The most boring person on the planet

Bill was a dinner guest last night at our little gathering. Someone (I wasn't sure who) had dug him up as a blind date for Sue, who lost her husband last year in a scooter accident. Bill's wife died last year also.

Bill was the most boring person I've met in a long time. Oh, he was nice enough, but literally, the only thing he could talk about was the "Blue Collar Comedy Tour" DVD. Over the course of two hours, I'm pretty sure I heard every joke and story that's on that DVD. Now I don't have to watch it.

Sue found him most unappetizing, mostly because of that. A man should always listen to his date. Ask her about herself. Make her think she's the most fascinating person in your universe, because if you hope to get anywhere with her, she needs to be.

Bill apparently never learned any of that. He talked about himself incessantly, mostly in terms of that stupid comedy DVD. Or about Germany (his late wife was German).

Dull, dull, dull. It was a relief when he left early.

All of us were silent, looking down at the table, after he left. I was thinking obnoxious thoughts, but I wasn't sure whose friend Bill was, so I was reluctant to say anything. I'm always thinking the most obnoxious thoughts in any gathering of people, I believe, but I rarely say a thing, because it's usually just hurtful.

Finally Donna broke the silence. "If I hear one more stupid joke, I'm ready to scream." We laughed with relief. And it turned out that Bill was her friend.

I told my darling wife later that she should smother me with a pillow if I ever, ever get that way. (It's too late, I'm sure some of you will say. ;-) ) She smiled and said I never would. Ha, I thought.

Wonderful neighbors

It's so nice to have neighbors who are your friends. I've never had that, ever, in any neighborhood I've ever lived in, even as a child. It's a wonderful thing, to have neighbors who are your friends. You can buy luxury in a home; you can buy location; you can buy (to an extent) safety and security.

But you can't buy friendship. It's an amazing thing.

We had a lovely dinner last night, the five of us, plus Bill (a guest, the most boring person on Earth). We ate and drank and talked in copious amounts.

After Bill left, the conversation relaxed and drifted from topic to topic. We discussed hurricanes, and how we should prepare for a hurricane as a group.

Sue has a big generator and a swimming pool full of water for drinking.

Bob and Donna have food and firearms and radios.

We have food and fuel and ammunition and tools.

We decided that we'd be pretty well set, as a group, in the event of some sort of disaster, like a particularly bad hurricane.

"But what about Ray and Claire down the street?" asked Sue. We had discussed Ray and Claire earlier. They are elderly, frail and of modest means. We all thought Claire had died months ago because no one had seen her in awhile, but then Bob found her face-down on the front lawn several weeks ago, where she had fallen while tottering to and from the mailbox. Ray is also very frail, and won't spend a dime on his house unless pieces are actually falling off of it. I'm sure they are very nice people, but they are very reclusive and no one really knows them. They keep to themselves, and are suspicious of others.

All of us fell silent, wondering whether to include them in our little survivalist group.

I spoke up. "We eat 'em, and take their stuff," I said, nodding sagely.

We laughed ourselves silly.

Pete the really annoying window salesman

We invited Pete to come over and give us an estimate for new windows in our home.

Two grueling hours later, I told him "no thanks," and he left.

He talked incessantly. He had a bone-crushing handshake. He insisted on telling us how great the windows were, the best ones made, even though we told him three times that we'd already had those windows in another house, hence we wanted them again.

He just would not shut the fuck up. My wife filled her notepad with dark, repeatedly-traced doodles, which even the most unobservant person could interpret as "I'm bored."

He also quoted a price of $17,000, which was a bit much. We got the same windows four years ago, in a greater quantity, for $10,000. "Oh, what a deal!" he said. "Today only!"

What a huckster. It made me long for MacGregor the salesdog. At least MacGregor would have been quieter, even though we would have risked being licked to death.

No sale, Pete. And next time, just shut up, measure, and give us a number. I will tell him that when he calls tomorrow to see if we've changed our minds.

An evening with The Fixx

The Fixx were amazing in concert on Friday.


Singer Cy Curnin and keyboardist Rupert Greenall.


Cy Curnin, bassist Charlie Barret, drummer Adam Woods, and guitarist Jamie West-Oram.

Notice the Steinberger headless bass that Charlie is playing. I haven't seen one of those in a long time.


I apologize for the crappy cellphone pictures. At least I was close enough to hit them with a spitwad. Not that I would.



There were about 3000 people jammed into the little outdoor courtyard where they played. A drunken woman danced next to me all night, bumping into me. She apologized several times, hugging me. By the end of the evening, I think we must have been friends, even though we didn't speak much. ;-)

UPDATE: Thank you to Muserella for correcting my mis-identification of the bass player - that is Dan K. Brown, who (re)joined the band for this tour. I swear, my 1000-year-old dad wears hats like that. It's not appropriate for a rock musician.

Where's my spy camera? Where's my spy camera?

I don't watch The Simpsons much, but I remember one episode where Bart orders a spy camera from a cereal box through the mail. Every day, he greets the "femailman" (mail lady) with the incessantly-repeated question, "Where's my spy camera?"

He drives her nuts. I love it.

So. I am wondering where the camera is that I ordered. It was supposed to be here. Today. Now.

Where's my spy camera?

Supreme Court rules DC Gun Ban Unconstitutional

I'm frankly amazed that the Supreme Court actually used some logic in their ruling on District of Columbia v. Heller. I had long ago lost faith in the judicial system in this country.

Now, watch. At the end of next year, to absolutely no fanfare at all in the media, a quiet report will be released that shows that gun crime and gun violence in Washington D.C. dropped at least 10 percent in 2008-2009. Will the gun-ban ninnies like Sen. Dianne Feinstein or Sen. Hilary Clinton or NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg ever admit that more guns mean LESS crime? Of course not. But it does. Violent crime dropped in Florida after concealed-carry was passed in 1987, and serves as a beacon to crime-ridden states like New Jersey, which is considering allowing concealed carry again. Colorado's violent crime dropped since the 2003 concealed-carry law was passed. I was one of the first people to get a CCW permit in Colorado. It felt good to help make a change for the better.

When was the last time you heard of a mass murder in Vermont? or Alaska? I don't recall any, ever. Because Vermont and Alaska are the only states where anyone who hasn't been convicted of a felony can carry a gun concealed, without a permit. An armed society is a polite society, and Vermont and Alaska are the proof.

Since 1982, Kennesaw, Georgia has required every household to own and keep a gun, with ammunition. Switzerland has a similar law. As a result, Kennesaw has the lowest crime rate in the country for a city of its size.

Washington D.C. would do well to imitate Kennesaw's lead. But high-handed mayors like Adrian Fenty in Washington D.C. , Gavin Newsom in San Francisco, Michael Bloomberg in New York, and Richard Daley in Chicago think they know better.

I'm thinking that a wave of lawsuits will force them to knuckle under. And when those cities' crime rates go down as a result of citizens owning guns, those mayors will never, ever admit it. They'll even try to take credit for the decrease in crime themselves.

But you'll know better than to believe them.

MacGrrregor the Salesdog

My darling wife has been jonesing for a swimming pool. We have discussed it at length: how large, where to put it, how much to spend, when to do it. We are nothing if we are not good planners. We plan things to fucking death.

But after we got a laughable quote from one of the most reputable swimming pool companies (a quote which has no real justification in this weak economy, when everyone else is slashing prices), we decided to skew our search, and look at swim spas.

A swim spa is a watery treadmill. It is a long rectangular spa with powerful jets that move the water against you like a tide, and you swim in place. You can achieve a similar effect by using a tether in a regular swimming pool, but it's not the same. I like the idea of a swim spa better than a pool, because (a.) it's a more useful, versatile tool, (b.) it contains less water in a smaller space, (c.) it requires less maintenance, and (d.) you can keep it aboveground like a spa, instead of installing it in the ground, which makes it easier to work on when it needs work.

So we took our swimsuits and stopped by a showroom, and were greeted by MacGrrregor, a beautiful white golden retriever. They look similar to regular goldens, except they are whiter, stockier, and they often have a "mane" of long hair cascading down from their neck and chest. They're beautiful, sweet dogs.

So MacGrrregor greeted us at the door. He and his owner, Mark, were both from Scotland. Only Mark had an accent that I could discern. MacGrrregor was the perfect host, sitting on our feet, nuzzling us, laying his head in our laps, and when the rain and thunder outside got too loud, he crawled into my wife's lap. Well, most of him did - he's a big 35-kilo dog.

He was adorable. And he did a lot to assist Mark's sales pitch.

I don't know if we'll buy a swim spa very soon, but we certainly had a good experience at the showroom, thanks to MacGrrregor.

A clear glimpse of the future, part 2

Earlier I spoke of a camera that I hoped to acquire. However, a comment by a photographer on one of the photo websites that talked about cameras said, "The best camera is the one that you happen to have with you."

I thought about this. I realized that regardless of a camera's power and features, if it's too bulky, I won't be carrying it much. I travel lightly, with regard to both physical and spiritual baggage.

Ergo, I wish to acquire the Panasonic DMC-TZ4 instead. It is last year's model, so it is cheaper today than the latest TZ5 model. And it has all the features of my lost Nikon Coolpix S4, but it has anti-shake correction as well, making sharper images.


I know you will notice the difference. I certainly will. ;-)

The universe always comes back to bite me on the ass

Recently I discussed K and the fact that she will miss me after I leave the project, but I will probably not miss her.

She emailed me the other day. Among other chitchat, she said, "I AM YOUR FRIEND--AND CARE ABOUT YOU."

Ouch. If I had a heart, the knife of unrequited friendship would be twisting in it about now.

Yet I do feel guilty, which means I am not totally heartless. Perhaps I do miss her after all. ;-)

And the universe, in its infinite sardonic wisdom, is chewing on my ass, because I also recently reached out to someone and was rebuffed.

"Pay attention," says the universe. "This is how it feels when you do that to someone."

I am listening and learning. It is a useful experience.

"You can't fix stupid"

I was talking with a fellow consultant about the problems that her client was having with their software implementation. They, like many clients, had failed to "scrub" their data in their existing systems before they converted it into the new software. Therefore the new software produced new and entertainingly bizarre errors with that data.

They had also managed to mis-convert a lot of data, leaving out certain important fields. This meant that a temp had to go back and enter that data manually, across thousands of records. Lucrative, if boring work, for the temp.

And, the new system was highlighting the existing business problems that the client had. These were problems that always had existed, and now suddenly were glaringly obvious because the new system didn't cover up for them or make excuses for them. The numbers were right there in the reports coming out of the system. Certain business processes were completely broken, and always had been. The client was upset at the reports and the data that the reports contained - not upset about the problems in their business processes.

My fellow consultant shook her head. "You can't fix stupid," she said.

We laughed and compared some other consultant mantras, such as:

"I get paid by the hour."

"I get paid to do it smart. I get paid to do it stupid. If I do it stupid, I get paid two or three times to do it."

"When this is all over, I get to leave. You guys (the client) get to stay."

And of course, Dogbert's favorite:

"We put the CON in CONSULTING."

Beach photos in June

Thou shalt not touch the turtle nest.


Ghost crab. They can't see straight up, so they run sideways to escape whatever predators they think might be descending upon them. They're justifiably paranoid.


Barnacles on the rocks.


"Angel's ladders" - sun rays through the clouds.


Sponges.


This sea turtle fought her way across the rocks to lay her nest. Now THAT is determination.


This one climbed a steep dune. Sea turtles are very single-minded.


I hunt for shark's teeth here.


And here.


I search for shapes, since I can't see the colors.

On my to-do list...

Must, must, must see "Wall-E." I identify with this robot. I take pride in my work, I am diligent, tireless, and sometimes lonely. And I'm a bit clumsy. I love the music in this trailer - I have not seen this particular one before. I like the car alarm.

Must, must, must see The Fixx this Friday night. They are the creators of such hits as:
One Thing Leads to Another
Red Skies at Night
Stand or Fall (Check out the vintage Australia New Zealand Army Corps uniforms)
Saved by Zero
Less Cities, More Moving People
Secret Separation (I like the weird "Brazil"-style futuristic set)
Are We Ourselves?

My darling wife has canceled her play date with the girls so she can accompany me to see a band that she doesn't know much about (she likes Led Zeppelin), and that she probably won't like. Is that love, or what? I am the luckiest man in the world. I insisted that she keep her play date, because "girl time" is important, more important than a concert. She insisted that she accompany me, because it's time we get to spend together. I am flattered.

Gary Numan's darkwave sound

Gary Numan, "Melt" from the "Jagged" album, 2006


These fan videos are interesting because you can actually read the lyrics. And then you probably wish you hadn't. This album speaks to some people, I'm sure. But I prefer his old punk/New Wave sounds. "Darkwave" kinda all sounds the same to me. There's a big market for darkwave, though, and Gary is smart to tap into it. He actually answered an interview question once, which I had posted on his site at www.numan.co.uk. I asked him if he suffered from depression, and he said no, not at all. He was very nice. I've seen him three, maybe four times in concert. He puts on a terrific show. But the crowd of oldsters like me always goes nuts when he plays his old stuff. We love that.

Failure to act

I was coming off the exit ramp this morning into the airport, and an elderly man passed me in his elderly Buick, going the other way - the wrong way, blithely ignoring the "Do Not Enter" signs on both sides of the road.

I swerved to avoid him, pointing at him and gesturing that he needed to go the way I was going. He was oblivious. His wife next to him saw me, and was beginning to catch on as they rounded the bend behind me, heading onto the highway going the wrong way.

I should have swerved into his path to stop him, but he probably would have hit me, and I have a plane to catch.

I hope they survived. I have horrible visions of head-on collisions. I failed to act to save them, because I was intent on saving myself. I regret that.

I think people need to be tested annually to renew their driver's licenses, once they reach 65. Especially here, where everyone is old.

A venomous caterpillar

(I apologize for the blurry photo. I will do better with my new camera, due to arrive next week.)

This little bastard, the saddleback caterpillar (Sabine stimulea) stung the crap out of my darling wife the other day, as we cut down vines on our vacant lot. Caterpillars like these are covered with stinging hairs like the cnidocytes on jellyfish, which fire barbs into an enemy's flesh and then inject powerful neurotoxins.

These suckers HURT. Luckily she scrubbed the burns down with soap and water, and took antihistamines to make the stinging subside. By the next day, it was all better.

Of course, I must be honest, and admit that I am the one that got her stung. "Stop," she said, as I yanked on a handful of vine and scraped Mr. Little Bastard across her arm the first time. I kept pulling. "Stop!" she yelled, as I sawed MLB across her arm a total of four times. (I was on a roll.)

She is fully justified in whacking me with a shovel, the next time I fail to stop when she says so.

A desert dream

I was stumbling through the desert, the hot late afternoon slanting across the ground. My tongue was swollen and parched. My blood pounded in my ears; I had been walking for hours after a sloppy landing far from civilization.

I slogged across the uneven ground, picking my way among the cactus. The sun glowed redly off of the mesas around me.

My foot caught something and I stumbled, tumbling awkwardly to the ground. A cloud of cactus needles stabbed me in the chest. I grunted and levered myself up to my knees and elbows, and tried to back away from the offending cactus. It stabbed me again. And again, even though I was struggling to move away from it.

"Wait," I thought. "What's wrong with this cactus?"

I opened my eyes. Valkyrie, my calico cat, was lying with me on the bed, taking an afternoon nap. She lay close to me, facing me, with her feet against my chest. She was kneading her paws. Again, the cactus needles jabbed me. Her eyes were blissful slits, half-asleep.

It was hot in the room. My tongue felt like a wadded-up athletic sock.

I looked at her through heavy-lidded eyes. She looked back at me.

I opened my eyes wider. So did she.

I widened my eyes, staring at her in mock alarm. In cat-speak, wide-open eyes are a threat. She opened her eyes wide, staring back at me, then leapt to her feet and scurried away, tail flying behind her like a flag.

I settled back to a peaceful, cactus-free dream.

A wonderful 7th anniversary

Saturday was my seventh anniversary of marriage to my darling wife. I got her two cards, as usual. One card is usually silly, and the other is serious, but this time, both of them were serious. She was very touched. I took her to a craft fair and bought her a bunch of plants from a plant vendor, and got her a wood-carved flamingo which stands six feet high, cut from a single cylinder of wood so he's very elongated and stylized.

I took her to a nice restaurant on the water for dinner, a restaurant to which we'd never been, so it was a treat. We got all dressed up, but were disappointed to see that everyone else was slumming in shorts. No matter - it was pouring rain outside, so we watched the tide flowing out of the harbor and watched several cigarette boats tied up in the channel, with their crews puttering around in the cockpits. After dinner, we took a drive up the nearby island (called a "key") and marveled at all the giant, tasteless houses crammed onto what amounts to a sand bar that's only a hundred yards wide. The pouring rain had left the road flooded in many spots, so it was slow going. But it was a pretty drive in the rain, during sunset, along the beach.

We talked idly about renting "The Seven Year Itch" (1955) with Marilyn Monroe, Tom Ewell and Evelyn Keyes, since I had never seen it. It's about the myth that after seven years of marriage, a man is more likely to stray from his wife.

I'm not itchy. I'm happy. And we forgot to rent the movie, so it doesn't really matter.

Seven years. I have no idea how I got here, but I'm glad I'm here.

A match made in heaven, not so heavenly after all

My darling wife is a Master Gardener. I am a gun nut. Those two topics are pretty far apart on the Scale O' Hobbies.

Yet here's a magazine just for US.



My eyeballs boggled when I got a promotional issue in the mail. (That's probably the first time that both me and my wife have appeared on the same marketing mailing list.)

I thumbed through it and was disappointed. I'm not sure what "lifestyle" it's aiming for... maybe 21st-century Southern Plantation? I didn't even know there was such a lifestyle anymore. Big mansions, beautiful furniture, picture-perfect families, lots of land, horses and dogs. I'm pretty certain that's not our lifestyle. Small house, used furniture, oddball people, a little bit of land, and a bunch of cats. Mmmmmmmmnope.

My darling wife wants to read about which plant species grow in which types of soil, and how pH can affect their growth rate, and which plants are classed as "invasive." I want to read accuracy and reliability specs on the latest Smith & Wesson products.

I really doubt there IS such a magazine for the both of us. Though "Garden & Gun" sounded really promising. ;-)

Whoops

I collect bumper stickers. I used to have several on my truck, like "I [heart] EXPLOSIVES". I have none on my car now, mainly because it's my wife's car, and she drives mine (for practical reasons - mine is newer and has more space, and she needs reliability and cargo capacity). I feel funny about putting bumper stickers on my wife's car. It's not "mine" to modify, even though we share all our property.

Anyway.

Now it seems that people with bumper stickers, especially a LOT of bumper stickers, are more prone to road rage.


I'll remember that, the next "Obama '08" sticker I see. ;-)

Peacemaker

Extreme, "Peacemaker Die," 1990.


I really enjoy the melody and the lyrics, and especially the use of the speech in the middle. I like songs that incorporate famous speeches. I think it's a nice mix of history, literature, and music.

"You have no idea how close you are to death..."

... I think venomously at the arrogant financial consultant who sits near me. Every time his stupid cellphone rings, it rings with the Godfather theme.

It rings a lot. And it makes me want to kill him.

The first time it was cute. The second time it was silly. The four hundredth time, it's homicidally irritating.

Out of all the stupid themes he could have picked, why not something interesting?

Like "The Rockford Files"?
Like "SWAT"?
Like "Magnum PI"?
Like "The Greatest American Hero"?

(Do you sense a law-enforcement theme here? Hmmm. TV law enforcement versus movie criminality. There's some sort of moral here.)

Thankfully I will not see him again. He has no idea how lucky he is.

Farewell, faithful servant

Now that airlines are charging for each bag you check, it's even more important to pack light and to carry on your luggage, to be stowed in the overhead bins.

I love my rolling duffel bag. It's big, roomy, zippery, and because it only has one hard side (the back side), it squishes as flat as I need it to squish in the overhead bin. It fools the TSA monkeys who want to make me check it. They prod it suspiciously and mush it, as I beam like a proud father. "It squishes!" I declare with a smile. Grudgingly, they nod and let me proceed with it through Security.

Alas, my rolling duffel bag is reaching the end of its life. As I hoisted it up to put it in the overhead bin, I noticed that one of the bottom seams is ripping, letting a bit of white alien underwear poke out, waving like a flag for all to see. I'm sure I wandered through the entire airport like that, waving my underwear at passersby. I was chagrined.

It is time to retire my faithful servant, to that great baggage claim carousel in the sky. This duffel is 26 inches long, I think. I will have to get a shorter one next time, to avoid arousing the TSA monkeys from their somnolence and encouraging them to prod and squish my stuff. Pretty soon they won't let you take any luggage at all on the plane, just you. Then they'll make you strip naked to get through Security. Eventually they'll just make you mail yourself parcel post, and quit flying altogether. I'm okay with that, I think. At least I'll be able to pack my own drinks.

I will miss my duffel. It served me well. And now, a musical eulogy.

Terry Jacks, "Seasons in the Sun," 1974

THIS is German engineering? part 4

This week on the rental lot, I had the choice of:

• A silver 2008 Volkswagen Jetta
• A cream 2008 Chrysler PT Cruiser

Guess which one I chose. Guess. ;-)

The PT Cruiser has lots of space inside, and lots of headroom. The seats are upright, firm and comfortable, giving you a good view of the road. The dashboard is cheesy plastic, and the horizontal passenger grab bar mounted on the dashboard indicates that the passenger should hang on for dear life, but I think that's quite optimistic for the little 2.4 liter four-cylinder. The transmission shifts quite roughly between first and second.

Overall, it's a nice little car, but one thing simply MUST be corrected.

Most cars today have a lift-up or pull-out door handle. NOBODY has thumb-buttons on door handles anymore to release the latch. Nobody... except Chrysler.

This car is blatantly discriminatory against drivers who have no thumbs. How can thumbless drivers ever hope to get into the car? Do they have to buy a special Chrysler accessory, the Remote Keyless Thumb for $300, to help them open the door? Sheesh. Engineers. Sometimes they just need a whack. Next they'll be discriminating against drivers who have no brains. Which is probably a large part of their market.

UPDATE: To clarify my problem; my left thumb is double-jointed in both joints, and applying too much pressure the wrong way tends to dislocate one of them. It's rather painful. My right thumb is a single bone, fused solid from the removal of an extra thumb. It's probably the strongest bone in my body, but it doesn't lend itself to pressing buttons. Therefore I have trouble with push-button car doors like the PT Cruiser, and it's difficult to play console video games like Xbox, or use a Blackberry. As if I had time to play console games or to dink with a Blackberry. ;-)

Free at last!

Due to a fortunate confluence of seemingly unrelated events, I had enough money to pay off my credit cards. Now I am debt-free, except for my mortgage. I haven't paid off my cards in a long time - every time I got them down, I'd have to run them up again for car repairs, moving expenses, whatever.

It's a relief to have them gone. I wanted to cut them up, but my darling wife said no, you might need them. So I locked them away.

I used to work for a credit card issuer. I know how interest sneaks up on you, along with late fees and high-balance fees (called "nuisance fees"). Most cards now have a $39 or $49 fee when you violate the payment terms. So I always try to pay at least 10% of my balance, if not more, to get the balance down. The best method is to never charge more than you can pay off by the next due date. And never charge more than half of your total credit limit, and order the bank to lower the limit whenever possible, especially when they automatically raise it without you asking.

Sometimes that's just not possible, though, and you rack up debt without even trying. USA Today had an article showing that banks helped create this credit crisis by raising people's credit card limits based on the ever-increasing value of their homes. That encouraged people to use that credit, and to borrow against their homes' increased equity. And then when home values dropped like a rock, people were left with big credit card balances, homes that were worth a fraction of their previous value, and no way to pay off their debt.

But I believe that there is no such thing as a coincidence. So when "coincidence" ensured that I had enough money to pay off my cards, I jumped at the chance.

Now I can work at staying debt-free.

To find something, you must stop looking for it

A dear longtime friend of mine has decided that she's tired of dating. All she finds are friends, or men who want to bed her, and very little in between. So she's stopping, not out of cynicism or despair, but because she's finally reached that point where she's happy with herself and her life, and she doesn't feel compelled to share it with a man.

I've watched her efforts to find love for the past 25 years or so, and they've usually been unsuccessful, because she's trying too hard. She's been wandering in the wilderness, lost, seeking love which always eluded her.

I found my darling wife by surrendering, and accepting that I would be alone for the rest of my life. It was depressing at first, but it helped me become comfortable with myself. Once I was comfortable with myself and who I am, I could attract others without even realizing it. And so I attracted my darling wife, much to my benefit and happiness. What she sees in me, I don't know, but by being still and calm and not seeking, she could see into me and appreciate me.

This weekend will be our seventh wedding anniversary. I don't know where the time has gone; it was only last week that I proposed. It was only yesterday that we were married. It was only this morning that we moved to the jungle and started a new life by the sea. When the time flies like that, I believe that it's a sign that things are "right."

I found love because I stopped looking for it, so that it could find me. I hope that my friend finds love the same way.


(Holy crap, I need to buy a card! And make a dinner reservation!)

"Show your work"

At one time, I had planned to be a physicist. I wanted to work for the Pentagon, designing energy weapons. It seemed like the thing to do, during the Cold War, when one diplomatic or military miscue could rain nuclear destruction down on everyone. A dual major in English and Physics was only natural, since I was a decent writer and a decent scientist.

Unfortunately, the math kicked my ass.

I could explain how things would work. I could even build the experiment to demonstrate it. But I just couldn't do the math. "Solve for X," the exam would say, in bold letters glaring up from the smelly mimeographed paper. "Show your work."

I couldn't show my work. And so I failed.

Which worked out well, actually, since I did much better things with my life (and probably made more money) by writing, and by helping people, not by figuring out new and better ways to kill them. (The old ways work just fine, really.)

So I was reading my classmate Heather Byer's book, "Sweet: An Eight-Ball Odyssey," and in it, she discusses people and events in her life, and how those things shaped her goals and her motivations and even her personality. She analyzes these things, and basically says, "A+B-C+D=Heather." Not so succinctly, of course, or it would be a dull read. But she does connect the dots, and you can see the maturation process at work, as the hammers of events shape her life upon the anvil of experience.

It got me to thinking about my own life. How did I get here? How did I become the person I am? I like who I am, and I'm happy. But can I point to this person, or to that experience, or to a sequence of events, and string it all together into a narrative which says, "A+B-C+D=Marvin?"

No.

And it makes me nervous. Because I cannot show my work. Not as Heather has.

Does that invalidate my experiences? Does it mean that I am not who I think I am? Or at least, not for the reasons that I thought?

"Show your work." The phrase still haunts me.

Now, certainly, Heather has had years in which to craft her book. Countless nights of rumination and self-analysis, hours of discussions with friends and family, reams of notes... all of this no doubt preceded her finished tome which wrapped up things so neatly in a presentable package.

I have nothing but the endless dialogue in my head, a conversation with myself that I have at all times in my mind, even when I'm asleep. That conversation began around age six, and has continued ever since; analyzing, processing, constructing the person that I know as me. And unfortunately, I haven't been taking notes.

My female friend B said, "She (Heather) has done a good job of analyzing herself and her relationships because that's what girls do, endlessly. Boys don't do that. And you should be glad you don't."

I know she's right, but it doesn't make me feel any better.

But then, there is evidence to suggest that this planet is a school, and we are here by choice, to learn the lessons that we planned out for ourselves before we arrived in corporeal form. And I don't think there's a written test at the end. We either learn our lessons, or we don't. We grow as thinking, feeling, loving entities, or we don't. If we don't learn, we are stuck here, to repeat the lessons until we "get" it.

I think I am learning my lessons here, even though I cannot show my work.

Hopefully when it comes time to turn in my final exam, God will accept the answer of "Marvin" without questioning how I arrived at it.

Give 'em an inch, and they'll take a foot. Or five.

Remember the severed human feet that keep washing up on the British Columbian shore?

Here comes another one!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,357703,00.html

Smokin'

I have had this song stuck in my stupid head all darn day. It's a great song, but after 10 hours of it, I'm dying for some Thin Lizzy or Supertramp. Or even The Carpenters.

I love the Hammond organ. No other keyboard sounds like that, in rock music. It's amazing. From about 2:20 onward, the song has such a baroque tonal quality to it, almost like something Bach would have written, had he had access to towering megawatt amplifiers and arena-size audiences.

Boston, "Smokin'", 1976

Nerd Alert!

A middle-aged man in a Ford Explorer Sport Trac (the four-door Explorer with a pickup bed) was backing into the baggage dropoff lane in front of me at the airport this morning.

His truck looked perfectly normal, except for the huge sticker across the back window:


Mr. Fusion was the white food-processor-looking device which powered the time-traveling DeLorean automobile in the "Back To The Future" movies, generating the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity needed to power the flux capacitor, which is the device which moved the vehicle through time.

It was nice to see a fellow nerd so prominently displaying his nerdy plumage. I prefer to blend in without advertising my nerdiness, and then surprise people later, when it's far too late for them to disavow my friendship. ;-)

The smallest kindness can change a life

I've had several people tell me, over the years, that things I did for them offhandedly had a huge positive impact on their lives. It was no big deal for me, at the time; usually I was just being friendly, or trying to help with some minor thing, which was major to them. They remembered, and told me how much my actions meant to them, years later.

I've had the same experience myself. The smallest smile, friendly gesture, or helping hand at a critical moment makes all the difference in the world.

The faces in my life blur together, and names drift away like evaporating smoke. I don't remember many people from my life, more than a few years ago.

One of those few people that I do remember was Heather Byer, a classmate of mine when we were young. We were not friends, or even acquaintances, perhaps; she ran in different circles, with different interests. She was a native of the neighborhood from infancy, as most of my classmates were, while I was the alien who arrived halfway through our four-year educational segment, who never assimilated properly.

We worked together on the school literary magazine. We probably had some classes together, though I don't remember what they were. We won some kind of literary award, each of us, our senior year; I can't remember what it was. She was the valedictorian of our class, a fact of which I was completely unaware, being much further down in the ranks from that rarefied strata.

But the thing that I remember most about Heather was that she was always kind when she spoke to me. The way she treated me stood out in that cliquish environment, where I could never fit in because I had no history there. She made me feel like I fit in. She treated me like an equal. She accepted me for who I was, in our limited interactions. And I was grateful for that. Such a small, insignificant thing that meant nothing to her carried great weight for me, at the time, and later.

And she was, is, brilliant. Everyone has talents which I can respect, whether they are athletic talents, or artistic, or intellectual, or spiritual, or emotional talents. But not many people earn my respect for their intellect. There are seething masses of dull people in the world, throngs of average people, groups of smart people, and a very few truly gifted, brilliant people. I prefer to think of myself as average, because it helps me appreciate and respect people who are above average, in whatever medium they excel. And I respected Heather for her brilliance because it was obvious, even when we were young. The way she carried herself, her direct gaze, the way she spoke, the things she spoke about, her well-modulated contralto voice articulating thoughts that our duller classmates could not hope to comprehend; all these things pointed to her brilliance, and to her future success.

Her name is one of the few names that I remember from that phase of my life. And for whatever reason, it popped into my head last week, and on a whim, I looked it up on a search engine. And there she was, at www.heatherbyer.com.

And she IS successful; an ex-entertainment company executive, a gifted writer who has penned myriad articles in various newspapers and magazines, and now the author of a wonderful book, "Sweet: An Eight-Ball Odyssey," a book about her love of the game of pool, about how her own personality quirks drew her into the game, and about how the game changed her. It's fascinating. I did not know her well before, though I admired her. Now I know her slightly better, and I admire her more. She has the gift of observation, and she paints a beautiful dark tapestry with words, describing the rules of the game of pool, the history of it, and the kinds of people who play it. She has the gift of analysis, being able to string events in her life together, relating them and assigning meaning to them. She looks at her surroundings, at her friends and her pool opponents, and measures them. She measures their impact on her, measures herself, and watches herself change and grow, becoming a better player and a better person.

She touched my life decades ago, and she touches my life again through the pages of her book.

Like the radio personality Paul Harvey, I don't recommend things to others that I haven't tried myself. So you should buy Heather's book. It's well worth the read; you'll learn something about pool, and you'll learn something about my brilliant classmate whose words can change the world, one person at a time.

Doris Daytheearthstoodstill

For obvious alien reasons, I love this song. And I love this fan video, featuring large swaths of video from "The Day The Earth Stood Still" (1951), which is a masterpiece. Sometimes the soundtrack pierces the music (I don't like that; leave the music alone) but still, it's very well done. I like the dripping-water sound that forms the backing beat.

Future Bible Heroes, "Doris Daytheearthstoodstill"


The girl in the film is Patricia Neal, who also did a slew of commercials for Maxwell House coffee in the 1970s, which I actually remember.

They don't know we're out here
as far as we can tell
Jamming all our senses
with advertising hell
the late-night movie heaven
is accidental, well
details at eleven

Doris Daytheearthstoodstill
the hippest chick on Thurth
Let's live always in the dream
they beam from planet Earth
All our tentacles entwined
snowblind and without sound
Doris Daytheearthstoodstill
you make my world go round

Grow a new antenna
The signals multiply
with ads for soap and henna,
and products we can't buy
And all across the asteroid,
everyone will die
unless we send the gas droid

Doris Daytheearthstoodstill
the hippest chick on Thurth
Let's live always in the dream
they beam from planet Earth
All our tentacles entwined
snowblind and without sound
Doris Daytheearthstoodstill
you make my world go round

Marvin gets his ass shot off

Milling thoughts

I am unsettled, though I know not why. My thoughts dart here and there, never landing on one topic for long. It is the frantic circular thinking of a sleepless night at 4 A.M., yet I am upright, vertical, in the daytime. I feel this way perhaps four times a year. The rest of the time, I am my usual quiet, placid self.

I don't like feeling unsettled. It... unsettles me. ;-) (Circular thinking - see?)

Perhaps composing some haiku will calm me.

Summer thunderclouds
drift low over the cornfields
spawning tornadoes

Thoughts of distant rain
are interrupted by the
loud clatter of hail

Newly-hatched ducklings
Scurry for shelter under
mother's outstretched wings

Gold evening sunlight
Pierces the black clouds, to soothe
rain-swollen rivers



Nope. Not working. I think I'd better fire up "Star Wars: Battlefront 2," climb into my TIE fighter, and blast a few X-Wings. Die, rebel scum! That'll make me feel better. ;-)

I am required to like pink birds

My darling wife is fascinated by flamingos, which is driven by her fascination with the color pink. We once counted all the flamingo-related items in our home, and it numbered well over three thousand. I will have to take you on a tour of our yard in the next few weeks, and show you all the flamingo stuff out there.

People ask me how I deal with it, as if it's an embarrassing affliction. I tell them that it doesn't bother me because I can't see pink anyway - it's just gray. And if she's going to be obsessed with an animal, I'm grateful that it's something unusual, rather than the run-of-the-mill cows or pigs or geese or cats or whatever. I couldn't stand to have one of those goose statues on the front lawn that you dress up. That's just... sigh.

So we have flamingos, and I am happy with my fate.

But.

I am blessed to live in an aquatic area that is thickly populated by birds. We see six varieties of herons and four varieties of egrets, and ospreys and ibis and storks all the time. But I had never seen a roseate spoonbill (Platalea ajaja) until the other day.

(Photo courtesy of wikimedia.org - I didn't have my camera with me.)

These are big birds, almost a meter tall. They wade around in marshy and coastal areas, scooping up small fish or frogs with their spoon-shaped bills.

They're funny-looking (so am I), and therefore I like them. I think I like them better than flamingos.

But at least I have satisfied the requirement that the bird that I like must be pink.

People who use French words...

People who use French words in conversation always make me smile. I know that they do it to sound cultured, but the effect is lost on me, because I don't associate France, or things French, with culture. I associate it with economic and political weakness, social decay, and interpersonal rudeness. Individual French people occasionally have been very nice to me. But as a nation? As a culture? Pfui!

Nevertheless.

The word milieu, or social setting, sprang to mind last night as I was leaving the restaurant with members of my team. The restaurant is near a mall, and so the density of teenagers in the restaurant is higher than normal. Several of them were lounging on the rails outside of the restaurant, talking, laughing, acting silly.

One of them leaped up and yelled in my face with a big smile, "Dude! How's it goin'?"

I smiled and nodded and said nothing, and kept walking. I had no idea who he was. But it occurred to me as I walked away that he knew me, because I could hear him telling his friends that I was one of the guys on the software team who's installing the new software at work.

I replayed that two-second interaction in my mind.

There. He's one of the operators in the factory. Jason.

I had failed to recognize him because he had appeared outside of the normal milieu of work. The hair was familiar, but without the uniform, and the familiar factory surroundings to put him in context, I did not know him.

I will have to apologize to him when I see him today.

Daily dose of snark

As time grows short, and my tenure at my current client draws to a close, I find myself exhibiting a curious strain of snarkiness.

W came in from the factory to see me. "Hey, Marvin, can you come help me? I can't get on the network today. You helped me get a new password yesterday, and it worked, but . . . " His voice trailed off, and he spread his hands helplessly.

I looked at him with mock astonishment and said, "But sir, that was yesterday!"

My team laughed. Even my client manager, who I'm sure jotted down something on his pad about "Talk to Marvin about his sarcastic attitude toward system reliability."

And today's dose of annoying '80s arena rock: Journey, "That Was Yesterday." This is one of those songs that got so overplayed on the radio, I never wanted to hear it again. So I'm inflicting it on you.

Josh, you're a moron

I came into the hotel lobby last night late. C, the regular night clerk, was there. She waved a weary "hi" as she listened to someone babbling on the phone.

"You had six rooms reserved for your wedding party, sir . . . It's a no-show charge, because one of the rooms never showed up. . . . Yes sir, it's $175 plus tax. . . .I'm not sure what that other charge is, then, sir; I'll have to research it. . . .You gave us a debit card to hold the rooms, Josh. . . On a debit card, a "hold" looks the same as a sale. Your available balance will go down while there's a "hold" for whatever the charge is . . . I don't know, Josh, I'll have to research it. . . . The manager's not here, I'm the only one here, and he won't know anything more than I do until I research it. . . Yes, I'll research it and I'll let you know before I leave tonight . . . Yes, thank you."

Gratefully, she hung up.

"Josh is a moron, huh?" I asked, smiling in sympathy.

"You have no idea," she said, rolling her eyes.

Game over

I laughed my butt off when I saw this anti-smoking ad on TV. I used to play online quite a lot. Give me a pistol, or a sniper rifle, or a bag of grenades, and I was a happy alien, picking off hapless opponents. I wasn't the best, but I dished out the punishment, and received extra helpings of punishment in return.

But I have never seen a first-person-shooter mimic smoking. Or what happens when you smoke.

And still, we are soooooo lucky

My darling wife had lunch with Z today, a childhood friend.

Z is in her fifties, still married but separated for many years from her husband, who's in prison for drug trafficking.

Their son, who is the same age as Andy, is also in prison for various drug offenses. Actually, he was out on probation, but he violated whatever probation rules they had, and now he's back in jail.

When he's out, he shows up at Z's and wants to crash there, eat her food, and borrow money that he will never pay back.

She's had enough, and is going to tell him that he's not welcome anymore.

It must be very hard for a mother to see her child waste his life, and to make the difficult decision to refuse to continue to assist him in wasting his life.

And it makes me appreciate my struggling relatives who are of similar ages. At least they are working, trying to make an honest living. At least they are not criminals.

A meaningful sacrifice

Last week, I-75 south of Tampa was closed after a gasoline tanker truck swerved on an overpass to avoid an out-of-control vehicle, crashed through the guardrail, plummeted sixty feet to the road beneath the overpass, exploded and burned, damaging the bridge badly enough to require its demolition. (They had already demolished it by Saturday afternoon when I passed by, and are now rebuilding it.)

The driver, fifty-four-year-old Ray Neumann, who'd been a professional truck driver for most of his life, was burned over 90 percent of his body. Against all odds, he fought his way out of the flaming maelstrom under the bridge, and bystanders put him out. Sadly, he died on Saturday, leaving an ex-wife and six children ranging in age from 10 to 26.

It's so unfortunate that he died to avoid killing someone else who was in the process of having an accident, an accident from which they walked away nearly unscathed. (Electrician Fernando Aguilera, 29, lost control of his truck as he accelerated down an on-ramp onto the highway, sliding into Neumann's path). Neumann's instinctive reaction to avoid killing Aguilera with his big rig got Neumann killed.

But I think it's a noble death, even though it's a sad one. If you're going to die, I think it's better to die purposefully, for a reason. Even though he wasn't consciously sacrificing himself for another in that instant, Neumann's death still has meaning, whether he intended it to or not. It's small consolation for the family that Neumann left behind. But perhaps Aguilera and his loved ones can appreciate Neumann's sacrifice with each day they share from this day forward . . . days that they would not be sharing if Neumann had not acted as he did.

Spiderman

I like fun vocal groups, like the now-defunct "Moxy Fruvous," a Toronto-based comedy troupe. Here they present their twisted take on the theme from the Spider-Man TV show.

Moxy Fruvous, "Spiderman"

Movie list for June

Movies I need to see (keeping in mind that my 1930s viewpoint of movies is that they exist to distract viewers from the awful realities of life, not to shove their noses in it):

• "Indiana Jones 3"
• "Wall-E"
• "Kung Fu Panda"
• "The Love Guru"

Movies I saw recently:

• "Nim's Island"- kiddie stuff, but Jodie Foster is hilarious as the phobic author of childrens' adventure books
• "The Spiderwick Chronicles" (on the airplane) - WTF was THAT? Wayyy too much Computer Generated Imagery. I think a film should be mostly live acting with a minimum of CGI (preferably well-executed CGI), or it should be ALL CGI. Not half-and-half, like the last three Star Wars movies.
• "Iron Man" - Very cool, well worth it, Robert Downey Jr. has a very good sense of comedic timing - I've never seen him in anything else except "U.S. Marshals" as the duplicitous bad cop. It's weird to see Gwyneth Paltrow play someone's secretary, but she does a good job with the role, and she looks as beautiful as ever.
  
• About ten minutes of "There Will Be Blood" on the laptop of the man sitting next to me on the plane. This is why I don't watch indie films (as if the title didn't give the ending away) - scruffy man argues with people a lot, then at the end, kills a guy in his private bowling alley by smashing his skull with a bowling pin. I would rather watch "Saving Private Ryan" again.
  
• "The Andromeda Strain" (new remake, made-for-TV with Benjamin Bratt). BLEAGH. About 70% of the movie is true to the book. The rest of the movie is a gratuitous conspiracy theory about the virus being a manufactured bioweapon, possibly from the future or another universe, and how factions within the Pentagon want to keep it and harness it. Tedious and stupid, and it sullied the cold, scientific genius of the book. And Benjamin Bratt is good at comedy ("Miss Congeniality") but I can't take him seriously as a leading man. He's too skinny, too hairless, and too much of a jerk. I can't believe there selling this movie at Best Buy now, for $20. I saw it for free on A&E, and I STILL think I got gypped. ;-) I want those 2 hours of my life back (thank God for Tivo and the Fast Forward button).
  

THIS is German engineering? part 3

I am compelled to mention that the Jetta lacks an icon to show which side of the car the gas cap is on. Oh, there's a fuel icon on the fuel gauge, on the left side of the gauge. On most other cars, that would indicate that the gas cap is on the left side of the car.

Is that true on the Jetta?

Noooooooooooo. ;-)

However, I found a VW that I could like.

I think this is the "Urban Survival" option package, with a remote-controlled General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG) on top, in either 5.56mm or 7.62mm (heavier for better penetration). I think it would be a big seller in Los Angeles. Me, I would go for the 40mm automatic grenade launcher, because the ammunition is more versatile. And much more destructive. ;-)

Baby Alive

A 20-something woman in the security line at the airport the other day was carrying one of those dolls that "sleeps" when you put it down, then "wakes up" when you pick it up. It was stiff in her arms, unmoving, unblinking. I thought it was odd that she would be carrying a doll in public, at her age, but whatever. I see stranger things in KMart.

Then the doll turned its head and looked at me.

"Gaaaah!" I didn't yelp, nor did I step back. I recoiled inwardly while keeping my face impassive, because the woman was looking at me also, and I did not want to offend her.

Her "doll" was real. It just looked fake.

Dolls are usually unmistakably dolls. But I was very surprised to see a human baby look so much like a doll, so artificial.

It was very creepy.

Muppet music from an alternate universe

In a darker, stranger, alternate universe, Oscar The Grouch and Animal (the drummer from the Muppet band "Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem") got tired of being typecast as funny muppets, and went off to form a death metal band, "Polyester Bloodbath."


Lead Screaming, Guitar: Oscar
Backup Screaming, Drums: Animal

I think if we could buy music from that strange universe, they would sound something like this.

Vampire Mooose, "Adamantium Elbow"

(Adamantium is the metal that makes up Wolverine's skeleton in the X-Men comic book series.)

I have categorized this post under "music" but I think you know that I'm being facetious.

Boiling clouds

As I got out of the car one evening in a parking lot in Chicago recently, I saw several other people nearby staring into the sky. I turned to see a black river of rain-laden cloud ooze past us from the south at an altitude of perhaps 700 meters. Just north of us, it ran into a denser mass of clear air, and began boiling upward into the sky, higher and higher, the top of the cloud turning a brilliant white in the evening sun. It looked like a time-lapse film, run forward at high speed. The cloud churned and oozed upward into the brilliant blue evening sky, bubbling and swelling higher like a vigorous pot of yeast on a stove. It moved so fast that it looked alive.

The setting sun played a panoply of colors on the front of the cloud, colors which I could only vaguely perceive, but I knew they were there.

It was amazing.

The Seventh Commandment

Driving to dinner the other night, I was listening to a story on public radio about the biblical Ten Commandments, told by a secular "journalist." I'm not really sure what the point was, other than to snarkily illustrate that in today's "progressive" society, the Ten Commandments are irrelevant.

I happened to tune in to the seventh commandment, "thou shalt not commit adultery." This Old Testament prohibition was extended by Jesus in the New Testament to include "don't even look lustfully at another, or you commit adultery in your heart." This sets up young Christians to feel guilty pretty much all the time, unfortunately.

They interviewed a two or three Christians for this segment, including a man who related the story of how, as a teenager, he was so ashamed of his thoughts of girls and of sex that he trained himself not to look at women below the neck. This made his job as a cartoonist difficult, because he couldn't draw women - he didn't know what they really looked like, from the neck down. (I don't remember if they said how he eventually learned to draw women, or how much sex it involved. I was busy trying not to get lost while driving).

Another man, as a teenager, was so intent on avoiding sexual thoughts that he wound up thinking about it all the time. He asked his pastor what to do about it. His pastor actually sent him to a sexual addiction therapy group. And the kid was still a VIRGIN. I think that's outrageous. What a way to twist someone up even more, by lumping them in with a group of people who are much further along the scale of whatever you're measuring. It's like putting a teenage graffitti artist in the same prison cell as a forty-year-old serial killer. But finally the kid found another pastor, who recommended that he simply buy a porno magazine, masturbate, and get over his guilt trip. And so he did, and it worked. (They didn't mention whether he was a porn addict today. That would have been interesting. But that would have been a different program segment, I'm sure.)

The point of the story was, by thinking all the time about how you must avoid something, you let it control you, and it becomes much more of a problem for you than it would have been simply to ignore it or to force yourself not to care about it. I think that's true. I wish that teenagers could feel what it's like to be older, to be calmer, to not care about such things, to know that all the angst they feel now will dissipate over time. It certainly would have helped ME when I was young. ;-) (I knew back then, intellectually, that all that angsty youthful spiritual and emotional turmoil would fade and disappear. I couldn't WAIT to grow up, for that calmness to arrive. But I couldn't FEEL what it was going to be like, to be calm. I could impose it, intellectually, from the outside in, but it wasn't the same as having peace flow from the inside out. So knowing that inner peace would arrive, decades from that moment, was not much of a help.)

(And I'm not saying that I have achieved inner peace. It's a continuum. I am more peaceful now than I was then. Decades or centuries from now, I will be more peaceful then than I am now. I don't think anyone ever achieves perfect inner peace while they inhabit a physical body (and perhaps not even after they leave their body). Look at Mother Teresa's diaries and letters. As old and as spiritually enlightened as she was, she was angst-ridden. So I will take what peace I can get at any particular time, and be content with it. And that, in itself, is a form of peace.)

Thinking about it, I realize now that they did not interview a woman for that radio segment. What, women don't have sexual thoughts, or commit adultery in their hearts? (or in the real world?) Only men do? I find that to be sexist and offensive. But I find many politically-correct ideas to be racist, sexist, and offensive. ;-) That's why I listen to public radio while I'm driving in my rental cars, to keep myself irritated and focused. It's better than coffee, and much less addictive.

Telekon

Telekon was Gary Numan's third album, following up 1979's huge-selling "The Pleasure Principle," (which contained the worldwide smash hit "Cars"). Telekon didn't sell quite as well (though it did debut at #1 on the UK charts), mainly because it was softer and more introspective. It has some great tunes, though, like "We Are Glass," "A Game Called Echo," "I Die, You Die," and "I Dream of Wires." And this one.

Gary Numan, "Remember I Was Vapour,"1980

22 Twain

In the comedy/mystery film "Murder By Death" (1976), the mansion where the murder takes place has the address of 22 Twain.

Here's a rather large 22 Twain. It sat next to my client's manufacturing plant for four days, idling, with a train connected to it. I hope the customers whose goods were on that train were not in any particular hurry to get them.



The locomotive sat, idling softly, with no one around, only a few dozen meters from the road. Somehow it wasn't tripping the crossing guard and warning lights. Two hundred meters away at the plant, I could hear the locomotive making a sharp tick, TICK, tiktik, TICK sound, with no particular pattern.

I walked up to it, noting the "DANGER: 600 VOLTS" signs on the side. Diesel-electric locomotives like this one are just big 3,000-horsepower engines which drive giant electric motors, which turn the wheels and also act as brakes.


You can see a power cable on the ground next to it. Sometimes you see locomotives parked next to manufacturing plants, like automobile factories, with power cables connecting the locomotives to the building. They are being used as huge generators to power the manufacturing facility.


The ticking sounds were very loud by now. I walked around the locomotive, and looked at the panels marked "600 VOLTS". The ticking was coming from in there.

I deduced that the ticking sound was the sound of electricity arcing, like lightning, inside the housing of the locomotive. I have never heard a locomotive make a sound like that before. I think it would be dangerous to operate the locomotive in that condition.

The things that pass for knowledge I can't understand

There are few songs which make me reach for the volume on the car stereo and crank it up.

This is one of them.

Steely Dan, "Reeling In The Years"

A nice dinner with relatives

I had a wonderful dinner with my brother-in-law and his girlfriend tonight. We met at Outback and ate and talked for two hours, and it was wonderful. I don't see them very often, so it was nice to catch up. Watching the two of them play off of each other is hilarious - he will hold forth on a subject, and she will pick his story apart as he tells it, in a running commentary, trying to get him to lose his train of thought. But he usually will not be shaken off the trail - he sticks doggedly to the storyline, refusing to be dragged off track, no matter how hard she tries. It is a grinning, goofy battle of wills.

I love them.

Thoughts on non-political news

I don't watch television. I read the news in various places on the web instead. I save the links that pique my interest. I share them here for your amusement.

I wonder how many more feet have to wash up on BC beaches before they figure out they either have a growing population of handicapped swimmers, or they have a serial killer? Probably the latter, one imported from Oregon. Oregon has more than its share of serial killers, for various reasons.

How often do you hear of a gang of armed men bursting into a hospital and shooting a patient to death in his bed? (A patient, by the way, who had been hospitalized with gunshot wounds from their previous attempt to kill him). These guys were determined. And it happened in the US Virgin Islands. Sounds like island life is not so idyllic as one would think.

Another UN money scandal, this time in their UN Development Program. When I decide I want to get paid to sit around and do nothing but embezzle funds and sexually harass women, I'll go get a job at the UN. It sounds like a fun place.

Did you know that most light-aircraft crashes are due to pilot error, usually because they run out of fuel? These guys ran out of fuel, AND didn't have a flight plan, or know of nearby airfields, and still they survived, undoubtedly to crash another day. I think God has a sense of humor.

The movie "Minority Report" had billboards which recognized you and spoke to you and called you by name with their advertising pitches. In the real world, we're moving in that direction also. I will start having to wear a mask in public. Or a slouchy fedora hat and sunglasses. I think 1930s fedoras and double-breasted suits and .45 automatics are all fashion accessories that need to come back into vogue.

I love it when researchers do stuff that's ethically suspect, like track people's movements through their cellphones. In this case, I don't think there's anything wrong with what they did. If they used the peoples' cellphones to actually listen to their conversations, or watch through their cameras, or somehow led someone else TO that person carrying the cellphone, that would be bad. But this? I don't think so. It's not like they tracked these people down, knocked them out and removed one of their kidneys.

And I am among the less-than-one-percent of the people who regularly travel outside of a thousand-kilometer circle. Isn't that delightful?

An observation of a political nature

I am working in the Chicago area, which is the home base of junior United States Senator Barack Hussein Obama. I see a few "Obama '08" stickers on cars, but not very many. Not nearly as many as I would expect to see, if Obama truly has massive support in this region.

Now that I am finished ignoring the tedious campaign for the Democrat presidential nominee, and before I begin ignoring the tedious campaign for the Presidential election in November, I wish to make an observation.

The American public is, by and large, centrist in its ideology. With the exception of the liberal coastal areas, they're not particularly conservative, and they're not particularly liberal. They generally don't like extremes. They just want someone in charge who can make reasoned decisions, and who otherwise leaves the average voter alone.

From some people, I hear that Obama is the Messiah. He brings a message of hope, of change. But if I ask them exactly what he will change, they usually don't have an answer. I have half-listened to bits of his speeches, and they seem to be the usual empty platitudes, aimed at pleasing whoever is listening at the moment. That's normal for a politician. But I don't detect any hard, concrete plans underneath his general calls for change. That indicates to me that he doesn't really have any.

From other people, I hear that his is the AntiChrist, that he has one of the most left-wing voting records in the Senate, that he is a closet, America-hating supporter of America's enemies. That sounds a bit extreme, but I wouldn't know. Despite the fawning press coverage that he has received, I have not been impressed with the elitist statements that both he and his wife have made, the anti-American statements that his longtime pastor has made, and the kudos that he has received from various terrorist groups and dictators (with whom he may, or may not, negotiate without preconditions - he doesn't really seem to be sure.)

I did some research into his US Senate voting record, at http://www.votesmart.org/voting_category.php?can_id=9490. It shows an alarming number of Not Votings (NVs). As a junior senator, he certainly hasn't been representing his constituency much. I find that annoying. I think that if you already hold an office, and you're going to run for a different office, you should be required to resign from your current office. This way, you are not allowed to use your current office and its influence as a political springboard. And, you step aside to let someone else perform your duties as they should be performed, rather than have you ignore your duties while you are trying to get elected to an entirely different office.

None of that really matters to me though. What's interesting to me is, the Democrats have chosen a candidate to represent them who is the farthest from the American political center.

When pitted against a person who is closer to the American political center (John McCain), the centrist American electorate will probably vote for the person who is the closest to the center. McCain.

Some pundits draw a comparison between Obama and George McGovern, the anti-Vietnam War candidate for the Democrats who ran against Republican Richard M. Nixon in 1972, and who was soundly defeated by a vote of nearly two-to-one. I wouldn't know. I wasn't paying attention then. But I think we will see a similar result in November between Obama and McCain.

Now I'm going to pointedly ignore political news until the end of the year. Because neither candidate represents Martian interests. And none of it will matter anyway after Plan 9 from Outer Space is implemented. ;-)

Planet Earth

This is an appropriate tune for the new template and the whole alien-from-space motif.

Hate Department, "Planet Earth" (originally by Duran Duran)



(Never mind the Sailor Moon video - it's the music that matters)

I only came outside to watch the night fall with the rain
I heard you making patterns rhyme
Like some new romantic looking for the TV sound
You'll see I'm right some other time

Look now, look all around, there's no sign of life
Voices, another sound, can you hear me now?
This is Planet Earth, you're looking at Planet Earth
Bop bop bop bop bop bop bop bop this is Planet Earth

My head is stuck on something precious
Let me know if you're coming down to land
Is there anybody out there trying to get through?
My eyes are so cloudy I can't see you

Look now, look all around, there's no sign of life
Voices, another sound, can you hear me now?
This is Planet Earth, you're looking at Planet Earth

Bop bop bop bop bop bop bop bop this is Planet Earth
Bop bop bop bop bop bop bop bop calling Planet Earth
Bop bop bop bop bop bop bop bop looking at Planet Earth
Bop bop bop bop bop bop bop bop this is Planet Earth

The past few weeks in photographs

A Florida scrub jay (Aphelocoma coerulescens), Florida's answer to the Pacific Northwest's spotted owl, in that it is endangered, and therefore anywhere it is found is designated "scrub jay habitat," and it becomes very difficult to build there.

We have scrub jays on our lot next door, and in back of us. That means that the guy who owns the lots in back of us cannot use them for anything. We've offered to buy them, but he said no. So we get to use them for free, basically, since he can't use them either, and he lives thousands of miles away. It works for me.


A great blue heron (Ardea herodias) at the jetty. He thought I would feed him. He was wrong.


You know, I will never figure out why people dig around in the surf, hoping to find sharks' teeth. It seems obvious to me that the flat, sharp-edged teeth in good condition will plane in the surf, scooting up onto the dry sand, propelled by the waves; while the rounded, beat-up teeth in poor condition will continue to roll around in the surf. Perhaps those facts are not so obvious to these poor people.


The first sea turtle nest of the season. The cage is supposed to keep predators, like raccoons, from eating the turtle eggs. The sticks contain writing, with dates and positions and weather information about when the nest was laid. It's a federal offense to tamper with or destroy a turtle nest, because they are endangered.


Boo! It's a ghost crab (Ocypode quadrata). I spooked him. He ran straight into the water to take a few deep breaths (they breathe water, and hold their breath on land, sometimes up to six months while they hibernate. There's a trick.).


Wood storks (Mycteria americana) - a whole crowd of them. We usually see lone specimens of this bird; to see a flock of them is quite unusual. They are the avian equivalent of Winnie the Pooh's friend Eeyore.




My office at home (Pru wanted to see). That's a new telephone. Probably won't hold up any better than its predecessors, I wager.



Our cardboard plant (Zamia furfuracea) is called a cardboard palm, although it is not a palm tree but a cycad. It has put on 50 percent new growth on the top half of the bush this year. If we leave it alone, it will take over the yard. We will have to beat it back with a stick. I'm hoping to get a flamethrower for my birthday; perhaps my darling wife will let me practice on this plant. Nothing will kill it; it would be purely for fun. ;-)

THIS is German engineering? part 2

I experimented more with the headlight switch in my rented Volkswagen Jetta today. I turned on the lights and turned off the motor.

It chimed to warn me that the lights were still on.

Why didn't I hear it the other day when I left the lights on in the parking lot and it killed the battery? Perhaps I'm deaf. Perhaps my head was in the clouds.

"Where was my head that fateful day? Was it lying on a tray?
Was it sitting in my house? Was it stolen by a mouse?
Was it wafting on the breeze? Was it trapped in a deep freeze?
Was it buried in some clay? I don't know where it was that day."

To distract myself from my idiocy about the headlights, I noticed something else that irritates me about this car, and THAT made me happy.

When you push the SCAN button on the radio, it goes around the dial exactly once, and stops where you started.

I think that's entirely too intelligent for a radio. What if I'm driving through farmland, far from cities and radio stations? I want the SCAN button to go round and round and round the radio dial, sampling from the few radio stations that there are out there, until I find something I want to listen to, at which point I will push STOP so that I can listen. Going around just once is annoying.

THIS is German engineering?

There were very few cars left on the lot at the Budget dealership when I arrived in Chicago on Monday night. So I took one of the remaining few: a Volkswagen Jetta.

Four doors, five cylinders, six gears, 2.5 liters of displacement, and zippy, sportscarlike performance. And a terrible dashboard interface which came back to bite me in the ass.

For years, I have rented Fords, Chevys, Chryslers, Toyotas, Subarus and Hyundais. A lot of them now have automatic lights-off switches, so that when you turn off the engine, the headlights turn off too, regardless of whether the headlight switch is "ON" or not.

Volkswagen just HAS to be different.

Not only do they take pride in NOT having an auto-lights-off feature, they also fail to have a warning chime on the headlights. Pull the key out of the ignition while the lights are still on, and what do you hear? Absolutely nothing.

So I came out to my car after a twelve-hour day today, and it was completely dead. Not even a click when I turned the key, because I, like a moron, had left the headlights on. Luckily, one of the maintenance technicians was taking a smoke in the loading dock, and happily agreed to help me. He had a little battery charger in a plastic briefcase, just for that purpose. And within five minutes, I was off and running again.

The headlight switch alone would keep me from buying a Volkswagen. The other features I have learned to loathe in our 24-hour relationship thus far:

• The driver's seat tilts uncomfortably far back. When you get in, it feels like a racecar, because the seat bottom rises up under your knees and cantilevers you into a reclining position. You can't make the seat bottom any more horizontal. I understand that they did this in order to give the driver and front-seat passenger more headroom, because the roof is low, and the best way to do that is to recline. But I find reclining in a car to be uncomfortable.
  
• The switches on the control stalks for the cruise control and for the wiper speed are unnecessarily small, fiddly and counter-intuitive. I think VW's been taking lessons in un-ergonomics from Saab.
• The switches and panels on the interior of the doors are flimsy. The trunk-release switch panel on mine is popping out of the door.
  
• The interior styling is Euro-edgy, and it feels like a fighter plane. That's okay, if you like the Spartan accoutrements of fighter planes. I don't. I want it comfortable, schlumpy, worn, and somewhat stained, like my couch. I want logically-placed buttons, and not too many of them. I want green or red lighting in the dashboard, not eyeball-jabbing blue.
  

But I think most of all, the Jetta's design philosophy irritates me. The car handles nimbly and capably, I won't deny. In a crowd of quiet, sedate, competent, solid, blandly predictable automobiles from American and Japanese manufacturers, the Volkswagen feels jittery and barely-controlled, like a skittish colt. It encourages you to romp on the gas and try to take a corner on two wheels. And I think that explains why most of the Jetta drivers out West whom I have observed in the past decade drove like assholes, because the car encourages them to drive like assholes. It makes it very easy to weave in and out of traffic, to speed, to tailgate, and to engage in other obnoxious driving behavior. The car encourages it because it feels like you have very precise control over what you are doing. But I think it is a fundamentally antisocial design for an automobile. It is marketed to young, not-quite-rich-yet-but-trying-to-become-so young people who want to distinctly say "fuck you" to other drivers, without spending a lot of money.

I find the car philosophically obnoxious.

And I really, really hate that fucking headlight switch.

Captain says

Some small, useless part of my brain (not to be confused with the large, useless part) is always playing this song whenever I board an aircraft. I like the discordancy of the saxophones overlaying the backing chord-loop of her voice, along with her laconic delivery of the oddball lyrics.

Laurie Anderson, "From the Air" (1980)

A thoroughly beautiful (if antiquated) mode of transportation

Saturday my darling wife woke up with a headache, which terminated our plans for a nature walk followed by yardwork. So she suggested that we go and watch the Space Shuttle launch over in Cape Canaveral, a three-hour drive from us.

This was Mission STS-124, the "plumbing mission," since it is taking up spare parts for the International Space Station's toilet, which is currently broken (requiring the station residents to poop into little plastic bags).


We parked on the A1A causeway over the Indian River (which is also State Route 528), south of the launch pads, so we had a great vantage point.


It was a big party. People brought their campers, their barbecue grills, and their babies.


There was a sailing regatta on the river behind us.

I apologize for the crappiness of these 5x zoom photos. My Kodak V570 is really just incapable of shooting at any distance greater than 10 meters. I would cheerfully smash its durable metal casing with a hammer if my darling wife didn't need it for garden and animal photos.


Through binoculars (though not with this camera), we could see the shuttle on its launch pad, right above the big boat in the foreground. Here, the engines have just started and it's beginning to lift off.


Up, up and away!


About now, the noise hit us. It sounded like the rumble of a hundred jet engines at full power. Not the crackling, earth-shaking roar of the Saturn Five engines of old, but more of a gentle surf-pounding roar.


About here, the solid-fuel boosters separated from the fuel tank. My darling wife, watching through binoculars, said she could see the boosters tumbling through the air, catching the sunlight with a flash as they turned. I couldn't see them.


The white smoke of the boosters stopped, but we could see the star of the ship rising upward from it.

The whole thing took perhaps two minutes. It was almost worth the ten-hour drive (four hours there in stop-and-go traffic, five hours home in really HORRIBLE stop-and-go traffic, with an accident every five miles). I am very glad that I went to see it, but now that I've done it, I won't do it again. (Jesse the cat is feeling puny, and I could not justify staying overnight there and risk having something happen to him while we were gone, because my darling wife would never forgive herself.)

But watching the launch made me look forward to the day when human scientists discern the true nature of gravity. And when they do, and they develop simple methods to shield their ships from the effects of gravity, a launch won't be a dramatic countdown followed by an explosive column of fire lifting the the ship into the sky. Instead, it will simply be the turn of a key, the silent press of a button, and the ship will shed its weight like a cloak, and fall gently skyward, a steel dandelion seed floating toward the stars. No fanfare, no drama, just the shadow of the ship passing over the heads of millions of people who don't even look up to see what it was, because it has become so commonplace.

And then, having seen the dramatic chemically-fired launches of yesteryear, I will turn to some poor youngster who doesn't care about what the crazy old Martian has to say, and I'll say, "See, there, that ship going up? I saw them when they used explosive rockets to launch themselves!" And the youngster will shrug, because it will be so far in the past for him, that I might as well describe how they built the Pyramids. And I will resume watching the sparkling ship waft away into the sky, and remember.