Blogging since 1998. By David Wertheimer
Leave it to me to make a courtroom laugh.
Judge, addressing the jury panel: “Since this is a criminal case, we’d like to know if any of you have ever been the victim of a crime.”
I raise my hand.
“Yes, Mr. Wertheimer.”
“This is going to sound a little silly, but I once had my pants stolen….”
Google Zooms In Too Close for Some in the New York Times. The article, discussing privacy issues surrounding Google Street View, uses as its human-interest lead a woman named Mary Kalin-Casey, who a few days earlier discussed Street View with BoingBoing and complained that anonymous people on the Internet could see her living room and her cat.
In agreeing to the Times interview, Kalin-Casey, who is ostensibly concerned about her privacy, posed for a photograph… in her living room… holding her cat.
Our mail hasn’t been coming to our new address, so I called the old post office to investigate.
Me: “Hi, we submitted change-of-address forms for April 2 and aren’t getting forwarded mail. Can you help me find out why?”
Supervisor: “Your carrier would know what’s going on, he’s right here, let me get him for you.”
Carrier: “Yeah, I saw your note in the old mailbox, but I never got any forwarding information.”
“But I have my confirmations right here.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, I don’t have any yellow slips.”
“That doesn’t make any sense—I got several pieces of mail with the yellow forwarding sticker, just nothing consistent. Where did they come from?”
“I really don’t know. I don’t see anything here that has a new address on it for you.”
Exasperated, I tried a different question. “I went to the old mailbox on Monday and got my mail, and when I went yesterday it was empty. So where’s my mail from yesterday and the day before?”
“Oh,” the carrier said, “Once I saw your ‘moved’ note, I sent everything back.”
“Sent it back?”
“Yeah, returned to sender.”
“You marked all my mail return to sender? But I sent in change of address forms!”
“I’m sorry, but that’s what I did.”
I asked for the supervisor again. “How,” I asked, “do you not have anything indicating my new address?”
“All I can tell you to do is to re-submit your change of address form,” the supervisor said.
“That’s fine. But what about the confirmation letters that I received?”
“That doesn’t help. We didn’t get anything here.”
“Why wouldn’t you get the form I got?”
The reply, and I quote:
“Well, sir, it may have gotten lost in the mail.”
I read both the New York Times and The Economist, which gives me a terrific
point-counterpoint on hot-button issues in global news.
This week:
Battle Over the Banlieues, the New York Times Magazine. “[What Sarkozy said
at the riots] was the antithesis of what a government minister was expected
to say. … I canât remember a single political conversation in any of the cités I have visited in the last year, on any subject—jobs, discrimination, France herself—that wasnât prefaced by at least a few almost ritualistic denunciations of Sarkozy.”
vs.
France’s Chance: After a quarter-century of drift Nicolas Sarkozy offers the
best hope of reform, The Economist. “He is the only candidate brave enough
to advocate the ‘rupture’ with its past that France needs after so many
gloomy years. It has been said that France advances by revolution from time
to time but seldom, if ever, manages to reform. Mr Sarkozy offers at least a
chance of proving this aphorism wrong.”
Hi! I’m in an airport. Charlotte (NC) Douglas International Airport, to be exact. I am enjoying the free (!) wifi in Terminal D while I rock gently in a white wooden rocking chair (!!), one of dozens situated in large picture windows throught the airport.
I am mid-trip from Myrtle Beach to New York-LaGuardia. I normally abhor two-hop air travel, what with the dual protocols and four rounds of ear popping and twice the chance for frustration (case in point: my connecting flight is currently delayed). But my rocking chair and wireless is making me smile, as is the exposure to small-airport America that US Airways provides. Charlotte to Myrtle Beach! Charlotte to Dayton! Charlotte to Harrisburg! I had nearly forgotten that jets flew point to point between mid-market cities. New York has truly skewed my perspective.
Most notably, I flew MYR-CLT in a whisper-quiet Canadair CRJ-700 outfitted in leather. Regional jets don’t climb to 30,000-plus feet like the jumbos, so the pressurization is significantly lessened in addition to the noise; my usually difficult ears didn’t even pop on the descent. The flight was so easy and uneventful that I downright enjoyed myself, a rarity for a domestic flight. I deplaned in such a good mood that I began to consider looking for short-hop regional flights when I next need to travel. Maybe if I had occasion to fly to Dayton.
The news now is that lightning has shut down the runway. We’ll see how long this rocking chair can keep my spirits up through the delay. Regardless of my departure time, though, my first regional jet experience actually has me looking forward to more.
This time last year I was suffering through Passover in Paris, a not insubstantial test of willpower in the land of perfect bread (which I am pleased to report ended successfully, with a rather wonderful meal of homemade pasta and good company).
So what do I do as an encore this year? I fly to Texas on day seven of the observance, and am forced to break Passover on the plane, with some half-day-old bread purchased on a business lunch and sheepishly carted around Dallas in the back seat of a colleague’s car.
Next year I may just lock myself in a bakery midweek. Probably wouldn’t be much more exasperating.
If you’re going to exit a mildly competitive round of golf without finishing, don’t do it on the eighteenth tee.
No, that’s not a band: Amy and I bought an apartment. It’s a prewar two-bedroom “Edwardian five” on West End Avenue.
What, pray tell, is that? To quote the New York Times, an Edwardian five is “a one-bedroom for a rich bachelor or widow (probably not for a young single woman—they rarely lived alone in Edwardian times): only one bedroom but a preposterously large dining room and, of course, a maid’s room.” And indeed, that’s what we have, oversized dining room and all.
Our broker called us hopelessly romantic when we fell for the place, with its high ceilings, inlaid wood floors, stained glass bathroom windows, intact transoms, and extensive moldings. We’re in the midst of pushing it even further into prewar-ness, with fresh paint from the Benjamin Moore historical palette and accessories like glass doorknobs (from eBay, of course). Romance is in a holding pattern, though, as the days since closing have been heavily consumed by painting and spackling and arguing about dining room chairs. We move in early April.
Wondering what an Edwardian five is like? Here’s the floorplan:
My mother spent the past few months producing a benefit performance of “The Vagina Monologues” at the new South Orange Performing Arts Center (SOPAC), culminating in two sold-out shows this week, the first of which I attended with my family. In short, the play was terrific, and so was Mom’s big scene.
I could write extensively about the implications of hearing one’s mother scream, “C… U… N… CUNNNNNNNN…” while sitting with one’s father, wife and brother. But the truer emotion to recollect is one of the pride I—we—feel, in both the production and her standout performance.
I haven’t been able to find quite the right words (beyond, well, you know). My future sister-in-law, on the other hand, says it beautifully. Do give it a read, and don’t miss the comments.
Y’know, you go on vacation, and you think to yourself, “It’s going to be a great week, seeing new things, relaxing, taking in the sights, soaking up the local culture.” What you don’t think is, “Hey, y’know what’ll be great? Flying half a mile across a 600-foot-deep valley between hills on the side of a volcano in the middle of a rainforest….”
Ideapad © 1998–2025 David Wertheimer. All rights reserved.