Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

You know it's bad ...

... when you write your obituary for fun during computer-system training at work. We were writing fake stories to learn the system, and this is what I came up with. I have issues.


Copy editor dies of boredom

Medical experts baffled, impressed


Abilene Reporter-News copy editor Sarah Carlson died Tuesday of excessive boredom. Co-workers found her slumped over at her desk at 9:43 p.m. and called 9-1-1, but the mundane task of editing the paper's Sunday Life section had already taken its toll. She was 22.

"We are shocked and saddened at the sudden loss of such a valuable employee," said editor Barton Cromeens on Tuesday. "We're offering free counseling sessions for all employees who are attempting to deal with this tragedy while continuing to produce our award-winning newspaper.

Carlson graduated from Abilene Christian University in May 2006 with a degree in journalism and mass communication. She had dreams of becoming a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter and the ruler of a small country. Friends described her as charming, witty and brilliant.

She is survived by her parents, Steve and Eileen Carlson of San Antonio; her brother, Daniel, of Los Angeles; the family's poodle, Rusty; her impressive DVD on TV collection; and numerous grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends.

Upon her request, her ashes will be buried underneath the Great Hall of Christ Church in Oxford, England.

Best. Idea. Ever.

A new theme park -- The Wizarding World of Harry Potter -- will be built at Orlando's Universal Studios' Islands of Adventure, opening by late 2009.

Universal plans a 20-acre "Wizarding World," a little bigger than the average size of its themed "islands" at Islands of Adventure. Part would be carved away from what is now "The Lost Continent" island, and the rest would be land now used for employee parking and park support, outside the back fence.

The new, "seventh island" would feature reconstructed and rethemed attractions, and all-new ones, Scott Trowbridge, vice president of Universal's Creative Studios, said in an interview. The Hogwarts castle and locations from Rowling's Forbidden Forest and Hogsmeade village will be created as backdrops to attractions, shops and restaurants.

I wonder how early they will sell tickets. For this, there's no such thing as "too early."

I Like Pizza. A Lot.

Daniel: we can also walk down to the subway on the corner [when you're in L.A. in a month]
and papa john's
me: i can eat a large papa john's thin crust pepperoni
well, most of it. once you get down to two pieces left, you're in pain
Daniel: wow
man alive
me: save those for later
papa john's is the best pizza cold
Daniel: amen
but still
me: THAT'S RIGHT MAN ALIVE
Daniel: a whole pie
me: thin crust is different
Daniel: yeah
me: two thin crust is like one regular
they go quickly
Daniel: a regular crust large is like 3 meals
me: wuss
Daniel: or two meals and diarrhea
me: i didn't know my brother ate like a girl
Daniel: i didn't know my sister ate like a lumberjack
me: well now you do
Daniel: ok then, paul bunyan
i'll just set you some pizza and let you go to town
me: i appreciate that

I'm Not That Smart

Yesterday, as I sat in traffic, I looked at the horizon and saw the Blockbuster sign towering over buildings. And, for what I'm pretty sure was the first time in my life, I realized that the logo is a torn ticket stub. I don't think I ever realized that before. Seriously.

I Owe It All to Sam Waterston

Conversation with the brother:

Me: what are you getting mom for mother's day?
Daniel: that's in like a month
me: haha
Daniel: i already got her a successful firstborn
me: well, dad and i have been planning

whatevs
Daniel: hehe

what are you two planning?
Me: (Here I list out way cool gifts)
Daniel: hmm

a cd it is then
me: haha

lame
Daniel: YOU'RE the lame one

[kicks her]

[runs]
me: didn't you already not buy her a christmas present because you blew the money for it in vegas?

what was this about being a successful firstborn?

[kicks him back]
Daniel: i have no memory of that, counsel
me: how convenient

jury should note that the defendent suddenly lost his memory when he was asked about his shady behavior
Daniel: jury should note that it's actually the "defendant"
me: objection. defendant is taunting the prosecutor and speaking out of turn
Daniel: defense resents the implications of impropriety, moves to dismiss on grounds that prosecutor is clearly biased and short
me: objection sustained. move to dismiss overruled

watch it, counselor
Daniel: defense further objects to the fact that the prosecutor and the judge seem to be the same person, which is cheating
me: one more instance of name-calling, counselor, and i'll hold you in contempt of court
Daniel: defense is pretty freaking confused, but cooperative
me: proceed
Daniel: [had no idea it was his turn]
me: i just made it your turn
Daniel: defense maintains that a cd is a solid gift, and that combined with a phone call and the preexisting aforementioned successful firstborn, that mom would be pretty happy
me: prosecution agrees to settle with the stipulation that it be put on the record that the defendant was combative and called the the prosecuting counselor "short."
Daniel: defense will stipulate
me: defendant's combative remarks are noted. court rules in favor of the defendant and is now adjourned.

Counting Down to 01.20.09

An excellent editorial in today's New York Times:

The President's Prison

George Bush does not want to be rescued.

The president has been told countless times, by a secretary of state, by members of Congress, by heads of friendly governments — and by the American public — that the Guantánamo Bay detention camp has profoundly damaged this nation's credibility as a champion of justice and human rights. But Mr. Bush ignored those voices — and now it seems he has done the same to his new defense secretary, Robert Gates, the man Mr. Bush brought in to clean up Donald Rumsfeld’s mess.

Thom Shanker and David Sanger reported in Friday's Times that in his first weeks on the job, Mr. Gates told Mr. Bush that the world would never consider trials at Guantánamo to be legitimate. He said that the camp should be shut, and that inmates who should stand trial should be brought to the United States and taken to real military courts.

Mr. Bush rejected that sound advice, heeding instead the chief enablers of his worst instincts, Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Their opposition was no surprise. The Guantánamo operation was central to Mr. Cheney's drive to expand the powers of the presidency at the expense of Congress and the courts, and Mr. Gonzales was one of the chief architects of the policies underpinning the detainee system. Mr. Bush and his inner circle are clearly afraid that if Guantánamo detainees are tried under the actual rule of law, many of the cases will collapse because they are based on illegal detention, torture and abuse — or that American officials could someday be held criminally liable for their mistreatment of detainees.

It was distressing to see that the president has retreated so far into his alternative reality that he would not listen to Mr. Gates — even when he was backed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who, like her predecessor, Colin Powell, had urged Mr. Bush to close Guantánamo. It seems clear that when he brought in Mr. Gates, Mr. Bush didn’t want to fix Mr. Rumsfeld's disaster; he just wanted everyone to stop talking about it.

If Mr. Bush would not listen to reason from inside his cabinet, he might at least listen to what Americans are telling him about the damage to this country's credibility, and its cost. When Khalid Shaikh Mohammed — for all appearances a truly evil and dangerous man — confessed to a long list of heinous crimes, including planning the 9/11 attacks, many Americans reacted with skepticism and even derision. The confession became the butt of editorial cartoons, like one that showed the prisoner confessing to betting on the Cincinnati Reds, and fodder for the late-night comedians.

What stood out the most from the transcript of Mr. Mohammed's hearing at Guantánamo Bay was how the military detention and court system has been debased for terrorist suspects. The hearing was a combatant status review tribunal — a process that is supposed to determine whether a prisoner is an illegal enemy combatant and thus not entitled in Mr. Bush's world to rudimentary legal rights. But the tribunals are kangaroo courts, admitting evidence that was coerced or obtained through abuse or outright torture. They are intended to confirm a decision that was already made, and to feed detainees into the military commissions created by Congress last year.

The omissions from the record of Mr. Mohammed's hearing were chilling. The United States government deleted his claims to have been tortured during years of illegal detention at camps run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Government officials who are opposed to the administration's lawless policy on prisoners have said in numerous news reports that Mr. Mohammed was indeed tortured, including through waterboarding, which simulates drowning and violates every civilized standard of behavior toward a prisoner, even one as awful as this one. And he is hardly the only prisoner who has made claims of abuse and torture. Some were released after it was proved that they never had any connection at all to terrorism.

Still, the Bush administration says no prisoner should be allowed to take torture claims to court, including the innocents who were tortured and released. The administration's argument is that how prisoners are treated is a state secret and cannot be discussed openly. If that sounds nonsensical, it is. It's also not the real reason behind the administration's denying these prisoners the most basic rights of due process.

The Bush administration has so badly subverted American norms of justice in handling these cases that they would not stand up to scrutiny in a real court of law. It is a clear case of justice denied.

Being scared every time I saw Peter O'Toole took years off my life

For the five of you that read this, you should add another blog to your bookmarked pages: The Insider. I co-write an entertainment page each Thursday in the paper called The Insider, and now we have our own blog that we'll be updating daily. You should check it out. All the time. Seriously. And leave comments. We had way too much fun live-blogging the Oscars last night.

Things I'm happy about: "The Departed" winning Best Picture.
Things I'm sad about: Jennifer Hudson winning; Mark Wahlberg not winning; Peter O'Toole scaring the crap out of me every time he was on screen; me losing almost four hours of my life watching the ceremony.

Things I Plan On Doing This Summer

1. Go to Disneyland with my brother.
2. Make my brother buy me funnel cakes, pretzels and balloons, as well as take my picture with Disney characters, at Disneyland.
3. Embarrass my brother by wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and a fanny pack at Disneyland.
4. Trick my brother into riding a scary ride, and enjoy watching him scream like a girl, at Disneyland.
5. Visit Dani in Orange County and embarrass her by taking pictures of locations seen in "The O.C."
6. Sit in the shade, covered in sunscreen, at the beach with Dani, refusing to be in direct sunlight for more than 15 minutes.
7. Go to a professional baseball game.
8. Go to a Spurs playoff game (if you feel like buying me tickets, go for it).
9. Spend as much time as possible away from Abilene.

That's all I can come up with for now. Most of this is contingent upon my vacation request being approved, but with the stressful work environment and a creepy weather environment (see below), my birthday (the date of the Carlson Birthday Disneyland Extravaganza) can't get here soon enough.

The sky is filled with dirt:

I bet even Jesus would weep if he read this.

The Arts page for my university newspaper has been hijacked by illiterate hipsters. I know this because of this stunning display of inadequacy (something that is, apparently, supposed to be a review of "Pan's Labyrinth"). Thanks to Facebook, I learned that this contributing "writer" is dating a guy named Tripp, who contributed part two of his enthralling three-part look at the Wii to the same page. They aren't journalism majors, and they aren't staff writers. But they've somehow earned prime real estate on the page too many people who cared too much about movies spent too many hours working to make better. I shouldn't care, but it still makes me want to weep. Weep for humanity, weep for the future, weep for my school. Weep.

So go ahead -- read it. What isn't fun about criticizing sophomore English majors who think "Set in 1944 in the depths of a Spanish forest is Guillermo Del Toro's latest film, Pan's Labyrinth" is a good lede?

My favorite responses from people I sent the article to:

Malinda: "Wow. I was bored two sentences into that. It reads like a research paper for Freshman English."

Dani: "The plot thickens ?!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That sentence alone should be enough to give Doc (journalism professor) a coronary."

Daniel: "Did you send me that so I would be upset? So I would hate this stupid girl who wrote the review? So her absolutely stunning lack of talent and inability to write a good sentence would worm its way into my mind and render me unable to write on my own? I could go through every sentence of her review and refute it either based on style or her reading of the film. Every. Sentence."

See? It's fun.

There is nothing not funny about this video.

The glove compartment isn't accurately named -- and everybody knows it

The weekend was spent staying up into the wee hours of the morning and lamenting our newfound adulthood.

For some reason, I wrote that sentence on Sept. 4 of last year, intending to follow it with other sentences, but I didn't. It's been harder and harder to maintain this blog, perhaps because so many come here from friends' and relatives' blogs expecting to be just as entertained. I had started that post in September to talk about post-graduate life, but I must have lost interest.

That weekend had been spent, though, with a fellow graduate and two fifth-year friends. We stayed up watching a crappy movie on the Sci-Fi Channel on which a computerized saber-toothed tiger was set loose in a Jurassic-Park like theme park. It liked to behead people using its teeth. Lizzie McGuire's dad was in it, and we wondered about his future career possibilities while stealing music from each other's iPods. (Looking at IMDb, it appears to be called "Attack of the Sabertooth." Enjoy.) When the drizzle began, my friend (we'll call him Jeff) suggested we go for a walk. Oh wait -- a bike ride! What else is there to do at 2 a.m. in West Texas?

So we drove to his house to commandeer his (male) roommates' bikes. My legs were too short for most of them, and my flip flops had no traction, so I was stuck riding a stunt bike, barefoot, through the late-night drizzle. Let's ride around campus! The trek began well enough, but soon I lost my balance and couldn't start riding again. My friends had to keep stopping, trying to explain to me just how to ride a bike while trying not to laugh and enjoy the circles they were biking around me.

I rode for 10 seconds, then stopped. Then I was stuck for several minutes. Repeat. My feet were killing me, so I traded bikes with another friend and attempted to get going. Too hard. After standing on the curb and kick-starting the bike, I was able to maintain a balance and ride for about two minutes. Then my friend (we'll call her Courtney) rode up alongside me on the sidewalk, trying to tell me how to shift the gears and forcing me to look at the handles. There went the sidewalk, and there went my bare feet, right into a pile of mud. I couldn't get back on the bike, at least not for a while. I was that kid on the playground begging for recess to be over so they can go read. "This is the opposite of fun. Can we please go home now?"

We retreated, having made it not even a fourth of the way around campus. Riding back to the house seemed easy, for some reason. I drove home, accompanied by me fellow graduate, to hang my muddy jeans up and wonder why our spontaneous adventure had floundered.

The fifth-years graduated in December in a lackluster ceremony I plaid solitaire through. My warnings about the overratedness of adulthood had to be learned the hard way for them, though, but at least I was able to entertain them by being a 22-year-old who can't ride a bike.

Confession Time

9:38 p.m.
Daniel: sometimes i wonder what would happen if i just went home
9:40 p.m.
me: sometimes i wonder what would happen if i started screaming at people mid-conversation. or just hit them. just to see how shocked they would be and what they'd say.
...
but i'm weird
9:44 p.m.
Daniel: sometimes i wonder what would happen if i barked at people in a crowd to get them to move
me: sometimes i think about all the ways you could kill a person, or at least seriously injure them, using household objects
9:45 p.m.
Daniel: sometimes i wonder what my coworkers look like naked
9:46 p.m.
me: sometimes i practice acceptance speeches for prestigious awards in my head
9:47 p.m.
Daniel: sometimes i pretend i'm playing guitar and my friends are watching me in awe
9:56 p.m.
me: (i totally blanked. i'm thinking ...)
10:08 p.m.
Daniel: sometimes i wonder if anyone would notice if i killed tony, the old man who works here
10:10 p.m.
me: do you seriously think that?
10:13 p.m.
Daniel: ... no

Have some Style (and keep people like me in a job)

I like Garrison Keillor's latest column. He writes in that loopy, run-on sentence fashion of older men, but he entertains:

It seems to me, observing the young in coffee shops, that something is missing from their lives: the fine art of holding a newspaper. They sit staring at computer screens, sometimes with wires coming out of their ears, life passing them by as they drift through MySpace, that encyclopedia of the pathetic, and check out a video of a dog dancing the Macarena. It is so lumpen, so sad that nobody has shown them that opening up a newspaper is the key to looking classy and smart. Never mind the bronze-plated stuff about the role of the press in a democracy -- a newspaper, kiddo, is about Style.

Whether you're sitting or standing, indoors or out, leaning against a hitching post or with your brogans on a desk, a newspaper gives you a whole rich vocabulary of gesture. You open it with a flourish and a ripple of newsprint, your buoyant self-confidence evident in the way you turn the pages with a snap of the wrist, taking in the gray matter swiftly, your eyes dancing over the world's sorrows and moving on, crinkling the page, snapping it, rolling it, folding the paper in halves and quarters, tucking it under the arm or tapping it against the palm. Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart, all the greats, used the newspaper to demonstrate cool. Sitting and staring at the profile of Kerri ("Dreamer of dreams") Jodhpur, 18, of Muncie, Ind., and her cat Snowball is not cool.

A man at a laptop is a man at a desk, a stiff, a drone. Where is the nobility here? He hunches forward, his eyes glaze, and beads of saliva glitter in the corners of his mouth and make their way down his chin as he becomes engrossed in the video of the fisherman falling out of the boat. A newspaper reader, by comparison, is a swordsman, a wrangler, a private eye. Holding a newspaper frees you up to express yourself, sort of like holding a sax did for Coltrane. Just observe a few simple rules.

1. If you want to make a serious impression, don't buy one paper, buy three or four. A person walking into Starbucks with four papers folded under his wing is immediately taken for a mogul. If he's young, he's a software mogul. If he is unshaven and wearing pajamas under his raincoat, he is an eccentric mogul, perhaps a Mafia kingpin.

2. Take your sweet time opening the paper. You already know what's in it, boss man, you only read it so you'll know how much other people know, so there's no big rush.

3. Once you open it, never look up unless someone speaks your name. Don't be distracted just because a leggy blonde has crossed the room, leaving a trail of cigarette smoke and Chanel No. 5. You're the actor so let others be the audience, you be the scene.

4. Scan the front page, check out the headlines, but don't pore, don't be a drudge. Be cool. Jump to the sports page, then the comics, then the society page, then editorials. That's the beauty of the inverted pyramid news story. A glance is usually good enough.

5. Always rip out a story or two and tuck it in your pocket. Not casually, like it was a recipe for meatballs, but with urgency and purpose. This creates an indelible aura of mystery.

6. When you're done with a paper, clap it shut and toss it aside. (You can't do that with a laptop.) A gesture of dismissal that says, "Feh! Enough of this pettiness! Onward! To the barricades!"

7. All of this should take no more than 20 minutes.

I know a man who is almost my age, and so he grew up with ink on his fingers and then, for reasons he couldn't explain, he switched over to reading online publications and checking out the Times and the Washington Post and Slate, and then found a Web site with streaming video in which a mature Austrian woman with braids tells you what to do. He sits, his eyes locked to hers, as she says, "You vill eat, mein little schweinhund" and upbraids him for imaginary transgressions. If he reaches for the off switch, she screeches at him and a Rottweiler growls low in its throat and so he is a prisoner of his laptop, his days shot. This sort of thing happens all the time. The Internet will eat you alive. With newspapers, you're in and out, 20 minutes. It's your life, you choose.

The folks at EW.com's PopWatch blog asked readers to chime in on which movies, actors and TV series we felt were snubbed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for Golden Globe noms. Me, being a geek, wrote in about my love for all things "Battlestar Galactica," and my fellow geeks took notice: Click on this to see my comment on the site.

At least I can console myself when the second half of season three returns Jan. 21. But if "Heroes" wins the award, I'm hunting down a HFPA voter.

They're after us

Apparently, someone left a dead squirrel in my parents' mailbox yesterday. My brother had to pry the gut-spewing body out with garden shears, dumping the remains into the trash bag my father was holding. Off to the dumpster! Later, my mom and brother cleaned out the mailbox.

But what does this mean? Who on the block has it out for the Carlsons? What did we do to deserve such a cryptic message? Did we run over a family's dog and not notice? Let's hope the bloody threats stop here. Most animals won't fit in a mailbox. Or will they?