This is really, really real

Attention blog reader: In order to continue on, you will need to give this blog your credit card number, pin number, account number, name, address and photos of you naked. If you don't send this, your account will be closed. Also, this is really a real thing. It's really, really real. Don't ignore it, or you might die. Kidding. You will die. Because we'll kill you. With guns. Which we have.We have lots of guns. Just sitting around the office here. From where I'm sitting there are, like, seven guns. Plus all the ones that are hidden. So don't screw around with us. Thanks!

So it wasn't that bad, but in my inbox today I found a happy message said to be from Verizon Broadband, which I have never used, informing my that I needed to click a link and give them a lot of information -- including my pin number -- to move my account to a new server. Why? Because, according to the e-mail, their number of customers "growed up" in December. So they have new servers. And I need to verify my account. And it's all so totally real. How real is it? So real that they even have an image of the Verizon logo. Real, baby.

And the link to the Web site, shown as "https://www22.verizon.com/myaccount," actually goes to another address that's clearly not Verizon. But don't worry. Because when you click on it, it takes you to an address that looks like Verizon. Also, they have logos.

Here is their helpful e-mail in full:

Thank you for choosing Verizon^TM. Unfortunately there was a problem processing your billing information for the month of December, 2006. Soon we have changing some servers in our data base for a new service for our customers. Our number of clients has been growed up very much last month and for that, was necesary a new aditional data base server, where some clients are moved in new server.

Please review our billing requirements at KW: Billing. You will be able to update your billing information quickly and easily using our secure server web form. Please understand that without promptly updating your billing information, your Verizon^TM Internet service may be disconnected. To update your billing at this time, please visit our secure server web form by clicking the hyperlink below.

So, even if you're not a Verizon customer, I reccomend going to the link, as I did, and filling out fake information. Then, in the comments field, tell them to fuck off.

Divorce and the Double Christmas

I was in second grade when my father Bryan and mother Alice divorced. We were living in Heppner, Oregon. After the divorce, we settled at the Dad's house in Milton-Freewater where we all went through high school. Mom settled in Pendleton. Both parents started new lives. Both re-married.

Since the split, we've experienced one of the effects of a divorce on family: the Double Christmas.

Each year, on some kind of rotating system, we'd find a way to open presents with family in two homes. Christmas Eve on Jacquelyn Street, Christmas Morning on Gopher Flats lane.

Of course, the Double Christmas doesn't mean two Major Gifts. Despite the divorce, the parents still talk. Nevertheless, it's really nice to have two rounds of Christmas, each with its own unique set of traditions, its own traditional board game, its own kind of pie or cake.

It gets more complicated as the kids leave home when they're of age. We're lucky to get all of us together at once. This year, it happened. Phil, Chris and I are are here until Christmas Day, when the three of us brothers will drive across the state for Christmas No. 2, this one in Vernonia.

The Divorce was confusing and difficult for us as kids back in Heppner, and it certainly wasn't always smooth sailing as we all moved on. But for us, having two wings of the family is just how it is, how it's been for most of our lives. So it's not something we frown about. Instead, we enjoy the good stuff that comes from it. Like having a Double Christmas.

In the news and on the home front

In the news today, the Mount Hood climber story has taken a sad turn toward closure, a court in Libya sentenced a group of foreign health workers to death, and President Bush said the military should be expanded to help fight the War on Terror.

On the home front, I've been busy this week running errands for Mom. On two consecutive days I sent packages of cookies and calendars and things to far-off relatives, standing in long lines at the Pendleton Post Office to ensure arrival by Christmas.I cleared the house of empty beer bottles, making way for the Next Round, which will certainly be larger thanks to visiting brothers who are en route from Portland.

It's cold here, friends. About 24 degrees cold. Driving to town from our homestead on Gopher Flats on the Reservation, going the Up Way through the fields, where the brush is frost-bitten, motionless and white, it looks almost like time has stopped.

But the cold didn't stop me from changing into a turtleneck and shorts and taking the dogs, Betty and Hunter, for a run up the hill and back. When I returned to the house I was hacking. I tried water, I tried a shower, I tried standing by the space heater. Nothing worked.

Then I cracked open a bottle of Alaskan Winter Ale, and that seems to be doing the trick.

Blog on news eyes Mt. Hood coverage

The TVNewser blog at mediabistro.com has a recent post about cable news coverage of the missing climbers on Mt. Hood. Here's a sampling of the post:

I thought FNC's coverage was the most compelling, thanks in large part to Gallagher and reporter Adam Housley. Both FNC and CNN repeatedly labeled pics from Mt. Hood as "new video" even after they aired several times.

I check the blog almost daily -- more frequently that I actually watch TV news these days. It offers criticism, insider news and ratings. If you're interested in the media business, it's a great daily read.

Even more interesting is that the man behind the blog is a college student, who like me, is editor of his university's newspaper. The blogger, Brian Stelter, was anonymous until he was profiled in The New York Times in 2004. The paper ran a recent follow up as well (available for money or to TimesSelect members).

As for my own commentary about coverage of the missing climbers -- one of whom was found dead Sunday -- I've been getting most of my updates from local news channels or The Oregonian's shoddy Web site. I have been checking daily to see if the story has been getting play on national Web sites. It has. The New York Times has given the story relatively prominent play on its Web site, perhaps because one of the missing climbers is from Brooklyn.

Confusion can be deadly

The Oregonian, in its Sunday edition, reports that confusion and communication gaps hurt the search for the missing Kim family.

The story suggests that an inexperienced emergency services coordinator made some major mistakes. It adds that the undersherrif who was behind the mic at the press conferences declined to take a call from the emergency services coordinator because he was watching an OSU football game on TV.

These are just some of the problems. It's nice to see this kind of reporting, which will hopefully avoid these kinds of mishaps in the future.

I'm still digesting the lengthy story so I'm short on commentary at the moment.

Read it here.

New Life for a Dead Theatre?

Replace the group of 25 or so Pendletonians with a starry-eyed lot of college drama students, and today's tour of the darkened and gutted Rivoli Theatre on Main Street would have been a great opening scene to a scary movie.

Men with flashlights strapped to their heads climbed un-tested ladders that easily could have been constructed in the 20s or 30s. Fear was abandoned as the brave walked across the "bridge of death" from the seating area to the stage. Small groups winded down stairwells leading under the stage, discovering a trap door, a green room and passages to nowhere.

Others ventured upstairs, finding old movie posters, a mysterious paper-towel wad and even more ladders leading up. A few of the adventurous climbed to these peaks, reporting to the others what they'd found: the projection room.

The Rivoli Theatre began in 1921 as a place for live action shows, says my mother, who invited me to join her for the tour. It later showed movies, but for decades now it has lay a dormant, disorderly disaster, changing owners more than once.

But the community college's theater board here in Pendleton is exploring the idea of bringing the place back to life.

Which would be quite a project. Ripped-out rows of seats are layered like trash facing the stage. Traces of a torn-down section of the balcony line the walls to the left and right. From the lobby to back stage, trash is a signature.

Under the stage, face to face with the heaps of trash, somebody noted that in a quick movie montage, the group could renovate the place in just a few minutes.

But reality is the biggest enemy of the group of Pendleton culture visionaries. Can they find the money, the man-power or the long-term vision required to inject new life into a dead theatre?

I'll be sure to keep up on the project. If it does happen, it would be a great story to tell in a magazine article or a documentary film.

I'd be happy to direct if somebody wants to throw me some cash.

Red Ink

I found among my mom's current lot of Netflix choices a film called Tinta roja or Red Ink, a Spanish-language, English-subtitled drama set in Peru.

The lead character Alfonso is an aspiring writer who signs on at a not-so-classy tabloid newspaper planning to cover the arts. Instead he gets thrown into the strange world of reporting crime.

When he first sees the sensationalism that drives the paper, he balks, but eventually he becomes a natural at bringing drama into any murder case, whether the drama was really there or not. He becomes a key player on a team that includes his sleazy boss Faundez, a wise driver who is perhaps the film's most likable character, and a usually silent photographer who specializes is making victims' families cry so he can make the best photos.

The plot unwinds on two key developments that bring the reporters own lives into their coverage area, exposing hypocrisy in the experienced Faundez and principles in the transformed Alfonso.

This film is worth a viewing for anyone interested in journalism, but more than being about newspapermen it is simply a human drama -- and like the journalism they practice in the movie, it may be at times a bit over the top.

Smoke

Vacation can be boring. Sitting around, the only comfort from Dave Letterman and the occasional cell phone call from family or friends, I got the idea of visiting a Web site that would encourage me to start smoking.

I tried www.startsmoking.com but some idiots have bought it and made it an anti-smoking site. I'll keep looking for a site that tries to hook me on tobacco.

That's all.

Remember ...

... last night when I posted about the Horny Manatee? Well, The New York Times totally scooped me. This thing is growing.

Would you go gay for soy?

Both my friend Andrew and humorist Dave Barry noted in their blogs today that soy products, according to an expert blogger on a conservative Web site, make babies gay. The original post is here, hilarious titled, "A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals."

Fortunately, my taste for Japanese food is safe from the Evil Wrath of Soy. Says the author, Jim Rutz:

P.S.: Soy sauce is fine. Unlike soy milk, it's perfectly safe because it's fermented, which changes its molecular structure. Miso, natto and tempeh are also OK, but avoid tofu.

Bring on the natto!

Gordon Smith, defender of peace

Should moderates, or even liberals, embrace Sen. Gordon Smith's change of heart on Iraq? The Oregon Republican has suddenly decided that he opposes the war. Just in time for what could become a bitter re-election battle in 2008. I'm not going to waste column inches on the issue when The Oregonian's Steve Duin said it best.

(Here is the latest wire story on Smith's war criticism.)

Why not

Visit www.hornymanatee.com.

That is all.

It's vacation, that I know for sure

I drove more than five hours across Oregon's oceanic freeways today to arrive in the comfortable lounge that is my mother's home on Gopher Flats Lane. Here, I'm on vacation until Christmas, when I'll head back to Portland to be on vacation until early January.

This is among the perks of being a college student. I'm in my fifth year, so the routine has become normal. Ten weeks of school, a month off. Ten more weeks of school, two weeks off. Ten more weeks of school, three months off. Repeat.

But what should we call this time off? Break? Winter break? Christmas break?

In the newspaper business, we get some flack from the faith community if we don't refer to the break as "Christmas Break." In my traditional sign-off in our last issue of fall term, I urge the campus readership to "have a great winter break." In past years, the newspaper has received angry and colorful hand-written letters informing us that the break is, in fact, in honor of Jesus Christ.

I readily admit that the structure of the school year in the U.S. is based on the religious and cultural history of our dominant people. That doesn't mean we must name the break after Jesus. And what about the cultural significance of the other breaks? We don't call summer break "harvest break," do we?

And then there's the obvious reason we don't, at least at the paper, call it Christmas Break. Not everyone celebrates Christmas, shock, shock, shock.

I wouldn't be spouting off on the topic if I hadn't been hit with a anti-war-on-Christmas note from one of the paper's copy editors. In an e-mail to the copy desk, I innocently asked that they "have a great winter break." One copy editor who is, ahem, really conservative, chimed back with a decidedly early "Merry Christmas."

Is he a soldier on the side of Christmas in the alleged war perpetrated by liberal God-haters? Maybe he just loves the holidays. Either way, I'm sticking with "winter break." You don't have to believe in God to eat cheeselogs, drink winter ales and sprawl out on the couch in front of Family Griswold.