Our story continues over at ericberlin.com/blog.

So they found an illegal missile system in Iraq, and are in the midst of destroying it. Nobody else seems to be saying this, so I must be wrong, but my first thought was that this presents a small problem for Bush. If Bush says "Aha! See! Banned weapons! CHAAAARRGE!", the rest of the world can say: Wait a second. Before you wanted to invade because inspections weren't working. Now you want to invade because inspections are working. Under what possible circumstances will you actually change your mind about going to war? I say "small problem" because I think Bush has a reply for this kind of logic. How long did it take to find this illegal system? 10 weeks and then some? Did Iraq simply hand it over, as they were supposed to? No. From today's New York Times: "The inspectors learned of the range of the missiles from test results that were provided in the 12,000-page arms declaration Iraq delivered at the start of the inspections. The missile data was part of the relatively small amount of new useful information the inspectors found in the vast document." If I ask you for a needle, and you say, "Sure! I put it in that haystack over there. It's all yours!", that is not the same thing as being cooperative. Bush still has a perfectly lucid argument for getting rid of Hussein, and should be able to hold his ground. The problem for the doves is that charges of U.S. unilateralism are increasingly hard to swallow. Beginning with the letter from the "Gang of Eight," countries left and right are lining up behind our plans to invade. The idea that the U.S. is "going it alone" has been ridiculous for a long time now. How can Saddam's sympathizers make the U.S. look once again like a crazed loner cowboy bent on destruction? Well, if Bush could be forced into presenting a second UN resolution, that resolution can be summarily vetoed by France or Germany or Russia. Then, when Bush invades Iraq anyway, doves can trumpet that the U.S is going in without UN authority! Those crazy unilateralist cowboys are at it again! Yaaay! With the discovery of this missile system, France and Germany have been given powerful new ammunition to achieve this goal. If they can convince any of the "Gang of Eight" countries -- hell, even Portugal -- that inspections are working, U.S. could lose an ally, and such a loss would be trumpeted all over the media. If that begins to turn the tide against us, it might just force Bush and Powell into writing a second UN resolution. But I don't think that's going to happen. France and Germany have lost a lot of ground with their obstinance -- all they've done is make themselves fools in the eyes of our true allies. They're going to need more than a single small discovery to convince anybody that inspections are the future. What about all those mobile biological weapons lab?, we can counter. What about any other missiles that are lying around? If we have 10 weeks of inspections for every minor discovery, we're going to be here until 2035! The U.S. continues to have the stronger argument. The discovery of this missile system may start a pro-inspection rally, and that may cause Bush the tiniest of headaches, but I don't think this will be a problem for very long.

This is funny: How the Muslim world is viewed by Americans.

Congress is totally pissed at France and Germany, and I don't blame them. But now some congressmen are making noises about possible laws prohibiting the importation of French wine, or Evian water. Phooey, says I. If they pass such a law, it'll mean that 500+ powerful men got a chance to say "Nyahh nyahh" to our least friendly allies. A better idea is to allow all of America to show France and Germany how they feel -- let the wines come in and let us have the opportunity not to buy them. Let the Mercedes-Benzes grow rusty in their showrooms. Let the Evian water sit on the shelves. I'm drinking good old American water from now on! It's infused with that spunky can do spirit! I think sales of French and German products are going to suffer plenty, even without any action on Congress's part. And I think the message delivered by that decline will have more oomph if Congress has nothing to do with it.

Not to be outdone, Lea also has a new trick: Sneezing while her mouth is full of liquefied carrots. If I wasn't in the way, I'm sure she would have shot them thirty feet or more. But... I was in the way.

Alex's new trick: Climbing into his booster seat. It is a feat of contortion worthy of Cirque de Soleil, like watching a man fit himself into a picnic basket. First he hoists up one leg. Proportionally, this is the equivalent of me hoisting a leg over a wall that comes up to my rib cage. Then, with much grunting and effort, he grabs the back part of the seat and pulls himself up, so that he is kneeling in the chair, but facing the wrong way. Next he does some kind of full-body twist, getting his tush onto the seat but with his legs still tangled up beneath him. Finally he straightens out the legs and gives a satisfied smile, and my heart starts beating again. Soon this will all be commonplace, and I won't even watch while he performs this feat. But not yet.

Bin Laden is dead. If he was alive, he'd be making video after video, taunting the United States with his continued existence. I just do not buy into these audiotapes.

Holy moley, do I love this letter to the editor, from yesterday's New York Times. (It's the top letter.) It's so hard to choose a favorite line. How about this one: "A country that relegates poetry to the periphery risks the stunning lash of well-chosen words when it transgresses moral behavior." Golly, that's just a risk we'll have to take. By the way, what exactly is immoral about defending one's self from future attacks, or liberating an oppressed people from a tyrant? Please answer in the form of a limerick. I like this one, too: "Poetry is a defense against darkness; when we contemplate something as profound as killing other people to achieve an objective, poets have an obligation to give voice to doubt." Absolutely right, although I dare say that responsibility is not relegated solely to poets. By the way, you do realize that you only have this obligation because you live in a country with freedom of speech. Right? A stunning lash of well-chosen words in Iraq will get you very seriously dead. You know that, right? Finally: "To consider dropping bombs on children or flying hijacked planes into buildings is to be less than fully human." I completely agree. I assume you are talking about Palestinian suicide bombers, as well as the cretin terrorists responsible for 9/11. Unlike our enemies, the U.S. will not be targetting citizens, and in fact will be making strenuous efforts to minimize civilian casualties. It's incredibly ignorant to lump the U.S. together, morally, with the fundamentalists we are trying to thwart. Did the Times really see fit to print this letter? Doesn't it read like the lead editorial in a fourth-rate alternative weekly?

I've been fairly neutral about this new Homeland Security department -- all in all I don't think it'll be much more effective than what was in place beforehand, but its existence doesn't actually anger me like it does many others. And, yes, it seems like it has a great deal of boondoggle potential, but hell -- throwing money away in great heaping truckloads is what our government does. It's their specialty, whatever the political leanings of the administration. Tom Ridge, however, is absolutely killing himself in the credibility department. Has the man never read "The Boy Who Cried Wolf?" Here we are in a heightened state of Terror Alert -- so much so that the government is recommending that people buy plastic sheeting to post over their windows, to keep out all those nasty biological agents that are about to be released. But this new Terror Alert follows many others in which the government's beating of the Drums of Panic (I believe that was a magic item in Dungeons & Dragons) was followed by... resounding silence. Why, then, should we believe this one? Especially since, on the Today Show, Ridge proclaimed that the reason why this warning was so serious was because they had "specific information." But he went on to say that the specific information did not point to a time, a date, a place, or a method of attack. What else is there to be specific about? There are those who believe all this sounding of alarums is just a way to constantly remind people that The Enemy is At Our Doorstep, and nothing can stop them short of war, War, WAR!!! In other words, that this is all a bunch of malarkey -- propoganda -- generated to turn us into a nation of hawks. I don't believe it. Because surely we are being plotted against by those who despise us. But that doesn't mean the government needs to send us into a daily panic. If you have credible information about a specific threat, tell the people in that specific area to get inside and put up their plastic sheeting, and send the National Guard in to put a stop to it. If all you have are smoky generalities, I for one don't even want to hear about it. I've got a life to live. Okay -- this just in, literally this very moment, from CNN.com: "Reports of planned al Qaeda attacks which led to heightened terror alert are "most specific we have seen," CIA Director George Tenet tells Senate panel. Details to come." This is what I'm talking about. If this situation is as bad as Mr. Tenet suggests, I might recommend he deal with the problem first. Convene the Senate panel afterwards.

Just in time for Valentine's Day, this extremely nasty little sliding block puzzle, by Ed Pegg Jr., whose MathPuzzle.com never fails to amaze, even if I don't know what the hell he's talking about half the time. (Here's a the beginning of a sample puzzle from a couple of months ago: "Define the n-complement of a number j as the number k, such that corresponding digits of j and k always add to n." Maybe I'll just stick to crosswords.)

Great article in this week's Weekly Standard about the brouhaha that resulted when a Cincinnati theatre commissioned a play about the Israel/Palestinian conflict. (The play came under fire by Muslims in that city, who deemed themselves insulted despite the fact that, if anything, the play was slanted ideologically in their favor.) Written by one of my favorite political writers, Christopher Caldwell. Best line: "If the target of a potential comment is the final arbiter of whether it's an "insult" or illegitimate, then we live henceforth in an indefinite state of emergency in which freedom of speech is, de facto, suspended." Read the whole thing here.

How many absurdities can you find in this New York Times article on a proposed ban on toy guns, and a silly attempt by Manhattan Libertarians to protest it? Let's count together! 1) The proposed law itself. The goal is to put an end to the raging epidemic of ten-year-olds murdered by policemen because they were wielding squirt guns. (12 cases since 1998! It's an outrage! It's a debacle! It's... well, actually, it's less than three incidents a year. Hardly an epidemic at all. And no details about any of those cases are mentioned in the Times article. Might it be possible -- even likely -- that in many of those cases, the toy guns were just another element in an overall pattern of stupidity on the part of the victim?) 2) The picture of Councilman David Weprin. As you can see, he is holding a toy gun in one hand, and a can of black spray paint in the other. He has painted his daughter's pink toy gun, making it look like... a real gun!!! A real small gun, anyway. But I understand his point. The problem is: Is anybody really painting their toy guns black, and then drawing them against police officers? How many of the 12 cases since 1998 have involved a painted toy gun? The article doesn't say. (My guess: 1, max.) Anyway, if we must make a law against something, why not make a law against painting your toy gun black? That seems to be a specific action one could reasonably ban. (Not enforce, mind you, but that's another story.) Going after every toy gun in creation is a typical jackhammer solution to a garden spade problem. 3) The clause within the proposed law that might lead to jail time for children caught with a toy gun. Jail time! Says Welpin, "Obviously, it's going to be a discretionary thing, about whether to put a kid in jail." Whew, that's a relief. 4) The Manhattan Libertarian Party's reaction. They were right to slap their foreheads and say "Arrggh! $#@^%* local government!" But their response was less than measured: They decided to hand out hundreds of toy guns to the children of the city. Specifically, they went into Harlem, the area of the city most affected by gun violence. In an interview at City Hall, Mr. Snyder said the party selected P.S. 72 to show support for a deprived neighborhood. "We narrowed our choice down to a school on Park Avenue and one in East Harlem," he said. "We ultimately thought the kids of East Harlem might appreciate a free toy more than kids on Park Avenue." (I had thought the Libs handed out guns at multiple locations around the city, but the Times doesn't mention this.) What the Libs found in Harlem was not a horde of happy children waiting to squirt each other but a posse angry of parents wanting blood, and it's hard to be terribly surprised. 5) The reaction of the people of Harlem. Of course, the Libs went to Harlem not because they were indelicate but because they were RACISTS! "I'm livid that the Libertarian Party would have the racist nerve to come into a community of color just to get some attention," Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn said as the hearing opened, "to give toy guns to our children, knowing that these toy guns have led to deaths. This is not a game for media attention." And of course the protesters could not restrain themselves to the topic with shouts of "No Toy Guns For Our Children!" and "Barbies, Not Bullets!" They had to cross into invective like "Get out of Harlem!" and "Go back to your own neighborhood!" Very fine. Good going, guys. 6) The phrase "This is not a game for media attention." Spoken to the media. By a politician.

I. Am. Wiped. Out. Both kids were mine today -- Janinne has been unable to shake off whatever minor illness is plaguing her, and she essentially slept the day away. Alex and Lea, neither of whom yet speak, nonetheless conspired to give me the hardest time possible. For Alex, this took the form of never getting tired -- not once, all day. He's two years old, somewhere around mid-afternoon he usually gets a look of profound exhaustion, as if he had just hiked the Grand Canyon. Not today! And it was a busy day, too, what with one of his various therapists arriving at 8:00 a.m. This was the occupational therapist, who focuses on Alex's developing motor skills, and she wanted to watch him eat breakfast. At the appointed hour, I let her in and went to get Alex, who had been playing nicely in his bedroom. He came toddling out with his usual triumphant enthusiasm and was nearly to the living room when this woman jumped into the hallway and said "Surprise!" To Alex's immense credit, he did not cry, or turn around and run away. But, geez, what a start to the day. You've had a lovely post-wake-up period throwing your toys around the room, and now you're looking forward to your first glass of cold milk, and suddenly some strange woman is lunging at you! What kind of place are they running around here, you wonder. These therapists arrive care of a state-funded program to help developmentally disadvantaged children -- the Birth-to-3 program -- but lately there have been cutbacks and layoffs. This enrages Janinne -- the children are our future and all that -- but frankly I'm not quite sure what these therapists are accomplishing. Alex has a sort-of team leader, who oversees the occupational therapist, a physical therapist, and a veritable parade of speech therapists. The first one, whom Janinne liked immensely, was laid off. Her replacement was only meant to fill in for a couple of months, until a new permanent speech therapist could be assigned. This is fine with us, because this transitionary therapist gets our goat. In the three times she's been here, she has given up on proceeding any further if Alex shows the slightest sign of unhappiness. "Whoop! He's upset" she says. "Better call it a day!" Slotted to work with him for an hour, her first visit was a brisk forty minutes. Luckily, her replacement is due to start with the next appointment. But, wait, that's not what I was going to write about. Oh yes. So usually, when the schedule includes an appointment with a therapist, that's a sign that Alex is going to take an extra long nap come afternoon. Not today. Today, with Janinne desperately trying to get some sleep herself, Alex stormed around as if I fed him not Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast but amphetamines. It's the uncontrollable toddler! The crashes coming from his bedroom as I was attempting to feed his sister -- he can't really break through the wall and escape to the outside world, can he? It certainly sounded like he was trying his level best. And then there was the matter of the building block. Allegedly down for a nap, I heard an odd cry from his room. Upon investigating, I discovered Alex had placed a block into his mouth to the point that it could not be easily removed, prying his jaw apart the way a cartoon character would defeat an alligator with a stick. The block had to be not pulled but yanked out. Egads. No splinters or teeth came flying out, and I subsequently collected every toy smaller than my fist and had the whole lot smelted. Way to feel like a total failure of a father! And Lea, the most chipper, smiliest baby turned into Devil Girl. She would not, could not be consoled. The list of things she could possibly want is quite small -- new diaper? Food? Burp? Pacifier? WHAT? WHAT DO YOU WANT?! Finally gave up and turned on Baby Mozart, and that settled her right down. She's seen these particular images set to these particular classical tunes about a trillion times in her six months on Earth, but she continues to be mesmerized by it. But it's only half an hour long, and then Waaaaahhhh! Back to the all-consuming world of crushing misery. Way to feel like a total failure of a father! But now Mommy is awake, Alex is asleep, Lea is calm, and I am at my rightful place by the computer. Gonna work out a crossword idea, play a few games, chat with some friends, and temporarily -- I say, temporarily -- forget that I have children at all.

Members of Stormfront -- a white nationalist, anti-Jew hate group -- are mulling the creation of a blog. From a thread on a bulletin board at stormfront.org: There's about fifty billion neoconservative blogs out there, but no white nationalist ones. The closest thing we have is Vanguard News Network, which is certainly an excellent site, but it mainly preaches to the choir. What I have in mind is something more "respectable", i.e. no cursing, no racial slurs, excellent spelling/grammar, etc., but with the same pro-white and anti-Jew message. Something that "mainstream" readers would be more likely to look at and take seriously. Apparently they think blogging is simply a way of broadcasting one's message to the world with no consequences whatsoever. But the best of the bloggers (which I am not) live for this kind of thing: Taking the stupidities espoused by idiots across the Web, and disposing of them using logic, wit, and -- most of all -- facts. (Robert Fisk has probably had more than his fill of the Internet.) It's the kind of debate that Stormfronters absolutely cannot handle -- they prefer it when they can control their own messages, and distort things to their liking. That's not a blog, guys. Go back to your silly little newsletters.

I'M COMPILING A LIST of specialty business magazines, in hopes of scrounging up some freelance work. My favorite so far: "Framing Business News is the industry's framing authority and your best source of information and news for today's rapidly changing world of framing." I'm not sure I could handle the excitement.

BACK ON UNEMPLOYMENT. It's still hard to believe. I wasn't even sure if I'd qualify for benefits, as my last job only lasted six months, but apparently that's the minimum qualifying time, and I squeaked in under the wire. Yay. Both New York and Connecticut require you to call in once a week to their "tel-service" lines, and answer a series of questions by using the touch-tone keypad. In New York, it didn't take me long to memorize the order of the questions, and since the answers never changed, I would simply interrupt with the answer at the earliest possible moment. Pretty soon, the electronic voice could barely get its mouth open: In the week ending Feb-- BEEP! Thank you. Have you received any j-- BEEP! Thank you. Have you applied to any j-- BEEP! And so on. I had the whole five-minute process down to less than thirty seconds. In Connecticut, they force you to listen to the -- entire -- question -- before -- they -- allow -- you -- to -- answer. It's maddening. Have you received any job offers (BEEP!) or completed any full or part-time work (BEEP!) including self-employment, in the week ending Saturday, February 2nd? (BEEP!!) And then they ask you the exact same question a second time, in case you didn't hear it the first time because you were too busy trying to interrupt the system with incessant button-pushing. They could simply say "You answered YES. Is this correct?" but no, they have to drag you the whole damn question: You indicated that you did not receive any job offers or complete any full or part-time work, including self-employment, in the week ending Saturday, February 2nd. Is this correct? No, I did not! I mean, YES, that's correct! Gah. Yes, it's only five minutes of my life once a week, but it's still aggravating. Just this moment received my least favorite flavor of telemarketer: The sort that refuses to identify themselves. The conversation went something like this: Me: "Hello?" {sound of a hundred telemarketers buzzing in the backgroud, but nobody speaking directly to me} "Hello??" Woman: "Hello, may I please speak to... Jah-nin..." Me: "Who's calling?" Woman: {still on previous sentence} "...Buh-lin?" Me: "Who's calling?" Woman: "This is Theresa. May I please speak with Jah-nin?" Me: "Where are you calling from?" Woman: "Okay, I'll call back." {she hangs up} Unbelieveable. Did she think I was going to mistake her for one of Janinne's friends? They generally know how to pronounce her name. Obviously, they want to speak with the Woman of the House, who is more likely to be receptive than the boorish, ill-mannered Man. If they make the pitch the man and he says no, they've got to mark a big "refused" by my name and not call for, oh, a week at least. But if they simply hang up and call back in hopes of getting my wife, they think they've got a better chance of making the sale. Shows what they know. I love it when they try to use guile to get through me to Janinne. They're about as clever and subtle as a bullseye painted on the road by Wile E. Coyote. There was the one guy who introduced himself and asked to speak with my wife, and what I asked what this was in reference to, you could hear the caginess flood his voice: "I'm sorry, but this is a private matter which can only be discussed with Janinne Berlin." Riiiiight. I said to him: "Then I wish you the very best of luck," and hung up on him. He didn't call back. Guess it wasn't that important a matter after all.

ANOTHER DAMN DISASTER. I have nothing to say about it, not yet. (Except only this: it's not terrorism. Let's try to keep the conspiracy theories under control for a change, shall we?) A good friend raises this excellent point: the Columbia disaster: When will see the footage of Palestinians dancing in the streets at reports of a dead Israeli astronaut? It'll happen, wait and see.

A REQUEST FOR THE GOVERNMENT: If you're going to use $15 billion of our tax dollars to fight AIDS in Africa, can you possibly set it up in such a way as the money actually gets to those who need it? Is that too much to ask? I'd guess that for every dollar spent on food aid -- to keep the third world from starving -- another five bucks is used in bribes, or is stolen. (And a 1:5 ratio is probably a very generous estimate.) How many times do we have to learn that simply throwing money at a problem will not make it go away? Isn't this supposed to be among the very core principals of the Republican party? I'm not saying we shouldn't do it -- hell, we give God-knows-what to Egypt every year, and for what? At least in Africa we can potentially heal the truly ill. But don't think the job is done just because you wrote a check. That's a nasty habit the government really must break. Whenever the president stands in front of the country and says, with great pride, "And we will spend $400 billion to fix such-and-such a problem," the first question everyone should ask is: "HOW? How will you spend that money?" Details! We need details!

AMERICAN MOVIE CLASSICS has been showing Raiders of the Lost Ark repeatedly over the last couple of months, and we were watching the bar fight scene. Indy is being strangled by a big galoot when the German Toht says, with an evil hiss you can reach out and touch: "Shoot them. Shoot them both." Indy gives a priceless look of surprise, and the galoot and Indy temporarily join forces -- they've been struggling over a firearm, and now they use it to shoot the henchman who was about follow Toht's orders. Then the galoot and Indy go back to their little melee. At this point Janinne turns and asks a question that had not occurred to me in three thousand viewings of this movie: "Why do they go back to fighting? Why isn't that guy on their side now?" She has an excellent point. Put yourself in the galoot's place. Yes, you're a BAD GUY -- says so right on your SAG membership card -- but when the creepy German guy you've been travelling with suddenly, casually, hands out your death sentence, doesn't that make you rethink your priorities? Yes, the guy in the fedora is also trying to kill you, but only because you are trying to kill him. If you turn around and attack the other members of your party, that may signal to this Indiana fellow that you've had a change of allegiance. Is Toht paying you so well that you would continue working for him even after he gives the order to have you killed? Holy crow, of course not! What a crappy movie.

I USUALLY START TUNING OUT when I hear the phrase "tax breaks for the rich." How does one give tax breaks without giving them to the rich? They do, after all, pay the vast majority of taxes in this country. But this elimination of the dividend tax really does seem micro-focused to affect only the richest possible Americans. And calling it a "double taxation," as Bush did in his address last night, seems to me like a bit of mumbo-jumbo. I'm no financial genius, but isn't this the way it works? A corporation pays off its expenses, including governmental taxes on its income. This results, one hopes, in a company's net profit. That profit is then spread around -- reinvested back into the company, delivered as bonuses to the employees, and/or given to the stockholders in the form of dividends. Right? When the money is given to stockholders, it becomes income for them. In this country, there is a tax on one's income. Toot finis. Nobody is talking about rescinding the tax on employee bonuses, and that money comes from the same place as the dividends: Corporate profit. What's all this nonsense about double taxation?

THE NEW REPUBLIC'S JOSHUA KURLANTZICK on Bush's State of the Union address, which he deemed to be "largely a failure:" Bush is in some sense guilty of self-sabotage, neglecting to mention Iraq until more than halfway through the speech. If, as this magazine believes, Iraq's weapons of mass destruction pose an imminent threat, and if an overthrow of Saddam's regime could lead to a sea change in Middle Eastern politics, why didn't the president make Iraq the first topic on his agenda? Surely America's justification for sending its men and women to die in a foreign invasion should take precedence over plans to prevent forest fires, eliminate the marriage penalty for taxpayers, or provide mentors for middle-school children--all topics Bush mentioned in the first half of his speech. By the time Bush got to Iraq, it seemed like just another item on a laundry list. Jeez, Joshua, haven't you ever had to give a speech? By placing Iraq last in his address, he in fact gave it the strongest possible emphasis. In a business meeting, yes, you start with the biggest, most looming issue -- you want to get work done on it before everyone starts doodling on their notepads. In an important speech, however, you build up to the big stuff, and issues don't come much bigger than the coming war. What, Bush should have ended on the note of providing mentors to junior high students? Talk about dullsville.

I AM NOT VERY GOOD AT DEBATES. I read the political blogs, but I feel no particular need to jump in to the non-stop bustle. First of all, who even reads this? Anyone? No. A handful of people. Even if I were capable of making the leakproof argument as to why we should be invading Iraq right now, there is no one to hear it, and even if there was someone to hear it, you've already made up your mind anyway. You either agree with the notion that Saddam must be toppled, or you fall into one or more of the following camps: 1) Bush! He's a moron! He couldn't lead us in a round of Row, Row, Row Your Boat! 2) Iraq doesn't have nuclear weapons and North Korea does! But we're attacking Iraq! DUH! or 3) We're only attacking Iraq for the oil! And/or because we failed to capture Al-Qaeida! Now, with Hans Blix's report, what more is there to say? Blix, from what I can see, desperately wants to avoid war. And yet his report is nothing but bad news for Saddam. As Andrew Sullivan summarizes: The critical elements of the report are: that Saddam's December 7 dossier was riddled with unacountable gaps and omissions; that there are tons of unaccounted for VX gas, anthrax, 6500 missing chemically-armed bombs, SCUD missiles, and the like; that Saddam has neither shown what happened to these weapons and chemicals nor has he publicly destroyed them; that no Iraqi scientists have been granted immunity in order to talk to UN inspectors alone and without fear of retribution; and that documents related to uranium enrichment have been found in scientists' private homes, suggesting a policy of deliberate concealment of critical documents related to chemical and biological weapons. Any one of these is a material breach of U.N. Resolution 1441. All of them represent a hole the size of a tank in the credibility of Saddam. Blix also reports that inspectors found, in an Iraqi lab, a precursor to mustard gas. You know what that's called? Chemical weapons. Of the kind Saddam claims he doesn't have. So? What else do we need here? If you are against the war because you don't think Saddam is aggressively trying to acquire WMDs, you have Blix himself telling you otherwise. If you are against the war on purely moral grounds -- the Sheryl Crow philosophy; it'll harm our nation's karma -- then you are dooming the Iraqi people to further existence under a cruel despot. (What's that? Our economic sanctions were even more cruel than Saddam himself? I dunno, the sanctions didn't seem to prevent him from building 37 palaces.) And if you are against the war because Bush is a moron, then I don't know what to tell you. I don't agree with everything he's done in terms of foreign policy: Including North Korea in the "axis of evil" was like poking a gorilla-sized hornet's next with a stick, and I don't know if he knows what to do with Iraq after we have liberated it. But all in all I think he's done a fine job, and he's on the right track. I was amazed to read on Andrew Sullivan's site that he feels we should give Iraq yet one more last chance. How many more should there be, and why should we offer them? Countries like France and Germany won't be swayed by the fact that we offered a lastlast chance. They won't want to take action under any circumstances. Ditto for the doves in this country. No, Bush did what the world asked: He went through the U.N. He got the inspectors into Iraq. They found nothing but obstinance and the occasional chemical weapon. Not to sound like Ah-nuld, but the time for talk is over. Now it's time to finish the job.

WELL, THAT WAS RETARDED. I wrote a long entry and then hit "Sign Out" on Blogger, instead of "Post." So now it's all gone. Grr. Back to square one. Three questions about the Super Bowl: 1: Anybody else notice that one of the Raiders involved with the coin toss was named "Lincoln Kennedy?" This is a man destined to be part of a football coin toss! 2: How did Anheuser-Busch, maker of Bud Light, come to the conclusion that commericials prominently featuring the human posterior will sell beer? And I'm not talking about the attractive female variety. A couple of years ago, they began subtlely, although it seemed grotesque at the time: Two young men who choose Bud Light over toilet paper when they run out of money at their local supermarket. (They request their groceries bagged in paper, please.) This year, a true horror show: A man in an upside-down clown costume -- it looks like he's walking on his hands, but he's not -- enters a bar and asks for a drink. When he drinks the beer, it looks like he's doing it through his, uh... well, you get the picture. The rest of the bar looks on in horror, as does the television viewer. (Final moment: The same man asks for a hot dog, and the bartender refuses to sell it to him.) Yucch. Anheuser-Busch has been the sole beer sponsor of the Super Bowl for a long time now, and each year they present the commercials you are most likely to revile the next day. This is a marketing strategy? 3: By the way: Every year, there are numerous contests where the prize is "two tickets to... The Big Game!" The NFL does not let just any old schmo have the rights to use the name "Super Bowl." Why? I have no idea. I understand the need of a corporation to protect its trademark, but the Super Bowl trademark is about as watered-down as it gets at this point. It's in the dictionary for criminey's sake. Tribal chieftains in Botswana know what the Super Bowl is. What possible harm can come from letting advertisers use the phrase? I know -- it's a money thing. You want to use the phrase "Super Bowl" in your radio spot? Pay the NFL. The problem for the NFL is, so many companies now use "the Big Game" instead that it has become synonymous with the Super Bowl, and costs nothing to use. Better for the NFL to release "Super Bowl" into the public domain so that... well, what. So that it can receive even more publicity? Right, the Super Bowl's been suffering from a lack of hoopla in recent years. Never mind, forget I said anything.

LEA IS NOT FRAGILE X! What a freakin' relief. I guess we understood this to some extent even before the test results came in this morning -- she is clearly developing at a normal rate, almost as if she had read What to Expect in the First Year herself and was keeping track on a little checklist. Turning over back to belly: Check! Belly to back: Check! Laughing out loud, generally at Daddy: Check! She can sit up with help, something Alex couldn't do until he was around eight months. She seems on the very precipice of crawling. But she could be doing all this and still be Fragile X. Girls are less affected by the genetic disorder, as they have a backup X chromosome. If one is broken or completely conked out, the backup kicks in and pulls some extra weight. Boys only have the one X chromosome, and that is why Alex is not yet speaking. We got the phone call this morning: This is Jkfjdofewp Labs calling to report that Lea Berlin's Fragile X test results are negative. As emotionless as if she had said ...and here are today's Lotto numbers. But it changes everything around here. Now we have to be careful not to favor her -- the NORMAL child. The SMART child. That would be instant doom for any prospects Alex might have. And really, Alex is doing great. His state-funded special education teachers report on their dealings with other Fragile Xers -- children older than Alex who cannot feed themselves, who are completely non-verbal at 10 years old, who are emotionally unstable. Alex is none of these things -- he is, in fact, an utter delight. Okay, he's not speaking, but he has a high pitched squeak that we refer to as "singing." It is his "everything is right in the world" sound. Yesterday he climbed up on his toy chest and sat for a long time looking out the window, singing to himself, happy as Rod and Todd Flanders. Okay, he is slightly damaged. But considering all I have read about Fragile X, he seems at the very top of his class.

WAAAAY BACK when I was working for the Incredibly Shrinking Toy Company, I was forced to make a few decisions that, at the time, I wondered if I would regret. The screen size and text resolution of these products is way beyond bad, and yet we intented to pack in a full dosage of learning: History! Science! English! (Or, if not English, then your geographical area's language of choice.) I wondered idly whether it was even possible to write History and Science content for a product that cannot display words of longer than ten letters. Now, having been laid off, I find myself working freelance for the exact same company, writing the very content I once only considered in the abstract. And it's just impossible. I spent a chunk of today writing American Geography match-up questions -- but without mentioning any city or state or landmark over ten letters in length. Goodbye, Pennsylvania! Adios, North Carolina! I need 120 geography questions and began to choke after, oh, fifty. I crossed the finish line, ultimately, but every step was a painful step through hip-deep muck. Tomorrow: World History! Another 120 questions. What I shall write about I have absolutely no idea. But the money's good... and for now, it's the only money coming in. So I'll keep my complaining to a bare minimum.

GENERALLY, WHEN BERT IS SLEEPING OR READING, and Ernie bursts in with some insane game to play or song to sing, Bert resists at first, but is usually swept up in Ernie's enthusiasm by the end of the skit. This is how the two famous Muppets have complemented each other for thirty years -- Bert prim and introverted, allowing his inner child to be released only through the machinations of his roommate, the impish Ernie. Generally, at the end of the skit, Ernie does an abrupt about face: He stops singing or walks away from the game, and if Bert, swept up in his newfound emotional freedom, dares to keep singing, Ernie rebukes him: Keep it down, will ya? I'm trying to sleep! Which of course were Bert's exact words at the beginning of the scene. Bert winds up emotionally exposed, and embarrassed. In short, Ernie is a passive-agressive little shit, and even if his mind games occasionally allow Bert to break out of his shell, that is only a side effect. Ernie's main purpose is to humiliate his long-suffering friend. On today's episode of Sesame Street, I saw a Bert/Ernie skit I had never seen before, although it is almost certainly a rerun. Bert is reading. ("It was the best of pigeons, it was the worst of pigeons.") Ernie enters, but before he can even say anything, Bert says "No!", attempting to cut off any foolishness right from the start. Good luck. Ernie will not be denied, and soon he is singing "The Addition Song." With each new number, more and more animals and monsters and Muppets join Ernie and Bert, singing along. This time, Bert is not swept up into the bouncy musical number. For the duration of the song, he stands in the center of the picture, holding the book he wanted to read, scowling. His unibrow is curved down dramatically, indicating a plateau of anger rarely seen. He says nothing, but he looks an inch away from killing somebody. When the song ends, Bert snaps. I mean, snaps. He screams at Ernie, flailing his arms, and it would not have surprised me if Bert had fallen to his knees and wept loudly. It's really very alarming. He begs Ernie to get rid of all the intruders and just let him read. And Ernie, in response, simply leaves. Bert is left there surrounded by various penguins and aliens and an elephant. Holy smokes. One day there's going to be a Sesame Street skit in which the police bash down Bert's door to find blood everywhere, and Ernie's head in the oven. No jury on Earth would convict him.

YESTERDAY WAS "READY, SET..." and today is "Go!" Go back to my former job to learn just how badly I've been screwed. Will they extend benefits to the end of the month? Will there be any severance pay? Betting on either of these things would be a waste of money, and I don't have any money to waste. But I'll also discuss possible consulting work in the future, and if I can pull $50/hour out of them, that will ease my trouble just a little. They won't be keping me busy 40 hours a week, so I'll need to rustle up more work from somewhere. But it's a start. Then, finished at last with that humiliation, it's off to Boston and the MIT Mystery Hunt. I've been looking forward to this since... well, since the last Mystery Hunt. Over 48 hours of solving puzzles, with very little time for sleep? I'm there! Sign me up! This is the kind of thing you either jump into with both feet or couldn't be dragged into with a power winch. And strangely, one's enthusiasm for the event has very little to do with being a "puzzle person." My brother Daniel has been going for years, and as far as I know it's the one time each year he glances at anything puzzle related. You might go because you love puzzles, yes, but it's just as likely you'd go for the team spirit thing -- the joy of working together with good people to solve devious, outrageous puzzles that often, on the surface, seem simply impossible. It's a thrill to be one of twenty or thirty minds, all focusing on a single puzzle that has stopped us all for hours. And to see that puzzle crumble to the ground on the force of our mental exertion. Every year, there is someone who joins the team despite the fact that he knows that he will be useless. And inevitably, that person brings an simple insight to an intractable problem, one that allows it to be solved once and for all. Last year it was Janinne, and she wasn't even in attendance. We had been staring at the blackboard at a list of words, and after many hours of getting nowhere, I took a break and called my wife. After the inquiries into the health of babies and dogs, I read her the list of words, and she jotted them down, but said she didn't really want to think about it because a movie was about to start. Well, that's fine -- if she wanted to join in, she could have schlepped to Boston with me. Love, love, love, miss you, miss you, and good bye. Half an hour later I checked my e-mail, to see that she had sent me a message perhaps five minutes after I had hung up the phone. She had just about solved the whole damn thing. I remember looking at her e-mail and initially thinking, What is she talking about? That can't be... right... Hang on a second!!! I must have made some sort of barking noise that indicates sudden inspiration, because the rest of my team surrounded my computer and read her e-mail, too, and suddenly new ideas were flying, and within thirty seconds the puzzle that had stopped us for nearly a day was checked off under the Solved column. Happens every year. It's a wonder to behold, and a thrill to participate in it. I'll be staying with Dan this year -- no hotel for me. Ah well. But I'm only in the hotel for maybe eight hours over the whole weekend -- a nap, a shower, and then back to the puzzles. Foolish to spend so much money on it when Dan lives ten minutes away. Plus he just e-mailed me to announce that Beef Burgundy is on the menu for this evening. Why on earth would I chose to buy a completely average burger at the hotel sports bar instead of chowing down with my bro? It's going to be a great weekend.

SPENT THE DAY WORKING ON THE WEB SITE. It is no longer "Eric Berlin's Little Chunk of Web," but instead, "Eric Berlin -- Editorial Services." Considering how very bad I am at HTML, it looks okay. Gets the message across anyway. Need to fix a few more things, and then tomorrow I start spreading news of my existence to my pitifully small list of contacts. Speaking of pitiful: Sheryl Crow. There's nothing more cringe-worthy than artists -- especially those whose work I respect -- spouting off on the issues of the day. Sheryl's statement last night at the American Music Awards is a marvel of oversimplification: "I think war is based in greed and there are huge karmic retributions that will follow. I think war is never the answer to solving any problems. The best way to solve problems is to not have enemies." We shouldn't have enemies! Why didn't we think of that?! I wonder what Sheryl would have done about that Hitler fellow way back when, since war is never the answer to solving any problems. What's amazing is she almost certainly believes what she is saying. Karmic retributions. Good hopping Christ.

SO, I AM OFFICIALLY UNEMPLOYED. Again. Still can't believe it. My dot-com jobs -- companies with no coherent business plan whatsoever; companies that thought a catchy name was all that was needed to become a phenomena -- these jobs lasted longer than my tenure with a multimillion-dollar, nationally known toy company. I would never have dreamed it possible. I didn't think I'd retire from this place old and gray, but, shi-ite, who would have looked at this company and said, "I give this six months tops?" Criminy. They offered to keep me on. Same salary, fewer responsibilities. The trick is, I'd have to move to Chicago. My gut reaction was: No way. But I bit my tongue and listened to the offer, then came home and discussed it with the wife. Gave it some serious consideration. End result: No way. I'll happily work as a freelancer for them, do some consulting work, but this company is not going to uproot my life twice in one year. I was already leaning against the move when I called Chicago to speak to human resources on another matter -- a small insurance snafu that needs to be cleared up before the end of the week. And if I had any fantasies that moving to Chicago might be a good idea, they got eradicated fast as I tried to navigate my company's phone-mail system, which is a living electronic Escher print of menus and submenus that twist and turn and slam into each other. I expected to hear a phone-mail Minotaur come on the line: Another wanderer lost in the maze! It's dinnertime! I spent ten minutes -- a real, solid ten minutes -- pushing buttons, and failed to raise a single human being. I did leave a message for someone, but I have no idea if she's anyone who can help me. Is it foolish to reject a job on the basis of a company's phone mail system? Not hardly. If they can't get this right, what might the future hold for its products? I shudder to think.

WHAT ARE THE POSSIBLE SCENARIOS FOR TOMORROW? Let's see: 1) First, and most likely: "This office is being shut down. Help yourself to the office supplies, then get out." There's a part of me that's even hoping for this, although it would be nice if my insurance was stretched to, say, the end of February. (Ha.) 2) "This office is shutting down at the end of this week." (Or even, God help us, "This office is shutting down at the end of this month.") The paychecks will continue for a little while longer, but dragging myself to work will be like crawling through a lake of sludge every single day. But the paychecks will continue for a little while longer. So this is the scenario I should be hoping for. 3) "What? Fired? Who said anything about being fired? Jeez, how did this crazy rumor get started in the first place? Raises for everybody!" I can't really see our Chinese CEO saying "Jeez." Or the rest of it, either. But, really, it'll probably be Scenario #1: Don't take off your coat, you're going right back home. Here's a good sign that things are bad: I asked my boss for a contact at Fisher-Price, his former employer. How many times in your life do you get to ask your present boss for information to help you get a new job? I've already sent out a half-dozen resumes, including the one to FP. (Which is in... Buffalo. So it's come to this.) I am also gearing up to assault the nation with an editorial services at-home business. Writing! Editing! Uhh... more writing! The whole editorial gamut between writing and editing, right here at Eric Berlin's Writing and Editing Bistro! This plan needs more fleshing out. But I expect to have all the time in the world to do just that.

CONSIDERING THAT I AM ALMOST CERTAINLY GOING TO BE FIRED TOMORROW, I am in a surprisingly good mood. So what if I only had this job for six months? So what if I actually bought a house on the belief that this job would be stable? I can either make myself physically sick with worrying about the future -- I've done it before! I'm good at it! -- or I can simply have a nice weekend. Amazingly, I chose the latter. Would a worried-sick person make a lasagna? I think not! But I did it, although in general I'm more of a spaghetti kind of guy: Boil water, put in spaghetti, drain, add sauce, eat. Any idiot can do it. Lasagna always seemed like too much of construction project, like baking a house of cards. Surely there are at least a dozen things that can go wrong here. And now you've got this no-boil lasgana, of which I have always been deeply suspicious. It seems closer to witchcraft than food technology. The lasagna comes out of the package in stiff, fan-folded sheets, like corrugated cardboard. You lay these in a pool of sauce, and it could not possibly look less like this will eventually become a meal. Unless you like extremely crunchy pasta. But something wonderful happens in the oven, and it all came out perfect. (Except for the top layer, which really was crunchy. Oh well. Easily enough peeled back.) Lasagna even a guy can make! Try that one for your next slogan, Ronzoni.

A LITTLE PUZZLE I SUBMITTED TO WILL SHORTZ was used in his segment on NPR Weekend Edition.

AS TOBY, OUR BORDER COLLIE, approaches his seventh birthday, it occurs to me that it might have been a good idea to train him. Lately we've been simply letting him out into the backyard to do his business. After it is clear that he is going to accomplish nothing further, digestive cycle-wise, I whistle for him to come back. But apparently my dog has gone deaf. This is the same dog who can hear the word "cookie" from three rooms over, and even if the word is not used in a dog-related context, he will stare at you until surrender and get him a biscuit. So: "Cookie" he hears fine. "Come back now!", however, doesn't seem to register. He is in the furthest reaches of the yard, sniffing and exploring and pointedly ignoring me. La la la la la, I don't heeeeaaarr yoouuuu. It's freakin' cold out, which is the whole point to why he is out there by himself. My dog gets his time outside, and I don't have to put on my shoes. Everybody's happy. But if he's not going to return, then I have to do something about it. Do I really want to go find my sneakers, put them on, go outside, grab my dog, and drag him into the house? No, I do not. Here's a better idea: Let's call him again! That should work! Toby! Here, boy! Nothing. He continues to sniff. I am standing in my enclosed porch, which while technically "inside," provides no shelter from the freezing cold. And yet, it seems silly to put on a coat so that I can more comfortably stand there, peering through the screen door. So I jump up and down in my socks and T-shirt, feeling useless and impotent. Stupid dog. He seems to understand just how far he can push me, and just as I'm opening the door again to call him, he comes trotting towards me, collar jingling. Hiya! Glad to be back. You weren't calling me or anything, were you? I contemplate leaving him in the kitchen overnight, banishing him from our bedroom and his cozy featherbed on the floor. But what purpose will that serve? He would have no idea why he is being punished, and after an hour he would begin crying mournfully to be freed, and I'd have to climb out of bed to shut him up. So he goes utterly unpunished. Maybe I'll buy one of those fifty-foot leashes, so that when I want him to come back in, I can just reel him in like a sea bass.

LEA, LIKE MOST BABIES, has a wonderful smile. Her face is so tiny that every emotion floods the zone, and her smiles just beam. And we cannot capture this image on film. Try as we might. Alex loves cameras and can always be counted on to perform for them, smiling so big it almost looks fake. Lea, however, is deeply suspicious of cameras, and when one comes into sight, she gazes up at it with a mixture of worry and awe. We do not have a single picture of her smiling, and she is already halfway through her first year on earth. We're going to have to start employing increasingly complicated Wile E. Coyote-like gambits in order to get what we want: 1) Sawing a trap door in the floor and setting the camera down there on a giant spring. When we coax a smile out of her, we press a button, and BANG! The trap door pops open, the camera sproings out, and the smile is captured! Requires very fast film, but I think we can get that at Costco. 2) Hooking a camera on to a metal device which we in turn connect to Lea's shoulders, so that it is pointed at her face at all times. The camera takes pictures every thirty seconds. She has to smile eventually, right? 3) Building a Daddy robot with a giant camera for a head. Put a beard and glasses on it, she'll never know the difference. Robot says "Googlygooglygoogly," she smiles, and the robot imprints it on silver nitrate quick as a wink. Success!

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF "OH-HOW-IRONIC" COMES THIS: My company is falling apart, and the building that houses my company is also falling apart. Over the past couple of weeks, some spectacular variety of construction has been taking place in the large garage appended to my office. I don't know quite what they are doing over there, but it requires them to use a gigantic jackhammer. This is the Power Tool of the Gods, this jackhammer. And they seem to be applying it directly to the other side of our conference room wall. If you ever want to put your family through a realistic earthquake simulation, I highly recommend the purchase of whatever-the-hell tool they are using over there. The first time they began pounding away, it could very well have been Armageddon -- it was screamingly loud, and the whole world was shaking. My first thought was the boiler was going to explode. But then I thought: What boiler? There's no boiler. Is there? What the hell is happening? It went on for hours, and by the end of the day we were all used to it. If we were a growing company instead of a rapidly contracting one, it would have been fun to bring someone in for an interview that day. Make no mention of the fact that someone had picked up our office and put into one of those hi-intensity paint-can shakers. And if the interviewee ever brought it up, we could feign ignorance: Shaking? Noise? What do you mean? Whatever they're doing over there -- and you'd think I'd have some curiousity about that, but I don't -- it's taken them a long time to complete it. A week will pass, we'll all get used to the blessed relative silence, and then, THOOMMM!!! Thor has returned, and he is angry! The result of all this is, our conference now room resembles a too-metaphorical stage set for a play entitled "The Failing Toy Company." There are huge cracks in the exposed mortar -- in a couple of places you can see right through the wall to the daylight on the other side. There is a small gully in the floor as if someone had picked it up with two hands and just ripped it. All we need now is a dangling wooden beam hanging from the ceiling, or maybe a nice oil spill. (Later...) Wow. Not thirty minutes after I wrote the above words, all the power went out in my office. Everything: dead dead dead. That includes the restaurant next door and the offices above ours. Rumor has it the landlord didn't pay the electric bill. We hung around for about ten minutes, wondered exactly what we were hanging around for, and left. What's next with this place? A stampede of buffalo?

I SEEM TO RECALL that the last time I started a journal, it was a few weeks before I was laid off from a sinking dot-com. As the days and weeks of unemployment stretched out in front of me like a desert road, I found less and less to write about. Or rather, I had plenty of bile to spew, but not the energy to spew it, and the journal died its usual death. We'll see what happens this time: I am about to be unemployed yet again. This is not the way this was supposed to happen. Some people enjoy the journeyman role, bouncing from company to company. I am not like that -- I want stability -- and yet I find myself in a career that scoffs at the very concept. Still, my present company is a known commodity, its products sold in toy stores nationwide. They're not a fly-by-night dot-com. They are supposed to continue to exist, indefinitely. File bankruptcy if you must, but the toys must still be made! And someone if going to have to produce those toys, and that someone will be me. Right? Wrong. It's looking very much like the Chinese leaders have had their fill of the U.S. market. Leapfrog is kicking our collective asses. We have tied our own shoelaces together with the help of some startlingly bad product -- toys that sat and sat on the shelves like Artificial Boiled Meat Product. (I say "we" out of corporate unity, but these horrible decisions were made well before my arrival. Small consolation.) The rumor is, the entire U.S. operation will be shut down, and the whole of the company will recede back to Hong Kong. To me, this is the same thing as going out of business. They've got excellent programmers and artists over there, but they decidedly do not have their fingers on the pulse of the American toy market. Or Europe, either. God knows what they'll produce in 2004, but it will suck. The company is skipping merrily towards complete annihilation. So where does that leave me? In a very bad way. Let's face it. Sheesh. I wanted this blog to be a light-hearted romp of observations and anecdotes. (Like, um, that little Palestine rant of yesterday. Okay, it doesn't always have to be light-hearted...) Well, it may take some determination, but I'd like to try to maintain a healthy attitude here. I do have options, and as bad as things are at the moment, we're still better off than many, many others out there. A sense of perspective is a very valuable thing. (sob) No, no -- no sobbing allowed. I'll get aggressive. I'll find freelance work, and consulting gigs. Stupid as it seems, I'll construct crosswords -- the Times just raised their rates, God bless 'em. If I can construct just three puzzles a week, and if I can consistently sell them, that'll bring in... hmm. Less than 15K. All right, but that's just one possible avenue to explore. The key to success is to have a lot of pots on the stovetop! All bubbling at once! Lots of bubbling pots, and me standing over them, spoon in hand, ready to dip into whichever seems about to... to... Well, this metaphor has run out of steam. China is supposed to be calling in fifteen minutes. Now there's a phone call I'm dying to take. I'm certainly highly motivated to stay awake in order to make my product line the best it can possibly be. I almost wish I didn't like my Chinese counterparts -- screw 'em! Let 'em float! But I do like them, and it's not their fault that the company is imploding, and I'm not about to turn my back on them. Damn my sensitive soul.

"[T]he South African archbishop added that, while al-Qaeda was a terrorist organisation, many of its followers were 'not lunatic fringe, many of them are quite intelligent', and that leaders had to ask why such people 'should be willing to pilot a plane and go to their deaths'." - Archbishop Desmond Tutu, quoted in the British paper "The Guardian," by way of Andrew Sullivan. Oh those daring suicidal hijackers. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. It's quite astonishing how many variations on this theme we have heard over the past 18 months, sometimes from sources I had previously respected. And we've heard it for far longer when referring to Palestinian suicide bombers, killing Israeli civilians in a supermarket or a diner. The amazing argument: Since the Palestinians are an oppressed people, it's okay for them to retaliate in such a manner. It's nothing more than what's expected of them, in fact. Here's my question: If black Americans in the mid-60's had gone the suicide bomber route, would they even have the right to vote today? We'd still have black water fountains -- hell, we'd have them in Maine. When did the whole world forget the power of the non-violent protest? At its most effective, the protest was small and simple -- a simple march, a small boycott -- and the reaction of the people being protested against was a complete outrage: Bring out the fire hoses! A good non-violent protest clarifies a situation like nothing else, makes it clear as day just who are the Oppressors, and who is the Oppressed. When the cause is just, change can be brought around by non-violent protest. It has happened repeatedly. The left-wing sympathizers of the Palestinians know this. Even if they fail to be outraged at the Palestinian murders of Israelis -- and fail they have -- why are they not calling for the end of such murders and the adoption of non-violent techniques? Besides saving countless Jews, might not such protests do a better job of furthering the Palestinian cause? Of course, this bit of fantasizing doesn't take into account that one of the stated goals of the terrorists is to rid the world of Jews. Non-violence won't do that.

YESTERDAY MARKED THE FIRST TIME Alex and I went to a restaurant, just the two of us. We were in the shopping mall to get a new watchband and to get a beard trim. I would trim it at home but the little hairs fly everywhere -- it's like mowing a lawn without using a bag attachment. It takes me twice as long to clean up as it does to do the original trimming. I'd rather pay someone five bucks. The watchband purchase was not an overwhelming success -- the one I picked out is too big for my wrist, so now the watch can be twirled about like a bracelet. I need to stab it with an awl, get a new hole in there. But I don't own an awl. Why would I own an awl? After the beard trim -- and the haircut, since I was in the area -- it was time for lunch. I'd been looking forward to this. Father and toddler-aged son, out for a bite. Child in the booster seat reaching for Dad's french fries. Well, it wasn't to be. He was gung-ho for the cup of cranberry juice, but didn't even consider the notion of eating his grilled cheese sandwich. He was far more interested in the three-ton flowerpot on the windowsill that he was somehow able to slide to within an inch of the edge. Gaaa! No. No. Have a french fry. Please? Alex, have a french fry. He didn't want a french fry. He didn't want food. He didn't want me to have my food, which I was eating in enormous chomps in between efforts to prevent my child from killing himself. His booster seat was a simple lump of red molded plastic -- no straps to hold him in place, no straps to hold the booster seat to the grown-up chair. He would slide around -- in an effort to grab the flower pot -- and nearly topple over. I slid his chair as close to the table as I could without breaking his ribs, then took another enormous bite of my sandwich. He eventually gave up and leaned against me, sucking his thumb. Aww, he's tired. We drove home, and I put him into bed. Three minutes later, he was running around playing with all of his toys. He didn't nap until four more hours had passed. Tricked by a baby. I left half a sandwich behind because he was acting tired. And some very good french fries. Incidentally: The restaurant we went to was in all ways kid-friendly. Kids eat free with the purchase of an adult entree, they gave Alex his juice in a cute plastic cup which we could take home, and the waitress didn't scowl when Alex spilled his juice all over everything. But when they brought out his grilled cheese, it was on a plate that had been heated to the standard 500 degrees. I don't know why they do that for adults. "Be careful, the plate is hot," says the waiter at the fine upscale restaurant, and they are absolutely NOT KIDDING. It is the fashion to not serve plates until you can roast marshmallows on them from ten feet away. Okay, it keeps the food hot. But it also burns the customer. Is that an appropriate trade-off? And even if this is appropriate for adult platters, perhaps they might reconsider the idea when serving food to two-year olds. Hmm? I have recently broken the broad jump record, leaping across the room to prevent him from burning himself on the oven. And here the restaurant is placing directly in front of him a superheated piece of porcelain. Thanks, guys. Why not give him a steak knife while you're at it? Or a... what else is dangerous in a restaurant? Well, whatever -- find it and give him that.

THERE IS A COMMERCIAL ON THE AIRWAVES for a spray-on deodorant called "Axe." This is a manly-man product aimed at masculine men who wish to smell manly. The commercial shows a man in an elevator putting the finishing touches on his ensemble. In an elevator? Well, whatever -- let's say he's late for work. His shirt is unbuttoned and he is spraying Axe on his manly chest. He buttons up, and gets off the elevator just as Mr. Milquetoast gets on. A pretty young woman also boards at that time. After a moment, she sniffs the air. She looks at Mr. Milquetoast. She makes a visible attempt to control herself. She fails, and presses the "Stop" button on the elevator. Cut to: The two of them, readjusting themselves. Mr. Milquetoast is in more need of readjustment than the woman. The elevator stops, the young woman disembarks, and just as the elevator doors close again, a hand reaches in. We don't see this new person, but it is definitely another young female -- we see a glimpse of dress. The camera is more interested in what the woman has with her: A large dog. Wearing a pink bow. Licking her chops. End of commercial. Axe: The Deodorant That Will Get You Molested By German Shephards. Sounds like a winning tag line to me!

THIS BLOG IS JUST A FEW DAYS OLD and already I'm sick of trying to come up with titles for each entry -- poof! No more! Titles be gone! By this morning, the last of the snow and ice had vanished from the Earth. And the Weather Gods looked at the calendar and said, "What?! That can't be right!" Pow. A fresh coating for one and all, including a special delivery of teeny tiny hailstones that made me wish my umbrella was made out of sheet metal. The roads were covered in horrible brown slush by noon, and by 2:00 my office was closed and my boss had sent everyone home. Snow day! Came home and worked on my Web site a bit. My working knowledge of HTML is scanty at best, and the last time I updated my Web site was... oh, who knows. Plus my HTML book is still packed away somewhere. In sum, my Web site is not exactly bubbling with progress. The goal is to have a menu in a frame down the left hand side, with everything, including this blog, loading in the larger main screen. Easy peasy, right? Not for me. I've got the left frame set up right, but then everything wanted to load into that frame. Then my HTML apparently demanded that a new screen open up on every click of the mouse. Why have just one browser open when you can have six! The more the merrier! Now the blog loads into the right place, but in the wrong proportions -- the whole right side of the screen is ignored. It's an HTML no-man's land. I'll work on it over the weekend. Eventually I always stumble into success. Or, more likely, stumble into a compromise that I can live with. Yes. That's exactly what I meant. A thick black bar on every page! It's ART.

Progress! Maybe! Once or twice a week, there is Playgroup. It's held in a church, and it's another branch of the Connecticut birth-to-3 program in which Alex and many other developmentally disadvantaged toddlers are enrolled. It is called the Playgroup, but if Alex could speak, and if we let him say dirty words, he would have a wide variety of other names for it. Fragile X kids are often uncomfortable in crowds, and 25 little kids running pell-mell around the place is definitely a crowd. Alex spent the first several Playgroups wailing in that patented no one understands my misery! way that babies have. For all he knew, this was his new home -- we were never going back to his room full of toys, or his blue booster seat, or his Baby Mozart videos. Just him and two dozen little lunatics, forever! Waaaaa! And so it went for several months. Alex isn't old enough to "dread" things yet, but Janinne is, and she's come to dread Playgroup enough for both of them. Am I really going to take him back there again? He hates it, and he doesn't interact with anybody, and it's so depressing watching the kids his age or younger who run around so well, and chat with their mommies... The last few times, Alex hasn't been as heart-achingly miserable -- just a little overwhelmed, a little dizzy from all the hubbub. And today, some actual progress. Confirmed! Alex participating in snack time -- taking not one but two cookies. (He declined the juice.) Confirmed! Alex taking a single trepidatious step up the ladder to the slide before backing away. Previously, he treated the slide as something that should never be approached without a haz-mat suit. Confirmed! The long yellow plastic Fun Tunnel -- which actually looks like a haz-mat device -- is another piece of equipment Alex would never dream of using... but today he sat at one end and watched all the other kids crawl through it. And when one of those kids began rolling around, shaking the whole Tunnel back and forth, Alex laughed riotously at this genius touch of physical comedy. Laughing! At Playgroup! (Janinne reports there was another newcomer at today's Playgroup, a boy around Alex's age. Sat in the corner and shrieked the whole time. And so the cycle begins anew.) The day Janinne calls me to announce that Alex has actually crawled through the plastic Fun Tunnel, I'll go home early so we can celebrate. In other Playgroup news, Alex's non-screaming behavior actually allowed Janinne to converse with the other moms there. One mom complained with a sigh about her husband's job, about how he has to travel so often. Aww -- what does he do? asked someone. He's an arms inspector in Iraq. This does not strike me as a position with a great deal of job security. The extreme opposite, in fact. UPDATE: I am informed that it is not two dozen kids at Playgroup but rather... five. Well, I'm sure it looks like two dozen when you're only three feet tall.

Flush the bowls There was an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine a couple of weeks ago about college sports. The Times is often (rightfully) accused of bias, and this bias usually takes the form of sneaky little adjectives in an otherwise straightforward piece -- a Republican senator might be "strident" while a Democrat "forceful." (To give a real-life example, the Times recently referred to the upcoming "aggressive Republican Senate." Doesn't the GOP have a single-vote majority? How aggressive can they possibly get? [Thanks to Kausfiles.]) Where was I? Oh, right, college sports. Anyway, this was not a sneaky-bias kind of article. This author, Michael Sokolove, wore his bias like a sandwich board and paraded about holding placards. It's amazing the University of South Florida let him on campus. USF, in order to get itself a more national reputation, is trying to break in to the upper echelons of college sports. Sokolove pretty much comes to the conclusion that they could save themselves a great deal of time and worry by simply flushing 100 million dollars down the toilet. He points out that even the largest programs are hanging on by their fingernails, financially. Only a couple of truly successful, deep-rooted programs -- I believe he mentions Notre Dame -- are profitable, or breaking even. Not failing miserably, in any event. What I have never understood is the mentality of college sports. When Bobby Knight got fired from Indiana, there were interviews with angry students who had chosen Indiana because of Bobby Knight and were now considering transferring. These weren't students on the basketball team; they just liked basketball. They chose their school exclusively because it had a violently colorful basketball coach. Is it possible to have one's priorities any more perfectly, exactly backward? It's like choosing a school because it has an absolutely beautiful cafeteria. What am I majoring in? Who cares! Let's eat! Sokolove makes it clear that going the college sports route does increase an administration's ability to raise money... for college sports. All the other programs -- you know, the learnin' ones -- don't see much. Yes, it does enhance a college's reputation, but in a completely arbitrary way. So what if a given college has a great football team? How is the freaking EDUCATION? What really gets me about the whole thing is that you can't pay the athletes. That would be wrong! That would be treating this multi-billion-dollar business like... well, like a business, or something. Yes, the kids get a free education, but the graduation rates for college athletes are appalling. And so few turn pro. How many of these kids get to the end of their four years and say, What the hell was I just doing? I say give them some real money -- not in the form of an illegal Corvette, but in the form of a trust fund they can access after they turn 21. Or -- ooh! -- in the form of a trust fund they can access after they graduate with a 3.0 grade point average. Since I'm dreaming anyway. Sigh. So. Let's see, have I met this evening's goal of offering a completely unreasonable solution to something 99% of America doesn't consider a problem? Looks like it! Mission accomplished!

National Precrime? I've seen many of the plot holes in Minority Report pointed out, but having just watched it again for a second time, one hole in particular jumps out: As the movie opens, there are efforts to take the precrime division from its roots in D.C. and turn it into a national program. How exactly were they going to do this? They've only got the three pre-cogs. It's a big country. What was the plan? To hook up the whole damn continental US to these three psychic brains? They'd be beef jerky in a week. (You heard me: Beef jerky! No, I don't know what I mean, either.) And what happens when the pre-cogs die? The three of them, it is made clear, are nothing more than a genetic accident. Could other pre-cogs be manufactured? It doesn't even seem as if anyone is working on the issue. The short-sightedness of these people is just amazing, considering they are attempting nothing less than to prevent every single murder in the country. Ah well. Just a movie, and a darn good one, warts and all. The bit with the spiders running amok through the tenement -- just smashing. Oh: Sorry: One more hole, pointed out by a friend: The Pre-Crime Division didn't erase John Anderton's authorization codes from its security system? So he's wanted for (pre-)murder, but he can still come waltzing into the building because someone forgot to change the locks? Holy smokes, let's think here, people. Happy new year to you all. (Which, considering I have told all of three people about this blog, is probably three of you. You know who you are.)

Yay. Had a Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle accepted by Will Shortz. This will be my second Sunday puzzle -- although my first one was completed only with the generous assistance of various friends and colleagues. Hell, someone else did the entire fill, and allowed me to take all the credit. I always thought there should have been an asterisk over my name for that supposed "debut." But this time the puzzle is all mine, and by gosh I'm proud of it. Will writes glowing acceptance letters, too -- he said my puzzle was "handsome" with a "fresh, tight theme" and a "dynamite fill" which should clearly be awarded the "Nobel Prize for crossword construction." All right, no, but he was very complimentary. Hell, the one time I had a puzzle rejected by him, it took me two readings to understand that he had, in fact, rejected the puzzle -- even that puzzle was "fresh and imaginative." I wasn't a constructor back in the days of Eugene Maleska, Will's predecssor at the New York Times, but I understand that Maleska could be just plain mean. I forget which constructor told me of a letter he received in which Maleska directed him to get out of crossword constructing entirely. Additionally -- and I realize I am speaking ill of the dead -- Maleska was bewildered by phrases such as "CAR SEAT" and "STAPLE GUN" and generally assumed that the constructor had made them up. He was much more comfortable in the world of rare African birds and Swedish rivers, the kind of vocabulary that turns a fun-filled crossword puzzle into a grand tour of the yawningly obscure. (There are some people who prefer that kind of crossword puzzle. These people are wrong.) Will brought the crossword into the modern age, and I'm happy to have a small part in his tenure.

Is it 2004 yet? Presently, I am producing a line of toys to be released in fall of 2003. My life has been essentially devoted to these toys since September, which is not, I admit, all that long a time. But mentally, I am finished with these products. The bulk of the work is in the hands of my Chinese counterparts, and all I can do from my end is sweep up loose ends. I don't want to sweep up loose ends -- there are far too many of them, and its depressing to know that I'll never get them all, because they multiply like horror movie monsters. For mercy's sake, don't get them wet or they'll take over the town! What? They multiply like mad even when dry? In the Gremlins movies, the hero manages to eradicate all of the Gremlins simultaneously, with a single cleverly improvised maneuver. My own gremlins have to be dealt with one at a time. There is simply no other way. I am loathe to open my e-mail, lest there be another painful setback in my In box. Which there always is. Loose ends take two forms: My Stupid Mistakes, and The Grievous Miscommunication. Today brought examples of both. My Stupid Mistake is another iteration of one that has been haunting me for weeks. I hired a freelance writer to provide content for one of the many activities on these products. I neglected to tell Mr. Freelance Writer of the simply un-bee-leev-able restrictions we are facing on these devices. On the least expensive of them, we can only fit perhaps 10 characters on a single line of the LCD screen. A Lite-Brite has better resolution. Mr. Freelancer sent in his content and -- aggh! -- most of it is too damn long to use. Has to be edited. Whittled down to size. What a pain. And now, today, just as I believed myself past this problem, I discover more of his content that I simply overlooked previously. That's right: Too long. And I should have sent it to China last week. But I can't -- it'll have to be edited first, line by slow painful line. Grievous Miscommunications happen no matter how well you plan. It is simply a by-product of having half the team in Connecticut and half in Hong Kong. But they irk me just the same. Today's was a particularly aggravating example: One of the activities we are planning for this line of toys is a simple variant on Hangman. On three of the four products in the line, the Hangman puzzle will be preceded by a clue to the answer. On the least expensive product, the one with a screen resolution that comes frighteningly close to being just one giant pixel, we cannot fit a clue. So: Skip it. No clue. No clues in the least expensive product! When I was in Hong Kong, we went over every game in detail, and when we discussed Hangman, and I said the word "clue," -- even in the context of saying, "I don't have a clue," or, "Anybody for a game of Clue?" -- the product manager for the cheapest product would chime in with, "There are no clues in my product." By the time I left China, I knew my name, I knew my address, and I knew that the cheapest product did not have clues in its version of Hangman. Naturally, today I get an e-mail asking me where the clues are for the Hangman data. How is this possible? In the next couple of weeks, assuming I am not fired for My Stupid Mistakes, I will be assigned my responsibilities for the 2004 product line. I am ready for 2004. When first embarking on a new product, perfection is still within reach. No compromises have yet been made, nobody has yet said that the specifications are unworkable, no one has yet said that we can't do it that way because it won't sell in Spain. Anything is possible, and there is no reason on Earth (yet) why this product cannot astonish the world with its brilliance. Who wouldn't rather be at the start of the production cycle than here at its bitter finale? But, tempting as it is, I cannot sit back and wait for the 2004 line to be announced. 2003 is still very much with us, in the form of a wriggling mass of loose ends. Pop! Look! There's another!

Joe Millionaire I'd like to imagine that Fox had to scour the country to find someone so misogynistic as to want to be its Joe Millionaire -- a $19K-a-year construction worker willing to fool women into thinking he's a multi-multi-millionaire. Reality TV has no impact on me -- I'm aware of its faddishness, but I've never felt any desire to watch any of it for more than five consecutive minutes. But Joe Millionaire really burns me up. A group of women are competing for a man they believe to be worth millions. Presumably, they will be winnowed down to a sole winner, who will then be told they her prize is really just some pipe-laying schlub from L.A. Will true love prevail? Will she choose to love him anyway? Criminy, OF COURSE NOT. Fox is promoting the show with the tag line, "Can love survive a little 50 million dollar lie?" But this is not a little lie; it's a great big fat whopper. Any woman would say to this putz, "Screw you! With mustard!" But Fox will edit the show to make it seem like the woman is the villain -- a gold-digger who was never out for anything but money. What bullshit. First of all, this small matter of the salary will not be the only lie Joe Millionaire is going to tell. A suave and debonair man of the world simply does not act like a construction worker. Joe is going to be acting his ass off, pretending to be something he is not. Essentially, the big winner will know nothing about her supposed prize, except that he is willing to participate in a stunt of this nature. Is she supposed to run off with him back to Los Angeles, simply because the cameras are running? She'd be a fool, and I doubt very much that they roped any such fools into the contestant pool. It'll be too much fun for Fox to crucify the winner as a greedy shrew.

A perfect day Let me count the ways. We're up before dawn, to get the kids ready for the trip to Long Island. Have to wake Alex up, which sometimes results in tired crankiness, but today he crawls out of bed and heads right for the kitchen -- time for breakfast. Even Lea doesn't cry this morning but wakes up googly and happy and rarin' to go. The Bridgeport Ferry is near-empty -- ten cars, tops. We get a table in the cabin so that Alex can look out at the water, bouncing excitedly in his seat. I'm pretty sure he views the Long Island Sound as simply a really, REALLY big bathtub. And he loves the bath. Water in any form -- oh boy! Let's splash! So we threw him in, and he had a fine old time. Well, no. But I honestly don't think he'd have minded, for the first few seconds. Anyway. Got to the Folks house and was told that both brothers would be joining us -- Adam is a given, he lives ten minutes away. But Daniel's up in Boston and I wasn't expecting to see him until the MIT Mystery Hunt in mid-January. The kids fell asleep at just the right time, and we men sat down to watch the Giants take on Philly for the big season finale. A terrifying nailbiter, just the way football should be. The Giants dominated in every possible way except for points -- three times in the Red Zone resulted in three turnovers: one interception in the end zone and two fumbles. Worse, two long touchdown passes were called back on extremely dubious holding penalties. The Giants simply could not get out of their own way -- the end zone may as well have been in the center of the Earth. They were losing 7-0 until mid-way through the fourth quarter, when finally Kerry Collins connected with Jeremy Shockey for a touchdown. Shockey's aggression and desire often translate into extra yards -- the first tackle never stops him -- or acrobatic mid-air catches that can only be described as didjooseethat?! His touchdown catch was a classic: It was, in fact, in the opposing player's hands for an interception, and Shockey simply ripped it from him while both players were still in mid-jump. When the two men landed, only one player had the ball, and it wasn't a Philadelphia Eagle. And so, tie game! On the Giant's next possession, however, Tiki Barber fumbles for the third time that game -- and Philadelphia starts deep in Giant territory. It looks to be all over, but Eagle David Akers actually misses a 35-yard field goal attempt -- only the second time this year he'd missed from that yardage. An incredible break. It should have been over. It seemed impossible that it wasn't over. But no, it's on to overtime. Tiki Barber seems to carry the ball on every play, getting the Giants set up for a 39-yard field goal attempt. Kicker Matt Bryant had already missed earlier in the game from closer than that, and even scared the hell out of us by bonging an extra point off of the goalpost uprights. The Berlin family held its breath, aaaaaaand it's good! The Giants are in the playoffs! They don't have a chance in hell of making the Super Bowl! But it's nice that they'll get to play at least one more game before heading home to watch the rest of it on TV. And then upstairs to even better news than this: Lea coughed! No, wait -- that's not the good news. But something amazing happened immediately after that. Janinne, who explains absolutely everything to Alex, said to him: "Lea coughed." And Janinne coughed, by way of example. And then Alex coughed. On purpose. Imitation! He imitated Janinne! Imitation has been a huge iron door with many, many locks. Alex has long been able to imitate select gestures, but only occasionally -- he's been shaking his head happily for a year, and just lately I can say "Hands in the air!" and he'll oblige. But he has never purposefully imitated a sound from his parents. Until tonight. In the car on the way home we all practiced coughing like a wardful of tuberculosis patients. We don't want to get overly optimistic, but it's hard not to see a light at the end of the tunnel: Coughing could lead to staccato vowel sounds -- "Ah! Oh!" -- which could lead to full-fledged syllables, which could lead to... dare I say it... actual words. It's hard not to be climbing the walls in excitement over this development. And all because my son coughed. The grand finale: A typical gigantic meal from Mom, my whole family around the dinner table, Lea in her car seat dozing off, Alex in his high chair coughing happily. A birthday cake for Daniel, and then happy goodbyes and it's back on the ferry and home. I've printed out the Sunday Times crossword, and I'll sit in bed and solve it. And think about this good, good day.

Nothing doing; plus, clone babies and lottery winners A good, good day -- exactly what a day off should be: Did naught but play with my son, cuddle my daughter, solve a few puzzles, and watch TV. Now I'm cooking up a mess o' dinner, to last us until the middle of next week. Asking Janinne to play housewife -- where's my dinner, woman?! -- is a bit much, considering (a) she can't cook and (b) she's busy teaching Alex from sun-up to dark. So I try to fill the refrigerator on the weekends. Tomorrow we are heading for the Parents to watch the big finale to the Giants season. It should be a good game; all the better to watch it surrounded by family. Meanwhile... Is it going out on a limb to say that this clone baby will prove to be no such thing? Is it truly possible that the first cloned baby will be brought to the world by a religious sect that believes their founder, a former race-car driver, was abducted and wooed by voluptuous female space robots? Wasn't this an episode of Futurama? Anyway, I'm betting this will prove not to be a clone at all, and a whole lot of major media outlets will be deservedly red-faced that they ever gave high-volume headlines to these silly, silly people. Speaking of high-volume headlines, I thoroughly agree with Best of the Web. Why do we treat lottery winners like celebrities? It only serves to promote gambling -- in this case, Lotto, the most easily accessible form of gambling around, one that amount to nothing more than a tax on the poor. All those local news snippets of long, long lines at the Lotto stations whenever the jackpot gets big -- man, they turn my stomach. Our culture is so tuned-in to the get-rich-quick frequency, we forget there are other possibilities -- like, oh, saving and investing one's money over a period of time. It's not as much fun as dreaming that this is the week all your problems come to an abrupt end, but it's a hell of a lot more realistic.

What? No plans to sue? But this is America! Associated Press reports on a couple whose children found pornographic material inside a Barney book. Astonishingly, the parents have no plans to sue the publisher, and furthermore do not care who is at fault. All they want is an apology. Can you imagine? They're not going to sue! It's gotten to the point, when I read these articles, that my eyes skip down to the insane figure being demanded by the plaintiffs. Would anyone be surprised to see that this couple was demanding $45 million from the publishers? For pain and suffering, or trauma, or what-have-you? Publications International, the publisher in question, should count its lucky stars. The company, in its "apology" to the couple, noted that picture found by the children was, to quote the AP article, "not especially shocking." Quoth the company: "The material is no more graphic than what's seen on magazines, billboards and TV every day." Umm, perhaps. But maybe this is one of those instances where context is everything. Even if it was just a bikini shot of Cindy Crawford, it's not something you expect to find in a Barney book. And even if the material -- which was captioned "Wilder Sex" -- was no more graphic than what's seen on television these days, that doesn't make it automatically appropriate for Barney-aged tots, now, does it? Hey, Publications Int'l: If this couple wanted to sue your asses, you'd settle in a heartbeat. A simple "sorry" would suffice. While we're on the topic, let me recommend Overlawyered.com, a great blog specializing in the great gold rush that is our legal system.

Me and the boy Janinne took off with Lea for a friend's house, an hour north of here, so it was just me and Alex all day. It's very easy to simply fall into the trap of letting him do whatever he wants -- he has so much fun simply wandering in the basement, opening and closing drawers, pulling books of shelves, etc. Have fun destroying things, son, I'll be over here doing a crossword. But, oh, there is just so much we need to teach him. Alex has Fragile X, a genetic disorder that can lead to a wide variety of manifestations, and there's no doubt he is at least slightly learning disabled, and it's hard to rule out the notion that he might be genuinely retarded. Our sole weapon in combatting this is simply to repeat things to him one ZILLION times, in hopes that suddenly the light bulb in his head will flicker, buzz, and then magically glow. Lately I've been pushing colors on to him, as forcefully as I can: "This is red, this is blue. This is red, this is blue. Okay, Alex: Point to the red circle. Point to red!" He makes a random jab at the page. "No, that's purple. Here's red, Alex! Here's red, over here!" Aaaaaand repeat. And repeat again, and again, and again. This is Janinne's day, every day, and I frankly don't know if I could do it if I were her. Anyway. You can tell when he's had quite enough of one lesson and is ready to move on to another, so we gave up on colors and moved on to Simon Says -- raise your arms! Cover your face! Arms out wide! He doesn't get this game, either, but he enjoys watching Daddy make a fool out of himself. Then it's on to a rousing game of Push the Ball Back and Forth. Then lunch and nap. And then, well, time to wander around the basement destroying things while Daddy does a crossword puzzle. We'll get back to red and blue a little later, okay?

Down with pregnancy! Right now there are toy buyers at Wal-Mart -- not to mention product development types at Mattel -- who are throwing up their hands and just... giving... up. When I first read the headline "Barbie's pregnant pal pulled from the shelves," I assumed someone in the toy industry had lost his mind again. Happens every so often. Someone gets an idea for Ax-Murderer Elmo, and that idea grows legs and sprints for the finish line before anybody can muster up a decent argument why this can not, should not, must not be done. Only when the toy is pushed back by an appalled public does the company wake up to its insanity. So I assumed this was simply another toy industry debacle. Just in time for Christmas! Teenage Single Mother Barbie! Comes with an envelope of food stamps! (Sorry, there is no Single Father Ken. He's run off.) But while the toy industry is perfectly capable of catastrophe, this isn't an example of it. Not at all. The controversial product -- which generated so many complaints that Wal-Mart felt compelled to pull the product from the shelves -- could not possibly be more wholesome. The "Happy Family" set included Midge, her husband, and her three-year old son. (You don't even have to buy these separately. It's the whole family or nothing!) And, yes, Midge is pregnant -- her newborn is held in her stomach via magnet, and can be simply snapped out. Midge even wears a wedding ring. So Wal-Mart customers (in large numbers, apparently) were complaining about a traditional, no-nonsense, nuclear family. Calling it bad. And Wal-Mart executives said, "You're right! What were we thinking! Get those toys off the shelves!" The whole lot of them: Idiots. Toy companies think about the Wal-Mart audience every single day -- Wal-Mart is, after all, the number one retailer in the country. A toy simply does not get developed without someone asking, How will the Wal-Mart crowd react to this? And here we have as conservative a product as one might want, one that seems specifically designed for Wal-Mart and its audience. And that audience's reaction is: My GOD! Are you saying Midge and her husband -- a healthy married couple -- had SEX?! Avert your eyes! I assume that was the complaint, anyway. What else could it possibly be? The blame for this falls squarely on Wal-Mart, which has been coddling its customers for years. If you're a musician and you want to sell your product at the number one retailer in America, you better not have any offensive language -- Wal-Mart simply won't carry it. (And musicians comply, providing alternative tracks or otherwise cleaning up their act for the Wal-Mart audience. Such artistic integrity!) That's Wal-Mart's right, of course, and I'm not suggesting they do a 180 and start stocking Hustler. But the resulting message delivered to Wal-Mart customers is: "You have the right to not be offended by anything. And we shall protect you!" The only possible result of this is customers demanding more and more such protection, even from goods that are not even remotely damaging. Once you a draw circle and say, "Only good things are allowed in the circle," it becomes all too easy to look around, make up reasons why this or that thing is "bad," and cast it out. It makes a consumer feel powerful. Look how I can yank this gigantic company around! Sit up, Wal-Mart! Beg! Beg for my dollars! But the customer is always right, and so get that toy nuclear family off the shelves!