Twofer

UPBEAT:
Genesis, "Follow You, Follow Me" (1978)



DOWNBEAT:
Genesis, "Mama" (1983). I never really paid attention to the lyrics before, but I realize now that the images of a brothel are sadly appropriate.

Baby butterflies

These are Gulf Fritillary caterpillars (Agraulis vanillae). My darling wife built and runs a butterfly garden in a nearby county park, and so these are pictures of her "kids." I don't claim them in any way. Crawly things give me the creeps.

Hello, I Must Be Going!

"Hello, I must be going!" sang Groucho Marx in the 1930 comedy classic, "Animal Crackers".

"Hello, I must be going.
I cannot stay,
I came to say
I must be going.
I'm glad I came
but just the same
I must be going."

Phil Collins used the phrase for the title of his second album in 1982.

And today I am reminded that the life that I have chosen always has me leaving. I arrive in a new place, I meet new people, I work there for a few months, perhaps I make some friends, and then I am off again to somewhere new, never to see that place or those people again.

On the one tentacle, it's rather sad to live in an impermanent, ever-shifting kaleidoscope of people and places and events. I can never put down roots, never make plans to spend time with people or to make commitments to participate in things. On the other tentacle, it makes a kind of sense to live this way, because I never have enough time to begin truly loathing my surroundings.

I have met so many people who have worked in the same place, the same room even, with the same people for 30 or 40 years. I shudder to think about it. After a few years of such an existence, I'm certain that I would have suddenly flown into an inexplicable, unprovoked rage and stapled them all to death. And that's not a very nice thing to do.

So I wander from place to place, always smiling, putting my best pseudopod forward, always smoothing wrinkled situations and tensions, making people happy, lending an ear to their cares, all the while knowing that it will come to an end very quickly when I must leave again.

I think it helps me stay positive and upbeat, and it's one reason people like me and enjoy talking to me and telling me things. I am a non-threatening outsider who is willing to listen. I am not vested in the office politics in which they are mired, and I am sympathetic to their concerns, knowing that they do not affect me in the least, but knowing also that it helps them to talk about them, and so I let them.

My current project is coming to an abrupt end tomorrow, and I am sad . . . for the moment. I have enjoyed working here, working with these people, making . . . I can't call them friends, but perhaps good acquaintances. But Monday, I will be somewhere else, meeting new people, doing my job, listening, smiling, helping, and in the back of my mind, getting ready to leave again.

(I think that this is one of the reasons why I blog. This record is permanent. Sure, it is always slowly growing and morphing, but still it is a constant in an inconstant life.)

Once in a great while, I come back to a place I've been before, and I am usually welcomed back like a long-lost brother. And it's very awkward for me, because I can't pick out their faces or their names from my kaleidoscopic past, while they always remember me because I was the unusual visitor in their world of day-after-day sameness. I apologize profusely for failing to remember them, I re-learn their faces and names quickly, I do my job, and then I leave again, sloughing off those refreshed memories like a borrowed cloak.

For in some measure, I am the cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.

Our nighttime visitor

When a certain absent-minded alien forgot to clean the barbecue grill the other week, our local panther paid us a visit. He pulled the drippings pan off of the grill and licked it clean, leaving some rather large fangholes in it. The noise of the pan banging onto the ground and the heavy, whuffling breathing of the panther scared the crap out of our cats, and made my darling wife rather nervous.

I think the panther was back last night, because something large was lurking in my neighbor's back yard and tripping his security lights, according to my darling wife. My neighbor's dog was about to have a heart attack. Later the visitor wandered through our yard and bent one of our metal candle-stakes flat, sending the glass globe flying several feet through the air and smashing on the sidewalk.

I may need to set up a hunting camera to take pictures to confirm whether this is indeed a panther or some other visitor. Especially since a GPS unit went missing from another neighbor's car last night. Possible answers:
(a.) the panther is lost
(b.) the panther is unemployed and needed to pawn the GPS unit in exchange for raw meat
(c.) our visitor is a human prowler, in which case I may need to lie in wait for him and reward his trespassing with a bullet

I would much rather this visitor be a panther. Panthers do what they are programmed to do. There is no malice in them. I have no such illusions about human prowlers, though.

"He bit my ****!" she said

From the "People tell me things" file, sub-categorized under "Things I wish they didn't" label:

"He bit my cl*t!" she said, describing her abusive lover's latest transgressions. "On purpose!"

"And you told him 'Stop it!'?" I prompted, helpfully.

"I jumped and said, 'Ow, that hurts!'"

"And?" I prompted.

"And he laughed, and he did it again!" she said, incredulously.

"And you picked up the brass lamp from your bedside table and smashed him in the head with it?" I suggested.

She shook her head sorrowfully and changed the subject.

I think things will not improve without the suitable application of painful negative reinforcement. Against one or the other of them . . . I'm not sure who needs it more.

An anthem of disaffection and disillusionment

I always liked Linkin Park's brand of emo-metal, giving voice to the despair that some young people feel, where no one understands them. Of course, they're just like everyone else, in that everyone feels that way at a particular age. Hopefully they outgrow it before they explode and hurt other people around them.

This song is interesting for its use of a Japanese flute and drum as the backing sample, and I like the heavy drum (best experienced with a subwoofer). The video, though unrelated, is an interesting example of computer animation. (I have never played Final Fantasy in any guise, but the images are beautiful.)

Linkin Park, "Nobody's Listening"

A non-vacation

So, I took a week of vacation to spend with my father and his side of the family (his brother and his brother's wife, his sister, his sister's daughter and her husband and their son and his girlfriend) and my sister and her husband. We threw my father his 1000th birthday party. He enjoyed it. The rest of the week was spent running around and doing various family-type things. I think they all enjoyed their stay in the jungle. It was nice to see everyone . . . it's been a decade or so since I've seen some of them.

However, it was not much of a vacation for us . . . both my darling wife and I are very tired now. ;-) It's nice to be back at work so I can get some rest.

Hope for geeky males everywhere

I had no idea that Donnie Iris was so . . . geeky. But geeky must work for some females, as evidenced by the video. ;-)

I always thought that this song embodied the mindless, overpowering passion that compels some couples to be together, despite any other factors which argue against such a union. I think such relationships are interesting to watch, given that they rarely occur among Martians, but apparently occur quite a lot among humans.

Donnie Iris, "Ah Leah" (1980)

I am so tired of this Blogger graphic

I am glad they have taken it down. I found it annoying, since it's not "my" native Indic script. I think they presumed too much.

See one of my clients!

You can see the factory of one of my clients, Elgin Sweeper, in a TV program coming up next week.

The Travel Channel, "John Ratzenberger's Made In America," Wednesday, April 23rd, 21:00 Eastern Standard Time. ("Check your local listings.")

You can see the people I have worked with, and watch them build the unique and ubiquitous Pelican three-wheeled street sweeper.

"John Ratzenberger's Made in America (Season 5)
Old State Capitol Building/Elgin Street Sweepers
TV-G, CC

We travel to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and pay a visit to the historic Old State Capitol Building. Then we head to Elgin, Illinois and the Elgin Sweeper Company, home of the original motor-driven street sweeper, which is still cleaning America's streets."

Set your recorder!

Compulsive organization is contagious

Before I moved from the dusty cold mountains of Earth to the seaside, I spent many happy hours flipping through thousands of discs in various stores which specialized in the fencing of stolen CDs. (Those stores are long gone in the new recession, Amazon having replaced them with more effective fencing methods.) However, those stores did a VERY good job of keeping those thousands of discs organized by musical category and then by artist. Each artist had a little white plastic card bearing the artists' name, which sticks up above the discs to help group them.

Last night I was in a much smaller, dingier version of such a store, where organization was only a vague and ill-respected concept. Oh, they tried, in that they usually managed to get the artist within one or two letters of the alphabet where they belonged ("R" filed under "T" for example).

I repeatedly found artists' discs mis-filed. Sometimes they were within inches of each other, but apparently the filer was either illiterate or blind, neither of which are particularly good traits for such a task.

Before I knew it, an hour had passed as I re-filed disc after disc after disc.

I know several people who are compulsive organizers. I always regarded them with a measure of pity, as I watched them spend hours moving things, cleaning things, arranging things, and then starting the whole process over again when it somehow failed to satisfy.

I never imagined that this overpowering organization impulse could be viral. But apparently it has infected me. (*shudder*)

It is most distressing. I must report to my physician for decontamination.

"Better" human-to-computer interfaces

I break about two computer mice per year, because they get bashed around in my backpack, and they're not the sturdiest devices. I broke another one last week, and so I went shopping for a new mouse.

I was surprised to see that the trend in mice is toward wireless mice, and now "laser" mice (which are allegedly more accurate than a regular optical mouse, though there are no numbers on the packaging to indicate why this is so, or how much more accurate they are. Wikipedia suggests that their main advantage is in power savings, which only matters if you're using a wireless mouse).

I think the greatest leap forward in mouse technology was to get rid of the electromechanical rollers and the ball inside. I work in dirty manufacturing environments a lot, so the mouse ball picked up dirt, jamming the rollers. My co-workers would laugh as I disassembled my mouse on a weekly basis and cleaned it with a swab (or a knife, if the dirt was particularly crusty). But I was anal about having a mouse which would track true.

When optical mice came along, I thought it was fantastic. Sure, they won't work on shiny surfaces, but I work in dirty environments, so that's not a hazard for me.

Now many manufacturers make optical mice with USB cords, and the profit margin is zero. So I figure that the manufacturers want to push consumers into buying more profitable hardware. That's why the stores are pushing wireless mice, and it's very difficult to find a corded mouse anymore. But wireless mice are a bad idea, in my opinion, because:

• You have two pieces (a mouse and a separate antenna which plugs into the computer's USB port). Two pieces to lose instead of just one.
• The mouse uses a battery. For me, that anything computer-related that uses batteries is not as good as something with a power cord. As much as I use computers (which is all the time), I need a constant, reliable source of power.
• The antenna is usually a couple of inches long. Every extra millimeter of length is just more of a chance that a bump will break off the antenna, and/or ruin the USB port, and/or damage the motherboard. This would be a Bad Thing.
• I often attend meetings, or my schedule changes at a moment's notice, which requires me to pick up my running laptop and carry it to another room or another building. It's handy to have the mouse on a cord so that even if I drop it, I won't lose it. A wireless mouse would mean that I have to put the mouse in a pocket, and I risk losing it. (Martians have lots of pockets. Big ones, for Martian tools.)

I can see where a wireless mouse would be handy if you're giving a presentation, and your computer is across the room near the projector, while you sit in the back of the room and "drive." But I almost never do that, because good training technique says that the presenter should be up front, next to the screen, so that the audience's attention is not divided. But I have to laugh at people who use wireless mice at their desks, when their computer never moves from that spot, and the mouse is inches away. What's so bad about a cord? Might it get tangled in their coffee cup? It seems silly to me.

And now there are "laser" mice (making the appropriate Doctor Evil quotation marks with my tentacles in the air), which cost up to $80. I'm willing to pay $80 for a device that moves the pointer on the screen based on my eye movements, or just by thinking at it. That would be VERY useful. But as far as I can tell, laser mice are no discernible improvement over standard optical mice. Except for the manufacturer's profit margin.

I am looking forward to interactive holographic interfaces, similar to the touch screens in the movie "Minority Report" (sans the stupid gloves and the theatrical arm-waving). And of course, telepathic interfaces that allow you to control the computer just by thinking at it. Of course, by then, commercially-available computers will be the size of a pinhead, inserted into the skin of your skull, powered by your body heat, connected into your brain by an organic neural network which is stimulated to grow there by your friendly neighborhood medico-computer technician. Wireless broadband coverage, almost universal already, will mean that such people will have access to artificial telepathy, supplanting the current communications grid. Soon, more and more humans will choose to become cyborgs (in the technical sense), augmenting their abilities with computer processing and artificially-enhanced senses and perhaps even artificial muscle strength.

I wonder how long it will take for such improvements to become mandatory, required by law. Because by then, a new form of class warfare will have developed, between "normals" and "supers."

It will be interesting to watch.

[Marvin looks over this post, and thinks, "wtf? How did I get here from there?" This is the bad thing about stream-of-consciousness writing.]

An actual use for MySpace

I am not a big fan of MySpace. If you have something useful to say in writing, there are better places and mediums in which to say it. I use Blogger because it does what I need it to do. It is not pretty, but it is functional. I paint pictures with words, because my graphic artistry is sadly lacking, and therefore Blogger is sufficient.

However, there are uses for MySpace.

She suspected that her boyfriend was cheating on her, or at least that he wanted to cheat on her. So she set up a fake MySpace account with a picture of an innocuous part of her body, unidentifiable.

She sent a message to her boyfriend, using this fake account, saying that after reading his profile, she thought he was cute, and would he like to hook up?

Sure! he replied. Let's meet. He suggested a time and a place, a time that he knew his girlfriend would be busy and unable to know where he would be.

She was crushed. She cried and cried. But her suspicions were confirmed. And it was the last straw for her. Now she knew that she was better off alone.

It was a negative experience, but a positive use of MySpace.

"Oh, yeah? Well, go f*ck yourself, then!"

That would have been my response, were I female, and my male partner told me, "If you won't give me any [sex], then I'll go out and find it somewhere else!"

I overheard that statement recently, spoken by a male to a female. I did not hear what she said in response, if anything, but the title of my blog post is EXACTLY what I would have said in her place. Actually, the Martian equivalent sounds more like a spitting cat. But it means the same thing.

I can't believe that even today, there are males who do not respect a female's right to decide when she wants to have sex, with whom, and how. These males seem to regard the female's body as property, a playground with no curfew and no rules.

Perhaps there are females who like that. As a sentient being, I cannot fathom that mentality. It only strengthens my belief that females deserve the right to respond with as much physical force as they care to use, when confronted with such idiocy.

Airline mergers and failures

As a traveling consultant, I miss the glory days before 9/11, when airlines flew half-empty planes, flew as many as seven trips a day between two cities, lost money continually and had a great time doing it.

September 11th was a much-needed slap in the face for the airlines, because that kind of behavior is not how you run a business. Customers may like it, but customer goodwill doesn't pay the bills.

Now most airlines have cut the number of trips per day between two cities, they're packing the planes 100% full, and they don't serve meals anymore.

And now they're failing and merging like crazy. Just in the past month:

• ATA - bankrupt.
• Aloha Airlines - bankrupt. (which was okay because you're never sure if their pilots are actually awake up there in the cockpit.)
• Skybus - bankrupt. No more $10 fares! (THERE was a stupid business model.)
  
• Frontier - I can't BELIEVE they're bankrupt, they were my favorite airline when I lived out West. But theirs is a proactive bankruptcy, since they will keep operating while they reorganize. That's good. Frontier is one of the best airlines around, in terms of service, amenities, and reasonable fares.
• Northwest Airlines is merging into Delta Airlines (the Northwest name will disappear). I've never been impressed with Northwest Airlines, and I can't stand their hub airports (Minneapolis and Memphis in particular). I can't imagine that Delta's service or quality will improve by absorbing Northwest. It will be a shame if Delta pulls out of Cincinnati as a hub airport, but since Cincinnati's airport is actually in Kentucky and not in Ohio, it will hurt the Kentucky economy more.
  

Next up - Continental and United are making noises about merging. United has been struggling for years, in and out of bankruptcy. I have a ton of miles on them, but I am not particularly loyal to them. Continental is, well, Continental. I only fly them when I'm going to podunk towns in the South.

All of this bankruptcy and merger activity (along with the FAA's crackdown on sloppy aircraft maintenance) is long overdue, I think. Deregulation was fine, but it clogged the skies with aircraft, overloaded the nation's airports with too many takeoffs and landings, and created a huge underclass of flight attendants who are now jobless, and who will probably form roving bands of well-dressed vandals, breaking into duty-free stores and stealing alcohol, perfume and roll-aboard luggage.

It's all very sad. But these times are a necessary adjustment, because there are too many airlines serving too few customers profitably. When we have fewer carriers competing, prices will no doubt go up. Which will reduce the number of passengers. Which is just fine with me. Flying used to be a luxury, and most people could not afford it. We may see a return to those days.

Will the consolidation of the airline industry affect my job, with higher prices making it more expensive to travel, and discouraging clients from paying for it? Maybe. If I can telecommute more, that would be nice. But nothing beats being able to work with the client face-to-face. We shall see what happens.

I think you are blind to the fact that the hand you hold is the hand that holds you down

It's scary, how often I see people in thrall to their abusers. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's Stockholm Syndrome, but merely that they don't believe that they deserve any better.

Everclear, "Everything to Everyone"

The license plate on the truck of doom

I saw a sad sight on the way to the airport Sunday. I was driving down the four-lane state highway near my house, in an urban area, so we were not moving very fast. In the right lane ahead of me, a minivan trundled along, its driver oblivious, as so many elderly drivers in the jungle are.

A flurry of motion underneath the minivan attracted my attention. The minivan driver had plowed into a robin, or some other brown songbird. He had hit it low, with the bumper, and the bird bounced on the road underneath the minivan, shedding feathers wildly as it struggled to recover, bouncing along the pavement, carried along by the momentum of the minivan and the wind of its wake, bouncing, bouncing, slowing, still struggling with its wings probably broken...

Time seemed to stand still as I watched this poor creature, slammed into the ground by a swift-moving immutable force, writhing in its death throes, bouncing in the wake of the metal beast that had struck it unheedingly, and which now drove blithely onward, its driver unaware and uncaring that he had just ended the life of an innocent creature.

The bird flopped wildly in the road, feathers flying, as another car behind the minivan bore down upon it. I averted my eyes, and then looked back to see the bird flop into the gutter, still struggling. Carried along by the river of traffic, I said a prayer for the little creature, who was probably dying, if it was not already dead, and who, even if it survived this trauma, would probably become a predator's meal within the next hour.

It made me sad, and more than a little angry, to see people so unwittingly, uncaringly kill, without thought or regard for the lives that they take.

And yet, an odd part of me also envied that bird.

I hope that when my time comes to leave this place, that a similar immutable force of destiny swoops down upon me and delivers a crushing, killing blow, quickly and without remorse, so that I might not suffer. At most, perhaps I might realize what has happened to me, and have only enough time to recognize my fate, and to heave a sigh of welcome and of relief, before I die.

Surely it would be a better death than to waste slowly away, losing my vitality and my memories and my friends and family, withering into an empty shell that persists, agonizingly, waiting in vain for a death that is far too long in coming.

BS lawsuits

I read in the local newspaper the other day that a group of firefighters is suing the parent company of one of my clients, because the fire engine sirens that the company made were allegedly too loud to be mounted on top of the driver's cab (as they were up until the 1980s), and made the firefighters go deaf.

Please.

The company's response was that they had moved the sirens from the cab mount to the front bumper (as they all are mounted today) three years before government regulations recommended it. And, the company had always recommended (and had always put safety warning labels on their sirens to recommend) that users and bystanders wear hearing protection.

This is just another case of people looking for someone with deep pockets to sue, and to get money from them. It makes me sick.

If tort reform ever occurs in the United States (unlikely, since most of Congress is made up of lawyers), one reform that should take place is to require that if the plaintiff loses the lawsuit, the plaintiff must pay all of the defendant's legal fees and court costs. This goes for the government also. If a district attorney brings suit, and then drops it or loses the suit, the DA should be responsible for reimbursing the defendant's costs in defending themselves.

It would be a little like a band of cavemen hunting a mammoth. If you're going to attack a mammoth, you had better be prepared to get yourself stomped, gored, and otherwise killed.

If you're going to sue someone, you had damned well better have an airtight case, because if you lose, it's going to cost you.

I think this would fix a lot of problems in the legal system, starting with getting rid of frivolous or harassing lawsuits. Lawyers would hate this idea, of course, because it would slow the number of cases in the system to a trickle, and many lawyers would be out of business.

This would be a good thing for Earth, I think. I'm not the only one. The author Robert Heinlein often made reference to the Great Purge of '65, in which all of the lawyers were killed. In fact, in the future, there is no word for "lawyer."

I always found that funny. (With apologies to any of my readers who are lawyers.)

She needs a stroller

I came home late from an errand, and my darling wife spotted movement on the driveway.

"Stop!" she hissed to me, as she ran to get the flashlight. I stopped, wondering what had spilled or otherwise become a hazard on the driveway. At our house, you never know. I thought it would be best to wait for my wife.

She came back with a flashlight and pointed this creature out with it.


This is a wolf spider, Hogna huello. Wolf spiders are unusual in that they don't spin a web. Instead they run down their prey, like a nomadic hunter. Typically they can reach lengths of three inches across, or more, as this one is. (It is the jungle, after all.)

This particular spider is female. How can you tell? She's furry. Only that's not fur. . . it is her brood of hundreds of baby spiders, all clinging to her back like a fuzzy, multi-eyed and multi-legged mat.

I think mommy needs a stroller.

Synchronicity and the redistribution of wealth, part 2

Somehow I got on the mailing list for "Omaha Steaks," which is a business that makes it a game of shipping you perishable food items packed in just barely enough dry ice to make it to your home, IF there are no delays in shipping. Otherwise, you are the delighted recipient of a box of rotten meat. Which works for some life forms, but not for Martians.

Omaha Steaks is located at 10909 John Galt Boulevard in Omaha Nebraska. I found that to be amusing. I have not found any reasons why Omaha Steaks would choose to be located on a street named for Ayn Rand's hero in her novel "Atlas Shrugged," but I can only assume that it was intentional.

Workin' at the car wash

This was on XM this morning. I loooove this song. If Martians could dance, this would get their many feet moving.

Why my helmet needs a faceplate

Martians wear helmets, with the little broom-brush on top, as you may have noticed. I discovered an annoying flaw in our helmet design, though, last Friday on the way through the airport.

I went to the gender-unspecified-alien's bathroom. I spat my gum out into the urinal (gum-chewing is an annoying habit which I've developed as a human - certainly my superiors would reprimand me if they caught me doing it). Having poor mouth-urinal coordination, I missed the urinal. I stepped back and bent down to pick up my gum.

Stepping backward triggered the motion-sensitive flushing mechanism on the urinal.

Fooooshh! It sprayed a vigorous jet of water down into the urinal bowl, a jet so vigorous that a significant portion of it leapt out of the bowl and into my face. It was an appropriate end to an otherwise tedious day of travel.

I scrubbed down as best as I could, but I found the whole thing to be very VERY annoying.

I must get a new helmet, one with a faceplate.

Reading, writing and 'rithmetic... nope, just reading

One of the unfortunate side effects of university for me was that it taught me to dislike reading fiction for pleasure. I had to read so much that I was sick of it. Then I was in the mad scramble to find a career (until I settled on "professional observer") and so I had no time to read for a few decades. I don't think I visited a library for 20 years or more.

Now I'm trying to recapture that lost love of reading fiction for pleasure. I strolled through a new bookstore the other night, and saw absolutely nothing of interest. Part of it was that the prices have gone ever higher for books, to where a simple mass-market paperback is eight dollars. That's a bit much for something that I can devour in two nights. Part of it is that a lot of the books that are currently on the market, like films and television, seem to have been recycled from earlier authors and ideas. And the pervasiveness of "media fiction" (where one or more authors contribute to a series of books that are based on a movie or a television show) is obvious when a whole shelf of books all have the same logo in different colors, just with different titles like "Star Wars: The Attack of the 837th Variation On a Theme."

It's annoying.

So I went looking for a used bookstore. And I found one (only one), a little hole-in-the-wall in a shopping strip, sandwiched between a laundromat and a Chinese take-out restaurant. It was small, dimly lit, and cluttered, with piles of books stacked horizontally, vertically and diagonally. The shelves were a bit too close together, making the aisles narrow. The proprietor had taken the time to categorize them and then to alphabetize by author, which is an enormous help, instead of some used bookstores where they just shlump the books together by category, like "Romance" or "Mystery."

I was in heaven.

There's something about a used bookstore, the way it smells slightly musty, the way the dry, yellowing pages of the old books exude memories into the air. It smells of quiet, of patience, of summers spent reading on the front porch or in the park, of winters spent curled up on the couch with a favorite tome.

I found a few books and paid $6 for them. Now I'm set for a week or so. I'll see whether I can get back in touch with the ravenous reading monster that I was when I was a child.

Rockin' the shop, part 2

I saw S in the shop yesterday, and I thanked her for playing Boston for me at top volume earlier in the week.

"My supervisor yelled at me for that one," she laughed. But she didn't care. She has a healthy disrespect for petty authority. I like that in a person.

Where Keanu Reeves is from

I had no idea that Keanu Reeves was born in Lebanon, and grew up in Toronto. (He speaks English really well, despite his years in Canada, LOL!) I love Keanu Reeves, from the first time I saw him in "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" to "Speed" to "The Matrix" movies to "The Replacements" to "Constantine." (I am leaving out "Johnny Mnemonic." Lalalalalalalalalala I'm pretending he was never in such an awful film, lalalalalalalala.) I like the way that, even though he's often a wooden actor playing an even more wooden character, he IS convincing in his roles, and he isn't afraid to make fun of himself, or to have a little fun with the role.

I wish all movie stars would be as quiet and secretive as he is in his personal life. Instead, so many of them are loud and stupid and opinionated, telling everyone their half-baked ideas that have no basis in reality.

Morons. That's what blogs are for! ;-) Mine, anyway.

Synchronicity and the redistribution of wealth

"Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events which occur in a meaningful manner, but which are causally un-related. In order to be synchronous, the events must be related to one another conceptually, and the chance that they would occur together by random chance must be very small." - Wikipedia

I experienced synchronicity the other night, driving to my hotel.

• I saw a bumper sticker on an SUV that said "Who is John Galt?" It's been a long time since I've seen one... perhaps 20 years. It is the refrain from the book "Atlas Shrugged" by the Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand. In it, John Galt is a mysterious man who creates a new society of like-minded people in the wilderness, people who will not suffer being exploited for their wealth or intelligence or ambition merely to allow lesser people to survive. He encourages various captains of industry to abandon the society which is bleeding them dry with taxes and efforts to nationalize their property and their inventions. (I thought the book was dull. There's an incredibly long speech by John Galt, where the philosophy of Objectivism is laid out in excruciating detail. It could have been condensed into a four-page pamphlet, in my opinion. I agree with many of her points, but I thought Ayn was very long-winded about it.)
  
• When I got to my hotel room, the front-page story on the weekend newspaper was that a Democrat state representative in the Illinois legislature wants to double the state income tax on "the rich" (people with incomes greater than $250,000/year), from 3 to 6 percent. This is surprising because Illinois is one of only seven states that has a "flat" income tax, where ALL taxpayers pay the same percentage. Singling out a special group of taxpayers is inherently unfair under the current flat tax structure. Six percent doesn't sound like much, but there are 107,000 people (mostly in the Chicago area) who might think so. They would bear the burden of this new tax on being successful, which would fund education, state-sponsored construction projects and "tax relief" for people who make LESS than $250,000/year. The proposal has been dubbed "The Robin Hood Referendum." The representative who proposed it, Mike Smith, says that "I'm not sure who would campaign against this [proposal] other than those 107,000 [people]." My question is, what's to stop those 107,000 people from simply picking up and leaving Illinois? Nothing. And it would be within their rights to do so, when the undeserving leeches latch onto them and try to bleed them in the name of "equality."
  
• I was listening to a fun song, "Nugget," by Cake, which is basically a song addressing those very leeches. (Naughty, repetitive use of the F-word, plus goofy/inappropriate images of dead dictators and other silly but relevant people and objects. One of my degrees is in political science so I think it's amusing.)
  

It was an interesting feeling, all of those events converging in the same few moments of time.

Annoying signs

A large billboard on the side of a church assaults my eyeballs every time I drive past it.

"The members of [insert city name here] Bible Church are praying for you and your family."

Well, thank you ever so fucking much. That's what I need, is some sanctimonious holier-than-thou snots "praying" in a generic, impersonal fashion for my well-being. I think that's obnoxious.

It's not that I don't believe in prayer. I believe in it a lot. It works. I have felt the power of prayer realigning reality around me, and making the impossible possible.

I just don't believe in prayer as a generic, impersonal instrument of do-gooding.

It's one thing to have someone you know pray for you. There's a personal relationship there, an understanding of a situation that warrants prayer, the sharing and exchange of energy, hopefully resulting in a positive outcome.

It's quite a different thing to have someone tell you that they're praying for you, without any specific goal in mind other than that clearly you must need help because you are NOT a member of their group. Which is what that obnoxious sign on the church says to me. It's kind of like receiving a Christmas card addressed to "Occupant." It is an empty gesture, a meaningless gesture, and one that borders on being insulting in its cliquish emptiness.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into it. Then again, probably not.

Why I need to keep a telephone next to my bed

Perhaps you have seen old black-and-white movies from the 1940s, such as a murder mystery. Occasionally the murder weapon sits in plain sight on someone's desk, while the detective putters around, trying to put two and two together to figure out who did it, and with what.


This is the Western Electric Model 302 desk telephone, produced from 1937 to 1958. It is the classic telephone. A straight fabric cord (which was famous for getting twisted up, but which was easy to re-wire if it broke), a zinc metal body, and a heavy rubber handset, weighing about 10 pounds altogether. This phone was an excellent blunt-instrument murder weapon.

Have you tried to murder someone with one of these?

It's really not very efficient. I broke two of them the other night before my assailant stopped moving.

My lovely wife heard the struggle and arrived just as it ended. She surveyed the scene as I straddled him on the floor, tentacle raised with the third phone in my grip, ready to hit him again should the situation warrant it.

"You could have used a flyswatter," she pointed out. "It's only a wasp."

"I couldn't find the flyswatter," was my weak rejoinder.

"Here," she said, picking it up from the dresser and handing it to me. "And clean up this mess."

One thoughtless action, part 2

I was wrong, much as it pains me to say it. I predicted to no one in particular, with absolute certainty, that my idea of making the students re-take the quizzes that were "missed" by the tracking database would be dismissed out of hand. I thought for sure that we would have to incorporate students "scores" by hand, keying them in some kind of a secondary database, based on their say-so, because the main training tracking database suffered several periods of unconsciousness in the past two months, causing gaps in the training records.

I was wrong. My client manager says that he will send out a global email to all users, telling them that if our reports say they missed a topic, then they will have to re-take the quiz for it.

I am amazed. Then again, that email has not yet gone out. I will believe it when I see it. ;-)

Our beautiful yard and beautiful home, thanks to my beautiful wife

My wife has such a whimsical way of decorating our house and our yard. Every weekend that I come home, it's always a delight to see what new and beautiful things she has done to our humble abode.


Our telescope pad, which we hope to start using at some point if we can haul our 5-inch reflector out of the garage some night when it's not too buggy.


The yard, looking west, in the early morning.



I forget who had the idea of the boat, me or my wife. But I spotted it in the junk pile in front of someone's house one dark night a few months ago, and she helped me muscle it into the car and we brought it home. My wife is the champion of re-use and re-cycle. She's got ME looking at people's junk, now. You find all sorts of neat things, perfectly clean and serviceable. One human's trash is indeed another alien's treasure. I have not found any discarded plutonium yet. But I think I am just not looking in the right places.


My darling wife found a cool LED light at Big Lots, the solar kind that changes colors constantly. We put it at the stern of the boat. It's very pretty at night, but too dim to take a picture.

I really need to transplant those sunflowers. They are getting too big for their britches in that thin layer of potting soil.


Easter decorations!









This is a metal lamb-shaped cake pan. I'm not sure what lambs have to do with Easter. I'm not sure what rabbits have to do with Easter, or eggs. It seems to be a very mixed-up pagan/Christian jumble to me. I never pay attention to holidays anyway - I'm doing good to know whether it's summer or winter, with all of my travel.

Easter-egg hunting

Be vewy vewy qwiet. We're hunting...


Easter eggs! This is our friend Diana. She always uses yardwork as an excuse to not get out with friends and do stuff. So we hid her yard tools and refused to give them back until she came out and played with us.


We like to hide them in strange places, where vertically-challenged people would have a hard time spotting them. Or so we thought.




In the kitchen...


In the yard...


In the trees...


Under the cats... (I'm surprised that Jesse sat still for this)



I even hid one in the tailpipe of my car. This turned out to be a bad idea, because it was nearly a perfect fit, and then it slid down inside the pipe and could not be extricated. I felt quite stupid. But then I started the car and the egg came shooting out with a foop, bouncing down the driveway. I was very lucky. It could have gotten stuck in there and melted, and the car would reek of burning plastic until I got the muffler replaced. That would be my typical luck. Thankfully, "luck" abandoned me that day.

But all of the eggs were found, eventually. We use plastic eggs, so that if we fail to find one or two, they don't stink later. ;-)

Never take yourself seriously

I don't think Aqua did, when they were a band. "Bumblebee" is one of their better songs, with deliciously naughty lyrics, and a video that makes fun of the entire music video creation process.

The director is wearing a T-shirt advertising The Misfits (another fun band). My "daughter" Tara has a tattoo of that image on one of her feet.

Rockin' the shop

Today I taught a group of welders. They are a rough, fun-loving bunch. A few of them are women. They are usually rowdier then the men.

One of the women, S, apparently controls the public address system on the factory floor. Or she has a massive stereo system set up in her work center, I'm not sure. But she asked me what I wanted to hear when she goes back to work from my class.

I racked my brains for something that I knew she would have, based on the type of work that she does.

"Thin Lizzy," I suggested.

"Nope," she said.

"Boston?" I queried.

"Now BOSTON, I have," she smiled.

"Good," I said.

Now the factory is rocking out to this wonderful, timeless tune, reverberating the length and breadth of this huge building, full of flashes of welder's torches, screaming metal saws, and the brrrrrp! of air tools. Little do they know that they dance to the whims of a Martian. ;-)

One thoughtless action has wide-ranging repercussions

The tool that we are using for training at one of my clients allows you to construct a website with a "tree" or menu of simulations and PDF documents. It is intended to be the "one-stop-shopping source" for training material. The website is so smart, in fact, that it has a SQL database running behind it to monitor traffic, registering where each logged-in user goes, how long they spend there, and when they take a quiz, what their score was.

It's very handy.

My client is using this training tool to provide audit reports of who was trained, to satisfy the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which says that "no person shall be issued a logon with security access to a financial system unless it can be proven that they were trained in how to use the transactions to which they are authorized."

All good, in theory.

However, the SQL tracking database has been failing periodically. It simply stops working, issuing a string of alarming error messages when you try to run a tracking report in it to review the students' training progress.

This is bad for morale among the students, because they are trying to take their training, and many are struggling through it with great difficulty, only to have us tell them, "You still need to take topics X, Y and Z."

"But I already TOOK those topics!" they exclaim. "I took the quiz and scored 100 percent!"

"Yes, well, you're not showing up on the reports," we say.

This does not make the students happy.

The local DBA kept trying to blame ME for the SQL tracking database outages, because I have administrator rights to the server, to maintain and update the training website. I kept explaining that it was NOT my fault, that I was using the training website tools the way they were designed to be used, and to prove it, I documented every step that I was doing, and showed him that the outages we were experiencing were NOT coinciding with my activity.

After the local DBA agreed that the outages did not seem to be my fault, the IT apparatus slowly, creakingly, began to set about discovering what the REAL cause was. (Not O.J. Simpson. Although I wasn't ready to rule him out.)

Our server is a "virtual server," in that it is one large physical machine that is electronically subdivided into many smaller servers, each with its own IP address and/or website URL. It makes sense for large corporations to do this. But finally the investigation turned up the fact that some DBA (data base administrator) in the IT (information technology) department a thousand miles away decided, on a whim, to limit the memory that was allocated to our little virtual server to 1 gigabyte.

One GB for a SQL database is not very much. And there was so much activity in that database, with 450 students using the training website, that it was regularly exceeding the memory of the machine, and shutting down.

Now the problem is fixed. Our artificial memory cap has been removed, and we are allowed to have our database consume as much memory as it wants to.

But the fact remains that we had several database outages which left gaps in our students' training records.

Currently my client's management is discussing what to do about those gaps. Their first inclination is to use the "honor system," recording that Student A completed Topics X, Y, and Z which are missing from the tracking database, merely on Student A's say-so. My first inclination is to jab the student with a 50,000-volt cattle prod, just to ensure that they are paying attention, and then making them take the topics again for the sake of the tracking database, which hopefully will record the student's activity THIS time.

On top of that, this client is generous with their employees. They have set up a competition where the students are divided into teams, and the teams compete to (a.) complete the training first, and to (b.) get the highest aggregate test scores for their training. As a reward, all of the students will receive money (tens to hundreds of dollars), based on the speed with which they complete their training and the scores they get.

Because money is an issue, and money is being awarded based on people's test scores (whether recorded in the tracking database or entered manually based on the student's "say-so"), it is imperative to make everyone adhere to the same standard of recording their test scores in the tracking database, by executing the topics and the tests as they were designed to be taken. To skip that, and to allow people to claim that they passed their training without any proof, is both an audit issue and unfair to the students who played by the rules.

"But I already TOOK the training, and I got 100 percent on my tests! The tracking database just didn't record it," they say.

"Fine," I say. "You are being paid to take this training. You are being rewarded for your test scores with money also. If you scored 100 percent before, you can easily do it again, and all it will cost you is time."

We shall see whose philosophy prevails. I already know what the answer will be, but it will be interesting to see how long it takes to arrive at it.

Five miles per hour makes a difference

I drive a long distance on the same stretch of road under nearly the same conditions twice a week, every week. It gives me time to think, and time to experiment with different ways to get better fuel mileage.

One way is simply to drive slower. The speed limit in our area is 70 mph. Most people do 80. A few (including me) do well over 100 mph. Well, I used to, enjoying my 3-liter V-6. But then I realized that I burned a whole tank of gas driving 200 miles (15 gallons at 110 mph = 13.33 mpg, which is truly atrocious for a Toyota Camry, though it's a lot of fun), when I could easily go almost 420 miles if I stay at 55-60 mph (15 gallons at 55 mph = 28 mpg). I seem to get about 25-26 mpg at 60. Driving 65 instead of 70 mph, I seem to save about 3/32nds of a tank, or about a gallon and a half, or about $5 on one tank.

Every little bit helps.

So now I drive like a doddering old person, plodding along in the right lane at 55 mph (if there's no traffic, at night) or at 65 mph (in traffic, to avoid being so much of a nuisance). People pass me constantly, swerving around me. Some don't seem to notice that I'm in their way until they're almost in my backseat with me. That's okay... it's an old car. If they hit me, it's their fault, and I get a new car. I'm buckled up. Have at it. It would not be my first collision in a human-built conveyance. Martians are generally fairly durable, more so than "cars."

In heavy traffic, I sometimes find that driving in the right lane with the hazard flashers on seems to help a lot. The flashers gets their attention, and they give me a wide berth because they don't know what I'm going to do, poking along there in the right lane with my flashers on. I smile quietly to myself, blending in with truly doddering old people who are truly dangerous and who should have their licenses yanked, in my opinion. But I am using them as camouflage, so I accept their presence and use their bad driving reputations to my advantage.

In moderate traffic that moves at maximum speed, I get the best mileage, because the "draft" of the vehicles passing me helps break up the air and pull me along, rather than having to force myself through still, quiet air by myself. From what I can tell, I get an increase of 3 to 5 mpg driving in fast-moving traffic rather than driving alone on an empty road.

I'm not sure it's worth the irritation of dealing with traffic. But I'm not sneering at the savings.

All that learning, and for what?

I have seen many highly educated people (masters and Ph.D.s) who don't have the sense of a small soap dish. I'm sure that they were once reasonably intelligent and capable people, before eight or more years of academic life in university drained their innate intelligence from them, rendering them barely capable of tying their shoes or balancing their checkbook. Of course, this prepares them VERY well for a life in academia as a university professor or staffer. But it usually is a major handicap in the real world. (My apologies to any of my readers who happen to be academics. Consider yourselves fortunate exceptions to the rule.)

I did not expect to be one of those people. But this weekend I realized that I was.

We spent our short weekend hanging drywall. We had never done drywall before, but we were assured by our wonderful contractor neighbor Bob that it is, in fact, quite easy.

And it is. IF you are dealing with rectangles of drywall. On the wall.

Unfortunately, we were hanging trapezoids of drywall on a ceiling that is angled 15 degrees upward from the horizontal. And the normal laws of physics do not seem to apply.

We measured once. Twice. Three times. Four times. We measured the length of each side. We measured the distance between the long sides of the trapezoid, at right angles to the corners, forming isoceles triangles. We knew the measurements down pat.

We cut the drywall and attempted to fit it into the trapezoid-shaped hole. It wouldn't fit.

We were baffled. We measured again. Our measurements on the ceiling matched the measurements of the drywall. Yet it refused to fit.

We were appalled. Four university degrees between us and we couldn't figure out some basic math to hang some stupid drywall. I was very annoyed with myself.

Finally I eyeballed it, hacked off a half-inch from the longest edge of the trapezoid, and pressed it into place. It fit perfectly.

I have decided that I do not like hanging oddly-shaped sections of drywall on the ceiling. Even though I seem to be very good at it.

The clash between heart and mind

People talk to me. I think it's because I radiate the proper mental vibration that tells people that I am not a threat to them, and indeed, that I can be an ally to them. It's a Martian trait, a skill honed to a fine edge by Martian assassins. I use it merely as a mechanism to facilitate my movements through human society on my assignment here. It's a useful characteristic.

I have a friend, a wonderful man, who was horribly mistreated his whole life by family and friends. Abandoned as a child, raised by neighbors and friends, passed around, abused, intimidated, mistreated. Yet he has such a sunny personality, and seems to have such a drive to survive and to succeed, that it constantly amazes me. His is clearly a case where "nature" carries far more weight than "nurture," especially since he's never gotten any nurturing.

He gets some from me, though. I give him advice, when he seems to want it, and when he seems to be in a frame of mind where he can use it. Currently he is battling the conflicting signals from his heart and his mind. His heart tells him that he is committed to a woman who does not necessarily have his best interests at heart. She dominates him and occasionally mistreats him (in my opinion), yet he stays with her because she is the nicest woman that he has ever been with.

Nice, of course, is a matter of degree.

His mind tells him that he needs to leave her, because he doesn't like the way she treats him and belittles him. But he worries about what will happen to her without him.

My hearts go out to him, because I once was in the same position as he.

"There are a couple things that you should hear, from one thinking entity to another," I said. (He knows I am an alien, and doesn't seem to mind.)

"One, humans will take what they can get. That's just the way they are. But, no one can take advantage of you unless you let them.

"Two, you have to look out for yourself, because no one else is going to do it for you. No one else has your interests at heart as much as you yourself do. And no one else is your responsibility - only you are. To sacrifice yourself for another who does not appreciate it and who does not reward you is not kindness, but stupidity.

"And three, no one is irreplaceable. There are a million women out there who are worse than your partner, and another million women who are better. You can always find another. I am not irreplaceable in my partnership, and I know it. Therefore I make sure that I am worthwhile to my partner to stay with me. You deserve no less, either."

He appreciated it, I think. He seemed to "hear" me, but only time will tell whether he has the personal courage to act on that advice. All I can do is hope for the best for him.

Ninety-nine percent of the things you worry about will never happen

I violated the cardinal rule of never employing friends. Or neighbors. That IS a cardinal rule, and the reason is that when they try to take advantage of you, it's always awkward. Best not to chance it. That said, I would always rather pay someone skilled to do the work, rather than try to figure out how to do it myself, take twice as long to do it, botch it up, and wind up paying the professional anyway to fix what I did. I use this method for cars, and it's well worth it. I try to use this method for houses also, but since it's very difficult to find reliable, trustworthy skilled labor in the jungle, it's usually easier to do it yourself.

So. I violated the cardinal rule of never employing friends or neighbors, when I had a neighbor perform some work for me on the rental house, fixing a jalousie window which a deadbeat tenant had broken in the distant past when said tenant was stoned and forgot his keys, and broke into the house rather than calling me for the key.

So this neighbor brought in his workman partner (an older man who was so palsied that the hand holding his circular saw trembled violently - that should have warned me right there, but nooooo) and together they fiddled around with the window and finally announced that they could NOT fix it. They don't make those windows anymore (such windows are not allowed under current building codes because they have an annoying habit of disintegrating during hurricanes, separating into little metal-framed glass razorblades whirling through the air and chopping unfortunate bystanders (as if there are any of THOSE in a hurricane) into small bits).

Never mind, said the neighbor, he could screw it shut and install a window air conditioner in it, run power to it and install a new outlet for it, and make it all look professional and intentional to cover up the fact that the window could not be repaired, but instead needed to be replaced. (To replace that window would mean replacing all the windows on that wall, or three thousand dollars, or replacing all dozen windows on the lanai, or twelve thousand dollars. That was not really an option, since the goal was to SELL that house, not to plow more money into it.)

So I agreed, install the window air conditioner and make it look purposeful. How much? I asked. Two hundred to $250, he said. Fine, I said, and I want to see the receipts for the parts you buy. He agreed.

So together my neighbor and his partner worked on it for a day. I called him the next day and asked how it was going. He said he'd broken one of the windowpanes while working on it. I said fine, fix that, and I don't expect to be charged for it. He said fine.

Another day went by, and then they finally announced that it was done. We went over to look at it. There was a garbage can full of molding and trim and power conduit, which by all appearances looked like enough to do the project three or four times over. That bothered me, but then I saw that they had just slapped on the molding around the air conditioner and had not caulked it at all, leaving it open to rain and bugs. So I caulked all around the air conditioner, tested it (it worked) and said to myself, fine, it's done, don't worry about it. I called and asked the neighbor for the bill and for his parts receipts. He said he'd get it to me by that weekend.

Four months went by. I asked for the bill a couple of times, and he said he'd get it to me, but it never materialized.

Finally his wife brought the bill over. It was $400! I was annoyed. But, by then, due to intervening circumstances like a massive car repair, I didn't have the money to pay him at that point anyway, so I let it compost on my desk for three months. I was dreading the conversation that I needed to have with him, which was, "you said it would be $200 to $250, and you would supply the receipts." But I felt like I could not really have that conversation with him until I had the cash in hand to pay him. The whole scenario was irritating to me.

So finally when I had the money to argue about, I called him and said, "Look, when I give a client an estimate, I have to live up to that estimate. When we talked, seven months ago now, you said it would be $200 to $250, and you would supply the receipts. Why is it $400, double the amount of the low end of your estimate? And where are your receipts?"

He had no answer, really. I knew he would not. I imagine that breaking the window and having to buy the parts for THAT, plus the labor not just for him but for his palsied partner, had driven the price up to $400. And he can't keep track of any of his paperwork... I think his wife finally figured up the bill, since he was in no particular hurry to do it. None of which was my problem, particularly.

I said, "So, here's what we'll do. It's fixed, and I'm happy to have it done. So I'm ready to pay you $300, which is more than I wanted, and less than you wanted. But I think $300 is fair since you need the money, and I'm happy it's finished."

"Fine," he said. Problem solved. Since his wife brought the bill to me, my wife took the check to him (I was out of town).

I had worried about this discussion for awhile, since it was a neighbor, and I did not want to create bad blood between our families. If it was a regular workman with whom I had no personal relationship, I would not have had a problem being an unyielding prick about it. But I felt that "meeting him in the middle" would avert future problems with my neighbor.

It seems to have worked. He agreed right away, and we've heard no more about it since. All my vague worrying about it was pointless. The conflict that I had been dreading did not materialize.

Still, it reminds me not to violate cardinal rules like that in the future.

Interview with the dead

During a Monty Python reunion, years ago, all of the members were gathered around a table discussing the highs and lows of the comedy troupe. Even the late Graham Chapman was there (he played King Arthur in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail). His ashes were in an urn on the table.

What happened next still makes me crack up just thinking about it.



Later, at the end of the show, Graham's urn lid began rattling all by itself. "He's trying to say something!" He started tapping out the rhythm to "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," and all the other members joined in to sing. It was very silly, and yet very moving.

MORE bailouts

A couple of weeks ago, Bear Stearns, a Wall Street investment bank which had most of its money tied up in securities that were backed by subprime mortgages, collapsed after rumors that it was suffering a liquidity crisis caused shareholders to pull their money out of it, which caused an actual liquidity crisis. It was a classic "run on the bank" as shareholders cashed out their holding as fast as they could. A share of Bear Stearns was worth $150 last year, was worth $30 on Friday March 14, and was worth $2 on Monday March 17.

I think it's amusing, in a sick, sad way. Especially because Bear Stearns' employees owned one-third of the company's stock, and were paid bonuses in stock. Peer pressure inside the firm kept people from selling the stock. Some of the employees, including James Cayne, the chairman, were billionaires on paper. After the crash, they were merely millionaires. They've even had to sell their second homes.

I am strangely unsympathetic.

But what bugs me is that JP Morgan, another Wall Street investment bank, stepped in to buy Bear Stearns, but ONLY after the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States agreed to pony up $30 BILLION dollars in a credit line to guarantee the loans and securities that Bear Stearns holds. Now, JP Morgan is buying Bear Stearns for pennies on the dollar - $236 million, or $2/share, which is pocket change compared to its value last year. And once again, the taxpayers (who fund the Federal government) are left holding the bag. JP Morgan graciously upped its offer to $10/share and agreed to assume $1 billion dollars in risk for potential Bear Stearns losses, leaving the Fed (you and me) on the hook for only $29 billion.

Today Fed Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee that the Fed HAD to make sure that Bear Stearns did not go bankrupt, and HAD to make sure that JP Morgan bought Bear, because to let Bear go bankrupt would create a run on investment banks around the world, and would tie up the money of thousands (if not millions) of shareholders in bankruptcy court for years. Many of those shareholders are huge investment funds with billions of dollars in assets. Bear Stearns, it is said, is "just too big to fail."

Funny, I remember the same thing being said about Chrysler when it teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. I don't really think the world was a better place for bailing out Chrysler.

The best thing to let the market do is to sort itself out naturally, painfully, but in the end, more quickly and efficiently than interfering with it by using someone else's money to soften the blows. MY money. YOUR money.

This is not right.

Mortgage bailouts

It frustrates me when politicians talk about "bailing out" mortgage companies and their victims who made bad decisions in structuring their mortgages, particularly those mortgages with sub-prime interest rates, which had artificially-low monthly payments for a period of five years or so, and which then suddenly leaped up to two or three times the initial payment amount.

Subprime mortgages were a stupid idea. And now the Senate wants to make everyone else pay for it.

The Senate wants to buy into Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut)'s nightmare of creating a Home Ownership Preservation Corporation, fueled by twenty BILLION dollars of taxpayer money, to buy up failing mortgages in bulk and renegotiate terms with borrowers.

So they're going to take YOUR money, pay off mortgage companies for their bad lending decisions instead of properly letting them go bankrupt, and then assume the debt owed by the borrowers, who will probably default anyway. Then the government will be stuck with massive quantities of dilapidated unoccupied houses, instead of the banks and mortgage companies who were dumb enough to create this mess.

Instead of punishing the offenders (banks and mortgage companies), the taxpayers are punished. And the offenders are free to repeat their mistakes yet again, looking forward to a future bailout. The only way people learn is when they feel the pain resulting from their poor choices. If you eliminate pain, you keep people from learning not to do dumb things.

This bailout only encourages people to avoid paying taxes, since they're going to be squandered anyway. To which government will respond by raising tax rates to make up for the fewer taxes collected. Which will encourage people to avoid paying taxes even more.

It's a vicious circle. It would be amusing to watch, if it weren't so sad.

Read the @#!&ing SCHEDULE

I got a frantic email today from a trainer who skipped the Train The Trainer class that I taught, who has not prepared her classes, and therefore is wigging out in terror. "You have to teach my class tomorrow! I'll help if you teach!" She meant Thursday.

She is not scheduled for any classes Thursday. Nor is she scheduled for next Thursday.

I replied with a copy of the schedule, and said that I'd be glad to help her out, but that I don't know what class she is talking about.

She replied that she had talked to my client boss about it. ("Annnnd?" I thought. But no answer or resolution was forthcoming from her.)

I think she is very confused. And she is doing her best to confuse me. If only she would read the @$*&ing schedule.

Of course, did I read the @$*&ing schedule for another classroom, and note that I was scheduled to assist in teaching there? No. I only paid attention to MY classroom. Stupid me. Luckily my co-worker bailed me out, and substituted for me. I only found out about the class later, after I came to work, after it was already over. I am indebted to her.

I saw your eyes, and you made me smile...

...for a little while, I was falling in love...

at least, until I saw his stupid haircut! What is THAT about? He looks like he's wearing a Romulan helmet from the Star Trek episode "Balance of Terror". Or maybe he's one of the aliens from "Babylon 5."

Oddly enough, I never ever understood the lyrics correctly until I looked them up just now. I always thought he was singing, "It's all a lie, and you made me sigh, for a little while, I was falling in love."

A Flock of Seagulls, "Space Age Love Song"

Imitation is the sincerest form of homage

Many bands pay homage to other bands who inspire them. One of the homage-ers is Information Society, a fantastic band from the 1980s and 1990s. This one is apparently new - I was not aware. I will have to buy the album. Last I heard, Kurt (the lead singer who is overly-endowed with ego) was pursuing a huge music career in Brazil. Mmhmmmm. Sure.

Information Society, "I Like The Way You Werk It"


Kraftwerk is the homage-ee in this case ("Werk" in Information Society's song refers to Kraftwerk). Kraftwerk is a German band who invented the "techno" genre of electronic music. They've been around for 40 years. They sing badly and take pride in it, because it's about the music and the groove, not their pathetic singing. This is a live cut from a recent DVD of theirs. They have never done music videos and probably never will. But buy some Kraftwerk, notably "The Man Machine" or "Computerworld." Very cool stuff.

Kraftwerk, "Vitamin"

No good deed goes unpunished

Ever try to help someone who was a helpless, sad sack? Sure you have. You were probably motivated by pity, or some sense of obligation or responsibility.

Next time you feel that urge to help someone like that, I recommend that you take that urge and beat it into a bloody pulp with the hard hammer of reason. Because your "help" will only come back to bite you.

I won't get into specifics here. This matter does not involve a family member, but rather an ex-associate who was in and out of my life within a matter of weeks. But I just wanted to remind myself, and my dear readers, that "no good deed goes unpunished." Whatever you do, whatever your motivation for doing it, the number one question you should ask is "How does this benefit me?" The number two question you should ask is "How can this hurt me?" Be creative in your theorizing. If any of the possible outcomes smells in the least bit yucky, do NOT be "helpful."

"Helpful" is bad.

Schadenfreude (warning - political post)

"Schadenfreude" is German for "joy at other people's misfortune." Trust the Germans to come up with a word like that. ;-)

I am feeling schadenfreude watching Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama tear each other apart trying to win the Democratic Party's nomination to run for President of the United States, while weak-kneed liberals everywhere are wringing their hands, worrying about the damage that the infighting is doing to the party. I think it's very amusing. As Napoleon said, "Never interrupt the enemy while he is making a mistake." The Democrats have always been their own worst enemy. It's one of the reasons why they are so ineffective and unfocused.

I found an interesting article that discusses a sordid event from Hillary's past (there are so many to choose from - but I did not know about this one). You should read that article. It has surprising parallels to events that occurred in the Clinton administration, where Hillary was discovered to have hidden boxes of files in her White House residence, files which had been subpoenaed two years earlier in relation to the investigation of the Clintons' Whitewater scandal, files which the Clintons had repeatedly claimed that they did not possess.

"Layers and layers," as a conspiracy-theorist acquaintance of mine used to say with a knowing smile.

They cannot hurt you unless you let them

Ah, I found it - the official video for Everclear, "One Hit Wonder," about "Loopy," a talentless "rock star" who is using the music industry machine to make his fortune, even while it threatens to eat him alive. It's got a positive message, that you can only be taken advantage of by others if you let them do it to you.

I'm not sure which game show they're spoofing here. I see elements of "The Price Is Right" and perhaps "Jeopardy," but I don't watch game shows so I don't know for sure.

Is it too much to ask for reliable electricity?

The manufacturing plant where I am training has adequate training rooms. They have desks, chairs, PCs, a projector, network connections, and a fan to keep us from melting in the heat generated by all the machinery. That's better than many clients have. Often I tell my clients to rent space at local universities because there's just no decent training space at the plant.

But I have a decent training room. Unfortunately, my particular training room has unreliable electricity. I had heard last week that when my client boss, MB, tested all the PCs together to make sure they would turn on, the breaker blew on the junction box that feeds the room. She had Maintenance re-set the breaker. It blew again 20 minutes later.

E, the Maintenance supervisor, shrugged. "It's only pulling 10.5 amps on a 20-amp breaker," he said. "Unless something either melts or starts smoking so we can identify where the problem is in the wiring, we can only hope that it doesn't happen again."

MB was not happy. Neither was I. It's hard to teach computer software when the power keeps failing. It's one thing to have story-time with a book and a flashlight. But you can't teach software that way.

So we agreed to cross our fingers and hope the power would not fail.

"Ping" went all the PCs at 3 PM today, right before my class started. All the power was off, except for the ceiling lights. The network switch was dead. The fan that keeps us cool was dead.

I went and found M in Maintenance. "Can you re-set the breaker?" I asked. He climbed up into the rafters to the breaker box and re-set it. It was hot, he said, and it did not want to re-set.

"Can you clamp it closed?" I asked, knowing that this is a BAD thing to do.

"No," he laughed, "not unless you want to start a fire."

"Okay!" I said cheerfully. "Then we'll find that melted, smoking spot that your boss E says he needs to see in order to fix the problem."

M was not convinced. He went away and I went back to teach my class, crossing my fingers.

At 10 PM M came back with a partner in tow. "Can we change the breaker?" he asked.

"Sure!" I said. Changing the breaker is Step 1 in the diagnostic process. If changing the breaker doesn't fix it, then I'm going to have to start bitching loudly and frequently until they start ripping out wiring to find the problem. I do not want to spend a month and a half in this training room, polishing a worn path on the concrete floor between my room and Maintenance because I have to fetch someone every day to re-set the blown breaker. It would be unproductive and VERY annoying.

So far, the new breaker is holding. I am typng withh my tentacls crossd.

Wait for the punchline

I think this song has one of the cutest lyrical twists of any pop tune that I have ever heard. Of course, it's by the Swedish supergroup ABBA (an acronym of the four members' names: Anna-Frid, Benny, Bjorn, and Agnetha. They had to fight a lawsuit from a canned tuna fish company which had the same name.)

ABBA, "Two for the Price of One"

And this one is a weird one... it was on the jukebox in the community center where I used to hang out as a child. When they cleaned out the jukebox and were throwing away all the old 45-rpm records, I snagged this one. I must still have it somewhere. Or maybe not. I have gotten very good at "getting rid of" in the past decade. I dump anything I haven't used in a year or two. Except guns. I don't get rid of those unless I am really tired of them.

ABBA, "Elaine"

The "finger wag"

There is much chatter on the Internet about Delta Airlines' new flight safety video, featuring an allegedly beautiful stewardess, 31-year-old Katherine Lee from Atlanta, where Delta is based.

I don't think she is particularly beautiful. But apparently many fat, bearded, balding men who surf the Internet think she is. They are especially entranced by the way she wags her finger when she says "No Smoking" in the middle of the video. I think they harbor secret desires to be dominated by a flight attendant.

Bleagh. I would rather watch "Cops." Nothing beats a good car chase, ending in a twisted mass of disintegrating metal tumbling end over end into the highway median. Woohoo!

A bizarre little tune

I like the keyboard here. It's also interesting how the video of skateboarders suddenly morphs into an origami-style bird.

The Knife, "Heartbeats"