It's Hot Today...

... and I am not talking about the weather!

Although, the weather is quite pleasantly warm.

No, I am talking about the fact that the Griffith Park/Hollywood hills less than five miles from my office are on fire. Like, HUGELY on fire.

I was out walking for lunch with a co-worker, when we noticed the smoke going up on the other side of the mountain. The smoke got worse, and soon I could see ash falling here and there, while the light took on a peculiar reddish cast as the smoke got in front of the sun. I'm back in the office now, and my hair still smells like smoke.

When we got back to work, everyone was in the corner office, which has a great view right over the Warner Bros. backlot... all the way to the hills, which, as I said, are on fire. Smoke is billowing in biblical proportions!

Here are some pics, courtesy of a co-worker. These were taken from the corner office about 45 minutes ago (it's still going pretty strong):








Also check out the LA Times website or NBC 4. Right now there is live video coverage.

Further bulletins as events warrant! So far, I'm safe... I think!

I Kill Me Sometimes

The haunting specter of my soon-to-be backpacking adventure has been looming over me, in a Casper-the-friendly-Ghost kind of way, gently reminding me that I really should start exercising now (as in, immediately), or I'll be sorry later (as in, next month when I am trudging and gasping my way along the trail in Kauai and kicking myself for not getting into shape when I had the chance).

Hmmm, maybe I should call him Casper the friendly Coach.

Anyway, I must have been under the spirit's influence this past weekend when I made the decision to walk not once, but TWICE around the Rose Bowl, because that was sheer insanity. A single lap around the Rose Bowl is three miles, so two laps are (hang on, let the English major get out her calculator)... SIX whole miles!

Naturally, things went wrong.

The first lap went fine, and that was actually the beginning of my trouble. See, if it had been miserable, I'd have quit before I started the second lap, and thus saved myself the suffering that awaited me. But no. I was lulled into a false sense of "Oh, this isn't so bad" by the fact that it wasn't so bad. And I embarked on round two.

I hadn't gone far when my left foot began to hurt.

Specifically, it felt as though I had a hangnail, or a sharp pebble, sticking into my toes. I'd stop every now and then to shake my foot and readjust my shoe, but the pain wouldn't go away. For those of you wondering why I didn't take off my shoe to better assess the situation, well, there's a perfectly good answer to your question, and it goes like this: I am lazy.

Are you satisfied? Then I'll continue.

So I was still a fair distance away from the car, when I had to stop again. This time, when I looked down at my feet, I noticed something weird about my right shoe. Keep in mind that my right foot was not the one in pain. I saw a red stain on the material close to the front of the shoe.

That's odd, I thought. I don't remember my shoe having red trim... wait a second.

Agh! It was BLOOD!!!

I straightened up and looked around. I was at least 3/4 of a mile from the car. Great, I thought. My foot is bleeding enough to actually soak through my sock all the way to my shoe, and I have to keep on walking. Perfect.

But what really annoyed me was the fact that my bleeding foot didn't even hurt. The other, completely NOT bleeding foot, however, was getting more painful by the second. Talk about typical.

Finally, I made it back to the car, where I took off my headphones in preparation for opening the car door, sitting down, and taking off my bloody shoe... at which point I discovered that my necklace, in utter defiance of every known law of physics, had succeeded in entangling itself with the wire of my headphones. I actually had to take the necklace off in order to get free of the headphones, and that's when I saw that the necklace had a knot in it.

How it got a knot in it when it was around my neck the entire time is beyond even my admittedly astounding mental powers, so you probably shouldn't even bother trying to figure it out.

Anyway, I spent the next few minutes muttering to myself and trying to sort out the necklace from the headphones, all the while wondering how horrible my foot would look when I took off my shoe. I was not pleased at having to delay my investigation due to my stupid necklace (or my talented necklace, depending on your point of view).

Finally, finally, I was ready to examine my foot. I pulled off the shoe and sock, and just as I had suspected—remember, formidable mental powers!—there was a lot of blood.

What I failed to find was the gaping hole in my foot that would have accounted for the amount of blood.

Instead I found a small—one might even say, tiny—cut on the side of my second toe, a cut which was made by my third toe's nail. A cut that was barely visible once I'd wiped the blood away. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Or, talk about anti-climactic. Take your pick.

As I drove home, I thought that my Rose Bowl experience does not bode well for my backpacking adventure. However, it didn't exactly surprise me; after all, it was pretty much in line with my past backpacking experiences, which have been fraught with ill-fitting shoes, sore legs, horrendous blisters, bruised toenails (three) that eventually fell off, and tears.

*sigh*

All right, Casper, what can I say... Just bring it on.

News Flash! I Might Have Been Wrong

And believe me, you won't hear me say THAT very often.

Anyway, I was re-reading my Starbucks rant of a couple days ago, when I realized something... "alto" in Spanish actually does mean "tall." I had thought it meant "stop" because it shows up on stop signs. I mean, that seemed a logical assumption to make, considering. But I doublechecked with the oracle (i.e., my handy-dandy translation widget), and "stop" in Spanish is apparently "parada." Which I guess was too long to fit on a stop sign.

I am so confused right now.

If there are any Spanish speakers out there (and I don't mean people who took tres years in high school and then forgot everything they learned, like me), I hope you'll help me sort out this mystery. But if not, I don't really care. I still think Starbucks should use just one language for their cup sizes. It would make my life so much less perplexing, and the less perplexed I am, the better off we'll all be.

Also, I think Starbucks shouldn't waste time patting themselves on their supposedly environment-loving back for using recycled-content cups, and then not putting actual recycling cans (instead of just trash cans) in their stores.

Language Lessons

Today has been just absolutely fraught with gloom from start to finish. So much for California sunshine.

In other news, I am once again at one of the local Starbucks—there are, naturally, more than one—where tonight I am sipping on a small ('scuse me, I mean tall) cup of liquid dirt. Why do I come here? Why?

The mysteries of the universe never stop abounding.

Speaking of which, why is Starbucks' method of naming the sizes of their cups so weird? My "tall" cup is not tall. In fact, it looks pretty much the opposite of tall to me, which, translated, would be "short." And if they are going to label the other two sizes with frou-frou Italian names (what, is English not good enough for a company based in the last-I-checked-English-speaking Pacific Northwest?), why can't "tall" also be in Italian? Why did "tall" get the short end of the naming stick?

Let's investigate, shall we? After all, I have nothing else to do tonight. (In this context, "nothing to do" translates into "I have an enormous amount of homework hanging over my head about which I am in fervent denial.")

First things first: It seems to me we've got to figure out what the Italian word is for "tall." Does anyone know what "tall" in Italian is? Hang on a sec, I'll just consult my handy-dandy translation widget...

*hold music of your choice plays here*

The word in Italian for "tall" is "Alto." Well, that seems harmless enough. Not catchy, exactly. Still, it could be worse.

But now let's think about this. If memory serves me correctly, "alto" in Spanish means "stop." Probably more people in the States know Spanish than Italian—at least, I'm sure that's the case in my state. So that would be funny if they had a cup size that basically suggested to a fair amount of customers that maybe you should not be drinking whatever beverage you were planning to fill it with. I can see why Starbucks went with the plain old English "tall."

That still doesn't explain why they couldn't use the same language (i.e., English) for all of their cups.

I feel like asking one of the baristas (translation: "Starbucks workers"), but the line has gotten long and I doubt they would welcome my investigative probing. So I'll just mull the problem over in my mind as I sip conscientiously on my cup of coffee-that-wishes-it-were-a-rich-soil-compound (translation: Cafe Verona).

NB: In Italian, "Verona" means "Verona." In English, however, "Verona" means "the location of many tragic deaths according to a playwright who may or may not really have been named Shakespeare and who had a penchant for littering theatre stages with dead bodies at the end of most of his third acts." Just in case you were wondering.

Life... It Just Keeps Going, And Going...

Not that I'm complaining about that, of course. I much prefer it to the alternative.

Anyway, the point being, lots going on in the frogg's life. First and most excitingly, it's official... I am going to Kauai next month! Woo-hoo!!

Today, in the spirit of getting into shape for the backpacking adventure that will be the primary feature of my Hawaiian vacation, I went for a walk in the hills behind my house. I did not carry a pack. Still, I was out of breath faster than you could say... well, anything really. (I personally wouldn't have bothered to try, because I needed all the oxygen I could get.)

Now, the trail I walked this morning is not terribly strenuous. The Na Pali Cliffs backpacking trail in Kauai, on the other hand, is rated something like a 9 on the Sierra Club's scale of difficulty. I'd like to think that the scale is between 1 and 1000, with 1000 being "pretty darn difficult" and 9 therefore being "less work than the hills behind my house!" but I have a feeling I'm not that lucky.

I am a little nervous now.

In other news, I am almost finished my first semester in the creative writing program. I'll have about a month off, and then it's back to the bluegrass state for 10 fun-filled days of writing, talking about writing, listening to other people talking about writing, listening to people read their writing, and amidst all that, trying to find time to sneak some piano practice on the incredibly out-of-tune piano I discovered in one of the campus buildings last time.

Oh, and speaking of piano, I am finally ready to start on the third movement of Beethoven's everlasting 6th sonata. I mean hey, it's only been what, almost a year that I've been working on it?! Sheesh. The first movement is nearly memorized, the second is not but I have it's four pages well in hand, no worries... and the third is going to be "so fun!" as my teacher said yesterday. "You'll love it!" I looked at the page rather grimly when she said that. It didn't look fun. It looked hard. And, on the recording that I have of Rudolf Serkin performing it, it sounds even harder.

Sigh... may as well start it today, I suppose.

Right after I recover from my walking exertions by sitting in the sun and doing nothing for awhile. Priorities, priorities...

Seek Justice

On Saturday night, I attended the International Justice Mission's Benefit Dinner in Los Angeles. I have not been able to stop thinking about it since. I am not the sort of person to jump without reservation on a "cause bandwagon" but I am going to unabashedly plug IJM today, because I absolutely believe in the importance—and necessity—of the work in which they are engaged.

To put it as simply as possible. IJM is an organization that fights to free people from slavery. (And for those of you who think slavery ended with the Civil War in the United States, I have some bad news: it didn't.) In the non-profit organization's own words, "International Justice Mission is a human rights agency that rescues victims of violence, sexual exploitation, slavery, and oppression."

I think we can all agree that's a good cause, right?

But IJM does not stop only at rescuing people. As I learned from the presentation on Saturday night, they also seek justice on behalf of victims. That means bringing charges against the victims' oppressors whenever possible, to hold them accountable for their crimes.

That determination to make sure perpetrators receive just punishment is one of the reasons I decided to support this group. Another reason is the fact that many of those who are rescued by IJM are young girls and women who have been sold or kidnapped into the worst kind of slavery imaginable: sexual slavery. I read an article not too long ago on CNN, about a 6-year-old girl named Srey sold by her family into a brothel. Look at this quote:

"Passed from man to man, often drugged to make her compliant, Srey was a commodity at the heart of a massive, multimillion-dollar sex industry in Phnom Penh, Cambodia."

Believe me when I say that Srey does not represent a horrible exception to the rule in places like Cambodia, Thailand, and many other countries. I saw first-hand on my travels in Thailand several years ago the prevalence of the sex trade. In Pattaya, for example, where I stayed for several days, there is no red-light "district"—unless by "district" you mean "pretty much the whole city."

Abuses like slavery and sexual exploitation of any kind should not be tolerated, but when helpless children are the victims... there is nothing more reprehensible. This has to stop. Period.

I know the problem seems overwhelming. But Sharon Cohn, one of the speakers at the Benefit Dinner and Senior VP of Interventions for IJM, pointed out that even if we help just one person at a time, the cumulative effect can make for a lasting change. As more people are brought to justice for their crimes, as laws are upheld and applied more consistently, others will perhaps think twice before committing the same sins. And the bottom line is, if it's not profitable, people will stop doing it.

I hope you'll consider supporting the International Justice Mission. If you want to know more about what they do, go to their Web site and read some of their case stories. They also have a page where you can find links to articles written about them in the news media. To find out how they allocate funds, check out their standing as a charitable organization at give.org or review their financial information here.

Thanks for listening.

Note: Opinions, etc., expressed above are mine alone. International Justice Mission should not be held responsible for any of them. Also, they did not ask me to ask you for your support. That was my idea. If you don't give anything, it's not like I'll hate you or stop being your friend. Just think about it, OK? That's all I'm really asking.

Time for Some More Frogg Awards

Been awhile since I've handed any of these out, so with no ado whatsoever, here are three new awards for your enjoyment. Please hold your applause until the end!

Let's start with the Frogg Award for Worst Name For A Bus Tour:

Blood & Dumplings Crime Bus Tour

One word: Yuck.

I was alerted to the existence of this tour by a co-worker. She sent me the link via IM this morning, and when I asked her how she heard of it, she said she's on a new mailing list and that's what they sent out today. That begs a lot of questions, but I'm not sure I want to ask them.

So let's move on.

The Frogg Award for Best Headline of the Day goes to this story on Yahoo!. For those of you too lazy to click on the link, it reads:

"Hole in Pyjamas Reveals Internet Plagiarism"

Now tell me that's not an article you want to read.

Finally, last but most definitely far from least, let's have a big drum roll please for the Frogg's You've-Seriously-Got-To-Be-Kidding-Me Award, which goes to Newt Gingrich! During a radio interview with conservative Christian leader Dr. James Dobson, Gingrich admitted that while he was in the middle of the Clinton impeachment process, he himself was doing a little extramarital wandering of his own.

He pointed out that he wasn't proud of it, which makes me laugh. Who would be, honestly? How many people would raise their hands and say, "I am so proud of the fact that I cheated on my wife/husband while championing the cause of family values!"? Give me a break, Newt. Of course you're not proud of it. There's nothing to be proud of.

My favorite part of the article is where Gingrich talks about how he hasn't decided whether or not to run for president. I wonder if the Christian Right will like him more than Guiliani? After all, Gingrich also has a couple divorces, uh, under his belt. But maybe the fact that he has now confessed his sins to Dr. James Dobson will absolve him of the guilt.

Well, that wraps it up for this episode of the Frogg Awards. Thanks for tuning in! I'm sure there'll be a next time, and I hope you'll be there to see it. Until then, folks, be nice, play safe, and kiss a frog for me! (Oh, and If he turns out to be a prince, please send him my way!)