R3plica V1agara P3nis 3nlargments

As I've already noted, I HATE T*MOBILE. But I forgot to mention their lousy spam filters.

Unlike Google's gmail, T*Mobile essentially has no spam filter. On my gmail account, I basically do NOT have spam. And if something unwanted somehow pierces their shield, one click of the mouse, and I will never receive crap from that source again. T*Mobile's website is terribly clunky, and their pathetic spam filter page doesn't even work anymore.

Everyday, I wake up to find my phone clogged with about a dozen spam messages. It's bad enough that they think that people are interested in fake watches or cheap stocks, reduced debt or enlarged penises. But do they really think we'd be ineterested just because they spell their words incorrectly? Ooh, I'm not really partial to real watches, and I only kinda like replica watches, but 'r3plica' watches? Sign me up! And let me order some medications online, too! I'll take some C1allis, V1codin, and maybe some more V1agra. Here's an idea, T*Mobile: If a message contains a word spelled with numbers, I don't fuck1ng care! 4uck y0u, T*Mobil3!!!

I Hate T*Mobile!

When we put our eldest on our cell phone plan last summer, we extended our contract with T*Mobile another two years from that day. Then we discovered that we hate T*Mobile!

In Manhattan and Brooklyn, it really doesn't matter what carrier you use because they all have brilliant reception. My cell phone even works in the elevator of my mom's building. But around New Paltz, my wife and I noticed that our cell phones cut out in various spots. This is especially true in the outlying areas like Gardiner and Rosendale, where there aren't any local cell phone towers, but more annoying is that my phone loses contact when I'm driving to and from Manhattan on my way to The City. This is especially troublesome because I often lose contact with my students' parents I'm speaking with, so I tend to have difficulty conducting my work. When I took the bus to Manhattan, this issue wasn't quite as irksome because people aren't really allowed to use their cell phones en route. But lately I've been driving, and the problem has become much more apparent.

I wouldn't mind this so much if it weren't for the fact that many other major carriers have better coverage. When I was up in the relatively obscure north western part of the state where the fire academy is located, all of the other would-be fire fighters had fine reception, but I was totally blacked out. In fact, I couldn't use my cell phone until I was miles away from Montour Falls. And the same is true for the highways to NYC. T*Mobile works fine for most of Interstate 87 (not all of it, mind you), but it fares poorly when I break from 87 and take some of the other roads that speed up my trip.

Verizon doesn't have this problem, and one of my friends showed me his cool new Verizon phone. It does everything my Sidekick III does -- AND it works where my stupid phone doesn't.

I called T*Mobile to see if I could get out of my contract, but I don't think it's going to work because they insist that if you have good reception at work and at home (but not necessarily in between), then you're stuck with them. Time ticks (almost) inexorably towards two summers from now -- just 18 months to go....

What is There to Complain About?

I'm finding it hard to maintain this blog -- my life is pretty complaint-free, and I've learned to take a lot of things in stride that previously annoyed me, like the reckless driving of young turks on the highway. I guess that life in the country will do that to a curmudgeon. Here are some things I used to find annoying in Manhattan that simply go too easily in New Paltz. Let's start with the letter P.

Parking
Well, big-city parking hasn't got a lot to say in its favor. The furthest we've had to drive for a spot in the Noop is about a City block. In NYC, on the other hand, I can't even count the number of times I've parked over a mile from where I'm heading or have spent over a half-hour looking for a place.

Parking Tickets
We've gotten a grand total of one parking ticket in our 16 months in New Paltz. It was for an expired meter, and Shirra didn't pay it on time, so the fine doubled... to $20. The cheapest ticket in the 5 Boroughs, on the other hand, is about $55, but the one I got last year (for parking on the street-cleaning side at the wrong time one day) was for $110. I almost got a second one in New Paltz, but I arrived at the car just as the ticket-writer did, and he simply smiled, exchanged a few words, and walked away. In NYC, that sort of behavior is extinct in most locales, which explains why meter-readers in Manhattan want guns and bullet-proof vests.

Post-Office
How many NYC folks dread ever having to set foot in a post office? Part of the success of FedEx and UPS is probably the simple fact that they are NOT the post office. In New Paltz, there are only three postal workers you're likely to see, and all of them are pleasant, knowledgeable, and efficient (you're lucky to bat one-for-three in The Big Apple).

Pee
How often does it happen that a person has to pee but can't get to a toilet in New York City? Sure, they're plentiful if you know where to look (Barnes & Noble, McDonald's), but first you have to park. Of course, most Manhattanites don't have cars in the first place, so they just have to walk two blocks to the nearest Starbucks, but then those bathrooms are likely to be either occupied or occupied and disgusting (those are apparently the only two options). In New Paltz, on the other hand, it doesn't take long to learn best places to pee (Starbucks is one of them), but they're rarely occupied when you get there, and they're all much cleaner. My favorite ones can be found at the Stop and Shop, the Library, and best of all, Water Street Market.

What's a complainer to do? It's easy to be a kvetcher among the tall buildings of the city, but it's not so easy to be a kvetcher in the rye.

What Is It About Opera?

I just got back from what could be the last opera I ever attend. I didn't mind it as a whole, and the third act was pretty fun, but when you weigh the cost and multiply it by the entertainment factor, the resultant enjoyment-per-dollar is far too low. It's like if you paid $500 for a hamburger: That had better be one damn good burger, and you'd better not be a vegetarian.

New York City has the big sports: baseball (three stadiums!), basketball, football (ok, that's really NJ), and hockey. Oh, and tennis. Similarly, The City also has the major sources of entertainment: movies, theater, musical performances, and ballet. Oh, and opera. Opera is like the tennis of entertainment. It's not on all the time, and when it is, it can be fantastic or it can be really dull, especially if you're not a fan. And then there's the price. Those US Open tickets are pretty pricy, and opera seats cost even more.

If you're really into opera, you'd better be rich. Decent house seats at the New York City Opera House are $150 a piece. That would get you to about a dozen movies, three good musical performances, or two ballets.

To make matters worse, this was an opera that was supposed to be fun. If you attend a performance of Carmen, you expect a fat woman to die of tuberculosis at some point. But if you have cajoled your kids into seeing Hansel and Gretel, you need the experience to be pretty, or perversely funny, or at least on par with Sweeny Todd. But this production was oddly staged and had, as usual, a fairly incomprehensible libretto. My little one, who was 3, wasn't quite up to reading the subtitles. My 8-year-old wasn't much better off, either, tho he understood it enough to be quite disappointed.

A bad movie sets you no further back than $12 an a couple of wasted hours. In football terms, it's like losing one game; you move on. This opera experience was the equivalent of watching your team lose every game of the season.

Oh well, there's always next year!

Parking Pricks

Between crosswalks along the parks in Manhattan, there are spaces where no more than two cars can park...but only if the drivers cooperate. Occasionally someone parks in such a way as to take up both spaces. These people really annoy Voice of Society Man because the drivers of these cars don't bother to think of others when parking, and nothing irks VoSMan more than thoughtlessness.

Of course, VoSMan _should_ have special tools in his utility belt to help him deal with such crises. A fast-acting jack could perhaps raise the car enough to move it a foot or two, but my alter-ego carries nothing of that sort. Then there's the French trick, but even that wouldn't work with most modern American cars.

I first saw the French trick in, well, France -- hence the name. On my way back to my cheap hotel, I came upon a man who was looking for a parking spot for his lovely Citroen. His car wasn't especially large, but space is at a premium off the beaches of Cannes as much as it is off Central Park. But apparently my French doppleganger knew just what to do. He leaned against the tiny car in front of the spot and DRIBBLED it, lifting it off the ground so that the brakes didn't keep it from moving up. A few bounces did the trick, and he was able to park his car with ease. Bravo, Voix de la Societe Homme!

Back home, I have no similar recourse. The cars are too heavy (and New Yorkers, too ornery) for that maneuver. And pushing the other car with mine doesn't work (I've tried). So when I came across a car taking up both spots this afternoon, I knew I had to act fast. VoSMan hopped out of the car, sticker in hand, and affixed a little message to the world (and to the parking prick who had robbed the world of a spot).



As if the parking gods were smiling on this, no sooner had I gotten into my car to continue the search than another spot opened up a block away. Had VoSMan left alone that Prick Parker, I might still be looking for a place to park. Thanks, VoSMan!

Really Supporting our Troups

A report on National Public Radio yesterday (11/12/07) noted that veterans make up 12.5% of the population of US prisons but only 10% of the US general population. I would have thought that veterans would make up a smaller percentage of prisoners -- perhaps no more than 7% -- but the reporter mentioned post-traumatic stress syndrome and job loss as possible causes for stress in veterans that could lead to criminality.

All of this reminded me of my earlier post about those ubiquitous "I Support the Troops" ribbons that people sport on their cars. When people say that they support our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, what I hope they mean is that they:

* work hard to maintain friendships with their soldier friends when those veterans come home, even when the vets rebuff them.
Remember, folks: PTSS makes people depressed, cold, and/or mean.

* offer them back their jobs, or offer replacement jobs when necessary.
Many returning veterans find that their work has dried up. The government is totally to blame for this situation (employers can't hold jobs forever), but if you hired someone who was later called to arms, one way to support the troops is to hire that person back.

* do whatever they can to help their friends and family adjust to life back home after a stint in the military.

Anything short of this is just twaddle. And anyone with a ribbon touting how they support the troops when they really don't should get a new ribbon: "Better them than me."

The Demise of Baseball

Last night one of my granddaughters asked me to explain an old photo. It featured me and her grandmother smiling next to a tall man in a uniform from the "California Angels," before that team became the "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim," which was a few decades before they became known as "that old base-ball team that used to play near San Angeles, CA." My grand-daughter had never heard of baseball.

"Gertrude," I asked, "Do you have a few minutes for a story?" She obliged by tapping her arm to turn off her i-Skin, but I waited until she had pressed her temples firmly to turn off her internal speakers. Then I began.

I asked if she knew that there were four major sports.

"Sure," she replied. "Football, basketball, soccer, and Nascar."

"Well," I told her, "it used to be baseball, football, basketball, and hockey."

"Hockey? You've got to be kidding," she said. "Wait, was this before basketball went co-ed?"

I explained how hockey had died a natural death after people no longer understood the concept of ice or winter. On her recent trip to the Albert Gore Presidential Museum, she had seen old 2-D photos of snow, so this part made sense to her. But explaining the death of baseball was another matter.

"Ok, it went like this, Gerty. You see, back in the 1970s, when I was a kid, a baseball player sued baseball for the right to be a free agent. That meant he could negotiate his own salary with whatever team wanted to pay him the most."

"Like school teachers," said Gertrude.

"Right. And the players had a union that fought for their rights," I explained.

"Like babysitters."

"Right. And the team owners got caught trying to keep the players' salaries low, and they had to pay the players for all the money they had been cheated out of. It was $280 million, which was a lot back then." Gertrude's raised eyebrow told me she had a hard time believing that. I continued:

"So the team owners had to give players bigger and bigger salaries to try to get the best players on their teams. This forced them to raise more money, and pretty soon they had to raise ticket prices so that only the rich could afford to go to a game. A family of five, like mine, might have to pay two or three hundred dollars to see a game. Maybe even $500, including parking, food, and a few toys."

"That's my allowance."

"Really? Well, that was a lot back then -- as much as some people earned in a week." Gertrude was speechless.

"To make matters worse, baseball started putting all of its most exciting games on only after kids had gone to bed."

"Why? Was it for mature audiences?" Gertrude had received an old DVD player for Solstice, and her parents, whose own parents were quite permissive, had shown her their favorite old South Park episodes.

"No, it was supposed to be for the whole family. But tv commercials...."

"I've heard of those. Go on."

I continued: "These commercials paid more when the games were on later. So baseball made a lot of money for a decade or two, but then the grown-ups got interested in other things, and the kids who had been asleep during those exciting games got caught up in other sports, like soccer and Nascar."

"I like those sports because women can play on the same teams."

"Yeah, baseball never found a way to include women, even as umpires. Even football made rules that 2 women had to be on the field at all times. It also didn't help that the average baseball game was three hours long."

"Well, that's not so long."

"This was before the water was adderalized. It was hard for most people to pay attention that long."

"Oh."

"So pretty soon, no one cared about baseball, and the sport just kind of died."

"I guess that's kind of sad, but they had it coming, didn't they?"

"Yes, they certainly did," I said. That Gerty is a pretty smart kid.

Of Frogs and Parents

There is nowhere you can go to get away from a Frog. Frogs have been in every borough of The City, in every suburb, and even in the outerlying exurbs of New Paltz. I'm talking about the Rolex of strollers, the Bugaboo Frog.

By "Rolex," I mean overpriced-and-ostentatious. After all, no one needs an $800 stroller that doesn't fold up any more than they need a $10,000 watch that doesn't release endorphins directly into the bloodstream. But Richie and Ricki Rich have been tootling around town with Junior in an extravagant perambulator ever since some Scandinavian genius realized that there was a market for a miniature, manual Mercedez.

The selling point of the Bugaboo series appears to be their complete uselessness for anything other than pushing. They hold almost nothing in the basket below the baby and they are heavy. They are huge when open, but when folded up, they seem to require even more space, necessitating a 1970s-era stationwagon for storage. I believe that most models are offered with a Dominican or Haitian babysitter, tho some parents deign to push the godforsaken things themselves.

I was on a crowded subway train when one such couple attempted to board with their wee one in a Frog. By "in" I mean that they had made no attempt to fold the nearly unfoldable stroller; they had simply made the decision that all of us should make way for their huge stroller and equally huge heads. Everyone looked at them with raised eyebrows, but only one of us knew just what to say. Donning my cape, I lowered my voice a half octave, pointed to my left and in my best Grey Poupon accent said, "The first-class car is at the front of the train. You can get off at the next stop and make a run for it before the subway starts again."

Baseball Hates Its Fans

Here is the future of baseball: empty stadiums

As if baseball wasn't boring enough (and I've been to over 150 games and was a huge rah-rah Yankees fan for years), they've gotten into this idiotic habit of starting their post-season contests after 8pm. Looking ahead at this week, I see that the games of Tuesday and Wednesday are slated to begin at 8:21pm. The reasoning among the idiots who are running (ruining) things -- the dual doofuses of both Major League Baseball and whichever network has decided to lose money on the playoff games that year -- is that starting games early means that commuters in California or, in this year's case, Arizona and Colorado, would miss the beginning of the games. But let's remember two things: 1) The excitement of a baseball game (if there is any) happens at the end of the game, and 2) most post-season games are over three hours long. This means that games starting at 8:21 finish long after most adults, and almost all kids, have headed to bed. And where does baseball think it's going to find the fans of tomorrow if the fans of today are sleeping thru 9th inning walkoff homeruns or tension-frought pitchers' duels?

What baseball and the networks need to do is to begin the post-season games no later than 7pm EST. That means that kids in New York and Boston can watch an entire game, while young'uns on the West Coast can ... watch an entire game. As for their parents, the East Coasters can watch the whole game, but their West Coast counterparts might have to miss the beginnings of games but will always get to watch the end.

Voice of Society Man has spoken -- now who's listening? If only I had a good friend who worked at MLB.

Actually, I do. I've mentioned all of this to him, but he's not high up enough in their hierarchy to make that sort of difference. Well, at least I've tried!

The Kobiachi Maru of Grammar

I have finally found work that marries my love of a good joke with my obsession for semi-colons.

I have a new job, one that ranks 2nd on the list of oddest work I've ever been paid for (right after the time where I demonstrated Barbie products in K-Marts thruout Sydney). In my latest incarnation, I'm a work-from-home behind-the-scenes editor for Comedy Central in their effort to create a searchable database of every episode of The Daily Show. A problem has arisen, however, that threatens to undermine my very sanity and put me in Davey Jones' locker: possessives after an S. Thank goodness for Star Trek.

Didn't "Davey Jones' locker" sound wrong in that last sentence? Anyone who's seen a Pirates of the Caribean movie knows that dead seamen find themselves in Davey Jones's locker (dead semen can be found in Davey Jones's tissue in the garbage by Davey Jones's bed). This whole Jones' thing is a leftover from the days when we watched our favourite programmes on the telly with our neighbours. In other words, it's a British thing. Not Cockney-British, but Oxford-British. That is to say, it's pompous.

Steven Pinker, the cunning linguist from Harvard, has written much about this so-called prescriptive language. His point is that language should flow naturally. If I say, "Who did you give the ball to?" it's not like anyone over the age of 2 is going to look at me like I'm from another planet. Prescriptive grammarians would find fault twice in that sentence, but "To whom did you give the ball?" is not the way any adult would speak to a child, and for that matter, it's not the way most of us speak to each other. Put another way: 'Right' isn't what we should say but what we actually do say.

There is a way to placate both sides of this argument. This is where Star Trek comes in: In "Star Trek 2," we learn that Captain Kirk reprogrammed a simulation rather than going down with his virtual ship. The simulation, called the Kobiachi Maru, is meant to test the mettle of prospective captains faced with the certain destruction of their vessel. By hacking into the system, he avoided certain doom. I have taken "Kobiachi Maru" to mean a situation where, faced with choosing between bad choice A or bad choice B, you wisely pick C.

There are many grammatical situations that require a Kobiachi Maru:

A. I told everyone to grab his or her things.
B. I told everyone to grab their things.

Sentence A is gramatically correct but sounds awkward. Sentence B is more vernacular but is technically wrong (according to most prescriptives) since 'everyone' is supposed to be singular. [If you don't believe that 'everyone' is singular, try asking, "Are everyone ready for fish?" the next time you serve dinner.] Our only choice is to make up a new sentence:

C. I told all of them to grab their things.

Ta da. Now let's see if we can apply the Kobiachi Maru of grammar to possessives:

A. She is one of jazz' greatest guitarists.
B. She is one of jazz's greatest guitarists.
C. She is one of the greatest jazz guitarists.

Here is another one:

A.This is Betsy Ross' famous flag
B. This is Betsy Ross's famous flag
C. This is the famous flag that the lying snots of the Ross family claimed Betsy had sewn when in fact she'd done nothing of the sort.

That gives me an idea for the famous final resting place for dead sailors:

A. Captain Jack is in Davey Jones' locker.
B. Captain Jack is in Davey Jones's locker.
C. Captain Jack is dead. Arrgghh!

Oh, for goodness's sake!

Mrs VoS Man

Mrs Voice of Society Man has had her own secret identity, but for the most part it has been replaced by Mama Bird, who usually comes out only to protect her own chicks. Her earlier alter ego, however, would boldly (and loudly) demand a seat on a bus or subway when no one volunteered one. Perhaps you've heard of her: Voice of Preganancy Woman. This rather acerbic character made no bones about her huge belly and that fact that our society had sunk to the point where a hugely pregnant woman was shown no courtesy on mass transit. She would walk onto a crowded bus, wait an appropriate amount of time (usually five or ten seconds), and, when no seat was forthcoming, would yell, "Will no one give a hugely pregnant woman a seat? Are you young businessmen too weak from all your pencil-pushing to stand up for a few stops?" But since the birth of our third child, Mrs VoS Man (oops, I mean Voice of Pregnancy Woman) has had few brushes with Seat Hoarders and other such miscreants.

Mean Soccer Dads

My wife came across an ugly type of parent recently while attending our son's soccer practice. Keep in mind that the soccer players in question are 7 or 8.

One of the little tykes came over to the man beside my wife and complained that his hands were cold. The man -- presumably the boy's father -- asked him, "When did you become a girl?" Apparently he was making reference to the little-known fact that beneath the top layer of skin, most boys' hands have a special layer of protective machismo that somehow his sons' hands were lacking. Then Mean Soccer Dad taunted his son a second time: "Lemme see if I can find you some pink gloves."

My wife was too stunned to speak, but I know what Voice of Society Man would have done. Remember, VoS Man's mission isn't only to stand up to bullies, Time Wasters, Litter Bugs, and other societal outcasts. He must also educate them so as to reform them. His weapons in this instance would have been a Confusing Opening Sentence followed by a Poignant Lesson. Here is how I imagine it unfolding:

VoS Man: Does your son drink beer?
Mean Soccer Dad: Hunh?
VoS Man: Your kid. Is he a drinker?
MSD: Of course not. What are you talking about?
VoS Man: Does he smoke pot?
MSD: What the hell are you talking about?
VoS Man: In a few years, your son will be a teenager. Would you want him to tell you if friends of his were drinking their parents' liquor or trying to get him to smoke pot with them?
Meanie: Yeah, sure, I guess.
VoS Man: Do you think it's easy for kids to bring up alcohol with their parents, or do you think they get nervous.
Meanie: I'm sure they get pretty scared.
VoS Man: How do you expect him to want to talk with you about alcohol if he can't even tell you that his hands are cold at a soccer game?
Meanie (starting to cry): All I ever wanted was for him to hide his soft, vulnerable side beneath a tough mantle of manliness so as to keep away the demons that haunt me.
VoS Man (wrapping his cape around MSD): There, there, now. Your father loved you even if he never said it. It takes a tough man to hold in all of those feelings, but it takes a tougher man to let them show. Growl, you bear of love, growl.

At this point, we can all imagine the formerly Mean Soccer Dad becoming Bill Bixby's character from The Courtship of Eddie's Father. When he turns to thank me, Voice of Society Man is no longer there, having gone to right other wrongs.

Racing Grannies

Or, Collective Waiting, Revisited

An unusual need arose recently for Voice of Society Man in the world of unicycle racing, but fret not, the situation described has tendrils that reach into many aspects of our daily life.

This past summer at the annual unicycle convention (yes, there is such a thing), a woman in her 50s took 25 minutes to complete the mile race, 15 minutes longer than her next slowest competitor. 300 of us had to wait for her to finish. As a result, our day at the track finished 15 minutes later than it could have. Should the race director have put an end to our misery by stopping the race? Voice of Society Man knew there could be only one answer, a resounding "Duh."

In a note I wrote to a committee that considers these issues (yes, there is such a thing), I explained that it comes down to math. Granny's 15 extra minutes of racing took place while the rest of us could have been doing more enjoyable things, like swimming in the hotel pool, chatting with other parents, or twiddling our own personal thumbs. Now factor in that there were 300 people waiting for her to finish. 300 people x 15 minutes = 4500 human minutes. That is to say, Granny's race cost a collective 75 hours of human time. Clearly her pride-of-accomplishment was worth something, but most people would agree that this was selfish or unthinking behavior on Granny's part.

Admittedly, the math doesn't seem to hold up under close scrutiny. Had there only been 4 people waiting for her to finish, she'd still be in the wrong for making them wait, even tho that's only 60 minutes of wasted human time. But had she only taken one extra minute (causing 300 minutes of wasted life), no one would have noticed. In fact there would be no real (or kind) way to get back that one minute, and any attempt to do so would have caused an outrage. At what point does the racer become a Time Waster? Perhaps this quandary requires further thought. Is there a cut-off, mathematical or otherwise, for Time Wasting?

Even Voice of Society Man cannot tell you where this line is drawn, but its pretty clear that somebody should have pushed Granny off that unicycle.

Waiting Room TVs

Doctors, here is my prescription: Remove that television set from your waiting room!

The last thing I want to see in a doctor's office waiting area is a TV. The set is invariably tuned to either one of two horrors: something insipid, where I am forced to hear that month's flavor of daytime personality pretend to be surprised by what her interviewee has just revealed ("You're kidding!"), or something horrible on the news ("A father murders his own infant daughter while her horrified mother watches... stay tuned!"). Happily there is a solution, and it comes on the end of a key chain.

Of course, in theory, Voice of Society Man should really be going up to the waiting room receptionist to announce that no one is actually watching the TV and that furthermore, even if someone is, that person should really have thought ahead and brought a knitting project, a good read, or a book of sudoku puzzles. Better yet, that time could be used reflectively to ponder one's existence or the societal benefits of a utilitarian philosophy.

Voice of Society Man is keenly aware that speaking up against waiting room practices could have deleterious consequences. Complain about Oprah today and you might find yourself waiting even longer next week. This is one time when VoS Man must use Prudence.

This product first came to my attention in 2002 or so, perhaps in a copy of Discover magazine (or maybe it was Curmudgeon Digest). It cycles thru hundreds of frequencies until it turns off most TVs. The inventor, like many of us, was tired of knitting or reading or solving sudoku puzzles while trying to ignore the bruitish television in the waiting room.

Sometimes Voice of Society Man must rely on his Utility Belt...or in this case, his Utility Key Chain.

Now if only I could get hold of a device to disable car alarms!

Correctus Interruptus

The Story of the Deviated Septum

Voice of Society Man will not be seen at his irregularly scheduled times because the author has been the victim of his own self-improvement. There comes a time in most men's lives when they must decide whether and when to correct their deviated septa. I decided 'yes' and 'today.'

Once you've realized that your nose was not always strictly banana-shaped, the entire procedure has many steps, and I'm just rounding third now. After the initial doctor visit, I had to go back to that same otorhinolaryngologist two months later to make sure that the curvaceous stature of my nose wasn't temporary. He confirmed this two weeks ago, so we scheduled the surgery. A few days later, I had to go for a pre-op, where I visited five different stations (including EKG, bloodwork, and, most daunting of all, insurance) within just 30 minutes; from what I understand, the medical personnel I met were as efficient as a Russian vasectomy team but much more pleasant. The final steps are the post-op, tomorrow, where the doctor will remove my bandages, and another check-up in a few days. Today, however, was the tough part: surgery.

I have written all about the actual hospital visit at my unicycle blog because, strangely, it was unicycling that brought about my deviant decision. What I forgot to mention was that today is September 11. Yes, the 6th anniversary of the destruction of the twin towers.

Like most New York City dwellers, Shirra and I were devastated by the attack -- even tho we didn't lose any family members, friends, or even acquaintances that day. In fact, I was teaching at my old school in Brooklyn Heights that day, and despite the fact that four parents worked in the twin towers, all of them made it out safely. The last arrived at school four hours later, covered in shiny dust, to take his kids home a bit earlier than usual. I happened to be on emergency escort duty at the time, and since all of the other parents had already been accounted for, seeing him was a huge but strange relief: I wanted to hug him and cry, but we didn't know each other that well, so we shared an awkward silence, much as the City itself did over the ensuing days. So I take 9/11 seriously -- in small part, it's why we moved to New Paltz -- but after 2005, I realized that it was time to move on.

As I lay in my hospital bed awaiting the operation, I reflected on how stress-free I was feeling. I'm not one of those people who's really that much in touch with certain personal states, like anxiety and stress. So when my nurse asked if I was nervous, I told her I'd have to wait for the results of the blood pressure machine. I was 116 over 76, so 'no.' When not hooked up to a machine, I usually have to rely on my pulse. The nurse commented that I seemed relaxed.

That's when I heard the droning of a voice on the TV in a room across the hall. It was the recitation of the names of the victims. The person in room 2 was actually listening to thousands of names read over hundreds of minutes. The nurse might have to take my blood pressure again, because I had a feeling that what I was experiencing was stress. I also had a feeling that if something didn't change fast, I'd be in danger of having my deviated septum worked on for free.

Here is the dialog I was imagining right then:

Me: Excuse me, would you mind if I closed your door?
Room 2: They're reading the list of 9/11 victims.
VoS Man (maneuvering cape around IV drip): I think it's time for Americans to move past the tragic events of that day.
Room 2: Well, I don't think that 6 years is too long a period of mourning.
VoS Man: Maybe, but you know, they never read out the thousands of Pearl Harbor vicitms after that attack.
Room 2: Yeah, but people grieve differently now.
VoS Man: I think you mean 'wallow.' But I guess it depends on who a person has lost.
Room 2: It wasn't anyone close, just one of my wife's friend's acquaintances. I just want to hear them say his name.
VoS Man: It wouldn't happen to be Zeke Zyzzyva, would it?

At this point, VoS Man's anesthesia and deviated septum would have been handled for free, simutaneously.

Before this could unfold, however, a deus ex nursina arrived to announce that it was time for my procedure. Voice of Society Man went blissfully to sleep minutes later.

Keep in mind, I wept for days after that attack, forcing myself to read the thousands of obituaries published in the Times in the months that followed. But by 2003, I'd purged myself of that sorrow as much as I could, and I don't need to see September 11 become further grist for souvenir salesmen, tourists, slimy politicians, and worst of all, the pseudo-newscasters of network television. After a while, grief has to become just a personal affair, and I think that five years was enough.