I’ve had better days than today.

I took a half vacation day, because I’d made an appointment with a plumber to look at a water pressure problem in my shower. His diagnosis was that I need my entire pipe system rebuilt.

That wasn’t the answer I was looking for. I’ll put that one off. For years, God willing.

As I left work to meet the plumber, I exchanged a few words with a co-worker. As he turned away from me to go inside, he walked straight into a column in the entryway and gave himself a bloody nose.

I know in my heart it was my fault.

I also noticed a couple deaths in the news. One was Robert Goulet. Goulet has become a sort of a joke in recent decades, but when I was a kid I thought he was the coolest guy in the world. I wanted to grow up to look like him and sing like him. I also wanted to be married to Carol Lawrence, his wife at the time. (They were slim, dark-haired people. When I was a kid I never understood all the excitement about blondes. I lived in one of the most Norwegian towns in America. Blondes were a dime a dozen in Kenyon. Dark-haired people were exotic and beautiful in my eyes.)

I did not succeed in growing up to be Goulet, but I’ve learned to live with it.

Also Hank Reinhardt died Tuesday. You’ve probably never heard of him, but he was the founder of Museum Replicas, Ltd., one of the foremost purveyors of replica swords to reenactors like me. I have several pieces of equipment from his company. He was also, as it happened, married to a senior editor at Baen Books, who is now Managing Editor, so I had one degree of separation from his acquaintance.



But there is one piece of good news. Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church, the egregious “God Hates Fags” people, lost a big case in federal court (thanks to Blue Crab Boulevard). They’ll have to pay the family of an Iraq War veteran whose funeral they disrupted.

I can imagine ways in which this judgment might lead to bad precedents, but if anybody has it coming it’s the WBC crowd.

God hates ‘em.

Mitt Romney in an interview with Sean Hannity tonight:

But I fundamentally think the people will not vote based upon someone’s gender or their race, or their religion, for that matter. I think they’re going to look at what their vision is for the future of the country, where they would take it, and whether they had the experience and skills to actually lead a nation of our scale in such a critical time.

And I think the greatest drawback beyond the direction [Mrs. Clinton would] take us is that she’s never run anything. She’s never had the occasion of being in the private sector, running a business, or, for that matter, running a state or a city. She hasn’t run anything, and the government of the United States is not a place for a president to be an intern. You need to have experience actually leading and running things.

I’m late, and this post will be short, assuming I get it posted at all.

I’ve been in Wireless Router Purgatory all evening, and Earthlink phone support is down due to “technical problems” (no doubt they’re on hold with their own phone support). Then, after a couple hours, my connection light came on again all on its own. And then off again. And now it’s on again. So I’m hoping I can get this posted before it falls off the wagon once more.

Blue Crab Boulevard provides this post about the world’s oldest clam–we’re talking a 400-year-old mollusk here. Found in one of my favorite places, no less. Iceland.

What the article doesn’t tell is whether it was found in a month with an “R” in it.

And Theodore Dalrymple (himself not a believer) makes some excellent arguments against recent atheist books in City Journal. (Hat tip to Freedom Dogs.)

Earlier this month, Rami Khader Ayyad, 32, was abducted and murdered in Gaza City. He ran The Teacher’s Bookshop, the only Christian bookstore in Gaza and part of ministry of the Holy Bible Society. May the Lord deliver the Palestinian people from the hands of murderers.

I’m conflicted about Halloween, probably because I often think of it in these adult terms, but this Japanese skirt looks like a great costume. Of course, some people may ask for candy from you instead of the other way round, but maybe they will offer money in exchange.

My eyes have been opened to the criminal denial of resources to southern California, caused by George Bush and the war in Iraq.

But why stop there? Washington isn’t the only city wasting precious supplies and manpower that might have helped the impoverished denizens of southern California.

How about Hollywood?

Think of all the people who could have been evacuated in the limousines used by studio executives and movie stars.

Think of the refugees who might have been fed by the catering companies.

Think of the coffee and donuts the gofers could have fetched for the firefighters.

And all those lawyers writing contracts? They could be suing somebody or other for the mental suffering of the homeless.

Dear Heavens, when will the infamy cease?



Speaking of Hollywood, S. T. Karnick at The American Mind tells a story today of a movie actor who seems to have a conscience not dictated by the hive mind of his peers.



Television is also part of Hollywood, and tonight I’d like to give you a list of the Top Two of my favorite new network shows.

My list is restricted to two because I’ve only found two I enjoy. But they’re pretty good, I think.

My favorite is “Pushing Daisies.” You know those Walgreens commercials about “A Town Called Perfect?” The whole show is done in that style, like a children’s book. They even use (apparently) the same narrator.

The main character is Ned (Lee Pace), a pie maker with a supernatural gift. When anything dies, he can bring it back to life by touching it. The drawback is that he has to touch them again and send them back within a minute, or they’ll stay alive and some equivalent life form nearby will drop dead in their place. He makes a side income by helping his friend Emerson (Chi McBride), a private detective. He brings murdered people back to life to name their murderers, and he and Emerson split the reward money.

The complication that produces the show’s drama comes when the girl Ned loves, “Chuck” (Anna Friel, who’s just a delight to watch) is murdered, and Ned brings her back and keeps her alive (a larcenous undertaker drops dead). While Ned is delighted to have Chuck back, he can never touch her, or she’ll die again.

This wonderful plot device permits the writers to give this show an element that has almost disappeared from contemporary drama—romance. Ned and Chuck manage to kiss (through cellophane) and dance (in beekeepers’ suits), but there’s no question of their jumping into bed together. That means you have actual sexual tension here, and a relationship that isn’t consummated in the first episode. This imparts to the whole enterprise an innocence that chimes perfectly with the fairy tale staging. I love this show.

I worry though. I note from Wikipedia that Anna Friel became famous in large part for lesbian scenes and nudity on British television. A supporting character is Kristin Chenoweth, an avowed “liberal” Christian who has a Lisa Minelli-like following in the homosexual community. So I wouldn’t be surprised if they blindside me with a “gay” story one of these weeks.

But until then I’m enchanted.

Speaking of people called Chuck, there’s also a new series called “Chuck.” The concept here isn’t quite as fresh as that of “Pushing Daisies,” but it’s not bad.

Are you old enough to remember “The Avengers?” Remember how intriguing and appealing Mrs. Peel was? Not only gorgeous, but completely capable of taking care of herself when attacked by the vilest enemy spies (as a sexist I should have hated that, but somehow I didn’t when she did it)?

Well, in “Chuck” you’ve got a Mrs. Peel character, a CIA operative, teamed up with an ordinary computer nerd, the titular Chuck. Chuck (Zachary Levi) got a hard drive-full of top secret security information uploaded into his brain (don’t you hate it when that happens?), and Mrs. Peel, er, Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski, She’s not Diana Rigg, but she’ll do) is assigned to babysit him while he continues his ordinary life as a computer tech at a big box store called Buy More.

Of course there’s sparks between Chuck and Sarah, and the romantic tension here comes from his realistic understanding that he is way, way out of his league with her. But there are hints that she’s warming to him, and he’s growing through the dangers he experiences every week.

Great escapist stuff. And about time, too. It’s been a while since there’s been anything this fresh, or this innocent, on TV.

You’ve seen photos of horrible fires in California, but here’s one a little removed from the flames.

Unnatural Light

Vivienne Parry asks why wet feet brings on putrid fever or the like in many literary heroines. “For, I confess,” she writes, “part of me has always longed to grab them and say: ‘You only got your slippers wet. For heaven’s sake, girl, just get a grip!'” (via Books, Inq.)

Ack. I’m worthless tonight. I’m in the grip of some kind of vague, unlocalized malaise, probably psychosomatic. Had to slug my way through work. My body seems to be saying to me, “Take it easy and feed me protein,” and that’s what I’m doing.

All in all, I’m glad I live in Minneapolis, and not southern California. All the world wants to live in S. Cal, but we Norwegians (at least the ones who haven’t absconded to Mission Viejo) sit here and say, “Yeah, the weather might be nice most of the time, but you gotcher earthquakes. You gotcher wildfires. Better to stay home where the disasters are usually less catastrophic, and generally come on a scheduled basis.”

It’s a particularly Norwegian point of view, I think–“I won’t ask much, but in return I expect very few bad surprises.” Comes from generations of explaining to our children why we continued to live in a place where the sun didn’t even rise half the year.

Same goes for living in Minnesota, more or less.

I was sent a quotation once. Forget who said it. Somebody commented on Charles Lindbergh’s not having much of a sense of humor, and the quotee replied, “Did you ever try to tell a joke in Minneapolis?”

To which my reply is, “Remember Lou Grant? Remember how funny his life was on the Mary Tyler Moore show, set in Minneapolis? Then he spun off to Los Angeles and his own show, and the yucks stopped cold.”

I think that settles that.

In closing, here’s a YouTube link from Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost. The kind of counselor all of us neurotics dream of (played by Bob Newhart, no less). He’s just as effective as all the others, and charges you less.

In my ongoing campaign to raise the intellectual level of the blogosphere, and indeed of the world at large, I ever strive to draw your attention away from the trivial, the evanescent, and the superficial, to matters of universal relevance and substance.

Today, the subject is my face.

The spark for this meditation was a couple conversations I had in Minot (I expect I’ll be milking Minot for months in this space, since I don’t actually interact with my fellow man much in ordinary life, and that plays hob with a guy’s stock of anecdotes).

An older gentleman approached me in the Viking village on (I think) the first day. He asked me if I was Icelandic.

I told him I wasn’t, but that I’d once spent a couple days in that delightful country.

He said, “You’re a fine looking man. Handsome enough to be an Icelander. In fact you look like you could be a member of my family.”

At that point I realized I’d had this exact conversation two years ago, on my last visit to Høstfest. The same man had approached me then, and said the same thing.

I figured he was about the only Icelander at the festival, and was desperately trying to connect with someone. In his loneliness he felt compelled to go around and confer Icelandicity on random Norwegians like me.

Poignant, no?

That in itself wouldn’t have led to this post, but later on I was approached by two middle-aged ladies. They said, “We recently lost our dearly beloved brother, and you are his spitting image.”

At that point I thought, “Oh no. My old face is coming back.”

As a visual aid at this point (and against the advice of counsel), I shall re-post a picture of myself in high school which I used a while back:

I looked pretty much like this through my college years too, except that I changed to wire-rimmed glasses as a junior.

You’ll note the utter lack of distinction in this face. Ordinary brown hair. No particular bone structure to speak of. The nose, though large, is not of any identifiable shape. Is it a long face or a round face? Somewhere in the middle. Could go either way. It’s a blank slate face.

Back in those days people used to tell me all the time, “You look just like my cousin So-and-so.” Or their nephew. Or some guy they went to school with. I remember walking through Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis one afternoon while a drunken Native American yelled at me for minutes from across the grass, trying to get the attention of some buddy he’d mistaken me for.

As I grew older, and especially after I grew my beard, that sort of thing stopped. Stopped completely. I figured that the wrinkles and spots installed by Time’s little Mr. Potatohead game had finally given me an aspect that was also an artifact (Lincoln once said, “Any man over forty is responsible for his own face”).

But now I seem to be losing it. As we age, it’s well known, we start reverting to our baby faces, and it looks like my short run as a figure of distinction is coming to an end.

On the other hand, if I can get these people who think they’re related to me to co-sign a loan or two…