "Chicago" roads,
there's no sign of State Street
that great street.

Species of Doom

A Slate article spins some reverse sensationalism, pooh-poohing the formerly scary population boom, instead predicting the just-centuries-from-now extinction of humanity due to a sharply declining world population total:

By 2300, it’ll barely scratch 1 billion. ... Extend the trend line, and within a few dozen generations you’re talking about a global population small enough to fit in a nursing home.

As one type of panic begins to fade,
the opposite fear starts up a parade.

Cable News

I spent an hour and a half tonight at a school trying to figure out why the network was down in a couple of classrooms. I did succeed.

In the end, it was just an unplugged cable
fallen behind a radiator underneath a table.

Comma Controversy

There's a punctuation controversy that pertains to commas, and the question is, which of these is better:

I ate bread, cheese, and grapes.

I ate bread, cheese and grapes.

I probably vary between the 2 patterns, myself. In elementary school I learned the first pattern. In high school I learned the second. And now I kind of think the elementary school pattern was better.

But, the whole thing is illogical. After all, the real question is why does English mix commas and "ands" when constructing lists?

Either of these would be more consistent:

I ate bread, cheese, grapes.

I ate bread and cheese and grapes.

But the odds of a natural language being perfectly consistent
are distant.

Kwanzaa Principles

By the way, I don't mind another holiday celebration, but the "7 principles" of Kwanzaa involve an anti-individualist streak, at least as they are officially pushed.

On some of the principles you have to read past the first heading. At first glance, you might think that "Self Determination" sounds individualistic. But here's the description of what that means:

Self-Determination requires that we define our common interests and make decisions that are in the best interest of our family and community.

Every one of the 7 principles is given a community spin, including Faith, Purpose, and Creativity.

I suppose there was never any question about the collectivist drift of these 3: Unity, Cooperative Economics, Collective Work and Responsibility.

Of course, humans are association-forming animals.

But, a man is not a bee.
He is more likely to thrive
when he is allowed to break free
from the mind of the hive.

Donation Liability

One of the oddities of contemporary law is that we have simultaneously pushed 2 paradigms:

1) If a man impregnates a woman by having sex with her, and she keeps the baby, regardless of the state of their union, regardless of agreements between them as to who will support the child, the state will gladly garnish his paycheck for the support of the child. This is particularly true if the woman or child begins to receive some kind of expensive assistance from the state. After all, someone needs to come up with the money for the assistance.

2) Sperm donation is held forth as a perfectly acceptable model for reproduction. In this model, the man has no responsibility for the support of the child.

Now and then, someone falls in a grey area between 1 and 2. A case in the news involves Kansas, a lesbian couple, and a married man who gave the couple a donation. It was done privately, with no lawyers or doctors involved. Which made it a lot cheaper - in the short run.

But then the lesbian couple broke up. And the biological mother hit hard times and applied for aid from the bountiful state of Kansas. And Kansas wanted to know who the father was so they could make him pay. And it turned out the sperm donation had not complied with the requirements of Kansas law, particularly because no doctor was involved.

The other lesbian parent turned out not to be a legal parent at all, under Kansas law, so she's not on the hook for support. (She is reportedly "co-parenting". That presumably involves shelling out some dough, not to mention time, effort, and heart. But she's not legally obligated to do so.)

If only Oprah were still on the air, this story would be perfect.

Procedure not done by a doc.
Bio-mom goes on state aid.
Donor receives a rude shock.
Kansas wants to get paid!

Non Redemption

Almost disappointing:

The second inmate who made a daring escape last month from a high-rise federal jail in the South Loop was captured today in South Suburban Palos Hills, according to FBI officials.

Palos Hills is a Chicago suburb. The other inmate was actually caught within the city limits. Note to self: if you ever break out of jail, don't hang around the general vicinity.

They broke out of jail from the 15th floor,
boldly rappelling down.

Did they head to a beach in Ecuador?
No, they stayed here, and got caught in town.

Evidence Based

You hear a lot about "evidence based" medicine nowadays, but it obviously means something more than just "medicine based on some evidence." I imagine all medicine is based on SOME evidence.

Note that "evidence based" doesn't quite mean proven.

So it was with great interest that I read an article by Erika Ramsdale, MD, and William Dale, MD, "Evidence-Based Guidelines and Quality Measures in the Care of Older Adults".

I'm no physician, but the article had some interesting points, including these:

In many cases, clinical trials fail to enroll subjects representative of patients seen in practice.
...
Furthermore, there is no definitive evidence that using EBM clinical guidelines as quality measures improves outcomes.
...
Algorithmic guidelines sufficiently flexible to account for the wide heterogeneity of older adults are unlikely to be created.

Sometimes the evidence-base
may have little to do
with the case you now face.

On Thin Ice

Wrong way to take a swim.
It starts with a guy on a sled.
His friends fall in after him.
Luckily, no one's dead.

Not Euthanasia, Of Course Not

Remind me not to be old and terminally ill in England, where they've worked out a protocol for letting patients die in 29 hours. You sedate them, withhold fluids, and let them die of dehydration.

I mean, it might not be the worst way to go, but I'd like some choice in the matter, and they aren't always too careful about telling patients or family members when a patient is being put on this "Liverpool Pathway".

Unsurprisingly, there are financial incentives for putting patients on the protocol.

Under figures gained from a 2012 freedom of information request by The Daily Telegraph, 85 per cent of NHS trusts were revealed to have adopted the Liverpool Care Pathway. Just over half of the total of NHS trusts have received or are due to receive financial rewards for doing so.

I'm sure it's all done through appropriate channels,
with any use of those scary "death panels".

Morning at the Beach

It was sunny morning at the beach.
A beautiful day, deserving of song.
But at 17 degrees,
nobody stayed in the water too long.

For some reason, in America, there's a minor tradition of jumping in cold water on New Years Day. In Chicago, the water of choice is Lake Michigan, and the favored spot is North Avenue Beach.

Why? I think it's something to do with those major New Years themes: resolution and starting afresh. I heard a man saying to a woman, "Once you've done this, you can do anything!"

That's not a literal truth, of course. There are always things you simply cannot do. But I suspect it's true that most people seriously under-challenge themselves in life.

This year, I signed up to do it with Freezin' for a Reason, a charitable effort which raises money to rescue retired racing greyhounds. After all, I like dogs, and I like silly rhymes.

So raising money, for runners with paws,
seemed like a fun and worthy cause.

Les Mis & The Critics

I tend to pronounce the first "S" in Les Mis,
making me sound like less than a wiz.

I did like the movie. Very moving. I read today that critics often panned the original show for its "earnestness". And reportedly a lot of critics don't like the film for the same reason.

But, audiences are another matter. They mostly don't mind earnestness. That's because they're not deeply cynical, I suppose.

Cynicism tends to destroy
the taste for unalloyed joy.

Bloomberg's Perspective

They've arrested another crazy person for the 2nd NYC subway push-death in a month.

A deranged woman who told cops she detests Muslims broke into a maniacal fit of laughter as she was charged with a hate crime Saturday, three days after she allegedly shoved an Indian immigrant to his death in front of a Queens train.

But if you're a regular rider on the system, you shouldn't get too worked up about this, says no less an authority than:

...Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged residents to keep the second fatal subway shove in the city this month in perspective.

Now, some subway systems around the world are actually being retrofitted with safety systems to cut down on push-deaths (and accidents and suicides).

So why not New York City? Last year, 146 people were struck by subway trains in New York City. Of those, 47 were killed. That amounts to one accident every 2.5 days, many of which would conceivably have been prevented by a feature now widely used around the world.

But the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the corporation that oversees the city’s transit system, is notably cash strapped these days, facing a $2 billion budget deficit that is expected to mushroom to $3.6 billion by 2016, according to a recent report by Citizens Budget Commission.

146 people hit by subway trains in New York per year?

It's a public health epidemic.
The problem is systemic.
The mayor's urge for "perspective"
is heartless and defective.

Dash Into The New Year

I know it's not quite 2013 yet, but today I ran the Dash Into The New Year 5k. The race was in Matteson, Illinois, about half an hour south of the city limits.

In the past I've run an actual New Years Day 5k in Chicago, but this was a lot more convenient for my schedule, and I managed to snag this nice medal for 2nd place in my age group. And yes, there were more than 2 people in my age group!

Snow was blowing in my face
for half of the race.

But it wasn't really all that cold. The snow wasn't sticking to the road.
I like doing a New Years race because the Christmas season somehow always makes me feel so comfy and cozy. Sooner or later I find myself sitting in a rocking chair, staring out the window at the snow, and savoring the pleasantness of just relaxing. All while munching on cookies!

I can feel my muscles turning to mush
so it's good to run out for a 3 mile rush.

Forward

I suspect it's a minor government tiff.
But it sounds much scarier when you say "cliff".

Goodbye Richard

The head of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, is stepping down. She says it's to pursue new challenges and spend time with her family. However...

A Washington attorney suing the Obama administration for access to alias emails sent by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson claims that a recent decision by the Justice Department to release thousands of those emails next month contributed to her resigning Thursday.

It seems that Ms. Jackson had a secret EPA email under another name, "Richard Windsor", under which she was conducting government business. And Republicans in congress are making a stink about it.

We live in a suspicious society
where the appearance of impropriety,
even without proof of crime...

can suddenly inspire
an overwhelming desire
for lots more "family time".

Jack Reacher

We sent to see the new Jack Reacher movie. I've read one of the novels, and liked it. I thought the movie was very enjoyable. Tom Cruise turned down the boyish charm a bit and put on a rougher edge.

I haven't read the novel (One Shot) on which this movie is based, but the "world" of this movie felt like the world I remember from the novel I did read (61 Hours).

The author's sense of right and wrong
came through loud and strong.

Today

Whether you're on the mainland, an island, or an isthmus...
wherever the heck it is, I wish you a Merry [insert rhyme]!

Criminal Fortification

I was reading about a local arrest, and saw that someone had been charged with "criminal fortification of a residence". I had never heard of such a charge. Well, sure enough, here in the land of Lincoln:

(a) A person commits the offense of criminal fortification of a residence or building when, with the intent to prevent the lawful entry of a law enforcement officer or another, he maintains a residence or building in a fortified condition, knowing that such residence or building is used for the manufacture, storage, delivery, or trafficking of cannabis or controlled substances as defined in the Cannabis Control Act or Illinois Controlled Substances Act.

(b) "Fortified condition" means preventing or impeding entry through the use of steel doors, wooden planking, crossbars, alarm systems, dogs, or other similar means.

So, on the bright side, it's only applicable if your intent is the protection of certain verboten substances.

But, I bet at least half of the houses in my neighborhood have an alarm system or a dog. Or both.

So according to the courts,
we're a neighborhood of forts!

Lies

Not exactly shocking news:

Many workers are willing to lie about a death in the family, illness or jury duty to play hooky, according to a survey conducted by a temporary job staffing firm.

Use uncles, not grandfathers, if a relative must "die",
You wonder why?

Because for grandpas there's a limited supply!
You only get two.

But,  when it comes to uncles, you may well have beaucoup.

If It Save One Life

Logistically, it may be hard,
but I believe that each of us deserves a well-armed guard.

News You Can Use

A friend today requested a rhyme for this legal ruling from Iowa:

The Iowa Supreme Court says a dentist did not commit sex discrimination when he fired an attractive woman assistant he viewed as a threat to his marriage.

If a hot employee tempts you
toward illicit enjoyment,
it legally exempts you
to cut off her employment!

Pre-Rhymed Headline

Business woman injured in sex romp gets worker's comp

This case, in Australia, has been working its way through their court system for years, but finally the claimant has emerged triumphant.

While on a business trip, having sex on a hotel bed, a lighting fixture fell down on her head.

The technical legal question before the Australian court was whether her ill-fated mattress-merry-making was "an ordinary incident of an overnight stay". Well, who's to say?

In her favor, reportedly her employer had encouraged her to stay at this hotel with the shoddy light fixture.

The story sounds strange, since the guy in the case testified that he didn't know whether they had bumped the fixture or whether it had simply fallen. Really?

But what interests me is the "injury" claim itself. She suffered "facial and psychological" injuries. Most of the value of the claim had to be on the psych side, wherein she "later suffered depression and was unable to continue working for the government."

The nice thing about using a depression claim in your opening move,
is that it's hard to disprove.

Heads Roll

3 officials at the state department are resigning, just after the carefully worded impartial report found a pattern of systemic failure leading up to the Benghazi murders.

Security failed.
Careers derailed.

Our secretary of state was already planning on leaving, of course. And can't testify about the murders because she's recovering from a concussion.

Truman said "the buck stops here."
But sometimes the buck just seems to... disappear.

Transparency vs. Privacy

This makes intuitive sense to me:

We typically assume that the more we can see, the more we can understand about an organization. This research suggests a counteracting force: the more that can be seen, the more individuals may respond strategically with hiding behavior and encryption to nullify the understanding of that which is seen.

That's from Ethan S. Bernstein who goes on to argue that people may actually be more productive when they are allowed some privacy at work.

Put privacy under steady, official attack,
and people will find ways take it back.

Blithe Spirit, First Rehearsal

We had our first rehearsal tonight for the MPTG production of Blithe Spirit, the ghost story comedy by Noel Coward.

I'm playing the skeptical doc,
who is rather inclined to mock
the mystically dotty
Madame Arcati.

Seasonal Floral Limerick

A competitive sort of poinsettia
Proclaimed that her petals were betta.
She said, "Use your eyes -
My blooms take the prize -
They're bigger and brighter and redda."

A Christmas Carol (Abridged)

That's the title of the Christmas show at Dream Theatre, which opened today at a matinee performance.

It's performed with 3 actors on a fairly bare stage, and its claim to your attention is that all the words you hear were written by Charles Dickens. The emphasis is on the literary quality, rather than special effects, and you never actually see Tiny Tim - unless you see him in your mind's eye, which I guess I did.

(Yes, there are special effects, but they are of the understated sort that ask you to use your imagination.)

This is a labor of love on the part of Rachel Martindale, who adapted it, directed it, and acts in it. And that love comes across. John-Paul Kostecki is a great deal of fun as Scrooge, and Mason Pain plays the other male parts with skilled enthusiasm.

It's ghostly and slightly scary,
but ends up sprightly and merry.

HRC Hits Head

The US secretary of state was sick, and slipped, and sustained a concussion.

And now won't be able to testify as scheduled before congress about the Benghazi attack.

I think they should reschedule when she's feeling better. Even if she's not secretary of state any more by then.

State department employees were needlessly killed.
The person in charge deserves to be grilled.

Joy on a Sad Day

At lunch, I happened upon highschoolers singing holiday carols in the library lobby. Their singing was lovely, and I stood transfixed.

Listening to them sing,
I felt the truth that life is a holy thing.

Cliff Hangers

The Wall St. Journal reports:

Fiscal Cliff Inspires Legion of Poets

There are samples, both rhymed and haiku.

For many the cliff inspires creative leaps.
But I get depressed and soon fall sleep.

Hold Out, Turned Out

Illinois is a hold-out state - the only state in the union with no provision for normal citizens to carry a loaded gun. But our local federal appeals court has now struck down that ban as unconstitutional.

Don't go walking outside with a gun in your pocket just yet - the court gave the state 180 days to pass some new rules.

So, the unconstitutional law, is still in effect? That's kind of bizarre, in a way.

The ruling itself is interesting. It's written by Richard Posner, no fan of gun rights, but a bright guy who is trying to apply the logic of recent supreme court rulings. I'm fond of this sentence:

The right to “bear” as distinct from the right to “keep”arms is unlikely to refer to the home.

A "right to bear"
suggests the "where"
extends beyond the home.

Gun carriers must be allowed to roam.

Losing Track of Time

I find I get the most work done when I'm losing track of time and the day is vanishing at a rapid pace. You know, a day where you glance at your watch and are surprised that most of the normal workday has already evaporated.

You want productivity? Here's what I ask:
let me become absorbed in the task.

Liberty of Contract

For book club today we discussed David Mayer's Liberty of Contract: Rediscovering a Lost Constitutional Right. I enjoyed it a lot. It's short and lawyerly, and it's dry, as legal arguments often are.

As with his book on the Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson, part of the interest for me was exploring how the constitution was viewed in the past, by very bright people whose theories were often quite different than those you usually hear today.

In Liberty of Contract, Mayer takes part in an ongoing scholarly re-examination of a period in the Supreme Court's history when it held that such liberty was an individual right.

Synthesizing the new scholarship and presenting a coherent and comprehensive overview of liberty-of-contract jurisprudence, this book argues that the orthodox view of the so-called Lochner era is fundamentally flawed in a number of respects. Indeed, the orthodox view is wrong in virtually all of its assumptions, which were based on myths originally propounded by Progressive-Era scholars that have been perpetuated by modern scholars who similarly defend the policies of the modern regulatory state.

Proponents of the regulatory state
don't give "liberty of contract" much weight.

Clause Needed

A US district judge, refusing to buy the wait and see if it really hurts argument.

“Moreover, the First Amendment does not require citizens to accept assurances from the government that, if the government later determines it has made a misstep, it will take ameliorative action,” he continued. “There is no, ‘Trust us, changes are coming’ clause in the Constitution.”

Maybe that's what the constitution needs! A "trust us" clause!

Proposed 28th amendment:

Citizens must
henceforward trust
that their government's actions are just.

Unadorned

Haul a tree indoors and prop it,
in a prominent position.

It's very hard to stop it,
it's a dominant tradition.

Come Quick

Somewhere in Texas...

"I'm out in the country somewhere," Moore told the 911 operator during the 10-minute call. "Some guy's got a gun on me."

You might wonder why some guy had a gun on him. Well... because the guy had caught him engaged in a burglary. The guy's wife also called 911, saying:

"You better come quick," she said, "or my husband's going to shoot him."

It's getting tough to be a thief.
You might have to call the cops for relief.

Chump Change

I think I've mentioned it last year, but they're talking about it again!

Feeling held down by a debt ceiling? Then -
mint some coins worth 10 to the 10.

Yes, that's a one trillion dollar coin. Proposed, not actual, to be perfectly factual.

There are limits on how much paper money the U.S. can circulate and rules that govern coinage on gold, silver, and copper. BUT, the Treasury has broad discretion on coins made from platinum. The theory goes that the U.S. Mint would create a handful of trillion dollar (or more) platinum coins. The President would then order the coins deposited at the Fed, who would then put the coin (s) in the Treasury who now can pay all their bills and a default is removed from the equation.

Limits?
Those are for dimwits!

Federalism Chaos

Illinois is now considering a medical marijuana law. And our state senate just passed a law granting drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants.

Neither of these will make it exactly legal to smoke weed or overstay your visa in Illinois. Because federal laws presumably still apply here.

I'm unclear on whether the state can actually stop a local cop from enforcing a federal law. But I bet they can discourage it.

If... due to a medical condition,
duly certified by a physician...
you need to get high,
it'll be mostly the DEA and FBI
that concern you.

The local fuzz won't burn you.

In Pursuit of an Upper Lip That's Hirsute

In the Mideast, reportedly, a mustache is a sign of manliness. But not all men can grow a thick one. So, here comes cosmetic surgery to the rescue:

...in recent years, increasing numbers of Middle Eastern men have been going under the knife to attain the perfect specimen.

Embarrassed by a thin moustache?
Want to look manly in a flash?
Just slip our surgeons some folding cash!

Owe Yes

Tomorrow, tomorrow, we'll borrow tomorrow -
I hope there's a way to pay!

Coffee!

Most days I drink a cup or two. But...

"What I tell patients is, if you like coffee, go ahead and drink as much as you want and can," says Dr. Peter Martin, director of the Institute for Coffee Studies at Vanderbilt University.

I guess this means I need more caffeine!

But you know the way these things go...
in just about a year
there will be a major study to show
that coffee's a thing to fear.

Foreverland

I went to the opening of Peter Pan's Shadow, Part 3: Foreverland, by Jeremy Menekseoglu. I was thoroughly charmed by it.

Of all 3 parts, I liked this last the best.
The bodiless talking-head mermaid left me particularly impressed.

After I attended a reading of the piece, I asked Jeremy how he was going to have a talking decapitated mermaid's head on stage. He told me it would be "easy", but it sounded hard to me! Well, somehow the way they did it worked. Sarah Scanlon, who played the mermaid, deserves praise for pulling that off. It's mostly done with suggestion, not illusion. But in fantasy pieces, people are willing to let their imaginations run riot with well-crafted suggestion.

The play focuses on the recurring tragedy of the charismatic alpha male who refuses to "grow up", who attracts swooning women, but who cannot fully return their love. You know, what is sometimes called the Peter Pan Syndrome. It's rough on relationships!

There are emotional moments throughout the play that were just mesmerizing.

I guess that means that even though there wasn't much yelling,
the acting was utterly compelling.

Up For Grabs

Since Jesse Jackson Jr. resigned his congressional seat, 2 weeks after winning re-election, we've all been wondering who will take his vacated position.

Well, today Mel Reynolds announced that he's in the running. The funny thing is, he already held that seat. Jackson took that seat after Reynolds vacated it. Reynolds, you see had some trouble with the law.

Reynolds held the 2nd Congressional District seat from 1993 until October 1995, when a Cook County jury convicted him of several sex-related charges, including having sex with an underage volunteer campaign worker. While serving time in state prison, Reynolds also was convicted on federal financial and campaign fraud charges. President Bill Clinton commuted Reynolds' sentence to time served in 2001.

The story says he "no longer has to register as a sex offender".
I guess that makes him a valid contender.

Opportunity to Tune

I came across an interesting thought in an Ann Althouse post today. The context is about a crazy prank, but that doesn't matter too much:

One girl knew he was a fake. You see her at about 3:00. I think it's not a mere coincidence that the young woman is strikingly beautiful. Well-tuned bullshit detector.

"Not a mere coincidence." Althouse isn't quite saying that all strikingly beautiful women have well-tuned BS-detectors. But you can see where they might have extra opportunity to tune that instrument.

Competitive males in pursuit of a mate
have sometimes been known to generate
BS
in excess.

Choking on Food

Last month I saw a story about a guy who died after winning a bug-eating contest - roaches and worms were on the menu. I wondered what had done him in, since the bugs weren't thought to be toxic as such. Now they tell us:

Edward Archbold died "as a result of asphyxia due to choking and aspiration of gastric contents," said the Broward County Medical Examiner's Office. It said his airway was obstructed by bug body parts, and ruled his death was an accident.

So, like too many rock stars, he choked to death on his own vomit. I wonder if he was drinking to celebrate his victory. Alcohol suppresses your gag reflex somewhat, and also can upset your stomach, a potentially dangerous combination.

But... what a weird way to go.

He gobbled worms with vigor and vim.
Now I figure they're nibbling him.

Munchausen by Internet

I read an interesting article about "Munchausen by internet", by which the author means people who sign onto internet health forums and pretend to have a health problem.  He offers a list of tips for spotting the fakers, of which this one jumped out at me:

5. There are continual dramatic events in the person's life, especially when other group members have become the focus of attention.

In other words, the faker works to stay in the forum limelight, making up drama.

Paradoxically, the medical establishment treats the fakers as having an illness - namely Munchausen Syndrome - an "illness" that consists of falsely claiming to have a real illness. It's a psychiatric disorder, of course.

Bear in mind, if you fake an illness for a semi-practical reason, such as collecting undeserved disability payments, that doesn't count as Munchausen. That's just malingering.

Unlike individuals who engage in MALINGERING, people with factitious disorder and Munchausen syndrome are not primarily seeking external gains such as disability payments or narcotic drugs—though they may receive them nonetheless. In some cases, the fabrication or induction of illness is an expression of jealousy, rage, or the desire to control others.

So the theory is they really are "sick"
but not with what they claim to have... that's just a trick.

Instead
they're sick in the head.

Turkey Trot

Ran the Beverly Hills Turkey Trot 5k today.

Took first in age group. Race goes by my house. Thank you Marsha and Romeo for cheering me on!

If you're lucky enough to still be able to run when you're 60, your odds of taking first go up. I feel like the tortoise in the fable.

As your competition diminishes,
you have better relative finishes.

Arab Autumn

What is wrong with these Egyptians?

Supporters and opponents of President Mohammed Morsi clashed Friday in the worst violence since he took office, while he defended a decision to give himself near-absolute power to root out what he called ‘‘weevils eating away at the nation of Egypt.’’

Don't they understand that his virtuous intentions justify dictatorship?

He surely wants power
in order to shower
goodness and light
upon those trapped in night.

No? Well, maybe you're right.

Happy Endings

From Playwriting Seminars 2.0:

There's nothing wrong – and in fact everything good – about a happy ending if that's the logical outcome. The problem with happy endings is that more often than not, they defy the logic of the story.

I just want to note that the same ending can be tragic or happy, depending upon who the protagonist is.

I have to say
that if only the play
was mostly about MacDuff...

the death
of MacBeth
would be happy enough.

Adventurers

You have to hand it to the Pilgrims for their ability to admit mistakes:

It’s wrong to say that American was founded by capitalists. In fact, America was founded by socialists who had the humility to learn from their initial mistakes and embrace freedom.

But it's also worth remembering that the first successful English settlement in the Americas, in Jamestown, really was founded by capitalists:

Late in 1606, English entrepreneurs set sail with a charter from the Virginia Company of London to establish a colony in the New World.

Success did not come right away to the Jamestown settlement, either. Famine struck within a few years and, "Only 61 of the 500 colonists survived the period".

Of course, I understand why we focus on the Pilgrims on Thanksgiving, since we trace the holiday back to them.

But I'm not sure why they are so often treated as if they were the first settlers.

It's kind of a mystery,
at least to me.

Sometimes I wonder if there could be
Northern bias in our history?

Forgetful Me

There's an exercise I go through after I write a long story, such as a play. I go back and look at the notes and early versions it evolved from.

Often I am surprised.

I just did it for this new thing I've written, and, sure enough, I was surprised. It somehow evolved out of 2 quite different abandoned story attempts, the first involving an encrypted laptop, and the second involving a private school. The main thing these 2 attempts had in common - was that they both involved a lawyer. The thing I finally wrote ended up involving 4 lawyers, so I guess I had lawyers on the brain. Well, I have 4 close relatives who are lawyers, so perhaps I can be forgiven for that.

I had completely forgotten that the immediate impetus for Start Number 3, the start which I carried to completion, was an article in the Chicago Tribune on February 20th this year:

Heavy-equipment operator Mark Michelsen, 49, is threatening to rip up or fill in the subdivision detention pond he unwittingly bought for $11 at a tax sale if the village or homeowners don't pay up.

I found the article fascinating, but I didn't actually use the story in the article, although my story did end up involving a legal dispute over a pond.

Funny how going back to replay the tape
to see the way a story really took shape
is so often an exercise
in surprise.

Thanksgiving Is Coming

I see friends working on developing their gratitude in November, by thinking of a new thing every day that they're grateful for.

Isn't one day a year enough
to be grateful, and stuff?

Alternatively...

If it's good to embrace a sense of gratitude,
maybe it should be a whole-year attitude.

Themes

I'm rereading Richard Toscan's Playwriting Seminars, and recently reread his section on Theme, where he advises you not to try to write a play with a message.

Nearly all contemporary playwrights would say it’s a fool’s errand to try writing a play driven consciously by a predetermined theme or message.

It's more or less the opposite advice from what Lajos Egri gave in his famous The Art Of Dramatic Writing.

Central to Egri's argument is his claim that the best stories follow the logical method of thesis, antithesis, synthesis, or dialectic, to prove what he calls a "premise." A premise, as Egri describes it, is a thematic truth.

My newest play, currently entitled "O'Brien & O'Brian", was done by the first method. But I felt like it had some thematic unity, so I sat down today and thought about what the story meant. Sure enough, I perceived a thematic thread.

I've tried both ways, conscious and un,
depending upon my vision.

I think either way can get the job done,
and neither deserves derision.

At The Mound, On Stage

That's a photo from last night, left to right you can see Sam Bell as the pitcher, Gavin Maloney as the catcher, and Greg Wittenberg as the umpire. (Not pictured is Vince Nuno, who played the coach.) I thought the young men did a fine job with my play.

The young men playing the pitcher and catcher actually play those positions on their high school team. Which made costuming easy for them!

Of the 9 baseball plays, mine was the only one that involved actors playing players on the field. You can see where it would be hard to put much of a baseball game on the stage - the stage is too small, the actors aren't real baseball players, etc. In a movie, of course, you can make it work quite well. But I was able to "cheat" by putting up an "at the mound" discussion, the impromptu conference where a catcher goes out to talk to a pitcher about what is wrong. At the game, in the stands, it's an odd sort of moment. You watch the discussion, but you hear none of it. You wonder what they are saying, but you just don't know.

In my little plot,
they say quite a lot.

The Energy of Grief

My 10-minute baseball play, At The Mound, seemed to play well last night. The 4 young actors did a fine job playing pitcher, catcher, umpire, and coach. I had an all male cast, which kind of balanced some all female pieces.

The play, whatever else it is about, is partly about one of the ways men, young men especially perhaps, deal with grief - by channeling the energy - the anger - into something else.

I'll see it again, tonight.

The energy of grief
seeks relief.

ORCA Needed LARP

You may have read about ORCA:

It was supposed to be a "killer app," but a system deployed to volunteers by Mitt Romney's presidential campaign may have done more harm to Romney's chances on Election Day—largely because of a failure to follow basic best practices for IT projects.

What "best practices" would those be? Beta testing and stress testing. In beta testing you let end users test the product. And in stress testing... well, let's look at how the competing campaign handled that:

The election was still 17 days away, and this was a live action role playing (LARPing!) exercise that the campaign's chief technology officer, Harper Reed, was inflicting on his team. "We worked through every possible disaster situation," Reed said. "We did three actual all-day sessions of destroying everything we had built."

If you want a product that's best,
that is how you test.

As someone who has supported himself for some decades by writing computer programs, I suspect some sort of managerial groupthink hubris infected the ORCA effort.

The elephants built some tech, but failed to test in beta,
while the donkeys recruited nerds who really knew their data.

Cliff!

I heard a knowledgeable economist say that he didn't really know what the effect of going off the fiscal cliff would be. He seemed to think it might even be beneficial. I mean, at least it would involve "spending cuts," although he indicated that, as so often, they aren't really reductions in what was spent this year, they are reductions to scheduled increases for next year.

Is it mainly the word "cliff" that makes it sound
like a fully fatal fall to the ground?

Play Ball!

Join us tomorrow and Saturday for the Upper School fall show. "Play Ball" is a collection of one-act plays about baseball, including a piece about the MPA baseball team by alumni parent John Enright and the world premiere of an all-female piece adapted from best-selling novelist Jane Heller. Showtime is 7 p.m. tomorrow (Nov. 16) and Saturday (Nov. 17). Tickets are $7 for students and $10 for adults.

The traditional wish to the cast is: Break a leg!

It has the ring of superstition, as if by officially wishing disaster, you could trick Fortune, by reverse psychology, into favoring a performance.

I expect they'll do great,
sliding into home plate.

Snooper's Dream

Google is popular with your government - as a source of data:

The search and ads company today released figures revealing that it was asked to hand over user data 7,969 times by US agencies in the first six months of 2012 - an increase of 26 percent over the previous six months.

Which brings us to General Petraeus, and the story that just keeps rolling downhill:

Oddly enough, the leader of the intelligence gathering agency was brought down by Gmail...

Well, Gmail and his email with a female...

Reducing National Debt

Jason Fichtner:

At more than $16 trillion, the United States’ gross national debt has grown to equal its gross domestic product—a level that for other nations has marked an economic tipping point.

I think this is why economics is called the dismal science. When things are looking dismal, economics tells you your glass is even less than half empty.

I've decided on defiance
against the dismal science.

Why worry about the national debt?
We don't really have to pay it yet!

If we just keep growing it bigger,
it'll pay itself, I figger.

Productivity Runneth Over

Whew. What a writing-productive long weekend. (Had Veteran's Day off.) Finished first draft of new full-length play, previously entitled "High Water," and then "Over Flow," now provisionally entitled: "O'Brien & O'Brian". Of course, the title may change again, but this is the first title I've had a good feeling about as fitting the play. What I don't know is whether that title will sound attractive to anybody. Well, we'll see who complains about it.

Over the years, I've had to rework the "final exchange" dialogue quite a bit. I'm hoping that's not true this time. Well, we'll see that too.

It's a play that features lots of Irish names,
and characters pursuing secret aims.

Currently 800 Something

Illinois uses its electronic highway alert signs to flash a running tally of state traffic deaths, in between useful traffic alerts. That means I end up looking at the sign longer.

That's dangerous, I fear.
And, yes, traffic deaths are up this year.

Honoring

I'd like to say "Thank you, vets",
but they come in 2 separate sets.

And today I'm skipping the healers of pets,
and thanking the ones with rifles and jets.

Brecht and Copyright

From David Mamet's book, The Secret Knowledge, which I was just previewing on his website:

As a youth I enjoyed—indeed, like most of my contemporaries, revered—the agitprop plays of Brecht, and his indictments of Capitalism. It later occurred to me that his plays were copyrighted, and that he, like I, was living through the operations of that same free market. His protestations were not borne out by his actions, neither could they be. Why, then, did he profess Communism? Because it sold.

This is funny and apt, but there's an underlying question, of course.

Why did the road to hell
sell so well?

Chekhov Shorts

You don't usually think of Chekhov as being laugh-out-loud funny, but the audience was laughing out loud tonight at Chekhov Shorts, a collection of 3 of his early farcical one-acts.

I went because a friend of mine, Chad Sheveland, is the cast. You can see him below, struggling for control of a dueling pistol in "The Bear".


Chad's performance was excellent, as I expected. And I was pleased that the other actors were also playing at a high level.

Chekhov's mature plays have a reputation for subtle humor, but these early plays are loaded with humor of a broader sort.

His later plays are thought of as delicate flowers,
but his early efforts already show raw power.

UPDATE: Belatedly realized that I had previously met another actor in the show, Ginger Leopoldo. She was also very funny, so here's her picture too:

Never Take Counsel Of Your Fears

Never take counsel of your fears. Have you ever heard that phrase? Have you wondered where it came from? I like it, so I've wondered.

I started looking it up today, and I saw some people attributed it to Andrew Jackson or George Patton. But on Google Books, it first appears in 1858, in Brownson's Quarterly Review, in a piece called Conversations Of Our Club:

"Never take counsel of your fears," replied Father John, "and always hear a man's whole thought before you fly in a rage at him. I wish the Catholic public in our country to take higher views of what a collegiate education should be;"

I can't quite tell who really came up with the phrase. The piece claims to be "reported for the Review, by a Member." Was it really just a piece of reporting? Was there really a Father John who said exactly this?

Or did Anonymous, as from his earliest days,
turn this perfect phrase?

The Demand for Flammable Flags

Stimulus:

Many Pakistanis fear President Barack Obama’s re-election will mean a surge in America’s unpopular drone campaign, but for those making and selling US flags to burn at protests this could be good news.

Yes, they manufacture the Stars & Stripes -
just to express some anti-American gripes!

Well, even without the drone campaign in particular, you could expect a lot of anti-American protests in Pakistan. They weren't too happy when we coptered those SEALs into Abbottabad to kill Bin Laden, either. I'm not sure what it would take to get them to like us again.

Not that being liked is, or should be, the chief goal of our foreign policy.

We could always try the Ron Paul strategy of not being Team America: World Police. He's pretty consistent about it. But a lot of people aren't.

Some say they want us to stop
playing global cop,
until some outrage occurs that they don't like.

Then they're on the phones
calling for the drones
to strike.

Current Affairs

Undercover boss

takes a lover and a loss.

In Passing

A penny in the pool goes splash and dives,
The waves pulse out a pattern that goes on.
We're here a while, plunging through our lives,
And leaving love behind us when we're gone.

Last Hurrah

Going out in glory:

Dead candidates win elections in Florida, Alabama

Their days were done,
but still... they won!

Dietary Preference, For Future Reference

An explanation is offered for why animals might "get the taste for human blood":

"Since human blood has more salt than animal blood, once wild animals get the taste of salty blood, they do not like other animals like deer," Dhakal told CNN.

If predators like to eat us because we're salty,
my pretzels-for-breakfast habit may be faulty.

Thoughts on Directing

I've been directed, and I've watched a bunch of directors work intensely with other actors, but I hadn't tried it myself until last week. So these are just some first thoughts on actually doing it.

I was lucky in my cast, which was assigned to me - two very talented young women who worked very well together. And they had to work pretty closely together, since they ended up inside one double-dress, playing conjoined twins.

I was lucky in my script. It was a literary, poetic script, which plays to my strengths. And it was by a friend, so I had a preliminary feeling for the emotional tone and intention.

My first crisis was finding a place to rehearse. The theater was available - but not during the time slots we needed to rehearse, given our three schedules. One of my sisters was able to give me downtown space to use, for free. Well, I arranged for free admission for her and my brother-in-law in return, but it was a lot less than I would have paid to rent space!

I could have rehearsed at my house, but I'm far south of downtown and the actresses both live north of downtown. It would have meant extra travel time for them.

So, we had some deep conversations about the script, sharing insights and suggestions. The actresses came up with a lot on their own. I did feel I was able to contribute something material now and then to how it was being acted. This felt to me like the most mysterious part of the process, but it seemed to go well enough. I followed my "instincts" mostly, since you don't have time to do much else.

As one of the actresses said afterward, a lot of being a director is scheduling and finding props! I did round up a nice set of props, from a couple of thrift stores and from stuff belonging to my wife. I found a nice photo of a garden to be projected behind the scene, and I found some fun introductory and closing music. I worked with the person running tech to actually develop a lighting change during a certain part of the script.

One thing I didn't really get to do was blocking - telling the actors when to move and where to stand. My actors were sitting at a table for the whole script - until the end when they stood. That's what the script specified, anyway, and we stuck with it.

Being conjoined, they were stuck on each other.
I wondered what giving birth was like for their mother.

In My Experience

Electoral joy may soon cloy. But nothing about defeat tastes sweet.

Animal Scandals

If an alligator makes an allegation, must the ostrich suffer ostracization?

TOW7 is History

I was very pleased with both of the plays I was directly involved in at Theatre of Women 7, which is now history. I had fun watching the other plays too.

As my brother in law said, the great thing about 10 minute plays is that:

Even if one leaves you vexed or perplexed,
it's over soon and time for the next!

Okay, that's not an exact quote from my brother in law. He said it without rhyming it.

I see that Anna Menekseoglu has uploaded a video of Saturday night's performance of "Two Girls, One Heart", which I directed.

Falling Back

Cat thinks I need to get out of bed,
so she can be fed.

And she doesn't understand me when I say:
we've got an extra hour to sleep today.

Ending Soon On A TV Near You

This may seem controversial
but my favorite thing to view
is a juicy election commercial!

What will I do
when the races are through?

They leave me reeling
with dizzy fun.

(I like the feeling
of being spun.)

The Ick Factor

Eww.

David Axelrod described the message coming from President Barack Obama days before Election Day as "coming from his loins."

Is this part of the macho dominance narrative - the idea that voters pick whoever seems like more of Type A leader? A lot of people see the dramatics of debate as really being settled by who seems to "own the stage" more.

It's okay if you speak from your heart,
I'll applaud if you speak from your head,
But when a pol speak from his loins,
I don't want to hear what he said.

Secret Cases

The Chicago Sun-Times reports on a local judge who says there are "secret cases" which are ruining her life. They must be very secret, because the head judge says they don't exist.

McDunn insists, “I’m not paranoid.”

"I'm not paranoid,"
is one of those phrases you want to avoid.

Just saying it makes you sound
unsound.