The FBI wants to make me rich

I suppose because my byline appears regularly in the paper, scammers bombard my email address with more come-hithers promising vast riches than the average user of a computer might receive.

Usually, the con artists pretend to be a relative of some rich despot now deceased. I got three or four of these messages earlier today. As you may know, Nigeria is infamous for being the origin of most of these scams.

But the last one I got was in a special class. It was marked "Federal Bureau of Investigation." Well, that got my attention. I thought I might be nailed for transporting juvenile jokes across state lines.

It began:

"Attn:Beneficiary.

We believe that this notification meets you in a very good present state of mind and health. We the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in conjunction with some other relevant Investigation Agencies here in the United states of America have recently been informed through our Global intelligence monitoring network that you presently have a transaction going in Europe and Africa as regards to your over-due payment which was fully endorsed in your favor accordingly."

That awkward and overly polite English marked this as the usual scam from the get go "We believe that this notification meets you in a very good present state of mind and health..."

Ah yes, that would be how the G-men send me correspondence. They would forget to capitalize the states in United States of America as well.

You got to hand it to these guys, though: Pretending to be the FBI is world-class chutzpah.

I've got mail (from lawyers)

My column on Wednesday about lawyers, health-care reform and tort reform not surprisingly brought a lot of emails from lawyers.

While they took me to task, most were respectful, thoughtful and dignified - in short, they had mastered the civilized art of disagreeing without being disagreeable. I expected no less from professional people.

But in case I got the wrong impression of lawyers, a second wave of emails came in to show that these indignant ones were just a bunch of insulting goofs with no sense of humor. In short, while it seemed for a time that I had finally fulfilled my dream of finding a better class of enemy, my initial hopes were dashed. Oh well, you know me: I always smile bravely through my tears and then burst into laughter.

But I want to focus on the smarter and more polite replies. Some of them had a common theme. They started off by saying that I had misquoted William Shakespeare, a capital offense in certain old-fashioned colleges where the ivy climbs up the trouser legs of English professors.

Here is a typical reaction: "As you may know, the phrase "the first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers," from Henry VI, Pt. 2 is the classic out-of-context quote. What Shakespeare makes clear in the play is that if you wish to set up a tyrannical government, kill the lawyers."

And here is my reply to this gentleman (and indeed so he was, not like some of those other scoundrels): "Thank you for your courteous note but your explanation of the quote is a case of doth protest too much. I have no argument with the greater meaning of the quote in the general scheme of Shakespeare's play, but the bard was too great a writer not to let Dick the Butcher speak in the authentic voice of the people - that is, the resentful, prejudiced voice of the people. That, of course, was precisely my point, I ventured no further than to suggest than public resentment of lawyers is of long standing."

This is why I love my job - not because I am regularly called vile and ignorant but because good people exist out there also and they care about their Shakespeare.

Have a great weekend, you good people. As for the rest of you, I visit upon you the curse of the Australians: May all your emus turn into chickens and kick over your patio furniture.

Monkey business

I have difficulty figuring out family relationships. I understand what mom and dad are and I am not befuddled by brothers and sisters. I also can place cousins and nephews in the family tree.

But what is a great aunt anyhow? What is so great about her? That's what I want to know. And how about a cousin once removed? I have at least one of those but I don't know why she was removed.

It's enough to say, "I'll be a monkey's uncle!"

Unfortunately, that just got more confusing. The headline on a front-page story in the Post-Gazette this morning reads: "Monkeys Have Two Mothers Due to Cloning Techniques." Yikes!

Given that monkey mothers must worry a lot about their offspring getting up to monkey business, they are probably grateful for another mother to share the worrying load. Still, it threatens to get impossibly confusing for the rest of us.

A word to MyReply, who asked if I was being paid to write this stuff. Yes, MyRepy, a great deal of money, huge amounts. It's is part of my merry-quip-and-jest compensation package.

Actually, MyRepy, I made that high compensation part up to make you feel more miserable than usual.

A word to Scarletpumpernickel, who asks if guests dip while dancing at the better class of cocktail parties I attend. Certainly they do. I have myself danced over to the dip at such affairs. The onion dip is my favorite.

It is important, however, to extend a pinkie in the manner of taking afternoon tea while holding the chip or cracker to be dipped.

Hope that clears it up.

Beyond Cash for Clunkers

The Cash for Clunkers program has ended. Not to worry. A new government program will be starting later this week to further stimulate the economy.

Ladies, pay special attention, because this one could interest you. No, it isn't one for greener appliances. This one is called "Cash for Codgers."

For a limited time, married women can get cash for worn-out, clueless husbands who have been around the block too many times. The criteria are strict. Only those husbands who snore and give off other global warming gases are eligible for the trade-in.

If you get a new model that doesn't have sagging upholstery, the government will give you three or four thousand dollars toward the cost of your reception after your next wedding.

This is a limited offer, so don't delay.

Why I am not understood

Recently, one of those who regularly posts comments on this blog said that he sometimes could not understand what I was trying to say. Well, there has been a lot of that going around lately and I have been a bit worried about it.

But on Sunday, in The New York Times Week in Review section, an article about the literary critic and scholar Richard Poirier, who died this month at the age of 83, put my worries to flight.

The author of the piece, Alexander Star, wrote: ".... Mr. Poirier's most important contribution came in his criticism, which tried to convey why the act of reading is - and should be - so difficult. The most powerful works of literature, he insisted, offer "a fairly direct access to pleasure" but become "on longer acquaintance, rather strange and imponderable." Even as readers try to pin down what a writer means, the best authors try to elude them, using all the resources of sound, rhythm and syntax to defeat any straightforward account of what they are doing."

Yes, yes, that's it! That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

And now for the most disheartening story with the most ridiculous suggestion in the Post-Gazette this morning: "Rendition of Terrorism Suspects to Include Monitoring for Abuse."

This New York Times story by David Johnston began thusly:

"WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration will continue the Bush administration's practice of sending terror suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but pledges to closely monitor their treatment to ensure that they are not tortured, administration officials said yesterday."

Oh sure, those foreign torturers are renowned for their honesty.

Sometimes I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I do know that somewhere Dick Cheney is smiling.

A note to my contributors:

I am sorry to say, Mr. (or Ms) The Scarletpumpernickel, but I cannot divulge too much I learn at the better class of cocktail parties. Yes, I can confirm that wieners are present but they deserve their privacy. It's a matter of protecting my sources and sauces. I do hope you understand.

Mr. Toadsley: Do not believe the rumors about kookaburras. They are a most agreeable bird and are known in Oz as the "Laughing Jackass" because of their distinctive laugh, which fills the trees with gales of mirth, especially at dawn and sundown. In fact, they are only bird I can get a laugh out of. Some of the tough old birds that flock here are harder to amuse.

Also, I believe that you asked about the Laundramutt in Sewickley (Edgeworth really). I am a satisfied customer. This establishment has several times put my faithful hound Sooner through the wash.

Mt. Obama

People who have really make it in this world buy themselves a place at the exclusive Mill Reef Club in Antigua. It is a fair bet that those who frequent the snooty precincts of the Mill Reef Club tend to be politically conservative, because being rich tends to make a person conservative - ask Dick Scaife, if you don't believe me. Why, as soon as I become rich, I intend to become conservative myself.

(This doesn't mean that people of modest means aren't conservative sometimes; it means that the rich are especially prone to be influenced by self-interest, or so I have found as an observer at the better class of cocktail parties).

I wonder how the residents of the Mill Reef Club have taken to the news that Antigua's highest mountain has been renamed Mt. Obama? They probably think it is positively ghastly, darling, and this thought should cheer us all up.

David Bear, described as the Post-Gazette's travel editor emeritus, wrote about the 1,327 foot Mt. Obama, more properly the Mount Obama National Park, on Sunday. The mountain was formally known as Boggy Peak. Although one can fairly wonder how much of an honor it is to have something called Boggy Peak renamed for you, Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer was sincere as seeing Obama's election as the hope of the world.

Of course, Antiguans can rename their prominent features anything they like but it is always perilous to rename anything after a living politician.

The voters of San Francisco recently turned down a proposal to rename a sanitation plant for George W. Bush, which was wise. After all, sanitation plants are useful.

What if someone had named a Mt. Carter in honor of President Jimmy? There's one mountain they would have wished to be eroded to a hillock.

More than half a year into Obama's presidency, the verdict should be still out on his presidency, except for those who declared him a failure one minute after he took office. The fact is that he's too busy scaling Mt. Health Care to get a good fix on him yet. In any event, he's not going to be a Mount Washington.

Heartbreak hotel

So, a big banner is going to be put in front of the Hilton Hotel ahead of the G-20 summit to hide the unfinished construction.

I believe that strippers - not that I would know any of those - have a word for such coverings meant to add a note of decorum to sights that the eye is naturally drawn to - pasties.

This would be the biggest pastie in the world but it would be a bit of cover for the boobs who run the Hilton and did not pay their bills. So it's all good.

To those who haven't read it, I highly recommend E.J. Dionne's piece "The Politics of the Jackboot" in today's paper. It thoroughly refutes all those of you who have argued that the current protests about health care are not of a different order than protests again George W. Bush. The fact is that they are different - and any reasonable person would think so. (I know, know, being reasonable isn't as much fun.)

By the way, Dionne is another journalist who sees the hand of racism in the protests, so I guess we can add him to PghGirl's list (see last posting), although she wrote before he did. I did promise not to mention this subject again but it's to PghGirl's credit, so I think it's OK.

Have a happy weekend everybody. Don't go getting all reasonable on me and losing your charm.

A blogger revealed

In the most suspenseful moment in America since Geraldo opened Al Capone's vault and found nothing, mystery blogger PittGirl has unmasked herself to reveal someone most of us don't know.

Still, I suppose that her ordinary station in life serves to underscore her extraordinary achievement in causing so much excitement that the mainstream media (newspaper division) was interested enough to do a story.

I say hurrah for her. And on reading that she has two little children at home - one a 2-year-old, a member of the perennial class of terrible twos - I say double hurrah.

We have a PghGirl who posts replies to this blog. Can this be the same Super Mom? It would be very flattering but I do not ask her to out herself.

Instead, I have a question, Recently, she wrote:

"For every talk-radio host or whoever questioning Obama's birth location, there are 20 ‘journalists' in the popular media whining that opposition to this ridiculously superficial, vague, un-researched healthcare proposal is "racism" directed at our multi-racial President-- even though the crappy proposals were drafted by our almost totally white Congress."

OK, I'm game, PghGirl. Instead of outing yourself, out the 20 "journalists" in the popular media who you think have been whining about health-care opposition and charging racism. Citations please.

Actually, I am going easy on you because at least several talk show hosts have been on the health-care vendetta and you should really be producing 60 names of journalists under your formula. But I'll give you a break on the grounds of hyperbole, of which I am frequently guilty myself.

Of course, I don't doubt someone has done this - America is a big country - but I suspect you might be hard put to find more than half a dozen. Two or three then? Just one? Anybody? Frankly, I can't remember anybody but - as several people have told me - I live on another planet.

So enlighten me and all the other alternative planet dwellers. This is not a gotcha moment. As one who cares about journalism and sees it as mostly a force for good in the world, I am genuinely interested. If I have something to learn, I would be happy to learn it. I will not reference this again, so you are unencumbered by any potential embarrassment from me.

By the way, I am glad you are posting replies to this blog. Thank you. All are welcome. Even the ever cranky MyReply.

The fat of the land

As a follow-up to my column this morning on the General Motors Diet, I can report that, as of this morning, I have lost a further pound to make nine pounds overall.

For today's finale to the diet, I am eating brown rice. Yes, there's nothing like brown rice for breakfast, not to mention lunch and dinner (with vegetables and cabbage soup as needed).

Actually, the diet wasn't so torturous. I was never really hungry. The worst part may have been going to the movies Saturday night and watching "Julie and Julia." It is a terrific movie by the way - witty and interesting with Meryl Streep in her usual outstanding form - but of course it is all about food and wine. I am surprised someone didn't step on my tongue when leaving the theater.

On Nov. 16, 1996, before I had a regular column, I wrote a Saturday Diary about the cabbage soup diet I mentioned this morning. It includes my bogus weight-loss recipe I also referenced. I hope it gives you an extra laugh.

Fortune Favors the Fuller Figure

The Saturday Diary is especially designed to be read over breakfast.

As the subject matter is usually not food for serious thought, we recommend a plate of sausage, bacon and eggs to make the whole experience substantial.

As for hash browns, muffins, toast, pancakes, coffee and juice, we say - whatever makes the diary work for you. And if someone in your household should declare that such a hearty meal is not a healthy choice, remember that the paper, properly rolled, can make an effective counterargument.

But, whatever happens, do not accept any cabbage soup while reading this diary.

Cabbage soup is fatal to literary appreciation, indeed to any appreciation of the finer things of life. The very name should strike you with dread.

It struck me. There I was at almost 200 pounds - happy, jolly, carefree if not fat-free, a veritable Santa Claus in training.

Then one night my wife accused me of being obsessed with food. It was a base charge, certainly, and I refuted it immediately after dinner. But as they say in culinary circles, my goose was cooked.

She suggested that I go on the notorious cabbage-soup diet, which is sweeping the nation wherever fat people gather.

(Readers will recall that it was Eve who got Adam on that apple diet with such disastrous consequences.)

The cabbage-soup diet is well-named. The hapless dieter must carry around a thermos of cabbage soup wherever he or she goes. If hunger pangs attack in this war on fat - and the cravings come not as single candy spies but as whole battalions of chocolate soldiers - then it's time to whip out the old artillery shell of cabbage soup.

Of course, you get to eat other things as well. One day I ate steak, another day bananas and skim milk, until my system did not know what the heck was going on and simply surrendered.

I ate grapefruit until my stomach puckered at the thought. These days grapefruit are cultivated to be sweet, but they are really a disagreeable fruit. They think they're a cut above lemons, and they're sour because they always wanted to be oranges. By any reckoning, they are not a civilized substitute for breakfast pop-tarts.

And always the dreaded cabbage soup supplemented the meager meal. Cabbage soup would coat my teeth. Cabbage-soup apparitions would haunt my dreams, whispering wickedly into my slumbering ear: "Pssst, Henry, stuffed pork chops, hee, hee!''

Oh, but it was worth it. The pounds shed quickly - 15 pounds by the end of it. I was fit, trim and utterly crabby and depressed. Fifteen pounds' worth of the joy of living fell off my frame.

Furtively, I found myself studying the food ads with a ravenous eye. The voluptuous thighs of turkeys danced before me. Outside, the sun itself seemed a dab of butter in the blue icing sky. The clouds were merely mounds of mashed potatoes.

Why was I torturing myself to please my wife? Was I a man or a mouse? Unfortunately, a mouse - and cheese was not part of the diet.

*

Well, it's all to the good, I suppose.

After all, it's beginning to feel a lot like Sparkle Season. All week, workers were putting up the tree on the side of the old Horne's building. A Nativity scene controversy is raging in Pittsburgh once again.

Because we are a pious people, soon we shall celebrate the season with some serious eating. A person needs to prepare - lest he burst one silent night or in a fit of thanksgiving.

To impress your relatives and friends over the holidays, I include today a little diet of my own creation. It is cabbage-free because recent experience has taught me that cabbages are the enemy of all that is good and holy.

Monday: Delicious raw carrots. All the water you can drink.

Tuesday: Toasted cork board. It looks like fiber bread but you won't be tempted to overdo it. Don't spare that water!

Wednesday: Boiled spinach. Yum! Treat yourself today - you've earned it. Have a grape (peeled).

Thursday: Prunes. Skimmed yak milk.

Friday: Ballottine d'Agneau rotie a la Perigourdine. Whoops, don't speak French? Substitute the cork board.

Saturday: Chicken without its skin.

Sunday: Skin without its chicken.

I can't guarantee that you will lose weight on this diet, but I do know that you will be extremely miserable. And that, as any serious dieter will tell you, is really the point.

*

Last Monday night, disgracefully sober but otherwise only a Big Mac and fries away from serenity, I went to Heinz Hall to see B.B. King, the king of the blues.

The evening did not start well because a number of thin, therefore irritable people around me had a 10-minute argument about where they should be sitting.

But by the time the king arrived on stage, everybody was feeling fine - and he made us all feel better.

What a great showman! One can politely say that there is a lot of B.B. King to love. For him, the cummerbund is not so much a fashion accessory as a retaining wall against the bountiful accumulation of after-show snacks.

Apart from his music, the thing that really impressed was how happy he was. Not for him the "my-wife-dun'-goin'-to-kick-me-out-if-I don't-slurp-that-cabbage-soup blues.''

No sir, he sings the blues, but he eats the sandwiches.

What an inspiration to us all. At that moment, I decided it was time to fling away the winter garment of repentance.

Time to stop dieting and start living. I suggest all you plump persons out there follow my lead.

Of course, we can't forget to exercise.

So, run to the fridge! Lift drumsticks! Shovel potato salad!

Not to be obsessive or anything, but are you going to finish that muffin?

Homer's odyssey

This is the tale of a little dog named Homer. This is a sad story, so those who wish to avoid sorrow should leave the blog now.

Homer was one of two dogs that my sister-in-law Linda owns. The other is Bella - Bell for short - who is a black labrador, not unlike the dog that supplies the image for the Black Dog company in Martha's Vineyard that I wrote about in my last posting.

Bell has a sweet nature; Homer on the other hand was irascible, a curmudgeon canine of great irritability who suffered humans - other than Linda - hardly at all. He was a Lhaso Apso, a breed originally employed in Tibetan monasteries as sentinels but nothing of ancestral Buddhist calm survived in Homer's genes. He was like a floor mop with an attitude.

Homer was so over the top that you had to admire his style. One of my other sister-in-laws told the story of arriving in Westport Point, Mass., for a brief vacation and Homer signalled his disapproval by dropping an odoriferous calling card just where she would step out of bed.

Homer and Bell were in attendance when my wife and I went to Westport Point after visiting the Vineyard. It is a beautiful spot, right on the river, and not far from the beach. By his standards, Homer was quite welcoming when we arrived. He barked, of course, but didn't leave anything for us to step in, perhaps in my case recognizing a fellow sufferer whose occupation leads him to step in quite enough unfortunate piles as it is.

As it happens, that beautiful river on our doorstep was the reason why we were away on a fateful Saturday night. The Westport River Watershed Alliance held a benefit and my brother-in-law, Michael, is on the board. We said goodbye to the dogs, piled in a car and went off. We returned about 9.30 to find Bell but no Homer. Someone had been letting off fireworks and Homer had taken fright and run off on his own odyssey. We all went on a desperate search.

It was not until next morning that a call to the local police revealed the sad news - Homer had run on to a nearby bridge and had been killed by a car.

In this very space, I have written approvingly of letting people shoot off fireworks but there is sometimes a cost that I did not reckon with. I owe it to Homer to remind people of that cost.

Goodbye, Homer. You might have been a bad dog in some people's reckoning but you were a great character, which made you a good dog in my book. We shall all miss you.