BLATHER: Was planning on an 8:00AM flight to BWI this morning, so I had a cab scheduled for 6:15. He showed up early, traffic was nil, and I breezed through security...and jumped on a 6:35 flight. Awesome ease! So now I'm in Baltimore six hours early. Maybe I'll head over the local Starbucks and do wireless from there. This hotel room is freezing.

GET BACK IN THE ARMY! I remember the Bushies telling us that maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan and in Iraq at the same time would not strech the military too thin. This article says otherwise. Good gracious. Ugh. I have never felt so torn before an election.

MIRA'S MESSY MAN: What is it about the "dirty elf" look that chicks dig? Little head, stubble, bizarre hat and/or shaggy hair-do...ala Johnny Depp, Hayden Christiansen, Orlando Bloom, and now this guy? Come to think of it, Justin Timberlake kinda has that dirty elf vibe, too.

OUR BLOGS COULD BE YOUR LIFE: So now Blind Camel regular Trisha has a blog, too, and I see that yesterday's hero Morgan Worth is already commenting there. Maybe Blind Camel can be the Velvet Underground of blogs, the blog that launched a thousand blogs...

Or maybe it's more like the Grow Bugs of blogs, which was a really bad band I was in in college that played mostly covers and had more to do with parties than it did with music. Alas...

BTW, Trisha's blog is called the least of my worries, but it's hosted at netsmarts.net. Which leads me to this Gary Colemanesque query:

What you talkin' bout, Trisha?

Oh, and there's this, too:

My sister-in-law (and stealth Blind Camel reader) Paula also has a new blog, called phaneromania. It's quite nice, and y'all should check it out, too, whilst you're just procrastinating.

LADIES LAST: I like etiquette, doing the right things socially so that you don't look like a simp. I do. Sure, in our liberated world, where guys and gals are working side-by-side and nobody wants to be politically incorrect, it can be tough to do the right thing. Sometimes it's best just to pretend we're all gender-neutral action figures. But most of the time I still try to use the classic "Miss Manners" protocol, and I find I'm one of the only people left in the world that knows the real "rules."

One thing that really bugs me is elevator etiquette. The right way to do it? Guy gets in first, holds the door for the ladies, presses the appropriate floor for them. Guy moves to the back of the elevator so the ladies can get out first. Does it usually go down like that? Nope.

Just this morning at my building some guy dramatically steps back to let some ladies in first. I happened to be close to the elevator, and I happened to know the PROPER etiquette, so I jumped onboard and held the door...and got a dirty look from the guy and the ladies. Hello!?

The other one that always bugs me is the revolving door thing. Guys are supposed to enter revolving doors first, pushing the door around for the ladies. But everytime I step into the revolver first (in mixed company) it seems like I get all manner of ugly stares from men and women alike.

I'd like to buy billboards in every major city, or a Super Bowl ad, or something, so I could just blast the truth out there:

Polite guys get in elevators and revolving doors first! Dumb guys stand back and let the ladies in! Duh!

HE IS SPUDBOY, HEAR HIM ROAR: My old pal Morgan Worth has a cool blog you should wander by: Swallow Everything. Check it out. When you're reading him, bear in mind that he's a long tall drink o'water with big eyes and an infectious enthusiasm. Cheers to Morgan!

ABSOLUTELY GREAT READ: Am just about to finish David Lipsky's wonderful ABSOLUTELY AMERICAN, an apolitical account of a class's four-year trek through West Point. Believe it or not, the book grew out of a piece the Army itself pitched to Rolling Stone magazine, and editor/icon Jann Wenner originally envisioned it as a hatchet piece on the military. Instead, Lipsky, a self-confessed military doubter, penned what is at the very least a tribute to the men and women he more or less lives with for four years, and may even be a tribute to the military system in which they live and prosper. A tremendous book, a real page-turner of a nonfiction work. (An illuminating interview with Lipsky is here. Interviewer Dave Weich agrees that the book is an amazingly clear-eyed account of of a loaded subject. He writes, "Again, I come back to the absence of a loaded political agenda in the book. In that sense, it's very different from most of what gets published and promoted today. So much of what we see, or so much of what sells, is either Ann Coulter or Michael Moore. You know what you're going to hear before you even open the cover. Instead, Absolutely American is a story about people and values and commitment.")

THE REAGAN LEGACY? I'm in a San Diego hotel room listening to Ron Reagan on Larry King. He's carefully unpacking the idiocy behind the Bush administration's ban on stem cell research. He's very compelling and likeable. In fact, I'd say he's done more to sway me towards Kerry than anyone else. Ironic, eh?

HITCHENS 1, MOORE 0: Please to be checking out Christopher Hitchens' marvelous disembowelment of Michael Moore. For some sick reason I'd love to see the two old wheezers in a real live slugfest sometime.

SNOOZEAPALOOZA: I'm with independent concert promoter Seth Hurwitz, as quoted in the New York Times story on the cancellation of Lollapalooza. In real estate, the mantra is location location location. For big festivals, it's about lineup lineup lineup.

The reason this year's festival couldn't motivate people to buy tickets was its limp lineup. Morrissey's new record flat-out blows, and Sonic Youth are the most boring wankfest of a band since the Godchaux-era Grateful Dead. P.J. Harvey is a critic's darling but has never been a big draw (literary pretensions, no hooks? small crowds). Modest Mouse's Isaac whatever-his-name-is yells too much, and them Flaming Lips dudes make good studio records but bad live performers.

Plus, c'mon...after a decade of these megaconcerts, most of us have learned that standing outside all day in some corporate shed is about as much fun as working at Taco Bell with a keg-beer hangover.

HOWDY: I've gone quiet of late because I've been traveling -- Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, and Miami in the last ten days or so -- and because I've felt I have nothing to say.

Today was dull, but then tonight got better.

The rain stopped as I pulled up in front of my house and the sun extemporaneously warmed the soggy green canopy that is my street. The air rippled with humidity and lurid photosynthesizing, and the smell of damp chlorophyll rose from thousands of sated plant forms...

Etcetera. It was nice.

Now my ten-year-old Airedale Terrier, Vladi, is spread-eagled on the bathroom tile, flatulent and twitchy. I've just drank two cans of Schlitz while watching a Shane MacGowan documentary, and I set my cab pickup for 6:10AM -- or "six-tan-yam" as the Southern dispatcher pronounced it. It's time for bed, but I felt I needed to break my silence here. More from San Diego tomorrow. I'm there the next couple days.

ADVENTURES IN MARRIAGE: When you marry a guy named after a gun and his only file photo shows him with a bandana drawn gang-style across his face...well, I'm not saying you get what you deserve, but you gotta know he ain't gonna be Ward Cleaver.

TODAY: I'm camped out in the LAX Hilton lobby for the next several hours, then doing some focus groups, then catching a late flight over to Vegas for the weekend. This lobby is bustling with international flight crews. What a subculture! A whole lot of jet-setting young people eyeing one another and speaking with funny accents. Meanwhile I'm trying to stay awake, not eat too many pretzels, and imagine myself staying up past midnight at the blackjack table.

RALL RAILS AGAINST REAGAN: I find Ted Rall so loathsome I can barely stand it. It's to the point that I'll never get his message because the messenger is such a putz.

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT, LESSON #371: Avoid suing your customers, if at all possible.

J. WHO? I wouldn't admit it either.

TOUGH MORNING: It starts with me having my umpteenth high school reunion dream. This time it focuses on my Ohio reunion, although a week or so ago it was about my Michigan reunion. (I did two years at each high school. My 20th reunions for both schools are in the next couple months, and I'm planning to attend both.)

In the dream I come upon a table of people I knew in high school, although not necessarily friends of mine. I recognize them all, greeting them by name and/or nickname, but none of them seem to recognize me. One of them, a guy who wasn't even in my class, gives me a book he's written. All of a sudden it starts to beep, startling me. They all laugh.

"There's an alarm built into the book," one guy explains through chuckles.

I realize I'm dreaming, and slowly it dawns on me that my alarm is going off on the nightstand next to my head. I swat it off. My wife wakes up and gives me a dark look.

"I dreamed you left me for a guy at my office," she tells me, deadpan.

"I would never leave you for a guy," I tell her. "Especially not a guy from the insurance industry."

Ewww.

I pull on some running clothes, grab some jeans and a t-shirt, and speed down to my car. If I get on the highway by 6:30, I'll miss the morning rush and be out at the Chicago Botanic Garden by 7:00. Plenty of time for a run, a Starbucks, and a shower.

I get on the highway and pull into dead-stopped traffic. Huh?

It takes me 55 minutes to travel about four miles. The whole trip -- usually a 30-minute proposition at this hour, covering just shy of 20 miles -- takes an hour and a half. As I pull off the highway I realize I've forgotten to bring a towel. I also realize I need to go to the bathroom, and I'm not talking about the old number one. We're talking the deuce here. Serious. As in, "I can't believe I ate a whole grilled portobello mushroom sandwich yesterday," serious.

I drive by the CVS hoping to find a beach towel. Not open for another 15 minutes. Oy vey. Now what? I'm supposed to be at my desk around 8:00, and here it's after 8:00 and I've yet to run or shower or get coffee or do anything, plus Nature has gone from tapping on my shoulder to grabbing me by the arm and tugging.

I race over to the Botanic Garden and take care of business in the lovely main building. Then I say what-the-hey and have a great run, weaving my way through the Japanese Garden and through the Prairie and around the lake. I jog back to the car and make for CVS. Three beach towels for ten bucks. Perfect. I hit the Starbucks, cruise to my building, spill coffee in my lap, rush through a shower, and make it up to my desk by 9:30. What the heck, I think. All is not lost. I had a good run. I feel refreshed. I count my change from CVS and notice the clerk has charged me $18 for the three towels. I wonder what's next.

I write it all down in this post.

LAUGHING AT OUR DIFFERENCES: One of the reasons I like Howard Stern is that he shows how it's possible for different races and sexual orientations to get along with each other while still enjoying the richness of our differences. You could say he demonstrates his respect for black people or gay people by refusing to tiptoe around stereotypes and refusing to camouflage his own biases and prejudices. He acknowledges that the topics of race and sexual orientation can make us uncomfortable, and yet he's courageous enough to dance through these dual minefields rather than tiptoe. And, if you listen to the show, most of his minority listeners and guests seem to love him for it.

(On the other hand, for what it's worth, I think much of his ridicule of handicapped folks -- whether they're mentally or physically challenged -- can veer off course and become plain old cruelty.)

I just ran across a fun exchange in my personal life that reminded me of the best of the Stern approach.

One of my best friends is engaged to a black woman. (He's a white guy.)

We were organizing a Belmont pool, betting on the race, and his girlfriend wanted in it. We had three horses apiece for three guys, so the math didn't work out. She was all bent out of shape.

"Why can't I be in?" I heard her begging in the background of the phone call. "Is it because I'm a woman?"

"No," he replied. "It's because you're black. This pool is whites only."

If we could all make these kinds of jokes with one another, the world would be a better place.

FOUR MORE YEARS: As much as I go on about Bush 43 here, if Slick Willie were to run again I'd vote for him in a second. I got so tickled reading this quick news piece about the kickoff of his MY LIFE book tour, I was grinning ear to ear. Here's a favorite quote from the article:

"A lot of presidential memoirs, they say, are dull and self-serving," the two-term president told a booksellers convention. "I hope mine is interesting and self-serving."

This guy may be far from perfect, and he may have told a few fibs in his day, but at bottom I think I admire him for his honesty. Go figure.

GABBA GABBA GOP: Turns out there's at least one cool Republican.

ACCIDENTAL POETRY: My friend Trisha sent me a picture of her son Robbie. He looks very cute, as I told her in my reply. Her response struck me as an (inadvertent) great poem, and so I've formatted it appropriately:

ALWAYS MORE LOVE
He said Mommy yesterday.
I could not love him more.
Ooops, I do.
I do again.

THE ZENMASTER DOES BAGHDAD: My pal Rob looks at the picture (below) of new Iraqi president Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer standing in front of a portrait of the slain chairman of the Iraqi Governing Council, Izzadine Saleem, and comes up with the quip of the week:

"Why is there a huge picture of Phil Jackson in the background? I hope they vote for him. He really knows how to build a dynasty."

STERN SOFTENING? As I've mentioned, I have terrible mixed emotions about Howard Stern. On the one hand, he's sometimes so breathtakingly funny that I find myself tuning in and hoping for one of those moments. On the other hand, he can be be so heartless and cruel that I feel dirty and wrong for listening.

Some of my favorite things about Howard are that he spotlights the hyocrisy and/or self-importance of celebrities, that he's willing to say something sucks if it sucks, and that he seems to speak his own mind no matter what the consequences. But some of his recent choices suggest this devil-may-care attitude, his me-against-the-system veneer may be on the fade. Today, he ass-kissed the reunited Wilson Phillips on the air. And a few weeks ago he gave the same treatment to Alanis Morrisette. What's next, a tribute to Phil Collins?