"I, no no no no. No, what I said..."

Again, I promise to share some vacation stories, but there continues to be a hold up. My camera, along with my souvenirs and a healthy batch of my clothing, is still somewhere between Heathrow and my house. Supposedly. Until then, more random thoughts...

When Karen and I got engaged in Boston, back in the heady days of 2002, it just happened to be the weekend that the Patriots finally won the Super Bowl.

Being in an Irish pub in Boston, watching the Pats win, was truly an awesome experience. We emerged from the pub to find the entire city in rapture, a sprinting mass of people hugging each other and howling with glee.

The next day, we stopped by the Patriots' victory parade. Tens of thousands of people turned out to welcome home their champions, and the mood was again one of unbounded joy. As the parade dispersed, the crowd spontaneously began chanting in unison, as if they were all of one mind, one voice.

And what did they chant?

"Yankees Suck! Yankees Suck!"

This was my first real introduction to the depth of rivalry between the Red Sox and the Yankees. It runs so deep, a Patriots celebration is as good a reason as any to boo a baseball team in New York.

Because of this, I was able to appreciate the inherent humor in Gov. Bill Richardson's spectacular implosion on "Meet the Press." Slate's coverage notes that the painfully awkward interview ended with Tim Russert's softball question about the Red Sox, which presidential candidate Richardson still botched dramatically.

So with that lengthy prelude, I present you with the transcript of Richardson's closing:

MR. RUSSERT: You spent a lot of time in, in Massachusetts. Are you a Red Sox fan?

GOV. RICHARDSON: I’m a Red Sox fan, but I got into trouble in New Hampshire. You know why? Because I said...

MR. RUSSERT: Luis Tiant, the fund-raiser. But, now, governor, this is very serious. In your book on page 18 it says...

GOV. RICHARDSON: No, about Mickey Mantle?

MR. RUSSERT: You said you’re a Yankee fan!

GOV. RICHARDSON: No, no, no. I said—no, no, no.

MR. RUSSERT: I mean, you can, you can...

GOV. RICHARDSON: No, no, no, no.

MR. RUSSERT: ...you can have different views on immigration, assault weapons...

GOV. RICHARDSON: I, no no no no. No, what I said...

MR. RUSSERT: But when it comes to Red Sox, Yankees.

GOV. RICHARDSON: What I said, the Associated Press asked me, “If you weren’t running for president, if you weren’t running for president, what would you rather be?” I’ve always been a Red Sox fan, but I said if I weren’t running for president I would like to be number seven, Mickey Mantle, playing center field for the New York Yankees.

MR. RUSSERT: “Because of Mickey Mantle, I became a Yankee fan.”

GOV. RICHARDSON: I, my favorite team has always been the Red Sox.

MR. RUSSERT: You’re a Red Sox fan.

GOV. RICHARDSON: I’m a Red Sox fan.

MR. RUSSERT: End of subject.

GOV. RICHARDSON: End of subject.

MR. RUSSERT: You better get rid of this book.

GOV. RICHARDSON: Oh, no! I’m also a Yankee fan. I also like...

MR. RUSSERT: Oh, now, wait a minute!

GOV. RICHARDSON: You can—Tim...

MR. RUSSERT: I guarantee...

GOV. RICHARDSON: No, I know, I got in trouble...

MR. RUSSERT: ...if you go—if you go to Yankee Stadium or Fenway, you cannot be both.

GOV. RICHARDSON: But I like—Mickey Mantle was my hero. If I weren’t running for president, and the Associated Press asked me, I’d play center field for the New York—I wanted to be number seven. And—but I still love the Red Sox as a team. I mean, this is the thing about me, Tim. I can bring people together. I can unify people.

MR. RUSSERT: Yankee fans and Red Sox fans?

GOV. RICHARDSON: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: Not a chance.

What can nerd do for you today?

No real deep message here...just a series of coincidences:

On Slate.com today, the main story is illustrated thusly:




Then, a few paragraphs down, there's this headline:



Finally, their "Explainer" piece on real-life tomb raiders begins with this:

Video-game maker Eidos will soon release the 10th-anniversary edition of its classic game Tomb Raider, starring nerd temptress Lara Croft.

So what have we learned? Nerds are dangerous. Nerds are auteurs. Nerds are tempted by cleavage.

I was surprised about the auteurs part.

How/when/what/where/mate with Pygmies?

I hate to harken to Slate.com articles two days in a row, but there's a classic today. As they continue to wrap up the year, Slate's "Explainer" feature listed some of the questions they didn't answer in 2006.

Here are my favorites (with parenthetical notes from me):

• Why do train whistles at night always sound lonely and mournful? Not so in the daytime.
(Seriously...isn't that true?)

• Is it possible to collect all the cookie dough in Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream and actually bake cookies from it?
(My guess was no. A little Google sleuthing proved I was right.)

• Can you tell me how long it will take if you eat rat poison to see if it is going to affect you? Please e-mail me back. Because my niece ate some.
(In an anthro class, I once learned that some monkeys will risk their lives to save their nieces and nephews. However, the professor did not say how quickly the uncle monkey would jump on the case.)

• I have noticed that a lot of mainstream movies feature men peeing. Are the actors really peeing?
(I actually remember someone asking Ebert whether Jodie Foster was really peeing in "Panic Room." Ebert said that stuff's always a sound effect added later.)

• PYGMIES: How/when/where/still in existence/do we mate with them?
(This one's solely here for you, Britt.)

Oh, and for those of you who read "The Know-It-All," you might remember that writer AJ Jacobs repeatedly mentioned that kids like to ask how far down dirt goes. For fun, I poked that into Google and found the answer the same place he probably did...in an article from Esquire, where Jacobs is an editor.

Ten feet or less. In case you care.

Just don't ask me to make you one.

I apparently missed the frenzy over Slate.com's article on the secret existence of Starbucks' short cappuccino. (The article was included today in a list of Slate's most popular stories from 2006.)

This excerpt pretty much gives you the gist:

Here's a little secret that Starbucks doesn't want you to know: They will serve you a better, stronger cappuccino if you want one, and they will charge you less for it. Ask for it in any Starbucks and the barista will comply without batting an eye.

A few points from my perspective at the Starbucks cousin that is B&N Cafe:

The article is dead-on right that a short cappuccino is as good as it gets, flavor-wise. More volume than that, and you're really just drinking a foamy latte. But a good barista can make a tall cappucino pretty well. I wouldn't get it bigger than that.

But, as I've told many a customer, we don't have a short at B&N. It's one of the very few things Starbucks doesn't equip us with (probably for economic reasons outlined in the article). In case you're curious, the other big differences are that we don't have sugar-free hazelnut syrup or a bean grinder. And for the love of god, we don't take Starbucks cards. *Sigh.*

I wish we did have a short. Partly, it would be nice just to calm people who get worked up that "tall" is our shortest size. And "grande" is not the biggest size. People, you've had a decade or so to get past that. Suck it up.

But I also just think Starbucks is going to reverse course in the coming years and quit pimping the venti. (Which, by the way, is Italian for "20," even though the cold venti holds 22 ounces. Go figure.) I just don't think we're doing our customers any favors by pushing them toward 20-ounce (or 22-ounce) mochas, much less peppermint mochas or eggnog lattes.

Who knows? Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe we'll just keep making people buy more and more fat, until we're have to resort to dropping a few slices of bacon into the cup. I can already see how we'll sell it: "Would you like to try that pancetta affumicata style today?"

When there was no crawdaddy to be found, we ate coal.

There's a fun/scary tool in today's installment of the Slate.com Carbon Diet, an ongoing series of tips for reducing your CO2 emissions. Today's entry is about electricity, and it links to an EPA site that tells you where your local energy comes from.

Up here in Hoover, we're lovin' us some coal:


The good news is, up until a few years ago, Alabama was 30% coal, 43% suet, 6% moonshine and 3% bacon drippings. So there is some progress.

BTW, there are some great tips in this Slate series, so I really encourage you all to check it out each week.

Here are the two admonishments I was most guilty of today:

• How many times have you left your cell-phone charger plugged in, even when your phone is not? Wall chargers for things like iPods and cameras suck energy out of the socket, even when not attached to their mates. With the national average at five chargers per person, unplugging adds up.

• Rechargeable battery docks for gadgets like drills and handheld vacuum cleaners can draw from the socket five to 20 times more energy than is stored in the battery. Unplug them once tools are juiced.

Oops.