A selection from my outbox.

I just spent a lot of energy crafting this email to a friend, so I thought it prudent to preserve it here in the weblog. Interestingly, the friend to whom this email was sent is mostly the only person who ever reads this blog, unless I force my wife or my brother to read it, which I have been known to do, with varying results. So here you go, friend, here's that same email one more time:

Thanks for the great update. Yeah, you take your math class, friend. Just do it! You're so close!

I had to make so many posts because I was watching a movie that needed to be posted about, at parts. It was very important. I've heard of Northern Exposure, I think my parents used to watch it with much enjoyment. I'll have to put it in my mental queue. Monique seems pretty cool, and I haven't seen UberJew in three days (that doesn't necessarily mean she hasn't been here, but if she has, she's been uncharacteristically quiet) so it's good. Getting lots of goofing off done here in Utah.

Get this! Our assignment for photography this week is portraits, and as soon as I found that out, I thought, "I have to find a way to get a picture of Roland my crazy neighbor." I assumed I would have to sneak the picture, because he seems like a guy who would flip out if you tried to take his picture. He tore down all the fences (oh damn, the UberJew just walked in, proclaiming, "SHE LIVES!") separating our yards, which I think is against the law. Luckily he's hired some steely-eyed Polynesians to build new ones. So I started trying to sneak pictures, and it didn't work. There's nowhere I can hide to get close to him in our shared driveway, which is where he spends about 70% of his life. So finally I strapped on a pair and approached him, asking, "Roland, can I take your picture?" Surprisingly, he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, "I'll take your picture!" This threw me off, and I stuttered, "Okay, we'll trade pictures of each other. I'll go first." Then he started walking away. "Wait, Roland, can I take your picture?" "Yeah!" Still walking away. "Wait, Roland, stand right there for a second while I take your picture!" I finally got him to stop and look at me, and I got some cool shots, as you can see. I was pretty excited. I've been riding that excitement all week. Also from my PoliSci class, because I got my grade back and I totally got an A! So it's pretty much 10 out of 10 over here.

Max figured out how to crawl, which has opened a whole new chapter of terror in our home. Little dude just loves to pull stuff down/out/around, all the time, and now he is mobile. So look out cats. And shoes in the shoe basket. And flowers in pots. And everything. I just talked to PJ on the phone, she says to say hi to you. That yarn bombing looks AWESOME. Send me pictures of every single thing you bomb. Or put them on your blog. I look at that. You guys should yarn bomb something in town in the middle of the night. If I was there I would help. But I'll send Reggie as my proxy. So just imagine that it's me sitting in the middle of your lettuce. Keep up the good WArk! That was a terrible attempt at a Washington joke

Carl

I would feel much better if I very quickly set the record straight on something. The person we have lovingly dubbed "the UberJew" is a very friendly, good-hearted lady. We are not anti-Semites. I am not a witch. The only reason we feel comfortable referring to her that way is because she has repeatedly made it clear that she wants to be identified primarily as a Jewish person. The first three things we ever found out about her were that she is "originally from Israel" (we don't know exactly what that means yet), that she has a tattoo that means _______ in Hebrew on her neck (again, lacking exact details), and that she owns a set of Israeli commando knives that are illegal for her to possess in this country. She has bandied this fact about loudly a number of times, usually as a deterrent to a perceived threat: "Well, if they do that, I'll just come back with my Israeli commando knives..." So, out of respect to her, we call her the UberJew. And now to the pictures. Below you will find one of the (very flat, unedited) photographs of my neighbor Roland that I referenced in the email, and the result of my Google search of "Israeli commando knives":

Dang, look at that thing! Okay, UberJew, we're cool. No need to bring your knives in to work. It's all good.

Ebay.

Customer service&Contact Us:

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The Authenticator, part III

Cordless phones by 1991! What a world we live in!

The Authenticator, part II

That's why you don't wear white tube socks with a black suit, you idiot! Who do you think you are, Michael Jackson?

The Authenticator

No! No, Ricardo Montalban! That Authenticator is some bad news! That bearded cracker is trying to trick you! Get out of there! Run, Ricardo Montalban!

"Nooo!" Crash!

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So now the rest of the movie will be fighting, right?

Anonymity bolsters boldness.

I have discussed the frequent lack of civility on the comment posting-boards of the internet before. People call each other idiots, they make scathing assessments of the character and disposition of those who are the subjects of the stories being commented on, and it's all done with the assurance that an insult posted as a comment online will not lead to any physical retribution. This lack of accountability makes people ruthless.

It's an interesting and fairly recent development. If you read a story about Aaron Burr in a newspaper in 1804, your best option for making known to the wider readership of that newspaper your ill opinion of Mr. Burr would be to run out into the street and shout, "Aaron Burr is an undistinguished knave!" (that is the 1804 equivalent of "Aaron Burr sux!") If you truly had as much audacity as many present-day comment-posters seem to have, you might seek Mr. Burr out, and then say, directly to his face, "Mr. Vice-President, thou art an undistinguished knave!" Then he would shoot you right in the stomach. The internet, with all of its screen names and avatars, has provided a wonderful disconnect between angry normal people and the objects of their rage. Unfortunately, this merely redirects that rage towards other normal people, who react defensively, escalating the conflict on the comment posting-board. Political scientists call this an "inadvertent hostility spiral". It is not ideal.

But the anonymity of a screen name cannot protect you from ridicule, as has heretofore been proved in this blog. When you post a comment at the end of an article that is aggressive and belligerent, you put a target on your back. Your grammar and spelling had better be perfect, because the nature of your comment makes other commentators want to have a go at you. It is not in your best interest to be angry and stupid. As a prime example, witness the reaction of a Salt Lake Tribune reader to the (possibly inadvertent) double-posting of a rather long comment by another reader:

JBrown247 3 hours ago in reply to TheSportsAuthority Do you really just post the same thing over and over again? You must be a liberal; they always say the same stupidness over and over and over because they think it makes it sound better.

My reply to JBrown247 was soon to follow:

CautiousCarl 2 hours ago in reply to JBrown247

you must be a conservative: you use words that aren't words, like "stupidness"

"I didn't pay attention."

Just got off the phone with one of our clients, who was following up on an interview he'd had last week. He wanted to know if any progress had been made towards our manufacturing the bulletproof ski goggles he ordered, which is what we do here. I asked him who his interview had been with:

H.E. Pennypacker: Oh, I'm not sure, I'm sorry.

Cautious Carl: No worries, we'll figure it out. What did the person look like?

H.E. Pennypacker: It was a lady with black hair.

Cautious Carl: Okay, I think I know who it was. Was she pregnant?

H.E. Pennypacker (laughing nervously): Uh, I didn't pay attention to that.

Do you know what pregnancy does to a lady's body, Pennypacker? It doesn't take a private eye to discern pregnancy. It's not something that takes special attention to notice. I mean, the woman we're talking about is due in a month. Maybe he thought I was asking if she was of distant German heritage, or if she was wearing green socks. Those are things you wouldn't notice if you weren't paying attention. Here is something you would notice even if you were somebody's pet ferret:

Attention:

Recent studies conducted at my desk have shown that:

What? They were the only edible things sitting on my desk. What was I supposed to do?

It's good to be a good atmosphere.

I have received lots of pressure of late to post to this weblog again. Lots and lots of pressure. International pressure. Economic pressure. The masses are clamoring for more! Clamoring! To the masses' delight, I have just stumbled upon something that is worthy of scrutiny. Behold an excerpt from a recent article authored by one Michael Lewis on concacaf.com, explaining a Guadeloupean soccer player's trepidation at playing in front of a Kansas City crowd who cheers for him when he plays for the local club team but against him when he plays for his national team:

"It doesn't matter," he said. "At least there's going to be fans. It's good to be a good atmosphere. They could be back us of backing the other team. I prefer to play in a full stadium agains us than in an empty stadiu. I hope some of them will back me, too."

So I guess the message here is members of the press (yes, a staff writer for concacaf.com is a member of the press) can just write whatever the H they want. Just whatever. They can even copy and paste from transcripts of interviews conducted by other members of the press, even if that transcript was translated into English by a foreign member of the press using free web-based software (this is what I suspect happened with the above quote). There is, of course, the possibility that this is a word for word quotation, and that this soccer player just talks this way. But I really doubt it. I'm pretty sure this one's on Michael Lewis. If I made a habit of blatantly half-A-ing my work like this at my job, I'd probably get fired. I wonder how much Michael Lewis makes? Honestly, probably not a lot. And honestly, he probably earns it.