Are y'all reading my columns on Wallet Blog? I'm particularly proud of my latest, a treatise on slow-consumption (which has nothing to do with TB). Joe Bob would say, “Check it out.”

Those of you who have been paying attention will know that I recently advertised for a running partner. Looks like one has emerged! Of course, before I take even a step with him, he'll be properly introduced to Monstro.

(When I typed my original Craigslist ad, he'd said, “put 'MARRIED' in the subject line.”

“I'm not going to mention it at all, for fear of attracting even *more* freaks,” I said.)

While speaking of portals on the Internet that bring us together and teach us about each other, what is it, in particular, about Facebook that makes people so effing *stupid*? I mean, no judgment at all. I'm not kidding. MySpace might be the stupidest social networking outlet, but FB is not bringing out the best in its “friends.” And, while I'm off on a Facebook rant, I got up to 200 and then someone de-friended me so now I'm back at 199. Scheisse.

Monstro and I celebrated our six-year wedding anniversary this weekend by leaving our children for the night. It's the first night we've been gone since well before BK's birth, and only our second night gone since Lex was born. I'd hoped it would be a surprise jaunt to Mohegan Sun, but when MS turned up sold out I told Monstro we'd be going out of town the following weekend.

“Where do you want to go?” I asked him.

“Without the kids? Anywhere,” he said.

He suggested a bed & breakfast so I googled some places in Vermont and we chose the Hickory Ridge House in Putney. The place looked nice; they had a cottage that reminded me of my cabins during our courtship phase; the cottage had a king-sized bed. The true icing on the cake was that the proprietors were hosting a dinner on Saturday night, which would be a freebie on top of the price of the room. I reserved our room and then Monstro and I spent the better part of the week giggling.

After a quick drive through Brattleboro into NH for some tax-free booze (including a ten-dollar case of Shipyard microbrews), we made it to Putney in less time than expected. Upon arrival, Dennis showed us the rooms in the main house — nobody else was booked to stay over so he let us poke around. We decided to stick with our cottage room — the Garden Room — and then we got busy with the doin' of it.

Dinner was excellent and before we sat down to eat, another couple arrived. Pat and Angie were from northern Vermont but moved there from California nearly two years ago. We four had a great time hashing out the differences between California and New England.

“We're so glad you were here to give us a reality check!” Pat said when it was time for us to check out. Hilarious.

We drove a little north and then back through Putney and on into Brattleboro, where we had yummy Thai lunch. Then Monstro purchased mood-music for our upcoming D & D adventure while I bought an exciting undergarment. Then we drove down to Agawam where we had one very long battle and one that lasted 20 minutes thanks to Monstro's “halve the monsters' hit points but double the damage they deal” strategy. We made it home before 10:00, took the sitter ( sitter #3 of the weekend; thanks Mary, Emily, and Renee!) home, and came back home and celebrated some more. I think because Monstro's so close to graduating, we're feeling extra celebratory this year.

During today's run, a man carrying a piece of lead pipe blew me a kiss.

The weather's been so intensely beautiful, like beauty concentrated, that I have gone running each of the past three days. Today I ran to the top of the hill that stymied me halfway the day before. Then I ran to the running track to see if the snow and ice was all gone, and it was, so I did 5×100 where I ran the flats and walked the curves. (OK, the third one was more like a 60, but I put my heart into it.)

DIdn't get my 10-minute warning this afternoon so I didn't get “My First Kiss” in the mail to The Pinch, but I have finished the editing and I'm proud of it. It reads like it was written by me, but different. Quite exciting. Re-reading Ulysses was a good way to follow re-reading Infinite Jest, though it hasn't done much for my thread-holding, if you've noticed. In any case, my reading diet is informing my writing output. Fuel for the flames. Not that I'm advocating bookburning.

I also submitted three one-act plays for a festival. Yeah! This fact is however diminished by the following outstanding, out-of-the-park news:

Monstro handed his printed 350-page dissertation to his second and third readers' secretary and mailbox today. He also made an appointment to be measured for his regalia. I told him I'd measure his regalia for free but he didn't take me up on it. Another time, perhaps. He also applied for four more professorships, including one in New Orleans, which would be a dream come true from Heaven. We went to the post office together on our way to pick up our kids. The postal worker put postage on his big envelope but I held up her progress by peeling the cat hair out from underneath the return-address label.

“Watch out,” Monstro warned me. “She's already accepted it… you could get in trouble.”

“Then when we get home, you can punish me,” I said. The postlady laughed.

“It's our anniversary this weekend,” I said.

Anyway, I'm looking at my title and realize I haven't paid it off yet. I was running this afternoon and saw a woman stopped at the fence looking at some working farm equipment. It was a manure-laden conveyer belt pointing up 65 degrees. Then the manure fell into an already substatntial pile of manure on the ground.

We watched it in silence for a minute and then I said, “There's a life lesson for you, right? Some days are like that.”

She laughed. “Don't I know it.”

“The thing is, though, everything grows stronger and taller as a result,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes it does.”

I wanted to get back to my run (I hadn't tried conquering the hill yet) so I excused myself with a “God bless you” and took off running.

Then, when I was doing my track workout, everything I saw was trees with branches like below-the-waist [first draft=waste] body hair, with gleaming spires sticking up from that. And all the houses seemed to have double-peaked ridgelines. “Welcome to Smith,” I thought. 'Course my inference might also have something to do with the fact that someone's sixth anniversary is this weekend, and we're so excited around the house we're just giggling. It's fun.

So yes, three runs in three days. The weather's been so beautiful that my past two runs have been one hour apiece. The one before that was on the new stretch of bikepath — just wonderful. And the day before that, I walked with the kids and pushed them in the double stroller all the way home.

But the real reason why I run is that yesterday I was passing my kid's preschool as I started my second big loop around campus, and one of the other mothers who's so shy we barely exchange words said to me, “You look beautiful and happy,” and that's how I felt.

Courtesy Leah Garchik, SF Chronicle:

As to much more workable ideas, computer guru/Electronic Frontier Foundation founder/songwriter John Perry Barlow was interviewed by David Kupfer. The subject was the origin of the Internet.

“The hippies built the Internet,” said Barlow, “in spite of the fact that it was a Defense Department project. There were very few people involved in the early days of the Internet who were not acidheads. … One of the things that happened when people took psychedelics was that you had the sense of everything being connected. It was such a powerful sense that all of us have been inspired by that to try to connect what is apparently separate here.”

I really did think that “Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker” were going to cancel out one another. Oh well; it's not like I have a crystal ball or anything. It was fun to determine pro/con arguments for each film, though!!

I'm totally en fuego today — ran for an hour, sent out a press release, contacted reporters, gave a fresh pair of eyes to the 37-page Chapter 2 of Monstro's dissertation, and I'm about to grade some pictures for tonight's digital photojournalism class. Whoo!

If it's NOT “District 9,” then “Precious” for the win. YHiHF.

Monstro and I have of late been embroiled in what for us has been a first-run movie-watching frenzy. A couple weekends ago we went to see “Avatar.” Then, tonight, we watched our Netflix of “District 9.”

District 9 is a much better movie than Avatar: here's why. SPOILERS (and probably typos, it's late) AHEAD.

District 9 starts the way you're always told to start a film in a beginning screenwriting class, but the premise is stripped down so as to be rendered completely unimaginative. A guy who would be the last guy you'd ever think would be in such a situation. Hell, it's security and “documentary” footage. How could anyone be sucked into such a boring premise told so stiffly?

[(that “such a boring premise” began with a Freudian “suck” in the first draft)]

Then we see what the humans are doing: incineratingly creepy medical experiments, evicting the other aliens from their tin shacks into a tent city, general all-around grossness. It probably helps this American that the host country is South Africa — even without the Apartheid influences, the Johannesburg language and geography is foreign. Makes it easier to take when you see the big, honkin', mothership that's been hovering over the city for more than two decades.

The hero is everyman. The Enemy Mine is a brilliant aerospace computer scientist; his son is bright and respectful and can be sent ahead to “run the binary sequence,” which are the top three reasons to have a kid. District 9 makes it easy to root for that side of the table, especially when those on the bride's side (literally, the hero is married to the daughter of the Bigbad Corp's executive leader) are gun-toting concentration-camp doctors.

I mean, come on. You're gripped. You're not even bothered by the blatant sequel foreshadowing. “When are you coming back? THREE YEARS! WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO BE? District 10!”

Then, there's Avatar. And I'm not here to dis on James Cameron, because Lord Knows that man can make a movie, and 'Aliens' was what passed for a religious experience in my junior-high days, and you can shut up about Sigourney Weaver, because her performance in 'Working Girl' was the pinnacle of bossy selfish bitchdom, and now that she's 60 there's no flies on her, nuh-uh.

But first, there's the lead guy; kind of a Mark Wahlberg but legless. And they don't let you forget that for an instance. The wheelchair should pull residual checks, you see it nearly more than the man IN it for the first 30 minutes. It's the world's first inanimate object to chew scenery.

Sergeant Wheelie (no disrespect: it's Cameron's vision) has a twin brother, except he doesn't anymore, a scientist who got killed while I was watching the “please turn off your cell phone” cartoon. Seems Marky Mark's the only one who can fuse with the alien harness force, or something about their central nervous systems, whatever.

Then there's the heartless, tough-as-nails military commander who's really in charge, even though the corporate-but-no-longer-pipsqueaky Giovanni Ribisi thinks it's all about the Benjamins.

And Zoe Saldana is smokin' hot and looks good in blue.

The whole movie is so pedantic that it's like Cameron won't be satisfied until the length of his political agenda is pressing right up against your gag reflex. But it's hard for me to cheer wholeheartedly against a military complex that has arrived to suck the native natural resources from the land — it would have been better to turn the military into private security for Chevron or some such — damn the natives, and it wouldn't be so hard maybe if the bad guys weren't all Americans.

At the end of all the stuff that happens, legless guy is going to die so he can permanently inhabit his alien form. And I'm supposed to be all, “Yay, he's not a human anymore, but he can walk”? It's too much of a conundrum. No Oscar for you (except every single special/visual effects award, which should be renamed from the Oscar the James Cameroney)!

On down the list:

“Up”: I haven't seen the first 15 minutes of this film, because Monstro doesn't want to be the first one to scar Lex irreparably emotionally, but I've seen the last 80 minutes twice and you know what? Not great.

“Up in the Air”: The Academy isn't going to give Jason Reitman an Oscar yet, not until his dad directs “Ghostbusters 3.”

I haven't seen 'The Hurt Locker,' but it won the British Oscar, and a producer got pinged for emailing “vote for my film!” to his address book, so I don't think the Academy's going to give it Best Picture over here.

“Precious”? I'm thinking not.

“The Blind Side” vs. “District 9”? Don't make me laugh; even though The Blind Side appeals to the part of me who is dying to adopt a Haitian orphan, it's not going to be the 2010 Best Picture.

And there are at least thirty-seven other “Best Picture” nominees this year, but I don't know who they are so who cares?

When you get down to the nitty-gritty sweepings of the late-night-movie usher, it's Peter Jackson's “District 9” vs. Quentin Tarantino's “Inglourious Basterds.” Anyone with eyes can tell you that by the Fu Manchu on Brad Pitt's chin, it just ain't Tarantino's year. (Maybe if he'd spelled at least ONE of the words right. Quentin, you auteur terrîble. When will you ever learn?) Motormouth sez: DISTRICT 9 FTW!

I finished re-reading Ulysses, and yes, it's even better the second time around. My pet-insurance: saver or scam? article was published to Wallet Blog and I got into a FB flame war — my first flame war in maybe five years — as a result. FB has notified me that the flamer went on to post a fourth and fifth comment but after I found multiple misspellings and incomplete sentence errors in her I'm-a-nationally-syndicated-journalist bio, I decided not to give her the pleasure of my continued attention. (Sorry for sullying your Friend list, Becky; next time I'm in CA, the Tower Cafe Chicken Salad is on me). Lex went to Nana's house for a few hours and I finished editing and adding citations to “My First Kiss,” which is going to The Pinch sometime early next week. I thought about running but the idea of it made me tired and even more headachey, so instead I read my new Runner's World. Now I'm making dinner for the kids and waiting to hear from a client about whether they want me to send out a press release on Monday. Pretty good day, and a sunny weekend ahead!