This is how we impress clients in the South.

An executive at my office urgently rushed over to his secretary's desk and told her to purchase two Arkansas Razorback hog heads by tomorrow.

In case you are ignorant of this appalling redneck headgear, behold:
The exec stormed back to his office, instructing over his shoulder, "Charge it to client development." I suppose this isn't any worse than the bright orange hunting vests and mesh-back ballcaps (with our coporate logo) and boxes of ammunition (sadly, without logo) that are distributed at the annual "client development" hunt.

Still, it is moments like these that make me want to leave the state of Arkansas and never look back.

An Amendment Concerning Voting

On November 4, in addition to casting inexplicable ballots for McCain, qualified residents in the great state of Arkansas will vote on the following consitutional amendment:

PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT NO. 1
(REFERRED TO THE PEOPLE BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY)
(Popular Name)
AN AMENDMENT CONCERNING VOTING, QUALIFICATIONS OF VOTERS AND ELECTION OFFICERS, AND THE TIME OF HOLDING GENERAL ELECTIONS
(Ballot Title)

AMENDING VARIOUS PROVISIONS OF THE ARKANSAS CONSTITUTION CONCERNING VOTING AND ELECTIONS; PROVIDING THAT ALL PERSONS MAY VOTE WHO ARE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES, RESIDENTS OF THE STATE OF ARKANSAS, AT LEAST EIGHTEEN (18) YEARS OF AGE, AND LAWFULLY REGISTERED TO VOTE; TO REPEAL THE REQUIREMENT THAT THE RIGHT TO VOTE SHALL NOT BE MADE TO DEPEND ON ANY PREVIOUS REGISTRATION OF AN ELECTOR'S NAME; REPEALING ARTICLE 3, SECTION 5 OF THE ARKANSAS CONSTITUTION PROVIDING THAT NO IDIOT OR INSANE PERSON SHALL BE ENTITLED TO THE PRIVILEGES OF AN ELECTOR; AND PERMITTING THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY TO ESTABLISH THE DATE AND TIME OF ELECTIONS AND THE QUALIFICATIONS OF ELECTION OFFICERS.

Am I reading this correctly, Arkansas General Assembly? You want to ALLOW idiots and insane people to be able to vote? I don’t know if you’ve noticed who is in the White House, but it appears to me they already can.

Northwest Arkansas Crime Report, September 2008

Sept. 14, 1:32 p.m. A man at 13501 Arrow Lane, Garfield, reported his grandchildren stole his vehicle.

Can you blame them? Wheeeeee!

Sept. 10, 8:28 a.m. A woman on Southwest Calm Ridge Road reported her husband trying to force her into a vehicle and take her to Tulsa and he wouldn’t say why.

Maybe he’s taking you to see the Center of the Universe or the Golden Driller. Get in the car!

8:10 p.m. A man on Kings Drive, Bethel Heights, reported his ex-wife called and told him to call the police because she was fighting with her boyfriend.

This is exactly why they got divorced. She can’t do anything her damn self.

Sept. 9, 10:11 a.m. A woman at Gotcha Repossessions, 1401 Ingram St., reported items stolen from the lot.

Gotcha back.

12:15 p.m. A woman on South Willow Avenue reported her ex-boyfriend pushed her out of a vehicle, pulling her fingernail off, and put her 2-year-old son down in the middle of the street.

Yeah, yeah, he planted a toddler in the road, but let’s focus on what’s important here. Lee Press-On nails don’t just grow on trees.

For more Southern hijinks, check out Melissa's crime reports here and here.

I also jumped up and motioned for a hand-ball foul. There are no referees.

Paolo is playing in the Fall soccer league this year, and it is both super-fun and excruciating. Paolo’s coach showed up to the first practice wearing sandals, his exposed feet as white as the ball. I lost count of the times Sam muttered, “I should have signed up to coach” when it got past four hundred. It turns out Coach Teva hadn’t signed up either; he got a call from the league because our team didn’t have a coach. Further validating his commitment, Coach Teva announced he would miss the first three games because his family was going out of town for a wedding. (For two weeks?)

Coach Teva appointed another father to be interim coach. Coach Sparky is a happy-go-lucky church dad who doesn’t know the first thing about soccer. A dear little man, enthusiasm for miles, with his pressed polo shirt tucked into pleated khaki shorts. I could gobble him up! He means well, but his advice to his players is along the lines of let’s kick the ball occasionally in the general direction of that net over there. Remember, this is the under-6 age group, fielding three players a side (no goalies) and switching them out every four minutes, and Coach Sparky is completely flabbergasted by what few rules there are: throw-ins, goal kicks and corner kicks. He can remind the players which goal to head toward, but once the ball rolls over a line, any line, he is lost. He once called the field a court.

Sam has been helping Sparky out with the kids at the games, and at the last game I got to assist with the substitutions. Normally a team has six players, so there’s no need to keep track. Whoever is on the field comes off, and whoever is not on the field comes on. It’s not complicated. However, we were a man down with the coach’s son gone, so someone had to make sure everyone got equal playing time. This was our second game, so I’d already sorted out our players. We’ve got the Bobbsey Twins, the blond-haired, blue-eyed Hitler Youth boys who carry the distinction of giving at least a tiny shit about the location and direction of the ball. Then we have the Bad News Bears, the three shorter boys who poke at the ball every now and then but are far more interested in galloping alongside their opponents and hanging from the crossbar of the goal as they get scored on. One of the Bears is Paolo, and one of the Bears is Emilio, and they are the worst two players on the team. How did that happen? In what world do the Mexican kid and the semi-Italian kid suck the most at soccer? It’s my own personal hell.

One of the Bobbseys pushing forward, while Emilio trails behind and Paolo skips.

Every four minutes throughout the game, I had to tell the coach who to send off. I’m not even going to lie: I was making strategic substitutions. I tried to keep a Bobbsey in the game at all times, except when the superstar player on the other team was on. Then I’d field the Bears because the kid was unstoppable; no point wasting a focused player. I kept my finger on the pulse of the game, taking note of which player’s energy was flagging and whose attention span was shot. Not that it mattered. If the score were kept (and it’s not; see how sick I am?) it would have been in the neighborhood of 39–1. I should be ashamed of my mania, and I am a little, but I’m too busy working out my strategy for the next game.

Is walking backwards a milestone or a disorder?

One way to evaluate Gianluca at one year is to count up all the things he’s not doing yet: not talking meaningfully, not pointing, not waving bye-bye, not walking independently. You could look at my son that way--and pediatricians have to--but you would be missing everything. You wouldn’t see him speed-crawl to and up the stairs whenever the gate comes down. You wouldn’t see him wrestle with his brother until their belly laughs bring tears to my eyes. You’d miss out on Danger Baby, who can home in on the most dangerous item or activity available to him and bee-line for it. How would you know that he can find a missing pacifier his parents have torn the house apart looking for? But baby doctors don’t ask those questions. They want to know if he is walking backwards and how many wet diapers he has a day. They don’t care that he is ticklish in the small of his back or that he is so proud when he takes half a dozen steps while I am watching. Instead, his pediatrician labeled him “cautious” because he didn’t pounce on a proffered toy.

This is neither my first rodeo nor my first pony, so the list of things he isn’t doing doesn’t worry me. Gianluca is not behind, delayed, or stupid, and a stack of arbitrary questions cannot qualify his intelligence. There is no measure for the spark in his eyes or the joy in his smile. If there were, pediatricians wouldn’t have to ask any questions at all. They would just look at him, just be in his company for five minutes, and congratulate me on having such an amazing boy.

"We believed in a dream and made it come true."

Did you know that any team who wins the World Cup four times gets to keep the trophy? I had forgotten until now. Brazil was awarded the first trophy, which was stolen and is still missing. The second belongs to Italy, forever. Amen. The picture at left is captioned, "Fabio Cannavaro receives the Cup from Joseph Blatter." Excerpts from the article on Gazzetta dello Sport below:

FLORENCE, 2 September 2008 - For the first time, a national side displays on their shirts a logo reflecting one of their achievements: for Lippi's lads, it will be a special memory. It's a logo that will identify the reigning world champions: the world cup on a white background, with the words FIFA World Champions 2006. "It has never happened before and this shows how much FIFA cares about Italy," said Abete, president of FIGC.

(In case anyone was wondering what I want for my birthday, a-hem.)

Here is Joseph Blatter, FIFA's number one: "The champions deserve special recognition. The Italian side are the first ones to have it; the logo will be on their blue shirts at least until 2010. The players who have that logo on their shirts will have extra motivation." Then came a round of applause, requested by Blatter, who complimented Italy.

The squad and the coaching staff were also present in the ceremony. The captain Cannavaro found some time to talk about a rematch: "The experience in Germany changed all our lives. We believed in a dream and made it come true. We have won a magical cup. However, we have another chance at it now; the chance to silence everyone. This is why I invite president Blatter to hand over the cup to me. He can do that now." After which, FIFA President (who left his place in Berlin to Johansson), stood up and handed the World Cup (that was behind both of them) over to the Italian captain: "It's never too late to do well," smiled Blatter.

Dear Bulldog Hockey Mom,

Dear Bulldog Hockey Mom,

Your inclusion on the McCain ticket is supposed to appeal to my kind. Like you, I am a woman, I have a career, and I have a family that means the world to me. However, you do not speak to or for me. You do not speak for any woman with a brain and a conscience. Your views are harmful and hypocritical and delivered in a tone both vicious and demeaning. I watched your speech at the Republican National Convention last night. It was a roof-raiser: the snarkier your remarks, the louder the applause. Noticeably absent, however, were your ultra-conservative right-wing views on social reform.

Among many ridiculous things, you support abstinence-only education, banning access to and information concerning contraception in schools. That trite ideal of yours is awfully hard to defend while you parade your big-bellied teenage daughter on national television. Like a true Republican, in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence, you refuse to admit a mistake or change your opinion. Since you want to impose your lunatic ideals on my family, I feel at liberty to point out how they failed you. How proud you must be of withholding information from your own daughter that could have changed her life, let’s be honest, for the better. Teen pregnancy is a life setback that can indeed be overcome, but it is nothing to aspire to, don’t you think, Grandma?

Second, you want to outlaw abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. You believe that a woman who did not even consent to sex should not have the right to terminate any resulting pregnancy. That’s mighty compassionate of you. But you’re being marketed as the soul of compassion for choosing to have a baby that you knew beforehand had Down’s Syndrome. That is not your badge of honor; it was your decision, and it does not make you more pious than a woman who would choose differently. I disagree with the choice to carry a baby with known genetic defects to term. However, I would never in a million years make that decision for any uterus but my own. I wish you and the rich, old, white men of your party would adopt the same attitude.

Speaking of your precious fifth child, is it in his best interest that you become vice president of this country? I do not disagree that a father can care for an infant just as capably as its mother, but in the first couple of years, a baby bonds with its mother more. Come on, you’ve had four previous kids, you KNOW that. You also know this baby will need you more than your others did. In addition, you have pledged your full support to your teenage daughter, who is due to give birth in four months. Lady, where will you find the time?

You are not more of a woman for seeking such a lofty position of power at this time in your life; you are less of one.

Sincerely,
Quattro Stelle

My Donkey Kicked the Lipstick off Your Bulldog.