Turning

So we're closing out this 2006 with some notable deaths: Gerald Ford, James Brown, and Saddam Hussein. It's unfortunate that they are all names that seem to be more a part of yesterday's news than current events, though perhaps that is a better way to go - when one's most notable moments have had a chance to play out in full. I have to think it's more fitting for such a list at the end of the year than as a beginning, as has too often been the case.

Morbid? Who, me? I look upon this past year and see personal and public tragedies that have thrown me off my stride more than once, so I cannot say farewell to this year with too much regret. I can only look forward to 2007 with optimism - may HP7 be released in this coming year, may Eldest prove a better film than Eragon, may those who are currently snowbound find the coming year more passable and fair.

Something Stinks, I Think

Many bags of litter promise to reduce and/or eliminate odor, but the plain truth is that anything sufficiently neglected or merely glossed will eventually lead to toxic buildup and unbearable reek. I'm talking about more than the kitty litter, of course. Promises are easy to make when others are in control, but delivering is a different matter. Robert Redford's movie The Candidate remains as applicable today as it was when it was made. There's a new leadership in national politics coming into power, but that doesn't guarantee that the reek of the recent past will be properly cleaned out. Detritus accumulates and evades housecleaning. That's just the nature of things, whether in literal or figurative housekeeping. Sometimes the old litter just needs to be completely discarded, including the old litterbox. Sometimes, revolution is the only way to really clean house. I say, sometimes - not always. The bigger the pile of manure, the less likely throwing the entire container out will serve to eliminate the inherent stench.

What am I talking about?

Odd Comment?

Odd Comment
14 November 2006

Walking around one of the increasingly ubiquitous box stores today led to another increasingly ubiquitous sight: a Christmas decorations display depicting an ostensible slice of Americana – a small town square. There was a hardware store (significantly smaller and less comprehensive than the one I was in), a diner (filled with teens who evidently don’t have afterschool activities like sports or part-time jobs), a railroad station (without accompanying tracks nearby), a ferris wheel, (doesn’t your town have a ferris wheel erected near the town square?), a gas station (sans posted prices because, after all, who knows what those will be from day to day?), children skating on an ice pond, villagers chatting idly, and a couple holding hands.

Now here’s the thing: the female partner looked perfectly normal (aside from the fact that she was attired as a typical bobby soxer), but her male companion (I have to assume he was male,) was clean-shaven from the shoulders upwards, to the point of being literally headless. Why, you ask, was he headless? This question opens the door wide to all sorts of speculation… (see the gleam in my eye?)

Did some careless clerk or customer accidentally drop the paired figure and accidentally knock off this guy’s block or is this some more insidious social commentary being made in an otherwise innocuous public setting?

Did some irate worker take out her frustration on the defenseless figurine? (I saw two women workers clearing and setting up wooden fences forming pens for incoming Christmas trees; they didn’t look happy about their task, though they did look resigned to it.)

Did the fellow finally say something to cause his female companion literally to bite his head off?

Is this a set composed by an ardent feminist commenting on the figurative male condition? Is he lucky he was allowed to keep his pants on?

Was this, perhaps, vandalism perpetrated by someone whose significant other needs to be very very cautious tonight upon returning home, perhaps because he was laggard in unpacking his “stuff” recently? (Should the local constabulary be informed?)

With any luck, the answer will never be known, never make the local or national headlines. Still, it does leave the idle passerby wondering…

Toy Store

Wandering through a smalltown toy store is always interesting, particularly because there tends to be a collector's interest in toys of bygone days as well as the more common offerings one might find at places like Toys-R-Us, K-Mart, Wal-Mart, or Target. Wandering through such a facility is almost inevitable when it is located within easy walking distance of a like-minded comic collector's store.

What was particularly striking today, however, was the realization that the toy market has become so aggressive in its early imprinting of children as potential future consumers. There is not just one style of dollhouse any more, but a plethora of real estate opportunities from which to select an idealized domicile these days, just like those through which young couples intent on nesting must wade. It's easy to see how parents or children might be tempted to invest in the assembling of a year-round town or private suburb. Think of it as a great learning tool for that budding civil engineer. There are all sorts of accessories available for the barebones structures as well, so that the townhouse, loft, condominium, ranch-style single family dwelling, classic Victorian, or banal apartment complex need not stand empty for long. There are contemporary kitchens, dens with plasma tv screens, wrap-around sofas, bunk beds, etc. Playing house has, indeed, come a long way.

It's nice to see that yesterday's children have been stretching their imaginations, but seeing such toys does make me wonder what room has been left for the imaginations of the next generation. Will they be too busy processing input to develop their own output? Or will they simply take both play and productivity to yet another level? Optimistically, I'm still young enough that I expect to see the answer to this question in just a few years.

No Mystery Here

The World Poker Tour is on television this evening, somehow far more engaging than early election results. One fellow backed into a straight flush, always a cool thing to see, though more interesting in one's own hand than in someone else's, to be sure. Watching the final hand, however, completely lacks drama if one is a clock watcher, as I am. How can one possibly get excited about that last river card when the hour is about to strike, indicating the end of the broadcast? Likewise, someone who goes all in in the middle of an hour is surely doomed. Where, then, is the suspense?

Startlement, however, is abundant. There has just been a breaking news story that a college football player has been shot and killed this evening, details still pending. One might reasonably expect stories of shootings to be confined to nightly news reports on network television and dedicated news channels, but these days ballplayers at all levels seem as vulnerable as the rest of the population. Why is a mystery to me. So there goes the title to this piece, as the "real world" dares to intrude on what should be a safe haven from all but manufactured violence. That's sad.

Yeah, yeah, that's a weak thing to say, but it's a pretty pathetic truth to face as well.

Relapse

Relapse
5 November 2006

Woke up this morning feeling fine
Had absolutely nothing on my mind
Now that fluff is turning to gel
My head is starting once again to swell
My nose is running for all it’s worth
My Kidz are giving me a seriously wide berth
I’m literally snotty and redeyed today
Guess I just started too early to play
Now the Piper is here with a vengeance
I’ll not be stirring soon hence

Oh no! The pathetic rhyming has begun again
It must be a consequence of sitting in my den
Trying to cobble together a few thoughts
While avoiding all those encircling “oughts”
Personally I think all the cooking and cleaning
Is the real reason I’m feeling like I need my own reaming

Tag and Other Childhood Activities

Tag and Other Childhood Activities
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/frank_deford/10/25/tag/
25 October 2006

Neanderthal or not, I have to agree with Frank Deford that there is something seriously foolhardy about banning some of the most basic childhood activities, especially those that encourage physical development while simultaneously helping individuals to develop a lifelong sense of self. What is childhood if not an ideal time to identify one’s boundaries as well as potential horizons?

Now, don’t get me wrong – I think Deford makes far too sweeping a generalization in lumping all educators in with the fanatics determined to eliminate all aspects of their own childhood experiences. Such folk belong with the critics who deem Roadrunner cartoons too violent for viewing by youngsters, for people who think that Little Red Riding Hood is worthy of censorship; (though, to be fair, Grimms Brothers tales and Aesop’s Fables in their original forms did tend to have a political bent to them, aimed as they were at adult target audiences.)

As much as I cherish the ideal of universal equality, I don’t think that it is possible to eliminate all elements of social interaction that indicate hierarchy, nor do I think it healthy.

Brief Break in Silence

27 September 2006
Honolulu

What can I say? When Dad didn't answer his nightly call, nor his morning doublecheck, I summoned the troops, who rallied oh, so beautifully. They forged on in, despite the lack of answer or any sighting of Dad... till a hand was spotted, Carrie-like, protruding from beneath a pile of tumbled rubble. A quick 911 call later, the short street was choked with emergency vehicles, all for a frail little Yoda-like figure who would not appreciate such a fuss being made over him.

Twelve hours later, miracle of miracles, I was by his side, having caught a light flight across the Pacific. The friend who had gone so bravely (fearfully?) in and sat by Dad's side all day, took the time to pick me up from the airport as well, before returning home to family, grading papers, and an all too short night's sleep before facing students once again. It is fortunate that God metes out mercy as well as justice.

So Dad was on the cardiac ward for three days, hooked up to a glucose solution instead of a saline solution because it's easier to counteract excess sugar than excess salt in a system genetically vulnerable to diabetes. So they say. In any event, his recovery has been in his customarily speedy style, despite his overall general slowness. The final verdict is that he has suffered extensive muscle damage from extreme dehydration, including a minor heart attack and evidently some damage to his memory, which was already under attack from age...

Two more days of charming nurses on a general population ward were followed by ten days at the highly touted, extremely aggressive Rehabilitation Center of the Pacific. Once again he seemed to charm the nurses and aides, much to my amusement and chagrin.

Finally came the day of the Great Breakout. Told to use a walker, he's been insisting on relying on his cane, for the comfort of familiarity, I think. He's currently undergoing a month of outpatient therapy, only agreed to after I promised to stay while he was being so treated. Like the proverbial horse led to water, he promptly blanks out all lessons, so his primary benefit seems to be from his physical therapist, who actually manipulates his muscles and makes him work, as opposed to the others, who just talk at him, and with me. I wonder if I shouldn't absent myself so that they have to deal with him directly. In a recent session wherein I could see him blocking out the white noise, I asked the therapist to have him articulare what he had gotten from the day's session - that was an eye-opener for her! Ah well... hopefully our next visit will be more productive.

On a personal note, I think I'm going quietly crazy. My greatest fear is that I could settle for this life, only to find that I had run out of time for life in the end. Ah, bite me.

Not One But Two

Not One But Two
25 August 2006

So there I was, angling for a parking in a clearly overflowing lot outside one of my favorite breakfast feed joints on the outskirts of Oakland. An old lady was fussing with one of the back doors of a car, so that was a real nonstarter, in so many ways… Then there was the work truck that pulled in just ahead of me with a real “Outta my way!” with no please or thank you to it. Most intriguing of all, however, was the fact that not one but two, count ‘em, two news vans were ensconced in primo parking spots. Well, all right then. At least there was hope of a free show inside.

A trip around the block, just so I could say, “I’ve been around the block, you know,” and then I caved and took (an admittedly free; the beauty of breakfast, of course, is that if you go early enough, street parking is still free,) street slot. My favorite waitress, a couple of cups of coffee, and a generously cholesterol-laden breakfast later, however, I still didn’t know what those darned news crews were up to.

Time flits, and so need I, so up I got, and paid, and left… and still those darned vans sat. Even when I’m on top of a story, evidently, I just don’t get it. Ah well… My guess is that this was a post-story feeding, just from the leisurely pace of things. My guess is that I’ll never know.

Seriously, not one but two, and their rival’s headquarters a scant mile up the street – what was that all about anyway?

Whole lotta head scratching going on today…

Lost Track

Lost Track
24 August 2006

Summer’s slipping away. Somehow I’d lost track of time amidst the ease of warm days and lazy nights. Now it’s the end of August, Hawaii’s celebrated its Statehood Day, and public schools are preparing to resume. Where has the season gone?

I was cleaning out a bag in search of some half-remembered documents when I came across “The Plan,” laid out in mid-March of this year, still awaiting instigation. Clearly I’ll never be old; it’s taking forever to grow up. Ah well…

Liquids and Gels

Liquids and Gels
11 August 2006

Time Stamp: Yesterday was the first day of a new era in U.S. air flight. Henceforth domestic passengers must choose between buying sundries at their destination in order to circumvent the interminable processes of checking and collecting luggage, or packing personal items in order to save money at the price of valuable time. This choice is necessitated by failed actions overseas that set off a chain reaction of fear locally. Spin doctors and politicians declare that a terrorist plot of major proportions has been thwarted. Personally, I think this is just another ploy on the part of manufacturers about to launch a new line of products in a new medium. What quicker way to boost sales than to cause politicians to outlaw current media, to wit, liquids and gels? Ah, the deviousness of entrepreneurs determined to create and profit from a global market…

I need a more productive life…

Stroke By Stroke

Saw this exercise show on a health channel, one episode in a series on combatting obesity. Such shows usually irritate the heck out of me, coming as they do during mealtimes and involving people nearly immobilized by their bodies, the majority of whom end up opting for surgery to remove what their teeth put on. This particular episode, however, featured a woman of more modest excess weight, if such a thing is possible, something nearer my own experiences. She chose the ideal route: determined effort coupled with patience over a long time. The result was what I hope to be realistic. Thus inspired, I spent the rest of the day talking about getting serious.

It's been a couple of days since then now. Today, once more starting by failing, I enjoyed an ample breakfast. This, however, was followed up by a bit of unusual industry, including a trip to the swimming pool. The trip (across the lawn) was exciting; the laps refreshing, the time off the clock disappointing. Still, one must start somewhere, and the only right time to start is always now. I haven't been blogging all that long, but I know I've already said something to this effect before. Guess I'll just have to keep saying it until I actually hear myself and believe.

Female Felines

Acquired three new female felines: two kittens and their formerly feral mother. The mother, a beautiful ash grey charcoal-colored one-year-old, was curiously misnamed "Mouse". (Maybe it's an Asian thing; in some cultures misnaming a child is a common practice in order to conceal from demons the true nature of said treasure.) The name has since been adjusted to "Nouna". It sounds Hawaiian when you say it, though it looks grammatical when you read it...

Her similarly misidentified and misnamed children, originally called "Mickey" and "Minnie", have since been renamed "Ajax" and "Comet". They're both tuxedo cats: black backs with white chests and bellies. I think Comet was initially named "Minnie" because she has mini-gloves on her toes, whereas Ajax has full white gloves, along with the energy and aggressiveness normally associated with boys. Ajax's evident attitude on life is "Have Wall Will Bounce." The similarity to a younger JJ has already caused the name to be further modified to "A.J."

Last night was a major breakthrough in socialization. Everyone (except JJ) gathered on and/or under the bed and proved to be very affectionate, which in turn caused a bit of hissing . . .

My Boyz are in transition from jealously suspicious and defensive to interested in all the new playthings that have invaded their formerly tranquil space, both animate and inanimate. There's currently a contest on to see who can climb and perch the highest in the house, a challenge compounded by the high ceilings in a couple of key rooms. I think the real barrier is the fear factor for the Boyz, who know from personal experience how much jumping back down can hurt. The Gurlz are still too young to know any such fears, so their greatest challenge is simply whether or not they have enough springs to get to the highest places (without being hissed by their elders).

Speaking of hissing, I thought it would be wrong to separate the children from their mother, but all evidence suggests a fundamental truth: mothers need periodic breaks from their children. Live and learn.

All Roads Lead

All roads lead to the central room these days. That's where the new feline ladies are staying. Thus far they've unplugged my clock, my floppy disk drive, and the external speakers for my iPod. They've turned my bags and stuffed animals into nesting materials, my skin into a giant pincushion, and my sweet Boyz into hissers that sound like a couple of balloons deflating. Ah well... You should see what they're doing to my Boyz...

Time Touches All

There's a news story out that Fidel Castro has temporarily relinquished power, for the first time since taking it in 1959, all because he is about to undergo a major surgical procedure. He's just this side of 80, still a spring chicken by geriatric standards, but the carrion are circling in anticipation of feasting on his bones. A recent film romanticizes his youth, but the U.S. media continue to villify him and present him as a monster. Whatever the truth of the matter, he has certainly demonstrated the ability to evoke response. No one who enters his orbit can ignore him, and few who hear of him do so either. What is amazing to me is that this man who so epitomizes charisma has outlived every American of his generation who might have been characterized as charismatic as well. There's something awe-inspiring about enduring, surviving and thriving, and outlasting one's critics. Still, like Mount Rushmore, Castro is beginning to show the wear and tear of time. No one wins that clash, and that in its own way is a good thing.

Health Bulletin Heading

Proof positive that weight loss is/may be detrimental to one's health and well-being:

A premature announcement from an initial study suggests that weight loss in older women is a sign of incipient dementia. Gotta tell ya: if a woman is losing weight, willfully or otherwise, you don't want to stand in her way. There's a distinct sense of pms around women who are midstream on a diet. If, indeed, initial evidence suggests that loss of weight is a sign of dementia, I don't find that to be a newsflash. The only real newsflash is that some moronic male considers it news at all. Anyone being deprived of adequate sustenance, oral gratification, (or any other kind, for that matter,) is going to be cranky. Gender is irrelevant; sex is the issue. When one gets hungry, one gets hungry, and denial... by anyone... is unacceptable. Of course you're gonna lose your mind!

Monkey See

I guess if it's okay for one country to bomb the heck out of another, it should be okay for another country to do the same, especially if they share people, financial interests, and nominal complaints. After all, it's the patriotic stance when one's leadership feels the need to look like it actually cares about what has happened to a conspicuous (read, been seen on mass media) segment of its population.

Perhaps I've been reading too much Lois MacMasters Bujold lately. Now there's a writer who's not afraid to use multisyllabic words and argue multiple viewpoints on contemporary controversies amongst her characters, all while retaining a light, humorous touch and rapid-fire pacing. She argues against war while modeling patriotic heroism, feminism featuring decidedly male heroes, theism in the mouths of acclaimed agnostics. Oh yes, and she touches on economics, class, culture, education, influence, biology, technology, bureaucracy, etc.

So bombs away! I've got a good book with which to sit this one out as well...

Gotta get off this darned fence someday... but not today...

Telephone Buzz

My ear's been affixed to my piece
But finally I've a moment of release
Playing phone tag all day long
Wears down a will that started out strong
Talking to disembodied voices
Eventually seems like just more noises
Battering my fragile, overcaffeinated head
Making me long for my abandoned bed
Talk is cheap, demanding dead trees' sacrifice
As the only action that will suffice
To substantiate all that chatter
Making hot air really matter

Change of Pace

Thoughts have filled my mind, then slipped away again
Eluding alike keyboard and pen
I need to switch gears now that I'm back here
Juggle who's in charge, what's far and what's near
Time zones differ by quite a bit
Temperatures too, making me feel more fit
Time to sort illusion from truth
Time to admit I'm no longer in my youth
But old age hasn't caught me either, I'm sure
I just need less coffee and more water that's pure
I have to ignore the joints that ache
For my own and everyone else's sake
Time once again to take charge of my kitchen
And end all that needless restaurant-related twitchin'
Cooking's a sport, just like any other
Not just domestic, restricted to Mother
It's chemistry and physics applied just right
That can leave you hungry or make your pants feel tight
Time to take charge and improve the cash flow
To make use of paid tuition and all I'm supposed to know
Wash the car, weed the yard, cut the grass, make things grow
Because while I was gone, someone let everything go.

Time to change the pace of things
Time to get moving with a new set of wings.

Home Again Home Again

Home Again Home Again
2 July 2006

Traveling from home to home is a time warping experience for me. Roles flip as completely as the weather, and I go from being in charge and all wet (in more ways than one) to cosseted and coddled, and who am I to complain? Max and JJ make me feel so welcome, so missed, so loved, so needed and kneaded. It’s a less desperate neediness, more pleasant because it seems less urgent. What does that say?

Tomorrow the Boyz will speak for themselves once again, but today I celebrate my much missed and freshly renewed Internet access. It’s hard to believe that a short decade ago this was all still fairly novel, primarily the province of governmental and educational institutions. Now, it’s an integral part of much of contemporary society, at least in this neck of the woods.

Woods – that’s where I think I’ve been; lost in some frontier space where things are still done manually, mechanically, or not at all. We nearly lost a little one in the weeds in the backyard, debated whether or not George Washington had the right idea about chopping down a tree, tried to define the difference between a weed and a tree,  buried the front yard in plastic bags filled with the waste that was once the backyard.

The birds of paradise are blooming. I raided them twice in one month for visits to Mom, would have done so a third time had I not run out of time. The blooms still linger, fertilized by the rodents now rotting silently in shallow graves beneath the tropical awning. The neighbors watch in wonder, puzzled by the seeming ease with which life thrives amidst the wilderness that is the homestead yard. Neighborhood cats prowl in answer to some silent siren call beneath the sagging floorboards. Life and death tango amidst the tangled brush, but I cannot linger. I have my own menagerie to which to attend.

Duh!

Rocket scientist I am not; it only took me two weeks to figure out why my laptop didn't want to talk to the local cable feed. I plead heat exhaustion. Yes, Hawaii is Paradise; who needs to be able to think clearly in Paradise where everything is easy at hand?

The world spins by in all its angst, but do I care? Not I? I am in a world of my own, clearly out of touch, both here and there. You may call me a here-and-thereian, but the truth of the matter is that I am neither here nor there. If this makes no sense, then welcome to my world.

I hear Canada has survived a terrorist threat. Indonesia has survived a devastating tsunami and volcanic eruptions? Okay, not everyone survived - and that's sad, or would seem more so were I not so overwhelmed by torpor.

The Mavs and Heat are two first-timers in the NBA playoffs, though each has warriors already ringed. Do I care? Not since I have no access to a television, much as I have enjoyed the occasional glimpses I have caught.

There was a fierce soccer battle between Sweden and Trinidad? I wish I might have seen more, for it seemed to be a battle of titans. Ah well...

Now, at last, I have figured out how to sustain my Internet access for more than a few paltry moments, and what am I doing? Squandering valuable time recounting banal trivia even I do not care much about. Ah well...

This heat!

Hm... maybe I should turn on the fan in my room...

Missing My Boyz

3 June 2006

Four nights have passed since I last saw my Boyz. I wonder if they miss me. How does one concentrate when far from home? Just do the job as expeditiously and efficiently as possible, I guess, and quit wasting time online... ;->

Lewis Carroll said that the "sun was shining on the sea, shining with all her might," and that's just what she's doing, though how a neuter object often referred to in the masculine picked up a feminine pronoun is beyond me, I'm sure... It's blazing hot here, crisping my skin and certainly causing physiological reactions that will displease my general practitioner if she ever gets wind of it.

Wind: I wouldn't mind more wind right now. A good trade wind is just what we need, and what we don't seem to be able to sustain, thanks to the concrete blockage everywhere here. The wind was kicking up back in the Bay Area as I was leaving, bad stuff for the incipient fire season, but just what would really benefit these subtropical islands right about now. Auwe!

Of course, if my Boyz were here, we wouldn't be cuddling; we'd be looking for and fighting over shade. Still, I miss them very much. (There, I've circled back to my starting point, for what it's worth.)

Caffeine Addict

I've tried to kick the habit that I so successfully avoided until I was in my mid-thirties, but temptation once indulged does not easily turn away again. I'm not willing to blame society or the current state of the economy for my weakness, for I'm the one who keeps going back to the stuff when I crave its smell and taste. Curiously, my addiction is despite the way it makes me feel, rather than because of its beneficial boost, except, of course, on days like today. Today I felt the need for any boost I could get, any way I could get it.

After all, what's a little caffeine drip, fed intravenously or otherwise? It's legal, even though it frequently comes from South of the Border or from other maligned agricultural areas of the world. It only adversely affects half the population that drinks it, the other half being unaffected by it, according to the most recent scientific study. Of course, my chances of being in that latter category are right up there with my chance of winning any pool besides a jury pool...

Eh, who wants to live forever? It's the quality, not the quantity of our years that matters, right?

Coffee, please, and keep it coming.

Spin Please

Spin, Please
19 May 2006

Visiting Workers’ Visas: A magnanimous, perhaps overly generous offer to legitimize the widespread and necessary use of neighboring laborers or another sly attempt of the U.S. government to impose Big Brother bureaucracy on a portion of the working population at present elusively untracked, like liquor during Prohibition?

Larry Hughes: An essential cog in the Cleveland Cavaliers’ well-oiled machine, or the one whose absence has served them better than his presence?

Inter-League Games: Valid athletic competition or crowd-pleasing, money-grubbing ploy?

Coaching Changes: The result of incompetence and/or inexperience or scapegoating?

Iraq and Afghanistan: Contemporary battlegrounds for human rights and democracy or pawns in multinational chess games?

Hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and other Acts of God: True potential human tragedies or only true media headlines when tech countries or their interests are involved?

I gotta stop listening to this activist music and read the daily comic strips more. No, wait; I stopped reading those because they got too political – I’m beginning to remember…

Eyes Turning Homeward

Eyes Turning Homeward
18 May 2006

I’m heading home for the month of June. Coincidentally, someone in the house has ordered up the Lost television series, three discs at a time, starting with the first season. As usual when there is a show filmed on location, I spend a fair amount of time trying to work out where exactly the show has been shooting. Watching raises my level of anticipation, contrary to my usual practice of ignoring the approaching event until it is almost upon me. It’s times like these that make me wish I really were just a tourist heading out that way. I’d love to check out Jackass Ginger, hike the Aiea Loop Trail, spend some quality time on Waimanalo Beach, maybe go mudsliding up Manoa Falls way, or even rock diving around Waimea. Better yet, I’d love to go island-hopping to check out less familiar beaches, hikes, and waterfalls, all of which are even more beautiful live than photographed.

I remember once some college friends accompanied me to visit some family friends, who insisted on showing us slides of their most recent trips to the mountains and the ocean. No one could doubt the majesty of the Rockies, any more than anyone thought the scenes of the Pacific deadly boring. Comparing seemingly immovable objects to irresistible forces via photos is just plain foolish. That’s no way to capture the dynamic energy that infuses the latter.

Comparing the characters of the television series seems a similar endeavor. Each episode thus far has managed to feature a different character or two, taking its time with plot development at a soap operatic pace. That’s okay; the plot can wait while this viewer fills out a scorecard in order to keep the players straight. Of course, viewing the series via Netflix really highlights the advantage of simply buying the whole set, as well as the folly of trying to watch this series on a weekly basis – I’d have found better things to do than wait around for the characters that interest me to show up of occasion.

Next Gen Big Bro

Next Gen Big Bro
9 May 2006

Being required to read George Orwell’s 1984 was a painful rite of passage, made marginally less distasteful by American society’s love affair with gadgetry, spurred in part by the Space Race, in part by the proliferation of television spy shows benefiting from the boom in James Bond films. I had the arguable good fortune to encounter Orwell as the euphoria was beginning to wear off and dystopic resonances were beginning to filter through the media censorship then in place but breaking down in the face of images out of Vietnam. The concept of Big Brother struck me as a darkly distorted version of my understanding of God’s omnipresence.

Since that time, evidence of God’s presence in American society has become far more fenced in, seemingly restricted to media-maligned conservatives and other right-wing radicals. Curiously enough, the concept of Big Brother, like so many other fictive concepts of the mid-twentieth century, is being developed and implemented by a subsequent set of waves on the seemingly infinite sea of technology washing through society. These waves, moreover, like the Biblical Flood, are not content to restrict themselves by national boundaries but, rather, insist on sweeping the globe.

Now there is the Radio Frequency Identification chip, also known as RFID and optionally identified by a little-used logo. I’d heard that it will soon be possible to make purchases via wireless connections with one’s cell phone, but today I learned that these chips are already being used to track all sorts of goods from library books to merchandise in Wal-Mart to indicted prisoners awaiting trial. They are, in fact, infiltrating all niches of society, and they are computer-accessible. It’s time to pass on activating those new credit cards arriving in mailboxes everywhere, time to return to a cash-based lifestyle, especially if one wishes to emulate Roger Zelazny’s character who thought he’d managed to fall off the government grid of computer tracking.

I find it very disturbing that all the darkest aspects of science fiction that I so enjoyed reading in my optimistic youth seem to be serving as models and goals for the commercially-oriented portion of the scientific community today. It’s a lowering thought that idealism has not inspired activity nearly as much as opportunism has.

Acquisitive or Frugal

Acquisitive or Frugal
5 May 2006

Children come in all shapes, sizes, and modes. There are those who are eager to savor the flavor of life, and they’re not too particular about how they get it. When they see what they want, they grab it with both hands. True, they quickly learn to run or punch after grabbing, but seizing comes naturally to them. Then there are those who are content with what they receive, able to explore and invent endlessly with what they have at hand and in hand. They soon learn to shield and protect that which they possess. Some even learn to conceal that which they treasure. There is, of course a third kind of child: the one that shares, freely and cheerfully, for as long as disillusionment can be held at bay.

These children grow into the adults that populate society. Too often, it is the acquisitive who remain most highly visible. In today’s society, they seem to garner honor, accolades, admiration, and emulation. Little does it matter that their harvest comes at the expense of others. When did our society shift these folk to the forefront? Surely this has occurred in my lifetime. How did I miss it?

Guess I’m that second child, off in my own little world, enjoying my imagination. What we need is more of those thirds.

Unsolicited Phone Calls

Unsolicited Phone Calls
2 May 2006

When a list of phone numbers not to be solicited was created, I rushed to register all my numbers. Since then, the only solicitations I have received come from some very persistent people whose numbers are unidentifiable to my caller i.d. feature but who, nevertheless, consistently identify themselves as representative of the local sheriffs. Now, when this first began, I commented sardonically on the deep Southern female accents I kept hearing. Since then, I have been solicited by young-sounding men with solidly sunny western intonations. What I want to know is why people representing law enforcement agencies feel themselves to be beyond the bounds of restrictions put on other enterprising solicitors and why they are so much more aggressive than others. I guess they don’t have to worry about me calling the cops on them…

Unto Us Is Born This

Unto Us Is Born This Day
30 April 2006

Rejoice! Rejoice! My second niece has been delivered of twin girls.

I find it regrettable that prescheduling for next week resulted in medical practitioners preempting the natural order of things by gleefully reaching for a knife, but I’m consoled by the thought that this is not the niece most likely to endure pain gracefully, but rather, the one more likely to have a proper appreciation of good drugs. Isn’t modern medicine grand?

Besides, I do believe that my mother was a firm believer in the efficacy of anesthetics, having made most excellent use of said drugs both times herself, and just look at the sterling results…

Okay, enough of that nonsense.

Elena Marie, emerging first at 12:50 a.m., weighed in at a sturdy 6 pounds 3 ounces and stretched luxuriously to a satisfyingly long 18 inches. Not to be outdone, all 19 inches of Angelina Rose followed a scant ten minutes later, weighing in at 6 pounds 7 ounces. Their mother is now understandably significantly lighter and delighted to be relieved of the constant load. Their father now stands ready to shoulder his share, and we in this marvelous electronic wonderland eagerly await the pictorial proof.

Sprint Mid-Distance Marathon

Sprint Mid-Distance Marathon
27 April 2006

What are the differences among a fling, a job, and a career? Definitions of terms must serve as the foundation of any lucid discussion.

Many people begin with a fling, that first toe-wetting experience with the exchange of a service or services for monetary reimbursement. Soon, the taste of purchasing power exerts its addictive influence and one must decide whether or not to pursue a longer term commitment of services in exchange for a continued cash flow. Eventually one must decide whether or not the cash flow suffices for the fulfillment of one’s needs and desires. Finally, one must decide whether or not providing such service(s) is satisfying or even endurable.

In racing there are sprinters, folks who like to compete over short distances. They are the glory hounds, full of charisma and dazzling speed. They are comparable to those select few who seem to achieve their goals early in life, or at least to attain the dreams of many.

Then there are the middle distance runners. The majority of the workforce can be equated with such runners, for they are no short-term day laborers on their way elsewhere, but neither have they yet achieved the kind of longevity that earns a gold watch, nor are many of them sure that such a race is for them.

Finally there are the marathoners, who have recently been accorded greater honor in running recently than they had been in the infancy of mass media broadcasting. Such a worker is said to have made a career of rendering whatever service has been provided. Such a person may or may not have loved the task, but the labor has lasted a significant amount of time, enough to earn lifelong benefits, both tangible and intangible.

Some people are fortunate enough to have more than one career in a lifetime, while others move restlessly from job to job, ever seeking satisfaction, never quite finding fulfillment, never really finding the race that resonates enough for the long haul.

So what’s the difference between a job and a career? Is it time? Is it compensation? Is it satisfaction? Is it attitude? Some folks can spend equal amounts of time at identical endeavors, yet for one it is a lifelong job, while for another it is a calling that can serve as a career.

A runner has to focus on the intended distance and pace accordingly. So does a person en route through life.

The APM Round Two

The A.P.M.: Round Two
25 April 2006

Yesterday was my first face-to-face encounter with the Automated Postal Machine, a new electronic gizmo at the local post office that I first saw during this last Christmas rush. Yesterday, being more word-oriented than graphic-aware, I allowed it to get the better of me. Today, however, was a different story.

For one thing, I realized that I didn’t have to wait for the post office to open. Brilliant.

So I strode purposefully into the lobby, ready to read more carefully, only to find that the screens did not wish to deal with “Media Mail”. Refusing to be stymied yet again, I noticed an older, once dazzling scale waving at me from a nearby alcove. It weighs everything, from getting an item there yesterday to sending something by slow boat seven times around the Equator. Of course it does Media Mail. What it doesn’t do is dispense postage. Ah…

Armed now with the necessary information, I was able to return to the shiny, sassy new A.P.M. and buy a stamp of the precise value identified by its older sibling.

Voila! Success!

This is my life…

Novel Postal Experience

Novel Postal Experience
24 April 2006

Call me green; I don’t care. I just love playing with new gadgets, which is what I got to do this morning. Granted, I had seen the equipment at Christmas when standing in the interminable line awaiting window service at the local post office, but I had put it out of my mind as irrelevant. So today I sat in the parking lot doing Sudoku puzzles while awaiting the opening of the facility. Of course, I had mistaken the opening by a half hour, so I didn’t think anything about the fact the parking lot was filling up and people were going in and out. Instead, I just finished my puzzle, gathered my paraphernalia, and headed on in. Naturally enough, I was a little startled to realize that the office area was still dimly lit. Then I saw that people were using the electronic postal clerk, and my heart leapt in excitement.

No, really, I’m that lame. I just love new toys.

I cheerfully put my fingerprints all over the touchscreen, until I reached the one asking for my credit card. Credit card? You mean the one not in my wallet? Panic? What panic? Where oh where did I leave my towel? Sheepishly I cleared the screen and stepped aside for the poor fellow who had been dodging me since the parking lot when he wanted to pull into the space into which I had thrust my door without looking. Ah well…

Fortunately, the card was right where I had left it, in the car, though why I should have been so foolish is beyond me. (Damn this thumb! No, I didn’t really mean that…)

Back, then, to my newfound toy, and oh, what Joy! I pushed and pressed, zipped through screen after screen, then stepped back in satisfaction as the first postage printed, almost larger than my package. I really do need to get my glasses checked, and my brain. Evidently the image displayed was real life sized… Ever resourceful, I made do, and made sure to press a better button for the rest of my packages. Of course, by the time I was done, the regular windows were open and the line that had formed was moving briskly along.

Next time, say tomorrow, I will know better. The experience, while still exciting, will not be quite so novel. Next time, I’ll know better. Right: next time…

I have been reliably informed that I must have a young soul, which is good, considering I don’t think I’m gonna get “it” all worked out in one lifetime, at the rate I’m moving (or not, as the case may be…)

Oops… I think all these spacebar bangings have reopened my thumb slit. Ah well…

Beating around the Bush

Beating around the Bush
21 April 2006

The freeways were remarkably open this morning, Friday traffic notwithstanding. A television reporter noted that at least one major company had recommended that its workers telecommute today in order to avoid the security in place for the arrival of the president. The lightness of the traffic suggests that more than one company may have seen the wisdom of such a suggestion. One can only wonder how that might have impacted potential audiences at the president’s various speaking engagements.

Edit-Free Publications

Edit-Free Publications
6 April 2006

Today I finally broke down and read a copyrighted publication that exhorted me to make diligent use of my grammar and spellcheckers — in language clearly free from such constraints. What’s up with that? People who exhort others to mind their p’s and q’s ought to model their advice, don’t you agree? I certainly do.

Okay, so I’ve noticed that my own prose has a tendency to be less than error-free of occasion. Have I ever asked payment for my posing? I think not. (although that may change at some future date – I’m just saying…) People who charge amounts that tempt one to pull out plastic really out to have the decency to proofread their own texts, don’t you agree? All in favor say, “Aye.”

I’m just a humble wannabe, not some overpriced whore, so I can stand back and criticize casually enough. Still and all, I do think that people who take the trouble to copyright clearly plagiarized materials and then turn around and charge a small fortune for the same, ought to have the decency to read what they clearly expect others to peruse with diligence. Okay, so I write in run-on sentences. This I freely admit.  I still think that people who charge for the privilege of reading their prose ought to take the trouble to proofread said prose. Am I getting redundant? It’s been a frustrating afternoon. Okay, I admit that I haven’t spent the entire day being thusly irritated, but do you really believe that I would spend an entire day in this manner? Seriously…

Slacker Doodle

Slacker Doodle
5 April 2006

I wake up to weather and traffic reports most days. That’s how I can tell it’s a weekday instead of the weekend. Everything is color-coordinated now. One doesn’t need to know much to tell at a glance just how exciting or wretched the morning commute will be, in turn affecting the general mood one can expect of the populace at large “out there”.

This morning was the usual insanity: twenty-five minutes to traverse the five miles to get off the island, another twenty-five to the next bridge, twenty to traverse the eight miles across said bridge, after which things opened up as commuters spilled off the highways onto the assorted off-ramps leading to their ultimate destinations. How anyone handles the morning commute without coffee is beyond me, though I was thirty-five before I actually started drinking the stuff.

Where do all these people go every day? What would happen if they all stayed home one week? Would the glut at the gas stations drive the prices down, if only until the backlog could be consumed? Would the government or businesses destroy the unsold oil to keep prices up, as they do with “surplus” agricultural produce?

Stay home and watch all those bought and rented videos and dvds sometime. I took a little over half an hour today to refile some flicks I’d had out long enough. If I were to sit down and watch each movie of which I possess a copy, I think I would be occupied for the better part of a couple of years. How realistic is that? On the other hand, I rarely have difficulty any more satisfying a late-night urge to watch an old favorite.

Ditto all my books. Some of them still await me in the garage. That’s no place for a book, especially not in this weather, in those boxes. I want my books. I need my books. Don’t talk to me about when the last time was that I read some of them; that’s not the point. Is there a point? Hm…

Where Were You Then

Where Were You Then?
4 April 2006

People who buy dvd collections of television series are like people who buy school yearbooks: for such folk the object’s appeal has more to do with the preservation and recollection of memories tied to images than with the quality of the production.

Turn on almost any extended basic cable channel and you’ll see someone’s childhood memories playing out once more. For the youngster, such a viewing can be a glimpse into ancient history, a chance to laugh and wonder at the cheesiness of a bygone era, or perhaps inspiration for a revival of past trends. For an older viewer it can be a stroll down memory lane, lined not only with familiar plots, but filled with sensations from a simpler yet more emotional time – a time of youth, idealism, perhaps even a romantic idyll or sexual awakening. Sure, it’s occasionally pleasant, but how often can one do it?

How often does one rewatch favorite old shows? The entertainment industry is counting on people to believe that they’re still a little bit in love with that first flame, at least long enough to buy a memento. That’s what the dvd series collections are: mementoes. Like those dusty yearbooks, they are destined to be flipped through eagerly upon first arrival, only to end up as yet another set of dust collectors in due course. If they’re as durable as promised, however, they can be shared with each new generation, at least once every twenty years or so.

Beets Bleed Red

Beets bleed red, it has been said,
But not if the greens remain
Somehow they detain the stain
Keeping nutrients intact instead.

JJ sniffed and JJ searched
He prowled the perimeter
And then he perched
For his nose is sharp as a scimitar

He knew there was pork somewhere nearby
He could scent is tantalizing essence
For the smell of meat invariably gets him high
And alerts him to its presence

But all he could see were those nasty beets
Some bamboo and turnips, definitely not treats
So on he searched both high and low
Moving oh, so careful and slow

At last there appeared to his questing nose
A fragrance sweeter than any silly rose
P.U. was offering him shredded meat
And, yes, it tasted oh, so sweet.

(Max has already had his say today, so this is nekko space for now, if that's okay.)

Where Has All the Good Food Gone?

Where Has All the Good Food Gone?
1 April 2006

As one ages, the taste buds go, so I’m told, but such is not yet the case. At least, I don’t think so . . .

One of the cool things about achieving independence from “the folks” was being able to eat out at restaurants of my own choosing. This opened up a world of new experiences for me. I was introduced to dishes I would never have known existed, had I stuck to the familiar haunts my parents frequented.

Now, however, I am suddenly seeing a disappearance of my favorite entrees, never mind my favorite restaurants. Sometimes there is a change in chefs, sometimes in management, but more often the cause is a change in culinary sensibilities, influenced in part by a changing sense of health consciousness. Food Nazis have declared many of my favorite ingredients and/or combinations of ingredients taboo. Strong language? You bet!

The other night I happened upon one of the recent nominees for Best Foreign Film, a German production entitled, Downfall. It is based on two different memoirs about the final days in Hitler’s bunker in Berlin. While I do recommend it, I only wish to reference it tangentially here. It depicts a horrendous number of very earnest people who could not imagine continuing to live if National Socialism failed. These people took not only their own lives, but the lives of their children as well. Now, while I have not yet quite reached that level of dedication to my ideal meals, I cannot help but question the point of longevity if the price is so many things that make living enjoyable for me, especially since I do not have much of a vested interest in this particular plane of existence in the first place. On the other hand, I have also been taught that accelerating my progression to the next phase of existence is actually regression, and that with heavy consequences. Kinda takes the joke out of those silly e-mails about world views that continue to circulate.

Really, all I want is my favorite dishes. I’ll even settle for the recipes.

People of Nineveh

People of Nineveh
31 March 2006

The rains came just over an hour early. Like the people of Nineveh, who had had ample warning, we were nevertheless startled. The morning sun had been so brilliant, the sky had seemed so clear; who would have thought the breezes would blow so briskly?

Kite flyers knew. The birds knew, though like the humans watching them, the well-fed flock of ducks ignored the warning signs, distracted and lured outside by the temptations of humankind.

A wet duck seems perfectly natural, but a duck being rained on is a different matter entirely. If you’ve ever been caught in a cloudburst while swimming, you know what I mean. Being in water is one thing; being pelted by water is another. There’s a distinct feeling of being physically assaulted, but there’s no one and nothing at which to strike back. All one can do is what smart ducks do: duck… dive deep… go fishing, like the proverbial sheriff when trouble comes to town.

We people think we’re so much smarter now than back in Noah’s day. The real estate ads boast of well-designed, interconnecting locks intended to control the height of the lagoons artfully sculpted into this man-dredged landfill. As the rains began to fall, a current became clearly visible, a well-intentioned race against the falling rains. After twenty-five days in a month of thirty-one, though, where will the excess go? After all, matter can neither be created nor destroyed, according to the wisdom of humans.

Many people here have boats and all manner of watercraft. Me, I left my body board at home, and I never did learn to surf. As Bill Cosby so drolly said, “How long can you tread water?”

Of course, this is nothing compared to last year’s ravages caused by Katrina, nor to this year’s Australian typhoons. I merely flatter myself that I can have any inkling whatsoever of what such a close-up view of God’s awesome might looks like. Sure, I’ve been in the path of a tsunami, but I was in a fairly fast car at the time, and I was able to get to the sheltered side of the island before the storm decimated the area I had been visiting. This stuff is more like real life: a slow but steady trickle that wears away at the ground and the spirit until the relentless erosion results in a caving in of the spirit and a slow but ultimately devastating mudslide of moral fiber.

It’s a good thing I don’t get depressed by inclement weather.

Rainy Day Feelings

Rainy Day Feelings
30 March 2006

Here comes that rainy day feelin’ again, so the song goes.

The voice on the other end of the line is disjointed, disoriented, frail. Words and meanings are out of sync, but there’s so little one can do across the miles.

Reach out and touch . . . say the commercial and song, but what do they really know about distances across nongeographical gaps?

Christopher Reeve once did a film with Jane Seymour called Somewhere in Time. It’s a silly, unbelievably improbable, unrealistic romance across generations. The time traveling is initiated by artifacts from the destination time period. The visualization if of a gauze-shrouded whirlpoolish suction, a definite contrast to the stark, cheesy pinwheel tumbling of the brief television series, Time Tunnel. Yet both images come to mind as I listen sadly to that disembodied voice. What is it about that slipping away feeling that sound can evoke? In Quantum Leap Scott Bakula played a scientist from the near future whose experiments caused him to get caught up in the timestream, always trying to get home. Unlike other series and movies, his character never did get to stay where he most longed to be. That’s how the voice at the other end of the phone sounds: like it’s lost in the slipstreams of time with no hope of ever finding its way home for long…

If one lives long enough, one inevitably ends up loose in that slipstream, like Kurt Vonnegut’s erstwhile protagonist. What is it about life and art, anyway?

Fine Time to Start Watching the News

Fine Time to Start Watching the News
27 March 2006

A busy weekend has led to renewed determination to pull this head out of its comforting ostrich sand and pay attention to mass media broadcast news once again. Perhaps that was not such a great idea…

Shiites and Americans disagree on whether or not the forty shot dead Sunday were at worship or in the streets. One likes to believe one’s own, but these are, after all, the same kinds of soldiers who shot down a former football player, let him be glorified as a hero and martyr to the cause, only to later admit to having taken him down themselves in “friendly” fire. Granted, endlessly repeated scenes of the bodies on Iraqi television cannot help but influence viewers as to the guilt of Americans and Iraqi government forces, but how does that differ from the U.S. media repeatedly showing footage of the damage done September 11, 2001? Even scenes of the rubble are enough to inflame many as suspects go to trial. When I was younger, I was taught that two wrongs do not make a right; when exactly did that axiom change?

Texas has begun a crackdown on public intoxication, going so far as to arrest people found drunk in bars and the bartenders who ostensibly served them. One has to wonder about the reporter’s agenda when reliably informed that hotel bars in particular are being targeted. This, of course, stands in interesting juxtaposition to the information that Texas is a promising state for real estate speculation, being business-friendly and all… Seriously, who goes to bars to stay sober, besides designated drivers, that is?

The U.S. federal legislature is eager to prove itself tough on illegal immigration in this election year. They are now in the process of raising the category of criminality for being or aiding an illegal immigrant from a misdemeanor to a felony. If this is a ploy to galvanize the conservative vote by inciting nonvoters to march in protest, it is a Machiavellian plot indeed, and successful to boot. GW is able to claim that he garnered more votes for himself in the last election than any other president in the history of this nation; he neglects to mention that he also caused more voters to vote against him than had ever voted against a candidate. Now the will of the people is being put to a similar test on this old issue being newly revisited. It will be interesting to see how pro-business forces deal with the loss of what some experts estimate to be 5% of the workforce, primarily menial laborers. Do they seriously anticipate the current change of entitlement addicts to warmly embrace the additional work opportunities that will spring up before them? Of course, there is always the generation of original Baby Boomers, now facing pension-free retirement. Perhaps it is they who are expected to fill the trenches to supplement their shrunken or nonexistent incomes in their “golden years.” After all, they are less proud, aren’t they? Hm…

Maybe I should stick to watching sports and weather. After all, Tiger tanked, all the number one seeds in the NCAA tournament choked, and I have lost track of my favorite teams in the NBA. Oh yes, and we’re currently chasing the all-time record for rain in March and on track to meet or surpass it.

Well, there’s always reading…

Morning Misadventure

Morning Misadventure
24 March 2006

Well, that was exciting… Two hours spent searching for, finding, and visiting (twice) the local Department of Vehicles (DMV). The people were pleasant in a spunky way, but the adventure was futile. This, of course, is an attempt to follow-up on Monday’s misadventure.

Round 1:
DMV? Down the street, over the ramp, turn on Eeeeeeeeee….
I beg your pardon?
Turn on Eeeeeeeeee…
Sorry, I have a hearing problem – surfer’s ear (without the waves).
Edes. E-d-e-s. Edes.
Oh! Okay. Thank you.

Round 2:
“START HERE.”
What do you want to do? Reregistration is by mail or Internet only, but we’re always willing to take money if you want to pay us now. Here’s your number. Take a seat and wait to be called.
Okay.
Twenty minutes later…
No paperwork? No service.
Okay, I can understand that. Just thought I’d try. Would have been nice to know before I was given a number.

Round 3:
Paperwork? OK. Credit? hahahahahaha… Do I look like the Internet to you? We only just started taking debit cards.

Yes, a blog does allow one to share one’s stupidity in a very public way, but my Tracksy logs assure me that only three people usually read this anyway, and they not so regularly, (though admittedly more regularly than I have been posting of late).

I used to be anal about paperwork, forms, and money. Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken that observation so much as a criticism as a compliment. Gotta find my way back to being me.

JJ on my desk. Time for BoyLove.

Big Brother Is Alive and . . . Well . . .

Big Brother Is Alive and . . . Well . . .
22 March 2006

A headline caught my eye this morning. Evidently the consumer version release of Microsoft’s long-awaited new operating system, due last year, has been pushed back yet again, this time from late this year to early next year, ostensibly to give consumers and support staff time to recover from the annual holiday spending season. That’s mighty considerate of Microsoft, isn’t it? Of course, beta testers already have access and corporate communities should see the software appearing on desktops everywhere sometime soon. Nothing like whetting one’s appetite…

Still, I’m not so sure there’s all that much for humble users like myself over which to salivate. The spec sheets currently available emphasize all the reasons IT personnel and corporate controllers will appreciate the new software. All I see are more ways for more people to track and control what I can and cannot see, can and cannot do. They’re fencing in the frontier, sure as shooting. Sure, merchandisers are already doing that to the Internet, but there are still many wild and woolly corners where one can find experiences out of the ordinary. More important, there is still plenty of room for saying and doing what one will. What this new system’s description seems to suggest, however, is that more fences are going up to corral such activities. Pretty soon there will be cyber-reservations for the socially unacceptable. No one will be above scrutiny and categorization.

Roger Zelazny wrote once of a man who existed off the grid, so to speak, or thought he did. Counterfeit i.d.’s, credit cards, and work histories were used whenever he surfaced, but mostly he survived on cash and coin. Such materials may be labeled “legal tender,” but good luck renting a car with nothing else. Don’t even think about buying any other big ticket items with nothing but cold, hard cash in hand. Businesses want a paper trail. More important, they want an electronic trail.

Here’s more to that tail…

Rear Light Stress

Driving a car with the title in my name
Carrying a license that says the same
Address doesn't match cuz I moved last year
Flashing lights fill me with fear
Sticker's out of date, sorry to say
Insurance? someone said they'd pay
Now I've got me an official court date
On top of being just a teensy bit late
Where's Pollyanna when I need a good cheer
To put a positive spin on the lights up my rear
Life's been getting just a little bit grim
All my hoops just bouncing off the rim
But life's too short to worry and fret
There're still some good times to be had, I'll bet

Pain

Pain
18 March 2006

Though the body’s wracked with pain
I struggle on
For theres’s so much to gain
If I see dawn
But, alas, the nights’ struggles bring no relief
Just more pain,
Exhaustion beyond belief.
And more rain
My well-wrought plan is all for naught
As my body resists doing what it ought
Forgetting all life’s lessons it’s been taught
As in this web of pain I remain caught

A Little Light Reading

A Little Light Reading
14 March 2006

One of the things I absolutely adore about this new abode is that there are a washer and dryer in the house. I think only a long-time patron of Laundromats can properly appreciate the luxurious nature of that nifty little feature, now that washing down by the river or in the backyard are mostly memories. (I have some vague ones from my single-digit days visiting my grandmothers’ houses.) Sometimes, however, a home system still isn’t enough. That’s when I toss the larger, heavier items into the car and head on down to the local Laundromat for a quickie. Today was one of those days.

As I was loitering about waiting between cycles, a magazine cover from last November caught my eye. It was one of those traditional magazines that Mom used to leave lying around the living room: Better Homes and Gardens. This issue, however, was boasting that the company had built “The Best House in America,” the sort of claim that seemed to challenge Sunset magazine’s annual feature. This was something I had to see. Below, then, are some of the impressions I drew:

A One-Acre Parcel

A one-acre parcel seems like so much these days. My parents were fortunate enough to be able to afford a quarter-acre, fee simple. Where I live, we measure in square feet. Yes, I know that there’s plenty of land in this country, available to those who are willing to work it, or who are willing to commit to a commute only possible because of fossil fuels that are fast becoming unaffordable. Therein lies the rub. For those of us determined to cling to coastal areas near urban centers, a one-acre parcel seems even more a fantasy than any one might encounter in literature, even “the old stuff.”

Ideal Kitchen, My Eye

How can an article describe a kitchen as small and ideal in the same breath? Economy of space is antithetical to an ideal kitchen, especially with reference to storage. Now, if we’re talking about economy of movement from workstation to workstation, I can see what is meant, but when one refers to efficient use of limited space as ideal, I have to quibble. My dream kitchen has some pretty elaborate storage solutions that include sorting, spinning, twirling, stacking, and drawers, all in the name of ease of access. Think Kurt Russell’s shoe storage in the Goldie Hawn vehicle, Overboard, and you’ll know what I mean. I’ve even seen some such systems in real life. They do not include invisible walls and nonexistent cabinetry, though the illusion is pretty good, I must confess. And while I like the idea of easy access to pots and pans in proximity to the stove, somehow the four pots in the House Beautiful photo don’t quite cut it, nor do the impeccably spacious open countertops I regularly see at Open House displays. Seriously, who doesn’t have small appliance clutter these days, especially with the current unreported epidemic of infomercial junkies on the loose in this country? If the stuff isn’t on the countertops, you know it has to be stashed elsewhere, whether in those nonexistent cabinets or out in that nominally two-car garage.

Pre-Installed Built-In Plumbing?

And then there’s the assertion in Phase III that the former breezeway turned crafts room will easily transform into a laundry room because of pre-installed plumbing. Seriously, if you wait until your teens are grown and gone before you build yourself a laundry room, you’ve raised yet another generation with some serious survival problems, let me tell you. What the heck have you been doing all these years? Yuck! Let me tell you, if there has been plumbing there since Day 1, then there has been a downstairs guest half-bath (toilet) as well.

Conclusion:

I think I’m outta step with mainstream America, but then, I think I already knew that…

Weather Concerns

Weather Concerns
13 March 2006

There was a pile-up of 28 cars this past weekend, caused in part by the whimsy of local microclimates, in part by the insatiable love of speed, in part by complacency. Who, after all, driving under crystal clear skies and brilliant sunshine, would expect to encounter ice and snow on the other side of a tunnel driven daily? After all, this is not anywhere near the environs of the mythic Shangri-La. And yet, so it was. My college friends from the Midwest would not have been surprised, but what do Californians know of the deceptive potential of Nature, as opposed to that of humankind?

That’s nothing, though, compared to what is being reported this morning: Wildfires across the Texas Panhandle, tornadoes across the Midwest, winter storms still raging above the hunkered down Punxsutawney Phil, all make California’s brief dance with snow flurries pale by comparison. Of course, inexperience and surprise can be as deadly as more familiar dangers. What’s more important, perhaps, is to avoid looking at these ravages of nature as some sort of competition. The question should not be which is worse or who suffers more, but rather, how do we as people respond? How do the individuals on the ground respond? How do onlookers respond? How do we as a society respond? Some of the areas in this morning’s news are the homebases of relief efforts for last year’s Hurricane Katrina victims. I still get regular weekly updates of what they are doing; now it’s their turn to need help. How will the rest of us respond?

I can’t help but think about the resources we are expending overseas, about the efforts spent domestically to distract us from those expenditures, about the needs that we have right here at home. All this I see juxtaposed against the exciting news that NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has successfully entered orbit around Mars. After all, one of the premises on which the science fiction to which I was addicted in my youth was based was that Earth was becoming overcrowded, at war, and ravaged by increasingly severe weather conditions. Of course, this is also all very Apocalyptic, but is it really so very different from any other century?

So my mind leaps and wanders this morning: weather to whether or not our government will respond adequately to what the future might hold for space travel, (which is also reported this morning to be on the verge of becoming cheaper soon). I think I’ll start this day optimistically, then.

On Upbringing

On Upbringing
8 March 2006

Does upbringing affect tolerance on a kinetic level? As I was making my way down the freeway today, I saw a baby strapped into the backseat of a passing SUV. This is such a common sight that I usually take it for granted, but today Max was with me, and it set me thinking.

There was a time when people thought that 25 m.p.h. was really moving because it wasn’t an everyday experience for them. Traveling at speeds exceeding 60 – 80 m.p.h. still sets every nerve jangling in the senior citizens I’ve driven back home. There are, in fact, still people in this world today who don’t consider high speed travel an everyday occurrence. Without any such experience at as young an age as suburban children generally have, how does a body react? Does it ever accept as readily with such a sense of assumption as does a body that has experienced such motion since infancy?

Take the thought away from speed but retain the question of kinetic memory. Monkeys, (for lack of a more scientific term,) hang and swing freely in their natural habitat. People are generally more earthbound. Parents who have gymnastic aspirations for their children expose their offspring early to experiences that will accustom the little ones to the sensations of freefall. This is also true of those who wish their children to learn to love water rather than to fear it, some even going so far as to have “water babies” delivered in a swimming pool.

This brings me back to my initial thought. Do children who grow up riding around in speeding cars perforce have a different sensibility about motion and speeds? For that matter, do people who have spent their childhood strapped into seats with seatbelts and ridden around in back seats have a different world view than those who grew up unfettered bouncing around front seats and climbing over back seats in station wagons and trucks? How do such experiences affect our perceptions of safety, risk, and lawmaking?

Hm…

Day Is Done

Day Is Done
7 March 2007

Day is done but I’ve not yet begun
I’ve sat and surfed my day away
If I had gumption I’d get up and run
Or at least walk part way
But it’s so much easier to sit and wait
No sense rushing when you know folks’ll be late
The trains, planes, and ferries are rarely on time
Except when I run out of rhyme
Rhyme scheme, rhythm, meter – what are they?
This isn’t great literature; it’s barely play
I probably need more vegetables in my diet
Either that or I’ve let my life become too quiet
Think I’ll go sit and think some more
If I wait long enough, will I discover my core?
Didn’t Verne say the world’s center is hollow?
That’s not a parallel I really want to follow
Time to get ready and warm up the car
Though, frankly, I’m not driving far
Is publishing regularly really more urgent
Than writing consistently with thought and control is important?

Sunday Evening Television

Sunday Evening Television
6 March 2006

Yahoo has a headline suggesting that the Nielson rating for Sunday evening’s 78th Annual Academy Awards show was less than stellar, but at this house, the AA is required viewing. Company is optional, chips and dips have become optional, as have alcoholic beverages, but viewing is required. Of course, that does make seeing the nominated works prior to the airing useful, but as often as not, the spectacle is its own reward.

Last night the Academy sought to take itself even more seriously than usual, all the major nominations involving films deemed to be of social, economic, and political significance for the first time since the socially revolutionary heyday of the post-WWII generation. So of course an M.C. capable of skewering such pretensions was requisite, though of two minds as ever, a comedian deemed “safe” was selected. He is white, male, and subtle – pretty much everything the majority of recent predecessors were not. People familiar with pundits seem to have appreciated him; we of the hoi poloi (sp?) less so. And so it goes… Off the cuff JS had some nice riffs, despite the cleanliness and near misses of his prepared material.

Like other steamrollers before it, Brokeback Mountain was honored for everything but its actual performers. As in previous years, the film of greatest epic scope, ensemble cast, and critical success took the plum prize. Peter Jackson seems to have superceded Steven Spielberg as the special effects extravaganza go-to guy, as far as awards go. As the former was absent and the latter present, perhaps a gauntlet will be perceived to have been thrown down and picked up. One can always hope that that bodes well for us as audience.

Despite an excellent opening acceptance speech riff by George Clooney, the majority of acceptance speeches were the usual hasty recitation of obligatory acknowledgements and thanks. The most notable exception was the unabashedly enthusiastic and euphoric cadre of hip hoppers, who may have garnered a few votes out of protest against the blandness of the opposition, in addition to a few votes delighted by the potential distress of the censors because of the song’s title. In truth, theirs was the most well-integrated song nominated, the music and lyrics woven inextricably with the plot. In truth, theirs was arguably the most honest acceptance, if not the most surprised.

The makers of Crash deserve that honor, though they also deserve the accolades heaped on them for the amazing narrative weaving they did. Don’t forget your scorecard for that one, though it’s well worth it.

I must say that there were a lot of very pretty movies this year. Cinematography was a tougher call than usual, or should have been. There are heartbreakingly breathtaking shots in The Constant Gardener, Pride and Prejudice, Brokeback Mountain, Capote, The Three Burials of (the guy whose name escapes me…), and even King Kong, in addition to Memoirs of a Geisha. Still, for my money the camera work on Good Night, and Good Luck was as integral a part of the narrative as the music in Hustle and Flow. It’s just too bad that so many folks are unwilling to consider the artistry of b/w these days.

It was only after the show had ended and cameras began covering the post-show parties that I realized that I’d forgotten the popcorn…

Spelling Bee

Spelling Bee
6 March 2006

First, an apology is in order for those few of you who have checked back here in recent days, only to find this poor blog treacherously neglected: Sorry.

Now –

Saturday afternoon is a wonderful time to drive across a bridge. There are no imminent starts or endings to create chaotic driving conditions. When the rain has been kind enough to relent, allowing the sun a bit of play time, the views are spectacular. Why, it’s even possible to see video game escapees coming before they are upon and past one! The clouds scud across the sky, portending further downpour, but at present they merely reflect the fine winds whipping delighted windsurfers about the briefly calm Bay. The experience feels like driving into a calendar image…

Destination: dinner en familia, a la Chinese cuisine. Perfectly chilled ginger chicken, comfortingly warm roast duck, something green like the newly trendy broccolini or classic swamp cabbage (sans shrimp paste), freshly made white rice, hot tea – what’s not to like?

Onward, then, to the Theater on the Square, where serendipity proffers street parking, a gift unheard of in the heart of the City. Evening is falling. There is a crisp coolness in the air that promises a very brisk walk at the end of the evening, but that will be for later. For now, everything seems to be going exceptionally well.

Casual chic is the order of the day, though perhaps a little more chic than casual, as I survey the working privileged at play. Banners decorate the foyer in appropriate elementary school style, in keeping with tonight’s performance. Eager recruiters are seeking volunteers for audience participation in the upcoming Spelling Bee, and I am eagerly volunteered by companions who wish for a shorter existence. I decline. My cravings for the spotlight do not include opportunities to embarrass myself willfully; at least, not at this particular moment…

The theater fills, the show begins, the lights go down… This trend violating the fourth wall grants permission to squirm, invites closer examination of wall decorations -- cool.

How could that woman volunteer and not know how to spell jihad, especially in today’s climate? I cringe. The other two volunteers are men, one of whom actually seems a cut above average. They finally bring out the Comfort Counselor, a burly fellow with the look of a bouncer, and challenge the final volunteer to spell the long version of LSD. He has the grace to err about three-quarters of the way in, and they ring him out before he can go any further.

The show goes on, full of song, dance, and quips clearly tailored to this San Franciscan audience. There’s a sense of satisfaction that the evening has been fun. Critiques about stereotyping vs. stock characterizations will come later, but for now, there is the freshness of a clearly crispy night, the pleasure of a nightcap, and a clean shot back across the Bay under a waxing moon.

I Lack Originality, But I Like to Share

This should be a place to post my own thoughts, but some of the stuff I find in my Inbox I just can't keep to myself. Here, then, is more from my Net:

Encourage your kids to stay in school or they'll end up just like these parents!! These are REAL notes written by PARENTS in a Tennessee school
district... (Spellings have been left intact.)

1-- MY SON IS UNDER A DOCTOR'S CARE AND SHOULD NOT TAKE PE TODAY. PLEASE EXECUTE HIM.

2-- PLEASE EXKUCE LISA FOR BEING ABSENT SHE WAS SICK AND I HAD HER SHOT.

3-- DEAR SCHOOL: PLEASE ECSC's JOHN BEING ABSENT ON JAN. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 AND ALSO 33.

4-- PLEASE EXCUSE GLORIA FROM JIM TODAY. SHE IS ADMINISTRATING.

5-- PLEASE EXCUSE ROLAND FROM P.E. FOR A FEW DAYS. YESTERDAY HE FELL OUT OF A TREE AND MISPLACED HIS HIP.

6-- JOHN HAS BEEN ABSENT BECAUSE HE HAD TWO TEETH TAKEN OUT OF HIS FACE.

7-- CARLOS WAS ABSENT YESTERDAY BECAUSE HE WAS PLAYING FOOTBALL. HE WAS HURT IN THE GROWING PART.

8-- MEGAN COULD NOT COME TO SCHOOL TODAY BECAUSE SHE HAS BEEN BOTHERED BY VERY CLOSE VEINS.

9-- CHRIS WILL NOT BE IN SCHOOL CUS HE HAS AN ACRE IN HIS SIDE.

10-- PLEASE EXCUSE RAY FRIDAY FROM SCHOOL. HE HAS VERY LOOSE VOWELS.

11-- PLEASE EXCUSE PEDRO FROM BEING ABSENT YESTERDAY. HE HAD (DIAHRE, DYREA, DIREATHE), THE SH**S. NOTE: [WORDS IN ( )'s WERE CROSSED OUT].

12-- PLEASE EXCUSE TOMMY FOR BEING ABSENT YESTERDAY. HE HAD DIARRHEA, AND HIS BOOTS LEAK.

13-- IRVING WAS ABSENT YESTERDAY BECAUSE HE MISSED HIS BUST.

14-- PLEASE EXCUSE JIMMY FOR BEING. IT WAS HIS FATHER'S FAULT. {You know, this could be legit!}

15-- I KEPT BILLIE HOME BECAUSE SHE HAD TO GO CHRISTMAS SHOPPING BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW WHAT SIZE SHE WEAR.

16-- PLEASE EXCUSE JENNIFER FOR MISSING SCHOOL YESTERDAY. WE FORGOT TO GET THE SUNDAY PAPER OFF THE PORCH, AND WHEN WE FOUND IT MONDAY WE THOUGHT IT WAS SUNDAY.

17-- SALLY WON'T BE IN SCHOOL A WEEK FROM FRIDAY. WE HAVE TO ATTEND HER FUNERAL.

18-- MY DAUGHTER WAS ABSENT YESTERDAY BECAUSE SHE WAS TIRED. SHE SPENT A WEEKEND WITH THE MARINES.

19-- PLEASE EXCUSE JASON FOR BEING ABSENT YESTERDAY. HE HAD A COLD AND COULD NOT BREED WELL.

20-- PLEASE EXCUSE MARY FOR BEING ABSENT YESTERDAY. SHE WAS IN BED WITH GRAMPS.

21-- GLORIA WAS ABSENT YESTERDAY AS SHE WAS HAVING A GANGOVER.

22-- PLEASE EXCUSE BRENDA. SHE HAS BEEN SICK AND UNDER THE DOCTOR.

23-- MARYANN WAS ABSENT DECEMBER 11-16, BECAUSE SHE HAD A FEVER, SORE THROAT, HEADACHE AND UPSET STOMACH. HER SISTER WAS ALSO SICK, FEVER AN SORE THROAT, HER BROTHER HAD A LOW GRADE FEVER AND ACHED ALL OVER. I WASN'T THE BEST EITHER, SORE THROAT AND FEVER. THERE MUST BE SOMETHING GOING AROUND, HER FATHER EVEN GOT HOT LAST NIGHT.

Amazing Ode to Love

This world, as I see it.

Professor Batty has an amazingly creative circle of friends. One of them posted this Whitmanesque poem on the last day of February. It's called, "Being in Love."

Turn of Month

Turn of Month
28 February 2006

Sun peeked in and looked about
Didn’t like what it saw, so went off to pout
Rain swung by for awhile as well
Decided it preferred an inland dell
High tide’s come and ebbed away
Just been a cyclical kind of day
Last day of the month means party’s about over
Last day to bask in privileged clover
Tomorrow starts a new month meant for someone new
Think I hear my Big Boy and his favorite mew
Christians may mark tomorrow as the start of Lent
But here we remember the eldest heaven sent
Max and his siblings were born six years ago
And ever since he claimed me, my life has been flow

Still Mulling

Still Mulling
27 February 2006

Gift giving has always been a complicated thing for me, both more and less than it ought to be, if others are to be believed. The most meaningful gifts come from the heart, not the wallet, but something of the head has to be involved as well.

When I was very young, sit-coms and other family fare invariably presented breakfast in bed as the ideal way to please parents. This, of course, didn’t fare so well in my real life laboratory. In fact, after the first disastrous endeavor, (not nearly as catastrophic as anything depicted on television,) the deed was forbidden. Cleanup was bearable, but the waste was not. Those were harder times when tales of two loaves per penny were still common. Foolish child that I was, I considered this a lifetime ban. All right, I admit it: laziness shored up the tenet long after logic had undermined it.

The gift of a deed is not in the doing, I think, nearly as much as it is in the timing of the deed. When I was young, Mother was the whirlwind. As time passed and she was in a position to reap the whirlwind, she would have been far more appreciative of the unexpected, unsolicited deed. Now, I see my whirlwind just below the horizon with none to stand between me and my own reaping.

Reflections on Mom

Reflections on Mom
26 February 2006

When I was still living at home and Mom was still alive, she’d make sure we knew that her birth month was coming, and why that mattered. Now, she didn’t ask much – just one day, but somehow she never quite seemed to get what she really wanted. She was a fairly conventional lady: referred to herself and her peers as “girls”, believed that a woman’s role was to support her man and raise the children, believed that life was meant to be lived without complaint. All she asked of us was just one day. She didn’t make a big deal out of it, though she did expect to be let out of the kitchen and taken to a “nice” dinner with her twin that day. She did figure that since there were two of them, that ought to carry enough weight to warrant her one day of release, once a year. And, of course, she liked pretty little things with big price tags, though her idea of big was actually pretty modest, in keeping with the rest of her. Looking back, it’s easy enough to see why she didn’t think she was asking too much.

We didn’t think it was too much, either; at least, not the shiny little things with the big tags. That was the easy part. We were all working and money was flowing pretty freely back then. Her keeping us mindful of the timetable was really all the help any of us needed. Spending money was such an easy salve for noisily twinging consciences that were all too easily salved. That one day, though, that was the hard part. Somehow, I don’t know that she ever got that one day. I look back now with regret and understanding, too late. The words and the gifts came all too easily, the simplest of gestures and thought not easily or early or eagerly enough. The woman gave so much to so many so freely. She deserved a more generous family.

Now when I look back on my own birth month haul and think of what I sought vs. what I got, I understand all too well… too late. The objects are dutiful; the actions priceless. Those actions would have been so much more validation of worth, so much more appreciation of services rendered, so much more lasting in gratification than the objects she accumulated over the years. We thought we loved her; did she?

Multimedia As Cultural Vehicle

Watching a dvd is like reading a book: when the tale is done, the screen goes blank, like the closing of a cover on that final page. Silence ensues, and there is time to reflect and to ponder what has just passed through your sensory apparatus, brain paths, and thought processes. One is free to pursue lines of thought beyond the final page, the closing scene; unless, of course, one makes the conscious effort to become engaged with something else.

When a book is done, there is the possibility of picking up another, of course. When a dvd is done, on the other hand, a mere push or two of a button will bring up further sensory input, whether from regular television broadcasts or from supporting materials on the dvd. If, however, one eschews cable or DSL subscription and lives in a signal-free region, then viewing dvds becomes even more like reading books. One must perforce rise to select and input a fresh dvd if one is to go on viewing materials, just as one must make a conscious choice of new reading materials. This time gap plays a significant role in the formulation of one’s response to the material experienced, for without a period of gestation, there is inescapable overflow and intermixing of impressions from the uninterrupted flow of input, comparable to the experience of reading multiple books concurrently.

The educational system as it is currently designed encourages such multi-tasking. High school and college students, even an increasing number of middle and elementary school students, are all being taught in departmentalized institutions. In such a setup, each teacher or instructor is allowed to focus on a particular discipline, while students are expected to absorb all the subjects to which they are exposed and to take everything in holistically while retaining a compartmentalized clarity of “it” all. While this is particularly useful in our increasingly computerized society, it yields a very different impression and leads to assessments of material at variance with those of yore.

Yes, of yore. Who uses such language any longer? Jokesters writing script material for the now defunct television series, Friends, did. Fantasy writers hearkening back to the days of heraldry do. Players of certain computing games might. The general public, however, is increasingly distanced from such language, making literature commonly read but a few decades ago as difficult to comprehend as Orwellian newspeak was in its time.

Despite the ways in which advances in technology are distancing language and knowledge base from the past, however, the fact that dvds can and do incorporate multiple sensory inputs, including sight and sound, words, pictures, and music, makes dvds both viable and vital. Multimedia brings together many of the arts through which culture has traditionally been expressed, preserved, and conveyed, from imagery through music and narrative. If multimedia is the new vehicle for literature and thus for culture, then it should be recognized and embraced as such. Whether we close one cover before opening another or stream disparate discs together, these are the bards of our lives.

Objects vs Deeds

“A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say;
I say
It just begins
To live
That day.”

~Emily Dickinson~

These pithy words have been attributed to Emily Dickinson, though I’ve never been able to find them in any publications of her collected works. Over the years they have stimulated some spirited discussions, mostly concerning whether one prefers yelling or the silent treatment. As a person who grew up with one each of such parents, (yeller and silent one,) I was fascinated by people’s responses to the question. The discussions made me realize why my own parents had always been so concerned about what my habit of voicing my opinions in public places might say to others about them as parents and as people. (Yes, paranoia runs rampant in my family, as much because of nurture as nature.) This month, however, these words popped back into my head under very different circumstances.

A long-standing practice of mine is to take the entire month of February to celebrate life, specifically mine. This has led to some valid concerns regarding the common practice of gift-giving. Now, I have repeatedly stated that objects are not as significant to me as actions. An object, after all, is given once it is transferred to the recipient, whereas attitudes, deeds, and treatment can last so much longer. That, I suppose reasonably, has become the source of discontent for those more materialistically-oriented, primarily because of the seemingly endless nature of service vs. object. Now I ask you: would you prefer an expensive object or a month of service? (Explanations appreciated.) (

Great Truths Floating around the Internet

GREAT TRUTHS THAT LITTLE CHILDREN HAVE LEARNED:

1) No matter how hard you try, you can't baptize cats.

2) When your Mom is mad at your Dad, don't let her brush your hair.

3) If your sister hits you, don't hit her back. They always catch the second
person.

4) Never ask your 3-year-old brother to hold a tomato.

5) You can't trust dogs to watch your food.

6) Don't sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.

7) Never hold a Dust-Buster and a cat at the same time.

8) You can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.

9) Don't wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.

10) The best place to be when you're sad is Grandpa's lap.


GREAT TRUTHS THAT ADULTS HAVE LEARNED:

1) Raising teenagers is like nailing Jell-O to a tree.

2) Wrinkles don't hurt.

3) Families are like fudge...mostly sweet, with a few nuts.

4) Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground.

5) Laughing is good exercise: it's like jogging on the inside.

6) Middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fiber, not the
toy.


GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT GROWING OLD:

1) Growing up is mandatory; growing old is optional.

2) Forget the health food; I need all the preservatives I can get.

3) When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you're
down there.

4) You're getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair
that you once got from a roller coaster.

5) It's frustrating when you know all the answers but nobody bothers to
ask you the questions.

6) Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.

7) Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.


THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE:

1) You believe in Santa Claus.
2) You don't believe in Santa Claus.
3) You are Santa Claus.
4) You look like Santa Claus.


SUCCESS:

At age 4 success is . . not peeing in your pants.
At age 12 success is having friends.
At age 16 success is . . having a drivers license.
At age 35 success is . having money.
At age 50 success is . . . having money.
At age 70 success is . . . having a drivers license.
At age 75 success is . having friends.
At age 80 success is not peeing in your pants.

Always remember to forget the troubles that pass your way;
BUT NEVER forget the blessings that come each day.

Hybrid

I was looking at blogs and came across this amusing link prefaced by this query:

What do you get when you cross Star Wars with Whole Foods?

http://www.storewars.org/flash/index.html

Multitasking and CPU Speeds

Multi-tasking and CPU Speeds
(Or the Lack Thereof)
22 February 2006

I’ve never been fast… quick, of occasion, but never fast. I’m one of those sad souls who feel compelled to turn full attention to one task at a time. This makes savoring experiences much easier, I think, but it does limit the number of experiences one can fit into one lifetime. So it was with some surprise today that I found myself actually multi-tasking. Turns out when a CPU takes an interminable amount of time to load a graphics intensive program or subset, there’s just so much Freecell or Minesweeper one can play before going stir-crazy. Thus it was that I find myself at the end of the day with laundry, dishes, housekeeping, and even record-keeping all done with the afternoon stretching out before me, never mind the evening. Even JJ and Max seem satisfied with the attention each has received today, between vigorous games and long love fests. The only real downside I see is a sense of nagging guilt that I have not given my work my full attention, but what is one to do while awaiting the loading of a screen, (besides silently scream)? Seriously, now what’ll I do with myself? Guess it’s finally time to start that great manuscript that has floated in and out of my head ad nauseum…

More Random EMail

More Random E-Mail
21 February 2006

SOME GOOD QUESTIONS

1. Ever wonder about those people who spend $2.00 apiece on those little bottles of Evian water?
Try spelling Evian backwards: NAIVE

2. Isn't making a smoking section in a restaurant like making a peeing section in a swimming pool?

3. OK.... so ! if the Jacksonville Jaguars are known as the "Jags" and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are known as the "Bucs," what does that make the Tennessee Titans?

4. If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhea...does that mean that one enjoys it?

5. There are three religious truths:
a. Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah.
b. Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the leader of the Christian
faith.
c. Baptists do not recognize each other in the liquor store or at
Hooters.

6. If people from Poland are called Poles, why aren't people from Holland
called Holes?

7. Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?

8. If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?

9. Why do croutons come in airtight packages? Aren't they just stale bread
to begin with?

10. Why is a person who plays the piano called a pianist but a person who
drives a racecar is not called a racist?

11. Why isn't the number 11 pronounced onety one?

12. If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that
electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged,
models deposed, tree surgeons debarked, and dry cleaners
depressed?

13. If Fed Ex and UPS were to merge, would they call it Fed UP?

14. Do Lipton Tea employees take coffee breaks?

15. What hair color do they put on the driver's licenses of bald men?

16. I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot
more as they get older; then it dawned on me .....they're cramming for
their final exam.

17. I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little spoons
and forks, so I wondered what do Chinese mothers use? toothpicks?
(Offensive, but I let the Baptist crack go, so might as well give equal time, I guess...)

18. Why do they put pictures of criminals up in the Post Office? What are
we supposed to do, write to them? Why don't they just put their
pictures on the postage stamps so the mailmen can look for them
while they deliver the mail?

19. If it's true that we are here to help others, then what exactly are the
others here for?

20. You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

21. Ever wonder what the speed of lightning would be if it didn't zigzag?

22. If a cow laughed, would milk come out of her nose?

23. Whatever happened to Preparations A through G?

24. As income tax time approaches, did you ever notice: When you put the
two words "The" and "IRS" together it spells "THEIRS"?