Hillary Clinton speech

So in the process of neglecting my blog, I totally forgot to brag:
http://www.thnt.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007704210409

Incidentally the bragging's *so* not about the crappily written story - just the getting to see Hillary Clinton part.

The quote I couldn't seem to work in there dealt with her hair and clothes, and how the media analyzes the hell out of everything she wears. But I'm not sure where my notebook is where I wrote down the quote, so this makes for quite a pointless story.

In other news, my hand has been all tingly for the last week or so. Any ideas on how to fix it?

Cat-petting morning

I started my day today as everyone should -- petting cats. Two municipalities are entering into a shared service agreement with their animal control services, cutting costs and therefore property taxes, etc., etc., etc., and I was able to use the opportunity to pet cats.

There was one awesome one, a white and brownish-grey stray that came in two days ago and I'm sure will get adopted very quickly. He/she (I dunno because you can't hold them until the eight days passes) rubbed up against the bars of its cage all sexy-like and even batted his/her little paw at me when I wasn't providing enough love.

Of course, for every good story...

Another cat there, a long-haired grey adult cat had been dropped off by her owners. Apparently they didn't want to take care of her anymore, for whatever reason. She was laying quietly up against the side wall, looking out the front of the cage. She was very skeptical of visitors, and I don't blame her, given that her family just deserted her. The shelter guy assured me that they'd find a home for her (and judging by the empty cages around the room, she's probably OK for now), but the fact that people don't take responsibility for their pets is sickening. Can you imagine just pawning a life off on a government service? Just walking away and figuring that that life isn't your responsibility anymore?

I just don't understand how a person can do that...

Google-maps me

This stolen from Nipole's MySpace bulletin:
Google-map directions from New York, New York to Paris, France.
Read through them... or at least to Line 23.

Not that Jersey isn't all it's cracked up to be, but...

People I know/knew all seem to be traveling and asking me for advice, and now I'm insanely jealous of all people I know/knew. Who wants to give me large sums of money and large amounts of time off from work? Anyone? You can come with me...

Tiger-petting

A kid I knew in high school went to Thailand, and visited a Buddhist temple where you can pet tigers. The monks at the Tiger Temple saved these tigers from poachers, and brought them up on this reserve at the temple.

During the day they let the tigers out, and people can walk right up to the tigers, with just a rope separating them. The monks and volunteers at the temple then let one visitor through the rope at a time to pet the tigers and take pictures.

There has been some controversy about why the tigers are so calm -- some people believe they must be drugged. But the monks maintain that they're calm because, a) they're nocturnal, and people see them during the day (before 6 p.m.) when they're at their calmest, and b) they've been raised by monks, and they trust people.

I pulled the photo off a travelhappy post. Now, who's coming with me to Thailand?

"Something fishy" has nothin on this lede

The lede from an AP story about New York City's revamped free condom distribution program:

NEW YORK (AP) — The city's new official condom is a "sensation,'' according to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration, which announced Wednesday that City Hall gave away a record 5 million in the first month of a distribution program.

The condoms involved in the revamped program have wrappers that say "NYC CONDOM" in the same font and bright colors used on city subway maps. The city distributed a record 5 million in the program's first month, about a 3.5-million increase over previous months.

That is all.

Perpetuating stereotypes

So I have this tendency to follow the car in front of me, regardless of who is driving that car or where he/she is going. Well I was in Carteret today waiting to get on the turnpike, and the truck in front of me merged into the right lane by slipping through the line of orange cones. I noticed a sign way up ahead that seemed to imply the Turnpike entrance was to the right, so, naturally, I followed the truck in front of me through the orange cones.

About 15 seconds later, I found myself in a muddy construction pit, and realized there were people directing traffic because of said muddy construction pit. Upon realizing there was no way out other than to turn around and try to cut in front of the stopped line of cars, I did that.

At which point the dude directing traffic got Very Angry.

Apparently there was an operational train track buried in the mud my car was sitting on, and the traffic guy started screaming at me. I opened my window to explain to him that I was clearly confused and ask where to go next.

All he did was scream over and over again, "What are you doing? Why would you do that? Get off the train tracks! You're sitting on the train tracks! Go park by the Volkswagen!"

So now that I finally had instructions, I looked for the Volkswagen I was supposed to pull up next to. This made him very unhappy as well.

"What are you waiting for?? Go park by the Volkswagen! Why are you sitting there? What are you doing?"

Now I was annoyed.

So, with my California plates, I inadvertently perpetuated every stereotype about Californians.

"DUDE!" I yelled out my window. "YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO CHILL."

He shut up.

Dream

On Friday night I dreamed that I was on a road trip with a bunch of Mennonites and we went into a Sports Authority where the Tamil Tigers' child soldiers were working overtime.

And I was worried

I was sitting in the corner eating pasta salad with a coffee stirrer when the extent to which I didn't belong at the foster care event thing became comical yesterday.

It was the lunch break, and the other reporters there -- all of whom were based in the city and most of whom were big-name magazines, big-name TV stations or the Associated Press -- were all talking amongst themselves. They all knew each other, and I'd already gotten a what-the-hell-are-you-doing-here look from the Newsweek guy, so I'd given up on trying to join the conversation.

Then, to make everything that much more Fun, the only vegetarian option with lunch was pasta salad, and they'd forgotten forks. Hence, the coffee stirrer.

In other news:
Some Cincinnati pizza places are decorating their pizza boxes with photos of parents who are delinquent in child support payments.

My IQ is 24, just like your jersey number for the Knicks!

So I went to see Bill Bradley promote his new book, The New American Story, at the Princeton Barnes and Noble. He spoke for about 20 minutes, answered a formulaic question about the electoral college asked by your standard pretentious I-think-I'm-a-scholar man and then signed books.

I got to the front of the line for the book-signing and became your standard tard.

I believe I said something along the lines of, "Hello sir Mr. Bradley, Senator Bradley, er, former... Erica? E-R-I-C-A? With a C? Yes that's good. THANKS!"

In the midst of that jumble of nonsense, which I believe took me all of half a second to say, all he said was "With a K?"

Now what I'd meant to say was that I'd seen him speak about seven years ago at the YWCA in Santa Monica about Title IX, and that I really admired him.

Maybe he understood...

***

Anyway his talk was pretty interesting. He discussed the $1 gas tax concept (where it cancels itself out by going toward social security while social security is taxed less from your paycheck, combined with more stringent fuel-efficiency standards for cars.) He talked about combating gerrymandering with citizen committees to draw Congressional districts, and then having those districts either approved by a panel of judges or voted on by the general public. He also talked about funding campaigns with taxpayer money -- although I wasn't so sure about that one.

He discussed his theory on the social security crisis, saying it could be solved by raising the minimum age to receive benefits to 70 (phased in by one month every two years until 2099); making 2 percent of the 6.5-percent of social security tax apply to all income (right now social security only taxes income up to $94,200), bringing state and local government employees into the system (this would only apply to new employees and would be phased in over five years) and basing the cost-of-living increase on the chained consumer price index (I don't completely understand that part, but it's supposed to be more accurate than the straight-up cost-of-living index because it takes into considerations the substitutions people make based on price increases... but I'm sure Aviva will tell me if I'm completely wrong in my understanding of that one).

So that's my Bill Bradley experience.

Tomorrow's that foster care roundtable in New York... wish me luck...

Here's some fun...

The mayor of one of my towns filed a police report against one of her political rivals, prompting:
http://www.thnt.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070328/NEWS0102/703280403/1001

Help poor people for almost nothing!

Nicholas Kristof's column today was about www.kiva.org, a Web site that allows you to make small loans to small business owners in poor countries. It's a pretty cool idea called microfinancing, started by the dude who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Muhammad Yunus' loans were for an average of $200 each, but you can donate even less through Kiva and still help people.

You can donate as little as $25, and your donation will be combined with other people's donations to fund the person's whole project. You can browse through all the different people seeking loans and learn a little about the person and their project. Most of them are women, but the loan-seekers run the gamete from single mothers trying to open their own business to married people trying to expand or repair their business to displaced persons.

I lent $25 to a woman in Samoa who sells prepared food to people who need it for children or elderly parents. She needs $850 to buy a taro plant, coconuts and some other products and supplies for her stall in the open-air market. At the time of this post, people had contributed $500.

I lent $25 to another woman in Samoa who's seeking $875 to expand her plantation. She needs to buy fertilizer and chemicals to increase her plantation's output so she can afford to sent her four kids to school.

I'm sure Kiva is slammed with new visitors after Kristof's column, but you can still make a difference here, so that might not suck. Especially if you keep making donations after the excitement dies down from the column.

Just passing along the idea...

So red means... stop?

I went hiking at the Delaware Water Gap on Sunday with my friend Becky (not you), and as we approached the hiking area, we hit a stoplight. This was a strange stoplight in that there was no cross traffic and no potential for cross traffic. So after waiting for about 30 seconds, Becky decided it was clearly an irrelevant stoplight and preceded through it.

We were winding through a narrow one-way road flanked by a mountain wall on our right and a cliff on our left. About a minute into the journey, we figured out what that stoplight was for.

A line of cars came flying toward us from the opposite direction. Becky managed to find a small shoulder to pull onto, and the other people who had obeyed the law by waiting for the stoplight on their side were just barely able to squeeze by us -- although we got glared at by five consecutive very annoyed drivers.

The dude driving the lead car opened his window and explained to us that the purpose of that light was to manage the traffic so that cars could only go in one direction at a time, since the road was too narrow to accommodate two-way traffic.

Sure enough, as we were leaving we noticed the sign right next to the light we ran: "Long three-minute light to control one-way traffic".

Good thing we're so observant, being reporters and all...

Sad...

With two No. 1 seeds and two No. 2 seeds in the Final Four, this tournament is losing its za-zing.

From the New York Times:

Last year at this time, of the 3.1 million entries in ESPN.com’s bracket pool, only four chose the correct Final Four teams. This year, 161,869 of 3.3 million entries have the Gators, the Buckeyes, the Bruins and the Hoyas still alive.

What fun is that?

Just wake me up when it's over

I'd like to use this opportunity to *scold* the local CBS station for its horrendous balance of coverage in yesterday's late games. CBS has always been good about switching to the more interesting game, but last night they apparently decided they were going to show Ohio State-Tennessee instead of UCLA-Pitt, NO MATTER WHAT.

What ended up happening was Ohio State-Tennessee absolutely sucked for the first 20 minutes, until Ohio State remembered it was the much better team and started playing just well enough to overcome a 20-point deficit and edge the Vols (who I was ultimately rooting for even though I'd picked Ohio State in my bracket). But for those first horrendous 20 minutes, why weren't we watching UCLA-Pitt?

And even more, when UCLA-Pitt was a two-possession game with just over a minute to go, why weren't we watching that??

And to take it even further, why did CBS switch over to UCLA-Pitt for *five seconds* when there was about a minute remaining, and then say, "Now back to the Ohio State-Tennessee game. We'll bring you back to this game when yours is over." Even though there were seven and a half minutes left in "our game" and just one minute left in the UCLA game? Was the one minute going to last longer than the seven and a half? Has that happened in the history of basketball, ever?

My theory is that the people in charge of the broadcast were paying no attention whatsoever to anything going on. My theory is that everyone but the intern was sleeping and it was the intern's job to wake them all up at the end of the game. My theory is that they also had no concept of geography, or the fact that Pittsburgh is way closer to the market area than either Ohio State or Tennessee.

I officially hate CBS.

Well, you could just bathe the kid in bleach

A Long Island couple is suing a fertility clinic after an in vitro fertilization yielded a child much darker than either parent. A doctor at the clinic recommended artificially inseminating the wife with the husband's sperm, which they did, but fast-forward nine months and the kid was jet black. So the parents did three different DNA tests, all of which found that the dad was not actually the dad.

The doctor's response?
The child will "get lighter over time."

I mean, it happened to Michael Jackson...

Getting jobs, losing jobs

Turns out, the story I wrote about the nursing home workers being asked to take pay cuts or leave got someone a new job. He called the other day to tell me about it. Hooray!

In other news, I got a *very* angry, *very* grammatically incorrect e-mail from a dude I quoted in my look-at-all-the-people-watching-the-NCAA-Tournament-in-the-bar story. I quoted him saying that he was taking a half-day from work without his boss knowing, and apparently his boss reads the paper.

Oops...

So I agreed to go to a "roundtable discussion" on foster care at Hunter College in New York, thinking it might be a good opportunity to meet some interesting people and get some story ideas, etc.

Today, I came in to work to find a FedEx express envelope from the people sponsoring the event. There was a folder inside with a letter thanking me for my *participation* in the panel, and noting that this event "is a listening exercise for us -- an opportunity to hear your open and honest feedback on how the media covers foster care." (the italics are actually there)

I then turned the page to find the following...
We will be joined by representatives from these media outlets:
It preceded to list the Associated Press, New York Times, Nightline, NPR, People, The Early Show, Newsweek, Ladies' Home Journal, Nickelodeon, and, that's right -- the Home News Tribune.

At that point my deskmate started singing, "Which one of these is not like the other one" over and over again.

And I'm already planning my out...

Lookit the little girls, trying to play a man's sport... cute, huh?

For whatever reason, I was watching the late local news on CBS. Sports came on, and they talked about the men's NCAA tournament and the NBA before going to commercial break. Then they came back from commercial and said, "Who says there's no local teams dancing?" (Aviva, etc.: "dancing" is the term they use for what you do in the NCAA tournament)

Then the local New Jersey station proceeded to give 1.5 seconds to the Rutgers women, one of the top teams in the nation. The extent of the coverage was something along the lines of, "Rutgers beat VCU in the first round today."

And that was it.

Now I understand that the women's tournament isn't as insanely popular as the men's tournament. But, seriously? We're in New Jersey, this is the only team this entire state has in the tournament, Rutgers recently beat UConn, a No. 1 seed, and people actually do give half a shit about the Rutgers women. So you bury it at the end of the newscast and devote less time to that than the news side gives to lookit-the-cute-doggy stories? Seriously????

Randomness

It was more than 70 degrees today ... on Friday it's supposed to snow ... tomorrow I get to write a story about a bunch of people watching the NCAA Tournament at a bar. This makes me much happier than all the lookit-the-people-watching-the-Rutgers-football-game-at-the-bar stories, as I actually want to watch the NCAA Tournament. I'm trying to figure out how long I can stretch the reporting end of the story before it starts to look like I was just sitting at the bar watching the games for my own benefit ... I'm officially addicted to the Sims 2, and I haven't even finished building my house yet. ... that's about it. ... back to the Sims 2.