I was not as supportive as I could have been...

My darling wife was walking through a thick stand of trees, and walked through a huge spiderweb. The spider was dangling in front of her, swinging like a pendulum. She began jumping around and batting at it, hyperventilating.

"Get it off me!" she yelped as she hopped around.

I stood there and made snorting noises like the man in the Wordless Wednesday video (see below), because her actions reminded me of him.

At first she was annoyed with me, but when she realized what I was referring to, she burst out laughing.

And the spider was gone. ;-)

What I'm watching tonight

It won't be Barack Obama's nomination acceptance speech at Invesco Field at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Nope.

I'll be watching "The Manchurian Candidate" (the 1962 version, the one that actually had a plot), and wondering if life will imitate art tonight.

>;->

(Honestly, I never could watch Angela Lansbury after I saw that movie, and not laugh out loud. The woman was a legendary actress.)

I'm worried about my neighbor

I went shooting with Bob on Sunday. He's teaching me trap. Trap is the fastest-growing sport in the United States right now, did you know that? Even kids are doing it in school. I think that's wonderful. It teaches them respect for and safe handling of firearms, it teaches them eye-hand coordination and spatial relationships, and it provides a team sport and a bonding experience for everyone, even those who are not athletically-inclined.

Anyway. Bob and I attempted doubles trap, where two birds fly out of the trap house in front of you at the same time, traveling in a V pattern. You must shoot both before they hit the ground.

I didn't do very well, hitting both perhaps 60 percent of the time. Bob did worse than I, and he has a far better gun. I didn't worry much about our poor performances, since it was our first time trying it. I tended to wait too long to shoot the second target, said the range officer who was watching me, and so I missed a lot. I thought a full choke would constrict the shot pattern enough to maintain a proper pattern density even at 30 or 40 yards. I guess not. ;-) The second target spun blithely along, unmolested by the tiny pellets flashing past it.

Bob and I moved over to the single trap station, and worked on that for a few sessions. Bob still wasn't doing well. I asked him what was wrong, and he said he was trying a new technique, where you shoot the target as soon as it appears above the trap house, before it can even begin traveling on whatever random angle the throwing machine chose for it. It didn't work for him.

He had also mentioned that he's worried about his blood work, that it may show that he's diabetic. Diabetes can cause a whole host of problems, and I've noticed recently that he's not as hale and hearty as he was when he turned 65 a few months ago. I'm worried about him.

My worries increased when my darling wife said that she has a feeling that Bob isn't long for this world. She is psychic, so she knows things, and she's usually right. I sincerely hope she's wrong about this one. Bob is the centerpiece of our little street. He's always helping people, always checking on them, making us all feel safe.

I can't bear the thought of our little neighborhood without Bob. I will have to make a point of spending time with him as much as I can.

While I have the chance.

Wordless Wednesday

This guy just can't find the words.

Shadows in a sunny life

I attended a birthday party last weekend for the husband of one of my darling wife's friends, on a nearby island in a swanky neighborhood. It was a nice gathering, especially because he was unaware that they were having a party. We were among the first to show up. He opened the door, looked at us strangely, and invited us in, since we'd brought wine.

By the time the third couple showed up, he began to figure it out. ;-) By the time the eighth couple showed up, he knew a birthday cake was coming. It was a potluck, so everyone brought food. It was an odd mishmash, but everyone had plenty to eat. We, of course, brought potato salad, bought at the store at the last minute, and delivered in our own Tupperware so as to avoid looking completely tacky. Hey, we're busy folks. Why make what you can buy cheaper and in less time? ;-)

Anyway, one of the guests was a delightful lady named Tuli. She was one of the birthday boy's neighbors. She was in her early thirties, slim, olive skin, a thick head of tight black curly hair, an infectious smile, and a charming accent. I had her pegged as Greek until she said she was from Colombia. So much for my ear for accents.

She was a pleasant, charming person to talk to, full of energy and enthusiasm. She is married to a wealthy lawyer who spends most of his time commuting to his office in Chicago. She is a master gardener, and has a wide variety of interests.

Later, I got more of the story from our friends.

Tuli has breast cancer. Because of the chemotherapy, she has no hair; her black curls are a wig.

Her husband is a hateful man who brought her home from Colombia as a trophy wife. He doesn't like her, doesn't do anything with her, and rarely comes home. That's why she was alone at the party.

She lives alone, a beautiful woman in a lovely home in a wealthy neighborhood, kept in style. But she is lonely, and suffering from a deadly disease.

It was sad to learn that such shadows exist in an otherwise sunny life.

Sometimes I amaze myself

My nephew was given a Dell Inspiron 9100 laptop with dual Pentium 4 processors by his former landlady, who'd hosed it up pretty good. It couldn't get an Internet connection, and without that, it was pretty much a paperweight. (It's a heavy laptop with dual fans blasting like rocket exhausts out the back, which actually is nice because it doesn't bake your legs like my Latitude D620 does.)

My nephew thinks I know something about computers. I really don't know much about fixing them, but people seem to think I do. So he brought it to me.

When I managed to log on and poke around in it, I noticed that someone had managed to delete all of the network drivers. I rooted through the bag and came up with a handful of driver CDs. Thank God my nephew's landlady had saved all of them. So I began the tedious process of digging through the CDs, clicking on and opening each unnamed install.exe, and hoping I would find some network drivers.

It looks like I did, because I finally got the wireless card working, and the modem, and the other network features that had been disabled. Even the Bluetooth.

Then I ran a full virus and adware scan, ran all the Windows updates it had missed for the last six months while it was sitting in a closet, and set up a Norton firewall. Now the computer lives and breathes and seems to be useful.

Sometimes I amaze myself.

It's just not the Olympics without a scandal

I watched in 2002 as the Canadian pairs ice skaters (Jamie Sale' and David Pelletier) lost the gold to the Russian pairs skaters, Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze. It was clear to everyone in the arena and those who were watching on TV that the Canadians had won. Yet the judges awarded the gold to the Russians. I thought there was going to be a riot right there in the arena. I was rooting for the crowd to storm the judges' stand. That would have made good TV. Soccer hooligans? Pah! We're talking skating fans here. A vicious bunch if there ever was. ;-)

Later it was discovered that the French judge had agreed to vote for the Russians to receive the gold medal in exchange for the Russians to support the French ice dancers for the gold medal in a later competition during the same Olympics.

Now He Kexin, the underage female Chinese gymnast, has been awarded the gold medal in the uneven parallel bars competition, even though it's become fairly obvious that the Chinese government faked her passport age so that she would be able to compete in the Olympics. Hexin is 14 years old, below the minimum age of 16 to be able to compete. Yet the Chinese government issued her a passport in February 2008 showing that she was 16, and removed several documents from the Internet which showed that she was only 14.

The International Olympic Committee doesn't care. "The Chinese say she's 16, that's what her passport says, so that's good enough for us," says the IOC. Pardon me if I don't find their sense of honesty and fairness very inspiring.

It's just not the Olympics without a scandal, I suppose. But I still think it's bullshit. And it basically just boils down to political jockeying by nations, instead of focusing on the true accomplishments of the athletes.

Maybe experience DOES matter

I had a good laugh this weekend when Barack Hussein Obama chose Deleware Democrat Senator Joe Biden to be his Vice Presidential running mate.

For months and months, the media's Obama mantra has been "experience doesn't matter because Obama is (a.) a 'rock star,' (b.) he embodies hope and change, (c.) he's not a Washington insider," etc. etc. etc. Plus he's young, relatively handsome, and black. The media (and Obama's supporters) all deemed those qualities to be more important than experience . . . or lack of it.

The choice of Joe Biden blew all of those fawning arguments right out of the water. Because Biden HAS had a lot more experience in the Senate and in foreign relations than Obama has. Six terms' worth, as I recall, since 1972 (36 years). He's the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is a powerful position in the Senate. Biden's earwax has more experience than Obama does.

And thus, the choice of Biden really does call into question Obama's lack of experience. After all, if experience doesn't matter, why did he pick Biden to be his running mate?

I'll tell you. Because Obama already approached the logical choice, Hillary Clinton, and asked her to be his running mate. It would have been the perfect dream team, and they would have been much harder to beat. A black man and a white woman would appeal to liberals' desire for racial and gender representation in government, and Obama's inexperience would not be so obvious because Hillary's experience in elected office is not lengthy either.

However, Hillary's supporters don't much care for Obama, for whatever reason. (Perhaps they're all a bunch of racists, as Obama's handlers routinely imply.) Despite Obama's claims of support from Hillarians, "It's still about Hill!" So said the Doonesbury comic strip over the weekend. And Doonesbury is right. Notice that Hillary is still angling to be on the list of nominees at the Democratic National Convention this week. She's not bowing out.

And so, when Obama asked Hillary to run with him, it's quite clear to me that she told him to fuck off. Because regardless of who wins in 2008 (besides her), she's going to run for President again in 2012. And during that time, she's not going to play second fiddle to anyone, especially a 'rock star' who has no experience. She can be much more visible far away from Obama, rather than standing in his shadow, waiting for him to die. (John Adams, America's first Vice President and its second President, thought little of the office of Vice President. He wrote to his wife Abigail, "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.")

So without Hillary as a choice, Obama's handlers and the Democratic National Committee looked around the pot-smoke-filled room, and chose Joe Biden. Who is almost as liberal as Obama, and who unfortunately has a track record of speaking his mind, such as exactly a year ago when he said that Obama was NOT ready to lead. And he's said a lot of similar things, apparently, attacking Obama's inexperience. Now that Biden is Obama's running mate, of course, it makes it quite clear that Biden was chosen BECAUSE of Obama's inexperience. I don't think that's going to help Obama's cause in the least. There's not really that much that Biden can legally do as Vice President. But I thought Obama's gaffe the other day, introducing Biden as "America's next President! ... Vice President!" was telling.

I just think it's amusing that for so long in this irritating and boring campaign, Obama's experience allegedly didn't matter. And now his choice of a running mate shows that it does.

A visit from a dead cat

Ghosts do exist.

I prefer to think of them as incorporeal, living entities. Disembodied, if you will.

I have met at least one that I remember, an elderly woman. She reacted to my presence with fury as I walked through her house, which was being put up for sale. All of the contents were for sale, and dozens of people were walking through, touching her stuff, handling it, and buying it and taking it away.

I could feel her standing next to me, seething with anger. I could see her, not with my eyes, but with my mind, somehow. Short, frilly gray hair, glasses, in her 80s, wiry and full of energy. She was infuriated that all of these people dared to be in her house, dared to touch her things, when she was not finished being there. She wanted all of us out, now. The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up in the face of her rage.

So I walked out onto the patio, and the "get out" feeling dissipated almost immediately. I did not go back in.

That's one experience I remember. Another occurred last night, in a dream, a dream that was so real and so vivid, I can still see it.

I was sitting in a white-walled, second-floor apartment that I have never seen before, with wood floors and modern furniture. Spartan, just the way I like it. The sofa was nondescript blue, like a futon. A window to my right provided a view of the roof of the one-story apartment next to me. The window radiated cold, because it was winter. The flat farm fields outside were frosty in the late evening, with the sky darkening past purple to black.

"Look, Wolfman's back!" said my wife, who was sitting next to me on the sofa. And sure enough, there was Wolfman, all 18 pounds of him, a huge Maine Coon cat, with uniformly long gray fur and green eyes, looking at me as he nudged my arm with his head, begging for attention. He meowed in that peculiar chirping way of his, half-meow, half purr, a burbling sound that I have never heard any other cat make. I petted him, hugged him to my side, thumped him the way he liked it while he clawed my hand the way he liked to claw things. He was meaty and healthy and very real.

He sat there and enjoyed it for a moment, chirping, and then walked over my lap to my wife, who gave him the same treatment. After a few minutes of both of us loving on him, he grew tired of it, and hopped up to the back of the sofa, as was his habit.

He walked over to the window and through the glass, onto the roof outside, where he vanished.

"He came back to say goodbye, because he's not coming back after this," said my wife.

My heart sank, because I was so pleased to see him. My own reaction surprised me, because I have not thought of him for months. He died in April of 2007, and at the time I was somewhat relieved because in his old age he had become a bit of a pain, always wanting attention and clawing you or nipping you if you didn't give it to him.

Then I woke up.

This was one of those dreams that is so real, so vivid, that I find myself questioning what is real and what isn't. I don't usually dream like that. I don't even remember most of my dreams.

But I think sometimes a dream is more than a dream. I think in this case, Wolfman DID come back to say hello to us, and goodbye. This dream had a feeling of reality, of purpose.

Unfortunately my darling wife did not have the same dream. If she had, it would have proven that he did come back, and that our dreams were a convenient medium for communicating.

Nevertheless, this dream, I will remember. I hope I have it again. It was nice to see Wolfman. I miss him, now.

Bounce right back

A couple weeks ago, my nephew's girlfriend dumped him. She'd left him before when they fought, then she came back.

Not this time.

She had mentioned to me that she was thinking of dating a creepy bank representative, who had been hitting on her while she opened an account, even though she told him that she HAD a boyfriend. Didn't matter; he kept up. Then she began thinking, well, he makes more money, he's lonely (his wife died two years ago), etc. etc., and he began to look like a better option. She was warning me that she was going to leave my nephew. "You have to do what you have to do," I said. I knew it was over already... all that had to occur was the actual leaving.

So she left. And he was very hurt and upset. She wouldn't tell him much, even though he kept begging for a reason why.

"Why does it matter?" both my wife and I asked him. "The fact is, she's gone. Move on."

He was despondent for a week. He hung out with us, moped around, and complained that he has no friends.

Then he began to perk up. Now he's hanging out with buddies from work, and he's having much more of a social life than he ever had when he was with his now-ex-girlfriend.

I'm very proud of him.

Now if only I could get him to stop referring to women as "chicks."

Naked Eyes, "Promises, Promises"

When I was small, I learned not to trust people who promised me things, because they rarely came true. There was always a reason, always an excuse why things never panned out. And sometimes there was no excuse, only a denial that the promise was ever made. And so I learned not to believe people when they promised things. Even today, I nod and smile when someone promises something, and I never expect them to follow through. It's a happy surprise when they do. And if they don't, no big deal. Actions speak louder than words. Perhaps that's why I'm such a terrible listener.

Perhaps that's why I always liked this song from 1983.

Roofer Madness

My nerves are shot. After the storm Tuesday, we called back the roofers to come and replace the roof as we had originally scheduled. So they came back Wednesday and they've been pounding and pounding ever since, pulling off all the red barrel tile and putting on white composite shingle that will stand up to a Category 3 hurricane.

It's been very loud. I thought the cats were dealing with it badly. It turns out that I am too. I am very irritable and snappish with my darling wife, which is unfair to her.

Maybe some reefer will help.

"Reefer Madness," 1936 (an anti-marijuana propaganda film)

A billboard that turns my stomach

There's a new lighted billboard in the airport terminal that I pass through every week. It's for a company for which I had the misfortune to do some work at one point. Out of all my 50+ clients that I've worked for in the past fifteen years, they are tied for the "Worst Corporate Culture" award. I have never seen more backstabbing, buck-passing and blame in a corporation, other than at a paper company that was struggling (unsuccessfully) to recover from bankruptcy after the employees bought the company.

When I worked at the company shown on the airport billboard, some of the employees I spoke to told me that they sincerely regretted ever hiring on there. Others who were terminated in a Black Wednesday "downsizing" were glad to be leaving. Even the employee who was "managing" me told me that he couldn't trust anyone there, and he'd been there over a decade.

It was a horrible experience to work there, but at least I got to leave.

I have no personal experience with their product. But I think it's interesting that there are many others who have, and who regret it. For example:

Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
Link 4

You may notice that I'm avoiding saying their name. ;-) Because they seriously make me want to throw up. And I just had a Dell technician come out and replace my keyboard on my laptop, from the last incident. I'd like to keep this new keyboard clean.

"Starman," 1984

I always liked Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen in this film. The music is deceptively simple, yet hauntingly beautiful and majestic. It really gives the feeling of a beautiful entity, so very very far from his home. I actually bought the soundtrack, I liked it so much. That's quite unusual for me.

Rent the movie, if you haven't seen it. I like the part where he learns to drive a car by watching her, and recites what he has learned from his observations: "Red means stop. Green means go. Yellow means go very very fast."

I'm always nice to the Jehovah's Witnesses...

...even when they come to my door and tell me I resemble Brendan Fraser. Not that I particularly resent it, since I enjoyed "The Mummy" movies and "Blast from the Past" and of course "Bedazzled." He's a decent actor. But though he wields a Winchester Model 12 shotgun with aplomb, he always seems so chubby to me. Which means, if they thought I resembled him, that I'm chubby, and I need to lose weight. I've never before been told that I resemble Fraser. Bill Gates, yes, oddly enough. But not Fraser.

Besides my floppy hair and chubby face, the nice middle-aged lady Witnesses were entranced with my darling wife's garden, and so they never got around to asking if they could speak with me about my personal relationship with Jesus, and so I never got around to telling them I'm Buddhist. (I'm not, of course... I am areligious, but that particular answer seems to take the wind out of their sails (or sales, LOL) without fail, and it's nicer than simply shutting the door in their faces. My darling wife considers herself Buddhist, although I think it really extends only to the respect for all life. She'll carefully capture an insect or a lizard in the house and take it outside. I like that about her, but I don't think it makes her a Buddhist.)

Witnesses are always a bit skewed, in my humble opinion, so I can't take their opinion on my appearance as gospel. But even if they were way off base, I still need to take their comment to heart.

Back to exercising, then.

PS - This edition of "The Watchtower" newsletter is in "stealth mode." In big bold letters on the front, it seems to be a pamphlet about GLOBAL WARMING. Inside, there's articles on that, and also on hybridized corn. Only on the back cover does it mention anything, in very small print, about the Jehovah's Witnesses. I think that's amusing.

The power of prayer

I'm a firm believer in the power of prayer. I think it's more related to the practice of visualizing what you want - the more you visualize, the more likely you are to make it real. The Olympic athletes do that. The ones who spend time visualizing instead of practicing their moves actually do better than simply practicing. Here's some information. And some more. And some more. I have read scientific studies that actually quantified the benefits of visualization versus physical practice, and of course I can't find them now. Sigh.


I think prayer is very similar, though. It's visualization, applying the power of the mind to have an effect in the physical world. The more minds applying their power together, the more effect there is. I think that prayer is not just a request for a higher power to act, but a statement of a desired goal, which has its own momentum and capacity to create change.


Anyway, what started my train of thought was a poll that showed that 57 percent of those surveyed believed in the power of prayer. I think that's interesting. I don't know how much God, or angels, intervene in response to a prayer, even though I have met people who swore that an entity intervened for them and saved their lives by averting life-threatening injury in an accident, or by effecting miraculous healing from a disease. But I believe that the simple act of prayer helps to focus a person's mind in the direction of changing their reality. If God or angels choose to wield their power alongside, or through, our prayers, then so much the better. ;-)

Oh my God, we're all going to die - some other day

According to local Native American lore, this locale on the west coast of Florida has never been hit by a hurricane. In fact, Seminole and other tribes used to migrate here from all over the state to be safe from the late summer weather.

It looks like the natives were right. Once again, the storm magically goes around us. At the moment, it's plowing through the center of the state, to the east of us, and I don't think it ever achieved hurricane status. It was too amorphous and disorganized as it exited Cuba. The edges of the storm are just brushing my neighborhood. Lots of wind, periodic rain, scary-looking clouds to the south and east. But otherwise, business as usual here.

I can see why some locals didn't bother to prepare. But I know my own luck. Because we prepared, it turned out to be very mild. Had we not prepared, our home would have been flattened. Catch-22, as far as pain-in-the-ass labor and disruption to our daily lives is concerned.

I will reschedule the roofers now, to come and replace our roof. (Of course, once we have a new roof, that will magnetically attract the next hurricane. Lalalalala, I'm not listening to my own paranoid thoughts.)

Badly-edited form letters

I received yet another solicitation for funds from one of the political parties. I've ignored about ten of them in the past four months. I'll contribute, sure, but in my own sweet time. I personally believe that assassinations are more effective than political contributions, but I'm not feeling particularly motivated this year. Neither is anyone else, it seems.

Anyway, in the plea for money, the chairman of the party said "...I'm concerned I've not heard from you since DATE of LC."

I'm guessing that "DATE of LC" means Date of Last Contact. Which he neglected to fill in from his mail-merge program.

I'm thinking he sent out at least a hundred thousand copies of this letter with that error in it.

It makes me annoyed that some of the funds that I infrequently send in get used to produce this kind of crap. For God's sake, people, edit your stupid junk mail before you send it out. You're killing trees for this. You're burning fuel to deliver this to my door. Don't dishonor the trees' lives and deaths even more by muddling up your oh-so-important missives with stupid grammatical and printing errors.

I might give them less money, or no money, since they're obviously just going to waste it.

ARGH.

Do you hear that sound, Mr. Anderson?

"The Matrix" was one of those excellent movies, like "Star Wars," which far outshone any of its lesser sequels. One of my favorite scenes is where the implacable, indestructible Agent Smith tries to kill the hero, Neo (and himself, knowing that he'll simply be reconstituted) by holding him in a headlock as a subway train is about to run over them both.


"Do you hear that sound, Mr. Anderson?" asks Agent Smith. "It's the sound of inevitability."


I love that line.


Here's another sound, the sound of a much larger train, about to run us over by Tuesday afternoon.

The Cocteau Twins, "Iceblink Luck"

I used to think Gary Numan's lyrics were hard to follow sometimes. But the Cocteau Twins' lyrics make Gary's seem quite pedestrian and mundane. I think the Twins looked to Led Zeppelin's more drugged-up days for inspiration.



I'm seemin' to be glad a lot
I'm happy again, come, come in time
This mustn't hurt or harm yourself
Well, me, I give in to your arms

You're the match of Jerico
That will burn this old madhouse down
And I'll throw open like a walnut (blown up?) safe
More like a love that's a bottle of exquisite stuff, yes

You, yourself, and your father
Don't know him, so part in your own ways
You've really both bone setters
Thank you for mending me babies

You're the match of Jerico
That will burn this old madhouse down
And I'll throw open like a walnut safe
You will seem that being throughout
That same bottle of exquisite stuff
Yes, you are that match of Jerico
That will burn this old madhouse down
And I'll throw open like the walnut safe

You, yourself, and your father
Don't know him, so part in your own ways
You're really both bone setters
Thank you for mending me babies

Oh God, we're all going to die...

The Weather Channel is doing the usual hysterics, plotting a hurricane path for Tropical Storm Fay which, at this time, shows that the eye of the hurricane will cross our back yard between the master bedroom and the garden shed. We're glued to the TV for updates to see if it will swing eastward and hit our neighbor's house instead. ;-)

We are going through the motions of putting up our storm shutters, removing all blowable and breakable things from the yard (good thing I didn't get that lighthouse done), and stockpiling supplies (food, fuel, water, batteries, tools, ammunition... the usual). Some of our neighbors are not even bothering. Our area rarely gets hit by hurricanes. But there's always the exception. And I would rather be prepared than unprepared. Regular readers know that about me already, LOL! "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst" is an excellent axiom.

My darling wife is pleased because for once, I'm home to go through the hurricane together with her. So if we're going to die, we'll do it together, instead of me being thousands of miles away while she's in danger. However, I'm sure we'll be fine. We were going to have the roof replaced today and tomorrow. We postponed that, seeing as how the hurricane may do the work for us, and then the insurance company can pay for it instead of us. ;-)

More later.

Lida Husik, "Trash Out Tonight"

I like Lida's alto voice; she has quite a range. Her music has a multilayered, pulsating quality. And her discs are super inexpensive, used on Amazon. ;-)

Sophie Ellis Bextor, "I Won't Change You"

I wish Sophie would get more recognition outside her native England. She's sort of popular in Europe, I think. But you'll never hear her voice on American radio, sadly. Too much of an English accent. I rather fancy it, meself.

Eric Clapton, "Lay Down Sally"

I always liked this guitar part. It's got a nice honky-tonk feel to it.

I hate horror movies, but I want to see "Mirrors"

I can't bear to watch horror films. Not that they're scary - they're silly, a lot of the time. But I have a very good visual memory. And if I see something that's gross or horrible, I get to see it continuously for weeks or months after that in my mind's eye. So I seldom see horror films.

That said, the beauty of the reflected images in "Mirrors" is intriguing. I enjoy optical reflections - I liked the "The Matrix" for that reason, because of all the reflected mirror images in it. The idea of the reflections taking on a life (or death) of their own is interesting to me.

I will wait for the video, though. Images on the small screen of a television have less of an impact on my visual memory. ;-)

ABBA, "Does Your Mother Know"

One of my favorite tunes of all time. I like the chirpy childlike melody of the girls singing the refrain.

Movie review: "Mamma Mia"

I am a huge ABBA fan. I have most of their music, and know almost all of their lyrics, although I was never part of the disco scene in the 1970s during their heyday. We had enjoyed the stage musical of "Mamma Mia" when it came out. People were dancing in the aisles, because for some reason, the "live" music moved the audience more than one would expect.

So we finally got out to see "Mamma Mia" in the film version. I will sum up pros and cons in bullet format because I'm tired.

Pros:

• ABBA's music, which made them one of the best-selling artists of all time (~400 million units worldwide, with ~3 million per year today)
• The setting of the Skopelos group of islands in Greece, which is beautiful
• The cast of Meryl Streep, Julie Walters and Christine Baranski as the three girlfriends and Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan, and Stellan Skarsgård as the three potential fathers of Streep's character's daughter
• The interesting twists in the lyrics of the songs, reversing genders for example, to fit the plot
• Cameo appearances by ABBA's male members Benny Andersson (the old fisherman playing the upright piano on the boat as the townswomen dance to "Dancing Queen" on the marina dock) and Björn Ulvaeus (one of the Greek gods looking down on the cast performing reprises of the songs as the credits roll at the end)
• The backing cast of the hotel staff (mostly Greek actors), who lent the film an air of ethnic authenticity and "family" which wasn't readily apparent in the stage musical
• The chemistry of Streep, Walters and Baranski, which is a scream to watch. They are totally believable as a wild disco-era girl band.
• Streep does VERY well as the lead role. Her voice is well-suited to ABBA's music, and she sings with a smooth mezzo-soprano that is very listenable. I gained new appreciation for her talent as an actress.
• Hearing ABBA songs interpreted in a folksy Greek style. For example, the brass ensemble in the church at the end plays "Knowing Me, Knowing You" as the processional. I laughed out loud. It was so interesting to hear such familiar tunes interpreted in such unusual ways.
  

Cons:

• Remember how "Dilbert" (a three-frame comic strip) didn't do well as a half-hour television show? Sometimes something that works well in one medium doesn't work as well in another. In "Mamma Mia," the format of the musical on stage worked because each plot point was an excuse for an ABBA song. One or more characters stepped forward and sang, the rest faded into the background, and it worked well. In film, I would argue, it's more difficult to do that, and some of the characters simply seemed to hang around in the background with not much to do. The camera's attention is not as "focuseable" as a live audience's attention at a stage show, and so unless you crop the camera shot to exclude extraneous characters, there's more distraction from the scene's lead singer. That said, the forced inclusion of the background characters in the film did help to make it more like a group of people who knew each other well.
• Pierce Brosnan's voice is ill-suited for singing. He can carry a tune, and he gets massive points for trying, but it's unfortunate that Colin Firth didn't get the lead male role instead, because Colin's voice is beautiful, while Pierce's is not. Notice that Stellan Skarsgård does not sing at all (I believe), because his voice is gravelly, reminiscent of Colm Meaney's voice. Nevertheless, all of the cast did well with their singing roles.
  
• Amanda Seyfried as "Sophie," the daughter of Donna (Meryl Streep). I haven't seen her before (her first big role was "Mean Girls" in 2004). The character of Sophie is mildly irritating in the stage musical, because her "it's all about me and my wedding" mindset leads her to invite three of her mother's ex-boyfriends (one of whom may be her father, but she knows not which one) to her wedding, causing farcical chaos, which is the point of the play. But Seyfried's portrayal of Sophie took the character to new heights of irritation, for me. I'm not sure why. She sings very well. She's expressive and pretty to look at. But I found her irritating, all the same. I'm not sure who I would recommend for the role instead of Seyfried, though. Someone with a more mature presence, perhaps, even though the role is that of a 20-year-old. Someone with a richer, fuller voice, not as "thin" as Seyfried's.
  

Overall, "Mamma Mia" is a fun flick. I'm glad I saw it in the theatre. It seems to be popular - most of the seats were filled, which is unusual for our little town.

4 out of 5 stars. Check it out.

Random pixels

A few pictures from the last few weeks. I have switched to widescreen format, chopped down the resolution a bit, and boosted the color to "vivid." It doesn't do anything for me, though.


Great blue heron (Ardea herodias).


Snowy egret (Egretta thula).


Another snowy egret. "Ooo, the bubbles tickle!"


Cuban tree frog (Osteopilus septentrionalis). I thought it was a bat clinging to the garage wall, it was so big.


Domestic, fat, lazy, sleepy cat (Felis catus).


A speedboat burning a lot of fuel to get home quickly.


Type G2 star. These stars are brighter than 85% of the other stars in this galaxy, most of which are red dwarfs (Type K or Type M). This one is pleasant.

Genesis, "Throwing It All Away"

And I had the same relationship end with this song.

At the time, I hated Phil Collins for ruining my romantic life, such as it was. ;-) Because it was indeed HIS fault, and not mine, that things were so unbelievably stupidly fucked up. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Phil Collins, "Take Me Home"

Music sometimes defines your relationships.

I had a relationship start with this song.

Bill Withers and Grover Washington, Jr., "Just The Two Of Us"

Corny, but fun. I like the electric piano.

An encounter with a waterspout

A waterspout is just a tornado over water. Just a tornado. Well, we got a nice close look at a waterspout the other day.


Tara is rushing away on her scooter, trying to get home and get to shelter before it hits us. You could see it spinning around like a revolving spring - the cloud pieces were very distinct. It didn't make any noise that I could hear, which surprised me - tornadoes usually have a rushing sound, sometimes as loud as a freight train if they're really close. Perhaps this one was farther away than it looked. It looked to be about four blocks away.

I would have taken video, but couldn't remember how to do it. By the time I remembered, the waterspout spun itself out as it came onto land.


(fssssssshhhhhhhhh)

That was Friday's fun. Otherwise, it pretty much rained all weekend. I told the boys that they were not welcome to come back if they insist on bringing the rain with them every time they come. ;-)

Maybe I'll watch a LITTLE bit of the Olympics...

My darling wife insisted that we watch the opening ceremonies. I'm glad she did. They were amazing. You can watch it here at http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/nbcencore/index.html?forcereload=true, and click on Opening Ceremony Sights and Sounds, but you'll need to install Microsoft Silverlight codec, and answer some irritating questions about how you get your regular TV programming.

Watch that video, especially 13:00 to about 16:00. One thing about China is its amazing supply of human capital. More than almost any other resource, China has an abundance of people. It makes it easier to do highly complex tasks when you just apply a sufficient number of people to them.

The scroll painting at 5:00, and the tai chi demonstration at 24:30 to about 32:00, and the lightbulb guys from about 34:00 to 38:00 are pretty cool. I really like the drums at about 45:00. Very pretty.

Sacré bleu! He's a charlatan!

Hmmm. "Sacré bleu" is a Marianist oath, "holy blue," meaning the blue color of the Virgin Mary's robes. A cousin of mine is a >Marianist. They are an interesting sect, which I understand is on the fringes of Catholicism, barely tolerated by the Holy See in Rome.

Anyway. "Sacré bleu!" I said to myself, when I read that the Free Credit Report.com singer is a French-Canadian who's just lip-synching in those commercials on TV. And here I was thinking that everything I saw in those commercials was totally true. Like, totally.

I'm not watching the Olympics

Okay, I'd really like to say I'm not watching the Olympics because I think it's important to stand up for human rights and individual freedom in the face of totalitarian communist states like China. I'd like to say that I'm disappointed in the International Olympic Committee, and that the IOC was wrong to suck up to China in the first place given China's human rights record, was wrong to accept China's word that journalists would be allowed to report freely and have unfettered access to the Internet while in China (an agreement which the Chinese reneged on later), and was wrong to accept China's restrictions on freedom of expression at the Games. I'd like to say that although I think countries should boycott the Olympics (because it's politically very similar to the 1936 Games in Munich, during Germany's Third Reich), I still support the activities of the brave and courageous athletes who merely wish to meet on the world stage and compete as brothers and sisters, free of political baggage. I'd like to say that those athletes have every right to compete regardless of whether a country chooses to boycott or not, because they may never get another chance to compete.

I'd like to say all that. But I won't.

Because the main reason I'm not watching the Olympics is that I'm not really interested. More power to the athletes, of course. Good on ya, mates. The comraderie of competition and physical prowess, and all that. Hoist one for me when it's over.

Then I'll continue ignoring whatever's on TV after that. ;-)

Sugarloaf, "Green-Eyed Lady"

My darling wife has green eyes and blonde hair.

I did not know Sugarloaf was from Denver. I used to live there. Small planet.

The answer is appropriate. The question is not.

My darling wife watches "The Today Show" religiously. She likes the "on-air personalities" who appear on it, like Matt Lauer (yecch). I avoid it equally religiously for the same reason, as well as the fact that I can feel my brain cells popping and dying with each moment I watch. I literally feel myself getting stupider as the drivel permeates my skull and leaches out what few bits of grey matter I have left.

I miss the old days, when you only had 4 hours of TV a day, and the rest of the time they broadcast color bars, or test patterns, or just plain static. That stuff had more intellectual content than "The Today Show" does now.

Established: In my unasked-for opinion, "The Today Show" television program is crap. Next: The Today Show's website. This is also crap, but for a different reason.

For all of television's lack of standards, the Internet is bereft of anything even remotely resembling a standard. And so the Today Show's website has a story about threesomes, or menage a trois (a French phrase for "a quick road to divorce.")

I am pleased that the psychiatrist author of the story recommends avoiding threesomes, since it usually breaks down the emotional and sexual bonds that joined the original couple. That's been my observation as well, with acquaintances who attempted to have threesomes, open relationships or full-blown polyamory. It usually doesn't work out. Although I contend that humans are not genetically programmed to be monogamous, it is an admirable goal, one which proves that humans can govern themselves with their brains and not their gonads. And simply because monogamy is an uphill battle does not mean that we shouldn't try.

(I am aware of the irony that one of my favorite authors, Robert A. Heinlein, was a longtime proponent of polyamory, bisexuality and even incest (albeit genetically-corrected incest, to avoid recessive gene reinforcement in incestuous progeny). That annoys me quite a bit. He was a fantastic writer, but he was simply fucked up in the head in some areas. I do my best to ignore those faults.)

But my issue with standards is, although "The Today Show" is so pathetically stupid as to be unwatchable, at least they wouldn't run such racy material on the show itself. (I hope.) Instead, they put it on their website. The Internet is expected to be racier and raunchier than television. But I would argue that it's inappropriate to have even on the website associated with "The Today Show."

However, it's titillating, which is what "The Today Show" often goes for. So I can see why they put it there. And at least they came up with an appropriate answer to an inappropriate question.

Give 'em an inch and they'll take a foot - or six, part 2

More information.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26014848?GT1=43001

Silliness

Talkative cube-neighbor programmer: "Hey, did I ever show you my lizard pictures?"

Me: "I'm not sure I trust a guy who wants to show me his lizard."

The Yip Yip Aliens of Sesame Street

I was not a huge fan of Sesame Street. It was okay, but I learned a lot more about human culture from the aliens on "Star Trek." ;-)

However, I loved this skit, from 1971. In it, the aliens attempt to "make contact" with a telephone.



I love how, when they are frightened, they hide behind their lower jaw. How funny!

Apparently the Yip Yips have a long history on Sesame Street. This was merely their first appearance. In most of the skits, they attempt to interact with common pieces of Earth technology. In its way, Sesame Street was introducing children to technology, approaching it from the same vantage point as aliens would. "The Teletubbies" would do the same thing later in the 1990s.

Why Generation Y is broke

I think all of the author's points are good, but even as a larva, I remember that the grade schools and high schools taught you NOTHING about fiscal management. Older people reminisced that yes indeed, high schools once taught people how to shop thriftily, how to make a budget, how to balance a checkbook. That was usually taught in Home Economics class, which was NOT just about cooking, but was actually about what the class was named for: the economics of running a household. And once upon a time, in many schools, it was a required class.

Alas, by the time I got here, Home Ec had devolved into an elective cooking class. And nowadays many schools don't even teach Home Ec anymore. Hence most people younger than 50 never learned how to balance a checkbook. Or how to cook. At least, not in school.

I never did learn how to balance a checkbook either, mainly because (a.) I forget to write things down in it, and (b.) I can't read my hieroglyphics later when I try to balance. Instead, I throw every receipt in my wallet, and at least twice a week I sit down and key them all into Microsoft Money, and pay all the bills that have arrived in the mail. Thank God for computers, because I have never failed to balance my accounts since 1997 when I started using Microsoft Money. It was a godsend.

So, make the computer do the work of balancing. But you also have to be a Nazi about paying the bills. One of the ninnies in the story never even opened some of her bills. I can't believe that. I think that is just plain stupidity there. Pay your bills FIRST. Then see what money you have left over. I know that financial experts say "pay yourself first," and I can see their point. But when I get tired of living on $5 a month after the bills are paid, it's easier to simply stop spending money. Then you have more left over. It's amazing what you don't need to buy, when you think about it.

Anyway, I think it's amusing that the MSN story focuses on all these economic factors about why Generation Y has no money, and at the VERY end, "oh, and they don't teach fiscal management in school either."

I really think a lack of education is to blame. All other factors are extraneous, irrelevant. One can survive in any kind of economy, regardless of technology and temptation, if one knows how to manage what money they have.

Stay-at-home wives without children - a status symbol?

Researcher and author Scott Haltzman says that more than 10 percent of the hundreds of stay-at-home women he has interviewed are childless. The story makes it sound like an abnormally high percentage. That seems like a low percentage to me. I would expect it to be 20 or 30 percent. Many people I know don't have kids. And kids are expensive, so not having kids means you have more disposable income, and therefore there's less need for both spouses to work, meaning it's more likely that such couples would have one partner stay at home.

I disagree more vehemently, though, with Daniel Buccino's view from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He says that stay-at-home childless women are "status symbols," symbols of "an extreme and visible luxury."

Hmph. My darling wife is a stay-at-home. She has two bachelors degrees and a master's degree, and worked for a decade in the oil business as a scientist. She got tired of stupid corporate life and incessant male chauvinism, and decided to quit. She wasn't rich, and she wasn't destitute. She supported herself after that by working as a housekeeper for several families for another decade. It was simple work that merely required responsible diligence, which she has in spades.

Then I met her, and she continued to work in the good economy of the city where we lived. But when we moved to the jungle, where old people on fixed incomes won't pay much for housekeepers, she decided it wasn't worth her time to work anymore. And I agreed.

She stays home and makes our home beautiful. She takes care of me, takes care of the house, takes care of the cats and our relatives who live near us, takes care of our neighbors, and volunteers a lot of time to the county to help with park maintenance and development. She does a wonderful job at all of it.

Are we rich? No. Is she a status symbol of my luxury? No. It's my job as her husband to support her, and give her the means to do what she wants to do with her time, because I love her, and I want her to be happy.

I think our life is better because she stays home. Sure, we could use more money if she worked. But what would we use it on? We have what we need. It's more worthwhile for her to enjoy her time as she sees fit. If she's happy, I'm happy, and I've done my job.

I think these ivory-tower researchers place value judgments where they are not needed.

The anthrax mailings: case closed?

Dr. Bruce Ivins, a senior researcher at Fort Detrick, Maryland for 35 years, allegedly killed himself with an overdose of acetamenophen on July 31. Federal investigators were preparing to charge him with the murder of five people who were sickened by the mailings of anthrax-filled letters to the major networks and The National Enquirer, and to several congressional members' offices in the weeks after September 11, 2001. The potential penalty was death, and Ivins took a shortcut. Supposedly.

>Dr. Stephen Hatfill was the previous suspect, having worked at the same lab between 1997 and 1999, but the Justice Department recently closed its investigation in June and settled his lawsuit against the federal government for wrongful prosecution by agreeing to pay him $5.8 million dollars after >years of harrassment failed to yield any charges against him.

Meanwhile, federal investigators had been eyeing Ivins for years, and recently claimed to have isolated DNA from the anthrax letters as matching DNA in Ivins' anthrax strains at work. He was recently banned from his laboratory and was being treated for depression. His group therapist had recently applied for a restraining order against him, and filed an affidavit saying that he had threatened to kill his co-workers.

Remember, the >Army dropped its espionage case against Army Captain James Yee in 2004 allegedly because they didn't want to have to reveal national security secrets as evidence in his prosecution.

It's not a stretch to wonder if Ivins was murdered, simply because it was easier than prosecuting him and being forced to reveal sensitive data from the Army's bioweapons research programs as evidence in the trial. A bioweapons researcher is a much more sensitive and dangerous asset than a Muslim chaplain. You can't have such an asset uncontrolled, knowing the things he knows. He might reveal highly-classified information as part of the trial, or as part of his negotiations with the government for a lesser charge. Maybe he was depressed and unstable. Any of those factors made him a loose cannon.

And then, maybe he had nothing to do with the anthrax mailings. But it's pretty easy to kill someone and then blame the dead guy for the crimes you've been investigating. Case closed. That would certainly be a nice tidy ending for frustrated federal investigators who've been working on the case for seven years, even if it wasn't necessarily true.

I just think it's a suspiciously neat ending to a long and messy investigation.

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

Severed human foot number six has been found on another Pacific coast beach (Strait of Juan de Fuca, 30 miles west of Port Angeles, Washington), near where five other feet have been found.

Detached naturally, sez the King County medical examiner. Mmmmhmmm. Yet, the foot has to match up to a decomposing corpse somewhere.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Unwelcome solicitations

I got a letter this past weekend. It began, "Dear Marvin, Acurian is a company that specializes in recruiting people for clinical research studies."

Uh oh.

It continued. "We are currently working with a pharmaceutical company to find women (between the ages of 18-70), willing to participate in research study for overactive bladder (OAB), which is characterized by a sudden and unstoppable need to urinate."

I have a sudden and unstoppable need to throw up. This letter insults me on multiple levels. Not only am I suddenly getting solicitations to participate in medical studies for maladies that usually afflict older people, but I am getting solicitations to participate in medical studies for women.

The injustice of it all! ;-)

ABBA, "Slipping Through My Fingers"

How quickly the children grow up!

I haven't seen the "Mamma Mia" movie, but I did see the stage musical. I enjoyed it very much. I need to see the movie too.

Yeah, so what?

So there's water on Mars. I could have told you that. But I'd much rather watch humans spend a significant portion of their GNP to find it out the hard way.

Preparing for my own surprise birthday party without knowing it

My darling wife said she had a terrible migraine all week. That's what she said. In reality, my mischievous beauty was rushing around, planning a surprise party for me. I've been on this planet for 40 years. That seems like a long time. I never expected to be here this long. She wanted to make it a special event, even though I went on a tirade last week about how I hated parties and I hated this society's penchant for making this particular milestone one with black balloons and gravestones and "Over The Hill" signs and all that. She listened patiently and then told me to shut up, which I did. I didn't realize that I was attacking her plans.

I should have gotten wise to her plans last Thursday, when our friend Ed called me in Dallas. He always calls my cellphone when he wants to talk to my wife, but he hasn't called in awhile. "Hi Ed!" I said. "What's up? When are we going to see you?"

"I was just calling to see how you are," he fumbled. I should have gotten wise at that point, because he never calls me to see how I am, but I am not that observant. On his end, he was mouthing to his wife Rosemarie, "Oh my God! I called Marvin by mistake! What do I do?" He was calling to confirm plans with my wife for the party. We made some small talk, and then I suddenly had to go when a technician showed up to work on my desk phone. He said it was fortuitous, later, because he was running out of things to say. ;-)

When I got home on Friday, I helped my darling wife vacuum the house and work on the yard, mowing everything and making it look nice. Then we went shopping for food. We seemed to have a lot of food in the fridge already, but I'm not one to deny her when she says she needs something. I didn't realize that some of that food in our fridge was for the party, and that she had a ton more food stored next door in Donna's fridge.

During the week while I was gone, she called all our friends, told them what to buy or bring, and set up the party for Saturday afternoon. Bob and Donna were in on it, so when Bob and I went to the shotgun range, he was deliberately stalling, insisting we shoot for a longer time, to give my wife and Donna enough time to get everything organized.

We both came home, and I schlepped my gun stuff through the front door and noticed a huge crowd of people and balloons. "Surprise!!!" they all yelled, with cameras flashing. I was flabbergasted and ever so pleased. I went around and hugged each and every one of them, especially because I had not seen some of them in months (my wife sees them, but I don't because I'm often traveling). It took awhile.

It was a wonderful party, with lots of friends and food and cake and presents. I made sure to mingle with everyone and talk with everyone, while Bob and my nephew Andy cooked burgers and brats on the grill (which would normally be my job). Everyone brought me shotgun shells as presents, for my new trap-shooting hobby. I thought that was very funny, because when my co-workers and I used to do Secret Santa for Christmas, they would always get me ammunition also. It was a safe bet, for me. Our friends thought buying ammo for someone's birthday was odd, especially because many of them had never bought ammo in their lives. "Believe me," my wife told them, "it's perfect." And it was. I am now set for a couple of months of shooting. One of our more liberal friend-couples refused to buy ammo, and bought me a book on shotgun games (like trap, skeet and sporting clays, describing the rules and history and how to play well). That was VERY cool.

The best gift of all was my darling wife's. During the week that she "had a migraine," she actually worked to put together a scrapbook of every year of my life so far, one page for each year. I only had photos from college onward; I had no photographs from my childhood. But my sister did, courtesy of my father, and so she loaned them to my wife to help build the book. My wife sorted through all the photos, identified me, figured out which year it was, and picked the best photos to use. The result was a beautiful timeline. It was amazing to see those pictures. I thought I had forgotten everything, but to see the pictures, I remembered the clothes, and the toys, and the places, and most of the faces. It was strange to have those memories come flooding back after being buried so long. It was strange and wonderful. Everyone passed the book around and marveled at her handiwork. It was very flattering.

We ate too much, drank enough but not too much, and then all of us took the ferry over to a nice sunset walk on the beach. We all came back and ate cake and ice cream (I managed to get all the candles out with one breath, unsurprisingly) and called it a night around 10:30 PM.

I didn't want a party, and didn't particularly want to celebrate my birthday at all, but I'm very glad that my darling, loving, wonderful wife has more sense than I do.