I got laid off today.

(I’m so proud of myself for not burying the lead…

Anyway, no, that’s not a joke, I really did get laid off today. Like the rest of the retail sector, Barbeques Galore has been going through a slump — they’ve closed at least two stores so far.

Much of my work involved installing computers at new stores. I just finished the most recent new store about two weeks ago, and there are no more planned for the foreseeable future.

So, ax time. Not a terribly big surprise, and no animosity. When I was laid off by Toshiba about four years ago, I was suffused with dread. This time it feels much more transitional — just one more thing to get through. I’m reasonably confident about my prospects.

I might get in touch with Seattle-based friends. Yes, I know things have been going badly up there, but it really is where Ulrika and I want to live. In some ways, this may be just the right opportunity.

And that’s the name of that tune, folks.

I’ve kind of been in “read only” mode for a while now. It’s frustrating… sometimes there’s moments when I want to say something, but I have nothing really to say.

Anyway…

There’s a great article today in the Wall Street Journal in their feature story “A-head” column (so called because the layout of the top of the column sort of looks like a big letter A). It outlines the story of the woman who was the letter carrier for the US Mail on the upper floors of One World Trade Center. It’s particularly heart rending because she’d been on that beat, floors 77-110, or so, for over twenty years. So she knew everyone. You really should read it.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk to you about. (said the whisper of Arlo Guthrie…)

I’m here to talk to you about the silly thoughts in my head. Such as, every time I see the bond trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald mentioned (who had offices up at the top, and lost 700 of about 1000 world-wide employees that day)… anyway, every time I hear Cantor Fitzgerald mentioned, I can’t help thinking, “Oh? And what about Father Goldstein? Let alone Rabbi O’Flanaghan?”

Or… Dare we say it…

Rabbi Denis Leary.

“Pull up your prayer shawl! Argue this pilpul, you fuckin’ dolts! Wake up and smell the Torah! Made from the finest cowhide… I’ll inscribe today’s reading, and ride the rest home…”

I have no idea if that’ll be funny to anyone else. All I can say is that I mean well.

In response to an article in Slate:

*^*^*

Subject: Intelligence as opposed to covert ops
From: Hal O’Brien
Date: Oct 11 2001 11:44 AM

I’ve heard this puzzlement about Sy Hersh’s article in other corners. I think the main misunderstanding is one of defining the CIA’s mission.

An intelligence service is one that gathers information about other countries and organizations. Much of the work involves analyzing publicly available material. Some of the work involves intercepting communications clandestinely. Another part of the work involves persuading people to tell us what publicly available material and intercepted communications cannot — direct reports about what happens behind closed doors.

Any similarity here to journalism is, I’m sure, purely coincidental. {cough}

While the CIA is an intelligence service in this sense, it also has a whole other mission tacked on to it — that of being, basically, the President’s secret army. Overthrowing Arbenz in Guatemala, or Mossadegh in Iran, or Allende in Chile, all fall into this category.

The upshot of this is that the CIA always has an internal battle going on, because the goals of the two branches are mutually exclusive. An intel guy wants stability for as long as possible so his source can promote into ever more senior and informed positions… and thus hand over the information to his case officer. The covert ops guys, on the other hand, always want as much sturm und drang as possible because… well, because that’s their job. And if a completely new regime comes to power, one that executes the intel guy’s sources — well, too damn bad, says the covert ops guy.

I think that what Mr. Hersh has long decried is the CIA’s covert ops/Presidential army mission. What he’s saying in the “New Yorker” article, though, is that the efforts to constrain that mission have also constrained the beneficial intelligence mission — the one that should’ve warned us about the WTC/Pentagon attacks.

So, the goal isn’t for CIA to give bin Laden an exploding cigar, a la Castro, as much as to know when, where, and what bin Laden had for breakfast… so that if we want to bomb him through conventional means, we can.

At least, that’s my interpretation of the article. I could well be wrong.

– Hal

So.

So Ulrika and I went to Regency dancing in Culver City tonight. It went well, we enjoyed ourselves, the company was fine…

We left to return home at about 11PM, 11:10, somewhere in there.

(Some of this will only make sense to Angelenos. Either that, or you need to go to http://maps.yahoo.com, or somesuch.)

We get on I-405, the San Diego Freeway, heading southbound.

Just as we pass the Sepulveda Blvd/Howard Hughes Pkwy exit, there’s a portable text sign that flashes, “BLOCKAGE AT CENTURY BLVD – EXPECT DELAYS”. There’s also a car with a flashing police light in it, except it’s not a black and white — it’s an all-white station wagon.

I turn on KFWB, 980AM, which is the only 24×7 news station in LA. (KNX is “mostly” news, meaning CBS has sports there sometimes, and old-time radio theatre, as well. KFWB makes great hay of this, rightly so, sometimes.)

KFWB’s traffic broadcast tells us (this would’ve been — 11:21? Around there. “Traffic on the Ones” is one of KFWB’s slogans) that the lanes blocked at Century Blvd have been cleared, and the backup should get moving fairly quickly.

So we creep along for a while… Century is only 1-1/2 miles forward… Which is when the Number 1 lane gets taken away by cones, forcing a merge.

Twenty minutes later, we catch up to a CalTrans truck, which is under Calif Highway Patrol escort, and replacing earlier flares with cones, taking away lanes 1,2, and 3. (the number system I know for lanes is to start left/center-most, and then count outwards.) I call KFWB’s “PhoneForce” line, which is their freeway traffic tipster’s line. I tell them how, far from being cleared, it seems the cones take an additional lane away, and that since they’re cones, they’re going to be there a while — longer than flares, that’s for certain.

That’s when we get to the Century Blvd off-ramp.

And get forced off the freeway, onto the ramp.

I make call 2 to KFWB, telling them the 405 is completely closed at Century, which also happens to be the exit for LAX, Los Angeles Int’l Airport.

But that turns out not to be quite true. The transition/exit lanes through that stretch are much more intricate than I knew, and they allow us to rejoin the 405 without ever having been at street level. You merge back in to the main freeway just north of the 105 interchange.

Along the way, we see what must’ve been a police investigation scene. Highway Patrol cars are parked perpendicular to lanes, to block the freeway. There may have been an LAPD car or two, I’m not sure. Maybe 6-8 black and whites, total. And more of the stealth all-white station wagons.

In addition to this cluster of manpower, plastic markers are all over the freeway, each showing a letter: A, B, C, etc. My first thought is bullet marks, but Ulrika says, no, the trajectories are wrong, it’s probably debris markers. Certainly they seem to be a way of marking and differentiating evidence.

So I call KFWB a third time, telling them this — that I was wrong about the full closure, you can still get through albeit on the transition roads; about the investigation; the white cars; the lettered markers.

Then I keep tuning in every ten minutes, to see if we get any updates.

At first, nothing. Then KFWB says there’s an accident on the 405 at Century, closing the fast lane (which would be the Number 1 lane).

Folks, there were four lanes of freeway closed at Century. Plus beaucoup cops and unidentified law enforcement crawling over the place. At the airport. To hell with the traffic implications alone, this was a story.

By the time we got home to Costa Mesa, half-an-hour and three updates later, KFWB never accurately reported the situation once.

After dropping off Ulrika and our dog at home, I went to In-N-Out for a late dinner. I listened to KFWB some more. One more update, no news.

After ordering at In-N-Out’s window, I called KFWB one last time: Why weren’t they reporting the four lane closure at Century?

“That’s police activity.”

“Yes, I know, but why aren’t you reporting it on the air?”

“We aren’t?”

“Not for at least the last half-hour, no.”

A long pause. “I have no idea, chief.”

That was at 1:05AM. When I left In-N-Out at 1:31AM, I listened on the way home. One more update, no 405/Century info.

So… The clear inference is that somebody spiked this story, good and hard.

Just look out for plain white station wagons in your rear view mirror, is all I have to say.