Category: Uncategorized

My dad’s MSN e-mail account got spoofed yesterday. In addition, my dad’s aversion to travel got spoofed yesterday. As did his not-so-PC racial attitudes. All in one stroke, as you can see from this e-mail I received from his @ddress last night:

How are you doing today? I am sorry i didn’t inform you about my traveling to Africa for a program called “Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education, the program is taking place in three major countries in Africa which is Ghana , South Africa and Nigeria. It as been a very sad and bad moment for me, the present condition that i found myself is very hard for me to explain.

I am really stranded in Nigeria because I forgot my little bag in the Taxi where my money, passport, documents and other valuable things were kept on my way to the Hotel am staying, I am facing a hard time here because i have no money on me. I am now owning a hotel bill of $500.00 and they wanted me to pay the bill soon else they will have to seize my bag and hand me over to the Hotel Management. I need this help from you urgently to help me back home, I need you to help me with the hotel bill and i will also need $600.00 to feed and help myself back home so please can you help me with a sum of $1,100.00 to sort out my problems here? I need this help so much and on time because i am in a terrible and tight situation here, I don’t even have money to feed myself for a day which means i had been starving so please understand how urgent i needed your help.

I am sending you this e-mail from the hotel Library and I only have 2 hours, I will appreciate what so ever you can afford to send me for now and I promise to pay back your money as soon as i return home so please let me know on time so that i can forward you the details you need to transfer the money through Money Gram or Western Union.

Thank you very much for your time.  Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Substitute “Roumanian/Israeli Archie Bunker” for “dad” and you’ll understand just how funny this e-mail is.

Happy 100th anniversary of getting your ass flattened by an asteroid, Siberia!

What I’m reading: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, along with more 10-K statements and annual reports for my Top Companies issue.

What I’m listening to: 5:55 by Charlotte Gainsbourg again. And again.

What I’m watching: Yankees-Mets, The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman, and the Roberto Benigni scene from Night on Earth.

What I’m drinking: Harp, at a semi-business get-together Saturday night.

Where I’m going: Nowhere for holiday week. Still more writing and layouts to do!

What I’m happy about: A week from today, this issue will be over. Oh, and yay! Germany loses!

What I’m sad about: Not a lot. I’m too busy to be sad. Which is sad in itself, I admit.

What I’m pondering: When Gillian Welch & David Rawlings are going to put out another album.

Working at home for several days, then coming into the office to square away a bunch of little details with people . . . only to discover that your desktop computer is dead!

Good thing I back up my issue and conference files on a 4gb thumb drive, and keep my (non-company) laptop on hand!

Sure would be nice to get to my old e-mails, though . . .

Sorry about the lack of posts, dear readers. This issue is really eating up all my time. I promise there’ll be some good Unrequired Reading tomorrow!

What I’m reading: I finished Endless Things, by John Crowley, this weekend, but I have so much work to do on my Top Companies issue that I’m probably only going to be reading 10-Ks and annual reports for the next week or so. Oh, and some more Cromartie High School.

What I’m listening to: Boxer, by the National.

What I’m watching: Sumo marathon on ESPN Classic.

What I’m drinking: An awful lot of Hendrick’s G&Ts; that’s trade show life for ya!

Where I’m going: Nowhere. In fact, I’ll probably be working at home much of the week.

What I’m happy about: That my flight home from San Diego was only 40 minutes late. Oh, and that my wife and my dog were waiting both for me at the top of the stairs when I walked in the door at 1:45am on Saturday.

What I’m sad about: George Carlin died last night.

What I’m pondering: Which of my neighbors left a Jack Chick tract in my mailbox entitled, Love the Jewish People. Don’t get me wrong; it’s pretty awesome, even if it doesn’t reach the heights of Dark Dungeons. That’s the problem the history-oriented tracts have when they match up with the comic-narrative ones. Of course, this was the all-time awesomest. (I’m pretty sure I know which neighbor it was.)

“Paradise Lost: They told him to go to Hell. They should have finished the job.”

Sorry for the lack of posts today, dear reader. I spent most of the day transcribing my Pfizer interview from Tuesday: 65 minutes on the digital recorder added up to 4,000 words, and that’s after I elided some sections that I know I can’t run in the magazine.

Anyway, I’m settling in to read, and just came across a word I’d never encountered before, which I figure I’ll share with you:

columbarium

n. (pl. -baria) a room or building with niches for funeral urns to be stored. a niche to hold a funeral urn. a stone wall or walk within a garden for burial of funeral urns, esp. attached to a church. Origin: mid 18th cent.: from Latin, literally ‘pigeon house’.

What I’m reading: Dæmonomania, by John Crowley, and some comics by Jason, the Norwegian cartoonist who’s currently doing the 1-pagers in the NYTimes magazine.

What I’m listening to: 5:55, by Charlotte Gainsbourg.

What I’m watching: The third season of The Wire, and Bowfinger.

What I’m drinking: Cherry Coke. It was that kinda weekend.

Where I’m going: On a quick trip to Louisiana next weekend, for Amy’s godson’s birthday.

What I’m happy about: That Rufus had a good time at the opening of the local farmers’ market.

What I’m sad about: Harvey Korman’s death. “That’s Hedley!” (oh, and Sydney Pollack and Yves Saint Laurent, too)

What I’m pondering: What intimation of mortality led me to go downstairs on Sunday morning and start pulling books from my library and putting them in the “I will never get around to reading this in my lifetime” pile. Later in the day, I found a neat article by Luc Sante about The Book Collection That Devoured My Life:

Over the years I’ve gotten used to the inevitable questions about my accumulation of books. No, I haven’t read all of them, nor do I intend to — in some cases that’s not the point. No, I’m not a lawyer (a question usually asked by couriers, back in the days of couriers). I do have a few hundred books that I reread or consult fairly regularly, and I have a lot of books pertaining to whatever current or future projects I have on the fire, and I have many, many books speculatively pointing toward some project that is still barely a gleam in my eye. I have a lot of books that I need for reference, especially now that I live 40 minutes away from the nearest really solid library. I have some books that exist in the same capacity as the more recondite tools in the chest of a good carpenter — you may not need it more than once in 20 years, but it’s awfully nice to have it there when you do. Primarily, though, books function as a kind of external hard drive for my mind — my brain isn’t big enough to do all the things it wants or needs to do without help.