And that's it for November. It couldn't have come sooner -- I am officially out of ideas. Plus, these bruises on my fingers from all the typing? Not attractive.

I'm impressed that despite having to reach harder and more frequently for ideas in posting every day, I've managed to mostly avoid talking about NaBloPoMo. Until now, anyway. More than once I had to fend off the temptation to throw down a placeholder just to say I'd posted every day this month. But I did it, because that was never the point of the exercise. Thanks to this month, I feel like I'm a better blogger ... maintaining my focus, not fearing the short entry, not talking about what I had for lunch, and seeing beauty and humor in the little things.

On the opposite track -- the big things -- I didn't complete NaNoWriMo. I got stuck about 15,000 words in and realized I had a lot more character and plot development to do before I can write the story. At this point, I've already pushed it out once, and there's no sense doing it again unless I can improve markedly on the original. Which I think is what my mom said when my brother was born.

However, if you add up all the words I did write in November:

Novel:	15,234
Blog:	9,212
LiveJournal:	24,212 (holy shit!)

... I got pretty close, actually. If you count the e-mails, the bulletin board posts, the reports and other assorted crap I had to chunder out for work, I probably made it. Not that it counts when all the sources are separate.

But then again, that's not what's important. What's important is that I continue to push myself to write better, to keep refining my skills and improving my storytelling. That's the real goal, not some arbitrary word count. If I use more words to hit a number and thereby muddy the message, I've failed.

That said ... holy crap, I am so done refining for a while. Well, at least the weekend. Unless I have an idea. I make no promises -- you're not off the hook that easily.

We're sitting in the waiting room at Casa de Benavidez, admiring the perpetual new construction and biding the time until we can eat, when Jacob turns to me and Sed.

"I know you're having a girl this time," he says, "but if you have a boy, you know what you should name it?"

This being our first baby, and only being four months in, and having had a concrete name in place since conception, we're unaccustomed to these kinds of suggestions. Still, Jacob recently helped name a new daughter of his own, and he's our friend, so we're willing to hear him out.

"Cedric."

He has to say it again, slowly, before we get it.

Michael Richards' verbal assault on a black heckler at a comedy club has been all over the news of late. I don't have to tell you that. But have you actually seen it? The guy forgot what he was saying, let some bias slip out and very quickly lost control of the crowd. One word -- the most offensive word of all, a word that has all by itself replaced Carlin's "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" -- was all it took.

Richards has since apologized for the diatribe. He's said that he doesn't consider himself a racist, that he spoke out of anger and humiliation, that he's tried to make amends with the heckler. I'm not saying I disbelieve it, necessarily, but an epithet-fueled tirade like that doesn't come out of the mouth of someone who has no bias.

And then he blamed the modern vernacular for providing the word. And now black leaders are calling for it to be banned.

Yes, the intent is pure. But, ladies and gentlemen, you're forgetting about a little thing I like to call the First Amendment. Taking away our right to say an offensive word is like taking away our right to throw the horns at a rock concert. After all, what if an Italian in the audience saw that and threatened to sue us for calling his wife an adulteress?

The word isn't the problem. The vitriol and bias behind the word is the problem. When a rapper uses it to refer to his friends, the only entity offended is the NAACP. But when a comedian -- wait. Let's be frank. When a white comedian is shouting down a heckler, using references to lynching and Klan rallies, it creates more news stories than a bomb in Bombay. And certainly Richards was capable of doing that without saying the word.

The thing is, you can't police the insides of people's heads. You might be able to stop them from saying offensive words, but you can't stop them from feeling superior to others. The only way to get around that is to create one brain, a hive mind if you will, that thinks your thoughts for you and tells you the thoughts of everybody else. Because, after all, then everyone is on level ground and we'll all be the same.

But who wants that? If everyone thought the same, there'd be no art, no music, no comedians to heckle. Again, I'm preaching to the choir. We've all read 1984, but just because said year has come and gone doesn't make us safe from the events described therein.

You're smart (readership of my blog notwithstanding). I don't have to remind you that people are people, regardless of color, gender, religion, country of origin, sexual orientation, handicap, handedness, shoe size, hair length, or preferred salsa heat level. That's what we need to keep in mind, though, rather than which words we should police.

Days spent in Albuquerque with my family

Thanksgiving meals eaten

Amount, in ounces, of turkey leftovers eaten

Total meals eaten

Number of those meals that included chile of some type

Attempts made by my wife and cousin to watch Cars

Times my wife and cousin fell asleep within the first fifteen minutes of Cars

Times we were told to expect a two-hour wait at Sadie's

Times we actually ate at Sadie's

Total time, in minutes, spent waiting at Sadie's

Amount, in pounds, of potatoes that the kitchen at Sadie's put on my stepfather's plate

Final score of the UNM-SDSU football game on Saturday

Copy-editing errors I caught on the scoreboard during the game

Times I complained about canned music when the band was just sitting there

Time, in minutes, I spent in my mom's hot tub

Times I checked my e-mail

Approximate time, in minutes, I had to wait for my parents' computer to load so I could post

Dogs I got to pet

Times I missed my own dogs

Pictures I took over the weekend

Pictures I posted for your perusal and amusement (permusement?)

The Loyola Marymount player on TV has unkempt stubble, dull eyes, a dirty headband holding limp and greasy hair out of his face. His jersey hangs askew on his shoulders, kept out of place by the baggy, untucked maroon T-shirt underneath, stained dark with sweat. Once-tall socks droop sadly around the ankles of his dirty high-tops.

And then he turns around, and I note the name on the back of his jersey: "Grubb."

During the fourth quarter of New Mexico's complete and utter domination (not that I am biased) of San Diego State today, the public address operator advised us to stick around after the game for an important announcement.

"They're going to the New Mexico Bowl," I predicted. After all, a win in this game would make UNM bowl-eligible, and the home team playing in a new bowl game ensures a sell-out and credibility for next year.

"You didn't know that?" my brother asked.

"Dude, they were five and six yesterday. And if anybody knows how to blow a 41-point fourth-quarter lead, it's the Lobos."

He just rolled his eyes at me. "You know when I knew they were going to the New Mexico Bowl? When they called it the New Mexico Bowl. If the school that has the same name as the bowl game doesn't get there, someone is gonna rewrite the rules."

One year when I was in my early teens, I thought it would be a good idea to go Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving. After all, that's when all the stores have the good sales, and the consumer mind-set coupled with holiday spirit would certainly contribute to fantastic holiday gifts. But when I broached the subject with my mom, she was less than enthusiastic.

"OK," she finally conceded, "but if we go, we're going to start early and get all of our gift shopping finished."

What followed was the most arduous thirteen hours of my young life. Being awakened at five in the morning, waiting in line outside the mall, shoving through the crowds to reach my desired destination, picking through the messes left by previous frantic shoppers, and endless traipsing back and forth because of a less-than-optimized shopping list. By the end of the day, it felt more like the Bataan Death March than the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Never again, I vowed, and my mom smiled, her point made loud and clear.

But it doesn't stop her from being pulled in, again and again. Every year, she and my aunt swear that unless some store is having an exquisite deal, they will not venture out of the house before lunchtime. But every year they find some item in the Thanksgiving newspaper ads that they can't resist, and I awaken on Friday to a house devoid of females. This year, they even snared Sed, who I can't persuade to go out on Black Friday even with promises of diamond-crusted ponies. (Then again, I'm just the husband, and I'm used to my opinion not mattering.)

Ordinarily they make a surgical strike -- hit the store, secure the gift, drive to the register, slash the credit card, and egress. But it's already almost 10, and they're still not back. I began to worry that the whirling vortex of low, low prices had them firmly gripped by the ankles, chortling maniacally at their feeble attempts to kick free.

At least, that is, until my mom called with an ETA and a promise of cinnamon rolls. Now that's a vortex I can get behind.

• When you're married (or in this case, when your parents are divorced), sometimes you have to poke down two Thanksgiving meals in one day. I'm happy to report that this is totally doable, as long as both parties in the relationship are either a) a big fat guy with a bottomless pit for a stomach or b) pregnant.
  
  
• Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything says that you can make a pie with frozen fruit without thawing it. Today, I learned that Bittman is a big fat liar. My blueberry pie totally fell through the soggy bottom crust before all the fruit scattered everywhere, spewing unthickened juices. It was like blueberry soup with a crouton. Next time: blind bake!
  
  
• A large family gathering invariably involves at least one opinionated older conservative relative opening his strong-headed mind about an issue that rankles your hackles. Unfortunately, you can't just stand up and say, "Grandpa, you're full of shit."
  
  
• The cranberry sauce is good, but we probably didn't need to make three kinds of it. I predict that the next time I visit my mom, she'll still have cranberry sauce in a Glad container in the back of the fridge.
  
  
• I don't know how anybody manages to function without a post-turkey nap. Today I've been without one and am furiously battling to stay awake until we can enjoy my mother's hot tub. My cousin also wishes to humiliate me at Dance Dance Revolution some time this weekend. I need that sweet tryptophan knock-out to put up with all these stressful events.
  
  
• I wanted to put another line from Adam Sandler's "Thanksgiving Song" as the title to this post, but nobody seemed to get the last one. Somehow, I doubt "Can't Believe Tyson Gave That Girl VD" would elicit the desired response.
  
  
• Despite my grousing, Thanksgiving still rules.

We're all sitting around the dinner table when my uncle grabs his son by the head, palming it like a basketball.

"Do you know what this is?"

"No." My cousin is obviously bored with the whole routine, biding the time until he can return to the bedroom to his PlayStation.

"It's a brain-eating monster. Do you know what it's doing?"

No answer this time. He might know what's coming, but the rest of us don't.

"Starving!"

Ah, family, how I've missed you.

What is up with the wives of my old friends tracking me down all of a sudden?

I don't exactly make myself difficult to find on the Internet. I maintain this site, I practically live on LiveJournal, I have a Flickr account and an Amazon wishlist and a Yahoo page that's so woefully outdated I still sporadically get date requests. I've even created an account on Myspace because everybody uses it, even though it allows those people to stab me in the eyes with their page layouts. Basically, I want to be found, and I'm glad it happens -- but I expected it to be by the guys I've befriended in the past, not their significant others.

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised it's the women reaching me. Survey memes aside, there's never been a question as to whether I get along with women better than men. I've only had female dogs, almost all of my roommates have been women, and as I've touched on girls were my friends as early as elementary school. In fact, my longest and most constant friendship in the world (even though we only get to hang out maybe once every other year) is with a girl I met when I was eight years old. My relationship with Jenny is warm, true, and miraculously uncomplicated, whereas most of my male friends have phased in and out with the tides.

But now they re-emerge, through the embodiment of their feminine counterparts. I'd like to say they're glad to find me, and wish to participate in sharing and conversation as in the past, but mostly I'm chalking up this phenomenon to spousal encouragement. (Please note I did not say "nagging." I would never call it nagging, because I am possessed of a wife myself, and there exists a possibility that through extrapolation and comparison on her part upon reading this entry, I'd go home to disgruntled unamusement -- again, note, not a "guilt trip.") And, perhaps not so oddly, the women are the ones with whom I more frequently converse.

Right now, in fact, I'm IMing with the fiancee of my high school best friend. We first met at his sister's wedding, and it took this woman all of two minutes to take a shine to me. By contrast, he and I played together for nearly a year in elementary school before we realized we were friends.

My befriending by betrothed and brides isn't limited to meatspace, however -- it happens in online venues as well. One of my old college friends has long since dropped off the planet, but his wife is obviously well and sound, as evidenced by her recent out-of-the-blue message to me. I've never even had the opportunity to meet the woman -- I attended their wedding, but had to cut out before the reception to go to work. And yet here she is, finding entry into my life.

Not that I'm complaining. I never mind making new friends, or uncovering old ones. And as a human being, any interest in oneself is nice to receive, whomever the delivering party. Still, my brain can't help but shout, "Who are you women and where were you before we were all married?"

First and foremost, I'm posting to get the one that talks about that college team with the toothy mascot and the basketball championship off my front page. As evidenced by the ads, Google apparently thinks I'm their No. 1 fan, so to cleanse myself I must excise said post and carefully avoid referring to the blue-and-orange scaly swamp demons of Gainesville by name in this one. I was talking about the New Mexico Lobos, Google, flash my cred there!

With that out of the way, we can continue. I'm sure you haven't noticed that I finally added the music page. That's because I'm a boring Web site maintainer whose internal pages do not change very much. You clicked on it the first time, shouted "BROKED!" and went elsewhere. Well, now it's there, and you can endure my boring musical anecdotes.

More usefully, I've finally created the recipe CSS, so now if you go to the cooking page you'll find my most famous dish available for theft. The chili has been a legend among certain circles, and even though I've put the recipe (what little I have of one) online in a previous format, this is a bit easier to digest. I'm also experimenting with how to put together a cookbook, and this layout is the first step.

When all I do for a whole post is talk about this site, you know NaBloPoMo is starting to wear me down. A holiday and a family vacation should give me some fresh ideas. Or else I'm screwed.

P.S. Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Bill Nelson, Bill Richardson, Hillary Clinton. I know, it's drastic, but now I have to get that evil blonde bitch out of my ads somehow.

Dear Ken Hughes,

If it's so important that I return your not-a-sales-or-solicitation call, maybe you should give me your actual phone number. After all, if my call was as important as the automated phone bank would have me think, it would connect me to you, wouldn't it? Either give me your direct line or stop calling me.

Your friend,
Mo

---

Dear adults,

Stop asking children under the age of nine whether they have significant others. It's not funny, and it just makes you look like assholes.

Thanks,
Mo

---

Dear Universal Studios,

You may not be aware of this, but sometimes girls go to your theme parks too. All the Marvel comics characters and fire-breathing dragons and flatulent Shrek dolls are great, but maybe you want to think about some feminine character products other than Betty Boop. It could help bring in the 50% of the population you're otherwise losing to Disney.

Sincerely,
Mo

---

Dear Rachael Ray,

Remember when you used to talk about quick, easy, inexpensive food? That was awesome. I mean, face it, girl, your travels to Italy and your six-dollar ballpark hot dogs and your dining on banana blossom salad in a Hollywood star's personal restaurant is starting to alienate your core audience. We all know you have more money now, but that doesn't necessarily mean you get to rub it in our faces. Stop televising the trips to the Trevi Fountain and get back to showing me how to make eleven kinds of hamburger.

Love,
Mo

Labels: open letters

The second-most culturally incongruous I've ever felt was working at a concession stand at today's Florida Classic.

As a product of Latino and Caucasian upbringings, I've never felt particularly out of place anywhere on this continent. In Puerto Vallarta I look like everybody else, but in Vancouver they talk like I do (though with more "eh"s). I'm not totally inconspicuous in the North -- they do periodically notice I'm not the same homogeneous white as everyone else, particularly when every time I fly through Minneapolis I am "randomly selected" for a more in-depth search of my belongings. For the most part, though, I feel like I fit in.

Not at the Florida Classic. Maybe you're unfamiliar; I'll clue you in. Every year, Bethune-Cookman College and Florida A&M University meet on the neutral ground of the Citrus Bowl to decide which is the state's superior traditionally black college. Whichever band rocks the house louder walks away with the honors. I hear there's a football game, too, when the bands aren't playing.

My hometown of Albuquerque does not have what you'd call a strong African-American community. There were maybe thirty black kids in my 2,500-student high school. Orlando has a greater saturation, but they tend to live on the west side of the city, probably to avoid the rednecks on my side. Working at a black college football game on the black side of the city put me into the greatest saturation of black people I've ever had the opportunity to experience. My drum corps cohort co-workers comprised the most white people I saw all day. There were three Latinos, including me, and only one wasn't working.

They shouldn't, but these situations really make me aware of the color of my skin. Growing up in a town that was about equally Latino and white, I never really gave it a thought. But when I'm surrounded by people who are neither, I suddenly remember that my biraciality does not automatically fit me into every category. I'll be the first to argue there shouldn't even be categories for such a thing, but I can't do anything about historical idiocy.

Now you want to know what my most skin-sensory experience was. Try being the only Hispanic in Japan for a year. You want to talk about racial homogeneity ... whoo, baby. They don't even let Koreans in. I saw one Asian woman at the game today, and I almost yelled at her, "Yeah, how do YOU like it?"

Is it denial that keeps sending me back to the Web site of the sports page for my hometown newspaper?

I mean, I live in a city with a robust newspaper. It may not exactly be a paper of record, but the Orlando Sentinel doesn't do any worse for central Florida than the Albuquerque Journal did for New Mexico -- hometown news, local sports, comics that make you want to gouge your eyes out. In fact, the only difference between the two is that the Sentinel is a branch of Tribune Communications, a corporation owned by the Chicago Tribune, whereas the Journal is that rarity, the family-owned paper.

But sports loyalties run deep. And when the Sentinel prints three pages about the Florida football game, I can't help but yawn. I know this puts me at risk of having an enraged Gator Nation showing up at my house and spray-painting my dogs blue and orange, but you can take your Two Bits and shove 'em up your Swamp.

I don't care about the Gators. I don't care that they're in the running for a national championship if USC stumbles. And I especially don't care that Tim Tebow might displace Chris Leak as starting quarterback when the hordes of angry fans finally assassinate the poor kid for throwing one too many interceptions. You people take your college football way too seriously, Gator Nation. And because there's no real paper in Gainesville, guess whose local rag gets to devote 198 inches to your obsession? That's right, mine -- at the expense of my employer's athletic program, a much closer program to said paper than yours, Florida, a program where my loyalties would lie should I care about college sports here.

But. Remember my first but? Gator Nation, Knights of Pegasus, you're too late. My heart belongs to another. It bleeds cherry and silver, and no matter how many times my beloved Lobos make it skip by forcing me to watch close games online, you can never take it from them.

It's not denial that sends me back to Journal Sports every day. Nor is it merely the enormous suckitude of the Slantinel's coverage. It's loyalty. Now I pledge my faith to thee, New Mexico, and never shall I fail. Fighting ever, yielding never. Hail, hail, hail.

With the return of holiday advertising comes that Ferrero Rocher commercial. You know the one, where the cadence of ringing doorbells plays out the tune to "Deck the Halls." As a former wannabe ad creative, I appreciate its skill and subtlety in conveying the message "take our candy to the Christmas party."

The first two notes of the song exactly mimic the pitch of the doorbell. This is great in driving the ad home to humans, but our dogs, pattern recognition whizzes that they are, connect "bing-bong" with "hey, someone else I can jump on and/or pummel with a toy has arrived!" Every single time this spot airs, they sprint to the door, barking their fool heads off, eager to greet our chocolate-toting guest.

On the bright side, it's giving me practice as a parent in saying, "Stop that -- it's just TV, it's not real."

I see some variation of this poster every day. Jennifer Kesse was a much-beloved graduate of the University of Central Florida, my employer. The university is in east Orlando, two miles from my house. So every time I go anywhere, I pass one of these exhortations for vigilance.

Jennifer Kesse disappeared overnight. She spoke with her parents over the phone the evening of January 23. On January 24, she was nowhere to be found. Her car was found abandoned two days later near her condo. Ten months later, she still hasn't turned up.

Back in January, when the story broke, I was sure they'd find gruesome remains in some seedy rent-by-the-week apartment complex on South Orange Blossom Trail, and that the family would be devastated. Come February, I thought that certainly officials in another state -- or maybe another country -- would have details to close the case. By March, I couldn't help but think of another Jennifer -- Wilbanks, the "Runaway Bride" who last spring ducked her wedding in Georgia and ended up in Albuquerque.

But it's November. And she's still not back, and the posters stay up.

Is this a lost cause? Probably. Jennifer Kesse has been missing for almost a year. Her family, her boyfriend, and her classmates have all painted her as a focused, organized, methodical woman; she certainly would have found a way to let them know she was alive by now. At this point, she's either written off her past and started a new life under a new name or she's in a well-concealed grave. Either way, she won't be coming back.

I think this, and I think that the family should put away the huge reward, remove their grieving from the public arena, and move on with their lives. But then I see how much good the Kesse family is doing for public safety and security awareness, especially in such a sketchy area as Central Florida, by continuing to host its events. And then I remember that at one time, Jennifer Kesse was somebody's little girl.

You've been here. You know that I'm about to have a little girl of my own. And if my little girl went missing, I wouldn't hide my grief. I wouldn't remove even the slimmest chance that someone, somewhere, knew where she was and what had happened to her. And I sure as hell wouldn't give up hope that one day she'd walk in the door and say, "Daddy, I missed you."

So I hope -- without malice, without self-interest, without even the slightest consideration that her reappearance will finally get rid of these posters, but purely for the sake of Drew Kesse -- that his little girl will one day walk in that door. He'd do the same for me.

As I'm walking from my car to the office this morning, I spy two construction workers leaning against their truck, taking a break from improving our building. With particulate masks askew on their foreheads, each enjoys the soothing feeling of a post-work cigarette.

There's some irony here if I weren't too lazy to look for it.

I love Thanksgiving. Seriously, it's my favorite holiday. It's Christmas without the greed, which if you think about it is what Christmas really should be. The food, the family, the parade, the nap, the football ... well, not so much because it's always the damn Lions and Cowboys, but at least I can root against those assholes. It's like sedentary happiness bottled for your convenience.

Of course, I love the turkey. Not just the flavor, even though turkey is delicious. The presentation is something to behold as well. There are only a few times of year when it's not seen as gluttony or overworking yourself to take an entire animal, stuff it with bread, baste it with butter and stick the whole thing in the oven until it's golden brown and delicious.

Thanksgiving without turkey is like Cinco de Mayo without a pitcher of blue margaritas, or Friday night without two pizzas. It's just wrong. So of course packagers are trying to make the turkey easier for us. They disassemble the bird and sell its parts, they take white and dark meats and compress them together in one easy-roasting boneless loaf, they sell turkey cutlets and turkey tenderloins and turkey pot pies. But when you only serve turkey parts, you miss out on that iconic presentation that really says, "Hey, this is Thanksgiving, and here's enough meat to subdue an entire village."

So Jennie-O has come up with a solution. The Oven Ready Turkey comes in a cooking bag, and you just pull it out of the freezer, drop the whole thing in a pan, and go to the oven. That's right -- no thawing.

How does it work? Well, here's a guess: the bird is ten percent "solution." I'm not very good at reading ingredients lists, but I'm pretty sure ten or eleven of them are essentially salt and sugar, both of which lower the freezing temperature of water. So you've really got a ten-pound turkey with fourteen ounces of brine injected into it. This means the bird will be capable of thawing in the cooking time alloted it, a process that normally takes three days in the refrigerator or six to eight hours under cold running water.

This should be great for those of us busy people who still want a good Thanksgiving spread. Except I don't buy it. You're basically putting a 12-pound block of ice in the oven and expecting an even simmer with no vapor loss in four hours. By the time the inside of your turkey is even thawed enough to cook, the outside is gonna be toast, I don't care how foolproof (or "FOOL-PROOF™," as Jennie-O's marketing department would have me write it) your oven bag is.

Besides which, the chemical magic required to thaw and cook a 12-pound turkey in four hours simply cannot be good for us. Consider: a four-ounce "serving" of this miracle bird has 370 milligrams of sodium. An entire can of preservative-laden diet soda, often considered the nutritional Antichrist, only has 35. And who eats four ounces of turkey? Man, that's only one slice. Most experts say you should plan on a pound per guest, with more if you want leftovers for a sandwich.

So thanks but no thanks, Jennie-O. I'll stick to the fresh-frozen turkey and brine the sucker myself.

You know, I try to get back into new and modern video games periodically, but sometimes I wonder if it's even worth the effort.

I get the Sunday paper delivered to my house. It's the best one of the week, not just because Sunday is the day when I actually have time to sit down and read the news but because a good 80% of the paper is filler stories and advertisements. Since I don't buy a lot of stuff and don't even go to the stores unless I can't avoid it (I like to think of myself as an "inconspicuous consumer"), this is as close as I get to window shopping. Even though I know I'm not going to buy any of the stuff that makes me drool, I still like to look.

But today I saw this.



It's a piñata game. For the Xbox 360. That costs $50.

Come on, Microsoft, are you deliberately trying to insult me?

"Settle down, girls, it's just a sandhill crane."

"My herbs are jumping right up. I haven't even done anything."

"I feel moldy."

"Today's not cool enough to go to the beach."

"Kucha, your breath smells like a dead armadillo."

"I don't feel like going to Disney World."

"Drive faster, you moron!"

"Screw the local joints, let's just go to Starbucks."

"You know, the Bush family has done a bang-up job of leading our country through times of crisis." (Oh, wait -- I still haven't said that.)

Today I saw little Margarita for the first time.

Honestly, it wasn't as cool as I was expecting it to be. I thought she'd be moving around, doing backflips and jumping jacks like Sed's described in having looked at her five or six times. But the kid was asleep. She did throw a token movement my way, but it was more of a wave of dismissal, as if to say, "All right, here I am, now leave me alone." If I'd had any doubt it was my child, that would have wiped it all away.

I also expected to be giddy at seeing her move. The problem there, though, was I was in a room with four excited women (the mom, the midwife, and two nurses), and you know, there's only so much giddy in the world. They stole it all before I even got to bounce. It was still amazing, though, watching something I'd previously thought of as a stagnant feeder (like a lamprey, or a sprig of mistletoe) announce to the world that yes, ladies and gentlemen, there's a real little person in there.

What was most disappointing, though, was the sonogram machine. The hospital Sed works in is brand new, and as such they have all new state-of-the-art equipment. The pictures she's brought home from previous viewings are all sharp and distinctly contrasted -- you can actually make out facial features on the twelve-week profile. Whereas if you look at this picture, you can kind of ... sort of ... not really see at all the difference between the fuzz of the baby and the fuzz of everything else.



"That's not my baby," I said. "That's the thing that burst out of the TV in Poltergeist."

Fortunately for me, it's not like Sed has limited access to the good machines. Next week, I plan to visit her at work (hopefully, one night when it's not so busy) and see my daughter for really real.

The Internets are abuzz with delight at Donald Rumsfeld's resignation, but I feel sorry for the guy suddenly being out of a job. Never fear, though; I know just the position for him. After all, there's a wall that needs building down south, and it's got to have some means of internal support.

I was eating some saltines at work today, and I went to put the package away, but I ran into a conundrum.

I seem to remember, when I was a kid, that the saltines used to have a little wire clasp in the box so you could seal your crackers up. But I didn't get one in this box! And if you don't close up the sleeve, the moisture gets in there, your crackers get stale, and you have to throw them away.

What's in a saltine, anyway? Basically flour, water and salt, right? A five-pound bag of flour costs $1.95, and since the box of saltines is 16 ounces it's gotta be less flour than that. Let's estimate 14 ounces, about two and a half cups. So a box of saltines uses 34 cents worth of flour -- but really, it's less because the saltine factory is buying it wholesale in 80-pound sacks. Water and salt are even cheaper than that. But they can't afford the extra penny's worth of wire and plastic so I can reclose my sleeve?

Yes, I realize the box of saltines itself costs me a whopping $1.55. But it's the principle of the thing! If I want to keep my saltines fresh, I should be provided with the ability to do so! They're forcing me to waste perfectly good crackers and buy more! Damn the man! Save the saltines!

I finally just twisted the sleeve shut and set it back in the box twist down, so the weight of the crackers holds it closed and thereby keeps the air out. Suck on that, Saltine Man! You won't be bleeding me of my hard-earned pennies!

I got scolded in the comments of my last post for not caring about Florida education. Let me clarify: What I don't care about is how they opt to hold schools accountable. That's the issue at stake with these candidates; whether the state keeps the FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test) or switches to something else.

The Democrats feel that the FCAT rankings make poorly-performing schools feel like failures, thus setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the failing schools can never un-brand themselves of the F they've been given. The Republicans think the FCAT works great -- after all, Florida schools get ranked in the top ten nationally year in and year out.

A standardized test never accurately judged how smart a kid is, though. And whether they keep or toss the FCAT, it's not really going to change how teachers prepare their curricula. Margarita will never take it, anyway; instead, she'll be breezing through the joke that is the New Mexico State Competency Exam, sleepwalking through classes in the state whose schools and students usually rank 49th -- or worse. So forgive me if I turn my attention to where educational improvements are really needed.

I stopped to vote this morning on my way to work. I may not like the candidates, but I believe strongly in the democratic process and vote in every major election. Besides, every race has a reason for me to lean one way or the other.

The U.S. Senate and House races were no-brainers. Both Republican candidates are cronies of George W. Bush, for whom I wouldn't vote if he were running for secretary of the Glee Club. In fact, the Senate Republican is none other than the infamous Katherine Harris, she of 2000-election-Florida-vote-seizing fame. The Democrats may have nothing going for them other than "Republicans suck," but these ones really do.

I had a hard time caring about the local races, though. The main issue with the local candidates is education, which doesn't matter to me -- for one, by the time I have a school-age child, I'll be long gone; and secondly, even though Florida is like number six in the nation in terms of standardized tests, it hasn't made Floridians any smarter. It's supposed to be a big deal who replaces Jeb Bush as governor, but Charlie Crist and Jim Davis are the same guy (Crist has better hair, but Davis is less of a homophobe).

For the record, I'm unaffiliated with any party. I used to be a registered Democrat, but then they stopped having ideas. When we first registered in Florida, I told the lady I'd be independent, but apparently there's such a thing as the Independent Party, which is some bullshit to rope in unsuspecting dissenters if I ever heard it.

The thing about the two major parties is that they're the same. On the grand political slidey scale between fascism and anarchy, the Republicans fall just left of the center, and the Democrats are a wee nudge left of that. It's just that the Republicans love Jesus. Oh, do they ever love the Jesus. They oughta change the name to the Jesus Party. Don't get me wrong; the Democrats love them some Jesus too, at least when they're stumping for votes in the heartland. But the Democrats aren't the ones letting their love for Jesus affect the law.

Eleven states have passed laws against gay marriage. Eleven. I'm pretty sure the thirteenth, fifteenth, eighteenth and twenty-fourth amendments have something to say about equality. But here's the sad part: In the land of the free and the home of the brave, we require a Constitutional mandate telling us to respect the rights of all races, sexes, and ages. But there's no amendment protecting the gay people yet, so hooray! A group we can legally persecute! Quick, let's get the anti-gay amendment in before someone notices! (I can point to the nineteenth as an instance when even that didn't work.)

Real Republicans don't pass laws saying who can and can't get married. The original stated mission of the Republican Party (I'm paraphrasing, since I wasn't there) was to minimize the role of the federal government in our everyday lives, to let the states have carte blanche in terms of law. Does that sound like our ruling party to you? The Democrats are supposed to be the ones making stupid laws and throwing money around. I can't help but laugh at the role switch.

So maybe that makes me a Republican. Hey, since the party is sliding ever farther left into Stalin/Hitler territory, somebody might as well fill the warm spot they're vacating.

Last night I beat The Legend of Zelda for the first time.

All those years ago when we had a Nintendo, I actually didn't get to play very much. My brother and I shared the controller, and you know how it is trying to play video games with someone so very much better than you -- he takes Mario all the way to World 8-1 before biting it on a cheap shot from a Hammer Brother, whereas I make it almost to the end of 1-1 before Luigi falls down that hole between the stairs.

He didn't like it, either, that his video game skill was leaps and bounds above mine, because it meant we weren't playing together. And so the games he picked out for us were of the pathetically easy sort so I could keep up; board games and racers and the like. For quite some time, my favorite game was Anticipation, because without cliffs, enemies, holes in the floor or any reason to use the D-pad, I could actually win.

But that meant I missed out on a lot of the classics, the icons of gaming. I consider myself a classic gamer -- I still have an original Sega Genesis -- but without playing these games I feel like a poseur. But we sold the NES years ago in upgrading to a Nintendo 64, and sadly, now they're hard to come by. Unless you use the mystical world of the Internet. No, I'm not downloading ROMs! That would be wrong! And if I were, I would certainly delete them when I was done playing! Stay in school, kids! (This message brought to you by the RIAA, the FBI, and the Federation To Keep Mo Out Of Prison.)

Yes, I used a walkthrough to beat Zelda. No, I'm not ashamed of that. Not really, it wasn't as hard I thought it would be. Maybe, I plan to take on the second quest. Damn right, this construction has become difficult to maintain.

But there are still so many games I need to play through, and Zelda seems easy by comparison. I can get Mario to World 3-3 now, but those holes just suck him down, I swear!

Those of you inquisitive enough to check my links probably noticed the music page doesn't work. There's a reason for that -- I'm lazy. But it goes beyond that.

I had the music page on the first incarnation of my personal Web site, back in 1995. I'd just started college then, and was still deciding whether I wanted to be reviled for being a hard-hitting journalist or a perfection-driven band director, and both took up residence in my online persona. (In fact, my first screen name was "MoyaSax.") Writing has always been my real passion, though, so it eventually won out. Then again, the noisy, apathetic, untalented kids going for an easy A didn't help music's cause.

Nonetheless, I kept playing all the way through college, kept learning, and eventually became the second-ranked jazz saxophone soloist at UNM. (As a non-music major. That pissed a lot of people off.) I served as an unofficial section leader in the marching band and pep band, too, by my sheer energy and amount of time served. Outside school, I had a few side projects, but nothing ever got off the ground. That should have been a sign.

The music just stopped when I graduated. Not having an ensemble for which to rehearse meant I had no impetus to practice (I'd never been the type to go home and work on scales or arpeggios or -- God forbid -- long tones), and so my horn got put aside. I'd pick it up once or twice a year, but even that wasn't the same. It wasn't the music I missed, but the group, and that's hard to come by in the real world. When I realized I hadn't participated in a new ensemble in over two years, I took that section off my Web site.

I don't know if you were ever a band geek. You might have been in band, but if you flinched when I called you a band geek, you weren't one. Acceptance of the label is the true sign. And if you're old enough to have aged out of damn near every ensemble through graduation, attrition or just plain yearsiness, you recognize that empty spot inside that used to be reserved for your band. It's like, OK, I've spent the last nine years of my life devoted to this group, but since I can't be in it anymore, now what?

Sometimes you keep your chops up, but more often, the horn gets pushed under the bed, or stashed on the closet shelf in your old bedroom at your parents' house, collecting dust. You keep telling yourself you're gonna start again, but things come up ... you're tired from work, your spouse needs to sleep, your dogs chased a frog into the house again and you need to trap it and take it out. These things become barriers between you and your music, and the longer you wait, the bigger the barrier gets.

I'm proud to say that as of today, I've climbed my barrier. I'd tried to join a community band in Albuquerque, but just rolled back down because they rehearsed on nights I had to work. But here in Orlando, I've discovered a group that not only plays, but marches too! My dream of being in an all-ages marching band has finally come true -- only don't call Heatwave Drum and Bugle Corps a "band" in front of the directorship. It means I have to learn a whole new instrument, but I'm more than willing to tackle that challenge.

So this afternoon I went to the first rehearsal of the 2007 season. They handed me a mellophone and a folder full of music, and I cacked my way through two hours of warm-ups and sightreading. It's only the fifth or sixth time I've played a horn with valves (I know trombone too), and only the second time I've touched a mellophone in my life. But they're understanding, they're willing to let me practice, to help me out, to get me up to speed. At the same time, they're pushing me, which is really what I need to make me practice.

So now, my lips are shot, my shoulders hurt, and my head is throbbing a little from reaching for those high notes. But that hole inside me? It feels like something's growing there again. And eventually it'll make something grow into that broken link on the side of my page.

I'm not ashamed to maintain a LiveJournal in addition to this blog. Sure, it's sort of an emo teenybopper poseur thing to have now, but I jumped on the bandwagon before it existed (though just barely too late to not have to pay for full access). In fact, my LJ has been active for so long, I feel like I'd be slighting my friends who read it if I gave it up altogether and focused on this blog.

But sometimes LJ slights me. Today, when I went to respond to a comment, I got the following error message:


A power loss event? Damn, I wish I'd known about it -- I would have tried to get tickets! But it probably wouldn't do any good; no doubt they gave them all to the "early adopters," anyway.

Election season is in full swing, and The Morning News recently proposed a contest to create campaign signs for fictional characters. Now, there's nothing I enjoy more than engaging in some graphical tomfoolery. (Except for food, band, and events that are not suitable to the tone of this blog, especially if my mom is reading it.) However, the contest required you to actually post your sign for your entry to count.

My neighbors are not known for their senses of humor. Right now there's a battle regarding some cats that live in the nearby woods. One household is feeding them and allowing them to propagate, which encourages them to stay close while vastly increasing their ... well, to maintain the aforementioned tone, let's just say the end of the street smells like a giant litterbox. To me, it's a minor inconvenience -- when I don't want to smell cat ... output, I use a startling new technique called "going inside." But the rest of the street is ... uhm, urinated. Reactions have varied from calling animal control to sitting in driveways with pellet guns, waiting for little Fluffy to squat in the flower bed.

So I didn't want to evoke a reaction (or a broken window) with a sign. I very carefully flew the U.S. flag a week before I hung out the Jolly Roger for the same reason. But when the submission deadline was extended, I thought I might as well at least PhotoJob up some signs, if not to enter then for my own amusement.



This one was the most obvious. Actually, I thought of the Hardy Boys first, but couldn't figure out what Joe would run for and didn't need to start a sibling war when all the Bayport ladies started flocking to Frank's side, Callie Shaw be damned.



After I'd already saved and uploaded it, I realized this sign would have been funnier with a much higher district number. We're talking about school in outer space here.

The very first idea I had when I read the article, though not technically for a fictional character, had to come out too.



And you know something? Between Charlie "Jesus Now" Crist, Jim "No-Show" Davis, and good old No. 13, I think we might have a shot at something here.

Now that the Tigers' shot at a trophy has come and gone (but much later than usual this year), I am literally champing at the bit for basketball to start in earnest. (Yes, literally -- I wish my wife didn't make me wear this thing.)

I was never really into sports as a kid. While the other guys traded baseball cards and tackled each other on the dirt, I stayed off to the side, talking with my best friend Poley. This wouldn't have drawn a second glance, were Poley not a six-inch stuffed penguin I carried everywhere until I was in fifth grade. Naturally, the boys wanted nothing to do with Poley, but the girls really liked him, and befriending them so young set me up for two possible scenarios in life:

1. I'd grow up to be a sensitive, caring man who understood what women really wanted; or
   
2. I'd be gay.

Fortunately for my beat-up-ability quotient, in middle school I started to grow. As I got bigger and more coordinated, and could no longer be mercilessly brutalized by kids twice my size, I found sports fun. While I enjoyed baseball, archery, and the game that let me nail my best friend in the eye with a Nerf football on purpose, my favorite quickly became basketball.

Don't worry -- this post isn't me reminiscing about how we could've won State if the coach had just put me in. I only played one year of organized ball, in a rec league, and my coach was so terrible that we would have lost even if he didn't put me in. Yeah, I wasn't very good. I could make a lay-up on the hoop in my driveway if nobody was guarding me and no one was looking and the wind was just right. But I kept watching the game, and I kept playing against my friends, and I got better. I'm no LeBron, but now I can dribble, rebound, pass, and even score sometimes.

My true involvement with hoops is as a fan. I played in the pep band for nine years, through high school and college, and almost single-handedly turned both organizations into loud, proud rooting machines. At one point, the mascot told me she could hear me yelling in the locker room. Just think of me as one big athletic supporter.

Now, I pick my passion as an individual. The NBA has started up, but those guys are one-on-one robots with minimal sense of team. Give me college hoops any day. The women's game is actually my favorite, and it's not just because they're girls in shorts running around. (That doesn't hurt, though.) College women play the most fundamentally sound basketball -- while it may not be explosive (Candace Parker is the exception, not the rule), it's crisp, it's solid, it's competitive, and it's a good way to learn about the sport. Plus I can get a season ticket for what it would cost me to get into one Magic game.

The games won't start in earnest for another couple of weeks, though. Until then, I guess I'll practice my lay-ups. Poley will spot me.

You wanna hear a cool ghost story? Yeah, yeah, I know, Halloween was yesterday. But today is the original real deal, el Dia de los Muertos. It's the day when the Aztecs believed the dead came back to visit, and Halloween evolved from their rituals of donning elaborate masks and providing food for the departed.

Like I said yesterday, I'm not a big Halloweenie, but last night I lit a candle and left out a plate of fajitas and beans for the soul of my great-grandfather, Jose Eduardo de Santa Cruz de Moya. And here's the creepy part: when I woke up, the food was gone!

Now I just need to freshen the air somehow -- ghosts smell like burnt dog hair. And I'm sure Kucha's missing whiskers are only a coincidence.