If you greet me with outstretched knuckles, in anticipation of doing the traditional male “knuckle touching” move, rest assured that I will not leave you hanging.  I will fulfill the gesture in the manner that society has mandated:

However, it’s worth noting that you’ve achieved the absolute opposite of what you intended.  Rather than bonding with me, you have almost guaranteed that we will never be close in any form--because if we were really friends, you’d know that I find the gesture completely annoying .  It’s actually my first filter for a potential friend. Well, that and whether you use the word “Irregardless.”

Furthermore, you might not want to push your luck and try it a second time. Because as I said, I won’t leave you hanging. But that doesn’t mean I won’t press my fist to yours and shout “WONDER TWIN POWERS ACTIVATE.”

And wouldn’t that be embarrassing if I did that with a lot of people around?  Well, maybe not for you; you’ve already taken on the form of a Doofus.

I thought I had been doing pretty well about not letting my own pop culture biases affect (or some would say “infect") my niece.  Take the other day, for example.  While shopping for a stocking stuffer book, I chanced upon a literary tome that immediately caught my eye.  Entitled Scooby Doo and the Rock and Roll Zombie, my first thought was that this was the perfect gift for Cameron.  Surely its gripping narrative and eye-popping illustrations would encourage her to take yet another step into the wonderful world of reading.

Now, I hadn’t read this particular installment in the Scooby Doo saga. But if I knew my literature, this alleged “Rock and Roll Zombie” would turn out to be the harmless old caretaker of the amusement park. Or perhaps the mean-spirited magnate who was attempting to buy out said amusement park.

Or it might actually be the caretaker wearing the mask of the magnate underneath the mask of the Zombie!  I hoped not, though. That whole “dual mask” twist is juicy but it’s also rather complicated. Surely such “Usual Suspects"-style reveals should be the province of a book that’s intended for, say ages 6 and up, rather than 5.

But as I reached for the book, I thought, well, maybe I was thinking too much about my own childhood and maybe it was possible to find something a little less corporate-ty for Cam.  And I ended up finding a very nice book with gorgeous, burnished illustrations and an easy-to-follow story. It didn’t have any rock and roll zombies, which I count as a minus (that’s also the reason I didn’t like Anna Karenina), but otherwise it seemed like a good choice.

Sounds like a rational chain of decision making? Except that I had an exchange with my sister-in-law the other day that made me realize that I haven’t been as good at this as I had thought:

SHE: Cameron’s decided that she wants a theme party for her next birthday.

ME: Oh, sounds great.

SHE (coldly): Yes...A Spider-Man party.

ME: Ha!  Really? Now that’s a chip of the old…

SHE: .....

ME: ...er...I mean...how nice?

SHE: Yes. I told her great, you can invite your uncle and all of your uncle’s friends.

I don’t remember foisting Spider-Man upon my niece, but maybe it just comes off me subliminally.  Or maybe it’s in the Howard blood. Maybe the Howard blood is radioactive.

(To digress for a moment, I’m confused why Dora the Explorer is somehow a more noble franchise to buy toys from than, say, Spider-Man.  I mean, talk about a role model that kids can’t live up to. How old is Dora supposed to be? Eight or so?  You show me a kid who is actually an “Explorer” by age eight. I could see Dora the Pooping or Dora the Oftentimes Drooling in her Sleep, but world traveling?  Let me tell you what I used to carry around with me when I was eight years old: beef jerky, Star Wars cards, and maybe a frog or two.  You know what I didn’t carry around?  A PASSPORT. If these are the characters that our kids are supposed to emulate, they’ll all be burnt out before junior high.)

The reality is, I don’t care one bit whether Cam reads about pink parasols or rock and roll zombies.  We start telling stories to kids as soon as they’re born: “This is who you are. This is where you came from. This is where you’re going.” And eventually they start choosing their own stories.  And no one, ever, has the time to read all of the stories in the world.  From that point of view, it doesn’t matter what stories you read, whether they’re these stories or those stories--as long as you’re immersed in them, and eventually have the ability to choose the ones that matter to you.  As long as she does that, I will happily stand down.

Which isn’t to say that I won’t stick her with Lemony Snicket down the road.

Northern California looks so cute when it tries to impress you with its seasons.  The leaves turn yellow and red haphazardly, like a kid scrawling inside a coloring book.  Then the whole area lurches into winter. Or it pretends to.  All that really happens is the air feels a little colder than usual.  It rains sometimes, but mostly the sun weakly dabs at the rooftops and tries to melt the morning frost.

California has no idea what real seasons are, and it will never know because it’s separated from them by thousands of miles. It has no idea that elsewhere in the country, the leaves turn so bright and vivid that they look as though they’re on fire.  It doesn’t know that if you stand in a certain place at just the right time, the air smells of apple cinnamon.  It doesn’t know that when the storms start to hit, the days become as hard and cold as a runway model’s face.

You are nice to California.  After all, you love California; it’s possible that you may never leave it again.  With that kind of commitment in the offing, the last thing you want to do is hurt California’s feelings.  So you smile indulgently as it parades its badly colored trees in front of you and occasionally showers you with rain.  Just because California does this one thing poorly doesn’t mean that it should be berated for its failures. California is a genius when it comes to spring, and second-run movie theaters, and couples key parties.  Let it get this nonsense out of its system, as it apparently needs to do once a year.  It’s all right if your face starts to hurt from all of the fake smiling. Once the air warms up and the fog lifts, your praise will once again be genuine.

During the White House reception for the Nobel winners, Gore was invited for a special, private 30-minute meeting with President Bush.  However, he was unwilling to talk about what they discussed:

“It was a private meeting,” he said, “and I’m not going to say anything about it other than that it was very nice, very cordial. He was very gracious in setting up the meeting, and it was a very good and very substantive conversation. That’s all.”

Fortunately, Geese Aplenty has obtained an exclusive transcript of this historic meeting, which is reprinted below:

BUSH: Thanks for coming in, Al.  Basically, this is about that whole global warming thing, which apparently you know something about.

GORE: I know a little, Mr. President, but hasn’t your administration typically denied the problem’s existence and even tried to discredit it?

BUSH: Bygones. I’m getting more interested in it.

GORE: Well, did you get a chance to see my movie on the topic?

BUSH: Was that the one where The Rock is a football player and discovers he has a cute 8-year old daughter?

GORE: No, that was a comedy called The Game Plan.  My movie was a documentary called An Inconvenient Truth.

BUSH: Then I didn’t see your movie. The only movie I’ve seen in the last three years was the one with The Rock and the cute kid.

GORE: Well, look, I can run through the problem pretty quickly for you. Let me set up my laptop--

(Bush BLANCHES)

GORE: Mr. President! Are you all right?

BUSH: You’re about to start showing me facts and figures, aren’t you?

GORE: Well, I just wanted to give you a summary of the--

BUSH: Al, you don’t work here, so you don’t know. But I’m telling you now.  Nobody shows me facts and figures. Allergies.

GORE: Well, what do you want me to do?

BUSH: Here’s the thing.  I’m getting a little worried about my legacy. I kinda don’t want to just have it be around the Iraq thing.

GORE: Well, you can also be remembered as the first President who was given the office by the Supreme Court.

BUSH: ...

GORE: ...

BUSH ...got a little fire in yer belly still, doncha Al?

GORE: My apologies, Mr. President, I honestly don’t know where that came from.

BUSH: Bygones. Point is, I want you to certify my administration as a Green Administration.

GORE: What?

BUSH: Yeah, everyone says you’re the green guy, so I want you to endorse my greenery.  Give me a big “thumbs up” from the standpoint of the green thing.  Once you do that, people will remember me as the Green President and not the Iraq guy. So what do you say?

GORE: Green President? What does that even mean?  Your policies are not environmentally friendly.

BUSH: Well, can’t you just say that the White House is green? Like, the staff recycles and stuff?

GORE: I’d have to run tests, evaluate the processes, crunch the--

BUSH: Facts and figures.  Al, what did I just tell you.

GORE: My apologies, Mr. President.

BUSH: Look, what can you do?

(pause)

GORE: Tell you what. I am willing to go out there to the mob of reporters outside right now and tell you that, with every fiber of my being, I believe that you are green. Your every action as shown you to be green. Your foreign policy, your domestic policy, your Supreme Court candidates--everything you’ve done for the last seven years has proven that you are truly green.  Many people prefer a president with experience and expertise, but you have shown that it’s possible to get through two terms by being nothing but green.

BUSH: ....there’s something in the way you’re phrasing that that’s actually making fun of me, isn’t there?

GORE: I’m afraid so, Mr. President.

BUSH: Okay, forget the whole thing. Just say nothing to the reporters. Good luck with your Nobel thingie, Al.

GORE: Good luck with your legacy, Mr. President.

“It’s always been you,” she breathed, her chest heaving like a freshman at college who had too many beers to drink at her first frat party.

As he reluctantly bathed in the shower of oncoming gunfire, he wondered how the bullets in his chest could be so hot even while his body was becoming increasingly colder.

“You and I will never be together.” Her eyes flashed like an exhibitionist in an oversized raincoat.

“I hate the rain,” she sighed. “Sometimes I see me dead in it. As well as tax audited.”

“Yes, that was your father,” the white whale responded, nonplussed. “He vanished under the waves with my Dad and they were never seen again.  I tracked you down using genealogical records.  You, Abu, are Ahab’s last living descendant--and frankly, I hope you’ve been keeping your harpoon sharpened, because I am plenty pissed.”

People tell me that I’m getting more curmudgeonly as I get older, which I take as a compliment. I mean, have you ever met one of those people in their eighties who are upbeat and pleasant all the time?  I look at those people and I can only assume that for eighty years they just haven’t been paying attention.

But sometimes a gesture of human kindness pierces my heart and cuts through all the negativity I’ve accumulated as a result of Darfur, the growing gap between the rich and the poor, global warming, and Adam Sandler.

Such was the case this weekend.  My friend Meredith knows some crazy people, and one of them threw a birthday party for her fiancée. What was the nature of said party? We were given movie cameras and told to write, film, and edit a movie in around six hours.  The Red Vic theater in San Francisco was rented out at midnight to screen all of the movies to a bunch of tired and (by that time) mostly drunk filmmakers.

Needless to say, this was a pretty stressful enterprise; we only had a few hours of light to capture all the footage. And most of our film consisted of exterior shots, as it was decided to do a parody of Run Lola Run (one of my favorite movies, as it happens) full of in-jokes and references to the birthday boy and his fiancée.

So anyway, I was trying to take some shots of Lola (Meredith) running.  We were running out of time, and we were all tired.  I needed a shot of her running down her apartment stairs, but we were in a cramped courtyard and I was having a hard time setting up the tripod.  I backed up against an apartment door and shouted “Okay, give me a second, I’m trying to get you into frame--”

--and suddenly, the door behind me opened.

I turned around, and an elderly lady smiled and gestured to me.

“Come in, come in, shoot here.” She had an accent--I couldn’t quite place it. Swedish?

It was a foggy, chilly day in the city, and I could feel the heat spilling out of her well-warmed apartment.

“Oh!” I said. “Okay, it will just be a second. Thanks!”

And I backed up a few feet.

“Come in more, shoot, shoot,” she said, urging me on.

So I backed up even more and planted my ass in her hallway and set up the camera and got the shot.

I turned around and said to my savior, “You’re very kind.”

“Ah, of course, of course,” she said, and then she shut the door.

Now, admittedly, this was Meredith’s neighbor and probably knew her by sight, so she didn’t think she was opening her door to a psycho killer or anything. But still, this lady was warm and peaceful in her apartment on a cold November day.  She disrupted her tranquility so a bunch of shouting morons could enter her house and finish a ridiculous movie.

So, of all the things I’m thankful for, topping the list is anyone who is willing to open the front door, place trust in humanity, and let people get the shot they need:

(And isn’t Meredith a dead ringer for the real Lola?)

Happy Thanksgiving.

ME (excitedly): How can they talk about remaking Poltergeist? It’s perfect the way it is. I don’t care if the special effects are dated.

COLLEAGUE: You’re probably right.

(Young, female co-worker walks by)

ME: YOU! What do you think of Poltergeist?

YOUNG FEMALE CO-WORKER: Older guys?

ME: ....

YOUNG FEMALE CO-WORKER: Why are you asking what I think of older guys?

ME: Not older guys. POLTER GEIST.

YOUNG FEMALE CO-WORKER: Whatever.

COLLEAGUE: Greg, tell me again how it is that you still have a job.

In complete defiance of all those over the years who have complained that I never write about anything important, here is a ripped-from-the-headlines discussion of the Oxford comma, also known as the “serial comma.” The summary of the discussion is as follows: anyone who uses the serial comma is one of the Chosen; anyone who doesn’t is a mutton head.

The serial comma is where you use a comma after the last item in a sentence to designate a list. For example:

“Greg blogs about wheat, toads, and potstickers.”

Here’s the same sentence without the serial comma:

“Greg blogs about wheat, toads and potstickers.”

Note how that sentence is completely confusing.  Why does “wheat” get its own little special space of the universe, while “toads” and “potstickers” are jammed together like frat boys in the back of a pickup? Are those two items somehow connected? Is there a cosmic meaning that one should derive from their breathless union?

Of course not, and that’s why each item needs a comma.  Those items are begging for a comma. If they don’t have a comma, they don’t look right. You stare at them and you sense something wrong.  Something out of place.  Something that strikes at the core of their identity. Like Lindsay Lohan with an alcohol monitoring bracelet.

The problem is, there’s no consensus. Most grammar books will say “Whatever, you can do it both ways.” However, before you shrug off responsibility for the issue and embrace the ambiguity, let’s take a look at two people who dislike the serial comma.  You will see why it is not wise to align yourself with their camp.

1) Lynn Truss, author of the best-selling grammar book Eats, Shoots & Leaves.  Despite the title of her book being an homage to the confusion caused by the lack of the serial comma, she writes: “My own feeling is that one shouldn’t be too rigid about the Oxford comma. Sometimes the sentence is improved by including it; sometimes it isn’t.” Whatever. Truss is from Britain, where the serial comma is typically not used, so her opinion is worthless.  The Brits weren’t that wishy washy about taking over the world, were they?  The sun no longer rises and sets on the British empire, and it’s all because of their highly problematic handling of the serial comma.

2) Some jerk at a job interview several years ago.  I was applying for a communications position at PeopleSoft, and one of the first questions my interviewer asked me was my opinion on the Oxford comma. I said I used it; he said that he didn’t. And what happened a few years later? Oracle bought PeopleSoft and fired most of its employees.  And why? Opinions vary, but I believe it’s because PeopleSoft didn’t use the serial comma.

Now, to be fair, a Wikipedia article on the subject does give some interesting examples of confusion that is created by the use of the serial comma.  But these examples are flawed.  Here’s one of the sentences used to show the potential problems of the serial comma:

“To my mother, Ayn Rand and God.”

The meaning of this sentence is clear. This is obviously a list of three. But if the serial comma is used:

“To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God. “

The commas appear to be setting off “Ayn Rand” from the rest of the items, suggesting that the writer’s mother is Ayn Rand.  This serves to confuse rather than clarify the sentence.

My response? Give me a break, Wikipedia; Ayn Rand was a windbag who wrote character speeches that literally went on for sixty pages.  If you were Ayn Rand’s child, you would not be dedicating things to her; you would be in therapy. Therefore, it’s impossible to read the sentence to mean that the writer’s mother is Ayn Rand, which serves to prove my point that the serial comma is always correct and its omission is always wrong.

As we head into another election season, it will be the responsibility of each and every citizen to choose allegiances and make decisions. To do that, you must first find out who you are. I mean--who you really are. Are you a proponent of the serial comma? Or are you one of the rump-fed ratbrain maggot pies who seek to destroy civilization as we know it? Be the former.  Join us.  We are waiting for you.

We are happy, hopeful, and enlightened.

It took me a while to recognize why Rowling’s outing of Dumbledore bothered me.

It’s not because a mega-billionaire author turned around and categorized a major character in a children’s series as gay.  I think that’s hilarious. I’ve never seen an author explicitly validate an entire sub-genre of slash fiction devoted to her work.  Can you imagine Gene Roddenberry standing up and saying “Yeah, you know, you guys were pretty much right about Kirk and Spock. There was a reason they always got themselves mind controlled so they could wrestle each other with their shirts off.”

No, my problem is the justification that Rowling gives.  She talks about Dumbledore’s youthful friendship with the dark wizard Grindelward, and remarks “He met someone as brilliant as he was and, rather like Bellatrix, he was very drawn to this brilliant person and horribly, terribly let down by him.”

I take issue with this reading because it continues a tradition of pointing at close, affectionate male relationships and basically saying “Yeah, that’s just suppressed gayness.” It has the effect of bringing back a different kind of homophobia by saying that anything involving deep emotional bonding between men can’t be affection for its own sake but rather subconscious sexuality.

I, myself, have suffered from this sort of viewpoint.  My friends can tell you that I’m the single worst hugger on the planet. I don’t really hug people; I kind of hang off them like a jacket that’s three sizes two small. It’s even worse when I hug my male friends. Sure, I can take responsibility for my own hugging inadequacies, but when you have a society that says “close male friendships = gay,” it doesn’t really help one to improve one’s hugging prowess.  I need society’s support in my attempts to hold my male friends close without suddenly being the love that dare not speak its name.

There are many famous male friends who shared close, intimate emotional relationships without being gay.  Lewis and Clark. Mason and Dixon. Penn and Teller.  Shatner and Spader.

When I was sixteen, my friend and I got drunk behind a supermarket. (We were subsequently arrested by a pair of Mormon cops, but that’s another story.) We had been a bit estranged prior to that evening, but the alcohol helped remove our emotional inhibitions and we admitted that we cared about each other and that we were, in fact, friends. And yes, we hugged.  Shouldn’t men in our society be able to do this without the influencing factors of alcohol or, worse, Mormonism?

Don’t get me wrong: Rowling is the writer and I completely accept her interpretation of her own character. I’m even entertained by it. I’m simply saying that her justification for the interpretation raises its own problems because it allows very little space for non-sexual male bonding.  To my mind, homosexuality isn’t simply a byproduct of male intimacy but something that specifically denotes sexual attraction.  Well, that and also an extremely intuitive ability to accessorize.

I spent most of last week in Boulder, a trendy college town in Colorado, and got a chance to scratch off one of my life to-dos: try a hookah.

My life to-do list is still pretty long--I still haven’t gone on a safari, had a constellation named after me, or taught traffic school to a classroom full of Maggie Gyllenhaals--but hey, one down is one down.

It cost about $10 per flavor, and I think we chose something like strawberry and watermelon. Sure, those flavors sound pretty weak, but they don’t sell hashish over the counter yet.  And I like them anyway because they taste good and make you forget that you’re turning your lungs into a toxic waste dump.

There are other good aspects of a hookah:

You can talk in a throaty voice and give instructions to Alice:

“One side of the mushroom makes you grow larger; the other one makes you grow shorter.” Jesus, no wonder I never liked mushrooms.

The other thing I learned--or re-learned, to be more accurate--is that I’m too old to hang out in college towns, hookah bars being the exception to the rule.  This is what you tend to realize when you look around and wonder how all these kids got past the guy checking IDs, and realize that they are, in fact, probably 21.  At least, in dog years.

Posted by Greg at 10:56 AM on 10/21/07

(9) Bring It • Link to This

I bought and used my first cordless drill today!  It is cool because you can wave it around and use it even though it’s not plugged into the wall. Which may be self-evident from the term “cordless drill,” but it’s one thing to say it and another thing to experience it.

I’ll tell you one thing, though--I sure am glad I read the instructions before using it.  It says “Do not operate this equipment while under the influence of alcohol.”

Wow!  I sure am grateful to the brain trust that came up with that nugget of zen wisdom.  I only hope it’s not too late to log on to Evite and cancel my “Do Tequila Shots While Helping Greg Install His New Window Blinds” extravaganza!

On a not-entirely unrelated note, I’d like to mention to my friends that yes, I put together the wine cabinet myself.  And yes, that is not necessarily good news considering that I got a B minus in shop because my wooden elephant looked more like an aardvark (I lived Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club*).  And yes, that does mean you shouldn’t make any sudden moves in my living room. Really, it’s a wine cabinet that’s a lot like that cute freshman girl that we all knew in college who was from a strict upbringing and away from home from the first time--you put some wine inside of it, and it starts trembling, and shaking, and basically feeling a little fragile.

*Minus the bit with the flare gun.

My communications person returned from maternity leave, so I excitedly asked the right people what I needed to do to ensure she was reinstated in the company system with regular paychecks and whatnot.

I was told: “She’ll need a note from her doctor.”

I said, “What do you mean? She wasn’t sick. She was having a baby.”

“Being out on maternity leave is technically a kind of disability.”

“Okay, I can sort of see that, but I don’t see why she needs a note from her doctor.”

“The note from the doctor would simply say that she’s able to return to work and no longer disabled.”

No wonder we can’t achieve equal rights across genders; women can’t even have a baby without suddenly becoming candidates for the special olympics. In a just society, there’d be a derogatory term for men who see a pretty girl and then have to walk around with their sweaters pulled down over their jeans, but no, that’s just business as usual and then there’s disabled women having children.

I said, “Look, she’s already back at work, and a cursory glance will reveal that she no longer has a baby inside of her. The baby left her body, much like a kidney stone being passed or the miracle of life or something--one of the two.  Furthermore, she can prove it. She’ll be very happy to show you the baby pictures.  It’s a really nice looking baby.”

”We need a note from her doctor.”

My vote is that we change this system. In order for it be just a bit more high school than it already is, I advocate that pregnant employees deliver a note before they go on maternity leave. But the note should be from the woman’s mother, not her doctor. It should say “Please excuse my daughter for the next five months or so; she will be unable to complete her projects on account of passing on the family genes.” And failing that, I think the least we can do is refer to mothers-to-be--those lifegivers, those childbearers, those goddesses who soldier on for months and suffer terrible pain in order to give us sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, grandchildren--as differently abled.

I have a friend who keeps a journal with her at all times.  In the journal, among other things, is a list of life lessons--many of which I have memorized because I find them highly amusing.  Over the weekend, she told me that she had recently ignored one of the life lessons and deeply regretted it.

I said, “‘Never make eye contact with a mime’?”

She shook her head.

“‘Never rub an Irishman’s head from behind unexpectedly?’”

“No.”

“‘It is surprisingly difficult to convince a stranger to accept a cupcake?’”

She shook her head.

“Oh.” I suddenly knew which one it had to be.  “‘Don’t make out with someone you knew from college. They will act all strange about it afterwards.’”

She nodded sadly.

“It could be worse,” I consoled her. “You could have done that and caught the attention of a mime.”

There’s an article in today’s New York Times about the rise of “iCrime"--people being targeted for their shiny, easy-to-steal, status symbol iPods.  I’ve actually thought about this before.  I sometimes jog through dicey areas of my city, and I’m often lost in my own thoughts as well as lost in a song.  My iPod is strapped around my arm.  I’m not especially fearsome looking. Wouldn’t it be easy for evil people to trip me to the sidewalk and strip me of my musical companion?

However, then I realized that my car had a “Protected by Auto Theft Alarm” sticker on the driver side window, and that gave me an idea. And now I don’t worry about being mugged at all.  I jog in peace, thanks to my iPod’s new decal: “Contains More than One Track by Oingo Boingo.”