Category: Misc

The Vanishing Date

I wrote one of the many ghost story endings appearing in The Morning News today.

Encyclopedia Brown For District Attorney

Speaking of The Morning News ..

TMN and I are holding a contest, in which we’re asking participants to make a display campaign paraphernalia for fictitious candidates. And while the event has attracted considerable notice on Teh Intarwebs, it grieves me to report that submissions have been scarce.

The deadline for submissions was supposed to be today, but they have extended it to November 3rd. Also, all participants now get buttons!

I’ve heard a few people say that they would participate, but they lack a “large-format printer.” The assumption, apparently, is that I used one of these new-fangled contraptions to print out the examples. Honestly, I don’t even know what a large-format printer is. My signs were mocked up in Microsoft Publisher; printed out, section by section, onto normal-sized pieces of paper; and then taped onto a real political sign that I had appropriated from a local median. (Fun fact: in Seattle it’s illegal to place political signs on medians, traffic circles and other conspicuous roadway locations, so if you filch one from one of these locations, you are actually enforcing the law.) I realize that sounds like a lot of work, but, honestly, I made all three signs shown in less than an hour. And you don’t even have to go this route, if you don’t want to: handmade signs are welcome. In fact, my favorite of the signs we’ve received thus far is a pen-on-posterboard affair.

Also, you are not limited to political signs. Although that’s what I made by way of example, the contest calls asks you to create a “sign, banner, flier, etc,” so less ambitious stuff is certainly acceptable.

Anyway, I know you guys are a literate bunch, so please send something in if you have the time and inclination. Plus, TMN gets a lot hits and they’ll include a link to your site along with your entry, so this is a perfect way to simultaneously showcase your creativity and drum up traffic.

A Modest Proposal

Last week I heard a radio commercial for Fred Meyer advertising Christmas decorations. They spent most of the 30 seconds justifying their decision to unleash the yuletide juggernaught in October. “As you get older, your family gets bigger,” the announcer said. “Which means you need more time to prepare for the holidays. So, see? We’re only hawking these dancing Santas nine weeks early as a favor to you!”

Sure enough, I stopped by Fred Meyer this morning to grab another bag of candy (I ate all the ReeseSticks — saw-whee), and found the “Seasonal” aisle cram-packed with wrapping paper, artificial trees, and wreaths — and no candy, except for a few picked over bags of sugarfree gum and Hershey BigYuk Bars (semi-sweet chocolate with creamy asparagus filling).

American holidays have become like suburban strip malls, expanding outward to the point where they’ve merged into one continual year-long festivity. I have no doubt that the Fred Meyer guys have Peeps and Easter Basket grass all queued up, ready to put on display come November 12th.

Why don’t we just make up a new holiday: Tomorroween. Tomorroween is the holiday which, regardless of the date, falls the day after today, the one where people exchange gifts, eat candy, send cards, drink alcohol, bake pumpkin pies, set off fireworks, plant trees, put colored lights on the eves of their house, wear costumes, buy roses for their loved one, and fly the flag. Stores could just have an aisle devoted to Tomorroween merchandise, and never have to rotate their stock; the guys who make M&Ms could stop changing the color of their candy every three months (black & orange in October, red & green in December, shades of pastel in March).

And maybe, in exchange for Tomorroween, we could ask the stores to keep their mitts off our Holidays. Wouldn’t that be a treat?

Squirrelly in the Punk’in Patch

Apparently I have been “tagged” with an “Internet” “meme.” I don’t generally do these, but the tagger, Mother Reader, was kind enough to play along with my silly little game, so I feel obliged to reciprocate.

Five Little Known Things About Me

1. Upon taking the first sip of carbonated beverages, my body responds with a little hiccupy-spasm. When I was young and still getting used to this quirk, I would routinely take a swig from a Big Gulp and then do a Jack-Tripper-like spit take, spewing Pineapple Crush onto all nearby. Now I take a small sip and wait out the reaction before quaffing the rest.
2. I refuse to watch trailers for movies I intend to see. If, while in the theater, they show a trailer for an upcoming movie that I have the slightest interest in, I will turn my head away from the screen, stare at the floor, and aggressively think about Catherine Keener in an attempt to avoid hearing the dialog. I have, in my travels, met two other people who also do this, and we cannot figure out why the rest of you don’t. “Who’d want to see the best scenes before the movie comes out??” we ask each other rhetorically, and then sadly shake our heads.
3. I do not pronounce my Ls correctly. I make the sound in the back of my throat, rather than by touching the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth. I was given speech therapy as a child but, as with the soda spasm, I eventually just figured out how to work around it, and when it got the point where no one could tell the difference they stopped trying to correct it. Still, it has a few practical ramifications: when choosing names for our child we steered cleared of those that contained Ls. Curiously, I make the L sound correctly when singing, reading aloud from a book, and shouting “Devil! Devil! Devil!’ at passing cars on the corner of 5th and Pine.
4. I think hate crime legislation is stupid. If one guy punches another it’s assault and should be treated as assault — I don’t care what words he was saying at the time. More to the point, hate crime legislation pegs the severity of the punishment to what the assailant is thinking at the time he commit his crime, and I don’t think the government should be in the business of regulating thought — even the thoughts of ignorant idiot assholes. This fact is “little-known” about me because, whenever I mention it while around my liberal Seattle friends, they’re heads tend to asplode. And that’s a total drag, as most of my clothes are dry-clean only.
5. Speaking of assault … (Fun fact: all the best stories start with the phrase “speaking of assault”). I have only once, as an adult, punched a guy. Except, I didn’t. I was in my early 20’s and working on a Conservation Corps crew. We all gave each other copious amounts of shit — heaping slander and slur upon each another in the name camaraderie — and no one ever took offense at anything. But one time my coworker Paul said something that made me see red. I don’t recall what it was — in fact, I can even imagine what it could have been, given the stuff I do remember simply laughing off at the time. Whatever it was caused me to go berserk: and I took three quick steps toward him, cocked my fist back, and started to throw a punch. But then the tiny part of my brain that was still rational pointed out that this would almost certainly result in the loss of my job, and not having a job seemed like a bad thing at the time. (What can I say? I was young and foolish.) So I arrested my swing and, instead, kicked him in the shin like an petulant, eight year-old, be-ponytailed-girl. And Paul, who could have easily kicked my ass (did I mention he was an ex-con?), looked down at his shin for a moment, dumbfounded, and then looked at me, and said “Dude, what the fuck?” And I was, like, “Whoa! I do not know what just happened to me there!” And then we laughed and went to work. Because, in the best of worlds, this is what young men do.

Do all graduating high schools classes have a “senior song?” Or is this just something we did out in the suburbs to compensate for the lamentable fact that were we raised in the suburbs?

My buddy Matt and I lobbied hard for “Road To Nowhere” by the Talking Heads. But, in the end, the popular kids convened a secret meeting and chose this.

I’m not bitter. But I would like to point out that our selection has proven to be more considerably accurate than theirs.

I’m going to write a psychological thriller for the blind. It’s not all plotted out yet, but I have a great, surprise ending: the last Braille letter will be replaced with a thumbtack.

Apparently Iceweasel — a fork of the popular Firefox browser — is in need of a logo. So I thoughtfully created one for them. What a nice guy.

No more dropping pianos onto the heads of infidels, alas.

BUSH BRINGS MUCH NEEDED HUGS, FROWNY FACES TO NEW ORLEANS

BELEAGUERED CITY’S DEPLETED SUPPLY OF PLATITUDES ALSO REPLENISHED

President reassures horrified nation: “Trent Lott’s home will be rebuilt.”

Regular readers of this website know that I am no fan of the Bush Administration, but the situation in New Orleans beggars belief. I’m so outraged I can barely think straight. Bad enough that the White House (again!) ignored repeated warnings of impending disaster and (again!) diverted necessary resources to its wealthy patrons and ideological hobby horses, but the federal response to the catastrophe is like a goddamned cabaret show.

Conservatives often justify the slashing social programs to fund corporate tax cuts by saying, “A rising tide raises all boats.” Well, the tide rose folks, and this is the result.

I’m glad that the act of giving birth has not come to be known as “going number three.”

On this day in 1862, the fine people of Puebla invented mayo — or, as we call it in English, “mayonnaise.”

Thanks Mexico! Without you our turkey sandwiches would be a lot drier.

Just for the record, I, Matthew Baldwin, as of 7:30 AM, May 04, 2005, still do not own a cell phone.

I want to document this fact in case, at some future point, there’s a dispute about who exactly was the last person on Earth to acquire one.