David Lat

My Happy Holiday Haul

I didn't really get that into Christmas gift giving this year, since I didn't have the time to invest in thoughtful present purchases. I ended up going to Borders on the weekend before Christmas and buying almost $400 in gift cards. A cop-out, I realize, but I rationalize it on libertarian grounds: I believe in giving people the freedom to choose what they really want, as opposed to what I think they want (or should want).

Of course, taking the libertarian argument for gift cards to its logical extreme might suggest we should all just give cash to each other. But that's not as socially acceptable, at least for gifts exchanged by social peers, like gifts from me to my cousins (as opposed to gifts from elders to young people, or gifts made in a professional context -- e.g., holiday gifts from lawyers to secretaries, or from apartment residents to doormen -- where cash is just fine).

Also, a gift certificate as opposed to cash has a desirable aspect of forced consumption. The giver is effectively telling the recipient, "Go out and treat yourself to something nice -- you deserve it." A cash gift, in contrast, can be saved or invested (and the recipient might feel guilty for blowing the cash on a day at the spa, instead of saving it for a rainy one).

So back to this year. I don't feel as guilty about my resort to gift cards, since I received several myself -- and was delighted to get them. In fact, I was very pleased by my Christmas gifts this year, which were uncommonly useful. Here are selected highlights:

-- an external hard drive (which I had been meaning to buy myself, but was experiencing indecision paralysis on, thinking I needed to do my consumer research first; so I'm glad my aunt just went out and got me one);

-- a flash drive (which I'm already using, to shuttle files back and forth between my three computers);

-- an iPod touch (the 16GB version -- sweet);

-- a digital tire pressure gauge (which is great, since I hate checking my tire pressure, and as a result don't do it enough);

-- a GPS system for my car (also great, since I'm constantly getting lost -- I hate D.C. and northern Virginia's poor road signage); and

-- gift cards to Whole Foods and Barnes & Noble, two stores that I regularly visit.

Christmas is a religious holiday, an occasion to reflect upon and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.
But the spiritual origins of Christmas shouldn't preclude us from taking pleasure in nifty gifts.

So I hope that you had a very merry Christmas -- and that you're as pleased with your gifts as I am with mine.

Dream: December 24, 2007

This was a long and involved dream, and vaguely unpleasant, but I can't remember many of the details. It featured a filthy lake, overgrown with weeds and covered with floating trash, that somehow I fell into. I then somehow got some of the disgusting lake water on to the jeans of a woman -- I didn't know her, but she was the wife or girlfriend of a friend -- who got pretty pissed about it (even though, at least in the dream, it wasn't my fault; it was an accident).

The dream also involved my riding the elevator in a subway station -- how many times have you ever ridden an elevator inside a subway station? -- packed with friends and family, as if we had all come from the same event. Someone in the elevator was wearing a t-shirt with excerpts from a Shakespeare concordance on the back. I don't see that shirt becoming a bestseller anytime soon.

A friend of mine was supposed to have ridden the subway with me. But after we went through the turnstile, he changed his mind, and offered some excuse for not traveling with me that struck me as somewhat lame. So I was left to ride the subway by myself.

Finally, there was a part of the dream where I was riding a short bus. But it wasn't short enough -- the bus driver wanted to parallel park it in a tiny space in front of an apartment building that the bus driver thought was being vacated. But I didn't think the owner of the car -- who was standing near the car in his pajamas, and carrying on a conversation with the doorman of his building -- was going to be vacating the spot. It seemed to me that he was maybe getting something from the car, or asking the doorman to keep an eye on the car. In any event, the spot would have been too small for the bus.

Happy Holidays to All

Here's a picture I took on Thursday of the ginormous Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center:

Click on the thumbnail for a closer look, so you can fully appreciate the tree's ginormosity. The people look so small by comparison. And hey, is that Susie Essman in the foreground?

I actually took many shots of the tree, from different angles and with different flash settings. As I snapped one photo after another, I asked myself: "Now what can I do to make myself look even more like an Asian tourist?"

Anecdotal evidence of a bad holiday travel season

From recent Facebook status updates of various friends:

R.C. hates holiday traveling.

A.O. finally in Chicago, after the second most turbulent flight ever.

A.N. is stuck on a plane idling on a runway... for the last two hours!!!

T.S. is having airport-related adventures.

M.S. is enduring / unexpected flight delay / reward, business class.

S.K. is not enjoying Amtrak's cryptic messages regarding why the train has been stopped for 30 minutes.

I don't recall reading this many travel complaints around Thanksgiving. As the old saying goes, blame it on the weather.

Weather Makes A Long Road Home For Some [CBS News]

Britney's Shout-Out to the Philippines

I was struck by the passing reference to the Philippines in Britney Spears's pleasurable new song, Piece of Me. So I thought I'd write a quick little post about it.

Here are the relevant lyrics (emphasis added):

I’m Miss American Dream since I was 17
Don’t matter if I step on the scene
Or sneak away to the Philippines
They still got pictures of my derrière in the magazine
You want a piece of me?
You want a piece of me…

But in the digital age, everything you might want to think or say has been thought or said already. Several other bloggers, on both sides of the Pacific, have already opined on the shout-out.

Here's what one Filipino blogger had to say:

Thanks to pop singer Britney Spears, not every pop culture reference to the Philippines is negative.... [Describes the reference.]

That's awfully nice and all, but it doesn't mean we're required to buy a record that badly written.

Oh come now, who buys Britney albums for the writing? We buy Britney albums for simple, ear-candy pleasures -- especially the infectious choruses, like the one in Piece of Me. [FN1]

A U.S.-based blogger, over at The Hollywood Gossip, offered this caustic commentary on the Philippines mention:

There’s a good chance this is the worst rhyme of all time. No one sneaks away to the Philippines. Come on. That’s the best you can do?

I agree that the rhyme is a bit forced, which comes across more clearly when you listen to the song. But I disagree that "[n]o one sneaks away to the Philippines." The island of Cebu, where my mother's family is from, was recently named one of the top resort islands in the world, by Conde Nast Traveler.

Not surprisingly, commenters jumped all over the Hollywood Gossip, with the zeal of paparazzi stalking Britney:

"[N]o one sneaks away to the Philippines? I’ve been to many places, and they have one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. You don’t know anything coz you don’t have enough money to travel the world and visit places like I do. I bet the farthest you’ve gone is your shitty toilet. Get a life. Earn money. Don’t attack Britney just because your life is worth less than her pouch bag."

"whoever wrote this article is stupid as hell! some celebs sneak away to the philippines! george clooney and mariah carey were spotted at some hidden private resort. you obviously don’t know what it’s like to be a celebrity so stop hating on britney."

"— WTF?! R U LKE OUT OF YOUR MIND?. WATS WRONG ABOUT THE PHILIPPINES. ITS SUCH A NICE COUNTRY… AND I ACKNOWLEDGE BRIT FOR PUTTING OUR COUNTRY IN THAT SONG… get a LIFE… if u hve one! "

To paraphrase a certain disturbed -- and disturbingly androgynous -- young man: "LEAVE... THE PHILIPPINES... ALONE!!!"

[FN1] For an example of the writing quality of the Spears oeuvre, consider the lyrics to Hit Me Baby One More Time: a grand total of forty-two (42) words, for the entire song (and that's counting "you're" as two words). We're not talking Coleridge here.

Britney Spears - “Piece of Me” Lyrics [Just Jared]
Britney Spears - Piece of Me [YouTube]
The Philippines and Britney Spears [Metroblogging Manila]
You Want a Piece of Britney Spears? [The Hollywood Gossip]

Dream: December 22, 2007

I was on a bus tour of Italy (although at times it looked more like Maryland than Italy; one of our stops was near a bridge that looked like the Chesapeake Bay Bridge). I was by myself and didn't know any of the other passengers. They were a demographic mix, but there were a fair number of old people (as there always are on escorted motorcoach tours).

We made a bathroom stop after crossing that bridge. As always, there was an issue about some passengers taking too long to return to the bus.

I was reading a book while on the bus. It was a novel, and it was hardcover and hefty, but it was going very quickly. I remember being halfway done after just a day of reading. The bus driver teased me about the size of this tome.

Listed on the passenger manifest, but not on the bus (thankfully): my book agent and his assistant. I've been hiding from them because I've been delinquent in working on a proposal. It's funny how the things that you stress out about in your waking life come and find you in your dreams.

Why I'm Glad I'm Not in DC Right Now

This happened about three blocks from my apartment. Nasty.

Crack is Whack [Knee Deep in Mud]

Obama Calls Out Edwards

It's kinda nice to see St. Obama go after John Edwards -- instead of attacking my girl Hillary, as he's been doing so much of lately (and with some measure of success).

But the flipside of the coin is that to attack Edwards is to acknowledge him. And I've been kind of enjoying how everyone has been ignoring JE, fixated as they are on the Clinton-Obama smackdown. In the past few months, Edwards has been like a well-groomed chihuahua. Despite  yapping away ceaselessly for attention, he is paid no heed, as the media and the voters watch the big dogs fight it out.

Obama Criticizes Edwards' Record [AP via Drudge]

How Did This Get To Be #3 on the NYT Most Emailed Articles List?

Usually it's easy to figure out how articles make their way on to the Most Emailed Articles list of the New York Times. But the presence (and #3 ranking) on the list of this column, by Bob Herbert, has me puzzled. Whether you agree or disagree with the substance of his argument, the piece itself is completely banal. One would be hard-pressed to find a single original thought in it.

To be sure, many NYT columnists -- including some of the most wildly popular, like Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich -- write columns that are less than completely original, drawing heavily on their past work. But at least Dowd and Rich are often scathingly funny. Herbert's column is devoid of humor and frighteningly earnest. One would expect to find it in the pages of a Long Island high school newspaper, penned by a guilt-ridden teenager from an affluent background -- not in the pages of the Gray Lady.

Nightmare Before Christmas [New York Times]

Because the world really needs yet another blog from me

I've been planning to set up a personal website for the longest time. Back in February 2007, I opened a Typepad account for this purpose. But I didn't get around to putting up the site until today (yes, some ten months later).

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure how much I'll end up blogging here. For law-related blogging, I have Above the Law; for personal blogging, I have Facebook (which, due to my frequent status updates, serves as a "microblog" of sorts).

I guess this is where I'll blog in the first person singular. I predict that I'll blog here on an unpredictable pattern -- sometimes multiple posts a day, sometimes no posts for weeks.

If you have any suggestions, as to either design or content, please email me. I've only just started this blog, so it's still a work in progress.

Thanks for visiting!