Bring the marshmallows

A mentally-unbalanced "activist" a few weeks ago stood next to a highway in Chicago, lit himself on fire and burned himself to death to protest the war in Iraq. Or something. No one paid attention, actually. Probably he was really just consumed with self-hatred because he couldn't be a productive member of society. Now that they've figured out who he was (it took them five days to identify what was left of him), a few people who clearly don't have enough to do now want to call him a martyr. I think that's amusing. He could not affect anything while he was alive, and he cannot affect anything now that he's dead. Whatever reason he wanted to ascribe to his failure in life, it still doesn't change the fact that suicide in our culture is an admission of failure. Life in this country is fairly comfortable, especially compared to 98 percent of the rest of the planet, and so unless one is in extreme physical or emotional pain, there's no reason for suicide. So he was unable to deal with whatever issues life dealt him, and he killed himself. Blaming the war was just a convenient "issue of the day" excuse for a perennial malcontent to avoid admitting that he himself was a failure. It would be one thing if he had been on the front line, had been subjected to enemy attacks, had watched his friends be blown to pieces around him. But no. He lived in Chicago, worked in "building maintenance" and dabbled in "experimental music." But he felt SO strongly about the war, he set himself on fire in protest. Mmmmhmmmm. Sure. And Elvis isn't really dead, we never really went to the moon, and your TV is broadcasting mind-control rays to make you buy stuff.

If other "activists" want to revere him, I think they should put their welfare checks and student loans where their mouths are, and follow his example. In fact, I'll bring the matches and the marshmallows. The rest of the world, along with the witnesses who ignored him that day, recognize a failure when they see it. That's why no one has paid any attention.

A Christmas parade

Our jungle town put on a wonderful Christmas parade the other night. It was almost two hours long, which surprised me. I did not think there were enough people in our town to be in such a huge parade, much less enough people to line the streets for blocks and blocks to watch. If this was such a big to-do, the Boat Parade should be even more fun next weekend, where everyone decks their boats out in Christmas lights and cruises the waterways.

Lots of 'Vettes. Tons of them. Every middle-aged man in the jungle has one, apparently. Me, when I reach that age... I will buy a huge diesel Army truck that will scatter those little plastic 'Vettes like deer.

The Bassett Hound Rescue. I'm not clear on whether these are Bassetts that HAVE been rescued, or if these are specially-trained Rescue Bassetts. No little drums of liquor were in evidence on their collars.

A chain-driven, single-cylinder automobile, probably from the 1890s. I can't remember what it's called.

A flame-belching truck towing members of the local drum circle. I didn't know there were such organizations in our area. But then, it is the jungle.

Lots of marching bands. At least three, that I counted.

A gaggle of Shriners.

Lots of fire trucks, at least two entire fire stations' worth. It's fortunate that there were no fires scheduled for that night. Fire trucks are my favorite parade vehicle, other than tanks and jeeps. Most of the fire truck pictures didn't turn out well because their reflective tape and numbers were so bright, you couldn't see the truck... they were just outlines and numbers floating in blackness. It's odd, what the camera sees, versus what your eye can see.

Lots of trailer floats with kids on them. There are an astonishing number of churches in our area.

I DO live in God's Waiting Room. Here are some of the patients.

But wait... the Boat Parade is scheduled for next weekend...

For once, I did not eat too much

I'm not alone in overindulging on Thanksgiving. I know a lot of my friends do. This year, though, we had it at a friend's house, and although her cooking is wonderful, I did not feel the urge to eat too much. Maybe it's because I've been sick. Maybe I'm developing better eating habits. I don't know. But Thanksgiving was a nice gathering of friends, and good food, and not too much of either.
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Today I am making needed repairs around the house. And of course, they are not going as planned. Off to the hardware store again.

For some reason, people tell me things

You may be one of those people to whom others just talk, and they tell you things that make you wonder, "why are you telling me this?" I know I am one of those people.

For example, I had a nice chat with Iris, a reservations agent at Air Canada, on the phone the other day. In ten minutes, I knew that:

• She was from Edmonton, and misses it, her whole family (five sisters) is back there
• She moved to Toronto with her husband and three sons when her husband who works for [insert meaningless Canadian government entity here] was transferred
• Two sons are in college, a third is a high school senior
• All three sons are elite hockey players, including one who's on scholarship at Brown University
• Most of the Ivy league schools' hockey teams are heavily weighted with Canadian youth
• She's not particularly keen on Toronto
• She grew up in a big rambling house with tons of space for everyone
• Her parents are still together

There is more that I probably forgot. All I said was "uh huh" and "really?" and she was perfectly content to hold up both ends of the conversation. Oddly, though, she didn't radiate that sense of desperation that you would usually get from such a person in such a conversation. She was genuinely a very nice lady, very fun to talk to. My co-workers who were listening to my end of the conversation were quite befuddled, thinking I had suddenly switched calls and was talking to an old friend. All that information, and I got my flight changed too. ;-)

This morning, I had a similar conversation with my dental assistant as she cleaned my teeth (well, it was a one-sided conversation, again). She, a native Torontonian, from Mississauga, no less, reminisced at length about Toronto in the early 1970s, before it turned into the dungheap (hey, not my word) that it is today. I learned lots about places in Toronto that I don't know, and don't plan to visit, but it was nice of her to tell me, over the whine of the polisher. RRrrrrRRRRR!

For that to occur twice in five days is unusual. Or, perhaps Canadians are just unusually chatty. But this happens to me a lot, and has always happened all of my life, and only recently with Canadians. Perhaps Canadians are even more at ease with my alien personality than most people are. I must experiment more.

A lost weekend

I slept most of the weekend, suffering from a horrible case of food poisoning, which I contracted either from the strange hors doeuvre lunch that my client served us on Thursday (hey, I'm always grateful for lunch, even if it's odd, but NOT if it makes me sick) or from a couple slices of provolone cheese that I ate for dinner Thursday night. I'm not sure. Either way, I got horribly sick while changing planes in D.C. - fever, chills, deep muscular pains, and stomach cramps. It stayed that way roughly til I drove myself home from the airport, whereupon I collapsed into bed and slept most of the weekend. I was drained of all energy.

I live in the tropics, where old people come to die. I often marvel at how slowly they move, how dazed and disoriented they appear... and after this weekend, I now understand how it feels to be old. You have absolutely no energy. It's an effort to stand up. You're always dizzy. Sound comes from far away, from an indeterminate direction. It's an effort to focus your attention on anything. Walking is a chore. Sitting is grateful respite, in between the chores of walking somewhere, like to the bathroom. Sleep is blessed relief.

All of which confirms my belief that we have GOT to take these old farts' driver's licenses away. They're DANGEROUS.

Fun at my co-worker's

One of my co-workers, who happens to be the only Quebecer I've ever spent any amount of time with, is a real smartass and a darn good cook, both of which are reasons to like him. He invited us down to his condo downtown for dinner, so of course we went, salivating. It was worth being stuck in a traffic jam for an hour, fighting our way around a broken-down car in the left lane on the Gardiner Expressway, for a chance to eat his cooking (marinated rosemary chicken breasts, sauteed veggies, broccoli (also a veggie, I'm told) and white chocolate mousse. Plus, the chance to play with his two adorable cats, Foof and Toots.


Toots holds down my co-worker's jacket on the bed, knowing that my co-worker HATES cats. Cats are smart that way.




Foof is a pig for belly-rubs.

It was a nice evening, with good food and good company. I slept in the next morning, though my flabby belly can ill-afford the exercise I skipped.

The hand of God

My client insists that I be at the client's site until 5 PM on Thursdays, not necessarily because I need to be (my hours are in by noonish), but because they need THEIR own employees to be there (i.e., certain client personnel's work ethics need a little spark, or a jab with a cattle prod, perhaps). Why their lack of enthusiasm for work is my problem, I'm not clear. I am told by knowledgeable people that when a client starts dictating my working hours, I am an employee, and they need to be paying me benefits. I'm not going to use that line of argument with the client, because I don't want to be their employee. That's why I'm a consultant. Duh.

So. To comply with the later departure requirement, I changed my flight from a flight on one airline through Philadelphia, to another flight on another airline through DC. The aircraft I was to take to DC was delayed into Toronto by weather. When they landed, something went BANG and so we were delayed in our departure to DC by mechanical failure (what, they would not say. Whatever it was, it had better be f*cking critical, like an engine falling off). It became quite obvious that I was going nowhere tonight, so I said f*ck it, I'm going back to my apartment.

When I got here, I got an email from Orbitz saying my original flight on the other airline through Philadelphia . . . was also canceled.

So I was doomed from the start. Clearly I was not meant to go home tonight, and it didn't matter what way I tried to go - I wasn't going. So. I am irritated, but I'm sure God is preventing me from flying tonight for a reason. Perhaps I was going to die in a car accident on the way home from the airport. Perhaps not. But when events conspire to stop me from doing something, I can feel the hand of God guiding me. So I can choose to be irritated about not going home tonight, or I can choose to be grateful. I think I shall be gratefully irritated.

The Engineer in the Plastic Bubble

Long long ago, in a galaxy far far away, there was a cheesy film called "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble," a made-for-TV movie (1976) about a boy born without an immune system, who had to live out his life in an antiseptic plastic bubble. It starred John Travolta, and it was a true story based on the lives of David Vetter and Ted DeVita, who really lived in bubbles, having no contact with the outside world.

Engineers can be that way, too. Like the dweebs who designed the elevators in my apartment building. An elevator costs, what, $100,000? Don't you think, for that price tag, it would include an eensy weensy pair of indicator lights inside the elevator, and another pair outside on the wall, that would tell you . . . whether it's going up or down?

No.

There are five elevators in my building. Each one of them is a heavy-duty 22-passenger model - very expensive, with nice tile and lighting. None of them have any indicator whether it's going up or down, especially on the wall in the elevator lobby on each floor. No, you are supposed to assume that when you push the button to call the elevator, the next elevator door that opens is one that's going in the direction you want to go. This works maybe 70 percent of the time. The rest of the time, you're stuck traveling in the wrong direction, and then you have to backtrack.

None of these elevators has any kind of manufacturer nameplate on it, just an Ontario elevating device installation number. Smart move - if I ran the company that built such a dumb design, I wouldn't want my name on it either. But while I was running the company, I would pay regular visits to the engineering department, and make sure those poor sheltered little engineers got outside more, and got some fresh air, and visited other buildings in the outside world that have elevators, and maybe those engineers would notice that THOSE elevators have direction indicators.

Elevators are not something that I pay particular attention to, but this has got to be the stupidest elevator-related thing I've ever seen.

I think I'll just start using the stairs.

Friends and veterinarians

I got up from my desk to take a call yesterday morning, and when I came back, my computer was running slow. I clicked the close button to close my mail message, and talked to my client manager while I waited. Nothing happened, so I clicked the close button again. Nothing happened. Then I noticed an odd-looking close button in the top right corner of my screen, so I clicked that, and closed the picture of my email window that my friend had placed on my screen while I was gone. No wonder my computer wouldn't respond - I had been clicking on the buttons on the picture, not on an actual window. My friend thought it was quite funny. I hit him.

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Another of my friends has just bought a wedding dress for her wedding next New Year's. Leadtimes for a dress are 4 to 8 months, I'm told, so she was smart to buy it now, especially when she just happened to find exactly the dress she had been looking for. It sounds wonderful, and I know she will be a beautiful bride in her new dress.

At the same time, it makes me glad that I'm male, and all I had to do at my wedding was to show up in a suit and be well-groomed.

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Science Diet makes a Hairball Control formula for cats. What they don't tell you is that they control hairballs by plugging up your cat's digestive system, so they stop pooping. As they fill up with poop, they stop eating, become listless, and don't groom themselves as much, thereby reducing the incidence of hairballs. It seems to be a quite roundabout way of achieving the goal, and is quite expensive in vet bills. We've learned our lesson. So has our vet, who had to give Jesse the cat not one, but two enemas to get him going. I'm sure that when he went to vet school, he didn't rank cat enemas very high on his list of professional goals. Now, any time I get dissatisfied with my job, I can look at my vet, and be glad that I have the job I do.

Errands, and home away from home

My darling wife and I moved a very large yucca plant this weekend, from its former home at the site of the plant sale last month (where it didn't sell, precisely because it's too big to move in its heavy pot) to our storage unit, where it will vegetate for awhile, so to speak. We put it out in front of the building, where it will get some sun, and our storage unit manager will water it periodically for us. We borrowed the storage unit's truck to go get it. I parked next to some trees as we worked, and when I pulled out, I scraaaaaped the side of the truck with the branches. Now, normally when I do something like that, it doesn't hurt the truck at all. But when we got back to the storage facility, I saw that the side of the truck had a huge scratch, with a big dent and a gouge at back end by the rear door. I told our storage unit manager about it, and she looked at it, and said it had already been there, that a customer last month had borrowed the truck, ripped a light fixture off her building with it, and didn't even tell her about it. So she appreciated that I told her, but she reassured me that I hadn't done any more damage than what was already there. So that was a relief.

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We watched "Elizabeth" on AMC today (1998, with Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, and a bunch of others, about the reign of England's Elizabeth I (1533-1603 AD). Fascinating movie, very well done. It was very interesting to watch her transformation from frightened teenaged princess to proud, strong and courageous queen. The movie both began and ended with a scene of the heads of various traitors stuck on pikes. Nothing says "This is what happens to my enemies" like a head on a pike. Much could be accomplished if so-called "civilized" nations re-adopted this practice today. For example, people would be much more polite to each other.

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The shuttle bus to the remote parking lot in Toronto came immediately upon my arrival, compared to the hour's wait last week for my co-workers. I did not know what to make of it. But, upon arriving at my apartment, I decided to take some pictures.

My apartment building. I live on the fifth floor, which is not so far to jump in the event of a fire. Not that I have no faith in the Toronto fire department - I have no particular faith in any fire department, where high-rise buildings are concerned.

The apartment that my client has provided is very nice, the nicest I have been in during my career. Some of the furniture is a bit frou-frou, but that's to be expected of a furnished apartment.

I like the view from my tiny balcony. My building is in a district of high-rise buildings. Some are prettier than others.

Entropy

Entropy is the natural tendency for ordered or organized atoms and molecules to move toward a more disordered state, or chaos. Ice melting in a glass is an example of entropy, as the ice moves toward the temperature of the water, and soon it is one mass of water all at the same temperature, which itself matches the temperature of the room where it stands. On the macro scale, Rudolf Clausius (1850s, who also pointed out that the sky is blue due to diffraction of sunlight) said that the entropy of an isolated system not at equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value. This maximum value is the "heat death" of the universe, when all atoms in the universe are at the same temperature, and there is no temperature variance (hot versus cold) which would enable "work" to be done, or life to exist.

On a much smaller scale, there are two groups of voters in the United States. Whether they know it or not, one group supports entropy. The other group fights it. Currently, the pro-entropy group is in ascendancy. The anti-entropy group squandered its chance to fight entropy, and so has lost its power temporarily. In the intervening time before the anti-entropy group reasserts itself, it will be interesting to watch how quickly the United States accelerates its inevitable slide toward entropy, chaos, and ultimately heat death.

What goes around comes around...

There once was a psychotic woman on a project (not mine) who was anal, controlling, badgering, domineering, and drove not one but two of my co-workers insane. The first co-worker quit... the second one suffered in silence as this woman insisted on (a.) using ugly 1950s-style step-action tables for documentation, borrowed from existing "documentation" in France, (b.) abusing my coworkers, telling them one thing then changing her mind later and blaming us for "misunderstanding" what she had originally told them, and (c.) saying she'll do everything, delivering nothing at all or delivering it late, and then blaming us and everyone else for it. Completely off-the-wall loon. Anyway, her misdeeds caught up with her the other day when her hands-off-up-until-now project manager noticed that most of the documentation was not yet done, because it was sitting waiting for her to edit it. She blamed us, her heavy workload (which she had asked for) and the project manager's bad management for the stuff not being done. So he canned her since now her craziness could no longer be denied. She was used to intimidating and blaming her co-workers for everything that went wrong, but this time she made the mistake of doing that with a superior and not a subordinate.

I think it's funny. So often, crazy people like that just barrel their way through life via intimidation of everyone around them, and there are no repercussions. But occasionally they get trapped by their own mistakes, and it's fun to watch them self-immolate. As Devo says, "When justice strikes / well every once in a while / it makes a bullseye hit." I agree.

A fun birthday party

We went to a friend's house for her husband's birthday party on Saturday. It was a potluck, and at least 30 people showed up, so there was enough food to feed an army. We met lots of nice people, including some neighbors-to-be, and had some nice conversations. The men all sat out by the pool and smoked, and me, not being a smoker and not knowing the men, just sat with my wife and her conversationmates and had a nice time. I met my mortgage broker's wife and 11-year-old daughter, who enjoys science and has a very engaging personality, much more personable than many kids I meet. And I ate entirely too much, and played with our friend's 8-year-old daughter's birds (a parakeet and a something-that-I-can't-remember), both of whom crave attention and don't care who they get it from, as long as someone's available to rub their head or has a spare finger to nibble. It was a very nice gathering, and it was very kind of our friends to invite us, even though we haven't been friends very long.

A day at the beach

Morning at the beach.


There was a particularly aggressive snowy egret. Snowy egrets have frilly head feathers, black legs and yellow feet.


"I'm the boss. Me!"


"In case you forgot, I'm STILL the boss. Yeah, you'd BETTER run away."


"Yeah. Hmph."


There was also a hungry great blue heron, looking for a handout from Mr. Fisherman. Every fisherman has his heron groupies.

We also ran into our friend, a nice Vietnamese lady who is always happy and joyous, and always tries to give you some of whatever she has with her (usually shark's teeth, or candy or something). She's very generous, and great fun to talk to. I'm looking forward to seeing another beach friend, an elderly lady from Pittsburgh who is a devout Steelers fan. I will need to remind her that the Broncos beat the Steelers the other night.

A wonderful dinner with friends

We met up with one of my friends for dinner tonight, and had a wonderful time. It was terrific to see my friend; the last time I saw her, she was deathly ill and was bedridden for at least a week, at a critical time when the project needed her. She felt doubly awful about that. But it was fun to see her and talk with her tonight, and we all had a nice time together at a fun restaurant with terrific food. It was another friend's birthday, so the waitress brought out a yummy frozen mousse with sparklers burning brightly on it. A nice evening! topped off by a chaser of Nyquil and a few dozen dead enemy bodies in "Halo" online. A relaxing end to a good day.