Small yapping dog

With the St. Louis Cardinals' World Series victory and the winning of the MVP by David Eckstein, there has been and will be more than a little coverage of the scrappiness of Eckstein, who is actually so tiny that he is only made up of eight or nine molecules. For the truth about Eckstein, and jokes that had me actually crying, you must go here. There was some true hilarity. Please, do click. Enjoy.

The wiring is faulty

Greetings all.
Just a quick check to let you know where my head is at. And I don't just mean on top of my shoulders.
What I'm Listening To: Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins "Rabbit Fur Coat." I especially enjoy "Rise Up With Fists."
What I'm Reading: "The Hot Kid" by Elmore Leonard. It's like any other Elmore Leonard book, such as Get Shorty or Be Cool, but its set in the days of cowboys, outlaws and the Klan. Kat and I found it in the bargain bin, so the copy we purchased is the large print for people with hideously poor eyesight. Needless to say, it's a real page-turner as a result.
Humorous sidebar: This evening I was getting into a friend's car, and though it is a sedan, for some reason I thought it was a coupe. As a result, my attempts to get into the backseat from the front seat were wildly unsuccessful. This is merely to teach America's youth about the dangers of paying so little attention.
What I'm Excited About: The upcoming NBA season, of course.
What I'm Going to be for Halloween: I've decided to be David Brent from The Office, although the costume isn't much more than a suit. It's all about the acting job - being arrogant, confused and making ridiculous statements.
What I'd like to get more of: Sleep.

The commenter is always right

Fewer words, more pictures!




















































Photos from Friday's trip to the Outer Banks.
Fun tidbits: We drove through the hometown of Catfish Hunter, saw the homebase for the monster truck Grave Digger and picked up roughly a billion burrs (or as Kat calls them "horrible pokey things") in our pants and shoes during the hike to the top of the Wright Brothers memorial.

Wake County Wanderings

I'm enjoying life here in Cary, North Carolina, thus far. It is a confusing place filled almost exclusively with malls, interstates and neighborhoods with names that sound extremely impressive whether they actually are or not.
Today, we went to the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh to see the traveling exhibition Monet in Normandy, which included 50 paintings by Claude along the French coast. For anyone who can't remember his work or never knew it, this scene from the groundbreaking 1995 film Clueless may help:

TAI : Do you think she's pretty?
CHER : No, she's a full on Monet.
TAI: What's a monet?
CHER: It's like a painting, see? From far away, it's OK, but up close, it's a big old mess. Let's ask a guy. Christian, what do you think of Amber?
CHRISTIAN: Hagsville.
CHER See?

Obviously, the exhibition was very impressive. I really enjoyed the pieces on Rouen Cathedral and those at Manneport, which include arches over the water. The rest of the museum was good, too, especially the contemporary art. One such piece was made entirely of handmade butterflies hung from the ceiling to make a three-dimensional plane with smoke trailing from the back that was actually made of flowers. It's confusing to explain without a photo, which I forgot to take. Apparently, the piece can be read as a commentary on war and how it rarely if ever achieves anything of consequence. However, Kat's dad, being an old Air Force pilot, first loudly exclaimed "Oh, it's an F-18 Hornet, you can tell by the tail." I realized that my dad and likely both of my brothers may have said something similar had they been there.

We also went on a nature walk and saw some of the sights of Raleigh, including its newly-opened main drag, Fayetteville Street. New subdivisions and malls are constantly being built. Kat's dad says every neighborhood has a name (some of my favorites Lochmere Lake, Lochmere Northside, Lochmere, Lochmere Lakeside, MacGregor Downs, de Vintage and many others) and if you ask a young child where he or she lives, sometimes they won't say Cary or Raleigh, instead choosing to say Amberwood Estates with a Scottish accent while puffing on a pipe. Unlike Nebraska or even Arizona (outside of Phoenix) there is no real delineation between one city d another. Cary blends into Raleigh, which seems as though it sort of blends into Durham which blends into Chapel Hill.

On Friday, the plan is to head east to the ocean to see Elizabeth City, where Kat used to live, Kitty Hawk, the Outer Banks and take a ferry or two. It looks like it should be fun. The long strip of land we are going to drive south on is east of Pamlico Sound. It appeas that the ocean is on both sides of you while you're out there. I realize my travel writing leaves much to be desired, but I'm doing the best I can. We'll be making the trip in a Mercedes-Benz sedan that is quite a machine. I get to play with the navigation system, which appears to be pretty fun. The omnipresent woman's voice pronounces mile more like "mall," which is always worth a laugh.

That's all from here so far. Stay tuned for more updates as events progress.

Creeping doubt

As a southern Arizonan, today was sort of like Tax Freedom Day for the rest of the United States. But rather than politicians telling citizens after four and a half months of the year that now all of their wages are going to them rather than to pay for government services for others, today was Air Conditioning Freedom Day. The AC was switched off - although it appeared to have rusted into the on position - for the first time since maybe March or April. When the front door opened, the house actually shifted as air rushed to the back windows, open for the first time in ages. The hope is that AC will not be needed for the next few months and this area will once again be livable. Like any other seasonal annoyance, the heat is seen as merely transitory and not the reason people choose to live here. It is a hardener, a test before one can taste the fruits of passing, a process that makes the endgame more sweet. As temps fall across the country (enough snow to drown a buffalo in Buffalo, air so cold in Minnesota that Garrison Keillor momentarily stopped talking about about playing hide and seek at a family reunion, cold rain falling on cold Air Force cadets yearning for spring and the end of their suffering), each day gets prettier here. However, one should not grow overconfident. Yea, though the winter be mild and a magnet for the aged whose sinewy bodies ache to soak in the temperateness, the sun hides a more serious and deadly season following the next solstice. Inside that ball of gases multitudes of light years away sits in wait the evil that will make some here curse their existence and the existence of others. Each late fall and winter day is a Faustian bargain. Each spring, summer and early fall day is a F---ian trial. But on AC Freedom Day, those thoughts reside not at the front of the cortex, but at the back. For one day, enjoy; for one day, forget.

In other business, I shopped, well more accurately walked around, a mall in Scottsdale called Kierland Commons. In Welsh, Kierland means "word made up by the marketing department to entice people with money to buy overpriced shoes." I was frightened by what I found at this place. Everywhere were tall blonde women unafraid to have a little "work" done swinging large shopping bags and talking about how their husbands are addicted to golf. I'm not allowed to live in Scottsdale because I'm not good looking enough. I'm allowed to enter occasionally because I have a government-issued temporary gawker visa, but there is a movement afoot among the residents to cease using these and require anyone ugly to return to their city of origin. The Scottsdale mayor has talked about the need to seal the border although other mayors in the greater Phoenix area are pushing for a comprehensive solution.

I have my panama hat, sandals and knee-high black socks pressed and folded so that can mean only one thing: you guessed it, The Yumanity is going on vacation. But this isn't one of those vacations where I get away from it all and neglect the reader like those other Web sites. In fact, the posting will be vastly accelerated (Victor Conte hooked me up with some primo stuff) during my trip. The destination is North Carolina. I plan to deliver details of the excursions and also anything interesting that happens. Watch this space for exciting hijinks abroad.

Reading- A Perfect Hell: The True Story of the Black Devils, the Forefathers of the Special Forces by John Nadler. I don't usually go in for war histories but this one seemed interesting. I'm not too far along, but I'll let you know how it goes.
Watching - Belle de Jour, a 1967 film by Luis Bunuel. Apparently, this was an erotic masterpiece, but I think it may be a bit off on both counts. But 1967 was a different time. Paris had a Hilton, but there was no Paris Hilton, so for a full-blooded male in 1967 Catherine Deneuve might have been the very epitome of an erotic masterpiece.
Listening - Scissor Sisters, Ta-Dah. I don't feel like dancing! If you know the song, this may be in your head for the next 27 hours.
Applying - Grass and weed killer. It's judgment day for flora around these parts.
Saying - Goodbye to you, gentle reader. Out.

And now the news

Have you ever had something you had to do, but could not, despite well-intentioned efforts, actually do it? You haven't? Excellent, you should feel great that you're not in the place I am. The "boss" wants the "big important project" by the start of November and for whatever reason I can't seem to put it together. I don't know if I'm putting too much pressure on myself or too little, but something is not working. All keep you posted on my progress - if there is any.
Interested in some bulleted items? I thought so.

• I bought a new shirt at Dillard's on Sunday. I'm not a regular department store shopper, but when they practically give away a nice white shirt by Nautica with crisp vertical mint-colored stripes for $7.99, well, you don't have to send me an invitation embossed with gold flakes.
• I also bought some new Puma shoes that seem pretty fun.
• Kat has mined this territory a bit, but she, Eric and I watched the entire first season of Weeds on DVD in one sitting on Saturday night. It was kind of sedentary and pathetic, but we did enjoy the show. It's good, not great. But after seeing it, I feel that it should be renamed Desperate Housewives (pot dealing = actual desperation) and ABC's show should be renamed Housewives. That would make things more clear. Also, Kevin Nealon, funny guy, good actor, not a very good DVD commentary maker. I think he was just watching the episode and forgetting to say anything. Or he was getting high while watching a dramatization of himself getting high. Maybe.
• Nice to see the 49ers come out on top in the Toilet Bowl on Sunday against the Raiders. I urge you, right now, to go to this link and tell me which game this season the Raiders are actually going to win. They have the Cardinals and Texans at home, but I don't know if they can win either. I think 0-16 is a clear and present danger.
  
• I don't have much to say about the Yankees except good riddance.
• I finished Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis. I'm not sure what I'll read next, but I'm sure I'll tell you about it.

Cleaning House

The title doesn't refer to me removing the dead wood from YumanityCo and ensuring this ship runs efficiently and productively because that's what the thousands of shareholders deserve. It actually refers to what I did today. I was a domestic dynamo - what with the laundry, the dishwasher, the vacuuming, the lawn mowing, the foliage trimming and the Swiffering. I always work hard when I'm watching a good football game. The pauses in the action give me plenty of time to monitor the bleaching of the whites and yet still keep me motivated, thanks to the needless violence on display.
The game I am referring to was Baltimore v. San Diego. The Chargers played well until the end when they got far too conservative, a situation that happens roughly every other game for the Bolts. My favorite moment was when the announcer, Kenny Albert (I think it was him, it could have been someone else, Kevin Harlan, maybe?) said, and I quote: That's why Marty Schottenheimer has more wins than any other active coach! The play Albarlan was referring to was having the punter step out of the back of the end zone to take a safety. Yes, Harlbert, Marty has accumulated all those wins because HE SCORES POINTS FOR THE OPPOSING TEAM! It was a bad choice, in my opinion, by Marty because it started the Chargers into their usual "protect the lead, try not to lose" mentality that kills them. When they attack, they succeed. When they don't, they fail. That memo apparently was lost on the way to Marty's desk. Bill Callahan needs to get the same memo. I figured the Kansas game was over by halftime, so the female companion and I chose instead to watch Mrs. Henderson Presents (that Dame Judi Dench is a firecracker!) instead. When the movie was over, I flipped back to catch the final tally of the drubbing and instead (egad!) found overtime. Thankfully, things turned out well, but I'm sure that second half was not fun to watch.
I really didn't want this post to be about sports, but now I've wasted all of this time and no one is still reading. But my comments about the shareholders and Nebraska leads me to the book I've been reading, Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist. Obviously, I knew Warren Buffett had done well in the stock market, but this book offers startling statistics about how successful he was. When other money managers were having difficulty simply keeping up with the Dow Jones, Buffett was destroying it -- routinely. From 1957 to 1966, the Dow was up 122.9 percent. People with money in what was then called the Buffett Partnership during that same period had their money increase by 1,156 percent. A few years later, when Buffett took over Berkshire Hathaway, it was at 18 per share. by 1983, it was up to 775. By the end of that single year, it was at $1,310 per share. This meant Buffett, while still a cheapskate in his personal life, was worth $620 million.
The book chronicles how even though Buffett had such success, Wall Street normally considered him as either an idiot savant or the luckiest man ever to have been born. While he has a genius with numbers, neither of these appelations appear to be true. The book also explodes the lie that what Buffett did was somehow "simple." He shied away from securities plays that were complicated on the premise that he wouldn't put his money into anything he couldn't understand. And he focused on stocks that he considered undervalued that had plenty of room for growth in the future. He did buy and hold, but his focus was only on buying that which would be worth holding.
To return to the world of sports, one could draw a parallel between Buffett and Billy Beane, who as general manager of the Oakland Athletics, uses roughly this same logic (i.e. find what your particular universe is undervaluing and buy it at a price that is affordable) to compete in a competitively unbalanced league. The A's are in the playoffs this year to play the Minnesota Twins, another small market franchise. One of those two teams may face the New York Yankees, who have so much money that value is of little importance.
In fact, in Michael Lewis's book Moneyball that chronicles Beane's methods, Beane is quoted as saying one of his favorite quotes is from Buffett: "The hardest thing to find is a good investment." (I think Moneyball should have had more about Buffett because of this similarity I'm mentioning.) Buffett's genius was that he was willing to wait for a good investment that met his requirements, no matter how long it took. He would sometimes go a year or so without buying any stock. Beane doesn't have that same luxury - if his good players leave in free agency, he has to have replacements in a few months for the start of the next season, whether there are good buys available or not. This year, the Big Hurt Frank Thomas has been to Beane what Geico was to Buffett - the once proud and successful commodity that had fallen on hard times but still had the talent that helped it achieve in the first place. I think Eric Chavez is Coke, the buy that everyone thought was good, but no one jumped on, thinking it had already hit its ceiling. I think Barry Zito is Capital Cities or Salomon Brothers. Huston Street is Nebraska Furniture Mart. Nick Swisher isBerkshire Hathaway, the textile mill that started everything. Anyone who has read Moneyball knows how Beane lusted after Swisher. I think I should give every A's player a Buffett stock, but I think I've already tested the patience of my reader(s) enough.
The next book on my reading queue is another Michael Lewis book, Liar's Poker, about Lewis's time working at, yes, Salomon Brothers.
(It all fits together.)