My Funny Valentine

I've been trying for days to come up with a positive perspective to Valentine's Day. I still wince in anticipation of appearing wholly adequate in the romance department. After all, the song does say that "each day is Valentine's Day" - no pressure. I find myself trying to strike a balance between grand gesture and a modest level that I can maintain for the rest of the year.
Around here, we have a phrase for it: "Of course I love you - I married you, didn't I?" That seems to be our standard, if not overly cynical, response to dealing with the 24/7 reality of a relationship that is based on love and mutual respect. At times like these I find myself replaying the words of Shrevie (Daniel Stern) in "Diner": “Before you get married, all there is is talk about the wedding — the — plans, you know, and sex talk. You know, when can we DO it? Are your parents going to be out so we can DO it? Where can we DO it? Then, after you get married, she's there all the time; when you wake up in the morning, she's there. When you come home from work, she's there … There's no more sex talk. Nothing else to talk about … But it's really good, you know, it's ok, it's good.”
This makes me feel good because I don't seem nearly as cynical as this guy. We still put toothpaste on each other's toothbrushes. We still cry at the end of "Philadelphia Story." We agree that "Born To Run" is a great song, but we like "Thunder Road" just a little more because it's a love song. She's the one that I want to make laugh more than anyone else in the world.
Is your mouth - a little weak?
When you open it to speak, are you smart?
Don't change a hair for me;
Not if you care for me;
Stay, little valentine, stay!
Each day is valentine's day.

Disarming Notion

Here's a little gift from the universe: North Korea has agreed to nuclear disarmament. Like all gifts, however, there is a price tag: They agreed Tuesday to shut down its main nuclear reactor and eventually dismantle its atomic weapons program in exchange for millions of dollars in aid. When I first read the article, I read "four million dollars in aid." The truth is, that would be getting off cheap. It's more likely that there will be factors of ten applied abruptly, as well as a player to be named later.
Still, a deal is a deal, and we should all breathe a sigh of relief on that. Presently we see a result gained through diplomatic means, that should not go without notice. The part about it that makes me flinch most wildly is this: Just how do we keep the genie in the bottle now that he has come out and said "Howdy do" to North Koreans? I forget my cell phone number because I so rarely use it, but will their physicists have to take a super-secret oath never to tell anyone how to enrich uranium? What if we're a little late one month with the check? Will they fire up their reactor all over again?
Today, at least, it's better not to worry about such things. We can imagine a new era of cooperation on the Korean peninsula. An era fostered in mutual respect, collaboration, and hundreds of millions of dollars. Just so I'm clear on this, how much would it cost if they just let the reactor burn?

Something Fishy

Here's something I learned tonight: Mike Nichols, director of "The Graduate" was also responsible for a little film called "Day of the Dolphin." Not only that, but Buck Henry, who worked with Nichols on "The Graduate" and helped create the TV series "Get Smart" was the screenwriter of record. Seems as though it should have been more laughs. Instead, it was a plodding thriller about Dr Jake Terrell, who has taught his dolphins to speak and understand English, although they do have a limited vocabulary. When the dolphins are stolen, he discovers they're to be used in an assassination attempt. Did I mention that it stars George C. Scott? Somewhere in there are the ingredients for some massive satire, but it just never got off the ground.
Not to worry. Those merry pranksters at the U.S. Navy are working hard to make this piece of seventies fluff a reality. Dozens of dolphins and sea lions trained to detect and apprehend waterborne attackers could be sent to patrol a military base in Washington state, the Navy said Monday. The Navy said it needs to bolster security at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, on the Puget Sound close to Seattle.
And just how does this aquatic-mammal surveillance work? When a Navy dolphin detects a person in the water, it drops a beacon. This tells a human interception team where to find the suspicious swimmer. The last time the animals were used operationally in San Diego was in 1996, when they patrolled the bay during the Republican National Convention. Yes, you read that right: Dolphins were protecting the Republicans. No word on what phylum was at work at the Democratic Convention.
The sea lions are just a tad more confrontational. They can carry in their mouths special cuffs attached to long ropes. If the animal finds a rogue swimmer, it can clamp the cuff around the person's leg. The individual can then be reeled in for questioning. "And I would have gotten away with it too - if it hadn't been for those meddling seals!"
It's not as if the Navy doesn't have a conscience. The Navy hopes eventually to downsize its marine mammal program and replace the animals with machines. "But the technology just isn't there yet," Tom LaPuzza, a spokesman for the Marine Mammal Program said. "The value of the marine mammals is we've been doing this for thirty-five years, and we've ironed out all the kinks."
When asked for a comment, one dolphin said, "Fa loves Pa." Good luck, Ensign Flipper!

Timetable

The U.S. military is angry at Iran. They say that one hundred seventy coalition forces have been killed by Iranian-made roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) that were smuggled into Iraq. Silly Iranians, don't they know this is our war? Why can't they stay out of it? Could it be that their barely-stable Middle Eastern country borders Iraq and with hundreds of miles of desert to cross unseen, Iraqi refugees continue to pour out and Iranian extremists continue to pour in? The obvious solution for this problem would be to have Haliburton construct (at considerable expense) a large fence or wall to keep all those bad guys with guns and bombs out while we sort through this thing.
The whole thing becomes frighteningly reminiscent of the swirling mass of conflict in Southeast Asia during the sixties and seventies. While the U.S. military was busy trying to reassert democracy in Vietnam, governments in Laos and Cambodia suffered the chaos of civil war and internal strife. In 1965, Cambodia broke off relations with the United States and turned instead to the People's Republic of China and the U.S.S.R. for relief. It is probably no coincidence that 1965 also brought the first wave of U.S. combat troops to Vietnam. "We" trained and fought with the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. "They" supplied, trained and supported the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Viet Cong. These were the heady days of the Cold War, and the "Domino Principle", in which it was America's responsibility to stop the Red Menace from sweeping the continent. In 1972, we left, and three years later Saigon fell to the communists.
Thirty-plus years later, the U.S. is attempting to plant the seed of democracy in a desert. The question should not be why the Iranians are becoming more involved in this conflict, the question should be "What took them so long?"

Cultivating A Better Community

Last Saturday morning, as is my custom, I ran past my son's elementary school. Someone had scrawled graffiti on the marquee out front. The security measures available to a public school are slim and none, so the "artist" was able to "tag" both sides of the sign and wander off into the night. I made a mental note to myself to come back up the hill before the day was out to remove the offending marks. I made a mental note to be relieved at the relative low end of the crime spectrum on which we found ourselves in Oakland.
Imagine my surprise when, on Wednesday afternoon, I heard that Oakland police were raiding a house across the street from the school. Six people were arrested and six million dollars of marijuana was seized. There were five different houses, and only one of them was across the street from the school, and no shots were fired as the arrests were made "without incident." There was some pretty tense looking videotape on the news that night, but it was mostly a matter of hauling people and plants away in the aftermath. Our principal was asked if anybody at the school was aware of the raid or of any illegal activity at the house across from it.
"That wouldn't be information we'd be privy to," she said. "Even though that is very serious, that doesn't necessarily pose a threat to the campus."
Today as I was making my run up the hill, Jimmy Cliff's "Harder They Come" happened to come on my iPod. Welcome to the Mean Streets of Oaktown.

Diversion Therapy

Somewhere, deep within the bowels of his ultra-secret dormant volcano bunker hideout, Dick "Dick" Cheney is making soft gurgling sounds and wringing his hands. The gurgling sounds are the result of his inability to experience human emotions and therefore he cannot actually laugh as he glances at the day's headlines: Anna Nicole Simpson autopsy continues - Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband involved in possible paternity. Bizarre love triangle between astronauts ends in kidnap/murder plot.
Nobody's talking about the mess in Iraq this week. Even as the "crackdown" begins, a tired and bored nation turns its eyes to the prurient and sad tales of desperate fame and those who will become infamous. Meanwhile, American officers, interviewed at the sprawling Camp Victory (whose job is it to name these things?) base at the western edge of Baghdad, acknowledge they are finding little in their initial searches of neighborhoods — suggesting either they received faulty intelligence or that the massive publicity that preceded the operation gave militants time to slip away.
The soft gurgling noises have stopped. The machinery that operates as a circulatory system for "Dick" struggles to keep up as his stress level rises. Somebody points out that Prince's guitar looked an awful lot like a phallus during that Super Bowl halftime show. "Dick" chuckles in spite of himself and grumbles, "Excellent." Everything is proceeding according to plan.

Whatta Life!

So maybe that Trim-Spa Diet isn't so hot after all. "Today, Anna Nicole Smith’s grief stricken and tumultuous personal life came to an end. Anna came to our Company as a customer, but she departs it as a friend." This one's going to be as tough a sell as the old Ayds weight reducing candy: "Ayds helps you lose weight" or "Why take diet pills when you can enjoy Ayds?" or even "Thank Goodness For Ayds!"
Anna Nicole Smith has become the punch line for her own life. With each tragic misstep, she became less of a person and more an inflatable version of celebrity - albeit a slimmer inflatable version of celebrity of late. She started out as a topless dancer at strip club before she entered her photos in a search contest and made the cover of Playboy magazine in 1992. She became Playboy's playmate of the year in 1993. She was also signed to a contract with Guess jeans, appearing in TV commercials, billboards and magazine ads. In 1994, she married 89-year-old oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, owner of Great Northern Oil Company. In 1995, her life switched gears as she became the embattled widow, with a potential inheritance of five hundred million dollars. Now that both Marshall's stepson and Anna are dead, the litigation over the fortune will probably continue - just as the questions about Smith's son, who died September tenth in his mother's hospital room in the Bahamas, just days after she gave birth to a daughter.
An American medical examiner hired by the family, Cyril Wecht, said he died accidentally of a combination of methadone and two antidepressants. Last month, a Bahamas magistrate scheduled a formal inquiry into the death for March 27.
Meanwhile, the paternity of Smith's now 5-month-old daughter remained a matter of dispute. The birth certificate lists Dannielynn's father as attorney Howard K. Stern, Smith's most recent companion. Smith's ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead was waging a legal challenge, saying he was the father. And what will happen to DAnnielynn? The soap opera has only just begun, and I suspect that Anna Nicole wouldn't have it any other way.