I'm so "that guy"

About two and a half years ago, I was studying in London, and three of my close college friends came to visit me and Spiwak (my best friend), who lived about a mile down the road.

The five of us made a bet about the order in which we would get married. Everyone, including myself, put me either four or fifth of five, except Spiwak, who said, in putting me second, "Gabe is full of surprises."

Yeah, okay. Good one.

Anyway, I've become known as the "single friend." I've always been the single friend.

In college, my closest friends and roommates had their Amos/Dean/Andres/Santiago/
Chris/Suz/Jess/Brittney/Brian/Adam/Josh/Jon/Aaron/Zim/Amy/Eric/Bruce/Sam/Jeff (points for knowing even half of who these people are; extra points for not getting pissed at me for mentioning them in my blog). In Israel last year, there was Dotan/Itai/Jana/Beatrice/
Donna Lee/Erez--the significant others of my Israeli (or Americans who think they're Israeli) friends.

And in Chicago, the list is even longer.

The good thing about the single friend, is that most of my taken friends have other single friends. I've met some great people--including ex-gfs--through friends of friends.

But, I'm still the single friend. Obviously, you guys didn't do well enough.

Being single can be pretty sweet. I mean, it's working for I can go out and not worry about calling my girlfriend at the end of the night. I can go away for the weekend and meet people without worrying that if they're of the opposite sex, some girlfriend may get jealous. I don't have to buy things like flowers or cards for no reason at all. Or one-, two- and ten-month anniversaries. Hallmark blows, anyway.

(That might have been the paragraph that will screw me over when I'm up for that promotion in ten years, and someone Googles me and finds this entry.)

So whether it's cognitive dissonance or something I really believe that girlfriends can be sweet, but being single for now is pretty cool.

The way I look at it, I figure I've still got another good five years ahead of me before I become lame and join Jdate.

The big three

During the summer of 1997, I was in what I thought was my next-to-last summer at camp. (I was off by six summers.) I was nearly 15 years old and about to enter my sophomore (read "worst") year of high school.

I was dating a girl when we went on our overnight unit trip that summer, but because she skated with another boy at the skating park on our camp outing, I was not happy.

So I decided to spend the night hanging out with good ole Ben discussing life goals.

I came up with three, and I'm sticking to 'em.

I'm going to be on a game show.

I'm going to write a book.

And I'm going to run for political office.

Eight years later, I'm 0-3. The closest I've come is trying out for "Who Wants to be a Millionnaire?" (I didn't make it), running for freshman class president (I lost), and writing a series of short stories for a fiction writing class (It was lame--the story, not the class).

I don't know why I came up with these three choices. Having a family, raising kids, even winning a Pulitzer Prize would seem to be loftier goals on the one hand but more realistic on the other.

So I'm thinking Jeopardy and an autobiography by age 50. Written by the President of the United States, of course.

What have you got?

Irish Republican Army

Today, I got an IRA, and Individual Retirement Account.

I'm thinking of going into early retirement. Reeeallly early. So early that I retire before I finish graduate school. Or get a job. Or pay off my school loans.

Or I'm just taking the advice of my personal finance, all-senior, pass/fail, b-school/pre-school professor. The earlier you start investing, the better off you will be in the long run.

Fittingly, I got a Roth IRA. (There are two types of IRAs: one is general; the other, Roth.) Name aside (see previous blog), the Roth IRA works better for me based on the way I want to invest, how I envision my tax bracket status in my peak earning years, and my approach to no-load mutual funds.

Not really. I have no idea what any of that means. It's just what some guy at the bank (a "financial advisor") told me to do.

Since I am planning on retiring early, I figured I'd need as much money as possible. Because in the future, things are going to be expensive. How do you think I'm going to afford my Delorian if I don't start saving now?

I really have no clue about investing save the basics, but I felt good about my initial investment today.

Because in this world, you've got to buy long, sell short, and we're going to get the hell out of the recession (or the "bagel," as it referred to on the West Wing, right Congressman Bailey?). Interest rates are low but going up, gas prices are high but getting higher, and somehow, there are people with bright yellow or green jackets selling pig's feet at something called the Merc in downtown Chicago.

What a world.

What's in a name...?

I'm thinking of changing my name. Back.

"Gabe" had a good run. But I'm a big boy now. I ride public transportation to school/work. I wear black pants (not that kind, Debbie) and black shoes. I have a small desk in a downtown office. I do business lunches at Chipotle. I go to trials. People approach me and start talking to me about the news. (It's the dinky press pass.)

I like "Gabe." It's unique. If you say, "Gabe said or did such and such" to someone who knows me, they're not going to ask you, "Which Gabe?" like it would be for a Josh, Matt or Rachel. The name, in that regard, has served me well.

But for work purposes, I thinking of going back to "Gabriel."

I had a girlfriend once who, in anticipation of my potential future job, would make fun me after I said something stupid by saying, "That was Gabe Roth, ESPN." But now it looks like it was "Gabriel Roth." And probably not ESPN, by the way.

While writing this blog, I saw an ad for the Gabe Dixon Band, and a guy in the new show "E-Ring" is named Gabriel Olds. So we have a stalemate in Gabriel vs. Gabe.

Introducing myself in class yesterday, I had the 15 people I knew and the 20 strangers weigh in on the subject.

"Gabriel Roth?" my professor called from the roll.

"It's Gabe," I replied, as I have been for years, at every first day of class I can remember. The professor asked if that's what used for a by-line (i.e., "By Gabe [not Gabriel] Roth" underline the headline), which I have since I was the founding editor of my junior school's newspaper, Top of the Hill.

"What about 'Gabriel'?" she asked. So then the strangers and I discussed it.

They like Gabriel, too.

I'm also thinking of ditching the glasses. I am one of the few people that I know who has worn glasses--and only glasses--for most of their lives. Everyone, even I, has contacts. But I never wear them, save for a rare basketball or raquetball game.

I like the glasses. I'm used to them. I don't feel like myself unless I have them on. I feel more confident with them and scratch at my face when they're not on.

But they may not be good for television. Some anchors/reporters wear glasses, but most wear contacts. At this point, who knows. I'm indecisive about it.

Girls I've asked are split--1/3 like the glasses, 1/3 like the contacts...and 1/3 wish I had smaller ears.

Don't even get me started on those.

Mediocre bad guys

(I'm still doing the song title/post title thing, and this is the only song I know about being mediocre.)

Today is the first day of school, or the first day of a new quarter after a three-and-a-half week break.

I have a love/hate relationship with school. I think I enjoyed kindergarten and most of elementary school. I had good friends (most of whom moved away--see previous posts), and some of them I keep in touch with still today. Middle school was tough, but I played football and soccer and ran track and cross country, so I felt pretty cool. (It turns out that I wasn't.) Freshman year was uneventful as everyone I knew switched school, but I stayed in the same all-dudes' institution. Sophomore year sucked. And junior and senior year were fun because I got to leave Tennessee a lot.

College rocked.

Though I had way too many large classes (35 people in a class is "large" because it's still a boring lecture and discussion is monopolized by those same annoying kids [I still remember 'Dan' from Cultural Anthro] who sit in the front and go to office hours), I did have some great writing seminars, and now that I'm in j-school, that trend is continuing. And the friends and the parties were great, but you know that because you were there, too.

But I digress.

Today was the first day of the second quarter of grad school, and in doing introductions in our Reporting Public Affairs seminar, I had to tell a special talent that I have, in addition to saying the usual name/where from/which journalism track are you doing. (I have a talent for run-on sentences?)

I couldn't think of anything for my special talent, and the teacher went Z-A instead of A-Z by last name, so that gave me even less time to think up something clever.

In the class, we have opera singers, tromboners, photographers, chefs, and one girl who gives a mean French manicure. One of the chefs mentioned that I have a blog, to which I replied, "Oh, yeah, I'm left-handed, and I think that's special." (See last post.)

For most of my life, I have been mediocre at most things I do. I've never been the captain of a sports team, but I can play any sport. Though I lose pool and ping-pong games more often than not, most games are competitive. I'm 2-1 in tennis this summer. I can kick a mean corner kick but would whiff 9 times out of 10 when trying to connect on a header.

I can sing (sorta), play guitar (kinda), act (if given months to memorize lines), and dance (if the girl leads).

What I do well, what my special talent is, then, is balancing the bad with the good.

I am on a softball team, and though I have yet to hit the ball out of the infield (bad), I have gotten on base more times than not and scored and driven in runs (good).

I can't see very well (bad), but I feel more confident in my glasses than in contacts (good).

I rarely visit home (bad), but I talk to my parents at least three times a week (good).

I don't cook a lot (bad), but I can make the same three or four dishes and neither me nor my guests get sick of them (yet) (good).

I don't type, read, or drive fast (bad), but I can if I need to (good).

I haven't spent much of my life in relationships (bad, or maybe good), but I'm in touch with almost all the girlfriends I have, and they don't hate me (good, or maybe bad).

I can't swim (bad), but while tubing at 40 mph, I can jump on to the tube next to me and wrestle the other person off of it (pretty cool, huh?).

So that's the way it goes. Mediocre at things that are talent-driven. But I do think it’s better to be mediocre at a lot of things than be really good at just one thing. That I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Plus, I've always been one of the smarter people in my classes—I’m into the whole Scrabble/crossword puzzle/Jeopardy thing—but that's not so much a talent as good genes.

Even so, I’m getting worried that my good pedigree that has begun to wear off. Just today, I couldn’t solve the Sudoku in the newspaper.

Guess that’s another thing I’m mediocre at.

Lefties rule

What do Michael Vick, Bill Clinton, and Shrek have in common?

No, they're not all sleeping with people who look like trolls, but close. (I'm sure Vick has a hot girlfriend).

They are all left-handed.

Being left-handed is mostly wonderful. Though it causes problems in sports, dining, can-opening, cutting anything with scissors, hand-shaking, and arm- and thumb-wrestling, it stands out and makes me different. (Like I'm not different enough.)

I always get excited when I notice someone else's southpawedness; I feel a special bond with anyone else I meet who is also left-handed. It’s like when you meet someone with the same birthday as yours. I’ve had best friends and girl-friends who were left-handed, and that similarity was something that helped our friendship/relationship grow.

If you work out the math, there are most famous lefties than righties in the world if you account for the fact that there are nine times more righties than there are lefties. Jerry Seinfeld, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jon Stewart are all lefties (at least two of the three, if not more, are Jewish too). Napoleon, Aristotle, and Leonardo da Vinci led, thought, and painted with the same side of the brain as I do.

And don't forget about Oprah. (Who herself should probably be nominated as one of the Seven Wonders of Chicago--see the last blog entry.)

Despite our inroads in comedy, philosophy, television, and dictatorships, there are certain things that lefties absolutely cannot do. Unfortunately, most of them involve sports. For example, on Monday I played second base for my 16-inch softball team. (The ball is 16 inches. Not the team.) Anyway, I reminded the coach who insisted on putting me at second base that lefties only pitch, play first, and play the outfield. Nah, it's cool, he said, play second. The first basewoman was really happy fielding my crappy shovel passes the rest of the game. (We won 18-8, so it was okay.)

When lefties write, we get that annoying smeared pen or pencil all over our left hand, as the ink doesn't have time to dry as we move our hands over what we just write to continue writing. Righty desks abound in high school and college classrooms. And the only cartoon character with whom we can commiserate is Ned Flanders. (His creator, Matt Groening, is of course a lefty.)

There are places in the world in which the language is written right to left (which is better for us), and people drive on the left side of the road (which is better for us, too). But I don’t live in a place like that. So I deal.

Additionally, most lefties that I know are somewhat ambidextrous. Living in a right-handed world, we are expected to conform in some ways.

I learned how to bat, kick, and play guitar right-handed because it’s frankly easier to do all of those things right-handedly. Growing up, I didn’t know a soul who could teach me how to do those things well left-handed.

Come to think of it, I’m not that good at any of those things right-handed or –footedly anyway.

I were to become a true lefty, though, at least I would have Babe Ruth, Romario and Jimi Hendrix to look up to.

My kind of town

The Chicago Tribune is sponsoring a contest to name the Seven Wonders of the city of Chicago.

The nominees are:

The Lakefront
The Water Tower
The "L"
Wrigley Field
Millennium Park
Sears Tower
Chicago hot dog
University of Chicago
Chicago theater scene
Chicago bungalows
Museum of Science and Industry
Chicago River
Lower Wacker Drive
Chicago Blues

This contest is funny for a number of reasons. First, there are Seven Wonders of the World. Why does a city like Chicago, as great as it is, get seven wonders, when the whole world also only gets seven? And the population of the world is 2000 times the population of the city of Chicago. So what are the world's 13,993 wonders? (If you're having trouble with the math, well, don't admit it.)

Second, there are countless things that make Chicago wonderful, so narrowing them all down to seven is a difficult task. The weather, the business district, the multicultural neighborhoods, the highest bars per capita of any city in the country, the attitude, Da Bears, and a number of movies in which Chicago played a major role ("Blues Brothers," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," and "Wayne's World" come to mind). And none of the preceding seven things were even nominated.

Though I am new to the city, I voted for the following: the Sears Tower (tallest building in the U.S.), Wrigley Field (best place to see a ball game), the theater scene (better than New York or London on a good day), the Lakefront (I can see it from my living room, so it's got to be sweet), the "L" (it's an eye sore, really slow, and never on time, but Chicagoans love it), the Water Tower (it's the only building to have survived the Great Fire), and the Museum of Science and Industry (see Devil in the White City if you wonder why I chose this one).

What would you nominate for Chicago or for your city? Isn't it more interesting to think about than, say, that spreadsheet you have due to your boss in an hour or that homework assignment that's due Friday but will surely take you all week to finish?

I thought so.

(By the way, 6,000,000,000 people in the world divided by 3,000,000 Chicagoans [we're just talking about the city here] is 2000. So the world would have 2000 times 7, or 14,000, Wonders if the ratio of Wonders/people in Chicago were to be the same as Wonders/people in the world. We can take away the seven wonders the world already has, so 14,000 minus 7 is 13,993.)

A billion people died on the news tonight

I can't watch the news any more. Which is a problem because I'm going to school to be a broadcast journalist.

Whoops.

I'll find a different career path in few years while you're making you're first million.

There is no good news today. People are dead in Iraq, people dead in New York, people dead in locations I've never even heard of.

And I finished fourth in the Tennessee State Geography Bee in 8th grade, so these places must be remote. But they're being reported about anyway, because in the news, if it bleeds, it leads and (my addition to the quip...) if it bruises, it loses.

There's a Jack Johnson song with a lyric that's like, "Why don't the newscasters cry when they read about people who die." This begs the question: Is Tom Brokaw human, having not shed a tear on Sept. 11? Or to beg a more relevant question, how about Brian Williams and Hurricane Katrina? And what about Kent Brockman?

For many people, the feeling is lost from the news. I don't even bat an eye when hundreds of thousands die in Sudan or even when another suicide bomber tries to kill Israelis.

And things aren't that bad in comparison to some of the atrocities of the 20th century. If there had been modern media covering the first two World Wars or the Holocaust, countless millions of people would not have died in Europe.

(This always makes me wonder how Americans felt when the U.S. entered the Korean War. World War II ended less than five years before the U.S. entered Korea, which is roughly the amount of time that has passed between Sept. 11, 2001, and today. So Truman’s like, ‘Millions of Americans are dead, tens of millions of Europeans are dead, and I just annihilated two large Japanese cities…but we're going to enter another war.’ [But Congress won't declare war, so that will make it, and every succeeding war, okay.])

Nevertheless, Walter Cronkite and his predecessors never wept on air. And Brian Williams doesn't cry when he reads about people who die, and in (not) doing so, he disappoints the heck out of Jack Johnson. And me. Williams just goes to New Orleans and New York and wherever the news is happening and reports in the same calm, almost stoic manner.

I hope there's no more genocide or natural disasters or terrorism once I get my first TV job. Otherwise, I think I'm going to be a mess out there.

She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah

At the end of my sophomore year of college, I was in a friend’s dorm at school (Amy’s birthday is next week, by the way), and she looked around the room decided that all of our friends are attractive. We were simply not friends with unattractive people.

With that in mind, I'm thinking of starting a dating service. Though it seems like everyone I know is married, engaged, or in a serious relationship, and that I completely missed the boat when everyone was pairing up back in the late '90s or early 2000s, there are a vast number of you out there who, like me, are single and slightly anxious. Moreover, there are even some of you out there who are single and very anxious, though I remind you that you're only 20-something and you're doing just fine.

I've been told by a few that I'm not someone who should give dating advice, considering. ("Considering what?" you might ask. Exactly.)

Anyway, that's not what I want to do. I can give advice, but that’s boring. I’ve been doing that for years, and it hasn’t gotten me anywhere.

I want to bring people together. I was always the one in high school and college with friends in different areas and loved it when, for example, my WUTV friends would meet my Hillel friends would meet my Student Life (that's the paper at WU) friends who would run into the guy I sit next to in Anthro at Blue Hill on a Thursday night. And they’d all be drinking Blue Moon. With an orange.

So I can bring individuals together, too. Single ones. (No offense to you not-single people, but I've had it with you. Check back tomorrow; same blog, same URL, whatever that stands for.)

I'll start with three hubs: Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C. I'll have Jon, Aaron, and Brian, respectively, sift through applications in their cities, which of course will include photos, and we'll go from there.

Since all my friends are smart and attractive, they might as well start hooking up with each other instead of the losers who are asking for their numbers at bars.

(If you met your current boy- or girlfriend at the bar, I’m sorry. I advised you to stop reading three paragraphs ago.)

What do you think?

It’s just a shame that dating services are doing really well right now, and it’s going to be a tough market to break into. Match.com, eHarmony.com, and the infamous jdate.com have taken away our souls (like lines in the airport; see yesterday’s entry), the chance meeting that leads to something special, and the ability for me to make a lot of money out of this since I know a lot of people.

(On that note, I will never ever ever join jdate. I am just not that cool.)

So, yeah, this is probably not going to work. Poop.

I think of another get-rich-quick scheme for tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Learn to fly

Have you ever flown in America? I hope not. It is quite dumb.

Every time I see a Transportation Safety Administration official, I want to gag. Maybe it's good that after 9/11, we've given lot jobs to people who like to fondle travelers for a living. Maybe not.

The lines are fun, too. I’d personally like to thank the 17 people who checked my ID and boarding pass from the time I received it until the time I was sitting in my plane seat. You’re the best!

The most important part of the process, the x-ray machine, still baffles me. Have you ever noticed what the x-rays of the stuff inside our bags looks like? A gun would look like a gun for sure, but I'm sure that a well-packed box cutter (used by you-know-who you-know-when) would still get through.

Every time I see an Indian, Pakistani, or other South or Western Asian-looking man at the airport, I feel bad. Sucks that people who look like him had to hijack some planes. (But when was the last time, say, a white woman or black man hijacked a plane?)

Taking your shoes off is also unnecessary. We do this because some crazy guy from Miami tried to light his shoes on fire a few years ago. (Debbie Rosenbaum is only tangentially at fault for this.)

Does that mean that after some guy tries to light his hair on fire we're all going to have to fly bald? Or that we'll have to fly in our knickers when some guy tries to strangle a flight attendant with his pants? I don't think so.

The problem with having a Department of Homeland Security (good job in New Orleans, by the way), a Transportation Safety Administration, more police at train and subway stations, etc., is that it works. And I hate it. I mean, there haven't been any terrorist attacks here in 2001. So it must be working, right?

The safety measures work simply because Americans are buying all the b.s. that surrounds it, you know, the yellow/orange/red alert levels, the Patriot Act, the need to have a guy who looks like he’s out of “Leave it to Beaver” to be the next Chief Justice.

Right now in America, b.s. is cheaper than gas. So Americans will buy it, at home and in the airports.

I just hate when I buy the b.s. myself. I'm was annoyed that I felt better knowing that after the London tube bombings there would be some cops added to the patrol near my "L" station. Everyone knew, deep down, that al-Qaida is not coming to Belmont and Sheffield (and, oh, they didn't!), but nevertheless, I smiled at officers that day.

I didn't even mind the long lines at the airport after 9/11 because I figured it was worth it. I knew full well that al-Qaida was not going to bomb Nashville International Airport, but at the time, the long lines seemed necessary.

I used to think safety was paramount. "Better safe than sorry," they say. I'm done with that motto. I prefer, "Better 'pretty darn safe because it's still America that we're living in' than 'soldiers at the airports/policemen in the subway cars/they know I checked out a book on the P.L.O. in 2001 because I did a report on them and since the P.L.O used to channel money to terrorist organizations now I have a file at the Pentagon' safe."

(What’s this library thing, you ask? Read the USA Patriot Act and find out. Two-thirds of Americans support it, and that’s good because I never liked my personal liberties any way. I want more illegal search and seizure! But only if they do it like Lenny Briscoe when he's had a bad day.)

In trying to become ultra-safe, Americans have lost their souls. They’ve given in to things that four years ago they wouldn’t stand for. Our country is not so different now than on Sept. 10, 2001. We live in the greatest country in the world, and it’s time we start acting like it once again.

And by the way, living in the greatest country in the world means no lines. They have lines in communist countries, like they in the USSR during food shortages.

So next time I want to travel, I’m taking the bus. Airports give me headaches.

Hail to the bus driver man

It's not every day you have a bus driver who's a chemist, landowner, and father-in-law to a moron.

But not every bus driver is Ken Freeman.

Ken has been driving a bus in Chicago for five years, and I met him on his #145 (that's a downtown express bus) Wednesday night. He was running a few minutes ahead of schedule and decided to stop for a second and take a stretch at my bus stop, right outside of my apartment building.

I asked him if his bus went to the specific corner that I wanted, and he told me that the route came to within a block of where I needed to go. That works, I said. And then we started chatting.

Ken was surprised that a guy like me was living in such a nice building and told me I should be paying at least 20% more than what I was paying. It turns out his quarter acre in rural Illinois costs the same as the two-bedroom condo I'm living in.

Once on the bus, Ken began to talkabout his family. His daughter, who passed up a scholarship to Wash U (or another St. Louis school; it wasn't clear) to go to Florida State, where she met her "idiot husband" (his words, not mine). The moron, Ken said, wants to become an architect but much to Ken's chagrin, can't identify termite infestation, which apparently is important if you're going to be working with things like wood all day long.

Ken really likes his job, and it seems as if he's enjoyed a lot of the many jobs he's had over the years. A chemist by training, Ken has worked for a company mixing fruit juices and other such beverages, and he also mixed inks for newspapers and magazines--"just some basic organic chemistry," he said, as if it were like tying a shoelace.

He likes his job, he said, because of the people he gets to meet every day. At one point, he motioned me over to his side--I was standing right behind the yellow line at the front of the bus--so he could tell me...a secret?

"Chicago has the most beautiful women in the world," he said, "and many of them ride my bus." Well, then. Maybe I should change career paths.

During the run, Ken helped both Chicago natives and tourists get to where they needed to go, all with the same calm, helpful demeanor and a sense of humor that made potentially embarrassing or awkward situations seem normal. He said to one woman who didn't pay as she jumped off the bus, "Hope you enjoyed your free ride!"

He told me other stories of passengers, of how Ivana Trump put a five into the bill machine that only accepts one, saying "Keep the change." As he was telling me about a Playboy Playmate who rides his bus, he saw an attractive girl and a poorly-dressed boy out the window. "She's gorgeous," Ken said, "but the boy doesn't know how to treat her."

Ken was so engrossed in conversation that he missed his turn on Michigan Avenue and had to double back. By that time, there were only three of us left on the bus, and he dropped us off right where we needed to go.

Every now and then, Ken would drop in words of advice that would begin, "Now, you're too young to realize this, but..." Normally, I would resent such a suggestion. But with Ken, I knew he was right. I didn't agree with everything he said, but I understood where he was coming from. This is a guy who knows what he's talking about, it seems.

Hard to believe all this happened in 30 minutes on a random bus. But pretty cool all the same, huh?

You pay for what you get

Gas prices have reached an all-time high.

Well, it took long enough.

For years, the rest of the civilized world has been paying upwards of $4-6 per gallon (or 99 pence per liter, whatever the conversion may be), and only now have we begun to feel the same pinch at the pump.

Why do Americans get to do one thing (pay little) when the rest of the world has to do something else (pay lots)? It's just not fair. I mean, it's not like any other country can just invade the Middle East every 10-15 years to try to keep oil prices low. Only we get to do that.

However you slice it, because of environmental damage we've been doing for the past 150 years or so (accelerated by our desire for unregulated, gas-guzzling cars), our grandkids are going to be in trouble. We're fine. Our kids are fine. Our grandkids? Forget about it. Our grandkids will be our age in 2075--can you imagine the effects of another seventy years of drilling oil reserves, ravaging the Arctic for more fossil fuels and depleting the ozone? I can't really, but I'm sure any Antarctic penguin would tell you he's mad there's no ozone in his neighborhood since we've been so energy-happy up in the Northern Hemisphere.

The silver lining? $4 gallons of gas! The more expensive gas is, the more likely people in this country will buy smaller cars, which are better for the environment and have the added bonus of raising the environmental consciousness of their owners. I'm thinking of getting a hybrid myself. (That's a cross between a car that runs on gas and a Dolorean time machine that runs on Mr. Fusion, right?)

The more expensive gas is, the more likely people will take public transportation, which will lead to more Subway, Metro, and "L" lines, which will lead to economic development in places that don't have a mass transit system, such as the area around the airports in New York and . . . Georgetown.

The more expensive gas is, the more likely people will realize--holy smokes!--they are not doing their share to save the world. It's the world. It's not like Mario. You don't get another life if you mess it up. (You don't get fireball power by touching a special flower, either, and warping from place to place is out of the question.)

In short: raise the price of gas. When I get a car, I will gladly pay the going (and rising) rate. I just hope I don't live in one of those states with mandatory full service. But, maybe that adds jobs to the economy? A topic for another day...

So, party at my place when oil hits $100/barrel?

See you there. I've got plenty of street parking for your SUVs.

They say it's your birthday...

I was talking to someone the other day and was wondering if it's cool or not to publicize your birthday. (This is hypothetical, of course, since mine is not for a long, long, long time.)

I'm not talking about calling people to remind them, because that's dumb (though it would save some slight embarrassment a few people may feel this weekend), but putting up an away message about it or leaving a hint in a blog.

It's a tough call. Last year I was in Israel, and I didn't really do anything for it. I went out to a bar with a few friends. I had a girlfriend at the time, and she got me a really cool, personalized present, even though she only knew me for a few weeks at that point.

The actual day itself I spent meeting my "adoptive family," who took me to a three year-old's birthday party in a Tel Aviv suburb. In Israel, instead of "Happy Birthday to You," they have dozens of grating birthday songs that the kid's parents put on a CD and played over and over again for the duration of the party. This was an alcohol-free party, of course, and it was rough.

This year, I'll be home with my family and maybe a few friends. That's good enough for me--I'm never home, and especially after being in a foreign country for a full year, it's nice to see my parents and sister when I can.

My birthdays are always low-key, and I'm looking forward to another mild one in Tennessee. I've talked about having a big blowout with some of the people I know in Chicago who have late-Sept. birthdays, but I don't know about that.

I always had sports-themed birthdays growing up. Maybe I could do that here. The Cubs could use some middle relief--my dream job is major league pitcher, by the way. (Don't think that's in the profile.)

I've decided that I don't really care what I do on the day itself (but, hey, it's cool to buy me shots if you're in the neighborhod).

As long as I have another happy, healthy year, that's good enough for me.