Imprecise language should be next reform

Much has been made of the sheer size of the healthcare reform bill currently being considered by Congress. Hulking, manly legislators who wouldn’t normally allow their strength to be questioned in public were seen staggering melodramatically as they attempted to carry the legislation before cameras, even using little red wagons to assist them. One representative dropped it to the floor with a resounding thud, making some arcane point about sound waves; another threw reams into a cheering crowd of protesters — cheering, that is, until Section 41, Paragraph 32, Subparagraph 15 injured eight.

All reasonable parties in the debate realize that to have a reform package that addresses such a complex issue requires meticulous documentation. We need a couple thousand pages of hopefully precise language, just so we don’t accidentally neglect to mandate that surgeries be sutured when done, or that CAT scans not be given to cats (unless they’re covered by Medicare). We don’t want to end up with tweet-able legislation that remakes our entire health care system in 140 characters or less.

Not sick? Good. Not well? See a doc. Really desperately ill? Consider dying cuz we won’t pay. LMAO

Imprecise language is a problem of everyday life that we don’t need to see codified into law. In fact, I hope that once we can get 535 Congresspeople, a president, 300-million-plus citizens and at least one Fox pundit to agree on insurance coverage, we can start to tackle the confusion that clouds ordinary conversations. I already have a list of “low-hanging fruit” ready for work.

“Low-hanging fruit” — This much-loved corporate bromide is supposed to refer to a strategy in which easily solved problems are tackled first. The next time I hear my manager request it, though, I’m bringing him a larva-infested mango.

“Just a little for me” — A common response when someone is asked “do you want some?”, usually in reference to food, though sometimes sex (which I won’t attempt to quantify here). More concise would be to actually describe the measurable amount of what you request. Often, I won’t want a full cup of coffee but a half doesn’t seem like quite enough, so I might request 65% of a mug. I’m hungry for a substantial slice of pie although asking for half seems greedy, so I’ll request 135 degrees. That mixed-green salad looks good; I’ll take four lettuce leaves, three cherry tomatoes, two onion circles, one cucumber slice and eleven croutons, please. Related to this imprecise phrasing is the haircut request “just a little off the top.” That it’s coming off the top should go without saying, except perhaps in the most expensive salons.

“Let’s turn down the heat” — Does that mean you’re too hot or too cold? Turning down the heater will turn up the temperature, and vice versa. I’m not asking that people dictate exactly what they want in degrees (that should be reserved for pies, as noted above). I just think we need to speak in agreed-upon terms, where up is “warmer” — think about how toasty it is in outer space, if this helps you remember — and down is “cooler,” just like the frosty magma that courses through the Earth beneath us. It’s all about clarity and accuracy, people. Please!

“We’ll do that next Monday” — If today is Wednesday (and it is), next Monday will be here in five days. Tomorrow, however, “next Monday” becomes a week from Monday, or 11 days in the future. If that’s the date you’re going to be discussing, get back to me in about a week because by then we may all be dead anyway.

“Part of me wants to say…” — This is used to communicate a certain amount of self-doubt about the statement that follows, or to escape responsibility in case your idea something like rounding up all the Lutherans and sending them back to Eleuthera. Too often, though, it implies instead that spoken language is going to be coming out of something other than your mouth. Anything you and Señor Wences have to say using your thumb and the lowest knuckle of your index finger (especially if you have lips and eyes drawn onto your hand) is not something that any part of me wants to hear.

“Do you know what I stopped you for?” – Most often asked by the police, though if the phrase interrupts your PowerPoint presentation to the corporate finance committee, you better turn around fast and make sure your laptop isn’t showing Shakira’s shaking hips to your meeting. If asked this by the officer standing outside your car door, do not start guessing assorted crimes in the hope that if you answer correctly, you’re going to get a prize. He knows what he stopped you for, and he’ll be more than happy to tell you. In fact, if you’re lucky, he’ll probably be kind enough to write it down for you.

“Let me know if you want to…” or “Feel free to…” – This passive-aggressive request is often made between spouses, to suggest in a friendly and loving way that you need to get your ass off the sofa and into something productive. Most couples have a relatively equal disposition of household chores, though they’re perception of when and how these need to be done is occasionally at odds. So the wife may breezily say “let me know if you want to climb up on the roof, clear those tree limbs, clean out the gutters, repair a few shingles, then possibly fall to your death, and I’ll hold off on dinner,” to which you’re thinking “oh, I’ll let you know, alright.” Husbands are usually a little less subtle, offering stuff like “feel free to take off your clothes and put on those high heels and cover yourself with whipped cream,” and she’s thinking “you call that freedom?” The good thing about using imprecise language in these scenarios is that you can answer “OK” to the request and not actually agree to do the act, but only to think about doing it (which can actually work just as good for the whipped cream fantasy, though not so much for the gutter cleaning).

“It’s always something” — Well, it’s not always something. Occasionally, it’s actually nothing but the random vibration of vocal chords in the larynx of the first-rate idiot who has chosen to speak to you.

Fake News: It’s like hysteria reigns

WASHINGTON (Nov. 9) — Following House Minority Leader John Boehner’s comment last week that health care reform was “the greatest threat to freedom” he’s seen, other opponents of the plan are stepping forward with hyperbolic metaphors that characterize portions of the plan in similarly apocalyptic terms.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called the provision that creates a so-called “public option” offering insurance that competes with the private sector “worse than if the sun were suddenly extinguished.”

“Health insurance needs private companies in much the same way that plants need sunlight to create food for themselves, which in turn creates food for us all,” McConnell said. “The end of nuclear fusion on our closest star would mean death to every living creature. I wouldn’t vote for that and I won’t vote for this healthcare reform plan.”

Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho) targeted the part of the bill that would set up health insurance exchanges where consumers can easily compare rates and coverage. He said such a marketplace would be “like taking all the puppies in the world and all the lions in the world, and putting them together in one big cage.”

“You can just imagine what would become of those cute little puppies,” Minnick said. “They would be mauled beyond recognition, becoming a giant pile of puppy remains. A forum offering a free flow of information about coverage options would be like the Wild West, except without the beautiful and rugged landscapes.”

GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R.-Ind.) said a mandate that would require nearly everyone to have health insurance by 2013 reminded him of “what it would be like if Hitler hosted a reality TV show along the lines of ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ except with history’s worst dictators playing the part of the experienced dance partners.”

“It would be absolute chaos combined with unprecedented tyranny,” Pence said. “If American citizens, represented by a Daniel Baldwin, for example, are required to choose between an Ivan the Terrible or a Genghis Khan or a Pol Pot, that’s not really a choice at all. Mandates simply will not work — not for waltzing with a despot, and not for being required to purchase insurance.”

Asked to explain how mandating car insurance but not health insurance made any kind of sense, Pence said that in a world that had been taken over by gorillas with giant fangs and where people suddenly sprouted two additional but non-functioning heads — one on each side of their existing head — common sense would go out the window.

Other comparisons being put out as talking points by the anti-reform FreedomWorks lobby include:

• A requirement that health plans allow children to remain on their parents’ insurance plan until age 27 was “like Judas betraying Christ and then posting a picture from His high school yearbook on Jesus’ Facebook page. Totally not cool.”

• Federal financial help for low-income consumers to purchase insurance is “like a trillion gazillion hydrogen bombs all going off at once.”

• A stipulation barring insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions is “like trying to do your federal tax return with your right hand while writing a Christmas letter to relatives with your left hand at the same time, and you’re wearing pants that are three sizes too small and your glasses are fogged up and you’ve got swine flu.”

• A ban on lifetime limits imposed on insurance coverage would be “as if giant aliens — creatures so big that each one’s eyeball alone is three times as big as the Earth — treated our planet like a shotgun pellet and blasted it over a cliff and into the Grand Canyon.”

• The proviso that imposes a 5.4 percent surcharge on people earning over a half-million dollars a year is “like having a hangnail on your toe, then stubbing that same toe, then tripping and falling and breaking your foot, then having gangrene set in causing your leg to be amputated, then having the whole bottom half of your body cut off, like one of those people you see riding around on a plywood board with wheels at the homeless shelter. And then, on top of that, your insurance carrier says having no bottom half of your body is a pre-existing condition.”

Proponents of the reform plan approved by the House over the weekend said they couldn’t understand why such a high level of hysteria had emerged among those opposed to long-needed improvements to the current system.

“It’s like a group of ideologues who care more about their bizarre political philosophy than they do about the well-being of the public have hijacked this debate,” said one of the president’s advisors.

On being Thoreau

One of the great things about keeping a blog is the excuse it gives you to do weird things. As you try to build your experience so you can get more unusual things to write about, you find yourself in places and situations outside your normal comfort zone.

For example, it would never occur to me to go down on one knee at the entrance to the local McDonald’s and take a picture of the sign telling how to navigate the drive-thru. When I wrote last week about my encounter with a “buttinsky” trying to cut in front of me, I thought a photo of the sign telling customers to “circle building for drive-thru” would lend a certain visual appeal to my story. I imagined myself a crusading investigative reporter, hot on the story of a thoughtless man abusing the freedoms on which this country was founded in order to get his Egg McMuffin ahead of me.

After the incident, I’m crouching down by the street, snapping shots of the sign from all different angles, completely oblivious to passers-by wondering what in the world is that crazy man doing? I’m not concerned with what others think of me, because I seek the truth — there’s a crusading cyber-journalist at work here.

I did feel the need to draw the line a few days later when I was preparing my thoughts about falling and becoming trapped in a roadside ditch. I was walking along a heavily traveled highway not far from my work, examining the litter that had accumulated in the weeds. I wanted to be able to create an essay that came from an authentic place (in my mind, not in the ditch) about the refuse that might suddenly become life-sustaining if I fell while running and couldn’t get up. I considered collecting pieces of trash and discarded cans for a photo montage, until it occurred to me there might be passing co-workers who thought I was using my coffee break to make a few extra bucks in the recycling business.

Another thing I enjoy is doing on-line research — okay, looking stuff up on Wikipedia — for background information. In the falling-into-a-culvert post, I wanted to make a joke or two about feeling like Henry David Thoreau communing with the natural world only steps from civilization. I had studied Thoreau and other prominent nineteenth-century transcendentalists in college, and admired their pioneering efforts in the environmental movement and in avoiding constructive work. Reading more carefully now about Thoreau’s personal life, I came to a new appreciation of what a lunatic he was. Were he alive today, he might even be taking pictures at the McDonald’s drive-thru.

What follows are a few interesting facts from his curious biography. Everything cited below is true; if I can’t resist making a sarcastic comment about a particular point, I’ll do that in italic. Wait, that last phrase wasn’t meant to be sarcastic, I just wanted to show what the italic would look like. Like people don’t know what italic is. Like that.

• He was born David Henry Thoreau and didn’t become Henry David Thoreau until college. He didn’t want to keep the middle name at all, but his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson insisted.
• Novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote that Thoreau was “as ugly as sin, long-nosed, queer-mouthed … but his ugliness is of an agreeable fashion.” He wore a neck-beard for many years, which he insisted women found attractive, probably because it hid large portions of his head. Louisa May Alcott said, however, that his facial hair “will most assuredly deflect amorous advances.”
• He declined his master’s degree from Harvard, in part because they charged $5 for it, and in part because the college offered it to all graduates who “proved their physical worth by being alive three years after graduating” and earning enough to be able to spare a $5 donation to their alma mater.
• He founded a grammar school with his brother John but had to abandon the effort when John became fatally ill after cutting himself while shaving. “See?” Henry told John as he lies dying in a pool of blood. “There are other advantages to the neck-beard.”
• Emerson urged him to start his first journal in 1837, and he did so with the following entry: “‘What are you doing?’ he (Emerson) asked. ‘Do you keep a journal?’ So I make the first entry today.” For the young people out there, I’ll note that a journal is like a collection of tweets, except if no one wants to read it, they don’t have to.
• After giving up teaching, he worked in his family’s pencil factory. He discovered a process to make a good pencil out of inferior graphite using clay as the binder. A pencil is like a laptop, except it can give you lead poisoning if it jabs you.
• In 1844, the original tree-hugger nature boy accidentally started a forest fire with his friend that consumed 300 acres of Walden Woods.
• His two-year experiment to live simply in the wilderness actually took place about a mile from his family home. Some historians claim his mom brought him a goodie basket of donuts and cookies every Saturday. You’d think that last sentence would be in italic but it’s not.
• In 1846, he briefly left the woods to make a trip to Mt. Katahdin in Maine. He later wrote a piece on the expedition that he titled “Ktaadn.” The transcendentalists were not known for their spelling skills.
• He wrote a two-million-word document that detailed his natural history observations over the course of 24 years. It didn’t sell well either.
• One night in 1859, he decided to go out during a driving rainstorm and count the rings on some tree stumps. He became ill with bronchitis and began a three-year decline that eventually rendered him bed-ridden.
• When he became aware that he was dying, he uttered his final sentence — “Now comes good sailing.” It sounds profound, until you learn that it was followed by the single words “moose” and “Indian.”
• Thoreau’s greatness was not recognized by some of his contemporaries in literary circles. Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson said that living alone in natural simplicity was effeminate. He was “like a plant that he had tended with womanish solicitude,” Stevenson wrote. “In one word, he was a skulker.” John Greenleaf Whittier (again with the middle name) said Thoreau wanted to “lower himself to the level of a woodchuck and walk on four legs.”

Revisited: Dispensing with good taste

If we could apply some of the same principles used by manufacturers of toilet paper dispensers to our country’s ports and immigration checkpoints, our concerns about national security would be over.

Bathroom tissue located in public restrooms is way more secure than it needs to be, if you ask me. American industry has developed highly engineered systems mounted in our nation’s stalls that are designed to allow users the absolute minimum amount of product while simultaneously making that product maddening to get at. These hulking plastic cases dribble a thin, single-ply dangle of paper with a fitfulness disturbingly similar to what I’m feeling in my own mid-section while trying to wrestle a few squares free.

Managers of these communal bathroom facilities – in restaurants, offices, government buildings – know this is a service they have to provide free of charge to their customers. So they’re obviously interested in limiting their expense as much as possible without putting their drapes and other nearby textiles in jeopardy. I sympathize with their situation in these hard economic times, but I also have similarly urgent hygiene concerns that need to be addressed. I decided to learn more about the companies that build and market these stingy dispensers.

Not surprisingly, most of them are manufactured by multinational corporations with interests in many sanitization-related areas. They are typically sold as part of a package that includes both the dispensers and the toilet paper, which I guess makes sense if you think about it. (The Pez analogy is one that unfortunately comes to mind; you rarely see the candy sold without the dispenser.) Bay West is one such company, offering a broad array of services in the environmental, industrial and emergency segments. Their corporate motto – “Slide Door Right for More Paper”– is printed proudly on each of their dispensers, and belies their larger mission in fields like brownfield site remediation (ew!) and hospital waste management. It’s good to know they have something to fall back on if bidets ever catch on in this country.

Another name that I came across in my research in the lavatory at a local bagel seller was SCA. When I searched for this firm on-line, I came back with several hits that caused me concern that this trend toward synergy in the industry was spinning out of control. Was SCA the Society for Creative Anachronism? The Student Conservation Association? The Society of Crystallographers of Australia? I could imagine any of these names being euphemisms for the business of helping the public do their business in public, but none turned out to be the company I was looking for. A link to “SCA Armor (Heavy)” seemed promising, considering the amount of protection these devices provide, but also led to a dead end. Finally I was routed to something called “Tork Online,” which referenced an SCA that sold “away-from-home tissue products,” and I knew I had struck pay dirt.

“An in-depth knowledge of our customers’ businesses means our products work hard to eliminate waste, reduce maintenance costs and offer hygienic solutions,” reads the products page. “Our dependable, attractive dispensers are designed to optimize hygiene, function and cost-in-use through designs that reduce consumption and maintenance time, dispense effortlessly and discourage pilferage.” Note that it’s only in the last two words of their blurb that they hint at their true purpose, keeping me and others from making off with free toilet tissue.

A more thorough look at the products section shows a fine array of conventional and jumbo dispensers, and a certain genius of these producers that I hadn’t considered before. The conventional model is described as “preventing waste by dropping a reserve roll only after the primary roll is depleted, keeping the used roll core in the unit and washroom floors clear of debris.” The jumbo model — for high-traffic facilities and, I presume, the waiting rooms of gastroenterologists — offers a “unique tear feature that eliminates the risk of cutting or scratching hands,” convenient for those moments of desperation we’ve all experienced but are too fortunate to remember in any detail.

Another maker is a company called Merfin, which I’m proud to say services my own workplace. With their system, “time spent replacing rolls can be reduced by up to 90%, and savings are increased by reducing waste and over-consumption with virtually indestructible locking dispensers.” I knew over-consumption was the problem that hyper-extended our nation’s credit system, but I never thought of it as an issue in the area of personal hygiene. Who are they to judge what’s enough or what’s too much? Anyway, I will give them credit for coming up with a cool trademarked and intercapped name for their line – VersaCore, offering the most versatile (bold italic theirs) tissue dispensing options in the world.

Finally, I want to reference probably the best-known company in this field, Georgia-Pacific. I didn’t go to their website because I found out enough to convince me that they are the future of public bathroom tissue during a recent and urgent visit to the toilet in the new upscale Barnes & Noble not far from my home. This casing, while still made of the traditional PMMA polystyrene that seems to be an industry standard, features a stylish, sloped front-end and an overall design that would be at home in the lobby of Europe’s trendiest boutique hotels. I was so impressed that I took a picture with my cell phone, even at the risk of criminal prosecution and a probable listing on certain predator lists. (I’ll include the photo with this posting if I can figure out how to get it off my phone and onto my computer). Even better, it dispensed paper easily in a free-flowing, luxuriant manner that tempted me to roll a mound out onto the floor and lay down for a nice nap.

Revisited: Happy Birthday to me

Yesterday was my fifty-sixth birthday. To honor the occasion, I’m reprinting the post I wrote for my birthday last year.

Today I celebrate what I calculate to be my fifty-fifth birthday. When you have to do the math to figure your age, you know you’re old. When your subtraction neglects to borrow from the hundreds column and you mistakenly calculate your age to be a negative number, you know you’re really old. With this birthday today, I think I’ve passed that threshold.

There are no party plans or other significant celebrations in the works. It’s a Thursday and we’re all still real tired from staying up for the election coverage the other night, so a party isn’t really practical (not to mention that I have no friends). My immediate family will be acknowledging me with cards, gifts and a special dinner that my wife is preparing. I got a few “happy birthdays” from my coworkers and I’m looking forward to a phone call from my parents tonight. But other than that, I’m on my own as to how I’m going to be receiving any unique treatment today.

It’s just the regular workday and the regular routine, so there’s not a lot of merriment I can inject into the occasion. I get up at 4 a.m., arrive at work by 5, take a lunch break around 10:30, get off at 1 p.m., stop by the Y for a workout, etc., etc. But I have managed to find a few small ways to honor myself on the anniversary of my birth.

• I skipped flossing today. This part of the morning bathroom routine is always a challenge, and I know I’m not really treating myself by increasing my odds of tooth loss. But there’s not much fun to be found at this hour of the morning, and it seemed like more of a tangible treat than my other idea – to slather a little extra mayonnaise on the turkey sandwich I prepared for my lunch.
• I chose a frayed, comfortable shirt to wear into the office. We don’t have much of a dress code, primarily because we don’t have much customer contact. I still like to wear a nice pair of business-casual slacks and what I guess is called a dress shirt. The one I picked out today isn’t what you’d call tattered but it has seen better days, like when I bought it for $2 at Goodwill about four years ago.
• Today is recycling day in our neighborhood and it’s my job to haul the bin down to the curb. When I collected the assembled piles of newspapers, junk mail and magazines from the counter and carried them out to the driveway, I chose to toss a small batch of cardboard into the regular garbage, just to lighten the load of the bin by a half-pound or so. Sorry about that, melting glaciers.
• Shortly after I arrived at work, my closest associate Arnie (a fellow Fifty-Something) gave me two slices of bread as a birthday present. It’s not as pathetic as it sounds. He bakes bread in a bread maker at home and this was from a nice dill and caraway seed batch he made just a few days ago. It was a little dry and a bit too seedy for my tastes but it was definitely not pathetic. He also gave me a Zip-Loc bag.
• Though our workload has increased in recent days because of an upcoming quarterly deadline, I still had excess time to kill and used a game of Scrabble with another co-worker to help with the killing. I usually think it’s pretty bush league to play two-letter words. However, today I indulged myself by using not only “oy,” but also “oi” and “oe.”
• Every time Arnie asked me a question or if I could help him out with a particular project, I responded by saying “Depends.” Incontinence humor is becoming a much more significant amusement for me than is probably healthy.
• For my lunch break, I decided to take a 10-minute walk to the neighborhood diner. It was a beautiful day for early November, sunny and approaching 70. Though I didn’t stop along the way to smell the roses, I did pluck a wilting gardenia flower from a bush outside the diner and detected a slight pleasant scent before it crumbled in my hand.
• I bought a cookie. I was going to use the change from the purchase to buy a local newspaper but as luck would have it, the change came out to be 48 cents and the newspaper stand required 50. I asked the diner cashier for change for a dollar and she declined, citing a critical lack of quarters in face of the upcoming lunch rush. Times are tough for everyone. I did find an abandoned USA Today in one of the booths, and that’s kind of a newspaper so I settled for that.
• While reading the paper, I indulged in one of my traditional birthday customs. I always read the column that lists which celebrities are also having a birthday today, and try to figure which of them I can beat up. I’d honestly have to say I’m in pretty good shape for a 55-year-old and I think I can still take screenwriter Mike Nichols, actress Sally Field and (probably) California First Lady Maria Shriver. I’d probably choose to run from a tussle with actor Ethan Hawke though. On the “Birthdays in History” list, I feel confident that I could soundly whip March King John Phillip Sousa were he still among us.
• Walking back to work from the diner, I took a scenic back road rather than risking my life along the shoulder of the truck-choked main highway. There’s no noise and no exhaust fumes and quite a few picturesque hardwoods, though the pastoral mood is lessened somewhat by the cinderblock back wall of a storage facility featuring the spray-painted message “redrum.”
• Not many opportunities for self-indulgence during the final 90 minutes in the office. Afterward, I climbed in my car and headed home right on time. When I hit the interstate segment of my drive, I decided I could splurge a little by declining to use the cruise control and instead went about eight miles an hour over the speed limit. You don’t get much opportunity to live life on the edge when you’re more than halfway through your fifties so I’ve decided to make the most of what time I have left.
• When I got home, I took a nap. Not that this is really anything all that special, since getting up at 4 in the morning each day makes the nap a necessary part of staying up past sundown.
• When I woke up, I headed off to the Y to end my day with a run on the treadmill. You might think I’d use my birthday as an excuse to skip the exercise for just one day, but I’ve found running to be so relaxing and so addictive that it would ruin my day to miss it. I did make a few concessions – I set the speed on 5.4 mph instead of my usual 5.5 and I brought the machine to a halt after only 25 minutes instead of my usual 30. If I ever used the incline feature, I could’ve cut back on that too. Maybe I should’ve tried putting the setting down below zero to see if I could achieve a negative incline, which would allow me to run downhill. On second thought, I’m probably headed downhill fast enough already.

Website Review: dbmassage.com

It must be tough living the life of a professional massage therapist.

On a good day, you spend your time working the muscles of well-heeled strangers, occasionally placing a hot rock on their backs or perhaps applying soothing unguents to the crevices between their toes. They’re relaxed, pampered, on the verge of a physical and spiritual rejuvenation, while you’re using your years of schooling in the ayurvedic arts in hopes of making enough tips to repay your student loan.

On a bad day, you’re clarifying your skill sets to a befuddled long-haul trucker whose interest in “massage” begins with the second letter of that word and ends with the fourth.

A proficiently administered massage, in the hands of a trained masseuse, can be a wonderful thing, bringing a sense of well-being to bodies over-exerted by the stress of everyday life. It’s a chance to step back from the rat race and give in to that guilty pleasure you’ve secretly harbored for new-age music and scented candles. Unfortunately, its image is too frequently sullied by purveyors of another, lower-class type of rubbing — the “adult hostess” whose “escort services” include “massage” along with posing, squatting and as much fondling of themselves as of others.

I wouldn’t claim to know anything about this baser style of entertainment, not in a public blog any way. But I have had an authentic, above-board massage on several occasions, and I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed it immensely if I weren’t scared witless by physical contact with others. So I thought I’d investigate the ins and outs of therapeutic massage (though I understand they don’t like the term “ins and outs”) in this week’s Website Review.

For my subject, I’ve chosen the site dbmassage.com. Obviously, they don’t do the massage through the website; you have to show up at their salon in a major city not far from my home. The “DB” in the name stands for Day Break, not for “denuded bodies,” not for “don’t blow,” and not for legendary hijacker D.B. Cooper, the guy who extorted $200,000 from Northwest Airlines and escaped via parachute over Washington State in 1971 (after all, why would you touch strangers if you had two hundred grand in ransom cash?).

Day Break’s home page is a simple affair, featuring a large close-up of either a bowl of jasmine petals gently floating in water, or an especially thin cabbage soup. You’re invited to “enjoy a respite from your hectic schedule,” and you don’t have to feel guilty about it because “massage is no longer a luxury, it is a healthy necessity,” though they do note elsewhere that it’s not covered by any insurance plan known to mankind.

Under the “Day Break Difference” heading, they describe their focus on offering “the best possible massage experience for the client, not on the quantity of massages performed,” so you can linger peacefully on a table rather than being rapidly kneaded in passing. All massage therapists must clear an extensive background check, because nothing ruins a soothing diversion like the fear that there’s a registered sex offender hovering inches above your half-dressed form.

The “Benefits of Massage” are described as “numerous and significant.” The style they use most often incorporates “touch therapy,” which I would think is a good idea for virtually any massage. Practitioners focus on “soft tissue dysfunctions” (the tissue may later become hard), and might provide “dramatic results” for conditions as unlikely as asthma, depression, gastrointestinal disorders, high blood pressure, and scarring. Their “knowledge of anatomy and physiology” will guarantee that they don’t accidentally massage your face when your biggest complaint is abdominal bloating.

I won’t name the individual staff members listed on the site, but you can trust that they are “passionate” about their work, travelled to Thailand, got an MBA from Wake Forest, or first became interested in massage while working for a dentist. Several of them are LMBTs (Licensed Massage and Bodywork Therapist) and at least one of the therapists has pursued additional coursework in something called “myofascial release” (hello!).

The “In-Studio” experience can generally take the form of one of three styles: therapeutic massage, sometimes called “Swedish”; neuromuscular and trigger point therapy, which “balances the person’s body over gravity” (presumably so you won’t go floating away during your session); and pregnancy massage. All three are reasonably priced between $65 and $75 an hour, certainly more expensive than the therapeutic benefits of a haircut but not as costly as legal advice. For only $20 more, you can get an additional 30 minutes of manipulation, a remarkable deal that makes me suspect you’re actually unconscious at that point and they’ve gone out for a bagel.

Finally, I’ll summarize a few of the Frequently Asked Questions. When should you NOT get a massage? If you are ill with an infectious disease, a fracture, or have open skin lesions, though the therapist will be willing to work around the latter if they’re localized and not actively oozing. What should you expect during your massage? You should talk with your masseuse before-hand to “determine what massage modality best fits your needs,” likely to include “vibration, percussion, effleurage, petrissage and whatever they think will work best for your muscles.” How should you dress for your massage? You can dress or undress to your comfort level, even leaving garments on, which the therapist will work around “as best they can.” I’d probably be most at ease in a full business suit, which hopefully they could massage through.

As for the proverbial elephant in the room (who, I imagine, would require one of the 90-minute sessions), they answer the question “what is NOT appropriate during a massage?” The following are strictly forbidden: foul language, arriving intoxicated, or “asking for more than a massage, i.e., sexual favors.” These can result in termination of the relationship, or simply allow you to take it to another level. However, “it is OK for your therapist to massage your buttocks/gluteal muscles.”

I guess using the term “gluteal muscle” is one way to keep those truckers at bay.

Fake international briefs: European edition

Scientology: C’est hilarant!

PARIS (Nov. 3) — French authorities defended a weekend court ruling that convicted the Church of Scientology of fraud and fined it almost $1 million, claiming that the faith’s basic tenets were “simply way too hilarious” to merit official recognition as a religion.

A Paris judge stopped short of an outright ban on the group’s activities. The church, which has attracted celebrity adherents such as Kirstie Alley and John Travolta, has a long and controversial history in Europe, with many claiming it should instead be considered a business, although a really, really funny one.

“The French have a proud heritage of appreciating the absurd, going back to playwrights such as Camus and Beckett,” said ministry of culture spokesperson Philippe Tardieu. “But seriously, you can appreciate the randomness of existence and the ridiculousness of the human condition without building a religion around it.”

Scientology preaches that the “thetan,” the equivalent of a spirit, can be cleared of negative energy from this and previous lives through a process called auditing. With the aid of auditors, followers seek a state called “clear” and then advance through various levels of the “operating thetan.”

“Stop it, you’re killing me,” Tardieu said. “I’ve got you on speakerphone here, and this whole office is just falling out. Quit, please.”

The minister noted that his countrymen appreciated contributions to their flourishing comic scene from such well-regarded Americans as Jerry Lewis, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Memphis Grizzlies reserve guard Allen Iverson. But he insisted that Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard was more pretentious than ludicrous, citing his use of an initial to replace his first name. He maintained that “if Hubbard was all that great, how come he’s not immortal, like the splendid Mr. Lewis? Huh?”

Tardieu also challenged the church’s concept of auditing, citing the French-born firm of Deloitte and Touche as recognized experts in the field. He admitted that accounting and similar assessments of financial records could on occasion be preposterous, though they too lacked concepts such as sin and redemption through a merciful God, so they’re not a religion either.

“When Tom Cruise shows up to tell us how wrong we are about all this, I’ll simply quote the master French mime Marcel Marceau,” Tardieu said. “He told us ’                                           ‘. Tom would be wise to model such wisdom.”

3G use getting heavy

BRUSSELS, Belgium (Nov. 4) — Communications experts have reported that the number of Europeans with 3G coverage now exceeds that of the United States, with as many as 70 million people on the continent living in areas where gravity has become three times as strong as normal.

Large portions of Western Europe as well as many nations of the former Eastern Bloc are now affected by the tripled gravitational pull that has taken the region by storm over the last year. The heightened force field has made economic recovery from the global recession considerably more difficult for a sluggish citizenry that even at its most vibrant could barely make it through an eight-hour workday without a wine-soaked lunch.

With many people now carrying as much as 500 pounds on their frames, large portions of the populace can only hoist themselves out of bed with the assistance of a system of pulleys.

It was originally hoped that the advance of 3G technology would herald a new era of productivity. After zero gravity was first explored during the space programs of the 1960s, most of the developed world spent the next three decades pulling a single “G”. Americans pioneered an increase in mass to as much as double their normal weight, but that had less to do with wireless data capabilities and more to do with poor eating habits and a sedentary lifestyle. Now, much of Europe is following the same path, or at least having their servants put them in a wagon or shopping cart and wheeling them on that course.

Experts say that 4G penetration in England, France and Germany will grow by more than 60% by 2010, at which point rising seas will consume subscribers in low-lying coastal areas. Wireless customers further inland will likely compress the ground under their feet to the point where seismic activity opens huge fissures across the picturesque countryside, swallowing millions in fiery death.

Live-blogging from the ditch near my house

My daily jog through the neighborhood takes me past a deep culvert just off one of the main roads heading into town. It’s not a drainage ditch or a creek bed; it’s more like a steep embankment probably built as part of the road construction. At this time of year, the thick grass lining the sides is dry and slick and matted and brown. It looks like a very slippery 30 feet from the sidewalk down to the deepest point.

It would be so cool if I fell in and couldn’t get out.

Maybe “cool” isn’t the right word, but it would be an interesting experience. You read occasionally about well-respected citizens who go out for a drive and are never heard from again, except perhaps 20 years later when their desiccated corpse is found by a utility crew. They veered off the road to avoid a deer and seemingly vanished from the planet. Every now and then they’ll survive on rainwater and gum for several days before gaining enough strength to haul their injured bodies up to the roadside. Then after all that, they get run over. Too bad, but it does make a great story. And the family is usually relieved to have some respectable resolution.

I’ve often wondered what it would be like down there in the ditch, pondering whether you’ll live or die, close enough to civilization to hear it passing by, and yet stuck in a world that is wild and primitive. If this ever happens to me and I happen to have my laptop along (and there’s a decent wi-fi hotspot within range), I’d love to live-blog about the experience.

It might go like this:

4:07 p.m. — Oops … oh no … sheesh … owww! … oof …

4:08 p.m. — Wha’ happened? What … ? Oh, shoot, my leg really hurts. Yow! Oh, hell, I don’t think I can get back up there. Oh, jeez …

4:13 p.m. — Well, that’s just great. I’ve fallen and I can’t get up. I’m like an old LifeAlert commercial. Great. How am I going to get back up to the sidewalk? Ow, my leg really hurts … I think it might be broken. What am I going to do?

4:15 p.m. — OK, try not to panic. I can still hear cars going by so I can’t be stuck here long. If I can just pull myself up this bank, I can signal for help. Guess I’ll have to crawl … ouch! Wow, I’m really up the creek. Heh, heh, that’s funny. Maybe I could blog about this!

4:47 p.m. — I’ve tried just about every way I can think to get myself out of here, but I’m not having any luck. Surely another jogger or walker will be by soon — I’ll yell out to them and maybe they can call for help. If I can find one not wearing headphones, like that’ll happen.

5:13 p.m. — This is definitely becoming a cause for concern. It’s starting to get dark. I know my wife and son are starting to wonder about me by now, but I don’t think I told them which way I was running. I need to focus, I need to think clearly, I need to concentrate on my … hey look — a squirrel with one leg missing!

5:58 p.m. — Wow, this sure does put any other problems I might have in perspective. Worrying about that dental hygienist appointment next week isn’t such a priority any more, is it? I’m going to start throwing rocks at the cars.

6:04 p.m. — Somebody stopped! Hey … help! Help!

6:05 p.m. — No, no, I didn’t mean to hit your 350Z. I was just … Yes, sir, I know I’m too old to be throwing rocks, but if you could just … Mister! Don’t leave, please!

7:50 p.m. — What are people going to think about this? They’ll probably think I’ve left the country, that I’ve got a secret second family somewhere. Jeez, I’m lucky to have one that will put up with me.

8:46 p.m. — Man, I’m really starting to get cold. I remember seeing a glove lying over there. At least I can keep my left hand warm. And … a sock!

11:31 p.m. — Getting so sleepy … What am I going to do without my Ambien tonight?

6:14 a.m. — Wow, I can’t believe I’ve been here all night. Unbelievable.

6:58 a.m. — It sure is beautiful out here early in the morning. The air smells so clean. Really makes you appreciate how nature can be close to home, and yet still exotic and wild. I think it was Henry David Thoreau who said it best, while he spent two years living in the wilderness on Walden Pond. He was fond of saying … Hey — jogger! Down here! Down here! Help!

7:26 a.m. — At least it’s getting light enough to see. Maybe I can look around and find something to eat. Is that a can of potted meat product? Maybe there’s a little left inside … nope, just ants. How can they eat that stuff? Hey, there’s a mayonnaise packet and I think I saw — yes, a grape jam packet from Bojangles. I can make dip!

7:44 a.m. — I think I smell pineapple or coconut. Oh, shoot, it’s just a discarded air freshener. I’ll hang it from this tree branch. Might as well make it things home-y if I’m going to be here a while.

8:22 a.m. — So thirsty… If I take this old sippy cup lid, and stuff a bunch of cigarette filters in it, maybe I can strain some water from that puddle over there and get a drink.

11:14 a.m. — Starting to get dizzy. Sure wish I could find something real to eat. You know, this would make a really great weight-loss plan. I’m going to try to sell something like it on the Internet when I get out of here. Wonder if ditchdiet.com is taken?

3:44 p.m. — Must keep my mind alert. Maybe if I found something to read. Here’s a cash register receipt from the grocery store. Wonder what is “FL BKD BEAN HMSTYL”? Sounds good.

4:33 p.m. — Not sure I can last another night. Thoughts turning weird … wonder if that raccoon over there would be interested in joining me in a provisional government. Man and beast, together at last, creating a just and peaceful society. Or I could club him with this stick and eat him.

4:53 p.m. — Hey, doggie! Here, boy. Come here, boy. Yeah, you’re a good boy. Here, let me attach this grocery receipt to your collar and you go tell your owner that there’s an MVP customer stuck in a gully. There’s some rewards points in it for you if you’re a good boy. Maybe even a free half-gallon of milk.

5:06 p.m. — Officer, officer! Thank you so much for finding me. I’m rescued at last! Thank God! Please, call my wife immediately and tell her I’m okay. And if you get the chance later, please check out my blog — davisw.wordpress.com.

That’s me, over on the right

Fake International Briefs: Asia edition

Maybe running, maybe not

KABUL, Afghanistan (Nov. 2) — The leading opposition candidate for the Afghan presidency was reportedly reconsidering his decision late yesterday to drop out of the run-off against current president Hamid Karzai.

“If my assassination or the murder of my every living relative were the only things to worry about, that’d be no problem,” challenger Abdullah Abdullah told reporters at his compound. “But the Americans were telling me I might have to be interviewed on ‘Fox and Friends’ or have my character questioned by the Tweeters on CNN. That is something I could not stand.”

Abdullah said he initially misunderstood the perils involved in continuing his campaign after the August vote put him in second place. International observers feared security concerns caused by a resurgent Taliban would make another round of voting difficult. Abdullah said he was more concerned about media scrutiny than he was about having his hands cut off, or his feet cut off, or both his hands and his feet cut off.

“I am a shy man who just wants to pursue his life’s work in peace, with all my appendages,” Abdullah said. “I don’t need the aggravation of being the head of a failed state, but if my people call, I will serve. Fortunately, we have no land lines in my country and virtually no wireless, so I’m not expecting too many calls.”

Abdullah said he would reach a final decision on whether or not to pursue the presidency in the next 24 hours. He characterized his “life’s work” as efforts to reform the nation’s corruption-riddled judicial system. Even the simplest administrative task tends to get caught up in a web of bribes and kickbacks, and Abdullah has worked tirelessly behind the scenes trying to repair the courts. He is also trying to have his first name legally changed to Jason.

“That whole ‘Abdullah Abdullah’ thing was just too confusing,” he said. “Everybody wants to make joke.”

The former doctor may find he has some unexpected competition if he does decide to return to the political arena. His vice-presidential running mate from the first round may also be joining the race.

Saradullah Saradullah, who describes herself as “just an everyday hockey imam,” may decide to challenge both Karzai and Abdullah. The former governor of Badakhshan province, that squiggly part in the far north of the country, said her knowledge of local tribes and customs would allow her connect with the common man. She said she could also help advance the issues of women, assuming that’s what’s scurrying around the marketplace under those burkahs.

“Plus, I have advantages I can bring in the area of foreign affairs,” Saradullah said during a satellite conference call with potential supporters. “I can see Osama bin Laden from my front porch. In fact, he’s mowing his lawn right now. Oh how I wish he would put a shirt on.”

North Korea blames WordPress

SEOUL, South Korea (Nov. 3) — The North Korean government denied charges yesterday that it was behind a series of high-profile cyberattacks last July that caused Internet outages in the U.S. and South Korea.

“The people’s glorious republic was simply trying to put up a new post on its WordPress blog, and things got a little out of hand,” said communications ministry spokesperson Joong Kim. “That HTML editor is almost as unstable as we are.”

Kim said his nation’s efforts to compose the post in a word processing program, then copy and paste it into the blog host’s upload/insert field, resulted in the first and second paragraphs running together with no break. When they tried to edit the tags, it caused U.S. Defense Department computers to crash in what’s called a denial-of-service attack.

Later, attempts by the regime’s personnel to correct their spelling of “acommodate” by adding the second “c” ended unsuccessfully when the cursor jumped one character to the right and the misspelling “acocmmodate” triggered further outages in both Washington and Seoul. Then they tried to add an image from their desktop to the end of the post, and somehow it showed up at the beginning. Then they accidentally posted a draft before it was reviewed by Premier Kim Il Sung and run through spell check.

“We meant no harm to the Social Security Administration’s check-printing programs,” Kim said. “We just wanted to tell the world about that funny thing our uncle did at the big family dinner Sunday night.”

Kim said further errors of this sort were unlikely, since the North Korean military had attached the nation’s lone laptop to a medium-range ballistic missile and launched it into the Sea of Japan in frustration.

“We’re more comfortable using giant colorful posters and banners carried by hundreds of happy schoolchildren to get our message out,” Kim said. “WordPress might be better than Blogspot, but that’s like saying our agricultural sector is better than our industrial sector. It’s no great triumph.”

I’ll circle the building only if I want to

Signs, signs, everywhere are signs

Blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind,

Do this, don’t do that,

Can’t you read the signs?

I don’t respond well to direct requests made by giant multinational corporations. For example, when the McDonald’s drive-through pre-recording asks me to “try our new Angus Third Pounder,” or the receipt implores me to “have a nice day,” I tend to resist. I have no problem following their subliminal requests to get fat and clog up my coronary arteries. I just don’t like the hard sell.

So when I drove into the newly redesigned Mickie D’s not far from my house several weeks ago, and saw that they were redirecting traffic to make the best use of their tiny piece of property, I wasn’t playing along. The entrance I chose was only a couple dozen feet from the speakerbox where you place your order, yet the sign next to the lane demanded that I “circle building to enter drive-thru.” At this time of the mid-afternoon, there were virtually no other cars in sight, so I swung my car around a small curb and went directly to the order board. I’ll show those corporate bigwigs who’s boss.

However, this past Saturday morning it was a lot busier when I stopped by to get my son an Egg McMuffin. Cars were already backed up almost to the front of the store, and it actually made sense to drive the short loop around to position myself in the proper sequence. (I’m not such an anti-establishment rebel that I’m going to avoid breathing just because “The Man” says that air is good for me.)

By the time I made the circle, a large pickup from a local sign company had come in the same entrance and angled directly to a position behind the car that would otherwise be in front of me. I pulled up tight in back of the same car, and it started to look like things could get tense. I know McDonald’s is no stranger to provoking explosions from the lower half of the body, but this potential eruption of emotions from the upper half was different.

I could see the face of the guy who was trying to cut me off. He was giving me the no-look defense, staring straight ahead to avoid eye contact. I adopted a strained facial expression that should have gotten his attention, but he continued to avoid turning in my direction.

So now I had to figure out if I should honk my horn at him. I made a quick assessment of where each of us stood in the two social hierarchies that most influence interaction among strangers. I was obviously superior on the socioeconomic scale, since he worked for a billboard company and I didn’t, but it was somewhat less clear that I could beat him up if it came to a physical confrontation. He was a good 15 or 20 years younger than I, and had a significant number of hardened tools in the back of his truck. I think I had a blanket and an old pair of work gloves in the trunk of my Civic, and maybe a box of cat litter, though unfortunately it wasn’t soiled.

He inched forward and I inched forward and we were rapidly running out of inches. Horn-honking was increasingly out of the question, since there was no escape if things turned ugly, unlike on the interstate where you can always cross the median and start driving wrong-way into oncoming traffic. I considered my other options, because increased grimacing didn’t seem to be working. There was the phone number of his home office plastered across the back panel of the truck, and I supposed I could call and complain to them. Though what were they going to do, fire him? He’d probably welcome the unemployment insurance, as opposed to teetering 60 feet off the ground and looking up at a giant Hugh Laurie face. I could complain to the McDonald’s management, except that they probably had surveillance video of that first time I violated their rules, and would likely be aghast at my hypocrisy, if they cared at all.

The two majestic bucks facing off in the forest for dominance over the herd had head-butted and reared and twisted their horns together, and it had become clear who had won, and who was going to have to settle for that homely doe with the bad teeth. I gathered up what was left of my dignity, gave in, and let him proceed to the ordering position. He asks for a dollar-menu egg biscuit and a large, no make that a medium, coffee. If he had added a side order of lichen, my defeat would’ve been total.

Now I look off to the right and here comes another intruder trying to wedge in front of me. This is a much younger woman, probably college-age, and she makes the mistake of catching my eye. This time, it’s a clear case that I’m the superior human being, so I assert myself immediately. I raise my index finger in the air next to my head, then move my hand in a rotating motion to indicate that she needs to circle the building before lining up to place her order. The look on her face is blank — she thinks I’m either signaling that she hit a home run, or I’m asking her if she has a lasso. I mouth “you have to go around” so now she’s convinced I’m a crazy menace and zips out of the way.

I place my own order without further incident and pay at the first window. The guy who butted is still in front of me, though there’s little left I can do, except maybe hope that they screw up his order. If it were one of those complicated ones — can I substitute a freshly killed groundling for the cheese?, for example — they might make him pull off to the side, and I can swoop past triumphantly and beat him to the exit. Instead, we both move swiftly through the last step and turn out of the parking lot and back into city traffic.

When I’m sure he’s far enough ahead that he can’t see me, I raise my fist in a sign of contempt.

The scene of Saturday's humiliation