It Came From the Eighties!!!!! (With a Special Celebrity Cameo!)

I visited Pennsylvania this past weekend for our second annual high school reunion picnic, which this year was a bit more significant as I actually graduated 20 years ago. I went stag, as I needed some time away from the kids and it's far more expensive to buy four plane tickets than one (imagine that!). I flew out on Wednesday night and spent Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and most of Sunday in my old stomping grounds - namely, Bucks County, PA. This year I won't write about my experiences, as I did last year, mainly because the kids weren't around, so my visit mainly concerned sitting around with friends drinking (not too much, as I just can't deal with a lot of alcohol anymore, plus I was driving most places), which no one wants to hear about. At the actual picnic, I had a grand time catching up with people, some of whom I hadn't seen in 20 years and others who I see every time I go home, but they all make me feel inadequate (off the top of my head, we had a psychiatrist, at least one doctor, a woman who works for the Peace Corps in Niger, a lawyer, and a person who's working on a vaccine for staph infections at the picnic, and I'm sure I'm missing several other impressive occupations, making my day of watching television and blogging seem trivial by comparison - even if I LOVE IT!) so I'll just say to any of them who might be reading, It was great to see you, and I hope I can do it again next year.

However, while I was home, my mom told me that she had dug out some old photo albums, so of course I had to go through them. These are pictures from no later than May of 1993, when I graduated from college, and going back to probably 1986 (the only dated photograph is from July 1987, but a few look older than that). So sit back and return with me to a time when I was actually skinny. I know, it's hard to believe, but I have photographic proof! These photos star my sister, my parents, my bride-to-be, and perhaps the greatest celebrity cameo in history. I kid you not!


That's my sister, by the way.


Check out that skinny dude! That's my dad, back when he had (some) hair.


Man, I look like a total nerd. What's up with the hair and glasses? Dang. That's my aunt and uncle and my two young cousins.


This is my sister and I waiting at the airport in the summer of 1988 before our trip to Barbados. My parents took us cool places, because they're awesome.


This is when we arrived in Barbados. I have no idea where I'm going with such intensity, but I love that picture.

All right, ladies, avert your eyes before you're overcome with desire! Stud Alert!!!!

Look at those abs! Is it any wonder I was beating them off with a stick?



This is my senior prom in May 1989. That's my girlfriend, Holly. She was a pretty cool chick. We grew apart once we went off to school, but I had a nice little romance with her.


High school graduation. Look at how uncynical I am! So very, very foolish of me!


Check out those glasses! And yes, that is my Billy and the Boingers T-shirt. That's just how I rolled, man!


A dude should never match his mother. But check out those shorts! The '80s ruled.


My sister and I again.


This is July of 1987 at Ricketts Glen, Pennsylvania. The girl on the right was an exchange student who lived with us for a time. Check out my tan! And that's a Little Shop of Horrors T-shirt I'm wearing.


That's my dad in a rare moment of levity. Well, I guess it wasn't all that rare, but this is still not too common from him.


I don't know when this was taken, but it was in the Poconos, I know that much. Check out the shades!


This is kind of murky, but it still cracks me the fuck up. This is when I got all four of my wisdom teeth out and I had to have ice on both sides of my mouth for a few days. It was no fun.


This was probably junior year, but I'm not sure. This was my first girlfriend Krista. I wonder what happened to her.


I live to be goofy.


Look at that idiot. He thinks the world is his oyster. What a kook!


This would be my lovely future bride. We were in Nanticoke, PA, where my grandparents lived. This was my grandfather's funeral in the winter of 1993. It was the first time Krys met my parents. Fun!


Here I am sitting around at my grandfather's funeral. That's some stylin' hair on that dude!


This is my graduation from Penn State, meaning it's May of 1993.


That's my maternal grandmother. She was 82 at the time. She was pretty awesome.


My sister again. You might be wondering, does she ever smile?


Hell yeah she does! Barb and my mom were flying to New Orleans once and yes, Richard Simmons was on the flight with them. So they got their picture taken with him. Don't they all look happy? Richard Simmons is awesome, man.

So those are my mother's olde-tyme daguerreotypes. I hope you dug 'em!

Plugging the other blog!

If you're at all interested, I have two long posts about my vacation in Disneyland up at the other blog. Go read Part One, then have a butcher's at Part Two.

Unless, of course, you have better things to do. You don't, do you? Of course you don't!

What I've been reading

The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 by Antony Beevor. 1982/2006, Penguin Books, 526 pages.

It took me a long time to read this book, not because it was bad, but because I had just zipped through a bunch of shorter and, frankly, less challenging books and I needed to get back into full-on historical reading mode. Plus, we went to Disneyland for a week, so I didn't do much reading. But I finally got through it, and while I didn't love it, Beevor does a nice job sorting through the morass that was the Spanish Civil War.

Most of us, I would surmise, don't know much about the war. We know about the bad guys (the fascists, who should be more correctly called the nationalists), the good guys (the republicans), the fact that the Nazis used is as a training ground for their weapons, that Pablo Picasso painted a masterpiece depicting the destruction of Guernica, and that many literary luminaries, such as Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell, fought or worked for the republican side. That is, if we even know that. I knew all that but not much else, so I figured it was time to learn more!

Beevor is certainly exhaustive in his research. This book was originally published in 1982, but years later, Beevor went back, looked at newly available archives, and reworked the book. It's an extremely thorough examination of the war, which is nice to see. Beevor doesn't focus on one side over the other, as he does a fine job getting inside both the nationalist and republican governments. He goes back to the nineteenth century to explain the context of the sides, especially the Carlists, who traced their origins back to the 1830s. He spends as much time with the society and culture of the opposing sides as he does with the actual war, which helps us understand why the nationalists were able to triumph beyond just the fact that they were militarily superior to the republicans. The nationalists probably would have won the war anyway, but Beevor does a good job showing that the republican government didn't do their fighting forces any favors.

Beevor's sympathy lies with the republicans, but what's nice about the book is that he never shies from showing the dark side of the Spanish democracy. It's easy to believe the atrocities committed by the nationalists - we're conditioned to believe that about fascists, after all, and General Franco was allied with Hitler, after all - but Beevor does a good job delving into the terror perpetuated by the republican side. The republicans were an odd melange of communists, anarchists, Marxists, and Basque and Catalan separatists, which were occasionally right-wing and therefore had more in common with the nationalists politically but didn't buy into their vision of a united Spain. The nationalists, of course, were a mix of monarchists (those who followed the traditional line of Alphonso XIII, and the Carlists, who wanted the cadet branch of the Bourbons to take over) and fascists (the Falangists), but they had the advantage of Franco, a powerful personality who could bend them to his will, for instance in 1937, when he merged the Carlists and Falangists. Beevor makes it clear that the republicans were ill-equipped to deal with the war, mainly because they had no one like Franco who could take over. As the war progressed, they committed several atrocities against nationalists caught in the republican zone, while the communists gradually took over and purged the government of anyone who disagreed with their ideology. Despite his sympathy with the republican side, Beevor still manages to be even-handed when he discusses their crimes.

This may be because the republican side, as it became more and more communist, also became the obvious puppet of the Soviet Union. Throughout the book, it's clear that the biggest crime of the war was the way the Western powers ignored the plight of the republican side because of the irrational fear of the Soviets. Many of the high-ranking officials in France and Britain were even pro-Franco, despite fearing Hitler's Germany. Hitler, of course, sent in the Condor Legion to test various weaponry (it was the Condor Legion, mainly, that carpet-bombed Guernica), and although he wasn't particularly subtle about it, the British and French governments looked the other way. This was at the height of appeasement, of course, and the republicans happened to be involved in a war at precisely the wrong time. Franco was desperate to win the war before the greater European war erupted, not only because he'd lose the support of Hitler and Mussolini, who'd be pre-occupied elsewhere, but because he would be lumped in with the Axis powers and be a target of the Allies. As it turned out, he won the war with about six months to spare (although the outcome was known for about a year before it actually ended) and then, even after declaring neutrality in World War II, still assisted Hitler and drew no ire of the Allies. This legerdemain was one reason Franco managed to stay in power until 1975.

This is a difficult book to get through because of the large cast of characters and even political parties. It's fascinating, though, because of what a mess Spain was during these years. Beevor points out that communists foolishly engaged the nationalists in pitched battles simply for propaganda reasons, which weakened the republican government even more and hastened its demise. He also shows that Franco may have been a dictator, but that democracy in Spain was weak even under the republican coalition of the early 1930s, so who knows if it would have survived. Beevor wonders if Spain would have gone the way of Stalinist Russia had the republicans won, and he feels that Stalin's interest elsewhere during the 1940s might have mitigated that influence somewhat. The book shows that the Spanish Civil War, which seems simple on the surface, is much more about the common folk who suffered during it than the warring sides, neither of which were particularly good for the country. War always takes it toll on the non-participants. In the case of the Spanish Civil War, that seems more pertinent than in others. That's the tragedy of it - even if the "good guys" had won, the common people would have lost.

Just how stupid are Americans?

That was the question I had to ask myself two weeks ago, when I first went into a lavatory at Disneyland and saw this on the wall, next to the faucets:

Yes, it's an instruction manual on washing hands. Now, given the fact that most Americans, I'm sure, don't wash their hands after using the toilet, it's perhaps not surprising that they've forgotten how to do it, but really? REALLY????

I'm moving to Andorra, damn it.

Saturday night YouTubery!

It's Saturday night, and why don't we look at some videos I found on someone else's blog! Namely, Nik's. Because why come up with content when displaced Americans living in New Zealand can do it for you?

First: Bollywood action movie scene. If any Hollywood movie had anything close to this cool, they'd make a shitload more money, I tells ya.



And like Nik, I would totally watch this show:



Enjoy! Thanks, Nik!

Random thoughts about Disneyland in particular and the Los Angeles area in general

I'll delve into our holiday to SoCal over at my daughters' blog, mainly because it was a kid-oriented vacation, but I thought I'd write about some things that struck me about our week-long journey to the wilds of Cali.

1. Driving for seven hours anywhere is a chore. Driving seven hours with two small children is pretty much suicidal. Even if they're pretty good kids, as ours are. If we want to get information out of terrorists, we should put them in a mini-van with about six kids and make them drive cross-country without a portable DVD player.

2. Speaking of portable DVD players, Krys bought one before our trip even though I didn't really think it was that great an idea. We did use it, but not until late in the trip when they were really being punchy. I think that's a happy medium. I asked my mom about driving all over Europe when I was their age, and she said we were generally good. So why can't modern kids shut it?

3. It was really pleasant to drive through an urban area that had to be molded around hills and valleys and natural impediments instead of simply thrown out in grid patterns. I didn't like LA all that much, but at least it had some character, unlike this boring-ass place where I live.

4. As much as I didn't really like Los Angeles, I can see why so many people live there. Every day was overcast, but it rained only very briefly, and the temperature hovered in the 70s all the time. You could actually go out and do things, and at night, it was ridiculously pleasant.

5. Whoever came up with FastPass is a freakin' genius. For those of you who don't know, FastPass is a ticket you can get at the rides in Disneyland and California Adventure that allows you to come back at a certain time and not stand in line. It's a beautiful thing. You do have to wait until that certain time (usually between an hour and three from the time you get the ticket) to ride, but you can go do other things while you wait. I love FastPass.

6. Of course, neither park was all that crowded. The weather may have factored into this, and the fact that we were there during the week. I don't know. However, the longest wait time for a ride (the wait times are extremely mutable, but not too far off) was 60 minutes, and I only saw that twice (at Splash Mountain and Space Mountain). Usually the wait times were between 25-40 minutes, which isn't that bad. Of course, we used FastPass a lot, so it didn't matter!

7. I hate to admit this, but one of the extremely few benefits of having a person in a wheelchair in your party is that you very often get on the rides much sooner, as in immediately (they allow you to go through the exit). In fact, that and handicapped parking might be the only benefits to having a child in a wheelchair. Yeah, it doesn't make up for everything else.

8. Newport Beach is nice.

9. Man, food is expensive in Disneyland. I know that's stating the obvious, but man!

10. The worst job for a "cast member" (which is what they call those who work at the parks) besides, you know, cleaning the toilets, has to be herding the folk every night just before the fireworks display. Krys and I went back to the park on Friday night after the kids were asleep just to get away from them for a while, and we came off a ride in Tomorrowland minutes before the fireworks. We were herded around the center cul-de-sac that ends at the castle and which was packed with people toward Adventureland and Frontierland and back down Main Street, because the brick walkways were, as the cast members patiently explained, not a viewing area. We managed to duck under a rope separating us from the real viewing area and therefore had a decent view of the fireworks, but anyone trying to stop on the walkway was chided by the cast members. Apparently sometimes they actually have to get physical because people are not listening. Nothing like that happened on Friday night, but it still has to be the suckiest part of their day.

11. California Adventure closes on most nights at 9 p.m. That is, as the kids say, lame.

12. There are a lot of fat, ugly, slovenly people in this world. I know, I'm one of them, but come on! Well, I'm at least not slovenly. But when we hear about the obesity problem in the United States, it's probably because the researchers went to someplace like Disneyland. Man. I don't like to call people fat and ugly (I don't mind calling someone "slovenly," because it's not that hard to look decent), but it's true - there are a lot of them at Disneyland. And not a lot of hot chicks. What was I supposed to do with my time? Pay attention to the children?

Check the other blog for longer posts about our vacation. There will be photographs!

Yeah, so I should probably explain where I've been

My five readers want to know!

I'm a bit off the grid this week. Obviously, I have Internet access, as I'm posting this, but the family and I went off to beautiful Anaheim, California, to visit Disneyland with my parents. So we've been a bit busy, and by the time I get home at night, I'm really too tired to write anything. I wanted to post an odd picture every day that we were here, but I forgot the cord that attaches the digital camera to the computer (it's my father's PC), and the chip doesn't fit, so I can't even do that. I do have some fun pictures, however, so I'll post those when I get back.

I know I might lose even my five readers now, but I'll be back on Sunday. Have a nice (rest of the) week.

Moral relativism and torture

I read an interesting opinion piece in the newspaper this week about torture. It was written by Grumpy Old Man Charles Krauthammer (and yes, that's his official title, hence the capital letters), who I often (almost always) disagree with, but who's still interesting to read.

Krauthammer begins by explaining that he wrote a column about the two exceptions to the no-torture rule. The first is the ticking-time-bomb scenario, the second is a less extreme variant, "in which a high-value terrorist refuses to divulge crucial information that could save innocent lives." He then writes that the column elicited spirited protestations. One response that he calls "stupid" came from a writer who claimed the "ticking-time-bomb scenario only exists in two places: On TV and in the dark fantasies of power-crazed and morally deficient authoritarians." Krauthammer, of course, has a real-life example to counter this, and follows up with:

One therefore has to think about what kind of transgressive interrogation might be permissible in the less pristine circumstance of the high-value terrorist who knows about less imminent attacks.

Of course, that's the crux of it. Krauthammer goes on to point out the "contemptible" hypocrisy of Nancy Pelosi. His critics, he says, reply that "her behavior does not change the truth about torture." "But it does," Krauthammer claims:

Our jurisprudence has the "reasonable man" standard. A jury is asked to consider what a reasonable man would do under urgent circumstances.

On the morality of waterboarding and other "torture," Pelosi and senior and expert members of Congress represented colleagues, and indeed the entire American people, in rendering the reasonable-person verdict.

And what did they do? They gave tacit approval. In fact, according to [then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter] Goss, they offered encouragement. Given the existing circumstances, they clearly deemed the interrogations warranted.

Krauthammer points out that the "circle of approval" was wider than even Congress. Even liberals believed torture was warranted in the aftermath of September 11th. He writes:

The reason Pelosi raised no objection to waterboarding at that time, the reason the American people (who by 2004 knew what was going on) strongly re-elected [52% of the vote is "strongly"? Krauthammer is engaging in some revisionist history, methinks] the man who ordered these interrogations, is not because she and the rest of the American people suffered from a years-long moral psychosis from which they have just now awoken.

It is because at that time they were aware of the existing conditions - our blindness to al-Qaida's plans, the urgency of the threat, the magnitude of the suffering that might be caused by a second 9/11, the likelihood that interrogation would extract intelligence that President Barack Obama's own director of national intelligence now tells us was indeed "high-value information" - and concluded that on balance it was a reasonable response to a terrible threat.

They were right.

Krauthammer concludes:

[Y]ou can believe that their personalities and moral compasses have remained steady throughout the years, but changes in circumstances (threat, knowledge, imminence) alter the moral calculus attached to any interrogation technique.

On the one hand, Krauthammer raises some interesting points. The idea of torture, in whatever form, is repellent to civilized human beings (or ought to be) until it becomes the only way to save someone you love. There's also the question of what constitutes torture. According to some reports, three people were waterboarded, and very few were psychologically traumatized by the various methods we used. I have no idea about the absolute numbers, but it doesn't really matter. The question remains: What is moral, and is torture ever okay?

Krauthammer obviously thinks it's okay sometimes, and he claims that the American people think so too, because they re-elected the man who sanctioned it. Well, I would argue that most people in 2004 still didn't know what we were doing, and if people like Nancy Pelosi knew and didn't object, I blame her as well for not making more of a big deal about it. We heard rumors, of course, but when the president of the United States stands in front of the press and says emphatically that we do not torture, we tend to believe him. So Krauthammer's argument there is dumb, but the question of whether or not torture might be okay in some circumstances is a difficult one. We would like to say that it's never okay, but what if my daughter is kidnapped and she's going to be raped or killed soon and the only way to find her is by torturing a suspect? That's the moral conundrum Krauthammer brings up, and it's a tough one. Of course I would say, "Torture away!" Then it comes back to - how could I ever teach her to have moral principles if I betray my own? But I'm sure she would say that I couldn't teach her anything if she was dead. That's why we don't like to be put in those situations.

I have argued this point with Mia's PT, who's quite a bit more conservative than I am. He accuses Barack Obama of wanting to be "nice," meaning speaking to regimes like Iran rather than pre-emptively striking them, and he disagrees with this. He's also a Christian, and this is where the moral question becomes sticky. I have no idea if Charles Krauthammer claims to be a Christian, but considering something like 90% of Americans consider themselves to be, I'll go out on a limb and say Krauthammer does as well. Even if he's not, plenty of "good Christians" are on board with torture. I've written about how hard it is to be a "real Christian" - as in strictly following the words of Jesus as represented in the Bible - because it's practically impossible in today's world, but it would seem to me that a Christian wouldn't condone torture no matter what the circumstances, even to save a loved one. After all, if you're a true Christian, this world means nothing - you're focused on the next one. I'm not about to accuse Mia's PT of being a bad Christian, because he's a wonderful therapist and a very nice man, but unfortunately, I don't feel like I'm a close enough friend to him to ask him how he reconciles these two somewhat opposing viewpoints. I can't imagine someone being a Christian and condoning anyone who tortures. But maybe I'm just being naïve.

If we continue in this vein, I like how some self-professed Christians have come out in favor of torture "in extreme circumstances," meaning morality is relative to the situation. Yet these same people (usually) consider something like gay marriage the death knell of all civilization and claim that there's no gray area when it comes to homosexual unions or, say, abortion. Moral absolutism rules there, it seems, but when it comes to defending the fatherland (yes, I'm using that word very deliberately), nothing is too horrible. This is why I try to avoid using moral absolutist terms, because it will always come back to bite you in the ass. And yes, that includes torture.

I'm certainly against the concept of torture, but again, how would I feel if it was necessary to rescue someone I loved? The biggest problem I have with the Bush Administration using torture is that they always took the moral high ground and claimed that we didn't do it and that the United States remains a shining beacon of how things ought to be done. It's bullshit, but it's fancy-sounding bullshit, and Americans love to believe that we're better than everyone else. I honestly think that "torture" might have been more effective if Bush and his cronies had come out and said they were doing it. If Bush had come out and told the terrorists that they had forfeited any rights to be treated as humans and therefore we were going to do anything to extract information, not only would the American people have been on board (especially right after 11 September) and therefore these days we wouldn't have all this moral hand-wringing, but maybe potential terrorists might have thought twice about attacking us. Even if that didn't happen, at least we the people would have known where we stood. Another columnist I read today claims that we're already complicit, as we could have figured things out in 2004. Well, that's one of the reasons I didn't vote for Bush in 2004 - I was repulsed by what he was doing, and that included locking people up for no reason other than they looked funny. Had Bush been more forthright, he might have had to deal with a brief shitstorm, but according to him, he never cared what people thought of him, so why would he have cared then?

The fact that we tortured people, even if it was just three people, depresses me. Not because we did it, but because this is what the world has come to. However, it always makes me laugh a bit bitterly when the same people who refuse to compromise to allow two men or two women to get married twist themselves into knots to justify torture. The irony, I would imagine, is lost on them.

It's hard to be a Luddite these days

Today is a rather important day in the history of the universe, and my lovely wife bought me an iPod Nano with the funky adapter that allows you to listen to it in your car. Yes, I've never had an iPod before today, nor have I ever been interested in one. I bought one for Krys a few years ago, and she really digs it. One of the reasons I never wanted one is because I prefer listening to albums the way they were recorded, in the order the artist wanted. Of course, the convenience of the iPod means when I fly to Pennsylvania in June I won't have to take a bunch of CDs with me, I can just take my iPod. So there's that. But now I have to figure out how to use the furshlugginer thing.

I felt the same way about my digital camera. I never saw the need for one. Of course, now I love it, but I still think of it as cheating, because you should live with the photographs you take, man! I got over that, however, and I'm much more jazzed about the iPod, even though I still consider it cheating to listen to random songs instead of where they're supposed to be on the album. The good thing about it is finding songs on iTunes that you like but are on albums you wouldn't necessarily like. That's going to be coolio.

I still resist getting a Blackberry or any other portable Internet/phone device, mainly because I can't imagine ever being comfortable with a screen or keys that small. I'm old, man! That's probably why I will never Twitter. Twitter seems like the kind of thing people do when they're out walking around with their portable Internet, and I will never have that. I can barely tolerate my cell phone! When I'm on the computer, I'm sitting in my chair at home, and there's almost nothing to Twitter about (of course, most people have nothing to Twitter about, but at least they're out in the world interacting with others when they have their banal thoughts). That's another reason why I don't like webcomics, which seems to be the trend in comic-bookery: I like to read in bed, and I'm not lugging my laptop in there just to read something on the screen (that and I'm cantankerous and covetous of actual printed material). So I will resist getting a portable Internet device with all my might.

Now I have to start putting songs on my iPod. That should be groovy!

(And yes, this is a roundabout way of saying that today's my birthday. But you already knew that, right? Isn't it marked on your calendars in bright red pen????)

Yeah, okay, I'm a slacker

Yes, it's been over a week. And what do I do? Link to two odd news stories!

Pentagon reports no longer quote Bible.

The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House as was practice during the Bush administration.

...


The Bible quotes apparently aimed to support Bush at a time when soldiers' deaths in Iraq were on the rise, according to the June issue of GQ magazine. But they offended at least one Muslim analyst at the Pentagon and worried other employees that the passages were inappropriate.

On Thursday, April 10, 2003, for example, the report quoted the book of Psalms - "Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him ... To deliver their soul from death" - and featured pictures of the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down and celebrating crowds in Baghdad.

"Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand," read the cover quote two weeks earlier, on March 31, above a picture of a U. S. tank driving through the desert, according to the magazine, which obtained copies of the documents.

Sheesh. Good to know we have separation of Church and State. Especially when we're talking about a supposedly Christian president sending people to kill and die.

Here's something a bit more fun:

Man calls 911 over 28-year-old son's messy bedroom.

An Ohio man who argued with his grown son over a messy bedroom said he overreacted when he called 911. Andrew Mizsak called authorities Thursday after his 28-year-old son - who's a school board member in the Cleveland suburb of Bedford - threw a plate of food across the kitchen table and made a fist at him when told to clean his room.

The son, also named Andrew, lives in a room in his parents' basement.

The father declined to press charges and told police he doesn't want to ruin his son's political career.

The son, who also works as a political consultant, said he's lucky to be living in the house rent free. He also promises to keep his room clean.

So ... many ... jokes ... to ... mention ...

Maybe the father should tell his TWENTY-EIGHT-YEAR-OLD SON to move the fuck out!!!!!

Maybe the son's political career will be ruined when his future opponents bring up that he was living in his parents' basement when he was twenty-eight years old! That might work.

Better content soon, I promise!

Want cheap gasoline? Move to Arizona!

Yes, for the briefest of moments (AAA of Arizona expects it to change soon), Arizona has the cheapest petrol (on average) in the country. On Thursday, the average price of gas was $1.93, while nationwide, it was at $2.14. Arizona's gas prices had only increased a penny over the past 30 days, while the country, on average, had increased a dime.

Of course, it's summer (here especially, as we've already had several days in a row over 100), so that means more driving and higher prices (how does that work?), so experts are sure the prices will go up. But still - we can't educate our children, but we can sell you some cheap gas!

What I've been reading

The Alps: A Cultural History by Andrew Beattie. 2006, Oxford University Press, 246 pages.

As a European history enthusiast, you might expect I'd be fascinated by the mountain range that separates the northern, Germanic section of the continent from the southern, Mediterranean section, and you'd be right. The Alps are a crucial component in the history of Europe, from Hannibal crossing them with elephants to Henry IV doing penance in the snow to conquerors descending from the north to plunder Italy. My family also vacationed several times in the Alps, and it's where I learned to ski. The very readable if not terribly deep book is a nice guide to the range.

Beattie divides the book into four sections. The geological section, which comes first, is the shortest, which is fine. Once the origins of the Alps are dealt with, the geological jargon would probably overwhelm the narrative, so Beattie simply skims the surface of how the mountains were formed. The historical section, which is second, is obviously longer, as Beattie zips through pre-historical and Roman times to get to the Middle Ages and the modern day, where he gets a bit more detailed. The history of the mountains is fairly confused, unfortunately, so he can't devote too much time to it. After Charlemagne, the political structure broke down, mainly because successive conquerors found it difficult to cross the mountains. Therefore, the lowlands were subjugated while higher up, people lived on without worrying about who was in charge. The biggest development in the Alpine region was perhaps the Protestant revolution, led by Huldrych Zwingli in Zürich and Jean Calvin in Geneva. Even this didn't touch the highlands, which remained Catholic (well, a patina of Catholicism over older, pagan beliefs). The religious strife helped fracture the political structure even more, so even though Switzerland existed by this time (Beattie goes over the William Tell myth quite well), it was made up of competing cantons, and while the Holy Roman Empire technically ruled much of the Alps, small city-states led by Prince-Bishops and Margraves and Dukes really controlled the area.

The most interesting section of the book is when Beattie examines the Alps in the imagination, beginning with Ludwig II and his fanciful creation, Neuschwanstein. The fairy-tale castle is the most obnoxious expression of the Alpine mindset from the 18th century onward, which began to see the mountains as an enchanted place, but not one to be feared (as had been the case for centuries before), but one to be embraced. Everyone who writes about Newschwanstein seems to think it's tacky. I've been there, and although I was only 6-7 years old (I can't quite remember), I still thought it was an impressive achievement. I can understand why people think it's tacky, but it's still a sight. Beattie springboards from Ludwig's madness to how the Alps have been perceived throughout the ages, from a place where dragons lurked and the weather was alive and malevolent to something to be sought for solace and quietude. He brings in the familiar people who helped popularize the Alps as a destination - the Romantic poets Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley most notably - and ends up with the Nazis, who believed that the mountains promoted a true Aryan lifestyle. Finally, in the final section he looks at the Alps as a tourist destination. This is not the most compelling section of the book, but Beattie does a decent job with it. He ties it in with the previous section, in that it took a perception shift by the populace to convince people to tour the mountains. As someone who has visited the Alps several times, it's far more fun to actually visit than to read about visiting. But maybe that goes without saying.

As I mentioned above, it's not a terribly deep book, but Beattie has a nice engaging style and he keeps things moving along. He has a good eye for anecdotes and debunking myths, which is always appreciated, especially as this is a "cultural" history and not a hard core historical survey. The biggest disappointment in the book is a lack of maps. Beattie writes about many, many places that are not necessarily famous (I suppose everyone should know where Geneva, Zürich, Bern, and maybe Innsbruck are, but maybe not), so I had to read the book with my atlas next to me, and even then, some places were too small for it. I love maps, of course, so maybe I feel the need for more of them than would be necessary, but even a large general one at the beginning would have been appreciated. Oh well.

The Alps is a quick way to get a crash course on a place everyone should visit at least once. The United States has the Rockies, but even those mountains aren't quite as impressive as the Alps, mainly because of the layers of history that go along with the scenery in the European range. So you can read this book, then book your next vacation, and learn to ski at St. Moritz! It's all coming together!

The Internet is awesome

I was reading a weekly news magazine I receive, and in the back they always have a two-page story about something interesting that doesn't necessarily qualify as "hard news." Recently they ran an excerpt of a story from The New York Times Magazine about the web site SeekingArrangement.com. What's so special about this web site, which is one of many dating sites? It's specifically for sugar daddies (or mommies) and the young women (or men) who want to hook up with them. The article mentioned that several men go on it specifically to find mistresses, as many are married. The writer of the piece interviewed some of the young ladies, many of whom use the site to pay their way through college. Go browse the site. It's a tad bit creepy, but that's why we love the Internet!

Is this a great world or what? Who knew that a rich dude would have so much trouble finding a sweet young thing?

My wife thinks I'm odd

Now, this isn't news, of course, but it's why she said that I'm odd recently. Over the past few months I've been biting the inside of my lip. It's kind of a compulsion. This happens to me every once in a while - the inside of my lip becomes dryer and, well, biteable. I don't know why it happens; it doesn't seem to coincide with any kind of temperature, but it happens occasionally. When it does, I feel the need to bite my lip. I don't like to do it, but like I said, it's kind of a compulsion. It doesn't hurt at all, and it doesn't seem to cause any long-term damage to the inside of my lip. Then, last week, something happened and the inside of my lip is no longer that dry and therefore no longer biteable. In fact, I doubt if I could bite it without doing some damage. Again, I have no idea why this happens. Does my body chemistry change? Is it because of the weather? The temperature rose last week to triple digits, but then it went back down. It's still hot, but not the ridiculous heat we'll get later in the summer. Anyway, I'm not biting the inside of my lip anymore. Any ideas what happened?

This isn't a big physiological problem, but I find it interesting. I made the mistake of mentioning it to my lovely wife, who called me "odd." This is why my wife and I never speak to each other. It's best if we don't know what's going on in each others' minds.