All aboard for the last ride on the Neighborhood Trolley to the Land of Make-Believe, folks: Mr. Rogers is dead.

The Red Sox play their first Spring Training exhibition game tonight at 7 o'clock against the Minnesota Twins, who surprised everyone last year (including Commission Bud Selig, who had been scheming to eliminate the team) by capturing the American League Central division by a thirteen game margin and then going on to eliminate the favored Oakland A's from postseason contention before being knocked out themselves by the destined World Series winners, the Anaheim Angels, and their now-famous Rally Monkey. Oh, no. We here at the Jersey Exile haven't forgotten the Rally Monkey! I hope the Sox spent some time during the offseason trying to conjure up their own "rally" mascot - how about a bonafide Rally Monster, instead of Wally, the emaciated Phillie Phanatic rip-off - because they sure as hell didn't go out and hire the pitching they needed to field a winning team this year, but rather chose to plug up their defensive holes with more offense, as they've done pretty much every year since hiring Pedro Martinez back in 1998. If the New York Yankees learned anything from their disappointing 2002 playoff performance, it's that dingers alone won't carry the day. That's why owner George Steinbrenner went out and bought two full rotations of starters over the winter, both for his own benefit and to everyone else's disadvantage (The Onion makes a damned good funny about this); and that's why the Yankees front office have been working overtime to stymie our every attempt to land a decent hurler here in Beantown. And true to form, New England Yankee cheapness has kept the folks at Yawkey Way from responding to New York Yankee extravagance, despite the fact that the Sox have changed owners only a year ago, and despite the fact that Red Sox Nation already pays the highest ticket prices in the league and would no doubt endure even higher costs to acquire another ace or two on the mound, if it meant seeing the Bambino's Curse vanquished once and for all. But that's just one Sox fan's opinion.

Hey, speaking of the Phillie Phanatic, it seems he had a run-in with the White House back in 2001:

Don't put president's head in your mouth

White House aides tone down the Phillie Phanatic

What do you get when you mix a humorless White House aide
with a fat, manic, green furry mascot?

Some tense moments, particularly when the Phillie Phanatic
began dancing with the Greater Exodus Baptist Church choir
on the church steps during President Bush's visit on July 4.

"They wanted the Phanatic to stay in one place, which the
Phanatic, who is hyper, has a hard time doing," said Mike
Alexander, a source close to his greenness.

The aide walked over to the Phanatic and said, "Hey, don't
pull any s---."

The aide was probably nervous since, as he told the Phanatic
earlier, another mascot had once put President Bush's head
in his mouth.

"We don't want this happening again," scolded the aide.

The Phanatic explained that it was anatomically impossible
for him to swallow the president's head, although giving him
15 inches of tongue was another matter.

When they did meet, the Phanatic bowed, kissed and hugged
Bush. In deference to the humorless aide, the Phanatic did
not pull his Phillies shirt over the president's head.

How did the Phanatic wind up there in the first place? The
White House called baseball commissioner Bud Selig to ask
for a baseball presence at the July 4 event. Selig's office
called the Phillies and suggested the Phanatic.


Good thing this wasn't after September 11th, or else the Phanatic may have ended up in Guantanamo Bay for pulling any funny business. I hear they just love beisbol down in Cuba...

Standing tough under stars and stripes
We can tell
This dream's in sight
You've got to admit it
At this point in time that it's clear
The future looks bright
On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
Well by seventy-six we'll be A.O.K.

What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free

Get your ticket to that wheel in space
While there's time
The fix is in
You'll be a witness to that game of chance in the sky
You know we've got to win
Here at home we'll play in the city
Powered by the sun
Perfect weather for a streamlined world
There'll be spandex jackets one for everyone

What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free

On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
(More leisure for artists everywhere)
A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision
We'll be clean when their work is done
We'll be eternally free yes and eternally young

What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free

Lyrics by Donald Fagan ("I.G.Y.")

Hey! Cold War irony is useful again...

Tonight, at 9:30 on CBS: My Big Fat Grssk Life.

Someone should tell Hollywood that Σ is an "s", not an "e". You'd imagine that this was pointed out somewhere along the line by Nia Vardalos, creator and star of the new sitcom (as well as the enjoyable hit movie about a Grssk wedding), or one of the myriad Greek actors involved in either venture. Or by Rita Wilson, wife of Tom Hanks and producer of My Big Fat Grssk Wedding, who happens to be half-Greek herself. At least you hope it was brought up. What galls me most about this is that the movie was a sweet and extremely funny celebration of what it means to be Greek, something I've had the greatest pleasure to experience firsthand, thanks to my wife Maria and her very large, very Greek family. Mangling something so simple as the Greek alphabet in the course of promoting a movie about Greeks is silly at best, frightfully ignorant at worst.

Well, at least the show was halfway decent. Καλη τυχη to Ms. Vardalos and her costars! I'll be watching and laughing while I write my angry letters.

Dear Tom Bruno,

A loan that you had requested:

Loan Title: Tomb of horrors : an adventure for character levels 10-14 /
Loan Author: Gygax, Gary.
TN: 61991

is now available for pickup at the Circulation Desk.


Tomb of Horrors! Someone (the City of Mesa Library in Mesa, Arizona to be exact) actually had this vintage Advanced Dungeons & Dragons module, pulled it off the shelves, packed it up, and shipped it all the way across the country so that I could groove on down memory lane. Wow. Back in the days when fantasy roleplaying wasn't something that Hollywood "it" people like Elijah Wood and Vin Diesel would have admitted to dabbling in, even at gunpoint, the original creator of D&D - the one and only Gary Gygax - was still writing the gamebooks and dungeon modules himself. One of these was the infamous Tomb of Horrors, first printed in 1978, an underground adventure that had been specifically designed by Gygax as a deathtrap for high-level characters. I remember when I first ran this game as Dungeon Master. Unlike most adventures written up to this point, Tomb of Horrors was a series of puzzles, requiring players more accustomed to smashing, grabbing, and smashing again to think on their feet, or watch their characters die. Surprise surprise, the latter happened more often than the former with my players, and it didn't take too much carnage for them to decide that this was the worst, most evilly-crafted dungeon module ever; and unlike other adventures, which strangely they enjoyed playing over and over again, even after having "solved" them, they had no desire to ever try their luck with it again. Needless to say, I loved this module. And it's great to take a peek at it again, as I'll be damned if I know what happened to my original copy.

My players probably burned it.

But aside from making a public display of my complete and utter geekiness, I bring up my old D&D days for an important reason. Watching the way George Bush and his Cabinet have been comporting themselves in the face of (rightly) skeptical allies and unfavorable vetoes this past week or so, I couldn't help but find their petulant behavior familiar. Then it hit me. They were acting exactly like my age-old friend back in high school, when we used to play D&D for entire weekends at a time. He was a great player, who approached his character like a Method actor, hurling curses at his enemies, relishing his victories in a grand, high fantasy style, even lurching around the table during a "fight" as he parried imaginary blows and hacked and slashed with an equally nonexistant sword. But one thing he was never good at back then was losing. Not having things go his way - a bad roll of the dice, other players mussing his epic moments, or losing a favorite magical item or piece of treasure - would cause him to fly into a rage and threaten to quit the game. As Dungeon Master, this always put me into an awkward position. Should I mollify my friend to keep him at the table, and undermine not only the good will of the other players (who never caught such breaks) but the integrity of the game itself? Or do I tell him too bad, and risk his berserker wrath? The United Nations and NATO are now finding themselves in a nearly identical bind. The world's most powerful nation doesn't like how the game is turning out, and is screaming bloody murder that if it doesn't get exactly what it wants, it's going to kick us all out of the living room and finish up on its own. But that's not how D&D works, nor is it how international relations in the 21st century should work. In either case, the magic (be it a successful night of gaming or the survival of civilization itself) is only kept alive by a roomful of geeks sitting around a common table, agreeing to abide by the rules, even if the dice don't break their way - especially if the dice don't break their way.

But I don't suppose George Bush played much Dungeons and Dragons, back in the day. Too bad, because unless we figure out a way to stop him, he's about to take our country (and the world along with us) into the Tomb of Horrors...

Forgot to do this yesterday - most of my Thursday morning was taken up by all-library staff meeting, during which (while I was paying attention) I caught a few new snippets of Managerial English I thought I'd share. "Managerial English" is of course an oxymoron. It refers to the neverending stream of buzzwords that infiltrates the minds of middle management, like rainwater makes its way through a ill-shingled roof, leaving unpredictable damage and non-removable stains in its wake. Well anyway, here's the latest batch of words and phrases since the last monthly meeting:

Driver: Impetus, Reason, probably from 'driving force'

"The lack of biscuit manufacturing space is the driver for our new cracker reorganization plan."

Lives: To be located, especially on an organizational chart.

"The Department of Widgets is where the new supervisor lives."

Low-Hanging Fruit: Something that can be done now, with no great difficulty.

"Since the spinal realignment brochure is low-hanging fruit, we can make that our first priority."

I've got to say that I'm not normally fond of Managerial English, but "low-hanging fruit" is uncharacteristically risque for the administrative set. So I'm going to allow it - for now...

The short story is finished - my first completed piece of fiction in over ten years. Woo-hoo!

On a more sublime note this afternoon, I thought I'd share something that a coworker of mine discovered last week while leafing through The Penguin Book of Hindu Names, which someone had borrowed through Interlibrary Loan and returned (this coworker likes to pick through the returns, as do I. Since we work at a medical library, our collection is a little on the dry side, which means anything interesting usually has to be ordered through our office. We also handle a lot of what we call 'courtesy returns' - books checked out from another Harvard library that are returned to our Circulation Desk - since the Medical School is located in Boston, a good haul away from the main campus. Chance finds in the returns pile is one of the quirky perks that keeps me here). He looked up the name Kalpana, which is the first name of Kalpana Chawla, mission specialist on the Space Shuttle Columbia when it was lost during re-entry, and here's what he found:

Kalpana (Sanskrit, Feminine Name)-- imagination; doing; decoration; composition; idea

A beautiful name for one who dreamt beautiful dreams. Hopefully her death - and the death of her comrades - will not have been in vain, and the dreams of space exploration will go on.

North Korea has an untested ballistic missile capable of reaching the western United States, intelligence officials said Wednesday.

As the U.S. continues to inch toward war with Iraq, a jealous and frustrated North Korea is wondering what it has to do to attract American military attention.

The first lead sentence is from the AP Wire, the second from The Onion. We are living in frightening times, indeed, when our best source for satire in America doesn't even have to make up its headlines anymore!

Grr. I lost a post between last Friday and today about "Old Europe" taking its diplomatic revenge on the Bush Administration, but current events are moving so quickly it's hard to zero back in on yesterday's outrage, so let's stick to the present. Colin Powell and the usual gang of blowhard lawmakers in Congress have worked themselves into a froth about France, Belgium, and Germany's recent attempts to halt or at least delay the United States' headlong rush into its first purely imperial war in over a century (more about that when I get a chance, but I've about had it with America's total amnesia of its late-19th century antics and the last time we tried to put together an empire, the fallout of which we are still dealing with, all these years later!). The three nations were responsible for blocking a NATO proposal that would have beefed up fellow member state Turkey's defenses "just in case" Iraq decided to attack its neighbor during the course of a U.S.-led invasion. Never mind that such a prospect is unlikely in the extreme - Saddam doesn't have the military force to defend his own nation against the American armed forces, so it's unclear as to how he'd have any men or material to spare for a retaliatory foray against Turkey - what the Continent found objectionable was the proposal's implicit presumption that war was already a done deal, and that any ongoing attempts to resolve the standoff between the United Nations and Iraq by diplomatic means were effectively (if not officially) at their end. No one is seriously suggesting that Turkey be left to twist in the wind, but that's how it's being spun here in the States. Already the knuckleheads - among them Representative Tom Lantos (D) of California and Representative Henry Hyde (R) of Indiana, proving that chest-thumping patriotic ignorance knows no party affiliation - are charging the French, the Belgians, and the Germans with ingratitude for all the wonderful things we did for them back during World War Two and the Cold War, as if the debt of having America as an ally comes with some sort of eternal interest attached to it that compounds daily. If that weren't bad enough, now the AP Wire reports that Powell, the pols, the pundits, and the Prez are all claiming that this current rift between NATO allies threatens the very alliance itself. Funny, haven't we been hearing the same exact thing about the United Nations? How juvenile has this nation of ours become, that faced with an otherwise friendly nation who happens to disagree with us on some issue or another, we brand them as traitors, threaten to pull out of all of the ties that bind us, and even refuse to take their phone calls, as actually happened to Germany last fall? Have we forgotten the most basic principle of democracy, that the leaders of other nations (however allied) must in the end answer to their own citizens, and not necessarily kowtow to Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush, or the U.S. House of Representatives? How dare the rest of the world make decisions that might not benefit us, first and foremost! These latest tantrums, both at NATO and the UN, are displaying in vivid Technicolor something I've been shouting up and down for years now - America doesn't give a flying fuck about democracy abroad, only that its friends and allies do what they're told, when they're told to do it, with as little lip as possible, thank you very much. What a surprise that this isn't sitting well with the rest of the civilized world, who have put their faith in the democratic process - at our insistence, mind you! - as the way to peace and prosperity for all nations, only to find that the U.S. prefers democracy at home but tyranny abroad when the chips are down.

Oh, and now we're supposed to believe that Iraq and al-Qaeda are in cahoots, based on a new Osama bin Laden tape urging the Arab world to resist an American invasion and calling upon Iraqis to sacrifice themselves as suicide bombers, if need be. News flash, folks - bin Laden wants this war, at least as much as the Bush Administration, if not more so. Rightly or wrongly so, bin Laden believes that the sight of American troops occupying Baghdad, once the jewel of the Arab world, and definitely a symbol of Islam's former heydey, will finally set the Muslim world off on a global jihad against the West. That's all he's wanted from the start. Idiot commentators are trying to figure out why bin Laden would broadcast such a message on the eve of war, since he must know full well that the United States and its "coalition" (read as: England, Australia, and George Bush's parents) would use it as evidence of an Iraqi-al Qaeda link. Wake up, America! When the enemy of your enemy hands you the other enemy's ass on a silver platter, there's often a pretty damned good reason for it.

Bruce Campbell as Elvis, Ossie David as J.F.K., fighting an ancient Egyptian evil that's stalking their East Texas nursing home. No, you're not "tripping" - it's Bubba Ho-tep! Apparently this gem's been kicking around since last fall, making the rounds with the various film festivals and delighting the critics along the way. The next screening will be in Hollywood on Thursday, February 27th at 7:30PM, at the Egyptian Theater (where else?). Once again, I am made painfully aware that I am living on the wrong coast.

British Intelligence apparently plagiarized a California graduate student's paper (containing 12 year old data, no less) in its latest propaganda "dossier" meant to shore up support at home for the America's military adventure in Iraq, the BBC World News reports. Now this is something I'd expect from a self-proclaimed "C minus" Yale alum, but M.I.6? Say it isn't so, England.

Money spent in 2002 by the federal government on NASA:
14 billion dollars.
Money spent in 2002 by the federal government on the military:
330 billion dollars.
Projected cost of potential war with Iraq:
62 billion dollars.
Projected cost of President Bush's 10-year tax cut, per year:
67 billion dollars.

(Figures taken from the Budget of the United States Government Fiscal Year 2003 Historical Tables and CNN.)

Any wonder why NASA has to keep reusing twenty-year-old shuttles until they literally fall apart? Look at the table scraps it's been getting, compared to the U.S. Armed Forces. If the Air Force wants a brand new stealth aircraft, it gets a blank check to develop it, no questions asked; whereas for some reason NASA has to do things "faster, cheaper, and better", and witness the results. Even when a tragedy like the loss of STS-107 illuminates this disparity in a way that Excel charts and a slick PowerPoint presentation to Congress could never manage, the President's response is to mumble something about the astronauts going up to God (which God would that be, Mister President? The God you believe in, who doesn't care for pagans like Kalpana Chawla, Mission Specialist and will damn any Jew - such as Israeli astronaut Ilan Roman - not defecting to Christ's fold at the Second Coming to eternal hellfire? Too bad you didn't elaborate on how you square your beliefs as a born-again Christian with your feelgood, mealy-mouthed platitudes about "The Creator"), and announce that he's going to add a paltry five hundred million dollars to NASA's budget. Never mind that half a billion barely keeps pace with inflation. Saturday morning's disaster has reduced the size of our space shuttle fleet by a quarter, and it's now been made painfully obvious that we as a nation shouldn't be relying on those remaining three spacecraft to take us into a new century of exploration and discovery. It's not fair to NASA to be forced by financial constraints to keep flying a shuttle whose estimated accident rate is one in a hundred, as opposed to the one in twenty thousand odds faced by U.S. combat pilots (this chilling figure from NASA adminstrator Dan Goldin, courtesy of a 2000 article on Space.com), when the field of aeronautical and astronautical engineering has made a whole generation of advances that could be utilized by a new generation of spacecraft. Imagine what could be done if President Bush diverted just a year of tax cuts for his multimillionaire cronies towards building a replacement fleet of shuttles. Or if he chose to forego the costly and unnecessary (and at this point inevitable) war against Saddam Hussein. With a hundred and twenty billion extra dollars, we could have ten new space shuttles, fly to Mars, and still have change left over for social programs, health care, and education. But no. Our commander-in-chief is more interested in the needs of the few - the oil executives, the ultra-wealthy, the pharmaceutical companies - than he is in making the world a better place. So he makes pretend with doing good, promising to fight AIDS in Africa and Asia, for instance, but only offering three billion dollars a year to do it, while earmarking just as much to develop new vaccines to protect American citizens from the as-yet still phantom menace of germ warfare. You'd think a war against an actual disease claiming more lives in Sub-Saharan Africa than the Black Death did in Europe might garner a little more financial assistance from the people who once rid the world of smallpox, gratis. But no. Africa gets a little over three hundred dollars per HIV-infected person (that is, if the pro-lifers allow such a plan to get through Congress, which I doubt, because it will involve distributing such horrible godless things as condoms to help prevent the further spread of AIDS), and that's for treatment and prevention combined. I guess in this context, the "Columbia Seven" didn't die in vain after all - 71 million dollars per fallen astronaut in extra funding is nothing to sneeze at, in these fiscally and socially conservative times.

Space Shuttle Columbia was lost during re-entry over Texas this morning. Terrible news, yes. But surprising? Columbia was first launched in 1981, and is the oldest shuttle in NASA's geriatric fleet (even the "youngest" shuttle, Endeavor, has been in use for over ten years now). There has been growing concern for years that NASA wasn't properly addressing the safety issues involved with relying exclusively on such an antiquated transporation system for our manned missions. The 2001 annual report of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel warned:

The Panel has focused on the clear dichotomy between future Space Shuttle risk and the required level of planning and investment to control that risk. The Panel believes that current plans and budgets are not adequate. Last year's Annual Report highlighted these issues. It noted that efforts of NASA and its contractors were being primarily addressed to immediate safety needs. Little effort was being expended on longterm safety. The Panel recommended that NASA, the Administration, and Congress use a longer, more realistic planning horizon when making decisions with respect to the Space Shuttle.

Since last year's report was prepared, the longterm situation has deteriorated. The aforementioned budget constraints have forced the Space Shuttle program to adopt an even shorter planning horizon in order to continue flying safely. As a result, more items that should be addressed now are being deferred. This adds to the backlog of restorations and improvements required for continued safe and efficient operations. The Panel has significant concern with this growing backlog because identified safety improvements are being delayed or eliminated. NASA needs a safe and reliable humanrated space vehicle to reap the full benefits of the ISS. The Panel believes that, with adequate planning and investment, the Space Shuttle can continue to be that vehicle.

And so here we are. Yes, the NASA suits are already explaining on the 24-hour news networks, the shuttle fleet is old, but that doesn't mean it isn't safe. But the truth of the matter is that NASA, cut to the bone by a Congress increasingly hostile to the original ideals of space exploration, has been forced to make do with less and less every year, and it's beginning to show. Despite the fact that this is only our second manned loss in seventeen years, something already being reiterated in a mantra-like fashion by talking heads on Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN, it's yet another disaster in a string of failures that have plagued NASA over the past few years.

What an awful day.