A recent study shows that there’s an increasing tendency of overweight babies, and this is something that parents should really be worried about. Apparently, at six months, there’s a chance you’ve already been slated to be overweight through adolescence and adulthood.

Is 21st century culture too obsessed with weight/nutrition (3 out of my last five posts have been about food and weight) or are we, as a group, so lackadasical about fitness that we’re now endangering the truly innocent?

What to say? I saw this image on a bumper sticker and missed my turn so I could make sure it said what I thought it said.

He’s cute. You’re not the hamster of doom, are you little hamster?

Googling “flying hamster of doom” and “coconuts” yields 116 results (meaning this hamster barely exists in Google terms), one of which is the above image, exactly what I saw on the car.

None of the results explain. All of them are like me — “saw this on a bumpersticker,” “inspired by a sticker at Hot Topic,” “hehe . . . BEWARE THE FLYING HAMSTER OF DOOM!!!”

They range from the misspelled:

the flying hamster of doom, which reins coconuts upon your pitiful city, …

To the cursed:

May The Evil Flying Hamster Of Doom Rain Coconut On Your Pitiful Town….

To the present perfect tense:

The Flying Hamster of Doom has rained coconuts on my pitiful city. …

To the political:

Our mascot will the flying hamster of doom who will rain coconuts down on Congress.

Good idea!

I finally turned to the Urban Dictionary, which had this helpful result:

1. flying hamster of doom

a winged hamster welding coconuts.

Well, why didn’t you just say so?

If anyone has any information regarding this hamster, send it in — before it’s too late.

What I hate about Jennifer Aniston is that she’s a moderately talented sitcom star whom celebrity magazines treat like the next Julia Roberts. If they gave such a break to, say, Maura Tierney, I wouldn’t complain. Tierney got her sitcom break on the underappreciated NewsRadio at around the same time Aniston landed Friends. They were originally known for doing comedy; both have tried to branch out. They even look a bit alike. But the similarity ends there, because Tierney is a phenomenal actress (she’s carried me through three or four otherwise unwatchable seasons of ER now), whereas Aniston is…a moderately talented sitcom star. I haven’t seen The Good Girl, to be fair; people say it’s her best performance, so maybe I’m missing something. But I did see Derailed—for two dollars, fortunately—and based on Aniston’s performance there, I can say that as a dramatic actress, she’s…a moderately talented sitcom star. She’s Rachel, always will be, and should take the path to Roberts-level success that involves never leaving her creative comfort zone and flashing a huge grin in public.

All of this is to say that I went into The Break-Up (again for $2) for the sole reason of wanting to see whether Aniston sucked in it. She doesn’t, but then, Brooke is Rachel with a bigger bank account. I got totally sidetracked trying to answer that question, though, because I was too busy trying to figure out what this movie is. A romantic comedy? It’s not funny—doesn’t really even try—and it’s not romantic. (I can’t say more without spoiling it.) A buddy comedy? But Vince Vaughn’s Gary doesn’t spend that much time with Jon Favreau on screen. A chick flick? But Brooke doesn’t spend that much time with Joey Lauren Adams. A serious study of modern romance? Then why on earth would they cast Aniston in it?

I get the feeling The Break-Up was actually supposed to be that last thing, a sensitive character piece about two people who stay connected once they disconnect, but the script got hijacked by a publicist with an agenda. It reminds me of Forces of Nature or The Banger Sisters—movies that had a shot at being interesting before they got refashioned into star vehicles. The Break-Up doesn’t work as a star vehicle. It’s too uncategorizable. It’s not a feel-good comedy, it doesn’t have a lot of action, and it doesn’t give underrated performers a chance to show off their range. It wants you to walk out of the theater thinking—not thinking, “Jennifer Aniston® is my new favorite actress,” but thinking, full stop. If a couple of talented but lower-wattage actors—say, Laura Fraser and Kevin McKidd, who, I’ll tell you in the spirit of giving two reviews in one, tried their valiant damnedest but were unable to salvage the hideous crapfest that was 16 Years of Alcohol—had taken the roles, this might have been a movie worth seeing. As it is, it’s an ineffective vehicle for repurposing Jennifer Aniston.

Plus her brother and his vocal group? Are fucking annoying.

It looks as if Pluto will be ‘unclassified’ a planet and ‘reclassified’ a Kuiper Belt object. Now, I’m all for greater knowledge and understanding, but isn’t this a bit of a waste of time?

I kind of feel like this would be the same thing as some group of alphabetologists informing everyone that the alphabet isn’t really ordered as well as possible and that all the vowels should be at the beginning for greater understanding. Possibly it would be a better system and more technically correct, but it brings up a tough question, is it worthwhile to re-categorize something that won’t be recognized by most people?

Certainly this has been done to great benefit and harm. There are numerous examples of new cultural identifications that have done away with years of latent bigotry. At the same time organizations have changed readily-understood concepts like ‘bomb’ into ‘payload delivery devices’ or firing a bunch of people to ‘right-sizing’.

Orwell was always talking about language like ‘right-sizing’ — the obfuscating of reality through language. But I wonder if there is another form of Orwellian language, that is some form of overanalyzing? 

Maybe I’m just rationalizing because I want to call a tomato a vegetable, a spider an insect and Pluto a planet. But is that so wrong? 

Did anyone in the Connecticut last week stop to think about how Mr. Schlesinger might feel? From Friday’s NYT:

Republicans have a candidate in the Connecticut race this fall, Alan Schlesinger, but he has struggled to raise money or attract interest amid the Lieberman-Lamont contest.

If you can’t run a nice candidate for the Senate, my mother used to say, then don’t run anybody at all. From the Minneapolis/St. Paul Star-Tribune:

The campaign of Connecticut Republican Senate candidate Alan Schlesinger has been so troubled that Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell urged him to give up.

The Republican candidate for the Senate in Connecticut right now is, unfortunately for everybody involved, Joseph Lieberman. ABC news speculates over a phone call Lieberman received from Karl Rove (offering an evil scheme or two, perhaps?) And we all know about the kiss of death Lieberman received at the State of the Union (OK, I’d missed it, too: George W. kissed him! Literally.)

In a move to distance himself from President Bush’s winnowing popularity, Minnesota-grown Republican senate hopeful Mark Kennedy has endorsed Lieberman over Schlesinger (what Connecticuter, I wonder, gives a damn about what he thinks?). Kennedy’s campaign strategy is to paint himself as more of an independent-minded Republican — from a Kennedy campaign ad, his son says of him:

Dad likes to help people. He’s principled, independent, just not much of a party guy. I meant … he doesn’t always do what the party says to.

And somehow, in Kennedy’s unique thinking, this would make him like Joe Lieberman. Kennedy said:

At times like these, when our country is fighting a global War against radical jihadists, and there is so much at stake for our nation’s security, we must put politics aside… It’s in that spirit that I would like to offer my support for Sen. Joe Lieberman’s bid for the U.S. Senate from Connecticut.

And now, in the same non-partisan spirit of Vice President Cheney’s slur that, somehow, Lamont’s victory sent a positive message to al-Qaeda, the Republican National Senatorial Committee issued press releases to tight senate races including Kennedy’s race against Democratic candidate Amy Klobuchar:

“What happened in Connecticut’s primary clearly demonstrates that the angry left fringe of the Democrat [sic] Party is in charge . . . ” said NRSC Spokesman Brian Walton. “Does Amy Klobuchar support the wishes of the angry left by endorsing Ned Lamont’s candidacy . . ?”

Angry left fringe? Angry, sure. You should be. Left? If you’re intelligent, educated, and informed, you probably are. But fringe? As Mr. Dionne at the Washington Post noted, the latest CNN poll revealed that 60% of Americans are now opposed to the Iraq War. That includes Democrats and Republicans; Minnesotans and Connecticuters.

Just not Joe Lieberman.

Dear 12apostrophes readers and writers: Is there a literary version of IMDB? If not, what’s the most thorough site you know to look up books and authors? (Don’t say Amazon). I’m particularly interested in a database that lists an author’s works chronologically, as opposed to one that compiles reviews of their works. Both would be great though.

You’re all literary types—would you mind using the comments section to make some suggestions?

No one cares how I came to be in possession of a fortune cookie today, especially since the important part was the message inside:

Pure pleasure is found in

my own imagination running wild about what the rest of that fortune was meant to have said?

Conjectures welcome. Happy Friday.

Today, for an hour or so still, is my wife and I’s second four-years-of-marriage anniversary.

Not that we’ve been married 8 years, just that we were married twice. Three times, actually. To each other. Not that we were divorced.

Hmmm . . .

It’s really very simple. It was important to my parents and grandmother that Maddy and I be married in the Catholic Church. Sure, we said. We weren’t any more Catholic than anybody else (and very much less Catholic than Catholics), but we were flexible.

The priest was flexible, too, but not that flexible. “Will you promise to raise your children in the Catholic faith?” Not so much, we said. Maybe, but probably not. Wouldn’t care to wager much on it.

So my parents’ priest said he would bless the marriage. But we needed a marriage to bless first. So we got pre-married at the county courthouse.

Then the Catholic marriage. And later, in India, a Hindu wedding with Maddy’s family. This one also somewhat religiously abridged, this time because we had lived together first (but we were already married! we thought).

We like celebrations and presents (who doesn’t?). Throw in our dating anniversary, three wedding anniversaries, Valentine’s Day, our birthdays, Christmas, Flag Day, 4th of July and Indian Independence Day, and we pretty much stay in celebration mode all the time (except for April, for some reason, unless you count my sister in Ohio’s birthday . . .).

Happy anniversary, Maddy.

(I was soooo kidding about Flag Day).

I’ve been reading a lot about the ‘people powered’ election of Ned Lamont in Connecticut – how for once an election wasn’t decided by the special interested, well-moneyed, over-lobbied joecumbent, but instead a grassroots, collective, power-of-the-people, wisdom of crowds type effort by the voters in Connecticut. 

And what strikes me about it is that I resonate so strongly with that idea. Politics is so disturbing lately because it feels so out of touch from everyday life (even if it always has been, it feels decidedly more out of touch in the past decade). And it feels so combative, without any sense of doing what’s best for the most amount of people. And so we rejoice at the victory of the ‘people-powered’ candidate in the nutmeg state.

Now, I’m just giddy that Joe Lieberman was defeated. And I’m saddened that an 18-year senator can’t leave the stage with some grace, and instead has chosen a path that seems to me delusional, quixotic, pathetic and infuriating: independence.  

What’s strange about this reaction to Lieberman for me is that for years I have longed for more choices in elections, that the choice between the lesser-of-two-evils isn’t really a choice at all, that we need more independents running on issues to bring more dialogue to elections and more connections with voters.

I suppose you could say the difference is in viewing that voice of ‘independence’ as not ‘independent’ enough, and rather a tired, establishment voice that doesn’t know when to quit.

But as I’m just shooting the breeze here, I’ll contend that it goes a little bit deeper than that to a contradiction in my own mind, and, dare I say, in the American psyche — or perhaps more accurately measured, the Midwestern American psyche (not that this is an exclusive condition to that locale).

But a contradiction in valuing deference to authority, community standards, and the power of cooperation, compromise and conflict resolution, while at the same time valuing critical thought, unconventional thinking and behavior, and the power of competition, creativity and confidence.

In thinking about this though, I think it is a perfectly healthy contradiction. Three things come to mind (mostly because they are on my mind for other reasons).

Take a new forum on Minnesota Public Radio called Public Insight Journalism. Part of me values the fact the establishment media is searching beyond its cadre of spoon-fed experts to dig up new sources of information, sources with just as much expertise in a given area as the Executive Director of this and that Institute. And part of me questions the value in this, that sometimes I do just want to be spoon-fed the expert opinion and I’ll come to my own conclusions based on that. And even more, though I’d hate to admit it, that sometimes I don’t really want to hear the opinions of everyday people, when, for instance, 50 percent of ‘everyday’ people can’t place Canada on a map of North America. Elitist? Yes. But do factoids like that give me much faith in something called a ‘people-powered’ movement? I’m still amazed that Lamont won, but factoids like that waver my enthusiasm just a little. Is this just a fluke? Will it still take place when the entire state votes in much greater numbers? Is there something wrong with Lamont too? etc. 

On the other side of the coin, take poker – yours truly won $1200 yesterday which is why it is on the mind. I love the game. But if this game isn’t quintessentially counter to what I most often think I believe in, I don’t know what is. Pool a bunch of resources, have a competition, and have the winner walk away with most of those resources, while most people (around 90%) are just out of luck. It is skill, it is luck, it is ruthless. And I love it.

Which brings me back, in a roundabout way, to Ned Lamont and the F5 key. I’ve started working one day a week in a new office. At that office, you have to hit the F5 key to refresh your email. At my other office, you don’t need to do that, your email just comes to you.

I guess all this is a very convoluted way of saying that whether I am a libertarian, independent individualist or a socialistic, common-good, deferentialist, all comes down to a given context. And please pardon the horrible analogy, but sometimes you just have to let the world refresh around you, and sometimes you have to do it yourself.

So would I like more independent voices in politics? Yes. Do I believe in the ‘people-powered’ movement? Sometimes. Do I want joementum to drop out? Without a doubt. As I said, context, and in this context, the one where Lieberman has repeatedly backstabbed party members and given the opposition increasingly damaging sound bites (“the anti-security party”), I’m leaning more towards the Hold ‘Em, pragmatist, forget-your-ideals-of-multi-party-politics, in-it-for-all-money mentality. I’ve got pocket rockets and some 18-year joeplayer just moved all-in after a ‘bad beat.’ You call that every time. Then hit the F5 key, and refresh.

I hate cooking.  It’s the whole organizational aspect of it–you have to have the green pepper chopped up and ready to go once the garlic has softened, you have to stir-fry it for five minutes (God help you if you skip out to pee and come back a minute late), and when you’re done you have to clean up the mess.  Pass.  For our first few months together my roommate thought I was a druggie because I hardly ate anything–until she discovered I think cooking takes too much work.

So why did I think it would be a good idea to subscribe to an organic farm?

Maybe because I’d only be getting one-sixth of the bounty.  I’m splitting half a summer-long subscription with my roommate and her boyfriend.  Maybe because I ought to eat more vegetables.  That’s why I was excited that we’d be getting everything from arugula to zucchini.  But also, in some abstract way, I think cooking is a good, nurturing, responsible activity, and that I should do more of it.

That didn’t happen.  There’s something about being faced every week with that boombox-size box of grubby wholesomeness that turns me off of food entirely.  It doesn’t matter if it comes filled with beets (which I don’t like) or tomatoes (which I love); I just don’t want to deal with it.  I…kind of let the veggies sit in the fridge until they’re rotten enough to pitch.  I feel guilty about this, but my roommate, who does like to cook, is even having a hard time getting rid of her share.  She started throwing dinner parties just so she can fob off our unwanted food on someone else.

Plus today I tried an ear of corn and it tasted like a baked potato.  I’m never doing this again.