On petty theft

So I needed boxes for my upcoming move (If you're one of the three people who actually reads this thing, I imagine you already know, but just in case, I'm moving all my stuff into storage and taking off for Europe for three months), and after visiting seven different places and not getting anything, I finally pulled to the back of Wal-Mart. There were a bunch of crushed and unusable boxes, but there were also some that were stacked nicely along the wall. On them, they said, "RETURN FOR CREDIT. BOXES COST WAL-MART AN AVERAGE OF 75 CENTS. DON'T THROW AWAY." I took 10. That's not stealing, is it?

I scared the shit outta someone yesterday

I did. I was running along, minding my own business, when I started to approach two teenage girls who were walking on the sidewalk. I passed them to the left, and the girl on the left side screamed, this high-pitched, piercing, long-lasting scream. Then she did a double-take, meaning she looked over at me a second time — and screamed again. Yep. I'm terrifying.

In other news, how the hell are you supposed to write a 750-word critique of an entire magazine?

The Wal-Mart that is my car

So last night I was at a friend's house and I needed two things from my car: a toothbrush and a tampon. When I began my search, I wasn't sure if I had either, but in the process of looking, these are some of the things I found in there:
• A stuffed monkey
• My mom's ex-boyfriend's Air Force jacket
• A NY Times from Oct. 31
• A cat fishing pole toy
• An Economics textbook from sophomore year in college
• The program from my dad's memorial service
• An empty bottle of listerine
• A WNBA media guide
• A bag of cat food
• A toothbrush and toothpaste
• My high school letterman jacket
But...
no tampons.

Financial breakthrough

Did you know my I can wear a boys size 4 shoe?? They're waaaay cheaper *and* they're not pink. This is all very exciting to me.

The last month and a half of my life...

Tell me what you think, keeping in mind the first sentence of the "Life in poverty" section didn't suck when I turned it in — we have one really crappy copy editor who likes to fuck with other people's work.

http://tracypress.com/local/2006-01-09-children.php

Happy hippies

Yesterday I got flipped off (emphatically — it wasn't one of those subtle finger-raises) and tailed by a guy with "PEACE" and "LOVE" stickers all over his Volkswagen.

Why People Kill.

At 7:15 this morning I woke up to two concurrent sounds: One was the sound of a hammer against a wooden fence and the prying of wooden planks off the fence (think MRI banging and then nails against a chalkboard). The other was the sound of two pitbulls barking and growling incessantly because they, too, had been woken up by the hammer and the prying. After about 15 minutes, I finally went to the window and asked the bearer of the hammer if he might please wait an hour to create this racket, as it was 7:30 in the morning. (I *swear* I really was that polite)

His response:
"Are you serious?" With a little bit of a laugh.

"Yes," I said. "It's 7:30 in the morning and I have about another hour to sleep. It's a little early for all this noise."

Him: *chuckle* "No. This is the only time I have to do this."

Me: *glare*close window as loudly as I could*

I think next time I get back from work around midnight, I'm going to start banging things around and making all kinds of noise and having cats growl loudly to wake him up. I think that might be a good idea.

This is why people kill.

Letter to the editor

So I'm not sure if you've all heard that I am singlehandedly "trying to destroy West High athletics." That's right. I moved across the country from the Boston Globe to the Tracy Press with one goal in mind: the demise of Merrill West High School's sports program. Now, in my first week as interim sports editor, we got the following letter to the editor:

Why is your newspaper so bias with Tracy High School over West High.
Is seems Tracy High always gets top billing. Three or four days ago West
wins the a basketball game in the tourney and Tracy looses, but Tracy High
get FRONT page cover and West is in small print on page 3. Almost every
sporting news, Tracy high gets front page cover. Just like today with the
Wrestling team. The city of Tracy has two high schools and both should get
the same respect being equal!!!

Yup. Not only do I hate all those West people, I decided to put a story last week in smaller print because of how much I hate them. The fun thing (well, the fun thing besides Tracy's "loosing" and the fact that "is seems Tracy High always gets top billing") is if Tracy was on the cover whatever day he's talking about, that means West was on the cover the day before, because we alternated days last week. Boy are we jerks.

Faceoff... kittens... yeah

I had a dream last night in which I peeled my face off and couldn't get it to stay when I tried to put it back on. Then there were kittens running around everywhere, and every time I opened a closet there was another kitten.

I know people always say you can interpret your dreams and that they represent something, but I think this may be one situation in which that is not at all true. Unless anyone has another idea...

Holidays and cats

In the mail yesterday I received a postcard reminder from the vet about getting a distemper shot for Fiver. This comes about two months after giving him up to that teacher-lady who seems to think his name is 'Jimmy' but is, by every other marker, a very good pet-owner. She's already splurged on a very expensive bed for him, which is a good sign, and I would expect he will soon receive more presents as tomorrow is the first night of Hanukkah (and I would hope that she knows he's a Jewish cat). For my cats for Hanukkah, I got them a very big bag of cat litter and some food, but everyone else at Petco today was racking up triple-digit credit-card receipts with bags of fancy treats fastened by red bows and strange toys that their pets probably have no interest in.

But I digress. The point is that even though it's felt like one of those really bad breakups (which I've never had, but I'm assuming here), I think I'm finally over Fiver. I'm also posting a picture of him at his new home (the lady sent this one about a month ago). I just wish he would explain to her that his name is not Jimmy.

"Technical" language

So today I wrote a little 250-word story for the news section, just since I'm such a nice guy. Anyway while the city editor was over there reading/editing it, I heard him typing, which I thought was very strange, given that there was clearly nothing at all wrong with my story. So I asked what he was typing, given that there was clearly nothing wrong with my story, and he said he was "tightening" it up and taking out the "technical language." His version of taking out the technical language?
1) Adding the word 'levied,' because we all know that an article without 'levied' is an article not written for the common man to understand.
2) Adding the word 'earmarked,' because, again, no one can understand a sentence like, "Measure Y, which was placed on the ballot in 2000, would have provided $5.45 million in bond funds to renovate Tracy High, but wouldn’t have addressed completing West’s facilities" if it doesn't have the word 'earmarked' inserted in a random place.
He also almost insisted on taking out the word 'tentative,' even though I explained that my source said, "I can't stress enough that this list is TENTATIVE."
I had to threaten to kick him so he wouldn't take it out. Editors are pretty great.

One more reason I have to get out of Tracy...

Tumbleweeds.

Grand exits

You know how sometimes you want to make one of those making-a-point exits, where you get the last words and walk emphatically out the door and leave? Apparently, I suck at those.

I got the first part right, saying my last words, walking out, shutting the door and getting into my car. Then I turned the car on on, backed up... and promptly hit a mailbox.

So I pulled forward and backed up again, then pulled into the one open space (I was in this little alleyway where you can only exit one side, so I had to turn around and go in the opposite direction). I didn't pull anywhere near straight into the space, and came about an inch away from hitting a pickup truck. So I backed up again, and had to pull forward again to complete my 10-point turn.

I hit the fence.

By the time I was about to pull out, the person I was trying to make the grand exit on was standing in the doorway looking at me, trying (I assume) to figure out what was taking me so long to pull out. Took a grand total of about 10 minutes.

God I'm awesome.

I won't butcher your name if you don't butcher mine

I understand corporate desires to try to personalize their customer service, and use people's names instead of just 'Sir' or 'Ma'am,' even if I disagree with it and would rather they give me my shit and move on.

But I can't understand, no matter how hard I try, why they bother when they're very clearly going to butcher your name. Sure, my last name's a little long, so it's not completely ludicrous that they get intimidated by it when they see it on my credit card. And as sick as I am of being called, "Ms. HAR-bit-kin", "Ms. Har-BOT-kin", etc., I can see -- to an extent -- where these semi-literate people are coming from.

But the woman at Safeway today called me "Ms. Har-bar", and I just don't get it. I looked at her funny and told her she didn't even try. I mean, she didn't even get three syllables in there.

I'd rather be called "Ma'am" or "Miss" or, fuck, even "Dude" than Ms. Harbar.

And I really think these corporate schmucks who make their minimum-wage employees try to read names to should strongly reconsider their policies. That's all. I just think they should reconsider.

For the CHILDREN

The parent of a kid who plays youth football called today and told me we don't have enough photos of kids playing football. That's right. We devote like two pages of every Monday paper to youth football, but it's not enough. He was particularly annoyed that we used a file photo of the game his kid played instead of going out and taking new pictures. It's true. Instead of dropping everything else to take pictures of every youth football game going on, we used an old photo. We're jerks. Horrible people. Deserving of death, if you ask me.

But here's the best part:
This isn't about me, the guy said. This isn't about my own kids. It's about the CHILDREN. For the CHILDREN. Did you know all the CHILDREN wake up Monday morning and the first thing they do is run to the doorstep to get the paper? They run as fast as they can out there and pick up the paper and look at what was written about them that week. Don't you see? It's for the children.

In other words, my kid plays again on Sunday at 2. Put a picture of him in the paper or I'll call and pester you even more.

We write the names of every kid who gets a tackle or an assist, and every last one of them deserves it, right? I LOVE small-town mentality.

Democracy: the freedom to set things on fire

So as I'm sure you know, protests in Argentina turned violent today outside a free trade summit attended by Shrub. Shrub, who was trying to encourage negotiations that had fallen flat, was met by people holding signs saying Fire Bush and launching gasoline bombs into the air.

When asked about this response, U.S. commerce secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez responded that these riots — or acts of free speech, as he likes to call them — are simply proof that Bush's efforts to promote freedom and democracy across the world have been successful.

I just found a quote:
Gutierrez called the riots — er... demonstrations "a great testament to the president's vision of spreading democracies to all countries around the world."

After all, the people of Venezuela had the FREEDOM to set fires, throw rocks and firebombs and run around with steel clubs. It's pretty great.

Can someone explain?

OK getting off the subject of kittens for a minute. The latest Washington Post-ABC polls came out yesterday, and here are some numbers that perhaps indicate the pure ridiculousness of some of the people in this country.
• 32 percent of Americans would rate Bush's handling of ethics in government as 'excellent' or 'good.' This for the man who praised Scooter Libby after he submitted his resignation after BEING INDICTED FOR LYING TO A GRAND JURY AND OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE.
• 1 percent of Americans believe "people like you" (meaning people like them) have too much influence in the Bush administration. This number was as high as 5 percent in Sept. 2003. I understand this isn't a huge percentage, but... seriously?
• 40 percent of Americans believe Bush is "honest and trustworthy." Again, not a majority, but FORTY PERCENT. So Bush didn't mislead anyone about WMD, he didn't praise Libby on the heels of an indictment, and he didn't continue to support Rove (who at least 437 "anonymous sources" have told the Washington Post played a role in the CIA leak). Honest and Trustworthy. Of course.
---> I wonder if these are all part of the 44 percent who believe "the Bush administration told the American public what it believed to be true."
• 30 percent of Americans believe "things in this country are generally going in the right direction." Forget 2,000 soldiers dying, forget the CIA leak, forget the DeLay indictment, the Frist case, the closed-door session of Congress. Things are going GREAT.
• 26 percent of Americans approve of "the situation with gasoline prices." I don't know what else to say about this.
• 31 percent of Americans believe Fitzgerald's entire case is based on political motivations.

Again, I understand these numbers don't reflect the majority, but... I just don't understand.

Fiver's new home

Well Fiver's finally moved on — he spent the night in his new home for the first time yesterday. The lady sent me a picture, so I'm posting it here.

He seems happy, I think. The lady says he's purring a lot, so that's a good sign. OK pump me up people - tell me how cute he is.

We know news

I forgot to write this on Wednesday. So you know how every other paper in the country had the 2,000-soldiers-having-died-in-Iraq story on their front page on Wednesday?

Yeah. We had a picture of 'Butchie,' a dog dressed up in a jester costume.

Fiver

A woman e-mailed and wants to adopt Fiver. She seems like a cat lady and all, but I object to the fact that she seems to think she's changing his name to Jimmy. His name is Fiver. Jimmy is a dumb name. I guess it's good he finally found someone to adopt him... I just wanted it to be someone I know so I could go visit.