Dave Fox's Outbursts!

What Happens in my Abdomen Stays in my Abdomen

I received a phone call a few weeks ago from an old friend I hadn't heard from in nearly a decade.

"How's it going?" she asked.

"I need to get out of town," I said. "I just finished writing a book."

"I need to get out of town too," she said. "I live in Oklahoma."

I looked on a map to determine the exact midpoint between Seattle and Tulsa, and it turned out to be Las Vegas. Of course, I was drunk at the time, so perhaps I was off by a few hundred miles, but oh well. We flew to Vegas for an exciting reunion.

The first thing you notice when you land at Las Vegas airport is the slot machines. They are waiting for you as you get off the plane. Honestly, I'm not sure why people bother going into downtown Vegas when you can just as easily lose all of your money at the airport. When you factor in the money you squander on a round-trip taxi to your hotel and back, you have 40 extra dollars to lose gambling if you just stay at the airport instead. But nobody had informed me of this, so I went downtown.

My day had been going pretty well so far, other than that I had woken up that morning with a stabbing pain in my abdomen. I decided, when I woke up, to do what any responsible 37-year-old American male would do with a stabbing pain in his abdomen; I ignored it. My flight landed at 2. My friend Jeni wasn't arriving until 6. This gave me four hours to explore.

I spent my first 30 minutes standing in the check-in line Luxor Hotel and Casino. I spent the next 60 minutes after that attempting to locate the correct elevator that would take me to my room. Seriously, the hotel is so huge, it could house the entire Norwegian village I used to live in.

After I found my room, I attempted to leave the hotel, which took another 45 minutes. All Las Vegas hotel casinos are designed so that if you look for an exit, a slot machine or video poker game will jump in front of you, with its hands on its hips, and ask, in a voice that is electronically programmed to sound exactly like your old high school hall monitor, "Just where do you think you're going?"

I finally located the Vegas strip. I wandered. I took in the spectacle. I noticed that the stabbing pain in my abdomen was now beginning to feel more specifically like a stabbing pain caused by a dull, rusty meat cleaver that Osama bin Laden himself was twisting into me. By the time I returned to my room, I was having trouble walking.

So I called my HMO in Seattle, hoping they could diagnose and fix my problem by telephone. "My abdomen feels like Osama bin Laden is twisting a dull, rusty meat cleaver into it," I said. "Should I be concerned?"

The nurse needed more information. "Is it a dull ache?" she asked. "Or is it more of a burning sensation?"

"Yes," I said.

"Okay," the nurse said. "But what I really mean is, are you sure it's Osama bin Laden? Or does it maybe feel more like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi?"

"No," I said, "I'm pretty sure it's Osama."

Oh goodness gracious heavens to Betsy!" the nurse exclaimed calmly. "Your appendix is about to rupture! You must go to the emergency room immediately!"

"That's kind of inconvenient," I said. "I'm about to meet a friend I haven't seen in nearly a decade. She'll be here in an hour. Can it wait?"

"You can wait until she gets there," the nurse said, "but then you must go immediately. And if the pain increases before then, or if you begin to feel like you are being beheaded, you must dial 911."

"Look," I protested, "my friend and I didn't come to Vegas to sit around some emergency room and have surgery."

"Well the emergency room could be a good place to get reacquainted," the nurse said. "If you get bored, they probably have blackjack."

So when Jeni arrived and called on her cell phone from the hotel lobby, I waddled downstairs to find her. We spent the next hour walking around the Luxor, talking on our phones, looking for each other. At one point I asked a man at a slushy drink stand for directions. "Can you tell me how to get to the West Tower?" I asked.

"This hotel has no West Tower."

"Yes it does," I said, showing him my map. "Look."

"That's the Luxor," he said. "You're in the Excalibur."

I'm not sure at what point the decor around me changed from faux Ancient Egypt to faux Knights of the Roundtable, but somehow the slot machines had corralled me through a secret passage into the building next door.

Finally, I found Jeni.

"How's it going?" she asked.

"Not so good," I said. "Osama bin Laden is twisting a dull, rusty meat cleaver into my abdomen. We must go to the hospital."

So we did. By this point, the pain was excruciating, which was the best thing that had happened to me all day because it enabled us to butt in the extremely long taxi line.

We arrived at the clinic. "Do you have insurance?" the receptionist asked.

"Yes," I said. "I'm self-employed, so I have one of those super high deductable plans where the only way you will ever be able to pay your bills if you become seriously ill is to get very lucky at the roulette table."

"Okay," the nurse said as I handed her my insurance card. "I just need to see if we accept your insurance plan."

"What if you don't?"

"Then you are going to die."

Luckily they did accept my insurance. "You can stay," the nurse said. "Please have a seat for the next four hours."

Finally, four hours later, a nice doctor called me into his office and poked at my abdomen. "Does this hurt?" he asked.

"Yes."

"How about this?"

"Yes."

"This?"

"Yes, damn it! Will you please stop!"

"It's just a bad muscle sprain," he said. "Stop doing sit-ups. They're bad for you."

"But the nurse in Seattle said it was my appendix."

"It's not your appendix."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because your appendix is on the other side."

The Seattle nurse had neglected to ask me which side the pain was on, but considering my inability to find a casino exit, I'm not sure if I could have accurately told her whether it was the left side or the right side anyway.

In the end I was fine. By the next morning, Osama's rusty meat cleaver had been downgraded to a relatively sterile Swiss Army Knife being twisted by Condoleeza Rice. The rest of the weekend was fun.

To answer the question people always ask when you return from Las Vegas, my net gambling losses for the weekend were one dollar, spent in two 10-line pulls on a nickel slot machine. I squandered the rest of my alloted gambling money on medical bills, and I broke even, leaving three days later with the same number of appendixes I arrived with.

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[Stay tuned for more lost bloggage from Vegas in the next few days.]

Weather Retort

Oslo, Norway

I love hot weather... which begs the question, why do I live in Seattle and work summers in Scandinavia? But Oslo is currently having what is, by Norwegian standards, a massive heatwave. It's been sunny, with temperatures in the upper 20s Celcius (mid-80s Fahreinheit) for the last week.

I love hot weather, but people who are less weird than me begin wilting when they attempt to be tourists in temperatures like this. We've had sunny weather this entire tour, and in the beginning, everyone in my group talked about how lucky we were. But as temps have risen, people have started saying they wish it were cooler.

I try to explain that this weather is way better than my first tour this summer, when it was 10 degrees Celcius / 50 Fahreinheit with a monotonous drizzle throughout the entire two weeks. But when you've packed clothes for Europe's chilly Arctic, and the three short-sleeved shirts you packed are unpleasantly sodden with sweat, a chilly drizzle sounds appealing to some.

The forecast for Bergen, where we head next, is calling for weather more like that on my first tour. When the drizzle comes down in the fjords, then people will miss the heatwave.

Journalism = Terrorism?

Ærøskøbing, Denmark

What's the difference between terrorism and journalism? In some Danish tabloids, there is no difference.

When President Bush came to Copenhagen this week, two rival tabloids took radically opposite stances on the visit. But in the wake of the London bombings on Thursday, BT and Ekstra Bladet have united with one common goal: to scare the crap out of their readers. Scared readers buy more newspapers.

BT's front page headline Friday morning said, "Terrorists behind the London bombings: Now they're threatening Denmark!"

Extra-sensational Ekstra Bladet went with a more scientific approach. Their front page read:

Madrid, March 11, 2004: 191 dead
London, July 7, 2005: 38 dead
Copenhagen: ?

When newspapers engage in this sort of sensationalism, they are engaging in their own form of terror -- not in the name of religious extremism, but in the name of fundamentalist business. Sell sell sell. Sell more papers at any cost.

Terrorists want this sort of headline. They want us to panic and feel paralized. Denmark's tabloids, and many other media sources around the world, have allied with the terrorists to help them achieve that goal.

Nerudawakening: The Art of Seduction Without Getting Slapped

I was having dinner recently at Olive You, a brilliant new Mediterranean cafe down the street from me. Timur, the owner, is from Istanbul. I taught English in Turkey many years ago, so he and I have become pals.

Timur asked me a couple of weeks ago if I was married. I told him no.

"You have to read poetry," he advised me. "Women love that. Memorize some poems by Pablo Neruda and recite them. They'll be all over you."

I have never read anything by Pablo Neruda. But just now, I spent approximately seven seconds on the Internet doing some in-depth research about him. Here is the first stanza from one of Neruda's poems, entitled, "Carnal apple, woman filled, burning moon":

Carnal apple, Woman filled, burning moon,
dark smell of seaweed, crush of mud and light,
what secret knowledge is clasped between your pillars?
What primal night does Man touch with his senses?

Okay, so I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to ask a woman, "What secret knowledge is clasped between your pillars?" I am picturing myself struggling to get the words out with a straight face. I am then picturing the woman's hand, slapping me hard across my straight face.

Here's the first stanza from another poem by Neruda:

Unclothed, you are true, like one of your hands,
lissome, terrestrial, slight, complete, translucent,
with curves of moon, and paths of apple-wood:
Unclothed you are as slender as a nude ear of corn.

Having recently been dumped by someone who told me she liked me but there "just wasn't a spark," I have to wonder, if I had told her she was as slender as a nude ear of corn, might that have made a difference?

So I'm taking a poll. Actually, two polls -- one for female readers and one for male readers. (These questions assume you have a romantic attraction to people of the opposite sex. If that's not your thing, answer whatever questions you want to answer, however they may apply. Or go watch Spongebob.)

Poll for Women:

1. If a man who you were not seriously involved with started reciting poetry by Pablo Neruda in an effort to win your affection, would you
   a) Swoon
   b) Break a rib from laughing so hard
   c) Slap him
   d) All of the above
2. Would it make a difference if the man was a charming Turk with a seductive accent, versus a dorkish humor writer with a passion for rubber duckies?

Poll for Men:

1. Have you ever recited poetry to a woman in an effort to win her affection?
2. How much did it hurt when she slapped you?
3. No, really. Drop the macho bullshit. How much did it hurt?

Please post your replies in the "comments" area below.

Keep Your Squarepants On! Spongebob Can't be Gay!

Before I dive into this controversy, let me make one thing clear: I think Spongebob Squarepants is weird and irritating. But that has nothing to do with his sexual orientation.

The hyperactive cartoon character, a talking sponge who lives under the sea in a pineapple, has come under fire recently from the ultra-conservative group, Focus on the Family, for promoting "acceptance of homosexuality to children." Spongebob was among a slew of other cartoon characters and Muppets featured in a diversity video that was sent out to 60,000 American elementary schools this week.

This is not the first time the far right has called into question the sexual leanings of fictional children's characters. A few years back, Reverend Jerry Falwell attacked Tinky Winky from the Teletubbies for being a gay role model. Why Reverend Falwell was watching Teletubbies in the first place is beyond me. He's got to be old enough for Mr. Rogers by now.

There's been speculation for years about Ernie and Bert. (When I blogged about them last weekend, I was unaware of the Spongebob controversy.) And I also learned recently that Noddy and Big Ears, folk heroes to British school children, and the star characters in my third grade Christmas pantomime when I lived in England, never made it in the US because, according to the BBC they were believed by some Americans to be "implicitly homosexual." Noddy and Big Ears were an elf and a talking toy.

How people find time to worry about the sexual lives of elves, toys, Muppets, and Teletubbies is something I find baffling. Have they considered getting a hobby? But the latest Spongebob controversy strikes me as especially absurd. It is scientifically impossible for a sponge to be gay.

To make sure I was not making false assumptions, I called my friend Darbi, who almost got a Bachelor's Degree in marine biology a few years back, but opted for the more lucritive field of English instead. Darbi confirmed for me some information that will shock scientists worldwide: I, Dave Fox, actually retained one small scrap of information from my high school biology class.

The piece of information I miraculously retained has to do with the sexual habits of sea sponges. Sponges cannot be gay, or straight, or bisexual, or transvestite. Sea sponges have no gender. They have no sex organs. They are just sponges.

"But they reproduce, right?" I asked Darbi.

Yes, she said, but in a boring, non-kinky kind of way. They don't whip out the handcuffs and have hot, steamy sponge sex. Darbi told me she thinks sponges can actually reproduce with themselves.

Boy, there's a scary thought. What if masturbation made you pregnant? But sponges apparently can't even do that. They just simply have no sexuality.

So the media have had a field day with this one, attacking Focus on the Family's founder James Dobson for speculating about Spongebob's sexual orientation. FotF has responded with a scathing rebuttal, stating Dr. Dobson never said Spongebob was a gay sponge. All he said, their article asserts, is that the video in question was promoting tolerance for homosexuality, which Dr. Dobson believes is immoral.

Fair enough. Dr. Dobson has a right to his moral views just like everybody else in this country. But he goes on to attack mainstream media outlets, such as MSNBC, charging, "I have never had my words more misrepresented than they were in this instance."

Did the mainstream media misrepresent Dr. Dobson? Probably. I don't believe Dobson ever actually said Spongebob Squarepants was gay. But as a professional humor writer, I can't be upset with columnists who allowed themselves a little poetic license here. When radicals on either side of the spectrum start getting their panties in a bunch over sex and cartoon characters, they're feeding us with material.

Here's the real kicker though: In a desperate attempt to defend itself, Focus on the Family is now accusing MSNBC columnist Michael Ventre of saying that Christians are "creepy, rigid, arrogant, cruel, know-it-all, pompous, obnoxious and treacherous -- better know by the acronym CRACKPOT."

Ventre did use those words, but not in regard to all Christians, as FotF implies. What Ventre said was that radical conservative groups are hijacking Christianity, and that those fringe people are "giving Jesus Christ a bad name."

So, Dr. Dobson, you have every right to attack the media if they have distorted your statements -- but distorting theirs does not help your case.

When I started blogging about this incident, my plan was to slam Dr. Dobson for claiming Spongebob Squarepants was gay. I now do believe that Dobson said no such thing. And there is something else I believe.

I believe so-called "pro-family" groups like Focus on the Family are making bigger asses of themselves every day for taking on topics like this in the first place. I don't feel sorry for them for the firestorm of ridicule they attract with these issues. I believe they are scared. They are losing ground -- because in 2005, far more Americans have a problem with FotF's message of intolerance than we do with people of minority sexual orientations.

Not in My Name

Money magazine has just published an article entitled Practicing Safe Blogging in which they suggest, among other things, that you should never ever use your real name or photograph in a blog.

Oops.

They call it "the 'no duh' warning," admonishing, "Don't post any pictures, reveal your name, or even confess you work for, say, an unnamed weekly newspaper in Seattle."

Okay... so, people... that dashingly sexy dude in the photo is not me, and my name is not really Dave Fox. My name is... ummm... quick, somebody think of something!

A Foul on the Interception

I was driving yesterday and found myself behind one of the souped up golf carts with flashing red and blue lights that the Seattle Police use for writing parking tickets. The name on the back of the vehicle said "Interceptor."

Interceptor? What's with the Star Trek'esque terminology? I'd keep them out of high speed chases. The only thing these buggies might be able to intercept is a four-year-old on a tricycle.

2004 Word of the Year is "Blog"

Merriam-Webster has just announced the number one word of 2004 is "blog." The dictionary company released its top ten words of 2004 on Tuesday. Results were based on the number of searches within the past year on the company's website.

The results excluded profanity and sexually explicit words. Had such words been eligible, the top ten words for 2004 would have been... well, never mind.

I discussed the word, "blog," in my very first blog entry on May 11 this year. At that time, I wrote:

The whole concept of a blog has always creeped me out. Hell, even the word "blog" is weird.

Blog, short for "weblog," has always struck me as one of those annoying techie words. There are people in the world who refer to their computers as "puters," and those people scare me. But according to Merriam-Webster, the word "blog" is here to stay.

It's not a big surprise. This year's elections helped spur the blogging phenomenon, which journalists are calling part of the "new media." Now there's a term that's getting tiresome. What is surprising is some of the other words that made the top ten list.

Take for example, word number seven: "peloton - the main body of riders in a bicycle race." Or word number 10: "defenestration." Merriam-Webster.com won't even tell you what defenestration means unless you subscribe to their premium service, but dictionary.com defines defenestration as "the act of throwing someone or something out of a window."

How did this get to be the tenth most researched word of 2004? Was there more defenestration than usual going on this year? How come I wasn't invited to the party?

If you think about it, blog isn't that exciting of a word. There's not much you can do with it. But defenestration, now there's a word I can get into. So I'm taking a poll. Please submit your answer (and read other people's responses) using the "comments" link below:

Who or what would you like to defenestrate?

Sticking Up for the Little Guy

It's about time somebody has broken the news that short men rock. Salon.com ran an article a few days ago acknowledging that, yes, our culture does have a bias toward taller men. And, the article suggests, women who refuse to date men their own height don't know what they're missing.

I'm 5'4" (163cm), if I stretch. I've dated women as much as nine inches taller than me. I've never gotten the whole height hang-up that our society it has, but it's there. Just check the online personals. I saw one ad a few months ago posted by a woman who was 5'2", saying she was looking to date guys between 5'10" and 6'10".

Six-foot-ten?!?!  You'll date a guy 20 inches taller than you but half a foot taller is too short? If that's your fetish, fine, but bring a ladder because standing on a phone book isn't going to cut it. Can you even hold hands with a height discrepancy like that? Can you hug him without injuring his back? Can you tell him a secret without yelling or using your cell phone?

The Salon article suggests women's bias for taller guys might have something to do with biology, and a need millions of years ago to have a burly guy protect them from stampeding wooly mammoths.

That's fine. I'm not interested in dating women who have a wooly mammoth phobia.

The article also addresses the so-called "Napoleon Complex" -- the belief that short men compensate for their height with excessive ambition. Here's what Salon says:

Invoking the Napoleon complex is, say those who have dated short men, facile. A guy who's 5-foot-2 isn't any more likely to be overly aggressive or determined to prove himself than a guy who's 6-foot-2 -- it's just that there's no name for the 6-foot-2 guy's behavior, except obnoxious.

Word.

Maybe some short guys do overcompensate for their height by aggressively trying to prove themselves. Me? I've decided to overcompensate for my Napoleon Complex by being a lazy bum.

• Read the Salon article.
• Salon also ran a similar article in 2000.