Packrat papers: Backsliding bigtime

Hopeless. I am hopeless.

There I was, minding my own business, strolling into the library to return the latest load o' books and WHAM. I'm face to face with the Bag Day finale of the Friends of the Library book sale. The counter lady locked eyes with me and smiled a beguiling smile. She slowly slid me a lovely, big, clean paper bag. She purred: "Fill it up for just a dollar. Anything you can fit in there, the whole bagful is a dollar. You can have as many bags as you want."

I felt my pupils dilate and my brain disengage, and I watched my quivering hands reach for the bag. A small line of drool dribbled from the corner of my mouth. That's the last thing I remember before coming to at home with my arms aching from the weight.

So. Now I have more books. I don't even remember what I bought. Want to watch over my shoulder as I unload the loot? OK, then, here we go ...

The one on the top is Mundome, by A.G. Mojtabai. "A story of schizophrenia, at once haunting and horrifying ... a stunning short novel." Well, that looks good.

The Turtle Warrior, by Mary Relindes Ellis. I've heard that's a good one, too.

Late Bloomer, Melissa Pritchard. OK, this looks whacky enough to be a fun beach read.

Spotted in France, Gregory Edmont. This thing is about a guy traveling around France on a Vespa with a dog. What was I thinking?

Whad'ya Know, by Michael Feldman. I like the show. Could be amusing.

Everyone Is Entitled to My Opinion, David Brinkley. Promising. He's one of my faves.

God's Banker, Rupert Cornwell. This is a nonfiction account of a particularly colorful banking scandal that involved the Vatican's finances, mentioned in The DaVinci Code. I'll need to be in nerd mode to read this one, but it could happen.

The Pigeon Project, Irving Wallace. I like Irving Wallace. "What would happen if every human being presently on earth could live to the age of 150 -- or more?" Good question.

In the Words of Great Business Leaders, Julie M. Fenster. Good addition to my reference shelf. You never know when you'll need a good business quote.

Protect and Defend, Richard North Patterson. Amy Tan says it's "an important novel on passion and politics." What's not to love about passion and politics?

Points of Light, Linda Gray Sexton. Oops. Chick lit? We'll see.

Making Picture Books, A Method of Learning Graphic Sequence, Stephen F. Gordon. Because I harbor a secret desire to write children's picture books. And I wish I could draw. This was a dumb one.

The bag is now, mercifully, empty. Wish I could say the same for the floor space around my bookshelves.

Hmmm.

Have you seen the TV ads for a new version of Jim Cramer's cable show, Mad Money? They haul him out of a padded cell in a straight jacket and promise he'll be appearing soon on NBC to help you pick stocks.

The guy is smart and popular, and may be OK as a stock picker, but is this really the image of a guy you want to trust with your money?

I'm just sayin'.

Game over

I suppose everyone's heard by now that the game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has been re-rated for Adults Only and has been pulled from some major distributors' shelves. It strikes me as ironic that murder, mayhem, gangs and drugs are OK in a game, but S-E-X knocks it into "Adult" territory. At any rate, good riddance.

An excellent argument can be made that if adults consider playing Grand Theft Auto to be a worthwhile use of their time, well, so be it. To each his own. (However, I do wish these adults came with prominent warning stickers, so the rest of us could steer clear.)

The problem is, we have to depend on these same people to keep the game away from children. From conversations I hear among my kids' friends, children as young as seven are playing this thing, often alongside their parents.

It is too much to expect restraint from any branch of the entertainment industry; after all, they make wads of money selling sex, shock and violence. But maybe they'd think of something better if we adults would just quit buying it.

Would you like to play a game?

I found this on the Web today and I'm already addicted: Chaos Theory. You just choose a contact spot, start things in motion and wait to see what happens. Kind of like bowling, but without the yucky shoes. (To begin, just move the cursor over the Asian writing until you hit a hot spot and click. It probably says something like "Start.")

When you've mastered that one, move on up to Planarity.

What can I say. I'm easily amused.

Something new to worry about

You know how it is when you get a song stuck in your head, how helpless and frustrated you feel? How you'd just about drive a nail into your own brain if it meant you never, ever again had to hear, say, the OompaLoompa song rattling around in there? Well, this just in from the Could Be Worse Department, courtesy of the New York Times: Neuron Network Goes Awry, and Brain Becomes an IPod. 

Wow. Sucks to be them.

Duck joke

Want to know a dirty little secret? I love duck jokes. I know, I know. But I can't help it. Here's my favorite:

 

Three golfers are killed in a car crash and, having mostly behaved themselves in life, they go straight to heaven.

When they arrive, St. Peter greets them at the gate and says, "We only have one rule here in heaven: Don't hit the ducks."

So they enter heaven, and, to their great joy, discover that it is one enormous golf course -- but there are ducks all over the place. It is almost impossible to play without hitting one. Sure enough, though they do their best to avoid it, one of the men eventually hits a duck. Poof! St. Peter, who doesn't miss a thing, appears with the ugliest woman the men have ever seen. St. Peter handcuffs this woman to the unfortunate golfer and says, "Your punishment is to spend eternity chained to this ugly woman."

The very next day, the second man accidentally hits a duck. Poof! St. Peter arrives, and with him is another unbelievably ugly woman. He handcuffs the two together and sentences the man to remain chained to her for all eternity.

The third man is determined not to end up like his buddies, so he is extremely careful. He manages to golf for months without mishap. And one day, Poof! St. Peter appears with an absolutely gorgeous woman. He chains the two together without a word and vanishes. The man stares at this goddess, this vision of perfection with whom he will now spend eternity, and says, "Whatever did I do to deserve you?" The woman says, "I don't know about you, but I hit a duck."

Losing it

I've been watching a lot of TV since I got laid off. I mean, A LOT. Mostly C-SPAN and PBS. And I'm here to tell you: This is not a big plus for one's mental health.

For example, I could have sworn I heard very strange things come out of the mouths of some highly rated Wall Street Journal commentators Sunday. Granted, it's the Journal. But still. I actually hallucinated a whole exchange applauding China's proposed purchase of U.S. oil company Unocal via its state-owned company CNOOC.

Stephen Moore may (or may not?) have said: "One other quick point about this is, a lot of people were against the sale, the same people who have been saying for the last 10 years, oh my God, what's going to happen when China sells American assets? Well, here they're buying American assets, so you know, you can't have it both ways. You can't say it's going to be terrible when they start selling off the assets that they own a lot of American, U.S. securities, and then at the same time say it's a tragedy if they buy American assets. To me, better that they're buying our assets than that they're selling them."

Surely, he did not equate China's buying U.S. Treasury securities -- that is, loaning us money -- with China buying up U.S.-controlled oil reserves. That didn't happen, did it?

And I KNOW he did not say "I don't think oil is the strategic resource that everyone thinks it is. I would be much more concerned if the Chinese were talking about taking over, let's say, a high technology company or an aerospace company. But oil is just guck in the ground ... " Yyyyyeah. And blood is just guck in your veins.

Now, Paul Gigot DID say, "Let's take this out of economics to the geopolitical argument, because some people make the case that if you allow CNOOC to buy, take control over these Southeast Asian oil and gas reserves, you're hastening the day when their sphere of influence in Southeast Asia will only increase. Their ability to influence, not just economics, but security events in Southeast Asia, in Thailand, Indonesia, that sort of thing. Is that anything we should be concerned about, Dan?" I'm positive I heard that.

But Dan Henninger could not possibly have replied, "Well, you do have the little matter of the U.S. Navy floating around out in those waters," as if we would cheerfully go to war with China if they got to throwing their weight around. Couldn't have happened. Right? Right? Right...