Pictures from Switzerland, part 7 - Lucerne

My client boss, Phillip, and my client co-worker, Gabe, and I went to Lucerne one evening.

Lucerne is the largest city in central Switzerland and is a tourist hub. It was founded in 1178 AD. The Reuss river runs through it, draining Lake Lucerne.

This is the Chapel Bridge (Kapellbrucke), a 204-meter long bridge built in 1333. Most of it burned down in 1993 in a fire allegedly caused by a group of smokers. The city rebuilt it, of course. The Water Tower (Wasserturm) stands next to it, 34 meters high, built in 1300. The Water Tower has been, in its lifetime, a prison, a torture chamber, a treasury, and an archive. It is the most frequently-photographed monument in Switzerland.

My client co-worker, Gabe, and my client boss, Phillip, walking across the Chapel Bridge. There's shops and stuff on it. Phillip bought a watch there, years ago, and showed us the shop where he bought it. The same lady was working there. I don't think she recognized him, though. ;-)

A hotel.

The Chapel Bridge was festooned with real flowers.

This is the Church of St. Leodegar, begun in 735 AD. The current structure as you see it now was built in 1633 AD, in the Late Renaissance style.

Lucerne is a busy place.

I like the bulbous windows on this building, and the paintings on the walls.

Phillip and Gabe amid some kind of a bierfest being set up.

This is a lovely church on the river. I think it's Eastern Orthodox. I couldn't tell, in the rapidly-dimming light.

We ate dinner at a nice Italian restaurant which was about one-quarter full when we arrived at 6:30 PM. By 7:15 PM, it was packed.

By the time we got out, it was dark.

Here's the waterfront of the Reuss, with the Church of St. Leodegar in the middle, again, on the walk back to the train station, to catch our ride home to Fribourg. It's about an hour and a half ride back.

On "vacation"

I'm on "vacation" for the rest of the year. This means I'll be working on:

• Finishing our garage into a usable laundry and storage room, by bricking up the garage door and putting in framing, insulation, drywall, electric, and air-conditioning ductwork
• Putting up a fence in the backyard
• Installing two new vanities, faucets and medicine cabinets in our bathrooms
• Setting up a new laptop for my darling wife
• Redoing our closets so that the shelves work better
• Setting up a lighthouse in the front yard

I'm sure there are other assignments that I don't know about, or have forgotten.

I will put up more pictures of Switzerland and of other things as I have time, but if I don't, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Happy Thanksgiving, all.

That's all. (burp)

;-)

Pictures from Switzerland, part 6 - Fribourg

This is Fribourg, Switzerland, a French-speaking canton about 25 km south of Bern. This valley was once the only southern entrance to the canton of Bern, via a rickety wooden bridge across the Sarine River. Like Bern, Fribourg is built on a rocky peninsula around which the river winds on three sides. It's very picturesque, because the river has carved the valley quite deeply.



This is the Rue de Lausanne, a lovely winding street that leads up the hill from the river.

You can see the Cathedral of St. Nicholas in the background. Construction began on the cathedral in 1283 A.D., on the ruins of a Romanesque chapel that was there before the town of Fribourg was founded in 1157. Construction was completed in 1490 A.D. It is built in typical Gothic style.

French architecture seems to differ from German architecture in that the rooftops and windows tend to be more arched than square (or peaked). Also, they use a lot more wrought iron railings on the balconies, and fewer flowers.

I love the old wooden doors of the buildings, with the twist-type bell ringers in the center.

Most of the town's buildings date from the 1500s or earlier. There's one house/restaurant that's been owned by the same family for 800 years. I can't imagine living in a place with 800 years of human habitation (and grime) behind it. The thought makes me shudder. ;-)

Narrow alleys sometimes separate the buildings, running downhill.

Mountain streams are funnelled down to public fountains, similar to Bern.

The west tower of St. Nicholas. It was completed 60 years after the rest of the cathedral was completed in 1430.

I like the curlicues.

This is the arch over the front door of the cathedral.

You could drop a franc into a slot in the wall, and light a candle for someone you love.

The candle that sits alone in the third row, in the middle, is for my darling wife.

I see dead people. I always liked cathedrals for this reason, because dead officials are buried in the walls and the floors. Delightfully macabre.

Another honking big organ, bigger (I think) than the Munster's in Bern. Alas, I did not hear it play. My co-worker Gabe, a Catholic, went to Mass here a few hours before I walked in. He said it was very nice, all in French, but they did not play the big organ. There were perhaps a few hundred people attending, he said.

More recent dead people.

This picture was taken in near-darkness, in a small stone room at the back of the church. It was very creepy to be there, and the light was a deep blue-purple. I think the camera shutter slowed itself down to 1/15th of a second, which is difficult to get a clear handheld photo with. I was surprised that this shot came out as well as it did. It is a testament to Panasonic equipment's light-sensitivity.

More alleyways outside.

This is the Irish pub outside the Hotel NH. One interesting thing about many of the older buildings in Switzerland is that they all have working window shutters. I have never seen so many functional shutters in all my life. I am quite used to the fake ones that were popular in the 1960s and 1970s in America. Now, thankfully, the fake ones are passe'.

This is a fanciful metal sculpture outside the Hotel NH in Fribourg. There are a few of these metal mobiles around town. They all move slowly, with their various parts spinning and extending and retracting, in a slow mechanical ballet. This one is made of plumbing pipe and tractor wheels, and the wheels revolve while the various pipes slowly wave around and spray water continuously into the fountain.

This, and similar sculptures, I think, is the product of Jean Tinguely (1925-1991), who was born in Fribourg, and who was part of the New Realism art movement in the 1960s. He specialized in creating kinetic sculptures like this one out of scrap metal. His art "satirized the mindless overproduction of material goods in advanced industrial society," says Wikipedia. I like it, especially now that our own economy is stumbling because of such overproduction of useless material goods.

Not another Christmas movie

I think that if I am forced to watch one more Christmas movie on Hallmark Channel or ABC Family Channel, my head is going to implode from the vacuum caused by the rapid death of my brain cells.

It's not even Thanksgiving yet, and I'm already sick of Christmas.

Nevertheless, my darling wife is decorating our home beautifully for Christmas. It's gorgeous. I love the way she makes our home such a wonderful place to be.

If only we could watch something else on TV.

Pictures from Switzerland, part 5 - Grindelwald and First

One day, my traveling companion Phillip and I went to the ski resort of Grindelwald, some 15 km southeast of Interlaken.


There's a long valley leading generally southeastward from Interlaken, through which the Schwarz Lutschine river flows. The valley is perpetually shrouded in fog and clouds... or at least that's how it seemed to us.

The rocks in the rivers are much smaller and more rounded than the rocks in the rivers of the Rocky Mountains. This is because the Alps are much older (320 million years) than the Rockies (anywhere from 100 million to 1.8 million years ago), and the rocks have had much more time to be eroded by the water. The rocks in the rivers of the Rockies tend to be the size of cars, or of houses, with sharp, crystalline edges.


This is the main street in the town of Grindelwald.


We took the cablecar up the mountain of First. It's a relatively small mountain, perhaps 2100 meters high, similar to Mount Pilatus. It's basically a bald knob, poking above the treeline. It's popular with skiers in the winter, and with parasailers and hikers and bikers in the summer.


This is the Eiger Glacier. The bowl was carved out by the glacier, which is much smaller than it was in the last Ice Age. Such is the massive power of a river of ice.

The glacier again, in the background.

It was a quiet, smooth ride. Each cablecar can hold about 4 people, or 6 in a pinch.

Looking back down Mount First, along one of the streams.

I used to take care of a quadriplegic friend who suffered from cerebral palsy. He used a motorized wheelchair. In this long shot, I could not tell exactly what the man and the bicycle looked like, in the left corner of the camera's viewfinder. In my mind's eye, I saw a man in a powered wheelchair like my friend's, watching other people soar like birds. I imagined that he was once one of those fliers, traumatically injured in a crash.

Of course, he's nothing of the sort. He's simply a mountain biker slouched on a log bench, watching the parasailers, with his bike leaning against the bench behind him.

Isn't it interesting, the blanks that the mind fills in when it is presented with incomplete information.

Looking roughly southeast from Mount First. The mountain on the left is the Eiger, made famous by a spy thriller book (later a movie starring Clint Eastwood and George Kennedy) called "The Eiger Sanction." I have never read the book nor have I seen the movie, but I am told that I should.

I did not shoot many pictures of it because I was shooting into the sun, and the mountainside facing me was in shadow. My camera would have needed a flash output of approximately 1.21 gigawatts to properly light the mountain. Sadly, I left all my nuclear devices in my hotel room in Bern.

Parasailers.

The air over Mount First was thick with them. I kept waiting for them to collide, entertainingly, but I was disappointed. I wonder if the townspeople of Grindelwald have the option of carrying special insurance on their homes, in the event a parasailer crashes through their roof.

Luckily, many of their roofs are metal or tile.

Cows were everywhere. On the cablecar ride, the only sound you could hear was the gentle grumble of the cable, the sussurance of the wind, and the tinkling of cowbells far below. Of course, closer to town, the smell of cow poop was quite strong. Be glad these are only pictures.

The cows are quite well-behaved. I saw one house with a small yard next to it, perhaps 10 meters on a side. In the yard were three cows. They were penned in by a strand of yellow string on stakes, and wrapped around the occasional tree.

This is a little playhouse in someone's yard. Quite fanciful design.

I love these blue flowers, on the side of a house at the base of Mount First.

I think they are Smooth Douglasia (Douglasia laevigata) but I'm not sure.

Pictures from Switzerland, part 4 - Mount Pilatus

On the weekend, my client boss Phillip and I went to Mount Pilatus, south of the city of Lucerne.


These are little garden parks, where people rent or buy a little garden shack, and they go there on the weekends, and they hang out and they garden. Most of them are just one tiny room about 10 feet by 10 feet, with a bed and a toilet and electricity and maybe running water. It's a very little "place in the country." I saw this concept in Holland also. I find it a little strange, but that's just because I'm not used to living in cramped European cities, where a place like this would seem like an escape.


To get to Mount Pilatus, it's easiest if you go to Alpnachstad, a tiny place just south of the mountain. There, you can catch a cogwheel train to the top.


The train runs on a toothed track, and geared wheels grip the track from both sides. This method is used for very steep grades, where a "normal" cogwheel track with the teeth on the top edge would not be able to hold the train, because the train would simply slide off.



This is the train. Just a little electric tram, but it's built in a stairstep pattern, so that you can sit upright, instead of leaning forward (or backward) at a 30-degree angle, which would be very uncomfortable. There are several of these trains running all the time. It's the steepest cogwheel railroad in the world.



The tracks are very steep.











This is the top of Mount Pilatus. There are two hotels here, and a giant doppler radar.



There's a nice promenade where people sun themselves. It was fairly warm, even though we were seven thousand feet up. (By Colorado standards, of course, that's not very high. But it was very pretty, all the same.)















The mountain is honeycombed with tunnels, as are many of the mountains in Switzerland.

Someone, in a fit of madness, thought it would be fun to build a church at these inhospitable heights. Mount Pilatus is named for a local legend which stipulates that Pontius Pilate, the government official who sentenced Jesus to death, was buried here.

Inside the drum-shaped silver hotel, there is a giant alphorn. This one (I think) is the longest alphorn in the world, at 40 meters. I think. That's a big alphorn.

Looking up through the center of the hotel, following the alphorn to the ceiling far above.

If you come up the south side of the mountain on the cogwheel train, you can go down the north side of the mountain via cablecar, all the way to Lucerne. Well, almost. You have to take a bus for a couple miles at the bottom.

The harmonies these gentlemen made with their alphorns were very pretty. It was a nice song. No one was shouting "Ricola" in the background, though.

Local lunatics like to parasail off the top of the mountain. Actually, it looks like fun. This man took about 20 minutes to arrange his sail just so, and to work up the nerve to run down the slope. About 30 meters in front of him, there is a steep drop-off, so he has to have his sail inflated properly before he runs out of room.


And he did.

Ever look down from an airplane and see the airplane's shadow in the clouds below? This is the same thing, only that's me standing there. I'm waving. See?

The Alps, to the south.

There was a flock of pushy blackbirds who live on top of the mountain, seeking handouts from the tourists. One kept landing on this woman's head. I think he liked the color of her scarf.

We took the cablecar down to Lucerne.

It was a pretty trip. Most of the pictures I took in the cablecar are crappy because of the blurry haze of the plexiglas, but this is one of the better ones.

Pictures from Switzerland, part 3 - Bern

More pictures of the old city of Bern. This is a big fountain in the Munsterplatz, in front of the big church.

Another fountain down one of the side streets.

The firefighter's parade was very long and disorganized. It meandered through the city over a period of hours. Sometimes I followed it, and sometimes it followed me. Pieces of it split off and took different routes, and rejoined the main parade later. I think some of it had to do with the size of the machines and the narrowness of the streets, whether they could get down the street or not. All of the fire engines were decorated, and most of them were "pocket fire engines" like this one. You could park them in a normal-sized garage in an American house, or at least in the back yard. They even had farm tractors, pulling flatbed carts as parade floats. It was very entertaining.

Bern has the longest stretch of covered shopping mall (since about the 1400s I think) in Europe. The front of every building has shops on the street and under the sidewalk in the cellars, and then apartments or offices above. It's a very efficient use of space, and it means you can really live where you work. It's a lesson that American civic planners need to learn, though most of them haven't yet.

This is a CD shop under a sidewalk. The red sign over the stairs says "Watch your head!" in German.

This is the Zytglogge tower, built in 1220 A.D. Originally it was the guard tower overlooking the western gate to the walled town of Bern. (It's about a ten-minute walk from here to the east end of the old town at the river Aar, so that gives you an idea of the small size of the town at that time.) After the town expanded westward beyond the tower, it became a women's prison, especially for women who had been convicted of having sex with clerics and other church officials. A clock and musical bells were added in 1405 A.D. after a huge fire that heavily damaged the tower. "Zytglogge" means "time bell." I didn't notice it bonging, though, because the Munster church bells were making all sorts of noise also. The giant clock faces were added in 1610. This is the eastern face, above.

The western face of the Zytglogge.

Like many European urban centers, the main streets are crisscrossed with electric wires for the trams and buses.

The firefighters had a biergarten set up, with a climbing wall for the kiddies...


...and a demonstration trailer that would "catch fire," which then they would put out, with prompt Swiss precision.

This is the Swiss National Parliament building, on the south edge of the old town, overlooking the river. Technically, this picture is of the backside of the Federal Palace, which houses the Federal Assembly of Switzerland (the federal parliament) and the Swiss Federal Council (the executive branch). The shields along the parapet represent each of Switzerland's 26 cantons. In American parlance, they would today be considered "states," even though they are the size of an average American county. (Switzerland is only a little more than 42,000 square kilometers, about the size of the states of Vermont and New Hampshire put together.) Up until 1848 when the Swiss federal state was created, they were each an independent country of their own, with their own armies and money. Nowadays they each still have their own parliaments, and are responsible for taxation, law enforcement, health and public education. I saw some proceedings of the local canton parliaments on TV in Bern and in Fribourg - it was dull, just like the county government meetings you see on public TV in America. But it was weird to see people's names subtitled with their party, like Socialist or Christian Democrat or SPP (Swiss People's Party). That hardly matters at the county level in America.

Playing outdoor chess.

A house below the Parliament building. I like the filgreed wood.

I like this face painted on the side of this apartment building down by the River Aar. I don't know who it is, though.

Check out that freaky fire escape crammed onto the side of the building.

Switzerland is infested with swans, at a somewhat lower density than the way Canada is infested with geese. Both are ill-tempered, although swans are more likely to bite or beat you with their wings. This is a swan on the River Aar, below the Federal Palace building. It was getting too dark at this point to shoot anymore.

A funny Extended Stay commercial

The rising cost of travel means that I often have to stay at an Extended Stay America hotel, rather than someplace nicer. However, some Extended Stays are VERY nice, and some, alas, are not. It really depends on the franchise operator.

All of them look exactly like what you see in the commercial, though. And yes, they are comfortable enough to fart in. However, I myself make a point of never farting in my own room. I go visit a co-worker, and fart in their room.

School of Seven Bells, "Connjur"

I heard this bunch on the new "Sirius XMU" channel, the indie-rock college station. My eyeballs twitch every time I hear or see "Sirius" associated with XM Radio, even though I know that they merged back in July. I chose XM because I liked the channel lineup and I didn't like Sirius' lineup. And I especially thought Sirius were a bunch of morons to give Howard Stern $100 million in a five-year contract to come to satellite radio, which shrank his audience by something like 96 percent when he left broadcast radio.

So this whole merger leaves me cold. And I fully expect them to start raising their subscription rates, now that they are the sole provider of satellite radio.

Still, at least they say who the artist is. I like this tune.

A minor flood

We had the plumber run new water lines in the attic, out to the garage where we are setting up a new, larger laundry room. Since the tourists are back, the plumber's phone is ringing constantly.

During one of his innumerable calls, he managed to forget to glue together a joint in the hot water pipe he was installing. He tested the pipes briefly, using the washing machine, but it held.

When we ran the laundry that night, it let go, and sprayed hot water all over the attic.

My darling wife's bionic hearing detected the sound of water falling through the ceiling and splattering on the linoleum floor in the hallway. I, of course, heard nothing. But when she got up to investigate, and then began shouting, I knew something was wrong.

Together, we found the hot water shutoff on our new water heater, and stopped the washing machine too. There was water everywhere... pouring out of the ventilation duct in the ceiling, dripping from the light fixture in the ceiling, pouring down the inside of the walls.

I called the plumber and was very nice, if I do say so myself. He apologized profusely and showed up within half an hour.

All three of us hauled about a third of the soaked fiberglass insulation batting out of the attic, and threw it away. We swept all the water out into the garage and out the garage door. By 11:00 PM, it was all done, the pipe was fixed, the plumber left and we went to bed. He promised to pay for the insulation and any other repairs we have to make.

Before he left, I told the plumber two things, with a smile:

• One, he has to turn off his cellphone next time he does work at our house.
• Two, he gets a corner cut off of his plumber's card. (We were both in Boy Scouts. In the Scouts, you are allowed to carry a knife or an axe only if you have been certified to do so by your scoutmaster. You carry a Woodsman's Card that says you can do this. Each slip or accident you have, the scoutmaster cuts a corner off your card. If all four corners are cut off, you lose your privileges to carry a knife or an axe. Therefore, our plumber gets a corner cut off of his "Plumber's Card" because he screwed up.)

He laughed, and agreed.

Pictures from Switzerland, part 2 - Bern

The iron filigree gates outside the Münsterkirche.


The inside of the Münster.


They have a honking big organ. I wish I could have heard it play.










The church has flying buttresses! (The angled brace at the bottom of the picture.) I have never seen flying buttresses before, I think.




Outside the church, you can take a cogwheel trolley to get up from the river Aar, and back down.



The hill is quite steep. This is the edge of the park to the south of the Münster church, looking down. The nets are there for people who lean too far. From this buttressed, walled platform, many of the church's icons and treasures were hurled and smashed during the violence of the Protestant Reformation in 1528 A.D. That's the other reason for the nets, in case it happens again. ;-)



Looking east along the south edge of the hill of Bern, from the Münster church. People built gardens on terraces. In Switzerland, people put gardens and farmland wherever it will fit. I even saw a farmer's field on a strip of land between a road and a river, and the strip had to be only 5 meters wide. Yet it was tilled and cared for, just like a bigger farm.


Looking southeast toward the River Aar from the Münster church's platform.

Pictures from Switzerland, part 1 - Bern

The view from my hotel room at the Hotel Savoy in Bern. This is looking into the back yards of the apartment buildings next to the hotel, and on the street behind us. Bern is a German city, and the architecture and the language is VERY German. They like lots of straight lines and turrets and pointed roofs and flowers on the balconies. I felt very at home there - it's very orderly and clean.

It was Youth Firefighter Appreciation Day, I think. Big parade, lots of firemen and equipment from many eras (late 1800s until present day), and a wonderful bagpipe-and-drum band.

There are public fountains like this all over the city. I'm sure they were used for as the public water supply for the population. I think they're powered by natural water pressure from water coming down from the mountains.

The Münster church, begun around 1421 A.D, and finished in 1893 A.D. They're working on it still. I'm told that it's not a cathedral, because apparently you need a bishop-in-residence to make it a cathedral, and there hasn't been one, so it's just a big church. Many websites refer to it as a cathedral though. Sounds more impressive, you know.

A close-up of one of the gargoyles on the Münster. This one is strangling a mermaid, it looks like. I have no idea what religious significance that has. Apparently mermaids were fearsome monsters in the Middle Ages.

The Last Judgment,over the doors of the Münster. There are over 200 stone and wood statues in this work. All the good people are going to heaven, at the right hand of God, although I don't think Jesus is represented here - that's the Archangel Michael with the sword there in the middle. All the bad people are going to hell on the left hand of God, and are being tormented, etc. The horizontal lines are wires that are strung across the opening to keep birds from roosting there and pooping on the artwork.

Looking southeast from the Münster, across the River Aar.

Looking west along the south edge of the old city of Bern. Bern is named for "bear," the first animal that the city's founder, Duke Berthold the Fifth of Zahringen, killed when he showed up on the rocky promontory back in 1191 A.D. The city sits on a tall U-shaped hill that points to the east, with the River Aar flowing around it from the north, around the east end, and then back to the south. It makes for a naturally-defensible position. Since the 1600s, the city has kept bears as mascots, in a pit across the river. They have a keeper and apparently are well-cared-for. I didn't see them, though.

One thing to like about the sagging economy

The gasoline prices are plummeting! I saw $2.11 per gallon down the street last night. That's amazing. It's a wonderful thing to see people get tired of paying top dollar for gas, and to decide to change their driving habits in order to use less.

I saw a reference on a news website to last year's "mental recession." It's the closest thing I've seen to an admission that there in fact was no recession at the time that the media was screaming that there was.

Now, of course, thanks to the media's help, there is one, I think. The third quarter of 2008 saw a 0.3 percent shrinkage in the US Gross Domestic Product, compared to the second quarter's 2.8 percent growth. The fourth quarter of 2007 saw a 0.2 percent shrinkage in the GDP.

The National Bureau of Economic Research defines a recession as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales." That's the version that About.com uses when they say that we're already in a recession.

Recession.org defines a recession the traditional way, which is "a situation in which a country's GDP, or gross domestic product, sustains a negative growth factor for at least 2 consecutive quarters."

That hasn't happened yet since 2001, but I think it will once the numbers are in for the fourth quarter of 2008.

Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. In order to have good times, we must also have bad. In order for successful businesses to thrive, bad ones must fail, like the Big Three automakers.

I just hope these bad times pass quickly.

Housecleaning

We have to have some new water lines run in our tiny attic, and so we are pulling stuff out of there so the plumber can work. I pulled out all my bins of CDs. I had forgotten that I had so many.

A couple of years ago, I ripped them all and archived them on my server, so that I always have them easily accessible. But I kept the discs, because the average hard drive's life is three years, and eventually the server will die. I should do a backup while I'm at it, now that I think about it.

Anyway. My darling wife has done a great job of weeding out her collections of things - quilts, holiday decorations, books, and so on - to try to fit into our new, more compact jungle lifestyle. The only things I collect are guns and CDs, and, like a typically insensitive male, I hadn't weeded out either of them.

A month ago I realized that I don't particularly like my AR-15 rifle (wimpy cartridge, plasticky lightweight design) and so I put it up for consignment at a local gun shop. It sold the other day, and they're sending me a check.

Today I pulled out all my CDs, went through them, and set aside a three-foot-high stack of CDs to donate. I think we'll send them to a charity to send to the soldiers overseas, like my neighbor Sue is doing. Hopefully they'll like some of them.

It feels good to get rid of stuff.

Genesis, "Keep It Dark"

I like the lurching beat, and the rhythmic metronome-like quality of the guitar, and the occasional "blerp" from the analog synth. I don't think I ever saw or heard this one before, but I bought the Abacab album used for $2.50 on Amazon, so I'm discovering a whole new side of Genesis. I don't know why people bother to steal music when it's so cheap, used.

Remember when country music star Garth Brooks tried to get legislation passed to make it illegal to buy or sell used CDs? He figured, if he couldn't make any royalties off of it, then it should be illegal. Ha.

Another severed human foot found in British Columbia

Ah, the picturesque coast of British Columbia wouldn't be the same without the occasional severed body part washing up on the pristine beaches.

This latest one was wearing a New Balance shoe. I think that's great advertising. ;-) Imagine the PR coup if it was wearing a Jimmy Choo.

Can't imagine it? Nope. I really can't either, though I tried.

Depeche Mode, "Any Second Now"

This little gem of a tune is the utmost in simplicity and in analog synthesizer sounds.


She remembered all the shadows and the doubts
The same film
Vivid pictures like a wall that's standing empty
And the night so still
Such a small affair, a relapse
Someone closing like the nightclub door
Here again and when you speak
I watch you move away and seem so sure

She is hoping to forget
And the moment almost slips away
When the colours move apart
And I wonder if you want to stay
And I need to change you
Like the words I'm reading, don't you understand
This the warning and the message
I remember as you touch my hand

Best Buy takes a beating

A "seismic change" in consumer behavior. I think that's great.

A new game

I had quit playing video games because I'm not allowed to have games on my corporate laptop anymore, and I'm damned if I'm going to buy a PSP or some other game system that I have to lug around. Instead, I quit playing, cold turkey, for several months.

It was horrible.

Then I stumbled across Quake Wars: Enemy Territory at Big Lots for $6.00 last night. For that price, I couldn't pass it up. I installed it on my Passport drive, at my boss' suggestion, so that it's technically not on my corporate laptop.

It works wonderfully.

Once more, the house is filled with the happy crackle of gunfire, the crump of grenades, the whoosh of rockets, and the angry taunts of dying alien Strogg soldiers as my heroic human soldiers advance on their prey.

My darling wife is out for the day, or she would be most unhappy.

One hell of a pilot

I have never seen a pilot THIS good before.

Waiting for the end

"We never see each other," said the young air-conditioning repairman who was working on my unit. We were talking about his girlfriend.

"I go fishing every night after work until midnight," he said.

"And your girlfriend doesn't go with?" I asked.

"No, she just likes to sit around and watch TV. The only time we ever see each other is when we're in bed."

"Really?" I said.

"Yes, we don't even talk anymore. It's like we're roommates, not boyfriend/girlfriend."

"It sounds like you're just waiting for the end, and neither of you has the courage to end it," I didn't say. "Get off your ass and be a man. End it," I failed to add.

"Mmmhmmm," I said, instead.

A handshake with history

I was wandering through a craft show on Saturday with my darling wife when we came upon an elderly couple selling decorations. The man was wearing a blue baseball cap that said "Purple Heart" on it, and it had many metal decorative pins on it, including "USMC" (US Marine Corps).

"You should thank him for his service," my wife whispered to me. So I greeted him, thanked him for his service, and shook his hand. Thus began a ten-minute brush with history.

His name is Ed Bremer. He and his wife Pat live in the next town over from us. I asked him where he had served.

"Saipan," he said. Saipan is one of the islands in the Mariana Islands in the northwest Pacific Ocean. It was the scene of a horrific battle in June and July 1944, where 71,000 men of the 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions and the 27th Infantry Division landed to fight more than 30,000 Japanese soldiers who held the island. The Japanese soldiers fought almost to the last man, and convinced almost all of the island's 22,000 civilians to commit suicide, either in banzai charges or by jumping off of the cliffs. 2,949 Americans were killed and 10,364 were wounded in the fighting - including Ed.

Ed had already recovered from being hit in the knees by shrapnel on the island of Tinian. On Saipan, he was hit by a Japanese shell which wounded him in the spine and deafened him in both ears. He was evacuated and spent the next year recovering in seven different hospitals across the Pacific and finally back to the mainland United States.

His gray eyes were clear, and his mind was very sharp. He spoke calmly of those events, as if they were yesterday.

"I was a B.A.R. man," he said. The M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle was a huge, 20-pound Light Machine Gun (LMG) firing the .30-06 rifle cartridge. It was developed too late to serve in World War 1, but was used extensively in World War 2 and Korea. Two B.A.R. teams were assigned per squad of 13 men, each team being made up of a gunner and his assistant who carried ammunition and spare barrels. The B.A.R. provided vicious, accurate automatic fire as cover for the advancing squad members. It used 20-round magazines, though, which meant it could not keep up sustained fire like a belt-fed weapon; hence, the use of two B.A.R. teams. (Today, the role of the B.A.R. is played by the M249 "Minimi" Squad Automatic Weapon, or SAW.)

Being a B.A.R. gunner was a death sentence, because the enemy knew just how deadly the B.A.R. was. Therefore, the B.A.R. man was always the enemy's first target.

"I was supposed to live about two minutes in combat," said Ed. "My assistant was killed. All my friends were killed. Everyone I knew well, who I was friends with, is dead. My best friend was killed on Saipan, and I didn't even know it until much later, after I was hit and evacuated."

We were silent for a moment.

"America wouldn't be the great country that it is without men like you," I said. "Thank you." And I shook his hand again.

It was an honor to shake hands with Ed, to shake hands with history.

Today is Veteran's Day. I am thankful for all veterans' service. Please thank a veteran today.

Another casualty of consumerism

Circuit City filed for bankruptcy today. Is Best Buy far behind, I wonder?

It's a natural result of a forcible reordering of priorities, as people discover that gas and food are more important than a big-screen TV.

My garden shed spider is hungry

Every time I go to the garden shed, the spider who lives there has woven a thicker web across the path in front of the doorway.

I cannot get to the shed without cutting the web, so I apologize to the spider, shoo him into the tree next to the path, and then cut the web.

The next day, the web is back, bigger than before.

I think he is determined to eat me.

Laurie Anderson, "Let X = X"

The first house that I bought was on the far eastern edge of Denver. And when the sun went down, but it was still shining upward over the mountains into space, you could see the spy satellites flitting by like little glinting snowflakes. It would take perhaps two minutes for a satellite to traverse the sky above me, usually from north to south. (With the Earth revolving beneath them on this orbit, they can usually see most of the planet's surface a couple of times a day.) On a good evening, swinging in my hammock, I would count perhaps five of them before the sun was no longer at the correct angle to reflect from their silvery bodies.

Sometimes I would wave, in case they were watching. Which they probably were.



This song ends abruptly because on the Long Playing record, it segues into the next song, "It Tango."

I met this guy. And he looked like might have
been a hat check clerk at an ice rink.
Which, in fact, he turned out to be. And I said:
Oh boy. Right again.

Let X=X. You know, it could be you.
It's a sky-blue sky. Satellites are out tonight.
Let X=X.

You know, I could write a book. And this book would
be thick enough to stun an ox. 'Cause I can see the
future and it's a place - about 70 miles east of
here. Where it's lighter. Linger on over here.
Got the time?.

I got this postcard. And it read, it said:
Dear Amigo - Dear Partner.
Listen, uh - I just want to say thanks. So...thanks.
Thanks for all the presents. Thanks for introducing
me to the Chief.
Thanks for putting on the feedbag. Thanks for going
all out.
Thanks for showing me your Swiss Army knife.
and uh -
Thanks for letting me autograph your cast.
Hug and kisses. XXXXOOOO.
Oh yeah, P.S.
I - feel - feel like - I am - in a burning building - and I
gotta go.
Cause I - I feel - feel like - I am - in a burning
building - and I gotta go.

Democracy at work

Democracy propelled Barack Obama to the highest office in the land, and, arguably, in the world.

Democracy also passed three popular initiatives in Florida, California and Arizona. These amendments sought to formally define marriage in the state as as a union between a man and a woman.

I think it's interesting that people are loudly praising one vote while condemning the other in the same breath, when it's the same machinery that created these results. Democracy.

Not satisfied with "civil unions," gay lobbyists and activists used lawsuits in the past few years to get gay marriages legalized in Connecticut, Massachussetts and California. That's not democracy.

Their actions galvanized the rest of the country to move to stop it. More than 40 states now have constitutional or legal language that prevent it, especially with Tuesday's votes in Florida, California and Arizona.

That IS democracy, which is "tyranny of the majority," as Alexis de Tocqueville said.

Just in the past three days, I noticed homosexual activity depicted on "Bones," "House," and "The Simpsons." I'm sure there's lots more in the media that I don't see, because I don't consume much media. But even my liberal friends have commented on the fact that the gay agenda seems to be promoted more and more in popular media.

I think many people resent that, especially when realistic estimates of the homosexual population in the United States place the percentage of homosexuals in the general population at between 2 percent and 7 percent. The amount of media focus on and promotion of homosexuality would indicate that gay people are much more numerous than they really are. I think this is actually counterproductive to their political cause.

And, of course, some ethnic and religious groups are predisposed to be against gay marriage. For example, in California, 70 percent of black voters, and more than 50 percent of Hispanic voters supported Proposition 8 this week to ban gay marriage. I think that's VERY interesting, considering that both groups in the United States are traditionally minorities themselves. For one minority group to "oppress" another is quite interesting.

Anyway. You saw democracy in action this week. The various outcomes can be seen as good or bad, depending on who's looking at what results. But it's amusing how quickly some people rush to condemn the results of democracy, and express a desire to overturn it, when the results aren't what they want to see.

Boys with guns on the train

In Switzerland, Sundays and Fridays are the big train-travel days for soldiers. Switzerland has nearly a half a million men (boys, really) on active duty. Sunday nights, they report for duty. Fridays, they go home. They may spend weeks at a time, stationed at their barracks in Swiss cities and towns, but Sundays and Fridays are the changeover days. Sometimes they're in their fatigues, and other times, they're in dress uniform. I suppose it depends on where they're stationed and what they're slated to be doing that week.

But most of them carry their guns slung across their backs. Sturmgewehr 90s, mostly, a 5.56x45mm assault rifle similar to the US M-16, only much better-made (and much more expensive). They all have folding stocks, to make them more compact, especially when traveling on crowded Swiss trains. No magazines were in evidence, mainly because since a 2007 law passed by the socialists in parliament, soldiers are not allowed to keep government-issued ammunition at home. They have to report to an armory during a declared emergency to fetch their ammunition.

No one gives them a second glance on the trains, or in the stations. The Swiss know that guns help keep them safe, and that these boys are doing a job for them.

I admire that in a culture.

A little frog, no bigger than my thumbnail

He was sitting in the parking lot in front of the Target store. I was walking diagonally across the parking lot to get to another store, and there he was, in the hot sun, sitting there. It was a quiet morning, and there were few cars in the lot, but I wanted to make sure that no one squashed him. So I shooed him into the grass median, where hopefully he would be safer.

It occurs to me now that I should have picked him up and carried him closer to the pond from whence he must have come. But the pond was 300 meters away, and at the time, I didn't think about it. That's a long way for a little guy like that to hop. It must have taken him hours to get to the place where I found him.

I hope he survives another day. That's all any of us can ask for, really. Just one more day.

Review: "My Own Worst Enemy"

Actually, this can hardly be considered a review, because I missed the pilot episode on NBC, and then watched about 15 minutes of the second episode, 8 of those minutes via fast-forward.

I want Christian Slater, Alfre Woodard, Saffron Burrows and all the others in this fine cast to succeed. I just don't think this is the show that will let them.

The premise is great - suburban dad (Slater) discovers that he has a secret-agent alter ego, which is activated by a government chip that's implanted in his head. He has no memory of what he does as a secret agent (usually cloak-and-dagger stuff, with the occasional murder), and his secret agent identity has no memory of what he does as a suburban dad.

What bugs me the most is that Slater's two identities communicate with each other by leaving snide video clips fpr each other on his cellphone. When one identity "wakes up," he checks his cellphone to see what his alter ego has been doing.

I find that plot device VERY annoying. So annoying that I can't really watch the show. Post-It notes, I would believe. Or just plain old "what the hell have I been doing?" fumbling, like most people would do if they suddenly woke up in the middle of a conversation - or a murder.

But the cellphone? Nope.

Good luck, guys. I have enough to do trying to figure out what's going on in "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles." (Like THAT'S a mystery - homicidal androids hound our harried heroes, who are not quite helpless, but who nevertheless hurtle toward a holocaust future that hangs in the balance. Same old, same old.)

Madonna, "Crybaby"

This is probably one of my favorite Madonna tunes, simply because it is so completely opposite of her normal genre. I have always enjoyed music from the 1920s through 1940s, and this particular piece, from the 1990 film "Dick Tracy," is a nice tribute.




And of course this one, "Now I'm Following You." It's amusing how Madonna and Mandy Patinkin sing it straight, and then mix it up in what is today probably considered to be a quite cheesy dance style.

Hiding from The Man

"The Man" is a colloquial term for a government officer or other person who can make life difficult for you.

We are trying to hide from The Man. Or The Woman, as the case may be.

We ripped out our nasty concrete sidewalk in front of our house the other day, because it was ugly and we're tired of it. We want to lay brick pavers down instead, to allow people to walk under the eave of our roof when it rains, so that they can reach our front door without getting sopping wet.

But there is The Woman.

The Woman is a county employee, whose job it is to drive around endlessly and look for code violations, for people who are doing work on their houses without getting the necessary county permits.

We don't need a permit for what we are doing. But nevertheless, we wish to avoid scrutiny. We don't need to be hassled by someone whose salary is paid by our taxes. (Somehow such hassling makes it even more insulting, that we're paying her to be a pain in the ass.)

So we have tried to conceal our activities. Mainly this involves praying that The Woman doesn't drive by and notice a large gash in the ground in front of our house. We have lots of bushes and trees in our front yard, so the odds are good that The Woman won't notice what we're doing.

I hope.

Happy thoughts

• It's finally cold enough to sleep with the windows open and pull the covers up.
• We can get lots of yard work done now that it's cool! The vines are taking over the trees again.
• Because it's cool now, we can work on our garage and make it into a real laundry room and an office. We have a stream of workmen coming and going every day, to make it happen. Slow but sure.
• I have a ton of vacation coming. I am taking off the last part of November and all of December. My vacation is always subject to the needs of my projects, and so I typically don't take any until the end of the year. I will use this vacation to work on the garage. And to put up a fence in the backyard, so we have some privacy. And to tear out more of the jungle in our lot next door. And and and.
• We're going to Disneyworld in a few weeks. My darling wife hasn't been in a decade. It's been more than two decades for me. Maybe we can go to Space Coast while we're at it. I want to tour the Kennedy Space Center. I thought the Johnson Space Center in Houston was the coolest thing in the world, with an actual moon rock that you can touch. (It's very grubby from millions of fingers, but who cares, it's a moon rock. Or they claim it is, anyway. ;-) )
• I will put my shotgun back together this weekend or next, and go back to the trap range with my neighbor Bob. He misses me. So do the guys at the range - they were asking where I was. Bob told them I had been kidnapped.

Happy thoughts.

A new era

I was all sulky and pissed off this morning. Because I had to install drywall at 7:00 AM, not because of the election results. Oh, sure, I think the election results stink. But I expected it. I've learned not to expect much from the American electorate.

(We are moving our laundry room into the garage, so I had to pull out the washer and dryer and store it in the living room, then pull the dryer vent pipe out of the wall, and install a piece of drywall over the resulting hole. I had to do this before our plumber got here to move our water heater into the space where the dryer was. My drywall patch looks very nice, and the plumber told me I did a great job. My friend Bill told me how to do it, and apparently I did a much better job than my old handyman, who once used a paper plate to cover a hole in our ceiling. A paper plate. I had never seen such shoddy work in my life. In Florida, it's often easier just to do the damn thing yourself.)


So. I could continue to be all sulky and pissed off, or I could decide to look at it as an opportunity. An opportunity to let liberals re-make all the policy mistakes that were made in the 1960s, only with a new-millenium spin. Higher taxes, massive new entitlement programs, redistribution of wealth, gun bans, lax law enforcement, voting rights for felons, victim status for entirely new groups of people. And I get to laugh at all of it.


Unfortunately, I also have to help pay for it, unless I figure out a way to successfully avoid paying taxes to support the carnival of idiocy, while also claiming victim status to get my "fair share." Millions of people are already doing that, so I'm sure it must be quite easy. I just have an ethical problem with it. I'm sure I'll overcome it at some point.


Given what I already know about Obama, his presidency will be a mix of Lyndon Johnson's domestic "Great Society" largesse and Jimmy Carter's ineffective foreign-policy handwringing, with a bit of Nixonian paranoia thrown in for good measure.


It will be amusing to watch. And after it's all over, we can get back to work. ;-)

Genesis, "Land of Confusion"

Ronald Reagan is spinning in his grave today. ;-)

A blast from the past

On the train back to Zurich, we stopped in a suburb of Zurich called Oerlikon. I remember that name because the Oerlikon 20mm cannon was quite popular on surface vessels of World War 1 and World War 2, and is still in use even today. The Oerlikon 35mm cannon is widely used on armored vehicles for anti-aircraft purposes. The manufacturer is based in Zurich, and drew its name from the town of Oerlikon. Nowadays Oerlikon is called Oerlikon Contraves, and is a subsidiary of the German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall-DeTec AG.

Gilbert O'Sullivan, "Alone Again"

Oddly enough, this happens to be one of my favorite cheesy tunes from the 1970s. Naturally.

How the Swiss stay thin

The Swiss stay thin because:

• They eat about half of what an average American eats at every meal
• They snack on fruit, whereas Americans eat processed foods from packages
• They eat foods high in protein, like thin-sliced, air-dried meats and cheeses (a LOT of cheese)
• Not many of them own cars, so they walk or bike wherever they're going (even if it's just to the train station)
• They often use the stairs, because many older buildings don't have elevators
• They live in a mountainous country, so streets are often steep, giving them more exercise when they walk
• They have a cultural bias toward outdoor activities, like hiking in the mountains - I saw people of all ages hiking all the time
• They don't have the massive penetration of fast food and video games in their culture

The Swiss are a healthier people, for sure. For some reason, they suddenly begin to look very old after age 45 or so. But at least they're healthy.

Fast food and fat people

In Switzerland, I saw:

• Three McDonalds
• Two Burger Kings
• One Starbucks
• Zero fat people

I think that says a lot. The first fat person I saw in two weeks was when I got to Atlanta's Hartsfield airport. The guy running the fryer weighed what three average Swiss men weighed.

The invisible presence

My last day in Switzerland, I woke up and looked out the window of my hotel room, and saw a mountain across the valley. The whole week I'd been there, the mountain and the valley had been shrouded in fog, rain and snow, so I never had seen the mountain before. "Holy crap, there's a mountain right THERE!" I said to myself. It was kind of scary to think that something so large and majestic and beautiful was there the whole time, right next to me, only I was unable to see it.

In a moment of introspection, it occurred to me that the same way the mountain snuck up on me, the way it was was there the whole time in its titanic beauty, God is near me. Sometimes I can feel God's presence in my life, working His will through me. Something huge and overwhelmingly majestic, full of quiet power, reassuringly calm. It's a nice feeling. Most of the time, God's presence is shrouded from my view, occluded by the fog of the everyday things that seem real to me. But once in awhile, God's quiet presence makes itself known to me.

Like that mountain.