Happened upon this while changing channels this morning.

There are several direction in which I could take this.

• How friendly?
• Damn you autocorrect!
• When interns attack.
• I don’t recall this program featuring a long-winged seabird.

How about you? Anything spring to mind?

I’m delighted to present today Watson’s Big Bump - my latest contribution to the sock monkey literary canon. It recounts the misadventures of Watson the sock monkey (named after Watson of Watson & Crick, of course, because my house is nerd-intensive). In this tome, Watson enjoys jumping on the awesome flowered chair until… there’s a big bump.

If anyone buys the book (attractively priced at $.99) and enjoys it, I encourage you to review it on Amazon – especially if we don’t share a last name. If you don’t like it, I encourage you to keep that to yourself. But really, feel very free to review honestly – I am grateful for any and all feedback and would love to learn how to do this better.

Of note: I agonize over making my books work well on the Kindle app for the iPhone. I believe one of the best features of this book (aside from the fact that sock monkeys are awesome) is that it is perfect for distracting and/or amusing children in lines and waiting rooms.

Thank you

Yvette – for dropping off her own sock monkey unbidden to play the doctor. It was just the kick in the butt I needed to actually do something.

Doctors Shearin and Roche – who graciously answered some very silly questions such as “what are the chances that you’d send a kid for an x-ray and their arm wouldn’t actually be broken?” Because I really wanted to do a sock monkey x-ray, but wanted to cop out on his arm being broken (it’s your lucky day, Watson!). Apparently, they tend to be pretty sure there’s a break before subjecting kids to radiology, so Watson gets a cast in the end.

Manda – For providing enough doubt in my own standard of sock monkey care that I consulted with the pediatricians. You kept me from making even more of an ass of myself. As usual.

The rest of you – For being too kind to make fun of me to my face. Please allow me to thank you in advance.

Exciting intellectual property issues that only I would notice

The first book – Watson on the Move – is currently free for Amazon Prime members. It also suffered from my photography (read the original post here). I got confused when I tried to figure out if I was violating anyone’s intellectual property by using photos of a sock monkey manufactured by someone else. Sock monkeys in general are in the public domain – they have been a feature of the American landscape for a good, long time, and are ubiquitous enough that no one can claim to own the concept.

However! The pattern that comes with the usual sock monkey socks is patented.

And furthermore! The monkey produced by a particular toy company may or may not have characteristics that sufficiently set it apart, so that I could conceivably be in some kind of violation.

And so I turned to illustrating my own sock monkey book. Just one problem…

I am crap at illustrating

But how, you’re probably wondering, can someone with no artistic talent or skill illustrate their own children’s book? Interestingly, when I posed that question to my friends on Facebook, everyone I know in Los Angeles said “no problem! You have style!” Take from that what you will.

Here’s what I did:

• Making my own damn sock monkey.
• Staging photos with it. I even made scrubs for Dr. Cal.
• Projecting those photos onto a piece of paper.
• Outlining.
• Coloring in.
• Scanning.

And here we are – it’s not great art, but I think it’s passable, and maybe even a little cute.  Thanks for reading this far. And I hope you like Watson. Coming up next: Watson’s Day at the Beach.

After a year of tremendous growth – thanks to my rockstar clients – Nutgraf HQ is on the move! Our original location, conveniently based on my kitchen counter, offered proximity to snacks and laundry facilities, but was no longer able to accommodate our workload and storage needs.

After a rigorous exploration process, we decided to engage the window nook in the guest room/Spouse’s home office area. This (comparatively) spacious, top-floor suite includes a big South-facing window and is absolutely flooded with natural light and fitted out with the latest designs from a little neighborhood boutique called Ikea – you may have heard of it. It is also painted a becoming shade of blue.

Our new perch includes an unobstructed view of the highway out front and the condo building across the street – a great improvement over our former view of the sink and snack cabinet. Unlike our previous workspace, we are delighted to note that this one features drawers.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

“Let’s talk about non-communicable diseases,” I might say to you.

“Omigod, I am sick to death of talking about NCDs,” you totally would not say. “If I hear one more world leader outlining a clear plan to address them, I’m simply going to scream,” you would never add.

The acronym may be new to you. And you may not have heard of them grouped this way, but NCDs are diseases like cancer, diabetes, respiratory and cardiovascular illness. The kind of sick you get for a long time. That didn’t come from a mosquito, or a bad drink of water, or physical contact with someone infected. The kind of sick that… wait for it… causes two out of every three deaths worldwide.

Let me repeat that last bit:

NCDs cause two out of every three deaths worldwide.

At this point, let me issue a prominent and exciting Disclaimer:
I’m a consultant and one of my primary clients is Arogya World – a small nonprofit dedicated to fighting NCDs. They pay me to work on their website and social media stuff, but no one at Arogya asked me to write this post, and they did not review it. I did not receive any special compensation for this essay, though I’m pretty confident that they’re not unhappy about it.

But back to the issue at hand…

The problem is that NCDs are like furniture.

NCDs are a group of everyday diseases that impact everyone around the world. They’re everywhere. They attack the rich and the poor alike. You know people who have or had cancer. Heart disease is ubiquitous. Stroke threatens us all. Diabetes is on the rise.

These diseases are largely preventable and treatable, and we’re still dying from them by the millions. In fact, more of us are dying from them each year.

And global health professionals have made it boring.

They keep talking to one another – going on about “engaging with stakeholders,” “outreaching to civil society.” It’s my job and it puts me to sleep. What do you or I care about their stakeholders, or policy elites?

The World Health Organization (WHO) did an awesome little video on NCDs that started off strong:

• NCDs kill 36 million people every year.
• Nine million of those before the age of 60, when they should be working and taking care of their families.
  And the kicker:
• These diseases are largely preventable.

They totally blow it at the 47 second mark, though. There, they talk about engaging government, private sector and civil society. Snore.

You can see the video here:
Unite in the fight against NCDs

18 million women die from NCDs each year.

Arogya World and a bunch of other partners started a petition that they will bring to the UN Summit on NCDs later this month. Their goal is to gather 10,000 women’s signatures demanding real, tangible commitments to helping people live longer, healthier lives. Commitments like educating people on healthy living and disease prevention, promoting sports and physical activity, taxing tobacco and alcohol products and reducing the marketing of junk food to children.

This is only the second time the UN has had this kind of meeting on a health topic, and the other one was HIV/AIDS, another acronym that didn’t used to mean a lot to people. This says to me that NCDs are at least this much of a crisis.

If you care about things like cancer, diabetes, and heart and lung disease, please consider signing on and sharing the petition with your friends.

Petition: Demand a Healthy Future, Free from Chronic Disease

Why do I care?

Here, I’ve been blogging about what a rat-bastard cancer is for a couple of years now (but less politely). I want my daughter to be at a lower risk of getting cancer than I am. I want her not to linger, suffer and die from the lymphoma that took my grandfather, or the lung cancer that took my grandmother – six weeks before she could have met her first great grandchild. I don’t want my kid to have to shave my head, like I shaved my mother’s when she was being treated for breast cancer. I don’t want my daughter to want because I got sick and can’t work. I want her heart to be healthy and her lungs strong so she can kick butt and take names. I want her to live for a million years, and to rock all of them.

We have the tools to live longer and healthier lives. We just have to make it happen. That’s why I signed.

Here’s that link again.

Petition: Demand a Healthy Future, Free from Chronic Disease

This post has been cross-published in a couple of places.

The Internets can be fickle. Social media is so in that it’s now a big yawn. The shark has been jumped, Twitter has been twa… er… tweeted, and nothing against all of you foursquare fans, but I know nothing about foursquare and still cannot stand it. I’m not even interested in where I am most of the time.

My pocketbook is smarter than me

But as we all stare ever more raptly into the tiny screens we carry around, I’ve been thinking about how isolating it all really is. We don’t talk to people on the metro (though honestly, that’s kind of a blessing), we don’t ask for directions, we can get book recommendations at the tap of a finger, find out how much that house cost, compare prices around the world with the flick of a thumb, and tighten our tether to e-mail and work all in the name of convenience. What I haven’t seen, though, is a really good implementation that combines social media, the Internets and the big, bad, real world.

The other week I was invited to try out the goSmithsonian Trek scavenger hunt across the Smithsonian Institution museums and – to be honest – I thought “Ugh. Trying to navigate the real world with new technology. How annoying is this going to be?” I was wrong. It was actually pretty fun, even going it alone.

• Read more about the Trek on the Around the Mall blog

Basically, you download the SCVNGR app to your iPhone or Droid (because you are a nerd) and it takes you on kind of a guided tour of several of the museums. You are invited to answer a series of questions or “challenges,” featuring trivia from the exhibits, and earn points for correct answers. It’s kind of addictive, and I found myself plowing through school groups and dashing up stairways to find the answers.

Dodging tourists and photographing elephant butts

One of the things you’re encouraged to do in each museum is snap a photo to share. Here’s mine from Natural History. I’m also not entirely proud of the way I behaved in the Wright Brothers exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum, where I tried to move quickly through lolly gagging families to efficiently complete one challenge before moving on to the next.

I think the Trek has great applications. As a DC native, I’ve long seen school groups going on pen-and-paper scavenger hunts in the museums. This takes it digital and really makes it work with the technology that’s already in your pocket. I could totally picture going on this Trek with a bunch of kids (assuming a bunch of kids each have iPhones or Droids or whatever) and setting them loose to conduct the challenge. Or maybe as a group activity. DC is riddled with bright-eyed young things who love organized fun. And curmudgeons (such as myself) can also learn a thing or two. Even those (also such as myself) who used to work at Smithsonian Enterprises.

To fulfill the challenges, I actually looked around the Smithsonian Castle for the first time in years, saw the crypt where are kept the remains of James Smithson, the man who donated the bags of gold (literally) to found an “Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge” in a country he never visited during his life. This is just one of the amazing things to know about this amazing place.

Focus on experience, not interface.

As I said, I was pretty reluctant to try this thing out. I’m no luddite, but am congenitally cranky. It would be the easiest thing in the world to make the interface either too complicated or the activity dangerously dull. They’ve managed to make a really simple-to-use tool to guide users through what is at heart a much more complex activity. And keep the focus on the content, and the experience rather than on navigating the freaking phone. Strong work, guys.

But don’t take my word for it – feel free to download the free SCVNGR app yourself and head to the national mall. And don’t forget to drink plenty of water, it’s appalling out.

Plans for the future

I just spoke to the charming Beth Py-Lieberman, the editor of goSmithsonian who managed this whole shebang. She said that they’d love to take it further after this one-month trial is up. Maybe monthly treks, since the exhibits (particularly in the art museums) change so frequently.

“One of the takeaway lessons for me,” said Beth, “is that some of the visitors are going to have to be challenged more. We’re going to have to make them work hard for the answers, and get them into the back corners of the Smithsonian where the great stuff is.” I somehow failed to mention that I just couldn’t get one of the answers from the Hall of Oceans, so I may be in big trouble if they smart it up too much.

But it takes a lot of work to put one of these together. The one that’s live now? Beth says they started development during the DeathSnow and launched it during the heat wave, and that is something of a time commitment. It went through a lot of rounds of edits, a couple because the exhibits changed and threw the trek out of whack with reality, and one round Beth called “riddle-fying,” which is where they made lots of the questions rhyming and/or funny, which is pretty cute. No one asked me, but this all seems rather perfectly in line with the Institution’s stated goal of taking the whole of the Smithsonian digital, a project that is so exciting and of such appalling scope I can’t even get my brain around it. Maybe my pocketbook can.

• Check out the Smithsonian Commons prototype

Disclosure: I used to be an employee of  Smithsonian Enterprises. I have not been paid, compensated, bribed, cajoled or threatened to try this trek or write this post.

Read more about the goSmithsonian Trek from these fine bloggers:

Going places and completing challenges with the goSmithsonian Trek mobile app

Winning an iPad from the Smithsonian!

You know you’ve been in DC too long when you know for a fact that this has happened before:

Northwest Washington residents capture runaway horse

“A runaway horse, without saddle, bridle or rider, galloped through the streets of upper Northwest Washington on Sunday evening, provoking concern and astonishment, and many calls to the police.”

My parents love to tell the following story from when I was a tiny kid, and we lived on Yuma Street in Northwest D.C.:

A Park Police horse got loose and went galloping up the street past our house. It was followed closely by a cop on a motorcycle. Apparently I was so taken by this that I pulled a little chair up to the window so I could watch for it to happen again.

Let it be known that I was not wrong! I just didn’t wait long enough.

During the 3094809803 months I was pregnant, I ate a lot of Dum Dum lollipops. Like, more than you’d think possible because I am congenitally incapable of leisurely sucking on one, and instead crunch them into oblivion instantly. This creates a lot of candy wrappers. You used to be able to cash them in for cool things like t-shirts and frisbees and other branded merchandise, back when online stores weren’t yet ubiquitous and people listened to cassettes. You can still trade ‘em for schwag (the wrappers not the cassettes), but it’s less of a challenge since you can also just send in $6 or whatever without having to suffer through the candy. But suffer I did. My friend Manda likes to say that I built a human heart out of Skittles, and she’s probably not far off. And now I have to wear large slacks. But that’s a story for another time. Back to the lollipop wrappers.

I had a bunch of small, colorful squares and wanted to do some kind of fun art project with them. After discounting some paper weaving projects as “too much effort,” I decided to try to make a small, delicate mobile that can be gently buffeted in the natural air currents of the baby’s room, to the delight of all. Origami is a natural application for small squares of paper, and I was sure that the Internets could hook me up with some simple instructions that even I could follow successfully. And so it came to pass…

How To Make An Origami Mobile

1) Eat a lot of lollipops and conserve the wrappers. Tip: Sharing the candy with your coworkers will mitigate their concern when they see a ziploc bag full of candy wrappers on the desk of the enormous pregnant lady.

2) Pick through the wrappers and discard any torn or mangled ones.

3) Flatten them clumsily by hand, and then – because you are a maniac – iron them individually. Place them between two layers of kitchen towel and smooth them gently on a medium setting without steam. Use a light hand and be careful not to melt them to the towel. Like I did.

4) Conduct many individual acts of origami! Instructions for many fanciful animals can easily be located on the Internets. Search terms I used included: origami, easy, for dummies.

5) Tie together to pieces of (in this case) floral arrangement wire with nylon thread for the armature.

6) Make several strings of several paper birds (or whatever) each and tie them in an artistic manner to the armature. If your piece does not balance well when held from a loop tied to the center of the armature, you can scootch (technical term) the strings to different places on the bars, or add and subtract birds as needed.

7)  Once you’re satisfied that it is structurally sound and well-balanced, declare your work of art complete and try to suppress any flashbacks to things you’ve seen on Regretsy.com: “Where DIY meets WTF.”

My family is full of enthusiastic walkers. We walk long, we walk often, we walk kind of fast. I love it – I get to look around the neighborhood, see what’s new, catch some vitamin D, run errands without having to figure out parking. It’s good exercise and a great tool in the stress management arsenal. And it gives you a pedestrian’s-eye view of your environment – which allows you to see more detail than you can from a car.

Details like this, found on a bike/running/walking kind of trail near my house:

Thanks for this, Sport. Very motivational. I was thinking of writing below it “Surrender Dorothy,” and then I lost interest.

And this little number in the window of one of those shady rug stores that are perpetually going out of business:

A nice twist don’t you think? To Prevent Bankruptcy. I think the subtlety may have been lost on some folks, since they have since reverted to the standard issue Going Out Of Business signage. It was cute while it lasted, though. And I would have totally missed if it I had been in a car. Not because I’d have been whizzing by, mind you, but because I would have been blinded by apoplectic rage. Traffic in my neighborhood sucks.

Interestingly (to me), I think the rug store owner is either acquainted with or is the same person as the owner and landlord of two group houses on my street. Folks who have known me since we bought our place knows that an adventure those houses have been. It looks like I’ve deleted my old posts about the neighbors. But they were a real treat. Once in a while, in a surplus of high spirits, they’d celebrate “Call Each Other a Motherfucker” hour at four in the morning, while slashing one another’s tires. I invested in earplugs and learned how to grind my teeth in my sleep.

Ah. Memories.

But the landlord remodeled the house a couple of years ago and implemented a total tenant turnover (after an attempt to sell for an outrageous sum failed – which I figure is probably helping him skirt some other regulation about owner occupancy, or rental permitting). The group there now is great and I have no complaints. But the owner is apparently a long-time scammer, and is up to some old tricks. I refer you to this old CityPaper article about The Going-Out-Of-Business Business – it’s a good explanation of the never-ending bankruptcy sale, and references my rug-mogul-turned-real-estate-tycoon right at the tippy top.

See? You can learn some stuff by getting out of the car and walking around.

The weather outside is deeply disturbing. And something about the air pressure make me keep tipping over on the sofa like a buffalo with a dart in its flank, napping randomly. But I am delighted to report that I have successfully worked my way through this pile of New Yorkers, and resolve to stay more on top of things moving forward.

• Winter wonderland photos and Deathsnow Challenge Part I
• Bare shelves at Safeway, and Deathsnow Challenge Part II

February 8, 2010, continued

Okay, so after the Keyser Söze piece, I did enjoy the profile of gospel singer Tonex, and his complicated past and present. Best of luck to him in all of his future endeavors. ‘William Burns’ by Roberto Bolano was a dark and disturbing piece of fiction that I was happy to end. Castle in the Air – about a ginormotron skyscraper in Dubai – Vegas of the Middle East, but without the class – was honestly pretty cool. No matter how repulsive  a city it is, they do build some cool stuff. None of the other reviews/critiques really moved me.

And on to the big, fat 85th Anniversary Issue, the last in my series.

Feb 15 & 22, 2010

In Talk of the Town, comparing the week’s takings for Avatar to the federal budget deficit is an unspeakably depressing thing to do. Thanks.

And so we move on to “The Trial,” and Eric Holder’s battle about trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Lots of bloodthirsty people on all sides of this equation who don’t want this to go to trial. Easy for them to say, seems to me. And while we’re at it – if none of the places where people died on 9-11 want to host an expensive and divisive trial, they should just have it here in DC. We never make our budgets anyway and public transportation is already a disaster. Also, c’mon people, due process and human rights are what America’s all about. Love it or leave it, man.

Mules? By the way? Are awesome. And this piece about alcohol and alcoholism across different cultures is really interesting. As is the incredible civil rights photographic portfolio by Platon and introduced by David Remnick – a class act.

And with that, I’ll get back to obsessing about the weather and the poor performance of WMATA. I thank you for your kind indulgence.

It just won’t stop frakking snowing, so I’m still trying to burn through these New Yorkers. Just when I thought that I was nearing the end, the mailman managed to access our house despite the Deathsnow and deliver another one.

• Read Part I of the Deathsnow Challenge

Meanwhile, Spouse had to walk me around today, in advance of this latest storm, so we went to our neighborhood Safeway. A couple of snapshots, to give you an idea of the carnage. I think Spouse was having flashbacks to his youth in Moscow. He kept muttering “if you are for the first time in Moscow, welcome.” and something about 12 kilos of potatoes. Poor Spouse.

February 1, 2010

Bed bugs, Lady Gaga, and the ongoing tragedy in Haiti open up this week’s issue. I kind of lucked out this time, since my copy is missing a bunch of pages from the middle – the result being that the article about Dresden merging awkwardly with one  about the Department of Investigation, also known as “the city’s secret police.” I think.

Meghan O’Rourke’s piece about grief hit kind of close to home, what with my rockstar Grandma dying just a couple of weeks ago. Which reminds me to point out that Cancer is Still an Asshole, and that I’ve had some great success with the Amazon affiliation since launch. There will be a donation to the ACS, as promised, just as soon as Amazon submits their tally. Not bad! Remember, all you have to do is go through this link or any on the Cancer is an Asshole Web site, buy whatever you’re going to buy on Amazon anyway, and they’ll kick me 4% or so of your purchase price, every cent of which I will send to the ACS.

The analysis of the Leno/O’Brien squabble is best summed up as “an abject failure of leadership” and left to die. Never cared for any of those programs myself, so it’s hard for me to take this story or the analysis thereof at all seriously.

Meanwhile, this is taking me so long that I just got another issue. And damn! As the special 85th Anniversay Issue, it’s a fat one.

February 8, 2010

Naturally, this issue opens with a couple of remembrances of J.D. Salinger. More power to ‘em. Moving on to the tragedy in Haiti, the story about Nadia provides a vivid picture of the harsh realities on the ground – both now and before the earthquake.

I don’t know why, but the Shouts & Murmurs pieces have been pretty weak for the last few issues. I could also be humor impaired after sitting in the house all this time. Now, I’m working my way through a really great article about a guy they’re comparing to Keyser Söze, but keep getting interrupted by things like dinner, extremely welcome phone calls, and Spouse wanting to read that article even more than me.

But since it’s Still Frakking Snowing, I’ll have some time tomorrow to finish up.