This is anything but a perfect world you’ve been born into, but I know that you’ll be raised to see the best in it. And there is much to love, surrounded by two extended families who each understand the value of being there for one another. Your mom and dad are the product of generations of love and care that have been poured into children, and they are overflowing with that to put into you. You’ll have enough money and opportunity, you’ll have your basic needs met, but all of that pales in comparison to the bedrock environment you’ll have to establish your emotional security and stability.

You’ll be a toddler before anyone realizes what has happened. I imagine you’ll be a hellraiser by then already, if genetic history is any indicator. Do me a favor, and give your mother a hard time, okay? Call that sibling revenge, or Karma. Whatever. Just make her sweat a little. And look forward to visits from your uncle, who will spoil you and amuse you and talk to you about physics while we watch Baby Einstein. Run around terrorizing the animals and scaring adults with close calls and showing everyone that amazing personality in development.

I can’t wait until you’re in grade school and reach that age when your mind opens to learning of all sorts. There comes a day in the development of every child when suddenly he or she becomes a conversational companion. That moment is a joy to adults in your life, because you’ll be a captive audience to whom we can impart all of our wisdom. You’ll be a mini-me for all the grown-ups who can see elements of themselves in you. Comments about you will go from “she has her mother’s eyes” and “she has her dad’s eyelashes,” to “she has her mother’s sense of mischief” and “she has her dad’s kindness.” For the record, I hope all of those things come to pass. You’ll be beautiful, but we’ll be more taken with your sense of humor and your quick wit.

This is your cousin, Kylie, at age four. Don't ever do this to your mother. Call that the first and best advice your uncle ever gave you.

Then there will come a day when you are a teenager, and you’ll be as perfect and invulnerable as all teenagers are. A legend in your own mind. You’ll refuse to listen to anyone … presumably anyone but your two uncles, who will be so fantastically cool that you’ll actually come to us for advice. Am I unrealistic? It’s possible, but I hold out hope. I suspect that you’ll be a different sort of girl, because you will have the relationship with your parents that each of them have with their own: open, candid, supportive, humorous, loving. When things are difficult, you’ll have learned the solidity and flexibility of your father to fall back on, and the creativity and tenacity of your mother. You will embark on adult life having absorbed the best qualities that people can have, because that is where you come from.

Eventually, parents cannot protect their children any longer and they must shove them out of the nest. Far from being sorry about that, I look forward to that for you. I would wish you luck, but I believe that luck favors the prepared, so I wish you good fortune. I hope that at least some of your plans work the way you intend, which is the most that anyone can ask. I hope you are taken early in your life with a great passion to which to dedicate yourself, but if you are not, I hope you experience a broad variety of things and take bits and pieces of life from each area in which you dabble, and that all of those experiences round you and prepare you for when you do decide what your corner of the world will be.

I hope your eyes and your mind are open to learning the great things in life by watching other people, but I hope you never settle for that. I hope you have the great good fortune to experience them yourself. I also hope that you are able to learn from seeing others suffer the consequences of momentary lapses, the things poorly thought out. I hope you can avoid personal experience with The Big Mistakes, because I don’t want my niece to have significant hurt or hardship. If those things happen, you will have amazing resources to fall back on.

That said, I do hope you make plenty of small mistakes, of the sort that give rise to humility and the ability to laugh at yourself. It is impossible to endear oneself to people or lead them without the ability to see the ludicrous nature of what we daily endure. I hope you encounter sufficient challenges that you realize that you are no different from countless other talented, motivated people who must hurdle the challenges life will put in your way. You’re special, but not above struggle. You’re capable of success, but only by appreciating your talents and drawing heavily on hard work.

Above all, I wish you happiness. Never stop striving for things better, but always remember to appreciate everything around you and what you have accomplished. May you revel in the small wonders that life presents every day. May you find your talents and pursue them with single-minded determination. May you stay away from the traps that the wrong people will put before you. May you be, in a word, everything bit as great as your beginnings suggest you can be. May you be the person everyone hopes you will be, and somthing approaching the person that your dog already thinks you are.

I haven’t met you yet, little Barbara Christine, but it won’t be long. I already know what I’ll see when I look into your eyes: a young continuation of a vivid, devoted family tradition. We’re all going to be there for you and take joy in watching you grow, and eventually seeing you become the woman that you can be.

Grow up well, please, but not too quickly.

Come to think of it, it really comes down to how much the stupidity in question inconveniences me.

Like I said, I do think it’s funny when smart people have brief spells of cluelessness. When my team and I were in Minneapolis back in April, we went for juicy lucies at a restaurant called the 5-8 Club. As we were piling out of cars and assembling in the parking lot, one of my teammates observed that there was a four-year-old climbing around on the hood of a car. Dumbfounded that she was left alone to do that, he started taking pictures of her. He was oblivious to the woman sitting in the driver’s seat, growing angrier by the *snap*, or the couple of restaurant employees standing nearby on a smoke break and watching him with undisguised suspicion. Of course, the rest of us saw all of this, but we decided to see what happened.

At least Rob only received burning looks. I have a long history of doing dumb stuff, much of which results in actual pyrotechnics. I’m just lucky that none of my reinterpretations on classical common sense have resulted in a Darwin award. Nothing like the story my dad swears to, in which he had a childhood acquaintance who liked to drop matches into a gasoline can. Reality came along and, in the immortal words of Henry VIII, made that genius a head shorter.

I laugh at incidents (well, not that last one) that remind me of Christopher Titus, when he tells the story about crawling under his car, which he’d jacked up on a sharply-sloped driveway. Whenever he did something stupid, his dad would forestall anyone interfering with, “Wait, wait …” And then when the inevitable did come to pass, he’d stand over a newly-injured Titus, pour beer on him, and either call him a wussy or ask, “Not going to do that again, are you?”

You might say it’s mean to find hilarity in people learning non-fatal lessons. I prefer to view it as a giddy enthusiasm for the acquisition of knowledge.

But there are some forms of Stupid that, as they say, you can’t fix. People who are congenitally incapable of learning lessons.

Enter today’s contestant number one: Lebain Preston, of Alabama. In 1992, Lebain — “Bain,” to his friends — was arrested for stealing $30 and a six-pack from a gas station, at knifepoint. He spent 16 years in prison. So where did this past March find Bain? Running from a gas station that he’d knocked off with a box cutter, to the tune of $40 and a 12-pack.

Sometimes it is *so* rewarding to research beyond the news snippet.

I have this image of him walking the yard for those 16 years with some elderly inmate telling him to “get busy living or get busy dying.” Dreaming of the truly Big Score, giving steely looks to the bulls and curling his lip contempuously when some bleeding heart made noises about “rehabilitating” him. But Bain, $40 doesn’t even take inflation into account. I hope he at least chugged the beer before they came and drug him away.

What I do know is that at some point, he had a chance to update his MySpace page. I know because I got curious and looked, and of course, his page isn’t private. The only photoshopping in the picture above is that helpful red arrow. My whimsical check on MySpace vaulted this guy from one more character on a police blotter to Captain Irony. My favorite part? His playlist has only one song on it: Alicia Keys, “Like You’ll Never See Me Again.” I wish I were clever enough to make that up.

Then, there are forms of stupid that shouldn’t even happen once. Ever.

Shocking that this is a mugshot. Simply shocking.

Ismael Ambrosio, pictured above. I saw a monster truck driving down the road one time with a bumper sticker that read, “It’s legal, officer. Fuck off.” For some reason, I remember that truck frequently, and always imagine it progressing a block or two at a time between encounters with stern police officers with tape measures.

But bumper stickers can be removed, as my sister learned of the “boy crazy” decal on the Ford escort I was forced to drive once. Even most blatantly inadvisable tattoos can be covered up with clothing of some kind. If Mr. Ambrosio tries to go shopping with his tattoo put away — walk into a store with a mask on? — he’s still going to get hassled by the fuzz. The best part? He was arrested on a hold issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Hey, stupid! They’d probably profile you anyway, but you had to go and bait The Man to take you down when they already had a legitimate reason?

Congratulations, sir. It looks like you’re playing stupid. And you’re winning.

Maybe you’ve always suspected an article like this was out there, like I did. Like this guy did.

Well, no more, baby birds. Of Mr. Carl’s 14 uses for beer, I’ll readily admit that I only knew about the first two. I linked to the article above in case you want to read more of the details, but here’s the basic list:

• 1. Trap slugs and snails;
• 2. Trap fruit flies;
• 3. Distract bees and wasps from your outdoor gathering;
• 4. Get rid of mice;
• 5. Cockroach trap;
• 6. Fertilize your gardens;
• 7. Fertilize your indoor plants;
• 8. Get rid of brown spots in your lawn;
• 9. Stain removal;
• 10. Spruce up wooden furniture;
• 11. Clean gold jewelry;
• 12. Polishing brass pots;
• 13. Loosen rusty bolts; and
• 14. Insulation.

Trap pests … check. Fertilize plants … why not? Stain removal … that’s novel. Insulate … wait, what? Here’s the explanation on that last one:

for the truly adventurous and creative, if you use full, unopened cans of beer in construction of walls, the beer absorbs the cold and won’t freeze in temperate climates (due to the alcohol content).

This reminds me of the Bud Light commercial where the guy builds his house out of beer cans, but everyone gets excited because the refrigerator is full. Take that, stupid Three Little Pigs — if anyone tried to huff and puff that house, they’d lie around on the front lawn afterward, moaning for someone to call Saferide to get them home.

In all seriousness, you’d probably not only need creativity and an adventurous streak to build a wall out of full beer cans, but also some amount of resignation that you’ll never have a serious girlfriend. I think it would also require a certain level of self-control to refrain from pulling pieces out of your wall when you wanted to keep your buzz going … a level of self-control that is basically belied by building a wall out of beer cans. It would be like the house of the perpetual kid: two parts frat boy and one part Bob the Builder.

We can forgive Good Mr. Carl a jest in his parting list item. Of course, the moral of the story is that people need to lay off when they see my fridge full of this wonderful stuff.

I’m just handy around the house.

No more. Now we cool guys play fantasy football.

Just so you understand, it’s sports, so it’s okay. We can create a franchise and track players run yardage, receptions, field goal percentage from 30-39 yards, injury status, the works. We may use our vorpal laptop +3, but it’s not like we’re rolling dice. We’re … well, we mostly just watch television and Internet score updates obsessively.

All of that changes the way you watch the games — I’m a Redskins and Lions fan generally, but you can bet that when Kansas City walks into some shit town I don’t care about, I’m a huge Dwayne Bowe fan. Because if he hits pay dirt, I’m all over the chat room rubbing that in to some other guy who also suddenly cares about that shit town and wants to know why they can’t stop the Goddamned Chiefs’ passing attack. You get to know the entire league much better (or the offense, anyway) because you have to, if you’re going to compete for the grail. It’s the best thing to ever happen to the NFL.

Not to say that it doesn’t skew your ideas about what constitutes a good offense. Coaches like Mike Shanahan and Bill Belichick use platoons of running backs, but when you have one of them, you want just one of those guys to get all the carries. Effective, but fantasy garbage. Because you don’t care if the team wins, as long as your player goes over 100 yards with two scores. I don’t think the term “goal line vulture” even existed before people cared who carried the ball across the goal line.

Someone along the way, another term was coined: “football widow.” While you probably think it was a disgruntled spouse somewhere, if I were a betting man, I’d say it was probably some football geek who was proud of himself. Alison is good about it; although I’m glad she was out of town while I dedicated most of today to our annual draft. There will still be the Sunday mornings when I roll out of bed early, frantic to make sure my line-up is set and I’ve laid down proper challenges to whomever I’m matched up against that weekend.

And I’m clearly a betting man. I used to be in a league with some fraternity brothers that had an entry fee of almost $300. I don’t know what it’s up to these days, but those guys play pretty hardcore, so my guess is that it’s grown. I don’t do that anymore, but the guys I’ve been playing with these past nine years still put a sawbuck in the pot to keep things interesting. People always compete just a little harder if there’s a bit of green on the line.

Fantasy football is like Facebook, in a way. The guys I play with now constitute the Cavalier Keeper League – a wonderful bunch of human beings down in Charlottesville. My brother played with them and introduced me, before he got too busy to keep playing. In any case, I think that’s why he left the league, rather than (un)popular reaction to his innovative idea to pick up and drop every good player on the waiver wire right before the weekend’s games started. For the uninitiated, doing that puts a two-day hold on everyone picked up and dropped, meaning no one could grab players to fill their bye-week holes. Reading about people’s exploits and debating new rule changes keeps everyone connected.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m letting the cat out of some nerdy bag and we’re not supposed to let on that this is big-boy AD&D. One thing that I have to give fantasy football over Dungeons & Dragons: trash talk. Warlock jokes pale in comparison to the ridiculous lengths people will go to on the league bulletin board or chat to intimidate, amuse and share their disappointments. Seeing your half-orc run down to zero hit points is nothing compared to your second round draft pick blowing an ACL early in the season. I’m sure more than one coach in my league has been on his knees praying for the recovery of a wideout.

Only no self-respecting fantasy guru would ever admit that, for the simple fact that the posture opens you to too many jokes.

To be fair, seldom in the legal industry do you have cases involving complex electronic discovery that end decisively. I was in London working on a second request, which is an antitrust kind of animal where the government asks for documents to enable them to decide whether your proposed merger is going to create a monopoly. When you turn in the documents, that’s it — there isn’t any follow-up request, there’s just an answer that you hope is in the affirmative. And if you don’t hit your deadline, there’s a definite negative answer and no real hope of appeal.

The fifth of August was our deadline. It shifted several times throughout the engagement (as in, I was told this was a three-week case back in April) but we had our timetable nailed down by early July and built toward that, despite issues with resources and the inevitable craziness on the part of the client. I’m remembering now the last two weeks of the project. Owen was back in town and Golnaz was dialed in, and we’d been through test productions and confrontations with the client and resource issues, and it was on.

There’s something special that happens during crunch time. All the people that complain about the hassle of coming up with custom things suddenly test them and take pride in making them work. The people that have had better things to do suddenly turn on and tell you to call their cell phones any hour of the night if you need anything. The client, who has ignored your requests for details and instructions for weeks or months, suddenly is giving you all the information you need. There’s a period shortly before you have to produce where you are alive in your profession, where the stars align to get this one single job done and you don’t care about much else. I wouldn’t much want to live in that place all the time, but the pinprick points in the calendar when everything is about one mission are kind of special. In an adrenaline-junky sort of way. Does that make sense to anyone out there? I’ve had cases like this that my superiors referred to as my “final exams.”

There’s a saying in the legal profession I’ve always loved: If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would ever get done. At least, I think that’s an expression; I’ve always said it. So if you’ve never heard it before, then I get the credit. But that’s not all that gets things done. You need a team to respect that last minute.

This blog will go back to normal tomorrow, but I have one last set of thank-you notes to pen in honor of the last four months in UK (whether the people thanked actually see them, I feel like writing them). Sorry to say it, but if you don’t have these people, best of luck to you when you find yourself in a similar situation:

Owen B. My compatriot expatriot. My fellow new hire. The guy with a skill set that complements mine perfectly; without either of us, I can’t see how this thing got or stayed off the ground. It will be my privilege to continue working with this bloke over the next however many years.

Golnaz B.B. I used her given name but perhaps “Fearless Leader” would be more apt. Golnaz spent far more energy on this case than she had time for, because she had a full load in addition to the case for which the Americans were in town. I can’t imagine a better guide, colleague or friend, working on a case with a new company in a strange city. And let’s face it — if you put three leaders on any matter without dictating to them who’s supposed to be in charge, you’re incredibly lucky if they get along and succeed as well as the three of us did.

And there's the magical moment ... telling a stack of hard drives that you never want to see them again.

Lori B. As long as we’re sending case managers, we may as well send application support, too. Right? Except let’s set the bar a little higher for these folks — can you please make AC exceptionally competent, funny, interesting, cooperative and farsighted? Better yet, make ‘em just awesome to hang out with. Lori, special thanks for architecting such an amazing workflow that a dummy like me could administer it when you were away.

Alex T. Head of operations and custom dev. Brilliant man and dedicated professional. Even better, he’s funny and can tell which project managers know both sides of the business and which ones don’t, and he’ll move mountains to make sure that clients get what they need.

Jason B. They ought to just call Jason the Wizard of EP, or maybe we ought to call him Iron Man. Up later at night than anyone else, in London longer straight than anyone else, and flat-out amazing besides.

Dan B. Resident genius. Always calm because there’s always a solution. Sees things coming that you don’t … because you’re mortal, and he doesn’t have that problem. Having an “okay” from Dan is more comforting than a blanket made of lambskin and baby seal eyes, because you know that if Dan’s on it, you’re good to go.

Paul T. Considering he’s getting married tomorrow, I’m really impressed with the focus over the last couple of weeks. But that aside, an amazing resource and so dedicated over the past months to make sure we understood what our data was and what was in it.

Chris B. Don’t talk to Chris about his vacation, but if you need to know what’s happening in your SQL database, don’t talk to anyone else first.

Chris T. Here’s a man who understands what we’re trying to accomplish and can help by coordinating between the US and UK sides; who can take on the client or support you when you need him to, but lets you do your thing otherwise. Another person I was lucky to work with, but even luckier to get to know.

Leon M. When he’s not busy giving fantastic presentations or serenading the office to keep things fun, Leon’s busy being an incredible resource. I don’t think I’ve met anyone outside the Godfather who knows more about the application with which we work, or is so steady and helpful with it. He’s got a pretty good workout regimen, too.

John K. Also so helpful, and a great friend. Thanks for the Newcastle ticket!

Megan S. One of the original amigos in town, she had personal commitments that took her back to the States (relatively) early in the case, but it was great getting to work together.

The problem with lists is that they can be conspicuous in what they exclude instead of what is on them, and I hope that isn’t the case here. I’ve been part of an amazing team, in an amazing office. Sitting quietly this week and catching my breath, it’s really gratifying to realize what we all accomplished together. And as for Friday night, our last in town, I’m more grateful than ever that our crawl across the finish line didn’t end up being from pub to pub. Cheers, London!

source: www.drewlitton.com

I blew my alarm and woke up to the air conditioning out in my hotel (again). I butchered my face shaving with lukewarm water, stumbled through a shower and out into the pouring rain to get to work. I almost got hit by a car because, for once, I looked the right way before crossing the street but he was on the wrong side of the road. A massive man bowled into me on the sidewalk because he was so intent on his phone while walking that he never looked up. The client had a series of panicked fire drills in the morning. Just after lunch, I’d put those to bed, so I ducked out to buy a proper umbrella and toys for my children.

Two stops along the Central line seemed no big deal, until I reached the platform and remembered that it’s crowded and triple-digit degrees down there. After power walking through the fetid London air (Summer has finally shown up, and she’s a real bitch), the Tube had me sweating through my shoes. Exiting, gasping for breath, I found James Smith & Sons, an iconic London shop for umbrellas and walking sticks, only to realize that they’re too long and vicious looking to ever get through security at Heathrow. I heaved a sigh and turned my prow toward Hamleys, an iconic London toy store.

Riding the Central line again seemed more horrible than the humidity at ground level, so I set off westward down Oxford Street. There were approximately 1,645,902 other people who had the same idea, around the same time. Except that all of my fellow geniuses were waddling four-wide with their faces jammed in maps or phones, or pointing cameras at anything that held still. It was about a mile down to Regent Street and by the time I got there, Your Humble Narrator was feeling positively stabby.

This douche canoe hit the London trifecta: popped collar, face in his phone and umbrella when it isn't raining.

As a parent myself, I know there are a variety of less-than-savory people whom you’re obliged to tolerate being somewhere near your children. Similarly, as a parent, I can tell you that when a red-faced, sweat-drenched, homocidal-looking man by himself wanders into a toystore, it is a cause for concern. Thank goodness I knew what I was looking for because it minimized the time spent up and down Hamleys’s five floors and probably saved me from touring London’s penal system. The return to work had me on the Central line again, literally dripping sweat as other passengers snuck horrified glances at the sweaty-toothed madman.

All in all, things were going so well.

I don’t have many complaints about this city, but they all made an appearance. It was like they filmed Ocean’s Eleven, but cast it with Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Nick Nolte, David Hasselhoff and all my other favorite wastes of wind. It was as if London were saying, “You think you’ve enjoyed it here? Joke’s on you, Yank. Have a little real life.” And by the end of the day, I was thinking, Yes, home on Saturday will be just fine, thank you. London, I can quit you.

Then everyone had to go and ruin it today.

The litany of chaff London threw at me yesterday was therapeutic, and thanks for bearing with it, but I won’t repeat a long list of reasons why today has been maddeningly better. Today is the deadline for this odyssey and with our team short a couple of members, it’s been insanely busy. But it’s a good kind of busy, with everyone buoyant about a job well done.

All week has been a slow farewell tour as people catch on that we’re flying out tomorrow, but at noon today, the entire gang crowded into an office and presented me with a set of books on London. They’ve been filing by to sign the inside jacket of one of them for me. The weather is gorgeous, and reputedly, there’s “leaving drinks” in the offing. I may even survive happy hour well enough to catch my plane.

It’s funny when you spend enough time in another office that the people embrace you as one of your own. Next week, I’ll probably still be answering email about this case, but here and now, well … I feel like Tom Sawyer listening in on his own funeral. To hear people talk and bestow compliments, you’d think I were leaving the company. There are a lot of hugs brewing.

Those hugs will have to go both ways. My company’s London office is staffed with some of the best people I have encountered in the legal technology industry. Hard-working, cheerful, cooperative, creative … before I lose my proper English reserve, I just have to say that anyone able to work with this crew is a lucky professional indeed.

Don’t worry, London says. You’ll be back.

Good.

The book is rewarding in the ways that it obliges you to confront things you might not otherwise think about. Just like an author like Stephen King takes a seed of an idea and expands it into the horrific, Kundera finds the smallest aspects of relationships as his “what if” departure point, then explores what would happen if those fleeting thoughts became the central point in a real emotional experience. “The Hitchhiking Game” is an excellent example — a man and his girlfriend embark on vacation and on the first day, he stops for gas. Flippantly, she starts walking down the road and he stops to pick her up as if she is a hitchhiker. Treating one another as if they are strangers, they become trapped by events, forced to see each other completely anew. If they had been actual strangers, the could walk away as soon as things became uncomfortable, but instead, they play things out with someone they don’t know anymore.

“Eduard and God” is another good example. A young man in Communist Czechoslovakia likes a religious girl and pretends belief in the Diety to win her physical favors, but the same gets him in trouble with the administration at the school where he teaches. Watching him navigate and deepen his lie.

Notalgia, jealousy, the nature and consequence of lying, questions of what is “serious” in life – Kundera tackles different aspects of relationships in varying levels of depth, but always with ingenuity and a quality of writing that makes me want to learn Czech so I can read them in the original. And don’t read these stories expecting comedy – the results of every one are tragic. After finishing the collection, I was left with a wonderful feeling that I’d explored corners of the human experience that hadn’t occurred to me before. Even more, I felt like he’d shared seven ideas with me and I’d walked away with 14 more.

That said, I think I’ve encountered an article that gives me encouragement beyond my wildest hopes that magazines will buy anything. I can’t remember exactly how I found this, but I’m thinking about proposing that this particular publication rename themselves to “Real Obvious.” Real Simple published an article called “Cooking Uses for Your Microwave,” and I’m not linking to it because 1) it’s stupid, and 2) it’s a top-whatever-style list where every item is on a separate page so they can jam fresh advertising pageviews into your eyeballs. The point is, someone wrote this and then someone bought it and published it.

In sum, here is Real Simple’s list of helpful tips for things you can do with your microwave:

• Soften Butter
• Melt Butter
• Melt Chocolate
• Soften Cream cheese
• Soften Ice Cream
• Soft Brown Sugar
• Warm Tortillas
• Warm Maple Syrup
• Toast Fresh Bread Crumbs
• Toast Coconut
• Toast Pine Nuts and Sliced Almonds
• Cook Bacon
• Steam Asparagus and Green Beans
• Steam Carrots
• Steam Artichokes
• Cook Winter Squash
• Make Applesauce
• Bake a Potato
• Cook Corn on the Cob
• Poach Salmon
• Make Polenta
• Cook Rice
• Make Popcorn

Where do I start? At the beginning? Butter melts with heat … microwaves apply heat to food … holy bernais, Batman. Why didn’t I think of that? And if butter melts in heat, why wouldn’t chocolate? I like what they did next, distinguishing between melting foods and softening them. That’s what, a few seconds different on the cook time? I’m glad the experts are there to help us understand that you can partially melt something, rather than cooking it until it’s a greasy spot on the rotisserie.

Actual picture of maple syrup from the article, in case you didn't know what it looks like or that you should remember to put it in a ramekin.

Lest you think that melting and softening are the only ways you can affect food with heat, it turns out that warming, toasting, cooking and “making” are also possible with this radioactive technological marvel. To be honest, I don’t think it’s capable of “baking” a potato, but I’m so happy to have a delivery vehicle for my bacon, cheese, sour cream and chives that I’m not inclined to quibble.

I’m wildly curious how some items made the list and others did not. Are carrots and artichokes such popular foods that explaining to people the effect of heating water under them is a public service, while broccoli falls by the wayside? Are asparagus and green beans a common combination? I didn’t know. All told, though, I’d like to know why it’s not enough to explain to people that a microwave can heat water beyond 212 degrees Fahrenheit, at which it becomes steam. Steamed water can “soften”, “warm” and “cook” various foodstuffs.

Don't tell ME what I can and can't put in a microwave. I'm creative AND practical.

Make popcorn? Really? Now that we have all this newfound knowledge about the power of the microwave, I kind of think that Reddenbacher doesn’t need to waste ink marketing their product as “microwave popcorn.” That probably wasn’t obvious enough. After all, the produce section doesn’t sell “microwave asparagus.” People are just expected to read Read Simple and figure out that there is this whole culinary world they’ve been missing out on.

I should probably wrap this up. Someone beat me to the idea of fun things to do with a blender, but I’m hard at work on an article entitled, “14 Shocking New uses for the Vacuum Cleaner.” I have such household scourges as dust, pollen and slow pets firmly in my sights. I’m also polling friends for revelations regarding new users for bathtub plugs and I’m open to suggestions in the comments section!

And in the meantime, I’m going to keep thinking up novel ways to use my appliances. You never know when that’s going to come in handy.

First, I decided that I was only going to post about London things while I was here … then this duty assignment stretched for more than three months, and while I’m not out of things to say about this great city, the timeliness of what’s happening prompts me to stop waiting on this post.

Second, I decided that I wasn’t going to talk a lot of politics on this blog … not because I don’t enjoy it, but because my intention is to amuse and interest, not cause conflict.

Finally, by nature and inclination, I try to write essays more than emotional or vitriolic posts. It’s less funny sometimes, but I’d like to be thought-provoking on occasion. I’m not sure this is going to come out sounding normal. I’m not going to throw dozens of facts and figures into my argument, because there’s just something I have to get off my chest.

To Hell with the Tea Party.

The Republicans have an opportunity right now to do something amazing, simply for its infrequency in American politics: by quoting the previous paragraph, I think they can do the right thing and position themselves to win elections.

Rewind. Let me say, I’ve always considered myself a Republican. I grew up in a conservative family in countless political arguments with my (then) liberal best friend. My aunt held several positions on a Republican governor’s cabinet. I was a precinct delegate in the 1992 presidential election and cast votes for Bush 41.

What’s more, I’m economically pretty conservative. My heart goes out to people in need and I believe that a basic social safety net is something that helps everyone, but I embrace personal responsibility. I believe in workfare, not welfare. I believe in equality of opportunity and equality of treatment, but I don’t think government can make us equal or should try. I’m pro-business. I’m pro-military, including using our military in the furtherance of our national interests. I’m pro-national sovereignty. Although the Republicans get fake credit for the idea (Reagan won the Cold War by outspending the Soviets, after all), I’m against deficit spending – I don’t spend money I don’t have, and don’t generally favor the government doing so just because they don’t have any discipline.

I always thought I had my conservative cred nailed down.

But then the the wheels fall off: I think your rights extend to the end of your outstretched fist. Legalize drugs? Fine. The arguments against them that people would commit more crime … well, crime is already illegal, for whatever reason you commit it, and people are doing countless legal things to kill themselves or put themselves on the public health dole. Abortion? It doesn’t seem to me to be the same kind of murder as knifing or shooting someone, and I’m not going to tell anyone else what to do with their body. Don’t like gay marriage? Don’t get one. Don’t like gay sex? Support gay marriage, because marriage is reputedly the end of good sex. I’m basically about government not telling people what they can and can’t believe or do, and government not doing anything that it doesn’t need to be involved in (including thought control). I’m against “liberals” telling me that I must accept things I think are wrong just because “people are different and we should be understanding.” Now, I usually settle for telling people that I’m a Libertarian.

Back to the Tea Party. There is a movement in our country that says Sharia law is horrible, but thinks that we’re a Christian country and that our laws should reflect God’s Law. A movement that lauds people who embrace ignorance because “normal, down to Earth” politicians are celebrated over “elitists” who might actually have the training and intellect to govern well. A movement that wraps resistance to change in a mantle of Constitutionalism, so they can refuse to allow anything to get better because God forbid we imagine that the Founding Fathers would have been in favor of a little progress. A movement that sees enemies everywhere and has publicly declared its unwillingness to compromise on even those things where they are nothing but a vocal minority. A movement that is an offshoot of the religious right’s hijacking of the Grand Old Party, mixed with nationalist brainwashing on a scarcely imaginable level.

How else do you explain people who can barely make ends meet, but beat the drum so feverishly for corporate tax breaks because the government shouldn’t interfere with business. People who are against welfare or unemployment for “those people,” but not if it’s their need. I personally think references to Nazism are overplayed and inflammatory, but the xenophobia and religiosity of the Tea Party movement feel so fascist that it scares me. Which is a shame, because I love the bare-bones economic ideas they started with, and the federalist view of what the national government’s powers ought to be. I’ve just never seen a group of people screaming so loudly in favor of things that are completely against their interests. Pragmatically, ivory tower intellectuals should be the ones for tax breaks for the rich, and these blue collar misfits should be picketing for unions, not against them.

I started thinking about this back in April when the Tea Party were holding the national budget debate hostage and Representative Boehner was showing fresh gray hair every day trying to keep his party in line. That last part hasn’t changed. All these freshmen congressmen and -women came to Washington and said, “Fine. Shut the national government rather than spend on things we don’t agree with.” And what, specifically? False statistics on Planned Parenthood. Careful, TP’ers, your hypocrisy is showing. When your willingness to crash the national spending is based on a few line items in discretionary spending, you’re going to have a hard time selling me on the idea that you’re serious about real fiscal reform. The budget almost didn’t get passed over an issue that constituted less than 0.01% of spending.

Fast forward to the last month or so, and the disgusting politics that is being played with the enlargement of the national debt ceiling. The level of brinksmanship that these people are forcing jeapordizes our couuntry’s future. Do you realize what’s going to happen if we default on our loans? I’ve already said that I favor balanced budgets, but a constitutional amendment dictating it in a couple of months is never going to happen (and isn’t a good idea, regardless). I do believe that a deal will get done in the next couple of days, but the tenor of the debate in Washington has ensured that nothing will be easy while these people are a racuous caucus within the Republican Party.

And so, to my idea. Boehner, Mitchell, whoever … tell them to wander off back into crazyland. You don’t need them. The Tea Party is a cancer on American politics, and you can kill so many flies with one blow that next the king will be promising you his daughter’s hand in marriage for slaying a giant.

The situation in American politics is abysmal. You have the democrats on the left, and one of the things that I generally like about them is also one of their biggest weaknesses: they have no cohesion. The Right’s politics can be summarized neatly – they are pro-military, pro-God and pro-smaller government. Mom and apple pie. Flags and baseball. They like self-made men and families and dislike homosexuality and brown people. But the Left? They’re a hodge-podge of people who believe that the government can fix things that are wrong OR believe in more tolerance of differences OR favor gay marriage OR are against military action. If you put nine “liberals” in a room, you’ll get ten different political platforms. It’s not that some liberals aren’t religious or some aren’t economically conservative or that some don’t believe that we should only be good global citizens when it suits us. It’s that there isn’t any homogenous combination of those things, so it seems to me that a lot of people vote democratic because they are reacting to the rejection of one or more of their personal issues by the lockstep Right.

I’m one of those. I would still like to call myself a Republican, but I feel like my party walked away from me more than a decade ago when Newt Gingrich started lobbing ultrapolitical bombs from the back bench as minority leader and Ralph Reed somehow persuaded so many people that God should still be sending our laws down mountains on stone tablets. I vote based on my personal judgment of a candidate – are they thoughtful, and will they listen and govern carefully? I’ve never been tempted to be a one-issue voter and now, more than ever, I try to see the forest for the trees when casting a ballot.

And you know what? I think there are a lot of people like me. People who believe in fiscal responsibility and try to live their lives that way; people who love the military but believe the best way to support our troops is not to put them in harm’s way unnecessarily; people who think that church is amazing for the people it’s amazing for, but not the foundation for a system of laws beyond the normative principles that are inherent in just about every organized religion; people who long for practical leadership by intelligent people, instead of having to put up with wedge issues and demagoguery. In other words, Republicans whom you can’t count on voting that way because of all the chaff inherent in putting a conservative into office.

To the Republican leadership: my demographic is up for grabs. A lot of these people would support the reasonable aspects of what our old platform used to be, but they frequently vote for the Democrats. Not because the democrats offer anything better, but specifically because of the cancer you’ve allowed to infest us. Excise it. Tell them they’re on their own. The Tea Party arrived in sheep’s clothing, pretending to be your conservative soul and grass-roots base talking, but every time their leaders open their mouths, they reveal themselves to be the champions of every ignorant and intolerant aspect of the cause. The thing that is aggravating you the most right now is actually your greatest opportunity in decades. You have everything that Middle America hates about the conversative cause wrapped into one vocal minority. Strike a blow for sanity.

There are three ways things can go. The Republicans can allow the Tea Party movement to remain within it and eventually accede to their vitriole, which will be the end of the party’s influence for good. Sorry to be the one to break the news, but if the Tea Party remains an influence, the Republicans will discover to their chagrin that far more than half of Americans have retained shreds of common sense and will move away forever. If the Tea Party remains within the movement and the Republicans continue to fight their influence, it will give rise to a perpetual Ross Perot situation, where the base is split and the Democrats are strolling to constant victory.

Or, Republican leadership, you can do as I’m suggesting and tell the Tea Party that if they’re a party, they have to go be their own. Take up residence in the first real “middle” ground that has existed in American politics in decades. Look past the idea of splitting your base, because you will gain a huge number of voters from the other side of the aisle, people that are voting for the Democrats even though they think they’re disorganized and weak. By putting a spotlight on extremism, you marginalize the Tea Party and their ilk, while simultaneously weakening your Democrat opponents. You focus on the practical aspects of governance and solutions to real fiscal and social problems, and leave forced tolerance or intolerance to the two newly emasculated fringe parties. Instead of becoming a third wheel, the Republicans could become the only game in town and would be able to cut deals with either side on specific issues.

I could be wrong, but I think I’m not. And while I think such an incredible opportunity would also take incredible political courage that the Republicans probably don’t have, I’d like to be wrong about that last part. More than anything, I’d like to have some reasoned leadership that is more interested in solving problems in moderate fashion than in taking advantage of gridlock to hear out every lunatic with a piece of posterboard and a spelling problem. This could happen now with one well-timed set of expletives and a bus ticket.

If my intolerance for nonsense isn’t your cup of tea, take to the comments and I’ll happily expound on or discuss any particular points. Or explore my normal brand of nonsense in the rest of the blog and call me on my hypocrisy.

All this crap lying around is basically the product of two stages in my adult life. When I graduated from law school and bought a house, my parents started showing up to visit and “help” around the house, but every time they arrived, they had two or three boxes of things I’d collected and never let go of. Those boxes had gravitated to the attic or deep within closets where I naively hoped they’d be forgotten forever. My parents didn’t forget. They slowly dropped on me all the accumulated junk of my childhood.

The second stage was after I separated from my wife, seven years ago, almost to the day. After we’d decided which things were going to be hers from the marriage and which things were going to be mine … well, there were interstices. There were boxes and bags and piles of crap that build up over seven years of living together. Every time I showed up to visit my kids, she shoved another box of “my stuff” into my arms on the way out.

None of this stuff has ever really gone anywhere. Personally, I suspect that paper breeds asexually. If you put it in a box in a cool, dark closet (it’s chosen environment, apparently), it will gives rats and rabbits a run for their money on frequency and volume of offspring. I have probably a dozen banker boxes sealed with packing tape, filled with trinkets and letters and high school class notes and college class notes and law school class notes and Boy Scout patches and books. Oh my God, the books. You’ve seen the show Hoarders, right? Let’s be clear: we’re not into that territory. You won’t come to visit me and find a rotten pumpkin under a pile of Cats playbills … well, okay, as I sit here, I can literally picture where in my house is sitting a playbill from Les Miserables from 1991.

All I’m saying is, I’m not a rotten vegetable junky. It’s mostly paper. My place isn’t gross. I can have people over.

Also, I’ll offer in my own defense, I come by it all honestly. My Mother has a series of hobbies (arts, really), including quilting, antiques, various crafts, cooking and reading. Pretty much all of these things involve acquiring piles of things.

As for my Father, he and my Mom have lived in their house for 29 years and it wasn’t 29 minutes before the garage wouldn’t fit an actual automobile anymore. Instead, it’s been converted to a man-cave, complete with cable television, heater for the wintertime, “rainbow box” (our name for a beer fridge, explanation some other time), and dogs gamboling around. His garage’s motto? “You can find two of anything out here.” He hangs around out there, working and watching his Faux News, and there are times when I want to hang out with him but wonder whether I’ll be able to navigate the piles of stuff.

The point is, I’ve always been hemmed in my physical things. My brother has gotten away from that – his living space is much more ascetic, and he always asks for experiences rather than gifts for holiday gifts, if people insist on getting him anything at all. That’s always seemed to me to be a great way of approaching your environment, but I haven’t been able get there.

In London, I believe that has finally changed. I realized a couple of days ago that I’ve been living in the equivalent of a studio apartment (hotel room) for three months, and my sum total of possessions here fits in one large suitcase and one carry-on computer bag. Three months with only that level of possessions. With a television that showed anything interesting, I’d be even happier, but I’ve been reading and working and exercising and writing and listening to music and sleeping. Life goes on without all those piles of crap that I keep saying I’d use “one of these days.”

The fact is, I’ll get home two weeks from Saturday and I’d be fit for duty the following Mondy, but I’m going to take a little time off anyway. The mission? To either throw or give away half the things in my house. Basic rules:

• If it’s a generally useful thing and I haven’t used it in a year, it’s gone.
• If it’s a memento and I haven’t thought of it in two or three years, it’s gone.
• If it’s a household item that’s worn, mismatched or left over from my bachelor tastes of yore, and now I just settle for it, it’s gone regardless.
• If it’s something my kids might want to see one day soon or ten years from now … it stays, but packaged efficiently deep into one closet. There are limited tickets for that bus.

I even like the way cleaning house fits philosophically with how everything else is going in my life. I have a new job this year that looks like probably the best one I’ve ever had and will be the career I’m looking for. I have a settled relationship in divorce, a live-and-let-live for the benefit of the children, so that’s not a constant distraction. And you knew how I’d end up a list of three things, right? I have a woman in my life whom I love and respect more than I thought possible. All this crap stuffing my living space just crowds out my ability to relax with how well things are going.

They say, you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. I say, you don’t know what you can live without until you do it. Three months in a room does a total job on your head regarding physical possessions. I’m going to go straight from a plane to cut a swath through my own. In with the new, out with the old.