One-minute news break

Who is Alicia Keys and why was she on my television screen so much last night?

Says here in my Very Large Metropolitan Newspaper that the president is using the war as a political tool. Well, duh. Isn't that basic politics? Say what you will about the president, but he's not going to miss something as basic as that.

In case you haven't noticed, an NBA team in Texas is challenging for the league's best record -- and it's not the Spurs. It's the team that not so long ago was challenging to break the league record for fewest victories in a season.

In the space of 18 months, I've experienced a 113-degree day and an 11-degree night in the same city.

Now, back to live action

I'm nobody. Who are you?
I spent a good portion of yesterday in a quest to figure out who I am, courtesy of my place of employment. I was part of a group taking one of these personality tests. Kind of like Myers-Briggs, except this one puts everybody into one of four categories, and as such, has a tendency to make generalizations. I took the Myers-Briggs about four years ago, and apparently, I haven't changed much. I'm said to be "Inspirational," meaning that I'm a consensus-builder who wants to make sure everybody has fun, but I often lack basic organizational and planning skills. Which is basically true, sort of.

I find these fascinating, not because I lack self-awareness -- I don't -- but because it's interesting to see what other people think of themselves, and how surprised (or not) people are at their results or at your results. Our group didn't have very many surprises. It's a creative bunch that, given their druthers, would just as soon work by themselves but are forced into being a part of a group that really is too large for its own good.

At small newspapers, they complain about not having enough people. Ours has too many. Maybe we could use the personality test to cull the annoying people. Then work would be more fun, and I wouldn't have to worry about my organizational skills.

A thought about journalism
Sitting behind a desk next to a window with a great view of the Dallas skyline, I feel a little silly identifying with a guy who was hacked and beaten to death in a dark alley in Pakistan.

I still remember when the girl who cut my hair in Orlando, making the obligatory haircut-girl small talk, asked me about my occupation. I gave my usual as-simple-as-possible explanation about how I worked at the newspaper, designing pages and editing stories. "Cool," she said. "Did you ever want to be, like, a journalist?"

Uh, hello, I am a f---ing journalist. That's what I wanted to say. But I knew she wouldn't understand.

Journalism is a lot more involved than the simple pursuit of stories. Despite the fact that I am an editor, I still hold a pretty solid contempt for editors. I do, however, concede the need for editors. I guarantee you, gentle reader, wouldn't want to read our unedited dreck. (Kind of like the stuff you're reading right now, actually. See how bad that would be?)

You're going to hear a lot about Daniel Pearl, because he was a journalist, and so are all the people from whom you're going to hear about him. We journalists are probably a lot more interested in Daniel Pearl than you are. And that's OK, and fully justifiable. He's simply a victim of terrorism just like the people in the airplanes and in the World Trade Center and in the Pentagon on Sept. 11, just like the people who die every day in the Middle East. He's not more special -- nor less so -- because he was a journalist just trying to do his job.

But understand this, too: Despite the incredible flaws of today's media, we are the society that we are largely because of journalism. No other country in the history of the world has been allowed to hold its government more accountable to its people than has the United States. Yes, journalists have abused this privilege. But the next time you hear a story about government malfeasance, listen to it. Understand that the fact that you're getting to listen to it doesn't happen everywhere in the world. The ability for you in your easy chair to do something about it (get the f--- out there and VOTE, for Pete's sake!) is a precious right. The ability to know what's going on in other corners of the world is also precious, and not something shared by everybody else in the world.

You wouldn't be able to fix your government or send help to oppressed peoples around the world if you didn't know about it. That's why I and my co-workers are here.

I hope you appreciate it. And I hope you appreciate what Daniel Pearl and the hundreds of other journalists who have been killed in the line of duty were doing for you, too.

The ennui continues
I'm sorry to report that things aren't getting any better for me at the place of employment. Not that you care, and certainly not that you should. They pay me well, I get to spend some time on the best equipment in the business, and I work with a bunch of really good people (and, yeah, a few assholes, too. That's the nature of the news business, or any business, really.)

So what do I have to bitch about?

It's simple. I'm bored. Bored, bored, bored. And that's a dangerous thing for me.

In the past, when I've become bored with my job, I've become contentious and bitchy. I say stupid things that I later regret. I cut my work days to about six hours if I can get away with it. And then, we pack up and move, becuase I need a new challenge of some sort.

I'm not quite to the packing-up-and-leaving part yet. I'm not quite all the way through contentious and bitchy, and I've only said a precious few stupid things so far. I'm holding out hope that the Next Big Challenge is coming down the line, soon.

Right now, my Next Big Challenge is simply trying to justify going to work tomorrow. I suspect that's bad.

We hate luxury SUVs, and here's why
I love my wife. Not just because she's tall, beautiful and the best mother on the planet, but because when she sees something she thinks is stupid, she by God stands up and says so.

I'm relating this story second-hand. I wasn't there. But it's a hell of a story, and it bears re-telling.

We have nothing against pickup trucks, or sport-utility vehicles in general. We understand that some people actually need a pickup truck or an SUV to haul stuff around or go camping or something. We have a minivan, ourselves, just because it makes more sense for us. But if you have actual need for an SUV or a truck, by all means buy one. What we're against in this space is "luxury" SUVs; vehicles that are big just for the sake of being big, vehicles that serve no purpose other than to suck down gas and take up space. Like you're going to take your Cadillac Escalade off-road. And here in Texas, bad weather isn't even really an excuse, considering we get about 5 inches of snow every two years.

Today, The Wife went to the local Large National Chain Hardware Store to pick up some flowers or something. She found herself caught in a slow-moving checkout line, so being the less-than-patient sort that she is, she went to investigate the source of the holdup.

The source of the holdup was a middle-aged man who was buying 70 bags of mulch. The Hardware Store guys started to load the mulch in his vehicle. Middle-Aged Suburban Man stopped them. "Don't put it in the car," he said. "Put it on top of the car."

The "car" in question was a larger-than-life Lincoln Navigator. As anybody with a brain knows, a Lincoln Navigator is just a really pretty rendition of a Ford F-150, slightly re-tuned to ride smoother. It's not a car; it's a truck. I don't care how much money you paid for it, underneath all the leather and stuff, it's a truck.

So, the Hardware Store Guys dutifully began the precarious task of loading 70 bags of much on top of a Lincoln Navigator. This, of course, was too much for The Wife. She looked at the guy and asked him, "Now, why are you putting the stuff on top of the truck when you could put it in the truck? Is that not why you bought a truck?"

"It's my wife's car," Suburban Man grumbled, none too pleased at The Wife's question.

The Wife was still beside herself when she called to relate the story to me. There's more: The Hardware Store Guys made the guy sign a release. I guess it said something along the lines of, "When all this shit falls off the top of your truck and spills all over the highway, we are not responsible for any damage to your $50,000 truck nor any other vehicle, and we are not giving you 70 more bags of mulch." Good for them.

The Wife, still shaking her pretty little head, loaded her flowers and mulch and stuff inside the minivan. Proudly, I might add. I think she spilled a little bit of dirt on purpose.

A girl I knew
On my visit last week to Anytown, I noticed that my first girlfriend's house is for sale. I took a trip back in time, thanks to the wonder of Realtor.com, and took a virtual tour of a house in which I spent many, many hours during the summer of 1979.

The house looks pretty much the same as I remember it, on the inside. A big, old house, lots of original woodwork and light fixtures, really very well-preserved. Somebody had installed vinyl siding since '79. Overall, the house is in pretty good shape, and will be a bargain for somebody at $69,000.

The girl's name was Kim, and we "went steady" from April to October of 1979 -- quite a long time for a couple of 11-year-olds, when you think about it. It's probably a stretch to say she was my first true love, but that summer, all I wanted to do was spend time with her. After we "graduated" from elementary school in 1980, she moved to Wyoming. Her grandmother stayed in the house in Anytown, and a few years later, Kim and the family moved back.

I didn't keep up with Kim much in high school. We talked a little bit right after she moved back, and I got the idea things didn't go very well out west. She had changed quite a bit; me, not so much. We were very much running in different circles by then. She dropped out midway through our junior year. I didn't see her again until 1989, when for some reason, I got an urge to see her. I called the old number I remembered, and she was there. She invited me to drop by the old house, where she still lived with her mom.

At first glance, I remember being struck by how much the same everything was. Her mom still drove the same Chevy Malibu station wagon they'd bought new in '79, and it still looked new. The house was almost exactly as I remembered it. I went upstairs with Kim and we caught up with each other a little bit.

I remember the conversation being interrupted by a phone call. A connection of Kim's, I gathered. Don't know what they were connecting on, and I didn't ask. Kim seemed mildly embarrassed. I told her not to be, that everything was cool. She seemed comforted by that, sort of.

I gave her my number and told her to call me sometime. She never did. I didn't expect her to.

I thought about her not at all for nearly 13 years, until I saw that For Sale sign in her yard. I wondered what became of her, and her mom, and her grandma. Like so many other things I see when I go to Anytown, it made me both a bit wistful for the past and so incredibly grateful I found my way out.

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be ...
It seemed only fitting that I was driving into an Ozarks sunset when I received word that Waylon Jennings had died.

Country music was a big, big part of my early years. My dad, man, he was into that country music, especially "The Outlaws" -- Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson. It was the noise that I woke up to every morning, and it was the songs I heard throughout the day, usually in my dad's way off-key hybrid West Texas-Midwestern drawl.

I was listening to KTTS -- the station I grew up with -- as I was coming back to Texas from Anytown after wrapping up Phase One of the Freelance Gig. In another life, I would have heard about Waylon Jennings' death on KTTS. It seemed right that that's where I heard about it in this life. Kind of a cosmic connection, if you will.

Hed goes here
Just me and the kids today. The Wife is off on another foray into Dog World. No ribbons to be won; this is merely an educational exercise. This exercise takes her and the Champion Dog down to the middle of the state. Gives me and the kids the chance to enjoy what is turning out to be a hell of a nice day in February.

Heading to Anytown tomorrow for several days of serious techno-geeking. We're about ready to unveil that web site you've been hearing so much about. You might soon notice some minor changes to this one, too. We'll keep you posted.

Wow, this is cool
Here's the first post from the new computer. It's a monster: 128 MB of RAM, 1.6 GHz Pentium 4, 40 GB hard drive. 17-inch monitor. Windows XP is a little weird; I can't log on to my computer now without thinking of that damn Madonna song. But I'm sure I'll get over that.

As noted in a previous post, I'm not really a technogeek. Despite the fact that for years I've been known at work as an advanced computer user, I didn't actually own a home computer until 1999. This computer is the first one I've actually purchased. The previous two were hand-me-downs, one only slightly less a dinosaur than the other. The first one had a 486 processor and eight, count 'em, 8 MB of RAM. The one I just took apart was a six-year-old box with 32 MB of RAM and a good ol' Pentium I. It's headed to the computer graveyard, too.

Got a long day ahead tomorrow; another trip to the doctor to get the latest on the Young Daughter's dread disease. Nothing of any grand urgency; she is still, as previously reported, perfectly healthy and happy and developing at a normal pace. It's more of an informational visit, with a geneticist, and it's expected to take three hours. That'll make the kid happy.

Then, Friday night brings the long-awaited annual event here in White Plastic Suburbia: The Daddy-Daughter dance. This is where the Old Daughter and I get dressed up and go to the local community center and hang out with other dads and little girls. It is every bit as cute as it sounds, and every guy there is absolutely as self-conscious as you would expect about actually dancing. But the girls enjoy it, and it's wildly popular. In a neighboring White Plastic Suburb, they had to break it up into three separate events by age group in order to have enough room. My White Plastic Suburb just went to two.

There certainly is not a lot of room for bordeom in my little life. And I certainly wouldn't have it any other way.

Two-yard gain brings up second-and-8
The redesign has advanced, ever so slightly. You're still not seeing the images. Someday soon, you will. For now, you get the explainer on the far right. (For our regular readers, that's what Web developers call "static" content. It doesn't change. It won't change, at least not on a regular basis. I'll probably edit it every once in a while. Don't waste your time reading it at every visit.)

Speaking of Web development, the Freelance Gig will move from consulting and setup to real-live Web development after this week. Maybe that means you'll see images on this site. Maybe that means this site will have a new address. Maybe I'll be so damn busy I won't have time for this site. (Wouldn't that be remarkable?) An awful lot of maybes; nothing's real definite, except that a Very Large Computer Company based in Texas has lots and lots and lots of my money. If the hardware sucks, you'll read about it here. I'll be sure to register with a search engine at that point so everybody will know. Until then, optimism reigns.

(Hold on for jarring transition from My Static Life to the sports world): Let the record show that I was not one of the bleating minions counting on a Rams blowout in the Super Bowl. I thought they would win, but I didn't expect a typical 45-21 Super Blah. It backs up what I've said about the Rams all year: Their offense can be stopped, if you just pound on their receivers, like, an awful lot. It's pretty simple, but so many teams were scared of pounding on the Rams receivers because usually, that only works right up to the point where the Rams receivers go all 4.3 on you and fade into the end-zone ether. The simple philosophy was summed up by Patriots corner Ty Law: "I've never seen anybody win a hundred-yard dash with somebody standing in front of them." The Rams' offensive line did its job admirably, but it didn't matter if Kurt Warner had all the time in the world to throw, because he had nobody to throw it to. And I was a little saddened by the fact that I'll remember Madden and Summerall from this game: Summerall being wrong, a lot, about what was happening on the field and Madden berating Bill Belichick for not running out the clock right up to the point where Adam Vinatieri kicked the game-winner.

And normally, I don't notice the Super Bowl commercials, no matter how loud the hype. Nor do I watch the halftime show. The one time I did, I had a thought: "Wow. Somebody approved this." But, three observations:

Cadillac has finally figured out that its customer base is, like, almost dead. The average age of a new Cadillac buyer is 69. The marketing folks catch a clue: Cadillac cues up the Zeppelin, finds a '59 Eldo, and voila, a star is born. Not crazy about the CTS; it's kind of a funny-looking car. But it's a hell of a lot better swing than the Cimarron and the Catera were. That said, anybody think Cadillac is a little late getting serious about the entry-level luxury market? Gotta figure that all the young, newly rich dot-com folks have already bought their Mercedes C-Classes and BMW 3-series and, maybe, a Lincoln LS or two. Anybody who hasn't bought one by now, chances are, is too late. Those stock options don't buy too many Cadillacs anymore.

I'm a big fan of Budweiser. I'm a big fan of the Clydesdales. Always have been. And, man, was I a big fan of the Clydesdales-in-NY commercial. That was a hell of a creative idea. I buy Budweiser anyway, so it didn't influence me much. But I feel a little bit better about buying it.

I'm a little old for Britney Spears. I admit that. She's not aiming at my demographic. Not with her music, anyway. Let's just say: You can't help but notice. (And, for the record, I am not a pig: I did not turn to NBC during the halftime show for Fear Factor. Not once. Not even for a peek. And I don't even like U2.)

Web development, Anytown-style
If you're thrown by the redesign-in-progress, we apologize. We're doing battle with three children and a 133-MHz, 32-MB-of-RAM dinosaur that's older than all three of the children. We're upgrading the equipment soon; the children, I just have to be patient with.

Stay tuned; it'll all be aligned properly soon.

Headed for rehab
I write this having just cracked open an ice-cold Coca-Cola, despite the fact that I haven't had any quality sleep for three nights and spent yesterday feeling like my throttle was stuck wide-open. I have to face a fact: I am a caffeine addict, and I am to a point that it might be causing me a problem.

My typical consumption:

7-9:30 a.m.: Four cups of coffee, with breakfast and during the very long commute.

10-11 a.m.: Two cups of coffee during the morning meeting circuit

Lunch: A big Dr Pepper or Coke.

After lunch: Another big Dr Pepper or Coke.

3-4 p.m.: Two cups of coffee during the afternoon meeting circuit

4 p.m.-on: At least one more Dr Pepper or Coke.

That's the first time I've ever written it down, but it comes to eight cups of coffee and at least a half-gallon of caffeinated sodas a day. Not quite so much on the weekends.

I carry cups of coffee like people used to carry cigarettes, before smoking became gauche. I fly into a rage if somebody takes the last cup of coffee and doesn't make a new pot. I'll be late to a meeting before I leave the coffee pot empty. I view the fact that we get free coffee at work as the best job perk I have. I very rarely leave my desk without the coffee cup.

I first noticed the warning signs Monday, when I left work in a near-rage over a situation that barely merited being miffed about. Then a discussion with The Wife turned into a semi-argument. Then I didn't sleep Monday night. Then I got out of bed Tuesday, wide-eyed, thinking very clearly, "Man, I don't need coffee today." Then, I proceeded to make a pot. Then I didn't do the routine fillup of the coffee cup at work, until the headache got so bad I couldn't see. The warm liquid made a soothing path down my throat and into my bloodstream, and suddenly all was better. Then I didn't sleep Tuesday night. I woke up in a little better frame of mind Wednesday, did the routine, and discovered that I could barely read my morning meeting notes because my handwriting was so shaky. Then I didn't sleep Wednesday night (but more because of thunderstorms scaring The Boy.)

I drank the breakfast coffee today, but skipped the morning-meeting coffee. It's 1:40 p.m. and I'm having my first soda. I'm trying to cut myself off after 3 p.m., depending on how bad the headaches are.

Who would have thought? For Pete's sake, the best damn part of waking up was Folger's in my cup. I can't even go to a posh rehab center and sit through group therapy ("My name is RJ, and I'm a Dr Pepper-aholic.) I gotta go on this journey all by my lonesome. Wish me luck.

Wheeeee! Here we go
Zigzagging like a Corvette with the 1989 version of me at the wheel ...

--See on MSNBC that some British group has declared Sunday an "Internet-Free Day." Thinks you should get off your ever-expanding asses and go see what's out there in the real world. I can hear the cry now: "How am I supposed to know what to do if I can't check the Web to see what's going on?"
--Speaking of ridiculous "-free" days: Friday at the Very Large Metropolitan Newspaper was a "Meetings-Free Day." Upper management thought this would be a good morale-builder. The catch: The ban on meetings did not apply to meetings directly related to the gathering of news (of which I have two, daily); or meetings relating to breaking news (of which I had two on Friday.) Bottom line is this: Meetings-Free Day doesn't apply to me. And since attending meetings is 85 percent of my job, I suppose that's a good thing. Otherwise I'd be completely irrelevant.
--Went for a haircut today. That's not a monumental event in itself, but it did expose my twisted decision-making process. I walked into one location of the Cheap National Chain Haircut place, looked around, and determined the following: "All of the stylists working are unattractive people ... with bad hair." Do you want somebody with bad hair making decisions about what yours should look like? I think not. So I left and went to another location. Hairstylist had very good hair. Now, so do I, and a lot less of it. That's a good thing.
--Are we ready to see Kordell Stewart in the Super Bowl? I certainly am, seeing as how I was one of the loudest people out there on that limb six years ago declaring him The Next Big Thing in the NFL. If that doesn't happen, another great angle arises: The New England Patriots will have reached the Super Bowl ... without Drew Bledsoe. Just another reason to wonder why bad teams fall all over themselves drafting quarterbacks. This is why we love football: Because some guy you've never heard of is a heartbeat away from getting his team in the Super Bowl while Brett Favre is still trying to figure out why none of the guys catching his passes last week were wearing the same color shirts as he.
--Computer fact of the week: Did you know that having more RAM makes your system last longer? That's what it said in the magazine I read while I was waiting for that aforementioned haircut. I have no idea if it's true or not, but, as a guy who's about to drop a huge dime on a new system -- with lots and lots and lots of RAM -- I'm willing to believe.

One of the bad things about writing these little potpourris is that there's not a clean, snappy way to wrap it up. I think about a lot, usually. I've had a lull in my thinking lately. It's good to see that lull might be ending.

We must be quarantined
The dread illness has struck the house. Two of the three mini-humans and The Wife. Vomiting, chills, diarrhea, the general ick. I dropped out of work early to come home to lead the Sick Bay, being the nice guy that I am. Of course, I pondered the decision long and hard: Do I stay at work, and help coordinate the Very Large Metropolitan Newspaper's coverage for the latest Rich Guy Who Died, and not get sick; or do I go home and risk contracting the dread illness myself? Being bored with local celebrity deaths (five in the last two months), I decided to take my chances with the D.I. Wish me luck.

Meanwhile, I have this generalized feeling that something big and wonderful is ... just out of reach. Can't really explain that feeling. I've made reference before to some interesting new things we're trying around here, things that would be pretty momentous in other households but are just New Things to Try here. Things like spending A Lot of Money on a Dog, with some thought that it might generate return on investment. Things like putting the house on the market (no takers yet). Things like taking on the Freelance Gig, which involves being a system consultant and Web-page designer despite the fact that as of the time I took the Gig, three weeks ago, I knew little more about a system than the average really competent end-user and had only designed one web page (this one, based largely on a template).

Oddly, all of a sudden, I've learned quite a bit about computers, and have now designed another web page, and it looks pretty good (and no, you can't see it yet) using nothing but raw HTML. It's really very cool, the way I learn; kind of like being at school, except it's a hell of a lot less expensive and I learn in the way I learn best, which is by sitting down and doing it and really f---ing it up and then figuring out where I f---ed it up and fixing it. Then, when I really get stumped, I refer to the book. Or, in a real pinch, Heaven forbid, I'll ask somebody.

The good thing about being able to learn this way -- and I am aware that not everybody does -- is that I'm bound by few conventions and have nobody to impress but myself, and, occasionally, somebody who knows less than I do. The bad thing is I never become really, really good at anything. I learn enough to be competent (or slightly better than competent, in a few cases) but no skill ever really gets developed. For instance, I'll soon be a pretty good Web designer, for a newspaper guy. I'm a pretty good newspaper page designer, as sports writers go. I was a pretty good sports writer, for a young kid. I'm never really really good at something. I'm just pretty good at [x], considering that [x] is not my main skill.

That presumes I even know what my main skill is.

Anytown, economy-style
You'll notice something ever-so-slighty different about Anytown, USA. We're now just going to bore you one day at a time. If you miss a day (or a week, or a month, or whatever), head over to the archives on the left. Newest stuff first, just to make it that much easier on you.

I've spent way too much time in front of this machine today. But I've learned more in the last six hours than I have in the last six months. Results to come, very soon.

A leisurely day, so far
Working in Netscape. One can argue -- strongly -- that Blogger's interface looks better in Netscape. But not being one to argue anything strongly, I won't.

Taking the day off from my real job to celebrate Dr. King, and, more actively, to catch up on some freelance duties. The freelance gig is something new, and very exciting. However, it certainly provides its own challenges -- namely, the inability to work more than three minutes at a time without being interrupted by a mini-human.

Living out here in the hinterlands, I have known of a lot of people who work at home. I admire and envy them, but at the same time, I wonder how in the hell they do it. It's nice to be able to work in one's underwear, I suppose, but it's not easy to maintain focus.

Speaking of the hinterlands: Not a lot of demand for the house yet. Something about too much supply in our price range. We'll give it a little more time and see how it goes.

Sorry, no Hall of Famers here
Probably you've heard about the guy in Massachusetts who killed the other guy at their kids' hockey practice. Another black mark for youth sports, etc., etc., etc.

The problem with organized youth sports is simple: They exist.

When I was growing up in Anytown, I played football, baseball, basketball and four-square with the kids in the neighborhood. We played on a vacant lot at Elm and 7th Avenue, behind the South Side Baptist Church. We changed sports with the seasons, just like the pros. That was about the only similarity.

On a given day, we'd have anywhere from 10 to 14 kids playing, both boys and girls. No coaches. No refs. No fights -- rare even was the occasional pushy-pushy over a hard tackle (yeah, we were playing tackle football, with no pads) or an argument over a call. We called our own penalties and fouls and balls and strikes.

After we were in junior high, those of us who had any athletic skill at all (and that wasn't very many of us) went on to the organized-sports thing. Not being a very big kid, I ended up on the track team, as a distance runner. I knew I wasn't any good, and I lived up to that. I was just participating in a sport just to participate in a sport. My parents weren't living vicariously through me; hell, they never even came to the meets. I was just a kid having a good time.

Now, having a good time isn't allowed. My daughter couldn't round up 10 kids in the neighborhood to play anything; they're all too busy with their scheduled activities.

It's all about trying to get scholarships and/or show up the other kids out here in White Plastic Suburbia. I spent my Saturday afternoons last spring umpiring youth baseball, kids 7 to 10. I didn't see any real egregious incidents; there were a few instances of bitchy parents and over-intense coaches, but nothing terribly out of line. I was struck by two things: 1/the kids were extremely well-behaved and 2/very few of them appeared to be having any fun at all.

Here's the thing, parents: I saw probably 100 kids play baseball last spring. Maybe one of them has a shot at pro ball -- probably that left-handed pitcher who was smoking 65-mph strikes past befuddled fellow 10-year-olds. He might have a shot at making money playing baseball someday And by that, I mean a year or two in Class A, making $1,200 a month in Port St. Lucie or Oneonta or Appleton.

What many people don't understand about professional sports is that hard work is really incredibly secondary to having natural talent. The last man on every NBA roster was at least all-state in high school; the stories of average kids making it big in pro sports are very, very few and far between. I could have busted my ass shooting free throws and 3-pointers and doing ballhandling drills till my hands bled, and all it would have gotten me was bloody hands. It was never going to overcome the fact that I was going to be 5-foot-7 for the rest of my life. That's the fate to which my children are most likely doomed, and it's probably the fate that your kid faces, too, no matter how much you scream at him or her on the soccer field.

If I live vicariously through my children -- and I'm not saying for a second I would -- it's not going to be on the ball field. It's going to be making sure they do their homework, and making sure they use more than 40 percent of their brains on their schoolwork, making sure they fill out their college applications on time. Not that I feel like an abject failure, but I do have that nagging feeling at times that I'm not fully exploiting whatever potential I have. That's what I'd like to save my kids from.

Your kid will not be a professional athlete. He just won't. So lighten up and for Christ's sake, let him play. Even better: Stay home. And take the coaches and refs with you.

A small triumph for right over wrong
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

It was almost as if he knew. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said those words on April 3, 1968. On that day, it was almost as if he knew he had changed the world by the force of his own will. It was almost as if he knew that a people who had spent centuries being punished for no reason other than the color of their skin were on the verge of being welcomed into American society, if somewhat grudgingly so in some corners. It was almost as if he knew that despite all the progress that had been made, there was so much more to do.

And it was almost as if he knew he was going to die the next day.

Dr. King is one of the very few people who ever lived that I consider a hero. He saw a problem, and he worked to get it fixed. He worked to get it fixed without killing anybody or directing anybody to be killed. He worked to get it fixed despite being a target himself. He worked to get it fixed despite the fact that many, many good and intelligent people refused to acknowledge that there was a problem.

Dr. King is a hero, despite his flaws. Dr. King's work saved me, a white man born of Southern heritage. It saved me from being brought up in a world where stubborn ignorance -- or benign neglect -- was considered right.

One of my lifelong dreams is to be able to ask somebody like Strom Thurmond, or Orval Faubus, or my grandfather, one simple question: "Why do you think you were right?" Racism can be justified by many arguments. All of them are wrong. They're logically wrong, and they're morally wrong. I understand that's just the Way it Was. It was still wrong. It's wrong that black children should go to substandard schools in any year, but especially wrong that it was the Way it Was in places that I have lived as late as 1971. Some younger people who think segregation was merely a vestige of America's Dark Age don't realize that it was happening -- overtly, not in the current covert way -- in their lifetimes.

(And before you start cluck-clucking about Southerners, you better know it's not restricted by geographical boundaries. I will stand by my statement that the most generally racist place I've ever been is Cincinnati. Certainly, the recent racial incidents there didn't debunk my argument.)


We're a lot closer to having made Dr. King's dream come true. We have a long, long way to go.

Dr. King would have turned 73 on Tuesday. He should still be here. He still had work to do. He should be here to be an influence on my children. He should be here to see the results of his work. He should be here to continue advancing the cause. I'm angry that he isn't.

But I'm glad that I am. And that my children will.

It was a bizarre day ...
... although it started out so promising. I can't even put my finger on what was so bizarre about it. I'm competely sure it's job-related. Just a weird, weird day. Possibly I'm overdosing on sensory input.

I remember writer's block from my sportswriter days. It never happened when I had to write a 16-inch story in 16 minutes, because those were easy. Write the facts -- who scored what, what they said after the game, who the teams play next -- and then, if you have time and the available brain cells, pop something clever on top to sucker people into reading it. It was a little tougher on non-game stories, when you had to actually sift through your notebook and determine which angle would actually hold up all the way through the story. And if you didn't get it by the third try, it probably meant you didn't have a story, which meant you wasted a lot of time and you were going to Look Bad in the Eyes of Your Superiors. I hated that part.

Now, the only writing I do (other than the aforementioned memos) is here. If I'm suffering through a block -- and on this night, I am -- I can't fake it. I have no facts around which to build anything. All I have is my brain, and right now, it's mush.

Good advice I once received: "When you don't have a story, the least you can do is keep it short." So shall this be.

Wanna buy a house?
You can have mine. It's for sale. This tells you something about me and my family: We'll put our house on the market, with not much more aforethought than we'd put into going to the grocery store. "Well, it's January; time to put the house on the market." For most people, it would be a momentous occasion, or cause for great trepidation, or something. For us, it's just another project.

The purpose is simple. As I've mentioned before, the one-way commute to work is 35 miles. That's too damn far. It's been too damn far since the minute we moved here in September 1999, but it got a lot farther a year later when I gave up my four-day-a-week night job for a five-day-a-week day job. Driving 35 miles at 2 a.m. four times a week is one thing; driving 35 miles at 9 a.m. -- supposedly not the peak of rush hour -- every freakin' day is another thing entirely. Even so, I was just kind of starting to get used to it. I feel a bond with the talk radio assholes. I'm up to, like, 10 CDs in regular rotation. I can rattle off all the exits in order from Highway 121 to the Woodall Rodgers Freeway.

Then one day the unthinkable happened. One day, The Wife had to drive to the big city to take the Young Daughter to see the doctor. When The Wife does something, and doesn't like it, things change. After making that drive, she proclaimed: "Dude, your commute sucks. We shall sell the house and buy a house closer to the Big City." And so it was.

So there's a sign in our front yard declaring the house can be yours, for a price. And it's a pretty steep price, and we're not shy about saying so. We're in no hurry. The reason is simple: We have no place to move. We have some ideas about where we want to live, but nothing is on paper yet.

This house holds a special distinction for us: In 11 years of marriage, it's the only house in which we've spent three consecutive Christmases.

We like change, and that manifests itself in some pretty dramatic (if not totally financially responsible) ways. In 2001, we neither bought a car nor moved -- only the second calendar year in which we've done neither. The other year was 1998, and in that year, I had three different job titles in three different departments.

In a way, it's kind of cool. The one constant through all that time has been each other, and anywhere we both are, well, that's home. I don't need to stand in one place to be deeply rooted as long as I have her.